THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE's PLAYS
The most profitable method of studying any writer is to take up his
works in the order in which they were written. More and more this
method is being adopted toward all authors, ancient and modern, Virgil
or Milton, Dante or Tennyson. We are thus enabled to trace the gradual
growth of the poet's mind from one production to another,--his constant
increase in skill, in judgment, in knowledge of mankind. The great
characteristic of the genius is, not simply that he knows more than
other men at first, but that he has in him such vast possibilities of
growth, of improving with time, and learning by his own mistakes.
Consequently, it is very important to know that a certain play or poem
is faulty because it was its author's first crude attempt; that a
second is better because it was written five years later in the light
of added experience; and that a third is better still because it came
ten years after the second, at the climax of the writer's powers.
Besides showing the author's growth, this method also shows his
relation to the great literary movements of his time. As fashions in
dress and sports keep shifting, fashions in literature are changing
just as constantly, and the dominant type may alter two or {74} three
times during one man's life. If an author changes to meet these
demands, it is important to know that one of his plays was merry comedy
because written at a time when merry comedies filled all the
playhouses; and that another is sober tragedy because composed while
most of the theaters were acting and demanding sober tragedy.
Now Shakespeare not only improved a great deal while composing his
plays, but also conformed, to some extent at least, to the different
tastes of his audience at different periods of his life. Hence, a
knowledge of the order in which his plays were written is very
valuable, and should form the first step in a careful study of his
writings.
Unfortunately, when we attempt to arrange Shakespeare's plays in
chronological order, we encounter many practical difficulties in
finding just what this order is. We know that Tennyson developed a
great deal as a poet between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three; and
we can show this by pointing to four successive volumes of his poems,
published respectively at the ages of eighteen, twenty-one,
twenty-three, and thirty-three, and each rising in merit above the one
before it. We know definitely in what order these volumes come, for we
find on the title-page of each the date when it was printed. But
scarcely half of Shakespeare's plays were printed in this way during
his life. The others, some twenty in all, are found only in one big
folio volume which gives no hint of their proper order or year of
composition, and which bears on its title-page the date of the
printing, 1623, seven years after Shakespeare died. Many plays, too,
published {75} early, were written some years before publication, so
that the date of printing on the flyleaf of the quarto, even where a
quarto exists, simply shows that the play was written sometime before
that year but does not tell at all _how long_ before. How, then, are
we to trace Shakespeare's growth from year to year, through his
successive dramas, when the quartos help us so little and when the
majority of these dramas are piled before us in one volume by the
editors of the First Folio, without a word of explanation as to which
plays are early attempts and which mature work?
At first sight the above problem seems almost hopeless. The researches
of scholars for over a century, however, have gathered together a mass
of evidence which determines pretty accurately the order in which these
different plays were written.
This evidence is of two kinds, external and internal. By external
evidence we mean that found _outside_ of the play, references to it in
other books of the time, and similar material. By internal evidence we
mean that found _inside_ of the play itself.
+External Evidence+.--This is of several kinds. In the first place,
every play which was to be printed had to be entered in the Stationers'
Register, and all these entries are dated. Hence we know that certain
plays were prepared for publication by the time mentioned. For
instance, "A Book called Antony and Cleopatra" was entered May 20,
1608; and although apparently the book was not finally printed at that
time, and although our only copy of _Antony and Cleopatra_ is that in
the Folio of 1623, yet we feel reasonably certain from this entry that
this play must have been written either {76} in 1608 or earlier. In
addition to the record of the Stationers' Register, we have the dates
on the title-pages of such plays as appeared in Quarto. These
evidences, it must be remembered, determine only the latest possible
date for the play, as many were written long before they were printed,
or even entered.
Again, other men sometimes used in their books expressions borrowed
from Shakespeare or remarks which sound like allusions to something of
his. Here, if we know the date of the other man's book, we learn that
the play of Shakespeare from which he borrowed must have been in
existence before that date. Thus, when the poet Barksted prints a poem
in 1607 and borrows a passage in it from _Measure for Measure_, we
conclude that _Measure for Measure_ must have been produced before
1607, or Barksted could not have copied from it. This form of evidence
has its dangers, since occasionally we cannot tell whether Shakespeare
borrowed from the other man or the other man from him; nevertheless it
is often valuable.
