The precise chronology of Shakespeare's plays as they were first written and performed is impossible to determine, as there is no authoritative record and many of the plays were performed many years before they were published.
Pirated editions are the first printed versions of several plays, but many of Shakespeare's works remained unpublished until the First Folio (1623). There is no play mentioned as Shakespeare's by his contemporaries that we do not have, except Cardenio and Love's Labour's Won. Shakespeare's exact role in writing numerous existing plays is debated, however.
Scholars beginning with Edmond Malone have reconstructed the plays' relative chronology by various means, including contemporary allusions and records of performance, entries in the Stationers' Register, dates of publication as reflected on the title pages of individual plays, visceral impressions and computer studies of the development of the playwright's writing style over time, and (particularly) a 1598 list of many of Shakespeare's plays then extant by Francis Meres.
Dissenting viewpoints
While many Stratfordian scholars have adopted a generally accepted order (see below), many dates continue to be debated and all dates should be taken as highly speculative. A number of orthodox scholars, as well as most Oxfordian researchers (so called because of their belief in the authorship by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford), disagree with this Stratfordian dating (dissenting view: Chronology of Shakespeare's plays ? Oxfordian). Also see Shakespeare authorship question.
Dates in the following lists are estimates. (Dates in parentheses indicate the date of first publication.)
If this is the same as the play titled "The Night of Errors", it was performed on 28 December1594. Probably the "errors" in Francis Meres' 1598 list of Shakespeare plays.
According to the first published edition it was performed by a company that folded in early 1593. In 1594 Philip Henslowe referred to it as a "new" play. In Francis Meres' 1598 list of Shakespeare plays.
In Francis Meres' 1598 list of Shakespeare plays. The work may have been based on Bartholomew Yong's translation of Jorge de Montemayor's Diana, which was done in 1583 but not published until 1598.
In Francis Meres' 1598 list of Shakespeare plays. In Christopher Hunt's August 1603 booklist. A lost play, though some scholars think it might simply be an alternative name for another of the plays, such as As You Like It, Much Ado, or All's Well That Ends Well.[1]
Originally written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and heavily revised perhaps ten years later by Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker and (perhaps) William Shakespeare, whose writing has been tentatively identified as "Hand D" in the manuscript.
Encyclopedia
top
