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 disposition 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.
[Sidenote: LAST DRAMAS]
In his final period, of leisurely experiment (cir. 1610-1616), Shakespeare seems to have recovered in Stratford the cheerfulness 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 Caesar, 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).
[Sidenote: TRAGEDY AND COMEDY]