The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Every play and poem Shakespeare wrote, in one enormous volume: all the tragedies from Hamlet to Macbeth to King Lear, comedies from Much Ado About Nothing to Twelfth Night, the histories, the romances, plus the sonnets and narrative poems. It's the complete working life of the writer who did more to shape the English language than anyone before or since.

Listening has a real advantage here, because Shakespeare never wrote a word intended for silent reading. These are scripts. The verse only fully makes sense in the ear, where the rhythm carries meaning that the page hides. At over a hundred hours, nobody takes this straight through, so treat it as a library, drop in on whichever play you've always meant to know, and let the lines do what they were built to do.

At roughly 939,700 words, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare runs about 104½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

1. Install LoudReader on iPhone or iPad, or its iPad app on a compatible Apple Silicon Mac.
2. Search for “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

Speech is generated locally without uploading the book for narration. Download the book and check your chosen voice before travelling offline. Available voices depend on your device; check the in-app voice list. Try every available voice for your first 8 hours of listening. Afterwards, keep a free English voice selection and unlimited book listening. No LoudReader account or word quota.