I think Shakespeare’s earliest dramatic attempt—perhaps even prior in
conception to the _Venus and Adonis_, and planned before he left
Stratford—was _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. Shortly afterwards I suppose
_Pericles_ and certain scenes in _Jeronymo_ to have been produced; and in
the same epoch, I place the _Winter’s Tale_ and _Cymbeline_, differing
from the _Pericles_ by the entire _rifacimento_ of it, when Shakespeare’s
celebrity as poet, and his interest, no less than his influence, as
manager, enabled him to bring forward the laid-by labours of his youth.
The example of _Titus Andronicus_, which, as well as _Jeronymo_, was most
popular in Shakespeare’s first epoch, had led the young dramatist to the
lawless mixture of dates and manners. In this same epoch I should place
the _Comedy of Errors_, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical
farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the
distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed _a priori_, have their
representatives in Shakespeare’s works. I say intentionally such; for many
of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, and the greater part of Ben Jonson’s
comedies, are farce plots. I add _All’s Well that Ends Well_, originally
intended as the counterpart of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _Taming of the
Shrew_, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, and _Romeo
and Juliet_.