'Venus and Adonis,' in particular, seems to have become at once the most
popular poem of its own time. Shakspere himself regarded them very
seriously, publishing them with care, though he, like most Elizabethan
dramatists, never thought it worth while to put his plays into print except
to safeguard the property rights of his company in them. Probably at about
the end of his first period, also, he began the composition of his sonnets,
of which we have already spoken (page 119).

The second period of Shakspere's work, extending from about 1594 to about
1601, is occupied chiefly with chronicle-history plays and happy comedies.
The chronicle-history plays begin (probably) with the subtile and
fascinating, though not yet absolutely masterful study of contrasting
characters in 'Richard II'; continue through the two parts of 'Henry IV,'
where the realistic comedy action of Falstaff and his group makes history
familiarly vivid; and end with the epic glorification of a typical English
hero-king in 'Henry V.' The comedies include the charmingly fantastic
'Midsummer Night's Dream'; 'The Merchant of Venice,' where a story of
tragic sternness is strikingly contrasted with the most poetical idealizing
romance and yet is harmoniously blended into it; 'Much Ado About Nothing,'
a magnificent example of high comedy of character and wit; 'As You Like
It,' the supreme delightful achievement of Elizabethan and all English
pastoral romance; and 'Twelfth Night,' where again charming romantic
sentiment is made believable by combination with a story of comic realism.
Even in the one, unique, tragedy of the period, 'Romeo and Juliet,' the
main impression is not that of the predestined tragedy, but that of ideal
youthful love, too gloriously radiant to be viewed with sorrow even in its
fatal outcome.

The third period, extending from about 1601 to about 1609, includes
Shakspere's great tragedies and certain cynical plays, which formal