checked at all,
only by the unexampled force of honor. Romance, in short, depends on
situation, on the artificial but skilful juxtaposition of emotions and
persons, and on the new technic that sacrifices consistency of
characterization for surprise. Characterization tends to become typical,
and motives tend to be based on fixed conventions, such as the code of
honor might dictate to a seventeenth-century gentleman; but the lack of
individuality in character is counterbalanced by the vividness with
which the lovers, tyrants, faithful friends, evil women, and sentimental
heroines are presented, and by the fluent and lucid style which varies
to any emotional requirement and rises to the demands of the most
sensational situations.

_Cymbeline_ in its plot bears some close resemblances to _Philaster_,
and it seems likely that Shakespeare was adopting the methods and
materials of the new romance. At all events, he turned from tragedy to
romance, and in _Cymbeline_ and the far more original and successful
_Winter's Tale_ and _Tempest_ produced tragi-comedies that, like
Beaumont and Fletcher's, rely on a contrast of tragic and idyllic and on
surprising plots and idealized heroines. After Beaumont's retirement in
1611 or 1612, it seems probable that Fletcher and Shakespeare
collaborated together on _Henry VIII_ and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.

There is ample evidence that the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher won a
great popular renown, surpassing for a time those of Shakespeare and all
others. Beaumont did not live long after he ceased to write for the
stage, dying at thirty, in the same year as Shakespeare. Jonson had
given up dramatic writing for the time, and Fletcher was left the chief
writer for Shakespeare's old company and the undoubted leader of the
theater. Including the plays written in collaboration with Beaumont,
Shakespeare, and later with Massinger, he left some sixty dramas of many
kinds, varying from farcical comedy of manners to the most extreme
tragedy. The comedies of manners present the affairs of women, and spice
their lively conversation and surprising situations with a wit that
often reminds one of the Restoration; indeed they carry the development
of comedy nearly to the point where Wycherley and Congreve began. The
tragi-comedies, which display the qualities already noted as belonging
to the romances, have the technical advantage that the disentanglement
of their rapid plots and sub-plots is left hanging in