SHAKESPEARE'S DEVELOPMENT AS A DRAMATIST
As the reader will remember, our main aim in attempting to date
Shakespeare's plays was to trace through them his development as a
dramatist and poet. Just as the successive chambers of the nautilus
shell show the stages of growth of its dead and vanished tenant, so the
plays of Shakespeare show how
"Each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut him from heaven with a dome more vast."
The great thing which distinguishes the genius from the ordinary man,
we repeat, is his power of constant improvement; and we can trace this
improvement here from achievements less than those of many a modern
writer up to the noblest masterpieces of all time.
Much of the material connected with this development has already been
discussed in another connection under Internal Evidence. Internal
evidence, however, that one play is later than another, is nothing else
than the marks of intellectual growth in the poet's mind between those
two dates. We arrange the plays in order according to indications of
intellectual growth, just as one could fit together again the broken
fragments of a nautilus shell, guided by the relative size of the ever
expanding chambers. So, in {86} discussing Shakespeare's development,
we must bring up much old material, examining it from a different point
of view.
+Meter+.--In the first place, the poet develops wonderfully in the
command of his medium of expression; that is, in his mastery of meter.
What is meant by the fact that as Shakespeare grew older, wiser, more
experienced, he used more run-on lines, more weak endings, more
feminine endings? Simply this, that by means of these devices he
gained more variety and expressiveness in his verse. A passage from
his early work (in spite of much that is fine) with every ending alike
masculine and strong, and with every line end-stopped, harps away
tediously in the same swing, like one lonely instrument on one
monotonous note. His later verse, on the other hand, with masculine
and feminine endings, weak ones and strong, end-stopped and run-on
lines, continually relieving each other, is like the blended music of a
great orchestra, continually varying, now stern, now soft, in harmony
with the thought it expresses. Below are given two passages, the first
from an early play, the second from a late one. In print one may look
as well as the other; but if one reads them aloud, he will see in a
moment how much more variety and expressiveness there is in the second,
especially for the purposes of acting.
"Urge not my father's anger, Eglamour,
But think upon my grief, a lady's grief,
And on the justice of my flying hence,
To keep me from a most unholy match,
Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.
I do desire thee, even from a heart.
{87}
As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,
To bear me company and go with me;
If not, to hide what I have said to thee,
That I may venture to depart alone."
--_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, IV, iii, 27-36.
"By whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have requir'd
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book."
--_Tempest_, V, i, 40-57.
The same reason shows why Shakespeare used less and less rime as his
taste and experience ripened. Rime is a valuable ornament for songs
and lyric poetry generally; but from poetry which is actually to be
acted on the English stage it takes away the most indispensable of all
qualities, the natural, life-like tone of real speech. Notice this in
the difference between the two extracts below. Observe how stilted and
artificial the first one seems; and see how the second combines the
melody and dignity of poetry with the simple naturalness of living
language.
{88}
"This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,
And utters it again when God doth please.
He is wit's pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;
Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve."
--_Love's Labour's Lost_, V, ii, 315-321
"I was not much afeard; for once or twice
I was about to speak and tell him plainly
The self-same sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on all alike. Will't please you, sir, be gone?
I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care. This dream of mine--
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther,
But milk my ewes and weep."
--_Winter's Tale_, IV, iv, 452-400.
I do not mean to imply by the above that Shakespeare's early verse is
poor according to ordinary standards. It is not; it contains much that
is fine. But it is far inferior to his later work, and it is inferior
in those very details which time and experience alone can teach.
An important point to remember is that while Shakespeare was growing in
metrical skill, he was not growing alone. A crowd of other authors
around him were developing in a similar way; and he was learning from
them and they from him. The use of blank verse in English when
Shakespeare began to write was a comparatively new practice, and, like
all new inventions, for a time it was only imperfectly understood. Men
{89} had to learn by experiments and by each other's successes and
failures, just as men in recent years have learned to fly. Shakespeare
surpassed all the others, as the Wright brothers in their first years
surpassed all their fellow-aeronauts; but like the Wright brothers he
was only part of a general movement. No other man changed as much as
he in one lifetime, but the whole system of dramatic versification was
changing.
