Chronology of Shakespeare's plays

Similarly, dates of first publication are often relatively useless in determining a chronology, as roughly half the plays were not published until seven years after Shakespeare's death, in the First Folio (1623), prepared by John Heminges and Henry Condell, and published by Edward Blount, William Jaggard and Isaac Jaggard.

A notable scholar who does so is E. A. J. Honigmann, who has attempted to push back the beginning of Shakespeare's career by four or five years, to the mid-1580s, with his "early start" theory.

[3][4] Most scholars, however, adhere to a more orthodox chronology,[5] and some, such as Gary Taylor and Sidney Thomas, argue that the early start theory causes more problems than it solves.

The Arden Shakespeare presents the plays in alphabetical order of their titles, without any attempt to construct an overall chronology.

The Oxford, Riverside, Norton and RSC collections each rely on chronologies that differ from one another and attempt only approximate dating.

Edmond Malone was the first scholar to construct a tentative chronology of Shakespeare's plays in An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays attributed to Shakspeare were Written (1778), an essay published in the second edition of Samuel Johnson and George Steevens 's The Plays of William Shakespeare .
Extract from Francis Meres ' Palladis Tamia (1598), which makes reference to twelve of Shakespeare's plays.
1596 second quarto of A Shrew
1594 quarto of The First part of the Contention
Title page of Robert Greene 's Groatsworth of Wit , which helps fix a date for 3 Henry VI .
1594 quarto of Titus Andronicus
1597 quarto of Richard III
1596 quarto of Edward III
1598 quarto of Love's Labour's Lost
Christopher Hunt 's list of plays; the bottom entry reads "Loves labor won."
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex , by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1596). In 1601, Devereux staged the earliest definite production of Richard II .
1599 second quarto of Romeo and Juliet
1619 " False Folio " title page of A Midsummer Night's Dream
1611 quarto of The First and Second Part of the troublesome Raigne of King John of England , falsely attributed to "W.Sh."
1598 quarto of Henry IV, Part 1
1602 quarto of The Merry Wives of Windsor
1600 quarto of Ben Jonson 's Every Man out of His Humour , which contains an allusion to 2 Henry IV .
1600 quarto of Henry V
Wilton House ; the location of a possible early staging of As You Like It .
The Red Dragon , upon which the earliest recorded performance of Hamlet took place.
1603 quarto of Hamlet
Edward Wright 's "A Chart of the World on Mercator's Projection " ( c. 1599 ), published in Richard Hakluyt 's 1600 edition of The Principal Navigations... and thought to have been referenced in the play.
1609 Q b edition of Troilus and Cressida
MS page of Sir Thomas More , believed to be in Shakespeare's handwriting .
1622 quarto of Othello .
Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Washington Allston (1814). Coleridge's theory regarding the composition of All's Well was accepted for much of the nineteenth century.
1608 quarto of King Lear .
Samuel Harsnett 's A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures (1603), one of Shakespeare's sources for Lear .
Thomas Middleton, who probably worked on Timon in some capacity.
Henry Garnet , executed for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot , and possibly referred to by the Porter in Macbeth .
1607 quarto of The Devil's Charter , which may allude to Antony and Cleopatra .
1609 quarto of Pericles
Sir Hugh Myddelton by Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen (1628). The play contains a possible allusion to Myddleton's 1608 scheme to bring clean water to London.
1620 quarto of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher 's Philaster , which has strong links with Cymbeline .
1728 quarto of Double Falshood
1634 quarto of The Two Noble Kinsmen