es up through the newer formation. "Troilus and Cressida" is so
remarkable in this respect that the chief of the absolute-period
critics, the Rev. Mr. Fleay, has been obliged to invent a most
extraordinary theory to account for it. His view is that there are three
plots interwoven, each of which is distinct in manner of treatment, and,
moreover, that each of these was composed at a different time from the
other two. He would have us believe that the parts embodying the Troilus
and Cressida story were written in Shakespeare's earliest period, those
concerning Hector in his middle period, and the Ajax parts in the last.
That these three stories were interwoven is manifest; but they came
naturally together in this Greek historical play--for it is that--and
their interweaving was hardly to have been avoided; the manner of each
is not distinct from that of the other, although there is, with
likeness, a noticeable unlikeness; but the notion that therefore
Shakespeare first wrote the Troilus and Cressida part as a play, and
then years afterward added the Hector part, and again years afterward
the Ajax and Ulysses part, seems to me only a monstrous contrivance of
an honest and an able man in desperate straits to make his theory square
with fact. As to detail upon this subject, I shall only notice one
point. Tag-rhymes, or rhymed couplets ending a scene or a speech in
blank verse or in prose, are regarded by the metre-critics (and justly
within reason) as marks of an early date of composition. Now in "Troilus
and Cressida" these abound. It contains more of them than any other
play, except one or two of the very earliest. The important point,
however, is that these rhymes appear no less in the Ulysses and Ajax
scenes of the play than in the others--a sufficient warning against
putting absolute trust in such evidence.

Among those few of Shakespeare's plays which are least often read is
"All's Well that Ends Well." This one, however, is to the earnest
student one of the most interesting of the thirty-seven which bear his
name; not only because it contains some of his best and most thoughtful
work, but because, being Shakespeare's all through, it is written in two
distinct styles--styles so distinct that there can be no doubt that as
it has come down to us it is the product of two distinct periods of his
dramatic life, and those the most distant, the first and the last. Its
singularity in this respect gives it a peculiar value to th