t_ long
years after, are simply repetitions so far as technique is concerned,
of this early triumph. Let us turn now from comedy to those plays
which deal with the sterner side of life. Here the development in
technical skill is similar, but much slower, requiring nearly a
lifetime before it reaches perfection, for the poet is grappling with a
problem so difficult that it taxed all the resources of his great
genius.

Before 1599 nearly all Shakespeare's plays which were not comedies were
histories. By a history or chronicle play we mean a play which
pictures some epoch in the past of the English nation. In one sense
{98} of the word, most of them are tragedies, since they frequently
result in death and disaster; but they are always separated as a class
from tragedy proper, because they represent some great event in English
national life centering around some king or leader; while tragedy
proper deals with the misfortunes of some one man in any country, and
regards him as an individual rather than as a national figure. They
differ also in purpose, since the chronicle play was intended to appeal
to Anglo-Saxon patriotism, the tragedy to our sympathy with human
suffering in general.

The first and crudest of Shakespeare's histories written at about the
same time as his first comedy is the triple play of _Henry VI_.[1] We
should hesitate to judge him by this, since he wrote it only in part;
but it is a woefully rambling production in which we no sooner become
interested in one character than we lose him, and are asked to transfer
our sympathies to another. _Richard III_ is a great step forward in
this respect; for the excitement and interest focuses uninterruptedly
on the one central figure; and his influence on other men and theirs on
him bind all the events of the drama into one coherent whole. Also, it
moves straight on to a definite end which we know and wish and are
prepared for beforehand. We feel, even in the midst of his success,
that such a bloody tyrant cannot be tolerated forever; and like men in
a tiger hunt we thrill beforehand at the dramatic catastrophe which we
know is coming. _Richard III_, though, a powerful play, is {99} still
crude in many details. The scenes where Margaret curses her enemies,
though strong as poetry, lack action as drama. In a wholly different
way, they clog the onward movement of the story almost as much as some
scenes in _Love's Labour's Lost_. Then again, one of the mo