which cannot indeed be called tragedies, but certainly are not comedies
in the same sense as _As You Like It_ or the _Tempest_. These seven
years, accordingly, might, without much risk of misunderstanding, be
called Shakespeare's tragic period.[26] And after it he wrote no more
tragedies, but chiefly romances more serious and less sunny than _As You
Like It_, but not much less serene.

The existence of this distinct tragic period, of a time when the
dramatist seems to have been occupied almost exclusively with deep and
painful problems, has naturally helped to suggest the idea that the
'man' also, in these years of middle age, from thirty-seven to
forty-four, was heavily burdened in spirit; that Shakespeare turned to
tragedy not merely for change, or because he felt it to be the greatest
form of drama and felt himself equal to it, but also because the world
had come to look dark and terrible to him; and even that the railings of
Thersites and the maledictions of Timon express his own contempt and
hatred for mankind. Discussion of this large and difficult subject,
however, is not necessary to the dramatic appreciation of any of his
works, and I shall say nothing of it here, but shall pass on at once to
draw attention to certain stages and changes which may be observed
within the tragic period. For this purpose too it is needless to raise
any question as to the respective chronological positions of _Othello_,
_King Lear_ and _Macbeth_. What is important is also generally admitted:
that _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ precede these plays, and that _Antony
and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_ follow them.[27]

If we consider the tragedies first on the side of their substance, we
find at once an obvious difference between the first two and the
remainder. Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature and
reflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense,