Edward Dowden, an Irish professor of English literature, is best known for having applied the term “romance” to four of Shakespeare's plays as part of two books of criticism published in 1872 and 1877 respectively, whose intent was to place the whole of Shakespeare's literary production into a developmental narrative tracing, to use Dowden's terms, the “growth of his intellect and character from youth to full maturity” (A Critical Study xiii). The two books, Shakspere, A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (1875) and Shakspere (1877), are the originary descriptions of four of Shakespeare's later plays as “romances” – a label that has since expanded to include other plays and the work of other playwrights. Dowden's work covers the whole Shakespearean corpus and divides the plays into a twelve part chronological sequence, from the “Pre-Shaksperian Group” (Titus Andronicus and 1 Henry VI) to “Fragments” (Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII). The influence of the romance label far exceeds his other divisions because it introduces a term not found in the Folio that brings together plays which appear under the comedy and tragedy rubrics in the Catalogue in the First Folio in ways that recognizes their affinities in terms of content. The other divisions add chronological labels to traditional genres (early, middle, late), and the plays of the Pre-Shaksperian Group and the Fragments have been more happily assimilated into the broader corpus of Shakespeare's plays than appears to have been the case in the later nineteenth century.

It is not news to argue that Shakespeare's contemporaries did not use the label “romance” for plays, despite it being an available and widely used term for long narratives in prose and verse dating back medieval literature. Nor should it be a shocking discovery that Dowden's description of romance does little to situate these plays in the dramatic context in which they were composed beyond considering Shakespeare's career and some cursory reference to some of the work of his contemporaries. Much of his lack of interest in plays other than Shakespeare is, of course, due to his time period and differences in the project of literary study in the nineteenth century. His biographical explanations of the shape of Shakespeare's career have not had much purchase, and most of the rest of both books have been forgotten.