There are around sixty surviving plays for the second half of our period, though we have no plays with firm links to the playhouses from the first fifteen years from 1565. The earliest play is The Three Ladies of London, published in 1584 (though likely performed earlier) and probably a Leicester’s Men play and later a Queen’s Men play (see McMillin and MacLean, The Queen’s Men and their Plays 84 and the project The Three Ladies of London).
Beneath is a working corpus of plays associated with commercial theatres and the Before Shakespeare project. The dates of these plays are based on Martin Wiggins’s best guess within the date range he establishes for each play (not necessarily of publication but of performance) in the British Drama catalogue:
1581
STC 25784, taken from Roderick McKeown’s post on the Three Ladies website
1582
Love and Fortune
1583
Campaspe
Fedele and Fortunio
1584
The Arraignment of Paris
The Palace of Whitehall, where the Arraignment was performed, from British-History.
Sapho and Phao
Gallathea
1586
The Famous Victories of Henry V
1587
The Spanish Tragedy
Printed woodcut of a scene from Spanish Tragedy, from Luminarium
1 Tamburlaine
2 Tamburlaine
1588
Endymion
Suleiman and Perseda
The Wounds of Civil War
Doctor Faustus
The Battle of Alcazar
The Wars of Cyrus
The Woman in the Moon
Dido, Queen of Carthage
The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London
1589
The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England
Mother Bombie
The Jew of Malta
A Looking-Glass for London and England
Midas
King Leir
The True Tragedy of Richard III
1590
Love’s Metamorphosis
Arden of Faversham
“Here lived Thomas Arden (mayor 1548, Comptroller of the port of Sandwich and Customer of Faversham) and herein on 15th February, 1551 he was murdered at the instigation of his wife. This house is immortalised in the Elizabethan Drama ‘Arden of Feversham’.”
Fair Em
James IV
John a Kent and John a Cumber
The Love of King David and Fair Bathsheba
1591
The Dead Man’s Fortune (plot)
Orlando (plus part)
Edward I
Mucedorus
Locrine
The First Part of the Contention
George-a-Greene
Richard, Duke of York
Selimus
Friar Bacon and John of Bordeaux
1592
The Old Wives’ Tale
The Taming of the Shrew
Harry VI
The Cobbler’s Prophecy
Edward II
Titus Andronicus
A Knack to Know a Knave
The Jig of Averted Adultery
1593
A Comedy of Errors
The Massacre at Paris
Richard III
Edward III
1594
The Taming of a Shrew
A Knack to Know an Honest Man
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
1595
Romeo and Juliet
Richard II
Singing Simpkin
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Plays dated as probably after ’95 by Wiggins, but with the potential to precede that date:
Love’s Labour’s Lost
King John
Edmund Ironside
2 The Seven Deadly Sins
A Warning for Fair Women
Plays with a possible but uncertain connection to the London playhouses:
Appius and Virginia
The Trial of Treasure
John Pickering’s Vice
The Bugbears
The Marriage of Wit and Science
Sir Clyomon and Clamydes
The Life and Death of Jack Straw
Summer’s Last Will and Testament
Two Lamentable Tragedies
Plays surviving in fragments/ variants:
The Hunting of Cupid
Orlando Furioso
The Dead Man’s Fortune
John a Kent and John a Cumber
The Battle of Alcazar
Cf. the Folio versions of Shakespeare’s early histories
1 & 2 Tamar Cham
