their real distance from an affecting tragedy or an exhilarating comedy. The main incident in Gammer Gurton's Needle' is the loss of a needle in a man's smallclothes.* 'Gorboduc' has no interesting plot or impassioned dialogue; but it dignified the stage with moral reflection and stately measure. It first introduced blank verse instead of ballad rhymes in the drama. Gascoigne gave a further popularity to blank verse by his paraphrase of Jocasta,' from Euripides, which appeared in 1566. The same author's 'Supposes,' translated from Ariosto, was our earliest prose comedy. Its dialogue is easy and spirited. Edwards's 'Palamon and Arcite' was acted in the same year, to the great admiration of Queen Elizabeth, who called the author into her presence, and complimented him on having justly drawn the character of a genuine lover.

Ten tragedies of Seneca were translated into English verse at different times, and by different authors, before the year 1581. One of these translators was Alexander Ney vile, afterwards secretary to Archbishop Parker, whose Edipus' came out as early as 1563; and though he was but a youth of nineteen, his style has considerable beauty. The following lines, which open the first act, may serve as a specimen :—

"The night is gone, and dreadful day begins at length t' appear,

And Phoebus, all bedimm'd with clouds, himself aloft doth rear;
And, gliding forth, with deadly hue and doleful blaze in skies,
Doth bear great terror and dismay to the beholder's eyes.

Now shall the houses void be seen, with plague devoured quite,

And slaughter which the night hath made shall day bring forth to light.
Doth any man in princely thrones rejoice? O brittle joy!
How many ills, how fair a face, and yet how much annoy,

In thee doth lurk, and hidden lies-what heaps of endless strife!
They judge amiss that deem the prince to have the happy life."

In 1568 was produced the tragedy of 'Tancred and Sigismunda,' by Robert Wilmot and four other students of the Inner

*["It is a piece of low humour; the whole jest turning upon the loss and the recovery of the needle with which Gammer Gurton was to repair the breeches of her man Hodge; but in point of manners it is a great curiosity, as the curta supellex of our ancestors is scarcely anywhere so well described." "The unity of time, place, and action, is observed through the play, with an accuracy of which France might be jealous."... "It is remarkable that the earliest English tragedy" (alluding to 'Gorboduc') "and comedy are both works of considerable merit; that each partakes of the distinct character of its class; that the tragedy is without intermixture of comedy-the comedy without any intermixture of tragedy." -Sir Walter Scott, Misc. Prose Works, vol. vi. p. 333.]

Temple. It is reprinted in Reed's plays; but that reprint is taken not from the first edition, but from one greatly polished and amended in 1592.* Considered as a piece coming within the verge of Shakspeare's age, it ceases to be wonderful. Immediately subsequent to these writers we meet with several obscure and uninteresting dramatic names, among which is that of Whetstone, the author of 'Promos and Cassandra' [1578], in which piece there is a partial anticipation of the plot of Shakspeare's 'Measure for Measure.' Another is that of Preston, whose tragedy of 'Cambyses 't is alluded to by Shakspeare, when Falstaff calls for a cup of sack, that he may weep "in King Cambyses' vein."‡ There is, indeed, matter for weeping in this tragedy; for, in the course of it, an elderly gentleman is flayed alive. To make the skinning more pathetic, his own son is witness to it, and exclaims,―

"What child is he of Nature's mould could bide the same to see, His father fleaed in this wise? O how it grieveth me!"

It may comfort the reader to know that this theatric decortication was meant to be allegorical; and we may believe that it was performed with no degree of stage illusion that could deeply affect the spectator.§

In the last twenty years of the sixteenth century we come to a period when the increasing demand for theatrical entertainments produced play-writers by profession. The earliest of these appears to have been George Peele, who was the city poet and conductor of the civic pageants. His 'Arraignment of Paris' came out in 1584. Nash calls him an Atlas in poetry. Unless

* [Newly revived, and polished according to the decorum of these days. That is, as Mr. Collier supposes, by the removal of the rhymes to a blankverse fashion.]

In the title-page it is denominated "A lamentable Tragedy, mixed full of pleasant Mirth."

[The Tamerlanes and Tamer-chams of the late age had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers.-Ben Jonson. (Gifford, vol. ix. p. 180.)

I suspect that Shakspeare confounded King Cambyses with King Darius. Falstaff's solemn fustian bears not the slightest resemblance, either in metre or in matter, to the vein of King Cambyses. Kyng Daryus, whose doleful strain is here burlesqued, was a pithie and plesaunt enterlude, printed about the middle of the sixteenth century.-Gifford. Note on Jonson's 'Poetaster,' Works, vol. ii. p. 455.]

[The stage direction excites a smile: Flea him with a false skin.]

we make allowance for his antiquity, the expression will appear hyperbolical; but, with that allowance, we may justly cherish the memory of Peele as the oldest genuine dramatic poet of our language. His 'David and Bethsabe' is the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry. His fancy is rich and his feeling tender, and his conceptions of dramatic character have no inconsiderable mixture of solid veracity and ideal beauty. There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare.* David's character-the traits both of his guilt and sensibility-his passion for Bethsabe-his art in inflaming the military ambition of Urias-and his grief for Absalom, are delineated with no vulgar skill. The luxuriant image of Bethsabe is introduced by these lines:—

"Come, gentle Zephyr, trick'd with those perfumes
That erst in Eden sweeten'd Adam's love,
And stroke my bosom with thy gentle fan:
This shade, sun-proof, is yet no proof for thee.
Thy body, smoother than this waveless spring,
And purer than the substance of the same,
Can creep through that his lances cannot pierce.
Thou and thy sister, soft and sacred Air,
Goddess of life, and governess of health,
Keeps every fountain fresh, and arbour sweet.
No brazen gate her passage can refuse,
Nor bushy thicket bar thy subtle breath:

Then deck thee with thy loose delightsome robes,

And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes,

To play the wanton with us through the leaves.

