Shakespeare's greatest achievements in this period, aside from _Romeo and Juliet_ in the unknown first draft, are the characters of Richard II and Richard III, the former a portrait of vanity and vacillation mingled with more agreeable traits, lovable gentleness and traces at least of kingliness, the latter a Titanic figure possessed by an overmastering passion. It is impossible to draw a satisfactory line of division between the experimental period of Shakespeare's work and the period of comedy which follows. Two plays, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, lie really between the two. The chief arguments for an early grouping seem to be that the former is in some measure an artificial court comedy, and is full of riming speech and end-stopped lines; the latter derives some help from Marlowe's treatment of _The Jew of Malta_. But, on the other hand, the {133} mastery of original characterization in such groups as the delicate fairies of the _Dream_, or those who gather at the trial of _The Merchant_, might justify their position in the second period rather than in the first. On the whole, it is perhaps wisest to let metrical differences govern, and so to put _Midsummer Night's Dream_, at the end of Imitation and Experiment; while _The Merchant of Venice_ may safely usher in the great period of comedy. The three plays known as _The Three Parts of Henry VI_, together with _Richard the Third_, constitute the history of the Wars of the Roses, in which the House of York fought the House of Lancaster through the best part of the fifteenth century, and lost the fight and the English crown in 1485, a hundred years before Shakespeare came to London. Although these plays have but slight appeal to us as readers, they must have been highly popular among Elizabethan playgoers. +The First Part of Henry the Sixth+ deals chiefly with the wars of England and France which center about the figures of Talbot, the English commander, and Joan of Arc, called Joan la Pucelle (the maiden). The former is a hero of battle, who dies fighting for England. The latter is painted according to the traditional English view, which lasted long after Shakespeare's time, as a wicked and impure woman, in league with devils, who fight for her against the righteous power of England. We are glad to think that while the Talbot scenes are probably Shakespeare's, the portrait of La Pucelle is not from his hand, as we shall see. The deaths of these protagonists prepares the way for the peace which Suffolk concludes, and the marriage {134} which he arranges between Margaret of Anjou and King Henry.