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 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 DURING THE LIFETIME 
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 BY 
 
 FELIX E. SCHELLING 
 
 Professor in the University of Pennsylvania 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1910 
 
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 fi> 
 
 Copyright, 1910 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published September, igio 
 
 R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY 
 CHICAGO 
 
 ©Cf,A27]949 
 
■ '^* PREFACE 
 
 The following pages attempt to tell once more, and as far 
 as possible at first hand, the fascinating story of Elizabethan 
 literature. But the tale has been somewhat compressed to 
 treat what preceded the birth of Shakespeare with brevity, 
 and what followed his death merely by indications and sug- 
 gestions. This compression has seemed the more justifiable 
 because Shakespeare's own work, thus contemplated in what 
 surrounded it, gives to the subject a closer unity, and because 
 the transition from literature, as an Elizabethan conceived and 
 practised it, to what it came to be regarded in the time of 
 Charles I, was well on its way by the year 1616. 
 
 This book departs in method from the customary arrange- 
 ment of material by way of annals. It has neither listed authors 
 in the order of their birth nor books in the chronology of their 
 publication; but it has sought to view the subject in large by 
 the recognition of a succession of literary movements, develop- 
 ments, and varieties in poetry, drama, and prose, at times 
 identified with a great name, at others grouped merely because 
 of subject-matter or likeness in origin or purpose. It is be- 
 lieved that the reader can experience no greater difficulty in 
 seeking for Jonson, for example, in half a dozen chapters, 
 than he might undergo in an effort to trace, let us say, the 
 pastoral form of poetry through the scattered annals of a score 
 of poets, ordered with chronological precision. It is the 
 writer's conviction that until the history of literature cuts 
 loose from the tyranny of biography, as history at large has 
 long since cut loose, little progress can be made toward the 
 realization of the higher aims of literary study. These he 
 believes to consist less in the acquisition of a mass of informa- 
 tion — however desirable information may be — about books, 
 authors, and borrowings, about style and the bare bones of 
 plays, than in the recognition of those unseen influences, 
 literary and other, by which even the greatest man becomes 
 
 V 
 
vl PREFACE 
 
 the product of his age. These higher aims he finds, too, in 
 the ideals that great men have set up to write for and to live 
 by, and in the nature of the artistry which, in as rnany differ- 
 ing beautiful forms as the forms of nature, results from this 
 finest phase of the activity of men. 
 
 History now chronicles the common man. Literature 
 should chronicle the common book, if we are to have a full 
 understanding of the age. For a knowledge of the relations 
 of minor authors, the quality, even the short-comings and 
 inferiorities of their work, give us a mean level from which 
 to judge the heights attained by choicer spirits. This book 
 offers no apology for its treatment of the works of minor poets, 
 dramatists, and pamphleteers where such treatment is de- 
 manded for the completeness of the picture. On the other 
 hand it makes no claim to exhaustiveness, as neither its plan 
 nor the demands of a just proportion could support such a 
 claim. 
 
 The drama was the most potent form of Elizabethan artis- 
 tic expression. It is obvious that in it Shakespeare literally 
 dominated his age, as he radiated after his time a wider 
 Hterary influence than that of any other English author. 
 Shakespeare accordingly dominates this book, the history of 
 literature in his age. For not only is the romantic drama his 
 sovereign domain, but in the lyric, too, Shakespeare expressed 
 the highest reach of his time. From the historical point of 
 view, however, other men equally affected their fellow-sub- 
 jects of Elizabeth and James. Sidney, Spenser, Donne, and 
 Jonson, in poetry; Lyly, Hooker, Bacon, and the translators of 
 the English Bible, in prose: these were the effective spirits of 
 the time to be recognized as such not only for the divergent 
 rays that each, as a lens, spread after far and wide, but for the 
 converging light that each drew to himself from his predeces- 
 sors, ancient, modern, foreign, or contemporary at home. 
 
 The short quotations from Elizabethan writers that occur 
 in this book have been frankly modernized; as what may be 
 lost of the flavor of quaintness is more than compensated in 
 ready intelligibility to the modern reader. So, too, old 
 titles have been curtailed at need and rendered into modern 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 spelling, except where custom demands, as in The Faery 
 Queen, for example, or The Defense of Poesy, a species of 
 compromise. The Bibliography presents, in alphabetical 
 arrangement, a list of authors who were writing or publish- 
 ing during the lifetime of Shakespeare. It purposes to give, 
 in condensed form, a representation of their literary activity 
 and to indicate where their works may be read in modern avail- 
 able editions. A few items of the Bibliography, such as "the 
 Martin Marprelate Controversy," Character-writing, or the 
 English Bible, are entered independently of any proper name. 
 Cross references, as in these cases, for example, to Penry, 
 Overbury, Coverdale, and others, should make these entries 
 readily available in consultation. 
 
 Tam WORTH, July, 191 o. F. E. S. 
 
XI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 England at the birth of Shakespeare, i. — Character, policy, and 
 success of Elizabeth, 2. — Literature in the earlier years of her reign, 2. 
 — The Renaissance in Italy and England, 4. — Tudor historical litera- 
 ture in prose, 5. — The Mirror for Magistrates, 6. — Latin influences on 
 English prose style, 8. — Nature of Elizabethan Latinism, 9. — The 
 prose chronicles, Holinshed, lo. — Harrison's Description of England, 
 II. — Rudimentary conception of history among the chroniclers, 12. — 
 Shakespeare and Holinshed, 13. — Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 14. — The 
 voyagers, Hakluyt, his various collections and translations, 15. — 
 Purchase, the continuator of Hakluyt, and others, 17. — The Last Fight 
 of the Revenge, 17-18. 
 
 Chapter II 
 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 The gentleman of the Renaissance, 19. — Origin of modern English 
 poetry in the court, Wyatt and Surrey, 20. — The limitations of their 
 poetry, and their services to English versification, 21. — Gascoigne and 
 his associates, 22. — Sir Philip Sidney, his life and education, 23. — 
 His poetry that of the coterie, 24. — The Areopagus and its ideals, 25. 
 — Sidney's - experiments in classical and Italian versification, 27. — 
 His critical and poetical tenets, The Defense of Poesy, 27. — The 
 poetry of Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, 29. — Sidney and Lady Rich, 
 30. — Sidney's alleged borrowings, 31. — Services of Sidney to English 
 poetry, 32-33. 
 
 Chapter III 
 
 THE NEW CULTIVATED PROSE 
 
 John Lyly, the Euphuist, his life and education, 34. — His novel 
 Euphues and its success, 35. — Mistakes as to Euphues, 36. — Euphuism 
 a rhetorical prose style, 37. — Its use of alliteration and other devices, 
 38. — Euphuism before Lyly, North, Pettie, 39. — The fiction of Greene, 
 Nash, and minor imitators of Lyly, 40. — Sidney's Arcadia, its romantic 
 and poetic quality, 41. — Crowded incidents of The Arcadia, 42. — 
 Its style, 43. — Services of Lyly and Sidney to English prose, 44. 
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 SPENSER, THE " NEW POET " 
 
 Life and education of Edmund Spenser, 45. — His friendship with V^ 
 
 Harvey and experiments with classical versification, 47. — The Shep- 
 
 ^ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 lendar, 48. — Its serious import and poetic quality, 49. — 
 
 in Ireland, 50. — Colin Clout, 51. — Spenser's contemporary 
 
 J in poetry, 52. — His marriage, 53. — His Vienxi of the Present 
 
 of Ireland, 54. — His relations to Queen Elizabeth, 55. — His un- 
 
 .ely death, 55. — The Faery Queen, its general design, 56. — Its poetic 
 
 .rt, 58. — Its allegory, 59. — The Spenserian stanza, 60. — The paradox 
 
 of Spenser's genius, 61-62. 
 
 Chapter V 
 
 LYLY AND THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 Elements of the drama in earlier Tudor times, 63. — The first 
 regular plays and the classical influences on them, 64. — Influence of 
 the court on the drama, 66. — The boy companies and other Eliza- 
 bethan actors, 67. — The choirmaster as theatrical manager, 68. — Lyly's 
 traffic with the stage, 69. — His comedies, 70. — His Endimion, its occa- 
 sional and allegorical character, 71. — ^Peele and his Arraignment of 
 Paris, 73. — Presentation of court plays, 76. — Settings of a private 
 theater, 78. — The theater in Blackfriars, 78. — ^Lyly and his influence 
 as a dramatist, 79. 
 
 Chapter VI 
 
 MARLOWE AND HIS FELLOWS IN THE POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 Origin of the professional player, 80. — Early companies, 81. — 
 Shakespeare's company and his relation to it, 81. — Elizabethan play- 
 houses and their sites, 82. — Structure of the Elizabethan playhouse, 
 84. — Settings, scenery, and properties, 85. — The playhouse and the 
 city fathers, 87. — Repute and standing of players, 88. — Pre-Shake- 
 spearean plays on the common stage, 89. — The classics, Italian story, 
 and actual life the three mainsprings of Elizabethan drama, 90. — 
 The work of Peele for the popular stage, 90. — ^Robert Greene and 
 his work in the drama, 91. — Thomas Kyd, his Spanish Tragedy and 
 other plays, 93. — Christopher Marlowe, his Tamburlaine, and his 
 consciousness of his dramatic departure, 93. — Faustus, and other 
 dramas of Marlowe, 97. — Services of Kyd and Marlowe to the new 
 romantic drama, loo. — Alleyn, Burbage, Shakespeare, and the sub- 
 stantial returns of dramatic success, loi. 
 
 / 
 
 Chapter VII \ 
 
 THE PAMPHLET AND THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 London and the Elizabethan reading public, 102. — Diversity and 
 popularity of the pamphlet, 103. — Its character as incipient journal- 
 ism, 104. — The pamphleteer. Churchyard, 105. — Breton, his ephemeral 
 verse and prose, io6. — Samuel Rowlands, 107. — Greene as a pamphle- 
 teer, and writer of fiction, 107. — His conycatching pamphlets, 109. — 
 His autobiographical confessions, no. — Lodge's Rosalynd and other 
 stories, no. — The Nash-Harvey pamphlet war, in. — The Marprelate 
 controversy, 113. — The part of Lyly, Nash, and Bacon in it, 113. — 
 Nash's Jack Wilton, 115. — The idiomatic qualities of the prose of 
 Nash, his vigor, satire, and humor, n6. — Dekker as a pamphleteer, 
 117. — Occasional worth and eloquence of the pamphleteers, 119-120. 
 
CONTENTS / xi 
 
 Chapter VIII 
 
 THE PASTORAL LYRIC AND THE SONNET 
 
 Nature and place of the Elizabethan lyric, 120. — Origin of the 
 English lyric of art with Wyatt and Surrey, 121. — Earlier miscellanies 
 of lyrical poetry, 121. — ^The pastoral_d£cade,_i22. — England's Helicon, 
 123. — The lyrics of Greville and Southwell, 125. — Barnes, Watson, 
 and the Italianists, 126. — The conventional " conceit," 127. — The 
 decade of the sonnet, 128. — Daniel and Constable, 129. — French in- 
 fluence on the sonneteers, 130. — The sonnet craze at its height, 130. 
 — The form of the sonnet, 131. — Varieties of the Elizabethan sonnet, 
 131. — Spiritual sonnets, 132. — The occasional sonnet, 133. — "Conceits" 
 in the sonnet, 134. — End of the sonnet craze, 135. — The lyrical poetry 
 of Raleigh, 136. — Drayton's sonnets, 137. — Spenser's Amoretti, their 
 subjective significance, 139. — Shakespeare and his patrons, 141. — ^The 
 Sonnets of Shakespeare, 142. — Autobiographical and other interpreta- 
 tions of them, 144. — ^Their defects and superlative merits, 146-147. 
 
 Chapter IX 
 
 SHAKESPEARE IN COMEDY AND IN CHRONICLE HISTORY 
 
 Known events in the life of Shakespeare, 148. — His education and 
 natural endowments, 159. — His choice of the stage as a profession 
 and early success, 153. — His earliest work, its imitative character, 
 153. — Influence of Lyly on Shakespeare, 154. — Experimental comedies, 
 155. — The Merchant of Venice, 156. — A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 
 157. — The Henry VI trilogy, 158. — Greene's envious allusion to 
 Shakespeare, 159. — Shakespeare's two Richards and Marlowe's 
 Ediuard II, 160. — Height of the chronicle play in Henry IV, 161. — 
 Chronicle plays by other hands, 163. — Plays on mythical British his- 
 tory, 163. — Meres' recognition of the character and standing of Shake- 
 speare, 164. — Much Ado, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, 164. — 
 All's Well and Measure for Measure, 166. — The problematic nature 
 of Troilus and Cressida, 167. — Shakespeare and King James, 168. 
 — The orderly growth of Shakespeare's genius, 169-171. 
 
 Chapter X 
 
 "' VERNACULAR DRAMA OF DEKKER, HEYWOOD, AND 
 MIDDLETON 
 
 Dekker as a dramatist, 172. — His Old Fortunatus, 173. — His Shoe- 
 makers' Holiday and other comedies, 174. — His dramatic portraiture, 
 176. — Thomas Heywood, 178. — The number and variety of his plays, 
 A Woman Killed nuith Kindness, 180. — Improvidence of the lives of 
 Heywood and Dekker, 181. — ^Philip Henslowe and his Diary, 182. — 
 The theatrical business in his time, 183. — Arden of Feversham and 
 other murder plays, 184. — Realism of the bourgeois drama, 185. — 
 Middleton and his comedies of London life, 186. — His collaboration 
 with Rowley and others, his imitators, 187. — Romantic plays of 
 Middleton and Rowley, 188. — A Fair Quarrel, 189. — Middleton as a 
 dramatist, 190. 
 
xu CONTENTS f 
 
 I 
 I 
 Chapter XI ^ 
 
 LATER ANTHOLOGIES AND LYRICS TO BE SET TO MUSIC 
 
 Early miscellanies of poetry, 191. — Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 
 192. — Elizabethan music, 192. — The Elizabethan song-book, 194. — The 
 madrigal, 195. — Poets of the song-books, 196. — Dowland, Morley, and 
 other Elizabethan musicians, 198. — Thomas Campion, 199. — His metri- 
 cal felicity, 200. — Songs of the drama, 201. — Dekker, Nash, and other 
 contemporaries of Shakespeare, 202. — ^The songs of Shakespeare, 203. 
 — Metrical variety and adequacy of the song-writers, 204. — Folk-lore 
 and balladry as sources of Elizabethan songs, 205. — Fletcher and 
 Jonson as writers of songs, 206. — Heywood's songs and Webster's, 208. 
 
 Chapter XII v 
 
 EPIC, NARRATIVE, AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 Elizabethan epic verse, 209. — The historical epics of Daniel and 
 Drayton, 211. — Life and literary activity of Drayton, 212. — Warner 
 and other writers of historical verse, 213. — Erotic narrative verse, 
 214. — Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 215. — Venus and Adonis and 
 Lucrece, 216. — Lodge, Marston, and others in like verse, 217. — Sir John 
 Davies and his poetry, 218. — The political verse of Greville and 
 Daniel's Musophilus, 219. — Drayton's Polyolbion, 220. — The Spen- 
 serians, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, 221. — Elizabethan eclogues and 
 pastorals, 223. — William Browne as a pastoral poet, 225. — The pas- 
 toral ideal, 227-228. 
 
 Chapter XIII 
 
 JONSON AND THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 Life of Jonson, 229. — Every Man in His Humor and the Jonsonian 
 theory of "humors," 230. — Its popularity and imitators, 231. — Jonson 
 and the war of the theaters, 232. — Satire on the Elizabethan stage, 
 233. — Personal allusions in Every Man Out of His Humor and other 
 plays, 234. — Poetaster and Dekker's reply, Satiromastix, 236. — Shake- 
 speare and the "war," 238. — The allusion in Hamlet to the "war," 
 239. — Senecan and other plays on Roman history, 240. — Shakespeare's 
 Julius CcBsar, 240. — ^Jonson's Sejanus and Catiline, 241. — Jonson's 
 collaboration in Eastvuard Hoe, 242. — Volpone and Jonson's larger 
 views of comedy, 243. — The Alchemist and other comedies of London 
 scene, 244. — The last plays of Jonson, 244. — The non-dramatic poetry 
 of Jonson, 245. — Its classicality and sense of finish, 246. — Jonson's 
 catholicity of taste, 248. — His unparalleled influence on the trend of 
 English literature, 249. 
 
 Chapter XIV 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, WEBSTER, AND THE HEYDAY OF 
 ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 
 
 Range and variety of Elizabethan tragedy, 250. — Seneca and 
 English tragedy, 250. — Influence of Kyd and Marlowe on Shakespeare, 
 251. — Romeo and Juliet^ 252. — Shakespeare, Jonson, and others in plays 
 on classical story, 253. — Antony and Cleopatra, 255. — Marlowe and 
 
CONTENTS xiil 
 
 Chapman in tragedy on modern foreign history, 255. — Other dramas 
 of this type, 257. — The tragedy of revenge, a revival of Kyd by 
 Marston, 257. — Hamlet's place in this group, 258. — Chettle's and 
 Tourneur's tragedies of revenge, 259. — Tragedies of perverted woman- 
 hood, 260. — Webster, his IVhite Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, and 
 other plays, 261. — Shakespeare's Othello, the master tragedy of jeal- 
 ousy, 264. — Kinff Lear, Macbeth, 265. — The tragic art of Shakespeare, 
 266. — Its growth and development, 267. — Shifting of Shakespeare's 
 point of view with advancing life, 269. — General qualities of Eliza- 
 bethan tragedy and of Shakespeare's, 269. — Shakespeare's attitude 
 towards women, 270-271. 
 
 Chapter XV 
 
 TRANSLATION IN VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 Elizabethan interest in foreign literatures, 272. — Range and di- 
 versity of Elizabethan translation, 273. — Translations of the classics, 
 274. — Life and education of George Chapman, 274. — His translation 
 of Homer, 275. — North's Plutarch, Holland as a translator, 278. — 
 Translations from the Italian, Harington's Orlando, 280. — Painter's 
 Palace of Pleasure and other like collections of Italian tales, 281. — 
 Use of these as sources for drama, 283. — Other works translated, 284. 
 — Translations from the Spanish, 284. — Shelton's Don Quixote, 285. — 
 Translations from the French, 285. — Florio's Montaigne, 286. — Trans- 
 lation of the English Bible, 286. — Tyndale and the Bible, 287. — 
 Coverdale and the Great Bible, 288. — The Bishops' and other Bibles, 
 289. — The Authorized Version of the Bible, 290-201. 
 
 Chapter XVI 
 
 HISTORY, DIVINITY, AND OTHER PROSE OF CONTEMPO- 
 RARY COMMENT 
 
 Elizabethan conception of history, 292. — William Camden and his 
 works, 292. — The Histories of England of Hayward, Speed, and 
 Daniel, 293. — Histories of foreign countries, Grimestone and Knolles, 
 294. — Raleigh and his History of the World, 295. — Antiquarian writ- 
 ings, Stow's Survey of London, 297. — Sir Henry Wotton and his 
 literary projects, 298. — Educational works, state documents, and minor 
 prose writings, 299. — Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft and 
 the literary works of King James, 301. — Books of travel, Moryson's 
 Itinerary, Coryate, Lithgow, and Sandys, 302. — Greville's Life of 
 Sidney, 304. — Jonson's Discoveries, 305. — Theological and controver- 
 sial writings, 306. — Calvin and the Puritan ideal of church and 
 state, 308. — Richard Hooker, his life and personality, 309. — The Lavas 
 of Ecclesiastical Polity, 311. — Its service to the Established Church, 
 its limitations and style, 312. — ^Donne's Sermons and the Contempla- 
 tions of Hall, 314. — Minor theologians and pulpiters, 315. 
 
 Chapter XVII 
 
 J. 
 
 ELIZABETHAN SATIRE, THE EPIGRAM, AND THE 
 " CHARACTER " 
 
 Nature and form of satire, 316. — The Roman satirists in their 
 influence on English satire, 317. — Wyatt the earliest English imitator 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 of classical satire, 318. — Hake and Gascoigne, 319. — The Satires of 
 Donne, 319. — Those of Lodge, 321. — The satires of Hall, 322. — 
 Obscurity in poetry, 323. — The satires of Marston, 324. — Suppression 
 of satirical writings by ecclesiastical authority, 326. — Elizabethan epi- 
 grams, 326. — Epigrams of the reign of James, 327. — Jonson as an 
 epigrammatist, 328. — Irregular satire in prose, pamphlets, and broad- 
 sides, 329. — Puritan attacks on social abuses, Stubb's Anatomy of 
 Abuse, 330. — ^The " Character," its origin and forerunners, 331. — The 
 Characters of Hall, 332. — Sir Thomas Overbury, his tragic death, 333. 
 — His Characters, 334.— Breton's imitations of the character and the 
 essay, 335. — Minor character-writing, 336. 
 
 Chapter XVIII 
 
 BACON, JURIST, PHILOSOPHER, AND ESSAYIST 
 
 Life of Francis Bacon, 337. — His friendship with Essex and enmity 
 with Coke, 338. — ^Bacon and Elizabeth, 339. — His conduct towards 
 Essex, 340. — His honors in the reign of James, 340. — His disgrace, 341. 
 — The Advancement of Learning, 342. — The Great Instauration, 343. 
 — The Baconian induction, 344. — His place as a philosopher, 345. — 
 His literary work, the Essays, 346. — Their masterly style and worldly 
 wisdom, 347. — Variety of Bacon's literary style, 349. — Bacon's mistrust 
 of English, 350. — His interest in masques his only touch with the 
 drama, 350. — The verse of Bacon, its mediocrity and pessimism, 351. 
 — Shakespeare and Bacon, 354-356. 
 
 Chapter XIX 
 
 DONNE AND HIS PLACE AMONG LYRICAL POETS 
 
 The life and education of John Donne, 357. — His early poetry, 
 its realism, 359. — His secular lyrical poetry, 360. — His scholarship, 
 the vogue of his poetry and his careless attitude towards it, 361. — 
 His romantic marriage, 361. — Years of poverty and depression, Bia- 
 thanatos, controversial writings, 363. — Mistakes about Donne, "The 
 metaphysical school," 364. — Qualities of the poetry of Donne, 365. — 
 The freedom of his versification and elaboration of his stanza, 366. 
 — The abstraction of his ideas and originality of his thought and 
 style, 367. — His use of conceit, 368. — Influence of Donne on later 
 poets, 371. — William Drummond, his life and reading, 373. — His 
 poetry, 374. — His occasional verse and others works, 375. — The posi- 
 tion of Donne among lyrical poets, 376-377. 
 
 Chapter XX 
 
 DRAMA AT THE UNIVERSITIES, THE PASTORAL DRAMA, 
 AND THE MASQUE 
 
 Early performance of plays at schools and at the universities, 377. 
 — The Parnassus trilogy at Oxford, 379. — Academic estimates of 
 Shakespeare and Jonson, 381. — Allegorical college plays, Lingua, 381. 
 — Prevalence at the universities of dramatic entertainments, 382. — 
 Latin tragedies and comedies, 383. — Ignoramus and King James' ap- 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 preciatlon of it, 384. — Nature of pastoral drama, 384. — The pastoral 
 element in earlier Elizabethan comedies, 385. — ^Jonson and Shake- 
 speare, and the pastoral, 385. — The true pastoral drama, Daniel's 
 Queen's Arcadia, 386. — Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, 388. — Other 
 minor pastoral dramas, 389. — ^Antiquity of masquing, 391. — ^The 
 masque defined, 391. — Daniel's masques and others', 393. — ^The pre- 
 eminence of Jonson as a writer of masques, 393. — His development 
 of the antimasque, 394. — Masques on the occasion of the marriage 
 of the Princess Elizabeth, 395. — Allegory and classical reference of 
 the Jacobean masque, 396. — Other contemporary pageantry, 396. — 
 Masques in the plays of Shakespeare and others, 397-398. 
 
 Chapter XXI 
 SHAKESPEARE AND THE NEW DRAMA OF FLETCHER 
 
 Chronology of the dramatic authors of Shakespeare's time, 399. — 
 Tragicomedy, 400. — The life of John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, 
 400. — Their collaboration in the writing of plays, 402. — Criteria 
 of contrast in their work and in that of Massinger, 403. — Change 
 in the popular dramatic taste, in the earlier years of James, 404. — 
 Philaster the typical tragicomedy, 405. — Other plays of the type, 406. 
 — The " dramatic romances " of Shakespeare, their contrasts with 
 the tragicomedy of Fletcher, 407. — Pericles, 408. — Cymbeline and The 
 Winter's Tale, 409. — The Tempest, 411. — The romances of Shake- 
 speare unmarked by any deterioration in art, 412. — Later years of 
 Shakespeare, 413. — His probable association with Fletcher in Henry 
 VIII and The Tivo Noble Kinsmen, 414. — Fletcher's comedies of man- 
 ners, 415— His romantic plays and their levy on Spanish sources, 416. 
 — The Maid's Tragedy, Bonduca, and other serious plays of Fletcher, 
 417. — Fletcher the completest of English dramatists, 419. 
 
 England and literature at the death of Shakespeare, 421. — New 
 books of the time and old ones reprinted, 422. — ^Relative popularity 
 of the dramatists and other authors as witnessed by the contempo- 
 rary demand for their printed works, 424. — The acknowledged pre- 
 eminence of Shakespeare, 425. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY, 427. 
 INDEX, 460. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE DURING THE 
 LIFETIME OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 WHEN Shakespeare was born, in the year 1564, Eliza- 
 beth had been on her throne for six years and had 
 already gained, by the steadiness of her conduct and the 
 wisdom of her counsels, the loyal affections and support of 
 her people. King Henry's reign towards its close had de- 
 generated into a reign of terror; and incompetency ruled 
 throughout the government of the child Edward. More recent 
 had been the bloody reprisals of unhappy and bigoted Queen 
 Mary in her misguided endeavors to restore officially to her 
 country the supplanted older faith. England had swung in 
 these three reigns from Rome to Geneva, and from Geneva 
 back to Rome, impelled by the fiat of monarchs and not by 
 popular revulsions of behef. But these things were now 
 memories of the past. What neither the example of Lutheran 
 Germany nor the despotic will of Henry could effect, the fires 
 of Smithfield had accomplished. England was at last become, 
 if not wholly Protestant, at least once and forever hostile to 
 the pretensions of Rome; and the menace of an ill-assorted 
 union of England with Spain, the danger that England might 
 sink, like the Netherlands, into a mere province of the uni- 
 versal Spanish dominion, had vanished with the resolute 
 refusal of Elizabeth to accept the hand of King Philip. 
 
 In 1564 Queen Elizabeth was thirty-one years of age, a 
 capable and imperious sovereign, skilled in the tortuous 
 diplomacy of the age, unerring in her power to discern and 
 employ men competent for the task of government, and 
 
2 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 devoted with the whole strength of her keen intellectual 
 nature to the welfare of England. The queen's subjects at 
 large knew little of her niggardliness in money affairs, of her 
 want of religious conviction, or the doubles and turns of the 
 royal policy in its frequently short-sighted opportunism; but 
 her immediate servants had learned that even by devious 
 courses and without the stay of a strong moral principle, 
 Elizabeth might be trusted to steer a course safe and true 
 among the quicksands of international intrigue; and in their 
 trust was begotten the larger trust of the nation. Elizabeth 
 had acquiesced in the accomplished fact of the French recovery 
 of Calais; but she wrested from Francis and Mary Stuart, a 
 year or two later, the withdrawal of the French garrison from 
 the Scottish town of Leith and the acknowledgment that 
 the realms of England and Ireland appertained of right to 
 her. Elizabeth failed to obtain the papal recognition of her 
 legitimacy and her right to succeed to the crown; but she 
 curbed the reactionary zeal of her sister's clergy as she held 
 in leash the violence of expectant Protestantism, and in the 
 chaos of the religious uncertainty of the first few years of her 
 reign achieved the foundations of a toleration of opinion, if 
 not of worship, which the other European countries of her 
 age knew not. Moreover Elizabeth was committed now, 
 once and for all, to the policy of her father by the passing of the 
 act of royal supremacy in the church, by her restoration of the 
 prayer-book, and by her decisive refusal either to admit a 
 papal nuncio into her realm or to send an envoy to the Coun- 
 cil of Trent. 
 
 It is difficult to realize the poverty of English literature 
 in the first years of Elizabeth's reign and appreciate how little 
 the age had advanced, despite the new learning, towards the 
 flowering time that was so near at hand. Aside from ser- 
 mons, controversial pamphlets, and chronicle histories, the 
 chief books reprinted in these years were Elyot's Governor, 
 the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, now turned into English, 
 and the Colloquies of Erasmus. In poetry the Songs and 
 Sonnets of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt 
 and Others, popularly known as TotteVs Miscellany, attained 
 
LITERATURE IN 1564 3 
 
 a third edition by the year of the accession of the queen; 
 and the notable, if lugubrious, collection of historical "com- 
 plaints," The Mirror for Magistrates, a second in 1563. 
 Other poetry there was little, if we except Tusser's easy rimes 
 on The Hundreth Good Points of Husbandry, Churchyard's 
 "flyting," as the Scotch call such literary squabbling, with 
 one "Camell," and the Eclogues of Barnabe Googe. In the 
 drama as little had appeared. An interlude or so of John 
 Heywood, Lusty Juventus, The Nice Wanton, and Thersites, 
 these were nearly all. Perhaps the Diccon of Bedlam of the 
 Stationers' Register of 1563 was Gammer Gurtons Needle, 
 though of this we can not be sure. But an interest in poetry 
 was awakening. Chaucer's complete works, Lydgate's 
 Siege of Thebes and Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman, all 
 were reprinted in 1 561; and the works of John He)Awood 
 appeared collected in the following year. The ancients, too, 
 were now translated into English. Besides Surrey's earlier 
 attempts of 1557, Phaer's translation of Vergil's Mneid came 
 two years later, carried on to nine books by 1562; while 
 Jasper Heywood and Alexander Nevile set forth four of the 
 Senecan tragedies in English, and Nicholas Udall, the well 
 known author of Ralph Roister Doister (long since written 
 but not yet printed), "newly corrected" his Publius Teren- 
 tius. Flowers of Latin Speaking. Translations in part of 
 Sallust, Cicero, Plutarch, Quintius Curtius, Cato, and Caesar 
 were printed within these few years, and Guevara's popular 
 Golden Book, Castiglione's Courtier, and Macchiavelli's Art 
 of War y^&ie. Englished for the unlettered. More suggestive 
 of what was to come was the translation of two Italian stories, 
 Titus and Gisippus and Romeus and Juliet, both shortly to be 
 employed as subjects for drama; while the beginnings of 
 that deep interest in everything Italian that characterizes 
 Elizabethan literature at large are disclosed in the informing 
 works of William Thomas, his History of Italy, his Italian 
 Grammar, and Dictionary of that language. 
 
 The mental awakening of England, which some still dare 
 to call the Renaissance, and the similar earlier awakening 
 in Italy offer two marked contrasts: a difference in character 
 
4 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 and a difference in the tardiness with which that movement 
 proceeded to its results in the northern country. In Italy 
 the Renaissance had been for the most part unmoral, and the 
 highest aesthetic perception and scholarly tastes had often 
 existed in men whose lives were marked by moral obliquity 
 and blackened with crime. There the pleasures of the world's 
 newly stirred curiosity were largely the virtuoso's delight in 
 profane learning. When this reached deeper, it stimulated 
 the frank philosophical cynicism of Macchiavelli's Prince, or 
 raised ideals of the perfect man living in society as depicted 
 in The Courtier. In Italy, the new world which the study of 
 the ancients had opened to the spirit of man reacted imme- 
 diately and mainly on literature, art, and society. In England, 
 on the contrary, the new learning, as it was there called, took 
 on from the first a more practical and a more ethical turn 
 The attitude of such men as Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, 
 and those who brought the study of Greek to England was 
 notable for its moral tone. The new knowledge was to be 
 studied as a means to the better understanding of man in his 
 relations to man and in his obligations to God. This was 
 wide of the virtuoso's pleasures in the beauties of ancient 
 classical art and the niceties of ancient classical learning; 
 and hence it was a long time in England before the spirit of 
 the new learning was felt to the full in works of art. In a 
 word, although the bud was swelling and ready to burst about 
 the time that Shakespeare was born, the flower of the Renais- 
 sance came into bloom only after Queen Elizabeth had been 
 on her throne for a generation. The poetical activities of 
 Sidney and of Spenser begin, at earliest, in the late seventies, 
 and Lyly's Euphues appeared in 1579. It is doubtful if 
 Marlowe, much less Shakespeare, wrote anything permanent 
 before 1586; and Hooker and Bacon first emerge from con- 
 troversy into authorship in the nineties. It is true that certain 
 qualities which came to distinguish Elizabethan poetry are 
 discoverable in Wyatt and Surrey, both of whom died while 
 Henry VIII was yet reigning, and it is equally certain that 
 men like Roger Ascham, the famous tutor to the children of 
 that sovereign, and Latimer, one of the most eloquently out- 
 
 fi 
 
TUDOR HISTORICAL LITERATURE 5 
 
 spoken of Henry's preachers, presaged, in form as well as in 
 matter, certain abiding characteristics of Elizabethan prose. 
 Nevertheless, it is the fruit and not the flower of promise that 
 we gather in the harvest; and little has the student of English 
 poetry or English prose to lose (if we except some half-dozen 
 books, all of them already mentioned), who begins his study 
 of Elizabethan literature with the works which appeared, in 
 print at least, at a time subsequent to the birth of Shakespeare. 
 
 It is a commonplace of English history that the vigilant 
 and centralized monarchy of Henry VII fostered in English- 
 men a sense of nationality to which they had become almost 
 complete strangers during the long feuds of the Wars of the 
 Roses. The national consciousness, once reawakened, waxed 
 strong in the earlier days of Henry VIII; and, though sub- 
 mitted to a terrible ordeal in the political and religious per- 
 secutions that followed, answered with enthusiasm the appeals 
 of Elizabeth to patriotism and rested firm in its appreciation 
 of her good government at home and her success in foreign 
 politics. Literature responded at once to this awakened 
 national spirit in a renewed interest in the past evinced in the 
 translation and republication, for example, of such history as 
 Ralph Higden's Polychronicon and in a revival of the popu- 
 larity of works like Lydgate's Falls of Princes and Malory's 
 Morte Darthur in which the historical instinct vies with the 
 love of romance. A little later came the heyday of the Eng- 
 lish chronicle history which flourished in prose, in verse, at 
 large and in epitome, in collections and in separate tracts, 
 poems, and dramas. Sidney died too early to have felt to the 
 full the literary reflex of this revival of national spirit. But 
 it was this spirit no less than the love of poetry which inspired 
 a fam.iliar passage of The Defense of Poesy, which quotation 
 can never stale: "Certainly I must confess my own barbar- 
 ousness, I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas 
 that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet: 
 and yet is it sung but by some blind crouder with no rougher 
 voice than rude style." 
 
 The amount and variety of the literature of the sixteenth 
 century which took English historical and legendary themes 
 
6 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 for its subject-matter are things commonly forgotten. This 
 Hterature began towards the end of the reign of Henry VHI 
 with Grafton's printing and continuation of the metrical 
 chronicle of Hardyng and his edition of Hall. In the two 
 succeeding reigns such books were discouraged; Gardiner 
 even discerned concealed heresy in the political examples of 
 The Mirror for Magistrates, and the projected publication of 
 that work, in 1555, was stayed. On the accession of Eliza- 
 beth the publication of historical literature began anew with 
 a third edition of the Chronicle of Fabyan. In 1563 Grafton 
 brought out An Abridgment of the Chroncicles of England 
 which attained a fourth edition in 1572. He was rivaled in 
 this undertaking by John Stow in 1565 with A Summary of 
 English Chronicles which ran through ten editions up to 1604 
 and was the accepted short history of England of its day. 
 Before a decade had elapsed John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, 
 first published in 1563 and popularly known as The Book of 
 Martyrs, had gone into a second edition; Grafton had abridged 
 his Abridgment which still stretched, however, "from the 
 creation of the world to the year 1566," and extended it into 
 his Chronicle at Large and Mere History of the Affairs of 
 England and the Kings of the Same, 1 569; while Stow, in 
 association with Bishop Parker, brought to the press three 
 earlier Latin chroniclers, Matthew of Westminster, Matthew 
 of Paris, and Thomas of Walsingham, and was busily at work 
 in gathering materials for his Chronicles of England, 1580, 
 and his Annals, first printed in 1592. In 1577 was pub- 
 lished the most important of Elizabethan prose histories, 
 The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, by Ralph 
 Holinshed, a second edition appearing under the title, 
 Chronicles of England from William the Conqueror, in 1587. 
 To this enumeration of chronicles may be added the scattered 
 biographies of historical personages from The Life of Cardinal 
 Wolsey by Cavendish, written in the reign of Mary, and Sir 
 John Hayward's several lives of English kings, to Bacon's 
 Life of Henry VH, dating late in the reign of King James. 
 
 Nor was the prevalent interest in English history less not- 
 able among the poets whose flights, if by no means so sustained 
 
"THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES" 7 
 
 as those of the chroniclers, were far more frequent. The Mir- 
 ror for Magistrates was one of the earHest fruits of the EHza- 
 bethan press. It is commonly spoken of as projected by Sir 
 Thomas Sackville, one of the authors of GorboJuc, though he 
 was really no more than the contributor of the one "legend," 
 that of the Duke of Buckingham, which reached a real poetic 
 level on a plane of mediocrity. The work was originally under- 
 taken in consequence of the revived popularity of Lydgate's 
 Falls of Princes. This origin gives to The Mirror for Magis- 
 trates a medievalism of tone which is enhanced by the sameness 
 of mood, the moralizing, the somewhat old-fashioned versi- 
 fication of the majority of the "legends," and their connection 
 by an artificial thread. The Mirror was a growth and accre- 
 tion. The nineteen "legends" which constitute the first 
 edition, that of 1559, are the work of six writers, of whom 
 William Baldwin is the chief. They concern events from the 
 days of the two Roger Mortimers and Thomas of Woodstock 
 (1329-1392) to the tragedy of George, Duke of Clarence 
 (1478). The second edition, 1563, reprinted these "leg- 
 ends," and added eight more by several authors, three of whom 
 had already contributed to the first. Nearly all these "le- 
 gends " concern personages of the time of Richard III. In 
 1574, John Higgins added seventeen "legends" of mythical 
 and Roman Britain; and, as they preceded the other stories 
 in point of time, called the new book The First Part of the 
 Mirror for Magistrates. Four years later a rival continuation 
 called The Second Part of the Mirror for Magistrates "con- 
 taining the Fall of the unfortunate Princes of this Land from 
 the Conquest of Caesar unto the coming of Duke William the 
 Conqueror" was published, the work of Thomas Blenner- 
 hasset, Baldwin's work thus becoming the third part. Blen- 
 nerhasset's collection contains twelve "legends." In 1587 
 Higgins added to his "first part" no less than twenty-three 
 stories, into which several Roman emperors intrude with a 
 few further tales of modern personages by Churchyard and 
 others. The last edition of The Mirror, 16 10, picks and 
 chooses from the earlier ones and adds eleven "legends," one 
 by Drayton, the rest by the editor, Richard Niccols. We have 
 
8 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 thus a corpus of nearly a hundred "legends" varying in length 
 from fifty to four hundred lines each, the work of some fifteen 
 authors, extending over a period of fifty years and appearing 
 in eight issues. We shall defer inquiring into the historical 
 epics of Daniel, Drayton, and Warner to a later place in this 
 book. All were of this general type. This impetus towards 
 historical writing continued far into the reign of King James j 
 although it was in the more patriotic times of Elizabeth that 
 it reached its height and begot in the English drama that pecu- 
 liarly typical and effective group of plays which is known as 
 the English chronicle histories.^ 
 
 Turning more specifically to the early prose chronicles, 
 it is to be remembered that the learned in Tudor days still 
 looked askant upon any work of a solid nature written in the 
 vernacular prose. The sanction of centuries of scholarship 
 demanded the use of the learned tongue, and when men came 
 to cast their thoughts into English, it was with apologies for 
 such a departure from custom and wont. For example it is 
 thus that the learned Ascham writes in 1545: 
 
 And although to have written this book either in Latin or Greek 
 had been more easier and fit for my trade in study, yet nevertheless, 
 I supposing it no point of honesty, that my commodity should stop 
 and hinder any part either of the pleasure or profit of many, have 
 written this English matter in the English tongue for English men. 
 
 Elsewhere Ascham makes clear the condition of the time : 
 
 And as for the Latin or Greek tongue, everything is so excellently 
 done in them, that none can do better. In the English tongue, con- 
 trary, everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and 
 handling, that no man can do worse. For therein the least learned 
 for the most part, have been always most ready to write. And they 
 which had least hope in Latin, have been most bold in English; when 
 surely every man that is most ready to talk, is not most able to write. 
 
 These passages of Ascham present by no means the biased 
 and prejudiced opinion of a scholar who failed to appreciate 
 the work of his own age in dwelling in the past. As a matter 
 of fact, few of the familiar books of the modern world were 
 
 ^ The foregoing three paragraphs are repeated in part from the 
 author's English Chronicle Play, 1 902. 
 
LATIN EXAMPLE AND ENGLISH PROSE 9 
 
 in existence when Ascham wrote. As Macaulay put it: "In 
 the time of Henry VIII and Edward VI, a person who did not 
 read Greek and Latin could read nothing, or next to nothing. 
 The Italian was the only modern language which possessed 
 anything that could be called a literature. All the valuable 
 books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe 
 would hardly have filled a single shelf. England did not yet 
 possess Shakespeare's plays and The Faery Queen, nor France 
 Montaigne's Essays, nor Spain Don Quixote; .... Chau- 
 cer, Gower, Froissart, Comines, Rabelais nearly complete the 
 Hst." 
 
 It was in the nature of things, then, that books so thor- 
 oughly national as those which discoursed of English deeds 
 and English heroes should be cast in the English mold. Sir 
 Thomas More might write in Latin of his imaginary common- 
 wealth in Utopia, or Bacon, much later, shudder to trust his 
 weighty philosophical cargo in the same vessel with The Faery 
 Queen or Hamlet; but when it came to the glorification of 
 English deeds and English kings, the English tongue was 
 clearly the only fitting medium. We ma/ thus affirm that 
 th_is^utburst of historical and kindred writing had much to do 
 with the development of English vernacular prose, and in con- 
 firming thoughtful men to a preference for their own tongue 
 over outworn and medieval Latin. 
 
 Once more, nearly all early Elizabethan English prose 
 moved in the leading-strings of Latin. "It had been more 
 easier and fit for my trade in study," says Ascham once more, 
 "to have written this book either in Latin or Greek"; and 
 when that excellent old teacher discourses of pedagogy his 
 thoughts are riveted on the study of the classics. To write 
 good prose was then to emulate Cicero; to write good English 
 was to transfer Latin terms and Latin constructions to the 
 modern tongue. To the present day we recognize a difference 
 between the formality of the bookish tongue and everyday 
 colloquial speech. And that difference arose out of the Latin 
 foundations of English style. Until recently grammarians 
 of English used an antiquated Latin desk full of pigeon-holes, 
 if it may so be put, elaborately constructed to contain, each 
 
lo THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 in its place, the many rules of Latin grammar. True, it might 
 be difficult to find English material to fill all these compart- 
 ments allotted to rules and exceptions. But for what was 
 language given us, if not that the grammarians might wreak 
 their ingenuity upon it ? And so our tongue was contorted and 
 analyzed, distinguished and subtilized until nearly every 
 pigeon-hole in the Latin desk was filled. Here, again, was a 
 recognition of the effect of Latin on English. But it is to be 
 most carefully observed that, though often devout almost to 
 slavishness in the worship of classical models, the writers of 
 Elizabeth's day recognized to the full — as some others have 
 not — that to confuse the vocabularies of two tongues is to 
 write in neither. The Latinism of the Elizabethans is a Lat- 
 inism of construction, not a Latinism of vocabulary. They 
 could write "without all question" (sine omni dnhitatione), 
 speak of "the ill" (malt) for bad men, or say, like Milton, 
 He, after Eve seduced, unminded shrunk 
 Into the wood fast by; 
 but it was reserved for Sir Thomas Browne, a subject of 
 Charles H, to write "Embrace not the opacous and blind side 
 of opinions, but that which looks most luciferously or influen- 
 tially unto goodness"; and for Dr. Samuel Johnson, a subject 
 of the Georges, to define, for simplicity's sake, a fit as "a 
 paroxysm or exacerbation of any intermittent distemper." 
 
 By far the most interesting of the prose chronicles of Eng- 
 land, enumerated above, is that of Holinshed; for aside from 
 the importance and excellence of this work, it was to this book 
 that Shakespeare turned most frequently for the material of 
 his chronicle plays. Ralph, or Raphael, Holinshed is first 
 met early in the reign of Elizabeth as a translator or utility 
 writer in the printing office of one Reginald Wolfe. Wolfe 
 seems to have been a man of ambition and ideas. He had 
 designed a universal history and a cosmography which was 
 to include elaborate illustrations and maps. He had inherited 
 the notes of the indefatigable librarian and antiquary of Henry 
 Vni, John Leland, who in his peregrinations claimed to have 
 visited "almost every bay, river, lake, mountain, valley, moor, 
 heath, wood, city, castle, manor house and college in the land," 
 
HARRISON'S "DESCRIPTION OF ENGLAND" ii 
 
 who sought to collect manuscripts from the dismantled mon- 
 asteries for the king's library, and who sedulously hived in- 
 formation and antiquarian, topographical, and literary material 
 for more than thirty years. But "after five and twenty year 
 travail spent therein," Wolfe died, and his successors, alarmed 
 at the impracticable magnitude of his undertaking, reduced 
 his plan to a history and description of the British Islands. 
 
 Holinshed continued in their employ, and became respon- 
 sible for the greater part of the work. But others, likewise, 
 were associated in it: among them William Harrison, at that 
 time chaplain to Lord Cobham, Edmund Campion, the not- 
 able Jesuit missionary and martyr, and Richard Stanihurst, 
 an eccentric Irish scholar and translator of Vergil. Stanihurst 
 contributed the greater part of the history of his own country, 
 adapting it chiefly from Giraldus Cambrensis. Holinshed 
 was assisted likewise in that part of his work w^hich dealt with 
 Scotland; and his sources here were chiefly the histories of 
 Hector Boece and John Major. It is to Harrison that we owe 
 the delightful prefatory Description of England, the founda- 
 tion book of any knowledge at first hand of the England of 
 Elizabeth. Several qualities conspire to give this work its 
 permanent value. First of all, Harrison tells us what we want 
 to know, from the order of the nobility and the constitution 
 of bishoprics to the nature of the houses people lived in, the 
 clothes they v/ore, and the hour at which they dined. Sec- 
 ondly, Harrison's style is ever direct, colloquial, and racy in its 
 originality of view and command of idiomatic English. Again, 
 the personality of Harrison, which is always present, is most 
 engaging in his honesty, outspokenness, and sanity of attitude. 
 The naivete of Harrison's nature, too, is unceasingly enter- 
 taining. It was this that caused him to find nothing irrelevant 
 in a digression as to how he obtained tulips for his garden 
 from Holland or in the circumstantial details of Mrs. Har- 
 rison's brewing of March beer. Harrison includes the com- 
 monplace and discusses the obvious, and as neither the com- 
 monplace nor the obvious of the England of his day is such 
 to the reader of the twentieth century, he contrives to give us 
 the "very age and body of the time, his form and pressure." 
 
12 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 Thus, in the chapter devoted to the degrees of people in 
 the commonwealth of England, we are informed with a search- 
 ing insight into human nature quite applicable to to-day: 
 
 Whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, whoso abideth in the 
 university, giving his mind unto his book, or professeth physic and 
 the liberal sciences, or beside his service in the room of a captain in 
 the wars, or good counsel given at home, whereby this common- 
 wealth is benefited, can live without manual labor, and thereto is 
 able to bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he 
 shall for money have a coat and arms bestowed upon him by heralds 
 (who in the charter of the same do of custom pretend antiquity and 
 service, and many gay things), and thereunto, being made so good 
 cheap, be called master (which is the title that men give to esquires 
 and gentlemen), and reputed for a gentleman ever after. 
 
 Elsewhere, affording more direct information, Harrison 
 tells us: 
 
 With us the nobility, gentry, and students do ordinarily go to din- 
 ner at eleven before noon, and to supper at five, or between five and 
 six at afternoon. The merchants dine and sup seldom before twelve 
 at noon, and six at night, especially in London. The husbandmen 
 dine also at high noon as they call it, and sup at seven or eight; but 
 out of the term in our universities the scholars dine at ten. As for 
 the poorest sort they generally dine and sup when they may, so that 
 to talk of their order of repast it were but a needless matter. 
 
 To return to Holinshed, his part in the Chronicles, aside 
 from general supervision, was the compiling of the history of 
 England from the coming of Brute to 1577. As thus issued, 
 Holinshed's Chronicles appeared in two large folio volumes 
 illustrated with portraits, pictures of battles, and the like 
 and enjoyed an immediate success. Holinshed died in 1580, 
 and the second edition, of 1587, was edited by John Hooker 
 alias Vowell with the help once more of several co-workers, 
 notable among them John Stow, author of the Survey of 
 London. The style of Holinshed's Chronicles is clear and 
 dignified, though little distinguished by the graces. The 
 editors strove to get at the truth as they understood it, and 
 quoted an enormous array of authorities. Moreover the 
 work is patriotic and Protestant to the core, and absolutely 
 
HOLINSHED'S "CHRONICLES" 13 
 
 honest in its faiths and convictions. However, the Eliza- 
 bretTian conception of history vt^as Hmited. It knew^ nothing 
 of historical perspective and weighed scarcely at all the rela- 
 tive importance of the events which it detailed. It knew very 
 little of historical portraiture, but followed the caricatures 
 which partisanship had created, and repeated the tales which 
 gossip had forged. Comets and pestilence were God's por- 
 tents of his intervention in the affairs of men. Droughts and 
 tempests, like contemporary murders and trials for witch- 
 craft, were fit subjects for its pages with the progresses of 
 kings and the falls and misfortunes of princes. Between 
 More's distorted "biography" of Richard III, the enemy of 
 the House of Lancaster, and Bacon's historical portraiture 
 of the first Tudor Henry, there is little historical writing 
 approaching our modern ideals and conceptions; for the 
 method of annals, the facile and thoughtless art of the narrator, 
 the simplicity of the repeater of tales and rumors, mark Hall^ 
 Holinshed, and Stow alike. Shakespeare used his materials 
 in Holinshed, as elsewhere, honestly, even faithfully; and it 
 is always a new surprise to turn from one of his historical 
 plays to the corresponding passages in Holinshed and realize 
 how close is his following: 
 
 Shortly after happened a strange and uncouth wonder, which 
 afterward was the cause of much trouble in the realm of Scotland, as 
 ye shall after hear. It fortuned as Macbeth and Banquo journied 
 towards Forres, where the king then lay, they went sporting by the 
 way together without other company, save only themselves, passing 
 through the woods and fields, when suddenly in the midst of a land, 
 there met them three women in strange and wild apparel, resembling 
 creatures of elder world, whom when they attentively beheld, wonder- 
 ing much at the sight, the first of them spake and said: 'All hail, 
 Macbeth, thane of Glamis!' (for he had lately entered into that dig- 
 nity and office by the death of his father, Sinell). The second of 
 them said: 'Hail, Macbeth, thane of Cawdor!' But the third said: 
 'All hail, Macbeth, that hereafter shalt be king of Scotland!' . . . 
 
 Herewith the aforesaid women vanished immediately out of their 
 sight. This was reputed at the first but some vain fantastical illusion 
 by Macbeth and Banquo, insomuch that Banquo would call Macbeth 
 in jest, king of Scotland. . . . But afterwards the common 
 
14 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 opinion was, that these women were either the weird sisters, that is 
 (as ye would say) the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or 
 fairies, indued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical 
 science, because every thing came to pass as they had spoken. 
 
 Which of us reading this passage for the first time could 
 fail to be surprised that the words "the weird sisters" are 
 borrowed thence by Shakespeare ? Indeed, considering 
 Shakespeare's employment of this ancient quarry and the 
 permanence of the ideas which cultivated men and women 
 have derived from his plays, it may be questioned whether 
 our general conception of the personages of earlier English 
 history have not been derived more from Holinshed than from 
 any other writer. Prince Hal, a wild and roistering youngster, 
 reformed by responsibility into a model sovereign; Hunch- 
 back Richard, malevolent, unrepentant, capable of any 
 crime; "Good Duke Humphrey"; Margaret, Queen of 
 Henry VI, "the she wolf of France"; cool, calculating Boling- 
 broke; wronged, pathetic, and unhappy Katherine, who does 
 not recognize these popular portraits .? And what student of 
 history does not know to how large a degree they are perver- 
 sions of historical facts ? 
 
 Even more popular than the Chronicles was Foxe's Book 
 of Martyrs, printed again and again between its first appear- 
 ance in 1563 and the end of the century. John Foxe had 
 studied at Oxford and resigned his fellowship at Magdalen 
 in 1545 in consequence of his Protestant convictions. There- 
 after he lived much abroad, but returned to England on the 
 accession of Elizabeth and died, in 1587, a prebend at Salis- 
 bury. He appears to have sacrificed preferment in the church 
 to conscientious scruples as to surplices and ceremonials; and 
 it is to his credit that he plead, though in vain, that mercy 
 might be accorded the much persecuted Anabaptists. The 
 portentous title of Foxe's remarkable work reads: "Acts 
 and Monuments of these latter and perilous days, touching 
 matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and de- 
 scribed the great persecutions and horrible troubles that have 
 been wrought and practised by the Romish Prelates, espe- 
 cially in this Realm of England and Scotland, from the year 
 
FOXE'S "BOOK OF MARTYRS" 15 
 
 of our Lord, a thousand unto the time now present." It was 
 later augmented, first by Foxe and then by others, to include 
 "a universal history of the church" at least so far as it con- 
 cerned Christian martyrdom. A late edition of Foxe (1804) 
 contains 2123 large pages in double columns of rather small 
 print, in three volumes, which it is an effort for any but an 
 athlete to wield. Foxe's book received the sanction of the 
 bishops, and an order of the Anglican Convocation of 157 1 
 "placed it in the hall of every bishop in England." In Pro- 
 testant households of standing it lay ever at hand for the old to 
 ponder and for the young to devour. Foxe is vivid, pictur- 
 esque and circumstantial. He had a thesis to defend for the 
 illustration of which the unchristian conduct of Christian men 
 in all ages afforded him only too many terrible examples. 
 Flis work is a huge party pamphlet and is often distorted, 
 unhistorical, and unfair. But it was not more distorted or 
 unfair than were the works which attacked it; and its stanch 
 patriotism and Protestantism, albeit the latter was fanatical, 
 wrought wonders in knitting Englishmen together to repel 
 alike the invasion of Spain and the more insidious efforts of the 
 Jesuits' missions to reclaim Protestant England to the mother 
 faith of Rome. 
 
 There remains a kindred topic. If Englishmen in their 
 re-awakened national consciousness "joyed to read the doings 
 of brave Talbot against the French" and the martial deeds of 
 Edward against the Bruce or Percy against Douglas, no less 
 intense was their interest in their present world, in the ad- 
 venturous spirit that animated Drake to compass the globe 
 or Essex to "singe the beard of the Spanish king" at Cadiz. 
 Martin Frobisher and Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins 
 and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, what heart of English speaking 
 man but warms at the mention of these valiant sea dogs, "old 
 England's ever memorable worthies," their daring on many 
 seas, their buccaneering, their grasp after Spanish gold, their 
 trust in God and in England! Richard Hakluyt — or Hackle- 
 wit, which attests his English origin — was a man of one idea, 
 and that was geography and the history of discovery. He 
 tells us that while a student at Oxford, "I read whatever 
 
i6 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 printed or written discoveries and voyages I found extant, 
 either in Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, French or 
 English languages." Later he became a lecturer on cos- 
 mography and w^as among the first to show "the new lately 
 reformed maps, globes, spheres and other instruments of this 
 art, for demonstration in the public schools." In 1582 
 Hakluyt published his first work. Divers Voyages touching 
 the Discovery of America, and he continued almost to the date 
 of his death, in the same year with Shakespeare, an unwearied 
 collector and investigator in the field of his choice. Like 
 Harrison, Hakluyt was a clergyman and his various livings 
 and preferments gave him the means and the leisure to prose- 
 cute his favorite work. Hakluyt's most noteworthy under- 
 taking was The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Dis- 
 coveries of the English Nation "made by sea or overland to 
 the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any 
 time within the compass of these 1500 years, 1589." The 
 range of this work is extraordinary and the zeal with which 
 the editor labored, collecting, translating, and adapting every 
 account of a voyage on which he could lay hands is altogether 
 unparalleled. The slave trade of Sir John Hawkins and his 
 barter and buccaneering among the Spaniards of the West 
 Indies; Sir Francis Drake and his amazing success in rifling 
 unprotected Peru, with his circumnavigation of the globe to 
 escape reprisal; Sir Humphrey Gilbert's search after gold 
 and the northwest passage, and the heroic death that he found 
 at sea : such are some of the themes of this prose laureate of 
 England's earliest geographical expansion. Variously en 
 larged and rewritten as it was in later editions, Hakluyt's P'^in- 
 cipal Navigations constitutes a marvelous and exceedingly 
 circumstantial piece of evidence of the astonishing activity 
 that preceded the laying of those foundations on which the 
 future empire of England beyond the seas was to rest. While 
 at first curiosity, and then patriotism, seem to have called 
 Hakluyt to his task, he displays a consistent interest in the 
 growth of trade and in the economic aspects of his subject, 
 as we should call them to-day; and again and again we meet 
 with him in the counsels of the newly founded East India 
 
HAKLUYT AND HIS SUCCESSORS 17 
 
 Company or in projects and petitions promoting colonization 
 in Virginia and elsewhere. Hakluyt belongs to other fields 
 than those of literature and yet the dead level of his utihtarian 
 prose is not unbroken at times with a smack of the larger 
 utterance of his age. 
 
 Hakluyt was only the greatest of his class, like Holinshed 
 among the chroniclers. Hakluyt's avowed successor was 
 Samuel Purchase (1577-1626), a Cambridge man, parson of 
 St. Martin's Ludgate. Purchase his Pilgrims, as he called 
 his collection of voyages, was published in 1625 and is a work 
 decidedly below that of Hakluyt in style, arrangement, and 
 editorial judgment. In an earlier work of Purchase, en- 
 titled his Pilgrimage, he had put together a species of gazetteer 
 of previous English voyages of discovery. Besides these 
 greater works, many lesser pamphlets attest English adven- 
 tures on the sea and in strange lands. The Last Fight of the 
 Revenge, described by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1591, is cast in 
 remarkably vivid and honest prose, and may be taken as 
 typical of the epic height which this literature of fact attained 
 at times in the hands of greater writers. The Revenge, single 
 handed, had fought fifteen Spanish ships of war for fifteen 
 hours : 
 
 All the powder of the Revenge to the last barrel was now spent, 
 all her pikes broken, forty of her best men slain, and the most part of 
 the rest hurt. In the beginning of the fight she had but one hundred 
 free from sickness, and four score and ten sick, laid in hold upon the 
 ballast. A small troop to man such a ship, and a weak garrison to 
 resist so mighty an army. By those hundred all was sustained, the 
 volleys, boardings, and enterings of fifteen ships of war, besides those 
 which beat her at large. On the contrary, the Spanish were always 
 supplied with soldiers brought from every squadron: all manner of 
 arms and powder at will. Unto ours there remained no comfort at 
 all, no hope, no supply either of ships, men, or weapons; the masts all 
 beaten overboard, all her tackle cut asunder, her upper work altogether 
 rased, and in effect evened she was with the water, but the very foun- 
 dation or bottom of a ship, nothing being left overhead either for 
 flight or defense. Sir Richard finding himself in this distress, and 
 unable any longer to make resistance, .... commanded the 
 master gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and 
 
i8 THE LITERATURE OF FACT 
 
 sink the ship; that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory 
 to the Spaniards. 
 
 It was then that the Spanish admiral offered honorable 
 ransom and a return to England for all; for he admired the 
 desperate courage of his foes. At last Sir Richard, who was 
 sorely wounded, was conveyed aboard the admiral's ship. 
 From a Dutch writer, who had at first hand the Spanish 
 report of this encounter, we learn that, on the Spanish gal- 
 leon after the fight, and wounded among his enemies, Sir 
 Richard "would carouse three or four glasses of wine and in 
 a bravery take the glasses between his teeth and crush them 
 in pieces and swallow them down." He was dying, and he 
 longed for death. When the supreme moment came "he 
 spake these words" : 
 
 Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for 
 that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought 
 for his country, queen, religion, and honor, whereby my soul most 
 joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it 
 an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his 
 duty as he was bound to do. 
 
 Into the corresponding works of the poets we can not 
 enter here. They were more imaginative and reconstructive, 
 and therefore less true to the actualities of stirring Elizabethan 
 life. The true epic of such an age of action must be close to 
 the deeds it depicts, though this represents but one phase of 
 multiform Elizabethan life. We shall meet with higher 
 ideals than these which are tethered to fact and national wel- 
 fare, but we shall meet with no truer exponents of the material 
 side of the national spirit that made modern England than 
 Holinshed's chronicles of the political and social past of the 
 nation, than Foxe's affirmation -and justification of the 
 Protestant position, or Hakluyt's thousand and one tales of 
 the distant gropings and graspings after empire that laid 
 the beginnings of greater Britain and her dominion over the 
 sea. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 THE medieval conception of the true gentleman excluded 
 books, and culture by means of books. "When 
 amongst knights or gentlemen," says Guevara, "talk is of 
 arms, a gentleman ought to have great shame to say, that he 
 read it, but rather that he saw it. For it is very convenient 
 for the philosopher to recount what he hath read, but the 
 knight or gentleman it becomes to speak of things that he 
 hath done." The gentleman of the Renaissance added to 
 the medieval virtues, which were prowess in war and wisdom 
 at the council table, the new qualities of a love of learning and 
 a taste and knowledge in the arts. The large and diverse 
 interests of Sir Philip Sidney, the mirror and pattern of the 
 Elizabethan gentleman, included athletic address on the 
 tilting field, the theory and practice of war, the training of 
 the courtier and the diplomat, a deep seated veneration for 
 the classics, and the modern man's acquaintance with his own 
 and foreign modern literatures. To Sidney were dedicated, 
 among many other books, Spenser's Shepherds' Calendar, 
 the first edition of Hakluyt's Voyages, and philosophical 
 writings of the Italian skeptic and philosopher, Giordano 
 Bruno; for Sidney was equally interested in the future of 
 English letters and of English colonial ismpire beyond the seas, 
 in the introduction of foreign meters to beautify English poetry, 
 and in the preservation of the balance of Protestant power 
 against the intrigues and encroachments of Philip of Spain. 
 In that beautiful book. The Courtier of Baldassare Castig- 
 lione, we have an engaging picture of the little court of Urbino 
 in the early years of the sixteenth century. There the graces 
 of conduct and the virtues of kindliness abounded; and a 
 sweet and unaff'ected converse, combined with innocent merri- 
 ment, all presided over by the grave but courteous duchess 
 
 19 
 
20 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 of that state. This circle was doubtless not so brilliant as 
 the notable assembly which met in Florence at the fiat of 
 Lorenzo the Magnificent, where Pulci, Ficino, Pico, and 
 Poliziano discoursed learnedly and eloquently of state, art, 
 literature, and philosophy. But at Urbino there was a comity 
 of spirit, a "sweet conversation that is occasioned of an amiable 
 and loving company"; and while we may recognize in its 
 externals traces of that worldliness, lightness, and vanity which 
 rise to the surface like froth in any current of social life, it 
 held before it wholesome and gracious ideals, honoring gentle- 
 ness and delicacy in man no less than in woman and offering 
 a conclusive refutation to the charge that the Italy of the 
 Renaissance was hopelessly abandoned and corrupt. A 
 similar court was that of Margaret of Navarre, patroness of 
 poets and lover of literature, Platonism, and the amenities of 
 gentle social life. Without here anticipating, it is clear that 
 the Sidneian circle of the Countess of Pembroke, that was to 
 come, was not without its precedent in foreign lands. 
 
 Modern English poetry found its earliest cultivation in 
 the select circles of the court. The old sacred drama, originat- 
 ing in the church, had come out into the public places of the 
 market towns; it flourished in York, Chester, Coventry, and 
 was popular and provincial. So, too, the ballad, that truest 
 example of folk-poetry, was tied neither to place nor to poet, 
 but was an utterance of the people at large. On the other 
 hand, Chaucer was a poet of London and the court; Gower, a 
 wealthy gentleman of Kent, attendant on his king, and learned 
 and dull in three languages; while the best of the Scotch 
 Chaucerians, from King James to Dunbar, were either royal 
 or in the royal service. So when English poetry revived to 
 shake off the traditions of medievalism, the first awakening 
 was at court, Henry VIII was an accomplished and affable 
 young man, a lover of the arts, a good musician, and not 
 without claim to an humble rank as a poet; and he was 
 surrounded by "a crew of courtly makers," foremost among 
 them Wyatt and Surrey who were imbued with like tastes and 
 talents. Neither Wyatt nor Surrey intrinsically amount to 
 very much. In form they limp only too often to the tiresome 
 
THE SONNET AND BLANK-VERSE 21 
 
 tune of what was known as Poulter's measure, a verse of alter- 
 nate sixes and sevens: 
 
 So feeble is the thread, that doth the burden stay. 
 Of my poor Hfe, in heavy pHght that falleth in decay; 
 That but it have elsewhere some aid or some succors, 
 The running spindle of my fate anew shall end his course. 
 
 Inexpressibly tiresome is this kind of thing when prolonged 
 to any degree. In substance, too, the Wyatt-Surreian lover, 
 faint-hearted, languishing, and despairing, begets in the 
 modern reader, according to mood, disgust or mocking laugh- 
 ter. Yet there are better things in both poets; and historically 
 their importance is unquestionable. Wyatt experimented in 
 English verse, counting his syllables; Surrey attained a 
 smoothness and ease such as no one had reached in England 
 since Chaucer. Both poets attempted new meters as well 
 as novel-subject matter, derived from Italy and France. 
 Wyatt, before its rage in the latter country, had introduced the 
 sonnet into England; and, with it, that close imitation and 
 translation of Petrarch, master of the sonneteers, and of the 
 Petrarchists of France, which was to beconie so distinguishing 
 a characteristic of Elizabethan lyrists. The sonnet thus took 
 the English fancy and became, in time, one of the noblest of 
 English lyrical forms. The French ballade, on the contrary, 
 also employed by Wyatt, was so little understood that Wyatt's 
 first editor, Grimald, misprinted it; and save for Charles 
 Cotton in the Stuarts' reign, the lallade remained unknown 
 to English until revived in our own day. On the other hand, 
 Surrey in more facile versification confirmed the practice of 
 the sonnet and attempted an imitation of the Italian versi 
 scioltt, a free or unrimed verse of ten syllables, known to 
 English literature as blank-verse. Surely it was no small 
 service to point the way to "Marlowe's mighty line," to be 
 the first to practise a measure immortalized by Shakespeare 
 and Milton. Surrey's translation of parts of the jEneid is 
 the earliest English blank-verse. Nor is the metrical form 
 of these two early Tudor poets their only claim on our con- 
 sideration. In them appears for the first time in English 
 
22 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 the subjective note that has come so markedly to distinguish 
 modern poetry. It was this, though it marked Httle more 
 than disconsolate love, that w^as recognized in TotteVs Mis- 
 cellany, and in The Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 
 Clement Robinson's Handful of Pleasant Delights, and The 
 Paradise of Dainty Devises, the anthologies of like charac- 
 ter, if inferior repute, that followed Tottel in the seventies. 
 What Wyatt and Surrey groped for in the lyric of art, 
 George Gascoigne, chief of poets between their time and 
 Spenser's, furthered with a certain originality and force of 
 his own. Gascoigne was born between 1530 and 1535 and 
 educated at Cambridge, the Middle Temple, and Gray's 
 Inn. Of honorable family but far from rich, Gascoigne 
 gravitated naturally to court and remained, with an interval 
 of service as a soldier in the Low Countries, a courtier and 
 protege at one time of Lord Grey de Wilton, at last of Elizabeth 
 herself. It was in the congenial society of his fellows of the 
 Inns of Court that Gascoignei^first became an author and his 
 versatility in poetry, drama, and prose was as great as his 
 contemporary reputation. Under the title of A Hundreth 
 Sundry Flowers hound up in one Small Posy, Gascoigne had at- 
 tempted, by 1572, songs and sonnets in the manner of Surrey, 
 elegies, autobiographical and narrative poems, in excellence 
 well above the best work of his immediate contemporaries, 
 a satire in blank verse of considerable merit entitled The 
 Steel Glass, and three dramas, each somewhat a departure in 
 its own kind. The prose writings of Gascoigne also deserve 
 attention for a directness and simplicity of style and a freedom 
 from Latinism rare in his day. To Gascoigne belong the 
 earliest set treatise on versification in the English language 
 and the first attempt to imitate, on the basis of an English 
 story, the "novels" of Italy already popular in England in 
 the translations of Painter, Fenton, and others. Gascoigne's 
 story. The Adventures of Master Ferdinando 'Jeronimi (other- 
 wise Master Freeman Jones) enjoyed, like some of his poetry, 
 a repute not a little enhanced by allusions and innuendoes of 
 a scandalous nature. Yet Gascoigne was one of the choir of 
 poets that welcomed Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth at the 
 
GASCOIGNE AND HIS ASSOCIATES 23 
 
 command of the Earl of Leicester during the festivities there 
 in 1575. Gascoigne's poetry is always egotistic, it is often 
 autobiographical. He was overwhelmed at times with repen-, 
 tance for "his youth misspent" and employed his later days 
 in penning devotional pamphlets and eulogizing the queen in 
 what seems a measurably successful endeavor to serve in the 
 royal employ. Gascoigne was not a scholar though he was 
 a cultivated man of the world; and both in his sensible little 
 treatise, Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the Making 
 of Verse and Rime in English, and in his practice of the art of 
 poetry, he maintained an attitude of remarkable independence 
 alike of classical models and of modern foreign influences. 
 
 Gascoigne's literary associates include such now forgotten 
 names as Francis Kinwelmarsh, his coadjutor in the transla- 
 tion of the tragedy Jocasta, Alexander Nevile, translator of 
 Seneca, Barnabe Googe, writer of Eclogues, and Thomas 
 Churchyard, general pamphleteer. Other poetical contem- 
 poraries were the Earl of Oxford, Humphrey Gilford, Matthew 
 Grove, and Thomas Howell. George Whetstone's prosaic 
 Muse celebrated Gascoigne's obsequies. But among the 
 commendatory verses prefixed to the Posies, one set is signed 
 with initials that may stand for Gabriel Harvey, Spenser's 
 Hobbinol and Mentor of the Areopagus, whilst to The Steel 
 Glass we find prefixed a series of verses signed "Walter Rawely 
 of the Middle Temple." Indeed, when Gascoigne died, in 
 1577, Spenser had already passed to^his master's degree at 
 Cambridge and but two years remained to the publication of 
 The Shepherds' Calendar and the broad daylight of Elizabethan 
 poetry. As for Sidney, though but twenty-two years of age, 
 he was already abroad on an embassy to the Emperor of 
 Germany and the poetry of Astrophel and Stella was soon 
 to be seething in his brain. 
 
 Philip Sidney was the son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord 
 Deputy of Ireland and President of Wales, one of Elizabeth's 
 most tried and faithful servants; his mother was sister to 
 Robert Dudley, the great Earl of Leicester who courted Queen 
 Elizabeth so assiduously. The Sidneys were of better blood 
 than the Dudleys. Sir Henry appears to have been too honest 
 
24 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 to become wealthy; but Philip, as his eldest son, with birth the 
 most honorable and as nephew and possible heir to Leicester, 
 started with much that fortune could give. Sidney enjoyed, 
 too, the best of educations, going to Shrewsbury School and 
 thence to Oxford. It was at Shrewsbury that Sidney formed 
 his enduring friendship with Fulke Greville. Sidney was a 
 grave and precocious youth and employed the leisure of his 
 attendance at court in travel abroad, or in study. His 
 interests were general — history, "plantation," as coloniza- 
 tion was called, politics, philosophy, science, and literature. 
 An idea of the diversity of Sidney's talents may be gleaned 
 from the fact that he was prized by William the Silent as "one 
 of the ripest and greatest counselors of estate in Europe/' 
 esteemed by the learned Languet for his scholarship, appreciat- 
 ed for his love of philosophy by Giordano Bruno, intimate with 
 Drake, Frobisher, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert for his interest 
 in adventurous voyage and colonization, and beloved by the 
 poets — Spenser foremost among them — for his poetry. 
 "There was not an approved painter, skilful engineer, ex- 
 cellent musician, or any other artificer of fame that made him- 
 self not known to him," says Greville. 
 
 Like the poetry of Wyatt and Gascoigne, that of Sidney 
 and of Spenser maintained a tradition and a cult. Confined 
 to a limited and select circle, it emulated in its practice and 
 its patronage of the arts the amenities of Italian courts such 
 as that of Urbino and in its theories about literature and its 
 experiments in poetry, the group of writers known in France 
 as the Pl'eiade. The Arcadia, written in the seclusion of 
 Penshurst, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, read to a group 
 of intimate friends there, page by page, and dedicated to the 
 author's beloved sister; The Faery Queen, allegorically setting 
 forth the doings of the queen and noble personages of her 
 court, as much a book of the ideal man and of ideal conduct 
 in life as The Courtier itself; Lyly's Euphues, the popular 
 novel of the moment, no less the work of an attendant at 
 court and no less addressed to a select and limited audience: 
 all of these belong to the literature of the coterie. And so 
 do Lyly's dramas and in a sense likewise, A Midsummer- 
 
THE AREOPAGUS 25 
 
 Night's Dream, perhaps prepared to celebrate the marriage 
 of that "universal patroness of poets, Lucy Harington," to 
 the Earl of Bedford in the royal presence. 
 
 Sidney's poetry was, in even a narrovv^er sense than this, 
 literature of the coterie. From certain letters exchanged 
 between Spenser and Gabriel Harvey, we learn that, in the 
 late seventies, there existed in London a species of literary 
 club called the Areopagus, which interested itself in poetry, 
 experiments in versification, and other literary matters. This 
 intimacy of the young poets and courtiers of the time is in- 
 terestingly illustrated in many poems and especially in the 
 "two pastorals made by Sir Philip Sidney upon his meeting 
 his two worthy friends Sir Edward Dyer and Mr. Fulke 
 Greville." A couple of stanzas will show the relation: 
 
 Join, mates, in mirth with me. 
 
 Grant pleasure to our meeting, 
 Let Pan, our good god, see 
 
 How grateful is our greeting. 
 Join hearts and hands, so let it be; 
 Make but one mind in bodies three. 
 
 Sweet Orpheus' harp, whose sound 
 
 The steadfast mountains moved, 
 Let here thy skill abound 
 
 To join sweet friends beloved. 
 Join hearts and hands, so let it be; 
 Make but one mind in bodies three. 
 
 "This happy blessed trinity," as it is called in another 
 stanza, was the heart of the Areopagus. About these three 
 were clustered a chosen few that were interested in poetry 
 and in theories about it. Spenser, then newly come to court, 
 could not fail to be drawn into such a brotherhood, whilst 
 Gabriel Harvey, the pedantic and somewhat unwise but 
 zealous Cambridge don, friend and self-constituted Mentor 
 of Spenser, surveyed the proceedings from afar and amused 
 himself — ^ if not others — by writing censorious or jocular 
 letters to Spenser on the subjects of the discussion, all of 
 which letters, as we have seen, Harvey carefully preserved 
 
26 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 and printed a few years later for general edification and for 
 the particular aggrandisement of his own importance. Later 
 members of the Areopagus were Samuel Daniel and Abraham 
 Fraunce, like Harvey a champion and practicer of English 
 hexameter verse. 
 
 The Areopagus entered heart and soul into a discussion of 
 the most pressing literary problem of the day, the relative 
 merits of ancient and modern versification. This question 
 had been first mooted in print in England by the excellent 
 Ascham, in his Schoolmaster, printed in 1570, two years after 
 the author's death. Gascoigne wrote his sensible little treatise 
 as we have seen, some five years later, laying down rules of 
 thumb for the making of English verse; and King James 
 followed, exercising his boyish pen in the same momentous 
 subject in the preface to a volume which he entitled Essays 
 of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesy, 1 586. With the 
 example of Roman literature before them, a literature based 
 on that of Greece and successful in the main only where it 
 had faithfully followed its prototypes, it was not surprising 
 that men, educated in the classics, should conceive that the 
 salvation of English literature was to be reached only in a 
 slavish following of the ancients. Long were the discussions 
 of Harvey, Spenser, and others concerning the quantities of 
 English words. Thomas Drant, the translator of Horace, 
 set up a system, the rival of Harvey's. William Webbe, a 
 tutor of St. John's College, Cambridge, in A Discourse of 
 English Poetry, 1586, ventilated his opinion "touching the 
 reformation of our English verse" and "travestied" a poem 
 or two of The Shepherds' Calendar into sapphlcs; Stanihurst, 
 even doing six books of the ^neid into some of the most 
 astonishing vernacular hexameters that have ever been per- 
 petrated in the name of poetry. Sidney alone of his time 
 discerned the larger issues of this controversy, and, recognizing 
 the beauties of Italian poetry as. well as those of the classics, 
 conducted a marvellously complete set of experiments in 
 classical meters and Italian forms: the more marvellous 
 when we remember his preoccupation and the extraordinary 
 variety of interests that claimed his attention and his time. 
 
SIDNEY'S EXPERIMENTS IN VERSE 27 
 
 Not to pursue this topic too far, it may none the less be re- 
 corded that an elaborate and important treatise on The Art of 
 English Poesy, pubhshed in 1589 and attributed to George 
 Puttenham, upholds the possibilities of English versification 
 in the course of an exhaustive discussion of matters historical, 
 rhetorical, and fantastic concerning poetry and language at 
 large. Indeed, the latest guns in this long controversy were 
 not fired until the very last years of Elizabeth's reign when 
 Thomas Campion, musician and lyric poet, and Samuel 
 Daniel, one of the last of the Sidneian circle, measured swords 
 on the subject in their tracts, entitled respectively Observations 
 on the Art of English Poesy and A Defense of Rime, l6o2 and 
 1603. 
 
 But let us return to Sidney and his experiments in exotic 
 forms of verse. Sidney's Astrophel and Stella/offers a com- 
 plete vindication of the sonnet, practised in a dozen different 
 forms, to adoption into the English language. In the poems 
 which diversify the Arcadia, may be found experiments in 
 the terza rima, the dignified and exquisite verse of the Divina 
 Corned ia of Dante; in the canzone and in the sestina, intricate 
 interlacings of successive stanzas; and in the madrigal, a 
 dainty little verse-form, commonly written for music. There 
 likewise are as successful achievements in classical sapphics, 
 anacreontics, elegiacs, and hexameters as may be devised in 
 a tongue which is compelled, as is English, to substitute, 
 as a governing feature, accentual stress for the classic principle 
 of quantity, and an arbitrary ascription of quantity to English 
 syllables for that nice system which the genius of classical 
 prosody had invoked. In a word, Sidney tested by exhaus- 
 tive experiment the possibilities of both classical and Italian 
 metrical forms transplanted into English verse. He died 
 before he made known his verdict. But when it is recalled that 
 no poem of his was published in his lifetime, we cannot affirm 
 that he was absolutely satisfied with his results. 
 
 But we are not without knowledge of Sidney's larger tenets 
 as to literature and art. The age was full of literary con- 
 troversy. Ascham had inveighed against riming and the 
 running of the letter with "the Gothic barbarism" that fos- 
 
28 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 tered it; but he had warned the age against "the Siren en- 
 chantments of Italy" and declared "an Itahanate EngHshman 
 an incarnate devil." Gascoigne, on the other hand, was 
 content to treat of English verse as it was, and waste no time 
 either in abuse or in praise of foreign matters. Another ques- 
 tion of the day was raised by the new and surprising up-growth 
 and popularity of vernacular plays acted on improvised stages 
 in public taverns and other resorts. In 1579 Stephen Gosson 
 wrote a book which he entitled The School of Abuse, "z pleas- 
 ant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters, and such 
 like caterpillars of the commonwealth. " This, as its title sets 
 forth, was one of a series of attacks upon the stage and its 
 abuses — attacks which were often extended Puritanically 
 to include all art. Gosson was a renegade actor and play- 
 wright and exhibits much of the zeal and rancor of the re- 
 claimed. Whether in impudence or in honest mistake, he 
 dedicated his School to Sidney, and "was for his labor scorned," 
 reports Spenser, "at least if it be in the goodness of that nature 
 to scorn." Gosson was almost immediately answered by 
 Lodge in a Defense of Poesy, Music, and Stage Plays, a book 
 of much eloquence and suavity; and soon after Sidney wrote 
 his own Defense, not for publication, but for circulation among 
 his friends. 
 
 Sidney's Defense of Poesy is a work of genuine and fervid 
 enthusiasm, remarkable in its breadth and liberality, and of 
 a nature comparable at least in its effects to Lessing's famous 
 Laocoon. Sidney transcended the limits of Gosson's petty 
 objections to consider on wide and philosophical grounds the 
 nature of poetry, its relation to history and to philosophy, and 
 eloquently to plead its divine origin and its beneficent influence 
 on human life. Nor is it a serious criticism of this work to 
 acknowledge the influence upon it of "current continental 
 criticism." But admirable as The Defense was in its day, the 
 historical value of this little treatise is even greater; for it 
 defines for us the position of a talented, judicious, and inde- 
 pendent young critic about the time that Spenser was begin- 
 ning The Faery Queen and Shakespeare was still wandering, 
 a mischievous rather than a dreamy lad, among the lanes of 
 
"THE DEFENSE OF POESY" 29 
 
 Warwickshire. The Defense of Poesy must have been written 
 soon after 1580, though it first appeared in print in 1595. It 
 is not, then, surprising that we should find Sidney expressing 
 discontent with poetry and declaring that besides Chaucer, 
 The Mirror for Magistrates, Surrey's lyrics and The Shep- 
 herds' Calendar, "I do not remember to have seen but few 
 (to speak boldly) printed that have poetical sinews in them." 
 In the Hght of this date of writing, Sidney's praise of Gorboduc 
 and his decided preference of Sophocles and Euripides over 
 the English dramatists Edwards and Preston, most popular 
 of their time, is in no wise amazing. Five or six years were 
 yet to elapse before T amhurlaine was to sound a new era for 
 English drama, and Gascoigne and Whetstone represented 
 the height to which the English dramatic genius had by that 
 time attained. Equally interesting is Sidney's attitude of 
 criticism towards the new Euphuistic prose, which had al- 
 ready fallen into the abuses of excess. He puts his finger 
 on three of its distinctive features, declaring of alliterative 
 writers that they pursue the "coursing of a letter, as if they 
 were bound to follow the method of a dictionary"; likening 
 the undue use of ornament to "those Indians" who are "not 
 content to wear ear-rings at the fit and natural place of the 
 ears, but they will thrust jewels through their nose and lips 
 because they will be sure to be fine." But the living value of 
 The Defense lies in the liberality and lofty ideality of its con- 
 ception of poetry and in its affirmation of poetry's true function 
 in life. We have here no petty dallying with the "toys of 
 wit," as Puttenham denominates poems, fit only "to fill the 
 vacant hours of time of idle courtiers and gentlewomen," but 
 the serious assignment of poetry to that concrete representa- 
 tion of human ideals in forms of imperishable beauty, which 
 has formed an essential part of every true definition of this 
 subtlest of the arts since philosophers began to define. 
 
 Let us now turn to the poetry of Sidney. Astrophel and 
 Stella (like the rest of Sidney's work) was printed after his 
 death, appearing first in a surreptitious edition in 1591, and 
 procured for the printers by Thomas Nash, This earliest 
 sequence of its kind in the language consists of one hundred 
 
30 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 and ten sonnets with a few intercalated lyrics in other meas- 
 ures. The series was indubitably inspired by the sonnets of 
 Petrarch and the Platonic ideals of love therein upheld by the 
 Italian poet's cult of his ideal mistress, Laura. Moreover, 
 Sidney was acquainted not only with Italian poetry, but with 
 French poetry, notably Ronsard, and the rest of the Pleiade as 
 well. He followed their guidance as to the professional manner 
 of writing a sonnet, if we may put it so, precisely as he might 
 imitate an ancient meter or observe any other poetic con- 
 vention. Until lately it has been customary to recognize in 
 the fervor of the poetry of Astrophel and Stella the poetical 
 expression of a leaf from Sidney's life; and his age appears to 
 have accepted his sonnets as such. According to this view, 
 Astrophel and Stella sets forth the story of Sidney's love for the 
 Lady Penelope Devereux, daughter of the first Earl of Essex 
 who was much attached to Sidney and had suggested a match 
 between the two as early as 1576, when Philip was twenty and 
 Penelope a little maid of twelve. But Sidney, proving un- 
 willing, whether from disinclination to marry at all, ambition 
 to achieve a higher position than was his before doin^^, or 
 indifference, another match was at once arranged for Stella, 
 and she was married to the young Lord Rich, who, to say the 
 least, neglected her. As to Sidney, he soon found out to his 
 disquiet that, having lost Stella forever, he had really never 
 ceased to love her; and being a man of poetic temperament 
 — the temperament that seeks consolation and relief in artistic 
 expression — Sidney spoke out his heart in rime. 
 
 Of late, however, it has been maintained that although 
 "Sidney's pursuit of the favor of Lady Rich, a coquettish 
 friend of his youth who married another," may have "led him 
 to turn sonneteer," "he wrote under the glamour of Petrarchan 
 idealism, and held that it was the function of the 'lyrical kind 
 of songs and sonnets' to sing 'the praises of the immortal 
 beauty' and of no mundane passion."* According to this idea, 
 "detachment from the realities of ordinary passion, which 
 comes with much reading about love in order to write on the 
 
 * See Sidney Lee, Elizabethan Sonnets, i, xliii; Courthope, 
 English Poetry, ii, 227-233. 
 
"ASTROPHEL AND STELLA" 31 
 
 subject, is the central feature of Sidney's sonnets"; and it is 
 shown triumphantly that Sidney borrowed idea after idea 
 from Petrarch, Ronsard, and others, addressing the Thames 
 only because Ronsard had similarly addressed the Rhone, 
 and apostrophizing night, sleep, and the power of Stella's eyes 
 only because Petrarch had said all these things before him. 
 
 These parallels need not be questioned either in bulk or 
 in detail. But it may well be queried if their mere existence 
 is in itself sufficient to deprive the story adumbrated in Sidney's 
 sonnets of all subjective basis in fact. However deeply Sidney 
 may have been affected by the study which we know he made 
 of the poetry of Italy and France, and whatever was to be the 
 general practice of English sonneteers to come, there is neither 
 anything improbable in the situation nor in the emotions de- 
 tailed in Astrophel and Stella. The following sonnet has been 
 found to parallel one of Petrarch's; it may none the less have 
 certain reference to the joustings of May, 1581, in which Sid- 
 ney and his friend Greville appeared as challengers, clothed 
 with a sumptuousness and attended by a state that recalled the 
 tourneys of the Middle Ages : 
 
 Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance 
 
 Guided so well that I obtained the prize. 
 
 Both by the judgment of the English eyes 
 
 And of some sent from that sweet enemy, France; 
 
 Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance, 
 
 Town folks my strength; a daintier judge applies 
 
 His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; 
 
 Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; 
 
 Others because of both sides I do take 
 
 My blood from them who did excell in this, 
 
 Think Nature me a man-at-arms did make. 
 
 How far they shot awry! the true cause is, 
 
 Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
 
 Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race 
 And this other sonnet; 
 
 Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame. 
 
 Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee; 
 
 Thine eyes my pride, thy lips mine history: 
 
 If thou praise not, all other praise is shame. 
 
32 LITERATURE OF THE COTERIE 
 
 Nor so ambitious am I as to frame 
 
 A nest for my young praise in laurel tree; 
 
 In truth, I swear, I wish not there should be 
 
 Graved in my epitaph a poet's name. 
 
 Ne, if I would, could I just title make, 
 
 That any laud thereof to me should grow. 
 
 Without my plumes from others' wings I take: 
 
 For nothing from my wit or will doth flow. 
 
 Since all my words thy beauty doth endite. 
 
 And Love doth hold my hand and makes me write. 
 
 Assuredly such poetry rings with more than the trivial music 
 of a mere Petrarchan imitator; or all instinct for poetry must 
 go for naught. 
 
 Besides Astrophel and Stella the greater part of Sidney's 
 poetry is found strewn incidentally through the pages of his 
 romance, the Arcadia. It may be said In general of the poetry 
 of the Arcadia that it seems less spontaneous than the sonnets 
 of Astrophel, less poetry of direct emotion; and yet we may 
 wrong Sidney here if we fail to recognize that delicacy and 
 elaboration of workmanship, in any art, need not necessarily 
 destroy that sincerity of impulse which is the life principle of 
 all the arts. The metrical experiments unconsidered, there 
 remains much in the poetry of the Arcadia worthy of the author 
 of the burning lines of Astrophel and Stella 
 
 Sidney's poetry is imitative of the loveliest melodies of 
 contemporary French and Italian poetry, and resonant with 
 deeper notes of the music of the classics. It was Sidney who 
 popularized the pastoral mode as well as the sonnet in Eng- 
 land. The first served its turn in offering to the poet£ of the 
 Elizabethan spring-time a delicate and artistic convention in 
 which to cradle their first fledglings. The sonnet had been 
 written before, as we have seen, but never with such success, 
 in a variety so Italian, or in a sequence which so emulated the 
 beauty and glory of the sonnets of Dante and Petrarch. The 
 popularization of the "conceit" is a more doubtful service of 
 Sidney to the literature of his time. Sidney's romantic temper 
 delighted in the ornament of detail, and no grace was to him 
 too trivial or bizarre to lavish on the decoration of divine 
 
THE POETRY OF SIDNEY 33 
 
 poesy. Though thus our first great poet to fall under the spell 
 of the petty "conceit" with its extravagant figure and far- 
 fetched metaphor, Sidney erred in this less from mere delight 
 in these petty baubles of ingenuity than from the passionate 
 current of a poetical eloquence that carried great thoughts like 
 trifles and trifles like great thoughts on its impetuous torrent. 
 More certain immediate services to the literature of his age 
 w^ere those in which Sidney proved by experiment the real 
 possibilities and limitations of classical prosody as applied to 
 the construction of English verse; and laid, by a liberal appli- 
 cation of ancient and Renaissance Italian theories to modern 
 conditions, the foundations of English aesthetics and criticism. 
 But whether for the earnestness and eloquence of his theories 
 or for the fervor and sincerity with which he applied them, it 
 may be said that Sidney was the poet he was because he was 
 the man he was. In the words of his loving and faithful 
 Jonathan, Fulke Greville, whose Life of Sidney is one of the 
 sweetest and manliest tributes to true friendship that literature 
 knows: "His very ways in the world did generally add reputa- 
 tion to his Prince and country, by restoring amongst us the 
 ancient majesty of noble and true dealing; as a manly wisdom 
 that can no more be weighed down by an effeminate craft 
 than Hercules could be overcome by that effeminate army of 
 dwarfs. And this was it which I profess I loved dearly in 
 him, and still shall be glad to honor in the good men of this 
 time: I mean that his heart and tongue went both one way, 
 and so with every one that went with the truth; as knowing 
 no other kindred, party, or end. Above all he made the rehgion 
 he professed the firm basis of his life." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NEW CULTIVATED PROSE 
 
 TT has been said that a list of the earliest Elizabethan books 
 -■- written in prose is chiefly a list of literary curiosities; 
 and to a certain degree this is true, though we are coming 
 more and more to understand that modern English prose was 
 not the invention of John Dryden or of any other subject of 
 King Charles, but had already been formed in all its essential 
 particulars in the age that produced Hooker, Bacon, our 
 English Bible, and the prose of Shakespeare and Jonson. 
 But much had to go before results such as these; and English 
 prose no less than English verse was compelled to pass through 
 the period of experimentation and to test the value of exotic 
 models before it came to its own. We have already heard of 
 Elizabethan Latinism and how it was a Latinism of structure 
 and idiom rather than a Latinism of vocabulary. When 
 learning left the school and the cloister to inhabit likewise 
 the court, new ideals were added both to the conception of life 
 and to that of literature. Scholarship had its conventions; 
 and so, too, had social life. There was a correct way (as to 
 which scholars agreed) in which to write the learned lan- 
 guage, then, be it remembered, no dead tongue. Might there 
 not be an equally correct way in which to write modern 
 English, a way in which the graces and elegance of court life 
 might be expressed in contradistinction to the common tongue 
 which men spoke in the streets and taverns ? 
 
 John Lyly, the Euphuist, was born in Kent about 1554. 
 He was a student of Magdalen College, Oxford, and entered 
 as plehii filius, which shows that he was a poor man. An- 
 thony a Wood, the gossipy biographer of Oxonians, tells us 
 that Lyly "was always averse to the crabbed studies of logic 
 and philosophy," and that he did "in a manner neglect 
 academical studies, yet not so much that he took not the 
 
 34 
 
LYLY THE EUPHUIST 35 
 
 degrees in arts, that of master being completed in 1575." 
 Lyly seems to have sought the patronage of Lord Burleigh 
 as far back as 1574; and he must have gone up to London 
 and begun attendance on the court soon after taking his mas- 
 ter's degree. Lyly was especially desirous of obtaining the 
 Mastership of the Queen's Revels, and several letters of his 
 relative to this remain. Lyly began his career with Euphues, 
 the Anatomy of Wit, registered in 1578 and published in the ^j-^, 
 next year. The book was an immediate success, and Lyly ""■" — '■ 
 probably spent the better part of 1579 in writing the second 
 and longer part, called Euphues and his England, which 
 appeared in 1580. Some idea of the esteem in which this 
 book was held may be gained from one or two contemporary 
 opinions. Thus Webbe in his Discourse of English Poetry, 
 1586, comparing the achievements of the ancients with modern 
 writers, says: 
 
 Among whom I think there is none that will gainsay, but Master 
 John Lyly hath deserved most high commendations, as he which 
 hath stepped one step further therein than any either before or since 
 he first began the witty discourse of his Euphues. Whose works, 
 surely in respect of his singular eloquence and grave composition of 
 apt words and sentences, let the learned examine and make trial 
 thereof thorough all the parts of rhetoric, in fit phrases, in pithy sen- 
 tences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speech, in plain sense and surely, in 
 my judgment, I think he will yield him that verdict, which Quintillian 
 giveth of both the best orators Demosthenes and Tully, that from 
 the one, nothing may be taken away, to the other, nothing may be 
 added. 
 
 Again and again we find Lyly's praises sung by his contem- 
 poraries with but few dissenting voices. As late as 1633 the 
 publisher of Lyly's collected plays exclaims: "Our nation 
 are in his debt, for a new English which he taught them. 
 Euphues and his England began first that language. All our 
 ladies were then his scholars, and that beauty in court, which 
 could not parley Euphuism, was as little regarded as she 
 which now there speaks not French." 
 
 The volume which so took the English world of its day 
 by storm is a love story of the slenderest possible construction 
 
36 THE NEW CULTIVATED PROSE 
 
 in which is told the adventures in England and elsewhere of 
 Euphues, a young Athenian gentleman of wealth and position, 
 thus offering the greatest possible number of opportunities 
 for conversation, argument, and satirical comment on topics 
 most of them of contemporary interest and moment. The plot, 
 such as it is, hardly moves at all, and little or no characteriza- 
 tion is attempted. It is neither for plot nor character that 
 Euphues was written; except so far as these things are neces- 
 sary to serve as the foundations on which to construct fine 
 dialogue, rhetorical speeches, and moral discourses. But a 
 distinction must be drawn between the first part, Euphues, 
 the Anatomy of Wit, which is in the main a philosophical essay 
 addressed to gentlemen and students, and Euphues and his 
 England, in which the author appeals directly "To the Ladies 
 and Gentlewomen of England," declaring that ^'Euphues 
 would rather lie shut in a lady's casket than open in a scholar's 
 study"; and that "there shall be nothing found that may 
 offend the chaste mind with unseemly terms and uncleanly 
 talk." The second part of Euphues is therefore much less 
 satirical and more interested in the refinements of choice 
 society, more concerned with the intricacies of polite love- 
 making and the repartee of smart conversation among gentle- 
 men and gentlewomen. While neither a book of essays, — much 
 less of philosopy, — a book of deportment and polite conduct, 
 nor a story in any wise worked out as to plot or character, 
 it is yet not altogether extravagant to say that in Euphues we 
 have the earliest important piece of English fiction, the slender 
 beginnings of that sea of writing realistic and romantic in 
 which the modern reader finds his solace and his delight. 
 As M. Jusserand has pointed out, with Euphues commences 
 in England the literature of the drawing-room 
 
 And yet it is remarkable how, in its many aspects, Lyly's 
 work has been understood and misunderstood. Charles 
 Kingsley called it, not without justice," as brave, righteous, and 
 pious a book as a man need look into"; and the year 1900 
 saw it abused in print as "a piece of square-toed, finical 
 vacuity," whatever that may mean. The most complete 
 failure to represent Euphues and Euphuism — though we may 
 
EUPHUISM 37 
 
 say with Dr. Horace Howard Furness, "it stabs, to couple 
 this word with that great and dear memory" — was Sir Walter 
 Scott's in his character of Sir Percie Shafton in The Monastery. 
 As to Euphuism the word is constantly misused/ although 
 the subject has been now so thoroughly discussed that there 
 is no excuse for any misunderstanding. 
 
