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In Athens, four young lovers and a group of amateur actors enter a forest inhabited by fairies. Oberon and Puck use a love potion that misdirects the lovers' affections and causes Titania to fall for the transformed Bottom; the confusion is resolved before the lovers' wedding, where the actors perform Pyramus and Thisbe.
The first act follows Shakespeare's familiar story of lovers and fairies. The second act is a classical wedding celebration, omitting Shakespeare's play-within-a-play finale.
Britten’s opera adapts Shakespeare’s comedy of fairies, lovers, and rustic performers, retaining the play’s plot with alterations and giving greater prominence to the woods and fairy world.
Romeo and Juliet are imagined as an elderly couple facing illness, memory, and the prospect of separation. Rearranged passages from Shakespeare create a new account of enduring love and the demands of caring for another person.
Ian McKellen performs Shakespearean monologues interspersed with anecdotes about acting and the theatre in a one-person recital.
Helena, a physician's daughter, cures the King of France and chooses to marry Bertram, who rejects her and leaves for war. She follows him to Italy and fulfills his conditions through a bed trick and exchanged rings; after he returns home, she reveals herself and the King compels a reconciliation.
After a love affair draws Roman triumvir Mark Antony between Alexandria and Rome, he and Cleopatra lose a war against Octavius Caesar. Antony dies after Cleopatra's false report of her death; captured and facing a Roman triumph, Cleopatra takes her own life.
John Adams’s two-act opera adapts Shakespeare’s tragedy, incorporating supplementary passages from Plutarch, Virgil and other classical texts. Its plot is not detailed here.
After Rosalind is banished from court, she and Celia flee to the Forest of Arden in disguise. There Rosalind encounters Orlando, while the exiled court and several intertwined relationships move toward reconciliation and multiple marriages.
At the Boar’s Head Inn in Eastcheap, Falstaff recounts a robbery to Prince Hal and Poins, who reveal that they themselves took the stolen money. Hal rehearses his response to the King with Falstaff, then disguises himself with Poins to observe Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet. News of civil war and a summons to court draw Hal away. Pistol and Doll quarrel, and Falstaff and his companions prepare to leave for war; the Hostess sends Doll out to meet Falstaff once more.
A three-act Czech-language opera based on William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
In Messina, Béatrice and Bénédict trade insults while Héro awaits the return of her fiancé Claudio. Don Pedro and Léonato trick Bénédict into believing Béatrice loves him, and Héro and Ursule similarly convince Béatrice that Bénédict is in love with her. At a masquerade celebrating Claudio and Héro’s wedding, Béatrice and Bénédict each struggle to hide their growing love. They finally declare their feelings and sign a second marriage contract.
Welles's modern-dress adaptation recasts Shakespeare's Roman tragedy as an anti-fascist political melodrama. A bare stage and stark lighting evoke contemporary dictatorships, and Cinna the Poet is killed by secret police rather than a mob.
After Prospero returns to Milan, a female Ariel follows him, while Caliban leads a coup against his former master. Once the revolt succeeds, Caliban begins imitating Prospero’s virtues, extending Shakespeare’s island conflict into a political sequel.
Catch My Soul is a rock musical produced by Jack Good and adapted from Shakespeare’s Othello. It premiered in Los Angeles in 1968 and later played in the United Kingdom.
Garrick condenses The Taming of the Shrew into three acts, omitting the Christopher Sly frame and Bianca’s courtship subplot. Catharine’s final speech is shortened and reframed; Petruchio promises a gentler marriage while retaining a closing claim that women should obey their husbands.
An opera by Lauro Rossi with a libretto by Marco D’Arienzo based on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. No plot description is available in the reviewed text.
After a Roman general wins the name Coriolanus for his victories over the Volscians, his contempt for plebeians and conflict with the tribunes lead to exile. He joins his former enemies and leads them against Rome, but his mother persuades him to make peace; the Volscians then kill him for betraying their cause.
Brecht’s unfinished adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy reworks the conflict through Brecht’s political thought, particularly Mao Zedong’s concept of primary and secondary contradictions.
When Cymbeline banishes his daughter Imogen's husband Posthumus, a wager and false evidence of infidelity set off a chain of disguise, attempted murder, and war. Imogen survives under the name Fidele; revelations about her brothers and Iachimo's deception reunite the family and restore peace between Britain and Rome.
George Bernard Shaw rewrites the final act of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, cutting supernatural revelations and the implausible victory over Rome. In Shaw’s ending, Imogen takes a more assertive role, recognizes Posthumus and confronts the immorality of his actions before agreeing to return with him.
Governor Friedrich enforces strict moral laws in Palermo, sentencing Claudio to death for an amorous indiscretion. Claudio’s sister Isabella pleads for his release, but Friedrich demands her body in exchange. Isabella arranges a masked meeting with Friedrich and substitutes her friend Marianne, whom Friedrich had previously betrayed. After the governor is exposed, Claudio is freed and Friedrich asks the returning King to judge him. Claudio explains that death need not be the penalty for a love offence, and the town celebrates Carnival.
Frank Martin’s German-language opera is based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, using the German translation by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck. The reviewed entry does not provide a separate synopsis.
A four-act German comic opera based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
Toni Morrison responds to Othello by centering Desdemona’s relationship with Barbary, the African woman who served Desdemona’s mother. This connection gives Desdemona an emotional relationship to African people and a perspective on her past beyond Shakespeare’s play.
A one-act opera by Giselher Klebe about the assassination of Julius Caesar, set in ancient Rome on the Ides of March.
Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg’s three-act German singspiel adapts Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Frau Fluth and Frau Reich each receive a love letter from Falstaff and conspire to punish him. Their husbands suspect infidelity, but the women repeatedly trick Falstaff, first hiding him in a laundry basket and later disguising him as a maid. Meanwhile, Anna Reich resists her parents’ preferred suitors and loves Fenton. In Windsor Forest, the couples frighten and mock Falstaff at a masked ball, while Anna and Fenton marry; the families reconcile.
An Italian-language opera by Michael William Balfe, identified as based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. The entry does not provide a plot synopsis.
Falstaff sends identical letters to Alice Ford and Meg Page, hoping to seduce them for money. The women discover the scheme and plan to humiliate him, while Alice’s husband Ford plots revenge and the women also help Nannetta marry Fenton instead of the husband her father chose. Falstaff is hidden in a laundry basket and thrown into the Thames, then lured to a midnight encounter at Herne’s Oak, where townspeople in fairy disguises torment him. Ford’s plan for Nannetta to marry Dr. Caius is also foiled, and the company ends with Falstaff’s declaration that all the world is folly.
A two-act Italian dramma giocoso adapting Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. The opera compresses the play, omits the young lovers Fenton and Anne, and adds scenes in which Mistress Ford pretends to be German to charm Falstaff; a fuller plot is not given.
After the civil war's devastation, two servants, Gary and Janice, clean up the bodies. The play is set in an alternate aftermath of Titus Andronicus.
An Italian dramma per musica based on Luigi Da Porto’s 1530 novella and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
A two-act Italian opera buffa adapted from Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.
Prince Hamlet learns from his father's ghost that his uncle Claudius murdered the former king and seized the throne. Hamlet feigns madness and stages a play to test Claudius, but the ensuing revenge plot leaves the Danish court in tragedy.
In this adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Prince Hamlet confronts the ghost of his father, the court of King Claudius, and the consequences of his response to his father’s death. Dean and Jocelyn draw on the play and its first quarto, reshaping portions of the text for the opera.
Hamlet learns from his father’s ghost that Claudius murdered the king and seeks to expose the crime. His rejection of Ophélie drives her to madness and death; after a duel with Laërte, Hamlet kills Claudius and is proclaimed king, surviving in the standard ending.
A 90-minute reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet intersperses fragments of songs from Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, reworked by Thom Yorke, with the tragedy. The production explores grief, paranoia and the search for a moral compass amid political delusion.
