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Shakespeare Inspired Novel Titles

Phrases from Shakespeare’s works have inspired writers of all nationalities for 400 years. There are thousands of novels, plays, biographies and other books that take their titles from phrases in Shakespeare’s works. From Hardy’s romantic novel Under The Greenwood Tree, to the terrifying book Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, Shakespeare’s words have proved a fertile ground for those creative minds. Here are just a few of the most famous Shakespearean inspired novel titles:

Antony and Cleopatra

Joyce Carol Oates: New Heaven, New Earth

Eva Figes: Seven Ages

Francoise Sagan: Salad Days

 

As You Like It

Thomas Hardy: Under the Greenwood Tree

 

Hamlet

Richard Matheson: What Dreams May Come

Edith Wharton: The Glimpses of the Moon

David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest

Peter Spence: To the Manor Born

Steven Berkoff: I Am Hamlet (play)

Monica Dickens: The Winds of Heaven

Anthony Powell: Infants of the Spring

Philip K. Dick: Time Out of Joint

Nigel Balchin: Kings of Infinite Space

Isaac Asimov: The Gods Themselves

Aldous Huxley: Mortal Coils

Graham Greene: The Name of Action

Agatha Christie: The Mousetrap (play)

Georgette Heyer: No Wind of Blame

Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (play)

David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest

 

Julius Caesar

Frederick Forsyth: The Dogs of War

Thornton Wilder: The Ides of March

 

King John

Charles Dickens: Twice-Told Tales

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Twice-Told Tales

Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case of the Gilded Lily

Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm

 

King Lear

Pearl S. Buck: Words of Love

Honoré de Balzac: A Father’s Curse and Other Stories

Francis King: Act of Darkness

Eric Linklater: Ripeness Is All

Isaac Asimov: The Gods Themselves

Peter Straub: Full Circle

Danielle Steel: Full Circle

 

Macbeth

Alistair MacLean: The Way to Dusty Death

Agatha Christie: By the Pricking of My thumbs

Ray Bradbury: Something Wicked This Way Comes

William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury

Terry Pratchett: Wyrd Sisters

John Wyndham: The Seeds of Time

John Steinbeck: The Moon Is Down

Bob Shaw: Dagger of the Mind

Rachel Billington: A Painted Devil

Paul Bowles: Let It Come Down

Ambrose Bierce: Can Such Things Be?

Ellery Queen: Double, Double

Ted Hughes: Four Tales Told by an Idiot

 

The Merchant of Venice

Faye Kellerman: The Quality of Mercy

Erica Jong: Shylock’s Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice

Frances Parkinson Keyes: All That Glitters

 

Pericles

Georgette Heyer: Behold, Here’s Poison

 

Richard II

O. Henry: Sixes and Sevens

Richard Matheson: Bid Time Return

 

Richard III

John Steinbeck: The Winter of Our Discontent

 

Romeo and Juliet

Dorothy Parker: Not So Deep As a Well

Ford Madox Ford: It Was the Nightingale

 

The Tempest

Robert Bloch: Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World

 

Timon of Athens

Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood

William Trevor: Fools of Fortune

 

Titus Andronicus

Irwin Shaw: Gentle People

 

Troilus and Cressida

Isaac Asimov: The Gods Themselves

Pierre Boullé: Not the Glory

 

Twelfth Night

W. Somerset Maugham: Cakes and Ale

Agatha Christie: Sad Cypress

 

The Sonnets

H. E. Bates: The Darling Buds of May

John Mortimer: Summer’s Lease

Anthony Burgess: Nothing Like the Sun

Marcel Proust: Remembrance of Things Past

 

See some Shakespeare inspired operas >>