Lifespans
Price’s twenty-four contemporaries, then the authorship candidates
The top section shows the twenty-four early modern writers whose documentary records Diana Price surveyed, every one of whom left a personal literary paper trail. Below them are the authorship candidates. The shaded band (c.1589–1613) is the orthodox composition window. The vertical line at c.1558 marks the earliest source date in Kevin Gilvary’s ranges, the earliest date from which a source used by the playwright was available. It is not a composition date.
c. before a name indicates approximate or disputed dates. Price’s list follows her appendix in Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography (2001, rev. 2012). Marlowe, Nashe, and Kyd appear in both sections, as members of Price’s comparison group and as authorship candidates. Hover over any bar for exact dates.
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Key Dates
The orthodox dates that mainstream scholarship assigns to the canon, and that are typically used to test candidates’ chronological eligibility. These dates are not settled primary source facts. Performance records establish when a play was performed, not when it was written or completed. Kevin Gilvary’s Dating Shakespeare’s Plays (2010) reviews each play against the evidence used by mainstream editors and concludes that “the evidence to fix a precise date on any particular play is lacking”, all dates are conjectural. The book records a range of possible dates for each play: the lower bound is the earliest date from which a source used by the playwright was available; the upper bound is publication or allusion. Those lower bounds are not composition dates. The ranges show that “alternative, often earlier, dates for the plays are tenable.” The findings are, as the book states, necessarily inconclusive.