 Euphuism is a rhetorical prose style. It is concerned 
 neither with the choice of subject-matter nor with vocabulary. 
 Hence the common use of the word to denote a florid and 
 poetic style, the chief features of which are foreign and far- 
 fetched words, is indefensible. Euphuism is concerned 
 wholly with grammatical structure and syntax, and its purpose V.^ 
 is the inducement of an artificial emphasis by means of an- 
 tithesis and repetition in sentence form and relation. Its 
 sentences are elaborate in their antithetical or parallel 
 structure, they are balanced and pointed, and constructively 
 as symmetrical as possible. The means used to produce all 
 this is complicated and yet not unreducible to certain very 
 definite categories. In the first place, Lyly is very fond of 
 oratorical question and response, a device too familiar to need 
 illustration. Secondly, he employs figurative language in a 
 deliberately artificial manner, often taking familiar natural 
 objects and stringing them together in similitudes, all illus- 
 trating the same point. For example: "As therefore the 
 sweetest rose hath his prickle, the finest velvet his brack, the 
 fairest flower his bran, so the sharpest wit hath his wanton 
 will, and the holiest l^ead his wicke,d way." Again, Lyly 
 carried to excess the fondness of his age for allusion to classi- 
 cal and mythical history, revelling with delight in that redis- 
 covered world in a true spirit of the Renaissance. Thus he 
 asks: "Did not Giges cut Candaules' coat by his own meas- 
 ure ? Did not Paris, though he were a welcome guest to 
 Menelaus, serve his host a slippery prank.?" Opening his 
 book at random, we find Diogenes, Pythagoras, Socrates, 
 
 ^ See especially Mr. Courthope's perverse employment of the 
 word in connection with poetry. The authoritative monograph on 
 the topic is that of C. G. Child, 'John Lyly and Euphuism, Miin- 
 chener Beitrdge, vii, 1 894. 
 
38 THE NEW CULTIVATED PROSE 
 
 Plato, Milo, Lycurgus, Lacedemonians, and Thessalians all on 
 one page. Scarcely less pervasive and excessive are the 
 figures and illustrations which Lyly derives from nature per- 
 verted, what has been dubbed Lyly's "unnatural natural 
 history." "It is like to fare with thee as with the eagle, 
 which dieth neither for age nor with sickness, but with famine, 
 for although thy stomach hunger yet thy heart will not suffer 
 thee to eat." "I have read, that the bull being tied to the 
 fig-tree, loseth his strength; that the whole herd of deer stand 
 at the gaze, if they smell a sweet apple; that the dolphin by 
 the sound of music is brought to the shore." No trick of Lyly 
 has called forth so much ridicule as this; but is it much more 
 unnatural than our own contemporary "animal story," which, 
 under guise of an accurate chronicle of nature (to which Lyly 
 made no pretense) ascribes to the beasts of the fields and the 
 ,,^ prairies manlike qualities of thought and reasoned action 
 
 y*^ ;, which would do credit to the talking dragons and diabolical 
 
 werewolves of the dark ages ? 
 
 But more distinctive than all these artificial similitudes 
 and illustrations is Lyly's equally deliberate employment of 
 certain devices for rhetorical emphasis. Alliteration, which 
 is the correspondence of the initial sound of words otherwise 
 dissimilar, is as old as the language. As is universally known, 
 it was a chief distinguishing trait of Old English verse, and it 
 remains one of the graces of modern English poetry. Lyly 
 makes use of this familiar device in the subtlest possible 
 manner, simply, continuously, transversely. He plays with 
 words of like sound or similar sound, producing what is tech- 
 nically know as assonance and annomination, and employs 
 ' all this to emphasize and ornament a larger likeness of clause 
 
 and phrase. 
 
 Cast not your eyes on the beauty of women, lest ye cast away 
 your hearts with folly; let not that fond love, wherewith youth fatteth 
 himself as fat as a fool infect you; fot as a sinew, being cut, though it 
 be healed, there will always remain a scar; or as fine Hnen stained with 
 black ink, though it be washed never so often, will have an iron mole: 
 so the mind once mangled or maimed with love, though it be never 
 so well cured with reason, or cooled by wisdom, yet there will appear 
 
EUPHUISTIC LITERATURE 39 
 
 a scar, by the which one may guess the mind hath been pierced and 
 a blemish whereby one may judge the heart hath been stained. 
 
 Here the whole passage Is balanced and antithetical as are 
 equally its various members; it begins with a play on words 
 (^cast not your eyes, cast away your hearts); alliteration is 
 present in "fatteth himself fat as z fool," "mind once maimed 
 and mangled," "cured with reason, cooled with wisdom," 
 where the antithical words reason and wisdom chime, as well 
 as cured and cooled. Lastly parisonic antithesis is'illustrated 
 in the "mind maimed with love, cured with reason, cooled by 
 wisdom"; whilst the Euphuistic similitudes are pervasive, 
 albeit we are for once spared a piece of unnatural nature lore. 
 In a word, Lyly uses alliteration continuously or transversely 
 for ornament to mark parallel or antithesis. All of these 
 devices are more or less constantly present in Lyly's earlier 
 prose whether in Euphues or in his dramas. 
 
 Euphuism was not the invention of Lyly, although most 
 highly developed in his hands. It is a style of marked and 
 unmistakable character discoverable in English literature as 
 early as 1532, reaching its height between 1579 and 1590, 
 and continuing even beyond that in Lyly's imitators. Ascham 
 and his contemporaries were chiefly engaged in writing clearly, 
 although Ascham himself employs antithesis with effect. In 
 1557 appeared North's Dial of Princes. In this book is found 
 an occasional use of parisonic balance, simple alliteration, 
 and figurative allusions in argumentative illustrations. This, 
 North seems to have derived in part from a French transla- 
 tion of the works of Antonio de Guevara, a Spanish writer of 
 history and familiar letters whose Epistolce Aurece enjoyed 
 great reputation in the reign of Henry VIII, and was trans- 
 lated into English early in Elizabeth's reign. In 1577 ap- 
 peared a book entitled Pettie his Palace of Pleasure, 3. collection 
 of stories translated from the French. The style of this work 
 retains and augments the peculiarities already noted in North, 
 and adds allusions to fabulous natural history and the device 
 of oratorical question and response, thus anticipating Lyly 
 in every one of the characteristics of Euphuism. What Lyly 
 did then was to heighten these devices and maintain their 
 
40 THE NEW CULTIVATED PROSE 
 
 quality. This, added to the sententious force and persuasive 
 morality of his book, gave it its success. That this was not 
 due alone to its style is proved by its superior popularity over 
 Pettie's book. Euphues reached a tw^elfth edition in the year 
 1636, and then was left unreprinted until 1868 
 
 The vogue of Euphues called forth a swarm of imitators, 
 and the new literature of the boudoir was thus launched in 
 England once and for all. M. Jusserand in his scholarly and 
 entertaining work, The English Novel in the Time of Shake- 
 speare, tells how the word "Euphues" was played on in the 
 titles of books. There was Zelauto, the Fountain of Fame, 
 ."containing a delicate disputation . . . given for 
 a friendly entertainment to Euphues," by Anthony Munday, 
 1580; there was Euphues his Censure to Philautus, 1587, and 
 Menaphon, Camilla's Alarm to slumbering Euphues, two years 
 later, both by Robert Greene, poet, dramatist, pamphleteer, 
 and enemy of Shakespeare. There was Rosalynd, Euphues 
 Golden Legacy by Thomas Lodge, 1590, delightful original 
 of As Tou Like It; and Arishas, Euphues amidst his Slum- 
 bers by John Dickenson, 1594. But far more than the title 
 oi Euphues was followed in Barnabe Riche's Don Simonides, 
 1 58 1, who travels abroad like Euphues and then comes to 
 England to meet Philautus, Euphues' friend in Lyly's story. 
 In Zelauto, likewise, a gentleman of station comes, after 
 other travel, to view "the happy estate of England," and learn 
 "how a worthy princess governed their commonwealth." 
 Other books more or less in Lyly's manner were Melbancke's 
 Philotimus, 1 583, Warner's Pan his Syrinx, 1584, and 
 Emanuel Ford's popular Parismus, 1598, with further like 
 stories by Munday, Lodge, Greene, and others. 
 
 Although the earlier of these productions make a deter- 
 mined effort to imitate the artificialities and mannerisms of 
 Lyly's style, few succeeded to any degree; and they certainly 
 added nothing to the devices for emphasis and other rhetorical 
 niceties for which Lyly must always stand notoriously emi- 
 nent among writers of EngHsh prose. Greene made almost no 
 ^ use of such features of Euphuism as its fabulous natural his- 
 tory, and he carried its other mannerisms to no inordinate 
 
SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA" 41 
 
 length. Thomas Nash's vigorous and vernacular English 
 lent itself -with, difficulty for a passing moment to a style so 
 alien to his own. Lodge is the most confirmed of the Euphu- 
 ists after the master himself; but in the best of Lodge's v^^ork, 
 as for example his Rosalynd, the story and the characters have 
 taken a place of importance — as they do likewise in the best 
 fiction of Greene — which clarifies the Euphuistic manner and 
 marks a step forward in the history of English fiction as well 
 as in English prose. In a word, no follower of Lyly was so 
 purely a rhetorician as he, and no one wrote his story so un- 
 abashedly for its moral and the opportunities which it offered 
 to discourse at large. By the year 1590, Euphuism had nearly 
 worked itself out, later prose preserving only "its spirit of 
 scrupulous neatness . . . with an occasional use of bal- 
 anced antithesis and alliteration." Even Lyly's own work — 
 we have only prose plays from which to judge — shows a 
 gradual abandonment of his favorite devices in the interest 
 of a purer and less conscious style. 
 
 Next to the mistakes about Euphuism, the commonest 
 misapprehension as to Elizabethan prose is that which groups 
 the prose of Sidney's Arcadia with that of Lyly. It is said 
 that every educated man carries about with him a definition 
 of poetry of his own making and adoration. Without raising 
 a question, more difficult to lay than a ghost, one thing may be 
 affirmed: whatever poetry may be, it is never rhetoric; and 
 where rhetoric abides and rules, poetry is not. Not only is 
 Euphues not poetic, but Lyly's plays are poetry neither in 
 form nor in spirit; and they owe their success to much the 
 qualities that distinguish his other prose. The late Mr. Hen- 
 ley went even further, to deny to Lyly's dainty little verses, 
 "Cupid and my Campaspe played at cards for kisses," the 
 title of a lyric and to class it with epigrams. The essence of 
 Sidney's work is his poetry; as Professor Dowden less fittingly 
 said of Shelley, "his life, deeds, and words all sang together"; 
 and the Arcadia in its nature, conduct, style, and impetus is the 
 complete and permanent antithesis of Euphues and Euphuism. 
 Nor need we qualify this statement, remembering Sidney's 
 experiments in exotic poetical forms and the extraordinary 
 
 ^ 
 
42 THE NEW CULTIVATED PROSE 
 
 part which he played in introducing the "conceit" into English 
 poetry, any more than we need doubt the sincerity of any true 
 art because its methods are ornate and ingenious. 
 
 The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, as Sir Philip called 
 his romance, was written during his retirement in partial dis- 
 grace with the queen, in 1580. It was addressed to his intimate 
 friends, dedicated to his sister, and never intended for publi- 
 cation. It remained in manuscript some years after Sidney's 
 death, but was fortunately not destroyed as he had intended. 
 In 1590 a piratical edition appeared and fourteen other edi- 
 tions followed within a century. The Arcadia was thus one 
 of the most popular stories of the age, and the parent, like 
 Euphues, of a long line of prose romances. It was translated 
 into foreign languages and used as material for other writings 
 at home. The underplot of King Lear, to mention only one 
 example, is derived from an episode of the Arcadia, that of 
 the blind king of Paphlagonia, and a dozen other plays levied 
 upon it. 
 
 The Arcadia is more a heroic romance than a pastoral. 
 The pastoral atmosphere of the earlier parts is not maintained. 
 As to material, Sidney's story is the very opposite of Euphues, 
 being rich in event, stirring in adventure, and full of imagina- 
 tion, sentiment, and poetry. The main Story relates the for- 
 tunes and adventures of two young princes, who disguise them- 
 selves, the one as an Amazon, the other as a shepherd, to win 
 the love of two fair princesses. The heroines are the daughters 
 of Basilius, a king whose caution for their welfare and future 
 causes him to remove his court to a country lodge. The course 
 of the story is much entangled and full of glorious and romantic 
 adventure, it is diversified with no less than seven episodes 
 each of them a completely wrought story, and the end is left 
 to the reader's imagination, as the whole is unfinished. Thus 
 not only the style but the content of the Arcadia is poeti- 
 cal. It was one of the prime theories of Sidney that it was spirit 
 and not form which made poetry. He says: "It is not riming 
 and versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long gown 
 maketh an advocate." And elsewhere: Verse is "but an 
 ornament and no cause to poetry: sith there have been many 
 
ARCADIANISM 43 
 
 most excellent poets that never versified, and nov7 swarm many- 
 versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets." In 
 view of such ideas we must expect to find a close relation in 
 Sidney's Arcadia between the subject-matter and the form of 
 expression. Arcadianism is then not only a prose style, but 
 a variety of the art of fiction. Sidney's aim is the "feigning 
 notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delight- 
 ful teaching which must be the right describing note to know 
 a poet by." Arcadianism is an emotional medium for the 
 expression of lofty and heroic thought. If we consider it on 
 the side of mere style, the diction of the Arcadia is what we 
 might expect of a scholar and a courtier. It is thoroughly 
 English and remarkably free from words which have since 
 become obsolete. Compound words are not frequent and 
 poetical words can not be considered a feature. The salient 
 characteristics of the Arcadian style are its habitual employ- 
 ment of bold and natural imagery for plain and direct speech, 
 in the extreme degenerating into conceit; the use of antithesis 
 with accompanying alliteration, balance, and iteration to give 
 emphasis to thought and feeling; and the general employment 
 of a loose and cumulative structure of sentence. It was no 
 vain boast of the age to declare that Sidney had reclaimed 
 English prose from the excesses of the cultivated style. The 
 influence of the Arcadia was more permanent than that of 
 Euphuism, if less easy accurately to trace; for Sidney's "bold 
 feigning of notable images," even his striking and original 
 "conceits," fell in with the spirit of a poetical and imaginative 
 age as no rhetorician's studied devices could hope to do. But 
 who can deny the permanent value to literature of these con- 
 sistent and thorough experiments in the art of writing elegant 
 prose ? From the leading-strings of an outworn tongue, from 
 the precedents and unchallenged usages of "Tully," Euphues — ? 
 led writers to a contemplation of the niceties and elegancies 
 of vernacular English and taught them the possibilities of their 
 own tongue. Nor was this education confined alone to the 
 writers of books. The beauty and clarity of the diction of 
 Elizabethan letters, even of documents, not too much clogged 
 by contact with the law, has often been remarked. Some of 
 
44 THE NEW CULTIVATED PROSE 
 
 the queen's own English letters show a grace and feeling for 
 the phrase which we may be sure, with all Elizabeth's natural 
 endowments, came not wholly unstudied. 
 
 It was a fortunate day for English literature that both in 
 verse and in prose it should so happily have passed the age of 
 experiment. What Sidney did for foreign meters in English 
 verse, Lyly accomplished for English prose. Sidney proved 
 that although we might compass the hexameter, the sapphic, 
 the canzon, or the madrigal in English, it would be better to 
 be true to the genius and spirit of English verse. Lyly showed 
 the possibihties of a highly organized and rhetorical style in 
 prose; but, living longer than Sidney, withdrew from its ex- 
 cesses himself when he saw growing up about him a vigorous 
 /and idiomatic English speech alike removed from the pedantry 
 of Latinism and the affectations of courtly preciosity. But 
 the lesson that Lyly had to impart once learned, it was in the 
 nature of the Elizabethan spirit to revert to the more spon- 
 vtaneous, the more flowing and imaginative prose of Sidney 
 and to prefer the fine abandon of his tumultuous eloquence to 
 the nice devices of Lyly's ingenious invention. It was Mat- 
 thew Arnold's stricture on English prose at large, that it is a 
 prose in which the imagination has been too busy, and the 
 rational faculty not busy enough. This criticism finds its 
 earliest justification in the prose of Sidney which chose rhet- 
 oric for its antithesis, not for its example. It was Lyly who 
 was dainty, artificial, allegorical, the rhetorician of finished art 
 and studied phrase, The limit of such literary art is the 
 epigram and beyond this it can not attain. Sidney, in con- 
 trast to all this, is natural; although of a strong artistic bent, 
 romantic in temper, seeking literature as an outlet to feeling, 
 not as an art to be loved only for its own sake: the goal of such 
 art is lyricism. And in lyricism the barrier between prose and 
 poetry, wherever you erect it, is once and for all broken down. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 *''' I ""HIS place have I purposely reserved for one," wrote 
 -■■ William Webbe in 1586, "who if not only, yet in my 
 judgment principally, deserveth the title of the rightest Eng- 
 lish poet that ever I read. That is the author of The Shep- 
 herds^ Calendar^ intituled to the worthy Master Philip Sidney, 
 whether it was Master Spenser or what rare scholar of Pem- 
 broke Hall soever ... I force not greatly to set down. 
 Sorry I am that I can not find none other with whom I might 
 couple him in this catalogue in his rare gift of poetry." And 
 even earlier, in his entertaining "gloss" to the Calendar, "E. 
 K.," the poet's friend, had declared: "I doubt not so soon as 
 his name shall come to the knowledge of men and his worthi- 
 ness be sounded in the trump of fame but that he shall . . 
 be . . . beloved of all, embraced of the most and won- 
 dered at of the best." Seldom has a poet so leaped with a 
 bound as did Spenser into the esteem and appreciation of his 
 countrymen; and even more rarely has such a feat been 
 accomplished by the means of an art so singularly ideal and 
 free from the transient qualities that commonly make for im- 
 mediate poetic repute. 
 
 In the Prothalamion, Spenser has recorded London as 
 the place of his birth and nurture. His father's family was 
 of northeast Lancashire, numerous and respected there and 
 elsewhere. Thus Spenser's connections were good and he 
 was born, if humbly for his station, a gentleman. The year 
 of his birth was 1552, and he was one of several children. He 
 was educated at the Merchant Tailors' School, then newly 
 founded and under the head-master, Richard Mulcaster, a 
 man neither unknown to the history of education nor to that 
 of the drama. The future dramatists, Kyd and Lodge, were 
 among his schoolmates. Spenser was the recipient of bounty 
 
 45 
 
46 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 granted "to certain poor scholars of the schools about 
 London," and went up to Cambridge, matriculating as a sizar 
 — a term equivalent to servitor at Oxford — at Pembroke 
 College, in May, 1569. 
 
 But Spenser had appeared in print even before he v^ent 
 to Cambridge. The Theater of Voluptuous Worldings, 1569, 
 is the translation of a moral tract, originally in Flemish prose 
 and the vi^ork of one John van der Noodt. It wzs translated 
 first into French and then into English. Prefixed were a score 
 of woodcuts illustrating certain poems of Petrarch and Du 
 Bellay and portraying matter more or less relevant to the moral 
 tract. Four of these poems, translations of Du Bellay into 
 unrimed decasyllabic fines, have been assigned to Spenser, 
 because in a collection of poems, avowedly his, published in 
 159 1, they reappear under the title. Complaints, with certain 
 revisions. 
 
 Spenser's works disclose that he acquired at college not 
 only a competent knowledge of the classics but a very consid- 
 erable acquaintance with French and Itafian poetry. As to 
 authors in his own tongue, he accepted Chaucer above all 
 as an inspiration and example; although Spenser's temper- 
 ament and his ideals of art were vastly in contrast with the 
 robuster genius of the father of English poetry. Spenser's 
 interest in Skelton is less easy to explain, although the poet in 
 Skelton is discoverable to him who will seek the tiny sweet 
 kernel within the thick and bitter rind. Among Spenser's 
 intimates at the University was Gabriel Harvey, the adviser 
 of the Areopagus, a man who must have had somewhat in him 
 above mere pedantry to have inspired Spenser's affection. 
 Edward Kirke, too, soon to introduce to the public The Shep- 
 herds' Calendar, must have been close to the poet in these 
 early days. John Still, once alleged the author of Gammer 
 Gurtons Needle, and Thomas Preston, the author of that 
 extraordinary hotch-potch of moral, history, farce, and tragedy, 
 Cambyses, were both of them contemporary with Spenser at 
 Cambridge. But we know nothing of any intimacy of Spenser 
 with them. Nash and Marlowe were to come a decade later. 
 Spenser was not a very healthy young man; and he left 
 
EARLY POETICAL VENTURES 47 
 
 college, after taking his mastership in 1576, going to live with 
 his own people in Lancashire. It was there that he met and 
 loved the young woman celebrated in his pastorals as Rosalind. 
 Aubrey's story that Rosalind was a kinswoman of Sir Erasmus 
 Dryden, the grandfather of the great poet, may be dismissed; 
 and a more recent identification of the lady with one Rose 
 Dyneley, at least provisionally, accepted. Whatever the truth, 
 it is certain that this Rosalind preferred another, not Spenser, 
 for her Orlando, and that some charming and plaintive poetry 
 was the result. 
 
 The circumstances of Spenser's coming up to London to 
 seek his fortune are not altogether clear. Through his associ- 
 ation with Harvey or through some unknown recommendation, 
 he gained an introduction to Sidney and a place in the house- 
 hold of the Earl of Leicester about 1578. Between this and 
 1580, Spenser appears to have traveled on the continent, per- 
 haps as far as Rome, and also into Ireland on services for the 
 earl. These were the days of growing friendship with Sidney, 
 who loved all poets, and of the Areopagus and the letters inter- 
 changed between Harvey and Spenser relative to the new clas- 
 sical measures in English. Spenser seems to have experimented, 
 like Sidney, with hexameters and other ancient forms of verse. 
 We hear also of nine comedies, called after the Muses and 
 written after the manner of Ariosto, of a poem entitled Dreams, 
 prepared for the press with a comment by Kirke, and of,a prose 
 tract. The English Poet, apparently in the nature of Sidney's 
 Defense of Poesy. But all have been irretrievably lost. Several 
 other poems are believed to have been recast into parts of The 
 Faery Queen and other extant poems. In December, 1579, 
 The Shepherds' Calendar was entered at the Stationers' Com- 
 pany. The Faery Queen, likewise, must have been well under 
 way before Spenser left the protection of Leicester in 1580. 
 
 It is a remarkable example of the confidence of genius that 
 Spenser should deliberately have set himself against several 
 of the fashions of his day, notwithstanding that he was more 
 or less affected by them. Although his natural affinities were 
 with Harvey and the classicists, Spenser's good sense and mu- 
 sical ear saved him from the absurdities of the attempt to in- 
 
48 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 troduce classic meters into English. But it was not only from 
 pedantry that he rescued himself. Though full of the spirit 
 of the Italian Renaissance in its larger embodiments as repre- 
 sented in the epics of Tasso and Ariosto, Spenser had little in 
 common with the Italianated style that dealt in "dainty an- 
 tithesis and alliteration, ingenuity of simile," and far-fetched 
 comparison. Spenser held "the laboriously small literature" 
 of Italy in undisguised disdain. In consequence of this feeling 
 he even dared to employ at times Chaucer's obsolete language 
 in protest against the foreign words which were at the moment 
 crowding into English. Other motives, too, led Spenser to a 
 love of antiquated expressions. There is a charm about the 
 unusual, especially in sound, which the ear of Spenser, attuned 
 to musical impressions, found it difficult to resist. Unques- 
 tionably Spenser abused at times his mastery over language 
 and, though he rarely invented new words, he frequently dis- 
 torted old ones. It has been held that many of his alleged 
 archaisms are really referable to actual provincial usage in the 
 Lancashire of his day, and that more of them may be otherwise 
 justified. But when all has been said, Spenser must be ac- 
 knowledged much of a tyrant over words, twisting and con- 
 torting, at times, his pitiable subjects at his royal will. In 
 this Spenser differed immeasurably from Shakespeare who ex- 
 tended a beneficent rule over thousands of subjects in the world 
 of speech that had remained hitherto unreduced to citizenship 
 in the realm of literary acceptance. 
 
 The Shepherds' Calendar, "containing twelve allegories 
 proportionable to the twelve months," was registered in De- 
 cember, 1579, dedicated "to the noble and virtuous gentleman, 
 most worthy of all titles both of learning and chivalry, Master 
 Philip Sidney," and modestly signed "Immerito." The Dedi- 
 catory Epistle to Harvey was written by E. K., that is Edward 
 Kirke, Spenser's friend at college, who also supplied the quaint 
 "gloss" or running comment that accompanies the text. The 
 Shepherds' Calendar is the first successful attempt to write 
 poetical pastoral eclogues in English. Spenser appears to have 
 found his inspiration in the pastorals of Battista Spagnuoli, 
 commonly known as Mantuan, one of the foremost Latin poets 
 
"THE SHEPHERDS' CALENDAR" 49 
 
 of the Italian Renaissance, and in those of Clement Marot, 
 a French reHgious free-lance who was alternately in favor and 
 exiled from the courts of Marguerite d'Alen^on and Francis I. 
 But the pastoral mode had already crept into England in 
 Alexander Barclay's satirical and allusive Eclogues, 1513, and 
 in those of Barnabe Googe, 1563, who, as well as Turberville, 
 had translated pastorals of Mantuan into English; while long 
 before the Scottish poet, Robert Henryson, had set a standard 
 of idyllic excellence in his perfect little poem, Robyn and 
 Makyne (albeit likewise of French extraction), which none 
 was to equal save Marlowe, Breton, and Lodge in times to 
 come. 
 
 Notwithstanding that The Shepherds^ Calendar is thus 
 imitative of foreign poets, written in a mode which seems 
 strained and artificial to us to-day, and weighted by a conserv- 
 ative adherence to an archaic vocabulary and an obsolete 
 system of rhythm in parts, the poem was an immediate success, 
 and Spenser was enthusiastically hailed as "the new poet" 
 in a chorus of praise. Spenser lived to see five editions of the 
 Calendar. It was translated into Latin by John Dove in 1585, 
 and commended by critics like Webbe and Nash, by personal 
 friends such as Sidney, and fellow poets like Drayton. And 
 indeed in the Calendar we recognize at once the presence of a 
 consummate artist, a powerful grasp of ideas, a pictorial and 
 vivid style, and an extraordinary power over metrical form in 
 calling forth the music of the language. Already we find 
 Spenser's fondness for allegory asserting itself in the person- 
 ages of these eclogues. Colin is Spenser himself; Hobbinol, 
 his friend Harvey; Menalcas, the fortunate rival of the poet 
 for the hand of Rosalind. 
 
 But The Shepherds' Calendar is more than a set of eclogues 
 on amorous and trifling subjects. It contains underneath a 
 thin disguise of pastoral form, a deep undercurrent of sturdy 
 and independent opinion. For example Archbishop Grindal, 
 as the wise shepherd Algrind, receives Spenser's unstinted 
 praise. Grindal had set himself in opposition to the court 
 in an attempt to educate and liberalize the clergy, and had 
 manfully refused to yield to the queen on what he considered 
 
50 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 a question of conscience. It was a brave thing for the young 
 poet, awaiting preferment, to speak so boldly as he did on the 
 side of liberality and justice. This conduct was of a piece 
 with the candor of Spenser's later satire of the courtly delay 
 and corruption of the time which he voices in his excellent 
 satirical poem. Mother Huhherd's Tale, and elsewhere. 
 
 The Shepherds' Calendar and the Arcadia set the pastoral 
 fashion, and thereafter this became for a decade or more the 
 prevailing literary mode. This mode was common to verse 
 and prose, to the epic, dramatic, and lyric form, and it mingled 
 with every other conceivable manner of writing which the teem- 
 ing inventivenesss of an age that doted on originality could 
 bring forth. The Arcadia had contained pastoral lyrics; but 
 the lyrics of The Shepherds' Calendar may have preceded them. 
 It is somewhat strange that Spenser should never have written 
 pastoral or other lyric for itself. The "Song to Eliza," "Peri- 
 got and Willie's Roundelay," and the majestic "Lament for 
 Dido," all included in their variety of beautiful meters in the 
 Calendar, disclose how varied and perfect was Spenser's 
 lyrical art. Yet in them all, as in the glorious poetry of the 
 Prothalamion and the Epithalarnion, we have the large and 
 leisurely poetical utterance so distinctive of Spenser. Spenser 
 has none of the brevity, the concentration, the concrete expres- 
 siveness, the short holding phrase that distinguishes the best 
 of Elizabethan lyrists. Rarely can he catch with the instinct 
 of some lesser men the fleeting joy or sorrow of the moment. 
 Spenser's Muse is like some stately galleon of the age, built 
 high above the water, bearing on in stately course, her bil- 
 lowy sails all set and gay with a thousand floating pennons. 
 She needs the broad ocean for her course, but she is a gallant 
 sight to behold, and little pinnaces shrink before her regal 
 progress. 
 
 In July, 1580, Spenser was appointed secretary to Arthur 
 Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and accompanied 
 him to Dublin. Although Spenser returned to England for 
 two brief visits, Ireland thenceforth became his home, until 
 the rebellion drove him back to London as a refuge shortly 
 before his death. The successive posts and employments in 
 
LIFE IN IRELAND 51 
 
 the service of the government held by Spenser we need not 
 detail here. He was for some years Clerk of Chancery (1581- 
 1588), and later clerk of the Council of Munster (1588-1594). 
 He was well paid for his services to the crown, and acquired 
 at different times a considerable landed estate, living, amongst 
 other places, at New Abbey in county Kildare, and at Kil- 
 colman Castle, near to Doneraile in county Cork. Nor was 
 Spenser without associates in Ireland. There were then as 
 now many cultivated gentlemen on what may be called the 
 civil list of the colonial office. One Lodowick Bryskett, a 
 fellow Irish official, became an intimate friend of Spenser's. 
 Bryskett was of Italian extraction, and had traveled on the 
 continent as the companion of Sidney. His Discourse of Civil 
 Life, 1606, the translation of an Italian philosophical work, 
 has a peculiar interest from his description in it of a party of 
 literary friends who met at his cottage near Dublin, chief 
 among them Spenser. Here Bryskett tells how Spenser en- 
 couraged him "long sithence to follow the reading of the Greek 
 tongue, and offered me his help to make me understand it"; 
 how he requested Spenser to discourse to the party of moral 
 philosophy . . . "whereby virtues are to be distin- 
 guished from vices"; and how Spenser excused himself on the 
 plea that he had already undertaken "a work tending to the 
 same effect." Another intimacy, the outcome of Spenser's 
 life in Ireland, was the friendship of Walter Raleigh, the 
 "Shepherd of the Ocean" of Colin Clout. Raleigh lived not 
 far from Spenser and visited him at Castle Kilcolman. To 
 him on one of these visits Spenser submitted the first three 
 books of the The Faery Queen; and Raleigh, delighted with 
 the work, induced Spenser to return to England to seek a 
 publisher. This Spenser did, arriving in London in October, 
 1589, about the time that Shakespeare was beginning his 
 apprenticeship to the stage. All this matter and Spenser's 
 own delight in the gracious reception which he met at court 
 from Cynthia and her maids is charmingly, allegorically, and 
 pastorally set forth in Colin Clout's Come Home Again, printed 
 in 1595. Spenser arranged for the publication of the first 
 three books of The Faery Queen, and in 1590 they appeared 
 
52 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 with the dignified and graceful dedication to Queen Elizabeth, 
 the well-known prefatory letter to Sir Walter Raleigh de- 
 claring the intention of the author, and numerous sonnets to 
 illustrious people who had shown favor to the poet. 
 
 Spenser's literary triumph was all that he could wish; but 
 he did not succeed in getting employment which would remove 
 him from savage Ireland and bring him nearer the court. He, 
 too, experienced the delays and doubts of attendance on royal 
 favor. According to a well-known anecdote Elizabeth was so 
 pleased with The Faery Queen — as well she might be, for 
 never has woman been so royally flattered — that she deter- 
 mined to give Spenser a pension of five hundred pounds per 
 annum, a large and munificent gift, considering the purchasing 
 value of money in that age. But Burleigh demurred that so 
 much money should be paid for a song. The queen then told 
 her thrifty secretary to give Spenser what in his judgment he 
 thought was fit for a poet, and the pension was granted at 
 fifty pounds. This is the basis of the notion that Spenser 
 was poet laureate. The ofiice did not exist in Spenser's day, 
 nor in Daniel's, the unofficial successor of Spenser to the favors 
 of the court. Ben Jmison^ was^xbejfirst^^^^^^ 
 
 In a well-known passage of Colin Clout, Spenser touches 
 on his poetical contemporaries with generous appreciative 
 comment. Each poet is veiled, after the fashion of the time, 
 under a pastoral name, and among them Spenser certainly 
 mentions Alabaster, Churchyard, Raleigh, Daniel, Sidney, 
 and some minor writers, while the surmises of scholars have 
 considerably extended the list of identifications. The whole 
 passage concludes: 
 
 And there, though last not least, is ^tion, 
 A gentler shepherd may no where be found: 
 Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, 
 Dbth like himself heroically sound. 
 All these, and many others moe, remain, 
 Now after Astrophel is dead and gone: 
 But while as Astrophel did live and reign, 
 Amongst all these was none his paragon. 
 
"COLIN CLOUT" 53 
 
 All these do flourish in their sundry kind, 
 And do their Cynthia immortal make: 
 Yet found I liking in her royal mind, 
 Not for my skill, but for that shepherd's sake. 
 
 Astrophel is of course Sidney whose memory Spenser every- 
 where reveres. It was becoming and courtier-like in Spenser 
 thus to attribute the royal recognition to his friendship with 
 Sidney and not to his own poetic merit. As to ^tion, the 
 adjective "gentle" in this passage immediately suggests 
 Shakespeare. We may not always remember that the epithet 
 is Jonson's, to be found with a dozen other good things about 
 the great dramatist in the famous lines prefixed to the first 
 folio edition of Shakespeare's works. "Gentle" is now once 
 and for all the Shakespearean epithet, and the heroically 
 sounding Muse of this passage has been applied to him (Shake- 
 speare). But it has also been applied to Sack-ville; and it is 
 equally applicable to Rowland, the self-assumed pseudonym 
 of Michael Drayton, a poet who must have been well known 
 to Spenser in 1595. It must be confessed that Shakespeare 
 — a player and only on sufferance acquainted with men of 
 Spenser's court circle — was certainly unlikely to be so ad- 
 dressed by "the new poet" in the year 1595, the year after the 
 earliest heir of Shakespeare's invention had seen the press. 
 And yet the two greatest poets of the age may have met. If 
 they did into what insignificance fall the royal fields of cloth of 
 gold and other ceremonious meetings of august worldly sov- 
 ereigns. Did Spenser find "our Shakespeare" truly gentle? 
 And was Spenser to Shakespeare the "poet's poet?" 
 
 In 1590 appeared Daphnaida, an elegy on Lady Douglas, 
 and a volume entitled Complaints. Strange as it must seem 
 to us, some of the matter of Muiopotmos, an allegorical story 
 of the proud butterfly swept into a spider's web, and the satiri- 
 cal beast epic. Mother Huhherd's Tale gave offense, and part 
 of the work was suppressed. The publishers, promise of an- 
 other volume of small poems was never fulfilled. 
 
 In 1592 Spenser fell in love once more and wooed and won 
 for his wife Elizabeth Boyle, a woman of position and culti- 
 
54 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 vatlon, well worthy of the poet's addresses. Spenser's beauti- 
 ful sonnet sequence, Amoretti, is, in part at least, the poetical 
 record of this courtship. The Epithalamion which celebrated 
 his marriage, in June, 1594, has been truly described as "one 
 of the grandest lyrics in English poetry." These two works 
 were printed in 1595, as was Colin Clout; and at the close of 
 this year Spenser brought three more books of The Faery Queen 
 to London and they appeared the next year. Once more was 
 Spenser received by the best people of England, staying at 
 Essex House with the earl, and penning the fine Prothalamion 
 for a double wedding held there. Spenser was also engaged 
 during this visit in writing his prose tract, A View of the Present 
 State of Ireland, This clear and able paper of state is marred 
 by its attitude which allows no rights to the down-trodden 
 Irish. The gentle and kindly poet was one of the English 
 invaders that approved and even took part in the raids of 
 devastation that wasted unhappy Ireland. He was also one 
 of those who was rewarded with the confiscated estates of 
 rebels, a reward which was to bring to him a speedy and ter- 
 rible retribution. In an examination of the social culture and 
 civilization of the reign of Elizabeth we must not forget that 
 much of the last was as yet superficial. Bear-baiting and bull- 
 baiting were no uncommon amusements, to say nothing of 
 cock-fighting, in praise of which worthy Roger Ascham wrote 
 a book, unhappily now lost. Those who delight in what they 
 choose to call historical "realism," have been at pains to tell 
 us how Queen Elizabeth used to beat her maids of honor, and 
 how she actually boxed my Lord of Essex on the ears one day 
 when she was scolding him, a chastisement which the young 
 coxcomb doubtless richly deserved. Add to this the habit of 
 public execution, drawing and quartering, and the exhibition 
 of heads and mangled limbs on the parapet of London Bridge, 
 and we have illustrations alike of the childish petulance of the 
 queen and of the brutality of the age. 
 
 In Elizabeth's day the Irish were little better than savages. 
 They had been given no opportunity to become civilized, 
 and were not eager to seize one. They continued, as they 
 have to our own day, the objects of the injustice and rapacity 
 
CONTEMPORARY REPUTE 55 
 
 of their more powerful neighbor. To Spenser, Ireland was 
 a horrible but beautiful wilderness, whose beauties and his 
 own loneliness among them he both celebrates and deplores. 
 He detested the Irish as an inferior race. Neither his age 
 nor his position could make his judgment in this matter fair. 
 As a man we know Spenser to have been kindly, gentle, and 
 estimable, with few of the weaknesses vulgarly attributed to 
 poets. It is no small credit to the taste of the Elizabethan age 
 that their contemporaries gave to Shakespeare and to Spenser 
 that rank to which it was left to comparatively modern appreci- 
 ation to restore them. Spenser was as highly honored by the 
 queen as could be expected, considering his birth and the fact 
 that he exhibited no very marked political qualifications. 
 As to his flattery of her, it was a mere fabric of imaginative 
 gallantry and devotion, the result of a grateful and loyal nature. 
 How manly after all, is his greatest piece of flattery, the dedica- 
 tion of The Faery Queen, and what a glorious assumption of 
 eq.uality it conveys: "To the most high, mighty, and magnifi- 
 cent empress, renowned for piety, virtue and all gracious 
 government Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, 
 France, and Ireland, and of Virginia, Defender of the faith, 
 her most humble servant, Edmund Spenser, doth in all humil- 
 ity dedicate, present, and consecrate these his labors to live 
 with the eternity of her fame. " 
 
 In 1597 Spenser returned to Ireland in failing health. 
 He was appointed sheriff^ of Cork; and in the year following, 
 the Tyrone Rebellion broke out. The English were taken 
 unawares, massacre and outrage followed. In October of 
 that year Kilcolman Castle was sacked and burnt, and Spenser 
 fled to Cork with his wife and four children. According to 
 Jonson, one of his children perished in the flames. In 
 December Spenser came to London, the bearer of dispatches 
 from Sir Thomas Norris, governor of Munster, and died at 
 an inn in Westminster the next month, January, 1599. The 
 tradition goes that he died in poverty. It seems improbable, 
 however, that the holder of a crown pension and bearer of 
 official dispatches, so well known and honored as Spenser, 
 should so have perished. He was ruined in a sense by the 
 
56 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 destruction of his Irish castle and the spoiling of his estate. 
 This is the origin of the story. Spenser's funeral was sump- 
 tuous, and attended by the poets and the nobility. He was 
 buried in Westminster Abbey near to Chaucer. 
 
 And now as to Spenser's famous book. The Faery Queen. 
 Fortunately for our understanding of its scope and meaning, 
 we have Spenser's own interesting letter to Raleigh. Therein 
 we learn that The Faery Queen is "a continued allegory or 
 dark conceit," and that "the general end thereof . . . is to 
 fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle 
 discipline." 
 
 Which for that I conceived should be most plausible and pleasing, 
 being colored with an historical fiction, the which the most part of 
 men delight to read rather for variety of matter than for profit of 
 the ensample, I chose the history of King Arthur, as most fit for the 
 excellency of his person, being made famous by many men's former 
 works, and also furthest from the danger of envy and suspicion of 
 present time. 
 
 After naming as his examples Homer, Vergil, Tasso, and 
 Ariosto, Spenser continues: 
 
 By ensample of which excellent poets, I labor to portray in Arthur, 
 before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve 
 private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised; the which is the 
 purpose of these first twelve books, which if I find to be well accepted, 
 I may be perhaps encouraged to frame the other part of politic vir- 
 tues in his person after that he came to be king. 
 
 Then follows a justification of the allegorical method and 
 an explanation of how Arthur saw "in a dream or vision the 
 Faery Queen^ with whose excellent beauty ravished, he 
 awaking, resolved to seek her out; and so being by Merlin 
 armed, he went to seek her forth in faery land. " 
 
 In that Faery Queen I mean glory in my general intention, but 
 in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of 
 our sovereign the queen and her kingdom in faery land. And yet, 
 in some places else I do otherwise shadow her. For considering she 
 beareth two persons, the one of a most royal queen or empress, the 
 other of a most virtuous and beautiful lady,' this latter part in some 
 
"THE FAERY QUEEN" 57 
 
 places I do express in Belphcebe, fashioning her name according to 
 your own excellent conceit of Cynthia, Phoebe and Cynthia being 
 both names of Diana. 
 
 It will thus be seen how this elaborate plan carries out 
 the idea, already suggested in Spenser's words to Lodowick 
 Bryskett "to represent all the moral virtues, assigning to 
 every virtue a knight to be the patron and defender of the 
 same, in whose actions and feats of arms and chivalry the 
 operations of that virtue whereof he is the protector are to 
 be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose 
 themselves against the same to be beaten dowil and overcome. " 
 This stupendous plan was never completed. The six finished 
 books give the legend (each in twelve cantos, averaging fifty 
 or sixty stanzas each) of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, 
 Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy; while a fragment of two 
 "Cantos on Mutability" is supposed to have belonged to 
 a seventh book (not necessarily seventh in order) on Con- 
 stancy, The legend that The Faery Queen was actually 
 finished may be dismissed as improbable. The poem as it 
 stands contains about four thousand stanzas, or between 
 thirty and forty thousand verses, and is of a quality of sus- 
 tained poetical excellence, unequaled in any other poem of 
 the language. 
 
 As The Faery Queen remains to us, it is like some fragment 
 of ancient sculpture, the more beautiful from its incomplete- 
 ness. However, such is its exquisite detail and such its chain- 
 like quality of unity in continuance, that it is probable that 
 we are not much the losers by this. Indeed, with all its 
 elaborate plan. The Faery Queen must be pronounced one of 
 the most plotless epics in. existence. Moreover the narrative, 
 despite its graces and variety, is repetitious, if continuous; 
 and whether we "prick o'er the plain" with the Knight of 
 Holiness, descend with Sir Guyon to the caves of Mammon, 
 or follow Sir Arthegal's aquatic duel with the Paynim PoUente, 
 again and again recur the seemly images of knightly prowess, 
 the brave encounters, the contrasted braggadocio or caitiff 
 knights, the fair disconsolate virgins, Una-like, and the Vivian- 
 like Duessas, all-seeming fair but foul within. I never read 
 
58 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 ^;- The Faery Queen without thinking of those rare and costly 
 1/ tapestries which decked in ancient days the halls of princes. 
 ■ f Here is the same soft richness of color and of texture, the 
 h^ > '"^' ^^"^ remoteness to anything like actual life, the delicate care 
 \ ii*- of detail, and the same enchanting decorative effect. Of 
 '^'■" such art we feel that it is loving and leisurely; its very progress 
 
 is like that of the shuttle in the loom, now forward, now back. 
 Neither weaver nor poet can be conceived as hurried or as 
 otherwise than content to add, hour after hour and thread 
 after thread, the beautiful colors that grow insensibly into a 
 pattern, ever recurrent and conventional, but ever holding, 
 as with a soft compulsion, our approval and affection. Take 
 these stanzas, some three of many more, descriptive of Bel- 
 phoebe, type of virgin perfection and sufficiency: 
 Eftsoon, there stepped forth 
 A goodly lady clad in hunter's weed, 
 That seem'd to be a woman of great worth. 
 And by her stately portance born of heavenly birth. 
 
 Her face so fair, as flesh it seemed not. 
 But heavenly portrait of bright angel's hue, 
 Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot, 
 Through goodly mixture of complexions due; 
 And in her cheeks the vermeil red did shew 
 Like roses in a bed of lilies shed. 
 The which ambrosial odors from them threw, 
 And gazer's sense with double pleasure fed, 
 Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead. 
 
 In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame. 
 Kindled above in th' Heavenly Maker's light, 
 And darted fiery beams out of the same, 
 So passing piersant, and so wondrous bright. 
 In them the blinded god his lustful fire 
 To kindle oft essayed, but had no might; 
 For with dread majesty and awful ire. 
 She broke his wanton darts. and quenched base desire. 
 
 Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave. 
 Like a broad table did itself dispread, 
 For love his lofty triumphs to engrave. 
 And write the battles of his great godhead: 
 
"THE FAERY QUEEN" 59 
 
 All good and honor might therein be read; 
 For there their dwelling was. And when she spake, 
 Sweet words, like dropping honey, she did shed; 
 And 'twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake 
 A silver sound that heavenly music seemed to make. 
 
 No wonder that it was once profanely said that nothing 
 but Spenser's death could possibly have prevented The Faery 
 Queen from going on in the same bloom, fragrance, and vital- 
 ity forever. 
 
 Two allegories underlie the story of The Faery Queen, one 
 figuring forth abstract virtues and religious qualitites, the 
 other the concrete presentation of the same. Thus the Red- 
 Cross Knight of the first book signifies Holiness in the abstract. 
 In the concrete this figure stands, somewhat unfittingly, for 
 the Earl of Leicester. Belphoebe, the Virgin Warrior, is 
 militant Chastity in the abstract; but, like all unwedded and 
 feminine abstractions of the age, in the concrete is Queen 
 Elizabeth. The allegory of The Faery Queen is sometimes 
 moral, sometimes political, sometimes religious and even 
 personal, although there can be no doubt that Spenser not 
 infrequently avoided the possibility of too close an identifica- 
 tion. With this uncertainty as to Spenser's personages. 
 The Faery Queen has been most happily compared to a wide 
 landscape, viewed from a point of vantage on one of those days 
 w^hen, although the heavens are fair, the mist is driving in 
 from time to time from the sea. As you look out over the 
 plain, you see some village, apparently familiar; but before 
 you identify the spire on its church, down sweeps the mist 
 and the baffling semi-luminous cloud covers all. In the read- 
 ing of the poetry of Spenser we may well follow the witty 
 suggestion of one of his fellow poets. "Poetry," says Sir 
 John Harington, "is one kind of meat to feed divers tastes. 
 For the weaker capacities will feed themselves with the pleas- 
 antness of the history and the sweetness of the verse; some 
 that have stronger stomachs will, as it were, take a further 
 taste of the moral sense; and a third sort, more high conceited 
 than they, will digest the allegory. " 
 
 Nothing is more erroneous than to suppose that Spenser 
 
6o SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 borrowed his perfect stanza of The Faery Queen from the 
 Itahan. The sonnet and the famous ottava rima {ah a h ah 
 c c) were both used by Spenser and may have suggested, be- 
 tween them, the advantage of a long and well-knit stanza. 
 A more likely original than either of these is to be found in 
 Chaucer's rime royal (a h a b h c c), used in Troilus and 
 Cress ide especially, which by the insertion of a line (a h ah h c h c) 
 between the last two verses becomes Chaucer's stanza of 
 The Monk's Tale. One step more, the addition of the final 
 alexandrine, and we have the Spenserian stanza {a h ah h c 
 h c c). But this step was a great and original one, and takes 
 Spenser's stanza out of the group of "five stress" verses, 
 giving it a character entirely new. The Spenserian stanza 
 is Spenser's own, and is certainly to be regarded as one of 
 the happiest inventions in formal versification. Its adapta- 
 tion, moreover, to the style and subject of The Faery Queen 
 is perfect; for the Spenserian stanza combines the advantage 
 of a beautiful integral form, of sufficient scope to admit every 
 variety of cadence, with the unusual additional faculty of 
 linking well stanza to stanza. It is therefore an admirable 
 form for a continuous narrative, made up of successive vi- 
 gnettes; and has very properly been likened to a broad and 
 beautiful river, flowing in graceful curves with a "steady, 
 soft, irresistible sweep forwards. " The extraordinary smooth- 
 ness of Spenser's versification further justifies this comparison 
 together with the agreeable recurrence of the rime, so cadenced 
 as not too strongly to mark the end of each verse. The final 
 alexandrine is inexpressibly beautiful, seeming as it does to 
 round up each stanza with a graceful retardo, and, by its 
 excess over the other lines, to break the monotony of the 
 succession of decasyllables : 
 
 Nought under heaven so strongly doth allure 
 The sense of man, and all his mind possess, 
 As beauty's lovely bait, that doth procure 
 Great warriors oft their rigor to repress, 
 And mighty hands forget their manliness; 
 
THE SPENSERIAN STANZA 6i 
 
 Drawn with the power of an heart-throbbing eye, 
 And wrapped in fetters of a golden tress, 
 That can with melting pleasance mollify 
 Their hardened hearts enured to blood and cruelty. 
 
 So whilom learned that mighty Jewish swain. 
 Each of whose locks did match a man in might, 
 To lay his spoils before his leman's train: 
 So also did that great (Etean Knight 
 For his love's sake his lion's skin undight; 
 And so did warlike Antony neglect 
 The world's whole rule for Cleopatra's sight. 
 Such wondrous power hath women's fair aspect 
 To captive men, and make them all the world reject. 
 
 The Spenserian stanza is really less monotonous than blank- 
 verse, even with Milton, in all his varied powers, as its ex- 
 ponent, to say nothing of stanzas, ending in a couplet and 
 shorter quatrains. Many poets have tried to improve Spen- 
 ser's stanza; none have succeeded either in writing it more 
 gracefully than Spenser or in inventing a better. The Spen- 
 serian stanza is technically an extremely difficult one, both 
 from its length, the intricacy of the rime, and the necessity 
 of long sustained excellence. Spenser accomplished all these 
 technical demands with an ease that must remain the despair 
 of all his imitators. 
 
 The paradox of Spenser's genius lies in his combination 
 in harmonious union of a passionate love of the sensuously 
 beautiful with the purest and sternest ethical spirit of his 
 time. This it is that makes Spenser alike the poet of the 
 Renaissance and the poet of the Reformation. The com- 
 bination of these apparently repugnant elements is exem- 
 plified to a still higher degree in Milton, the poet who owes 
 most to Spenser. We must say "apparently repugnant 
 elements," for it is assuredly no essential of the flower of 
 art that it spring from the ofFal of sensuality and irreligion, 
 nor of purity in morals and religion that all that is bright and 
 joyous in the world be held in contempt. It is this union of 
 the elements of beauty with moral truth that gives Spenser 
 a poetic dignity such as Tennyson enjoyed in our own day. 
 
62 SPENSER, "THE NEW POET" 
 
 Spenser, like Tennyson, is one of the greatest pictorial artists 
 in words, and a consummate craftsman in the handling of 
 that varied succession of sounds and qualities of tone in which 
 the technique of verse consists. But Spenser is, in a sense, 
 the last of the medieval poets. With all the decorative glory 
 of the Renaissance his' own, its imagery, its power to compel 
 words to the expression of ideas, the figure beneath all this 
 elaboration often discloses the hard angular lines of didactic 
 allegory. It is not Spenser's truth to nature nor his insight into 
 human life and conduct, his sense of design, nor his ability to 
 tell a connected story that makes him great. For, if the truth 
 be confessed, he has none of these things in unusual measure, 
 and we scarcely remember a character or an episode in his 
 great epic, or, if we do, it leaves the impression of an agreeable 
 arabesque in which the design was pleasing for color and 
 graceful of curve, but not memorable or distinctive, nor in- 
 deed at all times comprehensible. Spenser's mind was in 
 full sympathy with the strong, refining, and ennobling in- 
 fluences of the age which produced Sidney, the first English 
 gentleman. Its loyalty, its spirit of adventure, its sensitive- 
 ness and delicacy of sentiment, all found an echo in his poetry, 
 toned with a deep and fervent religious sense that has the 
 effect of sanctifying the melodious words in which he conveyed 
 his pure and beautiful thoughts. The saving grace of Spenser 
 is first his devotion to the beautiful, which no Keats nor 
 Shelley more profoundly worshipped; and, secondly his lofty 
 moral impulse, involving an ideal code of conduct for man 
 and a devout faith in good. In Spenser the worship of the 
 beautiful did not breed the passion of disappointment which 
 it bred in Keats, nor the defiant revolutionary attitude to 
 which it impelled Shelley; although the moral impulse of 
 Spenser, no less than that of Shelley, was a reforming impulse. 
 But where Shelley was revolutionary, and at times vituperative 
 of the tyrants, the dungeons, and wrongs of suffering humanity, 
 Spenser sought ever to reform by an appeal to the uplifting 
 effects of calm and exquisitely wrought poetry and by dwelling 
 with the passion and insistence of a lover on the beauty of 
 holiness. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 LYLY AND THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 THE accession of Queen Elizabeth found England with- 
 out a genuine drama. The old sacred plays that had 
 flourished all over England, in the ports and market towns, 
 even in boroughs and rural villages, were extinct or, where 
 lingering, moribund. The new drama of art was not, as yet. 
 True, the reigns of Henry, Edward, and Mary abounded in 
 interludes, moral, educational, religious, and, above all, con- 
 troversial. Moreover John He)Avood, first name on the hon- 
 orable role of English dramatists, had amused the court of 
 Henry VHI with witty and free-spoken interludes; and in 
 them for the first time unmistakably, the artistic process was 
 set loose, and English drama absolved from its ancient intent 
 to guide, edify, and instruct. The interludes of He)nvood are 
 as French as the sonnet of Wyatt is Italian. But the difference 
 between Respuhlica, a controversial morality written to incul- 
 cate Roman Catholic principles, or King Johan, a contro- 
 versial morahty written to intrench Protestant prejudice, and 
 the interludes of Heywood, is the difference between preaching 
 and literature, a difference from the point of view of art com- 
 parable alone to that between midnight and daylight 
 
 A contrast has been suggested between the medieval ballad 
 and the courtly lyric of art which found its way into England 
 in the days of Henry VHI; and the origins of modern English 
 poetry and much else have been found in the select court 
 circle, the coterie, which emulated the cultivation of the better 
 small courts of Italy. A similar antithesis exists between the 
 old sacred drama and the new regular drama of the reign of 
 Elizabeth. The old drama was, as all know, first clerical in that 
 the priests were the earliest actors and promoters of it, just as 
 the drama itself was in its essence a form of worship. Soon 
 all this was changed and the drama, once secularized, fell into 
 
 63 
 
64 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 the hands of the trade guilds and became bourgeois and the 
 care of the citizens of towns. A popular nature inhered in the 
 old sacred drama almost to the end, notwithstanding that both 
 morality and interlude were often employed as entertainments 
 at court, in the schools, and in the universities themselves. 
 The new regular drama, then, was separated from the past 
 not only in its character as an amusement and an art; but, 
 in its quality as a product of the literature of the court, it was 
 equally in contrast with the old popular drama of the citizens. 
 The earliest Elizabethan dramatists were scholars, gentlemen, 
 and courtiers; then came the school-masters and semi-profes- 
 sional poets; lastly, the actors as playwrights and the pro- 
 fessional dramatists. Elizabethan drama originated at court, 
 in the universities, and among the young lawyers of the Inns 
 of Court; it progressed to the schools and singing choirs and 
 thence to the inn-yards and taverns of London. 
 
 The familiar story tells how Nicholas Udall, sometime 
 head-master, first of Eton and then of Westminster School, 
 wrote the earliest English Comedy, Ralph Roister Doister, in 
 the reign of King Edward or earlier; how it was written in 
 imitation of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus and acted by the 
 boys of his school in place of the usual Latin play at Christmas; 
 but it is sometimes forgotten that Udall was not only a school- 
 master but a professional playwright who devised pageants 
 for the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn and dramatic per- 
 formances for Queen Mary. Of William Stevenson, author 
 of another of the earliest regular English comedies. Gammer 
 Gurton's Needle, we know very little. This was a university 
 play and may have been acted as early as 1560. Its author- 
 ship was long ascribed to Bishop Still, then given to John 
 Bridges, and now settled as Stevenson's. Gammer Gurton is 
 modeled on the interludes of Heywood, and tells in plain and 
 very vernacular language how a whole village is set by the ears 
 by the loss of a needle and the chicanery of a mischievous 
 rascal known as Diccon of Bedlam. Ralph Roister Doister 
 is a more decorous play if less vigorous and is concerned with 
 the foolish and presumptuous suit of Ralph, a vain braggart, 
 for the hand of the merry but virtuous Dame Custance. The 
 
PLAUTUS AND SENECA 65 
 
 power of both comedies is in their honest representation of 
 actual life. 
 
 On the other hand, romance came into regular dramatic 
 form in tragedy and at the hands of Thomas Sackville and 
 Thomas Norton, two young students of the Inner Temple; 
 and the name of their play was Gorhoduc or Ferrex and Porrex. 
 Here the model was Seneca, the moralist and philosopher of 
 Neronian Rome, though the story was borrowed from that 
 mythical lore which Englishmen of the day included in the 
 history of their country. Gorboduc was king of England. 
 Like Lear he unwisely divided his kingdom before his death 
 between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, a procedure which 
 ended in the destruction of all. Now this tale resembles that 
 of the sons of King (Edipus of Thebes who likewise divided a 
 kingdom and fought to the death over it; and this tragedy 
 Seneca treated in his Phcenissce, whence in all probability its 
 attraction for the young English students of law. Gorhoduc 
 was acted before Queen Elizabeth in January, 1561, and is 
 memorable alike as the first regular English tragedy and as 
 the first play to be written in English blank-verse. 
 
 Plautus and Seneca continued favorite models with Eng- 
 lish dramatists throughout the entire reign and for diverse 
 reasons. Plautus is genuinely clever and, despite all his bur- 
 lesque and farce, a dramatist of repute; English comedy could 
 have found no better model, limited though his subjects are, 
 and tending, though his characters do, to types. Seneca, on 
 the contrary, was only the most available model for tragedy. 
 His plays were not even intended for acting; and their florid 
 rhetoric, moralized commonplaces, and exaggerated horrors 
 were but a crude example to young English tragedy. More- 
 over it was a mistaken idea of the usages of the ancients as 
 exemplified in Seneca that long kept Italian tragedy, and after 
 it that of France, in classical leading-strings to the detriment 
 of the highest art. It is impossible here to mention the many 
 plays that followed on these various models; suffice it to say 
 that from the sixties onward the drama flourished steadily, 
 furnishing many notable examples. Thus, Gascoigne followed 
 Gorhoduc, a few years after, with a Senecan tragedy Jocasta, 
 
66 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 and adapted from the Italian of Dolci a comedy called 
 Supposes whence Shakespeare had a part of his Taming of the 
 Shrew. In the seventies Robert Wilmot rewrote a play (origi- 
 nally by himself and others) called Tancred and Gismunda, 
 a romantic tragedy levying on Italian rather than classical 
 sources. Whetstone, much about the same time, wrote his 
 Promos and Cassandra whence Shakespeare derived his grave 
 comedy, Measure for Measure. A play on the story of Romeo 
 and Juliet is alluded to as "lately set forth on stage," two 
 years before Shakespeare was born. And an interlude of 
 The Cruel Debtor, registered four years later, may not impos- 
 sibly be an earlier version of a play called The Jew, wherein 
 Gosson tells us was depicted "the greediness of worldly 
 choosers (Portia's unsuccessful suitors) and bloody minds of 
 usurers (Shylock's implacable pursuit of Antonio)." In 
 nothing are we more apt to mistake than in the supposition 
 that Shakespeare was identified with the beginnings of English 
 drama. The drama in a general sense was at least three hun- 
 dred and fifty years old when Shakespeare began to write, and 
 plays of the type of his own had long been popular before he 
 was out of his boyhood. 
 
 The history of the drama up to the coming of the Armada 
 is bound up with the tastes and the fashions of the court. In 
 view of the centralized power of the Tudors and the formation 
 about the person of the sovereign of a brilliant and cultivated 
 court, the personal character of the monarch came more and 
 more to affect society and the literature and art which mir- 
 rored it. Whatever may be said of the fickleness and men- 
 dacity, the doubles and turns, of her Macchiavellian politics, 
 Queen Elizabeth must have been a remarkable woman as well 
 as a magnificent and august sovereign to have inspired in men 
 of gravity and wisdom, as well as in those of more elastic tem- 
 per, those emotions of mingled loyalty and gallantry which 
 glow in nearly all who knew. her personally, and which may 
 be regarded as one of the most admirable testimonies to her 
 fortunate reign. Elizabeth had acquired many courtly Italian 
 accomplishments to gloss, if not to refine, a genuine English 
 spirit which was by no means lacking in coarseness. Dis- 
 
ELIZABETHAN PLAYERS 67 
 
 liking religious feeling and mistrusting sectarian zeal, Eliza- 
 beth had inherited a love of form and pageantry, which latter 
 had flourished with masking at her father's court. These 
 traits resulted in the royal encouragement of ceremonials, 
 functions, and amusements, the drama among the rest. As 
 a consequence the office of the revels, to which fell the super- 
 vision of plays and the allowance of their performance, was 
 increased in importance, entertainments were constantly de- 
 vised for the court and for the royal progresses, and the taste 
 for such things, growing on what it fed, soon demanded the 
 services of professional actors and playwrights. 
 
 The actors of the time of Elizabeth were of several classes. 
 There were first the gentlemen of the Inns of Court, of the 
 universities, occasionally the courtiers themselves; these were 
 all non-professionals. There were, secondly, the boys of the 
 public schools and the singing schools attached to the royal 
 chapels and to the cathedral of St. Paul's. These soon be- 
 came practically professionals. Lastly, there were the adult 
 professional actors, a class at first held in great contempt and 
 often verily little better than vagabonds, but destined, as time 
 went on, to claim among its numbers such actors as Burbage, 
 AUeyn, and Shakespeare, men who retired honored and rich 
 from the profession which their talents had graced. 
 
 The plays of Sackville and Gascoigne are occasional plays. 
 They were acted by amateur actors and staged by the authors 
 themselves. But amateur performances could not long con- 
 tent the cultivated and critical audiences that gathered about 
 the queen; and the professional actor soon emerged in answer 
 to the demand for better music and finer histrionic art. Dur- 
 ing the first two decades of the reign nearly a dozen names of 
 school-masters and choir-masters who were likewise the man- 
 agers of theatrical companies, appear. Among them was 
 Richard Edwards, Master of the Chapel between 1561 and 
 1567 and the author of an extant play called Damon and 
 Pythias, and a lost Palcemon and Arcyte, on the theme of 
 Chaucer's Knight's Tal.e and Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen. 
 To Richard Bower, predecessor of Edwards, has been assigned 
 Appius and Virginia, an indiff'erent production still extant. 
 
68 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 Edwards' successor also, William Hunnis, was pamphleteer, 
 musician, poet, playwright, and manager as well. To Hunnis 
 have been credited no less than thirteen plays, performed at 
 court between 1567 and 1582; but no one of them remains 
 extant. The early traffic with the stage of Sebastian Wescott 
 of Paul's, of Richard Ferrant of Windsor, of John Taylor and 
 WiUiam Elderton of Westminster, and Richard Mulcaster of 
 the Merchant Tailors' School remains even more doubtful 
 and shadowy. But the nature of the plays that they staged 
 is sufficiently known. Such were the anonymous Queen 
 Hester and Horestes. In the former the subject and treat- 
 ment of the old sacred drama persist. The latter is a naive 
 and preposterous popularization of the old Greek story of 
 Orestes. Camhyses by Thomas Preston, fellow of King's 
 College, Cambridge, in 1564, where and when his play was 
 acted before the queen, long remained the butt of contemporary 
 ridicule for its bombast and extravagant rant, attracting again 
 and again the pungent satire of Shakespeare. 
 
 The new professional actors, trained by masters such as 
 Edwards and Hunnis, were the pupils of the great schools, 
 Eton and Westminster, or the boys who sang in the choirs of 
 the royal chapel or of the cathedral of St. Paul's. This 
 custom of training choir-boys to entertain the court and the 
 nobility extends back into very early times. It soon became 
 mixed with a custom of different origin, the performance in the 
 schools on festival occasions of classical plays for the practice in 
 Latin involved. For the better service, moreover, of the royal 
 chapels, it had long been customary to issue letters patent, 
 permitting choir-masters to take good voices for training to 
 the royal service, a power which was soon abused. For the 
 choir-master was thus converted into a theatrical manager 
 and added an eager pursuit of popular favor to his former duty 
 as purveyor of entertainment to the court. In 1597 one 
 Nathaniel Giles, then master of the chapel, under a commission 
 of this kind, actually kidnapped boys on their way to school 
 and delivered them over to Henry Evans, who had just taken 
 a lease from James Burbage of the newly renovated Black- 
 friars' Theater. According to the complaint of Henry Clifton, 
 
JOHN LYLY 69 
 
 the father of one of these boys, to the Star Chamber, the chil- 
 dren were restrained in their liberty and compelled to learn 
 their parts at the point of the rod. Clifton's son was released; 
 but seven other boys, whose names appear in this complaint, 
 remained in this servitude, indubitably with the connivance 
 if not the approbation of the queen's council. Indeed it has 
 recently been affirmed that the status of this troupe of the 
 Children of the Chapel Royal acting at Blackfriars was that 
 of a company under the direct patronage of the queen, estab- 
 lished not only with her knowledge but carrying out her will.^ 
 Certain it is that this company became a very important one, 
 playing many of the most difficult and successful plays of the 
 age; and that it continued at the Blackfriars under the later 
 name of the Children of the Queen's Revels until the lease of 
 that theater was resumed by Shakespeare and Burbage's com- 
 pany in 1609. The boy companies continued throughout 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth powerful rivals even of the best 
 professional actors, though they were not infrequently "in- 
 hibited," as the term went, for indulging in satire and other 
 abuses, and were at last practically suppressed. 
 
 The most interesting person whose career as a playwright 
 falls among the school-master and choir-master managers is 
 John Lyly. Born within a year of Spenser, Lyly was thus 
 ten years Shakespeare's senior. From College, he removed to 
 court to enjoy the patronage of Burleigh and the Earl of Ox- 
 ford, for whom he appears at one time to have managed a com- 
 pany of players. The publication of his novel, Euphues, in 
 1579, as we have seen, brought Lyly an immediate and, for 
 his time, an extraordinary reputation; and a second part, in 
 the following year, confirmed it. Lyly was possessed of an 
 ambition to hold a post in the office of the revels, for which 
 he v^as better fitted than any man in England. But notwith- 
 standing recent affirmations to the effect that Lyly became in 
 1585 the Clerk Controller of the Revels, besides holding the 
 post of the Vice Master of the Children of St. Paul's, neither of 
 these statements can be substantiated. Lyly was at one time 
 
 ^ See C. W. Wallace, in Nebraska University Studies, 1908, viii, 
 240 ff. 
 
70 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 a member of Parliament and a writer in the contemporary 
 prose of controversy, but his tastes naturally turned him to 
 the drama and to the devising of entertainments for the court. 
 
 Eight comedies remain to attest the dramatic activity of 
 Lyly which was confined for the most part within the decade 
 of the eighties. All of them, except one, deal in a manner both 
 fanciful and romantic with material ultimately of classical 
 derivation; and three are commonly supposed to conceal an 
 allegorical significance underneath a seemingly mythological 
 story. Thus Endimion and Sappho and Phao are alleged to 
 figure forth intrigues within the intimate circle that surrounded 
 her majesty, the latter alluding especially to the visit of the Due 
 d'Alen^on and his offer for Elizabeth's hand; whilst Midas, 
 the foolish Phrygian king in whose grasping hand all things 
 were turned to gold, alludes to England's arch enemy. King 
 Philip of Spain. The remaining plays seem devoid of alle- 
 gorical design. Among them, Campaspe tells the story of 
 Alexander's infatuation for the fair Theban captive of that 
 name and his magnanimous release of her affections to the 
 painter Apelles. Interspersed as it is with the humors of 
 Diogenes in his intercourse with Alexander and the philos- 
 ophers, the whole is a pleasing comedy and it deserves the 
 praise which it has received as a love tale well told. Mother 
 Bomhie reverts to a closer following of the method of Roman 
 comedy, dealing in a well-constructed and clever plot with 
 the familiar situation of children exchanged in infancy, and 
 parents the dupes of clever and intriguing servants. Gala- 
 thea. Lovers Metamorphosis, and The Woman in the Moon 
 are best described under the general designation of pastoral 
 comedies of a mythological type. The last alone is written 
 in verse. All contain some allegory, but it is in none of these 
 cases as complete as that of Endimion or Midas, and may be 
 suspected as intended to convey little more than the customary 
 "concealed" compliment to the queen. Except for Lovers 
 Metamorphosis, all the comedies of Lyly are relieved by farcical 
 scenes usually sustained by pages and servants. But few of 
 his comedies are wanting in topics of serious gravity. 
 
 Endimion remains by far the most interesting of the dramas 
 
LYLY'S "ENDIMION" 71 
 
 of Lyly, alike for its intrinsic qualities and for the circum- 
 stance that it is most typical of the style and method of its 
 author. The allegory, too, of Endimion is elaborately con- 
 ceived and carried out with ingenuity and address. This has 
 given rise to many theories and surmises among scholars in 
 vi^hich the date of the presentation of the play is involved and 
 its relations to certain intrigues of the intimate court circle of 
 Elizabeth is affirmed and denied. This drama, w^hich is 
 otherwise called The Man in the Moon, is based on the well- 
 known classical myth of the sleep of Endimion on the slopes 
 of Mount Latmus and of the goddess Diana, enamored of him 
 and impulsively awakening him by her kiss. Obviously if 
 this myth was to be applied in any wise to the queen — and it 
 appears to have been impossible for any Elizabethan poet to 
 name Diana, Cynthia, Semele, or any other mythical virgin 
 without such an allusion — some change must be made in the 
 story. Lyly therefore represented the kiss as a boon extorted 
 only after entreaty and as a sovereign condescension free from 
 the slightest taint of an earthly affection. It is Endimion who 
 is enamored, not Cynthia, the queen; and his affection is of 
 the nature of that reverent adoration of beauty in womanhood 
 which has long been recognized as one of the distinctive "notes" 
 of Renaissance poetry. It has been customary to interpret 
 the allegory of this play, Hke that of The Faery Queen, as of a 
 double intent, the one abstract and relating to the contrasts 
 of the love inspired by heavenly and earthly beauty, love, free 
 or tainted with amorous desire, the other concrete, referring 
 to actual persons, their relations and intrigues. Not only is 
 Cynthia the queen, but Endimion is the Earl of Leicester. 
 TelluSjthe earth and foil to the goddess, the moon, is either the 
 Countess of Sheffield or Mary Queen of Scots; and the minor 
 personages fall more or less into their places according as we 
 interpret the events of the whole play as referring to Elizabeth's 
 discovery, in 1579, of Leicester's marriage with the Countess 
 of Essex through the French ambassador, M. de Simier, or 
 prefer the more recent interpretation that places the play at 
 1585 and refers the allegory to the historical duel of Elizabeth 
 with Mary of Scotland. It is but fair to say that recently a 
 
72 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 protest has been raised against these concrete historical in- 
 terpretations of Endimion; Lyly's comedy has been studied 
 anew and the whole allegory referred to the abstractions of 
 the contrasts and relations of heavenly and earthly beauty as 
 set forth in the conventionalized fashion of contemporary love- 
 making.^ To this we may give a qualified assent, remember- 
 ing, however, that inconsistency in its conduct and denial by 
 the author can be urged as no real objections to allegory in any 
 age, and that it was peculiarly the nature of English allegory 
 in Lyly's time to conceal a concrete as well as an abstract 
 significance. 
 
 While no author can be judged as a dramatist by short 
 extracts, the following may suffice to show the quality of Lyly's 
 refined and Euphuistic diction as well as the nature of his 
 allegorical flattery of the queen in this play. 
 
 Endimion. O fair Cynthia, why do others term thee unconstant, 
 whom I have ever found unmovable ? Injurious time, corrupt 
 manners, unkind men, who finding a constancy not to be matched in 
 my sweet mistress, have christened her with the name of wavering, 
 waxing and waning. Is she inconstant that keepeth a settled course, 
 which since her first creation altereth not one minute in her moving ? 
 There is nothing thought more admirable or commendable in the sea 
 than the ebbing and flowing; and shall the moon, from whom the sea 
 taketh this virtue, be accounted fickle for increasing and decreasing ? 
 Flowers in their buds are nothing worth till they be blown; nor 
 blossoms accounted till they be ripe fruit; and shall we then say they 
 be changeable for that they grow from seeds to leaves, from leaves to 
 buds, from buds to their perfection ? . . . Tell me, Eumenides, 
 what is he that having a mistress of ripe years and infinite virtues, 
 great honors and unspeakable beauty, but would wish that she might 
 grow tender again ? getting youth by years and never decaying beauty 
 by time; whose fair face neither the summer's blaze can scorch nor 
 winter's blast chap, nor the numbering of years breed altering of 
 colors. Such is my sweet Cynthia, whom time can not touch because 
 she is divine, nor will ofi^end because she is delicate. O Cynthia, if 
 thou shouldst always continue at thy fulness, both gods and men would 
 conspire to ravish thee. But thou to abate the pride of our afi'ections 
 
 * See P. W. Long in Publications of the Modern Language Asso- 
 ciation, xxiv, 1909. 
 
GEORGE PEELE 73 
 
 dost detract from thy perfections; thinking it suflScient if once in a 
 month we enjoy a glimpse of thy majesty; and then to increase our 
 griefs thou dost decrease thy gleams, coming out of thy royal robes, 
 wherewith thou dazzlest our eyes, down into thy swathe clouts, be- 
 guiling our eyes; and then — 
 
 Eumenides. Stay there, Endimion, thou that commitest idolatry 
 wilt straight blaspheme, if thou be suffered. Sleep would do thee 
 more good than speech: the moon heareth thee not, or if she do, 
 regardeth thee not. 
 
 When all has been said, Lyiy's Endimion remains a bril- 
 liant piece of court comedy, skilfully constructed and ad- 
 mirably sustained. The transition from Horestes and Cam- 
 hyses to Endimion is the transition from the botching of the 
 tyro to the professional touch of the artist. True it is that 
 these court plays of Lyly are rhetorical and decorative, super- 
 ficial and limited in any appeal to the modern reader by 
 reason of their occasional nature; none the less his contribu- 
 tions to the drama are tangible and definite. It was Lyly 
 who gave to English comedy ease of dialogue and natural 
 witty retort; who gave to drama likewise fluency and finish of 
 style. He drew for the first time portraits of the cultivated 
 men and women of his day in the easy intercourse of good 
 society, and he restrained exorbitant medieval allegory to a 
 modest and subsidiary place. He was inventive, too, and 
 happy in uniting the diverse classical and other elements out 
 of which he fashioned his plays. Indeed it may be aflSrmed 
 that he is the superior of many of his successors in these as in 
 some other qualities of his art. It was an innovation in 
 Lyly to write his plays — all except one — in prose, and it 
 is not to be denied that his prose, Euphuistic though it is in 
 some of his earlier productions, is wanting neither in idiomatic 
 force and effectiveness nor in grace and elegance. In a 
 word, it was Lyly who raised the entertainments of the court 
 from the haphazard of amateurishness to a professional 
 standard, giving to the drama for the first time artistic form 
 and unity. 
 
 Lyiy's earliest rival at court was George Peele, whose 
 first drama, The Arraignment of Paris, was acted before the 
 
74 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 queen between 1581 and 1584. Peele, son of the clerk of 
 Christ's Hospital, was educated there and at Oxford, where 
 his interest in the drama seems to have been inspired by a 
 kinsman, William Wager, the author of several Latin plays. 
 In these plays Peele appeared as an actor and he is related to 
 have translated while at college one of the Iphigenias of 
 Euripides, but whether into English or into Latin remams 
 uncertain. From college Peele went to court, where the slender 
 patronage he mustered could not have carried him far. Before 
 long he gravitated to the popular stage then occupied by 
 Wilson and Tarlton. Peele led a riotous and Bohemian 
 life and became a peg, so to speak, on which to hang knavish 
 stories and worse. Possessed as he was at times of no mean 
 lyrical gift, Peele is imitative and eclectic in the drama and 
 constantly follows in the wake of others. Thus his Arraign- 
 ment of Paris is a clear effort to outdo Lyly in his own court 
 drama and a bid for the patronage of the court; his Battle 
 of Alcazar frankly imitates Marlowe's Tamhurlaine; his 
 Edward I is an inferior chronicle play, disfigured by an at- 
 tempt to gain momentary popularity by a gross misrepresenta- 
 tion of one of the Spanish-born queens of England; and his 
 David and Bethsabe is an ill-advised if poetical revival of the 
 Bible play in the guise of a chronical history. Peele seems to 
 have been possessed of an uncontrollable bias towards bur- 
 lesque; for on this ground alone can we explain his Old Wives 
 Tale in which the absurdities and extravagances of old romance 
 are ridiculed with delightful effect. Locrine, which belongs 
 to the same source m mythical British history as King Lear, 
 is an extravagant attempt to popularize Senecan blood and 
 horror on the public stage. Although never avowed by Peele 
 as his, it seems almost unquestionably of his authorship, 
 and is perhaps truly read as a take-off on other like produc- 
 tions of his time. Peele's work must all have been written 
 while Lyly was still active, for he died prematurely, in 1597, 
 worn out by disease and a dissolute life. 
 
 Peele's Arraignment of Paris is a dramatic version of the 
 old myth of CEnone's unhappy love for Paris combined with 
 his award of the golden apple of Ate to Venus on her promise 
 
THE "ARRAIGNMENT OF PARIS" 75 
 
 to bestow on him the most beautiful woman in the world. 
 But Peele at this point adapted mythology to the exigencies 
 of a graceful flattery of royalty, borrowing his idea from an 
 old poem addressed to the queen by Gascoigne some half- 
 dozen years before. Paris, on complaint of Juno and Pallas 
 to Jove, is summoned to attend an action "entered in the 
 court of heaven." The parties meet at "Diana's bower," 
 and so equal are the claims of all three that Jove is perplexed 
 until Apollo suggests: 
 
 Refer this sentence where it doth belong: 
 In this, say I, fair Phcebe hath the wrong; 
 Not that I mean her beauty bears the prize, 
 But that the holy law of heaven denies 
 One god to meddle in another's power; 
 And this befell so near Diana's bower, 
 As for th' appeasing this unpleasant grudge. 
 In my conceit she hight the fittest judge. 
 
 Diana accepts the duty of deciding, and, having sworn each 
 god and goddess to obedience, declares : 
 
 There wons within these pleasant shady woods 
 Where neither storm nor sun's distemperature 
 Have power to hurt by cruel heat or cold, 
 
 a gracious nymph, 
 
 That honors Dian for her chastity. 
 
 And likes the labors well of Phoebe's groves; 
 
 The place Elizium hight, and of the place 
 
 Her name that governs there Eliza is; 
 
 A kingdom that may well compare with mine. 
 
 An ancient seat of kings, a second Troy, 
 
 Y-compassed round with a commodious sea: 
 
 She giveth laws of justice and of peace; 
 
 And on her head, as fits her fortune best, 
 
 She wears a wreath of laurel, gold and palm; 
 
 Her robes of purple and of scarlet dye; 
 
 Her veil of white, as best befits a maid : 
 
 Her ancestors live in the house of fame : 
 
 She giveth arms of happy victory. 
 
 And flowers to deck her lions crowned with gold, 
 
76 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 This peerless nymph, whom heaven and earth beloves. 
 
 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 honor 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, 
 
 As chaste as Dian in her chaste desires: 
 
 The same is she, if Phoebe do no wrong, 
 
 To whom this ball of merit doth belong. 
 
 And after further fitting ceremony, the distance from the 
 stage to the throne is traversed and the prize is conveyed into 
 the royal hand of the true Eliza. There are more beautiful 
 and poetical lines than these just quoted from The Arraign- 
 ment, for the comedy abounds in exquisite lyrics, and in 
 charming poetry and imagery, but none could better disclose 
 tne quality of these plays of courtly compliment. It may be 
 surmised that so admirable a piece of poetical flattery would 
 have meant preferment and fortune to a pretty fellow like 
 Sidney, Greville, or Harington, had any one of them devised 
 it; Peele was too lowly to have received more than a brace 
 or two of angels for his play, and these we may believe he 
 speedily spent in the honor of her majesty's health and to the 
 detriment of his own. In the maintenance of the perspective 
 of literary history we must recognize in Peek's Arraignment 
 of Paris, printed in 1584, a metrical facility, an ease and grace 
 of expression in verse, remarkable when we recall that at that 
 date Marlowe was still at Cambridge and Shakespeare in- 
 distinguishable as yet among his fellow yeomen of Warwick- 
 shire. 
 
 And now let us turn to the presentation of these earlier 
 plays at court and to some of the means by which they were 
 commended in action to their auditors. Shows, maskings, 
 and allegorical devices had been so long familiar to the Eng- 
 lish court that when the regular drama emerged from the 
 chaos of medieval dramatic conditions, all of those things 
 were at once adopted. An early use, for example, of dumb 
 
STAGING OF COURT PLAYS ']'] 
 
 shows or tableaux as we should call them, is to be found in 
 such plays as Gorhoduc and Tancred and Gismunda. In 
 the first the shows were extraneous to the action of the drama 
 though illustrative of it, as for example the parade of a com- 
 pany of "harquibusiers" in order of battle to betoken "tu- 
 mults, rebellious arms, a civil war. " In Tancred the tableaux 
 were for the most part made up of groupings of the personages 
 of the tragedy. In both, the dumb show eked out defective 
 action and appears to have been derived from an Italian de- 
 vice. Costume at court was always elaborate and costly, as 
 the extant inventories of the accounts of the office of the revels 
 still attest with their entries of silk, velvet and damask, em- 
 broidery and cloth of gold and silver. The fitness of this 
 apparel for the scene and purpose in hand is often far to seek : 
 a friar is clad in russet velvet with sleeves of yellow, Turks 
 wear caps unlike either fez or turban, and the Greek worthies 
 seem in one case to have been actually labeled with the 
 name of each on breast and back. 
 
 The drama of the court was staged from the earliest times 
 with properties and even with scenes, in our modern sense, 
 of considerable elaboration. These scenes were called "play- 
 ers' houses" in the accounts of the revels, and were constructed 
 of canvas stretched on frames and painted. Arbors, foun- 
 tains, trees, mountains, castles, battlements, and palaces are 
 among the scenes thus enumerated, and they were "steered" 
 by means of "long boards" or raised and lowered by pulleys. 
 Some must have been of considerable size, for cities, hills, 
 and forests were sometimes represented and the transportation 
 of them by water was deemed of sufficient importance to 
 receive a separate entry in the accounts.^ These evidences 
 derived from the office of the revels are corroborated when 
 we come to look at the plays still extant. Trees appear on 
 the stage in Lyly's Gallathea and Love's Metamorphosis, a 
 palace in Midas, a fountain and castle in Endimion. The 
 Misfortunes of Arthur, by Thomas Hughes and others, acted 
 in 1587, represented "the house appointed for Arthur" as 
 
 ^ See A. Feuillerat, Documents relating to the Office of the Revels, 
 1908, pp. 20, 116, 129, 331, 349. 
 
78 THE DRAMA AT COURT 
 
 well as Mordred's house. Mother Bombie calls for a row of 
 some half-dozen houses, among them a tavern; and the action 
 traversed the stage from house to house after the manner of 
 medieval pageantry. Gascoigne's Supposes, like several 
 early plays, calls for a balcony. Curtains were in constant 
 use; they were commonly drawn apart on rings run on wires, 
 but in one case at least they appear to have been raised up 
 and down. 
 
 In general when a play was given at court or in one of the 
 halls of the university the whole room was fitted and decorated 
 for the purpose. An interesting account of the arrangement 
 of the Common Hall of Christ's Church College, Oxford, 
 for the queen's visit of 1566 has come down to us, the work 
 of one John Bereblock. The hall was paneled with gilt, 
 arched and frescoed to represent an ancient Roman palace. 
 A large stage, "many steps high," was erected across the 
 upper end on which were reared "palaces and well-equipped 
 houses" for the actors and masquers. Scaffolds were raised 
 about the room with a lofty seat and golden canopy for the 
 queen; and especial attention was given to the brilliant light- 
 ing of the entire room by "cressets, lamps, and burning can- 
 dles." It has recently been maintained that the private 
 theaters, such as Blackfriars, that of the Paul's boys, and 
 Whitefriars, were evolved out of these halls of the court 
 and university, occasionally fitted for the performance of 
 plays; and that their structure and their practices in time 
 reacted on the conditions ruling the public stage. On the 
 dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII the property of 
 the Blackfriars on the embankment north of the Thames 
 and east of old Fleet Street, now Bridge Street, reverted to 
 the crown. Thither in Edward's day the office of the revels 
 was removed with its furniture and apparel for the customary 
 performances at court; and here, in all likelihood, the actors 
 for court performances rehearsed in the time of Sir Thomas 
 Cawarden, Master of the Revels from 1546 to 1560. Plays 
 were acted at Blackfriars in the eighties. Both Lyly's Cam- 
 pas pe and Sappho and Phao, printed in 1584, contain pro- 
 logues "at Blackfriars" as well as "at court." So that 
 
INFLUENCE OF LYLY 79 
 
 when, in 1596, James Burbage acquired the title to the old 
 Priory House in Blackfriars and refitted it as a playhouse 
 he was really making no serious innovation. The new Black- 
 friars, thus remodeled, cost Burbage upwards of ;^8oo and 
 has recently been compared favorably as to size as well as 
 equipment with the contemporary public playhouse, the Globe. 
 It was furnished with galleries and "lord's rooms," or private 
 boxes, and, while it may have accommodated no more than 
 half as many auditors as the Globe, had an ample stage and 
 sufficient tiring-rooms. The rental of Blackfriars, on its 
 remodeling, to the Children of the Royal Chapel was like- 
 wise no more than the maintenance of what must long have 
 been the conditions of this house. ^ 
 
 Of Lyly's qualities as a dramatist and his place among 
 the playwrights of school and court enough has been said. 
 But Lyly's influence was wider than this and more lasting. 
 It affected the court entertainments which continued in clas- 
 sical plays, pastorals, masques, and other entertainments, 
 despite much influence from the contemporary popular drama, 
 all the way to the closing of the theaters in 1642, and was the 
 true source of a distinct and separable stream of growth, 
 paralleling the popular drama of Shakespeare. The first 
 prominent successor of Lyly, as the accredited entertainer of 
 the court, was Samuel Daniel, who outlived Shakespeare 
 three years and wrote favorable specimens of that exotic 
 form of the drama, the pastoral. Overlapping Daniel in his 
 later career was Ben Jonson, the master of the English 
 masque. That the grace and easy mastery of the amenities 
 of court life which Lyly shows were the example, with much 
 else, of both of these can admit of no serious doubt. More 
 interesting to us, Lyly profoundly affected the earlier comedy 
 of Shakespeare, a theme that will claim, with the considera- 
 tion of the earlier popular drama, our attention in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 ^ On this whole topic see the recent researches of C. W. Wallace 
 in Nebraska University Studies, April-July, 1908, since amplified in 
 book form. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MARLOWE AND HIS FELLOWS IN POPULAR 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 IN the last chapter we were concerned with the drama of 
 the schools and the court, with beginnings based on a 
 study and imitation of classical ideals, with amateur actors, 
 and, in a sense, with amateur authors as well. This drama, 
 like most of the non-dramatic literature of the age — the 
 sonnets and romance of Sidney, the poetry and allegory of 
 Spenser, and the cultivated prose of Lyly — was the literature 
 of the select and cultivated few, and to a certain degree existed 
 as the shibboleth of a clique. We turn now to something 
 very different, to the drama of the people acted in inn-yards 
 and by strolling players, written, as acted, professionally and 
 before long to develop, in the plays of Kyd, Marlowe, and 
 Shakespeare, to a degree of excellence not hitherto known. 
 
 Strolling players and mountebanks are traceable far back 
 into the Middle Ages, and link on to the minstrel as the minstrel 
 goes farther back to the Anglo-Saxon gleomon or scop. The 
 patronage of players' companies by nobles is likewise no inno- 
 vation of Tudor times, though, as the drama grew in popularity, 
 this patronage became more a form for the players' protection 
 than the mark of any intimate relation. The Earl of Lei- 
 cester, whose seat of Kenilworth was in Warwickshire near 
 to the town of Stratford, was an early patron of actors and 
 took a company abroad with him as early as 1585. By some 
 this company has been thought to continue into that which 
 Shakespeare afterwards joined, variously known as Lord 
 Strange's, the Chamberlain's, the King's, and by other titles 
 according to its successive patrons. By others the first step 
 in this succession has been denied, and the origin of Shake- 
 speare's company referred to a troupe under the patronage of 
 Lord Strange, mentioned as performing "feats of tumbling 
 
 80 
 
PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS 8i 
 
 and activity" at court in January, 1580.^ The history of 
 Elizabethan companies of professional players is intricate 
 and difficult. The same company not only passed through a 
 succession of patrons, some troupes disappearing, others 
 arising, joining and falling apart, but their personnel was 
 constantly changing, alike as to actors and as to the play- 
 wrights who were variously employed among them. Thus, 
 to look forward no further than 1595, there was the Queen's 
 company at the Theater in Shoreditch, Oxford's men and later 
 the Earl of Pembroke's at the Curtain near by. Ths Sussex 
 men were acting by 1591 at the Rose and the Admiral's in the 
 city. Marlowe wrote chiefly for this last-named company; 
 Greene, Lodge, Peele, and Kyd for the Queen's, but not 
 wholly. Lord Strange's men, the companions of Shakespeare, 
 were as yet perhaps unfurnished with a regular playhouse and 
 appear to have performed at the Cross-Keys, a tavern in the 
 city. In 1592 we hear of this company acting at the Rose, 
 a new theater on the Bankside. Later, known as the 
 Chamberlain's company, it acted at the Theater, then briefly 
 at the Curtain, until its final removal to the new Globe in 
 
 1598- 
 
 The circumstances of the building of the Globe theater 
 and the formation of a theatrical company to act there have 
 recently been placed in a new light by the researches of Pro- 
 fessor Wallace, whose discoveries have already been alluded 
 to in this book. It appears that when, in 1597, the Burbage 
 brothers met with difficulty in renewing the lease for the 
 ground on which the Theater stood, they determined to exer- 
 cise a right, reserved in their deed, and remove to the Bank- 
 side the material out of which the building had been con- 
 structed To insure the success of this venture they associated 
 with them five actors — Shakespeare, Heming, Philips, Pope, 
 and Kempe — and organized "a sharing company, the first 
 of its kind in the theatrical world." The new lease of the site 
 for the Globe was so arranged that the two Burbage brothers 
 acquired half of it, the five associated actors the other half, 
 the total rental being £14. lOs. Shakespeare thus held 
 
 ^W. W, Greg, Henslowe's Diary, Part II, 68-71. 
 
82 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 originally a tenth interest in the Globe; and this continued 
 up to 1610, when the five actors admitted Henry Condell to 
 a share, reducing the share in the whole of each of the now six 
 owners of the actors' half to one twelfth. In 1612 a further 
 admission of William Osteler as a sharer reduced the share 
 of each of the now seven actor-sharers of the Globe to one 
 fourteenth. The Burbages continued to own their half as 
 before. To continue this digression into Shakespeare's 
 relations to Blackfriars, in 1608 this house, also the property 
 of the Burbages, was leased to the Children of the Queen's 
 Revels who were suppressed as a company in that year by the 
 order of King James. Immediately after, Richard Burbage, 
 the owner, leased the Blackfriars to a theatrical company of 
 seven persons, retaining a seventh both for himself and his 
 brother Cuthbert, and giving five others, among them Shake- 
 speare, Heming, and Condell, each a share like his own. The 
 total rental was £^0 a year. In 16 14 Shakespeare owned one 
 seventh of the Blackfriars and one fourteenth of the Globe. 
 The original cost of these shares was merely the rent of the 
 ground and the obligations for building and management. 
 They became in time very valuable; but the statement in the 
 legal complaint of the time from which these facts were 
 gathered that the value of such a share as Shakespeare's in 
 each of these theaters was ;{^300 is of course excessive, as such 
 statements for claim of damage always are. It may be noted 
 in passing that Heming and Condell are the fellow-actors of 
 Shakespeare who signed their names to the prefatory matter 
 of the folio edition of his collected works in 1623.* 
 
 But if we are to appreciate the conditions under which the 
 popular drama sprang into life in Elizabeth's time, we must 
 understand the nature of the playhouses of the day and learn 
 under what circumstances they came to be built. Earlier 
 popular theatrical performances followed the traditions of 
 wandering minstrels and were acted for the most part in taverns 
 or other public places, not infrequently in yards and open 
 spaces. The inn-yard is the original of the Elizabethan 
 popular playhouse; and the common features of the inn were 
 
 ^ See C. W. Wallace in The Times, October 2 and 4, 1999. 
 
LONDON AND THE PLAYHOUSES 83 
 
 reproduced when structures intended specifically for the public 
 acting of plays came to be built. 
 
 Let us turn, however, first to a consideration of the ground. 
 Elizabethan London was to our modern ideas a small city, 
 certainly not much exceeding a hundred thousand inhabitants. 
 It lay along the Thames, then a clear and swiftly flowing 
 stream, from the Tower to Temple Bar, and, like most medie- 
 val towns, was surrounded by a wall. London was ruled by a 
 lord mayor, elected yearly, and by a council which was made 
 up of men prominent in the trade guilds of the city. A 
 certain gravity and seriousness naturally characterized such 
 "city fathers," and their care extended to the minuter welfare 
 of the citizens. For this reason quite as much as because 
 many of the citizens were Puritan in their leanings, the 
 theater was never approved in the councils of the lord mayor. 
 For aside from the vanity and ungodliness that they found in 
 many plays, they recognized in such concourses of the dis- 
 orderly element of the city, a menace to the public peace and 
 (most important of all) to the public health. The plague in 
 Shakespeare's age was a very real danger; and the general 
 ignorance of hygienic rules and popular carelessness in matters 
 of cleanliness rendered it at times a veritable terror. Laws 
 were passsed closing both churches and playhouses when the 
 mortality from the plague rose to a certain percentage; and, 
 when buildings for theatrical purposes were projected, the 
 lord mayor succeeded in forbidding the erection of any such 
 building within the precincts of the city. His jurisdiction 
 however stopped without the several gates in the city walls 
 and at the middle point of London Bridge, which alone con- 
 nected London with Southwark on the Surrey side or Bank- 
 side. Under these conditions, we find the earliest playhouses 
 just beyond the walls or across the river in Southwark. Thus 
 the Theater, the first regular playhouse to be erected in Lon- 
 don, was built in the parish of Shoreditch in 1576, and near 
 it in Moorfields the Curtain arose in the following year. 
 Shoreditch was a borough on the main thoroughfare north, 
 without Bishopsgate. The Theater was built by James Bur- 
 bage, father of the famous actor, Richard. It was demol- 
 
84 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 ished in 1598 and the materials used in part for the building 
 of the Globe. But the Bankside was soon recognized as a 
 more favorable location for the erection of playhouses. The 
 Bankside had long been in use as a playground and place of 
 license and diversion. Bull-baiting and bear-baiting were 
 among its amusements and the two old arenas for these pur- 
 poses existed long before the theaters. The Globe, the Rose, 
 the Hope, and the Swan were the four Elizabethan theaters 
 of the Bankside. All of them were built within the decade of 
 the nineties and, in the order named above, they ranged 
 irregularly along the river shore to the right of him who crossed 
 London Bridge from the city or to the left of the bridge and 
 the Church of St. Saviour's, as one looks at a map or a view 
 of old London. There were other theaters besides these, the 
 one at Newington Butts, back from the river in Southwark; 
 the Fortune, a new and fine theater for its day, built in 1600 
 by Edward Alleyn in St. Giles, Cripplegate, in rivalry with 
 Shakespeare and his Globe. And there were the private 
 theaters of Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and that of the boys of 
 St. Paul's; but these latter ones do not concern us here. 
 
 The last few years have witnessed much interest in the 
 construction of these old Elizabethan playhouses and in the 
 probable manner in which Elizabethan plays were staged. 
 Unfortunately the evidence at hand is sparse and, what is 
 worse, at times, conflicting: moreover, it has been occasionally 
 somewhat unwisely assumed that it is possible to reduce the 
 whole problem to a typical stage. Undoubtedly the play- 
 houses of Elizabeth differed as the theaters of to-day and what 
 may have been true of one may possibly not have been true of 
 all. This is not the place for discussion; of some things, 
 however, we may feel reasonably sure. 
 
 The Elizabethan public playhouse was ordinarily a cir- 
 cular or octagonal structure built about an open space or 
 yard to which there was but one public entrance at which 
 "gate money" might be charged. Within, the yard was open 
 to the sky and here the "groundlings" as they were called 
 stood to see the play. As to three fourths of its circumference 
 the yard was surrounded with galleries, two or three, and in 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYHOUSE 85 
 
 them sat the auditors of better station; although the highest 
 gallery must have been as undesirable then as to-day. In 
 the fourth part of the circumference and opposite the entrance 
 door, the stage was situated, jutting far out into the yard so 
 that the groundlings stood on three sides of it. The stage of 
 Shakespeare's time was primarily a platform for declamation, 
 not, as with us, a place for a picture set in a frame. The 
 roof over the stage was supported by two pillars or "pilasters" 
 as they were called; but they appear to have stood back from 
 the front of the stage, and it is doubtful whether they were 
 near the two edges or not, rather, placed closer together so as 
 to produce the effect of a structure near the middle of the 
 stage and thus leave space for free action not only in front 
 but around each pillar at the side. There has also been much 
 question as to whether or not a curtain was strung between 
 the pilasters. Certainly no drop curtain, such as we now use^ 
 was employed on a public stage before the Restoration. As 
 there are many references in the stage directions of old plays 
 to curtains (or traverses as they were sometimes called), it 
 has been thought that, if they were not stretched between the 
 pilasters, they were draped to hang beneath the balcony or 
 gallery that ran across the back of the stage, thus dividing 
 the stage into the part before the pilasters, the part between 
 the pilasters and the curtain, and the corridor or alcove under 
 the balcony. The opinion of the present writer leans to a 
 curtain between the pilasters, thus bringing out the action on 
 the back part of the stage to a point immediately behind them 
 rather than concealing it in the shadow of the balcony. As 
 to the balcony itself, it, too, was furnished with curtains and 
 was employed wherever an upper window, a battlement, or 
 other eminence was necessary to the action. The music, of 
 the use of which between the acts and elsewhere there is 
 abundant proof, was doubtless at times placed in a part of 
 of the balcony which was in the nature of a gallery and may 
 have been arranged diagonally at its two extremities.^ 
 
 Among the many questions concerning the Elizabethan 
 stage none has been waged more fiercely than that which 
 
 ^ See W. Archer in The Quarterly Review, April, 1908. 
 
