Page "Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship" Paragraph 108

For example, many 18th-and 19th-century scholars, including Samuel Johnson, Lewis Theobald, George Steevens, Edmond Malone, and James Halliwell-Phillipps, placed the composition of Henry VIII prior to 1604, as they believed Elizabeth's execution of Mary, Queen of Scots ( the then king James I's mother ) made any vigorous defence of the Tudors politically inappropriate in the England of James I. Oxfordians cite these sources to place the composition of the play within Oxford's lifetime.

In the case of Macbeth, mainstream scholar A. R. Braunmuller, in the New Cambridge edition, finds the post-1605 arguments for the play inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of 1603.