The Dramas of Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's day playwrights were producing various types of drama: the chronicle play, representing the glories of English history; the domestic drama, portraying homely scenes and common people; the court comedy (called also Lylian comedy, after the dramatist who developed it), abounding in wit and repartee for the delight of the upper classes; the melodrama, made up of sensational elements thrown together without much plot; the tragedy of blood, centering in one character who struggles amidst woes and

horrors; romantic comedy and romantic tragedy, in which men and women were more or less idealized, and in which the elements of love, poetry, romance, youthful imagination and enthusiasm predominated.

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare essayed all these types- the chronicle play in Henry IV, the domestic drama in Merry Wives, the court comedy in Love's Labor's Lost, the melodrama in Richard III, the tragedy of blood in King Lear, romantic tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, romantic comedy in As You Like It-and that in each he showed such a mastery as to raise him far above all his contemporaries.

In his experimental period of work (cir. 1590-1595) Shakespeare began by revising old plays in conjunction with other actors. Henry VI is supposed to be an example of

Early
Dramas

such tinkering work. The first part of this play (performed by Shakespeare's company in 1592) was in all probability an older work made over by Shakespeare and some unknown dramatist. From the fact that Joan of Arc appears in the play in two entirely different characters, and is even made

THE MAIN ROOM, ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE

to do battle at Rouen several years after her death, it is almost certain that Henry VI in its present form was composed at different times and by different authors.

Love's Labor's Lost is an example of the poet's first independent work. In this play such characters as Holofernes the schoolmaster, Costard the clown and Adriano the fantastic Spaniard are all plainly of the "stock" variety; various rimes and meters are used experimentally; blank verse is not mastered; and some of the songs, such as On a Day," are more or less artificial. Other plays of this early experimental

period are Two Gentlemen of Verona and Richard III, the latter of which shows the influence and, possibly, the collaboration of Marlowe,

Second
Period

In the second period (cir. 1595-1600) Shakespeare constructed his plots with better skill, showed a greater mastery of blank verse, created some original characters, and especially did he give free rein to his romantic imagination. All doubt and experiment vanished in the confident enthusiasm of this period, as if Shakespeare felt within himself the coming of the sunrise in Romeo and Juliet:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Though some of his later plays are more carefully finished, in none of them are we so completely under the sway of poetry and romance as in these early works, written when Shakespeare first felt the thrill of mastery in his art.

In Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, the practical affairs of life seem to smother its poetic dreams; but note how the dream abides with us after the play is over. The spell of the enchanted forest is broken when the crowd invades its solitude; the witchery of moonlight fades into the light of common day; and then comes Theseus with his dogs to drive not the foxes but the fairies out of the landscape. As Chesterton points out, this masterful man, who has seen no fairies, proceeds to arrange matters in a practical way, with a wedding, a feast and a pantomime, as if these were the chief things of life. So, he thinks, the drama is ended; but after he and his noisy followers have departed to slumber, lo! enter once more Puck, Oberon, Titania and the whole train of fairies, to repeople the ancient world and dance to the music of Mendelssohn:

Hand in hand, with fairy grace,

While we sing, and bless this place.

So in The Merchant of Venice with its tragic figure of Shylock, who is hurried off the stage to make place for a final scene of

love, moonlight and music; so in every other play of this period, the poetic dream of life triumphs over its practical realities.

During the third period, of maturity of power (cir. 16001610), Shakespeare was overshadowed by some personal grief or disappointment. He wrote his "farewell to mirth" in Twelfth Night, and seems to have reflected his own perturbed state in the lines which he attributes to Achilles in Troilus and Cressida:

Third Period

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd,
And I myself see not the bottom of it.

His great tragedies belong to this period, tragedies which reveal
increased dramatic power in Shakespeare, but also his loss of
hope, his horrible conviction that man is not a free being but
a puppet blown about by every wind of fate or circumstance.
In Hamlet great purposes wait upon a feeble will, and the
strongest purpose may be either wrecked or consummated by a
trifle. The whole conception of humanity in this play suggests
a clock, of which, if but one small wheel is touched, all the rest
are thrown into confusion. In Macbeth a man of courage and
vaulting ambition turns coward or traitor at the appearance of
a ghost, at the gibber of witches, at the whisper of conscience,
at the taunts of his wife. In King Lear a monarch of high dis-
position drags himself and others down to destruction, not at
the stern command of fate, but at the mere suggestion of
foolishness. In Othello love, faith, duty, the fidelity of a brave
man, the loyalty of a pure woman, — all are blasted, wrecked,
dishonored by a mere breath of suspicion blown by a villain.
In his final period, of leisurely experiment (cir. 1610–1616),
Shakespeare seems to have recovered in Stratford the cheerful-

Last
Dramas

ness that he had lost in London. He did little work during this period, but that little is of rare charm and sweetness. He no longer portrayed human life as a comedy of errors or a tragedy of weakness but as a glowing romance, as if the mellow autumn of his own life had tinged

all the world with its own golden hues. With the exception of As You Like It (written in the second period), in which brotherhood is pictured as the end of life, and love as its unfailing guide, it is doubtful if any of the earlier plays leaves such a wholesome impression as The Winter's Tale or The Tempest, which were probably the last of the poet's works.

Following is a list of Shakespeare's thirty-four plays (or thirty-seven, counting the different parts of Henry IV and Henry VI) arranged according to the periods in which they were probably written. The dates are approximate, not exact, and the chronological order is open to question:

First Period, Early ExperimENT (1590–1595). Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, Love's Labor's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Richard III, Richard II, King John.

SECOND PERIOD, DEVELOPMENT (1595-1600). Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Henry V, Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It.

THIRD PERIOD, MATURITY AND TROUBLE (1600-1610). Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew, Julius Cæsar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens.

FOURTH PERIOD, LATER EXPERIMENT (1610-1616). Coriolanus, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII (left unfinished, completed probably by Fletcher).

The most convenient arrangement of these plays appears in the First Folio (1623)1 where they are grouped in three classes Tragedy and called tragedies, comedies and historical plays. The Comedy tragedy is a drama in which the characters are the victims of unhappy passions, or are involved in desperate circumstances. The style is grave and dignified, the movement stately; the ending is disastrous to individuals, but illustrates the triumph of a moral principle. These rules of true tragedy are repeatedly set aside by Shakespeare, who introduces elements of buffoonery, and who contrives an ending that may stand for the triumph of a principle but that is quite likely to

1 This was the first edition of Shakespeare's plays. It was prepared seven years after the poet's death by two of his fellow actors, Heminge and Condell. It contained all the plays now attributed to Shakespeare with the exception of Pericles.