A reading edition for first-timers
Every line of Shakespeare, explained.
The complete works — every play and poem — with the archaic words, the Bible and the myth, the Tudor politics, and the jokes filled in beside the line. Sourced, fact-checked, and built for students meeting Shakespeare for the first time.
Looking for a specific line or speech? Use the search box at the top of the page.
Tragedies
The great tragedies, with the Roman and revenge plays.
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Antony and Cleopatra
ReadMark Antony, one of Rome's three rulers, neglects his duties for Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. His rivalry with the cold young Octavius Caesar pulls him home to a marriage of alliance, but he returns to Egypt and war follows. Beaten at Actium and falsely told Cleopatra is dead, Antony falls on his sword; she follows by the asp's bite rather than grace Caesar's triumph.
- lines
- 3,518
- notes
- 378
- glossary
- 996
Content notes: suicide, violence, war atrocity
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Coriolanus
ReadCaius Marcius, Rome's fiercest soldier, wins the surname Coriolanus by storming the Volscian city of Corioli, but his contempt for the common people and his refusal to court their votes turn the tribunes and the crowd against him. Banished, he joins his old enemy Aufidius and marches on Rome, relenting only when his mother begs him to spare the city — a mercy that costs him his life.
- lines
- 3,641
- notes
- 344
- glossary
- 1,054
Content notes: violence, war atrocity
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Hamlet
ReadA Danish prince, ordered by his murdered father's ghost to avenge the crime, delays and disintegrates while the court around him does the same.
- lines
- 3,897
- notes
- 356
- glossary
- 813
Content notes: violence, suicide, mental health crisis
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Julius Caesar
ReadA conspiracy of senators, fearing Caesar means to make himself king, draws the honorable Brutus into assassinating him on the ides of March; Mark Antony's funeral oration turns Rome against the killers, and the ensuing civil war destroys Brutus and Cassius at Philippi.
- lines
- 2,585
- notes
- 202
- glossary
- 1,030
Content notes: suicide, violence
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King Lear
ReadOld King Lear divides Britain between the two daughters who flatter him and disowns Cordelia, the one who loves him truly. Cast out by Goneril and Regan, he goes mad in a storm; in a mirroring plot, the Earl of Gloucester is blinded after trusting his treacherous bastard son Edmund. Cordelia's rescue comes too late: she is hanged, and Lear dies of grief over her body.
- lines
- 3,390
- notes
- 364
- glossary
- 1,056
Content notes: violence, elder abuse, mutilation, suicide, mental health crisis
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Macbeth
ReadA Scottish general, prophesied by three witches to become king, murders his kinsman King Duncan in his sleep and seizes the throne. To keep it he kills again and again, while his wife is destroyed by guilt; equivocating prophecies lull him until Birnam Wood marches on Dunsinane and Macduff, 'not of woman born,' cuts him down.
- lines
- 2,349
- notes
- 233
- glossary
- 894
Content notes: violence, infanticide, suicide
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Othello
ReadIn Venice the Moorish general Othello secretly marries Desdemona. His ensign Iago, passed over for promotion, feeds him false 'proof' — a planted handkerchief — that she is unfaithful with the lieutenant Cassio. On Cyprus Othello's jealousy hardens until he smothers Desdemona, then kills himself on learning her innocence and Iago's villainy.
- lines
- 3,465
- notes
- 348
- glossary
- 1,045
Content notes: racism, intimate partner violence, misogyny, suicide
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Romeo and Juliet
ReadTwo teenagers from feuding Veronese families fall in love, marry in secret, and die in the space of four days.
- lines
- 3,059
- notes
- 287
- glossary
- 1,004
Content notes: suicide, violence
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Timon of Athens
ReadTimon, a lavishly generous lord of Athens, ruins himself with gifts and feasts. When his money runs out, every flattering friend refuses him. Enraged at their ingratitude, he curses Athens and exiles himself to a cave, where — digging for roots — he finds gold and showers it on thieves and on the banished Alcibiades, now marching on the city. Timon dies a misanthrope by the sea.
- lines
- 2,412
- notes
- 253
- glossary
- 919
Content notes: misogyny
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Titus Andronicus
ReadReturning victorious over the Goths, the Roman general Titus sacrifices their queen Tamora's eldest son. Made empress, Tamora revenges herself on his family: her sons rape and mutilate his daughter Lavinia and frame his sons for murder, helped by her lover, the Moor Aaron. Feigning madness, Titus repays her with a banquet of her own sons baked in a pie, and the stage fills with the dead.
