group of plays, whether history or comedy,
the author is depicting chiefly the cheerful, energetic side of life.

The Third Period really begins about 1599, for this and the second
overlap; and it continues to about 1608. In the plays of this group
the poet becomes interested in a wholly new set of themes. The aspects
of life which he interprets are no longer bright and cheerful, but
stern and sad. Here come the great tragedies, several of which we have
mentioned above--_Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth,
Antony and Cleopatra_. Shakespeare is now at the height of his power,
for his greatest masterpieces are included in the above list. Mixed in
with this wealth of splendid tragedy (though inferior to it in merit),
there are also three comedies. But even the comedies share in the
somber gloom which absorbed the poet's attention during this period.
The comedies before 1600 had been full of sunshine, brimming with
kindly, good-natured mirth, overflowing with the genial laughter which
makes us love the very men at whom we are laughing. But the three
comedies of this Third Period are bitter and sarcastic in their wit,
making us despise the people who furnish us fun, and leaving an
unpleasant taste in the mouth after the laugh is over. Some have
assumed that the dark tinge of this period was due to an unknown sorrow
in the poet's own life, but there seems to be no need of any such
assumption. We may become interested in reading cheerful books one
year and sad ones the next without being more cheerful or {103} more
sad in one year than in the other; and what is true of the reader might
reasonably be true of the writer. But whatever the cause which
influenced Shakespeare, the tragedies of this group are the saddest as
well as the greatest of all his plays.

The Fourth and last Period contains plays written after 1608-1609.
There are only five of these, and since _Pericles_ and _Henry VII_ are
in large part by other hands, our interest focuses chiefly on the
remaining three--_The Tempest, Cymbeline_, and _The Winter's Tale_.
All the plays of this period end happily and are wholly free from the
bitterness of the Third Period comedy. Nevertheless, they have little
of the rollicking, uproarious fun of the earlier comedies. Their charm
lies rather in a subdued cheerfulness, a quiet, pure, sympathetic
serenity of tone, less strenuous, but even more poetic, than what had
gone before. In some ways they ar