Following his experimental work there came a succession of wonderful plays,—­Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra.  The great tragedies of this period are associated with a period of gloom and sorrow in the poet’s life; but of its cause we have no knowledge.  It may have been this unknown sorrow which turned his thoughts back to Stratford and caused, apparently, a dissatisfaction with his work and profession; but the latter is generally attributed to other causes.  Actors and playwrights were in his day generally looked upon with suspicion or contempt; and Shakespeare, even in the midst of success, seems to have looked forward to the time when he could retire to Stratford to live the life of a farmer and country gentleman.  His own and his father’s families were first released from debt; then, in 1597, he bought New Place, the finest house in Stratford, and soon added a tract of farming land to complete his estate.  His profession may have prevented his acquiring the title of “gentleman,” or he may have only followed a custom of the time[152] when he applied for and obtained a coat of arms for his father, and so indirectly secured the title by inheritance.  His home visits grew more and more frequent till, about the year 1611, he left London and retired permanently to Stratford.

Though still in the prime of life, Shakespeare soon abandoned his dramatic work for the comfortable life of a country gentleman.  Of his later plays, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale, and Pericles show a decided falling off from his previous work, and indicate another period of experimentation; this time not to test his own powers but to catch the fickle humor of the public.  As is usually the case with a theater-going people, they soon turned from serious drama to sentimental or more questionable spectacles; and with Fletcher, who worked with Shakespeare and succeeded him as the first playwright of London, the decline of the drama had already begun.  In 1609, however, occurred an event which gave Shakespeare his chance for a farewell to the public.  An English ship disappeared, and all on board were given up for lost.  A year later the sailors returned home, and their arrival created intense excitement.  They had been wrecked on the unknown Bermudas, and had lived there for ten months, terrified by mysterious noises which they thought came from spirits and devils.  Five different accounts of this fascinating shipwreck were published, and the Bermudas became known as the “Ile of Divels.”  Shakespeare took this story—­which caused as much popular interest as that later shipwreck which gave us Robinson Crusoe—­and wove it into The Tempest.  In the same year (1611) he probably sold his interest in the Globe and Blackfriars theaters, and his dramatic work was ended.  A few plays were probably left unfinished[153] and were turned over to Fletcher and other dramatists.