ABSTRACT
Shakespeare’s tragicomedies differ from the plays of the other genres not only in literary characteristics but also because they were all written in one period, the last few years of his professional life. In the summer of 1608, Shakespeare and his fellows took active control of the Blackfriars Theater, and from this time on Shakespeare devoted himself almost exclusively to a new form of drama. There were no more comedies in the earlier mold, no more tragedies at all, and the one history play, Henry VIII, showed the pervasive influence of the tragicomic genre with which Shakespeare’s mind was now preoccupied.
