Shakespeare’s Early Plays: 1589–1594 Shakespeare’s Plays from 1589 to 1594 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 1.0a

 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 Lucrece (text) Narrative Poetry Publication Quartos Tragedy Venus and Adonis (text) Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. added figure. added image source. 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/
First page of the first quarto printing of Titus Andronicus, dated c. 1594. Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library. CC BY-SA 4.0

Scholars disagree widely about the specific dates when Shakespeare’s early works were written and performed. In general, they agree that Shakespeare was likely in London working as writer and actor by 1592 and that before about 1594, he experimented with a wide variety of dramatic and literary forms. Like other young writers, Shakespeare imitated other popular authors from his own time and from his education. Some scholars contend he collaborated with other London playwrights on many early plays.

How to Date Works by Shakespeare

Determining a date of composition remains a challenge. The Stationers’ Register, a record of publication kept by the London guild that regulated the printing trade, is one way. There was no copyright protection for writers, although printers could ensure that others did not print books they had rights to by entering them in the Stationers’ Register. However, the entry date may have been months or even years after the date the play was completed or first performed. Without the protections given by the concept of copyright, acting companies often kept the manuscripts for the plays they owned until the play lost popularity or until an outbreak of the plague prevented performances. One such plague outbreak occurred from 1592–1594, during which the city authorities closed the theaters.

Investigation by editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016), asserts that many of Shakespeare’s early plays were authored in collaboration with other playwrights of the age, including Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and the later plays in collaboration with Thomas Middleton, George Wilkins, and John Fletcher.

Shakespeare’s early works likely include: Four history plays: (Henry VI, Parts One, Two, and Three; Richard III) An erotic narrative poem: (Venus and Adonis) A moralistic narrative poem: (The Rape of Lucrece) A Roman-style comedy indebted to Plautus: (The Comedy of Errors) A courtly comedy much like the work of John Lyly: (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) A farce about gender with roots in Italian commedia dell’arte, today often considered a problem comedy: (The Taming of the Shrew) A bloody revenge tragedy set in ancient Rome, with inspiration from Thomas Kyd: (Titus Andronicus) Speeches for a collaborative play about Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, Thomas More: (Sir Thomas More) Some sonnets that circulated in handwritten copies in the 1590s, but were not printed until much later in 1609

The Royal Shakespeare Company proposes this chronology: The Taming of the Shrew (before 1592) Henry VI, Part II (1591) Henry VI, Part III (1591; published 1595) Titus Andronicus (1591/92; first performance 1594) Henry VI, Part I (Likely the harey the vi performed at the Rose Theatre in 1592) Richard III (1592, shortly before the plague struck, or in 1594 when the theatres reopened post-plague) The Two Gentlemen of Verona (early or mid-1590s) The Comedy of Errors (1594)

The New Oxford Shakespeare proposes this timeline for probable composition dates: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1587?) Titus Andronicus (1590; printed 1594) Henry VI, Part II (1590) Henry VI, Part III (1590–91) The Taming of the Shrew (1591?) Richard III (1592?) Henry VI, Part I (1592; written by Christopher Marlowe, with additions by Shakespeare) Venus and Adonis (printed 1593) Lucrece (printed 1594) The Comedy of Errors (1594?)

The New Oxford Shakespeare also propose Shakespeare as co-author on anonymous plays from the early 1590s such as Arden of Feversham and Edward III. Each of these chronologies and attributions of authorship has proponents and detractors, but even when these scholars disagree, they show Shakespeare developing a wide range of skills as a dramatist.

Key Print Sources Potter, Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley Blackwell, 2012. Taylor, Gary et al. The New Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Key Online Sources Alberge, Dalya. Chrsitopher Marlowe Credited as One of Shakespeare’s Co-Writers. The Guardian. 23 Oct. 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/23/christopher-marlowe-credited-as-one-of-shakespeares-co-writers. Accessed 17 May 2017. Best, Michael. Plays: 1588–1595. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/reference/chronology/plays1588-1595.html. Accessed 17 May 2017. Best, Michael. Experimental Plays. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/earlyplaygroup.html. Accessed 17 May 2017. Gadd, Ian. Plays in the Stationers Register. Shakespeare Documented. https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/playwright-actor-shareholder/plays-stationers-register. Accessed 8 May 2017. Timeline of Shakespeare’s Plays. The Royal Shakespeare Company. https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-plays/histories-timeline/timeline. Accessed 8 May 2017.
Image Source Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus. 1594. MS. Folger Shakespeare Library. https://doi.org/10.37078/87.