In the same way, had Shakespeare left any biographical notes, we should see that this raw Stratford youth unconsciously acquired every bit of culture that came in his way; that his mind absorbed like a sponge all the learning and the literary art of his famous contemporaries. The Elizabethan age was charged with a peculiar imaginative power; the verse written then surpasses in uniform strength and beauty any verse that has been written since; the men who wrote were as lawless, as daring, as superbly conscious of their own powers as the great explorers and adventurers who carried the British flag to the ends of the earth and made the English sailor feared as one whose high courage and bulldog tenacity never recognized defeat. Given creative literary genius in greater measure than any other man was ever endowed with, the limits of Shakespeare's development could not be marked. His capacity was boundless and, living in an atmosphere as favorable to literary art as that of Athens in the time of Pericles, Shakespeare produced in a few years those immortal plays which have never been equaled in mastery of human emotion and beauty and power of diction. There is no guide to the order in which Shakespeare wrote his plays, except the internal evidence of his verse. Certain habits of metrical work, as shown in the meter and the arrangement of the lines, have enabled close students of Shakespeare to place most of the comedies after the historical plays. Thus in the early plays Shakespeare arranged his blank verse so that the sense ends with each line and he was much given to rhymed couplets at the close of each long speech. But later, when he had gained greater mastery of his favorite blank verse, many lines are carried over, thus welding them more closely and forming verse that has the rhythm and beauty of organ tones. As Shakespeare advanced in command over the difficult blank verse he showed less desire to use rhyme. This close study of versification shows that _Love's Labor's Lost_ was probably Shakespeare's first play, followed by _The Comedy of Errors_ and by several historical plays. One year after his first rollicking comedy appeared he produced _Romeo and Juliet_, but this great drama of young love was revised carefully six years later and put into the form that we know. Three years after his start he produced _Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, and followed these with his greatest comedies, _Much Ado About Nothing_, _Twelfth Night_ and _As You Like It_, the latter the comedy which appeals most strongly to modern readers and modern audiences. Then came a period in which Shakespeare's world was somber, and his creative genius found expression in the great tragedies--_Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_. And finally we have the closing years of production, in which he wrote three fine plays--_The Tempest_, _Cymbeline_ and _The Winter's Tale_.