Shakespeare's late romances
Shakespeare's late romances are a small cluster of plays that puzzled scholars for centuries before they even had a name. The label itself did not arrive until 1877, when the critic Edward Dowden coined the term "romances" in his book Shakspere. Before that, the First Folio of 1623 had listed The Tempest and The Winter's Tale as comedies and Cymbeline as a tragedy. Pericles did not appear in the Folio at all. So the question is: what exactly are these plays, and why did Shakespeare write them when he did?
The core group consists of Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; and The Tempest. The Two Noble Kinsmen, co-written with John Fletcher, is sometimes added to the list. These works followed a remarkable run of tragedies including Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Then, near the end of his life, Shakespeare turned away from tragedy and toward something harder to classify. The result was a set of plays featuring storms at sea, magic, long-separated families reunited, pre-Christian supernatural figures, and elaborate spectacle. What pulled him in that direction is a question critics are still arguing about.
Edward Dowden made his case for the word "romances" in 1875, two years before he published his full study. His reasoning was precise: the late plays resemble the late medieval and early modern literary genre also called "romances," where stories unfolded across vast distances of space and time. The grand plot points of these plays combine humour, dramatic action, and internal struggle in ways that earlier Shakespearean comedy did not.
The First Folio editors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, had no good category for the late plays. Their mislabeling of Cymbeline as a tragedy and their omission of Pericles entirely shows how awkward the plays were to fit into existing genres. Later writers, as Dowden noted, have generally been content to adopt his term. The majority of modern critics and editors prefer either "romance" or "tragicomedy" over the older category of comedy. The category matters because it signals that these plays are not simply comedies in a new key. They are, in a sense, tragedies that end happily, rather than the early comedies' pattern of a moment of danger moving rapidly to resolution.
Leontes's consuming jealousy in The Winter's Tale is one of the sharpest examples of how the late romances open. A potentially tragic element erupts at the start, and the rest of the play works toward resolving it. The same pattern appears in The Tempest, which opens with a shipwreck. Threats of death and scenes of suffering are more acute in these plays than in Shakespeare's earlier comedies.
Older men occupy the foreground. Young lovers appear in each play but are not the central figures. Pre-Christian, masque-like supernatural beings show up: Jupiter in Cymbeline, the goddesses whom Prospero summons in The Tempest. The plays mix courtly and pastoral settings, as seen in the island society of The Tempest and the contrasting worlds of The Winter's Tale. Encounters with the supernatural are more direct and emphatic than in earlier work. A recurring thread is the reuniting of long-separated family members, particularly fathers and daughters, at the end of each play.
Two developments in early seventeenth-century theatre shaped these plays in distinct ways. John Fletcher and his collaborations with Beaumont introduced a new mode called tragicomedy. These works made a pretense at serious, grave subject matter but always delivered a happy ending with light entertainment. Shakespeare's romances push harder on the tragicomic tension than Fletcher's work did.
Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, staging elaborate courtly masques during the same period, provided the second current. Key scenes in the late romances draw directly on the masque tradition. The plays embrace the visual magnificence of the masque form but also, as scholars have noted, its shallowness. The monarch's preference also shaped the repertoire. Elizabeth I had reigned until her death in 1603 and enjoyed the tragedies her audiences loved. James I, who succeeded her, preferred romances. The King's Men, as Shakespeare's company was renamed when James came to the throne in 1603, responded to that preference.
The King's Men acquired a second playhouse, the Blackfriars, which had been shut down because of objections from local residents. It reopened during the second half of 1608. In the years the theatre had been closed, the actors had aged. Scholar Catherine Alexander has suggested the plays do not reflect Shakespeare's own advancing age so much as the fact that the performers themselves were older, and Shakespeare adjusted his characters accordingly.
The Blackfriars drew a different crowd than the open-air theatres. Admission was costly enough that the lower classes were unlikely to attend regularly, leaving an audience that was generally upper class and attuned to aesthetics and culture. The company was also working at a punishing pace. They would put on as many as two new plays a week, many of which had only a few performances, and there was no director. Actors were expected to know standard blocking patterns. Shakespeare retired to Stratford after completing The Tempest, which is the last play he wrote by himself. He died about five years after it was finished.
Samuel Phelps, directing Pericles in 1854, solved the challenge of a sea voyage by having rowers carry Pericles on oars while a moving panorama rolled behind them, creating the illusion of travel. The romances repeatedly demand effects that test the ingenuity of every production.