86 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 concerns the presence or absence of scenery on the stage. 
 On the one hand all scenery has been denied; but we hear in 
 at least two authentic passages of its existence in such a phrase 
 as Jonson's (1600) '"Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of 
 perspective," and in Dekker's words (1609): "Stand at the 
 helm and steer the passage of the scenes."^ Moreover it is 
 well known that there were abundance of scenic properties 
 at court in times far earlier than Shakespeare's. It must be 
 allowed that there was no such, system of perspective by means 
 of back curtain and side flies as we have now in use; but it is 
 defiant of both evidence and probabilty to deny to the Eliza- 
 bethan popular stage many, scenic properties of considerable 
 size and variety. Thrones of state, trees, buildings of im- 
 portance enough to be designated ''castles," hangings suggest- 
 ing the rigging of a ship, even landscapes and cities find men- 
 tion again and again, and we should be impelled to believe 
 in the use of such properties, were the evidence less certain 
 than it is, from the influence that performances at court must 
 in time have exerted on the popular stage. 
 
 That the use of properties such as these was often very 
 crude and insuflScient according to our modern ideas must be 
 granted. The Elizabethan stage has been thought by some 
 to have inherited from medieval conditions the practice of 
 what has been called simultaneous scenery. Heavier proper- 
 ties must frequently have remained on the stage though often 
 incongruous to the action which appears at times to have 
 moved from one part of the stage to another. When the action 
 was about the throne set in the center, a presence chamber 
 was conjured with imagination's inward eye. When the 
 action sidled to a tree in a box to the left it was transferred to 
 the country-side. To escape this incongruity (to our modern 
 ideas), some have imagined that heavy properties were con- 
 fined to the space back of the curtain into which they might 
 be lugged from the tiring-room and concealed by the curtain 
 when not in use. Attempt has even been made to divide 
 Shakespeare's plays into a strict alternation of scenes before 
 
 ^ See Giiford-Cunningham, yo«j6n, ii, 210; The Gulls' Hornhook, 
 Grosart, Dekker, ii, 248. 
 
PROPERTIES AND STAGING 87 
 
 the curtain and scenes behind, to allow of such shifts of the 
 properties. However, of late it must be confessed that a very 
 good case has been made out for a liberal modification of 
 some such system, based on a study of the staging of theatri- 
 cal productions from the medieval times up and, more espe- 
 cially, from the Restoration backward. '^ None the less we may 
 believe that not a little of the setting of the Elizabethan stage 
 was content to symbolize the scene by some important object 
 suggesting it, and to be little hurt by incongruities which 
 would destroy the illusion to modern auditors. With the 
 intervention of incidental music and the employment, where 
 there was need, of the curtain which divided the rear stage 
 from the front, the action of an Elizabethan play must have 
 been carried on continuously all over the stage and gallery. 
 Indeed, those who have seen Shakespeare simply staged with 
 next to no scenery and acted without division by waits between 
 acts or scenes, have recognized how much our old drama has 
 to gain by a reversion to earlier and less elaborate methods of 
 histrionic representation. 
 
 As to the acting of an Elizabethan play, it is to be remem- 
 bered that the performance was for men and acted by men. 
 The employment of women to act on the stage of the day 
 would have been thought a disgrace and a scandal. In fact, 
 in stricter Elizabethan times no woman of character would 
 think of attending a common playhouse; and when later, she 
 did, she wore a mask. Women's roles were taken by boys 
 who appear to have become remarkably skilful in their diffi- 
 cult profession, though none ever attained the rank of such 
 men as Burbage and Edward AUeyn, the leaders in male parts 
 and the creators of the chief roles of Shakespeare and Marlowe. 
 The performance of a play, in old times, must often have been 
 a very disorderly proceeding, for gallants were tolerated on 
 the very stage itself and disturbances often arose among the 
 auditors, breaking up the performance and ending at times 
 in affrays and bloodshed. It is impossible not to sympathize 
 with the mayor and his council in their honest endeavors to 
 abate such nuisances and in their wider looks askant at the 
 
 ^ See especially V. E. Albright, The Shakesperian Stage, 1909. 
 
88 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 theater, in general, as an innovation of doubtful character. 
 The Elizabethan drama could not plead, like the old sacred 
 drama, that it instructed men in the gospel. It could not claim, 
 like the morality, that it existed to teach right living, or like 
 the Latin school plays to impart confidence to the boys who 
 acted and improve their Latin pronunciation. The new 
 drama had no excuse for its existence, and existed only to 
 amuse. There was a long struggle between the city and the 
 court about the professional players and their theaters, the 
 city passing laws against actors and plays, pleading their 
 wickedness and licentiousness, the danger to the public peace 
 and to the public health. On the other hand the court pro- 
 tected the actors, who commonly gave as an excuse for their 
 popular performances that they must practise if they were to 
 perform before the queen, and, claiming the protection of 
 some noble as patron, thus escaped the rigor of the laws against 
 "rogues, vagabonds, and common players." 
 
 As time went on the actors thrived and rose in the social 
 scale. In Greene's tract A Groatsworth of Wit Purchased 
 with a Million of Repentance, notorious for its attack on 
 Shakespeare, we find the following little colloquy on this 
 subject: 
 
 What is your profession ? said Roberto. Truly, sir, said he, I 
 am a player. A player! quoth Roberto, I took you rather for a 
 gentleman of great living; for, if by outward habit men should be 
 censured, I tell you you would be taken for a substantial man. So 
 am I, where I dwell, quoth the player, reputed able at my proper cost 
 to build a windmill. What though the world once went hard with 
 me, when I was fain to carry my fardel a foot-a-back; . . . it is 
 otherwise now; for my very share in playing apparel will not be sold 
 for two hundred pounds. 
 
 The player here represented may have been one Robert 
 Wilson of the queen's company of actors in 1583, the author 
 of three or four extant plays in which the old morality is 
 mingled with newer ideas. Elsewhere, he tells us "the twelve 
 labors of Hercules have I terribly thundered on the stage and 
 placed three scenes of the devil on the highway to heaven." 
 Another early popular actor and playwright was Richard 
 
PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN PLAYS 89 
 
 Tarlton, who was famed for his clown's parts and for antics 
 and humors that found a place in the jest-books of the time. 
 Tarlton was of the humblest origin and in the height of his 
 success kept a tavern in Gracechurch Street. He died in 
 1588, the year of the Armada, but he was long outlived by the 
 fame of his extemporal wit, a variety of extemporaneous em- 
 broidering on the part assigned that drew from Shakespeare 
 in later times the terse words of Hamlet: "Let those that 
 play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them." 
 Not only is the number of these early pre-Shakespearean 
 plays of the common stages very great, but their variety is 
 extraordinary. Besides the English historical subjects already 
 suggested in Tarlton's Famous Victories of Henry V (a crude 
 production, not unknown to Shakespeare), and plays like the 
 anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John (another Shake- 
 spearean "source"), there was a domestic comedy like Grim 
 the Collier of Croyden, or Tom Tyler, a diverting interlude in 
 which an attempt to tame a shrewish wife proves amusingly 
 abortive. There was also domestic drama, represented in the 
 able and effective Arden of Feversham, a tragedy which some 
 have thought not unworthy to assign to Shakespeare. And 
 there was, besides the semi-moralities of Wilson, romantic 
 • drama dealing with knights and fair ladies, Greene's Orlando 
 Furioso and The Thracian Wonder, turned to probably satiri- 
 cal references in such a play as Fair Em, the Miller s Daughter 
 of Manchester. Without pursuing this enumeration further 
 here, it is demonstrable that nearly all the notable varieties of 
 the Elizabethan drama were already presaged in rudimentary 
 form before the morality went out of vogue. Not only did 
 Shakespeare invent no solitary kind of play not already well 
 known to the stage before him; but no one of his great prede- 
 cessors — Marlowe, Greene, Lyly, Peele, or Kyd — invented 
 a new variety of drama. It is important to recognize how 
 fully the soil had been prepared for the great harvest that was 
 to follow, how an humble but by no means despicable growth 
 had already covered these previous times, and how the play- 
 house, the organized company, an audience eager for the 
 drama and accustomed to it, all had been created before the 
 
90 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 great and memorable playwrights of the time came forward to 
 assume their inheritance. 
 
 The three great influences that made Elizabethan drama 
 are now before us. First, the influence of the classics — 
 Plautus for comedy, Seneca for tragedy — exemplified in 
 Ralph Roister Doister on the one hand and Gorhoduc on the 
 other. Secondly, the influence of the popular vernacular 
 farce, English to the core though touched by French ex- 
 ample: in comedy illustrated in Gammer Gurton or Tom 
 Tyler, and pure of any foreign contact in the murder play, 
 Arden of Feversham. Thirdly, the influence of Italy and the 
 spirit of romance, already suggested in Lyly's courtly plays, 
 in Tancred, and in Whetstone's Promos and Cassatidra, and 
 soon to become the distinguishing characteristic of the great 
 dramas of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Webster. 
 
 With Lyly and Peele, it is customary to place Lodge, 
 Greene, and Nash as well as Kyd and Marlowe, to call them 
 indiscriminately "university wits" or by a like designation 
 to dilate upon their short and abandoned lives and the precise 
 similarlity of their alleged careers. Kyd was not a university 
 man; and Lyly, at least, was no Bohemian. Lodge, despite 
 early escapades, lived far into the reign of James, a respectable 
 physician, and wrote, besides Marius and Sylla, hardly any 
 drama certainly traceable as his. Nash's part, too, in the 
 drama is slight, and consists of one masque-like production. 
 Summer's Last Will and Testament, o£ Dido, Queen of Carthage, 
 a tragedy written in conjunction with Marlowe, and a lost 
 Latin comedy. Nothing could be more uncritical than the 
 habitual grouping of these "predecessors of Shakespeare." 
 
 Of Peele enough has been said above as to how he trans- 
 ferred his interests in the drama, first from the university to 
 court and thence to the popular stage of Wilson and Tarlton. 
 Peele's art was imitative, as we have seen, his life dissolute, 
 his end untimely; but his satirical consciousness of the ab- 
 surdities of the popular plays about him — plays that he imi- 
 tated in David and Bethsahe and especially in Edward I, 
 while he parodied them in The Old Wives Tale and in 
 
ROBERT GREENE 91 
 
 Locrine — Is not without its interest to the history of the 
 drama. 
 
 Greene, too, was a man of disordered life, although the 
 candor of his revelations concerning himself and the circum- 
 stance of his enmity to Shakespeare have conspired perhaps 
 somewhat to exaggerate his bad name. Greene was a busy 
 pamphleteer as well as playwright, and death overtook him, 
 as it overtook Marlowe, in the midst of his sins. Greene 's 
 work, like of Peele's, was imitative and eclectic. In A Look- 
 ing Glass for London and England, which he wrote with 
 Thomas Lodge, he gives us work of the morality type, little 
 above the plane of Wilson, though superior in execution. 
 In Orlando Furioso he outdid the excesses of the heroical 
 romance; in Alphonsus of Aragon he essayed the "high as- 
 tounding terms" of Marlowe's Tamhurlaine. None the less 
 Greene's genuine contribution to Elizabethan drama is both 
 considerable and peculiar. In The Scottish History of 
 "James I V he. has given us a serious comedy of very consider- 
 able worth, memorable for the fine and pathetic pictures of 
 true womanhood represented in both his heroine, Ida, and 
 the queen. In Friar Bacon he dramatized the story of that 
 famous English necromancer and contrasted his white and 
 harmless magic with the black art of Marlowe's Faustus, 
 which was at the moment holding the stage. Though truer 
 to nature and more peculiarly Greene's own are the charming 
 scenes in this comedy which tell of the love and courtship of 
 the Fair Maid of Fressingfield who is wooed for his prince 
 but won for himself by the young Earl Lacy, after a manner 
 familiar to American readers of Longfellow's Courtship of 
 Miles Standish. Equally successful and characteristic of 
 Greene, is his apotheosis of the English yeoman in George a 
 Green or the Pinner of Wakefield. This hero impounds an 
 earl's horses that have trespassed on the town's corn, defeats 
 Robin Hood himself at quarterstafF, and cleverly traps and 
 captures the king's enemies. For all these services King 
 Edward, who happens that way, asks George to demand what 
 he will. And his reply is that the king may use his influence 
 
92 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 to induce old Grimes, his "leman's father," to consent to that 
 maiden's marriage with him. This granted, the king adds: 
 
 Now, George, it rests I gratify thy worth : 
 
 Kneel down, George: 
 
 George. What will your majesty do ? 
 
 Edward. Dub thee a knight, George. 
 
 George. I beseech your grace, grant me one thing. 
 
 Edward. What is it ? 
 
 George. Then let me live and die a yeoman still: 
 
 So was my father, so must live his son. 
 
 For 'tis more credit to men of base degree. 
 
 To do great deeds, than men of dignity. 
 
 Can we not imagine how at this the pit must have risen to a 
 man ? And what could be a better example of the truly popu- 
 lar nature of this new people's drama .? 
 
 Could Greene have lived and led a less disordered life, 
 could he have developed leisurely and harmoniously instead 
 of driving an overworked pen for bread, Shakespeare might 
 not have been without a rival in comedy worthy his best 
 efforts. The pathetic story of Greene's end, his miserable 
 death from his own excesses, his touching letter to his wronged 
 and deserted wife that she see those paid who had buried him 
 out of pity, is known to every student, as well as his notorious 
 address to his quondam acquaintance, Marlowe, Peele, and 
 Lodge "who spend their time in making plays." It was 
 sheer envy that prompted the dying Greene rancorously to 
 attack the rising young Shakespeare, to call him "an upstart 
 crow beautified with our feathers," to imagine Shakespeare 
 so elated with his own success that he had become "in his own 
 conceit the only shake-scene in a country." But there was 
 another side, Greene was a genuine poet, an able playwright, 
 a successful pamphleteer, all this despite his reckless life and 
 wasted time. Such a man must have known of possibilities 
 within which we can not reconstruct from the broken remains 
 of his work. Infinitely above the painstaking achievements of 
 mediocrity is the comparative failure of an irregular genius 
 such as Greene's. 
 
THOMAS KYD 93 
 
 English romantic tragedy reached fruition all but simul- 
 taneously in two great plays, T amhurlaine in two parts by 
 Christopher Marlowe, and The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas 
 Kyd. Both plays were certainly on the stage a year or more 
 before the coming of the Armada; but which is the earlier 
 has never been absolutely determined, for neither exhibits the 
 slightest borrowing from the other and each expresses an 
 independent phase of tragic art. 
 
 Until recently we have known very little of Thomas Kyd; 
 now we can tell — thanks to Professor Schick of Munich and 
 to Mr. Boas and his researches — that Kyd was born in 1558, 
 in London, and attended the Merchant Tailors' School where 
 Lodge and Spenser were among his school-fellows. Kyd's 
 father was a scrivener or lawyer's clerk and Thomas may have 
 followed that "trade of noverint" as it was called. He ap- 
 pears not to have gone to either university, but was admitted 
 to the literary circle of the Sidneys and Pembrokes and en- 
 joyed the intimate acquaintance of Marlowe. The poets at 
 one time occupied together the same room, a circumstance 
 that drew Kyd into suspicion of sharing also in Marlowe's 
 alleged atheistical opinions, Kyd was even imprisoned on 
 charges connected with this association and lost all chances of 
 patronage therefore. Indeed, whether for this cause or for 
 some other, Kyd was disowned by his parents, who renounced 
 the administration of the goods of their deceased son in De- 
 cember, 1594. 
 
 The height of Kyd's activity as a dramatist was concen- 
 trated within a very few years, those between 1584 and 1589. 
 The Spanish Tragedy was doubtless his earliest dramatic work 
 and the companion play called The First Part ofjeronimo is 
 best considered not Kyd's, but a production subsequently 
 written by another on account of the popularity of Kyd's 
 tragedy. A second and less successful drama of much the 
 type of The Spanish Tragedy is Soliman and Perceda, dating 
 1588, and assuredly of Kyd's authorship. The translation 
 of a tragedy by Garnier called Cornelia, published in 1592, 
 and a lost play on Hamlet, 1587, complete the tale of Kyd's 
 dramatic labors. 
 
94 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 The Spanish Tragedy is the most typical of the tragedies 
 of Kyd. The story details the revenge of a father, the Mar- 
 shal Hieronimo, for the murder of his son, who has been slain 
 under circumstances that leave the father uncertain of the 
 slayer and incapable of redress. Madness, actual or pre- 
 tended, and hesitancy to act add to the difficulties of Hieron- 
 imo; but, discerning at length in the Prince Lorenzo the true 
 instigator of the murder, and with revenge for that reason even 
 more than ever beyond his reach, Hieronimo pulls down gen- 
 eral ruin on his enemies and himself, in a play devised to 
 bring about the catastrophe. The interest of The Spanish 
 Tragedy centers in the vital personage Hieronimo, This 
 became one of the favorite roles of Edward Alleyn and was 
 revised and amplified on revival by Ben Jonson. The popu- 
 larity of Kyd 's tragedy lasted a generation; seven quartos up 
 to 1608 and repeated allusions attesting its vogue and reputa- 
 tion. Nor is it to be denied that this popularity was deserved. 
 The Spanish Tragedy is effective melodrama, bold, striking, 
 dramatically efficient, and not untrue to the broader outlines 
 of life. The text affords many examples of the rhetorical 
 diction so beloved of the playgoers of the earlier days of Eliza- 
 beth and taken off, not altogether unkindly, by Shakespeare 
 in the speech of the player in Hamlet and in the soldier's 
 account of the battle at the opening of Macbeth. The follow- 
 ing passage is Kyd, not Shakespeare : 
 
 There met our armies in their proud array: 
 Both furnished well, both full of hope and fear, 
 Both menacing alike with daring shows, 
 Both vaunting sundry colors of device, 
 Both cheerly sounding trumpets, drums and fifes, 
 Both raising dreadful clamors to the sky. 
 That valleys, hills, and rivers made rebound 
 And heaven itself was frighted with the sound. 
 
 Now, while Bellona rageth here and there. 
 Thick storms of bullets rain like winter's hail, 
 And shivered lances dark the troubled air; 
 
"THE SPANISH TRAGEDY" 95 
 
 On every side drop captains to the ground 
 
 And soldiers, some ill-maimed, some slain outright: 
 
 Here falls a body sundered from his head; 
 
 There legs and arms He bleeding on the grass, 
 
 Mingled with weapons and unboweled steeds, 
 
 That scattering over-spread the purple plain. 
 
 In all this turmoil, three long hours and more 
 
 The victory to neither part inclined. 
 
 Till Don Andrea with his brave lanciers 
 
 In their main battle made so great a breach 
 
 That, half dismayed, the multitude retired. 
 
 Till, Phoebus waning to the western deep, 
 Our trumpeters were charged to sound retreat. 
 
 Although the direct influence of Seneca on Kyd is patent to 
 the most casual reader, the novel and apparently original plot 
 of The Tragedy, its swift action, inventive episode, and real 
 passion mark something new. There had been no play up to 
 its time alike so well constructed and possessed of personages 
 so vitally conceived. 
 
 Another interesting thing about Kyd is the unquestionable 
 fact that he was the author of a play called Hamlet, on the 
 stage at least as. early as 1589, though now irretrievably lost. 
 This play appears to have been of a Senecan character and 
 it is interesting to notice that the situation of the Hamlet that 
 we know and that of The Spanish Tragedy offers a striking 
 parallel. Hamlet is the story of the revenge of a son for the 
 murder of his father; The Spanish Tragedy, as we have seen, 
 the story of the revenge of a father for the murder of his son. 
 In both the fundamental idea is revenge under circumstances 
 justified by the impossibility of other redress, revenge height- 
 ened in difficulty of attainment by the hesitancy of the pro- 
 tagonist and by his real or pretended madness. 
 
 Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in February, 
 1564, and was thus some two months Shakespeare's senior. 
 His station in life was not much higher, as his father was a 
 shoemaker and tanner, though he acted likewise as clerk of 
 St. Mary's. Marlowe was a precocious boy and from the 
 King's school at Canterbury he went up to Cambridge which 
 
96 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 he finally left with a master's degree in 1587. Of his early 
 life in London we know as little as of Shakespeare's. It can 
 not be proved that Marlowe was an actor, but we know that 
 most of his plays were written for the Admiral's company and 
 that Alleyn acted in them. Marlowe's career must have 
 been well under way before the coming of the Armada and it 
 is not impossible that he was a dramatist of repute before 
 he attained his higher degree at Cambridge. Unlike Shake- 
 speare and Jonson, Marlowe appears not to have served an 
 apprenticeship to the drama, but leaped to immediate fame by 
 that daring production Tamburlaine, which was on the stage 
 by 1587. Thereafter his works followed year after year until 
 seven dramas, his in whole or in part, were credited to his 
 name with we know not how much other journeyman work 
 in unacknowledged collaboration with others. Marlowe, as 
 we make it out, was one about whom men held definite opin- 
 ions; he had enemies and many friends, among the latter 
 Raleigh and Sir Thomas Walsingham of Chislehurst. Mar- 
 lowe must have known his contemporaries, the playwrights, 
 thoroughly well. Nash collaborated with him, while Shake- 
 speare alludes to him tenderly in Js Tou Like It. Marlowe 
 was unorthodox in his opinions and unwisely frank in uttering 
 them; but it is difficult to believe the author of Faustus an 
 atheist. There are no actual evidences that Marlowe led a 
 loose life, although the sensuousness of his poetical imagina- 
 tion is indubitable. He died prematurely in 1593 under cir- 
 cumstances that are really unknown. The stories of a dis- 
 creditable brawl in which he ended his life blaspheming, the 
 allegations as to his atheism and abandoned life are inventions 
 which have gathered about his name since his death to adorn 
 a fanciful example of the depravity of the player and the 
 unorthodox; and, strange, as it may appear, priest and Puritan 
 combined to draw the monster. 
 
 Seldom has any poet begun his career with so definite and 
 purposeful an ideal as Marlowe. If we are to judge from the 
 conscious pronouncement of the prologue to Tamburlaine, 
 Marlowe set his face from the first against the trivialities of 
 
MARLOWE'S "TAMBURLAINE" 97 
 
 the comic stage, which he designates as "such conceits as 
 clownage keeps in pay," and against the old tumbUng, running 
 measures, illustrated in such plays as Gammer Gurton. It 
 was force, dignity, and passion that Marlowe demanded of the 
 romantic drama and in choosing blank-verse he fixed the 
 medium of serious drama for generations to come. Tam- 
 burlaine was a splendid gage of promise for a youth of twenty- 
 three to throw down to his age. The two parts of Tambur- 
 laine — for the popularity of the first part soon demanded a 
 second — are best described as an heroic epic in dramatic 
 form. The tale of the Scythian conqueror of the eastern 
 world and his rise from a shepherd to be king over kings is 
 told in language befitting so heroic a theme, and if it dilates 
 at time into the extravagant and bombastic, it is pervaded 
 none the less throughout with fire, poetry, and genuine 
 passion. The popularity of Tamhurlaine was immediate 
 and it begot in hands less forcible a long line of like 
 heroical plays. 
 
 The second dramatic venture of Marlowe was the drama- 
 tizing of the world-story of Faustus. How exactly the poet 
 came by the theme is not altogether clear, as the earliest ex- 
 tant translation of the German Faust-huch bears date 1592 
 and Marlowe's tragedy was certainly on the stage four years 
 earlier. The play, as we have it, seems sketchy and in- 
 complete. Moreover, it is disfigured with scenes of precisely 
 the type of clownage which Marlowe had so reprobated in the 
 prologue of Tamburlaine. Yet, with both these shortcomings, 
 Faustus is a surprisingly effective tragedy in which the throes 
 and agonies of the unhappy hero who had bartered his soul for 
 a few short years of power and pleasure in this world, are set 
 forth with a distinction of phrase, a quality of poetic imagery 
 and a poignant appreciation of the agony of hopeless repent- 
 ance unequaled in English drama. Least justifiable of all 
 are quotations from the dramas, for here everything depends 
 on the situation in hand, the personages, and the unity of the 
 complete whole; yet, possibly better in the following than in 
 some more striking passage, may the reader discern alike the 
 
98 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 temper of Faustus in his inordinate lust after power as well 
 as the limpid and effective diction of Marlowe: 
 Oh what a world of profit and delight, 
 Of power, of honor, of omnipotence 
 Is promised to the studious artisan! 
 All things that move between the quiet poles 
 Shall be at my command: emperors and kings 
 Are but obeyed in their several provinces, 
 Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds; 
 But his dominion that exceeds in this 
 Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man; 
 A sound magician is a mighty god: 
 Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity. 
 
 But the good and the evil angel, after the manner of the old 
 
 morality, are ever at hand with their alternate promptings: 
 
 O Faustus! lay that damned book aside 
 
 And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul. 
 
 And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head. 
 
 Read, read the Scriptures: that is blasphemy. 
 
 And the other replies: 
 
 Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art. 
 Wherein all Nature's treasure is contained: 
 Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, 
 Lord and commander of these elements. 
 
 The angels disappear and Faustus continues in soliloquy: 
 How am I glutted with conceit of this! 
 Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, 
 Resolve me of all ambiguities. 
 Perform what desperate enterprise I will ? 
 I'll have them fly to India for gold. 
 Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. 
 And search all corners of the new-found world 
 For pleasant fruits and princely delicates; 
 I'll have them read me strange philosophy 
 And tell the secrets of all foreign kings; 
 I '11 have them wall all Germany with brass, 
 And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg, 
 I'll have them fill the public schools with silk. 
 Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad; 
 
OTHER PLAYS OF MARLOWE 99 
 
 I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, 
 And chase the Prince of Parma from our land, 
 And reign sole king of all the provinces. 
 
 In The Jew of Malta Marlowe found a less universal 
 theme, but constructively he produced a better play. It is 
 Marlov^e's misfortune that his indignant and revengeful Jew^ 
 should be thrown inevitably into contrast with Shylock. 
 Barabas is the incarnation of superhuman revenge (not greed, 
 for that is secondary to him), as Tamburlaine depicts inor- 
 dinate lust of empire, and Faustus inordinate lust of knowledge 
 and supernatural power. To compare Barabas, therefore, 
 to Shylock, who remains ever human, is unfair, for the very 
 terms of Marlowe's art demand a different scale of values. 
 The Jew of Malta is a lurid and terrible play: but it must have 
 been most effective on the stage. To upbraid Marlowe for 
 following the popular conception of his day as to the race 
 whose badge is sufferance is as preposterous as it is to read 
 into Shakespeare a humanitarian spirit which belonged not 
 to his time. 
 
 The last of the unaided plays of Marlowe is Edward II, 
 in its source and more general characteristics a chronicle 
 history like much that had gone before; but, in its conception 
 of an unkingly king in struggle with his surroundings, in the 
 pity and the terror of his fall, a tragedy, worthy to hold place 
 beside Shakespeare. The advance in dramatic construction 
 of Edward II over Marlowe's previous plays is alone enough 
 to set at rest, once and for all, the notion that Marlowe's 
 genius was not dramatic. Almost anything might have been 
 predicted of a poet who at less than thirty had compassed the 
 overwhelming pathos of the closing scene of this tragedy. 
 But Marlowe was dead at the opening of the year 1594, leaving 
 however behind him a repute, foremost among the poets and 
 dramatists of his day, and affecting subsequent drama, for his 
 images of dilation and heroic resolve, for his genuine passion, 
 power over the phrase and poetry, more than any man of his 
 time. 
 
 Of Dido, Queen of Carthage, in which, according to the 
 quarto of 1594, Nash assisted Marlowe, and of The Massacre 
 
100 EARLIER POPULAR DRAMA 
 
 at Paris, the last of Marlowe's works, but a word must suffice. 
 Dido was acted (unlike the other plays of Marlowe) by the 
 Children of the Chapel and may have been written early, 
 though the blank-verse is mature. The whole play is less 
 vital than the rest of Marlowe's work. The Massacre ex- 
 hibits haste in composition and exists only in a corrupt text. 
 It is interesting as the earliest extant play to lay under con- 
 tribution the annals of France and to employ them in much 
 the way that the English chronicles were to be so largely used 
 by Shakespeare and others. 
 
 The new romantic drama that sprang into being in the 
 years immediately preceding the Armada is referable above all 
 to the influence and example of Kyd and Marlowe, the former 
 marking the steps from Seneca, the latter showing a freer 
 spirit all his own. Among the many plays inspired by their 
 example may be mentioned Peek's Battle of Alcazar, Greene's 
 Alphonsus of Aragon and Selimus, if the latter be his, the 
 anonymous Wars of Cyrus, 2Lndi other conqueror plays, as they 
 have been called from their immediate inspiration in Tam- 
 burlaine. Of more general though no less certain suggestion 
 in Kyd and Marlowe are the several plays on Titus of which 
 we hear about this time, the only one surviving being Titus 
 Andronicus, variously accredited and denied to Shakespeare. 
 A play of like class is Lust's Dominion, written at latest in 
 1600, but published for the first time long after. This melo- 
 dramatic production reproduces a queen of the extravagant 
 lust of Tamora, a Moor of equal wickedness with Aaron, and 
 otherwise imitates Titus Andronicus. Lust's Dominion has 
 been identified with The Spanish Moors Tragedy, mentioned 
 in Henslowe as the work of Dekker, Haughton, and Day. It 
 is certainly not Marlowe's. 
 
 With the death of Marlowe and Kyd, Elizabethan drama 
 was well launched on its conquering career: for it had gained 
 by this time not only dramatists to depict life, transfigured 
 with the illumination of poetry, but it had found as well, in 
 men like Alleyn and Burbage, actors to interpret the written 
 word on the stage. Edward Alleyn, through his marriage 
 with the daughter of Philip Henslowe, an exploiter of plays for 
 
ALLEYN AND BURBAGE loi 
 
 the rivals of Shakespeare's company, acquired the financial 
 support necesssary to success on the boards, and became notable 
 in tragedy, especially for the chief roles of Marlowe's plays. 
 Alleyn inherited Henslowe's wealth and, with money gained 
 by his own talents, retired, like Shakespeare later, a substan- 
 tially rich man. Richard Burbage's career was not dissimilar. 
 His father, James Burbage, was a joiner by trade and became, 
 through this, concerned in the erection of the Theater in 
 Shoreditch, first of Elizabethan playhouses. The interest of 
 the family in the stage continued through three generations, 
 Richard holding large shares in the Theater, the Globe, and 
 Blackfriars and making a reputation on the tragic stage that 
 placed him at the head of his profession. Burbage's asso- 
 ciation throughout his life was with the company to which 
 Shakespeare v/as attached; and it was he who created the most 
 important tragic roles of the great dramatist. A lifelong 
 friendship existed between the two, and of late their names 
 have been discovered in an association not hitherto suspected. 
 It appears that in March, 1613, the steward of the Earl of 
 Rutland paid Shakespeare "forty-four shillings in gold" for a 
 design of an "impresa" or semi-heraldic pictorial badge with its 
 attendant motto, and an equal sum to Burbage for "painting" 
 the same and "making it in gold." The invention of devices 
 of this kind was a fashionable pursuit of scholarly and literary 
 men of the day, and we hear of Sidney, Daniel, Camden, Jon- 
 son, Donne, and Drummond, all as variously interested in 
 them. The connection of Shakespeare's name with pictorial 
 art is new, but in no wise surprising. As to Burbage, there 
 is a picture of him in Dulwich College which purports to be 
 the work of his own brush. The notion that he may likewise 
 have painted, in 1609, the portrait of Shakespeare on wood 
 from which the Droeshout engraving of the title-page of the 
 first folio was subsequently copied, must be pronounced fanci- 
 ful. Burbage continued on the boards long after the retire- 
 ment of Alleyn, dying in 1619, three years after the death of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PAMPHLET AND THE PROSE OF CON- 
 TROVERSY 
 
 COULD you or I have had the good fortune to have 
 strolled out into the narrow streets of Elizabethan Lon- 
 don, along Cheapside, past the Standard where culprits were 
 displayed in the stocks or the pillory, and where condemned 
 books were burned by the common hangman; into Gracious 
 Street or Bishopsgate where were many taverns still used as 
 cheaper playhouses; or back to St. Paul's Churchyard where 
 the scriveners and stationers chiefly congregated, we should 
 have been struck by the sight on all sides of bright and con- 
 spicuous signs, marking not only shops with their wares 
 displayed on booths, but private houses as well. Your blue- 
 coated servant might be a very intelligent and trustworthy 
 fellow, but to give him a letter for delivery, addressed as we 
 address letters with name, street, and number, would have been 
 to nonplus him hopelessly. Such was the dilemma of Capulet's 
 servant, who, given a written list of persons to invite to his 
 master's feast, was compelled, as he put it, "to resort to the 
 learned." "To my very dear friend, Antonio at the Elephant 
 in the south suburb" would have reached Sebastian's friend 
 in Twelfth Night, precisely as a meeting might have been 
 arranged between two bookish friends at the shop of Thomas 
 Fisher at the Sign of the White Hart in Fleet Street, seller of 
 J Midsummer-Night's Dream, or of Thomas Heyes in Paul's 
 Churchyard at the Sign of the Green Dragon, for whom one 
 of the quartos of The Merchant of Venice was printed. 
 
 It is improbable that three out of ten of the general popu- 
 lation of the London of Elizabeth could read or were habitu- 
 ated to writing more than their names. Shakespeare's father 
 affixed his mark, and it has been declared that the art of read- 
 ing and writing remained a mystery to Judith, Shakespeare's 
 
 102 
 
PAMPHLET AND NEWSPAPER 103 
 
 daughter. Be these bits of gossip true or false, it is plain that 
 the age attached no such importance to what Carlyle calls 
 "the mystery of alphabetic letters" as do we. Now, we know 
 scarcely any education save that which comes through books, 
 and illiteracy is a brand and a stigma. Such was not Eliza- 
 beth's age. The London of Shakespeare's time could not 
 have numbered a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and 
 there was no other large city in England. With a reading 
 public thus limited in numbers and by illiteracy, it is amaz- 
 ing how many books the Elizabethan and Jacobean press 
 put forth. What proportion of the population of a modern 
 British or American city would buy the collected edition of 
 a popular contemporary playwright at say twenty or twenty- 
 five dollars a volume .? That was about the comparative 
 price of the first folio of Shakespeare in 1623, the year of 
 its publication. The exhaustion of the first edition of this 
 work in nine years, with a possible ten thousand readers in 
 all England, means little less than the twentieth thousand of 
 some cheap passing novel of to-day with the possibility of fifty 
 or — if it cross seas — a hundred million purchasers. 
 
 It is often affirmed that the theater of Shakespeare ab- 
 sorbed to itself the functions of the newspaper, including those 
 of our magazines, reviews, and other like publications. But 
 the theater was not alone. The pamphlet already existed, 
 and the pamphlet and the broadside were the forerunners of 
 the modern newspaper. The works of the pamphleteers, of,^ 
 Breton, Rowlands, Greene, Nash, Dekker, and many others, 
 are often among the rarest of books. No one thought of pre- 
 serving such productions any more than we think of treasuring 
 old newspapers; and they were read as thoughtlessly and 
 destroyed as carelessly as we read and destroy newspapers to- 
 day. The Elizabethan pamphlet is any piece of ephemeral 
 printing, from a prognostication of the weather or a ballad 
 turned into rime because of some recent event, to a tract of 
 political, religious, or other comment, or an account of the 
 queen's last progress. Within this range almost every con- 
 ceivable variety of writing is possible: anecdote, from the jest- 
 book or piece of rimed doggerel to the prose tale of low life or 
 
104 THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 complete romantic story; realistic pictures and writings-up of 
 contemporary rogues and vagabonds or exposures of the tricks 
 of thieves and sharpers; "characters," biographies, travels, 
 real and imaginary, autobiographical and other sketches. 
 The pamphlet vv^as rarely political, for there v^ere pains and 
 penalties attendant upon political freedom of speech, but it 
 v^as often on matters of religious controversy, social satire, and 
 personal lampoon. We are as apt to forget all this in thinking 
 of the great age of Spenser and Shakespeare as we are apt to 
 forget those clogs about the necks of our own culture, the com- 
 moner newspapers, the commoner books, and the common 
 thoughts with which they overlay and overwhelm us. Though 
 just as now there are able men who give their best talents to 
 our own daily and monthly press, so in the old time an occa- 
 sional man, capable of enduring work, bartered his talents to 
 the needs of the moment and rested content with the repute 
 of a day. 
 
 All this is incipient journalism, only requiring a keener 
 interest in that modern acquired need of our daily lives which 
 we call news, the organization by which that need is supplied, 
 and regular publication assured, completely to parallel the 
 modern newspaper. Much of this fleeting literature has per- 
 ished and much more of it was produced by anonymous au- 
 thors or by those whose names are now practically forgotten; 
 and yet enough remains to surprise us with its bulk and variety 
 and with the productiveness of some of those who contributed 
 to it. Thus, for example, an enumeration of the jest-books 
 that appeared in print between the time of Shakespeare's corn-: 
 ing to London and the year of his death comprehends a dozen 
 or more titles in which the names of Skelton, Scoggin,andTarl- 
 ton recur. Peele, the dramatist, was notorious for his Merry 
 Conceited Jests, collected in 1607; and Richard Edwards, in ■ 
 his day, and Robert Armin, a later actor, contributed each 
 his share to a variety of anecdote which neither then nor now 
 is creditable either for its wit or its decency. Of wholesomer 
 nature were the collections of popular tales, best represented 
 in the work of Thomas Deloney, variously described as "a 
 jig-monger" or "the balleting silk-weaver." This trades- 
 
THE PAMPHLETEERS 105 
 
 man's laureate, as he has likewise been called, was the author 
 of such books as Jack of Newbery, Thomas of Reading, and 
 The Gentle Craft, all printed in the nineties and concerned 
 with tradesmen heroes. It was from the last of these pam- 
 phlets that Dekker borrowed the plot of his Shoemakers^ Holi- 
 day, including the immortal personage Simon Eyre; and, in 
 a second story of the same book, Rowley found the story of 
 another play, his Shoemaker a Gentleman. As to the fecundity 
 of some of these pamphleteers, it may be noted that the article 
 on Thomas Churchyard, in The Dictionary of National Bi- 
 ography, contains over fifty titles of works of his; Grosart's 
 edition of Nicholas Breton prints some forty tracts in verse 
 and prose, all of this general class; and the same editor's edi- 
 tion of the prose writings of Robert Greene fills eleven crown 
 octavo volumes. Greene and Lodge were more than pam- 
 phleteers; for, aside from the plays of the former, each con- 
 trived to give distinction even to some of his more fugitive 
 tracts. Breton, too, concealed in much rubbish many a gem 
 of dainty pastoral verse and discloses a pervading kindliness 
 of spirit unusual in his class. While Thomas Nash, despite 
 the rancor of his personalities and the passing and trivial na- 
 ture of his controversies, must always be reckoned among the 
 masters of vigorous, idiomatic English prose. 
 
 Of the several pamphleteers, then, that it is here possible 
 to notice, Thomas Churchyard was the earliest. An older 
 contemporary of Gascoigne, born in 1520, but living on to 
 1604, Churchyard affected the broadside in verse and was fond 
 of historical and quasi-historical subjects. His best known 
 work is his contribution of the story of Jane Shore to Bald- 
 win's edition of The Mirror for Magistrates, 1 563; but he like- 
 wise told the vicissitudes of his own career as a soldier in 
 Scotland, Ireland, and on the continent, describing the siege 
 of Leith, "the lamentable and pitiful wars in Flanders," and 
 the "calamity of France," this last in 1579. Somewhat later he 
 wrote several tracts on the projected voyages of Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert and Martin Frobisher, moralized upon the late earth- 
 quake, described the queen's progresses into the country to 
 visit her nobles, and never lost an opportunity lugubriously 
 
io6 THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 to celebrate the obsequies of statesman or notable courtier. 
 Churchyard affected the letter in his titles: Churchyard's 
 Chipps, Churchyard's Choice, Churchyard's Chance, Church- 
 yard's Challenge. His Worthies of Wales, 1587, is accounted 
 the best of his works; their journalistic character is plain; for 
 few events, from Sidney's death and the Babington conspiracy 
 to Essex's folly, escaped his indefatigable pen. 
 
 Nicholas Breton, though later born, was even longer lived 
 and no less continuously industrious. Of better birth and 
 greater refinement than Churchyard, Breton seems to have 
 been urged to a literary career by the example of his step- 
 father, the poet Gascoigne, who left him a love of learning 
 although he dissipated his estate. Breton was a minor satel- 
 lite of the charmed circle of the Countess of Pembroke to whom 
 he dedicated more than one of his booklets; and his literary 
 work extends from 1577 quite through the reign of King James 
 to embrace much excellent devotional prose and poetry and 
 several exquisite pastoral lyrics. Considering his volumi- 
 nousness, Breton maintains a remarkable uniformity of style 
 and diction. He was, moreover, a writer of unusual versa- 
 tility, writing verse and prose, satirical, romantic, religious, 
 and pastoral, with equal ease and success, and with a charming 
 and equable flow of good spirits — cheerful, fanciful, and 
 pathetic at will. Wit's Trenchamour, 1597, in its interlocutors, 
 an angler and a scholar, and the talk about fish and fishing 
 with which it opens, is suggestive of its famous successor, 
 Walton's Complete Angler: but the dialogue takes a different 
 turn. A Discourse between a Scholar and a Soldier, The Praise 
 of Virtuous Ladies, An Old Man's Lesson and a Toung Mans 
 Love are sufficiently described in their titles. Several of Bre- 
 ton's pamphlets are satirical and three of these in verse contain 
 the word Pasquil — Pasquil's Madcap, Pasquil's Fool's Cap, 
 Pasquil's Pass — on their titles. But there is nothing bitter 
 in Breton's nature; even his satire is full of humanity and 
 kindly merriment, and the just and modest value that he puts 
 on his own efforts, calling them Toys for an Idle Head, A Post 
 with a Packet of Madcap Letters, I Pray Tou he not Angry, 
 
BRETON AND ROWLANDS 107 
 
 Against Murmurers and Murmuring, disarms anything in the 
 nature of hostile criticism. 
 
 Among Breton's many dialogues, moral, fanciful, religious, 
 and other, it is of interest to find several in form of short essays- 
 imitating the manner and even the subjects of Bacon, Fan- 
 tastics "discants of the quarters, months and hours of the year 
 with other matters"; but Characters upon Essays, Moral and 
 Divine, 16 15, not only deals with Baconian abstractions, such 
 as Honor, Love, War, and Resolution, but is dedicated in 
 respectful terms, confessing the imitation, to "my worthy, 
 honored, truly learned and judicious Knight, Sir Francis 
 Bacon." The Good and the Bad, a Description of the Worthies 
 and Unworthies of this Age, 1616, partakes more of the variety 
 of writing, recently come into the vogue of the moment in the 
 "character," of which more below. Lastly, the larger class 
 of Breton's devotional tracts, both prose and verse, exhibit a 
 simple-hearted piety and kindly charity of heart which further 
 endear this engaging old writer to our recollection. ^ 
 
 Of less literary worth, though similar in his career, was 
 Samuel Rowlands, whose activity lies between 1598 and 1628 
 and who died two years later. Rowlands' productivity almost 
 equals Breton's and includes many religious tracts and satires 
 of such asperity that some of the author's works were ordered 
 to be publicly burnt. Rowlands imitated greater men in a 
 large group of writings on the low life of London, its thieves, 
 beggars, and "roaring boys," as they were called; and a cer- 
 tain ready-handed ability marks, as well his High Way to 
 Mount Calvary, 'Tis Merry when Gossips Meet, as his Terrible 
 Battle between the Tvoo Consumers of all the Earth, Time and 
 Death. 
 
 The greatest of the early pamphleteers is Robert Greene, 
 whose place among the predecessors of Shakespeare has already 
 claimed our attention. Greene's earliest prose work was 
 written under the direct influence of Lyly whose style he imi- 
 tated and whose long disquisitions on the nature of love and 
 the processes of courtship he specially emulated. Greene's 
 Mamillia was entered as early as 1580 and was followed, be- 
 
io8 THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 fore the end of the decade, by more than a dozen other love- 
 pamphlets. Mamillia is the not ineffective story of a fickle 
 and wavering young man, Pharicles, at length reclaimed to 
 virtue and to matrimony by the beautiful and steadfast Mamil- 
 lia. Among the others, Euphues his Censure of Philautus is 
 interesting as an intended continuance of Lyly's famous story;^ 
 Perimedes the Blacksmith contains in its preface much valuable 
 matter by way of allusion to the contemporary relations of the 
 predecessors of Shakespeare; and Pandosto is memorable for 
 havins furnished in the beautiful tale of Dorastus and Fawnia 
 no unworthy original of The Winter s Tale. Greene is often 
 clever in the manner in which he frames or introduces his 
 stories. Thus Planetomachia,zs its name imports, is a dispute 
 amongst the planetary gods as to which had most potently 
 affected the doings of men, and stories are told by way of illus- 
 tration. In Penelope's Weh that dutiful wife discourses with 
 her maidens by night, of love and adventure, as she unweaves 
 the thread that she has spun all day; in Euphues' Censure thp 
 interlocutors are the heroes of the Trojan war. Some of these 
 productions are mere "dissertations on love clothed in a story." 
 In nearly all, Greene holds up a high ideal of womanhood and 
 maintains Lyly's conception of "a cleanly story fit for ladies' 
 to read." 
 
 With the threatened arrival of the Armada, Greene forsook 
 love themes to sound the note of war. The Spanish Mas- 
 quer ado is a book of the moment such as we might expect from 
 a stanch patriot and Protestant in a time of national peril. 
 "In the attempted invasion of the Spaniards he saw the hand 
 of God directed towards England for the purpose of awaken- 
 ing her religious enthusiasm; in Englishmen he saw God's 
 weapon for the punishment of Spaniards for their pride and 
 dishonesty." This production is only historically of any 
 interest. 
 
 Greene soon returned to his love stories, imitating the 
 Arcadia in Menaphon, a pastoral of great beauty, esteemed by 
 some the best of his work, and assuming a deeper and more 
 moral tone in The Mourning Garment. Nor did he leave be- 
 hind him a more charming and finished story than Philomela, 
 
PAMPHLETS OF GREENE 109 
 
 which was written in the year preceding his death. Greene 
 began now, too, to levy more and more upon his own adven- 
 tures and experiences, and to dispute more deeply on vice and 
 passion, as in his Farewell to Folly and in the two touching 
 books, A Groatsworth of Wit Purchased with a Million of Re- 
 pentance and Greene's Repentance, with which he closed his 
 career. There remains a notable class of Greene's writings, 
 the series which deals with the impostors and sharpers with 
 which London was infested, the haunts and tricks of which 
 Greene knew with the closest personal acquaintance. Some 
 half-dozen pamphlets of various lengths on cosenage and cony- 
 catching (the old words used to designate such deceits), belong 
 to the years 1587 and 1592. They were followings of a type 
 long since set, of which more below. Greene's handling of 
 such topics is frank and realistic but never prurient or unclean. 
 His words are marked by the same honest outspokenness 
 and sincerity which characterized all his utterances concerning 
 himself. It would be difficult to find a truer, a more whole- 
 some story of a fallen and reclaimed womanhood than may be 
 read at the conclusion of the tract called by the cumbrous title, 
 A Disputation between a He-Cony catcher and a She-Cony- 
 catcher; precisely as it would be impossible to find a more 
 touching story than the autobiographical account which Greene 
 gives us in his Groatsworth of Wit of his own pathetic and un- 
 timely death. That story has been told so often that it may 
 here be passed by and another passage preferred which almost 
 equally expresses the nature of these autobiographical pamph- 
 lets. After relating the careless wickedness of his life at the 
 University of Cambridge and in Italy, his pose as a "mal- 
 content," his extravagance in attire, Greene proceeds to tell 
 how he became "an author of plays and a penner of love 
 pamphlets," and one "young yet in years though old in wicked- 
 ness." At this period, he continues: 
 
 Yet let me confess a truth, that even once, and yet but once, I 
 felt a fear and horror in my conscience; and then the terror of God's 
 judgements did manifestly teach me that my life was bad, that by 
 sin I deserved damnation, and that such was the greatness of my 
 sin, that I deserved no redemption. And this inward motion I re- 
 
no THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 ceived in Saint Andrew's Church in the City of Norwich, at a lecture 
 or sermon then preached by a godly learned man, whose doctrine, 
 and the manner of whose teaching, I liked wonderful well: yea 
 (in my conscience) such was his singleness of heart, and zeal in his 
 doctrine, that he might have converted me, the most monster sinner 
 of the world. ... 
 
 At this sermon the terror of God's judgements did manifestly 
 teach me that my exercises were damnable, and that I should be wiped 
 out of the book of life, if I did not speedily repent my looseness of 
 life, and reform my misdemeanors. 
 
 But this good motion lasted not long in me; for no sooner had I 
 met with my copesmates, but seeing me in such a solemn humor, 
 they demanded the cause of my sadness: to whom when I had dis- 
 covered that I sorrowed for my wickedness of life, and that the 
 preacher's words had taken a deep impression on my conscience, they 
 fell upon me in jesting manner, calling me Puritan and precisian and 
 wished I might have a pulpit, with such other scoffing terms, that 
 by their foolish persuasion the good and wholesome lesson I had 
 learned went quite out of my remembrance: so that I fell again with 
 the dog to my old vomit, and put my wicked life in practice, and that 
 so thoroughly as ever I did before. 
 
 Is it always necessary that we should remember Robert 
 Greene as the man who first maligned Shakespeare, or even 
 as the poet whose ungoverned life and repentant spirit has 
 served to point many a moral and adorn many a tale ? Greene 
 never ceased to look up. He never failed to adore the sun and 
 the pitiful heavens, although his feet faltered sadly in the miry 
 ways of the world. If we add our voices to the chorus of 
 Shakespearean praise, may we not save a tear for this, his fallen 
 rival ? 
 
 Of Thomas Lodge as a poet, rare lyrist like Greene that 
 he was, and memorable for delicate and charming Rosalynd, 
 original of As Tou Like It, it is not the place to write much 
 here. As to his prose, in his Defense of Plays, 1579, Lodge 
 had taken a part, honorable to his taste and learning, in the 
 controversy which Stephen Gosson had started concerning 
 the wickedness of plays. The subsequent pamphlets of Lodge 
 include a variety of stories and discussions more or less Euphu- 
 istic or couched in the manner of Greene. Lodge was a far 
 
LODGE AND NASH iii 
 
 traveler and wrote one story while at sea on an expedition 
 against the Spaniards, another on a voyage while in the Straits 
 of Magellan, entitled A Margarite of America, published in 
 1596. This may be commended to those who think that the 
 accident of geographical position should determine such ques- 
 tions, as the earliest specimen of "American literature," as it 
 preceded Sandys translation of Ovid made in the wilds of Vir- 
 ginia by some twenty years, and Mistress Anne Bradstreet, 
 "the tenth Muse, sprung up in America," by sixty or more. 
 
 From these lighter pamphlets, the fringe of fiction, we turn 
 to the more forbidding prose of controversy. In one of the 
 latest of his pamphlets, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 1592, 
 Greene had incidentally described Gabriel Harvey, the Cam- 
 bridge don. Mentor of Spenser and would-be intimate of Sid- 
 ney, as "the son of a rope-maker of Saffron Walden," which 
 unquestionably he was. Absurdly touched by this in his 
 family pride, Harvey attacked Greene abusively in his Four 
 Letters and Certain Sonnets, and it is even said visited the 
 obscure lodgings in which Greene had meanwhile died to 
 collect material concerning his wretched and unhappy end to 
 _exult over. This conduct stung Nash to reply, not so much 
 because he had been an especial intimate of Greene's as be- 
 ; cause he detested Harvey's conduct and recognized in him an 
 excellent subject for his own satirical quill. Thomas Nash 
 was born in 1567, a minister's son of Lowestoft. He left Cam- 
 bridge prematurely, according to Harvey, because he had 
 played "the varlet of clubs in a satirical Latin play called Ter- 
 minus et non Terminus." The literar}'^ life of Nash in London 
 began about the year 1588, and his first work was apparently 
 The Anatomy of Absurdity. Nash was influenced in this work, 
 as were others temporarily, by the fashionable mannerism of 
 Lyly, though his vigorous prose was far from being subdued 
 by Euphuistic affectations. In the Epistle to Greene's Men- 
 aphon Nash reviewed contemporary literature with the vivacity 
 and contemptuousness of extreme youth. It is notable though 
 that the young critic attacks the abuses of the style of his day, 
 especially the bombastic style of Kyd and the "Thrasonical 
 huff-snuff," as he dubs it, of such translators as Phacr and 
 
112 THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 Stanihurst, while he lavishes eloquent words of praise on true 
 poetry, and upholds patriotically the credit of England. To 
 "our English Italians" who declare that "the finest wits our 
 climate sends forth are but dry-brained dolts in comparison 
 of other countries," Nash names Chaucer,Lydgate, and Gower; 
 and he adds: "One thing I am sure of, that each of these three 
 have vaunted their meters with as much admiration in Eng- 
 land as ever the proudest Ariosto did his verse in Italian." 
 And then he continues: 
 
 Should the challenge of deep conceit be intruded by a foreigner 
 to bring our English wits to the touchstone of art, I would prefer 
 divine Master Spenser, the miracle of wit, to bandy line for line for 
 my life in honor of England against Spain, France, Italy and all 
 the world. Neither is he the only swallow in our summer. 
 
 But to return to Nash's controversy with Harvey, it was in 
 his Wonderful Astrological Predictions and Strange News of 
 the Intercepting of Certain Letters that Nash assailed Harvey 
 in 1 59 1 and 1592. Harvey replied in Pierce's Supererogation 
 orNewPraise of an Old Ass; and Nash in the epistle to a serious 
 book called Christ's Tears over Jerusalem offered honorable 
 amends and reconciliation. But Harvey was not made of 
 magnanimous stuff and stood in suspicion of Nash's offered 
 hand, which Nash accordingly withdrew with dignity in a new 
 epistle to the same work. So things rested until 1596 when, 
 having heard that Harvey had boasted that he had silenced 
 him, Nash put forth his Have with you to Saffron Walden, or 
 Gabriel Harvey s Hunt is Up, "containing a full answer to 
 the eldest son of the halter-maker." "For brain power, for 
 prodigality and ebulliency of wild wit, for splendid fight," 
 says Grosart, "for ridicule deepening into scorn, scorn rip- 
 pling into laughter, for overwhelming absurdity of argument, 
 and for biting, scathing words, this satiric book stands alone 
 in the literature of its kind.'' Nor is this praise excessive. 
 Upon the publication soon after of a weak reply by Harvey 
 entitled The Trimming of Thomas Nash, the whole thing be- 
 came a stench in the nostrils of the public and it was ordered 
 by the Bishop of London "that all Nash's books, and Dr. 
 
MARTIN MARPRELATE 113 
 
 Harvey's books be taken wheresoever they may be found, and 
 that none of the same books be ever printed hereafter." This 
 meant, after the quaint custom of the time, a public burning 
 of all the confiscated copies of both books, a ceremony held 
 at the Standard in Cheapside and superintended — at least at 
 times — by the common hangman. 
 
 But this v^as not Nash's only literary w^arfare. Elizabeth's 
 system of uniformity in religion rested on compromise; and 
 the grov^^th of Calvinistic ideas among the Puritans imperiled 
 this equilibrium towards the end of her reign. The Puritans 
 made episcopacy the especial object of their attacks because 
 the institution savored, to their minds, of popery and upheld 
 many usages under the Act of Uniformity to which they could 
 not in conscience subscribe. The bishops, too, had other 
 enemies besides the Puritans. Many a gentleman, ruffling 
 it at court, recalled that his forefathers had founded his estate 
 on the dismantling of monasteries; and would have been little 
 loath to repeat a like spoliation of the church. Moreover, the 
 pride and ostentatious wealth of some of the bishops must have 
 raised the question among the poorer brethern of their own 
 clergy as to the administration of Christian offices in a manner 
 at times so unchristian. The Martin Marprelate Controversy, 
 as it was called from the pen-name assumed by the authors of 
 the attacking party, arose about 1588, among the Puritans, 
 out of these considerations and especially in consequence of 
 the immense authority which the union of church and state 
 had thrown into the hands of the bishops of the Established 
 Church. The Puritan party resented what amounted to the 
 conversion of a difference in religious opinion into a capital 
 crime; and being unable to reach the impersonal power resid- 
 ing in the high commission, appealed in print from the crown 
 to the people. 
 
 For the control of political and religious opposition and 
 criticism, the press had long been subjected to a rigid censor- 
 ship, and the right to print confined to a designated number 
 of printers in London and elsewhere. In 1585 Archbishop 
 Whitgift took a new step against the liberty of printing by 
 obtaining a decree of the Star Chamber which restricted the 
 
114 THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 right to print to London and the two universities. By this 
 decree the number of printers was still further limited. Only 
 a member of the Stationers' Company could maintain a press 
 and, on misuse, this press was subject to instant confiscation 
 under order to the warden of the company from the Bishop 
 of London, who, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 
 official Hcenser alone could authorize the publication of any 
 book. None the less the Puritan party opened their press 
 attack on the bishops, in 1588, with a violent dialogue, Dio- 
 trephes, written by John Udall, a minister of Kingston, who 
 had been dispossessed for his Calvinistic leanings. The press 
 of the printer of this tract was broken up and he was deprived 
 of his license. John Penry, a Welshman of reforming instincts, 
 whose tract, The Equity of an Humble Supplication, had- been 
 suppressed in the previous year, now took Udall's place in the 
 van of the Puritan advance, while his party, nothing daunted, 
 continued their attacks. Although the government sought to 
 reach their masked enemies, tract after tract issued from a 
 press moved from place to place and concealed in the houses 
 of various country gentlemen. Among the pamphlets so pub- 
 lished were Martin Mar prelate's Epistle, 1588, leveled against 
 Dr. Bridges of Salisbury, Martin's Epitome and Hay Any 
 Work for Cooper (both in the next year), the last a reply to a 
 serious Admonition to the People of England by Thomas 
 Cooper, Bishop of Winchester. At last the government suc- 
 ceeded in seizing the press and in prosecuting, under torture, 
 Barrow and Penry, two of the suspected writers, both of whom 
 were executed. Udall died after leaving prison in 1592. This 
 pamphlet war continued well into 1590; but it gradually died 
 out in the following years. 
 
 The merits of this dead question need not concern us. 
 There can be no doubt as to the violence and scurrility of both 
 sides. Who Martin Marprelate really was has never been 
 ascertained. The nom de guerre probably covered the writ- 
 ings of several persons. Among the popular defenders of the 
 bishops, on the other hand, both Lyly and Nash were active. 
 A pamphlet called Pap with a Hatchet, 1589, has been con- 
 fidently attributed to the pen of the former. Nash certainly 
 
MARPRELATE TRACTS 115 
 
 contributed no less than three such works in 1589 and 1590: 
 A Counter cuff given to Martin Junior, The Return of Pasquil 
 and PasquiVs Apology. A Mirror for Martinists, Martin s 
 Month's Mind, and An Almond for a Parrot have also been 
 assigned by some to Nash. Both Nash and Lyly are said to 
 have ridiculed the Martinigts- in plays on the stage. The 
 anonymous reply, Hay Any Jf'ork for Cooper, has been con- 
 sidered the best of the Marprelate tracts themselves; Lyly's 
 Pap, and the pamphlets of Nash, the ablest of the replies. It 
 is of interest to note that Bacon, safe man of compromise that 
 he was, raised his voice against this as against other religious 
 contentions in his able Controversies in the Church, 1 589. Of 
 the style of these papers in general it is not necessary to speak: 
 they range through all the degrees of satire and burlesque to a 
 grossness and acridity of personal invective which was in keep- 
 ing with the coarseness of the times. One of Nash's editors 
 condemns his author's "fine nose for the carrion of anecdote," 
 and for the "terrorism" and literary blackmail of his malig- 
 nant and vehement denunciation of the Martinists. In vio- 
 lence and scurrility Nash little surpassed the violence of mili- 
 tant Puritanism. 
 
 But controversy was not the sum total of Nash's art in 
 prose. His Christ's Tears over Jerusalem is a serious tract in 
 which, under the guise of lamentation over the fate of Jeru- 
 salem, the author bewails the woes and shortcomings of his 
 own city and age. In the social and satirical pamphlets, 
 Pierce Penniless and Lenten Stuff or the Praise of Red Herring, 
 we have Nash's more characteristic work. Quaint learning, 
 a keen and observant eye, much knowledge of the world and 
 its ways, an exuberant fund of humorous anecdote, a clever 
 power to give a witty turn to thought and phrase, and a copious 
 command of the language of encomium and especially that 
 of vituperation: all these things are characteristics of the 
 remarkable prose of Thomas Nash. 
 
 Lastly, there remains by Nash one piece of genuine fiction, 
 Jack Wilton or the Unfortunate Traveler. This vigorous bur- 
 lesque and melodramatic story has the distinction, as M. 
 Jusserand has pointed out, of being the earliest picaresque 
 
ii6 THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 romance in the English language and the only production of 
 its kind in its age. The Unfortunate Traveler relates the 
 adventures of a lively stripling, Jack Wilton, w^ho lives success- 
 fully by his wits in various parts of Europe. He begins as a 
 page with tricks upon a tapster for which he is soundly whipped 
 as he deserves; but, rising in fortune, becomes servant to the 
 Earl of Surrey, elopes with an Italian lady, and actually passes 
 himself off for the earl. It is worthy of remembrance that 
 the adventures of Surrey in this book, like Defoe's Memoirs 
 of a Cavalier over a century after, were taken as actual facts 
 by later writers and incorporated in sage biographies. Indeed 
 Nash shares with Defoe that delightful art of "grave, imper- 
 turbable lying" or, to put it less opprobriously, of faithful like- 
 ness to actuality in trifling details which is one of the most 
 precious possessions of the true novelist. It is impossible not 
 to deplore that talents such as those of Nash — his power of 
 vision, his mastery over language,his gaiety of spirit, eloquence, 
 and rapid ease — could not have been better enlisted than in 
 petty ephemeral pamphlet warfare and in the exploitation of 
 passing literary fashions. But when all has been said to mark 
 these limitations and conditions of his art, Nash must remain 
 conspicuous, nay unexampled, in the annals of English prose 
 not only for his inexhaustible Rabelaisian humor, his merry 
 malevolence, and for his confident mastery over the vocabulary 
 of Billingsgate, but likewise for his power over the telling real- 
 istic stroke and a copious flow of idiomatic vigorous English, 
 alike removed from the alienisms of the Latinists, the niceties 
 and affectations of the Euphuist, and the Arcadian flower of 
 speech and ornament. Here is part of a humorous description 
 by Nash of Harvey's bulky volume, Pierce's Supererogation : 
 
 O 't is an unconscionable vast gorbellied volume, bigger bulked 
 than a Dutch hoy, and far more boisterous and cumbersome than a 
 pair of Swisser's omnipotent galleas breeches. But it should seem 
 he is ashamed of the incomprehensible corpulency thereof himself, 
 for at the end of the 199th page he begins with lOO again, to make it 
 seem little (if I lie, you may look and convince me); and in half a 
 quire of paper besides hath left the pages unfigured. I have read 
 that the giant Abtaeus' shield asked a whole elephant's hide to cover 
 
PAMPHLETS OF DEKKER 117 
 
 it, bona fide I utter it, scarce a whole elephant's hide and a half would 
 serve for a cover to this Gogmagog, Jewish Talmud of absurdities. 
 But one epistle thereof, to John Wolfe, the printer, I took 
 and weighed in an ironmonger's scales, and it counterpoiseth a cade 
 of herring and three Holland cheeses. You may believe me if you 
 will, I was fain to lift my chamber door off the hinges, only to let it 
 in, it was so fulsome a fat bona-roba and terrible Rounceval. 
 
 Lastly as to Elizabethan pamphleteers, v^e turn to Thomas 
 Dekker, who to his repute as the follower of Greene in the 
 drama we must add that of the chief successor of both Greene 
 and Nash in the pamphlet. Of the life of Dekker word will 
 be found elsewhere; suffice it here to say that Dekker was a 
 voluminous writer of pamphlets, upwards of a score being 
 listed and accredited to his authorship between 1598 and 1637, 
 the year of his death. Nor is their range less than that of 
 previous pamphleteers. Thus Canaan's Calamity and The 
 Four Birds of Noah's Ark are devotional, respectively in verse 
 and prose. The Wonderful Tear is a vivid picture of the low 
 life of London, especially of London lying sick with the plague, 
 from which Defoe, in his Journal of the Plague, disdained not 
 to borrow. The Bachelor s Banquet is a free adaptation of a 
 well-known French tract, Les quinze joyes de marriage, while 
 the delightfully satirical Gulls' Hornbook, in which the Jaco- 
 bean gallant is anatomized in all his folly, is an equally free 
 rewriting of Dedekind's Grohianus. Dekker worked once 
 more the rich vein of Greene's conycatching tracts in his 
 Bellman of London and its several additions and amplifications, 
 and he diversified all with his ready wit, his fund of anecdote, 
 and the occasional play of a poetical spirit which we must 
 lament to find thus wasted on mere production of copy. Dek- 
 ker's pamphlets are an invaluable fund of information on 
 contemporary social manners and customs and have yet to 
 offer much in their obscurer parts to a fuller understanding 
 of the greater works of the age. For example, the single little 
 chapter, now very well known, in The Gulls' Hornbook, which 
 tells "how a gallant should behave himself at a playhouse," 
 contains a mine of information concerning the theater of 
 Shakespeare, its settings, the price of admission, how the gal- 
 
ii8 THE PROSE OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 lants abused the privileges of the stage, how the unfortunate 
 playwright and actor were beholden to them not only for their 
 patronage but for permission to be heard at all, and other like 
 matters. 
 
 As I open at random one of the five volumes of a modern 
 edition of Dekker's prose, I find an account of the poet's visit 
 to the Bear Garden on the Bankside where the bear set upon 
 by dogs puts the visitor in mind of "hell, the bear . . . like 
 a black rugged soul that was damned and newly committed 
 to the infernal churls, the dogs, like so many devils in- 
 flicting torments upon it." And much pity is moved in the 
 author's humane breast when "a company of creatures that 
 had the shapes of men and the faces of Christians 
 took the office of beadles upon them and whipped Monsieur 
 Hunkes," the famous blind bear, with long sticks till the blood 
 ran from his hairy shoulders. It was not for the bear that the 
 later Puritans condemned the royal game of bear-baiting. In 
 another place we read: 
 
 Thus sports that were invented for honest recreation, are by the 
 wicked abusing of them, turned to men's confusion: and not only in 
 these games before rehearsed, but also in those that are both more 
 laudable and more lawful. For in the tennis court, cheating hath a 
 hand; yea, and in shooting (which is the noblest exercise of our 
 English nation), arrows do now and then fly with false feathers. 
 
 Could anything have a more modern ring .'' 
 
 But the pamphleteers could occasionally rise above con- 
 temporary conditions. Many are the passages of memorable 
 eloquence that might be culled from their works. Here is a 
 rhapsody of Nash on poets, with which this chapter may well 
 conclude: 
 
 Destiny never defames herself but when she lets an excellent poet 
 die. If there be any spark of Adam's paradised perfection yet em- 
 bered up in the breasts of mortal men, certainly God hath bestowed 
 that, his perfectest image, on poets. None can come so near to God 
 in wit, none more contemn the world. Seldom have you seen any 
 poet possessed with avarice; only verses he loves, nothing else he 
 delights in. And as they contemn the world, so contrarily of the 
 
THE PAMPHLET 119 
 
 mechanical world are none more contemned. Despised they are of 
 the world because they are not of the world. Their thoughts are 
 exalted above the world of ignorance and all earthly conceits. As 
 sweet angelical choristers they are continually conversant in the 
 heaven of arts. Heaven itself is but the highest height of knowlege. 
 He that knows himself and all things else knows the means to be 
 happy. Happy, thrice happy are they whom God hath doubled his 
 spirit upon and given a double soul unto to be poets. 
 
( 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PASTORAL LYRIC AND THE SONNET^ 
 
 THE age of Elizabeth was above all the age of song. 
 Music then flourished as a diversion and accomplish- 
 ment to a degree w^hich has not been known since in England; 
 and that form of poetry which is nearest to music, the lyric, 
 reached a height as memorable for its variety as for its ex- 
 traordinary excellence. A lyric is primarily a poem that sings, 
 as an epic is primarily a poem that tells. But while the song- 
 like quality deserves all the emphasis which it has received, 
 the modern lyric demands an equal recognition of the sub- 
 jective or personal quality which characterizes it. The lyric 
 is concerned with the poet and with the interpretation of his 
 thoughts, sentiments, and emotions. It is the inward world 
 of passion and feeling that is here celebrated, as opposed to 
 the outward world of sequence in time. It is the individual 
 singer, dignified by the sincerity and potency of his art, that 
 unfolds his own moods and emotions to our sympathy and 
 understanding, not a mere voice, the instrument by which 
 we are introduced to the protracted wanderings of Ulysses 
 or the heroic deeds of Beowulf. Several corollaries follow 
 from this conception of the dual character of the lyric. It 
 must deal with passion and emotion in their simplicity as 
 contrasted with the drama which is busied with both in their 
 complexity. TieJ[yric_j3justJbe-,exnotjon clothed in beautiful 
 and musical language; it must be free from the intrusion of 
 mere story or mere description, except so far as each may serve 
 as the foundation of a mood. Above all, it must remain free 
 of any intent to teach, argue, or explain; for its address is 
 ultimately, like that of all true art, an address to the feelings, . 
 to the emotions, and only mediately to the understanding- 
 Inasmuch as the lyric demands a grasp of the subtler forms 
 
 ^ The initial paragraphs of this chapter are based on the author's 
 Introduction to Elizabethan Lyrics, 1895. 
 
 120 
 
NATURE OF THE LYRIC 121 
 
 of human passion and emotion, combined with a consummate 
 mastery of form and of the music of speech, it is but natural 
 that all literatures should displaj/^^ the lyric among the latest 
 onTterafjTgrowtFs. "TJespite what must be admitted as to an 
 inTpeTsonaFTyrical quality inhering in much early popular 
 poetry, an age, in which the gift of lyric expression is widely 
 diffused, must be alike removed from the simplicity and imma- 
 turity which is content to note in its literature the direct 
 effects of the phenomena of the outside world and no more, 
 and from that complexity of conditions and that tendency to 
 intellectualize emotion which characterize a time like our own. 
 In an age lyrically gifted, we may look for innumerable points 
 of contact between the spirit of the time and its literature, for 
 the most beautiful and fervent thoughts couched in the most 
 beautiful and fervent language; in such an age we may expect 
 the nicest adjustment and equilibrium of the real and the 
 ideal, each performing its legitimate function and contributing 
 fn due proportion to the perfect realization of truth in its 
 choicest form, beauty. Siich an age was that of the Eliz- 
 abethan lyric, whicH bloomed with a flower-like diversity of 
 form, color, and fragranee from the boyhood of Shakespeare 
 far into the century that knew Milton and Dryden. 
 
 The origin of the modern lyric of art in the poetry of Wyatt, "^ 
 Surrey, and their followers has already been sufficiently indi- 
 cated. iTotteVs Miscellany is the first book of modern English 
 lyrical j5oetry, and it includes what the following generation 
 regarded as the best of the lyrical output of the reign of Henry 
 VIII. Although The Paradise of Dainty Devises, published 
 in 1576, gathered what was intervening, and although the 
 lyrics of Gascoigne, Turberville, and some few others, their 
 contemporaries, deserve consideration, the outburst of the 
 true Elizabethan lyric scarcely preceded that of other forms 
 of the literature of the century. In 1575, Spenser, Greville, 
 Lodge, and Greene were already at Cambridge, whilst Lyly, 
 Peele, and Watson remained at Oxford, which Sidney had 
 just quitted to be introduced at court and to proceed upon his 
 foreign travels. The influences that made these men poets 
 were thus at work while they were students at the universities, 
 
 ^3 
 
122 THE PASTORAL LYRIC 
 
 and within the ten years that followed each had made a name 
 for himself in literature. 
 
 The Elizabethan lyric, with all its variety and its fre- 
 1 , quently high poetic attainment, is peculiarly conventional 
 and imitative of precedent and example. For this reason we 
 find it subject to a succession of fashions as to form and man- 
 ner, following now the dainty unrealities of the pastoral mode, 
 then inclosed within the formal bounds of French and Italian 
 sonnet practice, and again fashioning its winged words to 
 be set to music. 
 
 From 1580 to j^^Oj, jfor^jej^ample^ it was the^ custom to 
 express lyrical sentiment for the most part in the terms of tlie 
 pastoral. The world became a glorified sheep-walk, its 
 inhabitants nymphs and shepherds devoted to the cult and 
 sway of love, and flitting their time carelessly away in dis- 
 cussions of the divine passion combined with a convention- 
 alized appreciation of flowers and fine weather. The pastoral 
 mode, to be sure, was by no means confined, in England or 
 elsewhere, to the lyric. Originating in Italy with the revival 
 of an interest in ancient poetry, especially the Georgics and. 
 Bucolics of Vergil, the pastoral took many forms, such as the 
 \] eclogue, pastoral drama, prose romance, and lyric. All of 
 these spread to France and Spain, and later reached England 
 in as great a variety as that in which they flourished abroad. 
 We have thus the eclogue, illustrated in The Shepherds' 
 Calendar; the pastoral romance told in prose in Lodge's 
 Rosalynd; glorified into a tale of valor and adventure as in the 
 Arcadia; and told in verse and allegorized into a moral scheme 
 of life in The Faery Queen. Again, there is the pastoral 
 drama, which came for the most part later. The pastoral 
 ■J lyric occurs first as an incidental song in the midst of the 
 narrative or descriptive eclogue and continues in this use in 
 the romance, eclogue, and masque, only later developing 
 into a separate poem free from special application. Spenser 
 was the first English pastoralist to include songs in differing 
 meters within the dialogue of the eclogue. Such are the 
 "Song to Eliza" and "The Lament for Dido" in "April" 
 and "November" respectively of The Shepherds' Calendar. 
 
THE PASTORALISTS 123 
 
 Similarly, Sidney inserted many lyrics in the prose of his 
 Arcadia. Spenser never wrote a lyric for its own sake. Nor 
 did Sidney nor Shakespeare, very often, for that matter. All 
 Spenser's lyrics are incidental, like the two songs just men- 
 tioned, or of specific application like the larger Prothalamion 
 and Epithalamion, and even the Amoretti, if we consider that 
 sequence as a whole. The influence that separated the lyric 
 from its place in the eclogtieV TSfriance, or drama was its use >^ 
 as"the words for music; and we find the pastoral tone showing 
 itself in the first madrigals and songs intended to be sung and 
 in the anthologies, such as England's Helicon, 1599, in which 
 occur several poems, parted from their context. 
 
 Coming thus from Italy, where it had been cultivated for 
 two or three generations, the pastoral lyric combined with 
 a certain fantasticality, conventional phraseology, and fond- 
 ness for conceit, a delightfully childlike abandonment to the j * 
 sense^ a joy in beauty, light, and life itself which disarms the] 
 very criticism which at times it deserves. Indeed, the average 
 of this variety of lyric is not nearly so high as we might suppose. 
 The lesser poems of England's Helicon — admirable collec- 
 tion though it be at large — the volubility of Anthony Mun- 
 day, the long-spun mediocrity of Nicholas Yonge, even the 
 fluent but somewhat attenuated strain of Breton when he is 
 not quite at his best, all go to attest the truth of this assertion. 
 But if we turn to the greater men that practised the pastoral 
 mode, or to the best work of many minor poets — Sidney and 
 Spenser aside, to Lodge, Greene, Peele, Breton at his best, 
 Barnfield and Drayton at times, even Constable, and Marlowe 
 assuredly in one poem — we find the pastoral lyric rising 
 above its conventions into the domain of the finest literature 
 and exhibiting a simplicity, a freedom from consciousness, 
 a happiness in metrical effect, an engaging sweetness and 
 tenderness united with a love of nature, genuinely and artis- 
 tically expressed. 
 
 In time of yore when shepherds dwelt 
 
 Upon the mountain rocks. 
 And simple people never felt 
 
 The pain of lovers' mocks; 
 
124 THE PASTORAL LYRIC 
 
 But little birds would carry tales 
 
 'Twixt Susan and her sweeting, 
 And all the dainty nightingales 
 
 Did sing at lovers' meeting: 
 Then might you see what looks did pass 
 
 Where shepherds did assemble, 
 And where the life of true love was 
 
 When hearts could not dissemble. 
 
 Then yea and nay was thought an oath 
 
 That was not to be doubted, 
 And when it came to faith and troth 
 
 We were not to be flouted. 
 Then did they talk of curds and cream, 
 
 Of butter, cheese and milk; 
 There was no talk of sunny beam 
 
 Nor of the golden silk. 
 Then for a gift a row of pins, 
 
 A purse, a pair of knives 
 Was all the way that love begins; 
 
 And so the shepherd wives. 
 
 Thus sings that sweet pastoralist, JsTicholas JBreton, Nor is 
 Robert Greene behind with the music of his "Shepherd's 
 Wife's Song": 
 
 Ah, what is love ? It is a pretty thing, 
 As sweet unto a shepherd as a king; 
 
 And sweeter too: 
 For kings have cares that wait upon a crown. 
 And cares can make the sweetest love to frown. 
 
 Ah then, ah then. 
 If country loves such sweet desires do gain. 
 What lady would not love a shepherd swain .? 
 
 And what lover of old poetry ever forgets "that smooth song 
 made by Kit Marlowe," "Come live with me and be my 
 love," so beloved of Izaak Walton; or Barnfield's 
 
 As it fell upon a day. 
 
 In the merry month of May, 
 
 long and far from unreasonably attributed to Shakespeare 
 himself? The pastoral mode continued in vogue to the end 
 
FULKE GREVILLE 125 
 
 of Elizabeth's reign and after; but in the following decades 
 it declined and soon ceased to be the dominant lyrical strain. 
 But if this decade is superficially the period of the pastoral, 
 there is in its poetry a deeper undertone not only in the artistic 
 seriousness of Spenser, but in the sincerity and passion of 
 Sidney, of both of whom enough has already been said. In 
 the collection known as Coalica which embodies the lyrical 
 poetry of Sidney's friend, Fulke Greville, there is a new and 
 independent spirit, a widening of the sphere of the lyric theme 
 to include non-erotic sentiment, and an all but complete 
 abandonment of the classic imagery and allusion which long 
 continued elsewhere to be one of the chief excrescences of the 
 ornate and elaborated style of the time. The queen, with all 
 the poetry of adulation that was lavished on her, was not 
 often addressed in terms as cabalistic as these: 
 
 Cynthia, because your horns look divers ways, 
 
 Now darkened to the east, now to the west, 
 Then at full glory once in thirty days. 
 
 Sense doth believe that change is nature's rest. 
 Poor earth, that dare presume to judge the sky: 
 
 Cynthia is ever round, and never varies; 
 Shadows and distance do abuse the eye. 
 
 And in abused sense truth oft miscarries: 
 Yet who this language to the people speaks, 
 
 Opinion's empire, sense's idol, breaks. 
 
 Some of the later lyrics of Greville have a fullness and 
 intricacy of thought and a disdain for prevalent conventional 
 poetical mannerisms that would do credit to Donne himself, 
 who, whether influenced by a possible contact with the poetry 
 of Greville or not, was at least of a kindred cast of mind. 
 So, too, the devotional poetry of Robert Southwell, written 
 mostly in the years immediately following 1592, shows an 
 independence of the literary influences of the moment (save 
 for the one matter of "conceit") that discloses how deeply 
 that faithful priest and true poet was immersed in the mission 
 that brought him undeservedly to a traitor's scaflFold. South- 
 well was educated at Douay and took up, like Parsons and 
 Campion, the dangerous Jesuits' mission of reconverting 
 
 v/ 
 
126 THE PASTORAL LYRIC 
 
 England. His two volumes, St. Peter's Complaint and Mccon- 
 ice, appeared in 1595, the year of his execution. Southwell 
 deserved the high repute in which he was held in his time for 
 his fervor, originality, and genuine piety; and his use of an 
 older fashioned verse, for the most part, than that of his immed- 
 iate day did not obscure his worth. Even Jonson declared 
 that although "Southwell was hanged, yet so he [himself] 
 had written that piece of his, "The Burning Babe," he would 
 have been content to destroy many of his [own poems]." 
 Different in almost every respect from Greville and South- 
 well, to whom poetry was the outlet respectively of philosophic 
 ponderings and devotional yearni'ri^, was the poetry of Thomas 
 Watson and of Barnabe Barnes who continue the Italian 
 impulses given to English poetry by Sidney as Greville con- 
 tinued Sidney's strength if not his fervor of thought. Wat- 
 son'^. Hecatompathia or Passionate Century of Love was pub- 
 lished in 1582 jand was thus-contemporary with, if it may not 
 have preceded, the writing of Astrophel and Stella. Watson 
 was a Londoner; he studied at Oxford and appears to have. 
 died a young man about 1593. He is frankness itself as to 
 his inspiration, ostentatiously noting many of his sources 
 among Italian, French, and classical authors, and even occa- 
 sionally ridiculing them. In 1593 Watson issued a second 
 similar collection of amorous verse, this time in true sonnet 
 form, which he called Tears of Fancy or Love Disdained, 
 holding much the same attitude and pursuing the same method. 
 But this time he omitted definite mention of his sources. The 
 interests of Watson in foreign sources extended to music and, 
 between the two volumes just named, he published a book 
 entitled Italian Madrigals Englished, 1 590, thus taking his 
 place (though only as a translator) as the earliest of a long 
 line of lyrists writing words for music. Barnabe Barnes was 
 born about 1569 and died in 1609. Barnes was the son of 
 a bishop, an Oxford man, and much traveled abroad. As 
 the friend of Gabriel Harvey he was traduced by Nash. An 
 intimacy seems to have existed between Barnes and the minor 
 sonneteer, William Percy, and both were mterested in the 
 drama as well as in lyrical poetry. Barnes Parthcnop e and 
 
THE CONVENTIONAL "CONCEIT" 127 
 
 Parthe?7ophil, j^g^, is a sgcj,ygncf pf sonni^^^ 
 canzons, sestinas, and other poems of Italian forrn with whiqij 
 he"'seerfre'Ti6rKav'e experinriented almost as fully as did Sidney 
 The~re"di§'Ct5vety''of'Watson and Barnes within recent times 
 has caused critics somewhat to overrate their facile ability 
 to catch the general Renaissance spirit in its lighter moods, 
 even although both poets justify praise by occasionally reaching 
 high levels. 
 
 But before we pass on to a consideration of the sonnet, 
 a salient mannerism in the general poetical style of these 
 earlier poets must claim our attention. In Elizabethan 
 English the word "conceit^ meant commonly little more 
 than idea, thought, or conception. It came, however, soon 
 to involve the notion of wit, fancy, and ingenuity; and, as 
 applied to literature and to poetry in particular, was used both 
 of the thought itself and of the rhetorical device by means of 
 which the thought was expressed. Gascoigne thus advises: 
 "If I should declare my pretence in love, I would either make 
 a strange discourse of some intolerable passion or find occasion 
 to plead by the examples of some history, or discover my 
 disquiet in shadows per allegoriam, or use the covertest 
 means that I could to avoid the uncomely customs of common 
 writers." It is this conscious avoidance of "the uncomely 
 customs of common writers " that begets the conceit or, other- 
 wise expressed, the effort on the part of the poet to deck out 
 his thought in strikino;, apt, and oricrinal figures of speech 
 and illustration. It is obvious that such an effort easily degen- 
 erates ihtb ingenuity, far-fetched metaphor, extravagance, and 
 want of taste; for all these things came in time to characterize 
 the conceit to such an extent that the original idea was lost, 
 and a conceit came restrictedly to mean "any conventional 
 device of the poet — fancy, figure, or illustration — used to 
 give individual, transcendant expression to the thing he has 
 to say." The conceit was not the invention of any single 
 English poet; nor is it any longer held that Gongora, or 
 Marino, or any other foreign poet is specifically responsible 
 for it in English literature; though it certainly developed 
 under the influence of Petrarch and Tn the hands of his/-" 
 
128 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 in Italy, France, and England in their attempt to outdo the 
 hyperbole of their master's ingenious imagery. 
 
 As already intimated, to Sidney belongs the doubtCuI hoSLO*--- 
 of popularizing the conventional conceit in England, and from 
 his sonnets the conceit descended to His heifs, lawfully and 
 unlawfully begotten, the sonneteers. But Sidney's own use 
 of the conceit was not confined to his poetry. True, Stella's 
 brow is alabaster crowned with gold, the door of her face is 
 red porphyry locked with pearl, the porches (which endure 
 the name of cheeks) are of red and white marble; her lover 
 shares her heart and she yields him her frontiers; her eyes 
 serve him with shot, her lips are his heralds, her skin his 
 armor, her flesh his food; the ink as he uses it runs to Stella's 
 name, pain moves his pen, his paper is pale despair. But 
 in the prose of the Arcadia also, Urania, putting her foot in 
 a boat is said to divide her heavenly beauty between sea and 
 shore; Philoclea's hand at Zelmane's lips stands like a hand 
 in a book pointed to noteworthy words; and Pamela's eyes 
 dissolve in tears and leave only crimson circles behind.^ 
 Outside of the sonneteers — of whom more shortly — ^Father 
 Southwell elaborated the conceit m^^ extra vjagantly and at 
 times absurdly. Christ's tears are pools of Heshbon, baths 
 "oT^grace^wlTete happy spirits dive, turtle-doves bathed in 
 virgin milk, and half a dozen other things as strange. He 
 drinks the drops of the heavenly flood and bemires his Maker 
 with returning mud; Peter's heart was not thawed by the 
 fire before which he sat, its hell-resembling heat did freeze 
 it the more. Drayton, too, though comparatively free from 
 the conceit in Kis sonnets and pastorals, fell into the fashion 
 in his Heroical Epistles, a work naturally pitched in a high 
 key, though he later gave up the employment of such devices. 
 
 The next decade, the last of the sixteenth century, is the 
 time of the sonnet. Introduced into the language by Wyatt, 
 first practised in sequence and raised to the standard of ex- 
 quisite poetry by Sidney, the Elizabethan sonnet appears to 
 
 ^For the material of these paragraphs on conceit and these 
 illustrations I am indebted to an unpublished paper on the topic by 
 my friend and colleague, Professor C. G. Child. 
 
DANIEL AND CONSTABLE 129 
 
 have owed, almost from the first, nearly as much to France 
 as to Italy. The first and surreptitious edition of Astrophel 
 and Stella, uttered by Nash in 1591, included not only Sid- 
 ney's sequence, but "sundry other rare sonnets of divers 
 noblemen and gentlemen," notably twenty-eight sonnets of 
 Samuel Daniel. Daniel, an Oxford man of good family, 
 had already been introduced at court and encouraged by the 
 Countess of Pembroke. Daniel's inspiration is thus directly 
 traceable to Sidney. At the time of this publication of his 
 sonnets, Daniel was apparently abroad, as he appears to 
 have acted at various times as a tutor to the young nobility. 
 The poet resented this premature publication of his work, and 
 in the following year put forth a true edition of his Delia, 
 which included the sonnets already published together with 
 many others and a narrative poem. The Complaint of Ros- 
 amund. Daniel's poetry was so well received that in the next 
 year, 1594, he issued another edition, called Delia and Ros- 
 amund Augmented. Neither of these poems was without 
 its effect upon the non-dramatic poetry of Shakespeare. 
 And indeed Daniel deserved his popularity; for versatility 
 of expression, choiceness and polish of diction, grace and 
 leisurely dignity of style, all are his; though no one could be 
 carried away by his fervor, and the flowers of his ornamenta- 
 tion seem artificial at times. The same year (1592) brought 
 forth Diana: the Praises of his Mistress in Certain Sweet 
 Sonnets a short collection, afterwards enlarged and the work 
 of Henry Constable who is described as "a Roman Catholic 
 gentleman who lived much in exile by reason of his religion. " 
 Constable was also highly esteemed by his age for his "pure,,^ 
 quick arid high delivery of conceit," and he practised his art 
 with a clearer understanding of the technical demands of the 
 retrarchan sonnet than any man or his time. 
 
 With Daniel and Constable begin dear traces of the 
 ijnmediate influences of the French sonneteers on those of 
 England. Even the titles of these two series are suggestive 
 of their borrowings, the one from a series of dizains by Maurice 
 Seve, entitled Delie, the other from Desportes' Les Amours de 
 Diane. Michael Drayton too, in his Idea's Mirror, Amours in 
 
130 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 Quartorzains, 1 594, took over the title, L'Idee, from a collection 
 of sonnets by Claude de Pontoux, 1579, and is otherwise 
 indebted to the French poets. But the chief borrower from 
 France in the sonnet, as in his other lyrical poetry, is Thomas 
 Lodge whose Phillis Honored with Pastoral Sonnets, a pro- 
 duction of no inconsiderable poetical merit, was printed in 
 1593. Ronsard and Desportes especially were pillaged by 
 Lodge; Desportes by Constable and Drayton; while Barnabe 
 Barnes in his Divine Century, was more than inspired by 
 Du Bartas and Jacques de Billy. But the Italians and the 
 ancients were equal quarries for these free-booters of poetry. 
 Aside from the universal imitation of Petrarch and his school, 
 even Spenser disdained not to translate Tasso m sorne" oTTiis 
 ^moretti; ari37"tS^ "the* scandaT an3 employment of modern 
 minute scholarship, he neglected to make note of his borrow- 
 ings. When all has been said on this topic a protest must be 
 raised, as it is not fair to make too much of a practice that was 
 as common to the age and, in general, as ingenuous and free 
 from concealment as piracy on the high seas against the com- 
 merce of Spain. We have seen how Watson, in his Passionate 
 Century of Love, ostentatiously noted the sources of most of his 
 poems and even the details of his treatment. Watson differed 
 only in this petty pedantry from his contemporaries and succes- 
 sors in this art of lifting gold from the poetical coffers of those 
 who have had the impertinence to precede us. We may doubt 
 whether these foreign influences, so much exploited of late, 
 did much more than "facilitate literary effort by providing 
 plenty of material ready at hand," and justify Ben Jonson's 
 recognition, among the "requisites" of a poet or maker, of 
 imitatio, or the power "to convert the substance or riches of 
 another poet to his own use. " 
 
 Sonneteering now became the fashion, and sequence after 
 sequence, in repeated editions, issued from the press. Drayton 
 added the writing of sonnets to his multiform literary activities. 
 Watson gave over Latin poetry and converted his translations 
 into sonnet form, entitled The Tears of Fancy or Lo ve D is- 
 dained. Giles Fletcher, in his Licia, turned from travel and 
 diplomacy; the author of Zepheria and Sir John Davies from 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF THE SONNET 131 
 
 the law; Spenser from epic poetry and Shakespeare from the 
 stage to sonneteering; whilst every small gentleman, Percy, 
 Lynche, Griffin, or Smith, in his Coelia, Diella, Fidessa, or 
 Chloris, emulated the raptures of Sidney and the finished 
 similitudes of Petrarch in the public poetical courtship of his 
 real or imaginary fair beloved. 
 
 The Italian form of the sonnet, as is well known, involved 
 two parts, the octave and the sestette, the first displaying but 
 two rimes, usually inclusive (that is, arranged ah h a ah h a), 
 the sestette frequently three "^lor example, c d e c d e), but 
 variously arranglS'a""^! here are many theories about the 
 Italian sonnet; as a matter of fact, it was practised even among 
 orthodox Italian poets with considerable freedom.-^ Wyatt 
 attempted the Italian mode; Surrey frankly Anglicized the 
 sonnet by converting it mto a series of three alternately riming 
 quatrains, each with new fimes, followed and concluded with 
 a couplet. And the majority of Elizabethan sonneteers — with 
 Sidney, Constable, and Barnes as notable excep.tioris —- ac- 
 cepted Surrey's form. This forrn {ah ah, c d c d, e f e f, g g) 
 has been immortalized by Shakespeare, who. even emphasized 
 , the effect of the final couplet by bringing the sense habitually 
 to a pause immediately before it. It would not be difficult 
 to argue that in substituting English habits of verse — such 
 as the alternate rime {ah ah) for the inclusive {a h h a), such 
 as the final couplet for the avoidance of it, and a variety oi 
 rimes for the Italian paucity — the form practised by Shake- 
 speare and his compeers represents a truer translation of the 
 sonnet into English than a closer imitation of foreign exotic 
 conditions. Opprobrious names belong, assuredly, to no 
 sincere form of art^_^ Triumphant usage has hallowed the 
 Shakespearean form of the sonnet. 
 
 Elizabethan sonnet sequences fall naturally into certain 
 well-defined groups. The majority are devoted to the celebra- 
 tion of the passion of love: some, as Sidney's, Drayton's 
 Idea, Spenser's Amoretti, and Shakespeare's, suggesting by 
 means of successive lyrical moods a more or less connected 
 love story, on greater or less probable basis in fact; another 
 class dealing with the praises of a mistress or lamenting her 
 
132 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 hardness of heart, as Phyllis, Cynthia, and Diana or -Watson's 
 Tears of Fancy. Another class are little more than loosely 
 connected series of amatory verse, as Willobie's Aviso, 1594, 
 J. C.'s Alalia, 1595, Breton's Arhor of Amorous Devices, 1597, 
 or Tofte's Alha, 1598. Still others are collections of poems 
 amatory and other, as Greville's Ccelica, having nothing in 
 common vi^ith the sonnet except a certain unity of thought and 
 brevity of form. Tv^o interesting short series of sonnets 
 disclose a healthy revulsion against this excess of sentiinent 
 and sugared similitude. These are Chapman's Coronet for 
 his Mistress, Philosophy, I594> ^rid the Gulling Sonnets of 
 Sir John Davies in the next year. The first appeals to a 
 higher inspiration than that which animates the "Muses that 
 sing Love's sensual empery, " and is a fine and elevated con- 
 tinued poem, linked sonnet to sonnet by the repetition of the 
 last line of the first to the first line of the next sonnet, and so 
 on after the manner of .a "coronet." The sonnets of Sir 
 John Davies, as their title implies, are pure "take-off" on 
 the absurdities of the sonneteering tribe who were fair game 
 for the clever courtier's raillery. 
 
 But by no means were all Elizabethan sonnets amatory. 
 Second, but far from unimportant, was the devotional or 
 religious sonnet, often written in sequences emulating the 
 length, if not the extravagances, of the amatory sequences , 
 themselves; and sometimes, as in the case of Constable's 
 Spiritual Sonnets to God and his Saints, in their day unpub- 
 lished, and the Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets of Barnes, 
 1595, the work of the same poets. The most persistent writer 
 of devotional sonnets of his age was Henry Lok (or Locke) 
 who printed, in 1597, Sundry Sonnets of^Christian Passions, 
 "sundry" here equahng one hundred and one. A previous 
 hundred, devoted to "meditation, humiliation and prayer" 
 merciful Time has allowed to perish; but upwards of sixty 
 more, denominated "a few to divers," were collected by the 
 printer and reprinted in our own day. As to Lok, he appears 
 to have been a good man, practising a kind of piety that makes 
 this world a hideous place to live in. As to inspiration or 
 the slenderest runnel of song, he has absolutely neither. 
 
"SPIRITUAL SONNETS" 133 
 
 To have been born such a man as Lok in the age of Shake- 
 speare was the very quintessence of the irony of fate. But 
 Lok represents a dismal fall from the average poetical com- 
 petency of Elizabethan devotional sonneteering. The "spirit- 
 ual sonnets " of either • Constable or Barnes could furnish 
 examples comparable at least with the average level of either 
 in worldly poetry; while- the two short series of Donne, La 
 Corona and his Holy Sonnets, both of questionable date, 
 contain -individual poems wholly of Donne's great repute, 
 as this famous Sonnet on Death will show: 
 
 Death, be not proud, though some have called thee 
 
 Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; 
 
 For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow 
 
 Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. 
 
 From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be. 
 
 Much pleasure, than from thee much more must flow: 
 
 And soonest our best men with thee do go, 
 
 Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery. 
 
 Thou art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, 
 
 And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell. 
 
 And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well. 
 
 And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou, then .'' 
 
 One short sleep past, we wake eternally. 
 
 And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 
 
 The religious sonnet ran into hybrid varieties in some 
 cases, as in .Thomas Roger's Celestial- Elegies in Quartor- 
 zains, 1598, a mingling of the sonnet fashion with the obituary 
 poem, so dear to the, age, in the .old edition bordered with 
 black and embalmed, so tp speak, in a style suggestive of the 
 Senecan-funereal manner of the Mirror for Magistrates or 
 the lugubrious solemnity of Blair's Grave. In 1600 Breton 
 used the sonnet form as the stanza for a continuous religious 
 poem,, called The Soul's Harmony, and the second part of 
 Davies of Hereford's fFit's Pilgrimage, in 16 10, is cumber- 
 ously entitled Soul-Passions, "and Other Passages Divine, 
 Philosophical, Moral, Pietical and Political." 
 
 A third use to which the Elizabethan sonnet was put, 
 was that of the occasional poem, most frequently in obituary, 
 
134 ^ THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 dedicatory, or other form addressing a patron. Roger's Ce- 
 lestial Elegies, just mentioned, is an example of the extended 
 use of the sonnet for the first purpose. Four sonnets "to 
 Sir PhiHp Sidney's soul" accompanied the first edition of that 
 poet's Defense of Poesy, 1 595. It was the fashion to prefix 
 at times long series of dedicatory poems to important works. 
 Among works, so introduced by sonnets, may be mentioned 
 The Faery Queen, to the first three books of which seventeen 
 sonnets were prefixed in 1590; and Gabriel Harvey's Four 
 Letters touching Robert Greene, 1 592, which was opened with 
 no less than twenty-three. Chapman's Homer, in 16 10, sim- 
 ilarly contains fourteen dedicatory sonnets, later increased 
 in number. Of a different type are the forty adulatory son- 
 nets in form of a sequence addressed by Joshua Sylvester 
 to Henry of Navarre "upon the late miraculous peace in 
 France," in 1597. Although not sonnets in form, of similar 
 adulatory character is Astrcea, a series of octosyllabic acrostics 
 eulogizing Queen Elizabeth which Sir John Davies devised 
 in 1599. In this Davies followed the model of a like series, 
 called the Partheniads, by George Puttenham, written twenty 
 years earlier but now lost except for some fragments. 
 
