Claim: William Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus.

The plays written by English poet , playwright , and actor William Shakespeare -LRB- 1564 -- 1616 -RRB- have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature . Traditionally , the plays are divided into the genres of tragedy , history , and comedy ; they have been translated into every major living language , in addition to being continually performed all around the world .   Many of his plays appeared in print as a series of quartos , but approximately half of them remained unpublished until 1623 , when the posthumous First Folio was published . The traditional division of his plays into tragedies , comedies and histories follows the categories used in the First Folio . However , modern criticism has labelled some of these plays `` problem plays '' that elude easy categorisation , or perhaps purposely break generic conventions , and has introduced the term romances for what scholars believe to be his later comedies .   When Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1570s or early 1580s , dramatists writing for London 's new commercial playhouses -LRB- such as The Curtain -RRB- were combining two different strands of dramatic tradition into a new and distinctively Elizabethan synthesis . Previously , the most common forms of popular English theatre were the Tudor morality plays . These plays , celebrating piety generally , use personified moral attributes to urge or instruct the protagonist to choose the virtuous life over Evil . The characters and plot situations are largely symbolic rather than realistic . As a child , Shakespeare would likely have seen this type of play -LRB- along with , perhaps , mystery plays and miracle plays -RRB- .   The other strand of dramatic tradition was classical aesthetic theory . This theory was derived ultimately from Aristotle ; in Renaissance England , however , the theory was better known through its Roman interpreters and practitioners . At the universities , plays were staged in a more academic form as Roman closet dramas . These plays , usually performed in Latin , adhered to classical ideas of unity and decorum , but they were also more static , valuing lengthy speeches over physical action . Shakespeare would have learned this theory at grammar school , where Plautus and especially Terence were key parts of the curriculum and were taught in editions with lengthy theoretical introductions .