tion and the balance of advantages and
disadvantages. (Since this lecture was written I have read some remarks
on Shakespeare's soliloquies to much the same effect by E. Kilian in the
_Jahrbuch d. deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_ for 1903.)]

[Footnote 24: If by this we mean that these characters all speak what is
recognisably Shakespeare's style, of course it is true; but it is no
accusation. Nor does it follow that they all speak alike; and in fact
they are far from doing so.]

LECTURE III

SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET

1

Before we come to-day to _Hamlet_, the first of our four tragedies, a
few remarks must be made on their probable place in Shakespeare's
literary career. But I shall say no more than seems necessary for our
restricted purpose, and, therefore, for the most part shall merely be
stating widely accepted results of investigation, without going into the
evidence on which they rest.[25]

Shakespeare's tragedies fall into two distinct groups, and these groups
are separated by a considerable interval. He wrote tragedy--pure, like
_Romeo and Juliet_; historical, like _Richard III._--in the early years
of his career of authorship, when he was also writing such comedies as
_Love's Labour's Lost_ and the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_. Then came a
time, lasting some half-dozen years, during which he composed the most
mature and humorous of his English History plays (the plays with
Falstaff in them), and the best of his romantic comedies (the plays with
Beatrice and Jaques and Viola in them). There are no tragedies belonging
to these half-dozen years, nor any dramas approaching tragedy. But now,
from about 1601 to about 1608, comes tragedy after tragedy--_Julius
Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon of Athens_, _Macbeth_,
_Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_; and their companions are plays
which cannot indeed be called tragedies, but certainly are not comedies
in the same sense as _As You Like It_ or the _Tempest_. These seven
years, accordingly, might, without much risk of misunderstanding, be
called Shakespeare's tragic period.[26] And after it he wrote no more
tragedies, but chiefly romances more serious and less sunny than _As You
Like It_, but not much less serene.

The existence of this distinct tragic period, of a time when the
dramatist seems to have been occupied almost exclusively with deep and
painful problems, has naturally helped to suggest the idea that the
'man'