 In the matter of conceit, the later sonneteers vied with 
 each other to surpass in ingenuity both Sidney and his master 
 Petrarch; and in the main they succeeded. Nor is it to be 
 wondered that the conceit should develop most readily in the 
 sonnet, where intensity of feeling, real or simulated, was 
 compressed into a form and a mode of expression alike con- 
 ventional and restricted. Among the sonneteers Daniel and 
 Drayton, coming early, are^ss given to the conceit than their 
 successors. From the excesses of the conceit Spenser's good 
 taste largely preserved him; while Shakespeare, though by 
 no means free either from the artificialities or even the triv- 
 ialities of the sonneteering tribe, offers very few examples of 
 "the elaborate inventional conceit," as it has been called. 
 It is among the lesser men that we find the conceit in full 
 blossom. Thus Constable declares that the basest notes of 
 his Diana's voice exceed the trebles of angels; Giles Fletcher 
 bids his mistress put down her fan from before her face and 
 
LESSER SONNETEERS 135 
 
 put out the sun; and Tofte's Laura lays her handkercher to 
 dry snow white on quicksedge wrought with lovely eglantine. 
 The sun is slow, so she casts her glance upon it and dries the 
 cloth, but burns his heart. Lynche's thoughts reach out 
 beyond our planetary system to conceive of 
 
 The tallest ship that cuts the angry wave 
 And plows the seas in Saturn's second sun. 
 
 The anonymous author of Zepheria thus rings ingenious 
 change on an old theme : 
 
 Let not Disdain (the hearse of virgin graces) 
 
 The counterpoison of unchastity, 
 
 The leaven that doth sour the sweetest faces, 
 
 Stain thy new purchased immortality. 
 
 'Mongst Delian nymphs, in angels' university, 
 
 Thou, my Zepheria, liv'st matriculated 
 
 The Daughters of ethereal Jove, thy deity 
 
 On holy hill have aye perpetuated. 
 
 O then, retire thy brows artillery. 
 
 Love more, and more bliss yet, shall honor thee. 
 
 The after-history of the sonnet is not long. In 1604 
 Sir William Alexander, the friend of Drummond, published 
 a series of a hundred or more sonnets under the title o£ Aurora. 
 The collection is interspersed with a few songs and elegies, 
 and formally inscribed to the Countess of Argyle. Alexander's 
 poetry is decorous and graceful, and clearly modeled on 
 French examples. The sequence was probably written 
 within the period of the sonnet. The sonnets of Drummond 
 are scattered through his poems and belong, like the few of 
 William Browne of Tavistock, to the first decade of the reign 
 of Jamqs. Of Davies of Hereford's large collection. Wit's 
 Pilgrimage, i6io, devoted, with even-handed justice, half to 
 love and half to religion, mention has already been made. A 
 few rare little volumes, not strictly of sonnets, but protracting the 
 impetus of the sonnet, are Daiphantus or the Passions of Love, 
 by Anthony Scoloker and Breton's The Passionate Shepherd, 
 both in 1604; Dolarnys Primrose, by John Reynolds, 1606; and 
 long after, George Wither's Fidelia, 16 17, and Fair Virtue, 
 the Mistress of PhW Arete, 1622. It is altogether likely that 
 
136 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 the exquisite love poetry of these last two works of Wither was 
 written early in the reign of King James and before Puritanism 
 had acidulated the nature of that sweet singer. DaYphantus 
 is memorable for one superlative serious poem, entitled "The" 
 Passionate Man's Pilgrimage," later printed as Sir Walter 
 Raleigh's among his Remains. This poem is tuned to the 
 high and insolent vein which his contemporaries ascribed to 
 the Muse of Raleigh and deserves a place beside the equally 
 vigorous indignation of his most popular poem, "The Lie." 
 A tradition that "The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage" was 
 written by Raleigh in the Tower in expectation of the imme- 
 diate execution that threatened him in 1603, adds to the 
 poignancy of his words. The poem is too long to quote here 
 entire. These are some of the lines of it: 
 
 Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, 
 My staff of faith to walk upon, 
 
 My scrip of joy, immortal diet. 
 My bottle of salvation, 
 
 My gown of glory, hope's true gage; 
 
 And thus I'll take my pilgrimage. 
 
 Blood must be my body's balmer, 
 
 No other balm will there be given; 
 Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer, 
 
 Traveleth towards the land of heaven; 
 Over the silver mountains. 
 Where spring the nectar fountains: 
 There will I kiss 
 The bowl of bliss; 
 And drink my everlasting fill 
 Upon every milken hill: 
 My soul will be a-dry before; 
 But after, it will thirst no more. 
 
 From thence to heaven's bribeless hall, 
 
 Where no corrupted voices brawl; 
 
 No conscience molten into gold, 
 
 No forged accuser bought or sold. 
 
 No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey: 
 
 For there Christ is the King's Attorney. 
 
DRAYTON'S "IDEA" 137 
 
 Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader, 
 
 Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder! 
 
 Thou giv'st salvation even for alms; 
 
 Not with a bribed lawyer's palms. 
 
 And this is mine eternal plea 
 
 To him that made heaven, earth and sea. 
 
 That, since my flesh must die so soon, 
 
 And want a head to dine next noon. 
 
 Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread. 
 
 Set on my soul an everlasting head. 
 
 Then am I ready, like a palmer fit. 
 
 To tread those blest paths which before I writ. 
 
 To return to the sonnet sequences of amatory import, 
 five of them stand out distinct in poetical merit above the 
 rest: these are, in order of time, Sidney's Jstroj^hel^D^^niel^s^ 
 Delia, Drayton s'TJea^'^tfie y/morHfz of Spenser, and the iSon-^. 
 jiets of Shakespeare. Of the first tv^o enough has been said 
 in'Thfe"*b'o5fe'' '-'Mtdhael Drayton's career in poetry was to be 
 a long and honorable one, for to him, as to the other poets 
 just mentioned, sonneteering was but the passing fashion 
 of the moment. In the longer reaches of his work, Drayton 
 is a Spenserian, as shown in his love of allegory and the pas-., 
 toral mode, the sweet continuousness of his measures, hi&,„, 
 itataTa^felMity, even in his want of design and lengthy elab- 
 oratehessT And for all these things in time Drayton's pop- 
 uTarity^'eaTne to equal almost that of his master. But the 
 earlier sonnets of Drayton preceded both Spenser and Shake- 
 speare. Drayton's sonnets, judged as a whole, appear to 
 echo successively Daniel, Sidney, and Shakespeare Drayton's 
 Idea began with a few sonnets among several pastorals, pub- 
 lished in 1593. In the next year, the sonnets were separated 
 from the pastorals, augmented to fifty-one, and called Ideas 
 Mirror, Amours in Quartorzains. With his sonnets, as with 
 his other work, Drayton practised constant revision, omission, 
 and addition, so that by the definitive edition of 16 19, Idea had 
 come to contain many sonnets, written long after the sonnet- 
 craze, while other earlier ones had been suppressed. Indeed, 
 one sonnet of Drayton's (the one beginning "Since there's 
 
138 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 no help, come, let us kiss and part") which impressionistic 
 criticism has discovered to be "so fine that nobody but Shake- 
 speare could have written it," appears for the first time in 
 this edition of 16 19, three years after Shakespeare's death. 
 Drayton's sonnets in general have less of grace and art than 
 those oT Daniel; at times they arirSSS'i^amewh^T^^ 
 Despite their "originals," they seem less-Ilalianate than the 
 earlier sequences, although their metrical facility and ease 
 are prevailing, and two or three will maintain their place 
 among the very best sonnets of their time. Many parallels 
 have been found between the sonnets of Drayton and those 
 of Shakespeare, and it would be difficult to prove Drayton 
 always the borrower. The majority of such parallels, how- 
 ever, are easily referable to the conventional poetical furniture 
 of the time with which it was imperative that every well- 
 turned sonnet-sequence be equipped; and some of Drayton's 
 sonnets must have followed Shakespeare's. 
 
 JJraytpn's/^^fl purports by its very title to be no morg^ 
 than an objective expression of the poet's |deal of. jvomanhood.. 
 Yet here, as elsewhere, the ingenuity of scholarship has dis- 
 covered, or thought that it has discovered, references of sup- 
 posedly autobiographical import. On this whole topic of 
 the subjective significance of these sonnet-sequences, suffice 
 it to say that it is as easy to interpret mere lyrical hyperbole 
 into a chronique scandaleuse as it is temporarily to etherialize 
 real human passion into what Bagehot called, in a different 
 connection, "evanescent mists of lyrical energy." It does 
 not seem altogether reasonable to deny the existence of an 
 actual person inspiring a poet to become a sonneteer simply 
 because he may have translated from foreign poets and bor- 
 rowed the conventional ideas of his time as to courtship. 
 Artificiality does not always equal insincerity and, although a 
 poet may write without any objective undercurrent, that kind 
 of undercurrent is assuredly not so rare, as the world goes, 
 as to make every translator and imitator a pretender in affairs 
 of the heart. On the other hand it is impossible not to sym- 
 pathize with the frankness of the preface to Giles Fletcher's 
 
THE "AMORETTI" OF SPENSER 139 
 
 sonnets to Licia, or Poems of Love "in honor of the admir- 
 able and singular virtues of his Lady," 1593, wherein he 
 writes : 
 
 If thou muse what my Licia is ? Take her to be some Diana, 
 at the least chaste; or some Minerva: no Venus, fairer far It may 
 be she is learning's image, or some heavenly wonder: which the 
 precisest may not mislike. Perhaps under that name I have shadowed 
 [The Holy] Discipline. It may be, I mean that kind courtesy which 
 I found at the patroness [Lady MoUineux] of these poems; it may be 
 some college. It may be my conceit [i.e. fancy] and pretend nothing. 
 Whatsoever it be; if thou like it, take it. 
 
 The Amoretti of Spenser, a sequence of eighty-eight son- 
 nets, appeared in print with Colin Clout's Come Home Again 
 and the Epithalamion in 1595. Spenser published no other 
 edition of his sonnets and they were not reprinted until the col- 
 lective edition of his works in 1611. The Amoretti must have 
 been written during the years 1592 to 1594, and thus they 
 correspond in time with the height of the vogue of the sonnet. 
 It was in June of the latter year that Spenser married Elizabeth 
 Boyle, the lady indubitably addressed in these poems. A 
 critical analysis of the Amoretti discloses that the series falls 
 naturally into two parts, the second beginning with the sixty- 
 third sonnet. Up to that point the sonnets are concerned 
 with Spenser's courtship. In the second part, the lofty 
 celebration of love's victory is the poet's theme. It is char- 
 acteristic of Spenser thus to have continued his sequence. 
 It is also characteristic of him not to have stopped at the 
 eighty-fifth sonnet which is the real conclusion of the sequence, 
 but to have added several sonnets, doubtless written at other 
 times. Though perhaps in this we are wronging Spenser, as 
 this feature of an irrelevant gathering in of sonnets, not related 
 to the sequence and sometimes not even by the author of it, 
 is a familiar feature of many collections, among them Shake- 
 speare's, and may be referable to the printer. 
 
 In the following sonnet there is less of the conceit and 
 
I40 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 convention of the species than we sometimes find even in 
 Spenser: 
 
 More than most fair, full of the living fire 
 
 Kindled above unto the Maker near; 
 
 No eyes but joys, in which all powers conspire 
 
 That to the world naught else be counted dear; 
 
 Through your bright beams doth not the blinded guest 
 
 Shoot out his darts to base affections wound; 
 
 But angels come to lead frail minds to rest 
 
 In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound. 
 
 You frame my thoughts, and fashion me within; 
 
 You stop my tongue, and teach my heart to speak; 
 
 You calm the storm that passion did begin. 
 
 Strong through your cause, but by your virtue weak. 
 
 Dark is the world, where your light shined never; 
 
 Well is he born that may behold you ever. 
 
 This other is closer to the spirit of Petrarch as interpreted by 
 his imitators of the later Renaissance; but is a no less favorable 
 specimen of Spenser's sonneteering art: 
 
 Restore thy tresses to the golden ore. 
 Yield Cytherea's son those arcs of love. 
 Bequeath the heavens the stars that I adore. 
 And to the orient do thy pearls remove. 
 Yield thy hands' pride unto the ivory white. 
 To Arabian odors give thy breathing sweet. 
 Restore thy blush unto Aurora bright. 
 To Thetis give the honor of thy feet; 
 Let Venus have thy graces her resigned. 
 And thy sweet voice give back unto the spheres; 
 But yet restore thy fierce and cruel mind 
 To Hyrcan tigers and to ruthless bears; 
 Yield to the marble thy hard heart again: 
 So shalt thou cease to plague, and I to pain. 
 
 As to Spenser's "own marriage hymn of thanksgiving" the 
 Epithalamion, beautiful if robust poem that it is, it has well 
 been said that had Spenser "been silent, he would have felt 
 that he wronged Hymen as well as the Muses." It was in 
 this spirit that Spenser wrote the Amoretti which, despite 
 
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS PATRONS 141 
 
 their delicate art and their many points of contact with Italian 
 and classical poetry, can hardly be regarded as other than the 
 genuine outpourings of a lofty and chivalric nature and of a 
 quality, as poetry, second to the best of the sonnets of Sidney 
 and Shakespeare alone. 
 
 Despite some recent skepticism and scholarly Platonic 
 suspicions we may reaffirm with confidence that Astrophel 
 and Stella had its inspiration in a passion sufficiently real to 
 take on a genuinely tragic tone to one of the ardent nature 
 of Sidney. Spenser's Amoretti, too, won him the lady of his 
 choice. What, then, of the sonnets of Shakespeare ? Are 
 they, too, based on experience in life or are they mere literary 
 exercises, compounded of shreds and patches, filched from 
 French and Italian concettists where they are not the mere 
 figments of an imaginative mind ? 
 
 The life of Shakespeare will be best considered with his 
 dramatic work later in this book. Whatever the precise 
 time of Shakespeare's coming up to London and the condi- 
 tions of his earlier life there, he must soon have learned some- 
 thing more of the society of gentlemen and gentlewomen than 
 could have fallen to the lot of one who saw such personages 
 from the boards of the theater alone. We know that Shakes- 
 peare found an early patron in the young Earl of Southampton; 
 for Shakespeare dedicated both Venus and Adorns and Lucrece 
 to him. Recently the Earl of Rutland (like Southampton an 
 intimate of Essex and to become involved with him in his 
 ruin) has been discovered to have been also a patron of Shake- 
 speare. And while the matter is not susceptible of proof, 
 there is surely nothing irrational in supposing that William 
 Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was likewise at some time the 
 poet's patron, the more especially when it is remembered that 
 Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Heming and Condell, thought 
 Pembroke the fit person with his brother, the Earl of Mont- 
 gomery, to whom to dedicate the folio edition of the dram- 
 atist's works. 
 
 Shakespeare was imitative in his earlier work. Titus 
 Androntcus has already been mentioned as a case in point. 
 We shall see soon how he followed the lead of Lyly in comedy 
 
142 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 and learned from Marlowe in tragedy and chronicle play. 
 In his sonnets, too, Shakespeare followed the fashion of his 
 time. And although they were first printed in a piratical 
 edition, as late as 1609, there is every reason to believe that 
 they coincided in point of the time of their composition with 
 the general vogue of the sonnet and were well known by cir- 
 culation in manuscript "among his private friends," at least 
 as early as 1598. The Sonnets, Hke all other subjects connected 
 with Shakespeare's name, bristle with difficulties, though 
 most of them are of the commentators' own ^making. There 
 is question about their dedication, about the way in which 
 they came to be published, about the person or persons to 
 whom they may have been addressed, about their order, their 
 significance, and about the time when they were written. As 
 to this last, opinion has just been expressed. The publication 
 of Shakespeare's Sonnets is believed by some to have been 
 procured, like the publication of many other Elizabethan 
 books, by a personage who may be best described as a pro- 
 curer of copy. It was the business of this personage to obtain 
 "for publication literary works which had been widely dis- 
 seminated in written copies and had thus passed beyond 
 their author's control." Nash thus procured the publication 
 of sonnets of Daniel, as we have seen above, much to that 
 poet's disgust; and an earlier striking example of the same 
 thing was Gascoigne's borrowing of the manuscript of Sir 
 Humphrey Gilbert's pamphlet, called A Discourse of a Netv 
 Passage to Cataia, and publication of it on his own account. 
 According to this view, the "procurer of copy" in the case 
 of Shakespeare's Sonnets was an humble person. A clerk or 
 copyist, who was none too scrupulous, might have opportunities 
 of acting in this jackal capacity that a more honest man would 
 miss. The dedication of the sonnets to '^r. W. H. " as 
 ''the onelie begetter "is then regarded as referable merely to 
 this bookseller's matter; and the actual name of "Mr. W. H. " 
 — whether William Hall, Hart, Hughes or anything else — 
 becomes a matter wholly negligible. The greatest difficulty 
 which this theory escapes is the necessity of considering "Mr. 
 W. H." to stand for "the Right Honorable William, Earl 
 
THE "SONNETS" OF SHAKESPEARE 143 
 
 of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain to His Majesty, one of the 
 Privy Council and Knight of the most noble Order of the 
 Garter. " So to have misaddressed a peer of the realm might 
 have been made a Star Chamber matter in Shakespeare's 
 day. There still continue, how^ever, a few in the purlieus 
 of scholarship who insist that "Mr. W. H. " is intended to 
 indicate the Earl of Pembroke and that he was alike the ded- 
 icatee of the Sonnets and their inspiring subject. That 
 Shakespeare should have made no effort to interfere with the 
 printing of his sonnets need excite no surprise. This whole 
 matter of sonnet writing was at least a dozen years old in 
 1609; and, with his greatest dramatic work behind him and on 
 the point of retiring from the stage, Shakespeare could well 
 afford to neglect these passages of his youth. 
 
 Some other questions about the sonnets are not so readily 
 disposed of. It will be remembered that the Sonnets of 
 Shakespeare consist of two series the first, to cxxvi, "addressed 
 to a youn^ man"; the second, from cxxvii to cIuT*' addressed to 
 or referring to a woman." There is a greater connectedness 
 in the first series; but neither are arranged in consecutive 
 order and even this general division is not wholly justified 
 in every case. Moreover not a few of the sonnets, especially 
 towards the end, seem thrown in haphazard. By some, 
 among them the great poet Browning, Shakespeare's Son- 
 nets have been thought to detail matters purely imagi- 
 native; by others to be dramatic exercises as free from 
 autobiographical allusions as the plays themselves, though 
 perhaps written to serve the purpose of some other lover than 
 Shakespeare, possibly the Earl of Southampton. Again, 
 several writers, mostly German, have discovered an allegorical 
 interpretation for the sonnets, making the "Mr. W. H. " 
 of the dedication stand for "William Himself" and finding 
 nature, romanticism, Greek art, and what not, after the man- 
 ner of the second part of Goethe's Faust, locked up in the 
 cabalistic lines of the poet. As the young man is fair and 
 the lady dark, it might as logically be suggested that we have 
 here a myth of the sun god and that the dark lady is the god- 
 dess of eclipse. 
 
144 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 Without going into refinements and combinations of inter- 
 pretations, the story of the sonnets is neither difficult nor in- 
 volved; sonnet cxHv, published by Jaggard in The Passionate 
 Pilgrim, in 1599, supplies us with the. key. 
 
 Two loves I had of comfort and despair; 
 
 Which like two spirits do suggest [tempt] me still [ever]; 
 
 The better angel is a man right fair 
 
 The worser spirit a woman, colored ill. 
 
 The poet has become the devoted frig^d^ of a youth much 
 younger than himself and of a station in life aKove^THTI ST 
 much the same time he yields to a passionate infatuation for 
 a dark lady who keeps both men in her toils to their undoing. 
 The first group of sonnets details the growth and fluctuations 
 of the poet's affection for his friend (which in the parlance of 
 the time is continually called love), an affection which has 
 endured three years, which has been menaced by favors 
 bestowed upon another poet (variously identified with Daniel, 
 Chapman, or Barnes), and by fhe''dTtftfW§^^ 
 "'*"aBs^enceJTiis FrlenH has sought to become his rival in the favor 
 '■"of his mistress. The sequence ebbs and flows with the emo- 
 tions of the poet, now exultingly promising immortality to 
 the subject of his praise, at other moments reproaching him 
 for sensuality or for patronage bestowed on his rivals, des- 
 pairing of himself, his profession as actor, and of the ag«, and 
 longing for death; again returning to protestations of unfalter- 
 ing love and constancy in friendship. The second series 
 deals more briefly with the poet's passion for his mistress 
 whose "blackness" — to use the Elizabethan word — he 
 extols above the lily fairness of other men's beloveds; whom 
 he reproaches for her unfaithfulness and for the wreck which 
 she finally makes of the devotion of his friend as well as of 
 his own. 
 
 Without returning to the various identificatioi:iSj,if_ the 
 
 ..sonnets be of autobiographical import, Southampton is the 
 
 fairest claimant for the role of Shakespeare's friend and~p5t- 
 
 „ron, as he is known to have been both. Some still prefer, 
 
 ^^^ however, as we have seen^ the Earl of Pembroke. There ~aTe 
 
THE "SONNETS' OF SHAKESPEARE 145 
 
 difficulties in both interpretations. As to sirens, the court 
 or Elizabeth was fuller of them than was ever the JEgezn; 
 and for my part I should be sorry to have the mask of anon- 
 imity torn from the face of this immortal shadow. 
 
 In the autobiographical interpretation of the sonnets one 
 thing is to be noted. The tale is a tragedy; and it could only 
 be such because its chief actor recognized to the full the dis- 
 tinction between good and evil and shows them to us in mortal 
 struggle. The outcome is not told us; that evil did not ulti- 
 mately triumph to the hopeless corruption of that great spirit, 
 we have the true and noble ethics of his later works to prove. 
 Is our Shakespeare less that he was tested in the fiery furnace 
 of temptation which consumes the heart of man like chaff, and 
 came forth refined and chastened from the ordeal ? Must we 
 always put aside our charity when we judge the great ? And 
 is that which is imperishable and immortal impaired by sharing 
 that mortality which is ever man's whether in greater or less 
 degree ? These are some of the questions which we should 
 ask ourselves and in the answers which we can give to them 
 abide content with what we have before us and not seek to 
 explain away what does not comport with our own precon- 
 ceptions. 
 
 As a sequence the Sonnets of Shakespeare are not pleasing. 
 The story is not attractive, nor the uncontrol with which it 
 is told. It produces the effect of a vivid, terrible, and confused 
 dream; its very beauties seem the flowers of a heated and 
 overwrought imagination; and while it strikes one in only a 
 few of its interpolated notes as unreal, there is a distortion 
 about it. As a sequence J strop hel and Stella is preferable; 
 and we can understand why Hallam said of the sonnets: 
 "It is impossible not to wish that Shakespeare had never 
 written them. " But if we come to the consideration of in- 
 dividual sonnets, here is Shakespeare preeminent. Unequal 
 as the sonnets are, considered together, — some of them on 
 a level with Lynche or Barnes — there remains a collection, 
 the poetic excellence, the masterly touch and truth of which 
 no other poetry of the Elizabethan age can approach. More- 
 over their range is as various as their excellence is superlative, 
 
146 THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 
 
 now trifling with words or punning on his name, now play- 
 fully satirical, now rising to the impassioned strains of ecstatic 
 joy and confidence, now in the slough of despond or remorse 
 and fraught with that deep e xperience in lif e which makes 
 Shakespeare the greatest of all poets. 
 
 When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
 
 I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
 
 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
 
 And look upon myself and curse my fate, 
 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope. 
 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possessed. 
 
 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope. 
 
 With what I most enjoy contented least; 
 
 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising. 
 
 Haply I think on thee, and then my state. 
 
 Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; 
 
 For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings 
 
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 
 
 No longer mourn for me when I am dead 
 
 Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell 
 
 Give warning to the world that I am fled 
 
 From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell; 
 
 Nay, if you read this line, remember not 
 
 The hand that writ it; for I love you so 
 
 That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot. 
 
 If thinking on me then should make you woe. 
 
 O, if, I say, you look upon this verse 
 
 When I perhaps compounded am with clay. 
 
 Do not so much as my poor name rehearse. 
 
 But let your love even with my life decay. 
 
 Lest the wise world should look upon your moan, 
 
 And mock you with me after I am gone. 
 
 The fervor, the music, the distinction of these lines, may be 
 equaled, though not surpassed, again and again among these 
 exquisite lyrics. Can poems such as these be conceived as 
 mere literary exercises. Inspired in the passing fashion of the 
 moment and bearing no freight of an actual experience in life ? 
 And yet could not the mind that fashioned, as from within. 
 
THE "SONNETS" OF SHAKESPEARE 147 
 
 alike the doubts and questionings of Hamlet and the unimagi- 
 native certainties of Henry V, the wicked egotism of lago, and 
 the benign magnanimity of Prospero, — and this though he 
 was neither Prospero, lago, Henry, nor yet Hamlet, — could 
 not this man have written even these sonnets without once let- 
 ting us into the veritable secrets of his great and mysterious 
 soul? The question is insoluble; and it is better so. It is 
 well that there should still remain some mysteries which 
 the prying scrutiny of research must leave among the 
 riddles of time. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SHAKESPEARE IN COMEDY AND IN 
 CHRONICLE HISTORY 
 
 IN two of the preceding chapters of this book the earlier 
 history of the drama in Elizabeth's reign has been traced, 
 first with Lyiy at court and then with Marlowe and his fellows 
 on the popular stage of London. We turn now to the often 
 told story of Shakespeare, especially in what we may reason- 
 ably reconstruct concerning the earlier half of his life and 
 career as a dramatist. 
 
 It is a commonplace of literary biography that the mate- 
 rials out of which to construct a life of Shakespeare are exceed- 
 ingly scant; scantier, it is sometimes added, than similar 
 data concerning other men, his associates and contempo- 
 raries. The statement is not borne out by the facts. The 
 material as to Shakespeare's life, even unembellished, is not 
 inconsiderable; and it is a mistake to suppose the sub- 
 ject closed. There are, for example, some one hundred and 
 seventy-five separate and individual evidences of Shake- 
 speare's private life in the shape of official records, documents, 
 entries, notices, and allusions, all of them contemporary. 
 Most of these, as might be expected, have reference to his 
 dramatic and poetic works, but twenty documents which 
 concern his life and contain his name might be cited in any 
 court of record to-day for the facts that they witness. Of the 
 total twenty-six relate to births, marriages, and deaths; and 
 five are evidences of ownership in the precinct of Blackfriars. 
 The rest concern suits at law, and include a tax assessment 
 when Shakespeare lived in the neighborhood of Bishopsgate, 
 (though this has of late been questioned), certain deeds 
 and mortgages, and his will. Most recently of all, we hear 
 of Shakespeare as a witness in a lawsuit among the papers 
 of which turns up a deposition, signed by his own hand, add- 
 
 148 
 
THE LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 149 
 
 ing a sixth to the slender total of his other five signatures. 
 According to this, Shakespeare lived, from 1598 to 1604, as a 
 "sojourner" or sub-tenant in the house of one Christopher 
 Mountjoy, a French Huguenot and prosperous tiremaker, 
 at the corner of Silver and Monkwell Streets, in the parish 
 of St. Olave, not far from Cripplegate.^ All this is a slenderer 
 show of materials than that which we can scrape together con- 
 cerning several of his contemporaries, statesmen, noblemen, and 
 men of public service. We do not know as much about Shake- 
 speare, for example, as we know about Sidney, Raleigh, Bur- 
 leigh, or even Ben Jonson, who was much in the employ of the 
 court; but we know far more of Shakespeare than we can 
 glean of Marlowe, Webster, or Fletcher. In fact we know more 
 of Shakespeare than we know of any other man of his time 
 similarly circumstanced; and this is due not only to the indus- 
 trious researches of the scholars and editors of three centuries, 
 but to the indisputable fact that Shakespeare was interesting 
 to his own age. 
 
 The recorded facts of Shakespeare's life are familiar to all; 
 "how he was baptized April 26, 1564, at Stratford, the son of a 
 yeoman, John Shakespeare, and Mary, his wife; how he 
 entered into a bond when scarcely nineteen to marry Ann 
 Hathaway who was nine years his senior; how Susanna, their 
 daughter, was born so soon as to explain the necessity of the 
 irregularity of but once asking the bans; and how other 
 children followed to increase the responsibilities of a husband 
 not yet of age. There is record of young Shakespeare's con- 
 sent in 1587 to the mortgage of property of his mother's at 
 Ashby; and the scene then changes from Stratford to London. 
 In 1592 comes Greene's allusion, in the Groatsworth of fVity 
 enviously attesting Shakespeare's success as a playwright, 
 with Chettle's recognition, in his Kind-Heart's Dream, of 
 Shakespeare's standing as a man and an actor; the dedications 
 of Venus and Adonis and of Lucrece to the Earl of Southamp- 
 ton follow in the next two years. And now begin the entries 
 of the Stationers' Register, first of plays, some doubtfully 
 
 ^ See C. W. Wallace, New Shakespeare Discoveries, Harper's 
 Magazine. March, 1910. 
 
150 SHAKESPEARE IN COMEDY 
 
 Shakespeare's and as yet without his name. Later his name 
 appears with the titles, and popular plays run into six and 
 seven editions during his lifetime, while piratical printers not 
 only publish works that are Shakespeare's own (commonly, 
 we may believe, against his will), but affix his name to plays 
 with which he had nothing to do. Within the lifetime of no 
 Elizabethan dramatist were half so many plays printed as of 
 Shakespeare; and of no other playwright can it be said that 
 his work was so often pirated or his name so frequently mis- 
 used. This points to but one thing, the name of Shakespeare 
 was a name to conjure with in his day; people wanted to read 
 what they had heard of his on the boards. 
 
 We know that this repute came in the first instance from 
 the theater. In 1595 Shakespeare is mentioned in the 
 accounts of the Office of the Revels; his membership in the 
 leading theatrical company of the day, the Chamberlain's, 
 is established by record in 1594; and he is named, especially 
 as an actor in Jonson's Every Man in His Humor in 1598. 
 Meanwhile there is evidence of his affiliation with his home 
 and family in Stratford and of his increase in wealth and im- 
 portance. His son Hamnet — strange variant of Hamlet — 
 is buried at Stratford in 1596; and a draft of arms is granted, 
 not to William, but to John Shakespeare, his father. In the 
 next year the poet purchases the freehold of New Place, the 
 finest house in his native town, and we hear of other purchases 
 intended and consummated. There is correspondence as to 
 the loan by Shakespeare of money and as to petty suits at law, 
 brought and gained by him. Death comes to his family 
 again, his father dying in 1601, his brother Edmund in 1607., 
 his mother the following year. His first-born, Susanna, mar- 
 ries in the former year and Shakespeare becomes a grand- 
 father. There is the purchase of more land, of property in 
 Stratford and in London, and there are legacies of friendship 
 left to Shakespeare. At last there is his will, executed March 
 25, i6i6j and on April 23, traditionally considered Shake- 
 speare's birthday, the man is no more. These are the facts 
 in the main. Into the traditions we cannot here enter. 
 
 Books have been written on what Shakespeare learned at 
 
^*i^'^^.w 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S EDUCATION 151 
 
 school; he learned more out of doors. Jonson said that he 
 had little Latin and less Greek, and Aubrey gossips that he 
 knew Latin pretty well. The two opinions tally, as Jonson 
 and Aubrey viewed Latin from different quarters. The late 
 Churton Collins, in a scholarly essay on the learning of Shake- 
 speare, has quite upset the old notion that Shakespeare was 
 unacquainted with the classical authors; but it may be sus- 
 pected that Shakespeare never read a foreign book if he could 
 obtain the matter that he wanted in translation. Shake- 
 speare was not so learned a man as Ben Jonson, to say noth- 
 ing of Camden or Bacon; but it has now long been exploded 
 that Shakespeare was "a rude, natural-born genius," a 
 species of inspired idiot who knew not the wise things tliat 
 he "vyas uttering. As Bagehot so happily put it: "There is 
 clear evidence that Shakespeare received the ordinary gram- 
 mar-school education of his time and that he derived from the 
 pain and suffering of several years, not exactly an acquaint- 
 ance with Latin and Greek, but like Eton boys, a firm con- 
 viction that there are such languages." Moreover the stamp 
 of genius is on Shakespeare's life. He was not the man to 
 submit to any real inferiority and, whatever his early defi- 
 ciencies, the plays attest how he corrected them. There is 
 no proof that Shakespeare attended the Stratford grammar 
 school. He could have attended no other. There is no copy 
 of William Lilly's Grammar extant which bears Shakespeare's 
 signature. It is unlikely that he studied any other, for this 
 was the approved Latin book of his day and long after. 
 
 The happy and competent knowledge which Shakespeare 
 exhibits of many subjects, some of them technical and pro- 
 fessional, has led to a host of surmises as to his probable occu- 
 pation after leaving school. He has been thought a farmer, 
 a huntsman (which he certainly was), a lawyer, a printer, a 
 soldier, an usher in a school, and a surgeon. Aubrey repeated 
 an earlier tradition which made Shakespeare exercise his 
 father's trade and added that "when he killed a calf he would 
 do it in a high style and make a speech." We need not 
 believe this story; indeed, we need not believe a word of 
 Aubrey; but it has been well observed that this idle anecdote 
 
152 SHAKESPEARE IN COMEDY 
 
 suggests at least the theatrical genius. Shakespeare used the 
 picturesque Bible phrase of his time, not because he had 
 studied for the Church, but because he was an Elizabethan 
 with a memory for the phrase; he observed with marvelous 
 accuracy the symptoms of insanity, not because he was an 
 alienist but because he was observant of the psychology of 
 man. As to his legal acquirements, Professor Raleigh re- 
 marks that "it was not for nothing that Shakespeare was 
 his father's son": and besides, Shakespeare had lawsuits of 
 his own. A late discovery concerning him discloses a suit 
 in which he was the successful plaintiff in 1615.^ As to all 
 these surmises of Shakespeare's avocations, let them remain 
 surmises. To him who laboriously acquires a petty barony 
 in some little kingdom of knowledge, the grasp, the sweep, the 
 accuracy of Shakespeare's perceptions must seem super- 
 natural, if not based on diligent studies such as his own. 
 
 Before we leave Stratford and the youth of Shakespeare it 
 may be observed that many books have treated Shakespeare's 
 nature-lore, his knowledge of animals, his acquaintance with 
 birds, his insects, even his fishes. A delightful book. The 
 Diary of Master William Silence, has shown the completeness 
 of Shakespeare's knowledge of the contemporary nomencla- 
 ture of the popular sports of hunting and hawking and his 
 devotion to the horse. But Professor Raleigh has set us 
 straight as to the nature-lore of Shakespeare which was clearly 
 that of the keen but superficial observer, not that of the modern 
 scientific devotee of nature study. Shakespeare wasted no 
 time observing the habits of animals when men were to ob- 
 serve. He makes plenty of mistakes in natural history and 
 accepts the traditional qualities of the impossible beasts of 
 the medieval bestiary, "the toad that wears a precious jewel 
 in his head," "the unicorn that is betrayed with trees," "the 
 basilisk that kills at sight"; but he makes no mistakes as to 
 his men and women: there his touch is certain as his knowl- 
 edge is profound. 
 
 ^See Englische StuJien,xxx\i, 1906, where this discovery of Profes- 
 sor Wallace is most conveniently consulted. It was first communicated 
 to The London Standard, October, 18, 1905. 
 
SHAKESPEARE AND PREVIOUS DRAMA 153 
 
 Why Shakespeare went up to London is perfectly clear; ^ 
 he was compelled to make a living for his family; a poaching 
 expedition and threatened uncomfortable consequences may 
 have hastened his departure. When he first arrived in the 
 metropolis is not so certain. However it came about, Shake- 
 speare was on the boards as an actor before 1590 and already 
 done with his apprenticeship to the writing of plays. A year 
 or two later he is one of the sharers or part owners in the most 
 successful company of London. 
 
 When Shakespeare took his place in the lead of his pro- 
 fession he found the public prepared to welcome and appre- 
 ciate theatrical entertainments by generations of familiarity 
 with them; and he found, also, a secular drama already well 
 advanced in a hardy vernacular growth, together with a stage 
 which had passed beyond amateurishness into the beginnings 
 of a recognized profession. Moreover, literature had all but 
 shaken free of medievalism with its allegory and intent to 
 instruct, to look at life steadily and yet to see that life, at 
 need, in the transfiguring light of poetry. Shakespeare could 
 have learned very little, except by way of warning, of Robert 
 Wilson, who was active among the Earl of Leicester's players 
 and the Queen's between 1574 and 1584; even although the 
 
 ■scenes of Antonio's negotiations with Shylock have been 
 regarded as "anticipated" in Wilson's morality. The Three 
 Ladies of London, printed in the latter year. Equally slight 
 for the coming master of the stage must have been Shake- 
 speare's contact with the famous clown of his time, Richard 
 Tarlton, whose name has been attached by way of surmise to 
 an older play on subject-matter afterwards treated by Shake- 
 speare in his histories on Henry IV and Henry V. And yet 
 it was precisely stuff such as this that the young Shakespeare 
 was set to revise. However^ Shakespeare was not witfajnit , 
 
 .examples worthy his young ambition, and in Lyiy and 
 
 JMarlowe he found them. 
 
 Of the precise chronology of Shakespeare's plays, as of 
 those of most of his contemporaries, we are far from certain. 
 Except for Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, which in 
 revision falls beyond, the plays of Shakespeare's imitative 
 
154 SHAKESPEARE IN COMEDY 
 
 period are either romantic comedies or dramas based on the 
 history of English kings. We have touched sufficiently on 
 Titus already for the purposes of this book. Let us turn 
 first here to the earlier romantic comedies. Lovers Labor's 
 Lost is usually assigned to the earliest place among the come- 
 dies of Shakespeare (not later than 1591), and, although not 
 published in quarto form until 1598 and then possibly re- 
 vised, several features confirm this position. This comedy, 
 w^ith all its originality, is pronouncedly Lylian in its person- 
 ages, dialogue, and in type, in that it is, like Midas or Endimt- 
 on, full of personal, political, and other satirical allusions. In 
 this and in the peculiarity that it is the only plot of all 
 Shakespeare's plays w^hich he appears frankly to have in- 
 vented. Love's Labor 's Lost stands alone. Shakespeare's 
 knowledge of the courtly society that he attempts to depict 
 in this comedy can not be pronounced other than amateurish 
 This is high life as seen from w^ithout; and the frequently 
 trivial badinage of the three courtiers and ladies, so evenly 
 arrayed each against each, the absurdities of Holofernes, Na- 
 thaniel, and the rest, despite much promise, all serve to confirm 
 this. Shakespeare never repeated this experiment in trans- 
 planting the allusive and satirical court drama of Lyly to the 
 common stage. But he soon tried another experiment, in 
 The Comedy of Errors. Here he had the example of old Eng- 
 lish plays such as Ralph Roister Doister and Gascoigne's 
 Supposes; and it is impossible to credit him vv^ith ignorance 
 of Plautus, whether he read the Mencechmi in some English 
 version by William Warner or (if there are difficulties in this) 
 in the original. The Comedy of Errors (written in 1591 if 
 not even before), is a bustling and inventive farce of action. 
 It redoubles the difficulties of the comedy of mistake, and 
 produces as a result the most successful specimen of its class. 
 It is worthy of note that among the many imitations of Roman 
 comedy which Elizabethan drama affords, Shakespeare's 
 Comedy of Errors should have outstripped all the efforts of the 
 scholars. But Shakespeare never returned to Plautine comedy, 
 though many comedies of the general type, mixed with that 
 of disguise, followed him, developing in turn through the work 
 
"THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA" 155 
 
 of Chapman and Jonson into a favorite variety of the comedy 
 of manners. 
 
 In his third extant experimental comedy, The Two Gentle- 
 men of Verona (also first written about 1591), Shakespeare 
 found a dramatic species to which he afterwards adhered. 
 This was the romantic comedy of love and intrigue, based on 
 ItaHan tales of the type made famous especially in Painter's 
 Palace of Pleasure, 1 566. The plot of The Two Gentlemen 
 of Verona is that of the story of the shepherdess, Felismena, 
 in Montemayor's Spanish romance, Diana Enamorada, with 
 the possible intervention of a lost play. As to the romantic 
 drama in general type, it first manifested itself successfully, 
 as we have seen, in the tragical works of Kyd and Marlowe 
 or in dramas of heroical type like Greene's Orlando and 
 Alphonsus, Vfhich hark back to Tamhurlaine. Save for trans- 
 lations of Italian comedies such as Supposes by Gascoigne, 
 1566, it is difficult to find examples of lighter Italian stories 
 dramatized until we reach Shakespeare. Whetstone's Promos 
 and Cassandra, 1578, fulfils the conditions of an English 
 comedy modeled on an Italian tale, in this case a "novel" of 
 Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi; but the plot is all but tragic and, 
 though free at least from Seneca, is far removed from that 
 lightsome and buoyant tone which we habitually associate 
 with the term romantic comedy. Perhaps the only claim of 
 Whetstone's coarse and verbose play is based on the fact that 
 Shakespeare's genius subsequently transformed it into Measure 
 for Measure. Mucedorus, a sprightly if elemental little comedy 
 of romantic tone, was published first in 1595, and, despite 
 some notion that Shakespeare may have had hand in it, is 
 best assigned to the authorship of Thomas Lodge. But the 
 source of Mucedorus is Sydney's Arcadia and, although the 
 play is undoubtedly very early, it is questionable if it preceded 
 The Two Gefitlemen of Verona on the stage. Returning then 
 to this comedy, it becomes important in the history of the 
 drama not only because in it Shakespeare first found his bent, 
 but also because of its peculiar isolation as the first English 
 comedy dealing romantically with love. As to the comedy 
 itself, despite many faults, disclosing the continuance of the 
 
156 SHAKESPEARE IN COMEDY 
 
 influence of Lyly, The Two Gentlemen of Verona gives promise 
 in the decision and discrimination with which its principal 
 figures are drawn — the faithful Valentine, the recreant 
 Proteus, bright and generous Sylvia and steadfast, loving 
 Julia — of the greater comedies to come. 
 
 After these earliest comedies, Shakespeare applied 
 himself to history and tragedy. Into neither need we follow 
 him here; but rather look onward to the only two other come- 
 dies that are accepted as early by universal consent. The 
 Merchant of Venice was on the stage by 1594, and, in all 
 likelihood^ modeled on an old play, mentioned by Gosson in 
 1579, in which apparently both the story of the Jew and that 
 of the "Lady of Belmont" were already combined. By the 
 time that Shakespeare turned to the writing of this play, he 
 had already deserted the guidance of Lyly for that of Marlowe, 
 as will appear more fully in our discussion of the chronicle 
 plays. The influence of Marlowe's Barabas on Shake- 
 speare's Shylock has often been pointed out; and it is patent, 
 whether in reminiscence of individual traits and passages or, 
 as has been lately argued, in the very contrast of each poet's 
 conception of the Jew.^ It is a mistake to suppose that the 
 Jew was little known either to the literature of the time or by 
 actual acquaintance with him in the London of Elizabeth. 
 Aside from Gosson's mention, just alluded to, and the Gerun- 
 tus of Wilson's Three Ladies of London, a just and honorable 
 creditor, there was in actual life Roderigo Lopez, the queen's 
 Jewish physician, the trial and execution of whom for alleged 
 complicity in a plot against Elizabeth's life, early in 1504, ex- 
 cited much popular interest. Whether it was this that led 
 Shakespeare to his subtle study of Shylock, as has been held, 
 or not, certain it is that that famous character is conceived in 
 a full realization of the grotesqueness bordering on laughter 
 and the pathos bordering on tears which characterizes his 
 strange personality and situation. The admirable conduct 
 of this play in the successful intermingling of comedy with 
 a serious motive which rises for a moment almost to the height 
 
 ^Shakespeare's Jew and Marlowe's Christians, by William Poel, 
 Wtstminster Review, 1 909. 
 
"A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM" 157 
 
 of tragedy, its pervading humor and altogether dehghtful 
 personages, attest that in The Merchant of Venice Shake- 
 speare had reached, to the full, the manhood of his genius. 
 
 A Midsummer-Night^s Dream is usually dated 1595 and 
 is thought by some to have been written to celebrate a noble 
 marriage, a purpose for which its grace and gaiety well fitted it. 
 No source has been found for the major plot, though either 
 The Knight's Tale of Chaucer or Plutarch's Life of Theseus 
 may have served for the parts concerning that modified 
 ancient hero. Here Shakespeare has made a poet's use of 
 the supernatural, creating out of hints in popular folk-lore 
 a new order of beings in the enchanting and dainty fairyland 
 of Oberon and Titania. With its forest glades, peopled with 
 bewildered lovers and fairy folk, the grotesque histrionic at- 
 tempts of the "base mechanicals," and its pseudo-classic 
 background of ancient Athens, Theseus and his amazonian 
 bride, A Midsummer-Night'' s Dream marks the very acme of 
 the difficult Renaissance art of agglomeration; for only the 
 richest fancy, the most exquisite sense of the music of words, 
 and the harmony between poetic expression and poetic thought 
 could achieve such artistic unity in elements so repugnant. 
 
 Turning back for the nonce to the beginnings of Shake- 
 speare's conversancy with the stage, the chronicle play (which, 
 it may be interjected, is a drama dealing in epic wise with 
 subjects derived from the history of England) is the most 
 striking of the several forms of literature which resulted from 
 the realization of the national idea. Pride in England's 
 present greatness, in the success of Elizabeth's fleet against 
 the Armada of the King of Spain, and her skill in preserving 
 her throne despite the fulminations of Rome, begot an enthu- 
 siasm for the great deeds of Englishmen in the past such as 
 had been unknown before. Of this literature in other forms 
 an account has already been given in the first chapter of this 
 book. It was inevitable both that the stage should share in this 
 tide of patriotism and that the foremost writer for that stage 
 should contribute most largely to the drama of this type. 
 Shakespeare devoted literally a third of his dramatic activity 
 to the writing of plays based on what was accepted at the time 
 
158 CHRONICLE HISTORY 
 
 as English history, and he wrote many more such chronicle 
 histories, as they were called, than any three of his competitors 
 combined. In these historical dramas, too, better than else- 
 where, can we discern the probable steps in his apprentice- 
 ship to his art. 
 
 Three plays on the events of the long but unhappy reign of 
 King Henry VI are to be found in collective editions of Shake- 
 speare. The first of these, we are told by Nash in an often 
 quoted passage, achieved an unusual success in 1592, espe- 
 cially on account of certain vivid scenes in which the hero, 
 Talbot, figured in his warfare against the French; and it is 
 likely that the other two parts followed closely in consequence. 
 But if we examine these three plays, we find that all show clear 
 marks of revision and rewriting, and an earlier version of the 
 second and the third parts of Henry VI, differing materially 
 from Shakespeare's, is extant. These two old plays may be 
 called by a shortening of their cumbrous titles the first and 
 second parts of The Contention between the Two Noble 
 Houses of Tork and Lancaster, or shorter still, i and 2 Con- 
 tention. Part first of Henry VI seems to indicate revision 
 chiefly in the interpolation of individual scenes; while the 
 other two (2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI), by a comparison 
 with their earlier versions (i and 2 Contention), show rewriting 
 line for line, in which, however, a large proportion of the 
 original lines are retained intact. Some have held that, in 
 these revisions, Shakespeare was only making over his own 
 earlier work. But none of this work was claimed by him or 
 published in his lifetime as his. Inasmuch, moreover, as 
 Shakespeare was charged by Greene .with plagiarism and a 
 passage was parodied in proof from one of these very plays, 
 it is better to believe that, in the three parts oi King Henry VI, 
 Shakespeare was refashioning the earlier material of others 
 or at least work in which he had only shared with older fellow 
 playwrights. The internecine feuds of the Wars of the Roses, 
 detailed so minutely in this trilogy, seem deficient to us in 
 interest as we read them to-day. To the Elizabethans the 
 theme was an absorbing one, for it was thence that the stable 
 Tudor monarchy under which they lived had been evolved. 
 
GREENE AND SHAKESPEARE 159 
 
 As to the quality of these first ventures of Shakespeare into 
 history, their promise is clear. Of a mere youth who could 
 so revise the inchoate material of his predecessors almost 
 anything might be predicted. 
 
 But no account of Shakespeare can be complete without 
 a reference at this point to the notorious attack upon him of 
 Robert Greene, in his Groatsworth of Wit purchased with a 
 Million of Repentance, published late in 1592. This death- 
 bed pamphlet of poor Greene has been quoted already in a 
 passage describing the status of the contemporary actor. In 
 an address to "His Quondam Acquaintance," in which he in- 
 cludes Marlowe, Peele, and Lodge, Greene bids them beware 
 of "these puppets [the actors] that speak from our mouths" 
 and of "antics garnished in our colors." And he continues: 
 
 There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that in 
 his Tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide supposes he is as well able 
 to bumbast out a blank-verse as the best of you; and being an abso- 
 lute Johannes factotum is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene 
 in a country .... Never more acquaint [those apes] with your ad- 
 mired inventions, for it is pity men of such rare wit should be subject 
 to the pleasures of such rude grooms. 
 
 These allusions are clear to him who runs. The "Tiger's 
 heart wrapt in a player's hide" is a parody on "Oh tiger's 
 heart wrapt in a woman's hide," applied by the Duke of York 
 to Queen Margaret, the "she-wolf of France," in the third 
 part o{ Henry VI, and contained in that part of the play which 
 Shakespeare took over from the 2 Contention. That Greene's 
 rancorous opinion was not the prevalent one among Shake- 
 speare's fellows in his profession, is proved by the ample 
 apology which Chettle made soon after, in his Kind-Heart's 
 Dream, for his part in the publication of Greene's unhappy 
 tract. 
 
 To return to the chronicle play, Shakespeare soon followed 
 up his success with a more independent effort, the condensa- 
 tion of two anonymous old chronicle plays, called The Trouble- 
 some Reign of King John, by rewriting into one effective 
 tragedy. This must have been early in 1593. Shakespeare's 
 
i6o CHRONICLE HISTORY 
 
 King John marks a decided advance, and this notwithstand- 
 ing much fidelity to an original which is far from worthy of 
 contempt. It is in such personages as Falconbridge, Hubert, 
 the little prince, and the two wrangling queens that we find 
 the distinctness of characterization, the mingling of humor 
 and pathos that came later so much more fully to distinguish 
 our greatest dramatic poet. And in the dastard John appears, 
 too, suggestion of a deeper study of character. But Shake- 
 speare was not content to stop here. He turned from revision 
 to imitation, recognizing, as who could avoid it, the masterly 
 passion of Marlowe and filled with ambition to emulate his 
 triumphs. Richard III, which must soon have followed King 
 John, in 1593, is Shakespeare's one thoroughly Marlowesque 
 tragedy. And this is patent alike in the heroic proportions 
 of the distorted hero, monster that he is of conscious wicked- 
 ness and crafty design, and in the lyric quality of the emotion 
 which pervades many scenes. Richard III must have been 
 to Shakespeare a tour de force much like the earlier Titus. 
 Both are splendid followings of another man's gait and manner. 
 Indeed, if we would realize to the full Vv^hat Shakespeare could 
 do with a popular historical portrait, his Richard Crookback 
 should be compared with the older True Tragedy of Richard 
 III, to which gross if strongly written play he owed very little. 
 Marlowe's Edward II must have been written within a 
 twelvemonth of the date of his death in May, 1593. Whether 
 Shakespeare's Richard III preceded Marlowe's play or not, 
 it may be taken as almost certain that Richard II was planned 
 in direct and daring emulation of Marlowe's successful tragedy. 
 The subject-matter of these two later plays is as nearly identical 
 as English history can afford; for in each a monarch who is 
 unworthy to rule is thrown, in the contrast of circumstances, 
 against a group of rebellious barons, and in each his prob- 
 lematic character with his pitiful fall holds the center of the 
 stage. But in Richard II, though he chose Marlowe's theme, 
 Shakespeare enfranchised himself from Marlowe's method. 
 It seems almost as if Shakespeare had determined to rival 
 Marlowe on his own ground but in a manner of Shakespeare's 
 own choosing. The conception of the wayward poetical- 
 
MARLOWE AND SHAKESPEARE i6i 
 
 minded king, a poseur in fortune as well as in mischance, the 
 contrast of his levity with the sagacity, unimaginativeness, and 
 political effectiveness of Bolingbroke, the grasp and knowledge 
 of the world which this tragedy presumes, and the sure touch 
 and poetry with which it is written and embellished — all of 
 these things place Richard II not only far above King John 
 and Richard III but disclose Shakespeare as the triumphant 
 rival of the now dead Marlowe, even though it be confessed 
 that the closing scene of the latter's Edward remained, in its 
 terror and pathos, as yet unequaled by the younger dramatist. 
 
 In dramas such as these of Shakespeare and of Marlowe 
 the tragedy of a man at odds with fate transcended the acci- 
 dental circumstance that the protagonist was an English 
 sovereign. But the average type, that in which history was 
 staged epically and continuously, remained high in the popular 
 esteem. Not to go too far afield here in the mention of what 
 can be no more than mere names in a work of this scope, Peele's 
 inferior Edward I, 1590-1591, had been of this type; and so 
 was He3rwood's Edward IV, 1 594, .a play of no inconsiderable 
 merit and dramatic excellence; Munday and Chettle's Robin 
 Hood, Earl of Huntington, 1598, and several like productions. 
 So that when Shakespeare put forth, in 1597, the first part of 
 ■his Henry IF, with its history diversified by the humors of a 
 group of irregular humorists, headed by immortal Falstafl!^, 
 he was only returning to the epic type of the chronicle play 
 which from the very first had admittted the element of comedy. 
 The popularity of Henry IF, with its story of the wild life of 
 Prince Hal, the contrasted heroic Hotspur and witty, godless 
 FalstafF and his rout, took the town by storm, and a second 
 part was almost immediately demanded. To this Shake- 
 speare responded in 2 Henry IF, and the following year wit- 
 nessed the conclusion of the trilogy in Henry F, England's 
 ideal king in action in triumphant warfare with England's 
 hereditary enemy, France. 
 
 In these three dramas we have the height to which the 
 English chronicle play attained. Shakespeare made as much 
 of the undramatic elements of continuous history as was pos- 
 sible and he covered their inherent want of cohesion with his 
 
i62 CHRONICLE HISTORY 
 
 consummate art of portraiture, character thrown into con- 
 trast, and with the incessant play of his incomparable humor. 
 The picture of the hero king, Henry V, when all has been said, 
 is one of the most remarkable in Shakespeare. For it is the 
 practical, unimaginative man of action, a conformist at heart 
 despite his youthful escapades, who may be conceived to be 
 the most difficult for the imaginative and poetical mind to 
 appreciate and sympathetically reproduce. But Shakespeare 
 himself was a confident and sagacious man of affairs; and 
 there are no limits to the catholicity of his sympathies and 
 affections. Shakespeare is as present in the stern and in- 
 evitable repudiation of FalstafF by the regenerate young king 
 as he is in his revels and those of his pals, royal and common, 
 at the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap. 
 
 FalstafF is more frequently mentioned in contemporary 
 allusion than any other character of Shakespeare; and the 
 first part of Henry IV (with Richard III, for other reasons) 
 reached a larger number of editions within the period of 
 Shakespeare's lifetime than any other one of his plays. This 
 popularity led also to imitation. Four poets in the employ 
 of Henslowe — Munday, Drayton, Wilson the younger and 
 Hathway — set to work on a hurry order to write a rival play 
 and produced two plays on the life of Sir John Oldcastle, under 
 which name Shakespeare seems at first to have figured Sir 
 John FalstafF. Only one of these plays remains extant and 
 it is far from deficient either in humor or dramatic spirit; 
 although, it must be confessed, that the thievish hedge-priest, 
 Sir John of Wrotham, is a petty and futile attempt to rival the 
 unparalleled wit of FalstaflF. A tradition relates that, delighted 
 with these plays oi Henry IV, Queen Elizabeth expressed a 
 wish to see FalstafF depicted in love and that the Merry Wives 
 of Windsor, 1 598, was Shakespeare's reply. Clever and 
 diverting comedy that it is, it is also notable as the only one of 
 Shakespeare's frankly to accept an English scene. The buf- 
 feted and defeated Falstaff of the Merry Wives is but a shadow 
 in silhouette in comparison with the robust lover of Doll 
 Tearsheet in 2 Henry IV. 
 
 Although Henry VIII is a chronicle play, consideration 
 
OBITUARY PLAYS 163 
 
 of it may be deferred for the present because of its , affiliations, 
 by reason of Fletcher's hand in it, with the later plays of 
 Shakespeare. Of the chronicle play in general it may be 
 sufficient to say that it flourished in great variety of. 
 nation with other dramatic elements especially throughout the 
 last ten years of Elizabeth's reign. In tragedy it begot such 
 productions as Thomas of Woodstock, 1591, an exceedingly 
 able anonymous play on events in the reign of Richard II 
 which preceded Shakespeare's tragedy of that sovereign; it 
 mingled with drama of domestic type in Heywood's Edward 
 IV, with comedy of disguise in Look About Tou, 1594, and the 
 Robin Hood plays of Munday and Chettle; and continued in 
 the dramatic biographies of lesser historical personages such 
 as Sir Thomas Moore, Cromwell, Stukeley (ranging from 1590 
 to 1596), and many more. On the death of the queen a series 
 of obituary plays were staged, detailing the principal events 
 of her life, directly as in Heywood's If Tou Knoiu Me Not Tou 
 Know Nobody; allegorically in Dekker's Whore of Babylon; or 
 ■ dealing with the history of her immediate predecessors, as in 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt, the scene of which is laid in the reign of 
 Queen Mary; or in Rowley's When Tou See Me Tou Know 
 Me, which describes events in the reign of Henry VIII. It is 
 best to place Shakespeare's play on this monarch in this group, 
 which falls within the first three years of James, whatever may 
 have been its subsequent history. 
 
 Still another variation from the usual type of the chronicle 
 play was that which dealt chronicle wise with the legendary 
 history of England. Among Elizabethan annalists and 
 writers of plays little distinction was drawn between the deeds 
 of Brutus, legendary founder of Britain, Macbeth, and Henry 
 V; for all were fish to the historical drag-nets of the time. 
 Gorboduc and Jocasta first levied on material of the mythical 
 historical type, although inspired primarily by Seneca. Peele 
 apparently was the first to transfer this species of tragedy to 
 the popular stage in Locrine, 1586, and the older King Leir, 
 staged about 1594, and perhaps by Lodge, is another ex- 
 ample. The Birth of Merlin, 1597, by William Rowley and 
 several Hke productions soon followed. It was this type of 
 
i64 CHRONICLE HISTORY 
 
 drama in its tragic form that Shakespeare soon glorified in 
 Macbeth and King Lear. The final absorption of the chron- 
 icle play was romantic and in this, too, Shakespeare shared in 
 such a play as Cymheline, the scene of which is legendary 
 ancient Britain, although its interest is purely romantic. 
 
 In 1598 Francis Meres included in his Palladis Tamia, 
 "A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the 
 Greek, Latin and Italian Poets," recognizing Shakespeare 
 therein as the greatest dramatist and poet of his day and de- 
 claring him "most excellent in both kinds [that is, comedy and 
 tragedy] for the stage." His sonnets, as yet unpublished, his 
 narrative poems, and twelve plays are mentioned by name; 
 and the list includes all the plays named in this chapter except 
 one, Henry V, which had not yet been staged. Meres further 
 names a comedy under title o( Love's Labor's Won. Some have 
 thought this a lost play, others have identified it with Much 
 Ado About Nothing or with All 's Well that Ends Well. If (as 
 still others have surmised), it was an earlier name for the Tam- 
 ing of the Shrew, that play, also, may have been among the 
 experiments of Shakespeare in comedy, though its known 
 derivation from two earlier plays. The Taming of a Shrew 
 and Gascoigne's Supposes, leaves it not improbable that Shake- 
 speare, whatever the period of his work, was only the reviser. 
 
 Six comedies of Shakespeare remain above those already 
 mentioned to attest the height of his dramatic genius in this 
 kind of play within the remaining years of Elizabeth's reign. 
 Of these Much Ado About Nothing is usually supposed to have 
 been staged soon after the appearance in print of Meres' 
 *' comparative discourse." The story of Hero and Claudio 
 was derived by Shakespeare from a novel of Bandello, though 
 probably not without the intervention of an English play. 
 The delightful courtship of Beatrice and Benedick seems an 
 amplification of the relations of Rosaline and Biron in Love's 
 Labor 's Lost, and in its sheer comedy affords a happy contrast 
 to the somber elements of the major plot of Don John's machi- 
 nations. Dogberry and Verges, though their originals might 
 well have kept the peace in any hamlet in England, were dis- 
 cernible in all their unmitigated absurdity only by the eye of 
 
"AS YOU LIKE IT" 165 
 
 their creator. Lightsome and joyous As Tou Like It, on the 
 stage by 1599, is an interesting example of Shakespeare's 
 fortunate use of material near at hand. As a rule and es- 
 pecially in his earlier period, the great dramatist preferred the 
 rewriting of a play to any other process. Some twenty of his 
 plays are almost certainly so derived from former dramas, 
 English or foreign. In As Tou Like It, Shakespeare's im- 
 mediate source was the pleasing pastoral romance of Lodge, 
 known as Rosalynd or Euphues' Golden Legacy. In turning 
 Lodge's story into a play Shakespeare amended its Euphuistic 
 manner, which was now a fashion of the past; and while he 
 retained some of the pastoral spirit, he added to it the freshness 
 that pervades the English conception of an out-door life of 
 outlawry contained in the ballads of Robin Hood, and sub- 
 mitted the whole to much delicate raillery. The characters, 
 too, as we compare them with Lodge's originals, are more 
 subtly conceived and cast in a finer mold. Their motives are 
 more elevated and they themselves far less conventionally 
 pastoral. There is no more delightful love-making than that 
 of Orlando and his Rosalind, and when we recall that the mel- 
 ancholy Jaques, Touchstone with all his quips, his Audrey, 
 and other characters are Shakespeare's additions to the tale, 
 we can see how he could better admirable material and make 
 out of a pleasing tale a comedy of unmatchable wit, wisdom, 
 and lyrical beauty. 
 
 Twelfth Night or What Tou Will, 1 60 1, offers a tempting 
 problem to the seekers after sources in which no less than five 
 plays, Italian, Latin, and German, and three stories are in- 
 volved. Although a good prima facie case has been made out 
 for Shakespeare's acquaintance with a Latin comedy called 
 Lcslia, he doubtless found his chief material in the story of 
 Apolonius and Silla, in Barnahe Riche, his Farewell to the Mil- 
 itary Profession, and Malvolio's pretended madness may have 
 been suggested in another story of the same volume. Once 
 more, if we compare Shakespeare with his sources, we find how 
 immeasurably he has refined his personages and the motives 
 that guide their actions, how he has condensed, leaving out 
 the irrelevant and repetitious, to create a whole group of char- 
 
i66 LATER COMEDIES 
 
 acters — Malvolio, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, and Feste, 
 most fascinating of his clowns — and give coherence to one of 
 the most delectable of his comedies. 
 
 What event happened in the life of Shakespeare to produce 
 the revulsion from all that was bright and joyous as depicted 
 in the comedies just enumerated to the more serious themes 
 ofJll 's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure and the 
 gloom and misanthropy of Troilus and Cressida we can never 
 know. Perhaps the sonnets — which with the last-named 
 play are equally of the literature of disenchantment — paral- 
 leled these weightier dramatic works. Perhaps these were no 
 more than the passing moods that may beget in the musical 
 composer, for example, the composition of a scherzo or rhap- 
 sody on one day, and on the next a requiem. All 'j Well That 
 Ends Well is commonly dated about 1602, although evidence 
 has been found in the text to indicate that the comedy, as we 
 have it, is the revision of earlier work, perhaps the play named 
 by Meres in 1598 as Love's Labor 's Won. The story of Helena, 
 the physician's daughter, her cure of the king of France and 
 her pursuit and winning in the end of her recreant husband, all 
 is to be found in The Palace of Pleasure, borrowed thence from 
 Bandello. But the Countess of Roussilon, most engaging 
 picture of elderly womanhood, Lafeu the steward, and the 
 cowardly boaster, Parolles, all are of Shakespeare's invention, 
 as is the difficult handling of the character of the heroine in a 
 situation little calculated under ordinary circumstances to in- 
 spire our admiration and consent. It has been held that Bert- 
 ram's base associates, his hesitation, and plain lying in the 
 denouement (which is Shakespeare's entirely), come "peri- 
 lously near overshooting the mark" in the effort to enlist our 
 sympathies on the side of Helena; and the play has been more 
 seriously impugned for the coarseness and the daring of Hel- 
 ena's device to trick her husband into her arms. But granting 
 all this, Shakespeare's power over character and plot had not 
 failed him in All 'x Well. Similarly, Measure for Measure has 
 been submitted to criticism on the score of its coarseness of 
 detail in certain scenes and for its frank and unhesitating treat- 
 ment of a subject which modern daintiness affects to ignore. 
 
"TROILUS AND CRESSIDA" 167 
 
 Measure for Measure contains passages which seem to place 
 its staging after the accession of James in 1603. If we are to 
 judge this powerful and unpleasant play of Shakespeare just- 
 ly, we must recognize how he has humanized the repellant 
 qualities of Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, his original 
 in the tempted Puritan, Angelo, in peerless and immaculate 
 Isabella, and her weak and erring brother, Claudio. 
 
 Among the many problems that the plays of Shakespeare 
 raise, few are more nearly insoluble than those involved in the 
 strange but in no wise inferior "comedy" of Troilus and Cres- 
 sida. The work was registered in 1603, printed in quarto 
 with two different title-pages but identical texts in 1609, and 
 reprinted in the folio with many detailed differences. There 
 are parts of Troilus and Cressida which seem the work of an- 
 other hand, yet there are passages unmistakably Shakespeare's 
 at his best. The tone of the play is not only unheroic but dis- 
 tinctly bitter and satirical at times; and it has been thought 
 by some that in Troilus and Cressida we have Shakespeare's 
 contribution to the war of the theaters, of which we shall hear 
 more in the next chapter, and that the gross figure of Ajax is 
 Shakespeare's attack on Ben Jonson. The story of Troilus 
 and the faithless Cressida was a favorite subject not only in the 
 Middle Ages (as Chaucer alone is sufficient to witness), but in 
 the drama preceding Shakespeare. The dramatist may well 
 have caught the spirit that converts the Trojan heroes into 
 medieval knights, shivering lances for fair ladies, and the satir- 
 ical tone in his treatment of antiquity from some one of the 
 four or five plays on this subject, his predecessors, or from 
 Greene's Euphues his Censure to Philautus, as has been sur- 
 mised. Certain it is that vividly conceived as are Shakespeare's 
 Cressida and Pandarus, bearing comparison with their originals 
 in Chaucer, heroic as is Troilus, subtle and worldly wise as is 
 Ulysses, the effect of this drama is disheartening, for here alone 
 within the range of Shakespeare's dramatic activity do we feel 
 that his faith in man has forsaken him and he has substituted 
 for the nonce doubt, suspicion, and misanthropy for the larger 
 traits of mind and heart that are prevailingly his. 
 
 Thus as the reign of the old queen was drawing to its close, 
 
i68 LATER COMEDIES 
 
 we find Shakespeare established in a worldly prosperity and 
 success in his art that drew the eyes of envy and admiration 
 upon him. His thrift extended not only to personal invest- 
 ments in tithes and the purchase for his age of the»best house 
 in Stratford; it extended to a prudent foresight as to the future 
 of his company when Elizabeth's successor should come to the 
 throne. There is a well-known topical allusion to the depart- 
 ure of the young and popular Earl of Essex for Ireland in the 
 prologue to the last act of Henry V; and a well-authenticated 
 story tells of the acting, by men of Shakespeare's company, 
 of Richard II before the conspirators at the time of the Essex 
 rebellion, that their courage might be whetted and an example 
 set them of the deposition of an English sovereign. Plainly 
 Shakespeare looked foreward hopefully to the new reign to 
 come. He did more. With his company in disgrace in 1601 
 for these performances, he made a business alliance with one 
 Laurence Fletcher, an actor who had already taken a troupe to 
 Edinburgh and was known personally to King James; and 
 the upshot of this alliance appeared in the circumstance that, 
 on the accession of the king, the Chamberlain's men (Shake- 
 speare's company), was the first to pass under the royal pat- 
 ronage, becoming the King's players. 
 
 But there are other things to contemplate in Shakespeare's 
 rise within the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Without seeking as 
 yet the heights of the greater tragedies, Shakespeare had trav- 
 eled far from the trivialities of Love's Labor 's Lost to the con- 
 summate comedy of Twelfth Night and As Tou Like It. 
 Books have been written on this absorbing theme; and the 
 development of Shakespeare's genius has been traced in his 
 verse and his style, his rhetoric and his taste, and in the larger 
 influences of his experience and contact v^^ith men. Clearly 
 even Shakespeare must once have been an apprentice to his 
 art; and quite as certainly he soon transcended all the tricks 
 and rules of the playwright's trade. An attempt to trace the 
 poetical growth of Marlowe is frustrated at once by the brevity 
 of his meteoric career. On the other hand, Ben Jonson was 
 too much the conscious artist, despite the length of his life, too 
 
GROWTH IN SHAKESPEARE 169 
 
 much the constructive mechanician of his own artistic develop- 
 ment, to make it possible for us to observe in him those pro- 
 cesses in the unfolding of genius which in their orderliness and 
 their inevitability are as capable of prognostication as the pro- 
 cesses of nature, Shakespeare's career as a dramatist was of 
 at least twenty years' continuance. His openness to impres- 
 sions was that of a field long lain fallow; and, save for certain 
 storms that beset all life, his calm and benignity was that of 
 nature and of the wide heavens. It is here that we can 
 look for natural growth, for development as obvious and 
 rational as the unfolding of a flower. It is not only that Shake- 
 speare was imaginatively and creatively the most richly en- 
 dowed of mankind; he was happy in suffering fewer lets and 
 hinderances in his development than most men. He did not 
 see life through learned and classical spectacles like Jonson, 
 nor through the kaleidoscopic lenses of Italian romance and 
 allegory as did Spenser. He was not hampered, like Sidney, 
 by the necessity of experimentation in literature; nor led on by 
 "speculation to the overturning of the reasoning of a scholastic 
 world like Bacon. It may be confidently affirmed that Shake- 
 speare, better than most writers, yields to that analysis that 
 discloses an orderly growth in all that goes to constitute the 
 outward as well as the spiritual and inward qualities of 
 genius. 
 
 And when this analysis is made, we find, to summarize, 
 first a versification trending gradually from a certain degree 
 of regularity and rigidity to the freedom of a master of his 
 craft in the employment of pauses, redundancy, suppression or 
 substitution of syllables, whereby Shakespeare's blank-verse 
 becomes a thoroughly plastic medium in his hands, adaptable, 
 as English verse had never been before, to the thousand moods 
 that constitute the demands of the drama. Secondly, as to 
 Shakespeare's style, we find it characterized by affluence in 
 diction and vocabulary, by a lavish, at times extravagant, use 
 of what he has, and by spontaneity, absolute ease and readi- 
 ness, and as absolute an unrestraint. Let us take two passages 
 in conclusion of this matter, the first from A Midsummer- 
 
1 70 
 
 LATER COMEDIES 
 
 Night's Dream, the second (if we may look forward for the 
 moment) from Cymheline. 
 
 These are the forgeries of jealousy: 
 
 And never, since the middle summer's spring, 
 
 Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead. 
 
 By paved fountain or by rushy brook. 
 
 Or in the beached margent of the sea, 
 
 To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind 
 
 But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. 
 
 Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, 
 
 As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea 
 
 Contagious fogs; which, falling m the land, 
 
 Have every petty river made so proud. 
 
 That they have overborne their continents: 
 
 The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain. 
 
 The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn 
 
 Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard: 
 
 The fold stands empty in the drowned field. 
 
 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock; 
 
 The nine-men's morris is fill'd up with mud; 
 
 And the quaint mazes in the wanton green. 
 
 For lack of tread, are undistinguishable: 
 
 The human mortals want their winter cheer; 
 
 No night is now with hymn or carol blest: — 
 
 Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, 
 
 Pale in her anger, washes all the air. 
 
 That rheumatic diseases do abound: 
 
 And thorough this distemperature we see 
 
 The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts 
 
 Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose; 
 
 And on old Hiems* thin and icy crown 
 
 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
 
 Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer, 
 
 The childing autumn, angry winter, change 
 
 Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, 
 
 By their increase, now knows not which is which: 
 
 And this same progeny of evils comes 
 
 From our debate, from our dissension; 
 
 We are their parents and original. 
 
GROWTH IN SHAKESPEARE 171 
 
 Away! — I do condemn mine ears that have 
 So long attended thee. If thou wert honorable, 
 Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not 
 For such an end thou seek'st, — as base as strange. 
 Thou wrong'st a gentleman who is as far 
 From thy report as thou from honor; and 
 Solicit'st here a lady that disdains 
 Thee and the devil alike. — What ho, Pisanio! 
 The king, my father, shall be made acquainted 
 Of thy assault: if he shall think it fit, 
 A saucv stranger in his court, to mart 
 As in a Romish stew, and to expound 
 His beastly mind to us, — he hath a court 
 He little cares for, and a daughter who 
 He not respects at all. — What ho, Pisanio! 
 
 In the former of these quotations it matters little that the em- 
 broidery runs a Httle less or more amply. In Imogen's strong 
 defiance of a treachery that only her innocence has made her 
 dull to perceive, there is not a vv^ord too much. Shakespeare 
 seldom errs with a display of luxuriance in these supreme 
 dramatic moments; but full restraint, like much else, came, 
 even with Shakespeare, after years and trial. 
 
 Other things that mark the development of Shakespeare's 
 genius concern his gradual improvement in taste, in dramatic 
 technique, characterization, and in the attitude that he assumes 
 towards the creatures of his brain. Shakespeare never en- 
 tirely freed himself of the tyranny of the word. His age seems 
 never to have wearied of puns, and verbal fence and quibble 
 On the other hand and barring this, with time came power 
 and grasp. And nowhere in our literature is there to be found 
 a more marvelous display of the ductility, the subtle music, 
 the significance and associative force of English words, than 
 these plays disclose in their finer passages. 
 
 This chapter has already exceeded its bounds. To an- 
 other, that on the heyday of tragedy, must be deferred the 
 further discussion of Shakespeare's development in the dra- 
 matic technique and larger qualities of his art. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 VERNACULAR DRAMA OF DEKKER, HEYWOOD, 
 AND MIDDLETON 
 
 AS compared with that of Elizabeth, few ages in the 
 world's history have accepted with such unaffected 
 faith at once the hard inevitability of facts and the enchanting 
 possibilities of fortune. And in few times was life in the coarse 
 fiber of its daily routine so shot with bright threads of romantic 
 experience and adventure. It is related that the queen, who 
 had ardently expressed to the Scottish ambassador, Melville, 
 her wish that she might see and speak with her dear sister, 
 Queen Mary, was taken with Melville's proposal that, dressed 
 as a page, her majesty accompany his train to Scotland; and 
 that she dallied with the idea for days. As to the stage, so 
 peculiarly the mirror of the time, few sorts of Elizabethan 
 thought and action were left unrepresented thereon; and that 
 representation, as often as not, mingled with what was familiar 
 and at hand, things rare and strange, recognizing that the 
 separation of these two, the visible and the invisible, the 
 actual and the ideal, is more a habit of thinking than it is 
 ever a feature of life itself. 
 
 It was this combination of a recognition of the actualities 
 of life with a fine romantic spirit that raised the eclectic and 
 somewhat slovenly art of Greene to a position of respect; 
 and in Dekker, Greene's successor in certain forms of the 
 drama as well as in the pamphlet, we find no dissimilar com- 
 bination Of the life and extraction of Thomas Dekker 
 little is known. He informs us in one of his pamphlets that 
 he was born in London. Probably this was not far from 
 1570. The form of his name and his evident famiharity with 
 the Dutch language suggest that his family came originally 
 from the Low Countries. Dekker first appears as a dramatist 
 in 1598, though it is not unlikely that by that time he had 
 
 172 
 
DEKKER'S "OLD FORTUNATUS" 173 
 
 been for several years conversant v^^ith the stage. He con- 
 tinued to v^rite plays, pamphlets, broadsides, anything, for 
 forty years, and at one time prepared pageants for the city. 
 Dekker's life was full of struggle and toil, he was much in 
 prison for debt and received charity at the hands of Edward 
 Alleyn, the actor. In the drama Dekker exhibits an art as 
 mixed and varied as that of Greene himself. As to subject 
 and general conduct, Dekker is governed almost completely 
 by the taste and demands of the city, even though he rises 
 occasionally into the regions of the truest poetry as in passages 
 of Old Fortunatus. This comedy was on the stage by 1599. 
 In plot it levies, as Faustus did before it, on the old romantic 
 folk-lore of Germany; although Dekker also contrives to 
 give to the whole that flavor of the English morality which we 
 find so strong in Marlowe's tragedy. The story of Dekker's 
 comedy deals with Fortunatus, an elderly native of Cyprus, 
 who receives at the hands of the goddess of fortune the gift 
 of an inexhaustible purse and steals from "the Soudan of 
 Babylon" a cap which has the power to convey the wearer 
 wherever he may desire. Fortunatus soon dies in his folly — 
 for he has chosen wealth when he might have had better things 
 — and the play proceeds to set forth the contrasted careers 
 of his two sons, Ampedo, who is virtue, ignorant how practi- 
 cally to employ Fortune, and Andelocia, who lavishes her gifts 
 in self-indulgence and vice. The extant version of OU For- 
 tunatus has been adapted for court. This explains why 
 Dekker has so lavished on it his delicate fancy and a power 
 of poetical expression that will compare favorably with the 
 best of his fellows in the drama. Of several beautiful lyrics 
 that this play contains, none is more musical than the song 
 contrasting Vice with Virtue : 
 
 Virtue's branches wither. Virtue pines, 
 
 O pity, pity, and alack the time. 
 Vice doth flourish, Vice in glory shines. 
 
 Her gilded boughs above the cedar climb. 
 Vice hath golden cheeks, O pity, pity, 
 
 She in every land doth monarchize. 
 
174 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 Virtue Is exiled from every city, 
 
 Virtue is a fool, Vice only wise. 
 O pity, pity, Virtue weeping dies: 
 
 Vice laughs to see her faint; — alack the time. 
 This sinks; with painted wings the other flies: 
 
 Alack that best should fall, and bad should climb. 
 
 pity, pity, pity, mourn, not sing. 
 Vice is a saint, Virtue an underling. 
 Vice doth flourish, Vice in glory shines, 
 Virtue's branches wither. Virtue pines. 
 
 At the conclusion of the comedy, the palm of victory Is awarded 
 to Virtue, vs^ho now turns to the queen with the words: 
 
 All that they had or mortal men can have, 
 Sends only but a shadow from the grave. 
 Virtue alone still lives, and lives in you; 
 
 1 am a counterfeit, you are the true; 
 I am a shadow; at your feet I fall, 
 Begging for these, and these, myself and all. 
 All these that thus do kneel before your eyes 
 Are shadows like myself; dread Nymph, it lies 
 In you to make us substance. 
 
 In The Shoemakers' Holiday, i6oo, we have, as typically 
 as delightfully, the bourgeois spirit of Elizabethan London. 
 The disguise of high-born Lacy as a shoemaker's apprentice 
 to win the love of Rose who is only a lord mayor's daughter; 
 the faithful wife, Jane, who foils her rich and persistent suitor 
 in her faith in the return of her cobbler husband, Ralph, who 
 has been impressed for the wars; above all, the humors of 
 Simon Eyre among his journeymen and apprentices, prince as 
 he is of shoemakers and good fellows, with his elevation to the 
 mayoralty and the friendship of his king — such is the sub- 
 ject-matter of this busy, delightful comedy, borrowed and 
 bettered as it is from one of the prose tales of Thomas Deloney. 
 The Shoemakers' Holiday is typical of one of the happiest 
 groups of the comedy of contemporary life. Dekker presents 
 the life about him frankly, merrily, and roundly, seeking neither 
 the lesson of the moralist nor the distortion of him who scorns 
 and satirizes. There were other Elizabethan examples of 
 
DOMESTIC DRAMAS 175 
 
 this type of comedy, such as the anonymous Wily Beguiled, 
 Henry Porter's lively Two Angry Women of Ahington, and 
 William Haughton's Englishmen for My Money. Shakespeare's 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, too, is of this type; and all were on 
 the stage by 1598 and hence preceded Dekker's shoemakers. 
 Another favorable specimen of lighter comedy is The Merry 
 Devil of Edmonton, 1600, which has been ascribed to the 
 authorship of Drayton and touches the supernatural in its 
 introduction of the English Faustus, Peter Fabel. Indeed, 
 should we seek for the roots of this sort of play, we should find 
 them deep in morality times when the picturing of famihar 
 everyday life on the stage rose into popularity as a means of 
 enlivening the serious intent of the old drama to teach right 
 living. 
 
 Dekker was much given to the practice of collaboration 
 and wrote plays with at least half a dozen other authors. 
 Such a play was Patient Grissel, 1598, in which Chettle and 
 Haughton both had a share with Dekker. This dramatizing 
 of a medieval story of the slavishly devoted wife, long since 
 told by Chaucer, brings Dekker into touch — as does the story 
 of Jane for that matter in The Shoemakers' Holiday — with 
 a long series of domestic dramas in which the virtues of the 
 - faithful wife are set forth and extolled. This universal theme 
 exhibits itself in almost every conceivable form in Elizabethan 
 drama, in tragedy as well as comedy, in foreign as well as in 
 English setting, now throwing into contrast the jealous or 
 neglectful husband or exacting lover, and again placing beside 
 the faithful wife the wanton or her less malignant contrast, 
 the shrew. Between 1602 and 1607 some half-dozen dramas 
 combine the subject of the faithful wife with that of the young 
 spendthrift, for such How a Man May Choose a Good Wife 
 from a Bad, by Joshua Cooke, the anonymous London Prodigal, 
 Wilkins' Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and Marston's Dutch 
 Courtizan, their very titles proclaim them. Of equally early 
 origin in the drama are the lighter comedies of this class which 
 throw into prominence the nature of the "shrew," beginning, 
 as they do, with The Taming of a Shrew, before 1590, which 
 Shakespeare revised in his Taming of the Shrew, later answered 
 
176 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 by Fletcher in The Woman s Prize or the Tamer Tamed^ 
 which may date as early as 1606. This story of the taming of 
 Petruchio by a second wife who followed poor Katherine, 
 who had become too tame to live long, enjoyed great popularity 
 in the reign of King Charles, when it was often acted on al- 
 ternate nights with Shakespeare's comedy. In The Honest 
 Whore, printed in two parts, 1604 and 1630, Dekker collaborat- 
 ed with Middleton. Here the themes of the shrew and the 
 submissive and virtuous wife are united in a new aspect into 
 a serious drama which, save for one or two of Hejrwood's, rises 
 well above the best of its class. Here is told the story of a 
 fallen woman's regeneration by means of a passion inspired in 
 her by one who takes her passing fancy but withstands her 
 blandishments. And herein also is displayed in vivid realism 
 her steadfastness in virtue when temptation returns to her at 
 the hands of this very man, and she is compelled to endure 
 want and ignominy for her refusal to return to a life of sin. 
 The figure of Bellafront is admirably conceived and executed 
 and remains, with that of Signor Frescobaldo her old father, 
 who in disguise as her servant sustains her in her struggle 
 to lead a virtuous life, the most effective and touching piece 
 of character drawing in which Dekker had a hand. 
 
 Quotation in patch and fragment is always unsatisfactory, 
 but never more so than when it seeks to suggest the large lines 
 of a finished picture. Frescobaldo has long disowned his dis- 
 honored daughter and, assuming an air of hearty content, 
 declares: "Though my head be like a leek, white, may not 
 my heart be like the blade, green ?" He continues: 
 
 May not old Frescobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha ? I have 
 a little, have all things, have nothing: I have no wife, I have no 
 child, have no chick, and why should not I be in my jocundare ? 
 
 Hipolifo. Is your wife then departed ? 
 
 Fresco. She's an old dweller in those high countries: yet not 
 from me. Here, she 's here; a good couple are seldom parted. 
 
 Hipolito. You had a daughter too, sir, had you not ? 
 
 Fresco. Oh, my Lord! this old tree had one branch, and but 
 one branch growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was straight: 
 I pruned it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, helped it 
 
DOMESTIC DRAMAS 177 
 
 to the sun; yet for all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore 
 crabs : I hewed it down. What 's become of it, I neither know nor 
 care. 
 
 Told that Bellafront is dead, he cries: 
 
 Dead! My last and best peace go with her! I see Death 's a 
 good trencherman; he can eat coarse, homely meat as well as the 
 daintiest. Is she dead ? 
 
 Hipolito. She *s turned to earth. 
 
 Fresco. Would she were turned to heaven. Umh ! Is she dead ? 
 I am glad the world has lost one of his idols .... In her grave 
 sleep all my shame and her own: and all my sorrow and all her sin. 
 
 Hipolito. I 'm glad you are wax, not marble. 
 
 But later, undeceived and assured that Bellafront is not really 
 dead, but poor, and her husband, v^ho had first betrayed her, 
 in jail for the killing of a man, Frescobaldo breaks out once 
 more against his daughter, declaring. 
 
 I am sorry I wasted tears upon a harlot, .... I detest her, 
 I defy both, she is not mine, she 's — 
 
 Hipolito. Hear her but speak. 
 
 Fresco. I love no mermaids. I '11 not be caught with aquail-pipe. 
 
 Hipolito. You *re now beyond all reason. Is 't dotage to relieve 
 your child, being poor .'' 
 
 Fresco. 'T is foolery to relieve her. Were her cold limbs stretched 
 out upon a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my nails to buy her 
 an hour's breath nor give this hair, unless it were to choke her. 
 
 Hipolito. Fare you well, for I '11 trouble you no more. 
 
 Exit Hipolito. 
 
 Fresco. And fare you well, sir. Go thy ways; we have few lords 
 of thy making that love wenches for their honesty. 'Las, my girl, 
 art thou poor ? Poverty dwells next door to despair; there 's but a 
 wall between them. Despair is one of Hell's catchpoles; and lest 
 that devil arrest her, I '11 to her. Yet she shall not know me. She 
 shall drink of my wealth as beggars do of running water, freely, yet 
 never know from what fountain's head it flows. Shall a silly bird 
 pick her own breast to nourish her young ones: and can a father see 
 his child starve ? That were hard, the pelican does it, and shall not I ? 
 
 Turning from Dekker, whose other plays from their 
 affiliations in authorship and subject may be best considered 
 elsewhere, we find in Heywood even a closer representative in 
 
1 78 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 the drama of the ideals of the city and of its preference for 
 homely and domestic subjects. Thomas Heywood came of 
 Lincolnshire and was both younger and somewhat better 
 born than Dekker. Heywood's birth was about 1575. He 
 was sometime fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and, judged 
 by his use of the classics, a good scholar. He became an actor 
 about 1596, covenanting not to act for any other company 
 save Henslowe's. He appears, however, both to have acted 
 and written for several companies of players. Heywood was 
 altogether the most fertile among the old dramatists, declar- 
 ing himself that he was concerned, in whole or in part, with 
 the composition of two hundred and twenty plays. Of these 
 some thirty-five alone have survived; and their author in- 
 terested himself as little as did Shakespeare in the preser- 
 vation or publication of any of them. Like Dekker and 
 Middleton after him, Heywood furnished pageants for the 
 city; and he contributed largely in his later years to pamphlet 
 literature. The two chronicle plays of HejAvood have already 
 received the brief mention which their relative merits deserve. 
 The bias of Heywood's dramatic art towards domestic drama 
 is patent in both these plays, Edward IV turning chiefly on 
 that sovereign's relations to Mistress Jane Shore and her 
 unhappy story, // Tou Know Not Me, lugging in much bio- 
 graphical matter concerning Sir Thomas Gresham and a 
 somewhat apocryphal nephew of his to eke out the account, 
 by way of obituary in 1604, of "the troubles of Queen Eliza- 
 beth." It is likely that between these two chronicle histories 
 and about 1596, Heywood made his strange adventure into 
 classical story, dramatizing ancient mythology as he found it in 
 Ovid, the Iliad, and elsewhere. The novelty of this departure 
 was justified by its success; for The Goldefi, Silver, Brazen and 
 Iron Ages, as the published titles ran, comprise no less than 
 five plays of disjointed and heterogeneous material, astonish- 
 ingly well done when the conditions are considered. Another 
 early venture of Heywood's links on to the heroical dramas 
 such as Greene's Orlando Furioso, Charlemagne, and The 
 Thracian Wonder. But here, as in the histories, the taste of 
 
"A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS" 179 
 
 the London citizen and his credulity as to romantic marvels 
 ruled to produce, in The Four Prentices of London, a pre- 
 posterous combination of knightly adventure with a glorifica- 
 tion of civic pride. It w^as the absurdities of these London 
 "prentices," sons to "the old Earl of Bulloigne," and the 
 impossible adventures by means of which each carved out for 
 himself a kingdom, that Beaumont later ridiculed in his 
 noteworthy dramatic burlesque, The Knight of the Burning 
 Pestle, 1607. But the citizens preferred their Prentices, and 
 Beaumont's clever satire remained to be appreciated by a 
 later and a more sophisticated generation. 
 
 However, the strength of Heywood lay not in these experi- 
 ments. He contributed an admirable play to the series which 
 contrasts the faithful wife with the prodigal son in The Wise 
 Woman of Hogs Jon, doubtless acted about 1604. And if he 
 is the author of The Fair Maid of the Exchange, he added, in 
 the valiant cripple of Fenchurch, a new and interesting figure 
 to the drama. A Woman Killed with Kindness, first published 
 in 1607, is Heywood's most distinctive work. In it two 
 situations of ordinary domestic life are interwoven into a plot 
 less straggling and careless than is usual with this author. I 
 can not find these situations so improbable and contrary to 
 experience as some of late have found them. A sister's 
 honor offered in barter for the satisfaction of a supposed debt 
 of honor incurred to an enemy, the seduction by an ingrate of 
 his benefactor's wife, a woman of seeming sense and virtue, 
 surely such are not situations of "naive unreality." This last, 
 indeed, with its attendant plight of an honorable man, wronged 
 by the woman he continues to love but with feelings chastened 
 by the offense which he abhors, is Hejrwood's favorite situ- 
 ation. It is the story of Jane Shore, her honorable husband, 
 and the king in Edward IV; of Frankford, his wife, and her 
 betrayer in A Woman Killed with Kindness; and of Wini- 
 fred, Young Geraldine, and his faithless friend in The Eng- 
 lish Traveler, a play of later date. In the supreme scene of 
 A Woman Killed with Kindness, when, having suffered her 
 paramour to escape, Frankford, the wronged husband, con- 
 
i8o VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 fronts his guilty wife who has fallen groveling at his feet, we 
 
 have the following dialogue : 
 
 Mistress Frankford. Oh, by what word,what title, or what name, 
 Shall I entreat your pardon ? Pardon! oh! 
 I am as far from hoping such sweet grace 
 As Lucifer from heaven. To call you husband — 
 
 me, most wretched! I have lost that name, 
 
 1 am no more your wife. 
 
 Frankford. Spare thou thy tears, for I will weep for thee: 
 And keep thy countenance, for I '11 blush for thee. 
 Now I protest, I think 't is I am tainted. 
 For I am most ashamed; and 't is more hard 
 For me to look upon thy guilty face. 
 Than on the sun's clear brow. What would'st thou speak 1 
 
 Mist. Frank. I would I had no tongue, no ears, no eyes, 
 No apprehension, no capacity. 
 When do you spurn me like a dog ? when tread me 
 Under your feet ? when drag me by the hair ? 
 Though I deserve a thousand thousand fold 
 More than you can inflict: yet, once my husband, 
 For womanhood, to which I am a shame. 
 Though once an ornament — even for his sake 
 That hath redeemed our souls, mark not my face, 
 Nor hack me with your sword; but let me go 
 Perfect and undeformed to my tomb. 
 
 Frank. My God, with patience arm me! Rise, nay, rise, 
 
 ONan! O Nan! 
 
 If neither fear of shame, regard of honor. 
 The blemish of my house, nor my dear love 
 Could have withheld thee from so lewd a fact. 
 Yet for these infants, these young harmless souls. 
 On whose white brows thy shame is charactered, 
 And grows in greatness as they wax in years, — 
 Look but on them, and melt away in tears. 
 Away with them! lest, as her spotted body 
 Hath stained their names with stripe of bastardy. 
 So her adulterous breath may blast their spirits 
 With her infectious thoughts. Away with them. 
 
 Mist. Frank. In this one life I die ten thousand deaths. 
 
LESSER PLAYS OF HEYWOOD 
 
 I8l 
 
 And the scene ends with the husband's solemnly declared 
 decision to banish his wife from his sight and that of their 
 children forever, and to leave her, with every creature comfort 
 about her, absolutely an exile from his life and love. 
 
 Such was not the usual fate, we may feel sure, of culprits 
 like Mistress Frankford, who sufficiently declares her expecta- 
 tion of the customary brutal justice of the time. Heywood 
 was a novel moralist for his age and preached — shall we call 
 them without offense — the bourgeois virtues of charity, 
 restraint, and self-control, alive to the superior quality of 
 human pathos over mere terror and revenge. It is this directr 
 ness, honesty, and the homely pathos that Heywood employs 
 in the treatment of situations, such as these that caused that 
 rare critic of our old drama, Charles Lamb, to dub him with 
 no extravagance of phrase, a "prose Shakespeare," and to 
 remark on his utter carelessness as to the preservation or 
 publicity of his plays: "Posterity is bound to take care that 
 a writer lose nothing by such a noble modesty." In his later 
 and lesser plays: in The Fair Maid of the West, 1603, breezy 
 comedy of adventure that it is; in Fortune by Land and Sea, 
 1607, which he wrote with Rowley; in the intrigue, classically 
 derived, o£The Captives (of doubtful date); even in the later 
 Challenge for Beauty and Royal King and Loyal Subject, in- 
 fluenced as both of these last were by the new romantic senti- 
 mentality of Fletcher, we find ever recurring in Heywood's 
 plays a charming unaffectedness of manner and a pathos that 
 is born only of a true humanity of heart. Heywood long sur- 
 vived most of his fellow-dramatists, dying, it is believed, as 
 late as 1648. 
 
 In estimating the value of literary work such as that of 
 Dekker and Heyw^ood, whatever the demands of absolute 
 criticism, we can not but take into consideration the conditions 
 under which much of that work was done. The little we know 
 of Dekker spells improvidence and its consequent privation 
 and suffering. The bookseller, Kirkman, relates of Hey- 
 wood that he wrote something every day, filling at times the 
 backs of tavern bills or other chance scraps of paper with 
 his notes and scribblings: a sufficient glimpse into the Bohe- 
 
i82 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 mianism of that playwright's surroundings. Both Heywood 
 and Dekker lived for years in a kind of bondage (shared by 
 many of their fellows) to Philip Henslowe, pawnbroker, man- 
 ager, and exploiter of the theater; for, whatever the lack of 
 specific proofs, there seems little reason to make out that a 
 vulgar, illiterate man, who grew rich on the labor that kept 
 others in beggary, was really a beneficent friend to actors 
 and playwrights and an enlightened encourager of the drama. 
 Fortunately for the modern historian of the drama, Henslowe 
 kept a species of general memorandum and account book in 
 v^hich he recorded day by day his dealings with plays and play- 
 w^rights. This work is known as Henslowe's Diary. It is 
 still preserved in Dulwich College which was founded by Ed- 
 ward AUeyn, the actor, Henslowe's son-in-law, with money 
 inherited at least in part from Henslowe. Henslowe's Diary 
 has been published more than once and of late carefully edited 
 and annotated,^ so that we have, now easily at hand, much in- 
 formation as to the theatrical -business of Elizabeth's day, at 
 least so far as it was conducted by the most successful and 
 aggressive of the rivals of Shakespeare. 
 
 Henslowe's Diary, the entries of which lie between 1592 
 and 1614, contains references by name to nearly every popular 
 dramatist of his immediate time; and the signatures of a num- 
 ber of them appear subscribed to agreements, obligations, and 
 other papers. Neither Shakespeare's name, nor Beaumont's, 
 nor Fletcher's, appears in Henslowe; for the obvious reason, 
 his dealings were not with them. But aside from Dekker and 
 Heywood, the lesser names of Munday, Chettle, Haughton, 
 Hathway, Drayton, Wilson, and others of the popular school 
 recur again and again in his pages, attached not only to plays 
 which remain to disclose the nature of the wares in which 
 Henslowe dealt, but to many more which time has happily 
 suffered to perish. Other men, some of them among the 
 greatest in later times, began in apprenticeship to Henslowe 
 and worked out into a larger field and a greater independence. 
 Such were Middleton, Chapman, Marston, Webster, and Jon- 
 son, each one of whom devised, wrote, and mended plays for 
 
 ^ See the ed. by W. W. Greg, 1 904-1 908. 
 
