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Shakespeare & Beyond

Quiz: How well do you know Shakespeare's genres?

Shakespeare First Folio
Shakespeare First Folio

“The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited.”

These words, spoken by Polonius in Act 2, Scene 2, of Hamlet, are the inspiration for this quiz about Shakespeare’s genres.

The Folger, along with many Shakespeare scholars, recognizes five categories of Shakespeare’s work: comedies, histories, tragedies, romances, and poems. (Note that this classification is different from how the plays appear in the First Folio, which does not label anything as a “romance.”)

Take the quiz to see if you can match the right works with the right genres!