Among these are to be numbered all those that deal with English history, _The Life and Death of King John, Richard II, Henry IV, V, VI,_ and _Richard III,_ setting aside for certain reasons _Henry VIII,_ but including among the plays from Roman history (or from Plutarch as they are also called), _Coriolanus,_ while _Julius Caesar_ and _Anthony and Cleopatra_ are connected with the great tragedies. The historical quality of the material, in like manner, with every other material determination, is not conclusive as to the quality of the poetic works, and is therefore not independently valid in the estimation of the critic, as a criterion for separation or conjunction. A reconsideration of the plays mentioned above and their prominent characteristics, does not lead to accepting them as a kind of "dramatised epic," or as "works which stand half way between epic and drama" (Schlegel, Coleridge), not that there is any difficulty in the appearance of epic quality in the form of theatrical dialogue, but just because epic quality is absent in those dramas. It would indeed be strange to see epic quality appearing in an episodic manner in an author, during the period of youth alone. Epicity, in fact, means feeling for human struggles, but for human struggles lit with the light of an aspiration and an ideal, such as one's own people, one's own religious faith and the like, and therefore containing the antitheses of friends and foes, of heroes on both sides, some on the side finally victorious, because protected by God or justice, others upon that which is to be discomfited, subjected, or destroyed. Now Shakespeare, as has already been said and is universally recognized, is not a partisan; he marches under no political or religious banner, he is not the poet of particular practical ideals, _non est de hoc mundo,_ because he always goes beyond, to the universal man, to the cosmic problem.