- 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 the opening sentences of The War of the Worlds, which immediately establish an uneasiness regarding “intelligences greater than man’s.” The discomfort the narrator relays in this moment carries throughout the book, as humans struggle to accept that the Martians are superior not only because of their evolutionarily advanced physiology, but because they’ve “scrutinized and studied” humankind for many years. Indeed, these creatures have been watching the world “keenly and closely,” so it should come as no surprise to readers when, for example, the narrator later encounters an alien capable of opening a door. At the same time…
