D. Fourth Period

The fourth period of Shakespeare's work includes his principal romantic tragicomedies. Toward the end of his career, Shakespeare created several plays that, through the intervention of magic, art, compassion or grace, often suggest redemptive hope for the human condition. These plays are written with a grave quality differing considerably from Shakespeare's earlier comedies, but they end happily with reunions or final reconciliations. The tragicomedies depend for part of their appeal upon the lure of a distant time or place, and all seem more obviously symbolic than most of Shakespeare's earlier works. To many critics the tragicomedies signify a final ripeness in Shakespeare's own outlook, but other authorities believe that the change reflects but a change in fashion in the drama of the period.

The romantic tragicomedy Pericles, Prince of Tyre concerns the painful loss of the title character's wife and the persecution of his daughter. After many exotic adventures, Pericles is reunited with his loved ones. In Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, characters suffer great loss and pain but are reunited. Perhaps the most successful product of this particular vein of creativity, however, is what may be Shakespeare's last complete play, The Tempest, in which the resolution suggests the beneficial effects of the union of wisdom and power. In this play a duke, deprived of his dukedom and banished to an island, confounds his usurping brother by employing magical powers and furthering a love match between his daughter and the usurper's son. Shakespeare's poetic power reached great heights in this play.

Two final plays, sometimes ascribed to Shakespeare, possibly are the products of collaboration. A historical drama, Henry VIII may have been written with English dramatist John Fletcher, as was The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613?; published 1634), a story of the love of two friends for one woman.

Beginning in 1608, the King's Men were allowed to take possession and perform at their indoor theatre, the Blackfriars, the lease to which had been obtained in 1599 by Richard Burbage in his efforts to find a place to continue playing when their original lease on the Theatre had expired. That year also marks a change in tone in Shakespeare's work from the dark mood of the tragedies to one of light, magic, music, reconciliation and romance. Commencing with Pericles (probably written 1607/08 - the text of which is mangled, accounting for its original infrequent performances) and moving through Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and finally in The Tempest Shakespeare conducted a grand experiment in form and poetry that took advantage of these elements, shaping them into an enduring art that has at its heart acceptance and the beneficence of providence. 

Some feel that views expressed in the romances are representative of Shakespeare himself - having lived long enough to see his way through tragedy to resurrection. Others say that he, as a master showman, was just following the fashion and presenting the most popular sort of play for the years 1608 -1611. At court, the masque - extravaganzas of song and spectacle featuring courtiers in the performance - were popular. Ben Jonson as playwright and Inigo Jones as masque designer were the artists of the moment. Elements of the masque were therefore brought into the public stage. The fact that the players were now playing at two venues - performances at the Globe continued regularly until 1613 when it was burned down during a performance of Shakespeare's (and Fletcher's) Henry VIII - itself a play large on spectacle - made it possible to take advantage of elements of the drama, such as artificial lighting, music and stage effects that had been impossible on the outdoor stage. The indoor theatre also allowed higher admissions and plays aimed at a more sophisticated audience. Admission charges were more expensive at Blackfriars than the Globe, and plays at the Globe were less frequent from 1603 -1610 due to further ravages of the plague. All of these factors may have swayed Shakespeare to more romantic plots.

Returning to the world of Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare chose enchantment and magic again as the world he wished to dramatise in The Tempest (1611). Many feel that this play is Shakespeare's valedictory, and that Prospero's speech, revealing all, encompasses Shakespeare's own personal attitudes:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors
As I foretold you were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
IV,i,148-158

Prospero's great speech, where he abjures his magic, may have expressed Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage:

...I'll break my staff
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
V,i,54-57

Whether this was Shakespeare's intention in writing the play is again debatable. The Tempest was not the last play on which he worked, but the nature of his work had clearly changed and The Tempest is certainly his last great play.

