— 3—

According to Malone's arrangement, Shakspeare's plays were composed in about the following order and succession: Second Part of Henry VI(1591), Third Part of Henry VI (1591),(Third Part of Henry VI(1591)), Two Gentlemen of Verona(1591), Comedy of Errors (1592), King Richard II(1593), King Richard III(1593), Love's Labour'’s Lost(1594), Merchant of Venice(1594), Midsummer Night's Dream(1594), Taming of the Shrew(1596), Romeo and Juliet(1596), King John(1596), First Part of King Henry IV(1597), Second Part of King Henry IV(1599), As you Like(1599), King Henry V(1599), Much Ado about Nothing(1600), Hamlet(1600), Merry Wives of Windsor(1601), Troilus and Cressida(1602), Measure for Measure(1603), Henry VIII(1603), Othello(1604), Lear(1605), All's Well that Ends Well (1606), Macbeth(1606), Julius Caesar(1607), Twelfth Night(1607), Antony and Cleopatra (1608), Cymbeline(1609), Coriolanus(1610), Timon of Athens(1610), Winter’s Tale(1611), Tempest(1611). These thirty-four plays Malone supposes to be the indisputable productions of Shakspeare: the First Part of Henry VI, Titus Andronicus and Pericles are omitted, although Shakspeare's hand is visible in a few scenes of Pericles. Henry VI, 1 and Titus Andronicus were printed in the first(1623), Pericles for the first time appeared in the third Folio(1664), together with 6 other plays of undoubted spuriousness.

Malone grounds his arrangement on the philological principle that every author's works are the external expression of the gradual growth of his mental and moral powers, and we cannot help reminding here young students of the well-known arrangement of Plato's Dialogues by the celebrated philosopher Schleiermacher, from which all criticism of that ancient author originates. Besides his plays Shakspeare composed the following minor poems: Venus and Adonis(dedicated to his licencious friend, the Earl of Southampton, when he was just 20 years of age, 1593), The Rape of Lucrece(1594), The Passionate Pilgrim, The Lover's Complaint and 154 Sonnets(1609), which are all very important documents of the poet's inward life..

As to Shakspeare's Julius Caesar into which we purpose to give an introduction in particular, we must firstly observe upon the text that no modern editor has reprinted the plays of Shakspeare exactly as they stand in any of the old Folios or Quartos*). Neither the spelling, nor the punctuation, nor the words of any ancient copy have been left unaltered, even with the correction of obvious errors of the Press. Spencer may be supposed to have had some peculiar notions upon the subject of orthography; but apparently it was not a matter about which Shakspeare troubled himself. In departing here from the original texts(the archetypons), therefore, we lose nothing that is really his. Of much higher value is the observation that probably several plays of Shakspeare's, especially Romeo and Juliet(Compare the inquiries of T. Mommsen, Oldenburg 1859), and Hamlet, have obtained their present state of text by a later revision.

The sources from which Shakspeare has taken the fables of his plays, are chiefly ancient romances or novels, English Chronicles(Holinshed), Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, and for the three Roman Tragedies the Greek historian Plutarch, translated from a French trans- lation(of Amyot 1579) by North. Several plays also are revisions of elder plays, even in their imperfect form frequently going over the stage. For his Julius Caesar Shakspeare

*) See Craik, Prolegomena, page 27 th.