All 37 Shakespeare Plays Ranked by Line Count

Shakespeare wrote 37 plays spanning four decades, containing 108,093 lines of dialogue. Below, every play is ranked by exact line count — from the longest to the shortest.

Every Play by Line Count

Plays by Genre

Tragedy (10 plays, 31,473 lines)

Hamlet, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, Macbeth

Romance (4 plays, 11,811 lines)

Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, The Tempest

History (10 plays, 30,719 lines)

Richard III, Henry IV, part 2, Henry VIII, Henry V, Henry VI, part 2, Henry IV, part 1, Henry VI, part 3, Richard II, Henry VI, part 1, King John

Problem play (3 plays, 9,214 lines)

Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure

Comedy (10 plays, 24,876 lines)

Love's Labours Lost, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Comedy of Errors

Frequently Asked

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