rt, above all other living dramatists. It was chiefly
a period in which the young poet, full of ambition, curious of his own
talents, and eager for success, was feeling his way among the different
types of drama which he saw reaching success on the London stage.

The longest period of experiment was in the writing of chronicle
histories. The experience acquired in these six plays, all derived in
some measure from earlier work by others, made Shakespeare a master of
this type. Next in importance was comedy, chiefly romantic with four
plays of widely different aim and merit. These two types are brought
to the highest development in the dramatist's second period. Tragedy
was to wait for a fuller and riper experience. What the complete
earlier version of _Romeo and Juliet_ was like, we have only a faint
idea; it was obviously, while {132} intensely appealing, the work of a
young and immature poet. _Titus Andronicus_ led nowhere in development.

Christopher Marlowe remained Shakespeare's master in the drama
throughout the chronicle plays of the period. John Lyly's court
comedies contained most of the types of character which are to be found
in _Love's Labour's Lost_. Throughout the period Shakespeare grows in
mastery of plot and of his dramatic verse; but his chief growth is away
from this imitation of others into his own creative portraiture of
character. The growth from the bluff soldier, Talbot, in _Henry VI_ to
the weak but appealing Richard II is no less marked than is that from
the fantastic Armado in _Love's Labour's Lost_ to the unconsciously
ridiculous Bottom.

Shakespeare's greatest achievements in this period, aside from _Romeo
and Juliet_ in the unknown first draft, are the characters of Richard
II and Richard III, the former a portrait of vanity and vacillation
mingled with more agreeable traits, lovable gentleness and traces at
least of kingliness, the latter a Titanic figure possessed by an
overmastering passion.

It is impossible to draw a satisfactory line of division between the
experimental period of Shakespeare's work and the period of comedy
which follows. Two plays, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The
Merchant of Venice_, lie really between the two. The chief arguments
for an early grouping seem to be that the former is in some measure an
artificial court comedy, and is full of riming speech and end-stopped
lines; the latter derives some help from Marlowe's treatment of _The
Jew of Malt