Here are the primary and secondary sources for Shakespeare’s Tragedies:
Antony and Cleopatra
Plutarch’s Lives, translated by Thomas North (1579).
Coriolanus
Plutarch’s Lives, translated by Thomas North (1579).
Hamlet
Gesta Danorum, or History of the Danes, Saxo Grammaticus (1200). Grammaticus’ is comprised of 16 books which together tell the story of the rise and fall of the great rulers of Denmark. The tale of Amleth, Saxo’s Hamlet, is recounted in books three and four.
Julius Caesar
Plutarch’s Lives, translated by Thomas North (1579).
King Lear
The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella, published in 1605, but performed as early as 1594.
Rafael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (2nd edition, 1587)
The Mirror for Magistrates, a collection of didactic tales about the history of twenty princes (1559).
The Faerie Queen, Edmund Spenser (1590).
MacBeth
Rafael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (2nd edition, 1587)
Discovery of Witchcraft, Reginald Scot’s
Daemonologie, King James I, (1599)
Othello
Gli Hecatommithi, Cinthio (1565)
A Geographical History of Africa, Leo Africanus, translation by John Pory,(1600)
Romeo and Juliet
The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet, a poem by Arthur Brooke (1562).
The Palace of Pleasure (the popular tale of Romeo and Juliet), William Painter (circa 1580).
Timon of Athens
Timon: Life of Antonius, Plutarch
Timon the Misanthrope, Lucian
Titus Andronicus
No certain primary source
A minor source was Procne and Philomela, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which Shakespeare borrowed heavily from for Act IV, Scene i.
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