of wood, of a circular form, open to the weather, excepting over the stage, which was covered with a thatched roof. Outside, on the roof, a flag was hoisted during the time of performance, which com menced at three o'clock, at the third sounding or flourish of trumpets. The cavaliers and fair dames of the court of Elizabeth sat in boxes below the gallery, or were accommodated with stools on the stage, where some of the young gallants also threw themselves at length on the rush-strewn floor, while their pages handed them pipes and tobacco, then a fashionable and highly-prized luxury. The middle classes were crowded in the pit, or yard, which was not furnished with seats. Moveable scenery was first introduced by Davenant, after the Restoration, but rude imitations of towers, woods, animals, or furniture, served to illustrate the scene. To point out the place of action, a board containing the name, painted or written in large letters, was hung out during the performance. Anciently, an allegorical exhibition, called the Dumb Show, was exhibited before every act, and gave an outline of the action or circumstances to follow. Shakespeare has preserved this peculiarity in the play acted before the king and queen in Hamlet; but he never employs it in his own dramas. Such machinery, indeed, would be incompatible with the increased action and business of the stage, when the miracle plays had given place to the 'pomp and circumstance' of historical dramas, and the bustling liveliness of comedy. The chorus was longer retained, and appears in Marlow's Faustus, and in Henry VI. Actresses were not seen on the stage till after the Restoration, and the female parts were played by boys, or delicate-looking young men. This may perhaps palliate the gross

* The air-blest castle, round whose wholesome crest
The martlet, guest of summer, chose her nest-
The forest-walks of Arden's fair domain,
Where Jaques fed his solitary vein;
No pencil's aid as yet had dar'd supply,

Seen only by th' intellectual eye.'-C. LAMB.

ness of some of the language put into the mouths of females in the old plays, while it serves to point out still more clearly the depth of that innate sense of beauty and excellence which prompted the exquisite pictures of loveliness and perfection in Shakspeare's female characters. At the end of each performance, the clown, or buffoon actor of the company, recited or sung a rhyming medley called a jig, in which he often contrived to introduce satirical allusions to public men or events; and before dismissing the audience, the actors knelt in front of the stage, and offered up a prayer for the queen! Reviewing these rude arrangements of the old theatres, Mr Dyce happily remarks-'What a contrast between the alınost total want of scenery in those days, and the splendid representations of external nature in our modern playhouses! Yet perhaps the decline of the drama may in a great measure be attributed to this improvement. The attention of an audience is now directed rather to the efforts of the painter than to those of the actor, who is lost amid the marvellous effects of light and shade on our gigantic stages.*

The only information we possess as to the payment of dramatic authors at this time, is contained in the memoranda of Philip Henslowe, a theatrical manager, preserved in Dulwich college, and quoted by Malone and Collier. Before the year 1600, the price paid by Henslowe for a new play never exceeded £8; but after this date, perhaps in consequence of the exertions of rival companies, larger sums were given, and prices of £20 and £25 are mentioned. The proceeds of the second day's performance were afterwards added to the author's emoluments. Furnishing prologues for new plays, the prices of which varied from five to twenty shillings, was another source of gain; but the proverbial poverty of poets seems to have been exemplified in the old dramatists, even when they were actors as well as authors. The shareholders of the theatre

derived considerable profits from the performances, and were occasionally paid for exhibitions in the houses of the nobility. In 1602, a sum of ten pounds was given to 'Burbidge's players' for performing Othello before Queen Elizabeth, at Harefield, the seat of Sir Thomas Egerton. Nearly all the dramatic authors preceding and contemporary with Shakspeare were men who had received a learned education at the university of Oxford or Cambridge. A profusion of classical imagery abounds in their plays, but they did not copy the severe and correct taste of the ancient models. They wrote to supply the popular demand for novelty and excitement for broad farce or superlative tragedy-to introduce the coarse raillery or comic incidents of low life to dramatise a murder, or embody the vulgar idea of oriental bloodshed and splendid extravagance. If we seek for a poetical image,' says a writer on our drama, 'a burst of passion, a beautiful sentiment, a trait of nature, we seek not in vaia in the works of our very oldest dramatists. But none of the predecessors of Shakspeare must be thought of along with him, when he appears before us like Prometheus, moulding the figures of men, and breathing into them the animation and all the passions of life.'† Among the immediate predecessors of the great poet are some worthy of separate notice. A host of playwrights abounded, and nearly all of them have touches of that happy poetic diction, free, yet choice and select, which gives a permanent value and interest to these elder masters of English poetry.

