Shakespeare Playing Cards

Visual elements

Suits and characters

The goal was to represent as many plays as possible – no two featured characters are from the same play.

The card deck has custom suits, each representing characters from a different type of play. Daggers represent Tragedies, Masks represent Comedies, Crowns represent History and Roman plays, and Roses represent Romances and Problem Plays.

Suit	Ace	King	Queen	Jack
Daggers	Hamlet Hamlet	King Lear King Lear	Lady Macbeth Macbeth	Mercutio Romeo & Juliet
Masks	Beatrice Much Ado About Nothing	Ferdinand Love's Labour's Lost	Titania A Midsummer Night's Dream	Rosalind As You Like It
Crowns	Cleopatra Antony & Cleopatra	Richard II Richard II	Queen Margaret Henry VI 1-3, Richard III	Falstaff Henry IV 1 & 2
Roses	Prospero The Tempest	Cymbeline Cymbeline	Portia Merchant of Venice	Helena All’s Well That Ends Well

Card	Char.	Play
Ace	Hamlet	Hamlet
King	King Lear	King Lear
Queen	Lady Macbeth	Macbeth
Jack	Mercutio	Romeo & Juliet
Ace	Beatrice	Much Ado About Nothing
King	Ferdinand	Love's Labour's Lost
Queen	Titania	A Midsummer Night's Dream
Jack	Rosalind	As You Like It
Ace	Cleopatra	Antony & Cleopatra
King	Richard II	Richard II
Queen	Queen Margaret	Henry VI 1-3, Richard III
Jack	Falstaff	Henry IV 1 & 2
Ace	Prospero	The Tempest
King	Cymbeline	Cymbeline
Queen	Portia	Merchant of Venice
Jack	Helena	All's Well That Ends Well

Card Back & Joker ("Fool")

Face cards

Full Suits

Box Design

Product Prototype

Project: Creating a souvenir for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.

I decided to create a set of playing cards with Shakespeare characters:

Standard set of 54 cards: 52 cards + 2 Jokers
Aces, face cards, and Jokers based on characters

My goal was to make an accessible souvenir rather than a luxurious one – I wanted schoolchildren visiting the Globe to be able to easily afford them.

This meant designing a fairly standard deck:

Poker size (2.5 x 3.5”)
Standard stock (untextured, approx. 280gsm)
Standard process printing (no metallic inks, embossing etc.)
Packaged in a standard chipboard “tuck box” (rather than fancier multipiece or heavier options)

All illustrations are my own drawings.

Nat Bauer