2. Cymbeline—Source: Boccaccio and Holinshed. Synopsis of the plot and analysis of the chief characters. Serene temper with tragic element. Fanciful geography. Read Act iv., Scene 2, through the song Fear No More.
3. Winter's Tale—Source: Greene's Pandosto and the Decameron of Boccaccio. Analysis of the plot and description of the chief characters. List of Warwickshire flowers mentioned (Act iv., Scene 3). Discuss the reason for the popularity of this play in Shakespeare's time and its neglect now. Read Act iv., Scene 3, in part.
4. The Tempest—Source: almost entirely Shakespeare's own; very slight dependence on materials. Analysis of the plot and description of the chief characters. Probably Shakespeare's last play. Wreck of the Sea-Venture and description of Bermuda (see Mabie's Shakespeare). Note Shakespeare's desertion of reality for fancy at the close of his career. Read Act v., Scene 1.
Books to Consult—Hudson: The Life, Art, and Character of Shakespeare. Dowden: Shakespeare, His Mind and Art. The Arden Shakespeare: introductions by Chambers, Wyatt, Boas, etc. Editions of the plays by Rolfe, Brandes, and Hudson. Winter: Old Shrines and Ivy. Sherman: What is Shakespeare? (chapters on Cymbeline and Winter's Tale). W. B. Carpenter: Religious Spirit in the Poets (chapter on the Tempest).
As this is the last program in which Shakespeare's plays are taken up in detail, the important subject might be discussed of the relation of the plays to the author's own life and mental development. (See Dowden's book.) Special study should be made of the exquisite songs in which the last three plays are particularly rich. Hark, Hark, the Lark! and Fear No More, from Cymbeline, Jog On and When Daffodils Begin, from Winter's Tale, and Where the Bee Sucks, from the Tempest, should be sung or read.
VII—SONNETS AND OTHER POEMS
1. Venus and Adonis—Early experiment in narrative verse. The story founded on Ovid, with medieval alterations of the legend. Character of the theme acceptable to the Renaissance spirit, but impossible to-day. Correctness of the text.
2. The Rape of Lucrece—Story of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. Legend unaltered by the poet. Lucrece, the model of conjugal fidelity in the Middle Ages. Who was the Earl of Southampton, to whom the poem was dedicated? What did the other poets of Shakespeare's time think of these early poems?
3. Shorter Poems—A Lover's Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim, and The Phœnix and the Turtle. Shakespeare's part in the second and his indignation at the use of his name for the whole. The "unsolved enigma" of the last.
4. The Sonnets—The origin of the sonnet form in Italy. The plan of the series. Comparison of the collection with Wordsworth's sonnet sequences, Mrs. Browning's Sonnets, and Tennyson's In Memoriam. The problem of W. H. Read the Sonnets, 18, 22, 33, 116.