John Lyly (c. 1554-1606), a Kentishman, educated at Oxford (B.A. 1573; M.A. 1575), made a great reputation with his didactic romance Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit, 1579, and its sequel Euphues and his England, 1580, which established in popular favor the artificial prose style called Euphuism. About 1580 was acted his first play, Alexander and Campaspe, and he continued to write for the stage for some fifteen years. He applied for the Mastership of the Revels, but failed to win the post. Between 1589 and 1601 he was a member of four parliaments. His importance in English literature lies in his contributions to the development of prose style and of refined comedy.

By the time that John Lyly inaugurated, with Alexander and Campaspe, the great period of Elizabethan drama, the leaven of the Renascence had been at work in England for three quarters of a century. Although the miracle play reached its full development quite unaffected by the new learning, the morality and the secular interlude (the latter as practised by John Heywood between 1520 and 1540), however vernacular they may be in form and spirit, show that the English drama was responding to influences from abroad. Both at court, where humanism took hold early and where translations of Latin comedy were actually performed before 1525, and in the schools and colleges, where the plays of Plautus and Terence were studied, acted, and used for models, the rediscovered classics inspired court entertainers and pedagogues to adaptation and imitation.To Nicholas Udall belongs the honor of writing, probably during his term of mastership at Eton, 1534-41, the first regular English comedy, Ralph Roister Doister. In this play Udall, adapting the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus to English life, brings to comedy a sense of form lacking in miracle, morality, and interlude. Even native a product as Gammer Gurton's Needle, 1552-3, a farce comedy of village life straight from the soil, was written by a fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, and exhibits in its division into acts and scenes the tendency to regularization. Tragedy, likewise, felt the classic influence: Gorboduc, 1562, is our first regular tragedy, English in subject-matter,

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but in manner patterned on the tragedies of Seneca. The writers of the old didactic drama had vigor and sincerity and strong emotional appeal, but they had no master but experience, no critical faculty, low artistic standards. To give it a permanent value the English drama needed conscious artists with professional pride and technical training. After some decades of experimental work like that named above, such an artist appeared in the person of Lyly.

Lyly's university education and his connection with the court determined the style of his work. All but one of his eight plays employ classical material, and that one is done in the manner of Latin comedy. They are the work of a clever young college man, fired with enthusiasm by his reading of classical myth and Latin comedy, delighting in his already established reputation as a witty master of prose, and ambitious to gain court favor. Edward Blount, who published six of Lyly's plays in 1632, called them "Court Comedies," and the term was well chosen. They were well adapted to appeal to Elizabeth, learned, pleasure-loving, avid of flattery, and to her brilliant group of courtiers. Three of them deal in thinly veiled allusion with matters of court gossip: Endimion with the relations of Elizabeth with Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son James; Sapho and Phao with the Duc d'Alençon's vain effort to win Elizabeth's hand in marriage; Midas with Philip of Spain and his ambition to win back England for Catholicism. Three others are pastoral comedies, using mythological story and figures, and adroitly flattering the Queen. Alexander and Campaspe, presenting a romantic, pseudo-historical episode in the life of Alexander the Great, is seemingly without ulterior purpose, as is the rustic farce-comedy, Mother Bombie. Allusive, witty, reflecting in tone the politeness of court manners, these plays were admirably adapted for their time and audience, and justify Lyly's reputation as our first dramatist to write plays of real artistic value.

The play which follows is unique in Lyly's work in that it presents English life and English people unhampered by mythological accessories. The scene is laid in Rochester, in Lyly's own county of Kent. The occasional local allusions and the introduction of

homely figures like the village wise-woman, the hackneyman, and the fiddlers, add a pleasant touch of realism. In structure, however, the play is obviously modeled upon the Terentian comedy. No direct source has been found; indeed, the balanced complication of plot is more suggestive of invention than of borrowing. But the material, love-plots of children against their parents, aided by roguish servants, and the solution, by revelation of a long-concealed substitution of one pair of children for another, are reminiscent of Latin comedy. Then, too, in its approximation to the unities of time, place, and action, the play shows Lyly's classical training; although the theory of the unities was first formulated by the Italian critic Castelvetro in 1570, it is based on the usual practice of the Greek and Roman dramatists. The time is limited to two days in all, a reasonably close approach to the norm of Latin comedy. Unity of place is strictly observed, all the action occurring in an open square, about which are located the dwelk ings of the chief characters and the tavern. The only episode which can be objected to as in any way extraneous is the comic business of the hackneyman's suit against Dromio, surely no very serious interruption of the main action. As an early example, then, of classical method applied to English stuff, the play is historically important.