Furthermore, we sometimes find in contemporary books or papers, which
are dated, an account of the acting of some play. A law student named
John Manningham left a diary in which he records that on February 2,
1602 he saw a play called _Twelfth Night or What You Will_ in the Hall
of the Middle Temple; and his account of the play shows that it was
Shakespeare's. Dr. Simon Forman, in a similar diary, describes the
performance of three Shakespearean plays, two of the accounts being
dated. Still more important in this class is the famous allusion,
already quoted, by Francis Meres in his _Palladis Tamia_, a {77} book
published in 1598. In this he mentions with high praise six comedies
of Shakespeare: _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _The Comedy of Errors_,
_Love's Labour's Lost_, _Love's Labour's Won_,[1] _A Midsummer Night's
Dream_, and _The Merchant of Venice_; and six "tragedies": _Richard
II_, _Richard III_, _Henry IV_, _King John_, _Titus Andronicus_, and
_Romeo and Juliet_.[2] Hence, we know that all these plays were written
and acted somewhere before 1598, although three of them did not appear
in print until 1623.
The above list does not exhaust all the forms of external evidence, but
merely shows its general nature. External evidence, as can be seen, is
not something mysterious and peculiar, but simply an application of
common sense to the problem in hand.
Frequently two pieces of external evidence will accomplish what neither
one could do alone. Often one fact will show that a play came
somewhere before a certain date, but not show how long before, and
another will prove that the play came after another date, without
telling how long after. For example, _King Lear_ was written before
1606, for we have a definite statement that it was performed then. It
was written after 1603, for it borrowed material from a book printed in
that year. This method of hemming in a play between its earliest and
its latest possible date is common and useful, both with Shakespeare
and with other writers.
+Internal Evidence+.--By the above methods a few plays have been dated
quite accurately, and many others confined between limits only two or
three years {78} apart. But many plays are still dated very vaguely,
and some are not dated at all. For further results we must fall back
on internal evidence. The first, though by no means the most
important, form of this consists of allusions _within the play to
contemporary events_. If a boy should read in an old diary of his
grandmother's that she had just heard of the fight at Gettysburg, he
would feel certain that the words were written a few days after that
great battle, even if there were no date anywhere in the manuscript.
In the same way, when the Prologue of Shakespeare's _Henry V_ alludes
to the fact that Elizabeth's general (the Earl of Essex) is in Ireland
quelling a rebellion, we know that this was written between April and
September of 1599, the period during which Essex actually was in
Ireland. Similarly, certain details in _The Tempest_ appear to have
been borrowed from accounts of the wreck of Sir George Somers's ship in
1609. As Shakespeare could not have borrowed from these accounts
before they existed, he must have written his comedy sometime after
1609.[3]
But the main form of internal evidence, what is usually meant by that
term, is the testimony in the character and style of the plays
themselves as to the maturity of the man who wrote them. Just as the
stump of a tree sawn across shows its age by its successive rings of
growth, so a poem, if carefully {79} examined, shows the rings of
growth in the author's style of thought and expression.
The simplest and most tangible form of this evidence is that which is
found in meter. If we read in order of composition those plays which
we have already succeeded in dating, we shall find certain habits of
versification steadily growing on the author, as play succeeded play.
In the first place, most of the lines in the early plays are
'end-stopped'; that is, the sense halts at the close of each line with
a resulting pause in reading. In the later plays the sense frequently
runs over from one line into another, producing what is called a
'run-on' line instead of an 'end-stopped' one. By comparing the
following passages, the first of which contains nothing but end-stopped
lines and the second several run-on lines, the reader can easily see
the difference.
(_a_) From an early play:--
"I from my mistress come to you in post:
If I return, I shall be post indeed,
For she will score your fault upon my pate.
Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock,
And strike you home without a messenger."
--_Comedy of Errors_, I, ii, 63-67.
(_b_) From a late play:--
"Mark your divorce, young sir, [end-stopped]
Whom son I dare not call. Thou art too base [run-on]
To be acknowledg'd. Thou, a sceptre's heir, [end-stopped]
That thus affects a sheep-hook! Thou old traitor, [end-stopped]
{80}
I am sorry that by hanging thee I can [run-on]
But shorten your life one week. And thou, fresh piece [run-on]
Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know [end-stopped]
The royal fool thou cop'st with...--"
--_Winter's Tale_, IV, iv, 427-434.
Since Shakespeare keeps constantly increasing his use of run-on lines
in plays for which dates are known, it seems reasonable to assume that
he did this in all his work, that it was a habit which grew on him from
year to year. Hence, if we sort out his plays in order, putting those
with the fewest run-on lines first and those with the greatest number
last, we shall have good reason for believing that this represents
roughly the order in which they were written.
