Top 10 novels inspired by Shakespeare

It's the end of Shakespeare's birthday week, but the playwright has provided year-round inspiration for writers from Herman Melville to Patricia Highsmith

Shakespeare famously customised existing plots when writing his plays, and added to them an acute perception of human experience which gave them universal significance. Thwarted love, ambition, greed, jealousy, fear if you want to write a story about a fundamental predicament, there is a Shakespeare play to fit the bill. So it's not surprising that he has inspired so many writers, from Herman Melville to Angela Carter.

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