+Taste+.--But wholly aside from questions of meter, Shakespeare
improved greatly in taste and judgment between the beginning and middle
of his career. This is shown especially in his humor. To the young
man humor means nothing but the cause for a temporary laugh; to a more
developed mind it becomes a pleasant sunshine that lingers in the
memory long after reading, and interprets all life in a manner more
cheerful, sympathetic, and sane. The early comedies give us nothing
but the temporary laugh; and even this is produced chiefly by fantastic
situations or plays on words, clever but far-fetched, puns and conceits
so overworked that their very cleverness jars at times. On the other
hand, in the great humorous characters of his middle period, like
Falstaff and Beatrice, the poet is opening up to us new vistas of
quiet, lasting amusement and indulgent knowledge of our imperfect but
lovable fellow-men.
The same growth of taste is shown in the dramatist's increasing
tendency to tone down all revolting details and avoid flowery,
overwrought rhetoric. Nobody knows whether Shakespeare wrote all of
_Titus Andronicus_ entire or simply revised it; but we feel sure that
the older Shakespeare would have been unwilling, even as {90} a
reviser, to squander so much that is beautiful on such an orgy of blood
and violence. _Romeo and Juliet_ is full of beautiful poetry; but even
here occasional lapses show the undeveloped taste of the young writer.
Notice the flowery and fantastic imagery in the following passage,
where Lady Capulet is praising Paris, her daughter's intended husband:--
"Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story."
--_Romeo and Juliet_, I, iii, 81-92.
If we try to picture to ourselves the post-wedlock edition of Paris
described above, we shall see how a young man's imagination may run
away with his judgment. There are passages in this play as good,
perhaps, as anything which the author ever wrote; but if we compare
such fantastic imagery with the uniform excellence of the later
masterpieces, we shall see how much Shakespeare unlearned and outgrew.
+Character Study+.--Still more significant is the poet's development in
the conception of character. In no other way, probably, does an
observant mind change and expand so much as in this. For the infant
all men fall into two very simple categories:--people whom he likes
{91} and people whom he doesn't. The boy of ten has increased these
two classes to six or eight. The young man of twenty finds a few more,
and begins to suspect that men who act alike may not have the same
motives and emotions. But as the keen-eyed observer nears middle age,
he begins to realize that no two souls are exact duplicates of each
other; and that behind every human eye there lies an undiscovered
country, as mysterious, as fascinating, as that which Alice found
behind the looking-glass,--a country like, and yet unlike, the one we
know, where dreams grow beautiful as tropic plants, and passions crouch
like wild beasts in the jungle.
Great as he was, Shakespeare had to learn this lesson like other men;
but he learned it much better. In _Love's Labour's Lost_, generally
considered his earliest play, he has not led us into the inner selves
of his men and women at all, has not seemed to realize that they
possess inner selves. At the conclusion we know precisely as much of
them as we should if we had met them at a formal reception, and no
more. The princess is pretty and clever on dress parade; but how does
the real princess feel when parade is over and she is alone in her
chamber? The later Shakespeare might have told us, did tell us, in
regard to more than one other princess; but the young Shakespeare has
nothing to tell.
_Richard III_, which is supposed to have come some three years later,
is a marked advance in characterization, but still far short of the
goal. Here the dramatist attempts, indeed, to analyze the tyrant's
motives and emotions; but he does not yet understand what {92} he is
trying to explain, and for that reason the being whom he creates is
portentous, but not human. To understand this, you need only compare
Richard with Macbeth. In Macbeth we have a host of different
forces--ambition, superstition, poetry, remorse, vacillation,
affection, despair--all struggling together as they might in you or me;
and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize
that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like
ourselves. But in Richard there is no human complexity. His is the
fearful simplicity of the lightning, the battering-ram, the earthquake,
forces whose achievements are terrible and whose inner existence a
blank. Richard hammers his bloody way through life like the legendary
Iron Man with his flail, awe-inspiring as a destructive agency, not as
a human being.
Two or three years later we find Shakespeare in his conception of
Shylock capable of greater things as a student of character. In this
pathetic, lonely, vindictive figure, exiled forever from the warm
fireside of human friendship by those inherent faults which he can no
more change than the tiger can change his claws, the long tragedy which
accompanies the survival of the fittest finds a voice. Yet even in
Shylock the dramatist has not reached his highest achievement in
character study. The old Jew is drawn splendidly to the life, but he
is a comparatively easy character to draw, a man with a few simple and
prominent traits. Depicting such a man is like drawing a pronounced
Roman profile, less difficult to do, and less satisfactory when done,
than tracing the subdued curves of a more evenly rounded face. Still
greater will be the triumph {93} when Shakespeare can draw equally true
to life a many-sided man or woman, in whose single heart all our
different experiences find a sympathetic echo.
