Tragi-comedy has often been thought to be Shakespeare’s special creation. It is a term that can usefully be applied to four plays that Shakespeare wrote late in his career: The Winter’s Tale, Pericles, Cymbeline and The Tempest. Though these all end with the prospect of a marriage that will redeem the errors of the past, none of them has much room for laughter. All of them dramatise anger, violence and bitter jealousy. All except The Tempest include the deaths of some characters. They are comedic rather than comic. Critics have long been in the habit of calling them ‘romances’, and the description, dividing them off from the comedies, seems a useful one. On the other hand, some earlier plays – Measure for Measure, All’s Well that Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida and perhaps The Merchant of Venice – while ending in betrothals and containing scenes of comic misunderstanding, have such dark material at their hearts as to escape our usual idea of comedy.