A second form of metrical evidence is found in the proportion of
'masculine' and 'feminine' endings in the verse. A line has a
masculine ending when its last syllable is stressed; when it ends, for
example, on words or phrases like _behold'_, _control'_, _no more'_,
_begone'_. On the other hand, if the last stressed syllable of the
line is followed by an unstressed one, the two together are called a
feminine ending. Instances of this would be lines ending in such words
or phrases as, _unho'/ly_, _forgive' /me_, _benight'/ed_. Notice the
difference between them in the following passage:--
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors [feminine]
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and [masculine]
Are melted into air, into thin air; [masculine]
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, [feminine]
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, [feminine]
{81}
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, [masculine]
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, [masculine]
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, [feminine]
Leave not a rack behind."
--_Tempest_, IV, i, 147-166.
In the main, although with some exceptions, the number of feminine
endings, like the number of run-on lines, increases as the plays become
later in date.
A third form of ending, which practically does not appear at all in the
early plays, and which recurs with increasing frequency in the later
ones, is what is called a 'weak ending.'[4] This occurs whenever a
run-on line ends in a word which according to the meter needs to be
stressed, and according to the sense ought not to be. Here there is a
clash between meter and meaning, and the reader compromises by making a
pause before the last syllable instead of emphasizing the syllable
itself. Below are two examples of weak endings:--
"It should the good ship so have swallowed, and
The fraughting souls within her."
"I will rend an oak
And peg thee in his knotty entrails _till_
Thou hast howled away twelve winters."
Lastly, we have the evidence of rime. Run-on lines, feminine endings,
and weak endings constantly increase as Shakespeare grows older. Rime,
on the other hand, in general decreases. The early plays are {82} full
of it; the later ones have very little. It does not follow that the
chronological order of the individual plays could be exactly determined
by their percentage of riming lines, for subject matter makes a great
difference. In a staged fairy story, like _A Midsummer Night's Dream_,
the poet would naturally fall into couplets. But, other things being
equal, a large amount of rime is always a sign of early work. This is
especially true when the rimes occur, not in pairs, but in quatrains or
sonnet forms, or (as they sometimes do in the first comedies) in scraps
of sing-song doggerel.
Such is the internal evidence from the various changes in
versification. Its value, as must always be remembered, lies in the
fact that the results of these different tests in the main agree with
each other and with such external evidence as we have.
Then, wholly aside from metrical details, there is a large amount of
internal evidence of other kinds,--evidence which cannot be measured by
the rule of thumb, but which every intelligent reader must notice. We
feel instinctively that one play mirrors the views and emotions of
youth, another those of middle age. A man's face does not change more
between twenty-five and forty than his mind changes during the same
interval; and the difference between his thoughts at those periods is
as distinct often as the difference between the rounded lines of youth
and the stern features of middle age. This is a subject which will be
better understood in the light of the next chapter.
+The Order of the Plays+.--Upon such evidence as has been described, a
list of Shakespeare's plays in their {83} chronological order can now
be presented. The details of evidence on date may be found in the
account of the plays which appears in Chapters X-XIII.
Love's Labour's Lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1591
The Comedy of Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1591
II and III Henry VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1592
Richard III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592-1593
Two Gentlemen of Verona . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592
King John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592-1593
Richard II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1594
Titus Andronicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1594
Midsummer Night's Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1596
Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1591, revised 1597
The Merchant of Venice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1594-1596
The Taming of the Shrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1596-1597
I Henry IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1597
II Henry IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1598
Henry V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599
Merry Wives of Windsor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599
Much Ado about Nothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599
As You Like It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599-1600
Julius Caesar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1699-1601
Twelfth Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1601
Troilus and Cressida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1602
All's Well That Ends Well . . . . . . . . . . . . 1602
Hamlet . . . . . . . . . . . 1602, 1603-1604 (two versions).
Measure for Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1603
Othello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604
King Lear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604-1605
Macbeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1605-1606
Antony and Cleopatra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607-1608
Timon of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607-1608
Pericles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1608
Coriolanus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1609
Cymbeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610
The Winter's Tale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610-1611
{84}
The Tempest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1611
King Henry the Eighth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1612-1613
Among the many books and articles on the subject of this chapter, the
following may be mentioned: _Shakespeare Manual_ by F. L. Fleay
(Macmillan and Co., London, 1876); _Shakspere_, by E. Dowden (American
Book Co., New York); _Cartae Shakespeariante_ by D. Sambert.
[1] This play is either lost, or preserved under another title.
[2] Quoted in full in Chapter I, p. 10.
[3] This form of evidence is usually weak and unreliable. Most of the
supposed allusions are much more vague than the two given. Where there
have been similar events in history, the allusion might be to one which
we had forgotten when we thought it was to a similar one which we knew.
[4] Mr. Ingram makes a distinction between "light" and "weak" endings.
Both are classed together as weak endings above. The distinction seems
to us too subtle for any but professional students.
{85}