d used this pattern to comment on a variety of human foibles. In that respect, As You Like It is similar to Twelfth Night, in which the comical side of love is illustrated by the misadventures of two pairs of romantic lovers and of a number of realistically conceived and clowning characters in the subplot. Another comedy of the second period is The Merry Wives of Windsor (1599?), a farce about middle-class life in which Falstaff reappears as the comic victim.It wasn’t just all fun and games, two of his major tragedies, differing considerably in nature, were written in this period. Romeo and Juliet (1595?), famous for its poetic treatment of the ecstasy of youthful love, dramatizes the fate of two lovers victimized by the feuds and misunderstandings of their elders and by their own hasty temperaments. Julius Caesar (1599?), on the other hand, is a serious tragedy of political rivalries, but is less intense in style than the tragic dramas that followed it. It marked the beginning and the end of this period. Shakespeare’s third period includes his greatest tragedies and his so-called ‘dark or bitter comedies’. The tragedies of this period are considered the most profound of his works. In them he used his poetic idiom as an extremely supple dramatic instrument, capable of recording human thought and the many dimensions of given dramatic situations. Shakespeare’s writing also included many different styles to depict the actual feeling of each character. The Greeks were the first to develop a language of flowers, known as florigraphy. Over the centuries, in western civilization, flower language became extensive. Many different species, according to their properties, were associated with a wide range of human emotions, conditions, events, or ideas. The plays Shakespeare are a great source of traditional flower language. In Hamlet, for example, Ophelia describes the significance of the flowers she carries: Pansies ...
