Shakespeare's Last Plays

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.