All writers, and smarty-pantses in general, naturally need to have a good working knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays. There’s nothing worse than being at a dinner party full of literary types when someone brings up Shakespeare and getting confused about the difference between Henry V and Henry VI. Then everyone titters at you, and you try to recover by comparing and contrasting Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, but no one cares because neither of those guys are foundational writers of the English language and the whole evening is a disaster. We’ve all been there.
So, to avoid that, and to avoid your needing to read a whole hell of a lot of plays, I point you this handy reference, a retelling of Shakespeare’s plays in 3-panel, stick-figure comic form.