And this final triumph is not long in coming. Between his
thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth years, in Falstaff and Hamlet the poet
produced the greatest comic and the greatest tragic character of
dramatic history. The man who has read _Hamlet_ understandingly has
found in the young prince a lifelong companion. Has he been unjustly
treated? Hamlet, too, had suffered and hated. Has he loved? So had
Hamlet. Has he had a bosom friend? The most sacred and beautiful of
college friendships was that between Hamlet and Horatio. Has he been
bored by some stupid old adviser? So had Hamlet by Polonius and
similar "tedious old fools." Has he been thrilled by some beautiful
landscape? Hamlet, too, had admired "this goodly frame, the earth" and
the sky, "that majestical roof fretted with golden fire." Has he had a
parent whom he loved and admired? So had Hamlet in his father. Has he
had a friend for whom his love was mixed with shame? So felt Hamlet
toward his mother. Has he felt the pride of a great deed bravely
accomplished? So did Hamlet in dying. Has he felt the shame and
remorse of a duty unperformed? So did Hamlet while his father was
still unrevenged. Has he shuddered at the mystery of death? So had
Hamlet shuddered at "that undiscovered country." Or has he been
racked, as all good men are in practical life, by the doubt as to what
is his duty? So had Hamlet been racked by the same terrible
responsibility. And thus we might go on indefinitely. The {94}
experience of a lifetime is packed into this play. Shakespeare never
surpassed _Hamlet_, though he wrote for nine or ten years after; but
when he had once reached this high level, he maintained it, with only
occasional lapses, to the end.
+Dramatic Technique+.--Lastly, Shakespeare developed greatly in
dramatic technique. By dramatic technique we mean the method in which
the machinery of the story is handled. The dramatist, to do his duty
properly, must accomplish at least five things at once. He must make
his play lifelike and natural; he must keep his hearers well informed
as to what is happening; he must bring in different events after each
other in rapid succession to hold the interest of his audience; he must
make the different characters influence each other so that the whole
becomes one connected story, not several unrelated ones; and he must
make the audience feel that the play is working toward a certain
inevitable end, must bring it to that end, and must then stop. The
lack of any one of these factors may make a play either dull or
disappointing. It takes ability to get any one of these alone. It
takes years of training before even a born genius can work them all in
together. Of course, these details are much easier to handle in
dramatizing some subjects than others; and we find Shakespeare
succeeding comparatively early in easy subjects and making mistakes
later in harder ones; but, on the whole, in dramatic technique as in
other things, his history is one of increasing power and judgment.
Here, again, as in his metrical development, Shakespeare was merely one
leading figure in a popular {95} movement. Through a long evolution
the English drama had just come into existence when he began to write.
There were no settled theories about this new art, no results of long
experience such as lie at the service of the modern dramatist. All men
were experimenting, and Shakespeare among the rest.
His early play of _Love's Labour's Lost_ has already been used to
illustrate lack of characterization. In technique, also, in spite of
many marks of natural brilliance, it shows the faults of the beginner.
The story in the first three acts does not move on fast enough; there
is a lack of that rapid series of connected events which we mentioned
above and which adds so much to the interest of the later plays, like
_Macbeth_. Likewise, the characters in the prose underplot (except
Costard) have too little connection with the story of the king and his
friends. In very badly constructed plays this lack of connection
sometimes goes so far that the main and under plots seem like two
separate serial stories in a magazine, in which the reader alternates
from one to the other, but never thinks of them as one. This obviously
is bad, for just when the reader is most interested in one, he is
interrupted and has to lay it aside for the other. No play of
Shakespeare's errs so far as that; but the defect in _Love's Labour's
Lost_ is similar in a very modified form. Neither is this comedy as
successful as the author's later plays in preparing us for a certain
ending as the inevitable outcome and then placing that ending before
us. We are led to expect that all four love affairs must be
successful, and shall feel disappointed if the sympathetic dreams which
we have woven around that idea {96} are not satisfied. Yet the play
ends hurriedly in a way which leaves us all in doubt, and disappointed,
like guests who have been invited to a wedding and find it indefinitely
postponed. There is a wonderful amount of clever dialogue in this
comedy, but its structure shows how much the author had yet to learn.
_The Two Gentleman of Verona_, probably written a little later, shows
improvement, but by no means perfect mastery. The first two acts still
drag, although the play moves more rapidly when it is under way. The
inability to lead up naturally to an inevitable end still persists.
