- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
These are Let the Great World Spin’s opening lines, which constitute an “en medias res” opening, meaning that readers are thrown into the middle of the action without very much in the way of preface or background information. The second sentence, though, catalogues the surrounding street names, thereby establishing the city’s landscape and a sense of its sprawling geography. The idea of a busy and unfathomably large city immediately emphasizes the significance of the bystanders’ collective silence. This silence is significant because it emphasizes the tightrope walker’s ability to bring people together even in the midst of their hectic…