Shakespeare’s Plays from 1601 to 1608 Shakespeare’s Plays from 1601 to 1608 Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Unless otherwise noted, intellectual copyright in EMEE Anthology pages is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Theatre Explore the vibrant world of early modern theatre, including plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries and the cultural impacts of performance. Performance Comedy Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Literature and the Arts First Folio (1623) Publication Quartos Tragedy Published by LEMDO more edits to bib items for MLA 9 edits to bib items for MLA 9 Published by LEMDO Updated metadata proofed added one figure and citations. Created File. Michael Best 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.

 Leah Hamby 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.

 Navarra Houldin 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.

 Kate McPherson 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.

 LEMDO Team 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 https://www.uvic.ca/
Title page of the 1608 quarto of King Lear. Courtesy of Shakespeare Documented and the British Library. Public Domain.
Shifts in Power

Between 1601 and 1607, England grappled with the impending death of Queen Elizabeth I (1603) and with the accession of her cousin, King James VI of Scotland. Not long after his coronation as James I, the nation was shaken in 1605 by the near success of the Gunpowder Plot, a terrorist attack that attempted to blow up the House of Parliament with the King and all the members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons inside of it.

Unsurprisingly, Shakespeare primarily wrote plays of dark power during this time. A disturbing play drawn from Greek mythology and Chaucer: (Troilus and Cressida) A tragedy of power and race, love and jealousy: (Othello) Two dark comedies of gender and power, of virtue and its rewards: (All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure) A tragedy of age and waning power, of parents and children: (King Lear) A tragedy of magic and power, of husband and wife: (Macbeth) A tragedy of power and love, of Rome and Egypt: (Antony and Cleopatra) A tragedy of power and violence, of greed and generosity: (Timon of Athens) A tragedy of power and Roman violence, of mother and child: (Coriolanus)

Publication and Documented History, 1601–1608 Composition Date Range Play Title Evidence 1600–1603 Troilus and Cressida Stationers’ Register entry, 1603. First Folio text (1623) differs in major ways from the 1609 quarto. 1601–1604 Othello Performed at Court, 1604. First Folio text differs substantially from the 1622 quarto 1604 Measure for Measure Performed at Court, 1604. Published in First Folio 1604–1605 All’s Well That Ends Well Published in First Folio 1604–1606 King Lear Performed at Court, 1606. First Folio text differs in major ways from the problematic 1608 quarto 1604–1607 Macbeth May have been performed at Court, 1607. Simon Forman saw a performance in 1611. Published in First Folio 1603–1608 Timon of Athens Published in First Folio 1605–1608 Antony and Cleopatra Stationers’ Register entry, 1608. Published in First Folio 1605–1609 Coriolanus Published in First Folio

The New Oxford Shakespeare suggests the following chronology for the plays from this period: 1602? : Troilus and Cressida 1604? (Or 1601?): Hamlet 1604: Othello 1604: Measure for Measure, adapted by Thomas Middleton by 1622 1606: All’s Well That Ends Well, adapted by Thomas Middleton by 1621 1605: King Lear 1606: Timon of Athens by Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton 1606: Macbeth, adapted by Thomas Middleton in 1616 1606: Antony and Cleopatra 1608: Pericles, in collaboration with George Wilkins 1608: Coriolanus

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 UP, 2016.
Open-Access Digital Resources Best, Michael. Plays: 1602–1610. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 04 Jan. 2011, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/reference/chronology/plays1602-1610.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026. <title level="m">King Lear, First Edition. Shakespeare Documented, 25 Jan. 2020, doi: doi.org/10.37078/599. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026. Timeline of Shakespeare’s Plays. The Royal Shakespeare Company, https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-plays/histories-timeline/timeline. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Image Sources Shakespeare, William. King Lear, First Edition. MS. Shakespeare Documented, 1608, https://doi.org/10.37078/599.