- lines
- 2,542
- notes
- 232
- glossary
- 1,028
Content notes: violence, sexual assault, mutilation, infanticide, racism
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Comedies
Festive comedies, romances of disguise, and farce.
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
ReadFour young Athenians chase one another into an enchanted wood, where a quarrel between the fairy king and queen and the mischief of Puck's love-juice tangle their loves; meanwhile a troupe of amateur actors rehearses a play, and one of them is briefly turned into an ass and adored by the fairy queen.
- lines
- 2,106
- notes
- 189
- glossary
- 724
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As You Like It
ReadOrlando, kept down by his elder brother, and Rosalind, banished by her usurping uncle, both flee to the Forest of Arden. Disguised as the youth 'Ganymede,' Rosalind meets the lovesick Orlando and offers to cure him by having him woo 'Ganymede' as if it were she. Among shepherds, a clown, and the melancholy Jaques, four couples are matched and the usurper converted.
- lines
- 2,512
- notes
- 251
- glossary
- 1,018
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Love's Labour's Lost
ReadThe King of Navarre and three lords swear a three-year oath to study, fast, and shun women — then fall in love the moment the Princess of France and her ladies arrive. Their witty wooing, disguises, and a pageant of the Nine Worthies are cut short by news of the French king's death; the ladies impose a year's penance, and the play ends, unusually, with love's labour postponed.
- lines
- 2,670
- notes
- 243
- glossary
- 1,040
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Much Ado About Nothing
ReadSoldiers return from war to Governor Leonato's house in Messina. The sharp-witted Beatrice and Benedick, both sworn against marriage, are gulled into loving each other, while young Claudio courts Leonato's daughter Hero. Don Pedro's bastard brother Don John slanders Hero as unchaste, breaking off her wedding; the blundering constable Dogberry and his Watch expose the lie, and both couples wed.
- lines
- 2,254
- notes
- 231
- glossary
- 922
Content notes: misogyny
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The Comedy of Errors
ReadTwo sets of identical twins — masters and servants, separated by a shipwreck in infancy — land in Ephesus on the same day. As the travelling Antipholus and his Dromio are everywhere mistaken for their resident doubles, an afternoon dissolves into beatings, a locked-out husband, a disputed gold chain, an arrest, charges of madness and witchcraft, and a family reunion at the priory.
- lines
- 1,740
- notes
- 152
- glossary
- 888
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The Merchant of Venice
ReadTo fund his friend Bassanio's suit to the heiress Portia, the merchant Antonio borrows from the Jewish moneylender Shylock on a bond of a pound of his flesh. Bassanio wins Portia by the casket test, but Antonio's ships are lost and Shylock demands his forfeit. Disguised as a lawyer, Portia saves Antonio and defeats Shylock, who is forced to convert.
- lines
- 2,602
- notes
- 254
- glossary
- 870
Content notes: antisemitism, religious persecution
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The Merry Wives of Windsor
ReadShort of money, the fat knight Falstaff sends identical love-letters to two married Windsor women, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. The wives compare notes and gull him three times — dumped in the Thames with the laundry, beaten in disguise, and pinched by mock-fairies at Herne's Oak. Meanwhile their daughter Anne outwits both parents to marry the man she loves.
- lines
- 2,270
- notes
- 246
- glossary
- 1,021
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The Taming of the Shrew
ReadA drunken tinker is gulled into believing he is a lord and sits down to watch a play: in Padua, fortune-hunting Petruchio courts and 'tames' the sharp-tongued Katherina through a campaign of contradiction, while her gentle sister Bianca's disguised suitors compete for her. It ends in a wedding banquet, a wager on the wives, and Katherina's much-debated speech on a wife's duty.
- lines
- 2,583
- notes
- 238
- glossary
- 1,016
Content notes: misogyny
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Twelfth Night
ReadShipwrecked in Illyria and believing her twin Sebastian drowned, Viola disguises herself as the page 'Cesario' and serves Duke Orsino, who loves the countess Olivia. Sent to woo Olivia for him, Cesario is loved by Olivia while loving Orsino. Meanwhile Olivia's steward Malvolio is gulled into thinking she loves him. Sebastian's arrival untangles the knot: he weds Olivia, and Viola weds Orsino.
