Shakespeare's Last Plays [Hardcover]

Shakespeare's Last Plays was the first of E. M. W. Tilyard's influential works on Shakespeare. In it, Dr Tilyard argues that the last plays  Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest  develop patterns found in the earlier works. He shows how Shakespeare intertwines reconciliation (the final phase of the tragedies) with an awareness of possible worlds (where the natural' and supernatural have equal status), and concludes that The Tempest, by subordinating his tragic pattern, is his greatest achievement.

I. Introductory
II. The Tragic Pattern
Introductory
Cymbeline
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest
III. Planes of Reality
Introductory
Cymbeline
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest
IV. The Relation of the Two Themes
V. Epilogue

E.M.W Tillyard (sometime Master of Jesus College, Cambridge) is renowed for his many works on Shakespeare and Milton. He is credited with having put forward the theory that Elizabethan literature is not representative of a brief period of humanism between two outbreaks of protestantism, but rather representative of a theological bond in England that allowed for a continuation of the Medieval view of World Order.