In Shakespeare stuies, the term "problem plays" normally refers to three comedies that William Shakespeare wrote between the late 1590s and the first years of the seventeenth century: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, although some critics would extend the term to other plays, most commonly Hamlet, The Winter's Tale, Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of Venice. The term was coined by critic F. S. Boas in Shakespeare and his Predecessors (1896).