Free Cymbeline by William Shakespeare Page B

and litigation. But his London life also continued. In 1613 he made his first major London property purchase: a freehold house in the Blackfriars district, close to his company’s indoor theater.
The Two Noble Kinsmen
may have been written as late as 1614, and Shakespeare was in London on business a little over a year before he died of an unknown cause at home in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, probably on his fifty-second birthday.
    About half the sum of his works were published in his lifetime, in texts of variable quality. A few years after his death, his fellow actors began putting together an authorized edition of his complete
Comedies, Histories and Tragedies
. It appeared in 1623, in large “Folio” format. This collection of thirty-six plays gave Shakespeare his immortality. In the words of his fellow dramatist Ben Jonson, who contributed two poems of praise at the start of the Folio, the body of his work made him “a monument without a tomb”:
    And art alive still while thy book doth live
    And we have wits to read and praise to give …
    He was not of an age, but for all time!

SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS:
A CHRONOLOGY
    1589–91
    ?
Arden of Faversham
(possible part authorship)
    1589–92
    The Taming of the Shrew
    1589–92
    ?
Edward the Third
(possible part authorship)
    1591
    The Second Part of Henry the Sixth
, originally called
The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster
(element of coauthorship possible)
    1591
    The Third Part of Henry the Sixth
, originally called
The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York
(element of coauthorship probable)
    1591–92
    The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    1591–92; perhaps revised 1594
    The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
(probably cowritten with, or revising an earlier version by, George Peele)
    1592
    The First Part of Henry the Sixth
, probably with Thomas Nashe and others
    1592/94
    King Richard the Third
    1593
    Venus and Adonis
(poem)
    1593–94
    The Rape of Lucrece
(poem)
    1593–1608
    Sonnets
(154 poems, published 1609 with
A Lover’s
Complaint
, a poem of disputed authorship)
    1592–94/1600–03
    Sir Thomas More
(a single scene for a play originally by Anthony Munday, with other revisions by Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, and Thomas Heywood)
    1594
    The Comedy of Errors
    1595
    Love’s Labour’s Lost
    1595–97
    Love’s Labour’s Won
(a lost play, unless the original title for another comedy)
    1595–96
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream
    1595–96
    The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
    1595–96
    King Richard the Second
    1595–97
    The Life and Death of King John
(possibly earlier)
    1596–97
    The Merchant of Venice
    1596–97
    The First Part of Henry the Fourth
    1597–98
    The Second Part of Henry the Fourth
    1598
    Much Ado About Nothing
    1598–99
    The Passionate Pilgrim
(20 poems, some not by Shakespeare)
    1599
    The Life of Henry the Fifth
    1599
    “To the Queen” (epilogue for a court performance)
    1599
    As You Like It
    1599
    The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
    1600–01
    The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(perhaps revising an earlier version)
    1600–01
    The Merry Wives of Windsor
(perhaps revising version of 1597–99)
    1601
    “Let the Bird of Loudest Lay” (poem, known since 1807 as “The Phoenix and Turtle” [turtledove])
    1601
    Twelfth Night, or What You Will
    1601–02
    The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida
    1604
    The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
    1604
    Measure for Measure
    1605
    All’s Well That Ends Well
    1605
    The Life of Timon of Athens
, with Thomas Middleton
    1605–06
    The Tragedy of King Lear
    1605–08
    ? contribution to
The Four Plays in One
(lost, except for
A Yorkshire Tragedy
, mostly by Thomas Middleton)
    1606
    The Tragedy of Macbeth
(surviving text has additional scenes by Thomas Middleton)
    1606–07
    The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
    1608
    The Tragedy of Coriolanus
    1608
    Pericles, Prince of Tyre
, with George Wilkins
    1610
    The Tragedy of Cymbeline
    1611
    The Winter’s Tale
    1611
    The