n to the _Venus and Adonis_, and planned before he left
Stratford--was _Love's Labour's Lost_. Shortly afterwards I suppose
_Pericles_ and certain scenes in _Jeronymo_ to have been produced; and in
the same epoch, I place the _Winter's Tale_ and _Cymbeline_, differing
from the _Pericles_ by the entire _rifacimento_ of it, when Shakespeare's
celebrity as poet, and his interest, no less than his influence, as
manager, enabled him to bring forward the laid-by labours of his youth.
The example of _Titus Andronicus_, which, as well as _Jeronymo_, was most
popular in Shakespeare's first epoch, had led the young dramatist to the
lawless mixture of dates and manners. In this same epoch I should place
the _Comedy of Errors_, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical
farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the
distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed _a priori_, have their
representatives in Shakespeare's works. I say intentionally such; for many
of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, and the greater part of Ben Jonson's
comedies, are farce plots. I add _All's Well that Ends Well_, originally
intended as the counterpart of _Love's Labour's Lost_, _Taming of the
Shrew_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, and _Romeo
and Juliet_.

SECOND EPOCH.

Richard II.
King John.
Henry VI.,--_rifacimento_ only.
Richard III.

THIRD EPOCH.

Henry IV.
Henry V.
Merry Wives of Windsor.
Henry VIII.,--a sort of historical masque, or show play.

FOURTH EPOCH

gives all the graces and facilities of a genius in full possession and
habitual exercise of power, and peculiarly of the feminine, the _lady's_
character.

Tempest.
As You Like It
Merchant of Venice.
Twelfth Night.

And, finally, at its very point of culmination--

Lear.
Hamlet.
Macbeth.
Othello.

LAST EPOCH.

when the energies of intellect in the cycle of genius were, though in a
rich and more potentiated form, becoming predominant over passion and
creative self-manifestation--

Measure for Measure,
Timon of Athens.
Coriolanus.
Julius Caesar.
Antony and Cleopatra.
Troilus and Cressida.

Merciful, wonder-making Heaven! what a man was this Shakespeare!
Myriad-minded, indeed, he was.

Notes On The "Tempest."

There is a sort of improbability with which we are shocked in dramatic