well. That is the groundwork of the story of " Gwydonius," which is adorned with the usual love dialogues, debates, soliloquies, and letters. As a last illustration of the manner of the Euphuists, we take a whole letter of Castania to Gwydonius, written when her heart inclined to him, but she thought to try his constancy with one volley of shot, and if that did not make him fly the field she would resign the fort of her freedom into his hands. "Castania to Gwy.lonius, which hopeth in vaine, health. "Maister Gwydonius, your letter being more hastelie receiued than heartilie read, I perceiue by the contents that you are stil perplexed with your pen-sick passions, and that your disease is incurable, for if your paines may be appeased or your maladie mittigated by no medicine but by my means, you are like either to pay your due vnto death, or still to linger in distresse. My cunning is to smal to enterprise the composition of anie secrete simples, and my calling to great to become a Phisition to such a paltering patient, so that I neither can nor wil cure another man's harme by mine owne mishap. To loue him whome I cannot like were but to wreast against mine owne will, to flatter him whome I meane not to fancie is but a meere tricke of extreame follie. "What the cause is, Gwydonius, that thy goodwill reaps so small gaine, and that so rigorously I repaie thy loue with hate, I know not, vnlesse the constellation of the starres by some secrete influence haue so appointed it in the calculation of our natiuitie. But this I am sure, that as no Serpent can abide the smell of a harts horne, as the Panther escheweth the companie of the Ownce, as the Vulture is mortal enimie to the Eele, and as it is impossible to hatch vp a Swanne in an Eagles neast, to temper Oile and Pitch together in one vessel, to mixe the bloud of a Lione and a Woolfe in one bowle, and to procure amitie betweene the Fawlcon called Tilo and the Foxe, so hard is it to procure me by ruthful request to be thy friend, which am by instinct of nature thy protested foe, and as hard to winne me to thy wife who so little likes of thy loue that the verie remembrance of thy person makes me fal into most hatefull passions. Cease then, Gwydonius, to condempne me of crueltie, and leaue off at last to appeale to my curtisie, for thou shalt alwaies be sure to feede the one, and neuer to finde the other. Yet least thou shouldest accuse me of ingratitude, though I cannot inwardlie mittigate thy miserie, yet I will outwardlie teach thee to applie such plaisters (as if the experience of them proue true) shall greatlie appease thy paine. Plinie, Gwydonius, reporteth, that he which drinketh of the river Auerna cooleth and mortifieth his affections, but if the water be touched by anie means before it be drunk, the vertue thereof is of no value. He that weareth the feathers of the Birde Ezalon about him shall euer be fortunate in his loue, but if they be not pulled when the sunne is eclipsed, they are of no force and to conclude, there is nothing that sooner driueth awaie amorous conceits then to rub ye temples of thy head with ye sweat of an Asse, which if you canne performe it, as no doubt you may put it in practise, I hope you shall be redressed from your intollerable griefe, and I released from such an importunate sute. : "Arbasto." Forced by the destinies still to denie thee, Castania." Ar Arbasto, King of Denmark, victorious in war with Pelorus, King of France, accepts truce, becomes a guest, and falls in love with Doralicia, the eldest daughter of his enemy, while Myrania, the youngest daughter, falls in love with him. basto is seized, and imprisoned with his friend Egerio. Myrania saves him, and he marries her for gratitude, while loving her sister Doralicia. When Myrania discovers this, she dies of grief. Arbasto is driven from his kingdom by his subjects, and becomes a hermit in a cave, who tells his story to the novelist. "Morando." Morando, hero of the novel named from him, of which the first part was also first published in 1584, is an Italian gentleman who invites several friends to his country house, where they discourse for three days upon love, arguing and illustrating with little tales on the three several days three several questions offered for debate. The first question touches the truth or falsehood of the proverb, "Love does much, but Money all"; the second asks Whether it be good to love; and the third asks Whether women are more subject to love than men. The three days' argument is indicated by the TO A.D. 1586.] “PLANETOMACHIA." Greene's MarriagE, 225 second title of the book, "Morando, or the Tritameron of Love." "Planeto machia." In 1585 Robert Greene produced only one love pamphlet. This was "Planetomachia," dedicated to the Earl of Leicester. After an introduction in praise of Astrology, and a Latin dialogue in which Greene professed to discourse with his friend, Francis Hand, upon prognostications, with use of matter derived from Joannes Jovianus Pontanus (Pontanus was Secretary to Ferdinand II. of Aragon, and died an old man in 1503, leaving a large number of books, besides his history of the wars of Ferdinand I. and John of Anjou)—after these preludes came the story book, which represents