to have occurred during the Roman occupancy
of Britain, and the latter during the Saxon period.

With these before us, let us observe that names, chronology, geography,
costumes, and customs are as nothing in his eyes. His aim is human
philosophy: he places his living creations before us, dressing them, as it
were, in any garments most conveniently at hand. These lose their
grotesqueness as his characters speak and act. Paternal love and weakness,
met by filial ingratitude; these are the lessons and the fearful pictures
of Lear: sad as they are, the world needed them, and they have saved many
a later Lear from expulsion and storm and death, and shamed many a Goneril
and Regan, while they have strengthened the hearts of many a Cordelia
since. Chastity and constancy shine like twin stars from the forest of
Cymbeline. And what have we in Macbeth? Mad ambition parleying with the
devil, in the guise of a woman lost to all virtue save a desire to
aggrandize her husband and herself. These have a pretence of history; but
Hamlet, with hardly that pretence, stands alone supreme in varied
excellence. Ambition, murder, resistless fate, filial love, the love of
woman, revenge, the power of conscience, paternal solicitude, infinite
jest: what a volume is this!

TABLE OF DATES AND SOURCES.--The following table, which presents the plays
in chronological order,[32] the times when they were written, as nearly as
can be known, and the sources whence they were derived, will be of more
service to the student than any discursive remarks upon the several plays.

Plays. Dates. Sources.

1. Henry VI., first part 1589 Denied to Shakspeare; attributed to
Marlowe or Kyd.
2. Pericles 1590 From the "Gesta Romanorum."
3. Henry VI., second part 1591 " an older play.
4. Henry VI., third part 1591 " " " "
5. Two Gentlemen of Verona 1591 " an old tale.
6. Comedy of Errors 1592 " a comedy of Plautus.
7. Love's Labor Lost 1592 " an Italian play.
8. Richard II. 1593 " Holinshed and other
chronicles.
9. Richard III. 1593 From an old play and Sir Thomas
More's History.
10. Midsummer Night's Dream 1594 Suggested by Palamon and Arcite,