Cymbeline has attracted both elaborate and minimal approaches. Henry Irving staged the play at the Lyceum Theatre in London in the spring of 1896 with Celtic sets for palace gardens and interior rooms, a Roman banqueting hall for Posthumus's visit to Rome, and a dream sequence for the descent of Jupiter. Ben Greet at The Old Vic in 1918 took the opposite approach, using a simple Elizabethan staging. The Winter's Tale poses its own particular problem: a bear must chase Antigonus off the stage. Trevor Nunn and John Barton in 1976 cast John Nettles to play both Time and the bear. At Stratford-upon-Avon in 1986, Terry Hands used a bearskin rug that rose off the ground to pursue Antigonus. The Tempest opens with a scene inspired by the actual shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609, and its staging has ranged from a fully rigged sea vessel at Covent Garden in 1842 under William Charles Macready to a cruise ship with passengers playing shuffleboard at the Goodman Theatre in 1987 under Robert Falls.
Dowden proposed that Shakespeare was suffering from depression when he wrote his tragedies and had worked through it by the time he turned to romances. Edmund Chambers suggested a more dramatic explanation: a breakdown during the writing of Timon of Athens, with the romances reflecting a psychological recovery. Clifford Leech argued the plays showed a fantastical puritanism rooted in personal revulsion. D. G. James believed Shakespeare was simply running low on poetic energy as he aged.
Raphael Lyne pushed back on all of these readings, arguing it is impossible to show that Shakespeare managed his career to this extent, and that there is no pressing need to treat the plays as anything other than coincidentally late work. G. Wilson Knight took the opposite position, arguing that the late romances represent, alongside or even above the high tragedies, Shakespeare's greatest achievement. Harold Bloom wrote of The Winter's Tale that in it Shakespeare returns to his full talent and genius with full force. The debate has never closed, and the plays remain among the most discussed in the canon.
The Tempest has been adapted for film more often than any of the other late romances. A silent version appeared in 1908. Yellow Sky in 1948 relocated the story to the American west, featuring Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter. Forbidden Planet in 1956 transported it to outer space. Derek Jarman's 1979 version moved the action to a crumbling mansion off the Scottish coast. Tempest in 1982 set the story on a Greek isle, with John Cassavetes, Molly Ringwald, Gena Rowlands, and Susan Sarandon. Prospero's Books in 1991 starred John Gielgud and blended film, dance, opera, and animation into something closer to a reading of the play than a conventional adaptation. A 2010 film recast the lead character as Prospera, played by Helen Mirren.
Cymbeline received a film adaptation in 2014 with Milla Jovovich, Ethan Hawke, Penn Badgley, John Leguizamo, and Ed Harris. The persistence of The Tempest as an adaptation source, across more than a century of filmmaking and a range of settings from outer space to a Greek island, reflects the restless quality built into the play itself: a story designed to travel.
Common questions
What are Shakespeare's late romances?
Shakespeare's late romances are a grouping of his final plays: Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; and The Tempest. The Two Noble Kinsmen, co-written with John Fletcher, is sometimes included. They follow his major tragedies and mix tragic elements with happy endings, magic, and reunited families.
Who coined the term romances for Shakespeare's late plays?
Edward Dowden first used the term "romances" for these works in his 1877 book Shakspere. He chose the label because the plays resemble the late medieval and early modern literary genre of romances, where stories unfold across vast distances of space and time.
How did Shakespeare's late romances differ from his earlier comedies?
The late romances rely on grand themes rather than specific comic moments, and they open with tragic or potentially tragic situations that are resolved by the end. They also feature older men more prominently, include magic and supernatural figures, and focus on the reuniting of long-separated family members, particularly fathers and daughters.
What influences shaped Shakespeare's late romances?
Two main influences shaped the late romances. John Fletcher's development of tragicomedy provided a model of serious subject matter paired with happy endings. The elaborate courtly masques staged by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones influenced the plays' visual spectacle and supernatural scenes. The preference of King James I, who succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603 and favored romances over tragedies, also played a role.
How have directors staged the bear scene in The Winter's Tale?
Directors have taken very different approaches to the moment when a bear chases Antigonus off stage. In 1976, Trevor Nunn and John Barton cast John Nettles to play both Time and the bear. At Stratford-upon-Avon in 1986, Terry Hands used a bearskin rug that rose off the ground to pursue Antigonus.
How many times has The Tempest been adapted as a film?
The Tempest has been adapted for film more often than any of the other late romances, with major versions appearing in 1908, 1948, 1956, 1979, 1982, 1991, and 2010. Settings have ranged from the American west and outer space to a Greek island and a crumbling Scottish mansion.
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