Privileged biographies, marginal Shakespeare -- Shakespeare without King James -- Pestilence and the players -- Shakespeare after the first Stuart plague: 1604-1606 -- 1606: social confusion and creative concentration -- The problem of the later Shakespeare -- Playing in Lent: 1580-1613 -- Plague figures for Shakespeare's Stuart period: 1603-1610 -- The playing season at the London theaters -- The difficulty of dating Shakespeare's plays through internal evidence -- The date of Coriolanus.