WITH HIS LIFE. Illustrated with many hundred Wood-cuts, EXECUTED BY H W HEWET, AFTER DESIGNS BY KENNY MEADOWS, HARVEY, AND OTHERS EDITED BY GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, LL.D. WITH CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS, NOTES, ETC., ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOLUME I.-HISTORIE S. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 92 CLIFF STREET Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-seven, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. ENCX LIERAST NEW YORK 1 [To be slipt into any copy of Shakspere.] THE ORDER OF SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS. MR FURNIVALL'S Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere, Cassell & Co., 10s. 6d., gives his order and groups of the Plays and Poems as follows: FIRST PERIOD (? 1588-1594). e. The darkening Comedy. All's Well (1601-2). Shakspere's Sonnets (? 1592-1608). THIRD PERIOD (1601-1608). a. The Comedy-of-Errors or Mistaken-Iden- Romeo and Juliet (? 1591-3); Venus and Adonis (? 1593); Lucrece (1593-4); The Passionate Pilgrim (pr. 1599). d. The Early Histories. Richard II. (? 1593); 1, 2, 3 Henry VI. (1592-4: 1 Henry VI. perhaps earlier); Richard III. (1594). SECOND PERIOD (? 1595-1601). a. The Life-plea Group. King John (? 1595); The Merchant of Venice (? 1596). b. A Farce: The Taming of the Shrew (1596-7). c. The 3 Comedies of Falstaff, with the Trilogy of Henry IV., V. 1 Henry IV. (1596-7); 2 Henry IV. (1597-8); The Merry Wives (1598-9); Henry V. (1599). d. The 3 Sunny- or Sweet-Time Comedies, Much Ado (1599-1600); As you like it (1600); Twelfth Night (1601). Group. Julius Caesar (1601); Hamlet (1602-3); Measure for Measure (? 1603). b. The Tempter-yielding Group. Othello (1604); Macbeth (1605-6). c. The 1st Ingratitude and Cursing Play: Lear (1605-6). d. The Lust or False-Love Group. Troilus and Cressida (? 1606-7); Antony and Cleopatra (? 1606-7). e. The 2nd Ingratitude and Cursing Group. b. By Women (mainly). Cymbeline (? 1610); Winter's Tale (1611); Hen. VIII. (1612-13). Doubtful Plays: The Two Noble Kinsmen (1612-13), part Shakspere's. Edward III. (1594), none of it Shakspere's. In the Notes to the same Introduction are Prof. Dowden's groups and order, thus: Observe I have early, middle, and later History; early, middle, and later Comedy; and early, middle, and later Tragedy; and the plays might well be read not only right through in chronological order, but also in these three lines chronologically : I. II. III. WILL. |