JOHN LYLY.

JOHN LYLY, born in Kent in 1554, produced nine plays between the years 1579 and 1600. They were mostly written for court entertainments, and performed by the scholars of St Paul's. He was educated at Oxford, and many of his plays are on mythological subjects, as Sappho and Phaon, Endymion, the Maid's Metamorphosis, &c. His style is affected and unnatural, yet, like his own Niobe, in the Metamorphosis, 'oftentimes he had sweet thoughts, sometimes hard conceits; betwixt both a kind of yielding. By his Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit, Lyly exercised a powerful though injurious influence on the fashionable literature of his day, in prose composition as well as in discourse. His plays were not important enough to found a school. Hazlitt was a warm admirer of Lyly's Endymion, but evidently from the feelings and sentiments it awakened, rather than the poetry. 'I know few things more perfect in characteristic painting,' he remarks, than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of betraying the secret of Midas's ears, fancy that "the very reeds bow down, as though they listened to their talk;" nor more affecting in sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from his long sleep, "Behold the twig to which thou laidest down thy head is now become a tree."" There are finer things in the Metamorphosis, as where the prince laments Eurymene lost in the woods

Adorned with the presence of my love,

The woods I fear such secret power shall prove,
As they'll shut up each path, hide every way,
Because they still would have her go astray,
And in that place would always have her seen,
Only because they would be ever green,
And keep the winged choristers still there,
To banish winter clean out of the year.

Or the song of the fairies

By the moon we sport and play,
With the night begins our day:
As we dance the dew doth fall,
Trip it, little urchins all.
Lightly as the little bee,
Two by two, and three by three,

And about go we, and about go we.

The genius of Lyly was essentially lyrical. The songs in his plays seem to flow freely from nature. The following exquisite little pieces are in his drama of Alexander and Campaspe, written about 1583:

Cupid and Campaspe.

Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid.
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves and team of sparrows;
Loses them too, and down he throws
The coral of his lip-the rose
Growing on's cheek, but none knows how;
With these the crystal on his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win:
At last he set her both his eyes;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
Oh Love, hath she done this to thee!
What shall, alas, become of me!

Song.

What bird so sings, yet so does wail !
O 'tis the ravish'd nightingale-
Jug, jug, jug, jug-tereu-she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.

Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear,
Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark! but what a pretty note,
Poor Robin red-breast tunes his throat;
Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing
'Cuckoo !' to welcome in the spring.

GEORGE PEELE.

GEORGE PEELE held the situation of city poet and conductor of pageants for the court. He was also an actor and a shareholder with Shakspeare and others, in 1589, in the Blackfriars theatre. In 1584, his Arraignment of Paris, a court show, was represented before Elizabeth. The author was then a young man, who had recently left Christ-church, Oxford. In 1593, Peele gave an example of an English historical play in his Edward I. The style of this piece is turgid and monotonous; yet, in the following allusion to England, we see something of the high-sounding kingly speeches in Shakspeare's historical plays :

Illustrious England, ancient seat of kings,
Whose chivalry hath royalis'd thy fame,
That, sounding bravely through terrestrial vale,
Proclaiming conquests, spoils, and victories,
Rings glorious echoes through the farthest world!
What warlike nation, train'd in feats of arms,
What barbarous people, stubborn, or untain'd,
What climate under the meridian signs,
Or frozen zone under his brumal stage,
Erst have not quak'd and trembled at the name
Of Britain and her mighty conquerors ?
Her neighbour realms, as Scotland, Denmark, France,
Awed with their deeds, and jealous of her arms,
Have begg'd defensive and offensive leagues.
Thus Europe, rich and mighty in her kings,
Hath fear'd brave England, dreadful in her kings.
And now, to eternise Albion's champions,
Equivalent with Trojan's ancient fame,
Comes lovely Edward from Jerusalem,
Veering before the wind, ploughing the sea;
His stretched sails fill'd with the breath of men,
That through the world adımire his manliness.
And lo, at last arrived in Dover road,
Longshank, your king, your glory, and our son,
With troops of conquering lords and warlike knights,
Like bloody-crested Mars, o'erlooks his host,
Higher than all his army by the head,
Marching along as bright as Phœbus' eyes!
And we, his mother, shall behold our son,
And England's peers shall see their sovereign.

