t wholly
convincing, explanation. The First Folio was dedicated to Herbert
after Shakespeare's death, but we have no evidence that the two men
were intimate friends while living. Meres mentions the sonnets of
Shakespeare in 1598, so part of them at least must have been written
before that year; but Herbert did not have a permanent residence in
London until 1598, and was then only eighteen years old.

{73}

CHAPTER VI

THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE's PLAYS

The most profitable method of studying any writer is to take up his
works in the order in which they were written. More and more this
method is being adopted toward all authors, ancient and modern, Virgil
or Milton, Dante or Tennyson. We are thus enabled to trace the gradual
growth of the poet's mind from one production to another,--his constant
increase in skill, in judgment, in knowledge of mankind. The great
characteristic of the genius is, not simply that he knows more than
other men at first, but that he has in him such vast possibilities of
growth, of improving with time, and learning by his own mistakes.
Consequently, it is very important to know that a certain play or poem
is faulty because it was its author's first crude attempt; that a
second is better because it was written five years later in the light
of added experience; and that a third is better still because it came
ten years after the second, at the climax of the writer's powers.

Besides showing the author's growth, this method also shows his
relation to the great literary movements of his time. As fashions in
dress and sports keep shifting, fashions in literature are changing
just as constantly, and the dominant type may alter two or {74} three
times during one man's life. If an author changes to meet these
demands, it is important to know that one of his plays was merry comedy
because written at a time when merry comedies filled all the
playhouses; and that another is sober tragedy because composed while
most of the theaters were acting and demanding sober tragedy.

Now Shakespeare not only improved a great deal while composing his
plays, but also conformed, to some extent at least, to the different
tastes of his audience at different periods of his life. Hence, a
knowledge of the order in which his plays were written is very
valuable, and should form the first step in a careful study of his
writings.

Unfortunately, when we attempt to arrange Shakespeare's plays in
chronolog