What is a Shakespearean romance? How can we see Lost through the prism of Shakespeare? And how, in turn, can we read Shakespeare through the prism of Lost? The four ‘late’ plays by Shakespeare, Pericles (1608), Cymbeline (1609), The Winter’s Tale (1610) and The Tempest (1611), have blurred the boundaries between genres by including tragic moments while ending in harmony; they have defied dramatic categories and escaped simple definitions. Geographical peregrinations, time gaps, shipwrecks, characters coming from the dead, past conflicts that haunt the present, Lost children, con men, magical or supernatural interventions, dreams, incredible coincidences, narrative twists, reunions and redemptions – the themes of Lost are those of the Shakespearean romances and have raised the same reactions among spectators and critics. Lost, like Shakespeare’s romances, may actually offer some keys to respond to the challenges of an emerging historical period.