entitled to rank among original compositions.

Chronology of the plays. Metrical tests.

The determination of the exact order in which Shakespeare's plays were
written depends largely on conjecture. External evidence is accessible
in only a few cases, and, although always worthy of the utmost
consideration, is not invariably conclusive. The date of publication
rarely indicates the date of composition. Only sixteen of the
thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to Shakespeare were published in his
lifetime, and it is questionable whether any were published under his
supervision. {48} But subject-matter and metre both afford rough clues
to the period in his career to which each play may be referred. In his
early plays the spirit of comedy or tragedy appears in its simplicity; as
his powers gradually matured he depicted life in its most complex
involutions, and portrayed with masterly insight the subtle gradations of
human sentiment and the mysterious workings of human passion. Comedy and
tragedy are gradually blended; and his work finally developed a pathos
such as could only come of ripe experience. Similarly the metre
undergoes emancipation from the hampering restraints of fixed rule and
becomes flexible enough to respond to every phase of human feeling. In
the blank verse of the early plays a pause is strictly observed at the
close of each line, and rhyming couplets are frequent. Gradually the
poet overrides such artificial restrictions; rhyme largely disappears;
recourse is more frequently made to prose; the pause is varied
indefinitely; extra syllables are, contrary to strict metrical law,
introduced at the end of lines, and at times in the middle; the last word
of the line is often a weak and unemphatic conjunction or preposition.
{49} To the latest plays fantastic and punning conceits which abound in
early work are rarely accorded admission. But, while Shakespeare's
achievement from the beginning to the end of his career offers clearer
evidence than that of any other writer of genius of the steady and
orderly growth of his poetic faculty, some allowance must be made for ebb
and flow in the current of his artistic progress. Early work
occasionally anticipates features that become habitual to late work, and
late work at times embodies traits that are mainly identified with early
work. No exclusive reliance in determining the precise chronology can be
placed on the merely mechanical tests afforded by