The Tragedies

Shakespeare's great tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, King l2 Macbeth, Timon of Athens) were written between 1601 and 1608. Here the world-view has shifted to a rather bitter and disillusions outlook, and the emphasis is on tragic heroes, defined by the celebrated critic A.C. Bradley as, “conspicuous persons of high degree" whose fall leads to death and suffering. But these 'calamites and catastrophe follow inevitably from the deeds of men and [...] the main source of these deeds if character'. The tragic flaw which these great heroes display takes the form of a powerful passion (jealousy in Othello, ambition in Macbeth, revenge in Hamlet), which in the course of the play is revealed to be an exceptional disturbance oil normal moral laws; the balance must be righted again and order restored through the destruction of the hero, Darker forces often seem to be at work, and the whole world seems to be involved in the implacable progress of destiny; the storms or supernatural phenomena in Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, as well as the frequent madness (Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, King Lear) are indications of the feverish pitch to which the struggle between one man and his destiny is carried. The great tragedies create their own individual world where normal moral laws are overturned and Shakespeare, 'myriad-minded', to use Coleridge's phrase, uses intricate wordplay and an exceptionally rich store of vivid images to represent the depths of the human soul. A stroke of genius is his use of lighter moments to set off the darker ones: the comic relief of Shakespearean tragedy (the Fool in King Lear, the gravediggers in Hamlet, the Porter in Macbeth) only throws the ominous shadows of the protagonists into sharper relief and contains hidden levels of psychological depth and insight.

The Late Romances

This category embraces the later plays written after Shakespeare retired to Stratford, around 1608, and includes Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. These works are more lyrical in comparison with the earlier plays and seem to represent a newly found peace of mind in Shakespeare's art. Critics have also detected a common thread linking

some of the plays (fidelity in Cymbeline, in The Tempest, in The Winter's Tale). This is because all these plays somehow deal with reconciliation and justice, moving from a starting point of loss or wrong (Prospero usurped in The Tempest, the lost children, Perdita in The Winter's Tale and Marina in Pericles), through a series of conflicts to a happy and forgiving conclusion, exposing the corruption of civilization and reasserting the value of mercy and love. They also have a strong supernatural presence and have something of the qualities of a fairy tale, and in their tranquility constitute a fitting conclusion to Shakespeare's career: the aging playwright, after the great inner conflict which resulted in the production of the tragedies, finds peace and reconciliation in his own heart at last.