"HENSLOWE'S DIARY" 183 
 
 Henslowe, received advances in earnest for his promises, 
 accepted obligations, and was bailed by him, on occasion, out 
 of the debtors' prison. In the Diary may be found memoranda 
 of Henslowe's returns from the several theaters — the Rose, 
 the Sw^an, the Fortune and the playhouse at Nev^ington — in 
 which he was at various times interested; his expenditures for 
 various companies — the Earl of Sussex's, Lord Strange's, 
 the Queen's, and the Admiral's men; his loans to playwrights 
 and agreements with actors, advances of money to property 
 makers and costumers; and a large number of letters, more 
 or less concerned with dramatic affairs. From these pages we 
 learn that a new play cost Henslowe from six to eight pounds 
 sterling, and that the price of plays more than doubled before 
 the end of his life in 1616. With due allowance for the differ- 
 ence in the purchasing value of money, it is difficult to ima- 
 gine how the dramatic v/riters of the day contrived to make 
 even a modest living out of their vocation. This alone is 
 enough to explain why they so frequently turned to acting, to 
 pamphleteering, to pageant making, and such patronage as 
 might be secured; and this is why the only men who acquired 
 a competence out of their traffic with the stage were Alleyn, 
 Burbage, and Shakespeare, each one of whom was a manager 
 as well as an actor. Before we leave Henslowe's Diary one 
 caution is necessary to the unwary. The picture which this 
 book of accounts discloses is less an example of what we may 
 assume to have been likewise the conditions of Shakespeare's 
 authorship than a contrast of those conditions. Henslowe 
 was a shrewd man of business who built theaters where and 
 when they were v\^anted, catered to the taste of the moment, 
 and exploited art and, in exploiting it, degraded it as his kind 
 always does. The management of Shakespeare's company 
 is not to be conceived as in everyway ideal. Shakespeare and 
 Burbage, too, were men of business; but each v/as possessed of 
 the artist's temperament which admits the existence of ideals 
 even if it does not always follow, much less attain them. 
 Happily Shakespeare's age, with all Its materialism, retained 
 the Renaissance recognition and worship of art, and hence with 
 his three or four companies and a score of poets, with readi- 
 
1 84 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 ness to do anything in art or in business that might be con- 
 ceived of as popularly demanded, Henslowe battled for years 
 in vain for leadership over the Chamberlain's men who em- 
 ployed, besides Shakespeare, not more than two or three other 
 poets, and enjoyed some eighty per cent of the patronage of 
 the court. 
 
 A long and forbidding group of domestic dramas are those 
 most simply denominated the murder plays. They deal, 
 for the most part, with actual tragedies frequently of recent 
 occurrence, and may be regarded as among the productions of 
 our old drama that performed one of the most popular func- 
 tions of the modern newspaper. A larger proportion of plays 
 of this class than of some others have perished and there is no 
 need here to chronicle their forgotten titles. The first murder 
 play in point of time that remains extant is Arden of Fevers ham; 
 and it is, by universal consent, conceded to be the finest 
 example of its type. Arden was in print by 1592, and has 
 by some been dated back to a time prior to the Armada. The 
 story is that of the sordid murder, after several abortive 
 attempts, of Arden by his unfaithful wife, Alice, and her 
 paramour, a base serving-man named Mosbie. The source 
 in Holinshed is followed with close fidelity, and little attempt 
 is made to order the material artfully, much less to ennoble 
 the subject by flights of poetry or depths of moralizing. The 
 force of the tragedy lies in its simple and vivid realism, in the 
 unrelenting faithfulness with which the unknown author has 
 contrived to produce an artistic efi^ect by representing the 
 blind infatuation of Arden's wife for a worthless, menial 
 coward, and the weakness and fatalism of the husband's 
 own nature, until inevitable tragedy overtakes all. In its 
 robust and vigorous kind, it is not possible to find the equal 
 among English plays of Arden of Feversham; and this excel- 
 lence has led to the opinion — held by no less an authority than 
 the late Mr. Swinburne — that we have in this tragedy early 
 dramatic work of Shakespeare's. "Ease and restraint of 
 style," a mastery of humor and irony, and a depth of insight 
 into character and motive, these are some of the qualities in- 
 dubitably possessed by the author of Arden of Feversham, 
 
THE MURDER PLAYS 185 
 
 And all of these are Shakespeare's, if we judge him at large 
 and especially in his later work. But Shakespeare was no 
 such master of these maturer qualities of his art in 1590; and 
 it is difficult to conceive of the unrestrained and poetical pen 
 that wrote Romeo and Juliet, the early comedies, and Titus 
 Andronicus as capable of disclosing simultaneously the con- 
 trolled, if coarser, art of Arden of Feversham. Whoever the 
 author of this remarkable play, the suggestion of an indigenous 
 tragedy of everyday life, raised to a grade of artistic success 
 and permanence less by the graces of poetry than by the force 
 of uncompromising realism, was not realized in subsequent 
 dramas of the type. 
 
 Among minor murder plays may be named A Warning 
 for Fair Women, 1598, "containing the most tragical and 
 lamentable murder of Master George Sanders of London, 
 nigh Shooter's Hill, consented unto by his wife," and Two 
 Tragedies in One, 1 599, in which the contemporary killing 
 of one Beech, a chandler in Thames Street, is detailed with a 
 crude and rigid respect for the letter. A more important 
 murder play is the one-act Yorkshire Tragedy, 1605, wherein 
 the story of a young and well-born murderer, named Calverley, 
 was placed on the boards while the matter was as yet fresh in 
 the memories of the auditors, and in a kind of continuance of 
 Wilkins' Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 1 605, a domestic 
 play already mentioned. The "Shakespearean manner" 
 discovered by some in this brief dramatic sketch is due doubt- 
 less to a more or less successful imitation of the superficialities 
 of the master's style rather than to any closer contact with him. 
 It is fair, however, to add that The Yorkshire Tragedy was 
 acted by the King's company. But Shakespeare was not 
 its only poet. The later scattering murder plays of this 
 bourgeois type fall beyond the period with which this book is 
 concerned. 
 
 In the comedies that have thus far been described in this 
 chapter and in the more serious plays, to a certain extent as 
 well, the attitude of the author has been that of the simple 
 chronicler of what he sees before him, except for the tinge of 
 romance that enters into productions like The Four Prentices 
 
1 86 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 of London, Old Fortunatus, or The Merry Devil of Edmonton. 
 This in general is the attitude of Heywood, and of Dekker 
 in his eadier works. There is, however, another and very- 
 different aspect in which life may be presented successfuly 
 on the stage, and that is the satirical. In this method of 
 presentation the thing seen is not nearly so important as the 
 effect to be produced on the beholder; the essentials of Hfe 
 hold no such place as its conventions and accidental super- 
 ficialities. In a word, with the advent of satire the drama 
 becomes conscious Sometimes the satirical dramatist is a 
 moralist as we shall find in Jonson. At others, as in Middle- 
 ton, he stops short of any intention to teach or improve, con- 
 tent with the mere transcript of life in its comic, contradictory, 
 and scandalous departures from custom and convention. 
 
 Thomas Middleton was born in 1570 and received his 
 education at Cambridge and Gray's Inn. His work, despite 
 much coarseness, discloses a better bred man than either 
 Dekker or Hejrwood; but his career differs little from theirs 
 in the variety of his contributions to the drama, to civic 
 pageantry, and to pamphleteering. The earliest plays of 
 Middleton were written in conjunction with Munday, Dekker, 
 or Webster in the workhouse of Henslowe, and they comprise 
 refashionings of older plays of the chronicle type, such as 
 The Mayor of Queenborough, 1597, and an Entertainment to 
 King James, which he wrote with Dekker in 1604. Middle- 
 ton later frequently collaborated with William Rowley, and 
 some excellent work was the result. For the present we 
 are concerned with Middleton's comedies of London life and 
 manners which he wrote, for the most part, between 1604 and 
 16 14. These begin in Michaelmas Term (which equals the 
 modern phrase, London in the season, though it deals with a 
 different grade of life), and extend through J Trick to Catch 
 the Old One, A Mad World my Masters, Tour Five Gallants 
 to A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and No Wit no Help Like 
 a Woman s. These titles are themselves descriptive of the 
 subject-matter of these comedies and this enumeration by 
 no means exhausts the list. In Middleton's comedies recur 
 again and again the young spendthrift, going the pace, eternal 
 
COMEDIES OF MIDDLETON 187 
 
 darling of those that delight in the theater; the usurious 
 money-lender whom we laugh to see hoist with his own petard; 
 uncles and fathers duped, trusting maids deceived but ever 
 faithful; braggarts beaten; fools despoiled and abused; and 
 wit forever triumphant. Middleton's intention, in a word, 
 was the presentation on the stage of a witty and satirical picture 
 of contemporary London life. He avoided any attempt at 
 romance, such as Greene and Dekker were prone to, and he 
 escaped the moralist's attitude of Jonson as well. Middleton's 
 search was not for the charm of the unusual, and he had no 
 uncommon insight into common things; nor did he, on the 
 other hand, paint his world to show how wicked it was. His 
 words might have been: "This is the London of my day; 
 come, let us laugh about it"; and, having amused you with 
 the truth as he saw it, he has done all. In the accomplish- 
 ment of this result Middleton employed not only a discerning 
 eye and a wide if superficial experience in life, but the con- 
 structive arts of a consummate dramatist and a ready, fluent 
 style, in all respects adequate to his purpose. Middleton is 
 the truest of realists, but he is commonly disappointing; not 
 that we expect poetry here — it belongs little to his subjects 
 — but that there is a worldliness about him, a willingness to 
 extenuate moral turpitude and explain away moral upright- 
 ness that, however it be justified by human experience at 
 times, is displeasing in art. 
 
 This careless, witty, conscienceless, satirical comedy 
 became the most prevalent of its time and was imitated by 
 several of Middleton's contemporaries, whose ideas of life 
 were sounder than his own. Thus Dekker in collaboration 
 with John Webster (later to make so great a name in romantic 
 tragedy) wrote, between 1603 and 1606, two plays. Westward 
 Hoe and Northward Hoe, that mark the very depths of the 
 gross and vicious realism to which the comedy of the day oc- 
 casionally descended: and lesser imitations, among which 
 Lodowick Barrey's one comedy. Ram Alley, 1609, and Na- 
 thaniel Field's Woman is a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies, 
 both 161 1, are the best, followed in quick succession. Even 
 when plays were not wholly given up to this mode of comedy, 
 
1 88 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 when the romantic ruled or their scene was translated ta 
 outlandish countries, an under plot or episode frequently- 
 maintained the favorite satirical picture of contemporary man- 
 ners which no veil of Italian lawn nor Spanish domino could 
 entirely disguise. 
 
 When all has been said, however, the greatest of the disci- 
 ples of Middleton in the comedy of manners was John Fletcher, 
 a dramatist destined to outstrip him in the multiplicity of his 
 gifts, and this notwithstanding the fact that there is a greater 
 Middleton than the Middleton of the comedy of manners. 
 The best of Fletcher's comedies of London life, to which we 
 shall return later in this book, only glorify, by means of a 
 somewhat finer perception of its possibilities, the kind of 
 drama that Middleton had rendered by his talents popular on 
 the stage. 
 
 But, as already suggested, Middleton's dramatic activity 
 was not confined to comedies of manners. The earliest play 
 with which his name has been associated. The Mayor of Queen- 
 borough, 1597, is a chronicle history converted into a romantic 
 drama; and The Old Law, 1599, ^ capital farce on what in 
 our contemporary phrase we denominate "Oslerism"; Blurt, 
 Master Constable, 1601, and The Phanix, both have a like 
 romantic cast. William Rowley, with whom Middleton was 
 associated in many plays, was an actor as well as a playwright. 
 Rowley was likewise the author of several pamphlets of the 
 type made popular by Greene and Dekker, among which A 
 Search for Money, 1609, descriptive of the low life of the city, 
 is typical. In 1607 we find Rowley in collaboration with 
 Day and Wilkins in the composition of a formless production 
 for the stage called The Travails of Three English Brothers; 
 and it is not unlikely that Rowley's unaided effort, A Shoe- 
 maker a Gentleman, followed within two or three years. This 
 vigorous comedy is, like The Four Prentices of Heywood, a 
 direct appeal to the bourgeois prejudices of the citizens of 
 London; for therein is told of the apprenticeship of a Roman 
 prince, Crispianus, to a London shoemaker and of much else, 
 familiar as well as heroic and strange. At what time Rowley 
 rewrote an earlier play, Uter Pendragon, into The Birth of 
 
"A FAIR QUARREL" 189 
 
 Merlin, first published in 1662 as "by Shakespeare and Row- 
 ley," it would be difficult to say. This play, like The Shoemaker, 
 is far from devoid of merit, and though coarse to an extreme 
 in parts, is characterized by a certain honesty of purpose and 
 command of boisterous humor that give Rowley his place. 
 Rowley's greatest drama, the tragedy All 's Lost by Lust, 
 belongs to a period beyond the limits of this book. His 
 association as a collaborator with Middleton began about 
 1614 by the temporary union of the companies for which each 
 had been previously writing and continued until the death 
 of Middleton in 1627. The most noteworthy products of 
 this joint authorship. The Spanish Gipsy and The Changeling 
 (by all odds the greatest play in which Middleton had a hand), 
 also fall beyond us. But in the very year of the death of 
 Shakespeare these two playwrights produced A Fair Quarrel, 
 raising and disposing of an interesting question in an age of 
 dueling: dare a man fight in a quarrel unless he believes that 
 he defends the truth ? The Elizabethan age had its problems 
 as we have ours. The Honest Whore, A Woman Killed with 
 Kindness, A Fair Quarrel, are problem plays in the Elizabethan 
 sense. This last is a fine serious drama of its class and de- 
 serves, in its virile directness, the praise that is evoked from 
 Charles Lamb in contrast to "the inspid levelling morality" 
 to which the modern stage of Lamb's time, if not of ours, was 
 tied. "A Puritanical obtuseness of sentiment," continues the 
 critic, "a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among us 
 instead of the vigorous passions, and virtues clad in flesh and 
 blood, with which the old dramatists present us. Those 
 noble and liberal casuists could discern in the differences, the 
 quarrels, the animosities of man, a beauty and truth of moral 
 feeling, no less than in the iterately inculcated duties of for- 
 giveness and atonement. . , . To know the boundaries of 
 honor, to be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance which 
 shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth, to 
 esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a parent is 
 to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious cow- 
 ardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be 
 frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace 
 
190 VERNACULAR DRAMA 
 
 blunting that sword which the imaginary strokes of a supposed 
 false imputation had put so keen an edge upon but lately: 
 to do, or to imagine this done in a feigned story, asks something 
 more of a moral sense, somewhat a greater delicacy of percep- 
 tion in questions of right and wrong, than goes to the writing 
 of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honor 
 as opposed to the laws of the land, or a commonplace against 
 duelling." The main plot of ^ Fair Quarrel is alone enough 
 to atone for all the moral lapses of Middleton's comedies of 
 manners. To what degree the ruder but more generous nature 
 of Rowley was responsible for the success of this excellent 
 drama we need not here inquire. 
 
 Any further pursuit of the comedy of manners would lead 
 us either into a wider consideration of Fletcher or into a con- 
 trast with the Jonsonian comedy of humors. Both topics 
 will be best treated below. In the vernacular domestic drama 
 discussed in this chapter, whether it display itself in the direct 
 realism of Dekker, the homely pathos of Heywood, or the 
 flippant actualism of Middleton, we may realize better than in 
 the contemplation of the drama in its higher types how truly 
 of the people the Elizabethan dramatists were. This is not 
 where the poetry and the ideality of Elizabethan literature 
 reside, but where a vigorous part of its truth is to be found: 
 and art ceases to be art alike when tethered hand and foot to 
 the actualities of the mundane world or when those bonds are 
 wholly burst to leave it a disemfeodied ghost at the mercy of 
 every unbeliever's incredulity. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 LATER ANTHOLOGIES AND LYRICS TO BE 
 SET TO MUSIC 
 
 The miscellany made up of the work of several authors 
 continued to be the accepted mode of publishing lyrical verse; 
 and in most cases the fiction at least of reluctance on the part 
 of the author to appear in print v^as sedulously maintained. 
 Brittons Bower of Delight, 1591, was a pirated collection, trad- 
 ing on the well-known name of Nicholas Breton and including 
 other work besides his own. The Phoenix' Nest, edited in 1593 
 by one"R. S. of the Inner Temple," whose identity Is unre- 
 coverable, contains much of the best poetry of Lodge as well 
 as more of Breton; and The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, is made 
 up of poetry piratically culled from still more recent poets 
 who were attracting the public eye. It is in this last anthology 
 that Marlowe's "Come live with me" was first printed, be- 
 sides two important sonnets of Shakespeare. And it v/as in 
 The Passionate Pilgrim that several fine poems of Richard 
 Barnfield (chief among them "As it fell upon a day") were 
 attributed to Shakespeare, to cling to his name, despite proof 
 to the contrary, and be often reprinted as his. England's 
 Helicon, the richest of Elizabethan miscellanies, was published 
 by John Bodenham, a general collector and editor, in 1600. 
 The poetry that it gathered belonged to a somewhat earlier 
 period than that of publication, so that it really precedes The 
 Passionate Pilgrim as to the authors that it represents. Spen- 
 ser, Sidney, Constable, Breton, Lodge, and Peele are the 
 familiar names most frequently recurring in England's Helicon; 
 and there is still about its many graceful Italianate poems not 
 a little aflFectation of shepherds and shepherdesses. We may 
 omit here more than a mention of certain irregular collec- 
 tions such as the several poems on the theme of "The Phoenix 
 and the Turtle," including work by Shakespeare, Jonson, 
 
 191 
 
192 LATER ANTHOLOGIES 
 
 Marston, and Chapman, affixed to that somewhat mysterious 
 publication known as Chester's Love's Martyr, 1601; and mere 
 gatherings of extracts Hke Belvedere (later called The Garden 
 of the Muses) and England's Parnassus, both 1600. And it is 
 unnecessary for us to be misled into confusing the fanciful 
 titles which individual poets gave at times to their works — 
 Munday's Banquet of Dainty Conceits or Breton's Arhor of 
 Amorous Devices — with the titles of true anthologies. 
 
 The last important miscellany of lyrical verse in Elizabeth's 
 reign is Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, published in iboa.. 
 Francis Davison was the eldest son of William Davison, Eliza- 
 beth's unfortunate privy councilor and secretary of state whom 
 she disgraced for carrying her warrant for the execution of 
 Mary Stuart to the Council. Francis was educated at Gray's 
 Inn, where a masque of his was performed in 1594. Davison 
 and his father were adherents of the Earl of Essex, like South- 
 ampton, Shakespeare's patron, and so many hopeful younger 
 spirits of the time; and the young poet lost all chance of pre- 
 ferment in consequence. Francis made little of the law, and 
 in 1602 turned his attention to publishing the poetry he had 
 written and collected. There is no trace of him after 1608, 
 when the will of his father was probated. He is supposed, 
 however, to have lived until about 1618. As to his Rhapsody^ 
 it contains, besides his own poetry (which is distinguished for 
 its erotic fervor and directness), that of his two brothers, some 
 of Sir John Davies, of Donne, Sylvester, translator of Du 
 Bartas, of Sir Henry Wotton, Thomas Campion, and much 
 anonymous verse. The Poetical Rhapsody is full of sonnets 
 and madrigals and represents poetry, mostly written at least 
 a dozen years later than that contained in England's Helicon. 
 A dozen years meant much in this age of peculiar literary 
 quickening. Altogether this collection most fittingly opens 
 a new period. 
 
 We have already traced in brief the history of the Eliza- 
 bethan lyric and found it flourishing successively in pastoral 
 form and in the sonnet. We have seen how general was the 
 lyrical gift, how varied the nature of the poetry of this type, 
 and how it was governed, in the main, by that sensuous delight 
 
ELIZABETHAN MUSIC 193 
 
 in the beauty of the visible world that is the distinctive artistic 
 note of the Renaissance. Upon the v^avering of the sonnet 
 fashion the attention of lyrists w^as directed chiefly to the writ- 
 ing of songs to be set to music. To these as they occur first 
 in the song-books of the time and secondly in the dramas we 
 now turn. 
 
 The early skill and prominence of the English in music 
 has long been recognized. Indeed, the earliest period of 
 modern music, that extending from 1400 to the uprise of 
 Italian music with Palestrina in the latter half of the sixteenth 
 century, has been designated by historians of music as the 
 English period. Within this time the Flemings alone could 
 hold their own with English musicians and composers, and 
 it was not until Italian influence on literature had reached full 
 flood that the corresponding influence in the sister art became 
 at all important. From early times, too, in England the 
 essential unity of poetry and song had received recognition. 
 The poet and the musician frequently united in the same per- 
 son, as in the case of King Henry VIII, to descend to no meaner 
 example. Moreover, not only were poems of a distinctly 
 lyrical nature habitually set to music, but narrative verses and 
 ballads, often of considerable length, were actually sung. As 
 to some of his lyrical Posies, Gascoigne remarks on the margin, 
 "these have very sweet notes adapted unto them, the which 
 I would you should enjoy as well as myself." Robert South- 
 well, the Jesuit father, proposed that his fervid religious 
 poetry be sung; and so late as 1622, Patrick Hannay, a very 
 obscure poetling, furnished the music for the first stanza of 
 his poem, Philomela, with the unabashed intent that the re- 
 maining ninety or more stanzas be sung to the same tune. 
 
 The cultivation of music in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 
 was universal. To play neither the lute nor the cithern, to 
 prove unequal, whether young man or woman, to bearing your 
 part at sight singing or to "running a discant," as the freer 
 song was called, was to raise question of your nurture and 
 gentle training. The very carters and tinkers caroled at their 
 trades; and the weavers became proverbial for the excellence 
 of their singing. Elizabeth prided herself on her technical 
 
 ^ 
 
194 
 
 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 skill on the virginal, and was regaled when she dined in state 
 with kettle-drum and trumpets. The establishment of the 
 royal chapel was a considerable one, no less than sixty voices 
 being at times maintained therein at the royal expense. The 
 queen is said to have expended more than a thousand pounds 
 a year in the maintenance of the royal music; and positions, 
 such as those that we have already seen men like Edwards and 
 Hunnis occupying, were of dignity and of no small emolument. 
 The Elizabethan musician was a man of very special training. 
 Even a mere lutenist was often a university-bred man, and 
 no one could pretend to posts of importance in connection with 
 the queen's service, sacred or secular, who was not a doctor 
 of music of Oxford or Cambridge. The modern musician 
 who lives only by his dexterity of voice or skill on some one 
 instrument appears to have been little known to the time. 
 Where known at all, he was placed in the category of masters 
 of fencing or dancing. By the term musician, in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, a creative artist and composer was understood. 
 
 The Elizabethan song-book commonly supplied both music 
 and words, and was printed either in separate parts of alto, 
 basso, and so forth, or these parts were so arranged on the page 
 that three or four singers might sit on opposite sides of a table 
 and sing each his own part. The sacred song-book was of 
 course made up of hymns; the secular, usually of madrigals 
 and airs. These terms had very definite meanings which we 
 have lost in modern times. By a madrigal, in music, was 
 meant a polyphonic piece for several voices without accom- 
 paniment; while an air was acccompanied and, whether written 
 for one voice or for several, was not in counterpoint. As a 
 form of poetry, the Elizabethan madrigal is a poem of lyrical 
 or epigrammatic nature, integral like the sonnet, that is, not 
 composed of a succession of like stanzas. The madrigal, 
 metrically, is often made up of a system of tercets, followed 
 by a couplet or more; but none of these features are constant. 
 In length the madrigal ranges from half a dozen verses to 
 sixteen or even occasionally more; and the meter varies for 
 the most part independently of the rimes, and in verses of 
 differing lengths, most commonly lines of five and of three 
 
THE MADRIGAL 195 
 
 stresses. Lastly, a preference is shown for feminine or double 
 rimes over single ones, a trait derived from the madrigal's 
 Italian original and referable to the English attempt to repro- 
 duce syllable for syllable for the meter's sake. A perfect little 
 madrigal in nearly all the conditions of the species as well as: 
 in grace and in epigrammatic point is this, entitled "In Praise 
 of Two," from Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, the author un- 
 known. 
 
 Faustina hath the fairer face, 
 
 And Phyllida the feater grace; 
 Both have mine eye enriched: 
 
 This sings full sweetly with her voice; 
 
 Her fingers make as sweet a noise: 
 Both have mine ear bewitched. 
 
 Ah me! sith Fates have so provided,. 
 
 My heart, alas, must be divided. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that composers, with the sudden 
 •popularity of madrigal singing, held with any degree of strict- 
 ness in this matter of words, to any such rules as these of their 
 Italian originals. The Hne between a short poem of nearly 
 any meter and a madrigal was soon obliterated, and the quat- 
 rain and couplet asserted themselves (as in the sonnet) as 
 the arrangements of rime peculiarly English. A responsible 
 collection of English Madrigals in the Time of Shakespeare ^ 
 discloses that the musicians of the age set everything to the 
 fashionable part song: pastorals and experiments in foreign 
 versification by Sidney, songs of Jonson's masques and of 
 Shakespeare's plays, an occasional sonnet of lighter sentiment, 
 and even several stanzas of The Faery Queen. 
 
 As to the introduction of the madrigal into England, it is 
 related that the Earl of Arundel, visiting Italy in 1568, "em- 
 ployed Tarviso, an Italian musician, to compose a set for him. 
 The word "madrigal," however, seems not to have been em- 
 ployed until the first song-book of the ty^e.,Musa Transalpina, 
 collected by Nicholas Yonge, a London merchant, trading to 
 Italy and enthusiastically fond of music. Musa Transalpina 
 was published by William Byrd in 1588. In his preface 
 
 *By F. A. Cox, 1899; see pp. 13, 14. 
 
196 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 Yonge writes: "I endeavored to get into my hands all such 
 English songs as were praiseworthy, and amongst others I had 
 the hap to find in the hands of some of my good friends certain 
 Italian madrigals translated most of them five years ago by 
 a gentleman for his private delight." Two years later Thomas 
 Watson, the lyrist, published The First Set of Italian Madrigals 
 *' Englished not to the sense of the original ditty, but after the 
 affection of the note." This statement of the title should dis- 
 pose of the notion that Watson, who showed himself expert 
 enough in Italian elsewhere, was ignorant or careless of his 
 sources. He was after words that would set to the music 
 whether sung in English or in the original. It is of interest to 
 note that Watson's book was strictly contemporary, drawing 
 on but four collections of Italian madrigals, none of them dat- 
 ing earlier than 1580. 
 
 From this point onward song-book after song-book issued 
 from the press. A list of books of this kind, appearing be- 
 tween the time of the Armada and 1630, contains no less than 
 ninety items, and discloses an equal number of composers. 
 Sixty-six of these publications appeared between 1595 and 1615; 
 and fifty, between 1600 and the year of Shakespeare's death. 
 Hence the inference that the vogue of the song followed that 
 of the sonnet, as the sonnet had followed the pastoral mode in 
 popular estimation. 
 
 In turning to a consideration of those who were responsible 
 for these song-books, we find, as a rule, only the names of the 
 writers of the music given; at times it may be suspected that 
 the name on the title-page is little more than that of the pub- 
 lisher or collector. For example, William Byrd, described as 
 *'the central musical figure of the Elizabethan age, celebrated 
 early and living late," enjoyed for some years the monopoly 
 of music publishing which he sold later or shared with Thomas 
 Est and Thomas Morley. Byrd was certainly no more than 
 the publisher of Musa Transalpina; but he was likewise a 
 composer of note, as his Psalms, Sonnets and Songs, 1 588, 
 Songs of Sundry Natures, 1 589, and several other collections 
 attest. Once more, we have seen how the madrigal writers 
 in their search for words set anything that they could lay theii 
 
ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 197 
 
 hands on to music. But when the song-books are examined, 
 they disclose, nevertheless, a large proportion of lyrics, in- 
 capable of identification in the works of known poets, a matter 
 that gives rise to the question how far the composers of the 
 day may have been their own poets. On this point Mr. 
 Bullen (who of all can best speak for the Elizabethan lyric) is 
 of opinion that "as a rule composers are responsible only for 
 the music"; while Mr. Davey, author of an excellent History 
 of Music, says: "It appears to me that, as a rule, the poems 
 and the music were simultaneously conceived; I ground this 
 belief on the detailed parallelism in the matter of the successive 
 stanzas in the airs through which the same music fits them 
 all." A better argument might be founded on the uniformity 
 of poetical style which at times accompanies the musical work 
 of the same composer. Although, as to this, it has been 
 affirmed that all the words of Morley's First Book of Ballets, 
 1595, are from the pen of Michael Drayton. In the works of 
 the greatest man of this class, Thomas Campion, at least, we 
 are certain that the two arts were fittingly and indissolubly 
 wedded. And for this we may cite his own words "to the 
 reader" prefixed to his Third Book of Airs: "In these English 
 airs I have chiefly aimed to couple my words and notes lovingly 
 together; which will be much for him to do that hath not 
 power over both." 
 
 Among the several musicians who may thus not impro- 
 perly be entitled to a place in the choir of Elizabethan lyrists, 
 may be named John Wilbye, author of two sets of Madrigals 
 in 1598 and 1609, and famed as "the greatest of English mad- 
 rigalian composers"; Thomas Morley, the prolific author of 
 no less than seven like works between his Canzonets of 1593 
 and his First Book of Airs, 1600; and John Dowland, the 
 celebrated lutenist, author of four books of Airs before 1601. 
 On the other hand these musicians often set the poetry of others 
 to music. Thus Morley's First Book contains the original 
 setting of Shakespeare's "It was a lover and his lass. And 
 the songs which Richard Johnson composed for The Tempest 
 are published in Cheerful Airs and Ballads, 1 660. The memory 
 of Dowland, likewise, has been associated with Shakespeare 
 
198 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 because of the fine sonnet, "In praise of music and sweet 
 poetry," attributed by Jaggard, a piratical publisher, to the 
 great dramatist and commonly republished since as his, though 
 it is really Barnfield's. Dowland carried the fame of English 
 musicians to the continent and was for years lutenist to the 
 king of Denmark and to other great people abroad. 
 
 Other names of madrigalists there are: Orlando Gibbons, 
 organist of Canterbury Cathedral; Philip Rossiter, associated 
 with Campion and not without a place in the history of the 
 drama; Thomas Weelkes, of whom we know little; Robert 
 Jones, of whom we know nothing. Of Tobias Hume, we are 
 only certain that he was a captain. The quality of the poetry in 
 the song-books of these men occasionally reaches rare heights 
 and lyric perfection. More commonly it rises little above the 
 general level of the Elizabethan lyric. Take this one perfect 
 stanza from Tobias Hume's First Part of Airs, French, Polish 
 and Others Together, 1605, which Mr. Bullen picked out for 
 the text, so to speak, of one of his collections of lyrics : 
 
 love! they wrong thee much 
 That say thy sweet is bitter. 
 
 When thy rich fruit is such 
 
 As nothing can be sweeter; 
 Fair house of joy and bliss, 
 Where truest pleasure is, 
 
 I do adore thee: 
 
 1 know thee what thou art, 
 I serve thee with my heart. 
 
 And fall before thee. 
 
 Quite as perfect for the music of their words are lines such as 
 these: from The Muses' Garden of Delights^ collected in 1601 
 by Robert Jones : 
 
 The sea hath many thousand sands. 
 
 The sun hath motes as many. 
 The sky is full of stars, and love 
 
 As full of woe as any: 
 Believe me that do know the elf 
 And make no trial for thyself; 
 
THOMAS CAMPION 199 
 
 or these lines, half whimsical yet deeply serious, from the same 
 choice collection: 
 
 How many new years have grown old 
 Since first thy servant old was new! 
 How many long hours have I told 
 
 Since first my love was vowed to you! 
 And yet, alas! she doth not know 
 Whether her servant love or no. 
 
 But when all has been said, in Thomas Campion we reach 
 the prince of this tuneful realm of Elizabethan song. That 
 so delightful a minor poet should have needed rediscovery 
 towards the end of the nineteenth century is a matter all but 
 inexplicable, for Campion's reputation was commensurate 
 with his talents in his own age. The date of his birth is un- 
 certain. He was educated at Cambridge and Gray's Inn, 
 and published Latin Epigrams as early as 1594. His song- 
 books were printed between the years 1601 and 1619. In 1602 
 appeared his Observations in the Art of English Poesy, in which 
 he attacked "the vulgar and inartistic custom of riming" and 
 attempted to prove that English metrical composition was 
 faulty in not following the classics. Campion was ably an- 
 swered in the next year by Daniel, who expressed his wonder 
 that such an attack should proceed from one whose "com- 
 mendable rimes, albeit now himself an enemy to rime, have 
 given to the world the best notice of his worth." Later in life 
 Campion became a distinguished practitioner of medicine, 
 and held, as well, an honorable place among contemporary 
 musicians, alike for his compositions and for his excellent 
 treatise, A New Way to Make Four Parts in Counterpoint, 
 published in 1613. Although a conservative in theory as to 
 versification. Campion was remarkably liberal as to music 
 and wrote airs in preference to madrigals of set purpose. He 
 says : "What epigrams are in poetry, the same are airs in music; 
 then in their chief perfection when they are short and well 
 seasoned." 
 
 The inspiration of Campion is more directly classical than 
 that of almost any lyrist of his immediate time. Campion's 
 limpidity of diction, his choice placing and selection of words, 
 
200 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 his perfect taste and melody, and his devotion to love, all are 
 qualities v^^hich disclose how steeped he was in the poetry of 
 Tibullus and Catullus. Unlike most of his fellow lyrists, 
 Campion was practically uninfluenced by the contemporary 
 poetry of Italy and France; at least his name appears not in 
 the black lists of pilferers and plagiarists from these literatures 
 in which our contemporary doctors' theses so revel and delight. 
 But Campion's originality is not entirely confined to his aptness 
 of expression. He keeps constantly before him his idea of the 
 epigrammatic quality of such verse as he regards fit to set to 
 airs. Take for example the following: 
 
 Thou art not fair, for all thy red and white. 
 
 For all those rosy ornaments in thee; 
 Thou art not sweet, though made of mere delight, 
 
 Nor fair nor sweet, unless thou pity me. 
 I will not sooth thy fancies: thou shalt prove 
 That beauty is no beauty without love. 
 
 Yet love not me, nor seek thou to allure 
 
 My thoughts with beauty, were it more divine. 
 
 Thy smiles and kisses I can not endure, 
 
 I '11 not be wrapt up in those arms of thine: 
 
 Now show it, if thou be a woman right, — 
 
 Embrace, and kiss, and love me in despite. 
 
 The turn here at the end almost equals that of the much praised 
 sonnet of Drayton, "Since there's no help." Another dis- 
 tinguishing quality of Campion is the ease and ductility, so to 
 speak, of his verse. What he does, he does so readily that it 
 hardly seems difficult. 
 
 Come, cheerful day, part of my life to me: 
 
 For while thou view'st me with thy fading light, 
 
 Part of my life doth still depart with thee. 
 And I still onward haste to my last night. 
 
 Time's fatal wings forever forward fly: 
 
 So every day we live a day we die. 
 
 Here not a word is inverted, unusual or turned to the slightest 
 figurative use, and yet the eff^ect is perfect of its kind. Cam- 
 pion, as this stanza suggests, was not quite wholly an amorist. 
 
SONGS OF THE DRAMA 201 
 
 Among his poems will be found no inconsiderable number 
 possessed by a simple and quiet religious fervor; for the fash- 
 ion of the song-book, like that of the sonnet and other lyrical 
 poetry, included divine as w^ell as secular themes. 
 
 That the drama should have contained songs is as natural 
 as that the drama should have contained comedy; and the 
 origin of song and comedy is in the English drama referable 
 to much the same conditions, chief among them a desire to 
 amuse. If we turn back as far as the moralities and interludes 
 we shall find the few snatches of song, there indicated, com- 
 monly put into the mouth of the roisterer, the vice, or the devil; 
 though godly songs are not altogether wanting. The earliest 
 regular comedies are full of songs : there are some half-dozen 
 in Ralph Roister Doister, which the excellent old school-master, 
 Nicholas Udall, never found in his master Piautus; all are 
 sprightly, though of little value from a literary point of view. 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle, the other "earliest comedy," con- 
 tains one famous bacchanal song, "Back and side go bare, go 
 bare," which alone is enough to immortalize that rude old 
 play. For genuine spirit and for the vividness of the medieval 
 tavern scene which it suggests, this song deserves a place be- 
 side "The Jolly Beggars" of Burns. In the tragedies and the 
 earlier histories there was little opportunity for the introduction 
 of songs; though there is at least one in Peele's David and 
 Bethsahe of merit. Marlowe has none in his plays, and Greene 
 lavished his lyrical gift upon his pamphlets. So far as we 
 know, the earliest English dramatist of note to appreciate to 
 the full the value of the incidental lyric in the drama and to 
 raise that species of song-writing to an art was John Lyly. 
 Epigrammatic though the songs of the Euphuist are, they de- 
 serve an honorable place in the poetry of their time; though 
 we may share in the late Mr. Henley's doubt if such poetry be 
 lyrical. Recall Lyly's best known song, "Cupid and my 
 Campaspe played at cards for kisses," and we can see how 
 artificial and witty this art of epigram really is. Then read 
 one of the few exquisite lyrics of Thomas Dekker, nearly all 
 of them contributed to plays, and we recognize the difference. 
 If asked to name one lyric and one only which should illustrate 
 
202 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 to the full the music, the sincerity, and the spontaneity of Eliz- 
 abethan poetry, I should choose neither the profound depth 
 of a Shakespearean sonnet nor the pastoral sweetness of Breton 
 or Greene, the haughty insolent vein of Raleigh nor the su- 
 premely original and at times contorted thought of Donne; 
 but Dekker's dainty lyrical sigh on " Sweet Content " 
 
 Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers ? 
 
 O sweet content! 
 Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed ? 
 
 O punishment! 
 Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed 
 To add to golden numbers, golden numbers ? 
 O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! 
 Work apace, apace, apace, apace; 
 Honest labor bears a lovely face; 
 Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny! 
 
 Can'st drink the waters of the crisped spring ? 
 
 O sweet content! 
 Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears ? 
 
 O punishment! 
 Then he that patiently want's burden bears 
 No burden bears, but is a king, a king! 
 O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! 
 Work apace, apace, apace, apace; 
 Honest labor bears a lovely face; 
 Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny! 
 
 Almost equally beautiful though less musical is Dekker's 
 grave lyric, "O sorrow, sorrow, say where dost thou dwell," 
 the more especially when we remember how the author spent 
 his days in unremittent drudgery, a slave to pawn-broking old 
 Henslowe, always in poverty and often in the debtor's prison. 
 There is something inexpressibly touching in the thought of 
 such a man singing of sweet content, and of the inequality of 
 fortune,the withering of virtue's fair branches, and the dwelling- 
 place of sorrow. If it is the man beneath that is precious in 
 literature, we can spare many sweet sonnets and gay courtly 
 fopperies for a few poems such as these. Closely allied to 
 Dekker in spirit is Nash, the writer of even fewer lyrics. It 
 
THE SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE 203 
 
 is in Summer's Last Will, Nash's one drama, that we find his 
 lyrics, "Fading Summer" and "Death's Summons." These 
 two poems assume to us a new and terrible import when we 
 remember the grim and horrible visitant which was London's 
 every few years, the plague. This play was written in a plague 
 year and the refrain of "Death's Summons" consists of the 
 very words of the official inscription, "Lord have mercy on 
 us," which, with a cross, was affixed to the doors of what 
 were called "visited houses." 
 
 The wider popularity on which the contemporary drama 
 was based as compared with the choicer art of the musical 
 composers results in the circumstance that lyrics incidental 
 to plays are far less the reflection of foreign models. The 
 latter, however, reflect passing fashions in English poetry with 
 much faithfulness. The songs of Lyly and Peele are full of 
 the pastoral and classical spirit preceding 1590. Shakespeare's 
 earliest comedies exhibit the same tendency. The two 
 gentlemen of Verona were, neither of them, shepherds, but a 
 pretty song of that play asks: 
 
 Who is Sylvia ? what is she 
 
 That al] our swains commend her ? 
 
 The succeeding sonnet humor is well illustrated in Love's 
 Labor 's Lost, although none of the sonnets of that play are used 
 for songs. The sonnet does not ordinarily set well to music, 
 as the decasyllabic line is rather long for the average song- 
 phrase, and the integral form cannot be split into short stanzas. 
 None the less sonnets have been so set. Some of Campion's 
 airs have words in th's form. 
 
 The songs of Shakespeare are scattered through his plays 
 and are of a lyrical beauty and variety which it is impossible 
 to overpraise. More than twenty of them have been trans- 
 mitted to us with music actually or traditionally known to 
 have been used within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; 
 and this number is materially raised by the circumstance that 
 several of them exist in more than one contemporary version. 
 Within the range of Shakespeare's own life Thomas Morley, 
 Richard Johnson, Robert Jones, John Wilson, and other com- 
 
204 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 posers, unknown, set songs to music in As Ton Like It, Muck 
 Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, The 
 Tempest and other plays; whilst some of the poems of The 
 Passionate Pilgrim were set by Thomas Weelkes and anony- 
 mous composers. As might be expected a large number of 
 these songs must have been sung to melodies already well 
 known. Whether some of them were set before the perform- 
 ance of the play and thus added to its attraction, or after, be- 
 cause of the popularity of the words, we can not say. The 
 traditional tunes which have been handed down for generations 
 have been more or less modernized in the process; but many 
 of them contain enough of their probable original to support 
 their claims. With the beautiful and to us old-fashioned set- 
 tings of Shakespeare's songs by Dr. Purcell, by Hilton, Ban- 
 nister, and others, in the generations after Shakespeare's 
 death, we are not here concerned. 
 
 If the body of lyrics incidental to plays and masques be 
 compared with an equal amount of lyrical verse of the period 
 from Lyly to Ford, the dramatists will be found to hold their 
 own in variety and originality of subject, in diversity and 
 adaptability of meter, and to possess above all their contem- 
 poraries — not even excepting Campion and his group — the 
 power of making words sing. Here as in everything that he 
 touched Shakespeare is the greatest. There are no lyrics like 
 his, from dainty little ditties such as "It was a lover and his 
 lass" or the fairy music of Puck and Ariel, to the exquisite 
 "Dirge" of Cytnbeline: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun." 
 If you are visited by doubts as to whether so ethereal a thing as , 
 you suppose a lyric to be, can be made to present a scene of 
 homely realism and yet preserve its quality as a lyric, read the 
 song, "When icicles hang by the wall," with which Love's La- 
 bor 's Lost closes, and your doubts will be forever laid to rest. 
 If you can withstand the gross temptations of "Back and side 
 go bare, go bare," be careful not to get some of Shakespeare's 
 lilting bacchanal rimes into your head, lest you fall into an 
 undue appreciation of "cakes and ale." 
 
 All of the predecessors of Shakespeare were accomplished 
 metrists and the diversity and inventiveness of their lyrical 
 
THE SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE 205 
 
 measures remain the admiration and delight of those who read 
 their exquisite poetry. But here, too, as elsewhere, regal 
 Shakespeare comes into his own, wielding an imperious scepter 
 over all and claiming alike the vassalage of classical experi- 
 ment, Italian importation, and sterling old English freedom 
 in verse. It was Shakespeare who could manage the ripple 
 of the redundant syllable and the contretemps of the substituted 
 trochee. He compassed the mystery of that most difficult of 
 English meters, trochaic octosyllables and, with the solitary 
 exception of Campion, is the only Elizabethan lyrist who 
 essayed the effect of a change within the stanza from one to 
 another metrical system. The beautiful dirge of Twelfth 
 Night is a much-quoted example of the kind in which the 
 anapests slow down into iambics towards the close of each 
 stanza : 
 
 Come away, come away, death, 
 And in sad cypress let me be laid; 
 
 Fly away, fly away, breath, 
 I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 
 
 My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 
 O prepare it! 
 
 My part of death, no one so true 
 Did share it. 
 
 Equally felicitous is the change to the refrain of the famous 
 song of As Tou Like It: 
 
 Who doth ambition shun. 
 
 And loves to live i' the sun, 
 
 Seeking the food he eats, 
 
 And pleased with what he gets, 
 Come hither, come hither, come hither: 
 
 Here shall he see 
 
 No enemy 
 But winter and rough weather. 
 
 With respect to choice and treatment of material, the lyrists 
 of the age fall into three groups: those that modeled their 
 work either on foreign or English literary models, the bookish 
 poets, analogous to the bookish dramatists; those who, setting 
 
2o6 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 great store on originality, gave to the world their own, such 
 as it was; and those who based their art on popular taste, 
 tradition, story, and balladry, Shakespeare belongs to the 
 last of these groups. Many of his songs are bits of folk-poetry, 
 crystallized into permanent artistic form by the interposition 
 of the poet's genius. The universality of that genius is more 
 largely due to the trait which makes Shakespeare, in drama 
 and lyric, the artistic form-giver to the popular spirit of his 
 race, than to any other one thing. The man who seeks to 
 raise popular appreciation to a standard which he has taken 
 beyond his age, has the sheer weight of the world to move 
 without a fulcrum. The man who rides on the crest of a wave 
 of popular advance or popular emotion receives his own im- 
 petus from that wave and, like the very spirit of the storm, 
 may come to lead whither he will. The dramatic require- 
 ments of certain situations demanded the singing of familiar 
 tunes, even if the words were somewhat adapted. Such are 
 the songs of the distraught Ophelia, and the grave-digger's 
 in the same play, the "ballads" of Autolycus and the catches 
 of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. In plays such as 
 A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Tempest there was 
 opportunity for greater originality. From the earliest times 
 an ability to sing must have been an essential of the actor's 
 profession. In the boy-companies everybody could sing, for 
 that was the chorister's first duty. We may infer that the- 
 atrical music in the reign of Elizabeth was of a far higher 
 general grade than now, both in its originality and in the ex- 
 cellence of its performance. 
 
 Excepting Shakespeare, the two greatest lyrists of this 
 class are Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Fletcher learned his 
 lyrical as he learned his dramatic art of Shakespeare; and in 
 his songs has caught much of the Shakespearean lightness 
 and winged delicacy. He displays the same facile grace and 
 ease of expression, the same mastery of effect combined with 
 a complete absence of effort that form distinctive traits of his 
 dramatic works. Shakespeare need not have been ashamed 
 of this dirge from The Maid's Tragedy: 
 
SONGS OF FLETCHER AND OTHERS 207 
 
 Lay a garland on my hearse 
 
 Of the dismal yew; 
 Maidens, willow branches bear; 
 
 Say, I died true. 
 
 My love was false, but I was firm 
 
 From my hour of birth; 
 Upon my buried body lie 
 
 Lightly, gentle earth; 
 
 nor of the fine song in The Two Noble Kinsmen, and many- 
 others. Fletcher, and more especially Beaumont, begin to 
 show a satirical and cynical strain in the lyric which was not 
 common to the earlier age. When Beaumont sings: 
 
 Never more will I protest 
 To love a woman but in jest: 
 For as they cannot be true, 
 So to give each man his due 
 When the wooing fit is past. 
 Their affection cannot last; 
 
 we may be sure that he has come under an influence not to be 
 found in the earlier lyrists, and matchable only in Donne in 
 one of his most characteristic moods. 
 
 Save for a few well-known poems of the very best lyrical 
 quality, Jonson's lyrics contributed to dramas and especially 
 to the masques lose much by excision from their context; and 
 yet his masques are full of beautiful poetry of this kind in 
 which the classicality of his style, his love of form and genuine 
 originality all show themselves to advantage. Discussion 
 of the poetry of Jonson may best be deferred for the treatment 
 of it in its larger aspects. In the masques, too, of Daniel, 
 Campion of course, and of minor writers may be found many 
 beautiful songs which the art of contemporary musicians ren- 
 dered acceptable to the refined and fastidious taste of the courts 
 of Queen Elizabeth and King James. 
 
 Returning to the more popular drama, Heywood wrote 
 many songs, some of rare excellence, such as "Pack clouds 
 away" in Lucrece, and "Ye little birds that sit and sing" from 
 
2o8 LYRICS SET TO MUSIC 
 
 The Fair Maid of the Exchange. There Is a freshness and 
 genuine love of nature in Heywood that saves his lyrics from 
 the effect of artifice which belongs to some of the best vs^ork 
 of more polished poets. Heywood is also responsible for many 
 mock-songs, as they were called; they do not add to his fame, 
 but they enjoyed great popularity in their day. Among the 
 other great dramatists, Chapman and Marston alone are 
 devoid of song. Chapman because, like Spenser, he needed 
 a larger vehicle in which to convey his poetical freight; Mar- 
 ston, possibly because the lyric vein was not in him. Middle- 
 ton's songs are, the best of them, of incantation, as in The 
 Witch, or of the mock type. Lastly, Webster, our master-poet 
 in the domain of the terrible, has left us at least one lyric which 
 deserves a place with Shakespeare's best. That is his im- 
 mortal dirge from Vittoria Coromhona, with which this chapter 
 may fittingly close: 
 
 Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren, 
 
 Since o'er shady groves they hover, 
 
 And with leaves and flowers do cover 
 The friendless bodies of unburied men. 
 Call unto his funeral dole 
 The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole. 
 To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm. 
 And, when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm; 
 But keep the wolf far thence, that 's foe to men, 
 For with his nails he il dig them up again. 
 
 It is of this poem that Charles Lamb wrote: "I never saw any- 
 thing like this funeral dirge, except the ditty which reminds 
 Ferdinand of his drowned father in The Tempest. As that is 
 of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both 
 have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself 
 into the element which it contemplates." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 EPIC, NARRATIVE, AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 SAVE for the broken torso of that beautiful triumph of 
 romantic art and mingled medieval allegory. The Faery 
 Queen, the age of Elizabeth produced no great epic; and even 
 The Faery Queen fulfils the conditions of a vs^orld epic only 
 partially, as its inspirations, Jerusalem Delivered and Orlando 
 Furioso, fulfil them, and belongs, with all its merits, its charm, 
 and its luxuriance of beauty, to its age" and not v^ith the Iliad, 
 the Divina Comedia, and Paradise Lost to all time. But 
 however the epic, defined in its strictness, may have fallen 
 short in the dramatic and lyrical age that gave the world Shake- 
 speare's plays and his sonnets, narrative poetry in the wider 
 sense was neither neglected nor unpopular. 
 
 In the first chapter of this book our subject was the litera- 
 ture of fact, that extraordinary literary outburst that followed 
 on the rebirth of national consciousness, an outburst which 
 reached its height with the repulse of the Armada and fell olF 
 into mere echoes of the sonorous past in the reign of King 
 James. This literature was couched not alone in prose chron- 
 icles and historical dramas but from the very first was wont to 
 find an almost equally popular expression in narrative verse. 
 The Mirror for Magistrates, that strange composite, the work 
 of some fifteen authors and the growth of fifty years, is 
 elegiac rather than narrative, reminiscent of the fates of fallen 
 princes rather than descriptive of their actual careers; and 
 yet The Mirror begot a numerous progeny. Except for 
 Churchyard's narrative of Shore's Wife, the first historical 
 poem modeled on the separate "legends," as they were called, 
 of The Mirror for Magistrates was The Complaint of Rosa- 
 mund which Daniel published in 1592. Samuel Daniel was 
 a Taunton man, the son of a music-master. He received his 
 education, as we have seen, at Oxford, leaving, however, 
 
 209 
 
210 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 before receiving his degree. He became a tutor to the Herberts 
 and other noble families and doubtless traveled in this capacity 
 into Italy v^^hence he brought back the Italianate practice of 
 sonneteering. He w^as of the Sidneian circle, and later of 
 Queen Anne of Denmark's household; and he was early 
 encouraged by the friendship and praise, in his Colin Clout, of 
 Spenser himself. Even Nash approved Daniel's Rosamund, 
 which the author soon republished "augmented." Like its 
 models in The Mirror, The Complaint of Rosamund is elegiac 
 in character and full of moralizing of no very original kind. 
 But it is gracefully and well written as is all Daniel's poetry. 
 In the next year no less than five poems of this sort appeared, 
 treating, besides other topics, of the well-known historical 
 figures of Robert of Normandy, Piers Gaveston, and Richard 
 II, the work of men like Lodge, Drayton, and Giles Fletcher. 
 The composition of such poems continues far into the reign 
 of King James in the works of obscure as well as of better 
 known writers and in poems discoursing of Queen Matilda, 
 Owen Tudor, and Queen Katherine, of Edward IV and his 
 courtship of Lady Gray, of the Lollard, Oldcastle, of Hum- 
 phrey of Gloucester, and above all in the favorite theme of 
 the age, the rise and fall of Richard III and "the preserva- 
 tion of King Henry VII." 
 
 But Daniel had long since attempted more ambitious his- 
 torical poetry than this. In 1595 first appeared his Civil 
 Wars, enlarged to eight books in the final edition of 1609. 
 The History of the Civil Wars details, in an easy and graceful 
 stanza of eight riming lines, the principal events in the history 
 of England from the misrule of Richard II to the marriage 
 of Edward IV, thus covering the same ground as Shakespeare's 
 Richard II, the two plays on Henry IV, that on Henry V, and 
 the three on Henry VI. It was Daniel's purpose to complete 
 his epic up to the accession of Henry VII, the first Tudor king. 
 But as the work lagged on, despite its popularity, into the 
 reign of King James, there was no reason to carry out the 
 original plan. Daniel ambitiously took for his model no less 
 a work than the Pharsalia of Lucan; and it can not be denied 
 that the English poet is animated throughout by a true pa- 
 
HISTORICAL POEMS OF DRAYTON 211 
 
 triotism of heart and a fine sustaining faith in the greatness of 
 his country. But the Wars of the Roses offer no such theme 
 as the struggles of Pompey and Caesar; nor was Daniel a 
 match for the clever Roman. The Civil Wars is not without 
 grace and merit as a poem; but with all his rhetoric and sedu- 
 lous deliberation, Daniel never reaches a true epic height, and 
 the rapid changes from one to another historical figure and 
 episode are destructive of the least semblance of unity. 
 
 This want Daniel's rival in the historical epic, Michael 
 Drayton, sought to supply by taking Roger Mortimer for the'" 
 hero of his poem, entitled on its first appearance in 1596 
 Mortimeriados, later, on its completion and rewriting in 
 ottava rima in 1603, The Barons' Wars. Drayton's is an 
 abler poem than Daniel's. Its characters, Edward II, Isa- 
 bella, and Mortimer, are those already immortalized in Mar- 
 lowe's fine drama on that unfortunate monarch. Drayton 
 maintains, too, throughout an heroic pitch, alike in the events 
 of war and statecraft and in the passionate love of his hero for 
 Queen Isabella. This was not Drayton's first attempt at 
 historical verse, as his Legend of Piers Gaveston had been 
 printed in 1593- In 1597 Drayton essayed another variety 
 of historical poetry. England's Heroical Epistles is a series 
 of imaginary letters in couplets, supposedly exchanged between 
 royal and other historical lovers; and, though from its plan 
 wanting in anything like real unity, is characterized by much 
 dignity and beauty. In 1607 Drayton published his Legend 
 of the Great Cromwell in a volume with the "legends" of 
 Queen Matilda and Robert, Duke of Normandy, already written 
 some years since. Though incessantly adapting his poetry 
 to changed conditions, remodeling it, and revising, Drayton 
 continued remarkably constant to early influences. His 
 latest work in the "historical legend" by no means betters 
 The Barons' Wars. And yet the finest single literary expres- 
 sion of Elizabethan national spirit found utterance in a poem 
 of Michael Drayton. But this is not his tedious narrative of 
 The Battle of Agincourt, which he published late in the reign 
 of King James when the martial fire that had animated Eliza- 
 bethan England had long since faded into a memory, but in a 
 
212 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 single lyric that first saw the light in the Poems of 1605 and 
 which Drayton included among his "Odes," and quaintly 
 addressed "To my friends the Cambro-Britons and their 
 Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt." 
 
 Fair stood the wind for France, 
 When we our sails advance. 
 And now to prove our chance 
 
 Longer not tarry, 
 But put unto the main. 
 At Caux, the mouth of Seine, 
 With all his warlike train, 
 
 Landed King Harry. 
 
 And, turning to his men 
 Quoth famous Henry then, 
 "Though they to one be ten, 
 
 Be not amazed; 
 Yet have we well begun. 
 Battles so bravely won 
 Evermore to the sun 
 
 By fame are raised," 
 
 And ready to be gone. 
 Armor on armor shone, 
 Drum unto drum did groan, 
 
 To hear was wonder; 
 That with the cries they make 
 The very earth did shake. 
 Trumpet to trumpet spake. 
 
 Thunder to thunder. 
 
 The very tread of armies rings in lines like these, and later 
 poets, in feebler ages than Drayton's, have not disdained to 
 borrow both ideas and meter of the patriotic Elizabethan. 
 As to the man, Michael Drayton was born in Warwick- 
 shire in 1563. He apparently went to neither university, 
 but was educated in the household of Sir Henry Goodere and 
 enjoyed the patronage of Lucy, Countess of Bedford, one of the 
 most liberal and universal patrons of poets and learned men 
 of her day. To her he dedicated his Mortimeriados, although- 
 
WARNER'S "ALBION'S ENGLAND" 213 
 
 he characteristically withdrew this dedication on revision. 
 Drayton began the cultivation of poetry in early youth and 
 remained throughout a long life more undividedly attached 
 to his art than almost any man among his contemporaries. 
 Aside from a trivial attempt in 1590, called The Harmony of 
 the Church, Drayton's first publication was a series of nine 
 eclogues, closely following the manner of Spenser, to which 
 he gave the title Idea, the Shepherd's Garland, in 1593. This 
 word "Idea" he transferred to the title of his series of son- 
 nets, Idea 's Mirror, in the following year, not without a 
 reference (if precisians will have it so) to a contemporary 
 French title which has been already noticed. Of these sonnets 
 and their writing we have already sufficiently heard in this 
 book, and his later pastorals, the Polyolhion, and other works 
 will claim our later attention. Drayton lived on to 1631 
 highly honored and intimate, as we know from two or three 
 anecdotes, with his fellow country man, Shakespeare. Dray- 
 ton received the honor of burial in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 We are apt to forget, if the number of editions of a man's 
 work be any criterion, that next to Spenser Drayton, and 
 then Daniel, enjoyed the greatest contemporary reputation 
 as general poets during the lifetime of Shakespeare. But we 
 must recall that besides these, their epic labors, both were 
 notable lyrists and both dabbled in the drama, — Daniel with 
 Senecan tragedies and exotic pastorals, Drayton on the pop- 
 ular stage in Henslowe's mart, concealing his traffic with 
 the stage in later time and feeling with Shakespeare the degra- 
 dation of making himself a motley to the view of groundlings 
 and common fellows. 
 
 A third notable historical epic of the time was William 
 Warner's Albion's England. Warner, who was a London 
 attorney, wrote earlier than either Daniel or Drayton, his 
 book appearing in 1586; and he is remarkable even at that 
 date for his imperviousness to contemporary influences. Like 
 Southwell, though in a very different field, Warner wrote in 
 the manner of Gascoigne, Googe, and Turberville long after 
 those earlier worthies were dead, employing habitually the 
 long fourteeners for his epic verse. Albion's England is an 
 
214 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 episodic narrative poem professing for its general theme the 
 history of England from "the division of the world after the 
 flood to the coming of the Normans." It is full of incident 
 and digression, and it may be suspected v/as more prized at 
 times for its romantic stories — such as that of Argentile 
 and Curan — than for its "history." Albion's England en- 
 joyed, none the less, an immediate and deserved popularity 
 from its patriotic sentiment and its homely and unpretentious 
 style. Warner continued his chronicle to the accession of 
 Queen Elizabeth in the edition of 1592; and a final, sixth, 
 edition w^as printed in 1612 after the author's death, still, 
 further enlarged to include some of the events of the reign of 
 James. In 1604 an unsuccessful variation on the rimed - 
 chronicle was attempted by Sir William Harbert, in his 
 Prophecy of Cadwallader, "containing a comparison of the 
 English Kings with many worthy Romans, from William 
 Rufus to Henry V." This work has more merit than has 
 usually been accorded it. Thomas Deloney's Crotvn Garland 
 of Roses, 1613, is a collection of ballads on stories derived from 
 English history, and of no particular merit. A further de- 
 generation of historical verse is represented in scattered broad-, 
 sides and ballads of which it is unnecessary here to speak. 
 Taylor, "the Water Poet's" illustrated doggeral chronicle of 
 English kings represents the final absorption of this sort of' 
 verse chronicling: and Taylor falls without our period. 
 
 Another group of narrative poems, distinctively of the 
 Renaissance, and many of them of exquisite beauty, are those 
 which describe, and in describing, extol the ecstasies of earthly' 
 love. The age was franker in its speech and art than we, 
 and dared openly to admire not only the cold and chiseled 
 beauties of the Venus de Milo, but likewise the warm flesh 
 tints of the same goddess of beauty as depicted by the florid 
 brush of Correggio. Marlowe, translator of the Amores of 
 Ovid when a lad at college, at a time when he should have been 
 engaged with more modest classics, was the first among the 
 greater English poets thus to celebrate the glories of corporal 
 passion. In this Marlowe stands in striking contrast with' 
 Spenser who, as the poet of chivalry, finds in restraint of 
 
MARLOWE'S "HERO AND LEAIsDER" 215 
 
 passion and in a service devoted to beaut) Ls ideal of tn»c. 
 love, as he finds in the metaphyscial discussions of th .; Pla- 
 tonic philosophy, love's truest expression. MarloWv Hero 
 and Leander is really an amplification of a classic;' ',?jem 
 attributed to Musaeus. It was first printed in 159S as a frag- 
 ment, and appeared later in the same year, coxf-pieted by the 
 strenuous hand of George Chapman. TJ^Js lovers' tale of 
 Hero and Leander is a poem of rich and varied beauty and 
 finer in theme than either Venu\ and Adonis or Lucrece. 
 Sensuousness is the note of }Azx\owe. as it is of Keats; and 
 reticence was not a quality of Elizabethan times. But this 
 is not the only characteristic of Marlowe's part in Hero and 
 Leander. Marlowe's diction flows with limpid clearness; his 
 imagery is exquisite and the story, in its simple outspokenness, 
 as spoiitaneous and natural as the loves of Romeo and Juliet 
 th-^msehes. Whether for its descriptive energy and eloquence 
 or for its vivid and highly poetical portrayal of the effects of 
 absorbing youthful passion on man and maid. Hero and Lean- 
 der must remain one of the most astonishing poems in the 
 language. In this passage we have Marlowe's ease, limpid- 
 ity, and sufiiciency of phrase. His music, in its larger ca- 
 dence, and the full glory and color of his poetical style must be 
 sought in the poem itself. 
 
 On this feast-day — O cursed day and hour! — 
 
 Went Hero thorough Sestos, from her tower 
 
 To Venus' temple, where unhappily. 
 
 As after chanc'd, they did each other spy. 
 
 So fair a church as this had Venus none: 
 
 The walls were of discolor'd jasper-stone. 
 
 Wherein was Proteus carved; and overhead 
 
 A lively vine of green sea-agate spread, 
 
 Where by one hand light-headed Bacchus hung. 
 
 And with the other wine from grapes out-wrung. 
 
 And in the midst a silver altar stood: 
 There Hero, sacrificing turtles' blood, 
 Veiled to the ground, veiling her eyelids close; 
 And modestly they opened as she rose: 
 
2i6 NAxv.v-x^rx. ...,^ PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 Thciice flew Love's arrow with the golden head; 
 
 And thus L^^ander was enamoured. 
 
 Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gazed. 
 
 Till with the fire, that from his countenance blaz'd, 
 '^'jitfiientinf;; Hero's gentle heart was strook: 
 
 Such "fr'ce and virtue hath an amorous look. 
 
 It lies noH^ o'^r power to love or hate, 
 
 For wf'l in us :"'? overruled by fate. 
 
 When two are stript, long ere the course begin, 
 
 We wish that one woulJ lore, the other win, 
 
 And one especially do we af ^ct. 
 
 Of two gold ingots, like in each I'^^pect: 
 
 The reason no man knows; let n suffice, 
 
 What we behold is censured by our eyes. 
 J^When both deliberate, the love is slight: 
 
 Whoever loved that loved not at first sight ? 
 
 Chapman's continuation which takes up the story from r'ne 
 moment of the height of the lovers' joy, is no unworthy one; 
 though we miss, in his full and sometimes difficult and labored 
 lines, the clear sweetness of the earlier poet. 
 
 The next poem of this type, if indeed it may not have pre- 
 ceded Marlowe's, is Thomas Lodge's Glaucus and Scilla in 
 the story of which a nymph courts an unwilling swain much 
 as Venus courts Adonis in Shakespeare's poem, and with 
 words and imagery of a honied sweetness that match the earliest 
 Shakespearean manner. When we note that the meter of 
 the two poems is also the same (a stanza of six lines, the first 
 four alternately riming, the last two a couplet), and further 
 recall how invariably in all his work Shakespeare followed 
 whither others led, the conclusion is complete that Lodge's 
 poem was the model of Shakespeare's. Venus and Adonis is 
 termed in the dedication to his patron, the Earl of Southamp- 
 ton, "the first heir of his increase," and its erotic uncontrol 
 confirms the statement. The poem was printed in I593> the 
 year of Marlowe's death, and enjoyed an immediate repute, 
 running through seven editions before the conclusion of Eliza- 
 beth's reign. Nor was The Rape of Lucrece, which appeared 
 in 1594, much less popular, although the theme is more serious 
 and its treatment more dramatic and earnest. Neither of 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S NARRATIVE POEMS 217 
 
 these love tales is frivolous in Shakespeare's hands The 
 one, as it has been described, is, "of the innocence of early 
 manhood that is proof against the blandishments of Venus; 
 the other of the innocence of v^omanhood, outraged by man's 
 lust, and choosing death to set the pure soul free from the 
 prison of a tainted body." Coleridge dilated on the promise 
 and immaturity of these tvv^o poems of Shakespeare. The 
 latter quality needs no illustration; their promise Coleridge 
 finds in the consummate sweetness of their versification and 
 the remoteness of their subject-matter from the poet's ow^n 
 life and emotions; for it is the second-rate man, not the truly 
 great, who thrusts forward his own experiences and emotions 
 to the uninterested gaze of strangers. Coleridge likewise 
 found here that minute and faithful imagery which is every- 
 where Shakespeare's and, in Lucrece, a full promise of that 
 true philosophy of life that enables Shakespeare so invariably 
 to see things in large, so little unsteadied by the unessentials 
 that surround them. In Coleridge's own words," Shakespeare 
 possessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet, — deep 
 feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited to the 
 eye in the combinations of form, and to the ear in sweet and 
 appropriate melody; that these feelings were under the com- 
 mand of his own will; that in his very first productions he 
 projected his mind out of his own particular being, and felt, 
 and made others feel, on subjects no way connected with him- 
 self, except by force of contemplation and that sublime faculty 
 by which a great mind becomes that on which it meditates. 
 To this must be added that affectionate love of nature and 
 natural objects, without which no man could have observed 
 so steadily, or painted so truly and passionately, the very 
 minutest beauties of the external world." 
 
 Of the other poems of this class it is not needful to say 
 much. Marston the dramatist's first work. The Metamor- 
 phosis of Pigmalions Image, 1598, deserved the order of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury that it be burned wherever found, 
 and Marston's subsequent excuse that he wrote it to turn 
 ridicule on amatory poetry is a piece of Marstonian imperti- 
 nence. Salmacis and H ermaphroditus , 1602, has been attrib- 
 
2i8 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 uted to Francis Beaumont, but is unworthy alike of his taste 
 and his genius. For its exquisite lusciousness Britain's Ida, 
 which treats of the loves of Venus and Anchises, was attributed 
 to Spenser on the title-page of the edition of 1628, but must 
 be referred to his disciple, Phineas Fletcher. The others of 
 the class are negligible until we reach Narcissus of James 
 Shirley, published two years after Shakespeare's death, and 
 a poem of unusual merit and beauty. 
 
 The unexampled versatility of this extraordinary age did 
 not even stop short of poetry on philosophy, statecraft, and 
 topography, and extended Spenserian allegory diversely to 
 religion and to human anatomy. Sir John Davies, of whom 
 we have already heard as the author of a set of Gulling Son- 
 nets, attained distinction in the law. In his youth he had 
 written a series of Hymns to Astroea, 1599, each an acrostic 
 constructed on the words "Elizabeta Regina," and surprisingly 
 good considering such limitations. Davies likewise wrote a 
 clever jeu d' esprit in verse called Orchestra or a Poem on Dan- 
 cing, 1596, in which he represents Antinous, chief of the suitors 
 of Penelope, arguing with that constant lady to prove the art 
 of Terpsichore the move-all and be-all of the world. In 1599 
 appeared Davies interesting philosophical poem, Nosce 
 Teipsum, "a discourse in two elegies," so runs the title, "first 
 of humane knowledge, secondly, of the soul of man and the 
 immortality thereof." Davies' work has been well described 
 as " a popular exposition of current ideas by a man who has 
 no distinctive opinions." He maintains "with the agreeable 
 assurance of a ready dialectician" that "all learning is uncer- 
 tain and vain except knowledge of self and God"; and he has 
 contrived to set forth these metaphysical commonplaces in 
 language absolutely simple and direct, adorned with graceful 
 and fitting illustration, and expressed in admirably competent 
 verse. Nosce Teipsum is as typical a representative of Eliza- 
 bethan popular philosophy as the Essay on Man is typical of 
 the popular thought of the time of Queen Anne; nor can 
 Davies' work be esteemed a less successful piece of that hybrid, 
 metaphysical poetry. In reading some of its smooth and even 
 stanzas we can not but wonder whether Pope did not know 
 
GREVILLE'S POEMS OF STATE 219 
 
 more of it than he might have been willing to confess. And 
 we note with interest that Davies' stanza — which is that of 
 Gray's Elegy, a quatrain of decasyllabic verse alternately 
 riming — is also the same which Dryden used and so praised 
 Davenant for "inventing" thirty years after the death of 
 Davies. 
 
 Fulke Greville, the early friend of Sidney, Is the author of 
 no less than five poetical ^'Treatises," as he called them, on 
 Human Learning, Fame and Honor, War, Monarchy and 
 Religion, first printed posthumously in 1633 in Certain Learned 
 and Elegant Works. It is doubtful whether they may not 
 have been written at least in part within the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth. On their political side these abstract and often 
 difficult poems deal in a spirit of mingled frankness and irony 
 with their great themes, paralleling the counsels of Macchia- 
 velli in his Prince in parts but maintaining throughout that 
 strange Calvinistic stoicism which is characteristic elsewhere 
 of their exceedingly interesting author. Greville's Treastise 
 of Human Learning not only links on to Davies' Nosce Teip-s. 
 sum, with which it agrees as to the limitations and vanities 
 of human knowledge, but comes into contact as well with 
 Bacon's manifesto of the new science. The Advancement 
 of Learning, printed in 1605. It falls, tdo, into contrast with 
 Daniel's fine poem Musophilus, or a General Defence of all 
 Learning, 1599, which in a dialogue between Musophilus, the 
 lover of the Muses, and Philocosmus, the worldly man, en- 
 thusiastically upholds the "holy skill" of letters and stands 
 opposed alike to the popular agnosticism of Davies, to the 
 "practical utility" of Bacon, and to the "moral utility of 
 Greville." Daniel has well been considered one of the last_ 
 of the humanists; for in him was combined, to the full, the 
 love of learning and the appreciation of the dignity of the 
 scholar, with a fine loyalty to England and faith in the great 
 destiny of the English tongue. The following apostrophe 
 to "heavenly Eloquence," recently quoted by Mr. Court- 
 hope, deserves transcription for its truly "imperial" prophecy 
 of that spread and potency of our language which we have 
 come now in part to know. 
 
220 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 Thou, that cans't do much more with one poor pen 
 
 Than all the powers of princes can effect: 
 
 And draw, divert, dispose, and fashion men 
 
 Better than force or rigor can direct. 
 
 Should we this instrument of glory then 
 
 As th' unmaterial fruit of shades neglect ? 
 
 Or should we careless come behind the rest 
 
 In power of words that go before in worth, 
 
 Whereas our accents, equal to the best. 
 
 Is able greater wonders to bring forth. 
 
 Where all that ever hotter spirits exprest 
 
 Comes bettered by the patience of the north. 
 
 And who in times knows whither we may vent 
 
 The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores 
 
 This gain of our best glory shall be sent, 
 
 T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? 
 
 What worlds in the yet unformed Occident 
 
 May come refined with accents that are ours ? 
 
 Or who can tell for what great work in hand 
 
 The greatness of our style is now ordained. 
 
 What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command, 
 
 What thoughts let out, what humors keep restrained. 
 
 What mischief it may powerfully withstand. 
 
 And what fair ends may thereby be attained ? f 
 
 Returning to the honorable name of Michael Drayton, as 
 early as 1598 he is reported to have been engaged on a work 
 called Polyolhion^ printed in part in 1613, and completed in 
 thirty "songs" in 1622. The title describes this truly sur- 
 prising work as "a chorographical description of all the tracts, 
 rivers, mountains, forests and other parts of this renov^ned 
 isle of Great Britain, w^ith intermixture of the most remarkable 
 stories, antiquities, wonders, rareties, pleasures, and com- 
 modities of the same . . . digested into a poem by Michael 
 Drayton." It is amazing in a work of such stupendous 
 length and with subject-matter by its nature so monotonous, 
 how uniformly poetical the author has contrived to be. Poly- 
 olbion is truly a production without parallel in the annals of 
 any literature; for as Lamb said, Drayton "has not left a 1 
 rivulet so narrow that it may be stepped over without honor- 
 
DRAYTON'S "POLYOLBION" 221 
 
 able mention, and has associated hills and streams with life 
 and passion beyond the dreams of old mythology." This 
 grand and patriotic theme, the celebration of his fatherland, 
 Drayton must have derived from the unfulfilled dreams of the 
 old antiquary Leland. Selden, the famous scholar and pub- 
 licist, did not disdain to adorn the earlier part of Draytons* 
 work with learned notes and commentary, and the original 
 editions are illustrated with quaint maps in which the personi- 
 fied geniuses of town and country are represented bodily to the 
 view. Ridiculous as it may seem thus to personify every hill 
 and metamorphose every stream into a classical nymph or 
 river god, and alien as is Drayton's old alexandrine verse to 
 our modern tastes, no one reading in the Polyolhion can fail 
 to recognize the poet in Drayton and to treat with becoming 
 respect these labors of a by-gone time that stand like huge 
 Pelasgian walls, inexplicable from the hands of men as men 
 are now. 
 
 Despite the many other poetical influences that give to the 
 age of Elizabeth a variety in quality and kind not surpassed 
 in Victorian times, the dominant concord of Spenser's sweet 
 verse was heard strong and constant in the poetical concert 
 that continued for a generation after his death. Spenser's 
 allegory, his continuousness, his delight leisurely to dwell on 
 beautiful details, his diffuseness and carelessness as to design 
 or as to ultimately landing from the crystal flood of his on- 
 flowing verse anywhere: all of these qualities were perpet- 
 uated in his kind, though no one of the Spenserians reaches 
 a place beside his master. 
 
 Allusion has already been made to the poetical Fletchers. 
 Besides John, the great dramatist, and Giles the elder, his 
 uncle, who wrote sonnets in the sonnet time and traveled into 
 Muscovy, there were the two Spenserians, sons of Giles, 
 named Phineas and Giles the younger; and there was like- 
 wise, somewhat later, a religious poet Joseph Fletcher, who 
 does not, however, concern us Phineas Fletcher was born 
 in 1582; Giles, his brother, some three or four years after. 
 Both were educated at Cambridge and both entered the church, 
 leading useful if uneventful lives. Giles the younger died 
 
222 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 early, in 1623; Phineas was alive in 1649. The frequent 
 allusions in their poetry, each to the other, disclose the warm 
 brotherly affection between them, and their poetical kinship 
 is as close as that of their blood. 
 
 Christ's Victory and Triumph by Giles Fletcher the 
 younger was published at Cambridge in 1610. It is an 
 ambitious epic poem in the manner of Spenser, treating of 
 Christ's victory in heaven, on earth, his triumph over death, 
 and his triumph after death. The subject is overlaid with 
 an exuberance of allegory, typifying and personifying the 
 emotions and passions, and is full of passages of exquisite 
 poetical imagery. Giles Fletcher attempts a variation on the 
 famous Spenserian stanza, reducing it to eight lines by the 
 omission of the sixth. Christ's Victory and Triumph is a 
 beautiful poem of its type and throbs at times witlr'the true; 
 religious fervor which distinguishes the rapturous religious 
 poetry of Richard Crashaw. Phineas Fletcher's contribu- 
 tion to the poetry of this class is almost equally successful, if 
 more curious in kind. The Purple Island was first printed 
 in 1633. It is the opinion of Dr. Grosart, Fletcher's editor, 
 that the poem was substantially written as we have it early 
 in the days of King James, an opinion true in the main, if 
 perhaps questionable as to those passages which show a grasp 
 and understanding of Harvey's famous discovery of the cir- 
 culation of the blood, a first announcement of which was made 
 by him in a lecture in the year of the death of Shakespeare. 
 The Purple Island is "an elaborate allegorical description of 
 the human body and of the vices and virtues to which man is 
 subject." The body is figured as an island, the bones its 
 foundation, the veins its streams, and so on into a multiplicity 
 of minute detail, though it is fair to state that the poem has a 
 wider scope and rises in the later cantos to an allegory of man's 
 intellectual processes, his emotions, and even of his religious 
 ideas. The whole is framed in a pastoral setting and many 
 are the passages which for truth to picturesque nature, poetic 
 beauty of expression, and musical flow of verse are worthy 
 the inspiration of their great master, Spenser. It seems hardly 
 fair to quote from so fine a poem a passage which emphasizes 
 
ECLOGUES AND PASTORALS 223 
 
 its chief defect. Yet the following is alone enough to show 
 what Spenserian allegory could become when ingenuity tri- 
 umphed, as it did only too often in long, uninspired reaches of 
 the Spenserians, over poetic inspiration. The poet — or 
 rather the allegorist — has been describing the human mouth 
 as an "arched cave." He continues: 
 
 At that cave's mouth twice sixteen porters stand, 
 
 Receivers of the customary rent; 
 Of each side four — the foremost of the band — 
 
 Whose office to divide what in is sent: 
 Straight other four break it in pieces small; 
 And at each hand twice five, which grinding all. 
 Fit it for convoy and this city's arsenal. 
 
 In The Purple Island and in Christ's Victory and Triumph 
 we have Spenserian allegory, Spenserian epic continuity, even 
 an imitation of Spenserian stanza, for The Purple Island is 
 written in the meter of Christ's Victory, which we have seen 
 was a variation — not an improvement — on the stanza of 1^ ^ 
 The Faery Queen. But the influence of Spenser in the pas- 
 toral was even more pervasive and lasting. A list of English 
 eclogues following The Shepherds' Calendar and running not 
 beyond the lifetime of Shakespeare, includes the names of 
 Peele, Watson, Barnfield, Lodge, Sabbie, Drayton, William 
 Browne, George Wither, and Christopher Brooke. Of 
 these an unimportant Eclogue Gratulatory, addressed to the 
 Earl of Essex, was published by Peele in 1589. Thomas 
 Watson's Melihoeus, an elegy on the death of the queen's 
 secretary. Sir Francis Walsingham, was written first in Latin 
 and translated by the author in the following year. Watson 
 was the author of other Latin eclogues. Barnfield's Affection- t/ 
 ate Shepherd, four years later, is a free following of the Ver- 
 gilian eclogue, and the work of a rare young poet of whom 
 it may be said that he deserved the confusion which long 
 existed between some of his lyrics and Shakespeare's. Lodge 
 wrote both eclogues of an amatory and of a meditative cast. 
 The first are found in Phillis honored with Pastoral Sonnets, 
 1593; the second form part of his little volume entitled A 
 Fig for Momus, and appeared two years later. In these 
 
224 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 latter Lodge displays his literary relations to Spenser, Dray- 
 ton, and Daniel, whom he celebrates under guise of pastoral 
 names, and shows, like Spenser before him, that he had read 
 the popular eclogues of Mantuan. Lodge is always a sweet 
 poet and a master of musical effect; but he is happier in the 
 lyric pastoral than in the eclogue. Pan s Pipe by Francis 
 Sabbie of the same date is described in the title as "three 
 pastoral eclogues in English hexameters," It is a less nota- 
 ble work and equally referable to previous models. William 
 Basse's three pastoral elegies, published in 1602, really form 
 a short pastoral romance. Like his later work, beyond our 
 period, they are possessed of little merit. 
 
 The most important of Spenser's followers in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth was Drayton, whose industry and genuine 
 poetic gift once more inspire and hold our esteem. It was 
 in 1593 that Drayton published his Idea, the Shepherd's 
 Garland fashioned into Nine Eclogues; a tenth with much 
 revision of the rest appeared in 1606; and towards the end of 
 his career the poet returned to the pastoral mode in his Muses' 
 Elizium as he had still practised it as occasion arose through- 
 out the Polyolhion and elsewhere. The Shepherds' Calendar 
 was undoubtedly the model of the young poet, although The 
 Shepherd's Garland is knit in no such close continuity as 
 Spenser's poem. Drayton's pastorals, too, are less weighted 
 with serious matter moral and religious and freer from veiled 
 satire. Like Spenser's they sound the full gamut of the oaten 
 reed, treating of love requited and unrequited, eulogizing the 
 queen in a fine ode, and meditating "in higher strains." 
 Drayton uses a great variety of meters, is full of genuine 
 touches of nature, and musical with the choice lyrical gift of 
 his time. 
 
 We may pass such a production of mixed verse and prose 
 as England's Mourning Garment Worn by Plain Shepherds, 
 wherein Henry Chettle, memorable as the editor of Greene's 
 Groatsworth of ^?V, lamented the death of "Elizabeth, queen 
 of virtue, while she lived, and theme of sorrow, being dead." 
 It is chiefly interesting for his arraignment of the poets Warner, 
 Chapman, Jonson, Shakespeare, Drayton, and others for not 
 
LATER SPENSERIANS 225 
 
 singing threnodies to her deceased majesty. Shakespeare, 
 especially, under the pastoral name of Melicert, is adjured to 
 
 Drop from his honied Muse one sable tear, 
 To mourn her death that graced his desert, 
 And to his lays opened her royal ear. 
 
 There is record of the writing of twelve eclogues about this 
 time by Edward Fairfax, the translator of Tasso. But only 
 two of them and the fragment of a third are now extant. They 
 are said to concern chiefly contemporary affairs, to deal with 
 abuses in the church and in a panegyric of English maritime 
 adventure. Minor pastoralists of the earlier years of King 
 James were Sir George Buc, Master of the Revels from 1608 
 to 1622, and Lewis Machin, a very small dramatist. The 
 first used the eclogue form to celebrate the Plantagenet suc- 
 cession in a curious poem entitled Daphnis Polystephanos, 
 printed in 1605. Machin's three ecolgues, in easy but no 
 . very distinguished verse, touch on erotic themes of the class 
 ofHero and Leander and appeared affixed to a like production 
 by William Barkstead, the actor, called Mirrha the Mother 
 of Adonis, bearing date 1607. Needless to say, neither Fair- 
 fax, Buc, nor Machin write in the manner of Spenser. 
 
 The last group of Spenserians, all of them pastoralists, 
 cluster about the closing years of Shakespeare's life. William 
 Browne of Tavistock is chief among them, an amiable retiring 
 man, possessed of a simplicity of character and heartfelt love 
 of nature that remind us somewhat of Wordsworth, remote 
 though Browne is from any trace of Wordsworth's power of 
 spiritual insight. Browne lived between 1591 and 1643, He 
 received his education at Exeter College, Oxford, Clifford's 
 Inn, and the Inner Temple, for which last he wrote a beautiful 
 masque. Like so many of the poets before him, Browne en- 
 joyed the patronage and encouragement of the Herbert 
 family, and his poetical impulse comes direct from the pas- 
 toral poetry of Drayton, his acknowledged friend and sponsor. 
 Besides Browne, there was Christopher Brooke, son of a 
 wealthy tradesman who had been thrice mayor of his na- 
 tive town of York, and a friend and intimate of Donne. 
 
226 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 George Wither, most voluminous of later pamphleteers, in 
 whom the acid of satire spoiled one of the sweetest of poets, 
 was the third; and John Davies of Hereford, the writing- 
 master and author of many books in verse and prose, seems 
 likewise to have been of their counsels. In 1613 appeared 
 Browne's Britannia's Pastorals; in 1614, his Shepherd's 
 Pipe, to which were added eclogues by the other three. In 
 1615 Wither wrote his Shepherd's Hunting while a prisoner 
 for libel in the Marshelsea, and in 1616 Browne issued a 
 second instalment of Britannia's Pastorals, a third part re- 
 maining until the last century in manuscript. In this group 
 of pastoral poems we have by far the most important contri- 
 bution of its kind to English literature and it is suprising to 
 find how single an influence pervades this by no means in- 
 considerable body of poetry. Wither's Shepherd's Hunting 
 conceals an allegory of his ov/n imprisonment for "hunting" 
 with his many hounds of satire (in his Abuses Stript and Whipt, 
 161 1 ) the monsters of the country-side. Otherwise these 
 eclogues are without ulterior allusion save to the pleasant 
 poetical friendship of the little brotherhood. Story in these 
 poems there is none, and their diffuseness far exceeds that of 
 Spenser. But the readers of Browne and his fellows may feel 
 sure that "at whatever page they open, they have not far to 
 travel before they find entertainment." 
 
 Browne is essentially a descriptive poet, his "mood is 
 generally calm and quiet, like the painter of actual scenery." 
 There is little movement in his poetry, a broken and meander- 
 ing thread of story, and next to no human interest. Even his 
 lyric moods, which are often graceful, have almost none of 
 that glow and fervor which is characteristic of many of his 
 contemporaries. The strongest trait of Browne, as of Dray- 
 ton, is his devoted love of country; but where Drayton with 
 impartial loyalty celebrates all England in particularizing 
 each part, Browne, strong in his local affections, never strays 
 far from his native Tavistock and realizes the dreams of 
 Arcadia in the familiar features of his native Devonshire. 
 Thus it is that Browne expresses himself in terms of this 
 amiable provincialism: 
 
WILLIAM BROWNE 227 
 
 Hail, thou, my native soil! thou blessed plot, 
 
 Whose equal all the world affordeth not! 
 
 Show me who can so many crystal rills; 
 
 Such sweet-clothed valleys or aspiring hills; 
 
 Such wood-ground pastures, quarries, wealthy mines; 
 
 Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines; 
 
 And if the earth can show the like again. 
 
 Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men. 
 
 Time never can produce men to o'ertake 
 
 The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake, 
 
 Of worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more 
 
 That by their power made the Devonian shore 
 
 Mock the proud Tagus; for whose richest spoil 
 
 The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil 
 
 Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost 
 
 By winning this, though all the rest were lost. ' 
 
 In conclusion of these paragraphs on the pastoralists that 
 followed Spenser I shall quote not Drayton, most poetical and 
 resourceful in this kind of poetry, nor Browne, who approached 
 most nearly our modern conception of the touch with nature; 
 but make some amends to excellent Phineas Fletcher, for 
 having gibbeted his ingenious allegory, by choosing two or 
 three stanzas from several of equal merit in his Purple Islandy 
 that express to perfection this outworn ideal of the golden age. 
 
 Thrice, oh thrice happy shepherd's life and state, 
 
 When courts are happiness' unhappy pawns! 
 His cottage low and safely humble gate 
 
 Shuts out proud Fortune with her scorns and fawns; 
 No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep: 
 Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep; 
 Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep. 
 
 Instead of music and base flattering tongues, 
 
 Which wait to first-salute my lord's uprise; 
 The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs, 
 
 And birds' sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes: 
 In country plays is all the strife he uses. 
 Or sing, or dance unto the rural Muses; 
 And but in music's sports, all diff"erences refuses. 
 
228 NARRATIVE AND PASTORAL VERSE 
 
 His certain life that never can deceive him, 
 Is full of thousand sweets and rich content: 
 
 The smooth-leav'd beeches in the field receive him 
 With coolest shades, till noon-tide rage is spent: 
 
 His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas 
 
 Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease; 
 
 Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please. 
 
 His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps. 
 
 While by his side his faithful spouse hath place: 
 
 His little son into his bosom creeps, 
 The lively picture of his father's face: 
 
 Never his humble house or state torment him; 
 
 Less he could like, if less his God had sent him: 
 
 And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 JONSON AND THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 THE greatest of Shakespeare's contemporaries in the 
 drama, a man historically even more important than 
 Shakespeare himself, was Ben Jonson, poet, playwright, 
 critic, satirist, laureate, and dictator of his time. Jonson 
 was born in the year 1573, of a border family of Annandale, 
 and was the posthumous son of a minister who had lost his 
 estate by forfeiture in the reign of Queen Mary. His widow 
 marrying again and beneath her, Jonson was "brought up 
 poorly," but "put to school" at Westminster, and there be- 
 friended by the learned antiquary,, Camden. Fuller states 
 that from Westminster Jonson went to [St. John's College] 
 Cambridge. If so, he remained but a short time; for he 
 afterwards told Drummond that '*he was Master of Arts in 
 both universities by their favor, not his study." The trade 
 of his step-father, that of bricklaying, proving distasteful, 
 Jonson enlisted as a soldier and relates that "in his service 
 in the Low Countries,^' he had, "in the face of both the camps, 
 killed an enemy and taken opima spolia from him." Jonson 
 returned to London in 1592, married, and began writing for 
 the stage, probably about i^^ In 1597 he was in the employ 
 of jienslowe and acting as one of the Admiral's men; and in 
 the following year he is included in Meres' roll of honor as 
 one of the best contemporary writers of comedy. It was in 
 that year that Jonson killed "in duel" a fellow actor, named 
 Gabriel Spencer, for which offense he was tried at Old Bailey 
 and found guilty. He escaped the gallows by pleading the 
 benefit of clergy, but remained some time in prison. It was 
 under the stress of these experiences that Jonspn. became, a 
 RomarUCatholic; but he returned to the faith of the Church 
 of^England after some ten or a dozen years. A pleasing 
 tradition of this period relates that on his release Jonson 
 
 229 
 
230 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 sought employment for his pen with Henslowe's rivals, the 
 Lord Chamberlain's company, in which Shakespeare had 
 already become a prominent shareholder; and that Every 
 Man in his Humor was accepted by that company through 
 the good offices of Shakespeare who, we know, acted a part. 
 This was the corner-stone of Jonson's success, though in all 
 likelihood by no means the first of his dramatic efforts. 
 
 Every. MMniM his -Hurngr, acted in 159^8, is a satirical 
 comedy of London life, skilfully constructed on the recogni- 
 tion of two principles: the necessity of sketching direct from 
 life and the desirability of drawing your picture in a manner 
 already accepted as in accord with good art and a recognized 
 method. The comedy runs on an exceedingly slender story, 
 the mistake of a father as to the real character of his son, his 
 following to observe him, and the consequences to both and 
 to the little group of personages by whom they are surrounded. 
 The general intermeddling of a man-servant, namedJBraitt 
 worm^ possessed of a mania for fooling everybody, precipitates 
 several situations; the rest are the results of some dominant 
 trait of each character. In a word, in Every Man in his 
 Humor we have an example of a new kind of comedy, con- 
 sciously developed by Jonson on the basis of a very definite 
 theory of life and art, and known as the comedy of humors. 
 The word 'Ihumor" in the parlance of the day signified a 
 superficial tendency or bias of disposition that so ruled a 
 person, permanently or for the moment, that one could say,' 
 this man affects gravity, this is a disconsolate lover, this third 
 is a braggart or an affected fop. Jonson did not invent the 
 word "humor"; and characters, thus conceived, were not only 
 known to the stage before his time but were devised as made 
 up of "humors" by Chapman a little before Every Man in 
 his Humor. Jonson, extending this popular idea, held that 
 a "humor" should be some overwhelming passion or,.ujQiniSr 
 takable warp in character, such as.JB,rainworm's_.passioai_fQi; 
 gulling everybody, Bobadil's mania of boasting though he is 
 a coward at heart, or Downright, described in his name; and 
 he avoided making his personages turn (as did some of his 
 imitators) on petty affectations or mannerisms of speech. 
 
JONSON'S COMEDY OF HUMORS 231 
 
 Moreover, he constructed his play out of this clash of incon- 
 gruous humors, and was concerned less with a picture, much 
 less a story, of actual life than with the opportunity which 
 this method afforded him for devising ridiculous situations, 
 witty dialogue, and unlooked-for outcomes. Life is not much 
 like such a succession of the clever unexpected; though Jon- 
 son's scenes can not be pronounced absolutely untrue to 
 human nature. The characters of men in the world are not 
 built up on such impossibly simple lines; yet the attention 
 may not unfairly be directed to the ruling passion of a given 
 personage, and personages, so possessed for the nonce, be 
 chosen legitimately as subjects for the persons of comedy. 
 In Every Man in his Humor Jonson succeeded surprisingly 
 well in picturing, in vivid realism, the absurdities, the eccen- 
 tricities and predicaments, so to speak, of Elizabethan life 
 in terms of a glorified adaptation of the technique of Plautus. 
 This new variety of the comedy of rnanners leaped into 
 immediate acceptance and popularity. It was imitated by 
 everybody, at times by those not fitted for it; it was parodied 
 and misunderstood. It was used for single characters or 
 groups of them, as an underplot or episode; and this concep- 
 tion of stage character, degenerating frequently into carica- 
 ture, continued to tinge the drama onward to the days of 
 Sheridan, if not beyond. But we are not concerned with these 
 wide influences. Among immediate effects, the word "humor" 
 became current in colloquial speech and in titles of other plays: 
 for example, Jonson himself reemployed it in Every Man out 
 of his Humor and, later, in The Magnetic Lady or Humors 
 Reconciled. There was an anonymous and inferior comedy 
 called Every Woman in her Humor, 1600, imitating more than 
 Jonson's title; and, besides Chapman's Humorous Days Mirth 
 in 1599, Day wrote a sprightly comedy entitled Humor out 
 of Breath, printed in 1608. As to Chapman, he was, in comedy 
 at least, wholly of Jonson's school and method, as his admir- 
 able All Fools, 1 599, and May Day, two years later,attest. Field 
 was literally Jonson's scholar in the drama. But Jonson in 
 this example of his comedy of humors was not even without 
 his influence on the catholic and adaptable spirit of Shake- 
 
232 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 speare. It seems not irrational to refer such a group of humor- 
 ists as FalstafF and his rout — Bardolph of the carbuncled 
 nose, Pistol with his bombast scraps of plays, FalstafF himself 
 of unmeasured girth, and that "minnow," his contrasted 
 page — to this Jonsonian attempt to conceive theatrical per- 
 sonages on lines of definite simplicity and salient quality. 
 Dr. Caius and his group in The Merry Wives, and the typical 
 Scotch, Welsh, and Irish soldiers of Henry V, are similiar 
 examples. All these plays correspond in point of time with 
 the new rage of the Jonsonian humor, as did many others by 
 lesser men such, for example, as Oldcastle and The Merry Devil 
 of Edmonton, in both of which like groups of humorists recur. 
 During the next three years, from 1599 to 1602, Jonson 
 was engaged in a theatrical struggle conducted by means of 
 satirical dramas which is known to the history of the stage 
 as the war of the theaters. Throughout the latter years of 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Chamberlain's company, 
 acting continuously at the Globe, maintained its lead in the 
 dramatic profession. Its principal rivals were the Admiral's 
 men who occupied the Rose and moved, on its completion 
 in 1600, to AUeyn's new Fortune Theater in Golding Lane, 
 Cripplegate. In these years the companies of boy actors 
 assumed an extraordinary importance. These were the Chil- 
 dren of the Chapel Royal who occupied the private theater 
 which Burbage had built in Blackfriars from the time of its 
 erection, in 1596, and the Children of Paul's who appear to 
 have acted in their singing-school attached to the cathedral. 
 It has recently been argued, as we have seen above, that the 
 prominence of the former company was due directly to royal 
 patronage and that these boys, under the aggressive leader- 
 ship of Nathaniel Giles, Master of the Queen's Chapel, were 
 really maintained as actors, as well as singers for the Royal 
 Chapel, out of the royal purse. At any rate, save for Shake- 
 speare,they commanded the best pens of the moment, Jonson's 
 among them; and they enjoyed, for two or three years, an 
 unusual vogue because of the emphasis which they laid, in 
 the plays written for them, on a general satire of the times and 
 even on personal attack and lampoon. 
 
THE WAR OF THE THEATERS 233 
 
 To be sure, satire was no new thing in the drama and there 
 is reason to beheve that individual and personal attack had 
 been employed on the stage not only privately, as at the 
 universities, but publicly also and especially in the Martin 
 Marprelate controversy, an account of which has been given 
 in a previous chapter. The Marprelate plays have perished. 
 Lyly and Nash were the dramatists chipfly concerned in them. 
 As to the war of the theaters, or the "poetomachia," as Dekker 
 called it, its origin is not certainly known. Some have re- 
 ferred it to allusions of a satirical nature to Jonson, contained 
 in a satire by John Marston entitled The Scourge of Fillainy. 
 Jonson himself declared that "he had many quarrels with 
 Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his 
 Poetaster on him; the beginning of them were that Marston 
 represented him on the stage." The "war" assumed two 
 aspects from the first, the critical, in which Jonson arrogated 
 to himself the censorship of poetry and the stage, and the 
 personal, wherein he vigorously lampooned his enemies. We 
 are certain that the principals were Jonson and Marston. 
 Concerning the seconds and other aiders and abettors, much 
 is dubious. Marston was two or three years the junior of 
 Jonson, and was the son of a lawyer, sometime lecturer of the 
 Inner Temple. He received his education at Brasenose 
 College, Oxford, and his position among writers of non- 
 dramatic satire in verse will receive our later consideration, 
 Marston made a distinguished place for himself as a dramatist 
 within the first decade of the century and, entering the church, 
 lived on until 1634. He was an opinionated and self-satisfied 
 young man of twenty-two in 1598, fresh from his classics at 
 the university, and possessed of a conversancy with Italian 
 which he had from his mother. Jonson, as the new writer 
 of comedies of humors, just come into vogue, was as opin- 
 ionated and self-complaisant in his success as was ever Mars- 
 ton. It is likely that Jonson's hands were by no means clean 
 when he was attacked by Marston. In The Case is Altered, 
 a quasi-romantic comedy written before Every Man in his 
 Humor but which Jonson never acknowledged, he had gib- 
 beted several of his contemporaries satirically, among them 
 
234 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 Anthony Munday. In Every Man in his Humor he had quite 
 as certainly satirized in Master Matthew the poet Daniel, 
 against whom Jonson bore a continual grudge. DameThad 
 already been the butt of dramatic satire at the hands^oTChettle 
 and Dekker in one of the personages of Patient Grissel. It 
 seems likely that Histriomastix, a play revised by Marston 
 in 1598, contained in the character Chrisogonus, a poet, 
 satirist, and translator, poor but contemptuous of the ignoble 
 crowd, a picture of Jonson and one by no means discreditable 
 to him. If this was intended by Marston as amends, Jonson 
 refused so to construe it. It has even been surmised that this 
 is the representation of Jonson on the stage to which the poet 
 refers as the beginning of the quarrel.^ 
 
 The first of Jonson's three great satires in dramatic form 
 is Every Man out of his Humor, acted by the Chamberlain's 
 company in 1599. Whatever differences may arise among 
 students of the drama as to individual identifications, there can 
 be no question that in this play Jonson lampooned several of 
 his fellow poets, although the front of the satire is directed 
 against citizen follies. Munday, Lodge, Daniel as Fastidious 
 Brisk, "a spruce, afi'ected courtier," all have been thought to 
 be the subject of Jonson's wit and scorn; whilst Carlo Buf- 
 fone, "a public scurrilous and profane jester," was formerly 
 supposed to be Marston (author of The Scourge of Villainy), 
 especially because Carlo is pointedly alluded to as "the grand 
 scourge or second untruss (that is satirist) of the time" 
 (Joseph Hall having boasted himself the first). Of late, 
 however, there has been a return to an old identification of 
 Carlo Bufibne with a notorious person named Charles Chester 
 in the following passage from gossipy and notoriously inac- 
 curate John Aubrey. He relates that Chester was "a bold 
 importunate fellow ... a perpetual talker, and made a 
 noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir 
 Walter Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth (that is his 
 
 ^ On this whole topic, see the excellent work of J. H. Penniman, 
 7he War of the Theatres, Publications of the University of Penn- 
 sylvania, 1897, and his forthcoming ed. of Poetaster and Satiro- 
 mastix. 
 