The young author, well as he has managed the middle of the play, does
not wait for events to take their logical course. He winds up
everything abruptly like a man who has just changed his mind or become
tired of his task, and marries the most lovable girl in the play to a
rascal who is scarcely given time for even a pretense of reformation.
_The Merchant of Venice_, two or three years later, shows a great
advance in technique as in other ways. Notice how skillfully the
dramatist makes the different characters all influence each other's
lives, so that the interest in one becomes the interest in all. There
is one story in the relations of Shylock and Antonio, another in the
love affair of Lorenzo and Jessica, and a third in Bassanio's courtship
of Portia. There is also a fourth, a sequel to Bassanio's courtship,
in the trick which his wife plays on him with regard to the rings after
they are married. Yet we never feel an unpleasant interruption when we
are stopped in one story and started in one of the others, because the
interest of the first lives on in the second, {97} owing to the
interrelation of the people taking part in both. We leave Shylock's
story to take up Jessica's, but Jessica is Shylock's child, and our
interest in the fate of his ducats and his daughter, which began in his
story, goes on in hers. We leave Antonio's story to take up
Bassanio's; but Antonio's story was that of sacrifice for a friend, and
in Bassanio's we see the fruit of that sacrifice in his friend's joy.
Moreover, all four of the above threads of action are knotted together
in one scene where Bassanio chooses the right casket. Of the swift
succession of exciting scenes of the natural way in which these lead up
to the final end, of the lifelike truthfulness with which each little
event is made to work itself out, there is no need to speak here.
Though Shakespeare was not a third through his literary career when he
wrote _The Merchant of Venice_, he had by this time mastered the
technique of comedy; and we need trace his course in it no farther.
_Much Ado_ and _Twelfth Night_ somewhat later, and _The Tempest_ 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 most
important requirements for good technique is that everything shall be
true to life. When Anne, for the sake of a little bare-faced flattery,
marries a man whom she loathes, we feel that no real woman would have
done this. From that moment Anne becomes a mere paper automaton to us,
and we can no longer be interested in her as we would in a living
woman. The motivation, as it is called, the art of showing adequately
why every person should act as he or she does, is sadly lacking.
Moving onward a few years, we find marked improvement in _I Henry IV_.
It is indeed not technically perfect,--in fact, Shakespeare in the
chronicle play never attained what seems to modern students technical
perfection,--but its minor defects are thrown into shadow by its
splendid virtues. The three stories of Hotspur, the King, and the
Falstaff group, though partially united by their common connection with
Prince Hal, do not blend together as perfectly as the different plots
in _The Merchant of Venice_, and there is some truth in the idea that
the play has four heroes instead of one. But in spite of this, its
general impression as a great panorama of English life is remarkably
clear and delightful; and it improves on _Richard III_ in its swift
succession of incident, and vastly surpasses it in the lifelike truth
of its motivation.
In the middle of his career Shakespeare dropped {100} the chronicle
play, and instead began the writing of tragedies proper. He carried
into this, however, the lessons learned from his experience with
histories, and continued to improve. _Julius Caesar_ marks the
transition from chronicle play to tragedy. The lack of close
connection between the third and fourth acts and the absence of one
central hero are characteristic defects of the chronicle play which the
dramatist had not yet outgrown. _Hamlet_, coming next, has shaken off
all the lingering relics of the older type. Of its general excellence
there is no need to speak. Yet even in _Hamlet_ the action at times
halts and becomes disjointed. _Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ are great plays,
the latter, perhaps, the greatest of all plays; but, transfigured as
they are by genius, they show that in the difficult problem of tragic
technique the author was learning still. At the age of forty,
approximately, and a year or two after _Hamlet_, Shakespeare produced
_Othello_, the most perfect, although not necessarily the greatest, of
all his great tragedies. It is less profoundly reflective than
_Hamlet_ and less passionately imaginative than _King Lear_ or
_Macbeth_; but no other of his masterpieces shows such perfect balance
of taste and judgment, or is so free from any jarring note. Hence,
through the histories and tragedies taken together, we see the same
growth in technical skill which we have already found in his comedies,
save that it took longer here because the poet was working in a more
difficult field. It would not be true to say that each play up to
_Othello_ is superior to its immediate predecessor in technique, still
less that it is so in absolute merit; but the general upward tendency
is there.
{101}
+The Four Periods+.--Such was Shakespeare's development in meter, in
taste, in conception of character, and in dramatic technique. In line
with this development, it has been customary to divide his literary
career into four periods and his plays into four corresponding groups.
These groups or periods are characterized partly by their different
degrees of maturity, but more by the difference in the character of the
plays during these intervals.
