- 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
In this passage—shortly after Gayef and Ranevsky have balked at Lopakhin’s plan to modernize their estate in order to save it—Gayef reverently speaks directly to an old cupboard that has been in the family for a hundred years. Though inanimate, ornate, and ultimately useless, Gayef is in awe of the cupboard, and imbues it with values of courage and nobility while Lopakhin awkwardly stands by and watches. This passage shows how deeply Gayef reveres the past, and how loath he—and, by extension, his sister Ranevsky—are to accept the social changes that have swept their country. Their blatant and unrepentant sentimentality…