When people think of Shakespeare, they usually think of the obvious titles.
Macbeth.
Romeo and Juliet.
Hamlet.
The famous tragedies dominate classrooms, theatre seasons, revision guides, and endless social media quote posts.
But honestly? Some of Shakespeare’s most fascinating ideas live quietly inside the plays hardly anyone talks about.
The “forgotten” plays are often stranger, darker, more cynical, and — in many ways — more modern.
They’re filled with political anger, messy morality, performative masculinity, unstable identity, public image obsession, and brutal commentary on human behaviour.
Which makes them feel surprisingly relevant in 2026.
So here are five Shakespeare plays I think deserve far more attention.
1. Henry VIII
Reputation never survives intact
This play feels incredibly modern because it is obsessed with image.
Public image. Political image. Historical image.
Everyone in the play seems terrified of how they will be remembered.
One of the most haunting lines in all of Shakespeare appears here:
“Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.”
That line alone deserves far more attention than it gets.
It captures something painfully true about modern culture:
people’s failures become permanent while kindness and goodness disappear almost instantly.
In the age of social media outrage, public shaming, celebrity scandal, and endless online judgement, the line feels uncannily contemporary.
Shakespeare understood long before the internet that humans remember destruction more easily than decency.
2. Coriolanus
Shakespeare’s most terrifying study of masculinity
This might genuinely be Shakespeare’s angriest play.
Coriolanus is brilliant, powerful, respected in war — and completely incapable of emotional connection.
He despises compromise.
He hates public opinion.
He sees vulnerability as weakness.
The result is a man who can conquer armies but cannot survive ordinary human relationships.
One line captures the whole tragedy perfectly:
“What is the city but the people?”
The play constantly questions what happens when pride becomes identity.
It also feels frighteningly relevant in a world still obsessed with dominance, image, control, and performative strength.
Underneath the politics, the play is really asking:
what happens when a man is taught how to fight, but never how to feel?
3. Timon of Athens
The original burnout play
This play feels like emotional exhaustion written into dramatic form.
Timon spends his life giving endlessly to others:
money, generosity, loyalty, hospitality.
People adore him while the wine flows and the gifts continue.
Then the money disappears.
And suddenly everyone disappears too.
It becomes one of Shakespeare’s bleakest explorations of transactional friendship and performative loyalty.
The line:
“I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind”
sounds dramatic… until you’ve marked mocks for six hours, replied to twenty emails, and realised the group chat has drained your last remaining ounce of social energy.
The play is cynical, messy, bitter, and strangely moving.
It feels incredibly modern in a culture where relationships can sometimes feel conditional, curated, and exhausting.
4. All’s Well That Ends Well
One of Shakespeare’s most complicated women
People often dislike this play because it refuses to behave neatly.
Nobody is entirely admirable.
Nobody is entirely terrible.
And Helena — the central female character — makes audiences deeply uncomfortable because she actively pursues what she wants.
That alone makes the play fascinating.
Shakespeare allows her ambition, intelligence, desire, and persistence to exist openly rather than quietly in the background.
One of the play’s most powerful ideas appears in the line:
“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.”
It feels surprisingly empowering for a play written over 400 years ago.
Helena refuses passivity. She acts.
And whether audiences admire her or judge her often says more about us than about the play itself.
5. Troilus and Cressida
Shakespeare’s most brutally cynical play
If Romeo and Juliet romanticises love and heroism, this play tears both apart.
Set during the Trojan War, it presents legendary heroes as vain, exhausted, political, insecure, and deeply performative.
Nobody feels noble for very long.
The play constantly dismantles the idea of glory.
One of its greatest lines feels devastatingly relevant:
“Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back…”
History carries everything away eventually.
Reputation fades.
Power fades.
Beauty fades.
Fame fades.
Which makes the play feel oddly perfect for an era obsessed with visibility, influence, and instant recognition.
Why Shakespeare’s “forgotten” plays still matter
Maybe these plays remain underrated because they’re uncomfortable.
They refuse easy heroes.
They resist tidy endings.
They expose human weakness too honestly.
But that honesty is exactly what makes them feel alive.
The older I get, the more I think Shakespeare’s strangest plays are often the ones that understand people best.
And perhaps the plays we ignore say as much about us as the plays we celebrate.
Nicola ☕🚐
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