There are many books we read which we think of as very pretty, very quaint, very interesting—­but old-fashioned.  But Shakespeare can never be old-fashioned, because, although he is the outcome of his own times, and gives us all the flavor of his own times, he gives us much more.  He understood human nature, he saw beneath the outward dress, and painted for us real men and women.  And although fashion in dress and modes of living may change, human nature does not change.  “He was not of an age but for all time,” it was said of him about seven years after his death, and now that nearly three hundred years have come and gone we still acknowledge the truth of those words.

Shakespeare’s men and women speak and act and feel in the main as we might now.  Many of his people we feel are our brothers and sisters.  And to this human interest he adds something more, for he leads us too through “unpathed waters” to “the undreamed shores” of fairyland.

Shakespeare’s writing time was short.  Before he left Stratford he wrote nothing unless it may have been a few scoffing verses against the Justice of the Peace who punished him for poaching.  But these, if they were ever written, are lost.  In the last few years of his life he wrote little or nothing.  Thus the number of his writing years was not more than twenty to twenty-five, but in that time he wrote thirty-seven plays, two long poems, and a hundred and fifty-six sonnets.  At one time he must have written two plays every year.  And when you come to know these plays well you will wonder at the greatness of the task.

Shakespeare writes his plays sometimes in rime, sometimes in blank verse, sometimes in prose, at times using all these in one play.  In this he showed how free he was from rules.  For, until he wrote, plays had been written in rime or blank verse only.

For the sake of convenience Shakespeare’s plays have been divided into histories, tragedies and comedies.  But it is not always easy to draw the line and decide to which class a play belongs.  They are like life.  Life is not all laughter, nor is it all tears.  Neither are Shakespeare’s comedies all laughter, and some of his tragedies would seem at times to be too deep for tears, full only of fierce, dark sorrow—­and yet there is laughter in them too.

Besides being divided into histories, tragedies and comedies they have been divided in another way, into three periods of time.  The first was when Shakespeare was trying his hand, when he was brimming over with the joy of the new full life of London.  The second was when some dark sorrow lay over his life, we know not what, when the pain and mystery and the irony of living seems to strike him hard.  Then he wrote his great tragedies.  The third was when he had gained peace again, when life seemed to flow calmly and smoothly, and this period lasted until the end.