Shakespeare's final three plays were written in collaboration with the King's Men's new dramatist, John Fletcher. Henry VIII (1613), Two Noble Kinsmen (probably also written about 1613 or 1614) and the now lost Cardenio were the last plays that Shakespeare composed. Little is known of Cardenio except that in 1653 the printer Humphrey Moseley entered in the Stationers' Register details of several plays including "The History of Cardenio, by Mr. Fletcher and Shakespeare" and that in 1613 Heminges received payment on two occasions for performances at court of a play at one time called 'Cardenno' and another 'Cardenna'. There are later supposed versions of the play, but little is known of the original.


Literary Reputation

Until the 18th century, Shakespeare was generally thought to have been no more than a rough and untutored scribe. Theories were advanced that his plays had actually been written by someone more educated, perhaps statesman and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon or the Earl of Southampton, who was Shakespeare's patron. However, he was celebrated in his own time by English writer Ben Johnson and others who saw in him a brilliance that would endure. Since the 19th century, Shakespeare's achievements have been more consistently recognised, and throughout the Western world he has come to be regarded as the greatest dramatist ever. (see Who Actually Wrote Shakespeare?)

Shakespeare's Plots and Characters

Shakespeare's knowledge of humankind and his poetic skills combine to make him the greatest of playwrights. The world has finally made up its mind about this greatness. Many people spend their lives studying Shakespeare.
His plots alone show that Shakespeare was a master playwright. He built his plays with care. He seldom wrote a speech that did not forward the action, develop a character or help the imagination of the spectator. The plays should be read twice. The first reading should be a quick one, to get the gist of the story. The second reading at a more leisurely pace should bring out the details. The language itself should be studied. It has great expressiveness and concentrated meaning. An edition with good explanatory notes is helpful.
Many of Shakespeare's plots are frankly farfetched. He belonged to an age which was romantic and poetic. People still had the power to make believe. They did not go to the theatre to see real life. They wanted to be carried away to other times and places or to a land of fancy, rather like we today are transported to other worlds by film. The imaginative reader today loves him for the same reason. There were really no such places as his Bohemia or Illyria or Forest of Arden, though the names were real. He has never been equaled in the invention of supernatural creatures ghosts, witches and fairies (see Performances in Shakespearian theatres)
Yet Shakespeare's art is realistic in the sense that it is true to life. His plots, as in King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest may seem fantastic but they are powerfully and eternally true.
Shakespeare's people are alive and three-dimensional. They live in the mind as warmly as close friends. His best portrayals are those of his great heroes. Yet even his minor characters are almost as good. For example, he created in his plays more than 20 young women, all about the same age, of the same station in life, and with the same social background. They are as different, however, as any 20 girls in real life. The same can be said of his old women, men of action, churchmen, kings, villains, dreamers, fools and country people.

His Poetic Greatness

No other writer in the world is so quotable or so often quoted (see Quotations). He expressed deep thoughts and feeling in words of great beauty or power. In the technical skills of the poet rhythm, sound, image and metaphor he remains the greatest of craftsmen. His range is immense. It extends from funny puns to lofty eloquence, from the speech of common men to the language of philosophers.
The meter of his plays is the unrhymed iambic pentameter called blank verse. This was first used in Italy (see About Shakespeare's Sonnets). It was taken up by English poets in the reign of Henry VIII. The University Wits, especially Christopher Marlowe, developed it as a dramatic verse form. Shakespeare perfected it. With John Milton, he made it the greatest meter in English. Blank verse is an excellent form for poetic drama. It is just far enough removed from prose. Blank verse is not monotonous and forced, as rhymed verse sometimes is. It is more ordered, swift and noble than prose. At the same time it is so flexible that it seems - if well written - almost as natural as prose.

Examples of his poetry

To gain an impression of Shakespeare's power and variety, take a look at such passages as Prospero's speech in The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
And then read Lorenzo's speech in the last act of 'The Merchant of Venice':
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Then compare other great passages, such as Shylock's in The Merchant of Venice: "Signior Antonio, many a time and oft"; Mercutio's in Romeo and Juliet: "O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you"; Richard II's "No matter where; of comfort no man speak"; Hamlet's "How all occasions do inform against me"; Claudio's in Measure for Measure: "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where"; Othello's "Soft you, a word or two before you go"; Jaques's in As You Like It: "A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest"; and Cleopatra's in Antony and Cleopatra: "Give me my robe, put on my crown." 