"David. What tunes, what words, what looks, what wonders pierce

My soul, incensed with a sudden fire?

What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise,

Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame?

Fair Eva, placed in perfect happiness,

Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens,

Strook with the accents of archangels' tunes,

Wrought not more pleasure to her husband's thoughts,

Than this fair woman's words and notes to mine.

May that sweet plain, that bears her pleasant weight,

* [Mr. Dyce, in his edition of Peele, has quoted this passage from Mr. Campbell-" a critic," he styles him, "who is by no means subject to the pardonable weakness of discovering beauties in every writer of the olden time."-p. xxxviii.

It is quoted, too, by Mr. Hallam (Lit. Hist., vol. ii. p. 378), who concurs with Mr. Collier in thinking these compliments excessive.]

Joab thus describes the glory of David :—
"Beauteous and bright is he among the tribes,
As when the sun, attired in glistering robe,
Comes dancing from his oriental gate,

And, bridegroom-like, hurls through the gloomy air
His radiant beams: such doth King David show,
Crown'd with the honour of his enemies' town,
Shining in riches like the firmament,

The starry vault that overhangs the earth;
So looketh David, King of Israel."

At the conclusion of the tragedy, when David gives way to his grief for Absalom, he is roused with great dignity and energy by the speech of Joab. When informed by Joab of the death of his son, David exclaims,—

"David. Thou man of blood! thou sepulchre of death! Whose marble breast entombs my bowels quick,

Did I not charge thee, nay, entreat thy hand,

Even for my sake, to spare my Absalom?

And hast thou now, in spite of David's health,

And scorn to do my heart some happiness,

Given him the sword, and spilt his purple soul?

"Joab. What! irks it David that he victor breathes,
That Juda, and the fields of Israel

Should cleanse their faces from their children's blood?
What! art thou weary of thy royal rule?

Is Israel's throne a serpent in thine eyes,

And he that set thee there so far from thanks,
That thou must curse his servant for his sake?
Hast thou not said, that, as the morning light,
The cloudless morning, so should be thine house,
And not as flowers, by the brightest rain,
Which grow up quickly, and as quickly fade?
Hast thou not said, the wicked are as thorns,
That cannot be preserved with the hand;

And that the man shall touch them must be arm'd
With coats of iron, and garments made of steel,
Or with the shaft of a defenced spear?

And art thou angry he is now cut off,
That led the guiltless swarming to their deaths,
And was more wicked than an host of men?

Advance thee from thy melancholy den,
And deck thy body with thy blissful robes,
Or, by the Lord that sways the heaven, I swear,
I'll lead thine armies to another king,

Shall cheer them for their princely chivalry,
And not sit daunted, frowning in the dark,
When his fair looks, with oil and wine refresh'd,
Should dart into their bosoms gladsome beams,
And fill their stomachs with triumphant feasts;
That, when elsewhere stern War shall sound his trump,
And call another battle to the field,

Fame still may bring thy valiant soldiers home,
And for their service happily confess

She wanted worthy trumps to sound their prowess:
Take thou this course, and live ;-Refuse, and die."

Lyly, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Nash, Lodge, and Marlowe, were the other writers for our early stage, a part of whose career preceded that of Shakspeare.* Lyly, whose dramatic language is

* [An interesting subject of inquiry in Shakspeare's literary history is the state of our dramatic poetry when he began to alter and originate English plays. Before his time mere mysteries and miracle-plays, in which Adam and Eve appeared naked, in which the devil displayed his horns and tail, and in which Noah's wife boxed the patriarch's ears before entering the ark, had fallen comparatively into disuse, after a popularity of four centuries; and in the course of the sixteenth century the clergy were forbidden by orders from Rome to perform in them. Meanwhile "moralities," which had made their appearance about the middle of the fifteenth century, were also hastening their retreat, as well as those pageants and masques in honour of royalty, which nevertheless aided the introduction of the drama. But we owe our first regular dramas to the universities, the inns of court, and public seminaries. The scholars of these establishments engaged in free translations of classical dramatists, though with so little taste, that Seneca was one of their favourites. They caught the coldness of that model, however, without the feeblest trace of his slender graces; they looked at the ancients without understanding them; and they brought to their plots neither unity, design, nor affecting interest. There is a general similarity among all the plays that preceded Shakspeare in their ill-conceived plots, in the bombast and dulness of tragedy, and in the vulgar buffoonery of comedy.

Of our great poet's immediate predecessors, the most distinguished were Lyly, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Nash, Lodge, and Marlowe. Lyly was not entirely devoid of poetry, for we have some pleasing lyrical verses by him; but in the drama he is cold, mythological, and conceited, and he even polluted for a time the juvenile age of our literature with his abominable Euphuism. Peele has left some melodious and fanciful passages in his 'David and Bethsabe.' Greene is not unjustly praised for his comedy Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy' was at first admired, but subsequently quoted only for its samples of the mock sublime. Nash wrote no poetry, except for the stage; but he is a poor dramatic poet, though his prose satires are remarkably powerful. Lodge was not much happier on the stage than Nash; his prose works are not very valuable; but he wrote