A new chronology for Shakespeare’s plays

Abstract

It is widely recognized that Shakespeare’s verse lines grew progressively longer as his career unfolded. Scholars have traditionally used this fact, among others, to date the plays. Drawing on the existing and original data relating to their verbal arrangements, this essay constructs a new chronology for 42 dramatic texts, and parts of texts, by Shakespeare. This chronology is based on a constrained correspondence analysis of the plays’ internal pauses, qualified in relation to a principal component analysis of other verbal features and the recorded closings of the London playhouses owing to plague. The result is a more specific ordering of the Shakespeare canon than has previously been available.