Mother Bombie is the most complicated in structure of Lyly's plays. There are three main lines of action the love-affair of Candius and Livia, opposed by their parents and forwarded by the pages; the proposed matches between Candius and Silena on the one hand, and Accius and Livia on the other, furthered by the parents, real or supposed, thwarted by the pages, and nearly resulting in the betrothal of Accius and Silena; the love-story of Mæstius and Serena, apparently hopeless of fulfilment, but ending happily in the revelation that they are not brother and sister, a discovery which legitimizes their union and renders impossible that of the foolish children. The tangling of these threads is done with no small skill, but the complication would be difficult for an audience to follow were it not for the constant comments on the situation of the moment that Lyly puts into the mouths of the actors. Soliloquy and aside are used to their full capacity. The plotting is mechanical even to the paralleling of one scene by another in a manner recalling the use of balance and antithesis in one of Lyly's Euphuistic sentences. The first five scenes will serve for illustration. In scene one Memphio informs his servant Dromio of his desire to match his foolish son Accius to the daughter of his neighbor Stellio, and bids Dromio set about the matter. In scene two Stellio informs his servant Riscio of his desire to match his foolish daughter Silena to the son of his

neighbor Memphio, and entrusts the management of the affair to Riscio. In scene three Prisius and Sperantus agree that their children must not marry, and the plan of Sperantus to marry his son Candius to Stellio's daughter finds correspondence in the plan of Prisius to marry his daughter Livia to Memphio's son. The love-scene between Candius and Livia is witnessed by the fathers, who cap the lovers' speeches with antiphonal comments, and each of whom, after disclosing himself, dismisses his offspring with a long reproof. In the first scene of act two Dromio and Riscio echo each other's very words as they reveal the parts they are.to play, while Halfpenny and Lucio are sooner desired than they appear, and the four depart into the tavern to lay out their campaign of cozenage. The scene following presents the four scheming fathers entering severally in search of their respective servants, and, after soliloquies of one pattern, disappearing into the tavern door which has already welcomed the boys. Like the Euphuistic sentence, nothing could be more polished in its way, or more artificial.

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The double disguising in act four Lyly brings off with fair success. The approval of the betrothal of Candius and Livia by their fathers, the latter under the impression that they are witnessing the plighting of Accius and Silena, is truly comic and well managed. The corresponding situation, which brings the climax of the complication in the unmasking of Accius and Silena by their fathers is almost too intricate to be quite effective; Lyly evades rather than solves his difficulty by huddling his main group off the stage before he has begun to get out of the situation all the fun there is in it. The dénouement is brought about, as usual with Lyly, in brusk and mechanical fashion; here the confession of Vicinia corresponds to the oracle which brings the solution in the three allegorical plays, and to the deus ex machina of the pastoral comedies.

Lyly's curious method of group rather than individual characterization is well exemplified in Mother Bombie. Here we have four old men, four knavish pages, three young couples, three fiddlers, three village types, two old women. The groups are somewhat distinguished one from another, but inside the group distinction is almost lacking. Memphio and Stellio are rich, Prisius and Sperantus are poor; their occupations vary; but beyond these trivial differences they all act and speak alike. The same is true of the pages, except that, as is customary in plays written for boys to perform, the sharpest wit is given to the smallest boy, in this case Halfpenny. Such lack of individuality makes us feel about Lyly's people that they are puppets cleverly manipulated, not well rounded human beings. Candius and Livia,

Mæstius and Serena, are unsatisfactory lovers, because the artificiality of their handling and their speech forbids real passion. As for Accius and Silena, idiocy seems to us scarcely to furnish material for real comedy, but fools and madmen were regarded as legitimate game in an age when people of fashion found amusement in visiting the inmates of Bedlam. Mother Bombie is interesting as a type of the wise-woman, who appears in later Elizabethan plays, but, except in so far as her oracular utterance urges Vicinia to confession, she has no influence on the action.

