Shakespeare Malone and the Problems of Chronology

In 1778 Edmond Malone published his first contribution to Shakespeare scholarship An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare were Written. He revised and republished it in 1790 and began a further revision of it which was printed posthumously in 1821. This Element will be on the three versions of Malone's Attempt and the way they created shaped focused directed and misdirected our idea of the chronology and sequence of Shakespeare's plays. By showing Malone's impressive fallible choices adopted or adapted by later editors it reveals how current Shakespeare editions are in good and bad ways Malonian at heart.