- lines
- 2,326
- notes
- 231
- glossary
- 962
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Two Gentlemen of Verona
ReadTwo friends, Valentine and Proteus, leave Verona for the Duke's court at Milan. Valentine loves the Duke's daughter Silvia; Proteus, already sworn to Julia, also falls for Silvia and betrays both his friend and his love to win her. Julia follows in disguise as a page. After a troubling forest confrontation, Proteus repents and the two couples are paired off.
- lines
- 2,200
- notes
- 229
- glossary
- 835
Content notes: sexual assault
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Histories
The English chronicle plays, in the order of the reigns they dramatise.
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King John
ReadKing John holds the English crown against the claim of his young nephew Arthur, backed by France. After war, a brief marriage-peace, and the Pope's interdict, John has Arthur imprisoned and orders his death; Hubert spares him, but the boy dies escaping. England's lords revolt and France invades; the tide turns, John is poisoned by a monk, and his son succeeds.
- lines
- 2,649
- notes
- 254
- glossary
- 1,027
Content notes: child abuse, war atrocity
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Richard II
ReadKing Richard II banishes his cousin Bolingbroke and seizes his inheritance; Bolingbroke returns in arms, deposes him, and takes the crown as Henry IV, leaving Richard to fall from anointed king to murdered prisoner.
- lines
- 2,801
- notes
- 262
- glossary
- 891
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Henry IV, Part 1
ReadWhile rebels rise against Henry IV, the King's tavern-haunting son Prince Hal bides his time among thieves before redeeming himself and killing the rebel hero Hotspur at the Battle of Shrewsbury.
- lines
- 2,824
- notes
- 369
- glossary
- 1,044
Content notes: war atrocity
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Henry IV, Part 2
ReadAs Henry IV sickens and the northern rebellion sputters to its treacherous end at Gaultree, Prince Hal lingers a last while among Falstaff and the Eastcheap crowd — until, crowned at his father's death, he rejects the old knight and embraces the rule of law.
- lines
- 3,010
- notes
- 291
- glossary
- 1,173
Content notes: war atrocity
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Henry V
ReadCrowned and transformed, the former Prince Hal revives England's claim to France, foils a treasonous plot, and leads a sick, outnumbered army to a stunning victory at Agincourt — while a Chorus bids us imagine the 'vasty fields of France' on a bare stage. It ends in his blunt wooing of the French princess.
- lines
- 3,083
- notes
- 302
- glossary
- 1,125
Content notes: war atrocity, violence
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Henry VI, Part 1
ReadAs Henry V is buried, his infant son inherits a France that begins to slip away. The heroic Talbot fights on while Joan la Pucelle rallies the French and the English nobles fall to feuding — above all in the Temple Garden, where plucking red and white roses seeds the Wars of the Roses. The squabbling lords leave Talbot to die, and Suffolk woos Margaret of Anjou for the boy king.
- lines
- 2,713
- notes
- 262
- glossary
- 1,093
Content notes: war atrocity, violence
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Henry VI, Part 2
ReadMargaret of Anjou arrives as queen, and her favourite Suffolk schemes with Cardinal Beaufort and the Duke of York to destroy 'good Duke Humphrey' of Gloucester. Gloucester is murdered and Suffolk banished; York foments Jack Cade's bloody commoners' revolt as a trial of strength, then returns from Ireland in arms to open the Wars of the Roses at St Albans.
- lines
- 3,099
- notes
- 307
- glossary
- 1,051
Content notes: violence, war atrocity
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Henry VI, Part 3
ReadAfter St Albans, York forces King Henry to name him heir, disinheriting Henry's son. War erupts: York is captured and killed by Margaret, but his sons avenge him and Edward seizes the crown as Edward IV. His rash marriage turns Warwick the Kingmaker against him; Warwick restores Henry, then dies at Barnet. The Yorkists win at Tewkesbury, and Richard of Gloucester murders Henry in the Tower.
