From 1604 to 1610 [says Professor Dowden] a show of tragic figures, like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of Shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more lamentable ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves of Prince Florizel and Perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind was restored, gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave serenity in The Tempest, and so ended.

This is a pretty picture, but is it true?  It may, indeed, be admitted at once that Prince Florizel and Perdita are charming creatures, that Prospero is ‘grave,’ and that Hermione is more or less ‘serene’; but why is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of our attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters?  Modern critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is beautiful and good at its proper value, seem to have entirely forgotten that there is another side to the medal; and they have omitted to point out that these plays contain a series of portraits of peculiar infamy, whose wickedness finds expression in language of extraordinary force.  Coming fresh from their pages to the pages of Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, one is astonished and perplexed.  How is it possible to fit into their scheme of roses and maidens that ‘Italian fiend’ the ’yellow Iachimo,’ or Cloten, that ‘thing too bad for bad report,’ or the ’crafty devil,’ his mother, or Leontes, or Caliban, or Trinculo?  To omit these figures of discord and evil from our consideration, to banish them comfortably to the background of the stage, while Autolycus and Miranda dance before the footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the presentment of the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and vigorous as that of the other.  Nowhere, indeed, is Shakespeare’s violence of expression more constantly displayed than in the ’gentle utterances’ of his last period; it is here that one finds Paulina, in a torrent of indignation as far from ‘grave serenity’ as it is from ‘pastoral love,’ exclaiming to Leontes: 

    What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? 
    What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling
    In leads or oils? what old or newer torture
    Must I receive, whose every word deserves
    To taste of thy most worst?  Thy tyranny,
    Together working with thy jealousies,
    Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle
    For girls of nine, O! think what they have done,
    And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all
    Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. 
    That thou betray’dst Polixenes, ’twas nothing;
    That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant
    And damnable ingrateful; nor was’t much
    Thou would’st have poison’d good Camillo’s honour,
    To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,