Chapter 7

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]

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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]

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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

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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.

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