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Shakespeare's Plays A List in Probable Date Order Introduction Below is a list of plays known or thought to have been written by Shakespeare.  I have listed them next to the years in which I think they were played for the first time. The order and dates are not to be taken as fact, because nobody knows when many of the plays were first performed. I have based my order on several authorities, but where their opinions differ I have chosen the date that seems most plausible to me. A few plays may not belong in the list at all, but many scholars believe that Shakespeare had a substantial hand in their writing even if he did not write them alone. After Shakespeare's death in 1616 his fellow players John Heminges and Henry Condell gathered the texts of his plays, eighteen already published in quarto editions, and eighteen more previously unpublished, in a single volume known as the First Folio.  It was published in 1623. Of the plays now accepted as Shakespeare's, only Pericles wasn't in that Folio edition. The three extra titles in the list include Two Noble Kinsmen, Edward III and Cardenio.  Two Noble Kinsmen was probably co-written with John Fletcher who took over as the King's Men's chief playwright when Shakespeare retired. There is much argument about Edward III, but it was officially accepted as partly or wholly by Shakespeare in the late 1990's. I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 2003 and thought that the sub-plot in the middle section of the play, in which Edward tries to force his attentions on the beautiful Countess, didn't seem to fit with the war tale around it. Roger Warren in the text of the play ( Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) published by the RSC disagrees, citing the importance of honouring one's oaths to both parts of the play. You read it, or better still see a production, and judge for yourself. Cardenio isn't mentioned much, but there are reports that it was a play by Shakespeare and Fletcher performed by the King's Men.  Unfortunately we do not have a text, and Heminges and Condell  didn't include it (probably because they didn't have a text!) They didn't include Edward III either, though two previous quarto editions had already been published in 1595 and 1599. Neither quarto mentioned the author (or authors) nor the actors company that had performed the play 'about the city of London'. Complete Works There are several standard editions of Shakespeare's complete works.  The first one I owned was bought for me by my Uncle Mike in 1961, but nowadays The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works is well respected and liked. My stalwart for many years has been The Complete Oxford Shakespeare edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor.  In 2007 the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) published RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. Recent collections of the plays and verse have made decisions about whether to take the Folio version of a passage in a play or replace it with the quarto version which in some case is different. The RSC volume sticks with the First Folio text, modernising spellings and only including the quarto version if the Folio version of the passage doesn't make sense due to typesetting errors for instance.  Plays not included in the Folio and all the verse pieces appear in an appendix to the volume with any quarto alternative passages. This collection includes a verse which the editors believe was perhaps performed by Shakespeare himself as the epilogue to a performance of Twelfth Night on Shrove Tuesday 20th February 1599 at Richmond Palace before Queen Elizabeth.  I haven't seen this volume yet but I'm very tempted. Shakespeare's Plays Ordered by probable date Play Probable date   Henry VI part 2 1590   Henry VI part 3 1591   Henry VI part 1 1592   The Comedy of Errors 1592   Richard III 1593   Titus Andronicus 1593   The Taming of the Shrew 1593   The Two Gentlemen of Verona 1594   Love's Labour's Lost 1594   Romeo and Juliet 1594   Richard II 1595   A Midsummer Night's Dream 1595   Edward III 1595 Not certainly all or in part by WS.  King John 1596   The Merchant of Venice 1596   Henry IV part 1 1597   Henry IV part 2 1597   Much Ado About Nothing 1598   Henry V 1598   Julius Caesar 1599   As You Like It 1599   Twelfth Night 1599   Hamlet 1600   The Merry Wives of Windsor 1600   Troilus and Cressida 1601   All's Well That Ends Well 1602   Measure for Measure 1604   Othello 1604   King Lear 1605   Macbeth 1605   Antony and Cleopatra 1606   Coriolanus 1607   Timon of Athens 1607   Pericles 1608 Not included in the First Folio Cymbeline 1609   Winter's Tale 1610   The Tempest 1611   Two Noble Kinsmen   1612 Probably co-written with John Fletcher Cardenio 1612 Lost play probably co-written with John Fletcher Henry VIII 1613 Probably co-written with John Fletcher   Links Internal Brief Biography   An outline of the life of Shakespeare     The Globe Playhouse   Information about the playhouse where Shakespeare's plays were produced in his lifetime, and information and pictures of the new reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe on London's Bankside. Also reviews of most of the plays performed there since its first season in 1997.         Home|Gaynor|Mike|Art|Theatre|Book Shop   Updated 22nd April 2007