Peele was also author of the Old Wives' Tale, a legendary story, part in prose, and part in blank verse, which afforded Milton a rude outline of his fable of Comus. The Old Wives' Tale was printed in 1595, as acted by the Queen's Majesty's Players.' The greatest work of Peele is his Scripture drama, the Love of King David and Fair Bethsube, with the tragedy of Absalom, which Mr Campbell terms 'the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry.' The date of representation of this drama is not known; it was not printed till 1599, after Shakspeare had written some of his finest comedies, and opened up a fountain compared with which the feeble tricklings of Peele were wholly insignificant. It is not probable that Peele's play was written before 1590, as one passage in it is a direct plagiarism from the Faery Queen of Spenser. We may allow Peele the merit of a delicate poetical fancy and smooth musical versification. The defect of his blank verse is its want of variety: the art of

That precious fount bear sand of purest gold;
And for the pebble, let the silver streams
That pierce earth's bowels to maintain the source,
Play upon rubies, sapphires, crysolites;

The brim let be embrac'd with golden curls
Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make
For joy to feed the fount with their recourse;
Let all the grass that beautifies her bower,
Bear manna every morn, instead of dew;
Or let the dew be sweeter far than that

That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,
Or balm which trickled from old Aaron's beard.

Enter CUSAY.

See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel,

The cherubim and angels laid their breasts;

And when his consecrated fingers struck

The fairest daughter that obeys the king, In all the land the Lord subdued to me, Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well,

The golden wires of his ravishing harp,

Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar,

He gave alarum to the host of heaven,

Sweeter than flames of fine perfumed myrrh ;

Their crystal armour at his conquering feet.

On zephyr's wings before the King of Heaven.

Of this sweet poet, Jove's musician,

Cusay. Is it not Bethsabe the Hethite's wife,

And of his beauteous son, I press to sing;

Urias, now at Rabath siege with Joab !

Then help, divine Adonai, to conduct

Upon the wings of my well-temper'd verse,
The hearers' minds above the towers of heaven,
And guide them so in this thrice haughty flight,
Their mounting feathers scorch not with the fire
That none can temper but thy holy hand:
To thee for succour flies my feeble muse,
And at thy feet her iron pen doth use.

BETHSABE and her maid bathing. King DAVID above.
The Song.

Hot sun, cool fire, temper'd with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair:
Shine sun, burn fire, breathe air and ease me,
Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me;
Shadow (my sweet nurse) keep me from burning,
Make not my glad cause, cause of mourning.
Let not my beauty's fire
Inflame unstaid desire,
Nor pierce any bright eye
That wandereth lightly.

Bethsabe. Come, gentle zephyr, trick'd with thove

David. Go now and bring her quickly to the king; Tell her, her graces hath found grace with him. Cusay. I will, my lord. [Exit. David. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's bower

In water mixed with purest almond flower,
And bathe her beauty in the milk of kids;
Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires,
Verdure to earth, and to that verdure flowers,
To flowers sweet odours, and to odours wings,
That carries pleasures to the hearts of kings.

Mr Lamb says justly, that the line 'seated in hearing of a hundred streams' is the best in the above passage. It is indeed a noble poetical image. Peele died before 1599, and seems, like most of his dramatic urethren, to have led an irregular life, in the midst of severe poverty. A volume of Merry Conceited Jests, said to have been by him, was published after his death in 1607, which shows that he was not scrupulous as to the means of relieving his

In 1588, THOMAS KYD produced his play of Hieropart to it, under the title of the Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again. This second part is sup

play of the time. Ben Jonson was afterwards engaged to make additions to it, when it was revived in 1601, and further additions in 1602. These new scenes are said by Lamb to be 'the very salt of the old play,' and so superior to Jonson's acknowledged works, that he attributes them to Webster, or some 'more potent spirit' than Ben. This seems refining too much in criticism. Kyd, like Marlow, often verges upon bombast, and 'deals largely in blood and death.'

THOMAS NASH.

THOMAS NASH, a lively satirist, who amused the town with his attacks on Gabriel Harvey and the Puritans, wrote a comedy called Summer's Last Will and Testament, which was exhibited before Queen Elizabeth in 1592. He was also concerned with Marlow in writing the tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage. He was imprisoned for being the author of a satirical play, never printed, called the Isle of Dogs. Another piece of Nash's, entitled the Supplication of Pierce Penniless to the Devil, was printed in 1592, which was followed next year by Christ's Tears over Jerusalem. Nash was a native of Leostoff, in Suffolk, and was born about the year 1564; he was of St John's college, Cambridge, He died about the year 1600, after a 'life spent,' he says, 'in fantastical satirism, in whose veins heretofore I mispent my spirit, and prodigally conspired against good hours.' He was the Churchill of his day, and

was much famed for his satires. One of his contemporaries remarks of him, in a happy couplet

His style was witty, though he had some gall,
Something he might have mended, so may all.

