Like the schoolboys in Dogg's Hamlet, the young gang members in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange (1963) talk in a different language. After wreaking havoc on their community, their leader is eventually caught and entered into a criminal rehabilitation program, where even thinking of criminal activities makes him sick.

Stoppard dedicated Cahoot's Macbeth to the Czechoslovakian playwright Pavel Kohout, who faced censorship during communist rule in his homeland. Kohout's novel, The Widow Killer, published in 2000, takes place during World War II in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. This detective story concerns the events surrounding the assassination of a baroness and pairs a Gestapo agent and a Czech detective to solve the crime.

Stoppard is famous for his interest in both Shakespeare and language, which he explores in many of his plays. In Coined by the Shakespeare: Words and Meanings First Used by the Bard (1998), Jeffrey McQuain and Stanley Malless explore the enormous impact that Shakespeare has had on language.

In addition to plays, Stoppard has also worked on screenplays, such as his Academy Award-winning script Shakespeare in Love (1999), which he wrote with Marc Norman. This script incorporates many aspects from Shakespeare's life and uses poetic license to fill in the rest, creating an engaging story that utilizes the language skills of both Shakespeare and Stoppard.

Shakespeare's Hamlet, first published in the early 1600s, is considered by many to be the playwright's best work. The tragedy concerns the title character, the Danish prince who sees a ghost of his murdered father, who commands Hamlet to avenge him.

Shakespeare's Macbeth, first published in 1623, concerns the tragedy of the title character, who commits many murders. When three witches prophesy that he cannot be killed by any man who was born of a woman, Macbeth becomes overconfident, and, as a result, dies at the hand of a man who was removed from his mother's womb by cesarian section.

Stoppard's Arcadia, first published in 1993, explores complex mathematical and scientific concepts such as chaos theory. The play involves major characters from two different time periods in the same house, who are involved in a mystery that takes place in both eras.

Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, first published in 1967, is the play that made Stoppard famous. The play concerns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, who talk about the play, tell jokes, and reflect on reality while they wait for their inevitable deaths.