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} CHAPTER VIII THE CHIEF SOURCES OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS