After 1610, Shakespeare left London and returned to Stratford and semiretirement. But he continued to write plays, with The Winter's Tale (1609–1611), Cymbeline, King of Britain (1609–1610), and The Tempist (1611), largely composed in Stratford. Shakespeare's life as a playwright concluded with his creation of All is True or as it was also known, The Famous History of the Life of Henry the Eighth (1613), and Two Noble Kinsmen (1613–1614).
While writing his plays, Shakespeare was also composing sonnets, a format adapted by English poets from its Petrarchan origins. Although he probably began composing sonnets early in his writing career, evidence exists that Shakespeare continued revising his sonnets during the 1590s and through the early 1600s, finally publishing the entire sequence in 1609. The sonnet sequence was followed by "A Lover's Complaint," but probably composed earlier, as well (1602–1605) and a collection of occasional poems.
Although Shakespeare's authorship has been questioned, the man, as a playwright, was quite well known in Elizabethan London. A conspiracy to disguise the writer's true identity would have been difficult to sustain. In the end, it really does not matter whether the man we know as William Shakespeare composed the plays attributed to him or not. The plays exist for our enjoyment, and that is sufficient.