The story of young and adult Hamlet is interwoven through the clown Yorick. In the later described revision, Hamlet stages The Murder of Gonzago to investigate his father’s death, and the play’s close contrasts the tragedy with young Hamlet’s wish to perform cheerful comedies.
In a two-act parody, Hamlet refuses his murdered father’s call for revenge, then later kills those around him after the ghost returns; Sigmund Freud takes him to a psychiatric hospital as sailors dance to “Yablochko.” The play satirizes Russian chauvinism.
Across three Harlem eras—1860, 1928, and the present—Billie confronts Othello’s departure for a white woman and the racial pressures shaping their relationship. The play reframes Othello as a non-chronological prequel and uses a two-act, seven-stanza blues structure to explore racism, history, and Black identity.
Bowen transforms Julius Caesar into a modern political conspiracy thriller about a society slipping toward military dictatorship and authoritarian personality cults. The action unfolds in a near-future mixture of Italy and Britain.
Prince Hal divides his time between the royal court and the tavern company of Falstaff while rebellion gathers against King Henry IV. At the Battle of Shrewsbury, Hal defeats Hotspur and shows himself as a capable heir, though the wider rebellion continues.
Prince Hal moves toward kingship and ultimately rejects Falstaff, whose comic story of recruiting soldiers and recalling youthful exploits runs largely apart from Hal's. After defeating the rebellion and succeeding his dying father, Hal refuses Falstaff's expectation of royal favor and orders London’s lowlifes purged.
King Henry V invades France, uncovers a plot to assassinate him, and leads an outnumbered English army to victory at Agincourt. After the battle, he woos Princess Katharine as England and France negotiate peace.
After Henry V’s death, English leaders struggle to hold their French territories as Joan of Arc rallies the French and helps them reclaim ground. Back in England, York and Somerset’s feud deepens into factional division; Talbot and his son die when reinforcements fail to arrive, Joan is captured and executed, and Suffolk arranges Henry VI’s marriage to Margaret of Anjou.
As Henry VI proves unable to control his court, Queen Margaret and Suffolk help bring down the Lord Protector Gloucester. York advances his claim to the throne, while Jack Cade's rebellion exposes the kingdom's disorder; the play ends with the first Battle of St Albans and the opening of the Wars of the Roses.
During the Wars of the Roses, Henry VI’s agreement to yield the crown to the York line collapses into renewed civil war. York’s sons and their allies fight Margaret and the Lancastrians; after shifting loyalties and bloody battles, Edward takes the throne, while Richard plots his own rise and murders Henry.
The play follows Henry VIII's court as Wolsey engineers Buckingham's arrest and Katherine's trial, Anne Bullen rises to queenship, Wolsey falls from favor, and Cranmer survives a plot against him. The work concludes with Elizabeth's birth and baptism.
In 18th-century Ireland, Lieutenant Coyle’s impending departure for England upends his relationship with a local woman and their two children. Young Dermot, a cattle-killer and Caliban-like figure, becomes the instrument of his mother Maryanne’s revenge against Coyle.
A Czech-language opera based on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and named for the character Jessica.
As Caesar's power grows, Cassius persuades Brutus to join a conspiracy to kill him. Antony turns public opinion against the assassins, sparking civil war; at Philippi, Cassius and then Brutus die, and Antony honors Brutus as the noblest Roman.
A comic children's reworking of Macbeth frames the tragedy as a scene rehearsed by Andy, Lisa, and Danny, who are drawn into the play through a magic potion. Macbeth's prophecies, murders, and downfall unfold amid playful anachronisms and farcical inventions.
After dividing his kingdom between the daughters who flatter him, King Lear rejects Cordelia, the only daughter who speaks honestly. His decision sets off a chain of betrayal and conflict that leaves Lear and his family devastated.
David Williamson reworks Shakespeare’s King Lear into contemporary, accessible English while retaining the original structure and philosophy.
Lear disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to compete with her sisters in declarations of love, then loses his authority as Goneril and Regan reject him. Meanwhile Edmund deceives Gloucester and turns him against Edgar, who disguises himself as Poor Tom. The sisters and Edmund maneuver against Albany as the French and British prepare for battle; after Edmund loses a duel to Edgar, he orders Lear and Cordelia killed. Lear enters carrying Cordelia’s body and dies beside her.
Cassio, Bruto and Porzia lead a conspiracy to murder Giulio Cesare in Rome. Cesare’s loving relationship with Calfurnia forms a subplot; the assassination itself is not shown, and the body remains visible during the closing scenes.
An Italian-language opera adapting Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with roles including Prospero, Miranda, Ariel and Caliban. The entry does not summarize the plot.
Three-act French opera after Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The source says the opera follows the play with some textual transpositions and omits Lancelot Gobbo and Old Gobbo; it gives no further plot detail.
A two-part German-language opera based on Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear. The entry does not provide a detailed account of the opera’s plot.
The King of Navarre and three companions vow to avoid women and devote themselves to study, but fall in love with the visiting Princess of France and her ladies. Their disguises and wordplay unravel, and the Princess delays any marriages for a year after her father's death.
An English-language opera based on Shakespeare’s play, with scenes centered on the couples and a plot stretched over four seasons.
In Rome in 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius, Brutus and Collatinus discuss their wives’ fidelity. Tarquinius becomes infatuated with Collatinus’s wife Lucrezia, enters her home and rapes her. The following day she asks Collatinus to avenge her and takes her life. Brutus leads a rebellion that overthrows the monarchy.
In a one-person comic adaptation of Macbeth, Rick Miller performs the Shakespearean roles in voices drawn from The Simpsons, rearranging the text and inserting familiar characters and comic asides.
After three witches prophesy that he will become king, the Scottish general Macbeth murders King Duncan at his wife’s urging. Guilt and fear drive the couple into further violence, until Malcolm’s forces and Macduff overthrow Macbeth.
A three-act French opera by Ernest Bloch with a libretto by Edmond Fleg, adapting Shakespeare’s play and compressing its five acts into seven tableaux.
After witches prophesy that Macbeth will become king and that Banco’s descendants will rule, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth murder Duncan and seize the throne. Macbeth orders Banco and his family killed, but Banco’s son escapes; haunted by Banco’s ghost and emboldened by further prophecies, Macbeth continues his rule through violence. Malcolm and Macduff lead an assault that fulfills the apparitions’ warnings, and Macbeth is killed. The 1847 version ends with Macbeth’s death aria, while the 1865 revision concludes with a victory chorus.
Lady Macbeth urges her husband to murder Duncan, but Shaw’s Macbeth misunderstands her Shakespearean imagery literally, taking directions such as looking like an innocent flower at face value. The short comic exchange ends when Lady Macbeth’s performer breaks character in frustration.
Thirteen-year-old Mackenzie lands a small role on a children’s television show. When a make-up artist predicts she will become the world’s biggest pop star, Mackenzie and her ruthless stage mother pursue fame with increasingly destructive ambition.
When Duke Vincentio leaves Vienna in the hands of his deputy Angelo, Angelo revives a death penalty and sentences Claudio for fornication. Angelo then demands sex from Claudio's sister Isabella in exchange for his life; the disguised Duke intervenes through a series of deceptions and public revelations.
One year after A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Quince and Nick Bottom prepare a new court play based on Bottom’s recollections, while missing actors and an unfinished ending threaten the performance.
In Messina, soldiers Claudio and Benedick fall in love with Hero and Beatrice. Don John deceives Claudio into believing Hero unfaithful, disrupting the wedding, while friends trick the sharp-witted Beatrice and Benedick into recognizing their mutual love. The local Watch exposes the plot, and Hero is reunited with Claudio.
A four-act operatic setting of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
A setting of an abridged selection of text from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, arranged in seventeen sections. The first version was an opera-ballet titled La Princesse de Milan, with dancers portraying characters; later opera-only version includes more of Shakespeare’s text.
Set in 1880s Nebraska amid an Indian boarding school, saloon, and brothel, the play recasts Measure for Measure around Pawnee teenager Momaday and Irish orphan Caitlin, whose forbidden marriage and pregnancy lead to his death sentence. Their community confronts the authorities’ abuse and the school’s destructive conditions.
In a postcolonial present, Hamlet and Macbeth are actors stripped of their Shakespearean stature and confined by paralysis, censorship and fractured identity. Across two acts of repeating micro-dramas and changing confined spaces, Macbeth and Hamlet perform multiple roles; Ophelia remains absent, and Hamlet ends alone, waiting for her and for change.
The ensign Iago manipulates the Moorish commander Othello into believing that his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful. Othello kills her, then learns the truth and dies by suicide as Iago is exposed.
A three-act ballet by Lar Lubovitch based on Shakespeare's play, with an orchestral score by Elliot Goldenthal.
Mukul Ahmed reworks Romeo and Juliet as a pared-down touring production in the Bengali Pala Gaan tradition, combining Shakespeare’s words with Bengali poetry, storytelling, folk songs, music and dance.
After fleeing Antioch, Pericles travels through a series of kingdoms and shipwrecks, marries Thaisa, and loses her and their infant daughter Marina at sea. Marina survives, is kidnapped and sold to a brothel, but persuades its clients to virtue. Years later she and Pericles reunite in Mytilene, and Pericles finds Thaisa alive at Diana's temple.
Iša Krejčí’s Czech opéra bouffe adapts Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The work was written between 1939 and 1943 and received wartime radio performances.
Hamlet investigates his father's death as his mother marries the new king. Ravi Jain's reworking uses English and American Sign Language to retell the tragedy through a Deaf Horatio and reconsider who can tell this familiar story.
Loosely based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Delannoy’s stage work combines opera-comique elements, dance and spoken theatre. Puck is danced, while Titania, Oberon and the lovers and craftsmen populate the vocal and acting roles.
Pyramus and Thisbe arrange a meeting through a chink in the Wall, at Ninus’s tomb. Thisbe arrives first but is frightened away by the Lion. Pyramus finds her scarf, assumes she is dead, and stabs himself; Thisbe returns and does likewise. The impresario, Mr Semibrief, revives them in time to sing the epilogue. Spoken comments by Semibrief and two gentlemen interrupt the burlesque of Italian opera.
Radio and Juliet is an hour long ballet setup in 2005 for the Slovenian company Ballet Maribor in Slovenia. It was directed by Romanian dancer and choreographer Edward Clug. The ballet is a rendition of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set to the music of Radiohead, from their albums OK Computer and Kid A. Since 2005 Radio and Juliet has guested in the Netherlands, Italy, Singapore, Korea, Israel, Canada, United States, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Serbia and Croatia. It has also been set on the companies of Bucharest National Theater and Kyiv National Opera. On 15 September 2012, the 100th performance was celebrated on the old stage of the Maribor Opera house. The ballet premiered in the United States in 2008 at the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts at the Byham Theater. The last performance has been in Limassol in February 2026, the next is in Dortmund in May 2026. Noted for the ballet's choreography and simplicity, Radio and Juliet represents a modernized interpretation of Shakespeare. As stated by Edward Clug, "You could call this quite a twisted version... My intention was not to retell the story but offer the audience an experience from a different perspective."
Cibber reworks Shakespeare’s history of Richard III for a five-act Williamite audience, adding a new opening that shows Henry VI’s murder and making Richard’s rise and fall more violent on stage. Richard courts Lady Anne, imprisons and kills the princes, plots against his rivals, and is haunted by his victims before the Battle of Bosworth, where Richmond defeats and kills him and becomes Henry VII.
This six-hour stage adaptation condenses Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra to examine how political leaders make decisions and mistakes. Set in modern dress, it uses live video, audience seating onstage, surtitles and a news ticker to connect Roman politics with contemporary political life.
Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love despite their families' feud and secretly marry. After a fatal street fight and Romeo's banishment, a failed message causes each to believe the other dead; their suicides bring the families' reconciliation.
A three-act adaptation that sets the lovers’ story across three Italian political eras: Fascist Italy in the 1930s, political terrorism in the 1950s, and social unrest in the 1990s. It uses contrasting movement styles for the upper-class Capulets and lower-class Montagues and a multimedia video backdrop.
A dramatic ballet based on Shakespeare’s tragedy. The movement sequence includes the street awakening, the lovers’ balcony scene and love dance, the public festivities and duels, Juliet’s bedroom and farewell, and the deaths of Mercutio, Tybalt, and Juliet. Prokofiev’s original ending was happy; the score was substantially revised for the 1940 Soviet production.
Boris Blacher’s opera is one of the operatic treatments of Romeo and Juliet. The available text does not provide a plot summary.
Sutermeister follows Shakespeare’s tragedy of Julia Capulet and Romeo Montague. In the final scene, a celestial chorus celebrates the lovers’ union in death.
Romeo and Julie secretly marry in hopes of ending their families’ feud. After Romeo kills Tybalt in revenge for Mercutio’s death, he is banished. Julie’s father plans to marry her to Paris, so Friar Laurence gives her a sleeping potion that will make her appear dead until Romeo can rescue her. Romeo hears she has died and enters the tomb to kill himself, but Julie revives; Capulet keeps his promise to accept Romeo as a son-in-law, and the families rejoice.
At a masked ball in Verona, Roméo and Juliette meet and fall in love despite their families’ feud. They marry secretly, but a street fight leads to Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths and Roméo’s banishment. Juliette takes a sleeping draught to avoid a forced marriage; Roméo, believing her dead, takes poison in the family tomb. When Juliette awakens, she kills herself to join him in death.
Gilbert's burlesque of Hamlet has Claudius reveal that he once wrote a disastrous tragedy whose mention is punishable by death. Rosencrantz and Ophelia, who love one another, persuade Hamlet to stage it, hoping to rid themselves of his long soliloquies and unwanted engagement; Hamlet is banished and the pair marry.
King Khaqaan and his daughter Zara survive in this comic reworking of King Lear. Their story alternates with a farcical subplot in which servants trick their masters and a mistaken identity leads to a beating.
John Lacy’s farcical reworking gives Grumio’s role to Sauny, an irreverent Scottish servant comically terrified of his master. Petruchio threatens Meg, tells others she is dead and ties her to a bier, ending with her thoroughly tamed.
Falstaff plots to seduce Mistress Ford and Mistress Page for money, but the Merry Wives discover his identical letters and arrange to humiliate him. Meanwhile, Anne Page loves Fenton while her parents and suitors promote other matches. Ford, disguised as Brook, tests Falstaff and later joins the Pages in a trap involving a laundry basket. At Windsor Forest, the group stages a fairy prank; Anne and Fenton reveal they have married, while Slender and Caius discover their supposed brides are boys in disguise. The opera ends in reconciliation.
An immersive retelling of Macbeth unfolds through a cinematic film-noir world. Audiences move through the performance environment and follow the action at their own pace, encountering Shakespeare’s tragedy through physical storytelling rather than a conventional seated production.
Poet Sly drinks in a London tavern and later wakes in a palace, where he is told that he is its owner and has been in a coma for ten years. Believing the story, he falls in love with Dolly. When Sly learns the truth, he slashes his wrists; only then does he discover that Dolly loves him.
A small theatrical company tours Hamlet while its actors’ backstage conflicts begin to mirror Shakespeare’s tragedy. The play combines backstage farce, a play within a play, and a murder mystery.
A contemporary retelling of Romeo and Juliet follows two teenagers from rival families in a small British town. Six actors improvised from a prepared story grid, presenting the story through Twitter posts and supporting online media.
The Terminator 2 story is recreated as a theatrical assemblage using Shakespeare’s dialogue verbatim, with changes limited to names, pronouns and corresponding verb tenses.
A short farce built around the Induction’s practical joke, omitting the Petruchio and Katherina story. Johnson renames the tinker Kit Sly.
In Ephesus, two pairs of identical twin brothers, separated in infancy, arrive without knowing their twins are nearby. Mistaken identities lead to beatings, marital accusations, arrest, and apparent madness; the confusion resolves when both sets of twins reunite and their parents are found.
An opera pasticcio combining Baroque music by several composers with a new text by Jeremy Sams. It brings together characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander.
In Sardinia, Emilius and Louisa have secretly married, provoking Emilius's foster-sister Appamia, who loves him. She tries to destroy their trust and ultimately tricks Emilius into poisoning Louisa; when her plot is exposed, he kills himself and Louisa dies.
Tate reshapes Lear’s story around a love between Cordelia and Edgar. Cordelia remains in Britain as her sisters take the kingdom, while Edmund’s schemes threaten her and Lear; after the battle and imprisonment, Lear is rescued, regains his throne and gives Cordelia to Edgar, who declares that truth and virtue will succeed.
After Timon exhausts his wealth through generosity, his false friends refuse to help him and he retreats to the forest. Shadwell's version adds the lover Evandra and a jealous fiancée, Melissa; Timon rejects Evandra, burns his house, finds gold in the forest, funds Alcibiades' war, and ultimately dies.
William Davenant reshapes Measure for Measure by adding Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, making Angelo and Benedick brothers and introducing Beatrice’s singing, dancing younger sister Viola.
A history play depicting King John’s conflict with France, the papacy, and English nobles over the crown, ending with his death and the succession of his son Henry III.
As Henry Bolingbroke challenges Richard II’s authority, Richard’s seizure of Bolingbroke’s inheritance helps drive the nobles to rebellion. Bolingbroke takes the throne as Henry IV, and Richard is imprisoned and murdered.
Wesker’s two-act reworking centers on Shylock as a good man and close friend of Antonio. They share a love of knowledge and opposition to their community’s antisemitism; Shylock’s demand for a pound of flesh begins as a jest he cannot retract, and both men are relieved when the court denies it.
When merchant Antonio guarantees a loan for his friend Bassanio, the lender Shylock demands a pound of Antonio's flesh if it is not repaid. Bassanio wins Portia's hand, and Portia disguises herself as a lawyer to intervene at Antonio's trial.
Falstaff tries to profit by courting the married Mistresses Ford and Page, who discover his identical letters and set out to trick and humiliate him. At the same time, their daughter Anne pursues her own choice of husband despite her parents’ competing plans.
In Arcadia, Theocles and Philander become rivals for Heraclia’s affection. Their competition tests desire and virtue in a comedy that reshapes the setting, characters and action of The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Charles Marowitz recasts Shakespeare’s play as a gothic tragedy, removing characters and the Induction, rearranging dialogue, and using the Bianca plot as a modern parallel. Petruchio’s violence culminates in sexual assault and a hollow, prompted delivery of Katherina’s final speech, making the apparent comic ending an image of abuse.
In a play performed as a diversion for the drunken tinker Christopher Sly, Petruchio courts and marries Katherina, a headstrong woman, then uses deprivation and contradiction to compel her compliance. Meanwhile, Bianca's suitors pursue her through disguises and competing offers. At the end, Katherina is the only new wife to answer her husband's call, and Petruchio wins a wager on obedience.
In Padua, Baptista refuses to let his younger daughter Bianca marry until her tempestuous elder sister Katarina is wed. Bianca’s suitors recruit Petruchio to court Katarina; despite an uneasy start, the pair fall in love and marry.
Twelve years after his brother Antonio usurped his dukedom, Prospero conjures a storm that strands Antonio, King Alonso and their companions on the island where he lives with Miranda, Ariel and Caliban. Prospero uses magic to test the shipwrecked group: Ferdinand falls in love with Miranda, while Antonio and Sebastian plot against Alonso and Caliban conspires with the drunken Stephano and jester Trinculo. Prospero abandons revenge, forgives his enemies, regains Milan, frees Ariel and prepares to leave the island with Miranda and Ferdinand.
Opera adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
Dryden and D'Avenant adapt Shakespeare's The Tempest, retaining much of its verse while changing its language and adding characters. Prospero's daughter Dorinda and Ariel's girlfriend Milcha expand the island's relationships, including a parallel romance between Dorinda and Hippolito.
Richard of Gloucester manipulates England's court, eliminates rivals and family members, and takes the crown after his brother Edward IV's death. His rule collapses as he becomes increasingly isolated and faces Henry Tudor's forces; Richard is killed at Bosworth Field, and Richmond claims the throne as Henry VII.
Proteus leaves his betrothed Julia for Milan, where he and his friend Valentine both love Silvia. Proteus betrays Valentine and pursues Silvia, while Julia disguises herself as a page to follow him. After Proteus threatens Silvia, Valentine intervenes; Proteus repents, Julia is revealed, and the two couples reunite.
After Theseus defeats Thebes, imprisoned cousins Palamon and Arcite both fall in love with Emilia, turning their friendship into rivalry. A tournament determines which will marry her; Arcite wins but dies after a fall from his horse, and Palamon marries Emilia. A parallel subplot follows the jailer's daughter, who loves Palamon and is driven to madness when he rejects her.
John Barton's three-play adaptation combines Shakespeare's four history plays about the Wars of the Roses into a trilogy: Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III. It follows the struggle between Lancaster and York for England's throne, presenting political power as a violent cycle that culminates in Richard III's rise and fall.
Leontes, King of Sicilia, wrongly suspects his pregnant wife Hermione of adultery with his friend Polixenes and abandons their infant daughter Perdita. Sixteen years later, Perdita's love for Polixenes' son brings the kingdoms together, and the family reunites when Hermione returns after years in seclusion.
The wealthy Athenian Timon gives lavishly to his supposed friends, but when his fortune is gone they refuse to help him. He turns against society, lives in the wilderness, discovers gold, and gives it away while urging Alcibiades to destroy Athens; his loyal steward Flavius is the exception among those around him.
Roman general Titus Andronicus returns from war with Tamora, Queen of the Goths, and her sons as captives. After Titus sacrifices her eldest son, Tamora and her allies exact revenge, setting off a cycle of violence that destroys both families.
During the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida pledge their love before she is exchanged to the Greek camp, where he sees her with Diomedes and seeks revenge. Meanwhile, Greek leaders try to bring Achilles back to battle against Hector; Achilles returns after Hector kills Patroclus, and the play ends with Hector's death and Troy's war unresolved.
After a shipwreck separates twins Viola and Sebastian, Viola disguises herself as Cesario and enters Duke Orsino's service. Orsino sends her to woo Olivia, who instead falls for Cesario, while Viola loves Orsino. The twins' eventual reunion resolves the mistaken identities and leads to marriages; a comic subplot centers on a forged letter that tricks Olivia's steward Malvolio.
A reclusive king of a mythical realm hears about his kingdom only by overhearing conversations. When a traveling troupe arrives to stage The Tempest, the king listens to auditions and rehearsals and begins to imagine himself as Prospero, confusing the play with events in his own kingdom. He undergoes a psychological collapse, the production never takes place, and the troupe leaves. The king then has a vision of the future as he moves toward death.
Césaire reworks Shakespeare's island drama through a postcolonial lens, foregrounding the island's prior inhabitants and the power relations between Prospero, the white master, and his enslaved servants Ariel and Caliban. Caliban demands the name X and favors revolution, while Ariel seeks freedom without violence; Prospero frees Ariel but retains control over Caliban and the island.
This unfinished romantic opera is based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and includes characters such as Viola, Sebastian, Orsino, and Olivia.
A German- and English-language opera adapted from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, featuring Leontes, Hermione, Polixenes, Paulina and Perdita. The Sicilian scenes are mostly in German, while scenes on the Bohemian seacoast are mostly in English and use jazz-rock music. The entry does not give a plot synopsis.
Welcome Msomi’s adaptation of Macbeth transposes the story to the early nineteenth-century Zulu Kingdom, where Mabatha overthrows King Dangane.
In Athens, four young lovers and a group of amateur actors enter a forest inhabited by fairies. Oberon and Puck use a love potion that misdirects the lovers' affections and causes Titania to fall for the transformed Bottom; the confusion is resolved before the lovers' wedding, where the actors perform Pyramus and Thisbe.
The first act follows Shakespeare's familiar story of lovers and fairies. The second act is a classical wedding celebration, omitting Shakespeare's play-within-a-play finale.
Britten’s opera adapts Shakespeare’s comedy of fairies, lovers, and rustic performers, retaining the play’s plot with alterations and giving greater prominence to the woods and fairy world.
Romeo and Juliet are imagined as an elderly couple facing illness, memory, and the prospect of separation. Rearranged passages from Shakespeare create a new account of enduring love and the demands of caring for another person.
Ian McKellen performs Shakespearean monologues interspersed with anecdotes about acting and the theatre in a one-person recital.
Helena, a physician's daughter, cures the King of France and chooses to marry Bertram, who rejects her and leaves for war. She follows him to Italy and fulfills his conditions through a bed trick and exchanged rings; after he returns home, she reveals herself and the King compels a reconciliation.
After a love affair draws Roman triumvir Mark Antony between Alexandria and Rome, he and Cleopatra lose a war against Octavius Caesar. Antony dies after Cleopatra's false report of her death; captured and facing a Roman triumph, Cleopatra takes her own life.
John Adams’s two-act opera adapts Shakespeare’s tragedy, incorporating supplementary passages from Plutarch, Virgil and other classical texts. Its plot is not detailed here.
After Rosalind is banished from court, she and Celia flee to the Forest of Arden in disguise. There Rosalind encounters Orlando, while the exiled court and several intertwined relationships move toward reconciliation and multiple marriages.
At the Boar’s Head Inn in Eastcheap, Falstaff recounts a robbery to Prince Hal and Poins, who reveal that they themselves took the stolen money. Hal rehearses his response to the King with Falstaff, then disguises himself with Poins to observe Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet. News of civil war and a summons to court draw Hal away. Pistol and Doll quarrel, and Falstaff and his companions prepare to leave for war; the Hostess sends Doll out to meet Falstaff once more.
A three-act Czech-language opera based on William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
In Messina, Béatrice and Bénédict trade insults while Héro awaits the return of her fiancé Claudio. Don Pedro and Léonato trick Bénédict into believing Béatrice loves him, and Héro and Ursule similarly convince Béatrice that Bénédict is in love with her. At a masquerade celebrating Claudio and Héro’s wedding, Béatrice and Bénédict each struggle to hide their growing love. They finally declare their feelings and sign a second marriage contract.
Welles's modern-dress adaptation recasts Shakespeare's Roman tragedy as an anti-fascist political melodrama. A bare stage and stark lighting evoke contemporary dictatorships, and Cinna the Poet is killed by secret police rather than a mob.
After Prospero returns to Milan, a female Ariel follows him, while Caliban leads a coup against his former master. Once the revolt succeeds, Caliban begins imitating Prospero’s virtues, extending Shakespeare’s island conflict into a political sequel.
Catch My Soul is a rock musical produced by Jack Good and adapted from Shakespeare’s Othello. It premiered in Los Angeles in 1968 and later played in the United Kingdom.
Garrick condenses The Taming of the Shrew into three acts, omitting the Christopher Sly frame and Bianca’s courtship subplot. Catharine’s final speech is shortened and reframed; Petruchio promises a gentler marriage while retaining a closing claim that women should obey their husbands.
An opera by Lauro Rossi with a libretto by Marco D’Arienzo based on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. No plot description is available in the reviewed text.
After a Roman general wins the name Coriolanus for his victories over the Volscians, his contempt for plebeians and conflict with the tribunes lead to exile. He joins his former enemies and leads them against Rome, but his mother persuades him to make peace; the Volscians then kill him for betraying their cause.
Brecht’s unfinished adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy reworks the conflict through Brecht’s political thought, particularly Mao Zedong’s concept of primary and secondary contradictions.
When Cymbeline banishes his daughter Imogen's husband Posthumus, a wager and false evidence of infidelity set off a chain of disguise, attempted murder, and war. Imogen survives under the name Fidele; revelations about her brothers and Iachimo's deception reunite the family and restore peace between Britain and Rome.
George Bernard Shaw rewrites the final act of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, cutting supernatural revelations and the implausible victory over Rome. In Shaw’s ending, Imogen takes a more assertive role, recognizes Posthumus and confronts the immorality of his actions before agreeing to return with him.
Governor Friedrich enforces strict moral laws in Palermo, sentencing Claudio to death for an amorous indiscretion. Claudio’s sister Isabella pleads for his release, but Friedrich demands her body in exchange. Isabella arranges a masked meeting with Friedrich and substitutes her friend Marianne, whom Friedrich had previously betrayed. After the governor is exposed, Claudio is freed and Friedrich asks the returning King to judge him. Claudio explains that death need not be the penalty for a love offence, and the town celebrates Carnival.
Frank Martin’s German-language opera is based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, using the German translation by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck. The reviewed entry does not provide a separate synopsis.
A four-act German comic opera based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
Toni Morrison responds to Othello by centering Desdemona’s relationship with Barbary, the African woman who served Desdemona’s mother. This connection gives Desdemona an emotional relationship to African people and a perspective on her past beyond Shakespeare’s play.
A one-act opera by Giselher Klebe about the assassination of Julius Caesar, set in ancient Rome on the Ides of March.
Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg’s three-act German singspiel adapts Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Frau Fluth and Frau Reich each receive a love letter from Falstaff and conspire to punish him. Their husbands suspect infidelity, but the women repeatedly trick Falstaff, first hiding him in a laundry basket and later disguising him as a maid. Meanwhile, Anna Reich resists her parents’ preferred suitors and loves Fenton. In Windsor Forest, the couples frighten and mock Falstaff at a masked ball, while Anna and Fenton marry; the families reconcile.
An Italian-language opera by Michael William Balfe, identified as based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. The entry does not provide a plot synopsis.
Falstaff sends identical letters to Alice Ford and Meg Page, hoping to seduce them for money. The women discover the scheme and plan to humiliate him, while Alice’s husband Ford plots revenge and the women also help Nannetta marry Fenton instead of the husband her father chose. Falstaff is hidden in a laundry basket and thrown into the Thames, then lured to a midnight encounter at Herne’s Oak, where townspeople in fairy disguises torment him. Ford’s plan for Nannetta to marry Dr. Caius is also foiled, and the company ends with Falstaff’s declaration that all the world is folly.
A two-act Italian dramma giocoso adapting Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. The opera compresses the play, omits the young lovers Fenton and Anne, and adds scenes in which Mistress Ford pretends to be German to charm Falstaff; a fuller plot is not given.
After the civil war's devastation, two servants, Gary and Janice, clean up the bodies. The play is set in an alternate aftermath of Titus Andronicus.
An Italian dramma per musica based on Luigi Da Porto’s 1530 novella and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
A two-act Italian opera buffa adapted from Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.
Prince Hamlet learns from his father's ghost that his uncle Claudius murdered the former king and seized the throne. Hamlet feigns madness and stages a play to test Claudius, but the ensuing revenge plot leaves the Danish court in tragedy.
In this adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Prince Hamlet confronts the ghost of his father, the court of King Claudius, and the consequences of his response to his father’s death. Dean and Jocelyn draw on the play and its first quarto, reshaping portions of the text for the opera.
Hamlet learns from his father’s ghost that Claudius murdered the king and seeks to expose the crime. His rejection of Ophélie drives her to madness and death; after a duel with Laërte, Hamlet kills Claudius and is proclaimed king, surviving in the standard ending.
A 90-minute reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet intersperses fragments of songs from Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, reworked by Thom Yorke, with the tragedy. The production explores grief, paranoia and the search for a moral compass amid political delusion.
The story of young and adult Hamlet is interwoven through the clown Yorick. In the later described revision, Hamlet stages The Murder of Gonzago to investigate his father’s death, and the play’s close contrasts the tragedy with young Hamlet’s wish to perform cheerful comedies.
In a two-act parody, Hamlet refuses his murdered father’s call for revenge, then later kills those around him after the ghost returns; Sigmund Freud takes him to a psychiatric hospital as sailors dance to “Yablochko.” The play satirizes Russian chauvinism.
Across three Harlem eras—1860, 1928, and the present—Billie confronts Othello’s departure for a white woman and the racial pressures shaping their relationship. The play reframes Othello as a non-chronological prequel and uses a two-act, seven-stanza blues structure to explore racism, history, and Black identity.
Bowen transforms Julius Caesar into a modern political conspiracy thriller about a society slipping toward military dictatorship and authoritarian personality cults. The action unfolds in a near-future mixture of Italy and Britain.
Prince Hal divides his time between the royal court and the tavern company of Falstaff while rebellion gathers against King Henry IV. At the Battle of Shrewsbury, Hal defeats Hotspur and shows himself as a capable heir, though the wider rebellion continues.
Prince Hal moves toward kingship and ultimately rejects Falstaff, whose comic story of recruiting soldiers and recalling youthful exploits runs largely apart from Hal's. After defeating the rebellion and succeeding his dying father, Hal refuses Falstaff's expectation of royal favor and orders London’s lowlifes purged.
King Henry V invades France, uncovers a plot to assassinate him, and leads an outnumbered English army to victory at Agincourt. After the battle, he woos Princess Katharine as England and France negotiate peace.
After Henry V’s death, English leaders struggle to hold their French territories as Joan of Arc rallies the French and helps them reclaim ground. Back in England, York and Somerset’s feud deepens into factional division; Talbot and his son die when reinforcements fail to arrive, Joan is captured and executed, and Suffolk arranges Henry VI’s marriage to Margaret of Anjou.
As Henry VI proves unable to control his court, Queen Margaret and Suffolk help bring down the Lord Protector Gloucester. York advances his claim to the throne, while Jack Cade's rebellion exposes the kingdom's disorder; the play ends with the first Battle of St Albans and the opening of the Wars of the Roses.
During the Wars of the Roses, Henry VI’s agreement to yield the crown to the York line collapses into renewed civil war. York’s sons and their allies fight Margaret and the Lancastrians; after shifting loyalties and bloody battles, Edward takes the throne, while Richard plots his own rise and murders Henry.
The play follows Henry VIII's court as Wolsey engineers Buckingham's arrest and Katherine's trial, Anne Bullen rises to queenship, Wolsey falls from favor, and Cranmer survives a plot against him. The work concludes with Elizabeth's birth and baptism.
In 18th-century Ireland, Lieutenant Coyle’s impending departure for England upends his relationship with a local woman and their two children. Young Dermot, a cattle-killer and Caliban-like figure, becomes the instrument of his mother Maryanne’s revenge against Coyle.
A Czech-language opera based on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and named for the character Jessica.
As Caesar's power grows, Cassius persuades Brutus to join a conspiracy to kill him. Antony turns public opinion against the assassins, sparking civil war; at Philippi, Cassius and then Brutus die, and Antony honors Brutus as the noblest Roman.
A comic children's reworking of Macbeth frames the tragedy as a scene rehearsed by Andy, Lisa, and Danny, who are drawn into the play through a magic potion. Macbeth's prophecies, murders, and downfall unfold amid playful anachronisms and farcical inventions.
After dividing his kingdom between the daughters who flatter him, King Lear rejects Cordelia, the only daughter who speaks honestly. His decision sets off a chain of betrayal and conflict that leaves Lear and his family devastated.
David Williamson reworks Shakespeare’s King Lear into contemporary, accessible English while retaining the original structure and philosophy.
Lear disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to compete with her sisters in declarations of love, then loses his authority as Goneril and Regan reject him. Meanwhile Edmund deceives Gloucester and turns him against Edgar, who disguises himself as Poor Tom. The sisters and Edmund maneuver against Albany as the French and British prepare for battle; after Edmund loses a duel to Edgar, he orders Lear and Cordelia killed. Lear enters carrying Cordelia’s body and dies beside her.
Cassio, Bruto and Porzia lead a conspiracy to murder Giulio Cesare in Rome. Cesare’s loving relationship with Calfurnia forms a subplot; the assassination itself is not shown, and the body remains visible during the closing scenes.
An Italian-language opera adapting Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with roles including Prospero, Miranda, Ariel and Caliban. The entry does not summarize the plot.
Three-act French opera after Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The source says the opera follows the play with some textual transpositions and omits Lancelot Gobbo and Old Gobbo; it gives no further plot detail.
A two-part German-language opera based on Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear. The entry does not provide a detailed account of the opera’s plot.
The King of Navarre and three companions vow to avoid women and devote themselves to study, but fall in love with the visiting Princess of France and her ladies. Their disguises and wordplay unravel, and the Princess delays any marriages for a year after her father's death.
An English-language opera based on Shakespeare’s play, with scenes centered on the couples and a plot stretched over four seasons.
In Rome in 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius, Brutus and Collatinus discuss their wives’ fidelity. Tarquinius becomes infatuated with Collatinus’s wife Lucrezia, enters her home and rapes her. The following day she asks Collatinus to avenge her and takes her life. Brutus leads a rebellion that overthrows the monarchy.
In a one-person comic adaptation of Macbeth, Rick Miller performs the Shakespearean roles in voices drawn from The Simpsons, rearranging the text and inserting familiar characters and comic asides.
After three witches prophesy that he will become king, the Scottish general Macbeth murders King Duncan at his wife’s urging. Guilt and fear drive the couple into further violence, until Malcolm’s forces and Macduff overthrow Macbeth.
A three-act French opera by Ernest Bloch with a libretto by Edmond Fleg, adapting Shakespeare’s play and compressing its five acts into seven tableaux.
After witches prophesy that Macbeth will become king and that Banco’s descendants will rule, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth murder Duncan and seize the throne. Macbeth orders Banco and his family killed, but Banco’s son escapes; haunted by Banco’s ghost and emboldened by further prophecies, Macbeth continues his rule through violence. Malcolm and Macduff lead an assault that fulfills the apparitions’ warnings, and Macbeth is killed. The 1847 version ends with Macbeth’s death aria, while the 1865 revision concludes with a victory chorus.
Lady Macbeth urges her husband to murder Duncan, but Shaw’s Macbeth misunderstands her Shakespearean imagery literally, taking directions such as looking like an innocent flower at face value. The short comic exchange ends when Lady Macbeth’s performer breaks character in frustration.
Thirteen-year-old Mackenzie lands a small role on a children’s television show. When a make-up artist predicts she will become the world’s biggest pop star, Mackenzie and her ruthless stage mother pursue fame with increasingly destructive ambition.
When Duke Vincentio leaves Vienna in the hands of his deputy Angelo, Angelo revives a death penalty and sentences Claudio for fornication. Angelo then demands sex from Claudio's sister Isabella in exchange for his life; the disguised Duke intervenes through a series of deceptions and public revelations.
One year after A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Quince and Nick Bottom prepare a new court play based on Bottom’s recollections, while missing actors and an unfinished ending threaten the performance.
In Messina, soldiers Claudio and Benedick fall in love with Hero and Beatrice. Don John deceives Claudio into believing Hero unfaithful, disrupting the wedding, while friends trick the sharp-witted Beatrice and Benedick into recognizing their mutual love. The local Watch exposes the plot, and Hero is reunited with Claudio.
A four-act operatic setting of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
A setting of an abridged selection of text from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, arranged in seventeen sections. The first version was an opera-ballet titled La Princesse de Milan, with dancers portraying characters; later opera-only version includes more of Shakespeare’s text.
Set in 1880s Nebraska amid an Indian boarding school, saloon, and brothel, the play recasts Measure for Measure around Pawnee teenager Momaday and Irish orphan Caitlin, whose forbidden marriage and pregnancy lead to his death sentence. Their community confronts the authorities’ abuse and the school’s destructive conditions.
In a postcolonial present, Hamlet and Macbeth are actors stripped of their Shakespearean stature and confined by paralysis, censorship and fractured identity. Across two acts of repeating micro-dramas and changing confined spaces, Macbeth and Hamlet perform multiple roles; Ophelia remains absent, and Hamlet ends alone, waiting for her and for change.
The ensign Iago manipulates the Moorish commander Othello into believing that his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful. Othello kills her, then learns the truth and dies by suicide as Iago is exposed.
A three-act ballet by Lar Lubovitch based on Shakespeare's play, with an orchestral score by Elliot Goldenthal.
Mukul Ahmed reworks Romeo and Juliet as a pared-down touring production in the Bengali Pala Gaan tradition, combining Shakespeare’s words with Bengali poetry, storytelling, folk songs, music and dance.
After fleeing Antioch, Pericles travels through a series of kingdoms and shipwrecks, marries Thaisa, and loses her and their infant daughter Marina at sea. Marina survives, is kidnapped and sold to a brothel, but persuades its clients to virtue. Years later she and Pericles reunite in Mytilene, and Pericles finds Thaisa alive at Diana's temple.
Iša Krejčí’s Czech opéra bouffe adapts Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The work was written between 1939 and 1943 and received wartime radio performances.
Hamlet investigates his father's death as his mother marries the new king. Ravi Jain's reworking uses English and American Sign Language to retell the tragedy through a Deaf Horatio and reconsider who can tell this familiar story.
Loosely based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Delannoy’s stage work combines opera-comique elements, dance and spoken theatre. Puck is danced, while Titania, Oberon and the lovers and craftsmen populate the vocal and acting roles.
Pyramus and Thisbe arrange a meeting through a chink in the Wall, at Ninus’s tomb. Thisbe arrives first but is frightened away by the Lion. Pyramus finds her scarf, assumes she is dead, and stabs himself; Thisbe returns and does likewise. The impresario, Mr Semibrief, revives them in time to sing the epilogue. Spoken comments by Semibrief and two gentlemen interrupt the burlesque of Italian opera.
Radio and Juliet is an hour long ballet setup in 2005 for the Slovenian company Ballet Maribor in Slovenia. It was directed by Romanian dancer and choreographer Edward Clug. The ballet is a rendition of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set to the music of Radiohead, from their albums OK Computer and Kid A. Since 2005 Radio and Juliet has guested in the Netherlands, Italy, Singapore, Korea, Israel, Canada, United States, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Serbia and Croatia. It has also been set on the companies of Bucharest National Theater and Kyiv National Opera. On 15 September 2012, the 100th performance was celebrated on the old stage of the Maribor Opera house. The ballet premiered in the United States in 2008 at the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts at the Byham Theater. The last performance has been in Limassol in February 2026, the next is in Dortmund in May 2026. Noted for the ballet's choreography and simplicity, Radio and Juliet represents a modernized interpretation of Shakespeare. As stated by Edward Clug, "You could call this quite a twisted version... My intention was not to retell the story but offer the audience an experience from a different perspective."
Cibber reworks Shakespeare’s history of Richard III for a five-act Williamite audience, adding a new opening that shows Henry VI’s murder and making Richard’s rise and fall more violent on stage. Richard courts Lady Anne, imprisons and kills the princes, plots against his rivals, and is haunted by his victims before the Battle of Bosworth, where Richmond defeats and kills him and becomes Henry VII.
This six-hour stage adaptation condenses Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra to examine how political leaders make decisions and mistakes. Set in modern dress, it uses live video, audience seating onstage, surtitles and a news ticker to connect Roman politics with contemporary political life.
Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love despite their families' feud and secretly marry. After a fatal street fight and Romeo's banishment, a failed message causes each to believe the other dead; their suicides bring the families' reconciliation.
A three-act adaptation that sets the lovers’ story across three Italian political eras: Fascist Italy in the 1930s, political terrorism in the 1950s, and social unrest in the 1990s. It uses contrasting movement styles for the upper-class Capulets and lower-class Montagues and a multimedia video backdrop.
A dramatic ballet based on Shakespeare’s tragedy. The movement sequence includes the street awakening, the lovers’ balcony scene and love dance, the public festivities and duels, Juliet’s bedroom and farewell, and the deaths of Mercutio, Tybalt, and Juliet. Prokofiev’s original ending was happy; the score was substantially revised for the 1940 Soviet production.
Boris Blacher’s opera is one of the operatic treatments of Romeo and Juliet. The available text does not provide a plot summary.
Sutermeister follows Shakespeare’s tragedy of Julia Capulet and Romeo Montague. In the final scene, a celestial chorus celebrates the lovers’ union in death.
Romeo and Julie secretly marry in hopes of ending their families’ feud. After Romeo kills Tybalt in revenge for Mercutio’s death, he is banished. Julie’s father plans to marry her to Paris, so Friar Laurence gives her a sleeping potion that will make her appear dead until Romeo can rescue her. Romeo hears she has died and enters the tomb to kill himself, but Julie revives; Capulet keeps his promise to accept Romeo as a son-in-law, and the families rejoice.
At a masked ball in Verona, Roméo and Juliette meet and fall in love despite their families’ feud. They marry secretly, but a street fight leads to Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths and Roméo’s banishment. Juliette takes a sleeping draught to avoid a forced marriage; Roméo, believing her dead, takes poison in the family tomb. When Juliette awakens, she kills herself to join him in death.
Gilbert's burlesque of Hamlet has Claudius reveal that he once wrote a disastrous tragedy whose mention is punishable by death. Rosencrantz and Ophelia, who love one another, persuade Hamlet to stage it, hoping to rid themselves of his long soliloquies and unwanted engagement; Hamlet is banished and the pair marry.
King Khaqaan and his daughter Zara survive in this comic reworking of King Lear. Their story alternates with a farcical subplot in which servants trick their masters and a mistaken identity leads to a beating.
John Lacy’s farcical reworking gives Grumio’s role to Sauny, an irreverent Scottish servant comically terrified of his master. Petruchio threatens Meg, tells others she is dead and ties her to a bier, ending with her thoroughly tamed.
Falstaff plots to seduce Mistress Ford and Mistress Page for money, but the Merry Wives discover his identical letters and arrange to humiliate him. Meanwhile, Anne Page loves Fenton while her parents and suitors promote other matches. Ford, disguised as Brook, tests Falstaff and later joins the Pages in a trap involving a laundry basket. At Windsor Forest, the group stages a fairy prank; Anne and Fenton reveal they have married, while Slender and Caius discover their supposed brides are boys in disguise. The opera ends in reconciliation.
An immersive retelling of Macbeth unfolds through a cinematic film-noir world. Audiences move through the performance environment and follow the action at their own pace, encountering Shakespeare’s tragedy through physical storytelling rather than a conventional seated production.
Poet Sly drinks in a London tavern and later wakes in a palace, where he is told that he is its owner and has been in a coma for ten years. Believing the story, he falls in love with Dolly. When Sly learns the truth, he slashes his wrists; only then does he discover that Dolly loves him.
A small theatrical company tours Hamlet while its actors’ backstage conflicts begin to mirror Shakespeare’s tragedy. The play combines backstage farce, a play within a play, and a murder mystery.
A contemporary retelling of Romeo and Juliet follows two teenagers from rival families in a small British town. Six actors improvised from a prepared story grid, presenting the story through Twitter posts and supporting online media.
The Terminator 2 story is recreated as a theatrical assemblage using Shakespeare’s dialogue verbatim, with changes limited to names, pronouns and corresponding verb tenses.
A short farce built around the Induction’s practical joke, omitting the Petruchio and Katherina story. Johnson renames the tinker Kit Sly.
In Ephesus, two pairs of identical twin brothers, separated in infancy, arrive without knowing their twins are nearby. Mistaken identities lead to beatings, marital accusations, arrest, and apparent madness; the confusion resolves when both sets of twins reunite and their parents are found.
An opera pasticcio combining Baroque music by several composers with a new text by Jeremy Sams. It brings together characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander.
In Sardinia, Emilius and Louisa have secretly married, provoking Emilius's foster-sister Appamia, who loves him. She tries to destroy their trust and ultimately tricks Emilius into poisoning Louisa; when her plot is exposed, he kills himself and Louisa dies.
Tate reshapes Lear’s story around a love between Cordelia and Edgar. Cordelia remains in Britain as her sisters take the kingdom, while Edmund’s schemes threaten her and Lear; after the battle and imprisonment, Lear is rescued, regains his throne and gives Cordelia to Edgar, who declares that truth and virtue will succeed.
After Timon exhausts his wealth through generosity, his false friends refuse to help him and he retreats to the forest. Shadwell's version adds the lover Evandra and a jealous fiancée, Melissa; Timon rejects Evandra, burns his house, finds gold in the forest, funds Alcibiades' war, and ultimately dies.
William Davenant reshapes Measure for Measure by adding Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, making Angelo and Benedick brothers and introducing Beatrice’s singing, dancing younger sister Viola.
A history play depicting King John’s conflict with France, the papacy, and English nobles over the crown, ending with his death and the succession of his son Henry III.
As Henry Bolingbroke challenges Richard II’s authority, Richard’s seizure of Bolingbroke’s inheritance helps drive the nobles to rebellion. Bolingbroke takes the throne as Henry IV, and Richard is imprisoned and murdered.
Wesker’s two-act reworking centers on Shylock as a good man and close friend of Antonio. They share a love of knowledge and opposition to their community’s antisemitism; Shylock’s demand for a pound of flesh begins as a jest he cannot retract, and both men are relieved when the court denies it.
When merchant Antonio guarantees a loan for his friend Bassanio, the lender Shylock demands a pound of Antonio's flesh if it is not repaid. Bassanio wins Portia's hand, and Portia disguises herself as a lawyer to intervene at Antonio's trial.
Falstaff tries to profit by courting the married Mistresses Ford and Page, who discover his identical letters and set out to trick and humiliate him. At the same time, their daughter Anne pursues her own choice of husband despite her parents’ competing plans.
In Arcadia, Theocles and Philander become rivals for Heraclia’s affection. Their competition tests desire and virtue in a comedy that reshapes the setting, characters and action of The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Charles Marowitz recasts Shakespeare’s play as a gothic tragedy, removing characters and the Induction, rearranging dialogue, and using the Bianca plot as a modern parallel. Petruchio’s violence culminates in sexual assault and a hollow, prompted delivery of Katherina’s final speech, making the apparent comic ending an image of abuse.
In a play performed as a diversion for the drunken tinker Christopher Sly, Petruchio courts and marries Katherina, a headstrong woman, then uses deprivation and contradiction to compel her compliance. Meanwhile, Bianca's suitors pursue her through disguises and competing offers. At the end, Katherina is the only new wife to answer her husband's call, and Petruchio wins a wager on obedience.
In Padua, Baptista refuses to let his younger daughter Bianca marry until her tempestuous elder sister Katarina is wed. Bianca’s suitors recruit Petruchio to court Katarina; despite an uneasy start, the pair fall in love and marry.
Twelve years after his brother Antonio usurped his dukedom, Prospero conjures a storm that strands Antonio, King Alonso and their companions on the island where he lives with Miranda, Ariel and Caliban. Prospero uses magic to test the shipwrecked group: Ferdinand falls in love with Miranda, while Antonio and Sebastian plot against Alonso and Caliban conspires with the drunken Stephano and jester Trinculo. Prospero abandons revenge, forgives his enemies, regains Milan, frees Ariel and prepares to leave the island with Miranda and Ferdinand.
Opera adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
Dryden and D'Avenant adapt Shakespeare's The Tempest, retaining much of its verse while changing its language and adding characters. Prospero's daughter Dorinda and Ariel's girlfriend Milcha expand the island's relationships, including a parallel romance between Dorinda and Hippolito.
Richard of Gloucester manipulates England's court, eliminates rivals and family members, and takes the crown after his brother Edward IV's death. His rule collapses as he becomes increasingly isolated and faces Henry Tudor's forces; Richard is killed at Bosworth Field, and Richmond claims the throne as Henry VII.
Proteus leaves his betrothed Julia for Milan, where he and his friend Valentine both love Silvia. Proteus betrays Valentine and pursues Silvia, while Julia disguises herself as a page to follow him. After Proteus threatens Silvia, Valentine intervenes; Proteus repents, Julia is revealed, and the two couples reunite.
After Theseus defeats Thebes, imprisoned cousins Palamon and Arcite both fall in love with Emilia, turning their friendship into rivalry. A tournament determines which will marry her; Arcite wins but dies after a fall from his horse, and Palamon marries Emilia. A parallel subplot follows the jailer's daughter, who loves Palamon and is driven to madness when he rejects her.
John Barton's three-play adaptation combines Shakespeare's four history plays about the Wars of the Roses into a trilogy: Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III. It follows the struggle between Lancaster and York for England's throne, presenting political power as a violent cycle that culminates in Richard III's rise and fall.
Leontes, King of Sicilia, wrongly suspects his pregnant wife Hermione of adultery with his friend Polixenes and abandons their infant daughter Perdita. Sixteen years later, Perdita's love for Polixenes' son brings the kingdoms together, and the family reunites when Hermione returns after years in seclusion.
The wealthy Athenian Timon gives lavishly to his supposed friends, but when his fortune is gone they refuse to help him. He turns against society, lives in the wilderness, discovers gold, and gives it away while urging Alcibiades to destroy Athens; his loyal steward Flavius is the exception among those around him.
Roman general Titus Andronicus returns from war with Tamora, Queen of the Goths, and her sons as captives. After Titus sacrifices her eldest son, Tamora and her allies exact revenge, setting off a cycle of violence that destroys both families.
During the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida pledge their love before she is exchanged to the Greek camp, where he sees her with Diomedes and seeks revenge. Meanwhile, Greek leaders try to bring Achilles back to battle against Hector; Achilles returns after Hector kills Patroclus, and the play ends with Hector's death and Troy's war unresolved.
After a shipwreck separates twins Viola and Sebastian, Viola disguises herself as Cesario and enters Duke Orsino's service. Orsino sends her to woo Olivia, who instead falls for Cesario, while Viola loves Orsino. The twins' eventual reunion resolves the mistaken identities and leads to marriages; a comic subplot centers on a forged letter that tricks Olivia's steward Malvolio.
A reclusive king of a mythical realm hears about his kingdom only by overhearing conversations. When a traveling troupe arrives to stage The Tempest, the king listens to auditions and rehearsals and begins to imagine himself as Prospero, confusing the play with events in his own kingdom. He undergoes a psychological collapse, the production never takes place, and the troupe leaves. The king then has a vision of the future as he moves toward death.
Césaire reworks Shakespeare's island drama through a postcolonial lens, foregrounding the island's prior inhabitants and the power relations between Prospero, the white master, and his enslaved servants Ariel and Caliban. Caliban demands the name X and favors revolution, while Ariel seeks freedom without violence; Prospero frees Ariel but retains control over Caliban and the island.
This unfinished romantic opera is based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and includes characters such as Viola, Sebastian, Orsino, and Olivia.
A German- and English-language opera adapted from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, featuring Leontes, Hermione, Polixenes, Paulina and Perdita. The Sicilian scenes are mostly in German, while scenes on the Bohemian seacoast are mostly in English and use jazz-rock music. The entry does not give a plot synopsis.
Welcome Msomi’s adaptation of Macbeth transposes the story to the early nineteenth-century Zulu Kingdom, where Mabatha overthrows King Dangane.