HIS WORKS

A ccurately dating Shakespeare’s works or developing a precise order of composition is an impossible task. Publication dates give some clues, but publication was a very different business in Shakespeare’s day. Records of performance, topical allusions, and textual similarities all help, but are imperfect. The chronology changes as scholarship changes.

The following is modified from one of the best current chronologies, found in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery.

PLAYS

The Two Gentleman of Verona 1590–91
The Taming of the Shrew 1590–91
Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III 1591–92
Richard III 1592
Titus Andronicus 1592
The Comedy of Errors 1592–94
Love’s Labour’s Lost 1594–95
Richard II 1595
Romeo and Juliet 1595
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1595
King John 1596
The Merchant of Venice 1596–97
Henry IV, Parts I and II 1596–98
The Merry Wives of Windsor 1597–98
Much Ado About Nothing 1598
Henry V 1598–99

This section presents a complete list of the playwright’s works in chronological order by world premiere date.

Julius Caesar 1599
As You Like It 1599–1600
Hamlet 1600–01
Twelfth Night 1600–01
Troilus and Cressida 1602
Sir Thomas More 1603–04
(a collaboration, only a fragment survives)
Measure for Measure 1603
Othello 1603–04
All’s Well That Ends Well 1604
Timon of Athens (probably with Thomas Middleton) 1605
King Lear 1605–06
Macbeth 1606
Antony and Cleopatra 1606
Pericles (probably with George Wilkins) 1607
Coriolanus 1608
The Winter’s Tale 1609
Cymbeline 1610
The Tempest 1611
Cardenio (with John Fletcher; lost) 1612
All Is True, or Henry VIII (probably with John Fletcher) 1613
The Two Noble Kinsmen (probably with John Fletcher) 1613–14

POETRY

Venus and Adonis 1592–93
The Rape of Lucrece 1593–94
The Sonnets 1593–1603
The Phoenix and the Turtle 1600–01
A Lover’s Complaint 1603–04