Curious to a modern reader are the parade of schoolboy learning in the Latin quotations and the intolerable punning, more often simulating than attaining wit. Here again we

must remember that taste changes and make allowance for the author, a product of Renascence culture, and a conscious stylist, delighting in the use of language for its own sake, and writing for an audience which enjoyed hearing him " torture one poor word ten thousand ways." In general, the style of the play is less Euphuistic than that of its predecessors. Lyly tended more and more in his play-writing to abandon the niceties of Euphuism for a more natural style, and Mother Bombie, written about 1590, belongs to his later work. Moreover, Mother Bombie seems not to have been performed at court, as the earlier plays had been, and the delicate sentence structure of Endimion was perhaps not altogether suited for a popular audience.

HACKNEYMAN. SERGEANT.

SCRIVENER.

LIVIA, daughter to Prisius.

SERENA, daughter to Stellio; supposed daughter to Vicinia.

SILENA, supposed daughter to Stellio.

VICINIA, a nurse, mother to Accius and
Silena.

MOTHER BOMBIE, a fortune-teller.
RIXULA, a girl, servant to Prisius.

Scene-Rochester: an open square or street.

might I have a rope about my neck, horns upon my head, and in my house a litter of fools.

Dro. Then, sir, you had best let some wise man sit on your son, to hatch him a good wit; they say if ravens sit on hens' eggs, the chickens will be black, and so forth. Mem. Why, boy, my son is out of the shell, and is grown a pretty cock.

Dro. Carve him, master, and make him a capon, else all your breed will prove coxcombs.

Mem. I marvel he is such an ass; he takes it not of his father.

Dro. He may for any thing you know. Mem. Why, villain, dost thou think me a fool?

Mem. Rascal, dost thou imagine thy mistress naught of her body? 3

Dro. No, but fantastical of her mind; and it may be when this boy was begotten she thought of a fool, and so conceived a fool, yourself being very wise, and she surpassing honest.

Mem. It may be; for I have heard of an Ethiopian, that thinking of a fair picture, brought forth a fair lady, and yet no bastard.

Dro. You are well read, sir; your son may be a bastard, and yet legitimate; yourself a cuckold, and yet my mistress virtuous; all this in conceit.

Mem. Come, Dromio, it is my grief to have such a son that must inherit my lands.

Dro. He needs not, sir; I'll beg him for a fool.4

Mem. Vile boy! thy young master?
Dro. Let me have in 5 a device.

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Mem. I'll have thy advice, and if it fadge, thou shalt eat till thou sweat, play till thou sleep, and sleep till thy bones ache.

Dro. Aye, marry, now you tickle me, I am both hungry, gamesome, and sleepy, and all at once. I'll break this head against the wall, but I'll make it bleed good matter.

Mem. Then this it is; thou knowest I have but one son, and he is a fool.

Dro. A monstrous fool!

Mem. A wife, and she an arrant scold. Dro. Ah, master, I smell your device; it will be excellent!

Mem. Thou canst not know it till I tell it. Dro. I see it through your brains. Your

hair is so thin, and your skull so transparent, I may sooner see it than hear it. Mem. Then, boy, hast thou a quick wit, and I a slow tongue. But what is 't? Dro. Marry, either you would have your wife's tongue in your son's head, that he might be a prating fool; or his brains in her brain pan, that she might be a foolish scold.

Mem. Thou dreamest, Dromio; there is no such matter. Thou knowest I have kept him close, so that my neighbors think him to be wise, and her to be temperate, because they never heard them speak. Dro. Well?

Mem. Thou knowest that Stellio hath a

Mem. Now if I could compass a match between my son and Stellio's daughter, by conference of us parents, and without theirs, I should be blessed, he cozened,s and thou forever set at liberty.

Dro. A singular conceit.
Mem. Thus much for my son. Now for

my wife: I would have this kept from her, else shall I not be able to keep my house from smoke; for let it come to one of her ears, and then woe to both mine! I would have her go to my house into the country whilst we conclude this, and this once done, I care not if her tongue never have done. These if thou canst effect, thou shalt make thy master happy. Dro. Think it done; this noddle shall coin such new device as you shall have your son married by to-morrow.

Mem. But take heed that neither the father nor the maid speak to my son, for then his folly will mar all.

Dro. Lay all the care on me.

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te onere: I will rid you of a fool. Mem. Wilt thou rid me for a fool? Dro. Tush! quarrel not.

Mem. Then for the dowry, let it be at least two hundred ducats, and after his death the farm.

mews.