Dating shakespeares plays

Dating Shakespeare’s Plays

Few of Shakespeare's plays can be dated with certainty. The evidence for dating varies with the plays. In the chronology that follows , the plays have been divided into groups rather than years, to avoid making approximations seem too definitive. While there is no doubt that there is a consistent development in Shakespeare's style and art over his lifetime, it is unwise to argue a development between plays that are in a group. For example, the three great comedies, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night are usually dated in that order; but there is no clear external evidence that precludes their being written in precisely the opposite order. Print this page Cite this page. The chronology of Shakespeare's plays Few of Shakespeare's plays can be dated with certainty. For some there are external facts--date of publication, entry in the Stationers' register , or mention by Francis Meres , for example. For others only internal evidence can be use--verse style, number of rhymed lines, general subject matter, and so on.

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Subscribe now. Edmond Malone, whose work is regarded as the cornerstone of Shakespeare scholarship, made the first serious attempt. Chambers thoroughly reviewed the full scope of dating research in his William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems , published in , and laid out a chronology derived largely from Malone and Dowden. This new book, apparently several years in the making, goes on to review other aspects of the inherited tradition, and then lays out, play by play, the evidence put forward by scholars who believe that the plays were written by William Shakespeare of Stratford, followed by the evidence put forward by scholars who believe they are by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. The book is a major comprehensive revision and re-envisioning of the Shakespeare chronology, but it does not set up a rigid chronology of its own. The new chronology is refreshingly diverse, like the world of Shakespeare authorship studies.

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Shakespeare's Timeline at The Globe. Picture by Dysanovic. There have been graduate dissertations which have attempted the odd daring revision of the order of the early plays or have suggested hitherto undiscovered collaborations.

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“Dating Shakespeare’s Plays” Now Available Online

Update : The book is also now available from Portsea Press. Historically, the tendency among scholars has been to assume that the playwright produced one definitive version of each play, which was then handed over to the acting companies for immediate performance, before finding its way quickly to publication in quarto or, later, in the First Folio of More recently, there has been a growing awareness that a play might have been written well before its first performance or its appearance in quarto.

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