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  few
of Shakespeare’s writings can
be fairly precisely dated. An allusion to the Earl of Essex
in the chorus to Act V of Henry V, for instance, could
only have been written in 1599. But for many of the plays we
have only vague information, such as the date of publication,
which may have occurred long after composition, the date of
a performance, which may not have been the first, or a list
in Francis Meres’s book Palladis Tamia, published
in 1598, which tells us only that the plays listed there must
have been written by that year. The chronology of the early
plays is particularly difficult to establish. Not everyone
would agree that the first part of Henry VI was written
after the third, for instance, or Romeo and Juliet before A
Midsummer Night’s Dream. The following table is
based on the ‘Canon and Chronology’ section in William
Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, by Stanley Wells and
Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery (1987),
where more detailed information and discussion may be found.
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The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
Henry VI, Part II
Henry VI, Part III
Henry VI, Part I (perhaps with Thomas Nashe)
Titus Andronicus (perhaps with George Peele)
Richard III
Venus and Adonis (poem)
The Rape of Lucrece (poem)
The Comedy of Errors
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Edward III (authorship uncertain, not included in this series)
Richard II
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
King John
The Merchant of Venice
Henry IV, Part I
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Henry IV, Part II
Much Ado About Nothing
Henry V
Julius Caesar
As You Like It
Hamlet
Twelfth Night
'The Phoenix and the Turtle' (poem)
Troilus and Cressida
The Sonnets (poems)
A Lover’s Complaint (poem)
Sir Thomas More (a fragment, not included in this series)
Measure for Measure
Othello
All’s Well That Ends Well
Timon of Athens (with Thomas Middleton)
King Lear
Macbeth (revised by Middleton)
Antony and Cleopatra
Pericles (with George Wilkins)
Coriolanus
The Winter’s Tale
Cymbeline
The Tempest
Henry VIII (by Shakespeare and John Fletcher; known in its own time as
All is True)
Cardenio (by Shakespeare and Fletcher; lost)
The Two Noble Kinsmen (by Shakespeare and Fletcher)
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1590–91
1590–91
1591
1591
1592
1592
1592–3
1592–3
1593–4
1594
1594–5
not later than 1595
(printed in 1596)
1595
1595
1595
1596
1596–7
1596–7
1597–8
1597–8
1598
1598–9
1599
1599–1600
1600–1601
1600–1601
by 1601
1602
1593–1603
1603–4
1603–4
1603
1603–4
1604–5
1605
1605–6
1606
1606
1607
1608
1609
1610
1611
1613
1613
1613–14 |
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