The First Period includes all plays which there is good reason for
dating before 1595. In this the great dramatist was serving his
literary apprenticeship, learning the difficult art of play writing,
and learning it by experiments and mistakes. In the course of his
experiments, he tried many different types, tragedies, histories,
comedies, and rewrote old plays either alone or with a more experienced
playwright to help him. Nearly all of this work is full of promise;
most of it is also full of faults. Here belong the early comedies
mentioned above--_Love's Labour's Lost_ and _The Two Gentlemen of
Verona_. Here is the crude but powerful _Richard III_, and _Romeo and
Juliet_, the early faults of which are redeemed by such a wealth of
youthful poetic fire.
The Second Period extends roughly from 1595 to 1600. The poet has
learned his profession now, is no longer a beginner but a master,
though hardly yet at the summit of his powers. Here are included three
chronicle plays, the two parts of _King Henry IV_ and _King Henry V_,
and six comedies. One of the earliest of these comedies was _The
Merchant of Venice_, already mentioned. Three others, a little
later,--_Much Ado, Twelfth {102} Night_, and _As You Like It_,--are
usually regarded as Shakespeare's crowning achievement in the world of
mirth and humor. In this group of plays, whether history or comedy,
the author is depicting chiefly the cheerful, energetic side of life.
The Third Period really begins about 1599, for this and the second
overlap; and it continues to about 1608. In the plays of this group
the poet becomes interested in a wholly new set of themes. The aspects
of life which he interprets are no longer bright and cheerful, but
stern and sad. Here come the great tragedies, several of which we have
mentioned above--_Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth,
Antony and Cleopatra_. Shakespeare is now at the height of his power,
for his greatest masterpieces are included in the above list. Mixed in
with this wealth of splendid tragedy (though inferior to it in merit),
there are also three comedies. But even the comedies share in the
somber gloom which absorbed the poet's attention during this period.
The comedies before 1600 had been full of sunshine, brimming with
kindly, good-natured mirth, overflowing with the genial laughter which
makes us love the very men at whom we are laughing. But the three
comedies of this Third Period are bitter and sarcastic in their wit,
making us despise the people who furnish us fun, and leaving an
unpleasant taste in the mouth after the laugh is over. Some have
assumed that the dark tinge of this period was due to an unknown sorrow
in the poet's own life, but there seems to be no need of any such
assumption. We may become interested in reading cheerful books one
year and sad ones the next without being more cheerful or {103} more
sad in one year than in the other; and what is true of the reader might
reasonably be true of the writer. But whatever the cause which
influenced Shakespeare, the tragedies of this group are the saddest as
well as the greatest of all his plays.
The Fourth and last Period contains plays written after 1608-1609.
There are only five of these, and since _Pericles_ and _Henry VII_ are
in large part by other hands, our interest focuses chiefly on the
remaining three--_The Tempest, Cymbeline_, and _The Winter's Tale_.
All the plays of this period end happily and are wholly free from the
bitterness of the Third Period comedy. Nevertheless, they have little
of the rollicking, uproarious fun of the earlier comedies. Their charm
lies rather in a subdued cheerfulness, a quiet, pure, sympathetic
serenity of tone, less strenuous, but even more poetic, than what had
gone before. In some ways they are hardly equal to the great tragedies
just mentioned, for the poet is growing older now, and the fiery vigor
of _Macbeth_ is fading out of his verse. But in loftiness of thought
and tenderness of feeling these later romances are equal to anything
that the author ever gave us.
Whether other causes influenced him or not, Shakespeare was doubtless
in these four periods conforming to some extent to the literary
tendencies of the hour. The writings of his contemporaries also show a
larger percentage of comedies between 1595-1600 than between 1590-1595.
Many other dramatists, too, were writing histories while he was, and
dropped them at about the same time. Likewise during his Fourth Period
three-quarters of all the plays written by other men were comedies, the
most successful of them in a similar {104} romantic tone. On the
whole, too, other writers produced a rather larger percentage of
tragedies during 1601-1607 than at any other time while Shakespeare was
writing, although the change was not nearly as marked in them as in
him. But whether the influence of contemporaries was great or small,
these periods exist; and the individual plays can be better understood
if read in the light of the groups to which they belong.
Perhaps the best book on Shakespeare's development as a dramatist is:
_The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_ by G. P. Baker (The
Macmillan Co., New York, 1907).
[1] These plays are throughout designated as _I_, _II_, and _III_ Henry
VI.
{105}