nts and personages, but in general character differ strikingly
from the plays of a decade or two earlier. They are hardly comedies at
all, tho they have their humorous passages, but tragedies and
tragi-comedies dealing with more thrilling circumstances and less naive
wonderments than the earlier plays. Instead of a combination of romance
and comedy, they aim at a contrast of the tragic and idyllic. They
oppose a story of sexual passion with one of idealized sentiment, and
delight in a succession of thrills as by clever stagecraft they hurry us
from one suspense into another surprise. Until the very end you can
scarcely guess whether it will be tragic or happy. Their land of romance
is somewhat artificial and theatrical; but yet it has as of old its
adventures, dangers, escapes, rescues, jealousies, suspicions,
reconciliations and re-unions. And it has its idyls of forests, and
fountains of love-lorn maidens and enraptured princes. It is a land of
thrills and surprises, but also of idealization and poetry. For in all
that choir of poets who wrote for the London theaters there was no one
except Shakspere who could excel these young dramatists in their power
to turn the affairs and emotions of mankind into copious verse, now
tumultuous, now placid, but always bubbling with fancy and flowing
melodiously.

If Shakspere's mind was directed again to romantic themes and situations
by the success of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, the clearest evidence
of his indebtedness to them is to be found in his 'Cymbeline', which has
many marked similarities to their 'Philaster'. In his two plays which
follow, the 'Winter's Tale' and the 'Tempest', there is no detailed
resemblance to the romantic tragic-comedies of the younger men.
Shakspere, as well as they, had the whole tradition of romantic drama to
draw from, and in particular he had his own past practice. He did not
need to be shown how to depict romantic love, or charming heroines, or
ardent suitors. For drinking scenes, like those of Trinculo and
Stephano, or for dialog like that not very witty one of Gonzalo and the
courtiers, he had many passages in his own plays that served as guides.
Moreover, if 'Cymbeline' is an example of only partially successful
experimentation with new methods, the 'Winter's Tale,' and still more,
the 'Tempest,' seem to me triumphant and unguided excursions of his own
in the new field. But I think that Shakspere was attracted to this field
by contemporary