Cressida_ chronologically close to _King Lear_ and _Timon_;
even if parts of it are later than others, the late parts must be
decidedly earlier than those plays.

The conclusion we may very tentatively draw from these sets of facts
would seem to be as follows. Shakespeare during these years was probably
not a happy man, and it is quite likely that he felt at times even an
intense melancholy, bitterness, contempt, anger, possibly even loathing
and despair. It is quite likely too that he used these experiences of
his in writing such plays as _Hamlet_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _King
Lear_, _Timon_. But it is evident that he cannot have been for any
considerable time, if, ever, overwhelmed by such feelings, and there is
no appearance of their having issued in any settled 'pessimistic'
conviction which coloured his whole imagination and expressed itself in
his works. The choice of the subject of ingratitude, for instance, in
_King Lear_ and _Timon_, and the method of handling it, may have been
due in part to personal feeling; but it does not follow that this
feeling was particularly acute at this particular time, and, even if it
was, it certainly was not so absorbing as to hinder Shakespeare from
representing in the most sympathetic manner aspects of life the very
reverse of pessimistic. Whether the total impression of _King Lear_ can
be called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in the
text.]

[Footnote 154: _A Study of Shakespeare_, pp. 171, 172.]

[Footnote 155: A flaw, I mean, in a work of art considered not as a
moral or theological document but as a work of art,--an aesthetic flaw.
I add the word 'considerable' because we do not regard the effect in
question as a flaw in a work like a lyric or a short piece of music,
which may naturally be taken as expressions merely of a mood or a
subordinate aspect of things.]

[Footnote 156: Caution is very necessary in making comparisons between
Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like the _Antigone_
stands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespearean
tragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama like
the _Philoctetes_ is a self-contained whole, but, ending with a
solution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with a
play like _Cymbeline_. A drama like the _Agamemnon_ or the _Prometheus
Vinctus_ answers to no Shakespearean form of play. It is not a
self-contained whole, but a part of a trilogy.