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Explanatory Notes
It were a thing impossible to solve the vexed issue of the date of composition of most
of Shakespeare's Works. The table above intends to be a student's reference to best
guesses as to the dates of composition. Although it says Date Written in bold black
letters at the top of the column, the new student should not be deceived. I simply follow
here the conjectures of the best editors. In only rare instances do we know the exact date
of composition or first performance of any of the plays. Ergo the column headed Date
Range. But even this, in many particulars, is speculative. The limiting date of writing (terminus
ad quem) is known by publication or other external evidence (such as Meres's 1598
list), but what of the earliest possible date (terminus a quo)? And speaking of
Meres's list, is it conclusive that his list can indeed be taken as the earliest limit for
Shakespeare's later works?
The order is undoubtedly incorrect, but is based upon the best surmises of the best
editors of which I am aware. Whenever one ventures to say which of Shakespeare's plays was
written first, for example, and then goes back to re-read the work, one is struck with its
maturity and development and feels compelled to put it later in the cycle. The Comedy
of Errors often gets placed first simply because it smacks more of the schoolhouse
than any of the others, and those of us who are fond of imagining Shakespeare a poor,
overworked pedagogue, have a bias this direction. It may be that it was written as a
hurried, commissioned work for the festivities at Gray's Inn in 1594. On the other hand,
it may indeed have been written as early as, say, 1587.
I have reservations about placing The Two Gentlemen of Verona so late, but
feel it is a play associated with the Southampton years yet written for the stage, and
not, as Love's Labor Lost, written for a coterie. Shakespeare seems to have had a
definite clown in mind for the part of Launce. I am aware of how often this is cited as
Shakespeare's earliest of works, and wish to emphasize that this is just my opinion. Let
the new student not be misled. I feel that the works I have placed earlier, Errors,
Shrew, Titus, are based on formal, Italian models—probably reworkings of other
plays—and that The Two Gentlemen shows a different originality than these
earlier pieces. The external evidence, however, supports no firm conclusion.
The difficulty is that even Shakespeare's apprentice work (if we could only say exactly
what that means) is so good. He was not just head and shoulders above his contemporaries,
but above everyone else, for all time. It makes ranking the works among themselves, in the
absence of any external evidence, very difficult indeed.
I have been so bold as to present this table in the hopes that students will find it
useful as a thumbnail sketch, at least, of the chronology of the plays. Since the poetry
is another matter again, I have included it in a separate section after the plays. As this
project develops, I hope to add detailed materials regarding the dating of particular
works. The table presented here is based on one originally presented by Alfred Harbage in The
Complete Pelican Shakespeare (1969, p. 19), but the order and dates are somewhat
different.
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