a friend and fellow alive, as was our
Shakespeare, by humble offer of his plays."

If Shakespeare had not possessed the art of making friends, we might
to-day be without such plays as _Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The
Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Antony and
Cleopatra, and Macbeth_. These were printed for the first time in the
1623 _Folio_.

Amount and Classification of his Work.--The _First Folio_ edition
contained thirty-five plays, containing 100,120 lines. The Globe
edition, one of the best modern texts of Shakespeare, has thirty-seven
plays. Even if we give him no credit for the unknown dramas which he
assisted in fashioning, and if we further deduct all doubtful plays
from this number, the amount of dramatic work of which he is certainly
the author is only less astonishing than its excellence. His
non-dramatic poetry, comprising _Venus and Adonis, Lucrece_, 154
_Sonnets_, and some other short pieces, amounts to more than half as
many lines as Milton's _Paradise Lost_.

Mere genius without wonderful self-control and a well-ordered use of
time would not have enabled Shakespeare to leave such a legacy to the
world. The pressure for fresh plays to meet exigencies is sufficient
to explain why he did not always do his best work, even if we suppose
that his health was never "out of joint."

The _First Folio_ gives the current contemporary classification of the
plays into "Comedies," "Histories," and "Tragedies." We indicate the
following as some of the best in each class:--

Comedies: _A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_.

Histories: _Richard III., Henry IV., Henry V., Julius Caesar_.

Tragedies: _Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet_.

Four Periods of his Life.--We may make another classification from a
different point of view, according to the period of his development at
the time of writing special plays. In order to study his growth and
changing ideals, it will assist us to divide his work into four
periods.

(1) There was the sanguine period, showing the exuberance of youthful
love and imagination. Among the plays that are typical of these years
are _The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and
Juliet, Richard II._, and _Richard III_. These were probably all
composed before 1595.

(2) The second period, from 1595 to 1601, shows progress in dramatic
art. There is less