Jul 25, 2008

Shakespeare's Work | Shakespeare's Tragicomedies and Romances

The Tragicomedies
After the close of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare wrote no more comedies that dally "with the innocence of love," like the songs in Twelfth Night (1600), and he created no more characters who would "fleet the time carelessly" as in the "golden world" of As You Like It (1598). For eight or nine years after 1600, much of Shakespeare's attention must have been given to the great tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra. During this time he...