THE WAR OF THE THEATERS 235 
 
 upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From him Ben 
 Jonson takes his Carlo BufFone (i.e. jester), in Every Man in 
 his Humor." Is it conceivable that after all Jonson was 
 ridiculing Marston and that the point of the satire consisted 
 in part at least in an intentional confusion of the "grand 
 scourge or second untruss" with "the scurrilous and profane" 
 Chester ? 
 
 Asper-Macilente is Jonson's complaisant picture of him- 
 self, the calm, just, learned poet, carrying his brow high and 
 unruffled in the midst of a pack of the yelping curs of detrac- 
 tion. In 1600 followed Jonson's more elaborate satire, 
 Cynthia s Revels or the Fountain of S elf-Love, this time acted 
 by the Children of the Queen's Chapel, and still further 
 advancing against his foes with the direct attack of his biting 
 and galling satire. Here Marston is certainly ridiculed in 
 the character Anaides, with Daniel, Lodge, and Munday as 
 before. His personages Jonson designates characteristically 
 under abstract names of Greek origin. Thus, Anaides 
 (Impudence), Hedon (Pleasure), and Asotus (the Prodigal) 
 
 — each accompanied by an appropriate female abstraction, 
 Moria (Folly), Philautia (Self-Love), and Argurion (Money) 
 
 — appear on the stage in brilliant and caustic dialogue, full 
 of allusions, personal, social, local, everything but political, 
 most of them lost to us (despite our most searching scholar- 
 ship) but evidently affording an entertainment to the audiences 
 of the day, equaled only by what we learn of Aristophanes in 
 ancient Athens. Jonson himself figures as the righteous and 
 judicious Crites. The reversion of Jonson here, as again 
 in his latest plays, to the abstractions of the old morality and 
 to the method of allegory is a striking characteristic of his 
 strong English personality. It has been held that Jack 
 Drum's Entertainment, another unavowed comedy of Marston, 
 dating 1600, contains a second dramatic attack on Jonson in 
 the character of a ridiculous Frenchman of licentious habits, 
 Monsieur Fo de King; but this is questionable to say the 
 least. A satirical scene of Marston's Antonio and Mellida, 
 acted also in 1600, between Balurdo and a painter, has 
 been regarded a parody of a similar scene between Hieronimo 
 
236 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 and a painter which occurs in that part of The Spanish 
 Tragedy which we know that Jonson added by way of revision 
 of Kyd's old work. But this assumes an earlier date for 
 Jonson's revision than has yet been proved. 
 
 Jonson's third and final dramatic satire was Poetaster, 
 acted (once more by the Chapel Children) in 1601. Here 
 his avowed quarry was the inferior poets of the time whaTfie 
 declares, had provoked him with "their petulant styles" for 
 years "on the stage." In a parable of the poetasters of ancient 
 Rome, Crispinus and Demetrius, Jonson contrasts their 
 spleen, stupidity, habits of literary theft, and their envy of 
 Vergil and Horace, with the virtue, moral righteousness, and 
 impeccability of these two, in the latter of whom we recognize, 
 once more, Jonson's favorite portrait of himself. Jonson was 
 answered soon after by Dekker in his Satiromastix, 1602, 
 which he seems to have been engaged by others to write. 
 Dekker thus really comes into the quarrel near to its conclusion 
 and the circumstance that Satiromastix is clearly an unfinished 
 play — really of chronicle type and evidently altered in haste 
 for this specific purpose — makes this the more likely. From 
 a literary point of view, Satiromastix can not be pronounced 
 a good play, though clever and pointed enough. But the 
 arrogance of Jonson and his outrageous self-righteousness 
 caused the time to award the palm to his opponents; and this 
 despite Jonson's tremendous superiority in every quality that 
 goes to make up effective dramatic satire. The arrogance 
 of Jonson reaches its height in Jn Apologetical Dialogue which 
 he affixed to Poetaster, on its publication in 1602 and which 
 he declares was "only once spoken on the stage." Here the 
 poet represents himself in conversation with two obsequious 
 and admiring friends concerning his dramatic and other opin- 
 ions and in contemptuous, but only too mindful, neglect of 
 his enemies. It adds to our wonder at the sublimity of Jon- 
 son's arrogant self-esteem to learn that he acted himself, in 
 this Dialogue, in propria persona. No lawsuits, however, 
 appear to have resulted from these vituperative libels of the 
 stage. And we find Jonson in friendship and collaboration 
 with both Marston and Dekker a short time after. Hence 
 
JONSON IN COMEDY 237 
 
 we may infer that there was no small amount of playing to 
 the gallery in all this dramatic warfare. As a specimen of 
 Jonson's swift satirical dialogue in its lighter vein, let us take 
 the following. Fastidious Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting 
 courtier, one that wears clothes well, and in fashion," and 
 Puntarvolo, "a vain-glorious knight, wholly consecrated to 
 singularity," are the chief interlocutors. Carlo Buffone, 
 described as "a good feast-hound or banquet-beagle," bears 
 a minor part. 
 
 Fast. Good faith, signior, now you speak of a quarrel, I '11 
 acquaint you with a difference that happened between a gallant and 
 myself; Sir Puntarvolo, you know him if I should name him, Signior 
 Luculento. 
 
 Punt. Luculento! What inauspicious chance interposed itself 
 to your two loves ? 
 
 Fast. Faith, sir, the same that sundered Agamemnon and great 
 Thetis' son; but let the cause escape, sir: he sent me a challenge 
 mixed with some few braves, which I restored and in fine we met. 
 Now, indeed, sir, I must tell you he did offer at first very desperately 
 but without judgment: for, look you, sir, I cast myself into this 
 figure; now he comes violently on, and withal advancing his rapier 
 to strike, I thought to have took his arm, for he had left his whole 
 body to my election, and I was sure he could not recover his guard. 
 Sir, I missed my purpose in his arm, rashed his doublet-sleeve, ran him 
 close by the left cheek, and through his hair. He again lights me here, 
 . — I had on a gold cable hatband, then new come up, which I wore 
 about a murrey French hat I had, — cuts my hatband, and yet it 
 was massy goldsmith's work, cuts my brims, which, by good for- 
 tune, being thick embroidered with gold twist and spangles, dis- 
 appointed the force of the blow: nevertheless, it grazed on my shoul- 
 der, takes me away six purls of an Italian cut-work band I wore, cost 
 me three pound in the Exchange but three days before. 
 
 Punt. This was a strange encounter. 
 
 Fast. Nay, you shall hear, sir: with this we both fell out and 
 'oreathed. Now, upon the second sign of his assault, I betook me to 
 the former manner of my defence; he, on the other side, abandoned 
 his body to the same danger as before, and follows me still with 
 blows: but I being loth to take the deadly advantage that lay before 
 me of his left side, made a kind of stramazoun, ran him up to the hilts 
 through the doublet, through the shirt, and yet missed the skin. 
 
238 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 He, making a reverse blow, falls upon my embossed girdle — I had 
 thrown off the hangers before, — strikes off a skirt of a thick-laced 
 satin doublet I had, lined with some four taffetas, cuts off two panes 
 embroidered with pearl, rends through the drawings-out of tissue, 
 enters the linings, and skips the flesh. 
 
 Car. I wonder he speaks not of his wrought shirt. 
 
 Fast. Here, in the opinion of mutual damage, we paused; but 
 ere I proceed I must tell you, segnior, that in this last encounter not 
 having leisure to put off my silver spurs, one of the rowels catched 
 hold of the ruffle of my boot, and being Spanish leather and subject 
 to tear, overthrows me, rends me two pair of silk stockings that I 
 put on, being somewhat a raw morning, a peach color and another, 
 and strikes me some half-inch deep into the side of the calf; he, see- 
 ing the blood come, presently takes horse and away; I, having bound 
 up my wound with a piece of my wrought shirt — 
 
 Car. O! comes it in there f 
 
 Fast. Rid after him, and, lighting at the court gate, both to- 
 gether embraced, and marched hand in hand up into the presence. 
 Was not this business well carried ? 
 
 A natural question arises here: where M^as Shakespeare 
 during all this fuss and fury f especially as we know by a clear 
 passage in Hamlet that he was neither ignorant of the matter 
 nor without an opinion about it. There is moreover an allu- 
 sion to the quarrel in an academic play called The Return 
 from Parnassus in which Shakespeare is not only suggested 
 as having taken a part in the quarrel but is spoken of as having 
 gained the better of Jonson in it. Still further, some have 
 thought that Troilus and Cressida, from its bitter and satirical 
 spirit (so unlike the Shakespeare of earlier and later work) was 
 the particular play in which the great dramatist took his part 
 in these petty broils. However, in view of the circumstance 
 that Dekker's Satiromastix was acted by Shakespeare's 
 company in answer to Jonson's two satires, just performed by 
 the Children of the Chapel, it seems not impossible to suppose 
 this play, rather than Troilus, the one in which Shakespeare 
 triumphed, vicariously to be sure, over the satire of the trucu- 
 lent Jonson. The passage in Hamlet referring to "the war" 
 and constantly quoted, runs as follows. Hamlet has heard of 
 the arrival of players at Elsinore and is in conversation with 
 
SHAKESPEARE AND THE "WAR" 239 
 
 Rosencrantz about them. He asks: "What players are 
 they?" And Rosencrantz repUes: 
 
 Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of 
 the city. 
 
 Ham. How chances it they travel ? Their residence, both in 
 reputation and profit, was better both ways. 
 
 Ros. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late 
 innovation. 
 
 Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in 
 the city ? Are they so followed ? 
 
 Ros. No, indeed they are not. 
 
 Ham. How comes it ? Do they grow rusty ? 
 
 Ros. Nay, their endeavor keeps in the wonted pace: but there is, 
 sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, 
 and are most tyrannically clapped for 't: these are now in fashion, 
 and so berattle the common stages, — so they call them, — that 
 many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce 
 come hither. 
 
 Ham. What! are they children ? who maintains 'em ? how are 
 they escoted ? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can 
 sing ? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves 
 to common players, — as it is most like, if their means are no better, 
 — their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their 
 . own succession ? 
 
 Ros. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the 
 nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for a 
 while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player 
 went to cuffs in the question. 
 
 Hamlet learns that the regular troupes of the city have suf- 
 fered what amounts to an inhibition or order to cease playing, 
 because of the extraordinary popularity of an aery of chil- 
 dren, that is company of boy actors, who are tremendously ap- 
 plauded by the public for performing satirical plays in which 
 people are lampooned on the boards. And Hamlet's question 
 — that is, Shakespeare's — is not. Who are the parties to the 
 quarrel ? or, How cleverly have the poets lashed each other ? 
 His thought is for the little actors, and the pity that they should 
 thus be "tarred," or set on, to tear and worry, in such a rivalry, 
 their older fellows in the profession, when it is likely that they, 
 
240 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 in time, must succeed the very men they are now attack- 
 ing. It may be questioned if Shakespeare's personal contri- 
 bution to the war of the theaters was more than this kindly 
 admonition. 
 
 Even a cursory examination of Elizabethan plays discovers 
 them occurring as to kind and subject in groups wherein some 
 popular success is emulated by rival dramatists and the same 
 or like topic exploited until the public calls for something new. 
 Subjects derived from classical history or myth had been pop- 
 ular on the stage almost from the beginning. The direct 
 suggestion came from Seneca; and from Sackville to Kyd the 
 academic Senecan line was continued, by Daniel, Greville, 
 and the coterie that preserved the traditions of Sidney, to Sir 
 William Alexander and his Monarchic Tragedies, in the early 
 years of King James. Except for Daniel's Cleopatra and 
 Philotas, both of them graceful and dignified tragedies, none 
 of these plays were intended for the stage. The whole group 
 appears to have been influenced directly by the French Sen- 
 ecan, Robert Garnier, and the best of them are the remarkable 
 closet dramas, Alaham and Mustapha, strange yet attractive 
 product of the philosophic ponderings of Sir Fulke Greville, 
 written perhaps before the death of Elizabeth. On the pop- 
 ular stage, aside from such old productions as Lodge's Wounds 
 of Civil War and the anonymous Wars of Cyrus, which date 
 about the time of the Armada, Marlowe's Dido, Queen of 
 Carthage, printed in 1 594, was one of the more important 
 dramas levying on classical subjects, a tragedy in which Nash 
 is alleged to have had a hand and one which, while far from 
 ranking with Marlowe's greatest work, is no discredit to either 
 author. A year or two later came Heywood's mythology 
 dramatized in the sundry plays on the four ages, already men- 
 tioned; and about 1600, Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar. 
 
 It has been observed that Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar is 
 one of the most regularly constructed of his plays. In it he 
 seems to have caught more nearly than elsewhere the restraint 
 of the classical spirit, though great as this tragedy is and full 
 of the poetry, the wisdom, and the power of characterization 
 that mark Shakespeare's plays everywhere more or less, Julius 
 
JONSON IN TRAGEDY 241 
 
 Ccesar can not be declared, from the antiquarian's point of 
 view, an accurate or an informing picture of ancient Roman' 
 life and history. Scholar and antiquarian that he was, the 
 faults of such a production must have impressed themselves 
 on a man like Jonson; and his Sejanus, first acted in 1603, 
 was, if not exactly a reply, at least an expression of his own 
 position. It seems from words of Jonson on the publication 
 of Sejanus two years later that he had had in its first version 
 a collaborator. And he is careful to have the reader know 
 that, in printing, he has "rather chosen to put weaker and, no 
 doubt, less pleasing [work] of mine own, than to defraud so 
 happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation." Some 
 have thought the "second pen" Shakespeare's. At any rate 
 we know from Jonson's folio that Shakespeare was one of 
 "the principal actors" in Sejanus and that, whatever its exact 
 circumstances, the rivalry of these great spirits could not have 
 been other than a generous one. In this tragedy of Sejanus, 
 as to a lesser degree in his other tragedy dealing with classical 
 history, Catiline, his Conspiracy, Jonson shows himself true 
 to the classical ideals and theories that had always animated 
 him. The earlier play was printed with elaborate scholarly 
 references to authorities used in working up his material. The 
 poet was not unjustly criticized for this ^^edantry, Marston 
 slyly remarking in the preface to his Sophonisha (another able 
 tragedy of this general type), that "to transcribe authors, 
 quote authorities, and translate Latin prose orations into Eng- 
 lish blank-verse, hath, in this subject, been the least aim of my 
 studies." Sejanus, with its admirable portrait study of Ti- 
 berius, derived from Tacitus, and Catiline, using as Jonson 
 does in it the materials of Sallust's succinct account of that 
 conspiracy, are splendid examples of Jonson's power prac- 
 tically to apply his just and reasonable classical theories about 
 tragedy and literary art to current EngHsh conditions. It is 
 not enough to say that if Jonson's figures are the truer Romans, 
 Shakespeare's are the truer men. The art of the two is less 
 opposed than to be contrasted. To the academician the free 
 art of genius must always seem amazing and inexplicable, as 
 it remains for any rules that he can apply. But the art of the 
 
242 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 academician has its place and deserves its praise. It is a credit 
 to these men of natures so diverse that they should have es- 
 teemed each other and worked thus together to produce an 
 artistic result. And it is an equal credit to the age that it 
 appreciated both, although it made Jonson honored and famous 
 and added riches only to the more popular success of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 In 1605 Jonson produced, with the help of Chapman and 
 Marston, to whom he was now fully reconciled, one of the best 
 comedies of London life in the language. This was Eastward 
 Hoe, a vivid picture of the tradesman's life presented in the 
 eternal contrast of the good and the evil-lived apprentice. 
 Here the authors succeeded in hitting the happy mean be- 
 tween purposeless art and moralizing, even though this comedy 
 does mark the climax of the parable of the prodigal son in 
 English drama. Neither preaching, allegory, nor abstraction 
 enter into this comedy to mar its effect; and yet its personages 
 are sufficiently typical to have appealed to its citizen au- 
 ditors as they appeal for their truth, humor, and vivacity to the 
 reader to-day. The play, too, is so well knit and its plan is 
 so logically carried out that it is impossible to determine the 
 conditions of this fortunate collaboration. A passage con- 
 taining satirical allusions to the Scotch was excised by order 
 of the royal council; but as passages were retained reflecting 
 on the country of the king's birth, Jonson and Chapman were 
 arrested and sent to prison for a time. In consequence of this 
 and of the popularity of Eastward Hoe on the stage, it was 
 printed three times in the year of its first presentation. 
 
 Volpone, often regarded as the most characteristic of the 
 comedies of Jonson, was acted for the first time in 1606 It 
 marks in tone a transition from the dramatic satires to the purer 
 comedies of contemporary life that follow a year or so later. 
 Fo//>on/iOKe story of a Venetian grandee and his servant 
 Mosca, two scoundrels without a redeeming trait. They are 
 surrounded by a group of parasites and self-seekers whose 
 discomfiture at the hands of cleverer rascals than themselves, 
 with the final overthrow of these two, alone justifies the ethics 
 of the play. The cynical tone of Volpone and its attitude of 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 243 
 
 doubt as to the existence of virtue in the world raise the ques- 
 tion as to whether such a play is comedy at all. Indeed, its 
 method and tone are wholly tragic, although imprisonment, 
 not death, overtakes the evil-doers. Jonson's view of comedy 
 was derived from the ancients. To him the proper material 
 for comedy is to be found in those departures from ordinary 
 conditions, whether moral, social, or other, that rouse the 
 phlegm of the satirist and moralist. The world to Jonson 
 was made up for the most part of two classes, the fools and the 
 knaves. And fools have been fair game for the knave time 
 out of mind. There is such a thing, to be sure, as virtue; but 
 unaccompanied by the protection of brains, it is likely to be 
 little better than folly. Jonson_ca.n forgive any^^ 
 stupidity; and hence, Surley, the only respectable man in The 
 Alchemist is discomfited, and that graceless scamp. Face, for- 
 given for his wit and success. It is somewhat strange that a 
 man like Jonson, whose whole nature was grounded in a rig- 
 orous conception of moral ideas, should thus fail where Shake- 
 speare and Dekker, careless observers of life as it is, succeed 
 by an unerring instinct. But Shakespeare's appeal is almost 
 always to the heart; Jonson's to the head and the critical 
 understanding... Shakespeare's plots are made up of events 
 generally beyond the control or even guidance of those whom 
 they concern; and they involve in consequence an ebb and 
 flow of passion with a resulting development or degeneracy 
 in character. Jonson's plots on the contrary are a fabric of 
 contrivances and devices, controlled by the cleverness and in- 
 genuity of the characters of the play. In place of an ebb and 
 flow of emotion, we have a struggle of wit, a play of mind 
 against mind; and the characteristics of a personage once 
 determined, he remains the same to the end. 
 
 After Volpone, Jonson gave up foreign scene for comedy. 
 He even transferred the locale of Every Man in his Humor, 
 in his revision of that play for his folio, from Florence to Lon- 
 don, transforming Signior Lorenzo di Pazzi to Old Know'ell, 
 Prospero to Master Welborn, Biancha to Mistress Bridget 
 and Hesperida to Dame Kitely, dwelling "i' the Old Jewry." 
 The Silent Woman and The Alchemist, 1609 and 16 1 0, with 
 
244 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 Bartholomew Fair, 1614, represent Jonson at his very best in 
 comedies of the life of his native town. Jonson knew his 
 London as well as his namesake, Dr. Johnson, in the age of 
 the Georges; for satirist and moralist that the elder author 
 was, he never forgot that the material for the drama is obtained 
 primarily in the actual characteristics of people about you. 
 The Alchemist details the doings of three sharpers who set up 
 in a house, vacated for the time by reason of the plague, an 
 alchemical furnace and by this and other means fool and cheat 
 as many gulls as they can decoy thither. Their victims are, 
 for the most part, contributary to their own undoing by their 
 folly and wickedness and, in the denouement. Face, the clever 
 servant, prime mover of all villainy, is forgiven and a widow 
 married out of hand after a manner known only to Roman 
 comedy. The Silent fVoman turns on the trick of Delphine, 
 a knavish nephew, to regain his position as heir to his uncle, 
 in the process of which his uncle, who detests noise, is driven 
 almost frantic and a marriage (that he has planned to dis- 
 inherit his nephew) is frustrated by the discovery that the wife 
 is neither "silent" nor a woman, but an exceedingly noisy boy. 
 Even slighter is the general fabric of the visit of Zeal-in-the- 
 Land Busy, immortal Puritan, with his companions, to Bar- 
 tholomew Fair, with the adventures that there befell them. 
 Yet for clever plotting, for ingenuity of situation, sustained 
 wit of dialogue, and humor in the conception of character 
 and incident these comedies of Jonson have never been sur- 
 passed. Their age acclaimed them and imitated them again 
 and again; and they held the stage as long as the comedies 
 of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and after. 
 
 The rest of the plays of Jonson, except for a comedy called 
 The Devil is an Ass, that failed on the stage in the year of 
 Shakespeare's death, were not written until after the accession 
 of King Charles in 1625. They were called by Dryden "Jon- 
 son's dotages," which is not fair; none the less The Staple of 
 News, The New Inn, and The Magnetic Lady are certainly 
 vastly inferior to his dramatic satires, his comedies, or the two 
 Roman tragedies. But, great as was Jonson's activity in the 
 
THE POETRY OF JONSON 245 
 
 composition of his score of originally devised and closely 
 written dramas for the popular stage, this represents only one 
 side of his busy career. Of his masques, their inventiveness 
 and poetic beauty, we must write in a later chapter. He was 
 the acknowledged leader, as poet laureate, of those who found 
 their livelihood in entertaining the court of King James. And 
 this primacy of his extended into the next reign. In criticism, 
 Jonson was easily the first, and what he taught by precept he 
 exemplified in a wide and various practice. Jonson's non- 
 dramatic poetry includes lyrics, among them a few sonnets 
 (though he did not love the form), satirical verse, chiefly in the 
 shape of epigrams and mock poems, and a large amount of 
 occasional verse for the most part made up of epistles, epitaphs, 
 and dedicatory poems; for Jonson was on terms of intimacy 
 with all the authors and half the nobility of his time. The 
 author grouped these works under the headings Epigrams and 
 The Forest and published both in the folio of 1616 to which 
 he gave his careful personal attention. A third group (of mis- 
 cellaneous poems) doubtless also of his making, appears in 
 print for the first time in the posthumous second volume of his 
 collected works, bearing date 1640, and is there designated 
 Underwoods. 
 
 In turning to the non-dramatic poetry of Jonson, especially 
 to his lyrical poetry, the first thing that we note is a sense of 
 form, not merely detail and transition, like the "links, bright 
 and even" of The Faery Queen, but a sense of the entire poem 
 in its relation to its parts. This sense involves brevity and 
 condensity of expression, a feeling on the part of the poet that 
 the effect may be spoiled by a word too much, a feeling notably 
 in contrast with the diff"useness, the continuousness and want 
 of concentration characteristic of the Spenserian mode of the 
 day. Jonson is writing in courtly compliment to his patroness 
 Lucy, Countess of Bedford : 
 
 This morning timely rapt with holy fire, 
 I thought to form unto my zealous Muse, 
 What kind of creature I should most desire, 
 To honor, serve, and love, as\ poets use. 
 
246 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise, 
 Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great; 
 I meant the day-star should not brighter rise, 
 Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat. 
 I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet, 
 Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride; 
 I meant each softest virtue there should meet. 
 Fit in that softer bosom to reside. 
 Only a learned and a manly soul 
 I purposed her; that should, with even powers, 
 I The rock, the spindle, and the shears control 
 
 i Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours. 
 
 Such when I meant to feign and wished to see, 
 My Muse bade Bedford write, and that was she. 
 
 About such poetry as this there is a sense of finish rather 
 than of elaboration. It is less continuous than coinplete; 
 more concentrated, less diffuse; chaste rather than florid; 
 controlled, and yet not always less spontaneous; reserved, 
 and yet not alw^ays less natural. There are other things in 
 the Jonsonian manner. It retained classical allusion less for 
 the sake of embellishment than as an atmosphere — to borrow 
 a term from the nomenclature of art. Its drafts on ancient 
 mythology become allusive, and the effects produced by Hor- 
 ace, Catullus, or Anacreon are essayed in reproduction under 
 English conditions. Not less eager in the pursuit of beauty 
 than the Spenserian, the manner of Jonson seeks to realize 
 her perfections by means of constructive excellence, not by 
 entranced passion. It concerns itself with choiceness of 
 diction, selectiveness in style, with the repression of wandering 
 ideas and loosely conceived figures, — in a word, the manner of 
 Jonson involves classicality. Sidney's return to the ancients 
 has been called empirical; the classicism of Jonson may be 
 termed assimilative. 
 
 It is thus that Jonson turns a lyric: 
 
 Still to be neat, still to be drest, 
 As you were going to a feast; 
 Still to be powdered, still perfumed: 
 Lady, it is to be presumed, 
 
THE POETRY OF JONSON 247 
 
 Though art's hid causes are not found, 
 All is not sweet, all is not sound. 
 
 Give me a look, give me a face. 
 
 That makes simplicity a grace; 
 
 Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: 
 
 Such sweet neglect more taketh me 
 
 Than all th' adulteries of art; 
 
 They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. 
 
 And in this wise he fashions two stanzas of an "Ode," one of 
 the noblest of his many fine poems addressed to his notable 
 friends of the day: 
 
 He stood a soldier to the last right end, 
 A perfect patriot and a noble friend. 
 But most a virtuous son. 
 All offices were done 
 By him so ample, full, and round. 
 In weight, in measure, number, sound. 
 As, though his age imperfect might appear. 
 His life was of humanity the sphere. 
 
 It is not growing like a tree 
 
 In bulk, doth make men better be; 
 Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, 
 To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear: 
 A lily of a day 
 Is fairer far in May, 
 
 Although it fall and die that night; 
 
 It was the plant and flower of light. 
 In small proportions we just beauties see; 
 And in short measures life may perfect be. 
 
 Ill griQmic-tlionght and moralizing, such as this or the noble 
 Epode beginning, "Not to know vice at all," we have Jonson 
 lyrically at his best, if such passages be strictly lyrical and not 
 rather epigrammatic in the larger classical sense. The Epi- 
 grams of Jonson are full of cleverness and agile wit, and several 
 playful poems, such as "A Fit of Rime against Rime" or 
 "The Execration against Vulcan," are possessed of a light- 
 someness and raillery, as his epitaphs declare a humane tender- 
 
248 THE CLASSICAL REACTION 
 
 ness, such as we could hardly expect of the trenchant author 
 of Poetaster. 
 
 We have seen how classical were Jonson's ideas as to the 
 drama. This was only the most conspicuous example of the 
 wider tenets that he held concerning literature at large. From 
 his works and especially from his avowed opinions, expressed 
 in his Conversations with Drummond and carefully noted 
 down by that poet at the time, we learn that Jonson believed 
 in the criticism of Horace and in the rhetoric of Quintilian; 
 in the sanction of classical usage for history, oratory, and 
 poetry; and that an English ode should be modeled faith- 
 fully on the structural niceties of Pindar. Despite all this, 
 Jonson's theories about literature were not only, in the main, 
 reasonable and consistent, they were often surprisingly liberal. 
 Thus he could laugh, as he did, in a well-known passage of 
 the prologue to Every Man in his Humor, at the absurdities 
 of contemporary stage realism which, 
 
 with three rusty swords, 
 And help of some few foot-and-half-foot words, 
 Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars; 
 And in the tiring-house bring wounds to scars; 
 
 and yet declare, as to that fetish of the supine classicist, the 
 three unities, that "we [English playwrights] should enjoy 
 the same licence or free power to illustrate and heighten our 
 invention as they [the ancients] did; and not be tied to those 
 strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are 
 nothing but form, would thrust upon us." He could affirm 
 that "Spenser's stanzas pleased him not, nor his matter"; and 
 yet tell Drummond that "for a heroic poem there was no such 
 ground as King Arthur's fiction." He censured the pastoral- 
 ists for their unreality, and yet he had by heart passages of the 
 Shepherds' Calendar and showed how he thought that a true 
 pastoral drama should be written in the Sad Shepherd; he 
 mocked the sonneteers, especially Daniel, in his satirical plays, 
 for their sugared sweetness and frivolity; but wrote himself 
 some of the finest lyrics of his age. The catholicity of Jonson's 
 taste in its sympathy included the philosophy and eloquence 
 
JONSON THE CLASSICIST 249 
 
 of Lord Bacon, the divinity of Hooker, the historical and anti- 
 quarian inquiries of Camden and Selden, the classical scholar- 
 ship of Chapman, and the poetry of such diverse men as 
 Spenser, Father Southv^rell, Donne, Sandys, Herrick, Carew, 
 and his lesser "sons." 
 
 With consistent theories such as these applied with liber- 
 ality, with catholicity of taste, and the force of a strong and 
 confident nature such as was his, we can not wonder at Jon- 
 son's influence on his time, the more particularly that the wild 
 and inconsiderate spirit of much Elizabethan poetry laid itself 
 only too readily open to criticism for its amateurishness and 
 apparent want of any serious purpose in art. Further into 
 the qualities that distinguish Jonson as a classicist — his 
 habitual practice of occasional verse, his trend towards a pre- 
 cise, pointed, and antithetical diction, his Latinized vocab- 
 ulary, and his preference for the decasyllablic couplet over all 
 other kinds of verse, we need not look further here. To Jon- 
 son must be granted the credit of setting a standard of literary 
 excellence, not recognized before his time; and of assuming, 
 in so doing, an attitude of independence towards the public. 
 Jonson developed the masque, as we shall see, and devised a 
 species of Roman tragedy, conceived historically and freed 
 alike from the restrictions of Senecan models and the improb- 
 abilities of romantic treatment. He added the comedy of 
 humors to the forms of the English drama. And it was this 
 satirically heightened picture of contemporary life, handled 
 with a restraint and finish ultimately traceable to classical 
 example, that survived on the stage after the Restoration in 
 the comedies of Davenant, Dryden, Etheridge and Vanbrugh. 
 Thus it was that Jonson gave to the later drama one of its two 
 permanent types; and, displaying the tastes and ideals that 
 came, in still more restricted form, to rule English literature 
 in the age of Dryden and Pope, set the channel in which Eng- 
 lish poetry was to run for three generations as the founder of 
 what is known as the classical school of English poetry. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, WEBSTER, AND THE HEYDAY 
 OF ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 
 
 THE range and variety of Elizabethan tragedy is almost 
 that of the entire drama itself; for religious, historical, 
 and classical subjects, all find place among the tragic plays 
 of the age, as well as the romantic biography and fiction that 
 are levied on as their more usual sources. In previous pages 
 of this book the beginnings of tragedy have been traced from 
 its earliest examples in regular form, derived as they w^ere 
 from Seneca, to its realization in The Spanish Tragedy and 
 in the greater v^^orks of Marlowe. The murder play, too, 
 has been described; and its cruelty and crass realism found 
 to have developed in Arden of Feversham into one example, at 
 least, deserving a place beside the triumphs of contrasted 
 romantic art. But these were not all the varieties of earlier 
 Elizabethan tragedy; even the chronicle play, epic and often 
 dramatically formless that it was, developed in the hands of 
 Marlowe and Shakespeare into tragedy of a; higer type and 
 rose, in Edward II, in Richard II, and elsewhere, to a place 
 beside romantic tragedy at its best. 
 
 There is no one influence in English tragedy so abiding 
 and pervasive as that of the Roman poet Seneca. Without 
 lepeating what has already been suggested, it may be remarked 
 that the early selection of Seneca, rather than the superior 
 examples of ancient tragedy which ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and 
 Euripides offer, was due to several considerations. First, 
 Seneca was nearer to hand and he wrote in Latin, the universal 
 language of the learning and diplomacy of the age. Secondly, 
 Seneca's moral purpose, or at least his love of gnomic moral- 
 izing and putting the commonplace of obvious comment into 
 the mouths of his personages, fell in well with the ideas of a 
 time that had not yet learned to accept poetry and the drama 
 as things properly existent without an ulterior moral end. 
 
 250 
 
"TITUS ANDRONICUS" 251 
 
 Lastly, Seneca was the most modern of the ancients and the 
 most romantic of the classics; and his blood and revenge, 
 his ghosts, furies, and horrors, were dear to an age which, how- 
 ever nice its appreciation of the more spiritual qualities of art, 
 clung none the less to the robust, the virile, and the actual 
 fiquite as tenaciously as the times that went before and those 
 that have come after. 
 
 The earliest influences on Shakespeare in tragedy were 
 those of Kyd and Marlowe. We may not like to think of 
 Shakespeare as the author or even the reviser of Titus An- 
 dronicus; for the subject is horrible, the treatment often 
 uninspired and blatant. But this tragedy is neither wanting 
 in promise nor devoid of many touches that suggest the hand 
 and heart of Shakespeare. If we are to seek for any solution 
 of the enigma of Shakespeare's genius, we must expect just 
 such crudity, such unawakened sensibilities, such want of 
 taste as we find in Titus of the inexperienced Stratford lad. 
 Titus Andronicus is precisely the kind of a play that a young 
 dramatist of talent might write in his imitative period, over- 
 doing the lust, the cruelty, and the blood of his subject in his 
 endeavor to succeed, and from the very circumstance that these 
 things were so remote from his own intellectual preoccupa- 
 tions. That the style and the manner of Greene, Peele, Kyd, 
 and other authors have been found in it scarcely weakens the 
 probability of its writing by Shakespeare; and the circumstance 
 that the subject was popular (recurring in Henslowe under 
 variations of title in 159 1 and 1593, in a German version 
 derived from a contemporary English play, and later in a 
 Dutch version) merely adds to the likelihood of Shakespeare's 
 choice of it. Titus is a horrible and tasteless tragedy, showing 
 none the less in the quality of its diction and in its powerful 
 conception of such personages as Aaron and Tamora unusual 
 dramatic promise. 
 
 Titus must certainly have been on the stage before 1594, 
 in February of which year the recently rediscovered first 
 quarto was registered for publication.^ Romeo and Juliet, 
 
 ^ The only exemplar of this quarto was discovered among the 
 books of a Swedish gentleman of Scottish descent, name*! Robson, 
 at Lund, Sweden, in 1905. 
 
252 
 
 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 whether dated back to 1591 or left at 1596 or 1597, must not 
 only have followed Titus, but, if taste, growth of power and 
 restraint, and grasp of dramatic situation mean anything, 
 some time must have elapsed between the two tragedies. 
 Whatever Shakespeare's actual source for Romeo and 'Juliet, 
 the subject had long been popular on the stage and in current 
 poetry and fiction; so that here, as so often, Shakespeare 
 becomes the artistic form-giver to a theme already well known 
 and accepted. Inevitable tragedy though it is, Romeo and 
 Juliet is written in the exuberant and poetical spirit that ani- 
 mates A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Merchant of 
 Venice; and youthful and untamed though this spirit is, we 
 have in it abundant promise of much that was to come. In 
 this great tragedy of adolescence, especially as we compare it 
 with other examples of plays the theme of which is love, we 
 are struck by Shakespeare's naturalness, the simple adequacy 
 of his art, the poetry and clearness of his picture of human 
 passion, and the genial play of his humor about a theme easily 
 capable of degeneration into sentimentality in the hands of a 
 less skilful artist. In Juliet we have for the first time to the 
 full Shakespeare's unparalleled insight into womanhood and 
 his recognition of the glory of her love. The true theme is 
 Juliet's passion; Romeo's is paltry in comparison. Love 
 clears Juliet's vision as to all things and, left to her pru- 
 dence, her daring, her devotion, all had gone well. It is 
 Romeo's eyes that are blind, and it is he that plunges distracted 
 to the catastrophe. 
 
 By the time that Shakespeare again turned his attention 
 to tragedy, he had completed, save for Henry VIII, his list 
 of chronicle plays and now chose a subject from ancient history 
 in a sense kindred to them. The Tragedy of Julius Ccesar 
 has been variously placed as to date of composition between 
 1599 and 1 601. Whether he used some now lost play or not, 
 the dramatist's immediate source was the latter part of North's 
 Plutarch, which alone accounts for the unheroic character 
 given to the dictator, as Caesar's greatness and his exploits 
 belong to his earlier career. The play, indeed, is less the 
 tragedy of Caesar than that of Brutus, whom Shakespeare did 
 
SHAKESPEARE AND JONSON 253 
 
 not hesitate to present in a light far more favorable to his 
 honesty, his disinterestedness, and kindness of heart than 
 appears in the pages of Plutarch. In choosing thus the story 
 of the fall of the greatest man of antiquity Shakespeare was 
 attempting nothing novel. The subject had been treated on 
 the stage by Gosson, by henchmen of Henslowe more than 
 once, and at Oxford; and the source had been long since 
 broached for other purposes, by Lodge for example in his 
 Wounds of Civil War, as far back as 1588. The suggestion 
 of a regulative example in Jonson for this play of Shakespeare's 
 on Julius Caesar has been made above. But it must be remem- 
 bered that Jonson's own labors in this kind followed Shake- 
 speare's tragedy. Whatever their relation, nothing could be 
 greater than their contrast, for in Shakespeare the dramatist 
 ruled, in Jonson the scholar. Neither of these great authors 
 treated ancient history after the melodramatic manner of 
 Seneca, for even Jonson, with all his veneration of the an- 
 cients, never tied — save in the fiction of text-books — to the 
 strict laws that governed their art. But Jonson was solicitous 
 of historical, biographical, and archaeological truth. Hence 
 he studied his originals with care and followed them with the 
 scholar's fidelity. Shakespeare sought for a higher truth 
 than these; and as artistic truth — not historical, biographi- 
 cal, or archaeologic — is the truth of the drama, his work 
 abides the touch of time as Jonson's never could. Shake- 
 speare's Julius C(Bsar, which was an immediate success, 
 revived an interest in classical topics and not only did Jonson's 
 Sejanus follow in 1603, but Marston's Sophonisha, Heywood's 
 Rape of Lucrece, and Gwinne's Latin tragedy AT^ro, all belong 
 to the same year. The first of these is a romantic drama of 
 conglomerate type of no small merit; Heywood's play adds 
 little to his credit; Dr. Matthew Gwinne's Nero is an ambi- 
 tious work dedicated to the queen and true to all the theories 
 cherished by Jonson. 
 
 Although Shakespeare turned to subjects for tragedy more 
 truly romantic in the interim, he was drawn into other plays 
 of this type a few years later by a second revival of interest in 
 ancient story. To the year 1607 belong two plays on Caesar 
 
254 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 and Pompey, the one anonymous, the other by Chapman, and 
 likewise an English college play on Nero. And this year, or 
 one or two thereafter, saw Timon of Athens, Antony and 
 Cleopatra, Pericles, and Coriolanus as well. These plays 
 group naturally together from their setting in ancient times. 
 Their general source (save for Pericles) is Plutrach's Lives. 
 But they differ widely in their minor sources, in the terms of 
 their authorship, and in their relative qualities and excellence. 
 Pericles is a romance of adventure and belongs elsewhere. 
 Timon, even more than Pericles, is a work of great inequality 
 and inconceivable as wholly from the hand of Shakespeare. 
 In this story of hopeless misanthropy the dialogue of Lucian 
 concerning Timon, and perhaps an earlier academic play, 
 may have served for suggestions. It has even been doubted 
 whether Timon of Athens was ever staged, and its place in the 
 folio and the corruption of the text in places cast further sus- 
 picion upon it. With Antony and Cleopatra and with Corio- 
 lanus we are on firmer ground. The latter, on the stage by 
 1609, is a clearly conceived tragedy turning on a definite 
 theme, the arrogant pride of Coriolanus, and developed with 
 an artist's sense of the effectiveness of a single tone. It adds 
 to our appreciation of this emphasis of effect to learn that 
 the characteristics of Coriolanus are merely suggested in Plu- 
 tarch's narrative. Shakespeare's misinterpretation of history 
 in making "the dignified secession of the plebs" a turbulent 
 mob, is thus justified by the dramatic demands of his subject 
 as he conceives it. It is difficult to sympathize with the criti- 
 cism that objects to Shakespeare's contemptuous representa- 
 tion of the mob in this tragedy and in Julius Ccesar. The 
 drift and average of mankind in leaderless fluxion has always 
 been fickle, stupid, and disorderly; and it requires more than 
 seeing things as they are to wax eloquent on the virtues and 
 prudence of men when they herd in the streets. Shakespeare, 
 though country born, saw countrymen, rustic and the popu- 
 lace of London, ignorant and uncleanly; and he sacrificed no 
 jot or tittle of the concrete truth to lofty generalizations on 
 that figment of the imagination, the average man. 
 
 Just as we found Shakespeare raising the chronicle history 
 
"ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA" 255 
 
 out of its species into a tragedy of world significance, so in 
 this matter of ancient history he rises above the trammels of 
 his sources in Julius CcBsar and in Antony and Cleopatra. 
 This last remarkable tragedy is less an historical drama on 
 the days of ancient Rome than a glorification of the time-worn 
 fable which has converted the infatuation of an elderly de- 
 bauchee for a royal light-o'-love into one of the supreme love 
 stories of all time. In Shakespeare's hands Cleopatra holds 
 our sympathy and, what is more, our respect. It is only 
 necessary to compare this impetuous, variable, and fascinating 
 serpent of the Nile with the Senecan frigidity of Daniel's 
 picture of the Egyptian queen in his Cleopatra, 1593, or the 
 painted meretrix that Fletcher later made of her in The False 
 One, to realize to the full the strength of Shakespeare's por- 
 trait. Dryden, too, attempted a dramatic portrait of Cleo- 
 patra in his All for Love; and in emulating Shakespeare, sur- 
 passed himself; but he did no more. Depth, fullness of thought 
 and impetuous imagery, all are qualities of Shakespeare's 
 Antony and Cleopatra and it matters little that the scene is 
 changed at will (fifteen times in the fourth act) and that con- 
 structively the drama straggles almost to the degree of a 
 chronicle play. Julius Ccesar and Coriolanus are better con- 
 structed tragedies; but Shakespeare is seldom at his best 
 under restraint and there is a larger utterance, a wider horizon 
 in Antony and Cleopatra than in these earlier tragedies deal- 
 ing with classical story. 
 
 In our endeavor to keep the tragedies of similar subject 
 together we have advanced beyond the heyday of romantic 
 tragedy. Let us return to the later years of Queen Elizabeth 
 and to another topic. When Marlowe died he left behind 
 him a play called The Massacre at Paris in which the conse- 
 quences, rather than the terrible event, of the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew are set forth for the stage, and the Duke of 
 Guise is gibbeted as a monster of wickedness. This lead, 
 thus apparently for the first time pointed out. Chapman 
 followed in some five dramas of tragic import and, although 
 unequal, of a very real merit. Of Chapman we shall hear 
 more fully in the next chapter when we reach a considera- 
 
256 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 tion of his famous translation of Homer. For the present 
 it is enough to recall that Chapman's beginnings as a drama- 
 tist date at least as far back as those of Jonson and that his 
 earliest plays were comedies of disguse, intrigue, and humors 
 in the Jonsonian sense. In 1607 Bussy D'Amhois was 
 printed for the first time, though certainly much earlier 
 written. This tragedy tells the story of an impoverished 
 bravo who became a favorite of Henry HI, and sets 
 forth at large the tangled intrigues and dissolute life of the 
 court of that despicable monarch. This play was doubtless 
 written far earlier, if it does not link even more closely on to 
 The Massacre at Paris and The Civil Wars in France, three 
 plays of 1598 by Dekker and others, long since lost. In 1604 
 Chapman wrote and staged, under influence of the popularity 
 of the tragedy of revenge, a continuation of Bussy, entitled 
 The Revenge of Bussy D'Amhois, wherein that worthy's 
 brother Cleremont, "a Senecal man," as the author calls him, 
 of misanthropic Hamlet type, figures as hero and avenger. 
 Four years later appeared a more extensive work. The Con- 
 spiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron, a drama in two 
 parts, on French history almost contemporary. On complaint 
 of the French ambassador that his royal master was represented 
 on the stage in this production, the performance of it was 
 stopped, and the author driven into hiding to escape arrest. 
 When all was done. Chapman failed to secure permission to 
 publish his work in its completeness, and it remains, a testi- 
 mony of the efficacy of the censorship of its day. Byron's 
 story is that of the treason of an arrogant and self-sufficient 
 noble, whose contumacy when the royal clemency is offered 
 him brings about his deserved fall. Chabot, Admiral of 
 France, licensed only in the reign of King Charles, is the fifth 
 of these French histories of Chapman; and though by far the 
 best as a play, from its revision if not complete rewriting by 
 Shirley, is beyond the range of our period. In the other four 
 plays we have the most characteristic contribution of Chap- 
 man to the drama of his time. These French histories are 
 full of poetry, thought, and a certain power of moralizing in 
 verse for which their author is justly memorable. But they 
 
FOREIGN HISTORIES 257 
 
 are, save for Chabot, formless and chaotic; though it is re- 
 markable that Chapman's personages are none the less dis- 
 coverable in so much detail and stand out often so dinstinctly. 
 In these dramas, as in nearly everything he wrote, we feel 
 that Chapman strives too hard. Ease and naturalness he 
 seems never to have compassed; all is effort and strenuous 
 endeavor, with not quite complete success. These were by 
 no means the only plays levying on foreign contemporary 
 history and after Shakespeare's death came several such, as 
 Fletcher's Barnavelt, The Noble Spanish Soldier by Dekker, 
 and William Rowley and Middleton's Game at Chess, which 
 were close upon the heels of the events that they depict. A 
 background of French "history" serves for two early anony- 
 mous romantic dramas, The Trial of Chivalry, 1597, and 
 The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, i6oo; the Faust-like bio- 
 graphical Tragedy of Pope Alexander, i6o6, by the lyric poet 
 Barnabe Barnes, is one of many quasi-historical tragedies of 
 Italian scene. Other plays, such as A Larumfor London, 1602, 
 and The Hector of Germany, 16 1 5, lay their scene in the last- 
 named country. Among them is Alphonsus of Germany, an 
 historical tragedy of no little force, of doubtful date, and even 
 more doubtfully attributed by some to Chapman. 
 
 Let us turn back to our point of departure once more. 
 Few plays enjoyed the popularity of The Spanish Tragedy, 
 and few begot as time went on so large and vigorous a progeny. 
 This popular work of Kyd is a tragedy of revenge and we have 
 seen above how closely its story parallels that of Hamlet, an 
 early version of which may be confidently attributed to Kyd 
 also. It was in 1599 that young John Marston, fresh from 
 the university and from penning sundry satires and unre- 
 strained erotic poems, placed on the stage his Antonio and 
 Melltda and Antonio's Revenge, two dramas of vital if unequal 
 power and promise. The former is a serious drama, arrested 
 just short of tragedy; the latter a tragedy of revenge following 
 closely the method and even the details of The Spanish 
 Tragedy and Hamlet. Thus Antonio's revenge is for a father 
 slain, that vengeance is invoked by his father's ghost, Antonio 
 is driven nearly mad by his grief and horror, and hesitates to 
 
258 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 kill his enemy, as does Hamlet, when in his power; while, as 
 in The Spanish Tragedy, the catastrophe is brought about by 
 a play within a play. But Antonio's Revenge is no mere 
 copy; it is full of real and original horrors of its own and, with 
 all its stridency and melodrama, an effective piece of work. 
 Whether Marston started the revival or an earlier revival than 
 we know inspired Marston, certain it is that a couple of years 
 later The Spanish Tragedy was revived on the stage with 
 great success and that no less a man than Ben Jonson was 
 paid for additions, chiefly to the psychology (as we should 
 call it) of the protagonist Hieronimo, the distracted father 
 who seeks where to apply his vengeance for the murder of his 
 innocent son. By 1603 the earliest quarto of The Revenge of 
 Hamlet Prince of Denmark was printed. It was enlarged and 
 revised in the following year, and a third version, differing 
 in important particulars, appeared in the folio, seven years 
 after Shakespeare's death. The rewriting of Kyd's old 
 Hamlet by a rival company so soon after the revival and revi- 
 sion of The Spanish Tragedy, with Antonio's Revenge still 
 holding the stage, makes all but irresistible the inference that 
 these two old plays of Kyd were rewritten and revised in 
 emulation the one with the other by the two greatest drama- 
 tists of their time. The problem that confronts the student 
 as to this most notable of all the plays of Shakespeare is com- 
 plex and difficult, and with the data at hand quite insoluble. 
 Nor is the matter helped by the loss of any trace of Kyd's 
 old Hamlet or the existence of a German version of the play 
 derived from England, but whether before or after the Shake- 
 spearean quartos is doubtful. What was the nature of Kyd 's 
 original Hamlet ? What parts have been retained by Shake- 
 speare, and what are his changes and departures ? What is 
 the true relation of all these versions ? Such are some of the 
 questions we should like definitely answered but which seem, 
 despite all the scholarship lavished upon them, likely to remain 
 "in the backward and abysm of time." 
 
 Fortunately for the enjoyment of this world tragedy we 
 need none of these extraneous matters. To the understand- 
 ing of Shakespeare's depth of thought and wisdom we may 
 
THE TRAGEDY OF REVENGE 259 
 
 bring all the native wit and the added learning we may have 
 acquired and it will be none too much; but for these plays^ 
 as works of fiction, verily he who runs may read, though he 
 must often content himself with a meaning rather than the 
 meaning. Therefore the madness or soundness of Hamlet^ 
 the degree of his mother's guilt, was Ophelia frail or only 
 faulty, or Polonius the tedious old fool that Hamlet called him 
 — these are matters unimportant in view of the truth to life, 
 the insight into the depths of the human heart, and the larger 
 philosophy of life which this great drama gives us. We may 
 outlive the form of these dramas and find conventional and 
 stale the measured words and cadenced melody of their 
 rhetoric (if Mr. Shaw will so have it), but the sanity of Shake- 
 speare's outlook on life is imperishable, and when we have 
 degenerately ceased to respond to his poetry we must remain 
 the subjects of his wit and of that incomparable wisdon that 
 flashes impartially on all and illumines whatever it touches. 
 But our tale of the tragedy of revenge is not yet cornplete. 
 In 1602 Henry Chettle put forth his melodramatic Tragedy 
 of Hoffman or a Revenge for a Father, which it is impossible 
 to believe was not written at least after the revival of the older 
 Hamlet if not subsequent to the appearance on the stage of 
 the earlier Shakespearean version of that play. Chettle 
 heaped several additional horrors on those already invented 
 by Marston and is especially ingenious in the variety of dread- 
 ful deaths by which his characters depart from this life. 
 About this time was staged The Atheist's Tragedy by Cyril 
 Tourneur, as appears by the title-page. Tourneur lived 
 much abroad, chiefly in the Low Countries; and his slender 
 literary work is negligible except for this play and a second. 
 The Revenger s Tragedy, printed without his name in 1607. 
 Both are powerful and effective dramas full of action and 
 inventive device although they differ materially in atmosphere 
 and design, the first assuming the moralist's attitude towards 
 life and crime, The Revenger s Tragedy flaunting a bitterly 
 cynical outlook on the world and all its doings. This con- 
 trast has raised a question as to whether both plays can be by 
 the same hand. Whatever the truth of this matter, in terrible 
 
26o THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 realism of effect, in mastery of horror and poetry, The Re- 
 venger s Tragedy takes its place in our drama as second only 
 to Webster himself in these high qualities of tragic art. 
 With the intervention between the two plays just named of 
 Chapman's Revenge of Bussy D'Amhois already mentioned, 
 we complete the list of tragedies of revenge, at least of the 
 type strictly so called. The tragedy of revenge from its very 
 nature deals with crime, conscience, and remorse. These 
 plays make potent use of the supernatural and other terrors. 
 Chapman is the clumsiest in the use of such devices; Marston 
 and Tourneur are more successfully inventive. Shake- 
 speare's ghosts trascend their disembodied fellows as his men 
 and women excel the characters of other dramatists. And 
 this is not because he was less willing to obscure in his art the 
 line that marks what most men feel that they do know from 
 that which they mistrust, as because the Shakespearean ghost 
 is always true to the seat of his origin in the psychology of man. 
 To classify the subjects of Jacobean tragedy would be to 
 run the gamut of human passion: love, jealousy, revenge, 
 ambition, pride, all are there, as Shakespeare alone is enough 
 to disclose. A powerful if forbidding group of tragedies is 
 that which deals with womanhood in that deadly perversion 
 by which woman exists but for the destruction of man. Such 
 figures were Tamora in Titus Andronicus and the "lasci- 
 vious queen" of Lust's Dominion, mistakenly attributed to 
 Marlowe. Middleton, Marston, and Webster each contrib- 
 uted a drama of unusual reputation to this class and all three 
 fall close to the year 1612. Middleton's Women Beware 
 Women relates in its major plot the career of Bianca Capello, 
 who is represented as at first the innocent victim of a lady- 
 procuress, Livia, to the Duke de' Medici's lust, but sinks by 
 steps to murder. A still more revolting underplot makes up 
 an intricate but clearly constructed piece of realism, terrible 
 in its truth as it is superlative in its art. The Insatiate Countess 
 of Marston (though his authorship has sometimes been ques- 
 tioned) tells of the headlong career of a petulant wanton and 
 the havoc that was wrought by her beauty and her crimes. 
 Marston had treated the same theme, less luridly though 
 
JOHN WEBSTER 261 
 
 scarcely with less effect, in The Dutch Courtesan, described 
 as a comedy and linking, in the contrast that it sustains, with 
 the domestic dramas of the good wife and the wanton. The 
 third of these tragedies is Webster's Vittoria Corombona other- 
 wise known as The White Devil. 
 
 John Webster, concerning the details of whose life we 
 know next to nothing, appears first in the history of the drama 
 as a co-worker, especially with Dekker, in Henslowe's mart 
 of plays. This collaboration begot the chronicle play Sir 
 Thomas JVyatt and the Middletonian comedies of manners. 
 Westward Hoe and Nortward Hoe, all on the stage by 1604 
 or 1605. Webster's hand in other plays does not concern us 
 as his authorship is doubtful. His unaided extant work 
 comprises four plays. The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi. 
 The Devil's Law Case, and Appius and Virginia, published 
 variously in 1612, 1623, and 1654 and written it is difficult to 
 say precisely when. The Devil's Law Case is a romantic 
 comedy of no very striking excellence; Appius and Virginia, 
 a tragedy on the well-known classical story of very genuine 
 merit, though restrained and self-contained in great contrast 
 to the robust romanticism of Webster's most characteristic 
 work. It is on the two romantic tragedies that remain that 
 the reputation of Webster, as our greatest dramatist in the 
 domain of the terrible, rests secure, for there are no tragedies 
 of their kind that surpass them. 
 
 The White Devil purports to be the actual life-history of 
 "Vittoria Corombona, the famous Venetian courtesan." It 
 deals with the profligate Duke of Brachiano's infatuation for 
 Vittoria and the resulting tragedy to them both. But no 
 description can make clear the brilliant and fascinating per- 
 sonality of this "innocent-seeming white devil" of decadent 
 Italy, and the vivid group of personages — the cynical Fla- 
 mineo, her brother, her helpless and distracted mother, the 
 politic brothers Medici and Monticelso — that surround her. 
 The White Devil, because it departs both in general intent and 
 in many details from the facts of the celebrated case of the real 
 Vittoria Accoramboni, has been thought to have been derived 
 from the hearsay of some Italian traveler returned. The 
 
262 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 story of The Duchess of Malfi, on the other hand, represents 
 an embarassment of sources, though Webster unquestionably 
 found the version that he used in the old quarry for Eliza- 
 bethan playwrights, Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Webster's 
 tragedy has been customarily dated after Shakespeare's 
 death. It now appears that an actor, Willam Osteler, who 
 took a part in The Duchess of Malfi, died towards the close of 
 the year 1614. Indeed, it has been well argued that the like- 
 ness of Webster's two tragedies should place their composition 
 close together. Perhaps 16 10 for The White Devil and 1 6 12 
 for The Duchess of Malfi is as near as need be. The latter 
 tragedy tells of the vengeance which two brothers took on the 
 duchess, their sister, for marrying without their knowledge or 
 consent, a man in every respect worthy of her love, save for his 
 rank. The refinements of their cruelty, carried out with inex- 
 orable precision to the bitter end, by a creature of their making, 
 named Bosola; the steadfast, heroic fatalism of the duchess; 
 the contrasted wickedness of the brothers, especially the re- 
 morse of Ferdinand, are among the finest things in the whole 
 range of tragic literature and compare in the gnomic wisdom, 
 the brilliant diction, and admirable poetry in which the drama 
 is set with Shakespeare himself when all but at his greatest. 
 Attention has been called to the success with which Webster 
 creates an atmosphere of ominous gloom in these masterful 
 tragedies, and how he works at times, in a manner familiar 
 to Shakespeare, by means of instantaneous dramatic moments 
 charged with revealing passion. The influence of the master- 
 poet on Webster has thus been happily called not literary but 
 dramatic, and it is conceivable that it may have been derived 
 less from a reading of Shakespeare's plays than from a study 
 of them on the boards as acted. ^ As an example of the Web- 
 sterian atmosphere take his transfigured use of the familiar 
 lyrists' device of an echo in The Duchess of Malfi. Antonio, 
 whose beloved duchess lies dead with her children, although 
 he does not know it, is on his way with a friend to meet his 
 
 ^ See M. W. Sampson, Webster^ Belles Lettres Series, Introduction, 
 p. xix. 
 
"THE DUCHESS OF MALFI" 263 
 
 own death. The scene, as so often with Shakespeare, is 
 vividly suggested in the dialogue. 
 
 Delia. This fortification 
 Grew from the ruins of an ancient abbey: 
 And to yond side o' th' river, Hes a wall. 
 Piece of a cloister, which in my opinion 
 Gives the best echo that you ever heard; 
 So hollow and so dismal, and withal 
 So plain in the distinction of our words, 
 That many have supposed it is a spirit^ 
 That answers. 
 
 Antonio. I do love these ancient ruins. 
 We never tread upon them but we set 
 Our foot upon some reverend history; 
 And questionless, here in this open court, 
 Which now lies naked to the injuries 
 Of stormy weather, some men lie interred 
 Loved the church so well, and gave so largely to 't. 
 They thought it should have canopied their bones 
 Till doomsday. But all things have their end: 
 Churches and cities (which have diseases like to men) 
 Must have like death that we have. 
 
 Echo. Like death that we have. 
 
 Delio. Now the echo hath caught you. 
 
 Ant. It groaned, me thought, and gave 
 A very deadly accent ? 
 
 Echo. Deadly accent. 
 
 Delio. I told you 'twas a pretty one. You may make it 
 A huntsman, or a falconer, a musician, 
 Or a thing of sorrow. 
 
 Echo. A thing of sorrow. 
 
 Ant. Aye, sure: that suits it best. 
 
 Echo. That suits it best. 
 
 Ant. 'Tis very like my wife's voice. 
 
 Echo. Aye, wife's voice. 
 
 Delio. Come: let's us walk farther from 't. 
 I would not have you go to th' cardinal's to-night: 
 Do not. 
 
 Echo. Do not. 
 
264 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 Ant. Necessity compels me: 
 Make scrutiny throughout the passages 
 Of your own life; you '11 find it impossible 
 To fly your fate. 
 
 Echo. fly your fate. 
 
 Delta. Hark: the dead stones seem to have pity on you 
 And give you good counsel. 
 
 Ant. Echo, I will not talk with thee; 
 For thou art a dead thing. 
 
 Echo. Thou art a dead thing. 
 
 Ant. My duchess is asleep now, 
 And her little ones, I hope sweetly: oh heaven. 
 Shall I never see her more ? 
 
 Echo. Never see her more. 
 
 As to the instantaneous dramatic moments, charged with 
 revealing passion, such are the much quoted: 
 I am the Duchess of Malfi still, 
 
 and Ferdinand's words, as his sister lies dead before him: 
 Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle: she died young. 
 
 Of almost equal intensity is the last cry of Vittoria: 
 My soul, like to a ship in a black storm 
 Is driven I know not whither. 
 
 Returning to the tragedies of Shakespeare, Titus, Romeo 
 and Juliet, the Roman plays, with Timon and Hamlet, each 
 has received from us thus far that modicum of attention which 
 a book of this plan can give it. There remain Othello, Lear, 
 and Macbeth. Othello is the master tragedy on the passion 
 of jealousy which Shakespeare had already touched in comedy 
 in Ford of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and which he was 
 to treat so much more fully in King Leontes of The Winter s 
 Tale and Leonatus Posthumus in Cymheline. Just as Shake- 
 speare raised the theme of man's love for woman to an ideal-, 
 ized beauty in Romeo and Juliet and yet left it of the earth 
 that engenders it earthy, so he ennobled, while in no wise 
 emasculating its strength and terror, the venomous passion 
 of jealousy. There is scarcely anything in which Shake- 
 speare is so in contrast with his competitors in the drama of 
 
"OTHELLO" AND "KING LEAR" 265 
 
 his time, for none has so contrived to preserve the dignity of 
 human character in the midst of the infirmities of passion 
 that beset it. Othello is usually dated 1604, after Hamlet 
 and immediately preceding King Lear. The barest hints in 
 a novel of Cinthio's Hecatommithi served for the framing of 
 Othello, Desdemona, and lago; and Cassio's drunkenness, 
 Emilia's theft of the handkerchief, and the whole handling of 
 the catastrophe w^ith much else are altogether Shakespeare's 
 invention. With his entire lurid brotherhood from the 
 tragedy of revenge about him — Vindici, Hoffman, Antonio, 
 D'Amville, and the rest — lago remains the arch villain of all 
 literature. All of these "revengers" have a real impetus for 
 their crimes except D'Amville, and he dies mad. De Flores 
 in The Changeling is no more than a masterful voluptuary, 
 v^illing to face death v^ith unutterable crimes that he may 
 enjoy and drag down with him the woman he has singled out 
 for his victim. Webster's Bosola, who resembles lago in his 
 outspoken "honesty," is a connoisseur in crime, satiating a 
 morbid curiosity in the tortures of his victims and yet revert- 
 ing to his better self momentarily in the end. In lago alone 
 is villainy wanton and gratuitous and the monstrous fruit of 
 petty and serpentine envy. And yet with all his malignity, 
 subtlety, and venomous spite, the most terrible thing about 
 lago is that he remains human. 
 
 King Lear is best dated 1605; for in that year the old play. 
 King Leir and his Three Daughters (on which Shakespeare's 
 tragedy is founded), was entered in the Stationers' Register 
 and published, a thing unaccountable except on the assump- 
 tion that the subject had been revived on the stage or else- 
 where. From the point of view of ultimate source. King 
 Lear is a chronicle play; as the story, told in Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth, recurs in Holinshed, The Mirror for Magistrates, 
 and elsewhere, and was accepted, with other such "history," 
 in its day. The underplot of Gloster and his blinding, with 
 his contrasted faithful and wicked son, skilfully parallels the 
 main story and is derived, in its essentials, from an episode 
 of Sidney's Arcadia. But here, as in Macbeth, Shakespeare 
 has not only glorified his material, he has transmuted it into 
 
266 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 a something so entirely new that the accident of its origin — 
 like the origin of the sad-eyed clown — is a matter of no 
 moment. Lear is a tragedy of overpowering force and torren- 
 tial swiftness. In no work of Shakespeare's are his personages 
 so intensely conceived and nowhere does he more poignantly 
 reach the heart than in this pitiful tale of hapless Cordelia 
 and her distracted father. 
 
 With Macbeth — another chronicle play from its source 
 in Holinshed but equally glorified above its type — we bring 
 this enumeration of Shakespeare's tragedies to a close. Mac- 
 beth was written in 1605 or 1606, and doubtless after King 
 Lear. It appeared in print for the first time in the folio, and 
 it has been supposed suffered some mutilation of text and inter- 
 polation in a couple of scenes, found likewise in Middleton's 
 fVitch, a comedy of uncertain date. The opening scenes 
 between Macbeth and his wife, the knocking at the gate, the 
 appearance of Banquo's ghost, the prophecies of the witches 
 in Macbeth's second interview with them, and the sleep- 
 walking of Lady Macbeth, these are some of the things not 
 found in the chronicle but found in the play. But little does 
 this indicate the welding into a complete dramatic organism 
 of this story of inordinate but halting ambition, steadied by 
 marvelous constancy and wifely devotion in evil, and lured 
 on to inevitable overthrow by the supernatural agency of 
 "the weird sisters." 
 
 Were we to look for a prodigy in letters, where could we 
 find the equal of 'Julius Ccesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, 
 Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, six master tragedies of 
 all time, written in little more than the same number of years 
 with the several serious comedies that accompanied them as 
 well ? The range of feeling, the depth of wisdom and under- 
 standing, to say nothing of the dramatic art and the sheer 
 poetry of these great tragedies, stand out and beyond the 
 achievements in literature of all other men in other times. 
 And we read and study them, finding new truth and beauty 
 in them as perennially as in nature and the return of spring. 
 It is a great tribute to Shakespeare's genius that we disagree, 
 as we do, about his people. Ordinary art produces much the 
 
THE TECHNIQUE OF SHAKESPEARE 267 
 
 same effect on each and every reader. We see the same object 
 and agree, about it. About real persons, historical or of our 
 acquaintance, there is room for greater difference of opinion. 
 It is because Shakespeare's characters are so real that we in- 
 terpret them so variously, that we fall out about the sanity of 
 Hamlet or the sincerity of HenryV. But Shakespeare's real- 
 ism is far from all. Equally with Sophocles does Shake- 
 speare in these great tragedies uphold the nobility and poetic 
 elevation of the tragic art. His personages and their doings 
 are absorbing above the interest that we feel in actual men 
 because their innate qualities and capabilities, the things 
 they do, they feel, and suffer, are resolved for us by the poet's 
 energy into a finer, more logical and dignified reality than are 
 ever these things in life. 
 
 We have traced above — as it is customary to trace them 
 — some of the characteristics that marked the strengthening 
 and ripening of Shakespeare's genius in his verse and style, 
 his rhetoric and his taste. The technique of his dramatic art 
 also grew strong with use and maturing genius. There is 
 Love's Labor's Lost with its King of Navarre and the Princess of 
 France, each attended respectively by three lords and three 
 ladies who speak in strict alternation and, save for Biron, with 
 as little to distinguish them as the three kings of Brentford. 
 In Romeo and Juliet when the Montagues and Capulets assem- 
 ble in the opening scene, the scene is built up like an arch: 
 serving man of Montague, serving man of Capulet; Montague, 
 Capulet; kinsman of Montague, kinsman of Capulet; Mon- 
 tague, Capulet, Lady Montague and Lady Capulet, with the 
 prince for a cap-stone. This is not much better than Gorho- 
 duc. Such is not the daring structure at large of King Lear, 
 with the plot of the king and his good and evil daughters 
 paralleled and enforced with the story of Gloster and his good 
 and evil sons, and the daring contrast, in that supreme scene 
 of the storm, of senile dementia, congenital imbecility, and 
 feigned madness. Much has been written of late on Shake- 
 speare as a constructive artist, some wisely, some not so well. 
 It has been thought that virtue lies in discovering "the cli- 
 max" of Macbeth; and the precise point at which "the tragic 
 
268 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 force" of Othello arises is a thing to be argued with zeal and 
 defended with might. A few years ago quite a new science of 
 dramatic structure arose, founded on Freitag's interpretation 
 of certain lecture notes of one of the students of Aristotle 
 entitled the Poetics, and on other peoples' improvements and 
 additions to Freitag. Moreover this new science, after the 
 manner of new sciences, begot a horrid and numerous progeny 
 of technical terms such as "motivation," "enveloping, 
 counter and main action," "passion-movement," "deration- 
 alization," and "shock of Nemesis," with many things to 
 learn and more to ponder. Now there is surely no more harm 
 in charts of dramaticstructure or diagrams of character-contact 
 than in charts of the force of the wind or prognostications of 
 temperature. But the last are no more the cause of good 
 weather than the first are any real helps to our understanding 
 of the genius of Shakespeare. We may admit that, if the 
 truth be told and all the plays considered, Shakespeare is not 
 conspicuous as a merely constructive dramatist. Jonson 
 could write a more ingenious play, and one better able, in 
 Ascham's quaint phrase, "to abide the precepts of Aristotle." 
 Shakespeare had before him something better than elaborate 
 and clever structure in which the mind is directed from the 
 subject in hand to admiration for the cleverness of the artist 
 or the difficulty of the problem. Shakespeare was seeking 
 the dramatic and poetic picturing of life; for the rest he cared 
 not a jot or tittle. Hence his carelessness at times and his 
 indifference where lesser men would show anxiety; though, 
 none the less, in tragedy where rigor of cause and effect is most 
 demanded, there is little surplusage in Shakespeare's method 
 and he rarely deviates from the direct course of his story. 
 In this whole matter of dramatic structure it would be well 
 to consider less the standard rule, whatever its learned deri- 
 vation, and more the individual organic structure. It is of 
 less importance to know that Shakespeare habitually reaches 
 the turning-point of his action in the middle of the third act 
 than to recognize that the organism of Hamlet is not that of 
 Macbeth or Othello. Antony and Cleopatra is straggling and 
 well drawn out in structure, for the events were long preparing 
 
THE REALISM OF SHAKESPEARE 269 
 
 that brought about the fall of these royal infatuated lovers. 
 Hamlet, too, is lengthy and slow of development in harmony 
 with the doubt and hesitancy that paralized the "revenger's" 
 purpose and in accord with his introspective and pondering 
 nature. Othello progresses gradually with the sinuous glides 
 of serpentine lago, to rush to immediate and overwhelming 
 catastrophe when the passion of Othello breaks from lago's 
 guidance and suggestion. Macbeth is swift and accelerated 
 as crime begets crime and remorse follows hard on the heels 
 of ambition. Finally, Lear is of a torrential swiftness, bearing 
 innocent and guilty alike to destruction, for the decree that 
 carelessly dismembered a kingdom and banished Cordelia 
 was the decree of a madman. 
 
 It is easy to see, as we read Shakespeare's plays in the 
 general order of their writing, that Shakespeare viewed the 
 world as mirrored in them from the changing points of 
 vantage that mark his own growth from youth to the sager 
 attitude of middle life. It was a young man that depicted the 
 fire and passion of the lovers, Romeo and Juliet, and it was a 
 younger man who was contented with the badinage and occa- 
 sional silliness oi Love's Labor's Lost. Shakespeare's attitude 
 towards older people in the earlier plays also shows his youth. 
 The elder Capulet is viewed solely from the lovers' point of 
 view. Much might be said for the prudence and respecta- 
 bility of that old gentleman. Friar Laurence, too, talks ex- 
 actly as a young man thinks that he has observed old men to 
 talk. It was not for nothing that Shakespeare went through 
 the Slough of Despond, depicted in the gloomier comedies of 
 disillusion; for in the later tragedies is disclosed that fuller 
 power that comes with years to sound the deeps of human 
 crime and passion, till, in the latest plays we find Shakespeare 
 again and again assuming the attitude of the older and wiser 
 man who lives over again in recollection the past that once 
 was his and seeks his real happiness in the joy and hopeful- 
 ness of those who are shortly to succeed him. 
 
 The variety of Elizabethan tragedies as to subject, nature, 
 and treatment calls for no further word. As a whole this 
 drama is realistic and outspoken, unrestrained, and often 
 
270 THE HEYDAY OF TRAGEDY 
 
 melodramatic. Such men as Marston, Webster, and Tour- 
 neur loved to pile horror on horror. Less legitimate are the 
 devices, later to be more lawlessly employed, w^hereby tragic 
 themes are further heightened by making their motives ab- 
 normal: thus the ungodly become atheistic or at least cyni- 
 cally abandoned, and lust is supplanted by the horrible motive 
 of incest. In contrast with his fellows in the drama, Shake- 
 speare is alv/ays true to the normal mainsprings of human 
 action and passion, however he may heighten his effects by a 
 momentary fidelity to the coarser actualities of life. Shake- 
 speare is always frankly realistic, where realism seems to him 
 to be demanded by the nature of his subject. Moreover, 
 Shakespeare's age frequently looked for realism where the 
 usage of our time demands reticence or at least periphrasis. 
 No two things are more commonly confused by most of us in 
 our daily colloquial judgments of conduct than manners and 
 morals. Manners are parochial, morals cosmopolitan. The 
 manners of Shakespeare's day were not ours. Our manners 
 might equally have shocked Shakespeare; for they are tem- 
 porary as his were temporary. The moral atmosphere per- 
 vading Shakespeare's plays in large calls for few apologies to 
 our age, although our speech is more refined. Shakespeare 
 never confounds right and wrong; he never leaves you in 
 doubt as to his attitude on important questions. Lear was 
 half crazed and scarcely responsible for his folly, Cordelia had 
 much to excuse her momentary stubbornness and unwilling- 
 ness to humor her father's dotage with a few kind words, yet 
 both are overwhelmed in expiation. Never was man more 
 practised on by diabolical cunning and malice than was 
 Othello, yet his doubt quite as much as his crime deserved 
 the logic of his death. 
 
 Li few things does Shakespeare differ more completely 
 from the majority of the dramatists of his age than in his 
 attitude towards woman. In the fine words of Ruskin: 
 "Shakespeare has no heroes; — he has only heroines. . . . 
 The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly 
 or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the 
 wisdom and virtue of a woman, and failing that, there is none." 
 
THE WOMEN OF SHAKESPEARE 271 
 
 There is no cheap gallantry in these words nor in the dramatist 
 whose deep insight into the manner of this world they cele- 
 brate. Indeed, for the flippancy and heartlessness of con- 
 temporary gallantry we must consult, not the works of Shake- 
 speare, but those of Fletcher and Middleton. Except for 
 those monsters of wickedness, Tamora, the two daughters of 
 Lear, and wretched, trivial Cressida — a preposterous little 
 trull for a fair youth like Troilus to trouble his heart about — 
 there is scarcely a woman wholly bad in all Shakespeare. 
 As to Cleopatra, in the romantic glory of her abandon to love 
 as the all of the world, Shakespeare's Cleopatra is as distin- 
 guishable from the several frigid portraits of the Egyptian 
 queen in Shakespeare's age as she is immeasureably above 
 Mr. Shaw's ridiculous hoyden or Signor Ferrero's dainty and 
 heartless Parisian with a genius for politics 
 
 But enough; in Shakespeare and Webster, English tragedy 
 touched the elevation and dignity of the drama of iEschylus 
 and Sophocles. Thereafter it declined and was superceded 
 in popularity by a novel variety of play variously known as 
 tragicomedy or "romance." This last stage of the drama 
 in Shakespeare's lifetime claims a later and separate treat- 
 ment, and to that place we here defer it. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 TRANSLATION IN VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 'E are apt to think of the age of Elizabeth as the age 
 of Shakespeare and therefore the age of the drama; 
 or as the time when the new inductive system was proposed 
 as a substitute for outworn medieval methods of thought, and 
 therefore as the age of Bacon. Remembering how the lyric 
 flourished until England was a veritable "nest of singing birds," 
 we dub Elizabeth's the age of the lyric; or recalling who first 
 circled the globe and rifled the wealth of Spain in the cradle 
 of its birth, we call Elizabeth's the age of discovery. Look 
 where we will on that incomparable time we behold men 
 physically, mentally, and spiritually active with the indefati- 
 gable buoyancy of youth which like each returning spring is 
 always a new wonder. When the extraordinary interest 
 which the sixteenth century took in the classics, in modern 
 foreign literatures, French, Spanish, and especially Italian is 
 considered, when we add, too, to all this the fact that it was 
 within this period that the greatest of translations, our Eng- 
 lish Bible, was wrought by successive recastings to its per- 
 fection, the age of translation must seem no misnomer. Some 
 years since an industrious scholar attempted an appraisement 
 of Elizabethan translations from the Italian in three cr four 
 successive contributions. I say "attempted," not because the 
 work was not well done, but because such a work could 
 scarcely be pronounced complete except after exhaustive 
 research quite disproportionate to its results. In the first 
 paper there is mention of one hundred and sixty translations 
 from the Italian within the hundred and ten years from 1550 
 to 1660 "made by ninety or more translators including nearly 
 every well-known Elizabethan author except Shakespeare 
 and Bacon": Jonson and Donne might likewise have been 
 excepted. When the last of these researches was complete, 
 
 272 
 
THE AGE OF TRANSLATION 273 
 
 the total had risen to two hundred and eighteen English trans- 
 lations of two hundred and twenty-three Italian authors in 
 general literature and poetry, this not including more than 
 as many more that Lamb would have called "books in sheep's 
 clothing." A more recent appraisement of Spanish books 
 printed in Tudor England, including translations from the 
 Castilian tongue, mounts up to one hundred and sixty titles. 
 And a similar appraisement for France shows, only within 
 the lifetime of Shakespeare, the surprising total of nearly four 
 hundred titles. Though in this last list there are many cases, 
 such as North's translations of Amyot's French version of 
 Plutarch's Lives, in which French is simply the intermediary 
 language between the English translation and a classical, 
 Spanish, or Italian original. We await appraisements such 
 as these for the Dutch and Flemish books that found their 
 way into Elizabethan England in their native garb or trans- 
 lated. Even they could not have been inconsiderable; and 
 they were certainly more in number and in influence than the 
 few scatterd books printed in the language of High Almaine, 
 as Germany was then called, that came into England for the 
 most part through some other foreign channel.^ Now, if we 
 add to this mass of translation from modern foreign languages 
 the numerous English translations of the classics, from Bellen- 
 den's Livy, 1536, one of the earliest if not the first translation 
 of a Latin classic in England, to Chapman's Homer, completed 
 in the year of Shakespeare's death, remembering that the list 
 includes Horace, Juvenal, Vergil by three translators, Ovid, 
 at least in part, by four or five, Caesar, Seneca, the dramas 
 and the prose, Lucan's Pharsalia, Apuleius, Heliodorus, Sue- 
 tonius, parts of Plautus and Terence, with Hesiod, and 
 Musaeus, parts of Theocritus, besides Homer, at one extreme 
 and Tacitus, Plutarch, and Josephus at the other, no question 
 can possibly remain as to the activity of the age in this placing 
 of foreign words in English dress. 
 
 * As to these appraisements see the work of Miss M. A. Scott in 
 the Publications of the Modern Language Association, 1895-1899; and 
 the monographs of Einstein, Underhill, and Upham in Columbia 
 University Studies in English, 1902-1908. 
 
274 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 With such a mass of material before us, it is plain that it 
 will be better to pick and choose a few typical translations 
 which for one or another reason have most deeply affected 
 the literature of their time rather than to attempt anything 
 like an appraisement in mass of this largely forgotten material. 
 In the time of the experiments in classical meters it was but 
 natural that attempts should have been made to cloak the 
 English version in a garb supposedly representing the ancient 
 form. Surrey tried two books of the Mneid in blank-verse 
 in 1557. In 1582, Richard Stanihurst, the Irish scholar and 
 contributor to Holinshed's Chronicles, turned four books 
 of the same great epic into hexameters, expressed in an eccen- 
 tricity of vocabulary and grotesque homeliness of speech which 
 excite new wonder whenever read. Thomas Drant, another 
 like experimenter, theorized on hexameters, but translated 
 the Satires of Horace and his Ars Poetica as well as parts of 
 the Iliad into English rime. Arthur Golding had adequately, 
 if diffusely, translated the Metamorphoses of Ovid, with Caesar 
 and Seneca's prose also, in the sixties and seventies, and the 
 young Marlowe was drawn to the J mores of Ovid as he was 
 drawn to reconstruct the fragment of Musaeus on Hero and 
 Leander by the warmth of the Renaissance imagination which 
 begot as well the luscious sensuousness of Shakespeare's 
 Venus and Adonis. Marlowe's translation of the Amores 
 is that of a poet. 
 
 We do not know precisely the relations of Chapman to 
 Marlowe; they must certainly have been intimate, for Chap- 
 man followed closely in Marlowe's footsteps, not only in the 
 drama, but in translation, first Englishing Ovid's Banquet of 
 Sense, and then completing, as we have already seen, Marlowe's 
 unfinished Hero and Leander. George Chapman was an 
 older man than Jonson and Marston, with both of whom we 
 have already found him in , association in the writing of 
 Eastward Hoe. Chapman was born in 1559 at Hitchin in 
 Hertfordshire, and was educated at Oxford, leaving, however, 
 without a degree. He was late in turning tp literature; at 
 least there is no record of any publication by him before 
 The Shadow of the Night, two poetical hymns, in 1594. The 
 
GEORGE CHAPMAN 275 
 
 translation from Ovid, just mentioned, followed immediately- 
 after. It has been thought that Chapman wrote plays only 
 under protest and for a livelihood. Allusions in Henslowe's 
 Diary place his probable beginnings in comedy as far back 
 as 1596, and plays of his were in print — witness The Blind 
 Beggar of Alexandria and A Humorous Day's Mirth — by 
 1598 and 1599. Chapman's repute in the drama is referable 
 to his romantic comedies, such as The Gentleman Usher, 
 acted in 1602, and Monsieur D'Olive, 1605, as well as to his 
 comedies of humor and intrigue and to his several dramas 
 dealing with all but contemporary French history, of both of 
 which we have heard. But Chapman was, besides, an original 
 poet of repute, although his poems of this class are for the 
 most part occasional. Among them may be named his Tears 
 of Peace, 1609, an Epicede or Funeral Song on the death of his 
 patron. Prince Henry, and Andromeda Liber ata, 1 6 14. This 
 last celebrates in most unfitting allegory the infamous marriage 
 of the notorious Somerset with the divorced Countess of 
 Essex; and was a mistake characteristic of a scholar immersed 
 in his studies and myopic as to the significance of passing 
 events. This must have destroyed once and for all any chances 
 of preferment that the poet may have had. In all his poetry 
 Chapman is strenuous, intellectual, not emotional, with a 
 large sense for the phrase, but often wanting in taste and plung- 
 ing in the mazes of a contorted, difficult, and obscure style. 
 It has often been remarked that no poet of his own time so 
 resembled Ben Jonson. And this is true save for clarity of 
 diction, sense of proportion, and restraint, none of which are 
 among the virtues of Chapman. On the other hand, of no 
 poet of the age, outside of Shakespeare, can it be said that he 
 has left us so many poetical passages, moralizing wisely and 
 memorably on life, and quotable alike for their significance and 
 the beauty of their diction. 
 
 Chapman's famous translation of Homer was by no means 
 the first attempt to English the father of Greek poetry. Aside 
 from Drant's unpublished fragments of the Iliad, written 
 before 1580, Arthur Hall had published in the following year 
 Ten Books of Homer s Iliads, translated out of French in old- 
 
276 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 fashioned, fourteen-line, riming measure, a clumsy and inac- 
 curate version. Chapman must have begun his Homeric 
 studies well back in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, for the 
 first instalment of his work, Seven Books of the Iliads, appeared 
 in print in 1598, dedicated to the popular hero of the moment, 
 the young Earl of Essex. A second instalment dedicated to 
 Prince Henry followed in 1609; the Iliad wzs complete in 161 1, 
 the Odyssey in 16 16. Chapman, always in poverty and holding 
 the common world in lofty disdain, was encouraged by the 
 prince in his translation and with the prince's untimely death 
 all hope of reward for the poet's years of toil was at an end. 
 Few translations have been more enthusiastically admired 
 than Chapman's, even although his learning has been im- 
 pugned by those who could never have translated anything 
 into a poetical line. The unflagging and devoted zeal which 
 Chapman brought to the prosecution of this great under- 
 taking is only exceeded by the genuine poetic spirit that per- 
 vades it all. Nor can we say that either his zeal, his learning, 
 or his poetry deserted Chapman in his other translations, of 
 Hesiod, of parts oi^uvenal, of the Homeric Hymns, and The 
 Battle of the Frogs and Mice which his diligence also achieved. 
 As a specimen of Chapman's translation let us take these 
 lines from the famous speech in which Hector, departing for 
 his fatal combat with Achilles, replies to the entreaties of 
 Andromache : 
 
 Be well assured, wife, all these things in my kind cares are weighted. 
 But what a shame and fear it is to think how Troy would scorn 
 (Both in her husbands and her wives, whom long-trained gowns 
 
 adorn) 
 That I should cowardly fly off! The spirit I first did breathe 
 Did never teach me that; much less, since the contempt of death 
 Was settled in me, and my mind knew what a worthy was. 
 Whose office is to lead in fight and give no danger pass 
 Without improvement. In this fire must Hector s trial shine; 
 Here must his country, father, friends, he in him, made divine. 
 And such a stormy day shall come (in mind and soul I know) 
 When sacred Troy shall shed her towers, for tears of overthrow; 
 When Priam, all his birth and power, shall in those tears be drowned. 
 But neither Troy's posterity so much my soul doth wound, 
 
CHAPMAN'S "HOMER" 277 
 
 Priam, nor Hecuba herself, nor all my brothers' woes, 
 
 (Who though so many and so good must all be food for foes) 
 
 As thy sad state; when some rude Greek shall lead thee weeping 
 
 hence, 
 These free days clouded, and a night of captive violence 
 Loading thy temples, out of which thine eyes must never see. 
 But spin the Greek wives' webs of task and their fetch-water be 
 To Argos, from Messeides, or clear Hyperia's spring; 
 Which howsoever thou abhorr'st. Fate 's such a shrewish thing 
 She will be mistress.^ 
 
 Well may Matthew Arnold have remarked, "How^ ingen- 
 iously Homer's plain strength is tormented" ; for the v^ords 
 in this passage italicized by Arnold mark amplifications on 
 the original which are wholly Elizabethan and only to an Eliza- 
 bethan an improvement. And yet no translator of Homer 
 who has followed Chapman has surpassed him in poetic spirit 
 and none dare leave his version unconsulted. Well may 
 Coleridge have said that Chapman's Homer is as truly an 
 original poem as The Faery Queen. Indeed it is precisely on 
 this score of originality, which was not to be had except in 
 these very definite departures from the spirit and the letter of 
 his text, that Chapman has been most severely criticized. 
 When all has been said, however, concerning Chapman's 
 
 ^ For comparison, here is the same passage in the version of 
 Lang, Leaf and Myers: "Then great Hector of the glancing helm 
 answered her: Surely I take thought for all these things, my wife; but 
 I have very sore shame of the Trojans and Trojan dames with trailing 
 robes, if like a coward I shrink away from battle. Moreover mine 
 own soul forbiddeth me, seeing I have learnt ever to be valiant and 
 fight in the forefront of the Trojans, winning my father's great glory 
 and mine own. Yea of a surety I know this in heart and soul; the 
 day shall come for holy Ilios to be laid low, and Priam and the folk of 
 Priam of the good ashen spear. Yet doth the anguish of the Trojans 
 hereafter not so much trouble me, neither Hekabe's own, neither 
 King Priam's, neither my brethren's, the many and brave that shall 
 fall in the dust before their foemen, as doth thine anguish in the day 
 when some mail-clad Achaian shall lead thee weeping and rob thee of 
 the light of freedom. So shalt thou abide in Argos and ply the loom 
 at another woman's bidding, and bear water from fount Messeis or 
 Hypereia, being grievously entreated, and sore constraint shall be 
 laid upon thee." 
 
278 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 "barbarizing of Homer" and transmuting with a high Teu- 
 tonic hand the Iliad into a species of Niebelungen Lied, it 
 may be doubted if the age of Shakespeare could have pro- 
 duced a poet better fitted for the work. Jonson, or possibly 
 Drayton, alone combined the scholarship, the industry, and 
 the poetic instinct for such a task; but Jonson wanted the 
 generous heroic spirit that sustains the pages of Chapman; 
 and Drayton, with all that he might have gained in clarity of 
 diction over Chapman, is as little likely as Spenser himself 
 to have escaped (even to the degree to which Chapman es- 
 caped it) the fantasticality of thought and ornateness of treat- 
 ment that must have kept every true Elizabethan at arm's 
 length from the simple brevity and severe sufficiency of 
 Homeric art. 
 
 No other poetical translation of the classics in this age is 
 comparable to Chapman's work, although two excellent prose 
 translations. North's Plutarch and Holland's Natural His- 
 tory of Pliny, deserve places beside it. Fuller styled Phile- 
 mon Holland "the translator general of his age, so that those 
 books alone of his turning into English will make a country 
 gentleman a competent library." Holland lived between 
 1552 and 1637, was educated at Cambridge, and became a 
 school-master at Coventry. His translations began in 1600 
 with Livy's Roman History, and included, besides others, 
 Plutarch's Morals, the Twelve Ccesars of Suetonius, and 
 Xenophon's Cyropcedia. Holland also translated Camden's 
 Britannia into English in 16 10, and enjoyed the popularity 
 to which his industry and faculty of cursive and graphic v/riting 
 entitled him. Sir Thomas North was an older man, possibly 
 born as early as 1535. He did not survive into the reign of 
 King James. As a younger son of Roger, the second Lord 
 North, Sir Thomas enjoyed many advantages; he published 
 his translation oi Plutarch's Lives in i^^^- This famous v/ork 
 was not translated directly out of the Greek, but, as the title- 
 page declares," out of the French" of Jaques Amyot, which had 
 appeared in 1559. North had the advantage, while on an em- 
 bassy with his father, of meeting Amyot who was then Bishop 
 of Auxerre, so that his undertaking was well advised. With 
 
NORTH'S "PLUTARCH" ^ 279 
 
 the advantage of a scholarly and in the main remarkably ac- 
 curate version of an incomparable original, North contrived to 
 produce a truly great translation. To this a kindliness of spirit 
 and an artless directness of speech, combined w^ith a fine com- 
 mand of idiomatic but far from inelegant English, contributed 
 in no small degree. North's Plutarch went through six editions 
 before the Restoration and remains of especial interest as the 
 source vi^hence Shakespeare derived his ancient history. The 
 amount of Shakespeare's obligation extended not only to the 
 subjects of his well-known plays, Coriolanus, Ccesar, and 
 Antony and Cleopatra, but likewise to suggestions, classical 
 names for his dramatis personae, and innumerable allusions 
 scattered up and down the dramatist's works. Moreover, 
 in following no one of his other sources has Shakespeare 
 changed so little the thought and borrowed, so often in Ic^ 
 passages, the verbal raiment of another's ideas. Not only 
 does he take over bodily North's picturesque and effective 
 vocabulary, but he reproduces his turns of phrase and pecul- 
 iarties of idiom, his arguments and figurative illustrations. 
 How many of the pictured details of Enobarbus' glowing 
 speech describing Cleopatra's pageant on the river Cydnus, 
 Shakespeare had from North's translation of the Life of 
 Antonius, the following passage will disclose: 
 
 She disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in 
 the river of Cydnus; the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, 
 and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of 
 the music of flutes, howboys, cithernes, viols, and such other instru- 
 ments as they pla3^ed upon in the barge. And now for the person of 
 herself, she was laid under a pavilion of cloth of gold of tissue, ap- 
 parelled and attired like the goddess Venus commonly drawn in 
 picture: and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretty, fair boys 
 apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their 
 hands, with the which they fanned wind upon her. Her ladies and 
 gentlewomen also, the fairest of them, were apparelled like the 
 nymphs, Nereids (which are the mermaids of the waters) and like 
 the graces; some steering the helm, others tending the tackle and ropes 
 of the barge, out of the which there came a wonderful passing sweet 
 savor of perfumes, that perfumed the wharf-side pestered with in- 
 numerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge 
 
28o TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 all along the river-side: others also ran out of the city to see her com- 
 ing in. So that in the end, there ran such multitudes of people one 
 after another to see her, that Antonius was left post alone in the mar- 
 ket-place, in his imperial seat, to give audience: and there went a 
 rumor in the peoples' mouths, that the goddess Venus was come to 
 play with the god Bacchus, for the general good of Asia. 
 
 It has been well said that in North alone among his sources 
 Shakespeare met his match; and there are passages — such 
 as the famous one describing the death of Cleopatra — in 
 w^hich Shakespeare has not succeeded in bettering his original. 
 North's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, "compared 
 together by that grave, learned philosopher and historiog- 
 rapher, Plutarch of Chaeronea," as the title runs, is a noble 
 monument of simple and dignified old English and a quarry 
 well worthy the use of the master-poet. 
 
 /' Let us now turn to some of the translations from modern 
 /tongues. Among the Italians the Eclogues of Mantuan seem 
 / earliest to have attracted the Elizabethan translator Turber- 
 / ville, in 1567, as they later attracted Spenser to imitation in 
 The Shepherds' Calendar. With the eighties came the influx 
 of the lyric, especially the sonnet, which was more frequently 
 ^_^- imitated than translated, and the song which was often turned 
 literally into the northern tongue, syllable for syllable, that 
 it might be sung to the original Italian tune. But by far the 
 most important poetical translations of the age from the Italian 
 were those of the epics of Tasso and Ariosto. The story is 
 related how young Sir John Harington, court wit and privi- 
 leged, from the queen's having stood sponsor to him at his 
 christening, had the impertinence to translate and pass from 
 hand to hand one of the cantos of the Orlando Furioso, to 
 which Ariosto had prefixed the warning that it should be 
 avoided "by ladies and those who valued ladies." Brought 
 to the ears of Queen Elizabethj she bade Harington to take 
 himself home and not dare to come into the royal presence 
 until he could brtng back with him a complete translation of 
 the Orlando. This the clever young rascal accomplished in 
 haste and with ease and thus regained his royal god-mother's 
 favor. Readiness and facility rather than any great poetic 
 
HARINGTON'S "ORLANDO FURIOSO" 281 
 
 power characterize Harington's Orlando Furioso, which was 
 printed in 1591 and enjoyed no little fame. Harington pre- 
 serves the ottava rima of the original, but makes coarser the 
 irony and humor of the Italian poet. A witty and capable 
 preface, called An Apology for Poetry, precedes the translation. 
 Here Harington discourses in justification of epics such as the 
 Orlando, and upholds his brief for poetry at large with argu- 
 ments against the Philistines which, as has well been said, 
 men of Sidney's and Harington's intellectual caliber do not 
 waste their time in employing to-day. The Orlando In- 
 amorata of Boiardo was indifferently translated by Robert 
 Tofte in 1598. It has been described as "singularly unequaj" 
 but not without "dexterity of versification." Tofte also 
 translated Two Tales from Ariosto and other Italian works. 
 As to Tasso, a faithful if rather unpoetical version of the first 
 five cantos of La Gerusalemne Liherata was made by Richard 
 Carew, a Cornish gentleman in 1594, to be followed six years 
 later by the famous and enduring rendering of the entire Work 
 by Edward Fairfax. With Tass<^ pastoral Aminta, trans- ' 
 lated by Abraham Fraunce in 1587, 7/ F'asioF^ido of Guarini 
 by one Dymock in 1602, and the Satires of Ariosto done into 
 English by the pamphleteer Gervais Markham, we complete 
 an enumeration of the more important translations from 
 Italian poets. 
 
 Elizabethan translation of Italian prose began earlier and 
 is far bulkier. It may be said that English translations, / 
 
 adaptations, and imitations of the Italian novellieri constituted 
 by far the most popular reading of the period of Shakespeare's 
 childhood, contributing sources, it has been estimated, to 
 practically a third of the drama, and furnishing an inexhausti- 
 ble model and inspiration for English fiction and poetry. 
 The typical Elizabethan example of a collection of/ Italian 
 novelle is The Palace of Pleasure, "beautified, adorned and 
 well furnished with pleasant histories and excellent novels 
 selected out of divers good and commendable authors," by 
 William Painter, 1566. Painter was a school-master at Seven- 
 oaks and had first projected his book in 1562. A later com- 
 pleted edition of this popular work contains one hundred 
 
282 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 and one tales, "partly translations and partly imitations of 
 Italian novelle," and this is generally the character of these 
 collections of stories. There were upwards of a dozen such, 
 imitated and, in the quaint phrase of the day, "forged only 
 for delight," up to the time when Shakespeare began his 
 dramatic career; and they were, of course, his natural sources. 
 Among the more important were Certain Tragical Discourses, 
 the work of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, 1567; The Forest or Collec- 
 tion of Histories, by Thomas Fortescue, and The Rock of 
 Regard, by George Whetstone, both in 1571; A Pettie Palace 
 of [George] Pettie his Pleasure, 1576; A Courtly Controversy 
 of Cupid's Cautels, containing five tragical histories, by Henry 
 Wotton; also Barnabe Riche his Farewell to the Military Pro- 
 fession in eight novels, 158 1, and Whetstone's Heptameron of 
 Civil Discourses, 1 582. Turberville's Tragical Tales are in 
 verse. Single stories were many and gradually developed 
 from mere translations such as Arthur Brooke's poetical ver- 
 sion of Romeus and 'Juliet, 1 562, or the Excellent History of 
 Euryalus and Lucretia, 1 567, to original stories purporting 
 to be translations Vike Gascoigne's Adventures of Master Ferdi- 
 nando Jeronimi, 1 572, originally Freeman fones, and more 
 accurately Gascoigne himself. 
 
