The Shakespeare Classics, gen. ed. L. Gollancz (in progress, 1907-), reprints the chief sources of the plays: Lodge's Rosalynde, Greene's Pandosto, Brooke's Romeo and Juliet, the Chronicle History of King Leir, The Taming of a Shrew, The Sources and Analogues of A Mid-summer-Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Plutarch. Most of these, with other valuable material, are found also in W. C. Hazlitt's revision of Collier's Shakespeare Library. 6 vols. 1875 (out of print).
Many translations which Shakespeare may have known are included in the long series of the Tudor Translations, ed. W. E. Henley and Charles Whibley (mostly out of print).
For drama see Bibliography, chap. [vi]; for contemporary literature see bibliography in Cambridge History of English Literature; or any short manual, as Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature, or Seccombe and Allen's Age of Shakespeare. 2 vols.
CHAPTER IV
Chronology and Development
The first thorough attempt to determine the chronology of Shakespeare's plays was made in Malone's "Attempt to ascertain the order in which the plays attributed to Shakespeare were written," published in Steevens's edition of 1778. His final conclusions on the subject are to be found in the preliminary volumes of the 1821 Variorum. Since then, discussions of chronology and development have appeared in almost every edition of Shakespeare's Works and in many volumes discussing his life and art. (See Bibliography for Chaps. [II] and [VIII].) The following are the most important contributions to the general question of the chronology.
Hertzberg, W. G. Preface to Cymbeline in Ulrici's ed. of Schlegel and Tieck's trans. of Shakespeare, 1871.
—— Metrisches, grammatisches, chronologisches zu Shakespeares Dramen. Jahrbuch, xiii, 1878.
Fleay, F. G. Shakspere Manual, 1878.
New Shakspere Society. Publications for 1874 contain Fleay's tests as originally proposed with discussions by Furnivall, Ingram, et al. Publications for 1877-9 contain F. S. Pulling's essay on The Speech-ending test, p. 457.
Ingram, J. K. On the weak endings of Shakspere with some account of the verse-tests in general. N. S. S. Publ. 1874.