Our Method

Welcome to the website which reviews all the attempts (and failures) to date the plays of Shakespeare. There is, apparently, a scholarly consensus about the order and dates in which Shakespeare composed his plays.

Yet, there is no contemporary evidence to date the composition of any play.

Close comparison of “the scholarly consensus” shows some surprising discrepancies, e.g., King John (any year between 1588 and 1598), Love’s Labour’s Lost (somewhere between 1589 and 1598) and Hamlet (somewhere between 1589 and1602).

Moreover, the term ‘date’ might refer to the date of composition, or to the earliest performance or to its first publication As it is possible that Shakespeare revised his own works, there may be two texts to date: in the case of King Lear, this involves potentially six different dates; for Hamlet, there might even be nine dates, three for each version of the text.

Dating Shakespeare’s Plays reviews not only the evidence for dating every play but also every argument used in support of a preferred date. Each play is considered in relation to:

• Publication data (Stationers’ Register, title pages, etc.)
• Allusions to the play (contemporary accounts, diaries, poems etc.)
• Performance data (Revels’ Accounts, Henslowe’s Diary, etc.)
• Dates of sources (both probable and possible), using Bullough Narrative & Dramatic Sources

Starting with the ‘orthodox dates’ proposed by E. K. Chambers in  William Shakespeaere: a Study of Facts and Problems (1930), consideration is given to the dates and discussions by major editors (including the editors of the Arden2 and Arden3 series, the Oxford Shakespeare and New Cambridge Shakespeare series).

The impetus for this painstaking review came from an enquiry into whether any play necessarily post-dates 1604, when the Earl of Oxford died. Since Oxford is a candidate for authorship of the great works, this inquiry is important. However, no play can be dated with certainty post 1604. This finding does not entail that Oxford composed the plays, merely that he cannot be discounted on dating grounds. The findings are necessarily inconclusive: it is only possible to establish the date range for each play. The evidence to fix a precise date on any particular play is simply lacking.