If I believed that half a dozen, or eleven Shakespearean plays, as we have them, had been written or composed, between 1587 and 1592, I should be obliged to say that, in my opinion, they were not composed, in these five years, by Will.  Mr. Greenwood writes, “Some of the dates are disputable”; and, for himself, would omit “Titus Andronicus, the three plays of Henry vi, and possibly also The Taming of the Shrew, while the reference to Hamlet also is, as I have elsewhere shown, of very doubtful force.” {113a} This leaves us with six of Dr. Furnivall’s list of earliest plays put out of action.  The miracle is decomposing, but plays numerous enough to stagger my credulity remain.

I cannot believe that the author even of the five plays before 1592-3 was the ex-butcher’s boy.  Meanwhile these five plays, written by somebody before 1593, meet the reader on the threshold of Mr. Greenwood’s book {113b} with Dr. Furnivall’s eleven; and they fairly frighten him, if he be a “Stratfordian.”  “Will, even Will,” says the Stratfordian, “could not have composed the five, much less the eleven, much less Mr. Edwin Reed’s thirteen ‘before 1592.’” {113c} But, at the close of his work {113d} Mr. Greenwood reviews and disbands that unlucky troop of thirteen Shakespearean plays “before 1592” as mustered by Mr. Reed, a Baconian of whom Mr. Collins wrote in terms worthy of feu Mr. Bludyer of The Tomahawk.

From the five plays left to Shakespeare’s account in p. 51, King John (as we know it) is now eliminated.  “I find it impossible to believe that the same man was the author of the drama” (The Troublesome Reign of King John) “published in 1591, and that which, so far as we know, first saw the light in the Folio of 1623 . . .  Hardly a single line of the original version reappears in the King John of Shakespeare.” {114a} “I think it is a mistake to endeavour to fortify the argument against him” (my Will, toi que j’aime), “by ascribing to Shakespeare such old plays as the King John of 1591 or the primitive Hamlet.” {114b}

I thought so too, when I read p. 51, and saw King John apparently still “coloured on the card” among “Shakespeare’s lot.”  We are now left with Love’s Labour’s Lost, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Comedy of Errors, and Romeo and Juliet, out of Dr. Furnivall’s list of plays up to 1593.  The phantom force of miraculously early plays is “following darkness like a dream.”  We do not know the date of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we do not know the date of Romeo and Juliet.  Mr. Gollancz dates the former “about 1592,” and the latter “at 1591.” {114c} This is a mere personal speculation.  Of Love’s Labour’s Lost, we only know that our version is one “corrected and augmented” by William Shakespeare in 1598.  I dare say it is as early as 1591-2, in its older form.  Of The Comedy of Errors, Mr. Collins wrote, “It is all but certain that it was written between 1589 and 1592, and it is quite certain that it was written before the end of 1594.” {114d}