Shakespeare's earliest dramas I take to be--
Love's Labour's Lost. All's Well that Ends Well. Comedy of Errors. Romeo and Juliet.
Midsummer Night's Dream. As You Like It. Tempest. Twelfth Night.
In the third, as indicating a greater energy--not merely of poetry, but of all the world of thought, yet still with some of the growing pains, and the awkwardness of growth--I place--
Troilus and Cressida. Cymbeline. Merchant of Venice. Much Ado about Nothing. Taming of the Shrew.
In the fourth, I place the plays containing the greatest characters--
And lastly, the historic dramas, in order to be able to show my reasons for rejecting some whole plays, and very many scenes in others.
I think Shakespeare's earliest dramatic attempt--perhaps even prior in conception to the _Venus and Adonis_, and planned before he left Stratford--was _Love's Labour's Lost_. Shortly afterwards I suppose _Pericles_ and certain scenes in _Jeronymo_ to have been produced; and in the same epoch, I place the _Winter's Tale_ and _Cymbeline_, differing from the _Pericles_ by the entire _rifacimento_ of it, when Shakespeare's celebrity as poet, and his interest, no less than his influence, as manager, enabled him to bring forward the laid-by labours of his youth. The example of _Titus Andronicus_, which, as well as _Jeronymo_, was most popular in Shakespeare's first epoch, had led the young dramatist to the lawless mixture of dates and manners. In this same epoch I should place the _Comedy of Errors_, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed _a priori_, have their representatives in Shakespeare's works. I say intentionally such; for many of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, and the greater part of Ben Jonson's comedies, are farce plots. I add _All's Well that Ends Well_, originally intended as the counterpart of _Love's Labour's Lost_, _Taming of the Shrew_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, and _Romeo and Juliet_.
Richard II. King John. Henry VI.,--_rifacimento_ only. Richard III.
Henry IV. Henry V. Merry Wives of Windsor. Henry VIII.,--a sort of historical masque, or show play.