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Reading list of William Shakespeare

 William Shakespeare did not leave behind a reading list, diary, or letters that explicitly list his favorite books. However, scholars have pieced together what he likely read and admired based on the texts he quoted, referenced, or borrowed plots from in his plays and poems.

Here’s a carefully researched list of books that Shakespeare likely read and drew from—his "favorites" by influence:

📚 1. Ovid – Metamorphoses

  • Most influential classical source for Shakespeare.

  • He read it in Arthur Golding’s 1567 English translation.

  • Inspired Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titus Andronicus, Venus and Adonis, etc.

📚 2. Plutarch – Parallel Lives

  • Shakespeare used Thomas North’s 1579 English translation.

  • Basis for Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.

📚 3. Holinshed’s Chronicles

  • Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577, 1587 editions)

  • Shakespeare’s main source for history plays like Macbeth, King Lear, Henry IV, Henry V.

📚 4. Giovanni Boccaccio – The Decameron

  • Though indirectly, many plot elements in Shakespeare’s comedies (e.g. All’s Well That Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing) can be traced to Boccaccio’s tales.

📚 5. The Bible (Geneva Bible)

  • Shakespeare frequently quoted or alluded to the Geneva Bible, the most popular translation in Elizabethan England.

📚 6. Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales

  • Shakespeare borrows themes, character types, and style from Chaucer, especially in his early comedies.

📚 7. Seneca – Tragedies

  • Seneca's revenge tragedies (translated into English by the 1580s) shaped Shakespeare’s style in Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, and others.

📚 8. Montaigne – Essays

  • Shakespeare seems influenced by John Florio’s 1603 English translation.

  • Clear philosophical parallels appear in King Lear, Hamlet, The Tempest.

📚 9. George Gascoigne – The Supposes

  • An English adaptation of Ariosto’s I Suppositi, and a major source for The Taming of the Shrew.

📚 10. Thomas Kyd – The Spanish Tragedy

  • Shakespeare may have been influenced by this pioneering Elizabethan revenge drama when writing Hamlet.

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