Which of Shakespeare plays is not a tragedy?

Answer 1

Most of Shakespeare's plays are not tragedies. In the First Folio, the first collected volume of Shakespeare's plays, the plays are divided into tragedies, histories, and comedies: eleven tragedies, ten histories and fifteen comedies. But Cymbeline is listed with the tragedies and it is not particularly tragic. Likewise Richard III is listed with the histories, but it has a very tragic ending and was called the Tragedy of Richard III in the Quarto versions that had been previously published. Nowadays most people accept 38 plays as definitely being by Shakespeare. Of these, the following ten are accepted as tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Othello and Titus Andronicus. The other twenty-eight are not.

Answer 2

There is perhaps some debate about some of them, but generally speaking, some 28 of Shakespeare's 38 plays are not tragedies. That's about three-quarters of the plays he wrote.

You want their names?

Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Pericles and Tempest are clearly comedies. Love's Labour's Lost too, although the ending is marred by the death of the King of France. Winter's Tale has some dark and depressing action but it turns out well. Cymbeline was called a tragedy in the Folio, maybe because of a compositor's error. All's Well that Ends Well does end well, although not perfectly, and the happy ending in Measure for Measure just doesn't feel right. The Merchant of Venice turns out badly for Shylock, who has come to be the centre of attention of the play, so it's almost like the Tragedy of Shylock. At the end of Troilus and Cressida everyone is miserable and the most noble character in the play is dead, whcih doesn't make it much like a comedy. In the Two Noble Kinsmen one of them dies and a girl goes crazy even though the other Kinsman does get the woman he wants.

Of the histories, Henry IV, both parts, and Henry V are not tragic at all, and neither is King John, even though he dies at the end. I mean, everybody dies some time. The first part of Henry VI has the very tragic history of Lord Talbot, but the tragedy of these three plays is the disintegration of the country in civil war. But the most tragic of the histories are Richard II and Richard III--in fact both of them were billed as tragedies when they were first published.

However, none of these are usually considered tragedies. The tragedies are the ten plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Coriolanus, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, Antony & Cleopatra and Romeo & Juliet.

Answer 3

Romeo and Juliet

Answer 4

all of them