Each speech could come naturally from the speaker and from no one else. Each is very moving. Each has great rhythmic flow and force. Yet each is in the same basic pattern.
Shakespeare's love of words sometimes leads him to rant and bombast, pun and quibble. In haste he sometimes writes nonsense. At times his minor characters talk with affectation or without taste. He can be coarse and he sometimes shocks the reader by his lack of feeling. Yet most of his faults were natural to a writer of his time. The age was not ashamed of humankind's animal nature, and it did not doubt man's divinity.

How the plays came down to us

Since the 1700s scholars have worked over the text of Shakespeare's plays. They have had to do so because the plays were badly printed and no original manuscripts survive.
In Shakespeare's day plays were not usually printed under the author's supervision. When a playwright sold a play to his company he lost all rights to it. He could not sell it again to a publisher without the company's consent. When the play was no longer in demand on the stage, the company itself might sell the manuscript. Plays were eagerly read by the Elizabethan public. This was even more true during the plague years, when the theatres were closed. It was also true during times of business depression. Sometimes plays were taken down in shorthand and sold. At other times, a dismissed actor would write down the play from memory and sell it.
About half of Shakespeare's plays were printed during his lifetime in small, cheap pamphlets called quartos. Most of these were made from fairly accurate manuscripts. A few were in garbled form.

In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, his collected plays were published in a large, expensive volume called the First Folio. It contains all his plays except two of which he wrote only part: Pericles and Two Noble Kinsmen. It also has the first engraved portrait of Shakespeare by Droeshout.
The edition was authorised by Shakespeare's acting group, the King's Company. Some of the plays in it were printed from the accurate quartos and some from manuscripts in the theatre. It is believed that many of these manuscripts were in Shakespeare's own handwriting. Others were copies. Others still, like the Macbeth manuscript had been revised by another dramatist.

Shakespearean scholars have for centuries been trying to determine what Shakespeare actually wrote (see also Who Actually Wrote Shakespeare?) They have done so by studying the language, stagecraft, handwriting and printing of the period and by carefully examining and comparing the different editions. They have modernised spelling and punctuation, supplied stage directions, explained difficult passages and made the plays easier for the modern reader to understand.
Another hard task has been to find out when the plays were written. About half of them have no definite date of composition. The plays themselves have been searched for clues. Other books have been examined. Scholars have tried to match events in Shakespeare's life with the subject matter of his plays.
These scholars have used detective methods. They have worked with clues, deduction, shrewd reasoning and external and internal evidence:

Tests of greatness

'Greatness' is a hard word to define. A 'great' play is one that affects the audience deeply. For example, King Lear has quite a silly plot. It has obvious faults of taste. Yet it is regarded as one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. It moves the audience and the reader profoundly. It has sublime poetry, deep experience, touching pathos and characters created on a grand scale. It is great too, because one can read it over and over with appreciation.
King Lear is complex in detail, yet simple in plan and design. It is unforgettable in its effect. Each of the tragedies arouses similar powerful feelings. These feelings form the basis for critics' decisions as to how to rank the tragedies. Some equally general feeling of rich fun decides the rank of the comedies.

Reasons for his popularity

Shakespeare has a magic of speech and fancy which can be felt but not described. His tolerance and sympathy is great and his mind is healthy. No one else has his wide variety, his warmth, his clear-cut vision of evil and his high regard for heroism.
He believes that man can overcome the evil in himself. He says "we are mixtures of good and evil." His people have astonishing reality. Like real people, they can be great and yet foolish, bad and yet likable, good and yet faulty. He believes that the world is made up of all kinds of people. He finds fools, criminals and madmen fascinating. Shakespeare's people are painted larger than life. They have superhuman energy and grandeur. They stand for mankind in its greatest passions and powers, for good or for evil.

Chronological List of Major Works (with approximate dates):

Contents