in 1565; but in 1571 an edition was brought out under the supervision of the authors with the title, Ferrex and Porrex. It is our first play in blank verse, and is divided throughout into acts and scenes. Each act opens with a dumb show, illustrating by means of an allegory what was going to happen in the play. Each act except the last ends with a chorus spoken by four ancient and sage men of Britain. In the latter particular the dramatists were following the model of the Senecan tragedies.1 The plot of Gorboduc was taken from a legend told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and had perhaps the purpose of showing the Elizabethans the misery of a divided rule and the dangers of a disputed succession resulting from the lack of a direct heir. King Gorboduc divides his kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex. Strife ensues between the brothers, and Porrex slays Ferrex. Videna, the queen, laments the death of her one son, and vows vengeance on the other. She stabs Porrex in his sleep. The people rise, and slay both Gorboduc and Videna. More conflict ensues, and finally, after much misery and tumult, the crown is adjudged by the common consent of all to one of themselves. The play is, as Charles Lamb says, "stiff and cumbersome"; there is little action and much talk. But the language is clear and dignified, and there is an element of pathos in Marcella's speeches on the death of Porrex (iv. 2). Sir Philip Sidney declares the play to be full of "stately speeches and well-sounding phrases" and "of notable morality". It established blank verse as the medium for tragedy. The choruses, however, are in riming verse.

In 1587 another tragedy called the Misfortunes of Arthur, by Thomas Hughes, was acted. It is probable History that Francis Bacon had a hand in it. Plays plays. dealing with history were exceedingly popular; and before Shakespeare wrote, we find plays with such titles as the Troublesome Reign of King John; the Famous Victories of Henry V.; the True Chronicle History of

1 Shakespeare makes use of a chorus in Pericles and Henry V., and of a dumb show in the play scene in Hamlet.

King Lear. They followed the old chronicle with great exactness, and in some cases Shakespeare has based his own history plays on them.

IV. Dramatists before Shakespeare.

Rise of the

modern playwrights.

We have now to describe a group of playwrights who were writing for the stage when Shakespeare came to London. It should be remembered that in many cases the dramatic authors were actors and part proprietors of theatres; and thus the connection between the playwright and the stage was at that time very close. As we have seen, much material for the dramatists' use was at hand. Through the labours of the chroniclers and historians the knowledge of national history had greatly increased. The classic historians had also been studied, and North's Plutarch made easily accessible the lives and deeds of the Greek and Roman heroes. The numerous translations of Italian tales and poems also suggested subjects for plays. And further, the Elizabethan drama- of the tist did not fail to keep touch with his age; and in studying dramatic literature, while we regard the plays as works of art, we must also look upon them as illustrations of the social history of the period. Shakespeare himself tells us that the players 'are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time", and that the purpose of playing

The purpose

dramatists.

was and is to hold as 't were the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.2

The drama is thus very closely bound up with everyday life.

The chief writers of plays prior to Shakespeare were Greene (1560?-1592), Peele (1558?-1597?), Nash (1567-1601), Lodge (1558?-1625), Lyly (1554?-1606), and Marlowe (1564-1593).

George Peele's Arraignment of Paris was printed anonymously and acted before the queen in 1584. It is really a comedy in honour of Elizabeth, and Peele. in the last act Diana describes England and the queen in splendid language. She governs a kingdom that is

An ancient seat of kings, a second Troy,
Y-compass'd round with a commodious sea.
Her people are y-clepëd1 Angeli,2

Or, if I miss, a letter is the most:

She giveth laws of justice and of peace;

She giveth arms of happy victory,

And flowers to deck her lions crown'd with gold.
This peerless nymph, whom heaven and earth belove,
This paragon, this only, this is she

In whom do meet so many gifts in one,

On whom our country gods so often gaze,

In honour of whose name the Muses sing;
In state Queen Juno's peer, for power in arms
And virtues of the mind Minerva's mate,

As fair and lovely as the Queen of Love.

The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, published in 1599, is a kind of miracle play modernized. By some it is considered Peele's masterpiece, and although, as an acting drama, it cannot be ranked very high, it contains some very beautiful poetry. King David thus describes the coming of Bethsabe:

Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair.
To 'joy her love, I'll build a kingly bower,
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,
That, for their homage to her sovereign joys,
Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests,

In oblique turnings wind their nimble waves

1 called. 2 An allusion to the well-known story of Gregory and the English slave-boys, and his punning phrase: Non Angli sed angeli.

About the circles of her curious walks,

And with their murmur summon easeful sleep

To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.

The Old Wives' Tale, printed in 1595, may have given Milton some ideas for his Comus. The outline of the tale is similar, but Milton's poetry far transcends that of Peele. A lady is lost in a wood, her two brothers look for her, and find that she has fallen into the hands of a magician. To rescue her it is first necessary to tear off his magic wreath, break his sword, and extinguish his lamp. The escape is effected by the aid of a spirit.

Greene.

None of Greene's plays were published until after his death. James IV. of Scotland (1598) is a sort of history play, though the interest chiefly turns on the love-story, which is Greene's invention. It is notable as the earliest example of that favourite device of Elizabethan dramatists, a play within a play. Here Oberon and his elves appear as spectators of a play produced by a Scot to explain his discontent. In Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew the play is acted for the diversion of the tinker, Christopher Sly, who remains on the stage as spectator during the greater part of the performance. Greene's greatest achievement in drama was Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, printed in 1594. It was acted in 1591, and probably written in 1588 or 1589. The interest is twofold, turning on the magic arts of Friar Bacon (the celebrated Roger Bacon of mediæval Oxford), and on the love of Prince Edward (afterwards Edward I.) for a keeper's daughter, Margaret, the fair maid of Fressingfield. Edward sends the Earl of Lincoln to do his wooing for him, with the consequence that Margaret falls in love with the earl, and finally marries him with the prince's consent. The play contains some humour and much fine poetry. The description of Oxford is well known:

These Oxford schools

Are richly seated near the river side:

The mountains full of fat and fallow deer,

The battling pastures laid with kine and flocks,
The town gorgeous with high built colleges,
And scholars seemly in their grave attire,
Learned in searching principles of art.

One great point of interest in the play lies in the fashion in which Greene has treated his magician, Friar Bacon. Marlowe was to create a like character in his Dr. Faustus; but while Greene's magician is commonplace, of low aspirations, Marlowe's is poetical, aspiring to the highest knowledge.

Nash, Lyly, and Lodge are scarcely so great as dramatists as they are as romance writers.

The sole contribution of Nash to the drama of the period was a kind of court entertainment presented before

the queen in 1593, and entitled Summer's Nash. Last Will and Testament. Summer was Henry VIII.'s jester. The play was published in 1600. Nash also completed Marlowe's Tragedy of Dido. Lyly's plays were written for performance before the

queen at court. With the exception of the Lyly. Woman in the Moon, which is in blank verse, they are in prose, and abound in classical allusions; the characters are mostly drawn from mythology. The best of them are Alexander and Campaspe (1584), Endymion (1591), and Midas (1592). They have more of the character of the masque than of the play, their style is that of Euphues, and at every opportunity the queen is extravagantly praised.

Lodge's plays do not call for much notice, but he wrote in conjunction with Greene a very curiLodge. ous drama called A Looking-glass for London and England. It was intended as a protest against the Puritans' objections to the stage.

The plays of the dramatists with whom we have just been dealing contain very beautiful songs and lyrics, poems that will give delight as long as the English language shall be spoken and read.