"Pericles", "Cymbeline", "The Winter"s Tale" and "The Tempest": these are the last plays that Shakespeare wrote and they have bewildered and intrigued critics, directors, actors and readers for generations. In this book, Robert Adams helps to overcome the bewilderment and understand the intrigue. Why are these plays called "romances"? The Romantic tradition in literature stretches back to the Middle Ages. It is, as Adams writes, a "mysterious, half-denied country which cannot be limited, only explored - the world of quest and conflict, of erotic and religious seeking, of chivalric and pastoral adventure". These plays share much with each other and less with Shakespeare"s earlier works. Because they are "mysterious", critics have encumbered them with much fanciful theorizing. Adam"s elucidates the plays with little theorizing and with much witty common sense.