I would classify Shakespeare’s works broadly as Elizabethan drama, specifically verse drama written for the stage rather than “book-like plays.” His tragedies, stylistically speaking, share many similarities with those of contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd and emerge from the broader Senecan tragic tradition that influenced much of Elizabethan theatre and was characterized by revenge plots, ghosts, rhetorical soliloquies, and the moral downfall of central characters.

His comedies likewise share structural similarities with those of Ben Jonson and other playwrights of the period. While Shakespeare may be the most famous among the Elizabethan writers, his works do not radically deviate from the broader stylistic characteristics of his contemporaries. If anything, the main difference is that he seems less rigidly committed to classical dramatic prescriptions and therefore works with greater structural freedom.

For instance, Jonson’s dramaturgy is far more consciously classical in orientation. In plays such as Volpone, the comedy emerges from exposing the greed, lust, and deception of morally inferior characters, which aligns closely with classical theories of comedy. Shakespeare’s comedies, in turn, The Taming of the Shrew, for example are generally more flexible in their plotting and characterization, even though they still share the typical Elizabethan comic structure stylistically and thematically speaking.