For years past I have held and
maintained, in private discussion with friends and fellow-students, the
opinions which I now submit to more public judgment. How far they may
coincide with those advanced by others I cannot say, and have not been
careful to inquire. The mere fact of coincidence or of dissent on such a
question is of less importance than the principle accepted by either
student as the groundwork of his theory, the mainstay of his opinion. It
is no part of my project or my hope to establish the actual date of any
among the various plays, or to determine point by point the lineal order
of their succession. I have examined no table or catalogue of recent or
of earlier date, from the time of Malone onwards, with a view to confute
by my reasoning the conclusions of another, or by the assistance of his
theories to corroborate my own. It is impossible to fix or decide by
inner or outer evidence the precise order of production, much less of
composition, which critics of the present or the past may have set their
wits to verify in vain; but it is quite possible to show that the work of
Shakespeare is naturally divisible into classes which may serve us to
distinguish and determine as by landmarks the several stages or periods
of his mind and art.
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