the seven planets in discourse together, and the question arising whether Saturn the baleful or Venus the benign have most influence upon the fates of lovers. Each tells a tale against the other. "Venus' Tragedie" is of a saturnine Duke of Ferrara, who took deadly vengeance on the love between his daughter and a man he looked on as an enemy. "Saturnes Tragedie" is a tale told against Venus, of Psammetichus and the unfaithful Rhodope. Greene's It was after the writing of "Planetomachia” that Greene, in 1585 or early in 1586, married the daughter of a gentleman in Lincolnshire. They lived together probably at Norwich; for he says that he spent her portion, and after a child was born to them they parted, she going back home to Lincolnshire and he to London. He said in his last days that he had been away from her six years. They parted, therefore, in 1586, after about a year of marriage. Greene, going back to London, saw in that year, or in 1587, the great success of Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," plunged desperately into pleasures that breed pain, and poured himself out for the next six years as playwright and novelist. This time of Robert Greene's race to the grave was the time of Shakespeare's P-VOL. IX. training in his art. They were the six years during which Shakespeare was among the players, not yet recognised as a playwright, although using his pen for the renovation of old work. They were the six years in which the English drama was enriched by the genius of a few men, all young, who were true poets, and advanced the literature of the public stage to intellectual wealth and power. During the quarter of a century since the production of "Gorboduc," on New Year's Day, 1562, to the production of Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," the growth of the drama had been growth of childhood. Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Apologie for Poetrie," had found little to praise in English plays. The five-and-twenty years from "Gorboduc" to "Tamburlaine " were years of early growth in which, especially, there was development of the conditions of success:-the actors' craft, the reasonable independence of the stage, shaping of theatres, and partial training of an ill-taught populace to finer sense of intellectual enjoyment; there was the rise also of a higher energy in poets who had grown to manhood quickened by the dainty vigour of the time. Before 1586 there was no period of six years in the story of the drama that would have been so fruitful of suggestion to a young Shakespeare, taking note of what he heard and saw, as the six years from 1586 to 1592. These were the years of Shakespeare's 'prentice time, after which he began to write plays of his own that rose to the full height of human power-a height, perhaps, not to be reached twice in the history of man. Shakespeare under Elizabeth will be the subject of the next book of this history. In this book there is only indication of his place in the narrative, which now stands at the time when he was twenty-two years old, and came to London with his work before him. Except the Court plays of Lyly and Peele, there is nothing of mark to represent Elizabethan drama before the production of Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," in 1586 or 1587. Greene's first play followed up "Tamburlaine;" Before so did Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," and so did Marlowe. Lodge's "Wounds of Civil War." Nevertheless, Disobedient Child." "Gorboduc" had led the way to a substantial advance in the direction of a higher drama. Players no longer spent their skill on pieces like the " pretty and mery "The new Enterlude called the Disobedient Child, Compiled by Thomas Ingelend, late student in Cambridge," which was printed by Thomas Colwell in 1564, and was a lineal descendant of an interlude of Edward VI.'s time called "Lusty Iuventus." In the play of "The Disobedient Child," Rich Man's Son married against his father's advice, and caught a Tartar. The Devil came in with his Ho, ho, ho!" and advised young men to beware of him. As the players knelt at the end to pray for Queen Elizabeth and for the bishops and clergy, lords of the council, and all the nobility and people in general, perhaps the piece was presented at Court. 66 Dr. William Bulleyn. Another piece published in 1564, for which there has been no place yet in our story, we may glance back to as an illustration of the rise of a dramatic spirit in the land. William Bulleyn, born in the Isle of Ely in Henry VIII.'s time, resigned in 1554 the Rectory of Blaxhall, in Suffolk, which he had held four years, and went abroad to study medicine. He had a brother Richard, who remained a clergyman. At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign William Bulleyn published a book on "The Government of Health," with a sovereign regiment against the Pestilence. There was a second edition of it in 1595. It included verses by the author "Against Surfeting." Dr. Bulleyn wrote a book on "Healthful Medicines," of which the MS. was lost at sea, with part of his library, on a voyage from Tynemouth to London after the death by fever of a patron, Sir Thomas Hilton, in whose family he had been |