- lines
- 2,936
- notes
- 281
- glossary
- 1,054
Content notes: violence, war atrocity, infanticide
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Richard III
ReadDeformed and ruthless, Richard of Gloucester schemes toward the throne: he has his brother Clarence murdered, woos Lady Anne over a corpse, and destroys the queen's kindred. Crowned after branding his nephews bastards, he has the two young princes smothered in the Tower. As allies desert him, his victims' ghosts curse him before Bosworth, where Richmond kills him and becomes Henry VII.
- lines
- 3,657
- notes
- 364
- glossary
- 1,000
Content notes: violence, infanticide
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Henry VIII
ReadCardinal Wolsey rises to dominate Henry VIII and destroys the Duke of Buckingham, but his pride and secret double-dealing bring him crashing down. Henry sets aside Queen Katherine — who defends herself with unanswerable dignity — to marry Anne Bullen. The play closes with the christening of their daughter Elizabeth and a prophecy of her glorious reign.
- lines
- 3,240
- notes
- 303
- glossary
- 1,000
Content notes: religious persecution
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Romances
The late plays of loss, wonder, and reunion.
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Cymbeline
ReadBanished for marrying the king's daughter Imogen, Posthumus is tricked by the Italian Iachimo into believing her unfaithful and orders her killed. Disguised as a boy, Imogen flees toward Wales, where her long-lost royal brothers live in a cave. Through a Roman invasion, a vision of the god Jupiter, and a cascade of revelations, the scattered family and two kingdoms are reconciled.
- lines
- 3,744
- notes
- 386
- glossary
- 1,054
Content notes: violence, sexual coercion
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Pericles
ReadNarrated across many years and countries by the medieval poet Gower, Prince Pericles of Tyre flees a tyrant's deadly secret, wins and seemingly loses his wife Thaisa to a sea-storm, and is parted from his newborn daughter Marina. After Marina survives murder, pirates, and a brothel by sheer virtue, the goddess Diana reunites the scattered family.
- lines
- 2,405
- notes
- 248
- glossary
- 863
Content notes: sexual coercion, sexual assault, enslavement
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The Tempest
ReadProspero, the deposed Duke of Milan, has lived twelve years on a remote island with his daughter Miranda, served by the airy spirit Ariel and the islander Caliban. When his enemies sail near, he raises a storm to wreck them ashore, guides Miranda and Ferdinand into love, foils two murder plots, and — choosing forgiveness over revenge — reclaims his dukedom and frees Ariel.
- lines
- 2,281
- notes
- 247
- glossary
- 959
Content notes: enslavement, racism
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The Winter's Tale
ReadKing Leontes of Sicilia is seized by a jealous conviction that his wife Hermione loves his friend Polixenes, and wrecks his own family: his son dies, his wife seemingly dies, and his baby daughter is cast away on the coast of Bohemia. Sixteen years later that daughter, Perdita, is wooed by Polixenes's son; the lost are found, and Hermione's 'statue' comes to life in a scene of wonder.
- lines
- 3,233
- notes
- 325
- glossary
- 1,130
Content notes: violence
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Tragicomedies & problem plays
Plays that mix the comic and the bitter.
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All's Well That Ends Well
ReadHelena, a poor physician's orphan, loves the noble Bertram far above her rank. She cures the dying King of France and is granted Bertram as her reward, but he refuses the marriage and flees to the wars, vowing to accept her only when she wins his ring and bears his child—conditions he thinks impossible. By the bed-trick Helena fulfils both and claims him at last.
- lines
- 2,764
- notes
- 274
- glossary
- 981
Content notes: sexual coercion
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Measure for Measure
ReadDuke Vincentio leaves the strict deputy Angelo to govern Vienna and stays disguised as a friar to watch. Angelo revives a dead law and condemns Claudio to death for fornication; when Claudio's novice sister Isabella pleads for him, Angelo demands her chastity as the price. The disguised Duke arranges a bed-trick and a substitute head, then returns to judge — pardons and forced marriages follow.
- lines
- 2,715
- notes
- 290
- glossary
- 877
Content notes: sexual coercion
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Troilus and Cressida
ReadIn the war's seventh year, Troilus loves Cressida, brought together by her bawdy uncle Pandarus—until a prisoner exchange sends her to the Greek camp, where she turns to Diomedes as a hidden Troilus watches. Meanwhile the Greeks scheme to rouse the sulking Achilles, and Achilles' men butcher an unarmed Hector: a bitter satire on war, honour, and love.