Return from Parnassus.

The versification of Nash is hard and monotonous.

The following is from his comedy of Summer's Last Will and Testament,' and is a favourable specimen of his blank verse: great part of the play is in prose :

I never lov'd ambitiously to climb,

Or thrust my hand too far into the fire.
To be in heaven sure is a blessed thing,
But, Atlas-like, to prop heaven on one's back
Cannot but be more labour than delight.
Such is the state of men in honour placed :
They are gold vessels made for servile uses;
High trees that keep the weather from low houses,
But cannot shield the tempest from themselves.
I love to dwell betwixt the hills and dales,
Neither to be so great as to be envied,

Nor yet so poor the world should pity me.

In his poem of Pierce Penniless, Nash draws a harrowing picture of the despair of a poor scholar

Ah, worthless wit! to train me to this woe:
Deceitful arts that nourish discontent:
Ill thrive the folly that bewitch'd me so!
Vain thoughts adieu! for now I will repent-
And yet my wants persuade me to proceed,
For none take pity of a scholar's need.
Forgive me, God, although I curse my birth,
And ban the air wherein I breathe a wretch,
Since misery hath daunted all my mirth,
And I am quite undone through promise breach;
Ah, friends!-no friends that then ungentle frown
When changing fortune casts us headlong down.

ROBERT GREENE.

ROBERT GREENE, a more distinguished dramatist, is conjectured to have been a native of Norfolk, as he adds Norfolciensis' to his name, in one of his productions. He was educated at Clare-Hall, Cambridge, and in 1583 appeared as an author. He is supposed to have been in orders, and to have held the vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex, as, in 1585, Robert Greene, the vicar, lost his preferment. The plays of Greene are the History of Orlando, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Alphonsus, King of Arragon, George-aGreen, the Pinner of Wakefield, James IV., and the Looking-glass for London and England: the latter was

written in conjunction with Lodge. Greene died in September 1592, owing, it is said, to a surfeit of red herrings and Rhenish wine! Besides his plays, he wrote a number of tracts, one of which, Pandosto, the Triumph of Time, 1588, was the source from which Shakspeare derived the plot of his Winter's Tale. Some lines contained in this tale are very beautiful :

Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair,
Or but as mild as she is seeming so,
Then were my hopes greater than my despair-
Then all the world were heaven, nothing woe.
Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand,
That seems to melt e'en with the mildest touch,

Then knew I where to seat me in a land
Under the wide heavens, but yet not such.
So as she shows, she seems the budding rose,
Yet sweeter far than is an earthly flower;
Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows,
Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd flower;
Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn,
She would be gather'd though she grew on thorn.

The blank verse of Greene approaches next to that
of Marlow, though less energetic. His imagination
was lively and discursive, fond of legendary lore, and
filled with classical images and illustrations. In his
Orlando, he thus apostrophises the evening star :-
Fair queen of love, thou mistress of delight,
Thou gladsome lamp that wait'st on Phœbe's train,
Spreading thy kindness through the jarring orbs,
That in their union praise thy lasting powers;
Thou that hast stay'd the fiery Phlegon's course,
And mad'st the coachman of the glorious wain
To droop in view of Daphne's excellence;
Fair pride of morn, sweet beauty of the even,
Look on Orlando languishing in love.
Sweet solitary groves, whereas the nymphs
With pleasance laugh to see the satyrs play,
Witness Orlando's faith unto his love.

Tread she these lawns?kind Flora, boast thy pride.
Seek she for shades? spread, cedars, for her sake.
Fair Flora, make her couch amidst thy flowers.
Sweet crystal springs,

Wash ye with roses when she longs to drink.
Ah thought, my heaven! Ah heaven, that knows my

thought!

Smile, joy in her that my content hath wrought. Passages like this prove that Greene succeeds well, as Hallam remarks, 'in that florid and gay style, a little redundant in images, which Shakspeare frequently gives to his princes and courtiers, and which renders some unimpassioned scenes in the historic plays effective and brilliant.' Professor Tieck gives him the high praise of possessing 'a happy talent, a clear spirit, and a lively imagination.' His comedies have a good deal of boisterous merriment and farcical humour. George-a-Green is a shrewd Yorkshireman, who meets with the kings of Scotland and England, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, &c., and who, after various tricks, receives the pardon of King Edward

George-a-Green, give me thy hand: there is
None in England that shall do thee wrong.
Even from my court I came to see thyself,
And now I see that fame speaks nought but truth.
The following is a specimen of the simple humour
and practical jokes in the play: it is in a scene be-
tween George and his servant:-

Jenkin. This fellow comes to me,
And takes me by the bosom: you slave,

Said he, hold my horse, and look
He takes no cold in his feet.

