the other three
in nature as well as in date, for it is a dramatization of an old Greek
romance, and in it the hand of another than Shakespeare is only too
evident. Yet it shares with the others certain common features: like
_The Tempest_ it has scenes at sea; all four deal with the separation
and reuniting of families; all show us sympathetic figures deeply
wronged and finally overcoming their injurers by forgiveness. The
abounding high spirits of the earlier comedies are here replaced by a
mood of calm assurance of the ultimate triumph of good and a placid
faith that survives a rude acquaintance with the evil that is in men's
hearts. No period has a more distinctive quality than this of the
dramatic romances, in which the dramatist, on the eve of his retirement
from London, gave his imagination free play, and in both character and
action stamped his last creations with the mark of a lofty idealism.

[Page Heading: Interpretation of Periods]

The obvious fitness of this fourfold division into periods inevitably
raises the question of its causes, and attempts at an answer have run
along two main lines. One of these has been followed out with much
eloquence and persuasiveness by Professor Dowden, whose phrases "In the
Workshop," "In the World," "In the Depths," "On the Heights," to
describe the four periods, point clearly enough to the kind of
significance which he finds in the changes in mood and type of play.
With the first of these phrases few will be disposed to quarrel. In his
period of experiment Shakespeare's style was as yet comparatively
unformed, and his attention was so much occupied with problems of
technic that even the most psychological of critics finds here little
revelation of personality, and must be content to describe the stage as
one of professional apprenticeship. In the terms used of the three later
periods, however, there is an implication that the tone and mood of the
plays in each are the direct reflection of the emotional experiences
through which the poet himself was passing at the period of their
composition. But this is to take for granted a theory of the relation
between artist and production which has against it the general testimony
of creator and critic alike. It is not at the pitch of an emotional
experience that an artist successfully transmutes his life into art, but
in retrospect, when his recollective imagination reproduces his mood in
a form capable of being expressed without bein