His great tragedies belong to this period, tragedies which reveal increased dramatic power in Shakespeare, but also his loss of hope, his horrible conviction that man is not a free being but a puppet blown about by every wind of fate or circumstance. In _Hamlet_ great purposes wait upon a feeble will, and the strongest purpose may be either wrecked or consummated by a trifle. The whole conception of humanity in this play suggests a clock, of which, if but one small wheel is touched, all the rest are thrown into confusion. In _Macbeth_ a man of courage and vaulting ambition turns coward or traitor at the appearance of a ghost, at the gibber of witches, at the whisper of conscience, at the taunts of his wife. In _King Lear_ a monarch of high disposition drags himself and others down to destruction, not at the stern command of fate, but at the mere suggestion of foolishness. In _Othello_ love, faith, duty, the fidelity of a brave man, the loyalty of a pure woman,--all are blasted, wrecked, dishonored by a mere breath of suspicion blown by a villain. [Sidenote: LAST DRAMAS] In his final period, of leisurely experiment (_cir._ 1610-1616), Shakespeare seems to have recovered in Stratford the cheerfulness that he had lost in London. He did little work during this period, but that little is of rare charm and sweetness. He no longer portrayed human life as a comedy of errors or a tragedy of weakness but as a glowing romance, as if the mellow autumn of his own life had tinged all the world with its own golden hues. With the exception of _As You Like It_ (written in the second period), in which brotherhood is pictured as the end of life, and love as its unfailing guide, it is doubtful if any of the earlier plays leaves such a wholesome impression as _The Winter's Tale_ or _The Tempest_, which were probably the last of the poet's works. Following is a list of Shakespeare's thirty-four plays (or thirty-seven, counting the different parts of _Henry IV_ and _Henry VI_) arranged according to the periods in which they were probably written. The dates are approximate, not exact, and the chronological order is open to question: FIRST PERIOD, EARLY EXPERIMENT (1590-1595). _Titus Andronicus_, _Henry VI_, _Love's Labor's Lost_, _Comedy of Errors_, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _Richard III_, _Richard II_, _King John._ SECOND PERIOD, DEVELOPMENT (1595-1600). _Romeo and Juliet_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Henry IV_, _Henry V_, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Much Ado About Nothing_, _As You Like It._ THIRD PERIOD, MATURITY AND TROUBLE (1600-1610). _Twelfth Night_, _Taming of the Shrew_, _Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Measure for Measure_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Timon of Athens._ FOURTH PERIOD, LATER EXPERIMENT (1610-1616). _Coriolanus_, _Pericles_, _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, _The Tempest_, _Henry VIII_ (left unfinished, completed probably by Fletcher).