Chronological List of the Plays of 'Beaumont and Fletcher', together with the Plays of Shakespeare, Jonson and Massinger probably first performed during the Years 1605-1627.
AS noted in the preface to this volume, no attempt has here been made to comment on each one of the ' Beaumont and Fletcher' plays. It seems, however, useful to provide a list of their dramatic writings, and to indicate which plays of Shakespeare, Jonson and Massinger--the three dramatists of greatest influence and widest authority among their contemporaries--were being written and first performed at the same time.
The first column in the following table gives, in chronological order of first performance, the dramatic writings in the Beaumont and Fletcher Folios, with the addition of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt.1 The second, third and fourth columns give the plays and masques of Shakespeare, Jonson and Massinger that were certainly or probably first acted during the years 1605-27. In each instance the date assigned is that suggested in Professor Alfred Harbage Annals of English Drama, 975-1700 ( Philadelphia, 1940). The dates of many plays are still, of course, uncertain and are subject to modification in the light of further enquiry.
In the view of some scholars, the hand of Fletcher can be traced in certain of the plays here listed under the names of Shakespeare and Massinger and in numerous other plays as well: for the range of speculation on this, E. H. C. Oliphant's The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: An Attempt to determine their Respective Shares and the Shares of Others ( 1927) should be consulted.
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