Shakespeare’s Plays from 1595 to 1600

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The first quarto of Romeo and Juliet, 1597. Courtesy of Shakespeare Documented and the British Library. Public Domain.

Public Praise for Drama

Para1By the mid-1590s, published quartos (single-play editions about the size of a modern paperback book), court performance records, and mentions of him by contemporary authors all indicate that William Shakespeare was a thriving playwright in London. The precise composition date for many plays remains unknown, but scholars agree on a basic chronology for Shakespeare’s plays.

Evidence for Publication Dates

Para2In 1598, a publication called Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres praises Shakespeare for a number of his plays from the early 1590s onward. The plays mentioned by Meres are included in the chronology below. It offers important documentary evidence that Shakespeare was a respected playwright during his lifetime.
Para3By 1598, Shakespeare’s stature as an artist was enough that the second quarto of Richard II was published with his name on the title page.
Para4In the same year, the same publisher also printed two more versions of Richard II, as well as an edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost and a second edition of Richard III, all featuring Shakespeare’s name on the title page. A second quarto of Romeo and Juliet held at the University of Edinburgh Library, published a year after Meres’s commentary, has a handwritten note beneath the title Wil. Sha.

Publication and Documentation History, 1595–1600

Composition Date Range Play Title Evidence
1594–1597 Love’s Labour’s Lost Mentioned by Meres, 1598 and other documents. Published in quarto attributed to Shakespeare, 1598. Performed at Court in 1597.
1590–1596 Richard II Stationers’ Register entry, 1597. Mentioned by Meres, 1598. Published in quarto attributed to Shakespeare, 1598. May have been performed in 1595.
1593–1596 Romeo and Juliet Mentioned by Meres, 1598. Published in the bad quarto 1597.
1594–1597 A Midsummer Night’s Dream Mentioned by Meres, 1598. Published in quarto attributed to Shakespeare, 1600.
1587–1598 King John Mentioned by Meres, 1598. Published in Folio, 1623.
1596–1598 The Merchant of Venice Stationers’ Register entry, 1598. Mentioned by Meres, 1598. A possible topical reference suggests 1596-7.
1596–1597 Henry IV (Part One) Stationers’ Register entry, 1598. Meres mentions Henry the 4. Published in quarto 1599 with Shakespeare on title page.
1596–1598 Henry IV (Part Two) Stationers’ Register entry, 1600. Published in quarto 1600 with Shakespeare on title page.
1597–1599 Much Ado About Nothing Two Stationers’ Register entries, 1600. Published in quarto in 1600 with Shakespeare on title page.
1598–1599 Henry the Fifth Two Stationers’ Register entries, 1600. Published quarto without attribution to Shakespeare, 1600.
1598–1599 Julius Caesar Mentioned by Platter, 1599. Published in the First Folio, 1623.
1598–1600 As You Like It Stationers’ Register entry, 1604. Published in theFirst Folio, 1623.
1596–1600 The Merry Wives of Windsor Stationers’ Register entry, 1600. Published in quarto in 1600 with Shakespeare on title page.
1599–1602 Twelfth Night A performance described by Manningham, 1602. First attributed to Shakespeare when published in the First Folio, 1623.
1599–1604 Hamlet Stationers’ Register entry, 1602. Published in the bad quarto, 1603 and the good quarto, 1604. Published in the second good quarto, 1605.
Para5The New Oxford Shakespeare suggests the following chronology for the plays from this period:
1594: Love’s Labour’s Lost
1595: Richard II
1595: Romeo and Juliet
1596: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
1596: King John
1596: The Merchant of Venice
1598: Henry IV (Part One) and Henry IV (Part Two)
1598: Much Ado About Nothing
1599: Henry the Fifth
1599: Julius Caesar
1600: As You Like It
1600: The Merry Wives of Windsor
1601: Twelfth Night
1601: (or 1604) Hamlet

Key Print Sources

Berger, Thomas L. and Jesse M. Lander. Shakespeare in Print, 1593–1640. A Companion to Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan, Blackwell, 1999, pp. 395–413.
The New Oxford Shakespeare. Edited by Gary Taylor et al., Oxford University Press, 2016.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Plays: 1594–1605. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/reference/chronology/plays1594-1605.html. Accessed 25 Feb. 2023.
Jacquez, Manuel. Richard II, Second Edition. Shakespeare Documented, 25 Jan. 2020, doi: doi.org/10.37078/271.
Timeline of Shakespeare’s Plays. The Royal Shakespeare Company, https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-plays/histories-timeline/timeline. Accessed 25 Feb. 2023.

Image Sources

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. London: John Danter, 1597. Title page. Shakespeare Documented. https://doi.org/10.37078/155.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Shakespeare’s Plays from 1595 to 1600
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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Document status published
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
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