No, marry, shall he, sir, quoth I;
I'll lay my cloak underneath him.
I took my cloak, spread it all along,
And his horse on the midst of it.

Jenkin. Ay, but mark how I served him.

Madge and he were no sooner gone down into the

ditch,

But I plucked out my knife, cut four holes in my cloak, And made his horse stand on the bare ground.

Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay' is Greene's best comedy. His friars are conjurors, and the piece concludes with one of their pupils being carried off to hell on the back of one of Friar Bacon's devils. Mr Collier thinks this was one of the latest instances of the devil being brought upon the stage in propria persona. The play was acted in 1591, but may have been produced a year or two earlier.

In some hour of repentance, when death was nigh at haud, Greene wrote a tract called A Groat's Worth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance, in which he deplores his fate more feelingly than Nash, and also gives ghostly advice to his acquaintances, 'that spend their wit in making plays.' Marlow he accuses of atheism: Lodge he designates 'young Juvenal,' and 'a sweet boy;' Peele he considers too good for the stage; and he glances thus at Shakspeare: For there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country.' The punning allusion to Shakspeare is palpable: the expressions, 'tiger's heart,' &c. are a parody on the line in Henry VI., part third

O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide.

These

The Winter's Tale is believed to be one of Shakspeare's late dramas, not written till long after Greene's death; consequently, if this be correct, the unhappy man could not allude to the plagiarism of the plot from his tale of Pandosto. Some forgotten play of Greene and his friends may have been alluded to; perhaps the old dramas on which Shakspeare constructed his Henry VI., for in one of these, the line, O tiger's heart,' &c., also occurs. old plays, however, seem above the pitch of Greene in tragedy. The 'Groat's Worth of Wit' was published after Greene's death by a brother dramatist, Henry Chettle, who, in the preface to a subsequent work, apologised indirectly for the allusion to Shakspeare. I am as sorry,' he says, 'as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art.' This is a valuable statement: full justice is done to Shakspeare's moral worth and civil deportment, and to his respectability as an actor and author. Chettle's apology or explanation was made in 1593.

The conclusion of Greene's' Groat's Worth of Wit' contains more pathos than all his plays: it is a harrowing picture of genius debased by vice, and sorrowing in repentance :

But now return I again to you three (Marlow, Lodge, and Peele), knowing my misery is to you no news: and let me heartily intreat you to be warned by my harms. Delight not, as I have done, in irreligious oaths, despise drunkenness, fly lust, abhor those

tapers that are with care delivered to all of you to maintain; these, with wind-puffed wrath, may be extinguished, with drunkenness put out, with negligence let fall. The fire of my light is now at the last snuff. My hand is tired, and I forced to leave where I would begin; desirous that you should live, though himself be dying. ROBERT GREENE.'

Content-A Sonnet.

Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content:
The quiet mind is richer than a crown:
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent:
The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown.
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affords no pride nor care,
The mean, that 'grees with country music best,
The sweet consort of mirth's and music's fare.
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss;
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.

[Sephestia's Song to her Child,
After escaping from Shipwreck.]

Mother's wag, pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy,
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe,
Fortune changed made him so ;
When he had left his pretty boy,
Last his sorrow, first his joy.

Weep not my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.

The wanton smiled, father wept,
Mother cried, baby leap'd;
More he crow'd, more he cried,
Nature could not sorrow hide;
He must go, he must kiss
Child and mother, baby bless;
For he left his pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy.

Weep not my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.

The Shepherd and his Wife.

It was near a thicky shade,
That broad leaves of beech had made,
Joining all their tops so nigh,
That scarce Phœbus in could pry;
Where sat the swain and his wife,
Sporting in that pleasing life,
That Coridon commendeth so,
All other lives to over-go.
He and she did sit and keep
Flocks of kids and flocks of sheep:
He upon his pipe did play,
She tuned voice unto his lay.
And, for you might her housewife know,
Voice did sing and fingers sew.
He was young, his coat was green,
With welts of white seamed between,
Turned over with a flap,

That breast and bosom in did wrap,
Skirts side and plighted free,

Seemly hanging to his knee,