9 314 --- --- 1623 1592-4
2 Henry VI. 3162 448 2562 122 --- --- 1623 1592-4
3 Henry VI. 2904 --- 2749 155 --- --- 1623 1592-4
Contention 1952 381 1571 44 --- --- 1594 1586-8
True Tragedy 2101 --- 2035 66 --- --- 1595 1586-8

VI.--PLAYS IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS NOT SOLE AUTHOR

Taming of the 2649 516 1971 169 15 --- 1623 1596-7
Shrew
Troilus and 3496 1186 2025 196 --- 16 1609 1603
Cressida
Timon of 2373 596 1560 184 18 --- 1623 1607-8
Athens
Pericles 2389 418 1436 225 89 --- 1609[23]1608-9[24]
Henry VIII. 2822 67? 2613 16 --- 12 1623 1610-12[24]

Poems published.--_Venus and Adonis_, 1593; _Lucrece_, 1594;
_Passionate Pilgrim_, 1599; _Phoenix and Turtle_ in Chester's _Loves
Martyr_, 1601; _Sonnets_, 1609, with _A Lover's Complaint_.

Shakespeare recognized the greatness of North's _Plutarch_ and paid it
the compliment of following its thought more closely than that of any
other of his sources.

Shakespeare found suggestions for _As You Like It_ in Thomas Lodge's
contemporary novel _Rosalynde_, but Touchstone and Adam are original
creations.

Our astonishment is often increased to find that the merest hint led
to an imperishable creation, such as the character of Lady Macbeth,
the reference to whom in Holinshed is confined to these twenty-eight
words, "...specially his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing,
as she that was very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to bear
the name of a queen." His plays are almost as different from the old
chronicles or tales as the rose from the soil which nourished it.

[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE--THE D'AVENANT BUST. _Discovered in 1845
on site of Duke's Theater_.]

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

Sympathy.---His most pronounced characteristic is the broadest
sympathy ever shown by an author. He seems to have been able to
sympathize with every kind of human soul in every emergency. He plays
with the simple rustics in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The portrait
of the serving man Adam, in _As You Like It_, is as kindly and as
discriminating as that of king or nobleman. Though he is the scholar
and philosopher in _Hamlet_, he can afterward roam the country with
the tramp Autolycus in _The Winter's Tale_. Women have marveled at the
ease with which his sympathy crosses the barriers of sex, at his
portraits of Portia, Ro