Page:Shakespeare of Stratford (1926) Yale.djvu/136



The order and approximate date of composition of the plays written during the last half of Shakespeare’s career have been fixed with a good deal of definiteness. From Henry V, Julius Cæsar, and Much Ado, all produced about 1599–1600, a marked development in mannerisms and style, and the existence of a considerable body of contemporary allusions, enable critics to arrange the sequence of maturer plays in a series not likely to be fundamentally shaken. For the earlier plays and the sonnets this is not true. We cannot determine with any approach to certainty the time or manner in which Shakespeare began to write. Biographers like to infer that his poetical work commenced immediately after he came to London—say, in 1587–1588—or even before he left Stratford. Some assume that he began with narrative poetry, e.g. Venus and Adonis, others with an independent play like The Comedy of Errors, others as reviser of old plays like Titus Andronicus and Henry VI. There is, however, no positive evidence that any line of his writing was in existence before 1592, though the circumstantial evidence is strong against the possibility that the great quantity of writing we know him to have achieved by 1597, and the vast artistic progress we know him to have made, can have been the product of only five years.

Another fact which makes it impossible to date with positiveness Shakespeare’s earlier plays is that Elizabethan dramatic fashions changed very rapidly during the period from 1590 till 1600 and that Shakespeare’s