Plays popular during Shakespeare's time:
* Classical Roman playwrights: Plautus and Terence were well-known and performed regularly. Shakespeare likely saw adaptations of their works.
* Early English playwrights: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and Robert Greene were contemporaries and influential figures. Shakespeare likely witnessed their works.
* Other Elizabethan playwrights: Shakespeare's contemporaries, like Ben Jonson, John Webster, and Thomas Middleton, were likely competing for the same audience and could have been seen by Shakespeare.
Plays that influenced Shakespeare's own works:
* The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd: Its revenge plot, use of ghosts, and dramatic language likely influenced Shakespeare's Hamlet.
* Tamburlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe: Its ambitious hero and grand language may have inspired Shakespeare's Richard III.
* The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe: Its themes of greed, betrayal, and religious conflict resonate in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Plays mentioned in Shakespeare's works:
* Shakespeare occasionally references other plays in his own works. For instance, in Love's Labour's Lost, the characters discuss a play called "The Nine Worthies", suggesting that such a play might have been popular at the time.
Overall, while we can't definitively say which plays Shakespeare watched, we can make educated guesses based on the plays popular at the time, those that influenced his own work, and those mentioned within his works.
It's important to remember that theater in Shakespeare's time was a different experience than it is today. Performances were often held during daylight hours in open-air theaters, and the audiences were much more diverse and active than they are now. This makes it difficult to know precisely what plays Shakespeare saw, but it's safe to say that he was a keen observer of the theater scene and likely saw a wide variety of plays.