the poet's literary work. _The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_ are the
best of his later plays; but they all show a falling off from his previous
work, and indicate a second period of experimentation with the taste of a
fickle public.

To read in succession four plays, taking a typical work from each of the
above periods, is one of the very best ways of getting quickly at the real
life and mind of Shakespeare. Following is a complete list with the
approximate dates of his works, classified according to the above four
periods.

First Period, Early Experiment. _Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece_, 1594;
_Titus Andronicus, Henry VI_ (three parts), 1590-1591; _Love's Labour's
Lost_, 1590; _Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona_, 1591-1592;
_Richard-III_, 1593; _Richard II, King John_, 1594-1595.

Second Period, Development. _Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream_,
1595; _Merchant of Venice, Henry IV_ (first part), 1596; _Henry IV_ (second
part), _Merry Wives of Windsor_, 1597; _Much Ado About Nothing_, 1598; _As
You Like It, Henry V_, 1599.

Third Period, Maturity and Gloom. _Sonnets_ (1600-?), _Twelfth Night_,
1600; _Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida_,
1601-1602; _All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure_, 1603;
_Othello_, 1604; _King Lear_, 1605; _Macbeth_, 1606; _Antony and Cleopatra,
Timon of Athens_, 1607.

Fourth Period, Late Experiment. _Coriolanus, Pericles_, 1608; _Cymbeline_,
1609; _Winter's Tale_, 1610-1611; _The Tempest_, 1611; _Henry VIII_
(unfinished).

CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO SOURCE. In history, legend, and story,
Shakespeare found the material for nearly all his dramas; and so they are
often divided into three classes, called historical plays, like _Richard
III_ and _Henry V;_ legendary or partly historical plays, like _Macbeth,
King Lear_, and _Julius Caesar;_ and fictional plays, like _Romeo and
Juliet_ and _The Merchant of Venice_. Shakespeare invented few, if any, of
the plots or stories upon which his dramas are founded, but borrowed them
freely, after the custom of his age, wherever he found them. For his
legendary and historical material he depended, largely on _Holinshed's
Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, and on North's translation
of Plutarch's famous _Lives_.

A full half of his plays are fictional, and in these he used the most
popular romances of the day, seeming to depend most on the Italian
story-tellers. Only two or three