In this volume the Plays are arranged in the chronological order of their composition. Naturally, no claim to finality is made in a subject so beset with difficulties, but the sequence may be taken as fairly representing the general results of recent research. The time-honoured division into Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, dating from the First Folio and since universally followed, has been abandoned, in the belief that there were room and need for an edition that should enable readers to approach the body of the plays, not as a static monument of achievement, but as a vital and growing organism revealing the evolution of the poet’s personality and genius.NOTE: The text used for this edition is that prepared by the late Arthur Henry Bullen for the Stratford Town Edition, to print which he founded the Shakespeare Head Press in 1904.