Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/list-of-shakespeare-plays-2985250. Each of the print runs included personalized title page inscriptions, i.e. “The” Plays of William Shakespeare: Accurately Printed from the Text of Mr. Steeven's Last Edition, with a Selection of the Most Important Notes, Volume 4 “The” Plays of William Shakespeare: Accurately Printed from the Text of Mr. Steeven's Last Edition, with a Selection of the Most Important Notes, William Shakespeare: Author This volume also features Shakespeare's complete poetry, including the sonnets. dates taken from title pages), known performance dates, and information from contemporary diaries and other records. This volume also features Shakespeare's complete poetry, including the sonnets. [25] In June, Johnson advertised that his edition would be published on 1 August 1765. [26] George Steevens volunteered to help Johnson work on the Preface during this time. His earliest plays were primarily comedies and histories such as Henry VI and The Comedy of Errors, but in 1596, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, his second tragedy, and over the next dozen years he would return to the form, writing the plays for which he is now best known: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. The Plays of William Shakespeare [William, Shakespeare] on Amazon.com. Some scholars believe that Shakespeare may have also collaborated with George Peele, an English dramatist and poet; George Wilkins, an English dramatist and inn-keeper; and Thomas Middleton, a successful author of numerous stage works, including comedies, tragedies, and pageants. [25] During this time, Johnson added more than 550 notes as he began to revise the work for publication. The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood. Price: Shakespeare's first play is generally believed to be "Henry VI Part I," a history play about English politics in the years leading up to the Wars of the Roses. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. The exact order of the composition and performances of Shakespeare’s plays is difficult to prove—and therefore often disputed. [15] Years later, Edmond Malone, an important Shakespearean scholar and friend of Johnson's, said that Johnson's "vigorous and comprehensive understanding threw more light on his authour than all his predecessors had done",[5] and that the Preface was "the finest composition in our language". William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. No Shakespearean critic or editor has ever approached him in this respect. Bookmark this Shakespeare timeline for your reference. The edition was finally published in 1765. The Allot copies remain the most common. Walter Jackson Bate, in his 1977 biography on Johnson, wrote: the edition of Shakespeare – viewed with historical understanding of what it involved in 1765 – could seem a remarkable feat; and we are not speaking of just the great Preface To see it in perspective, we have only to remind ourselves what Johnson brought to it – an assemblage of almost every qualification we should ideally like to have brought to this kind of work with the single exception of patience... Operating in and through these qualities was his own extensive knowledge of human nature and life. Shakespeare's plays can be roughly divided into three genres—comedies, histories, and tragedies—though some works, such as "The … [31], Johnson, in his Proposal, said that "the corruptions of the text will be corrected by a careful collation of the oldest copies". As Shakespeare’s first full-length tragedy, it owes much of its theme, structure, and language to Thomas Kyd ’s The Spanish Tragedy, which was a huge success in the late 1580s. [26] However, he was unable to work on the Preface until August and it was not printed until 29 September. [32], Johnson's strength was to create a set of corresponding notes that allow readers to identify the meaning behind many of Shakespeare's more complicated passages or ones that may have been transcribed incorrectly over time. [15], On 1 June 1756, Johnson reprinted his Miscellaneous Observations but attached his Proposal or Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare, Corrected and Illustrated. [6], Furthermore, Johnson believed that later editors both misunderstood the historical context of Shakespeare and his plays, and underestimated the degree of textual corruption that the plays exhibit. They do so with great humanity, tolerance, and wisdom. Another 18 plays are known today only because they are included in the 1623 First Folio, the first collected edition of the plays.. London: printed for T. Bensley; for Wynne & Scholey and J. Wallis, 1803-1804. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. [3], 18th-century collection edited by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, For a list of plays written by William Shakespeare, see, Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, Preface to his Edition of Shakespeare's Plays (1765), A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Plays_of_William_Shakespeare&oldid=1014390200, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 26 March 2021, at 20:09. I have decided to list these plays in chronological order. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. [5] David Garrick offered Johnson access to his collection of Shakespeare texts but Johnson declined the offer, believing that Garrick would expect preferential treatment in return. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. Modern scholarly editions of the play contain material from multiple sources. Cotes also printed an 1835 edition of Pericles, one of seven … [27], There are four components to Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare: a discussion of Shakespeare's "greatness" especially in his "portrayal of human nature"; the "faults or weakness" of Shakespeare; Shakespeare's plays in relationship to contemporary poetry and drama; and a history of "Shakespearean criticism and editing down to the mid-1700s" and what his work intends to do.[29]. Lee Jamieson, M.A., is a theater scholar and educator. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. By the author of the Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth. "[18] However, the money was not a strong enough motivator and in 1758, partly as a way to avoid having to finish his Shakespeare, Johnson began to write a weekly series, The Idler, which ran from 15 April 1758 to 5 April 1760. [27], After Johnson was forced to back down from producing his edition of Shakespeare in 1746, his rival editor William Warburton praised Johnson's Miscellaneous Observations as "some critical notes on Macbeth, given as a specimen of a projected edition, and written, as appears, by a man of parts and genius". The Complete Works of William Shakespeare collects all 37 of the immortal Bard's comedies, tragedies, and historical plays in a collectible edition. [27] The edition sold quickly and a second edition was soon printed, with an expanded edition to follow in 1773 and a further revised edition in 1778. [17] The Proposal sold subscriptions for Johnson's future edition at the cost of two guineas, the first paid before and the second upon printing. Jamieson, Lee. The edition was finally published in 1765. Polonius, giving Laertes a pep talk. 3.7 out of 5 stars 8 ratings. [9], Johnson began work on Macbeth to provide a sample of what he thought could be achieved in a new edition of Shakespeare. [3], In 1766, Steevens published his own edition of Shakespeare's plays that was "designed to transcend Johnson's in proceeding further towards a sound text", but it lacked the benefit of Johnson's critical notes. In the "Preface" to his edition, Johnson justifies trying to determine the original language of the Shakespearean plays. Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays and over 150 short and long poems, many of which are considered to be the finest ever written in English. Kyd had hit on the formula of adopting the dramaturgy of Seneca (the younger), the great Stoic philosopher and statesman, to the needs of a burgeoning new London theatre. Most scholars accept that … "[33], In 1908, Walter Raleigh claimed that Johnson helped the reader to "go straight to Shakespeare's meaning, while the philological and antiquarian commentators kill one another in the dark. 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