Shakespeare of Stratford/Chronological Order of Shakespeare's Works

by Tucker Brooke

Layout 2

 

CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS

The order and approximate date of composition of the plays written during the last half of Shakespeare’s career have been fixed with a good deal of definiteness. From Henry V, Julius Cæsar, and Much Ado, all produced about 1599–1600, a marked development in mannerisms and style, and the existence of a considerable body of contemporary allusions, enable critics to arrange the sequence of maturer plays in a series not likely to be fundamentally shaken. For the earlier plays and the sonnets this is not true. We cannot determine with any approach to certainty the time or manner in which Shakespeare began to write. Biographers like to infer that his poetical work commenced immediately after he came to London—say, in 1587–1588—or even before he left Stratford. Some assume that he began with narrative poetry, e.g. Venus and Adonis, others with an independent play like The Comedy of Errors, others as reviser of old plays like Titus Andronicus and Henry VI. There is, however, no positive evidence that any line of his writing was in existence before 1592, though the circumstantial evidence is strong against the possibility that the great quantity of writing we know him to have achieved by 1597, and the vast artistic progress we know him to have made, can have been the product of only five years.

Another fact which makes it impossible to date with positiveness Shakespeare’s earlier plays is that Elizabethan dramatic fashions changed very rapidly during the period from 1590 till 1600 and that Shakespeare’s

DATES AND SOURCES OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS

Date of composition (?)	Comedies	Histories	Tragedies	⟨Dramatic poems⟩	Chief Source	First definite mention	First printed	Conjectural dates of
								Fleay	Alden	Adams
1588–1594	Comedy of Errors				Plautus	Dec. 28, 1594 (Helmes)	1623	1594	1590–1591	1588–1589
1590	Love’s Labour’s Lost				Unknown	1598 (Meres)	1598		1590–1591	1592
1591	Two Gentlemen of Verona				Montemayor	1598 (Meres)	1623	1591–1595	1591–1592	1592–1594
1592		Henry VI, Pts. II & III			Old plays, Holinshed	Sept., 1592 (Greene)	1623		1590–1592	1592
1592				⟨Venus and Adonis⟩	Ovid	Apr. 18, 1593 (S. R.)	1593			1592–1593
1593–1594				⟨Lucrece⟩	Ovid, Livy	May 9, 1594 (S. R.)	1594			1593–1594
1593			Titus Andronicus		?Older play	Jan.23, 1594 (performance)	1594
1594		Richard III			Holinshed	Oct. 19, 1597 (S. R.)	1597	1594	1592–1593	1595
1594	Midsummer Night's Dream				Unknown	1598 (Meres)	1600	1595	1593–1595	1596
1595		Richard II			Holinshed	Aug. 29, 1597 (S. R.)	1597	1595	1594–1595	1595
1595			Romeo and Juliet		Arthur Brooke	July, 1596–Apr., 1597 (L.d. Hunsdon’s Co.)	1597	1595–1596	1594–1597	1593–1596
1595–1596		King John			Older plays	1598 (Meres)	1623	1596	1592–1593	1595
1594–1600				⟨Sonnets⟩		1598 (Meres)	1609			1592–1594
1596	Merchant of Venice				G. Fiorentino	1598 (Meres)	1600	1596–1597	1594–1596	1597
1596	Taming of the Shrew				Older play	? ? ?	1623	1603	1596–1597	1597
1597		1 Henry IV			Older play, Holinshed	Feb. 25, 1598 (S. R.)	1598	1597	1597–1598	1597
1598		2 Henry IV			Holinshed	Aug. 23, 1600 (S. R.)	1600	1597–1598	1597–1598	1597–1598
1599		Henry V			Holinshed	Aug. 4, 1600 (S. R.)	1600	1599	1599	1598
1599		Henry VI, Pt. 1			Older play, Holinshed		1623		1590–1592	1594–1595, 1598–1599
1599			Julius Cæsar		Plutarch	Sept. 21, 1599 (T. Platter’s diary); 1599–1601 (Weever)	1623	1600	1599–1600	1599
1599–1600	Merry Wives of Windsor				Unknown	Jan. 18, 1602 (S. R.)	1602	1600	1598–1599	1598
1600	Much Ado about Nothing				Bandello	Aug. 4, 1600 (S. R.)	1600	1597–1598	1599	1599
1600	As You Like It				Lodge	Aug. 4, 1600 (S. R.)	1623	1599	1599–1600	1599
1601	Twelfth Night				Barnabe Rich	Feb. 2, 1602 (Manningham)	1623	1601–1602	1601	1599
1601			Hamlet		Older play	July 26, 1602 (S. R.)	1603	1603	1602–1604	1601
1602			Troilus and Cressida		Chaucer, Caxton	Feb. 7, 1603 (S. R.)	1609	1602	1601–1602	1602
1603	Measure for Measure				Older plays	Dec. 26, 1604 (Court performance)	1623	1604	1603	1603–1604
1596–1606	All’s Well that Ends Well				Boccaccio	?1598 (Meres)	1623	1593–1601	1602–1604	1596, 1600–1
1604			Othello		Cinthio	Nov. 1, 1604 (Court performance)	1622	1604	1604	1604
1605			Lear		Older play, Sidney	Dec. 26, 1606 (Court performance)	1608	1605	1605–1606	1605
1606			Macbeth		Holinshed	Apr. 20, 1610 (Forman’s diary)	1623	1606	1606	1606
1607			Timon of Athens		Plutarch, older play?	? ? ?	1623	1606–1607	1607–1608	1607
1607			Antony and Cleopatra		Plutarch	May 20, 1608 (S. R.)	1623	1607	1607–1608	1607
1606–1608	Pericles				Gower	May 20, 1608 (S. R.)	1609	1608	1607–1608	1607
1608–1609			Coriolanus		Plutarch	1609? (allusion in Jonson’s Silent Woman)	1623	1608	1609	1608–1609
1610	Cymbeline				Holinshed, Boccaccio	1610? (undated note in Forman)	1623	1609	1610	1609–1610
1610–1611	Winter’s Tale				Greene	May 15, 1611 (Forman)	1623	1610	1611	1610–1611
1611	Tempest				Contemporary pamphlets, etc.	Nov. 1, 1611 (Court performance)	1623	1610	1611	1611
1613		Henry VIII			Holinshed	June 29, 1613 (Globe Theatre fire)	1623	1613	1612	1613

personal taste and powers developed even more. The conditions of the day led to radical revision of plays, almost as often as they were revived, to suit the changing manners of the theatre and the playwright. Some of Shakespeare’s earlier works are therefore palimpsests, containing writing of several different periods, impossible to refer to a single point in the poet’s development. Love’s Labour’s Lost and All’s Well that Ends Well (probably originally presented under the title of Love’s Labour’s Won) are striking examples of this mixture of styles.

A list of Shakespeare’s works, classified according to type, and arranged in conjectural chronological order follows. For purposes of comparison the dates assigned by three other critics, Mr. Fleay, Professor Alden, and Professor Adams, are added in the last three columns. Titles of works which are of doubtful or only partial authenticity are printed in italic.