Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.
Date. The real date of this play is very uncertain, and I am very dubious whether I am right or not in giving it this position. Mr. Collier—with whom Mr. Dyce agrees—is positive that it appeared before 1603, for in that year Drayton published his Barons' Wars, in which is a passage so like the character of Brutus given in this play (v. 5), that one poet must have borrowed from the other; and it is inferred of course that Drayton was the borrower. But this is not by any means so certain, as the eagle did not always disdain to take a plume from the smaller birds (see above, The Two Gentlemen of Verona). It is very strange, however, that neither of these critics seems to have been aware that the very same ideas, and even expressions, are to be found in the character given of Crites in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (ii. 1), which was performed in 1600, and which may therefore I think justly be regarded as the real immediate original of the passages in both poets; the germ, however, is to be found in Chaucer's Tale of the Doctor of Physik. All, then, that we can venture to affirm is, that Julius Cæsar is posterior to 1600. I incline to place it in point of time before Shakespeare's other plays on Roman subjects. It may be observed that his Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus are as much Histories as those that are so entitled, the history being Roman instead of English.
Origin. North's Plutarch, from the French of Amyot.
Antony and Cleopatra.
Edition. Only in the folio 1623.
Date. From the language of this play I feel inclined to place its date near that of Julius Cæsar. It is true that "A Booke called Anthony and Cleopatra," which may have been this play, was entered in the Stationers' Registers, May 20th, 1608; but it seems never to have appeared, and that entry is no proof that the play may not have been acted some years before that date.
Origin. Life of Antonius in North's Plutarch.
King Lear.
Edition. 4to, 1608; 4to, 1608; 4to, 1608; in the folio, 1623.
Date. Certainly posterior to 1603, in which year appeared Harsnet's Discovery of Popish Impostures, from which Shakespeare evidently took the names of the fiends mentioned by Edgar. There is an entry of it in the Stationers' Registers, November 26th, 1607, in which it is stated that it had been played before the King on the night of St. Stephen's Day in the preceding year. The latest date of its composition, then, that we can suppose is 1606.