The important point is is that dating of the plays is largely conjectural. Since there are no autographs, at best we have a date of first printing. Scholars who believe the Stratford man (1564-1616) wrote them fit them into his biography (it's difficult) as well as they can, and then draw conclusions from the resulting chronology. (E.g., the Ur-Hamlet cannot have been his, because he was too young; I think Oxford -- 14 years older -- did write it, as he wrote later versions -- the first and second quartos -- through his life. It was his most personal and autobiographical play; that's why Hamlet's age seems to waver throughout.)
In Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World (2004) he notes, without drawing the obvious conclusion, that several plays seem to refer to events a decade or more before their assigned dates of composition...
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> The Earl of Oxford died in 1604. Who wrote Hamlet,
> MacBeth, Lear, Othello, Anthony & Cleopatra, Winter's
> Tale, Measure for Measure, All's Well, 12th Night, and
> The Tempest, all of which are later?
>
> --- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>> Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford
>> born April 12, 1550, Castle Hedingham, Essex, Eng.
>> died June 24, 1604, Newington, Middlesex
>> ...