ears following 1600, is the
shifting of popular approval towards a new form of drama about 1608.
This was the romantic tragi-comedy, a type of drama which puts a theme
of sentimental interest into events and situations that come close to
the tragic. Shakespeare's plays of this type are often called
romances, since they tell a story of the same type found in romantic
novels of the time. His plays contain rather less of the tragic, and
more of fanciful and playful humor than do the plays of the other
famous masters in this type, Beaumont and Fletcher; his characters are
rather more lifelike and appealing.

While the tragi-comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, which were written
from 1609 to 1611, have been shown to have influenced Shakespeare in
his romances, yet in several ways they are very different. The work of
Beaumont and Fletcher tells of court intrigue and exaggerated passions
of hatred, envy, and lust; Shakespeare's plays tell of out-of-door
adventures, and the restoration and reconciliation of families and
friends parted by misfortune. Fletcher contrives {197}
well-constructed plots, depending, indeed, rather too much on incident
and situation for effect; Shakespeare chooses for his plots stories
which possess only slight unity of theme, and depends upon character
and atmosphere for his appeal. Thus the romances of Shakespeare stand
out as a strongly marked part of his work, different in treatment from
the plays of his rivals which perhaps suggested his use of this form.
Here, as everywhere, Shakespeare exhibits complete mastery of the form
in which he works.

In addition to the romances of this period, Shakespeare had some share
in the undramatic and belated chronicle play, _The Life of Henry the
Eighth_, most of which is assigned to John Fletcher. In looseness of
construction, in the emphasis on character in distress, and in the
introduction of a masque, as well as in other ways, this play resembles
the tragi-comedies of the period rather than any earlier chronicle.
Thus the term "romantic tragi-comedy" may be properly used to describe
all the work of the Fourth Period.

+Pericles, Prince of Tyre+, was probably the earliest, as it is
certainly the weakest, of the dramatic romances. But the story was one
of the most popular in all fiction, and _Pericles_ was, no doubt, in
its time what its first title-page claimed for it, a 'much-admired
play.' Its hero is a wandering knight of chivalry, buffeted by sto