It also includes Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as his longer poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. This volume is a reprint of the Shakespeare Head Press edition, and it presents all the plays in chronological order in which they were written. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness.