Novelists have made frequent use of phrases from Shakespeare’s plays and poems during the past two centuries. That has also been the case with biographers, playwrights, and philosophers. Shakespeare has been a golden treasury of titles for writers.
Casting an eye down the list one is struck by the richness and power of the language and is no wonder that novelists have drawn on Shakespeare for their very striking titles, many of which resonate with readers before they even open the book.
There are literally thousands of such titles. Here are our favourite 101 play and novel titles taken from Shakespeare’s works, ordered by play:
Antony and Cleopatra
Seven Ages
by Eva Figes
New Heaven, New Earth
by Joyce Carol Oates
Salad Days
by Francoise Sagan
As You Like It
Under the Greenwood Tree
by Thomas Hardy
Hamlet
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
I Am Hamlet (play)
by Steven Berkoff
Time Out of Joint
by Philip K. Dick
Kings of Infinite Space
by Nigel Balchin
What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
The Glimpses of the Moon
by Edith Wharton
To the Manor Born
by Peter Spence
The Winds of Heaven
by Monica Dickens
Infants of the Spring
by Anthony Powell
The Gods Themselves
by Isaac Asimov
Mortal Coils
by Aldous Huxley
The Name of Action
by Graham Greene
No Wind of Blame
by Georgette Heyer
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (play)
by Tom Stoppard
The Mousetrap (play)
by Agatha Christie
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
Julius Caesar
The Dogs of War
by Frederick Forsyth
The Ides of March
by Thornton Wilder
King John
The Case of the Gilded Lily
by Erle Stanley Gardner:
Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons
Twice-Told Tales
by Charles Dickens
Twice-Told Tales
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
King Lear
Act of Darkness
by Francis King
Ripeness Is All
by Eric Linklater:
The Gods Themselves
by Isaac Asimov
Words of Love
by Pearl S. Buck
A Father’s Curse and Other Stories
by Honoré de Balzac
Full Circle
by Peter Straub
Full Circle
by Danielle Steel
Macbeth
Let It Come Down
by Paul Bowles
Double, Double
by Ellery Queen
Four Tales Told by an Idiot
by Ted Hughes
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Wyrd Sisters
by Terry Pratchett
The Seeds of Time
by John Wyndham
The Way to Dusty Death
by Alistair MacLean
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Agatha Christie:
Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury
The Moon Is Down
by John Steinbeck
Dagger of the Mind
by Bob Shaw
A Painted Devil
by Rachel Billington
Can Such Things Be?
by Ambrose Bierce
The Merchant of Venice
The Quality of Mercy
by Faye Kellerman
All That Glitters
by Frances Parkinson Keyes
Shylock’s Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice
by Erica Jong
A Pound of Flesh
by Thane Rosenbaum
Villain with a Smiling Cheek
by Paul Murray
Much Ado About Nothing
Kill Claudio
by P.M. Hubbard
Othello
Pzssing Strange
by Catherine Aird
Mortal engines
by Philip Reeve
Nothing if Not Critical
by Robert Hughes
Pericles
Behold, Here’s Poison
by Georgette Heyer
Richard II
Sixes and Sevens
by O. Henry
Bid Time Return
by Richard Matheson
This Blessed Plot
by Hugo Young
Richard III
Not So Deep As a Well
by Dorothy Parker
The Winter of Our Discontent
by John Steinbeck
Where Eagles Dare
by Alistair MaLean
Who Are the Violets Now?
by Auberon Waugh
Romeo and Juliet
It Was the Nightingale
by Ford Madox Ford
What’s in a Name?
by Isaac Asimov
Deny Thy Father
by Jeff Mariotte
Inconstant Moon
by Larry Niven
The Tempest
Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of
by Robert Bloch
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Sea Change
by Robert B Parker
Something Rich and Strange
by Patrick McMillup
This Rough Magic
by Mary Stewart
Timon of Athens
Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
Fools of Fortune
by William Trevor
Titus Andronicus
Gentle People
by Irwin Shaw
Alms for Oblivion
by Simon Raven
Troilus and Cressida
The Gods Themselves
by Isaac Asimov
Not the Glory
by Pierre Boullé
Twelfth Night
Cakes and Ale
by W. Somerset Maugham
Sad Cypress
by Agatha Christie
To Play the Fool
by Laurie R King
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
The Darling Buds of May
by H. E. Bates
Summer’s Lease
by John Mortimer
Nothing Like the Sun
by Anthony Burgess
Remembrance of Things Past
by Marcel Proust
The Pebbled Shore
by Elizabeth Longford
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
by Kate Wilhelm
Absent in the Spring
by Agatha Christie
That completes our list of Shakespeare inspired novel titles. Do you know of any others? Please do join in and let us know in the comments section below!
King Hereafter, by Dorothy Dunnett, about the historical Macbeth