How many tragedies did Shakespeare write, and what are some of the titles?

There is a simple answer to the question and a complex answer. The simple answer is that there are ten plays credited to Shakespeare that are generally considered tragedies. They are: 

1. Antony and Cleopatra


2. Coriolanus


3. Hamlet


4. Julius Caesar


5. King Lear


6. Macbeth


7. Othello


8. Romeo and Juliet


9. Timon of Athens 


10. Titus Andronicus

These plays are generally considered tragedies because they do not end happily. Instead they end with multiple characters dying and those left behind left to mourn and ask what they could have done differently. Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear and generally considered Shakespeare's four great tragedies. 

The moe complex answer to this questions depends on what definition of tragedy you are using. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher who lived and wrote between 384 and 322 BCE, wrote a book on poetry and drama called Poetics. In that book Aristotle described a tragedy as a piece the aroused feelings of pity and fear in the audience and then provides a catharsis, or a release of those emotions for audience members. The plays listed above meet this criteria as well; each play deals with issues that can bring up pity and fear in an audience, like loss of family, ambition, familial expectations, jealousy, loyalty and love.

Another definition of tragedy relies on the economic and political position of the main character. In this definition, the pieces needs to have a tragic hero, someone of noble birth who has admirable or heroic qualities but who falls or fails because of fate or a tragic flaw that destroys them. Tragedies tell the stories of the fall, failure or death of royalty, of queens, kings, princes and princesses. Stories that describe the fall, failure or death of non-royal characters are called melodramas. The definition and use of the word melodrama has changed and is now used to describe exaggerated plots with stock characters. But historically it was a piece where the characters who suffered were not royalty. Using this definition Coriolanus, Romeo and Juliet and Timon of Athens from the list of tragedies since the main characters in these pieces are not of noble birth. 

The playwright Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, The Crucible) wrote an essay called Tragedy and the Common Man, in which he argued that any person could be a tragic hero. He called his play Death of a Salesman a tragedy because even though his main character was not noble he was a tragic hero with noble qualities who fell at the end of the piece.