- lines
- 3,396
- notes
- 345
- glossary
- 1,079
Content notes: violence, misogyny
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Poetry
The Sonnets and the narrative and occasional poems.
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A Lover's Complaint
ReadPrinted in 1609 with the Sonnets: a narrator overhears a 'fickle maid' lament how a beautiful, eloquent young man seduced and abandoned her — and confesses that his arts would seduce her all over again. A 'complaint' poem shadowing the Sonnets' themes.
- lines
- 330
- notes
- 26
- glossary
- 253
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Sonnets
ReadShakespeare's 154 sonnets (1609) — the most famous short poems in English. The first 126 address a beautiful young man, urging him to marry, then charged with the poet's own love; sonnets 127–152 turn to a married 'dark lady' in a bitter, desiring affair. Across them Shakespeare reworks a few obsessions: time's ruin of beauty, the immortality of verse, jealousy, and lust.
- lines
- 2,155
- notes
- 590
- glossary
- 1,044
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The Phoenix and the Turtle
ReadA short, enigmatic funeral poem: the Phoenix (matchless beauty) and the Turtledove (perfect fidelity) die together in a 'mutual flame,' their two selves so merged that they defeat number and reason itself. The birds gather to mourn, and Reason sings a Threnos over their ashes. First printed in Robert Chester's 1601 'Love's Martyr.'
- lines
- 67
- notes
- 7
- glossary
- 104
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The Rape of Lucrece
ReadShakespeare's grave 1594 companion to Venus and Adonis: Sextus Tarquinius rapes Lucrece, the chaste wife of his comrade; she reveals the crime, exacts an oath of revenge, and kills herself, and Brutus turns the outrage into the revolution that founds the Roman Republic.
- lines
- 1,855
- notes
- 160
- glossary
- 293
Content notes: sexual assault, suicide
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Venus and Adonis
ReadShakespeare's 1593 bestseller: the goddess Venus aggressively woos the beautiful, reluctant young hunter Adonis; he breaks away to hunt a boar, is gored to death, and she turns his blood into a flower. A witty, sensuous debate on desire that darkens into grief.
- lines
- 1,194
- notes
- 119
- glossary
- 367
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The Passionate Pilgrim
CatalogA 1599 poetic miscellany that the printer William Jaggard issued as 'by W. Shakespeare' — but mostly NOT his: only about five of its twenty poems are genuinely Shakespeare's (versions of Sonnets 138 and 144, and three poems from Love's Labour's Lost). The rest are by Marlowe, Barnfield, Griffin, and others. Held back from the reader as an unreliable attribution.
Catalogued — not in the reader
No works match — try a title, a genre, or a theme like “love” or “power”.
See how it reads
Hover or tap an underlined phrase for a plain-English, sourced note. Three famous lines — three of the kinds of help built into every text:
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn Archaic word 'Bourn' is an archaic word for a boundary, a limit, or a border — territory's edge. Hamlet imagines death as a land beyond all frontiers from which no explorer has ever come back. The metaphor was powerful to an Elizabethan audience thrilled and frightened by New World exploration. Source: OED s.v. bourn
No traveller returns…
Now is the winter of our discontent Rhetorical device Richard opens with an extended metaphor: the Yorkist wars (winter, clouds, storms) have been replaced by peace (summer) now that his brother Edward IV of the house of York sits securely on the throne. 'Sun of York' puns on both the sun as a symbol of royalty and on 'son' — Edward is both the sunlight and the son of the house of York. The speech turns abruptly at line 14 ('But I') when Richard reveals he cannot enjoy this peace. Source: Onions, Shakespeare Glossary
Made glorious summer by this sun of York…
Beware the Ides of March Historical note The 'Ides' were a mid-month marker in the Roman calendar: the 15th in March, May, July, and October, the 13th in all other months. 'Beware the Ides of March' means 'watch out for 15 March' -- the day Caesar will be assassinated at the Capitol. Source: Plutarch, Life of Caesar (North 1579) .
Every note cites its source and is checked by independent passes. Keep Read for clean plain-English help, or switch to Study for textual variants, deep wordplay, and bawdy puns — all live inside the reader.
The complete works, annotated
37 plays · 5 poetic works — sourced, fact-checked, and free to read.
- annotations
- 11,273
- glossary entries
- 38,597
- source cards
- 222
- lines, numbered
- 110,272