Antony and Cleopatra? Exhausting. Lear? Magnificent but flawed. Hamlet? Limitless. For Shakespeare’s birthday, the Guardian’s former theatre critic ranks all the plays 35 With its improbable plot, comic opera outlaws, and attempted rape being rewarded with the “mutual happiness” of a double marriage, this early study of friendship and betrayal is no one’s favourite comedy. Yet it has hints of later, greater plays, boasts some memorable lines (“The uncertain glory of an April day”) and often