Fourth Period, Late Experiment. _Coriolanus, Pericles_, 1608; _Cymbeline_, 1609; _Winter's Tale_, 1610-1611; _The Tempest_, 1611; _Henry VIII_ (unfinished). CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO SOURCE. In history, legend, and story, Shakespeare found the material for nearly all his dramas; and so they are often divided into three classes, called historical plays, like _Richard III_ and _Henry V;_ legendary or partly historical plays, like _Macbeth, King Lear_, and _Julius Cæsar;_ and fictional plays, like _Romeo and Juliet_ and _The Merchant of Venice_. Shakespeare invented few, if any, of the plots or stories upon which his dramas are founded, but borrowed them freely, after the custom of his age, wherever he found them. For his legendary and historical material he depended, largely on _Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, and on North's translation of Plutarch's famous _Lives_. A full half of his plays are fictional, and in these he used the most popular romances of the day, seeming to depend most on the Italian story-tellers. Only two or three of his plots, as in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Merry Wives of Windsor_, are said to be original, and even these are doubtful. Occasionally Shakespeare made over an older play, as in _Henry VI, Comedy of Errors_, and _Hamlet;_ and in one instance at least he seized upon an incident of shipwreck in which London was greatly interested, and made out of it the original and fascinating play of _The Tempest_, in much the same spirit which leads our modern playwrights when they dramatize a popular novel or a war story to catch the public fancy. CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO DRAMATIC TYPE. Shakespeare's dramas are usually divided into three classes, called tragedies, comedies, and historical plays. Strictly speaking the drama has but two divisions, tragedy and comedy, in which are included the many subordinate forms of tragi-comedy, melodrama, lyric drama (opera), farce, etc. A tragedy is a drama in which the principal characters are involved in desperate circumstances or led by overwhelming passions. It is invariably serious and dignified. The movement is always stately, but grows more and more rapid as it approaches the climax; and the end is always calamitous, resulting in death or dire misfortune to the principals. As Chaucer's monk says, before he begins to "biwayle in maner of tragedie": Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie Of him that stood in great prosperitee, And is y-fallen out of heigh degree Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.