 The Italian authors whose work appears in these English 
 translations and imitations are many. Thus Whetstone 
 derives his Heptameron mainly from the Hecafommithi of 
 Cinthio; Barnabe Riche draws chiefly on Bandello; while 
 Painter harks back to Boccaccio as well as Bandello, although 
 both he and Fenton appear to have derived most of theii ma- 
 terial through the intermediary of similar collections in French 
 by Belleforest and Boisteau. In tracing a play through its 
 foregoing versions as they appear in these collections, English, 
 French, and Italian, it is not always an easy' matter to discover 
 which was the probable original. In the case of Shakespeare, 
 fortunately, such is his customary fidelity to his source, that 
 he is more readily followed than almost any dramatist of his 
 day. For example, the tragical tale of the ill-starred lovers, 
 Romeo and Juliet, had been told first to Western Europe by 
 Masuccio di Salerno, soon after 1470; by Luigi da Porto, in 
 
THE "PALACE OF PLEASURE" 283 
 
 his story, La Giulietta, in 1535; and by Bandello, in his 
 Novelle in 1554. From the last, it was translated into French 
 by Boisteau to form one of the stories of Francois de Belle- 
 forest's Htstoires Tragiques, 1559. Three years later, Arthur 
 Brooke translated the story into English verse; and, in 1567, 
 it appeared in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. The essentials 
 of the story have been found in a Greek romance of the second 
 century, Ahrocomas and Anthia, by Xenophon of Ephesus. 
 But all this learning is to little purpose: Shakespeare's source 
 was, as usual with him, the nearest and most obvious, Brooke's 
 English poem, not without a knowledge, however, of the tale 
 as related by Painter and Bandello, Thus it is that Painter 
 garrulously straggles through the beginnings of a well-known 
 story : 
 
 The family of the Capellets . . . was at variance with the Montes- 
 ches which was the cause that none of that family repaired to that 
 banquet but only the young gentleman, Romeo, who came in a mask 
 after supper with certain other young gentlemen. And after they 
 had remained a certain space with their vizards on, at length they 
 did put off the same. . . . But by means of the torches which 
 burned very bright, he was by and by known and looked upon of the 
 whole company, but especially of the ladies, for besides his native 
 beauty wherewith nature had adorned him, they marvelled at his 
 audacity, how he durst presume to enter so secretly into the house of 
 that family which had so little cause to do him any good. Notwith- 
 standing the Capellets, dissembling their malice, either for the honor 
 of the company or else for respect of his youth, did not misuse him 
 either in word or deed: by means whereof with free liberty he beheld 
 and viewed the ladies at his pleasure, which he did so well and with 
 grace so good as there was none but did very well like the presence 
 of his person. And after he had particularly given judgment upon 
 the excellency of each one according to his affection, he saw one 
 gentlewoman amongst the rest of surpassing beauty who (although 
 he had never seen her before) pleased him above the rest; and [he] 
 attributed unto her in heart the chiefest place for all perfection and 
 beauty, and feasting her incessantly with piteous looks, the love which 
 he bare to his first gentlewoman [the "unexpressive" Rosaline] was 
 overcomen with this new fire that took such nourishment and vigor 
 in his heart as he was not able ever to quench the same but by death 
 only. 
 
v 
 
 284 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 But poetry and fiction by no means represent the sole 
 varieties of Italian literature translated by Elizabethans. A 
 list of "miscellanea," after mention of these, includes nearly 
 four hundred numbers and is subdivided into "theology, 
 science and the arts, grammars and dictionaries, voyages, 
 history and politics, manners and morals." It represents 
 works as diverse as Sir Thomas Hoby's excellent translation 
 of The Courtier of Castiglione and trifles innumerable, such 
 as A Treatise "concerning the use and abuse of dancing," 
 and A foyful "Jewel "containing preservatives for the plague." 
 Most notable among other Elizabethan translations from 
 Italian prose works of importance may be named Fenton's 
 version of Guiccardini's J^/^arj- 0/ /ffl/j;, 1579; Macchiavelli's 
 Art of War, by Peter Whitehorne, 1573; and the same author's 
 Florentine History, translated by Thomas Bedingfield in 1595. 
 The Prince, most famous and influential of Macchiavelli's 
 works, seems not to have been translated in Shakespeare's 
 time. 
 
 / As to Spanish, after the early vogue of Guevara (whose 
 Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius was translated by Lord 
 Berners in the reign of Henry VIII), and after the personal 
 influence of the Spanish humanist Vives, exerted during his 
 residence at Oxford in the same reign, the earliest influence 
 of the peninsula upon England was exercised in the transla- 
 tions, by such men as Frampton, Thomas, and Nichols, of 
 Spanish accounts of exploration and discovery in new lands; 
 material in short of the kind later to be arranged and codi- 
 fied by Hakluyt himself. A considerable number of Spanish 
 religious books were translated too, chiefly of a type heretical 
 in their own land. Nor were the mystics and Catholics 
 without their translator of the devotional tracts of Fray Luis 
 de Granada, the famous Dominican, in Richard Hopkins. 
 Sidney and his circle were interested in Spanish; though only 
 a couple of the lyrics of the Arcadia are directly traceable to 
 the Diana of Montemayor, the story at large shows an ac- 
 quaintance with the Spanish pastoral romance. Translations 
 of various romances of chivalry, the Amadis de Gaule, Pal- 
 mertn d'Oliva, and Palmerin of England, were made by An- 
 
BORROWINGS FROM FRANCE 285 
 
 thony Munday, with other help, to regale the humbler readers 
 of English fiction. These date between 1588, when his 
 Palladino of England appeared, and 1619, when Primaleon 
 of Greece, "son to Palmerin d'Oliva," concluded the series. 
 But by far the most important translation from the Spanish 
 was the vigorous and able version of Cervantes' masterpiece 
 published by Thomas Shelton in 1612 under the title The 
 Delightful History of the Witty Knight, Don Quixote. This 
 admirable work, though begun in 1607, was not actually com- 
 pleted until 1620. It has received high praise, alike for the 
 author's extraordinary grasp of the difficult original and for 
 his employment of idiomatic English. 
 
 Turning to France, we find Arthur Hall translating Homer 
 from the French in 1581, as North had Englished his Plutarch's 
 Lives. Spenser translated Du Bellay and incorporated passages 
 derived from the pastorals of Marot in his Shepherds' Calendar; 
 Lodge was a notorious borrower from Ronsard, Phillipe des 
 Fortes, and other French lyrists; while in the drama. Lady 
 Pembroke and Thomas Kyd translated the Antoine and the 
 Cornelie of the French Senecan, Robert Garnier. But most 
 of these things have already found record and need not further 
 delay us. An important, though forgotten, work is Edward 
 Grimestone's General Inventory of the History of France, a 
 compendium of De Serres, Matthieu, Cayet, and others, pub- 
 lished in 1607. Grimestone, whose works are now of the 
 greatest scarcity, was a busy translator and compiler, publish- 
 ing besides other works a History of the Netherlands in 1608 
 and a History of Spain four years later. But if contemporary 
 popularity were always the measure of worth, the fame of 
 Joshua Sylvester might stand beside that of Spenser, where 
 many of his contemporaries placed it, for his translation of 
 the scriptural narrative poem. La Semaine, of the Huguenot 
 poet Du Bartas. This, Sylvester entitled Du Bartas his 
 Divine Week. It appeared in completion in 1606. Sylvester 
 emulated the manner of Spenser and was not without his 
 influence on William Browne and even on Milton. The 
 translator of Du Bartas was a ready versifier, something of a 
 concettist, and sustained at all times by a genuine religious 
 
286 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 enthusiasm. He belongs to the tribe later represented by 
 Quarles, and Wither in the uninspired stretches of his reli- 
 gious verse. 
 
 Among Elizabethan translations from the French, the 
 most famous is Florio's Montaigne. Florio's father was a 
 
 o 
 
 Florentine Protestant who fled from Italy on account of his 
 religion. His son John, who was about the age of Spenser, 
 was educated at Oxford, enjoyed, like Shakespeare, the literary 
 patronage of Southampton, and married a sister of the poet 
 Daniel. In the reign of James, Florio became reader in 
 Italian to Queen Anne. Florio's Translation of the Essais 
 of Montaigne was published in 1603; and while not so accu- 
 rate as that of Charles Cotton, 1686, has qualities of individ- 
 uality that will insure it a place among the great translations 
 of a translating age. The authenticity of the signature of 
 Shakespeare in the copy of Florio's Montaigne in the British 
 Museum has been called into question. But we may still 
 feel sure, from the well-known passage in The Tempest (that 
 in which Gonzalo describes an ideal republic), that this was 
 one of the books that Shakespeare read. 
 
 But when all has been said, the richest prose product of 
 the Elizabethan age, indeed of any age or language, is the 
 Authorized Version of the Bible in English. Among the 
 thousands of volumes of commentary — religious, antiquarian, 
 and philological, — that have been written upon this corner- 
 stone of Christianity, but little comparatively has been said until 
 of late of its transcedent position as an English classic or of the 
 deep and abiding effect which it has worked, whether directly 
 or indirectly, upon English prose style; and a feeling, far from 
 improper, of awe and reverence has conspired to deter many 
 from a treatment of this book as we treat others, although the 
 reasonablenss of such a proceeding must be plain to any stu- 
 dent of history. The thirty-nine distinct parts of the Old 
 Testament and the twenty-seven of the New, form the extant 
 literature of a whole people during a period of over a thousand 
 years. As such we need not be surprised to find no family 
 likeness of parts, either in style, matter, or mode of treatment. 
 The Bible contains legend, history, biography, poetry, pro- 
 
TYNDALE'S "NEW TESTAMENT" 287 
 
 verbs, parables, philosophy, and ethical and political injunc- 
 tions. Many of the books are exclusively theological or 
 religious, others are purely narrative or lyrical. The Book 
 of Job is draniadc^aLleast jn^ihrni. _ With all this diversity 
 of subject-matter, the first thing that strikes one in the style 
 of the English Bible is the extraordinary quality of its diction 
 "remarkable," as it is, "for clearness, simplicity and strength." 
 Homely, plain, and Saxon and yet endowed with a dignity, 
 a grace and sweetness which may be imitated but never ap- 
 proached. So widely is this admirable quality of diction 
 acknowledged that the late Cardinal Newman, most erriinent 
 of Anglican converts to Roman Catholicism, is reputed to have 
 once asked, "Who will say that the uncommon beauty and 
 marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the 
 greatest strongholds of heresy in this country, ? " 
 
 It is a mistake to consider the Authorized Version as 
 .mainly the work of the King James translators in 161 1. As a 
 matter of fact the Version was gradually perfected during the 
 greater part of the century by a succession of eminent theo- 
 logians. The first of these was William Tyndale, a student 
 of Greek under Colet and Grocyn at Oxford, later a pupil of 
 Erasmus at Cambridge. Tyndale was a man with one idea — 
 the translation of the Bible — to the end that the people might 
 know Christ from the pure fountain-head. Animated with 
 the spirit of Wyclif, he endured "poverty, exile, bitter absence^ 
 from friends and innumerable other hard and sharp fightings," 
 and finally martyrdom for this great end; for he was burned 
 at the stake for his opinions, at Antwerp in 1536. Tyndale's 
 New Testament, which differed from all previous translations 
 in being made not from the Latin Vulgate but from the original 
 Greek, was published in 1525. It was immediately ordered 
 suppressed and burned by Archbishop Warham; orders very 
 effectively carried out. But Tyndale continued his labors, 
 translating parts of the Old Testament which were variously 
 published and making a definitive revision of his New Testa- 
 ment in 1534. It has been said of Tyndale that he fixed the 
 literary style of the Bible. 
 
 In this very year the convocation petitioned the king to 
 
288 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 authorize a translation of the Bible into English, and Cranmer 
 suggested a board of bishops and other learned men to super- 
 intend the undertaking. This came to nothing, but Thomas 
 Cromwell, then secretary of state, urged Miles Coverdale to 
 print a translation on which he had long been engaged, and 
 this appeared in 1535, the first complete English Bible, and. 
 the first to obtain the right of circulation in England. Cover- 
 dale was neither the scholar nor the extreme Protestant diat 
 Tyndale had been; his work was chiefly editorial and siiper- 
 visory, and it was based on "sundry translations ^not only 
 Latin, but also of the Dutch [German] interpreters " and on 
 Tyndale. Two revised editions of Coverdale's Bible appeared 
 in 1537. In the same year appeared a completion of Tyn- 
 dale's work, known as the Mattliews' Bible from the name 
 which stands at the end of the dedication, but apparently the 
 work of one John Rogers. This work, like Coverdale's, was 
 dedicated to King Henry VIII, and furnished with marginal 
 comments of a somewhat contentious nature. It was allowed. 
 Cromwell again commissioned Coverdale to revise the Bible 
 and in 1539 appeared the Great Bible, as it was called, from the 
 large size of the volume and its sumptuous character. The 
 edition of 1540 contains an Introduction by Cranmer and is 
 sometimes known as Cranmer s Bible. Copies of this Bible 
 were set up in every church and the services even were deserted 
 at times by those eager to read for themselves the word of God. 
 Numerous editions of the Great Bible followed in the next 
 two years (there were six in 1540 and 1541 alone); and from 
 its appearance must be dated that familiar acquaintance with 
 the Bible and love of its very word which has since especially 
 characterized English speaking people. Another Bible pre- 
 cisely contemporary with the Great Bible was the work of an 
 Oxford scholar named Richard Taverner, who made some 
 valuable corrections in the New Testament, but revised the 
 OU mainly by reference to the Vulgate. 
 
 In the reactionary years towards the close of Henry's 
 reign the reading of the Bible was forbidden; all Bibles bear- 
 ing Tyndale's name were ordered to be destroyed, and Cover- 
 dale's New Testament was added to this condemnation. The 
 
THE "GENEVA" AND THE "BISHOPS' BIBLE" 289 
 
 reign of Edward removed these restrictions and revived the 
 publication of the Bible. Though no new version appeared 
 in this reign, there were thirteen editions of the Bible com- 
 plete, and thirty-five of the New Testament. With the acces- 
 sion of Mary, the reaction set in again. Rogers and Cranmer 
 Were executed; and Coverdale, now Bishop of Exeter, escaped 
 with difficulty overseas, settling at last with other English 
 fugitives in Geneva, where Calvin and Beza were holding 
 Protestant sway. There Coverdale proceeded with his life 
 work of Bible revision. But the greater part of the labor fell 
 to younger hands, William Whittingham (who was married 
 to Calvin's sister), in collaboration with other English scholars 
 completed the work, publishing the Geneva Bible in 1560. 
 These revisers were especially aided in their labors by the 
 Latin translation of Theodore Beza, the most eminent Biblical 
 scholar then living and, as might be expected, their marginal 
 commentary was Calvinistic in tone. The Geneva Version 
 long remained the popular Bible for home reading and exerted 
 no inconsiderable influence on the Authorized Version. 
 
 With the accession of Elizabeth a new official Bible was 
 needed; and Archbishop Parker with a group of learned men, 
 for the most part dignitaries of the English Church, set about 
 a revision of the Great Bible. This was accomplished by 1568 
 and is known as the Bishops' Bible: it at once superseded the 
 Great Bible in the churches, but was, owing to the method of 
 its revision, wanting in uniformity and somewhat uneven in 
 execution. The Bishops' Bible by no means supplanted the 
 Geneva Version in popular, and especially in Puritan, esteem. 
 
 Although the Romanist's point of view did not favor a 
 popular reading of the Scriptures, such was the contemporary 
 interest in a knowledge of the book of books that an English 
 Bible, neither the work of English bishops nor of Calvinistic 
 divines, became a demand of the moment. The preparation 
 of this version was naturally given to the English scholars of 
 the seminary which had been founded, first at Douay and con- 
 tinued later at Rheims (though it returned to Douay) by the 
 Jesuits, for the ostensible purpose of bringing about the recon- 
 version of England to the Roman faith. The New Testa- 
 
290 TRANSLATION, VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 ment of the Douay Bible appeared in 1582; but the work was 
 not complete until the year 1609. Gregory Martin and other 
 Oxford scholars, members of the Society of Jesus, were, in the 
 main, responsible for it. This translation was made not from 
 the Hebrew and Greek of the original, but from the Latin 
 Vulgate on the ground that this was the Bible of Jerome and, 
 Augustine and therefore the true version of the Roman Churchr-^ 
 
 Lastly we reach the Authorized Version of 161 1, the Bible 
 which served all English speaking Christians (save commu-;> 
 nicants of the Church of Rome), until the Revised Version^of 
 1 88 1. The scheme of revision, for much of which King 
 James must be held personally responsible, included a board 
 of some fifty revisers of Oxford, Cambridge, and London, and 
 involved not only independent work, but frequent consulta- 
 tion and comparison. The revisers were instructed that the 
 Bishops' Bible was "to be followed, and as little altered as 
 the original will permit." Though other versions might be 
 used "when they agree better with the text than the Bishops* 
 Bible." As a matter of fact the King James revisers had as 
 little liberty assigned them as our own recent revisers, and 
 they took less. Two features of the Authorized Version were 
 its omission of all marginal commentary, and its adoption 
 from the Geneva Version of the division of the chapters into 
 verses. Another feature was its retention of the ecclesiasti- 
 cal terms which Tyndale had violently banished. The supe- 
 riority of the Authorized Version over all others in literality, in 
 its freedom from sectarian or party zeal, and in literary style 
 is beyond dispute or cavil, and no words could exaggerate its 
 potent and marvelous influence on English religion and litera- 
 ture alike. 
 
 If the question be asked How could such a perfect result 
 be brought about under such circumstances ? several reasons 
 may be assigned. First, the nature of the original, offering not 
 only a subject-matter involving the most interesting of all 
 topics but a style in many parts for the equal of which we may 
 look in vain through the literatures of the world. Secondly, 
 the real piety of the translators and revisers, infusing into them 
 a wholesome awe in the prosecution of their great task and a 
 
THE "AUTHORIZED VERSION" OF THE BIBLE 291 
 
 painstaking care, lest they should impair the truth and beauty 
 of the word of God. Third, the state of the English language, — 
 that of a vigorous adolescence, alike removed from the stutter- 
 ing childhood of multiform Anglo-Saxon and from the conven- 
 tional and somewhat trite phraseology that marks every highly- 
 lettered tongue. And finally, the character of the age that 
 produced Shakespeare, Bacon, Jonson, and Spenser, all 
 writers, be it remembered, of superlative prose. To expatiate^ 
 upon this last point would be to tell the history of the whole 
 century; suffice it to say, that it is the age that has not yet 
 ceased to believe nor yet begun to conceive itself possessed of 
 all knowledge which alone could have produced this inimita- 
 ble translatloiroilan^inimitabLe work. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 HISTORY, DIVINITY, AND OTHER PROSE OF 
 CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 THE opening chapter of this book treated of the literature 
 of fact, that more or less literary reflection of past 
 tradition that we call history, and present exploit, especially 
 in the way of maritime and its attendant military adventure. 
 The Elizabethan conception of history as exemplified in the 
 pages of Holinshed or Stow is crude in the extreme. It neither 
 discriminates nor chooses, but takes whatever has been chron- 
 icled before, without hesitancy or question; and it knows no 
 ordering of material save the chronological sequence of events. 
 But no age could scrutinize and study the past, alike of Eng- 
 land and of foreign and ancient nations, as did this age, and 
 remain blind to the fatuousness of so childish a handling of 
 historical material. Sir Thomas More had already presaged 
 better things in his History of Richard III; and Cavendish's 
 Life of Wolsey, though more in the nature of memoirs than of 
 actual history, is the work of an observer, with his heart in his 
 subject and a natural aptitude for direct narrative. Towards 
 the end of Elizabeth's reign a conception of history superior 
 to that of mere chronicles and annals began to obtain. The 
 learned antiquary, William Camden, patron of Ben Jonson,^ 
 had already written his Britannia', 1586, in Latin, although it 
 was not Englished until Holland's version of 1610. Camden's 
 Britannia is not history, but an antiquarian topography of 
 Britain. But the ideal of research which such a work involved 
 (an ideal which it has been affirmed that Camden derived from 
 a brief personal acquaintance with the famous Flemish geog- 
 rapher, Abraham Ortelius, who visited England in 1577) 
 was something obviously applicable to the pursuit and writing 
 of history. Camden's Britannia enjoyed an immediate suc- 
 cess, reaching a third edition in 1590 and being reprinted 
 
 292 
 
SIR JOHN HAYWARD 293 
 
 abroad. His later Annals of Queen Elizabeth, 1615, exempli- 
 fied his method, satisfactorily applied to the history of his own 
 time, and forms with his Remains concerning Britain, 1605 
 (alone of his works first published in English) an honorable 
 memorial of one of the most learned and respected scholars 
 of his age. As to the method of documentary research in the 
 early years of King James, Fulke Greville relates in his Life 
 of Sidney that he purposed writing a history of the reign of 
 his late queen, Elizabeth, and "adventured to move the secre- 
 tary (Sir Robert Cecil) that I might have his favor to peruse 
 all obsolete records of the council-chest from those times down 
 as near to these as he in his wisdom should think fit." Cecil 
 asked this inquirer after historical material to come again in 
 three weeks' time, and on this second visit he condescended 
 "to question me": 
 
 Why I would dream out any time in writing a story, being as likely 
 to rise in this time as any man he knew; then in a more serious and 
 friendly manner examining me, how I could clearly deliver many 
 things done in that time which may perchance be construed to the 
 prejudice of this. I shortly made answer that I conceived a historian 
 was bound to tell nothing but the truth, but to tell all truths were both 
 justly to wrong and offend not only princes and states, but to blemish 
 and stir up against himself the frailty and tenderness, not only of 
 particular men but of many families with the spirit of an Athenian 
 Timon; and therefore showed myself to be so far from being dis- 
 couraged with that objection as I took upon me freely to adventure 
 all my own goods in this ship, which was to be of mine own build- 
 ing. Immediately this noble secretary . . . seriously assured 
 me, that upon second thoughts, he durst not presume to let the council- 
 chest lie open to any man living. 
 
 John Hayward, afterwards knighted by King James, was 
 born the same year with Shakespeare, dying in 1627, one year 
 after Bacon. Educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, 
 Hayward rose to a certain distinction as a lavvyer and was 
 patronized and encouraged in his historical labors by the king. 
 His works begin with a History of the First Tear of Henry 
 IV, 1599, which sent him to the Tower for some ill-timed 
 flattery of Essex. He wrote, later, the lives of William I, 
 
294 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 William II, Henry I, and Edward VI, besides Annals (of the 
 earlier years) of Queen Elizabeth. Ha3Avard was at one time 
 associated as a colleague with Camden in Chelsea College, 
 which James had founded. He seems to have caught some- 
 what Camden's idea of research and makes in his writings 
 a brave show of learning; but from a want of any sense of 
 proportion or of criticism, his efforts serve to little purpose. 
 Hayward, however, set himself the definite task of rising out 
 of the slough of the annalists and chroniclers into something 
 like the literary history practised by the ancients. Livy and 
 Tacitus thus became his models and he imitates them often 
 in that wherein they are least defensible, their rhetoric and 
 their formal imaginary oratorical passages. Bacon records 
 that Queen Elizabeth inquired of him as to Hayward's "un- 
 lucky first attempt" at history, "whether there were no treason 
 contained in it." To which Bacon replied: "For treason 
 I can not deliver opinion that there is any, but very much 
 felony." And when her majesty asked hastily, "How and 
 wherein ? I told her the author had committed very apparent 
 theft; for he had stolen many of his sentences and conceits 
 out of Cornelius Tacitus." 
 
 A minor historian of England was John Speed, the con- 
 tinuator of Stow's Chronicle down to the accession of James. 
 His History of Great Britain dates l6ll. Daniel, the poet, 
 was likewise the author of a lengthy History of England from 
 the Conquest to the Reign of Edward HI. But despite his 
 abilities as a stylist, Daniel contributed nothing to the ad- 
 vancement of the art of historical writing. The greatest piece 
 of historical composition of the reigns of Elizabeth and James 
 is Bacon's History of Henry VH. In this short essay — for 
 it is not much more — the writing of history in English leaps 
 with a bound to a place beside Tacitus and Thucydides him- 
 self.^ But this was the work of Bacon's latest years and, 
 printed in 1621, falls beyond us. 
 
 Among Elizabethan histories of foreign countries it is 
 somewhat difficult to distinguish between translators and those 
 whose compilations have a greater claim to originality. A 
 
 ^ See Spedding, Works of Bacon, vii, 4, 5. 
 
RALEIGH'S "HISTORY OF THE WORLD" 295 
 
 busy historian, not without a homely merit of his own, was 
 Edward Grimestone, already mentioned among translators 
 for his compilation of French annals into a portentous volume 
 entitled a General Inventory of the History of France, 1607. 
 Whether Grimestone's History of the Netherlands, of Spain, 
 and other later works that followed, were less completely 
 compilations, we are not at present in possession of the facts 
 to tell. A more famous work in its day was The General His- 
 tory of the Ottoman Turks by Richard Knolles,fellow of Lincoln 
 College, Oxford, and later Master of the Grammar School 
 at Sandwich. This history was the labor of ten years and 
 appeared, elaborately printed with a dedication to the king and 
 embellished with "portraits" of the sultans, in 1603. Knolles 
 is said to have drawn largely on "a Latin history of the Turks 
 published at Frankfort in 1596." His relations to a translation 
 of Georgievitz's De Turcarum Morihus by H[enry] Gough in 
 1570, entitled The Offspring of the House of the Ottomans, 
 might be worthy of inquiry. 
 
 Scarcely less a compilation, but in literary standing and 
 quaHty far above these works, is Sir Walter Raleigh's History 
 of the World, published in 1614. Written during his twelve 
 years' imprisonment in the Tower with a sentence of death 
 suspended over his head, this stupendous work is yet con- 
 ceived in a spirit of leisure and pervaded with an absorbed 
 interest in matters of detail that is simply astounding consid- 
 ering the circumstances. Sir Walter Raleigh was born about 
 1552, and was thus a year or two older than Spenser whose 
 early friend he was. Handsome in person, daring, brilliant, 
 and unscrupulous as to the means of attaining success, Raleigh 
 became a favorite of the queen, grew rich on monopolies, and 
 was spoiled and petted by fortune. He came of the old Devon-^ 
 shire stock of sea-dogs and martial heroes. The famous 
 navigator. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was his half-brother. Sir 
 Richard Grenville his cousin. Raleigh had fought by land 
 against Spain in Ireland and in the Netherlands; and he had 
 fought with the Huguenots in France. He had sailed with his 
 brother Gilbert in one of his voyages against the commerce 
 of Spain, and had helped the Earl of Essex "to singe the Span^ 
 
 ^ 
 
296 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 ish king's beard" at Cadiz. He had fitted out ships for the 
 Armada and searched for fabulous El Dorado, burning Spanish 
 towns by the way. Imprudence in espousing the claim of the 
 Lady Arabella Stuart to the crown brought about the fall of 
 this enemy of Spain early in the reign of James; and his con- 
 viction of high treason and long imprisonment led to the block 
 at last in 16 19. Raleigh's was certainly a strangely romantic 
 career; and better perhaps than in greater historic figures 
 can we discern in him the contradictions and contrasts that 
 make the age of Elizabeth and James so fascinating and in- 
 explicable at times. Raleigh was deeply interested in the ex- 
 ploitation of England, to his own advantage as well as the 
 empire's. But he was likewise a poet possessed of a "lofty 
 and insolent vein," scorning the world, its snares and vanities. 
 Raleigh had been a friend of Marlowe, and reputed a member 
 of a club of atheists, or at least free-thinkers, in his youth; yet 
 it was to him that Spenser confided the ethical scheme of his 
 ideal of a moral world in The Faery Queen; and The History 
 of the World is imbued throughout with a spirit of piety which 
 no unbeliever could affect. Raleigh's History has been called 
 a stupendous work; it is such not only because of its bulk 
 (for there are bulkier Elizabethan works), but because of the 
 extraordinary scope of its plan and range of its subject-matter. 
 Indeed, the book is less a history than "a series of dissertations 
 on law, theology, mythology, magic, war and the ideal form 
 of government," illustrated by an exceedingly difi'use account 
 of the rise and fall of several of the great empires of the world. 
 Raleigh must have had the help of many scholars In the 
 assembling of the material at least for this huge mass; and 
 Jonson informs us that he had his share in the portion dealing 
 with the Punic Wars. But the work, however unequal in 
 parts, is governed by the imperative spirit of Raleigh through- 
 out, whose eloquence (more particularly in the preface and in 
 the celebrated apostrophe to death with which the book ends), 
 rises to court comparisons with the best Elizabethan and later 
 English prose. 
 
 Into the many admirable prose writings of the age devoted 
 
STOWS "SURVEY OF LONDON" 297 
 
 to antiquarian studies on the one hand and statecraft, either 
 historically considered or in criticism, on the other, it is im- 
 possible to enter here. These topics belong from their con- 
 temporary conditions less to the domain of the literature of 
 power than to that of the literature of knowledge, and although 
 often conceived in a spirit of broad and philosophical gener- 
 alization, are limited none the less by the occasions that pro- 
 duced them. During the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth 
 an informal society of antiquarians existed, founded by Arch- 
 bishop Parker; its ruling spirits were Camden, Speed, Selden, 
 and Cotton. Of the first two we have just heard; John Sel- 
 den, born in 1584, was the most learned of legal antiquaries. 
 His great work was The History of Tithes, published in 16 18. 
 Selden was also a noted wit; but his Table Talk was mostly 
 the gathering of his later years. It was in 1598 that Sir 
 Thomas Bodley, a diplomat of note, made his offer to found a 
 library in the University of Oxford; this was accepted and 
 the library formally opened in 1602. Sir Robert Bruce Cot- 
 ton was an enthusiast in the collection of old manuscripts. He 
 published no more than a history of The Reign of Henry HL, 
 and this in 1627. But most of his extraordinary hoard of old 
 documents were acquired during the later years of Elizabeth's 
 reign and the earlier of James. There are no more imperish- 
 able memorials of the love of learning in the age of Shakespeare 
 than the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the Cottonian Manu- 
 scripts of the British Museum. Among Elizabethan anti- 
 quaries none has maintained so popular a reputation and one 
 so thoroughly deserved in his local field as John Stow, the 
 chronicler and the antiquarian of old London. Stow was 
 originally a tailor, but was led by a passion for his subject to 
 minute and personal research among the antiquities and mon- 
 uments of London and to write a book, absolutely unparalleled 
 in its kind. Stow's Survey of London was first printed in 1598 
 and is the starting-point of all inquiry into the subject of Eliz- 
 abethan and earlier London. Stow is so intent on his subject 
 that he tells it well, unconscious of his force and directness. 
 Like his fellow chroniclers Stow takes whatever is to his hand 
 
298 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 in the work of his predecessors, content that he be meted a Hke 
 measure by those that come after. Stow has been pillaged 
 assuredly for far more than he ever borrowed. 
 
 Singularly gifted and versatile was Sir Henry Wotton, a 
 Kentish gentleman, younger kinsman of Bacon and a personal 
 friend of Donne whom he met at New College, Oxford. Wot- 
 ton was much abroad in the service of the state and his breadth 
 of spirit in politics as in religion made him at once capable 
 of intimacy with scholars such as Isaac Casaubon, with whom 
 he lived at Geneva, and with Cardinals Bellarmine and Allen 
 at Rome. Wotton was esteemed and trusted by King James; 
 and his devoted attachment to the service of his sovereign's 
 daughter, the beautiful and unhappy Elizabeth, Queen of 
 Bohemia, was the romance of his life. On his retirement from 
 diplomatic life in 1624, Wotton became Provost of Eton. His 
 literary work embraces a History of the Republic of Venice, a 
 Life of Donne, and a Treatise on Angling, all of these only 
 projected however, although the last two were carried out by 
 Wotton's friend and biographer, Izaak Walton. Wotton's 
 most important work in his day was his treatise on The State 
 of Christendom, printed in 1637, towards the close of his life. 
 The Reliquice WottoniancB, published in 1 65 1, includes topics 
 as various as The Elements of Architecture, A Survey of Ed- 
 ucation, the "Characters" of two or three historical personages. 
 Letters, Aphorisms, and a few poems, two or three of which 
 — amons them the fine lines to the Princess Elizabeth be- 
 ginning "You meaner beauties of the night" — gained a lasting 
 and deserved celebrity. Wotton, like Selden and Bacon, had 
 the gift of putting things. He was possessed, too, of a deli- 
 cate critical taste for poetry. It was Wotton who first 
 enthusiastically approved Comus; and it is fitting that this 
 chivalrous, scholarly, and capable man should live forever 
 in Walton's fine biography. 
 
 Such writings as these of Wotton and many like them of 
 less conspicuous literary merit are best described under a 
 generic title such as the prose of contemporary comment; 
 for the conditions of the moment begot them and, while they 
 rise in dignity of subject-matter and in care of composition 
 
WRITINGS ON EDUCATION 299 
 
 above the grade of mere pamphleteering, their interest to us 
 must remain curious and historical rather than strictly literary. 
 Thus Richard Mul caster, first Master^of the Merchant Tailors -===> 
 School, wrote originally and eloquently in his Positions con- 
 cerning the Training up of Children, in 1581, and showed him- 
 self a worthy successor of Ascham and Elyot in a subject which 
 we now call pedagogy and dignify with many technical and 
 professional difficulties. In Mulcaster's book and in John 
 Brinsley's Ludus Literarius, 1612, will be found many a new 
 idea, grown old to be rediscovered by the historically unin- 
 formed of our own discovering age. The education of the 
 young has always been an absorbing theme to pedagogues and 
 parents. Even the great Lord Burleigh turned aside from the 
 cares of practical statecraft to pen, in admirably phrased and 
 unadorned English, Ten Precepts to his Son wherein such 
 apothegms as "Marry thy daughters in time lest they marry 
 , themselves," and "He that payeth another man's debts seeketh 
 his own decay" disclose his kinship in blood, as in worldly 
 sagacity, to his great nephew, Francis Bacon. It was in the 
 year of the Armada, before any certain work of Shakespeare's, 
 that Dr. Timothy Bright, physician to St. Bartholomew's Hos- 
 jppital, set forth a little book called Charactery: An Art of Short, 
 \Swift and Secret Writing by Character, and thus founded the 
 modern art of stenography. Many a "spurious quarto" of 
 Shakespeare's and others' plays doubtless owes much to the 
 art of Dr. Timothy Bright. A more professional work of the 
 same author was his Treatise on Melancholy, 1 586, by some 
 supposed to have suggested Robert Burton's famous Anatomy 
 of Melancholy published in 1621. 
 
 Attention has been specifically called of late to a remarkable 
 series of state documents concerning Ireland, among them 
 Sidney's defense of his father's administration as viceroy, 
 Spenser's dialogue, and later papers and reports by Bacon, 
 Sir John Davies, Fynes Moryson, and Sir Thomas Stafford. 
 It is interesting to think of some of these men whom we remem- 
 ber chiefly for their poetry, as taking their part in government 
 and practising, often with consummate success, the difficult 
 art of statecraft. Spenser's work is written in dialogue form 
 
300 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 and is entitled A View of the State of Ireland. It was licensed 
 in 1598, and is a dear and direct piece of prose writing based 
 upon knowledge and remarkably well arranged and handled. 
 In Certain Considerations touching the Plantation in Ireland, 
 1609, Bacon is critical of the administration of the time. Sir 
 John Davies, in his Discovery of the State of Ireland , 16 1 3, 
 contributes a history of the country, which he supplemented, 
 in 1617, with an account of the Tyrone rebellion. More per- 
 sonal in nature and for the most part well below the literary 
 level are the several diarists, among them the celebrated astrol- 
 oger, Dr. John Dee, who calculated an auspicious day for 
 Queen Elizabeth's coronation and long outlived her; Sir 
 Robert Naunton, who racily sketched in his Fragmenta Re- 
 galia, her favorites; and Robert Carey, later Earl of Mon- 
 mouth, who tells in lively narrative how he carried the news 
 of the old queen's death to her eagerly expectant successor. 
 To two diaries, that of John Manninghamofthe Middle Tem- 
 ple and that of the quack physician and astrologer, Dr. Simon 
 Forman, a peculiar interest attaches, as each affords us con- 
 temporary record of the performances of plays of Shakespeare. 
 The notes which the Scottish poet, William Drummond of 
 Hawthornden, made concerning the life, opinions, and literary 
 gossip of Ben Jonson, who visited him in 1619, offer us the best 
 contemporary picture of Shakespeare's greatest literary com- 
 petitor. It is fair to remember that these Notes of Conversa- 
 tions of Ben Jonson were neither published nor intended for 
 publication by Drummond; but were rescued from oblivion 
 generations after the Scottish poet's death. The Autobiography 
 of Sir James Melville, the diplomat, deals at large with the 
 history of Scotland as the Diary of his namesake, the reformer, 
 deals with the Scottish church in his time. Both works were 
 published posthumously and are of greater literary preten- 
 sions than the fragments just enumerated. 
 
 Several controversies, more or less literary in nature, have 
 found mention above. Besides the Marprelate dispute, so 
 drastically suppressed, and the personal literary duel between 
 Harvey and Nash, there was the old academic question of 
 classical verse as the vehicle of English poetry, and the long 
 
SCOTT'S "DISCOVERY OF WITCHCRAFT" 301 
 
 Puritan attack on the stage and on social abuses. Another 
 controversy, involving more serious consequences than any 
 matter of opinion, was the semi-religious question involved in 
 the Elizabethan belief in witches. In 1584 Reginald Scott— ^ 
 put forth an elaborate and learned work entitled The Discovery 
 of Witchcraft. Scott was a Kentish esquire and justice of the 
 peace, and left behind him a practical little treatise on the 
 staple of Kent, entitled The Hop Garden, 1574. It was in 
 the exercise of his official duties that Scott was drawn into an 
 appreciation of the enormities and injustice that frequently 
 resulted from the popular notions concerning witchcraft; and 
 he entered heart and soul into the question on this impetus, 
 and with a large mass of writings on the subject (such as those 
 of Bodin and Weier) before him. But Scott was ahead of his 
 time. He was denounced with singular unanimity by the 
 clergy; and King James, who was something of a connoisseur 
 in witches himself, so far condescended in his zeal as to answer 
 this heretic with his royal hand in his Demonology, 1597, 
 wherein he pronounced the opinions of Scott "damnable." 
 This excursion of King James into demonology was by no 
 means his only publication. He had taken part, when a lad 
 and still under the supervision of his tutors, in the discussions 
 about poetry that belonged to the days of Sidney, in his Essays 
 of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poetry, 1 584. And a few 
 years later, in 1589, he displayed the interest in theology that 
 he maintained throughout his life in Meditations on Revela- 
 tions. The Basilikon Doron, 1599, is a book of advice to his 
 son, crowded with marginal references to the classics and the 
 Bible, for James was nothing if not pedantic. Although it is 
 fair to add that even in this James was not conspicuous ac- 
 cording to the learned fashion of his day — or of ours, if the 
 truth be confessed. As to the wise saws and modern instances 
 of this book, it has been remarked that they might have come 
 with better grace from a monarch less a victim to favoritism. 
 But few authors can stand the test of judgment by the conduct 
 of their livet.. Two opinions of this royal author stand forth 
 in relief: his absolute faith in the divine right of kings, set 
 forth in several treatises; and his hatred of the new-fangled 
 
302 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 habit of smoking, denounced in A Counterblast to Tobacco, 
 1604. As to his controversy with Scott, on his accession to 
 the throne James took a thorough means of silencing his adver- 
 sary by ordering every copy of The Discovery of Witchcraft 
 to be burnt. Happily for Scott, he died a subject of Queen 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 Still another class of books based on contemporary ex- 
 periences, and of the greatest possible interest to the student 
 of manners and of the past, is that reported in the several 
 records which Elizabethan travelers by land into foreign parts 
 have left of their journeys and observations. The earliest of 
 these travelers was Fynes Moryson, a gentleman of Lincoln- 
 shire and student at Cambridge, who obtained a license to 
 travel in 1 589; and, two years later, started on a series of jour-, 
 neys that took him not only through the more important parts 
 of western Europe but to Copenhagen, Danzig, and Cracow, 
 and then to Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. Mory- 
 son was an observant and leisurely traveler. It was his custom 
 to reside in a place to become acquainted with it. He thus 
 lived at one time, a student at the University of Leyden, so- 
 journed for months in Rome, studying antiquities under the 
 protection of the English Cardinal Allen;- while so long was 
 his stay in Constantinople, he tells us, that he had contracted 
 the habit — necessary for his protection among the Turks — of 
 keeping his eyes fixed upon the ground and never looking a man 
 in the face. Like a true traveler, Moryson was interested in 
 everything: polity, manners, national traits, methods of trans- 
 portation, architecture, diet, apparel, and foreign coinages. 
 And he was possessed of the industry, requisite to a careful- 
 chronicling of all that he saw, and a homely clarity and direct- 
 ness of expression, not unillumined at times with an appreci- 
 ative sense of humor. Moryson wrote up his Itinerary (as it 
 was finally called on publication in 16 17) no less than three 
 times; first in Latin, secondly translated, and lastly abbre- 
 viated. The work is, from its mass of detail, of enormous 
 length and the last of its three parts remains unreprinted and 
 partly even now in manuscript. Earlier therefore in print 
 was Thomas Coryate with his Crudities Hastily Gobbled Up, 
 
BOOKS OF TRAVEL 303 
 
 161 1, the account of the author's travels a year or two previous, 
 mainly in France and Italy. Coryate, after failure to obtain 
 his degree at Oxford, became a species of privileged buffoon 
 at court v^here he affected w^himsicality of appearance, speech, 
 and manner, and rivaled in repute "Archie" Armstrong 
 whom Jonson called "the principal fool of the state." From 
 Coryate's character and from the enormous mass of semi- 
 ironical prefatory matter in commendation of the author and 
 his work which he procured at the hands of his many friends, 
 Coryate's Crudities might be supposed to be wholly a book of 
 fictitious foolery. Such however is far from the case. Coryate 
 tells, for the most part, a plain unvarnished tale, by no means 
 wanting in interest, despite the fact that his ways have been 
 so much traveled since his time. Coryate started on a second 
 tour in 16 12, visiting Constantinople, Damascus, and Aleppo 
 and going thence by caravan to Ispahan and Lahore, and visit- 
 ing the Great Mogul, by whom he was kindly received. But 
 of this journey we know only by a brief report of Purchas. 
 Coryate lost his life by fever at Surat in 1617 Of less interest 
 is the narrative entitled The Total Discourse of the Rare Ad- 
 ventures andrainful Perigrinations of William Lithgow first 
 published in 1614 and detailing an extension of Coryate's first 
 journey to Jerusalem and Cairo. Lithgow likewise went 
 abroad again and, although his life was saved by the inter- 
 vention of an English consul, it was not until he had endured 
 torture on the rack at the hands of the Inquisition in Spain for 
 his Protestantism. Lithgow's style, like that of Coryate is, 
 at times, affected and absurdly precious. But to speak of 
 either of these writers as Euphuistic is to obscure the signi- 
 ficance of words. The last of the travelers to write within 
 the lifetime of Shakespeare was George Sandys, paraphraser 
 in verse of parts of the Bible and translator of Ovid at a later 
 time when he was secretary to the governor of the colony of 
 Virginia. Sandys' Relation of a 'Journey begun A. D. 1610 
 was published in 16 15 and is the clear and unaffected narrative 
 of a man of breeding who traveled neither in the adventurous 
 spirit of Coryate nor as the vagabond that Lithgow was com- 
 pelled to become. Sandys enjoyed peculiar advantages while 
 
304 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 in Jerusalem, seeing many things denied to other travelers, 
 among them "the dwelling of Zebedee, the sycamore on which 
 Judas hanged himself, the 'Castle of Lazarus,' and the vault 
 from which he was raised, the house of Simon the Leper, the 
 fount where Bathsheba bathed her feet, the palace of Pilate, 
 and the convent to which the Magdalen retired from the van- 
 ities of the world." With the tomb of Juliet still on view at 
 Verona and the many curiosities of "Shakespeare" — to men- 
 tion none other — to be seen at Stratford and elsewhere, let 
 no one cast a stone at the credulity of either Sandys or other 
 of these Elizabethan "sight-seers." 
 
 Two examples of the prose of contemporary comment, 
 very diverse in their natures, have been reserved for a some- 
 what fuller treatment. These are Greville's Life of Sidney 
 and Jonson's Timber or Discoveries. Both were posthumous 
 publications, and both these men have already been considered 
 elsewhere and in other connections. Sir Fulke Greville, v/ho 
 received from James at his coronation Warwick Castle and 
 was years afterwards raised to the peerage as Lord Brooke, is 
 best remembered as the early friend of Sidney and the one 
 among the "favorites" of Queen Elizabeth who (doubtless 
 due to his own prudence) suffered least from the royal changes 
 of temper. Greville's literary repute is at least three-fold; 
 for his lyrics of intellectualized emotion, for his singularly 
 difficult Senecan dramas, and for his poetical treatises on 
 statecraft. To these we must add his writings in prose, 
 chiefly represented in the Life of Sidney and in A Letter to an 
 Honorable Lady. The latter is really a disquisition in the 
 abstract on marriage for love. It was never sent, nor indeed 
 addressed, to any real person; but is deeply interesting and 
 full of profundity of thought. The Life of Sidney is not a bi- 
 ography at all, but appears to have been intended as a species 
 of autobiographical preface to Greville's collected works, illus- 
 trating less the outward happenings of his life than his relations 
 to the two beings whom he most loved and revered, Sidney, 
 the friend of his youth, and his "incomparable queen," Eliza- 
 beth. In the course of a narrative that wanders whither the 
 author will, guided by associations and recollections often 
 
GREVILLE'S "LIFE OF SIDNEY" 305 
 
 irrecoverable to-day, Greville expresses himself on many sub- 
 jects on which he had pondered in the course of a long and ac- 
 tively useful public life. His reading must have been wide, yet 
 he is strangley unaffected either by the erudition or the liter- 
 ature of his time, A more completely metaphysical mind than 
 Greville's it would be difficult to discover. He was a Stoic 
 in an age of Platonism, a theorist in statecraft among poli- 
 ticians. He is full of Macchiavelian subtlety and insight, but 
 stands aloof from argument, controversy, and all practical 
 applications. Consciousness of the gauds and ornaments of 
 rhetoric as such he knows not at all; and yet the very essence 
 of poetry and of beauty of expression is his at times, not only in 
 his verse but in his prose as well. Fluency is the quality that 
 is furthest from the thought as from the style of Greville. 
 What he says, he says with gravity, with a certain hesitant 
 difficulty; and he abounds in indirections of speech and sen- 
 teinces in which we wander with him as in a maze. But there 
 is certainly (if we will but seek it) a significance, depth, and 
 beauty in the thought of Greville that make it worth the labor 
 of attainment and that come to exercise on him who learns 
 to know him a peculiar fascination. The comparison which 
 has been made of Greville to Polonius, with his pedantic 
 parade of shallow, hackneyed truisms, and his incessant bab- 
 ling to no purpose, seems peculiarly unhappy. King James 
 with his Basilikon Doron — the advice of Polonius to his son 
 written in large and in all seriousness — King James is Polo- 
 nius; not Greville, whose lofty preoccupation with abstract 
 truth and search therefor, together with a certain awkwardness 
 of style, despite his power to express a beautiful thought in apt j 
 and fitting raiment, seem qualities more in common with our 
 American Emerson. 
 
 Ben Jonson's Timber or Discoveries made upon Men and 
 Matter was gathered with other material at the end of the 
 second folio of the poet's collected works, 1641. The book 
 has been called a "species of commonplace book of aphorisms 
 flowing out of the poet's daily reading." But it is also much 
 more. For although many passages are all but literal trans- 
 lations, culled from the classics or from medieval or contem- 
 
f~ 
 
 306 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 porary Latin and other authors, every note is stamped with the 
 powerful personality of Jonson and penned with the utmost 
 care as to details of expression and style. Moreover, other 
 entries are not literary but allusive to Jonson's contemporaries 
 or expressions of his estimate of them. Such are the famous 
 passages concerning "Shakespeare nostrati" (our country- 
 man), as Jonson calls him in pride, and the one on Bacon and 
 his eloquence. Jonson esteemed both men and noted his 
 regard in unaffected terms. Of Bacon his words are: 
 
 My conceit of his person was never increased towards him by 
 place or honors. But I have and do reverence him for the greatness 
 that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his 
 work, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that 
 had been in many ages. 
 
 As to Shakespeare, Jonson draws nearer the man himself in 
 the memorable words: "For I loved the man, and do honor 
 his memory on this side idolatry as much as any." 
 
 Religious and devotional writings form a very considerable 
 proportion of the total output of the Elizabethan and Jacobean 
 press. Apart from the revision and innumerable editions of_ 
 the Bible and the various adaptations, translations, and para- 
 phrases into which it was wrought in parts by the devout, apart 
 too, from the English Prayer Book and other manuals and 
 rituals of devotion, the mass of controversial "literature" 
 which was begotten first of the break with Rome, and secondly 
 by the schism that arrayed Anglican and Puritan in two hostile 
 camps, was legion, even if now as dead as the herd of swine, . 
 possessed of devils, that cast themselves into the sea at Gad- 
 arene. Divinity, employing literary art, as it must only for 
 an ulterior purpose, is all but wholly of the literature of knowl- 
 edge, however it may wing its words with poetry or glow with 
 the passion of faith. Moreover, theological writing fliore 
 completely than any other form of prose is contemporary in 
 its purpose and tethered to the conditions of the moment. 
 For even when the religious principles involved are of the 
 widest significance and application, the theology of one age 
 needs commonly to be translated in terms of the next, and 
 
WORKS OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY 307 
 
 Issues that have once seemed momentous, creeds for which 
 men laid down their lives, are no more to generations that 
 come after than remote, jagged rocks that break the monotony 
 of a level horizon. 
 
 The battle royal of new and militant English Protestantism 
 against the Church of Rome in matters ceremonial and dog- 
 matic had been fought out mostly by those who survived, if 
 at all, not far into the reign of Elizabeth. Sir Thomas More 
 and Erasmus were agreed with the reformers as to the existence 
 of abuses within the church; but the controversy of the former 
 with Tyndale pivoted on the question, could the church be 
 reformed from within and survive. It is better to think of 
 Tyndale as the first of the devoted scholars that gave their time 
 to the translation of our English Bible than to recall in him the 
 bitter controversialist, attacking The Practices of Prelates. 
 And it is better to remember Cranmer, first Protestant Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, as the artistic.form-giver tothe beautiful 
 diction of the Book of Common Prayer, than for his voluminous 
 and now forgotten writings on the eucharistic and other con- 
 troversies that shook the theological structures of the time. 
 
 We may pass over the intervening decades of minor con- 
 troversy in which figured the once potent names of Whitgift, 
 Rainolds, Featley, Andrews, and Field. Towards the close 
 of Elizabeth's reign the religious equilibrium which she 
 had so long contrived to maintain was rendered unstable, 
 first by the activities of the Jesuits in their endeavors to win 
 back England to the faith of Rome; and secondly, by the mil- 
 itant attitude of Puritanism. . Among the many Roman Cath- 
 olics of English birth who took their part in the pamphlet war- 
 fare of the time may be named Thomas Stapleton, prominent 
 during the nineties in the counsels of the English college, founded 
 by the Jesuits at Douay, and the author, amongst much else, 
 of a History of the English Church and an Apology for Philip 
 II as against Elizabeth. A more notable man in the England 
 of his time was Robert Parsons, who came back to his native 
 country, about 1580, an accredited missionary from the Vatican 
 to carry on innumerable intrigues and to write innumerable 
 pamphlets in the cause of his church. His little volume of 
 
3o8 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 Christian exercises, entitled A Christian Directory, enjoyed 
 an extraordinary vogue. Among many, perhaps the most 
 conspicuous reply to the Roman Catholic position in later 
 Elizabethan years was John Rainolds' De Romance Ecclesice 
 Idolatria, 1 596. 
 
 Although the attack on Rome and Romish "practices" 
 continued almost unabated, long before the time when such 
 men as Rainolds began to write, Puritanism had arisen and 
 with it new issues and contentions. The Renaissance had 
 stood for individualism, and individualism fostered the ideals 
 of nationality; the Protestant idea went further to give to each 
 people its national church. But it was felt that the world had 
 lost something in thus sacrificing the ambitious ideal of Rome : 
 a world united in a universally accepted faith, under one su- 
 preme and apostolic head, who stood in spiritual power above 
 princes as princes stood temporarily above common men. It 
 was at this juncture that John Calvin conceived his ingenious 
 plan of a Christian republic which a happy train of circum- 
 stances enabled him to put into practice with triumphant suc- 
 cess at Geneva. Calvin's reorganization of the church in re- 
 lation to the state found its basis in the Christian man "elected 
 and called of God, preserved by his grace from the power of 
 sin, predestinate to eternal life." "Every such Christian man 
 is in himself a priest, and every group of such men is a church, 
 self-governing, independent of all save God, supreme in its 
 authority over all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual." With- 
 out entering into the details of Calvin's nice balance of power, 
 by which administration, election, interpretaion of Scripture, 
 decision of doctrine, discipline, and even excommunication, 
 all are provided for within the congregation, it is sufficient to 
 note this most important corollary: "To this discipline princes 
 as well as common men are alike subject; princes as well as 
 common men must take their doctrine from the ministers of 
 the church." Calvin was at one with the Church of Rome 
 in thus setting up a spiritual and ecclesiastical supremacy over 
 all political and national claims. But "the Pope of Geneva" 
 was not the same as the Pope of Rome. On the other hand, 
 Calvin was at variance with the political and social systems of 
 
RICHARD HOOKER 309 
 
 every nation of Europe in placing the ultimate source of power" 
 neither in prince, parliament, nor people, but in the individual 
 Christian man; for, however despotic might seem the Calvin- 
 istic idea of the authority of pastor and elder, both aHke were 
 subject, in the last resort, to the vote of the congregation. How 
 deeply the "exiles" from England drank of the Calvinistic 
 font must be clear to the most careless reader of history. The 
 new Puritan idea was alike counter to the ideals of a national 
 and established chunch and to any monarchical form of govern- 
 ment. That this idea should ultimately have led to armed 
 conflict with both church and state was in the very nature of 
 things. But with these larger issues we are not here concerned. 
 One service Calvinism assuredly rendered mankind in its 
 recognition of the individual man and his place as a political 
 and social unit at the basis of modern democracy. ' 
 
 It was these essential doctrines of Puritanism, with the 
 innumerable other points in which the Calvinistic interpreta- 
 tion of Christianity fell into variance with the tenets of the 
 Church of England, that Richard Hooker set himself to 
 refute in The Laws of Ecclesmstical Polity, four books of which 
 appeared in 1594, the other three posthumously in 1648 and 
 ■1662. The literary attacks of Martin Marprelate on the 
 bishops^and on what, from the Puritan point of view, was 
 regarde'd as a usurpation of power, preceded Hooker; and they 
 have already received attention above in our consideration 
 of the popular pamphlet literature. Hooker substituted, 
 in this warfare between the opposing forces of Puritan and 
 Anglican, coolness and circumspection for passion and abuse,- 
 a consideration of the question on the basis of principle and 
 general law for personality, recrimination, and scurrility, and 
 in so doing definitively stated the position of the Church of 
 England at the end of Elizabeth's reign. 
 
 Richard Hooker was humbly born at Heavitree, near 
 Exeter, in 1554. He was from the first a student of extraor- 
 dinary precocity and industry; and, attracting the attention 
 of Jewell, Bishop of Salisbury, went up to Oxford where, as 
 one of the fellows of Corpus Christi College, he gained an 
 unusual repute for his learning and piety. Hooker took 
 
310 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 orders in 1581; and four years after was appointed, through 
 the influence of Archbishop Whitgift, Master of the Temple. 
 It was here that Hooker, much against his will, was drawn 
 into a theological controversy with Walter Travers, who was 
 afternoon lecturer in the Temple, and who maintained Pres- 
 byterian views concerning church government with great ardor. 
 As Fuller put it, the pulpit of the Temple "spake pure Canter- 
 bury in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon, " — a condi- 
 tion of affairs that soon became intolerable. _ Hereupon the 
 archbishop intervened and, on a technicality, forbade Travers 
 to preach, a move that helped neither the bishops' cause nor 
 improved the temper of Travers,who continued the controversy 
 (now become hopelessly personal) in print. Hooker replied, 
 defending himself especially against the charge of latitudi- 
 narianism. But he was heartily sick of controversy and be- 
 sought his patron to remove him from the Temple to a quiet 
 retreat in the country. This he at length found in the living 
 of Boscombe, near Salisbury, and it was there that, pondering 
 in peace on the questions so raised in the heat of controversy. 
 Hooker projected and wrote his life-work. The Laws of Eccle- 
 siastical Polity. In 1595 Hooker was translated to the better- 
 living of Bishopsbourne in the neighborhood of Canterbury, 
 where he died towards the close of the year 1600. 
 
 In person Hooker has been described by Walton as mean 
 in stature, insignificant in appearance and address, and 
 conducting himself at all times "so as to give no occasion of 
 evil, but ... in much patience in afflictions, in an- 
 guishes, in necessities, in poverty and no doubt in long suffering; 
 yet troubling no man with his discontents and wants. " While 
 it has been suspected that Walton, like the true literary artist 
 that he was, overrated the insignificance of the personality of 
 Hooker that he might heighten the contrast with his brilliancy 
 of mind and argumentative power, it is certain that Hooker 
 was a man of impoverished vitality, shrinking from an active 
 contact with life, and singularly dependent on the good offices 
 of others — which seem to have been offered him unsought 
 — in the ordinary affairs of life. According to the often 
 related story of Walton, on the suggestion made by a kindly- 
 
"ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY" 311 
 
 disposed matron that he needed a wife, Hooker commissioned 
 her to find him one. And the matron provided for him "her 
 daughter Joan, who brought him neither beauty nor portion; 
 for her conditions," continues Walton, "they were too Hke 
 that wife's which is by Solomon compared to a dripping house; 
 so that the good man had no reason to rejoice in the wife 
 of his youth. " Walton completes his picture with a descrip- 
 tion of a visit paid Hooker by two of his pupils. They found 
 him "with a book in his hand" tending "his small allotment 
 of sheep in a common field; which he told his pupils he was 
 forced to do then, for that his servant was gone home to dine 
 and assist his wife to do some necessary household duties. 
 But when his servant returned and released him, then his 
 two pupils attended him unto his house, where their best 
 entertainment was his quiet company which was presently 
 denied them; for Ricjiard was called to rock the cradle." 
 
 The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity comprehends an exhaus- 
 tive explanation and justification of the theological position 
 of the Church of England, between the Puritan who claimed 
 the Bible for his sole and exclusive authority, and the Roman 
 Catholic to whom the authority of the church stood above 
 . all. In the first book Hooker endeavored to explain the 
 philosophical position of the Church of England and to make 
 clear its place as an institution in the universal scheme. The 
 second book takes issue with the Puritan assumption that the 
 Bible contains all the law and all guidance in things spiritual 
 and temporal that can be needed by the Christian man; while 
 the third denies the Calvinistic assumption that a form of 
 church government is prescribed in the Scriptures or is even 
 discoverable in them. The fourth book contests the charge 
 that the ceremonies of the Church of England are in any 
 wise popish; and the fifth is concerned with an exhaustive 
 vindication of that church as to the minuter attacks of the 
 Puritans. In the sixth book Hooker turns from defense to 
 attack the Presbyterian system of church government; the 
 seventh correspondingly attempts a vindication of Episcopacy; 
 while the last explains and defends the doctrine of royal 
 supremacy in the church. 
 
312 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 Whatever Hooker's suggested debts to the theological 
 system of the Spanish theologian, Suarez, or to Thomas 
 Aquinas, for comprehensiveness of design and admirable 
 quality of detail the Ecclesiastical Polity must be pronounced 
 a v^ork deserving the highest praise. Despite much dialectic 
 skill and an unquestionable integrity of purpose, it can not 
 be said that Hooker is either a clear or an accurate reasoner. 
 His fairness of attitude and moderation of spirit, hov^ever, 
 make him peculiarly the man to have set forth the position of 
 the church of compromise. Hooker is above all things schol- 
 arly and literary, but singularly free, vs^ith all his learning, 
 from the slightest trace of pedantry and the scholar's darling 
 sin in his age, the overplus of quotation. Hooker's style, too, 
 is devoid of literary affectations or the slightest strife after 
 rhetorical effect; and yet he is again and again effectively 
 eloquent where the current of his argument hurries him into 
 the rapids of similitude. Attention has been called to the 
 purely bookish nature of Hooker's figures and illustrations. 
 It may be doubted if a figure drav^n from nature or a personal 
 observation of man can be found from cover to cover of the 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, as it may be doubted if this meek and 
 shrinking scholar ever made an independent observation on 
 the visible things of this v^orld in his life. And yet there is 
 something estimable about both the man and his v^ork. We 
 do not, it is true, return to The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 
 — unless v^e be churchmen — with the pleasure which 
 attracts us to the witching phrase and sly humor of Hooker's 
 biographer, worthy Isaak Walton; but we feel that Hooker 
 has written a surprisingly permanent book when we consider 
 his theme, and one alike an honor to his wide theological 
 learning, his integrity of mind, and his power to compel 
 language into the artistic mold of thought. Hooker is one 
 of the great English prose stylists, fortunate that in his lifetime 
 his vine-like nature, that needed always the prop of patronage 
 to sustain it, was so sustained as to produce a great book. 
 Hooker has been even more fortunate posthumously, as few 
 authors have been more constantly and consistently over- 
 praised. The familiar grouping of his name with Spenser's, 
 
"ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY" 313 
 
 Shakespeare's, and Bacon's is preposterous, because Hooker's 
 talents are reconstructive and, in no primary sense, creative; 
 and because the field w^hich he tilled so fruitfully was, after 
 all, but a little plot of ground. 
 
 It is difficult to quote from a work such as Hooker's; 
 but perhaps this passage will disclose, as well as an extract can, 
 the unaffectedness of his diction, its impersonality and effective 
 rhetoric. 
 
 The bounds of wisdom are large, and within them much is con- 
 tained. Wisdom was Adam's instructor in Paradise; wisdom endued 
 the fathers, who lived before the law, with the knowledge of holy 
 things; by the wisdom of the law of God, David attained to excel 
 others in understanding; and Solomon likewise to excel David by the 
 selfsame wisdom of God — teaching him many things besides the 
 law. The ways of well-doing are, in number, even as many as are 
 the kinds of voluntary actions, so that whatsoever we do in this 
 world and may do it ill, we show ourselves therein by well-doing to 
 be wise. Now, if wisdom did teach men by Scripture not only all the 
 ways that are right and good in some certain kind, according to that 
 of St. Paul concerning the use of Scripture, but did simply, without 
 any manner of exception, restraint, or distinction, teach every way 
 of doing well, there is no art but Scripture should teach it, because 
 every art doth teach the way how to do something or other well. To 
 teach men therefore wisdom professeth, and to teach them every 
 good way, but not every good way by one way of teaching. What- 
 soever either man on earth or the angels of heaven do know, it is as 
 a drop of that unemptiable fountain of wisdom; which<widsom hath 
 diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. As her ways are 
 of sundiy kinds, so her manner of teaching is not merely one and the 
 same. Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture, 
 some things by the glorious works of nature; with some things she 
 inspireth them from above by spiritual influence, in some things she 
 leadeth and traineth them only by worldly experience and practice. 
 We may not so in any one special kind admire her, that we disgrace 
 her in any other, but let all her ways be according unto their place 
 and degree adored. 
 
 Vastly in contrast with a style such as this Is the personal 
 note, with which the following passage from one of Donne's 
 
314 PROSE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT 
 
 sermons opens, and the vivid and ingenious imagery that 
 succeeds: 
 
 If I should inquire upon what occasion God elected me, and writ 
 my name in the book of life, I should sooner be afraid that it were 
 not so, than find a reason why it should be so. God made sun and 
 moon to distinguish seasons, and day and night, and we cannot have 
 the fruits of the earth but in their seasons; but God hath made no 
 decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies; in Paradise, the fruits 
 were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn, his 
 mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask our daily bread, and God 
 never says you should have come yesterday. He never says you must 
 come again to-morrow, but to-day if ye will hear his voice, to-day he 
 will hear you. If some king of the earth have so large an extent of 
 dominion in north and south, as that he hath winter and summer 
 together in his dominions, so large an extent east and west as that he 
 hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God 
 mercy and judgment together; he brought light out of darkness, not 
 out of a lesser light; he can bring thy summer out of winter, though 
 thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, 
 or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, 
 clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupi- 
 fied till now, now God comes to thee, not as the dawning of the day, 
 not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon, to illustrate 
 all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries: all occasions 
 invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons. 
 
 Donne, the man and the poet, w^ill claim us in a chapter 
 to come. He had been much engaged in theological studies 
 and writing before he took orders in 1615. As reader in 
 divinity at Lincoln's Inn up to 1619, and as Dean of St. Paul's 
 between 1 62 1 and ten years later, Donne became a famous 
 preacher and nearly two hundred sermons, some of them more 
 like treatises for their length and elaboration, attest his zeal, 
 his extensive learning and eloquence in this field of his final 
 choice. The originality, the subtlety, intellectuality, and 
 fanciful wit of the poet Donne, all are present in these remark- 
 able discourses, transfigured by the steady light of a passionate 
 religious conviction such as only those who have once travailed 
 in the ways of the world can truly feel. But the Sermons of 
 Donne, like the voluminous Contemplations of Hall (begun 
 
MINOR THEOLOGIANS AND PULPITERS 315 
 
 in 1612), fall for the most part beyond our period, and find 
 mention here only because they complete our story of the 
 literary careers of two of ShakespeareVnotable contemporaries. 
 Hall, to receive attention in the next chapter, is better remem- 
 bered in the history of literature for his claim to be "the first 
 Engli sh s atirist" than as the Bishop of Norwich, with wliom 
 Milton disdained not to measure controversial swords. Among 
 other famous pulpiters, Henry Smith was described in his 
 time as "silver-tongued Smith"; Daniel Featley was valiant 
 especially against Anabaptists; ^nd eloquent Lancelot Andrews, 
 active among the translators of the Authorized Version of the 
 Bible, defended his sovereign. King James, when the latter 
 was fallen in controversial battle under the spear of the re- 
 doubtable Cardinal Bellarmine. Richard Sibbes, too, was 
 lauded for his pulpit oratory in King James' time; and 
 Thomas Adams was dubbed by no less an authority than 
 Southey "the prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians," 
 whatever these words may convey to those who can understand. 
 Of all these notable pulpiters, with their sermons, their med- 
 itations, works of edification, and manuals of devotion, the 
 outer fringe of a great literature, and as such the soonest 
 dispensed with — it is enough to have mentioned each with 
 honor in his place. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ELIZABETHAN SATIRE, THE EPIGRAM AND THE 
 "CHARACTER" 
 
 SATIRE is alike a mode and a form. As a mode it is 
 constant to practically all literature, verse, drama, prose 
 fiction, and the essay. So considered there is among the 
 Elizabethans one superlative satirist, and that is Ben Jonson, 
 of w^hose dramatic satires — chief among them Every Man 
 Out of his Humor, Cynthia's Revels, and Poetaster — an 
 account has already been given above. Formal satire, on the 
 other hand, is a different thing. It came comparatively late ' 
 in English as into other literatures. It is derived, in all the 
 literatures of modern Western Europe, direct from the Romans 
 and is one of the most self-conscious, as it is one of the most 
 easily distinguishable, of literary forms. Although the satire 
 of any given age must commonly be read with notes in the next, 
 as the conditions on which its allusions are founded have 
 lapsed into a half-forgotten past, its elements are remarkably 
 constant and its subject-matter changes very little from age to 
 age. "Satire," according to Heinsius (quoted by Dryden 
 in his Dissertation on Horace), "is a kind of poetry, without 
 a series of action, invented for the purging of our minds; in 
 which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things 
 besides, which are produced from them in every man, are 
 severely reprehended; partly dramatically, partly simply, and 
 sometimes in both kinds of speaking; but, for the most part, 
 figuratively, and occultly; consisting in a low familiar way, 
 chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech; but partly 
 also, in a facetious and civil way of jesting; by which either 
 hatred, or laughter, or indignation is moved." 
 
 It was in the nature of things that so self-conscious a 
 literary form as satire should flourish for the first time in the 
 first literary epoch of England which had learned to know 
 
 316 
 
SATIRE OF MEDIEVAL TYPE 317 
 
 itself and criticize its surroundings. Such an age was that of 
 Elizabeth which, with all its love of novel and romantic ideas, 
 had none the less within it that conservative force of reaction 
 which we have already seen exerted to the full in the ideals and 
 practices of Jonson. 
 
 Older English satire was altogether informal; its source 
 was not Horace or Juvenal, but contemporary life. It was 
 likely to take either the form of burlesque or invective and 
 was often political as well as social in its aim. The details of 
 the satire of earlier Tudor times do not concern us here; 
 suffice it to say that Barclay's celebrated Ship of Fools, Eras- 
 mus' Praise of Folly, and the vigorous satires of the redoubt- 
 able Skelton, though all show acquaintance with classical 
 satirists, are of irregular medieval type, though freed in a 
 measure from that leisurely and incessant allegorical quality 
 which makes medieval satire so insupportable to the modern 
 , reader. 
 
 But three Roman satirists survived the wreck of time. 
 These were Horace, Persius, and Juvenal; and all were known, 
 at least in part, while Juvenal was dear to the medieval under- 
 standing. All three were printed among the earliest printed 
 books. The Satires of Horace were translated by Thomas 
 Drant, an experimenter in classical meters for English, as early 
 as 1566; but Persius was Englished by Holyday only in the 
 year of Shakespeare's death, arid Juvenal not until much later. 
 The eighteen satires of Horace and the twenty odd epistles 
 which are very much like them, are the humorous narratives 
 of personal experiences, with witty comment and reflections 
 upon them of a kindly natured man of the world. Horace 
 says. "Come let us laugh together at the follies of men; our- 
 selves included." The sixteen satires of Juvenal, on the other 
 hand, with which may be included the six of Persius, difi^er in 
 pursuing the method of direct rebuke. They are the deeper 
 and severer thoughts of the moralist and the philosopher, and 
 they are as pessimistic in tone as they are bitter and ironical 
 of speech. These were the men whom the Elizabethan writers 
 of regular satire set themselves to imitate. But a curious 
 error in the origin of the word, or confusion at the least, had 
 
3i8 ELIZABETHAN SATIRE 
 
 much to do with affecting their practice of this art of the an- 
 cients. As all know, the Latin word satura signified a mixture 
 of fruits, as Dryden translated it, a hotchpotch. Most of the 
 Elizabethans thought of a satire as a "satyrus," a "mixed 
 kind of animal who was imagined to bring the rude observa- 
 tions of his simple life to bear upon the faults of humanity." 
 Even Every Man out of his Humor was registered in 1600 as 
 "a comical satyre." Nor were the satires written in Italy and 
 France in imitation of the Roman satirists - — the satires of 
 Ariosto, of Alamanni, of Fresnayne, and Regnier — unknown 
 to the writers of England, although it may be suspected that 
 contemporary foreign authors exercised less influence in satire 
 than in some other forms of literature. 
 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt is, as Warton called him, "the first 
 polished English satirist," and his three poems of this type — 
 which however he did not call satires — are taken almost 
 direct from Horace not without traces of an acquaintance with 
 the other Roman satirists and more especially with the Italian 
 Alamanni. At the same time they deserve much praise for 
 their English quality in detail, for their poetic and ideal spirit, 
 and for the humane character of their reflective mood which 
 was caught from Horace and perhaps was never so well 
 repeated by any subsequent English satirist. Wyatt's meter 
 is the terza rima of Italy. In the same meter is Surrey's 
 ^'Satire against the Citizens of London" a serious moral poem 
 in no sense a true satire. It has been remarked, as to this 
 subject, that "there is an interesting contrast between Wyatt 
 and Surrey — the former borrowing the spirit [of satire from 
 Italy] without the name, and the latter the name without the 
 spirit." 
 
 The earliest Elizabethan satirist is Edward Hake, a lawyer 
 and protege of the Earl of Leicester, whose News out of 
 Paul's Churchyard was registered in 1568. Hake is a follower 
 of old English satire and is little affected either by classical 
 example or classical urbanity. His outlook on life is pessi- 
 mistic and his picture of his "sottish sinful brittle age," as he 
 terms it, while full of observation, is neither of any unusual 
 merit nor very original. The most important of the early 
 
THE SATIRES OF DONNE 319 
 
 satirists is George Gascoigne, whose Steel Glass long enjoyed 
 a deserved popularity. This earnest moral poem has the 
 distinction of being one of the earliest non-dramatic poems of 
 any length to be written in English blank verse. It was printed 
 in 1576 and is based on the conception that most human wfongs 
 are due to the defective, if beautiful, visions reflected by 
 flattery in glasses of crystal or beryl, while the poet in contrast 
 holds up the true mirror of burnished steel to the common- 
 wealth, reflecting therein all manner of men in their just pror 
 portions. The Steel Glass, though eloquent, is scarcely more 
 a satire in the classical sense than Spenser's Mother Huhherd's 
 Tale, printed in 1591 but written far earlier, in which is related 
 the prosperous adventures of two scoundrels, the fox and the 
 ape, in a manner suggestive of Chaucer and its probable 
 original, the fable oi Reynard the Fox. It is of interest to note 
 that Mother Huhherd's Tale is the first satirical poem to 
 appear in the familiar decasyllabic rirned couplet. Nor is 
 the regularity with which Spenser here practised that popular 
 measure less worthy of note. 
 
 The life of that interesting man and genuine poet, John 
 Donne, must be deferred for the present, as he is here to claim 
 our attention merely as a satirist in regular form. To Donne 
 the penning of his six or seven satires was as incidental to a 
 career of celebrity in prose, poetry, and divintiy as was the 
 writing of Venus and Adonis to Shakespeare. Donne's 
 Satires, like most of his other verse, saw print only after his 
 death, five appearing in 1633, a sixth in 1635, the seventh, the 
 authenticity of which has been not unreasonably questioned, 
 not until 1669. The actual date of their writing is difficult to 
 ascertain; but there seems much reason to believe several 
 of them already written by 1593 and well known, like Donne's 
 lyrical poetry, in manuscript. Donne's Satires are written 
 in decasyllabic couplets, the measure universally followed by 
 regular satire in later times. But Donne's verse, here even 
 more than elsewhere, is rough, irregular, and careless of the 
 graces of versification. Donne's style, too, like his verse, is 
 rugged and conversational, yet concise and compact in thought 
 and at times obscure from the use of a Latinized construction; 
 
320 ELIZABETHAN SATIRE 
 
 but ever vigorous, true to the object seen and observed at an 
 angle of the author's own. The subjects of Donne's Satires 
 and their method, combine the narrative and reflective satire 
 of Horace v^ith the spirit of direct rebuke. While prevailingly 
 pessimistic in tone, they by no means assume the Juvenalian 
 attitude of authority to castigate vice and patronize virtue. 
 The first satire of Donne describes how a young gallant of the 
 time took the scholar from his books to walk abroad, the 
 gallant's estimate of passing acquaintances, and his flight 
 from his friend at sight of a pretty face at a window. The 
 second attacks the vices and chicanery of lawyers, as the fifth 
 lays bare the abuses and delays of justice; the fourth describes, 
 in Horatian manner, that ubiquitous habitant of civilized ' 
 places, the bore; whilst the last and doubtful one makes sport 
 of the new carpet-knights of King James' creation, a stock 
 theme for the ridicule of the age, and concludes with some 
 references, more free spoken than courteous, to Essex, the 
 late queen, and the new king. By far the best of these Sat- 
 ires is the third,which deals in a serious tone, rising to momen- 
 tary eloquence, of an unwonted theme for satire of classical 
 type, religion. Donne hits off in capital manner those who 
 seek variously for true religion, telling how one. 
 
 Thinking her unhous'd here, and fled from us. 
 Seeks her at Rome, there, because he doth know 
 That she was there a thousand years ago; 
 
 a second seeker, 
 
 to such brave loves will not be enthrall'd, 
 But loves her only who at Geneva is call'd 
 Religion — plain, simple, sullen, young, 
 Contemptuous, yet unhandsome. 
 
 Still another "stays still [that is, always] at home here," and 
 that 
 
 because 
 
 Some preachers 
 
 bid him think that she 
 Which dwells with us is only perfect. 
 
LODGE'S "FIG FOR MOMUS" 321 
 
 Whilst a fourth 
 
 doth abhor 
 All, because all can not be good; as one, 
 Knowing some women false, dares to marry none. 
 
 Then rising to a higher strain he sings: 
 Though truth and falsehood be 
 Near twins, yet truth a little elder is. 
 Be busy to seek her; believe me this. 
 He 's not of none, nor worst, that seeks the best: 
 To adore, or scorn an image or protest, 
 May all be bad. Doubt wisely, in strange way 
 To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; 
 To sleep or run wrong, is. On a huge hill, 
 Cragg'd and steep. Truth stands, and he that will 
 Reach her, about must, and about must go 
 And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so; 
 Yet strive so, that before age. Death's twilight. 
 Thy soul rest, for none can work in the night. 
 
 This passage marks the height of Elizabethan satire and 
 Donne stands for his sincerity, for the new light that his 
 original mind casts upon what he sees, as for the steadiness 
 of his vision and honest outspokenness, foremost among Eliza- 
 be than satirists. 
 
 In 1595 Thomas Lodge, long fledged to literature of almost 
 every type, printed his Fig for Momus. These satires, like 
 Donne's, were written in decasyllabic couplets, but Lodge's 
 regularity and smoothness of versification deserve the name 
 of heroic couplet as Donne's verses never could. It is a moot 
 question as to whether Donne, Lodge, or Joseph Hall is to 
 be credited with the choice of this meter as the fitting raiment 
 for satirical verse. Hall certainly wrote decasyllabics more 
 nearly approaching the compactness and regularity of those 
 of Dryden and his time than any other man of early days. 
 But the whole question is wrapped up with another, who was 
 the first English satirist, an honor which Hall claimed for 
 himself. Donne seems the best claimant, although his work 
 was published long after Lodge's and Hall's, which latter was 
 in print by 1597. Donne was widely read in manuscript; 
 
322 ELIZABETHAN SATIRE 
 
 Hall was most generally popular. Lodge seems to have been 
 with some justice neglected, as the four satires which constitute 
 his Fig for Momus are alike wanting in "the Horatian urbanity 
 and the Juvenalian vigor." The latter Roman poet is plainly 
 Lodge's model, not Horace as is sometimes said. But the 
 English satirist shows many touches with both Horace and 
 Persius, while maintaining an earnest and optimistic English 
 spirit. Lodge's Fig for Momus is singularly free from local 
 color and contemporary allusion and, while avoiding the 
 affectation of a Roman atmosphere, is satire in the abstract 
 and wide of the concreteness of Donne's allusions. 
 
 Joseph Hall, later successively Bishop of Exeter and of 
 Norwich, was by far the most generally read of Elizabethan 
 satirists. Born in the year of the Armada, a Cambridge man, 
 he lived to show his loyalty to church and state in now for- 
 gotten writings and died a very old man shortly before the 
 restoration of King Charles. Hall's Satires amount to some 
 thirty-five in number. The entire work is called Virgide- 
 miarum. Six Books, of buffetings; the earlier books are 
 described as '' Toothless Satyrs," and subdivided into three 
 books, respectively, poetical, academical, and moral, 1597; 
 while the other three appeared in the following year under 
 title Three Last Books of Biting Satyrs. These distinctions, 
 however, are not vital. It was Milton who years after, in the 
 heat of religious controversy in which the episcopal satirist 
 held the opposite side, attacked Hall in a passage negligible 
 for its personalities but not for the view of contemporary satire 
 which it discloses. "A satire," writes the great poet, "as it 
 w^s born out of tragedy, so ought to resemble his parentage, 
 to strike high and adventure dangerously at the most eminent 
 vices among the greatest persons and not to creep into every 
 blind tap-house, that fears a constable more than a satire. 
 But that such a poem should be toothless, I still affirm it to be 
 a bull, taking away the essence of that which it calls itself. 
 For if it bite neither the persons nor the vices, how is it a 
 satire ? And if it bite either, how is it toothless ? So that 
 toothless satires are as much as if he had said toothless teeth." 
 
 The compactness and regularity of Hall's meter has 
 
THE "SATIRES" OF HALL 323 
 
 already been referred to; his style was scarecely less suggestive 
 and prophetic of the age to come, in its hardness, brilliancy, 
 wit, and restraint. Concerning his obscurity, his fondness for 
 unfamiliar allusions and a certain remoteness of phraseology, 
 the last has been referred to Hall's avowed admiration for 
 Spenser and imitation of him, his fondness for unfamiliar 
 allusions, to his following of the Roman satirists. Hall's vo- 
 cabulary is not barbarous, as has sometimes been charged, and 
 as to the other faults of obscurity they belonged in a measure 
 to the contemporary conception of satire whence they have 
 descended into the critical opinions of modern times. Indeed, 
 it is quite notable that the first of the "biting satires" is the 
 best imitation of Juvenal as it is likewise the most difficult to 
 understand. 
 
 The subject of obscurity in poetry is of a wider interest 
 than the satires of Hall and I can not forebear the quotation of 
 two fine passages of our Elizabethan poets on the topic. The 
 first is from Daniel's Musophilos and reads: 
 
 For not discreetly to compose our parts, 
 Unto the frame of men (which we must be) 
 
 Is to put off ourselves and make our arts 
 Rebels to nature and society, 
 
 Whereby we come to bury our desarts 
 In the obscure grave of singularity. 
 
 A very becoming opinion is this for "well languaged Daniel," 
 true poet if somewhat conventional man that he was. But it 
 should be read with this weightier passage of Chapman, 
 Homeri Metaphrastes as he delighted to call himself. "Ob- 
 scurity in affection of words and indigested conceits is pedanti- 
 cal and childish; but where it shroudeth itself in the heart 
 of his subject, uttered with fitness of figure and expressive 
 epithets, with that darkness I will still labor to be shrouded." 
 
 To return to Hall, in his Satires "poetical," he declares that 
 "the nine Muses are turned harlots" in his degenerate age, 
 inveighs against the "huff-cap terms and thundering threats" 
 of tragedies like Tamhurlaine, the license of the stage clown, 
 the absurdities of experiments in classical versification in 
 
324 ELIZABETHAN SATIRE 
 
 English, the afFectations and warmth of amatory poetry, and 
 other like matters. There is wealth of allusion to contem- 
 porary literature in these and in the "academical satires" 
 where the bad poetry of one Labeo and the folly of writing 
 for money are especially attacked. But all is so obscurely 
 phrased that, save the mention of T amhurlaine and enthusi- 
 astic praise of Spenser, most of Hall's allusions remain prob- 
 lematic. The interesting thing about the satirist's literary 
 criticism is the consciousness of his attack on the prevailing 
 romantic spirit of his age : and this at its very height. Without 
 here going further into the subject-matter of Hall's Satires 
 it may be noted that the remainder is of the conventional 
 Roman type alike for its subject and its treatment. Hall was 
 frankly imitative and while his attitude has much of the, 
 assumption of the professed moralist, there was clearly in 
 this young man of twenty-three the making of the serious and 
 militant bishop that he afterward became. 
 
 As much can not be said for John Marston, the dramatist, 
 although he, too, died a clergymen of the Established Church. 
 Marston, who was of Hall's age, followed up the publication 
 of Hall's Satires, with five Satires and his Metamorphosis 
 of Pigmalion's Image, published together in 1598. Later in 
 the same year his Scourge of Villainy appeared, made up of 
 eleven more satires. The author signed both works with a 
 pseudonym, W. Kinsader; and they enjoyed for a time a 
 popularity almost equal to the Satires of Hall. Marston 
 followed Donne and Hall in the now finally approved decasyl- 
 labic couplet, but with far less ease, compactness, and smooth- 
 ness than the latter, and with a corresponding want of epi- 
 grammatic effect though not without a gain in vigor. Marston 
 is intentionally crabbed and grotesque and his vocabulary of 
 "new minted epithets," so ridiculed by Jonson, has justly 
 been described as monstrous though he only employs such 
 terms in his more conscious moments. Marston is no more 
 obscure than the other satirists of his time. The range of 
 Marston's topics includes the usual "satirical" material — hyp- 
 ocrites, flatterers, the foolish lover, lust and luxury, proci'as- 
 tination, effeminacy, afFectations, and personal foibles. Hall's 
 
THE "SATIRES" OF MARSTON 325 
 
 work was evidently their immediate inspiration, although 
 evidences of the author's familiarity with Roman satire are 
 not wanting, and Satire IF oi' the earlier set contains a direct 
 answer to some of Hall's strictures upon contemporary litera- 
 ture. The Scourge of Villainy sounds a note of conscious 
 literary coxcombry which is one of the peculiar characteristics 
 of Marston. The second edition, that of 1599, is dedicated 
 "To his most esteemed and best beloved Self." Then follows 
 a series of impertinent stanzas headed: "To Detraction I 
 present my Poesy"; and the work concludes with an address 
 to "Everlasting Oblivion": 
 
 Thou mighty gulf, insatiate cormorant! 
 Deride me not, though I seem petulant 
 To fall into thy chops. Let others pray 
 Forever their fair poems flourish may: 
 But as for me, hungry Oblivion, 
 Devour me quick, accept my orison, 
 My earnest prayers which do importune thee, 
 With gloomy shade of thy still empery, 
 To veil both me and my rude poesy. 
 
 On all of which it has been sagaciously observed that "ob- 
 livion is too easily had ever to be loudly demanded." None 
 the less there is merit in these vigorous if not quite always, 
 honest verses of Marston, nor are they wanting in a sense of 
 design. Thus in the "Cynic Satire," as he calls it, his theme 
 (in which we recognize a parody on the desperate exclamation 
 of Shakespeare's Richard HI) is "A man, a man, my king- 
 dom for a man!" and creature after creature, all but seeming 
 men, parade before the satirist, to be anatomized under the 
 eye of Lynceus who, it will be remembered, of all the Argo- 
 nauts was keenest of sight. 
 
 Elizabethan satire, in the restrictive sense and as compared 
 with that of other ages, can not be rated very high. The mis- 
 anthropy of Marston and Hall's judicial cynicism hardly ring 
 quite true. Indeed, these worldly-wise satirists were sated 
 with the gauds and snares of life at two or three and twenty. 
 But for any deep-seated convictions on moral issues, any real 
 
326 SATIRE AND EPIGRAM 
 
 detestation and revolt against evil, such as distinguished Jon- 
 son's dramatic satires despite his self-poise and arrogance, we 
 may look through the easy going pages of these young literary 
 triflers in vain. 
 
 If we turn from the field of formal and more or less ex- 
 tended satire in the manner of the ancients to the many epi- 
 grammatists and writers of irregular satirical verses, we find 
 the species holding its own with the many satirical pamphlets 
 of the prose pamphleteers. Thus we have, in 1598, the year 
 of Marston's Scourge of Villainy, Thomas Bastard's Chres- 
 toleros, a collection of two hundred and ninety epigrams; 
 Edward Guilpin's vernacular and interesting Skialetheia, "a. 
 Shadow of Truth in Certain Epigams and Satires"; and 
 William Rankins' Satires in seven-line stanzas, ridiculing the 
 absurdities of contemporary fashions. Rankins had pre- 
 viously trespassed in this field with his more notorious prose 
 satires, The Mirror of Monsters and The English Ape, in the 
 former of which he attacked especially "the spotted enormi- 
 ties of players." In 1599 appeared John Weever's Epigrams 
 in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, and also Microcynicon, 
 the latter unnecessarily attributed to the dramatist Thomas 
 Middleton. The prose pamphlets of Nash and Harvey, the 
 last in their notorious war of personal abuse, were but a year 
 or two old in 1599. Hall's satires had come out in the pre- 
 vious year, and Dr. Rainolds was thundering from Oxford 
 his total Overthrow of Stage Plays. Evidently this plain and 
 bitter speaking was overdone; for, towards the end of 1599, 
 an order was Issued by the ecclesi-astical authorities, command- 
 ing that Hall's and Marston's satires, the Microcynicon, and 
 certain other books, among them those of the Nash-Harvey 
 controversy, should " be brought to the Bishop of London to 
 be burnt," and that "no satires or epigrams be printed here- 
 after." This order was duly executed as to most of these 
 works; it was "staid" as to Hall, by what influence or for what 
 reason is to us unknown. 
 
 But satire and epigram were not thus to be put down. 
 Other epigrams were those of the courtier and author of 
 Nosce Teipsum, Sir John Davies, of various date and writing; 
 
ELIZABETHAN EPIGRAM 327 
 
 those of his namesake, John Davies of Hereford, writing- 
 master, entitled The Scourge of Folly, 161 1 ; and George 
 Wither's Abuses Whipt and Stript, of the same date, Fitz- 
 geofFrey and Owen penned epigrams of classical flavor in 
 Latin; at the other extreme, Samuel Rowlands, general 
 pamphleteer and hack-writer, put forth, between 1600 and 
 twenty years later, a series of quaintly named satirical book- 
 lets in verse, among them The Letting of Humor's Blood in 
 the Head Vein, 'T is Merry When Gossips Meet, Diogenes 
 Lanthorn, and the like. In the very last years of Shakespeare's 
 lifetime, and after some subsidence, the epigram revived into 
 a sudden brief lease of life. For in 1613 Sir John Harington 
 published the first of his Epigrams Pleasant and Serious, and 
 Richard Braithwaite, his rollicking Strappado for the Devil; 
 while in the next year, that of Shakespeare's death, appeared 
 Robert Anton's rare volume of literary epigrams called Vice's 
 Anatomy Scourged and, most important of all, Ben Jonson's 
 Epigrams, which form one of the divisions of the collective 
 edition of his works, 1616. 
 
 The Elizabethan epigram can not be considered as of 
 much higher general merit than was the more formal satirical 
 verse of the day. The word, epigram, was employed with 
 great looseness to signify almost any brief non-lyrical poem not 
 involving a narrative; and much occasional verse was in- 
 cluded in the mass. Of the English epigrammatists, Jonson 
 is easily the first, though there is wit and merit of its kind both 
 in Bastard's Chrestoleros and in the Epigrams of Sir John 
 Harington. These lines of Jonson, for example, "On Some- 
 thing that Walks Somewhere," are epigram in the restrictive 
 sense, and an excellent specimen of Jonson's satirical wit: 
 
 At court I met it, in clothes brave enough 
 
 To be a courtier; and looks grave enough 
 
 To seem a statesman: as I near it came. 
 
 It made me a great face; I asked the name. 
 
 A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh and blood, 
 
 And such from whom let no man hope least good, 
 
 For I will do none; and as little ill. 
 
 For I will dare none: Good Lord, walk dead still. 
 
328 SATIRE AND EPIGRAM 
 
 But Jonson considered this fine epitaph on his friend, Sir John 
 
 Roe, Hkewise an epigram. 
 
 In place of 'scutcheons that should deck thy hearse, 
 
 Take better ornaments, my tears and verse. 
 
 If any sword could save from Fates, Roe's could; 
 
 If any muse outlive their spite, his can; 
 If any friends' tears could restore, his would; 
 
 If any pious life e'er lifted man 
 To heaven, his hath: O happy state! wherein 
 We, sad for him, may glory, and not sin. 
 
 However, the real interest in verse of this kind lies in its 
 allusiveness and in the illustrations that it offers of the customs 
 and manners of its time. Though even here, such w^as the 
 force of precedent and example in an age of classically edu- 
 cated men, that many of the topics as well as the treatment at 
 large of both satire and epigram must be sought, not in con- 
 temporary Elizabethan life, but in the pages of Horace, Juvenal, 
 and Martial. 
 
 If we turn now from satire and epigram in verse to its 
 kindred prose, we trespass into an even larger field, and one in 
 which division and classification become well-nigh impossible. 
 In the previous chapter of this book devoted to the pamphlet 
 and the prose of controversy much of the earlier material, 
 generically to be designated satire in prose, has already found 
 its proper place of mention. Nash and Dekker in their prose 
 are nothing if not satirical, whether the satire is incidental to 
 fiction as in Jack Wilton, or to personal or political contro- 
 versy. Such work as Dekker's Gulls' Hornbook is of course 
 wholly and delightfully humorous and satirical, and it links 
 in its origin and association not only with the wider continental 
 satire, of which Grohianus is the type, but also with the inter- 
 esting series of English pamphlets in which the nature and 
 the shifts of contemporary vagabonds and sharpers are un- 
 masked and, in unmasking, satirized. As early as 1565, 
 John Awdeley put forth his Fraternity of Vagahonds, and two 
 years later Thomas Harman followed with his Caveat for 
 Common Cursetors. Both describe the various types of 
 thieves, sharpers, and beggars that infested the streets of 
 
SATIRICAL PROSE PAMPHLETS 329 
 
 London, Harman dealing even with their slang. These 
 earlier works, however, are less satirical than seriously descrip- 
 tive. Greene was not without his knowledge of them when 
 he turned his ready pen to depicting the life of their successors 
 in his series of five pamphlets on the haunts, characters, and 
 subterfuges of the conycatchers, as he called the rogues, con- 
 fidence men, and their like of the metropolis. These pam- 
 phlets begin with A Notable Discovery of Cosenage, registered 
 as The Art of Conycatchmg in 1591, and extend through 
 several additional parts of similar title to The Black Book's 
 Messenger in the following year. In them Greene drew not 
 only on previous writers but on his own experiences, writing 
 up his material precisely as a modern reporter might do, 
 with considerably less regard for mere facts than for a lively 
 and effective presentation of his subject. The like series of 
 Dekker, which was published early in the reign of James, while 
 borrowing much from his predecessors, is more humorous 
 and satirical in character. This pamphlet work of Dekker's 
 begins with The Batchelors' Banquet, in 1603, and extends 
 through The Dead Term, The Bellman of London, Lanthorn 
 and Candlelight to The Gulls' Hornbook, in 1 609. Samuel 
 Rowlands was Dekker's immediate rival in this exploitation 
 of low life. But his many booklets, such as Greene's Ghost, 
 1602, and Martin Mar kail, 16 10, show neither Dekker's genial 
 humor, literary aptitude, nor powers of observation. 
 
 Into the smaller satirical pamphlet literature at large it is 
 unnecesssary for us to go far. It descends to mere broadside 
 and catchpenny, now laughing at folly with Robert Armin, 
 a professional stage clown, in his Fool upon Fool or Seven 
 Sorts of Sots, 1605, and Nest of Ninnies, 1608; now lam- 
 pooning contemporary fashion in Rankins' English Ape, 1588; 
 attacking the stage as in the same truculent writer's Mirror 
 of Monsters, of the previous year, or Dr. Rainolds' Overthrow 
 of Stage Palys, 1 599; or deriding the vanities of feminine 
 attire, as in Gosson's Pleasant Quips for Upstart New-Fan- 
 gled Gentlewomen, 1595. A later attack of this kind, entitled 
 The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Forward and Inconstant 
 Women, by Joseph Swetnam, 1615, called forth a number of 
 
330 SATIRE AND EPIGRAM 
 
 retorts, some of them as violent and irrational as their cause 
 and, among them, an anonymous satirical comedy, called 
 Swetnam, the Woman Hater Arraigned by Women, 1620, a 
 very curious production. This small prose of satirical con- 
 temporary comment shades off into religious as well as social 
 satire and controversy; for these satirists, objectors, and re- 
 formers w^ere often, like Gosson, Stubbes, Wither, and Prynne 
 somewhat later, Puritans and biased in their attitude towards 
 life and the habits of their fellow men by a creed the rigor of 
 which discomforted not only its professors but those who had 
 the misfortune to differ with them as well. The typical social 
 satirist of this type of strictly Elizabethan times is Philip 
 Stubbes, the writer of several religious pamphlets in the eighties 
 and early nineties. It was in 1583 that he published his 
 Anatomy of Abuse, "containing a discovery or brief survey of 
 such notable vices and imperfections as now reign in many 
 Christian countries of the world; but especially in a very 
 famous island called Ailgna (anagram for Anglia), together 
 with most fearful examples of God's judgment executed upon 
 the wicked for the same." Stubbes' book is quaint and di- 
 verting in parts; and it is not without a certain force for its 
 plain speaking, honesty, and homely humor. But the last 
 is for the most part unconscious; for Stubbes was terribly 
 in earnest, and trivial follies and pastimes, harmless in them- 
 selves, are borne down in common overthrow with the seven, 
 and other deadly Puritan sins in his trenchant anathemas as 
 things accurst. The following is one of Stubbes' "fearful 
 examples," somewhat curtailed in its diffusive eloquence: 
 
 A gentlewoman of Eprautna (that is Antwerp) of late . . . 
 being a very rich merchantman's daughter, upon a time was invited 
 to a bridal or wedding, against which day she made great preparation 
 for the pluming of herself in gorgeous array, that as her body was 
 most beautiful, fair, and proper, so her attire in every respect- might 
 be correspondent to the same. For the accomplishment whereof 
 she curled her hair, she dyed her locks, and laid them out after the 
 best manner. She colored her face with waters and ointments. 
 But in no case could she get any (so curious and dainty she was) 
 that could starch and set her ruffs and neckerchers to her mind . . . 
 
STUBBES' "ANATOMY OF ABUSE" 331 
 
 Then fell she to swear and tear, to curse and ban, casting the ruffs 
 under her feet and wishing that the devil might take her when she 
 wear any of those neckerchers again. In the mean time (through 
 the sufferance of God)the devil, transforming himself into the form of 
 a young man . . . came in. . .and, seeing her thus agonized and in 
 such a pelting chafe, he took in hand the setting of her ruffs, which he 
 performed taher great contentation and liking. This doen, the young 
 man kissed her, in the doing whereof he writhe her neck in sunder, 
 so she died miserably, her body being metamorphosed into black 
 and blue colors, most ugglesome to behold. Preparance was made 
 for her burial, a rich coffin provided, and her fearful body was laid 
 there in, and it covered very sumptuously. Four men immediately 
 assayed to lift up the corpse, but could not move it; then six attempted 
 the like, but could not once stir it from the place where it stood. 
 Whereat the standers by marvelling, caused the coffin to be opened, 
 to see the cause thereof. Where they found the body to be taken 
 away; and a black cat, very lean and deformed, sitting in the coffin, 
 setting of great ruffs, and frizzling of hair, to the great fear and wonder 
 of all beholders. 
 
 What the epigra-m is, as contrasted with the great variety 
 of satirical verse that surrounds it, the "character" is in its 
 own group of prose satires. "To square out a character by 
 our English level," says Sir Thomas Overbury, "it is a picture, 
 real or personal, quaintly drawn in various colors, all of them 
 heightemed by one shadowing": in words, less figurative, a 
 "character" is a brief descriptive sketch of a personage, in- 
 volving a ruling quality or, of a moral quality, exemplified in a 
 typical personage. The remote origin of this species of essay, 
 (for it is clearly such), is traceable to Plato's disciple, Tyr- 
 tamus of Lesbos, generally known by the name that his master 
 bestowed on him for his eloquence as Theophrastus, the divine 
 speaker. In 1592 appeared Isaac Casaubon's Latin trans- 
 lation of the twenty-nine extant Characters of Theophrastus, 
 and to this may be confidently attributed the vogue of this 
 peculiar genre in English literature a short time after. De- 
 spite some suggestive forerunners such as Harman's descrip- 
 tions of the rogues of his earlier time, already mentioned, and 
 further back (if we must turn to poetry) Chaucer's inimitable 
 personages of the "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales, to Ben 
 
332 THE EPIGRAM AND THE "CHARACTER" 
 
 Jonson, who read everything, must be assigned the first step 
 towards a popularization of the "character." Thus the 
 dramatis personae of Every Man out of his Humor dis- 
 closes after the name of each person a brief satirical 
 description, designating his salient traits or "humor." 
 
 Puntarvolo. A vainglorious knight, over-Englishing his travels, 
 and wholly consecrated to singularity; the very Jacob's staff of compli- 
 ment; a sir that hath lived to see the revolution of time in most of 
 his apparel. Of presence good enough, but so palpably affected in 
 his own praise, that for want of flatterers he commends himself, to 
 the floutage of his own family. He deals upon returns, and strange 
 performances, resolving, in despite of public derision, to stick to his 
 own particular fashion, phrase, and gesture. 
 
 In the text of Cynthia's Revels there are several passages 
 in vv^hich personages are thus wittily and succinctly described. 
 Indeed it might be worthy some consideration whether Jon- 
 son's whole notion of character portrayed by ruling trait or 
 "humor" may not have been originally suggested by the 
 Theophrastian "character." 
 
 These plays of Jonson preceded Characters of Vices and 
 Virtues by Joseph Hall, the satirist, by some nine or ten years; 
 but it is specifically to Hall and not to Jonson that the "char- 
 acter" in its stricter Theophrastian form owed its popularity. 
 Jonson, as a dramatist, had emphasized the sketch of a per- 
 sonage involving a ruling quality, and to this point of approach 
 later "characterism," as it was called in its time, returned. 
 Hall, on the other hand, as a moralist, conceived of the charac- 
 ter as a moral quality exemplified in a typical personage. Be- 
 tween his English, Virgidemiarum, Six Books, 1597, and his 
 Characters, printed in 1609, Hall had published a witty Latin 
 satire entitled Mundus Alter et Idem, 1605, translated as 
 The Discovery of a New World, three years later. Hall's 
 Characters fall into "characterisms" of virtues and, secondly, 
 of vices. Individual essays treat of the wise man, the valiant 
 man, the truly noble, the good magistrate; the hypocrite, the 
 busybody, the malcontent. It is thus that the last, a favorite 
 of the age in life as in the drama, is in part described: 
 
THE "CHARACTERS" OF HALL 333 
 
 He is neither well full nor fasting; and though he abound with 
 complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he 
 condemned while it was, once past he magnifies, and strives to recall 
 it out of the jaws of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so 
 taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he cares not for, 
 because he cares so much for that which is not. . . . Every blessing 
 hath somewhat to disparage and distaste it; children bring cares, 
 single life is wild and solitary, eminency is envious, retiredness ob- 
 scure, fasting painful, satiety unwieldly, religion nicely severe, liberty 
 is lawless, wealth burdensome, mediocrity contemptible. Everything 
 faulteth, either in too much or too little. This man is ever head- 
 strong and self-willed, neither is he always tied to esteem or pronounce 
 according to reason; some things he must dislike he knows not where- 
 fore, but he likes them not; and otherwhere, rather than not censure, 
 he will accuse a man of virtue. 
 
 Hall's Characters are exceedingly well written, full of 
 worldly wisdom and animated by a sound average philosophy 
 , of life. They are often wittily expressed. His shortcomings 
 are incessant contrast and antithesis. We weary soon of his 
 neatness of phrase, and his literary tidiness; and we breathe 
 uneasily before long in this atmosphere of admirable moral 
 abstraction. 
 
 It is not unlikely that the famous Characters of Sir Thomas 
 Overbury were written much about the time of Hall's, of which 
 however they were far from a mere imitation. Their extra- 
 ordinary popularity — six editions in a single year and sixteen 
 in less than a generation — is referable in part to their merit, 
 but mainly to the notorious murder of Overbury, which grew 
 out of the greatest scandal of the court of King James. Sir 
 Thomas Overbury was born in Gloucestershire in 1581 and 
 educated at Queen's College, Oxford and the Middle Temple. 
 He became an intimate associate and adviser of the king's 
 favorite, Sir Robert Carr, later Viscount Rochester, and was 
 knighted by King James in 1608. Rochester had been carry- 
 ing on a flirtation with the frivolous young Countess of Essex 
 whose boy husband (worthy of a better wife) had been travel- 
 ing extensively abroad. Upon his return, although compelled 
 to live with him, his countess showed for the earl, her husband, 
 nothing but repugnance and contempt. After two or three 
 
334 THE EPIGRAM AND THE "CHARACTER" 
 
 years of this life, a project was formed by which the countess 
 was to sue, on what could only have been false pretences, for 
 a divorce, thus to make a way for a marriage with Rochester. 
 Her father and uncle were won over to this plan, and King 
 James unquestionably connived at the designs and in- 
 trigues of his favorite. Overbury, as the friend and adviser 
 of Rochester, strongly opposed from the first both the policy 
 of a divorce and a marriage for his patron with a woman such 
 as Lady Essex. Moreover he had not been silent in this dis- 
 approval; but had written, and perhaps circulated, a poem 
 called The Wife, published after his death, to dissuade Roches- 
 ter from a step so ill advised. For this Lady Essex took a 
 terrible revenge. On Overbury's refusal to accept a foreign 
 mission which the king was induced to tender him, he was 
 committed by the king's council to the Tower for contempt of 
 the royal commands and, after a number of abortive practices 
 against his life, was finally poisoned by an apothecary's 
 assistant. Lady Essex's creature, some ten days before the 
 judgment granting her her wished-for divorce. The sump- 
 tuous marriage of Lady Essex, Christmas of the same year, 
 to Rochester, now raised to the earldom of Somerset that her 
 ladyship might retain her rank, and the trial and conviction, 
 three years later, of the guilty pair with their several accessories 
 for the murder of Overbury, completed one of the blackest 
 pages in the annals of the Stuarts. It was these events that 
 gave a notoriety to Overbury's poem, The Character of a Wife, 
 first published separately in 1614, and later in the same year 
 with some twenty-nine other "characters" in prose. In the 
 following editions the number of characters "by Sir Thomas 
 Overbury and his friends," grew by accretion until, in the 
 last of the old editions, that of 1638, they numbered eighty, 
 the work thus having grown into an anthology, so to speak, 
 of this species of essay. 
 
 In such a collection the quality is of course far from equal. 
 Overbury's own work is literary in its aim rather than moral. 
 His characters, to speak of them at large, disclose no very 
 deep observation of individual traits; nor are they typical in 
 
THE "CHARACTERS" OF OVERBURY 335 
 
 any such sense as the "humors" of Jonson or the "charac- 
 terisms" of Hall. But they are certainly clever, epigrammatic, 
 and both brightly and quaintly written. Occasionally, as in 
 "The Good Wife," "The Happy Milkmaid," or "A Worthy 
 Commander in the Wars," the author (whoever he was) rises 
 above mere smartness to a touch of sincerity and even of 
 tenderness. The following famous description is somewhat 
 condensed to conform to the plan of this book, not that difFuse- 
 ness in the character as it was written demands it: 
 
 A fair and happy milkmaid is a country wench, that is so far from 
 making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put 
 all face physic out of countenance. . . . All her excellences stand 
 in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowl- 
 edge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than 
 outsides of tissue; for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the 
 silk-worm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. . . . 
 She rises therefore with chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night 
 makes lamb her curfew. In milking a cow and straining the teats 
 through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the 
 milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic 
 ointment off her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and 
 kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and 
 led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her 
 own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made haycock. 
 She makes her hand hard with labor, and soft with pity; and when 
 winter's evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel), she sings a 
 defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. . . . Thus lives she, and all 
 her care is that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers 
 stuck upon her winding-sheet. 
 
 On the success of Overbury's work, the character became 
 the rage of the moment. Nicholas Breton was earliest in the 
 field with his Characters upon Essays Moral and Divine, 16 1 5, 
 in which the influence of Bacon's Essays is acknowledged and 
 more patent than the example of Hall or Overbury. In 1616 
 appeared The Good and the Bad by the same author. Here the 
 characters are presented in pairs, as the worthy judge and the 
 unworthy, the honest man and the knave. These are true 
 
336 THE EPIGRAM AND THE "CHARACTER" 
 
 characters and are not wanting in the grace and lightness of 
 touch that distinguish their clever and adaptable author. 
 Through subsequent essays and characters of Geoffrey Min- 
 shull, Henry Parrot, and others the species reached its height 
 in literary excellence and perfection of form in John Earle's 
 M icrosmography or a Piece of the World Characterized, first 
 printed in 1628, and all but as popular in its time as Overbury's 
 had been. But these latter works fall beyond our period. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BACON, JURIST, PHILOSOPHER, AND ESSAYIST 
 
 MANY reasons conspire to give to Francis Bacon a 
 position of peculiar prominence in any consideration 
 of English literature. A notable lawyer under Elizabeth, 
 he attained to the woolsack and the chancellorship in the reign 
 of King James. A philosopher of great, if questioned repu- 
 tation, an orator of approved eloquence, an able historian, 
 and our earliest English essayist — all these phases of a 
 distinguished career must claim our attention, together with 
 the great intrinsic worth of most of his writings, the excellence 
 and variety of his style, the stimulating quality of his aphor- 
 isms, and lastly, the mingling of his name with Shakespeare's, 
 strange fruit of the ignorance, singularity, and perversity of 
 the last generation and our own. 
 
 Francis Bacon was born in January, 1561, the son of 
 Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth's first Lord Keeper, and 
 his second wife, Anne Cooke, who was sister to the wife of 
 Lord Burleigh, the famous chancellor of Elizabeth. Bacon 
 passed through the usual education of a gentleman of the day 
 at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Gray's Inn, going abroad 
 with an embassy when but sixteen years of age, and finding 
 himself fatherless with but small fortune in 1579. Destined 
 from the first for the law, he was admitted an utter barrister 
 in 1582; becoming a member of Parliament in 1584, through 
 the interest of his uncle Burleigh, and two years later a bencher 
 of his Inn. Bacon's mother was described in her time as 
 "exquisitely skilled in the Greek and Latin tongues"; she 
 was also austerely religious, and avowed and practised a 
 Puritanism of opinion from which her son Francis must 
 soon have become estranged. Indeed, his earliest work is 
 a letter of advice to the queen in which he deals wisely and 
 moderately with one of the most difficult of her political 
 
 337 
 
338 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 problems, the treatment of her own Roman Catholic subjects. 
 In these early days Bacon was needy, extravagant, careless 
 of practical affairs, compelled to labor at his profession for 
 bread, wait in chargeable attendance at court for advancement, 
 in ill health and neglected by his family. As to Burleigh 
 and his cousin Cecil, Bacon was assiduous in his cultivation 
 of both, and incessant in seeking through them for advance- 
 ment. Burleigh could not have doubted Bacon's abilities 
 or his subserviency to the family interests. He may have 
 been suspicious of his talents and have mistrusted his phil- 
 osophic ambitions. Burleigh certainly remained unsym- 
 pathic. Cecil's apathy towards the interests of his brilliant 
 cousin continued into the next reign. But Bacon could not 
 be long in any assemblage of men without making felt the 
 power and sublety of his mind; and his employment on public 
 business was not infrequent during the ensuing years, though 
 not in any matters of great moment or in posts of emolument. 
 He was heard towards the last of the long and violent Mar- 
 prelate quarrel in an able paper on Controversies in the Church 
 in which he opposed alike the factious temper of the Puritans 
 and the government's unwise rigidity as to conformity. 
 
 About this time Bacon formed a warm friendship with 
 the Earl of Essex, one of the most remarkable men of his age, 
 highly favored of the queen, and apparently destined to a 
 career of power and splendor. Essex seems to have been 
 drawn to Bacon by a genuine appreciation of his larger and 
 higher ambitions; for Essex was an intelligent patron of learn- 
 ing, and an accomplished and cultivated man himself, pos- 
 sessed of a generosity of temper and liberality in friendship 
 that account for his popularity and the hosts of his friends. 
 In 1593 the attorney-general's place fell vacant, and Essex, 
 now a privy councilor, at once sought the post for Bacon. 
 Bacon was young for such advancement, and better known for 
 his pursuits of philosophy and literature than for his learning 
 in the law. Besides, Sir Edward Coke, nearly ten years his 
 senior, already solicitor-general and famed for his technical 
 knowledge of the law, wanted the post for himself The 
 Cecils suggested a compromise, by which Coke should be 
 
ELIZABETH AND BACON 339 
 
 promoted to the attorney-generalship and Bacon become his 
 successor as solicitor. But Essex refused compromise, and 
 the queen appointed Coke attorney. Then Essex pressed 
 for the solicitorship for Bacon; but he was passed over for 
 an inferior man. Essex could do most things with the queen, 
 but he could not promote Bacon; and Bacon suffered the 
 added mortification of seeing the rich young widow of Sir 
 Christopher Hatton, to whom he had made his addresses on 
 the advice of Essex, accept the hand of Coke, his rival. 
 
 Various reasons have been assigned to explain why so 
 able a man as Bacon should not have received during the 
 lifetime of Elizabeth that recognition to which his talents 
 entitled him. One biographer states that it was Bacon's 
 "fate through life to give good advice only to be rejected, and 
 yet to impress those who received it with a sufficiently good 
 opinion of his intellectual capacity to gain employment in 
 :work which hundreds of others could have done as well." 
 With Bacon a settlement in life was only the means to a 
 larger end. In 1592, when thirty years of age, we find sure 
 indications of the ambitious philosophical designs that were 
 to make him famous. In one of his many letters of appeal 
 to Burleigh, he disclosed his hopes and aspirations, declaring 
 *T have taken all knowledge to be my province," and this 
 less in the spirit of a boaster than in a fervid conviction, born 
 of days of meditation and self-questioning. Bacon took the 
 world about him as it was, accepted with cynical indifference 
 its moral standards, and strove to thrive, as others thrived, by 
 the world's methods. In the interest of worldly success he 
 enlisted his keen intellect and his supple understanding; but 
 he failed, for the most part, to make men his counters because 
 he neither reached nor sought to reach their affections. If 
 there was one thing in which Queen Elizabeth exceeded most 
 monarchs, it was in a certain feminine intuition into character 
 that enabled her to keep herself surrounded alike by the ablest 
 and the most trustworthy of counselors. Elizabeth's tardy 
 recognition of Bacon is one of the evidences of this. However 
 willing she might have been to joke with the clever youth and 
 call him "her little Lord Chancellor," she must have felt 
 
340 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 from the first that Bacon was an unsafe man; and it was 
 reserved for her pedantic successor to be deceived by qualities 
 of intellectual brilliancy, unsupported by the homelier, safer 
 virtues that might well have misled a deeper man than the 
 author of A Counterblast to Tobacco. It was in the reign of 
 James that Bacon's honors crowded upon him; and it was 
 in that reign that his memorable fall came. 
 
 Essex continued the friend and patron of Bacon, impet- 
 uously bestowing an estate valued at ;^i8oo upon him, and 
 gained for him at last the post of one of the queen's counsel 
 in 1596. No greater contrast could be conceived than that 
 between Essex, ardent, masterful, inprudent, and headstrong, 
 whom the old queen doted on and spoiled only to punish him 
 for the presumption that she had invited, and Bacon, cool, 
 intellectual, and subtle, working sinuously and circumspectly 
 to personal ends, but stumbling at times among the gins and 
 snares of that corruption and intrigue that was to bring about 
 his ultimate fall. Bacon became the earl's adviser in the 
 handling of his affairs, especially the management of his 
 difficult royal mistress, seeking (there can be little question) 
 to rise in the rise of the favorite. Whether an instance of 
 the basest ingratitude in the annals of history or one of those 
 cases in which the law of self-preservation may be pled in 
 extenuation of an act outrageous in itself, it is certain that 
 when the difficulties of the reckless career of Essex came to 
 their logical conclusion, an impeachment for high treason, 
 Bacon repudiated and explained away their intimacy, appeared 
 of counsel against his benefactor, and was among the most 
 powerful influences that brought about the earl's conviction" 
 and execution. 
 
 With the accession of James, the lets and hindrances to 
 the career of Bacon were no more. He was first knighted, 
 became in time an intimate of the king, and rose through the 
 place of king's counsel in 1604, to Keeper of the Privy Seal 
 in 1617, Lord Chancellor under the title Lord Verulam in 
 1 6 19, and Viscount St. Albans two years later. Among the 
 many trials that Bacon conducted as Lord Chancellor was 
 that of Sir Walter Raleigh, the splendid adventurer and 
 
HIS IMPEACHMENT AND FALL 341 
 
 favorite of Elizabeth, who had long languished in the Tower 
 under the displeasure of King James. To Bacon, in his 
 judicial capacity, Raleigh was no more than "an unscrupulous 
 pirate and peculator, " and he did not concern himself with 
 the circumstance that the charge was an old one, trumped 
 up to serve the reestablishment of the cordial relations be- 
 tween the King of England and the King of Spain. Into the 
 circumstances by which the enemies of Bacon made head 
 against him and convicted him of bribery we need not enter. 
 Coke was brutally jubilant among them. We may feel sure 
 that Bacon's conduct in the case of Essex was now remem- 
 bered against him, not only by Southampton (who had been 
 ruined and in prison for years for his part in the rebellion 
 of Essex), but by many more. In a general movement 
 against the abuses and corruption of the courts, Bacon 
 was thus singled out and, from his exalted position and 
 •personal distinction, became the center of attack. Brought 
 to trial, the verdict of his peers of the House of Lords found 
 Bacon guilty in all the charges brought against him, and 
 punished him with a fine of ;^40,ooo, imprisonment in the 
 Tower during the king's pleasure, banishment from the court, 
 and a deprivation of any right to serve the commonwealth 
 in Parliament or otherwise. Southampton's desire that the 
 chancellor be degraded from the peerage was the only extrem- 
 ity at which the verdict paused. And yet one thing was even 
 more remarkable than this sudden overthrow in two months' 
 time of the foremost judge of the realm; this was Bacon's 
 complete and servile submission. It does not appear when 
 the evidence is carefully sifted, as was not done in his time, 
 that Bacon actually took bribes for the perversion of justice. 
 His decisions were in accord with the evidence and the law, 
 but he fell in only too readily with a system which, accepting 
 large gifts from suitors pending the decision of their cases, 
 and on the decision of cases in the suitor's favor, mingled 
 payment for services with gifts of a questionable nature to 
 the intolerable corruption of the administration of justice. 
 Bacon's confession that "in the points charged upon me, 
 although they should be taken as myself have declared them, 
 
342 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 there is a great deal of corruption and neglect, for which I 
 am heartily and penitently sorry, " should be accepted sorrow- 
 fully and without comment as conclusive, by all lovers of the 
 truth. Bacon survived his disgrace but four years, although 
 the king, in recognition of his long services to the state, tem- 
 pered the fine and penalty, and preserved him in his dignities, 
 his honors, and his titles. Bacon's life is a subject on which 
 it is painful to dwell; and this when all has been said in exten- 
 uation. His is a glaring example that the highest intellectual 
 gifts are consistent with self-seeking, servility, ingratitude, 
 and corruption. And it is no mitigation that the conduct of 
 politics and even of justice in his day were far from free of 
 any of these traits. The high-sounding aphorisms of the 
 Baconian philosophy have in them ever the ring of hoUowness 
 and mockery, and as we read them we forget the learning of 
 the chancellor and the wisdom of the philosopher in the ser- 
 vility of the courtier and the littleness of meanness rebuked. 
 The works of Bacon are conveniently considered in three 
 classes, his professional, philosophical, and literary writings. 
 With the first we need not concern ourselves. None of them 
 were published in the author's lifetime, although he prepared 
 four Arguments of Law for the press. It is the opinion of 
 the editor of Bacon's professional works that they exercised 
 comparatively small influence on the progress of English law. 
 They are distinguished, however, like his other work, by an 
 intellectual clearness of vision beyond his age. In 1605 Bacon 
 published The Advancement of Learning, which has been 
 called "a careful and balanced report on the existing stock 
 and deficiencies of human knowledge. " This work was not 
 conceived at first as a part of his Instauratio Magna or Great 
 Instauration (or Restoration), but was subsequently arranged 
 to precede or form a part of the Novum Organum. It was 
 fifteen years later, in 1620, when at the height of his prosperity, 
 that Bacon published this most important part of his phil- 
 osophical system, setting forth "the new instrument of thought 
 and discovery," which he believed would prove the key to 
 the command over nature. But the intervening years, with 
 all his outer distractions, had been years of assiduous industry 
 
"THE GREAT INSTAURATION" 343 
 
 and labor in his great task. The rejected projects of Bacon 
 would stock a dozen average men with ideas for their combined 
 lifetimes. "Experimental essays and discarded beginnings," 
 treatises, matter biographical so far as it concerned his hopes 
 and philosophical aspirations, mythology in The Wisdom of 
 the Ancients as allegorically shadowing forth later truth, a 
 fanciful philosophical tale. The New Atlantis — such were 
 some of the chips and materials of experiment that lay to one 
 side in that busy intellectual workshop in the center of which 
 stood, when all was at an end, the incompleted colossus of 
 The Great Instauration. 
 
 "The Instauratio, as he planned the work, is to be divided," 
 says Ellis, the notable editor of Bacon, "into six portions, of 
 which the first is to contain a general survey of the present 
 state of knowledge. In the second, men are to be taught how 
 to use their understanding aright in the investigation of nature. 
 . In the third, all the phenomena of the universe are to be stored 
 up in a treasure-house, as the materials on which the new 
 method is to be employed. In the fourth, examples are to 
 be given of its operation and of the results to which it leads. 
 The fifth is to contain what Bacon had accomplished in natural 
 philosophy, 'not however according to the true rules and 
 methods of interpretation, but by the ordinary use of the 
 understanding in inquiring and discovering.' It is therefore 
 less important than the rest, and Bacon declares that he will 
 not bind himself to the conclusions which it contains. More- 
 over, its value will altogether cease when the sixth part can 
 be completed, wherein will be set forth the new philosophy 
 — the result of the application of the new method to all the 
 phenomena of the universe. But to complete this, the last 
 part of the Instauratio, Bacon does not hope: he speaks of 
 it as 'a thing both above my strength and beyond my hopes. '" ^ 
 
 As we have it not only the Instauratio but the Novum 
 Organum itself is only a fragment. It was published in 1620 
 (as we have seen), and in Latin. The Advancement of Learning 
 
 ^Bacon's Works, ed. Ellis and Spedding, i, 71. The two quota- 
 tions of Bacon's Latin words, as quoted by Ellis, I have transcribed 
 in the translation by Spedding. 
 
344 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 appeared first in English. Other parts of the Instauratio and 
 "works on subjects connected with the Instauratio but not 
 intended to be included in it," are in English and Latin or, 
 as more frequently, only in Latin. Such are the Historia 
 VitcB et Mortis, printed in 1622, often quoted by Izaak Walton; 
 and De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, the enlarged and 
 Latinized version of The Advancement of Learning. In 1627, 
 the year after Bacon's death, appeared Sylva Sylvarum or a 
 Natural History in English, a collection of observations 
 and experiments in the nature of things, remarkably wide in 
 its range and often accute in discernment, but hopelessly 
 antiquated long since not only to the physicist but to the average 
 man. How impossible it is for even the sagest of men to 
 escape his age is discernible in such a passage as this: 
 
 There is a stone which they call the blood-stone, which worn, 
 is thought to be good for them that bleed at the nose: which (no doubt) 
 is by astriction and cooling of the spirits. Qucere, if the stone taken 
 out of the toad's head be not of the like virtue; for the toad loveth 
 shade and coolness. 
 
 Elsewhere Bacon recounts, with apparent acceptance and 
 approval, that "the heart of an ape, worn near the heart, 
 comforteth the heart and increaseth audacity." But surely 
 he who in Jonson's words could not "spare or pass a jest," 
 is less the philosopher than the wit when he adds: "It may 
 be the heart of a man would do more, but that it is more 
 against men's minds to use it; except it be in such as wear 
 the relics of saints. " 
 
 Many an educated man, asked who was Francis Bacon, 
 might describe him as the inventor of philosophic induction. 
 This is of course absurd. The method of scientific inquiry 
 in the Middle Ages was deductive, that is, the generalization 
 was applied to the particular case. This method is apt to 
 result in an examination of only those facts which are pre- 
 viously supposed to be likely to sustain a preconceived theory 
 or opinion, or at least to waste much time in ingeniously 
 devised syllogisms, arguments, and explanations without a 
 sufficient critical examination of the premises on which they 
 
THE BACONIAN INDUCTION 345 
 
 may be founded. It was to right this that Bacon wrote the 
 Novum. Organum. And the method he advocated was that 
 of inductive logic, the procedure of which was generalization 
 with the purpose of establishing the principle onlj after an 
 exhaustive gathering arid consideration of the particular facts 
 involved. It was a "systematic analysis and arrangement of 
 inductive evidence, as distinct from the natural deduction 
 which all men practise" that Bacon proposed; in his own 
 happy illustration: 
 
 The men of experiment are like the ajit; they only collect and use: 
 the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own 
 substance. But the bee takes a middle course; it gathers its material 
 from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and 
 digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business 
 of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of 
 the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural 
 history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory 
 whole, as it finds it; but lays it up in the understanding altered and 
 digested. 
 
 Bacon's noble, if somewhat utilitarian, ideal, thus, of the office 
 of philosophy was its mastery of the secrets of nature "to 
 extend more widely the limits of the power and greatness 
 of man. " Bacon's criticism of past error was just and needful, 
 his separation of science from religion valuable in itself and 
 for its consequences; his enlistment of physical experiment in 
 application for the benefit of mankind most suggestive and in 
 time fruitful. But we learn with amazement that this great 
 and novel philosophy rejected the Copernican system of 
 astronomy, held mathematics in undisguised contempt, and 
 yet disdained not to discuss and accept current fallacies of 
 popular lore such as the trivialities quoted above, some of 
 them as old as Pliny's Natural History and disprovable by 
 far less cumbrous methods than those of inductive logic. 
 
 In short the position of Bacon as a philosopher is by no 
 means the assured one that ignorance is apt to suppose it. 
 His place at the dawn of modern science was that of one who 
 points the true direction though he follow it not himself. 
 Bacon was not a partaker in any actual scientific discovery 
 
346 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 of his day, nor a leader to any discovery that came after. He 
 was not even in sympathy with the science of his time. For 
 he disparaged Copernicus and criticized adversely Gilbert's 
 treatise On the Magnet. While Bacon was condemning 
 all investigation into final causes, Harvey completed his 
 deductions as to the circulation of the blood; while Bacon was 
 questioning the advantage of any use of optical instruments, 
 Galileo was scanning the heavens with his telescope and adding 
 star to star. Moreover, as to the Baconian system, practical 
 workers, like the anatomist Harvey, like Liebig the chemist, or 
 Bernard the physiologist, "say that they can find nothing to 
 help them in Bacon's method." And Spedding, most appre- 
 ciative of the editors of Bacon, declares: "Of this philosophy 
 we can make nothing .... We regard it as a curious 
 piece of machinery, very subtle, elaborate and ingenious, but 
 not worth constructing, because all the work it could do may 
 be done another way." Induction is not a method fruitful 
 in results. However valuable Bacon's philosophical works 
 may be in inspiration, for any value as an instrument or 
 practical method of work — much less one that was to revolu- 
 tionize the intellectual processes of mankind — this gigantic 
 project must be pronounced a failure. 
 
 Of the literary work of Bacon the chief is the well-known 
 Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral. This famous book 
 appeared first in a very small octavo volume, in 1597, with 
 the title. Essays, Religious Meditations, Places of Persuasion 
 and Dissuasion. The two latter items of this three-fold 
 title refer to two other works, Meditationes Sacrce in Latin, and 
 Of the Colors of Good and Evil, a fragment in English, Neither 
 was afterwards reprinted with the Essays; and the Essays 
 themselves were but ten in number. It is of interest, in view 
 of the man that Bacon planned to be and inevitably became, 
 that the topics of these earliest essays should have been of 
 study, discourse, ceremonies and respect, followers and friends; 
 of suitors, expense; regiment of health, of honor and reputa- 
 tion, of faction, and of negotiating. The work was immedi- 
 ately recognized and, like most popular Elizabethan books, 
 soon pirated. In 1612 Bacon himself brought out a new 
 
THE "ESSAYS" 347 
 
 edition, enlarged to thirty-eight essays under the simpler 
 title, The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon; and in 1625 The 
 Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral of Francis Lord Ferulam, 
 now augmented to fifty-eight in number, represents the final 
 state of the work. From the epistle of the first edition, dedica- 
 ted to his brother, Anthony Bacon, it appears that the nucleus 
 of the ten original essays had "passed long ago from my pen," 
 that is, were written at a time well prior to their pubHcation 
 in 1597. It also appears that they were printed by the author 
 to stay unauthorized publication; for such seems the meaning 
 of the words: "I do now like some that have an orchard 
 ill-neighbored, that gather their fruit before it is ripe to pre- 
 vent stealing." In a later dedication to Prince Henry, sup- 
 pressed however owing to his death. Bacon speaks of his 
 purpose: "The want of leisure hath made me choose to 
 write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than 
 curiously which I have called essays. The word," he con- 
 tinues, "is late, but the thing is ancient. For Seneca's Epis- 
 tles to Lucilius, if one mark them well, are but essays, that is 
 dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epis- 
 tles. " That Bacon had another besides this ancient model 
 is not to be questioned, although he quotes Montaigne but 
 once. The Essais of Michel de Montaigne had appeared 
 first in 1580, and by the time that Bacon wrote had reached 
 at least a dozen editions in France. His title — essay, attempt, 
 endeavor, modest enough in its day — Bacon had, beyond 
 doubt, of Montaigne. Except for this and the genius of 
 both, there is little in common between the two authors; for 
 the gossipy self-portrayal of the French epicurean is at the 
 opposite pole to the worldly wisdom, the abstract philosophy, 
 and the glittering apothegm of the English lawyer. 
 
 The first things that strike the reader of Bacon's Essays 
 are their brilliancy, their polish, and their disconnectedness. 
 As we read further, we appreciate more fully their practical 
 sagacity, their wealth of pertinent illustration and quotation 
 (after the manner of the time), and their extreme condensity, 
 both of thought and of expression. The subjects of these 
 Essays are, for the most part, abstractions, — truth, love, am- 
 
348 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 bition, vainglory; but some relate to social and human rela- 
 tions, as parents and children, and the essay on marriage, 
 and more to politics, social conditions, and conduct in life. 
 Not least interesting are they at large in that they reveal the 
 man habituated to thought on all things, now great with the 
 larger issues of human existence, again minutely particular 
 in the minor things and even the trivialities of life. Of subject- 
 matter less momentous are the essays "of Building," "of 
 Masques and Triumphs," "or the Regiment of Health," and 
 the delightful paragraphs "of Plantations," and "of Gardens. " 
 While partaking largely of the quaintness which, to us at 
 least, seems a pervasive quality of Elizabethan literature. 
 Bacon's is a remarkably modern tone, and his short, crisp 
 sentences and sureness of statement enhance his modernness 
 of diction. Bacon's analogy and illustration is exhaustless, 
 and he shines at times with the brilliancy of epigram and the 
 gorgeousness of a magnificently rhetorical imagination. But 
 however prismatic the colors. Bacon is absolutely devoid of 
 any warmth of passion. Such a man must have been a great 
 orator from the power of his mind, if not from the eloquence 
 of his heart. And we read for the first time, with positive 
 expectation that it is to be found somewhere, the celebrated 
 passage of Ben Jonson as to the eloquence of the Lord Chan- 
 cellor: 
 
 There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of 
 gravity in his speaking; his language, when he could spare or pass a 
 jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more 
 pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in 
 what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own 
 graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without 
 loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges [i. e. those 
 before whom he was pleading] angry and pleased at his devotion. 
 No man had their affections [i. e. emotions] more in his power. The 
 fear of every man who heard him was lest he should make an end. 
 
 Returning for a moment to the style of the Essays, sen- 
 tentiousness, condensity, and pregnancy of thought have 
 seldom been carried to such a degree. And these things were 
 compassed, as we know by reference to the successive versions. 
 
THE "ESSAYS" 349 
 
 only by the most assiduous and painstaking revision. Indeed, 
 outside of the pages of the great Roman historian, Tacitus, 
 it may be doubted if a more complete success has ever been 
 attained in a like terse and difficult style. Yet it is a mistake 
 to think of Bacon as a man possessed of a single literary style, 
 how^ever excellent." The Advancement of Learning exhibits 
 the philosopher's evidences of design, and the v^hole treatise 
 is wrritten v^ith the continuity and copious flow w^hich is suit- 
 able to so stately a topic. In The History of Henry VH, 
 and especially in the interesting fragment. The New Atlantis, 
 the narrative is handled with a directness and steady progress 
 that must surprise the reader who knows his Bacon, as too 
 many of us do, only by the Essays. 
 
 So as marvel you not at the thin population of America, nor at 
 the rudeness and ignorance of the people; for you must account your 
 inhabitants of America as a young people; younger a thousand years, 
 at the least, than the rest of the world; for there was so much time 
 between the universal flood and their particular inundation. For 
 the poor remnant of human seed which remained in their mountains 
 peopled the country again slowly, by little and little; and being a 
 simple and savage people, (not like Noah and his sons, which was the 
 chief family of the earth), they were not able to leave letters, arts, 
 and civility to their posterity. 
 
 Very different in style and structure are the familiar words : 
 
 Read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. 
 Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few 
 to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only 
 in parts; others to be read, but cursorily, and some few to be read 
 wholly and with diligence. Reading maketh a full man, conference 
 a ready man, and writing an exact man. 
 
 And yet with all this literary excellence, and with a reputa- 
 tion to endure while English literature shall last, few great 
 men have so little deserved a place of literary eminence by 
 their own act. Bacon, unlike many of his great contempo- 
 raries — Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, Hooker, and Jonson — held 
 his mother tongue in undisguised contempt, and spent much 
 time in translating his works into Latin that they might 
 
350 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 endure to posterity. In his own words, often quoted, from a 
 letter to his friend, Sir Toby Matthew: 
 
 My labors are now most set to have those works, which I have 
 formerly published, as that of Advancement of Learning, that of 
 Henry VII, that of the Essays, being retractate and made more 
 perfect, well translated into Latin by the help of some good pens 
 which forsake me not. For these modern languages will at one time 
 or other play the bankrupts with books: and since I have lost much 
 time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to 
 recover it with posterity. 
 
 Bacon was, in all probability, insensible of the glorious wealth 
 of literature that was springing up around him; or if sensible, 
 too pusillanimous to trust his fame in the same vehicle with 
 that of low-born playwrights and Bohemian pamphleteers. 
 He preferred the passionless rhetoric of a dead tongue to this 
 living carriage of animate speech; and as a penance, much of 
 his work lies as in the tomb, the resort of the enthusiastic 
 metaphysician or the curious historian of speculative thought. 
 It would ill have become the philosopher who "took all 
 learning for his province" to have remained wholly uncon- 
 versant with the poetical and the theatrical activities of his 
 age. And despite the Baconian insensibility noticed above, 
 of these "toys," too, the great man took a condescending 
 cognisance. As early as 1587 we find Bacon one of some half- 
 dozen young gentlemen, members of Gray's Inn, engaged in 
 devising dumb shows (such as those in Gorhoduc) for '^Certain 
 Devices,'- acted before her majesty. In 1592 Bacon wrote 
 "speeches" for a device presented to the queen when enter- 
 tained by Essex. Bacon also contributed similarly to the 
 Gesta Grayorum in the protracted festivities of his Inn, in 
 1595. Far later, in 1613, on the occasion of the celebrations 
 incident to the marriage of the king's daughter Elizabeth 
 to the Prince Palatine, Bacon is described as "the chief con- 
 triver" of Beaumont's excellent masque. Lastly, in the fol- 
 lowing year. Bacon was designated, "the chief encourager" 
 of the anonymous Masque of Flowers, on which he is said 
 to have expended no less than ;£^2,ooo. Yet if we would know 
 Bacon's attitude as to these matters, we must turn to the well- 
 
TRAFFIC WITH THE STAGE 351 
 
 known essay, "of Masques and Triumphs." There it is 
 that he writes : 
 
 These things are but toys to come amongst such serious observa- 
 tions. But yet since princes will have such things, it is better they 
 should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost. Dancing 
 to song is a thing of great state and pleasure. . . . Acting in song, 
 especially in dialogues, hath an extreme good grace: I say acting, 
 not dancing, for that is a mean and vulgar thing. And the voices 
 of the dialogue would be strong and manly: a base, and a tenor, no 
 treble; and the ditty high and tragical, not nice or dainty. Several 
 choirs, placed one over against another, and taking the voice by 
 catches, anthem-wise, give great pleasure. Turning dances into figure 
 is a childish curiosity. And generally let it be noted that those things, 
 which I here, set down, are such as do naturally take the sense and not 
 respect petty wonderments. It is true, the alterations of scenes, so 
 it be quietly and without noise, are things of great beauty and pleasure: 
 for they feed and relieve the eye before it be full of the same object. 
 Let the scenes abound with light, especially colored and varied, and 
 let the masquers or any other that are to come down from the scene, 
 have some motions, upon the scene itself before their coming down: 
 for it draws the eye strangely and makes it with great pleasure to 
 desire to see that it can not perfectly discern. 
 
 And after another page of this patronizing, he abruptly 
 breaks off: "But enough of these toys." Elsewhere Bacon 
 speaks with similar disdain of "the transcendence of poesy"; 
 advises that we "leave the goodly fabrics of houses for beauty 
 only, to the enchanted palaces of the poets; who," he adds, 
 "build them with small cost"; and quotes with approval 
 St. Jerome's designation of poetry as vinum daemonum 
 (/. ^. wine of devils) "because it fiUeth the imagination . 
 but with the shadow of a lie. " 
 
 The late Dr. Grosart, an indefatigable editor and gleaner 
 in the well-reaped fields of our old literature, has collected 
 "The Poems of Francis Bacon." The collection includes 
 The Translation of Certain Psalms, six or seven in number, 
 which curiously enough his lordship published himself, in 
 1625, with a dedication to George Herbert; and two other 
 pieces. As to the psalms, Bacon translated them, as who did 
 not in that age from Sir Philip Sidney and Queen Elizabeth 
 
352 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 herself, to Bishop Parker, and Sternhold and Hopkins ? As to 
 their merit as poetry, Spedding remarks: "An unpractised 
 versifier who will not take time and trouble about the work, 
 must of course leave many bad verses : for poetic feeling and 
 imagination, though they will dislike a wrong word, will not 
 of themselves suggest a right one that will suit meter and 
 rime: and it would be easy to quote from the few pages that 
 follow not only many bad lines, but many poor stanzas." 
 Dr. Grosart, on the other hand, whose enthusiasm for the 
 particular author that he happened at the moment to be editing 
 commonly outstripped his judgment, declares himself able 
 to make "fresh discoveries of beauty, ineffable scintillations 
 of true 'Promethean heat' " in these psalms, whenever he 
 "returns" to them. Of the other two poems, one beginning: 
 
 The man of life upright whose guiltless heart is free 
 From all dishonest deeds and thoughts of vanity, 
 
 is attributed by somebody to Bacon in the manuscript in 
 which it occurs, and is verily such "as might very well have 
 been written by Bacon, or by a hundred other people." 
 Lastly, "the expansion of a Greek epigram," as the remaining 
 "poem" attributed to Bacon is entitled, is a production caUing 
 for more attention. It is superior in workmanship to any 
 of his psalms, and it is less a translation, or even a paraphrase, 
 of its original (an epigram from the Florilegium, attributed to 
 Poseidippus), than a new poem on the suggested theme. 
 These lines run as follows: 
 
 The world 's a bubble, and the life of man 
 
 Less than a span; 
 In his conception wretched, from the womb, 
 
 So to the tomb; 
 Cursed from his cradle and brought up to years 
 
 With cares and fears: 
 Who then to frail mortality shall trust, 
 But limns on water or but writes in dust ? 
 
 Yet, whilst with sorrow here we live opprest, 
 
 What life is best ? 
 Courts are but only superficial schools 
 
 To dandle fools; 
 
BACON AND POETRY 353 
 
 The rural part is turned into a den 
 
 Of savage men; 
 And where 's a city from foul vice so free 
 But may be termed the worst of all the three ? 
 
 Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed, 
 
 * 
 Or pains his head: 
 
 Those that live single take it for a curse, 
 
 Or do things worse; 
 These would have children; those that have them moan 
 
 Or wish them gone: 
 What is it, then, to have or have no wife, 
 But single thraldom or a double strife ? 
 
 Our own affections still at home to please 
 
 Is a disease; 
 To cross the seas to any foreign soil, 
 
 Peril and toil; 
 Wars with their noise affright us, when they cease, 
 
 We are worse in peace: 
 What then remains, but that we still should cry 
 For being born, or, being born, to die ? 
 
 From this repellent piece of pessimism, with its precision of 
 thought and polish of style, let us turn where we will to Shake- 
 speare : 
 
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 
 Admit impediments. Love is not love 
 
 Which alters when it alteration finds. 
 
 Or bends with the remover to remove: 
 
 O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
 
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
 
 It is the star to every wandering bark, 
 
 Whose worth 's unknown, although his height be taken; 
 
 Love 's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
 
 Within his bending sickle's compass come; 
 
 Love alters not with his brief hours or weeks, 
 
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom: 
 
 If this be error and upon me proved, 
 
 I never writ nor no man ever loved. 
 
354 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 Here is wisdom, the wisdom of the seer, not of the logician; 
 here is beauty of thought and loveHness of poetic form; thought 
 poetical, not epigrammatic; form in those free lines that mark 
 the sure stroke of artistic mastery, as opposed to the thought 
 of the admirably clear, cool, and subtle mind that is the anti- 
 thesis of the poet. The epigram, quoted above, is certainly 
 Bacon's, not only for the contemporary evidence but for its 
 Baconian spirit of worldliness and its hard-eyed recognition 
 of the vanity and futility of such a life as was his. But it is 
 little to found the reputation of a poet on. Indeed, Bacon's 
 touch with poetry is scarcely more serious than his momentary 
 points of contact with the drama. 
 
 If we dare emulate for the moment the rhapsodical art 
 of the late Mr. Swinburne, among the many vagaries and 
 wanderings into darkness that egotistic singularity has begot- 
 ten on crass ignorance none could be more unfortunate than 
 any confusion of the lives, the characters, or the works of 
 Francis Bacon with William Shakespeare. For, ransack 
 Elizabethan England how we will, it would be impossible to 
 find two minds of conspicuous prominence more radically 
 different in their natures, their modes of thinking, and quality 
 of achievement than were the minds of these two great men. 
 The man, whatever his name, who wrote the plays which 
 still issue under the name of Shakespeare in thousands of 
 impressions yearly, was country born and acquainted with 
 rural sports: moreover he possessed a knowledge of such 
 things that came by nature. Again, he was a man absolutely 
 free from the slightest suspicion of bookishness and pedantry, 
 a man of "small Latin and less Greek." In the third place, 
 the man that wrote the Shakespearean plays was one intimately 
 conversant with the theater; not merely to the degree of assist- 
 ing in the preparation of one or two masques for the enter- 
 tainment of her majesty, but to the extent of many years of 
 actual service, involving the ordeal of a rigid apprenticeship, 
 the revision and refashioning of old work, the treading the 
 boards as an actor, and that feeling of the pulse of the public 
 which the clever manager learns to interpret with unfailing 
 success. Lastly, the writer of these plays was a poet; a man 
 
BACON AND SHAKESPEARE 355 
 
 of lavish and exuberant imagination, pregnant with wisdom 
 and illumined with the purest vein of humor known to lit- 
 erature. To country breeding, the absence of all that makes 
 the bookish man, an intimate conversancy with the public 
 stage, and the qualities that combine to make the most con- 
 summate of poets and dramatists, might be added many other 
 characteristics which all would agree must have animated 
 the heart and brain of the author of these plays: his universal 
 sympathy and charity, his lofty ethics, his deep and noble 
 philosophy of life — but enough has been written. 
 
 Now, in view of all this, what sort of a man was Francis 
 Bacon ? City born and courtly bred, with an ideal of a trim 
 clipped garden as "the greatest refreshment to the spirit of 
 man, " with a knowledge of herbs and flowers, extensive (as 
 was all his knowledge) and pedantically scientific (as was 
 much of it). As to his acquaintance with contemporary 
 drama, Spedding declared that in all his study of Bacon he 
 had never seen any sign that the philosopher had ever read 
 a line of Shakespeare. A time-server and a trimmer, whom 
 the wise Queen Elizabeth mistrusted and the unwise King 
 James advanced; a scholar and an author distinguished for 
 his English prose, yet one, as we have seen, who feared lest 
 his mother-tongue might prove a bankrupt, as he put it, and 
 therefore entrusted the precious freight of his philosophy to 
 Latin; a philosopher who sought to revolutionize the processes 
 of human thought but rejected some of the most important 
 scientific discoveries of his own time; a jurist, the most 
 eminent of his day, self-convicted of corruption. 
 
 It is possible to treat with respect and accept so far as the 
 evidences appeal to reason, the scholars' proofs that parts 
 of Shakespeare as printed to-day are not his; that Fletcher's 
 hand is discernable in Henry Fill, and that other inferior 
 authors may have penned portions of other plays. The 
 influence of Lyly is patent in the earliest comedies, and Mar- 
 lowe's is as unmistakeable in the earlier historical dramas. 
 Conceivable — although the present writer could not share 
 it — is a fancy that Ben Jonson transcended himself in the 
 writing of parts of Julius Ccesar; or that Spenser miraculously 
 
356 BACON, PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST 
 
 wrote some passage or other of these plays, showing himself 
 for the first and only time in his life a dramatist. But of 
 all the men of Elizabeth's reign, great and little, gentle or 
 common, poets or none, there is not one so infinitely removed, 
 so absolutely alien, in character, spirit, and nature, in qualities 
 of mind and of heart from the author of Shakespeare's plays 
 as Francis Bacon. The man who wrote the Shakespearean 
 dramas was one whose birth, and extraction, whose education, 
 training, and experience in life were the precise counterpart 
 of the little that we know and the more that we may with 
 reason infer to have been Shakespeare's. These plays are 
 Shakespeare's very own; and least of all things conceivable 
 is the preposterous notion that they could in any part or parcel 
 have been written by such a man as Bacon. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 DONNE AND HIS PLACE AMONG LYRICAL 
 POETS 
 
 WE know more of the outward events of the life of John 
 Donne than of any poet or writer of his age, and yet 
 he remains a personage strange and enigmatic, and a poet 
 more often misjudged than appreciated. Donne's was a 
 twofold greatness. A biographer, not long since, wrote a 
 Life of Donne in which he confesses to little sympathy with 
 his poetry.^ He was writing of the famous Dean of St. Paul's, 
 amongst the most learned of divines in an age of deep theolo- 
 gical learning, the most brilliant and persuasive preacher of 
 his day. Of Donne as a divine we have already heard in 
 this book. But Donne would remain great in the history of [/' 
 literature with the Dean of St. Paul's neglected, in that he is 
 the most original, the most independent, the most perverse, 
 yet in some respects among the most illuminated of the poets 
 of the latter days of Elizabeth. Nor is it possible to separate 
 wholly these two aspects of Donne's career; for although there 
 is little of the future divine in those strange and cynical erotic 
 poems which formed so interesting a part of the exercises of 
 his youth, still his poetry would be far from what it is to us 
 were the spirituality of his later poems not to enter into account. 
 On the other hand, it is the power of poetry in the divine as 
 well as the beauty and sanctity of his life that endeared him 
 to those whose privilege it was to know him, and made him 
 a power for good in his day. 
 
 John Donne was born in London in 1573, the..,,yegr„,p£-««^ 
 Jonson's 'iiirth'. His father, also John Donne, was Master 
 of the Ironmongers' Company and a man of wealth and prom- 
 inence. His mother was Elizabeth Heywood, daughter of 
 John Heywood, the famous epigrammatist and writer of 
 interludes in the days of Henry VIII. Both families were 
 
 ^ John Donne, Sometime Dean of St. Paul's, by A. Jessopp, 1897. 
 
 357 ' 
 
358 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 stanch Roman Catholics; and they remained such, and 
 suffered for their faith. Donne's education was superintended 
 by his uncle, Jasper Heywood, a Jesuit of prominence and 
 translator, with others, of Seneca's tragedies. In order to 
 escape the difficulties of taking the oath of allegiance (which 
 was made particularly offensive to them), it was the custom 
 for Roman Catholic boys to go up to college very young; for 
 the oath was not exacted of any under the age of sixteen. 
 Donne and his brother, Henry, matriculated at Oxford when 
 twelve and eleven years of age, John leaving when less than 
 fourteen. There he formed a warm friendship with Sir 
 Henry Wotton, which lasted through life. Both left Oxford, 
 however, without a degree, and Donne probably traveled 
 abroad, as we know that Wotton did, with the design (as we 
 should put it) of entering the diplomatic service. In 1592 
 we find Donne again in England, a student at Lincoln's Inn 
 and intimate with the young poet, Christopher Brooke, the 
 friend of Browne and Wither. Donne certainly enjoyed 
 extraordinary advantages in the study of science and language. 
 His curiosity appears to have led him early to wide reading on 
 a diversity of subjects, especially law and the dialectics of 
 theology. But it does not appear that he became "a. con- 
 vinced opponent of Romanism" until the year 1603. Donne 
 was attendant at the famous meetings at the Mermaid Tavern, 
 where he met Shakespeare, Jonson, Drayton, Beaumont, and 
 many lesser men. Reputation as a poet and a scholar came 
 to Donne early. He was possessed of a competence; and his 
 expectations were doubled on the untimely death of his only 
 brother when but just of age. Donne spent his money, too, in 
 the manner of a gentleman, frequenting the best literary and 
 fashionable society. He seems to have been a man of hand- 
 some person and engaging manners; and he easily acquired 
 a host of friends. But one thing stood against preferment. 
 His uncle. Father Heywood — at one time "esteemed the 
 Provincial of the English Jesuits " and lodged in the Tower 
 for his activity in political intrigue — had long lived abroad, 
 conspicuous among the proscribed recusants; and Donne was 
 suspected of more than a sympathy with the old faith. 
 
DESCRIPTIVE POEMS 359 
 
 Donne began his literary career as a satirist, though he 
 himself published nothing. To Donne's Satires we need 
 not return. In 1596, when the expedition against the Spanish 
 king was fitted out, Donne offered himself as a volunteer 
 to the Earl of Essex and was accepted. He accompanied 
 both expeditions against Spain; and in that against Cadiz 
 formed an intimacy with Thomas Egerton, son of Lord 
 Chancellor Ellesmere. The two descriptive poems, "The 
 Storm" and "The Calm," belong to this period. Ben Jonson 
 admired the latter and declared to Drummond that he had 
 "by heart . . . that dust and feathers do not stir, all 
 is so quiet." The passage to which Jonson alluded runs: 
 
 The fighting place now seamen's rags supply; 
 And all the tackling is a frippery. 
 No use of lanthornes; and in one place lay 
 Feathers and dust, today and yesterday. 
 
 There is no better illustration of Donne's uncompromising 
 realism matched with his characteristic remoteness of thought 
 than this which follows. He is speaking of the storm and its 
 effects on his shipmates : 
 
 Some coffined in their cabins lie, equally 
 Grieved that they are not dead, and yet must die. 
 And as sin-burdened souls from grave will creep 
 At the last day, some forth their cabins peep 
 And trembling ask what news and do hear so 
 As jealous husbands what they would not know. 
 Some sitting on the hatches, would seem there 
 With hideous gazing to fear away fear. 
 Then note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast 
 Shaked with an ague and the hold and waste 
 With a salt dropsy clogged, and all our tacklings 
 Snapping, like too-too-high-stretched treble strings, 
 And from our tattered sails rags drop down so 
 As from one hanged in chains a year ago. 
 
 Indeed, nothing could be more discordant to the general accep- 
 tation of poetry than these harsh, vivid, and ingenuous lines. 
 We are concerned neither with their place in literature nor 
 
36o DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 their qualities as poetry, but with their marked character- 
 istics and divergences from the prevailing type of the moment. 
 And as to this, there can be no two opinions. 
 
 On his return from the Cadiz expedition the good offices 
 of his friend, young Egerton, procured Donne the post of 
 secretary to his exalted father the Lord Chancellor. This 
 post Donne held for four years, throwing himself heart and 
 soul into the amusements and the frivolities of the court, yet 
 reserving from every day some part to slake in study what he 
 calls "an hydroptic immoderate desire of human learning." 
 It was in these years that Donne acquired his great repute as 
 a wit and a poet, carelessly tossing off both verse and prose 
 (the latter in the form of "paradoxes" and problems), to be 
 read in clubs, discussed in ordinaries, and copied into man- 
 uscript commonplace books, the author taking not the least 
 heed as to the printing or preservation of either. 
 
 The lyrical poetry of a secular character which Donne has 
 ^leftHs lies in point of date of writing between 1592 and iSoi. 
 It contains that fascinating, yet forbidding, group of poems 
 which add to all his other traits of idiosyncrasy the.iifi5i£!.15ote • 
 of a frank and daring cynicism. The audacious outspoken- 
 ness of several of these erotic poems has blinded readers to 
 their possible autobiographical significance. And yet these 
 poems give us really very little definite biographical infor- 
 mation. They are often as cryptic as the Sonnets of Shake- 
 speare themselves. Indeed, it is possible that we may make 
 too much of all these throes, and agonies, and intensities of 
 fleshly love. There is such a thing as the libertine in thought 
 as well as the roue in practice. Of the latter we hear very 
 little subjectively in literature. He wallows in his sty, and 
 even Circe takes Httle note of him save to feed him. It is 
 otherwise with the libertine in thought. It is the adventure, 
 the danger, the imaginativeness of the pursuit of unlawful 
 love — dare we call it the sporting instinct ? — which interests 
 him. The very cynicism of Donne's earlier erotic poetry 
 confirms this opinion. It was the same active insatiable 
 curiosity and interest in the fulness of life which caused Donne 
 on the one hand to dip into forbidden volumes of heresy, 
 
EARLIER LYRICS 361 
 
 alchemy, and pseudo-science, and on the other to court and 
 dally inaginatively with experiences which come not to those 
 that tread the beaten paths of virtue. Take, for example, 
 the famous song, "Go and catch a falling star," wherein one 
 who has journeyed far to see "strange sights" is compelled 
 to "swear" 
 
 Nowhere 
 Lives a woman true, and fair. 
 
 The concluding stanza of the lyric is even more outrageously 
 cynical : 
 
 If thou find'st one, let me know, 
 
 Such a pilgrimage were sweet, 
 Yet do not, I would not go. 
 
 Though at next door we might meet; 
 \ Though she were true when you met her, 
 And last till you write your letter, 
 
 I Yet she 
 
 Will be 
 False, ere I come, to two or three. 
 
 The poemS"1of Donne came much into fashion from their 
 absolute originality, and it may be ajfhrmed that he exerted 
 a powerful influence on the course of English poetry before 
 he was aware of it himself. Indeed, Donne's attitude to- 
 wards his poetry throughout his life was that of the gentle- 
 man and courtier of his day, except that he was sincere in his 
 regard of poetry as a trifle: others often affected this attitude. 
 Donne was always an insatiable student. "His reading," 
 says Jessopp, "embraced an extraordinary range of learning, 
 which his command of foreign languages and his great ver- 
 satility tempted him to widen. He read with his pen in hand, 
 annotating, digesting, commenting. Nothing came amiss: 
 scholastic theology and casuistry, civil and common law, 
 history, poetry, philosophy, even medicine; and all these 
 subjects, not only in the language of the learned, but in the 
 vernacular of France, Italy and Spain. " 
 ^ In i6oi Donne crowned a romantic love story with an 
 imprudent marriage, clandestinely solemnized. There is 
 
362 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 nothing to his discredit in the affair, although it was a serious 
 matter in those days to marry a minor against her father's 
 wishes. Anne More was a niece of Lord Ellesmere's second 
 wife; and, as the daughter of Sir George More of Losely, 
 was above the young secretary in wealth and station. Sir 
 George was imprudent in leaving the young people together 
 in his sister's household, and very insulting when Donne dared 
 to ask for an alliance with his family. In short Sir George 
 played the part of the irate father to perfection; had his new 
 son-in-law, with his friend, Christopher Brooke, and his 
 brother, who had participated in the marriage ceremony, 
 committed to prison, and procured Donne's dismissal from 
 the services of the Lord Chancellor, thus destroying once 
 and for all his prospects in diplomacy. It mattered little 
 that Sir George later repented, when he found that Donne was 
 neither penniless nor without friends. Although he sought 
 to undo the work of his passion and to reinstate his son-in-law 
 with the chancellor. Lord Ellesmere replied that he had 
 "parted with a friend and such a secretary as was fitter to 
 serve a king than a subject; yet that, though he was unfeignedly 
 sorry for what he had done, it was inconsistent with his place 
 and credit to discharge and readmit servants at the request 
 of passionate petitioners. " The young people suffered from 
 narrowness of means and worry for years. Children came 
 to increase their needs; and sickness and death visited them. 
 Donne's own health was always precarious and he dated many 
 of his letters "from my hospital at Micham. " Yet even in 
 these times of depressed fortune, Donne was not without 
 friends. Though young Sir Thomas Egerton had died in 
 Ireland meanwhile. Sir Francis Wooley, whom Donne had 
 also met as a shipmate on the Cadiz expedition, now be- 
 friended him. A tender friendship also subsisted between 
 Donne and the Herberts, whom he had first met when their 
 admirable mother was residing at Oxford for the education 
 of Edward, afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and George, 
 the devotional poet, then a little lad. To these years (as 
 many letters which have been preserved attest) belong the 
 foundations also of Donne's enduring friendships with Sir 
 
"BIATHANATOS" 363 
 
 Henry Goodere and with that engaging and munificent patron 
 of poetry and learning, Lucy Countess of Bedford. Later 
 Sir Robert Drury offered Donne and his family a home with 
 him in his splendid mansion beyond Temple Bar. As to 
 his marriage, it turned out ideal in its happiness and, when 
 his beloved wife died, he cherished her memory. 
 
 It was during these years of waiting and intellectual de- 
 pression that Donne wrote his strange prose treatise, Biathan- 
 atos, "a. declaration of that paradox or thesis that self- 
 hofhicide is not so naturally sin that it may never be otherwise. " 
 We can see in this subject what were some of the ponderings 
 of this dialectic mind in a time of desperate fortune. This 
 work, though kn^own to his nearest friends, was not printed 
 during Donne's life; and in a letter accompanying a man- 
 uscript of it sent to a friend much later, Donne describes it 
 as "a misinterpretable subject . . . written by Jack 
 .Donne and not by Dr. Donne"; and adds: "Preserve it for 
 me if I live; and if I die, I only forbid it the press and the 
 fire." Biathanatos has been described as "a literary curi- 
 osity — a tour de force, unique in English literature, a survival 
 oFthe old dialectic disputations, carried on strictly according 
 tojthe^rules of syllogisticjreason, which the medieval schoolmen 
 loved so well. "^ 
 
 The steps by which Donne was drawn more and more 
 into the religious controversies of his day we need not follow. 
 Icrnatius his Conclave is a fierce little satire in Latin and 
 English and decidedly wanting in good taste. It was written 
 about 1608 and is alone sufficient to attest the author's com- 
 plete severance from the Jesuit influences of his youth. Donne 
 was apparently well acquainted with Bacon and may have 
 been one of "the good pens that forsake me not" that Bacon 
 kept busy in the revision and Latinizing of his works. At 
 some time prior to 16 10, Donne became secreatry to Lord Hay, 
 afterwards Earl of Carlisle, who was at the moment high in 
 the royal favor. This brought Donne into closer contact 
 with the king, and a happy argument on the question of the 
 oath of allegiance by Donne in the king's presence elicited 
 the royal command that he put the case in writing. The 
 
364 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 Pseudo Martyr, 16 10, was the result, a work that gained an 
 immediate popularity and confirmed King James in his 
 determination that Donne should enter the church. This 
 Donne was long reluctant to do from certain honest scruples 
 and from a fear lest his motives might suffer misconstruction. _ 
 There was perhaps another reason. With all his theological 
 learning, Donne was a man of large and tolerant ideas. "You 
 know," he writes to Sir Henry Goodere, "I never fettered 
 or imprisoned the word religion; . . , immuring it in 
 a Rome, or a Wittenberg, or a Geneva." The Christian 
 sects, he continues, "are all virtually beams of one sun, and 
 wheresoever they find clay hearts, they harden them and 
 moulder them to dust. . . . They are not so contrary 
 as the north and south poles; . . . they are connatural 
 pieces of one circle. " At last the king became importunate. 
 Donne was ordained in 1615. No one knowing the man can 
 hold his decision in anything but respect. A year later Donne 
 became one of the royal chaplains; and in 16 17, Dean of 
 St. Paul's. He was a great and eloquent preacher, and a 
 man of sweet and fervent piety. His ministrations, his 
 sanctity, and his charity, all can be read in Walton's incom- 
 parable Life. Donne died in 1626, 
 
 There are more mistakes prevalent about Donne as a 
 poet than about any one of even approximately equal rank. 
 The first is the notion that Donne was a late Jacobean or 
 Caroline writer, contemporary as a poet^with Cowley. This 
 error arises from the accident that the earliest extant edition 
 of Donne's poetry is posthumous and dates 1633. Cowley's 
 Poetical Blossoms, the appropriately named budding poetry of 
 a precocious boy of thirteen, appeared in the same year. 
 Donne would have been sixty, if alive. Without entering 
 into the clear evidences which are at hand for all to use, Donne 
 is.^an JEli:z3,t>ethan in his po.etry in the strictest acceptation of 
 that terrn, the forerunner of a remarkable movement, not 
 soon assimilated or even imitated by his immediate contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 A more serious error is that which has arisen out of the 
 term "metaphysical school of poetry." The word "jnfti- 
 
"THE METAPHYSICAL SCHOOL" 365 
 
 aphysics" was first associated, with the poetry of Donne by 
 'Dryden in his Discourse on Satire; ^inA^g^iy^s^^tXfC^zx^td 
 vvith imitating Donne, which it is not to be questioned that 
 he did. Although the mention of Donne is purely incidental, 
 he is praised for "variety, multiplicity and choiceness of 
 thought. " Now this passage fell under the eye of the great 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson when he was writing his "Life 'of Cowley" 
 in The Lives of the English Poets. He expanded it into a 
 sonorous critical dictum in which the word "metaphysical" 
 was extended from an incidental trait of Donne and his late 
 imitator, Cowley, to the distinguishing characteristic of a 
 whole "school" of poetry; in which this "school" was thrown 
 into violent contrast as "wits" with real poets, and in which 
 only one thing was omitted concerning Donne, and that was 
 the "variety, multiplicity and choiceness of thought" with 
 which the judicious Dryden had credited him. This famous 
 deliverance of Dr. Johnson's is a glaring example of the spe- 
 cies of criticism which is worked up out of the critical dicta 
 of others, a mystery unhappily not confined to the age of the 
 Georges. We may give over expectation of a time when 
 popular histories of literature will not discuss "the metaphys- 
 ical poets" in eloquent passages expanded from Dr. Johnson's 
 "Life of Cowley," as Dr. Johnson expanded the incidental 
 words of Dryden. The instinct that bids each critic follow 
 his predecessor has determined once and for all that the poet- 
 ical indiscretions of the saintly Dean of St. Paul's, perpetrated 
 thirty-five years before, shall be linked to all eternity to the 
 clever imitations of a school-boy fifty years his junior. But 
 let us turn from the discouraging negative function of crit- 
 icism, the detection of error, to its positive mission, the affir- 
 mation — if we may be so fortunate as to find it — of truth. 
 
 The salient qualities of the poetry of Donne are, fore- 
 most, a contempt for mere form, shown in his disregard of 
 the graces of diction as such^ alliteration, choice of words 
 for sound or smoothness, and pther like tricks of the traded 
 Neither harshness of sound nor violence to meter deter him; 
 and he repeats and uses the plain word where necessary to 
 the force and rhetoric of the thought. 
 
366 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 Some man unworthy to be possessor 
 
 Of old or new love, himself being false or weak 
 Thought his pain and shame would be the lesser, 
 If on womankind he might his anger wreak. 
 And thence the law did grow, 
 One might but one man know; 
 But are other creatures so ? 
 
 It was with reference to such a line as the fourth that Jonson 
 observed to Drummond that Donne "deserved hanging for 
 not keeping accent. " And yet there will be found a rhetorical 
 value in even the roughness of Donne. His stanzas are often 
 elaborate and always original, they are fitting to the subject 
 in hand. Moreover, the roughness of Donne has been exag- 
 gerated. Secondly, Donne's contempt of form carried with 
 it an absolute discarding of the poetical apparatus of the 
 past. The gods of Greece and Rome dwell not with him, 
 and though abundantly learned he scorns allusion or imitation, 
 representing in this the very antithesis of Jonson. Donne's 
 illustrations are powerful for their homeliness, vividness, and 
 Originality. He bids a lover ride "till age snow white hairs 
 on thee." He craves "to talk with some old lover's ghost 
 that died before the god of love was born"; Christ is addressed 
 as the "strong ram that batterest heaven for me." Once 
 more, Donne is not a nature poet,^ his work discloses no love 
 of animals or of flowers. The forms of this world were nothing 
 to him; he neither painted nature nor sought nature for his 
 model. There is, for example, a strange absence of the sense 
 of color in the poetry of Donne. When he uses color words 
 at all, they are crude and perfunctory. On the other hand 
 the abstractions of light and darkness are always before him. 
 The relations of men to each other were likewise matters sealed. 
 There is a completer absence of dramatic instinct in Donne 
 than in any poet of his age, The concrete was nothing to 
 him except as illustrative of the abstract. The reason for 
 this, as for his want of an appreciation of nature, is to be found 
 in the intense subjectivity of his poetry. It is related of him 
 that he never saw, much less knew personally, the young 
 maiden, Elizabeth Drury, whose untimely death he has immor- 
 
"THE ANATOMY OF THE WORLD" 367 
 
 talized in that strange and fascinating poem, "The Anatomy 
 of the World," To him she is a beautiful abstraction, the 
 symbol of all that is spiritual, divine, and permanent in this 
 passing world. The symbol is not the real thing; the real 
 is here the ideal. We must cross into the kindred sphere 
 of speculative thought for the glow, the white passion, the 
 power and subtlety of this remarkable work; and yet it remains 
 poetry, for, however speculative its thought and eloquently 
 rhetorical the expression, its real traffic is with the divine 
 illusions and phantasmagoria of this world. The person- 
 ality of Donne is ever present in his works; but it is not his 
 bodily self but the spiritual part of him in these poems, sub- 
 limed, if it may be so put, into a universal meaning. Donne 
 is himself the spiritual microcosm of the world. With him 
 the one is all; and hence to such a man the body is but a veil 
 for the soul. He speaks of the body of Elizabeth Drury as 
 
 so pure and thin 
 Because it need disguise no thought within, 
 'T was but a through-light scarf her mind to enrol 
 Or exhalation breathed out of her soul. 
 
 So that 
 
 We understand her sight; her pure and eloquent blood 
 Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought 
 That one might almost say her body thought. 
 
 To Donne the soul alone is worthy of contemplation whose 
 inner harmony is broken by too close a contact with the objec- 
 tive world. What seems a confusion of visual ideas really 
 has this inner contemplative harmony to one to whom time 
 and space are naught. By a natural step Donne "entertains 
 a universal, almost Pantheistic faith in the unity and totality 
 of his soul with all souls. " In Donne will be found a roman- 
 ticism of soul. His lyrics and satires are to be regarded as 
 his struggle with sense. The sonnets, epistles, and "Anatomy 
 of the World," these are the real Donne, though not alone 
 the most poetical of his work. 
 
 Returning, Donne's originality shows itself in his themes 
 which are of life, death, everything, and all; whatever he 
 
368 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 touches he treats as an abstraction. Take for example such 
 lines as these, apostrophizing "Strong and long lived Death": 
 
 The earth's face is but thy table; there are set 
 Plants, cattle, men, dished for Death to eat. 
 
 Nor will this earth serve him; he sinks the deep 
 Where harmless fish monastic silence keep, 
 Who (were Death dead) the roes of living sand 
 Might sponge that element, and make it land. 
 He rounds the air, and breaks the hymnic notes 
 In birds'. Heaven's choristers', organic throats. 
 Which, if they did not die, might seem to be 
 A tenth rank in the heavenly hierarchy. 
 
 His originality is likewise in his style, which in addition to the 
 negative qualities already noted displays a totally new range 
 / of imagery derived from science, medicine, law, mathematics, 
 astronomy, alchemy, and the chemistry of the day. Not 
 "learned eccentric" as some one described the vocabulary 
 of Robert Browning at times, nor crammed for the nonce as 
 in Jonson's Alchemist, but the natural utterance of a mind 
 accustomed to think in technical terms. In Donne's vocab- 
 ulary there are many peculiar words, not technicalities, and 
 many words repeatedly used with a kind of fondness. His 
 must have been one of those minds that form strong associa- 
 tions about certain symbols, and use words with a deeper 
 significance than can ever reach him who runs as he reads. 
 When all has been said, there remains however that quality 
 ^ ^ by which Donne is chiefly known, namely, his use of conceit. 
 Of the conceit, its origin among the imitators of Petrarch, and 
 of Sidney's position as the popularizer of extravagant met- 
 aphors among the lyrists, we have already heard in this book. 
 That the conceit originated with Donne is no longer main- 
 tained by those who have knowledge on the subject; but it 
 is still held by some that Donne is responsible for its 
 prevalence in Jacobean poetry: a position equally untenable. 
 The mistake in this whole matter is the general confusion of 
 Donne with the "concettists " who preceded him, and who, 
 affected more or less by him, followed him. What may be 
 
THE DONNIAN CONCEIT 369 
 
 true of English concettists in general may not be true of Donne 
 in particular and vice versa. The confusion of Donne with 
 Gongora is as bad as the confusion of Donne with Lyly. That 
 Donne is a concettist is unquestionable. He often employs 
 a tjiought which is far-fetched and ingenious rather than of 
 natural and obvious meaning. Moreover, it is true of the 
 Donnian conceit (in contrast with the hyperbolical conceit of 
 Sidney, the ingenuities of Cowley, and the antithetical wit 
 of the next, the "classical", age), that the twist with Donne, 
 if it may be so called, is in the thought rather than in the 
 words. Let us take a typical passage of Donne from a poem 
 entitled "The Ecstasy." The theme is of the spiritual nature 
 of the ecstasy of love : 
 
 When love with one another so 
 
 Interanimates two souls, 
 That abler soul, which thence doth flow, ' 
 
 Defects of loneliness controls. 
 We then, who are this new soul, know 
 
 Of what we are composed and made: 
 ■ For th' atomies, of which we grow, 
 
 Are soul, whom no change can invade. 
 But O, alas! so long, so far 
 
 Our bodies why do we forbear ? 
 They are ours, though not we; we are 
 
 The intelligences, they the spheres; 
 We owe them thanks, because they thus 
 
 Did us to us at first convey. 
 Yielded their senses' force to us. 
 
 Nor are dross to us but allay. 
 On man heaven's influence works not so, 
 
 But that it first imprints the air; 
 For soul into the soul may flow 
 
 Though it to body first repair. 
 
 This passage is subtle, as is the whole poem, almost dia- 
 lectic. A keen, sinuous, reasoning mind is playing with its 
 powers. Except for the implied personification of the body 
 regarded apart from the soul, the language is free from figure; 
 there is no confusion of thought. The new soul, the able 
 soul, is that which, uniting the strength in the soul of each 
 
370 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 lover, "controls" loneliness in that union. This new soul 
 is indestructible, because composed of the atomies (atoms 
 we should say) which, being indivisible and the primal mate- 
 rial of all things, are incapable of destruction. There is the 
 distinctively Donnian employment of ideas derived from phys- 
 ical and speculative science: the "atomies" with their indiv- 
 isibility, a term of the physics of the day; the body is the 
 "sphere" or superficies which includes within it the soul, a 
 term of the old astro-philosophy; the body is not "dross" but 
 an "allay," alchemical terms; the "influence" of heaven is the 
 use of that word in an astrological sense, meaning "the radia- 
 tion of power from the stars in certain positions or collocations 
 affecting human actions and destinies;" and lastly, the phrase 
 "imprints the air" involves an idea of the old philosophy, 
 by which "sensuous perception is explained by effluxes of 
 atoms from the things perceived whereby images are produced 
 ('imprinted') which strike our senses." Donne subtly 
 transfers this purely physical conception to the transference 
 of divine influence. How different all this is to the earlier 
 hyperboles of the Sidneian school, the rhapsodical extravagance 
 of Crashaw, or the persistently clever ingenuity of Cowley, 
 need be pointed out only to be understood. In Donne, even 
 where the conceit in all its ingenuity does exist, it is again 
 and again raised out of its class by a certain fervor, sincerity^ 
 and applicability that not only condones its^ jextravagance 
 but justifies it. Such is the famous image of the compass, 
 best known of the Donnian conceits, yet none the less worthy 
 of quotation once more. It occurs in a poem entitled "A 
 Valediction Forbidding Mourning," written to his beloved 
 wife, and runs thus : 
 
 Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
 
 Though I must go, endure not yet * 
 
 A breach, but an expansion, 
 Like gold to airy thinness beat. 
 
 If they be two, they are two so 
 
 As stiff twin compasses are two; 
 Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
 
 To move, but doth, if th' other do. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF DONNE 371 
 
 And though it in the center sit, 
 
 Yet, when the other far doth roam, 
 It leans, and hearkens after it, 
 
 And grows erect, as that comes home. 
 
 Such wilt thou be to me, who must. 
 
 Like th' other foot, obliquely run; 
 Thy firmness makes my circle just. 
 
 And makes me end where I begun. 
 
 A letter remains extant bearing date December, 16 14, 
 addressed by Donne to his friend Sir Henry Goodere in which 
 he writes : 
 
 One thing now I must tell you; but so softly that I am loth to 
 hear myself, and so softly that if that good lady (Lady Bedford) 
 were in the room with you and this letter, she might not hear. It is 
 that I am brought to a necessity of printing my poems, and address- 
 ing them to my Lord Chamberlain. This I mean to do forthwith; not 
 for much public view, but at mine own cost, a few copies. . . . I must 
 do this as a valediction to the world before I take orders . . . 
 and I would be just to my written words to Lord Harington to write 
 nothing after that. 
 
 This edition, if ever actually printed, has perished; and, save 
 for this mention, there is no word of it. We may believe that 
 Donne bade a final farewell to his Muse two years before the 
 death of Shakespeare. Even the divine poems, which include 
 a few sonnets, hymns, transcriptions of the psalms, and the 
 like, were doubtless all of them written before his ordination. 
 Of the influence of Donne on what came after little need 
 be said here. The poets that survived Shakespeare to write 
 into the reign of King Charles — to name only the most im- 
 portant — were Jonson, Drayton, Chapman, Browne, and 
 the Fletchers. Of these, the last three were wholly Spense- 
 rians, and Drayton remained to the end at least half such. 
 Chapman went his ample, fantastic way and, so far as we can 
 make out, wrote less and less after the completion of his 
 translation of the Odessey^ published in the year of Shake- 
 speare's death. But Jonson rated Donne at his due and a 
 friendship honorable to both subsisted between them, Donne 
 
372 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 penning more than one poetical epistle to Jonson. To Donne, 
 on the other hand, Jonson sent his Epigrams with verses 
 declaring, 
 
 If I find but one 
 
 Marked by thy hand, and with the better stone, 
 
 My title's sealed. 
 
 In another epigram Jonson trumpeted his opinion of his 
 friend in lines beginning: 
 
 Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each Muse, 
 
 Who to thy one, all other brains refuse; 
 
 Whose every work, of thy most early wit. 
 
 Came forth example and remains so ytt. 
 
 Jonson even paid the tribute of imitating what he conceived 
 to be the Donnian conceit in a little poem sent to Drummond 
 on "a Lover's Dust, Made Sand for an Hour-glass." But 
 the great dramatic satirist was much too self-centered and 
 independent to be affected by Donne or any one else, when 
 he had once laid his certain course, by theoretical compass 
 and classical chart, to the port of poetical celebrity. Among 
 the more important younger lyrists Drummond published the 
 first part of his Poems in i6i6, having previously appeared 
 first in print three years earlier in Tears on the Death of Moel- 
 iades, a pastoral name for Prince Henry. Thomas Carew 
 was but twenty in 1616; but Robert Herrick and George Her- 
 bert were both Carew's seniors, the one by five years, the 
 latter by three. Both must have begun to write poetry by 
 this time; but Herrick is the truest of the lyrical "sons of Ben" 
 and bettered his father's hard if noble favor with a beauty 
 all his own. Herbert remains the most certain of the succes- 
 sors of Donne to be affected immediately by his influences 
 in poetry; and Herbert, in his youth, as we have seen, was 
 personally intimate with Donne. A recent editor claims for 
 Herbert that "he devised the religious love-lyric and he intro- 
 duced structure into the short poem. "^ With the long line 
 of lyrists before us and the wealth of their stanzaic variety 
 and invention, this last is obviously too large a claim, but in 
 ^G. H. Palmer, The Life and Works of George Herbert, i, 57. 
 
DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN 373 
 
 view of the inventiveness of Donne as to stanza and the intensity 
 of the passion of his secular love-songs, it may well be sur- 
 mised that the poetry of Donne was George Herbert's imme- 
 diate poetical inspiration and model. To Herbert, even more 
 certainly, Donne transmitted his own peculiar use of the 
 conceit, though Herbert is often quaintly ingenious where 
 Donne flashes unexpected illumination by the original bias 
 of his mind. 
 
 William Drummond, known as Drummond of Hawthorn- 
 den from his estate near Edinburgh, was born in 1585, the 
 son of John Drummond, gentleman-usher to James before 
 he became King of England and knighted by that monarch 
 in 1603. The poet Drummond was educated at the University 
 of Edinburgh and in France, and joined his father at the 
 London court of the new Scottish king at the most impression- 
 able time of a young man's life. In several extant letters 
 which Drummond wrote home to friends in Scotland about this 
 time, he shows his interest and pleasure in the pageantry 
 and ceremonial of the court. But a list of his reading, also 
 extant, discloses him likewise busily engaged with poetry 
 and romance. His countryman Alexander's Aurora, Euphues^ 
 the Arcadia, and the Diana of Montemayor; Love's Labor' s 
 Lost, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Lucrece 
 and The Passionate Pilgrim were among the books read by 
 this Scottish youth in 1606; and later we hear of many French 
 and Italian writers : of Daniel, and Davison's Poetical Rhap- 
 sody and (most significant) the Arcadia, read a second time. 
 In 16 10, on the death of his father, Drummond gave up defi- 
 nitely his intent to follow the law and retired to his beauti- 
 ful estate of Hawthornden to devote himself to poetry and 
 scholarly leisure. It was there that he planned to lead the 
 lady, who had inspired much of his sincere and beautiful 
 poetry and whose memory, on her untimely death in 1615, 
 before their marriage, he cherished for so many years. It 
 was at Hawthornden, four years later, that Drummond enter- 
 tained Ben Jonson on that worthy's pilgrimage afoot to 
 Edinburgh; and doubtless Drummond's influence and appre- 
 ciation of Jonson's poetry and reputation at the English court 
 
374 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 procured for the English laureate the freedom of the city and 
 other attentions which the citizens of Edinburgh accorded 
 him. 
 
 The poetry of Drummond that made his repute is comprised 
 in the little quarto of 1616. It consists of songs and sonnets, 
 addressed for the most part to the lady to whom he was be- 
 trothed; of a collection of madrigals and epigrams, doubtless 
 the earliest of his poetizing; and of a series of "spiritual 
 poems," as the phrase went, entitled Urania, almost certainly 
 the most recently written. Drummond's pattern and example 
 is Sir Philip Sidney and his inspiration, Petrarch. To quote 
 from a fragment printed with the Poems and called A Char- 
 acter of Several Authors: "Among our English poets Petrarch 
 is imitated, nay surpassed in some things in matter and man- 
 ner: in matter none approach him to Sidney." Later he 
 continues: "Donne, among the Anacreontic lyrics, is second 
 to none, and far from all second. ... I think, if he 
 would, he might easily be the best epigrammatist we have 
 found in English. " With the mention of Alexander, who is 
 praised in this passage as only one Scotchman can praise 
 another, we complete the list of the chief poetical influences on 
 Drummond. But inspired by the work of other men though 
 he was, this new poet of the last days of Shakespeare was far 
 from devoid of a sweetness and gentle originality all his own. 
 This sonnet, while perhaps not among the very best of Drum- 
 mond, strikes the note of sincerity that marks all his threnodies 
 for his lost Aurastella, as he somewhere calls her: 
 
 As, in a dusky and tempestuous night, 
 
 A star is wont to spread her locks of gold, 
 
 And while her pleasant rays abroad are roU'd, 
 
 Some spiteful cloud doth rob us of her sight; 
 
 Fair soul in this black age so shin'd thou bright, 
 
 And made all eyes with wonder thee behold. 
 
 Till ugly Death, depriving us of light, 
 
 In his grim misty arms thee did enfold. 
 
 Who more shall vaunt true beauty here to see ? 
 
 What hope doth more in any heart remain, 
 
 That such perfections shall his reason rein. 
 
DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN • 375 
 
 If beauty, with thee born, too died with thee ? 
 World, plain no more of Love, nor count his harms; 
 With his pale trophies Death hath hung his arms. 
 
 A greater originality characterizes this serious little poem, 
 which the author denominates a madrigal: 
 
 This life, which seems so fair. 
 
 Is like a bubble blown up in the air 
 
 By sporting children's breath, 
 
 Who chase it everywhere, 
 
 And strive who can most motion it bequeath: 
 
 And though it sometime seem of its own might. 
 
 Like to an eye of gold, to be fix'd there. 
 
 And firm to hover in that empty height, 
 
 That only is because it is so light. 
 
 But in that pomp it doth not long appear; 
 
 For even when most admir'd, it in a thought, 
 
 As swell'd from nothing, doth dissolve in nought. 
 
 Drummond is not usually as free of conceit as these two 
 quotations would seem to indicate; and his conceits, where 
 he yields to hyperbole, are those of Petrarch, or rather Sid- 
 ney, never those of Donne. Drummond loved the sonorous 
 proper names of classical mythology as deeply as did Milton 
 after him; and he delighted, like Milton again, in the recondite 
 allusions involving them. Thus Pythagoras is the Samian; 
 Boreas is Orithyia's lover; Venus, the Idalian star or the fair 
 Erycine. Achelous' horn stands for a cornucopia; nightin- 
 gales are "Pandionian birds," and birds in general, "Am- 
 phions of the trees. " Equally dear to Drummond are unusual 
 poetical words: brandon, cynoper, ramage, decore, panisks; 
 and his originality is less in new figures than in a loving shaping 
 of old material into a something different, yet reminiscent, 
 like a faded fragrance, of some fair thing that we have known 
 before. Drummond welcomed King James to Scotland, in 
 161 7, in a panegyric of much poetic value called The River 
 Forth Feasting. This act of the courtier he repeated with 
 failing power, save for its adulation, in the Entertainment of 
 Charles when that monarch, too, visited Scotland in 1633. 
 In the year of the Shakespeare folio, 1623, Drummond pub- 
 
376 DONNE AND THE LYRICAL POETS 
 
 lished a book of devotional poetry of great beauty, entitled 
 Flowers of Sion, in which he displays, as in his prose essay, 
 J Cypress Grove (a treatise upon death, published in the 
 same volume), a singularly Platonic type of Christian phil- 
 osophy. Drummond's later life shows him interested in 
 theoretical mechanics and seeking patents for the invention of 
 various contrivances, chiefly warlike instruments. He was 
 a giver of books to his university, Edinburgh, and was drawn 
 into the vortex of the unhappy political controversies of the 
 day towards the end of his life. He died in 1649. 
 
 To return in conclusion to Donne, it is somewhat discon- 
 certing to find an author whom, not unlike to Walter Savage 
 Landor in our own late century, the critics can not glibly 
 classify as the founder of a school or the product of a perfectly 
 obvious series of literary influences. Donne is a poet of this 
 difficult type. For, just as Shakespeare touched life and man- 
 kind at all points, and, absorbing the light of his time, gave 
 it forth a hundred-fold, so Donne, withdrawn almost entirely 
 from the influences affecting his contemporaries, shone and 
 glowed with a strange light all his own. Orthodoxy — or 
 rather a restoration to orthodoxy — as to John Donne de- 
 mands that we recognize him in his poetry as an Elizabethan, 
 as strictly such as Shakespeare, far more so than Jonson; 
 that while we grant Donne to be a concettist he was such from 
 the originality and natural bias of his mind, not from affected 
 singularity or a striving after effect; that his strange and 
 fascinating poetry, so caviare to the general, yields a true and 
 rich reward to him who will seek with labor and true faith; 
 and, lastly, that Donne, next to Spenser and Jonson, exercised 
 the most potent influence of his time on English poetry. 
 Donne's highest contribution to literature, like Shakespeare's 
 in a very different way, depends on that deeper element of 
 modern poetry which we call poetic insight, a power in his 
 case which, proceeding by means of the clash of ideas familiar 
 with ideas remote, flashes light and meaning into what has 
 hitherto appeared mere commonplace. No one, in short, 
 excepting Shakespeare, with Sidney, Greville, and Jonson in 
 lesser degree, has done so much to develop intellectualized 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF DONNE 377 
 
 emotion in the Elizabethan lyric as Donne. In comparison 
 with all this the notions about a "metaphysical school," even 
 a "rhetorical school of poetry" and the fiction of a fantastical 
 prince of concettists, leading a generation of poetlings deliber- 
 ately astray, become vagaries of criticism comparatively 
 unimportant. Donne deserves the verdict of his friend, Ben 
 Jonson, who called him "the first poet in the world in some 
 things. " But Donne is the last poet to demand a proselyting 
 zeal of his devotees, and all those who have learned to love 
 his witching personality will agree to the charming sentiment 
 of his faithful adorer, Izaak Walton, when he says: "Though 
 I must omit to mention divers persons, . . . friends 
 of Sir Henry Wotton; yet I must not omit to mention of a 
 love that was there begun betwixt him and Dr. Donne, some- 
 time Dean of Saint Paul's; a man of whose abilities I shall 
 forbear to say anything, because he who is of this nation, and 
 pretends to learning or ingenuity, and is ignorant of Dr, 
 Donne, deserves not to know him. " 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 DRAMA AT THE UNIVERSITIES, THE PASTORAL 
 DRAMA AND THE MASQUE 
 
 FROM Chaucer's time to Spenser's, English poetry owed 
 most to the court. This we have seen in various lyri- 
 cal forms, in fiction, and in the pastoral, to name no more. 
 The old sacred drama had in it much of the folk; but when 
 modern drama arose to succeed it, the first influences were 
 those that belonged specifically to the society that surrounded 
 the sovereign; and however soon these were rivaled and sur- 
 passed by the larger utterances of the popular drama they 
 continued to develop in their own way, and what is more, to 
 exert a decided influence on the popular drama besides. Thus 
 Lyly was tutor to the young Shakespeare in comedy; Peele 
 transferred his talents from the college and the court to the 
 boards of the London playhouses; and Kyd, a satellite revolv- 
 ing in an outer orbit of the charmed Sidneian circle, fur- 
 nished popularized Senecan tragedy to the same stage. It is 
 the business of this chapter to trace the drama as it flourished at 
 court after the time of Lyly, and to treat, in connection with 
 this, the academic drama which in nature is of close kindred. 
 Scarcely anything secularly dramatic in England is as old 
 as the practice of the performance of Latin plays at schools 
 and colleges. It was out of this custom that such a play as 
 Ralph Roister Doister came to be written and perhaps Gammer 
 Gurton as well; for the substitution of an original play, Latin 
 or English, was an obvious enough departure from the older 
 acting of a comedy of Terence or Plautus. These perform- 
 ances were early used to celebrate important occasions and 
 came to be a recognized feature of royal progresses and enter- 
 tainments of other important personages. Thus in the year 
 of Shakespeare's birth, when Elizabeth visited Cambridge, 
 she was regaled not only with "scholastical exercises in phil- 
 
 378 
 
ELIZABETHAN COLLEGE PLAYS 379 
 
 osophy, physics, and divinity," but with comedies and trage- 
 dies at night "set forth partly by the whole university and 
 partly by the students of King's College. " Similar festivities 
 attended the queen's visit to Oxford, two years later, and 
 many a forgotten name, such as Preston, Edwards, Gager, 
 and Legge, has been preserved in the complaisant accounts 
 of these old theatrical revels. Among men to become known 
 to the stage, Peele began his career, as we have seen, in college 
 plays at Oxford; and Nash narrowly escaped expulsion from 
 Cambridge for a libelous Latin comedy. A satirical quality 
 is almost invariably characteristic of the college play. The 
 satire is for the most part dependent on the close and intimate 
 relations of college life and it assumed familiarity, as it had 
 a right to do, with the classical education in vogue at the time 
 and smacks, at times to excess, of the school and the commons. 
 A famous play, Pedantius, of Cambridge in the early eighties, 
 obtrudes an absurd Ciceronian (by some believed a take-off 
 on Gabriel Harvey) into the midst of a comedy of Plautine 
 intrigue; and Bellum Grammaticale, a contemporary piece at 
 Oxford, elaborates after a medieval model an ingenious alle- 
 gory of the parts of speech. At other times the immemorial 
 feud between town and gown becomes the subject of dramatic 
 treatment as in the now lost Cluh Law, at Cambridge, in which 
 certain townsmen were forcibly compelled to view themselves 
 outrageously lampooned in their own costumes, which had 
 been previously borrowed by the mischievous collegians with 
 that nefarious end in view. 
 
 Among strictly Elizabethan academic plays none are more 
 prominent or interesting than the trilogy known as "the 
 Parnassus plays, " the work of an unknown author and acted 
 at St. John's College, Oxford, in the interval covered by the 
 years 1598 to 1602. The first of these is entitled The Pil- 
 grimage to Parnassus. It details the career of a couple of 
 youths in their journey, by way of the well-known trivium, 
 through "the island of logique, " "the pleasant groves of 
 rhetorique," and the harsher climate of philosophy, until 
 they reach "the laurel shady grove" upon Parnassus' top. 
 They are not without adventures by the way with the tavern- 
 
38o DRAMA AT THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 er, the Puritan, and other typical personages of college life. 
 This production is not much more than an interlude in length. 
 But it was received so well that in a second part, The Return 
 from Parnassus, the author undertook a far more elaborate 
 presentation of "the progress of learning towards a settlement 
 in life" in which he represents the same heroes, seeking pre- 
 ferment and rebuffed and abused on every hand. In. a final 
 play, the second part of The Return from Parnassus, the 
 theme is still further amplified, and abuses of bribery and 
 favoritism in the presentations of church livings are held up 
 to the light. The disheartening moral is that there is no place 
 for merit and learning in this world, unless both be supported 
 by station, wealth, or at least by sycophancy. Incidentally 
 these comedies exhibit several typical figures cleverly satirized, 
 such as GuUio, the fool of fashion and patron of the poets, 
 whose cheerful and impudent appropriation of the verses of 
 other men's making, especially Shakespeare's, attests both 
 the great poet's repute and the attitude of the superior young 
 collegians towards his poetry. Gullio is exhibiting to Ingen- 
 ioso his "vein in courting": 
 
 Gullio. Pardon, fair lady, though sick-thoughted Gullio makes 
 amain unto thee, and like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo thee. 
 
 Ingenioso {aside). We shall have nothing but pure Shakespeare 
 and shreds of poetry that he hath gathered at the theaters. 
 
 Gull. Pardon me, moi mittressa, ast am a gentleman, the moon 
 in comparison with thy bright hue a mere slut, Antony's Cleopatra 
 a black-browed milk-maid, Helen a dowdy. 
 
 Ingen. {aside), Mark, Romeo and Juliet! O monstrous theft! 
 I think he will run through a whole book of Samuel Daniel's. 
 
 Gull. Thrice fairer than myself — thus I began — 
 The god's fair riches, sweet above compare. 
 Stain to all nymphs^ more lovely than a man. 
 More white and red than doves and roses are! 
 Nature that made thee with herself had strife, 
 Saith that the world hath ending with they life. 
 
 Ingen. Sweet Master Shakespeare! 
 
 Gull. As I am a scholar. 
 These arms of mine are long and strong withal, 
 Thus elms by vines are compassed ere they fall. 
 
THE PARNASSUS TRILOGY 381 
 
 Ingen. Faith, gentleman, your reading is wonderful in our 
 English poets! 
 
 Gull. Sweet mistress, I vouchsafe to take some of their words 
 and apply them to mine own matters by scholastical invention. 
 Report then upon thy credit; is not my vein in courting gallant and 
 honorable ? 
 
 It may be surmised from the allusions of these plays that 
 these "young sprouts of Apollo" regarded Venus and Adonis 
 as the work on which chiefly rested the contemporary fame of 
 Shakespeare. It was Ovidian in subject and manner, and 
 it, like Lucrece, had been published by the regular channels 
 and becomingly dedicated to lordship. Of the dramas, they 
 were not quite so sure. The popular actors, Burbage and 
 Kemp, are represented among the characters in the last of 
 these plays, and doubtless their appearance and their manner- 
 isms of speech and action were divertingly mimicked then as 
 our popular actors are at times mimicked by the collegians 
 of to-day. But though the world was ringing with the tri- 
 umphs of Shakespeare and Jonson, the acknowledgment 
 of their superiority is put into the ignorant mouth of 
 Kemp, the morris-dancer, in the certainly satirical words: 
 "Few of the university pen plays well; they smell too much 
 of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and 
 talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here 's 
 our Shakespeare puts them all down, aye, and Ben Jonson, 
 too. " 
 
 Few things are more persistent in the strictly academic 
 plays than their employment of allegory. The minuteness 
 of the parallels in the old Bellum Grammaticale would do 
 credit to Priscian or William Lilly; and even more elaborate 
 are the allegorical details o^ Lingua, a fluently written comedy 
 by one Tomkins of Trinity College, Cambridge, often acted 
 and in print by the year 1607. Therein the tongue is appro- 
 priately conceived as a feminine personage possessed of the 
 aggressiveness and activity of a modern "suff'ragette," who 
 demands, for herself, full recognition as one of the senses. 
 In an extraordinary number of scenes and with an aston- 
 ishing number of characters, this struggle for recognition is 
 
382 DRAMA AT THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 detailed to the end which we regret to say was Lingua's dis- 
 comfiture. The age of James was not the twentieth century. 
 Lingua is an ably written drama and full of ingenious wit. 
 It may be recommended to the reader who would learn how 
 sumptuously and with what variety the personages of a pri- 
 vate play were costumed in these old times. This drama of 
 Lingua was acted at the house of an uncle of Oliver Crom- 
 well, in 1603, to welcome King James on his progress up to 
 London. And an absurd story, of later cavalier invention, 
 makes Oliver himself the actor who impersonated the char- 
 acter, Tactus; and, learning in the play what it was to wear a 
 crown, he bent all his energies thereafter to acquire one. 
 Oliver was four years old in 1603. 
 
 But we may feel sure that, except on grand occasions 
 when the colleges were visited by royalty, the academ.ic play 
 was a much simpler affair. A pleasing little burlesque, 
 called Narcissus, served to enliven the Christmas festivities 
 at St. John's College,Oxford, in 1602. In its persons, dialogue, 
 and setting especially, we meet with as frank a satire on con- 
 temporary amateur theatricals as is Shakespeare's represen- 
 tation of Bottom and his "base mechanicals" of The Mid- 
 summer-Night's Dream. So, too, the several plays of 1607 
 at the same college, when Oxford seems for the nonce to have 
 gone theatrically mad, were performed apparently on a stage 
 erected in the refectory by pushing the tables together; and 
 the properties were the fewest. An interesting contemporary 
 account of these festivities informs us of the whole manner of 
 their proceedings: how the collegians selected a Christmas 
 prince who was installed with egregious solemnity and an 
 appropriate Latin play; how tragedies in Latin and comedies 
 for the younger sort in English were devised, rehearsed, and 
 acted; and of their troubles in rehearsal, the accidents and 
 triumphs of performances, and many like matters. Few of 
 these lighter amateur productions are possessed of any lit- 
 erary, much less poetic, merit. The one dramatist whose 
 work was strictly academic, to rise to literary distinction, was 
 Thomas Randolph, and he belongs to the reign of King 
 Charles. But these academic productions of the time of 
 
LATIN AND ENGLISH TRAGEDY 383 
 
 Elizabeth and James are neither without their value nor with- 
 out a deeper interest for their relations, though often remote, 
 to their sister plays on the popular stage. 
 
 Concomitantly with satiric farce and allegory, Latin 
 tragedy, with its imitation in English, continued to flourish 
 at both the universities. In subject-matter these plays were 
 preferably taken from classical history or myth. Two of 
 the most famous Latin tragedies in their day were Roxana, 
 1592, the work of William Alabaster, praised for his poetry 
 by Spenser, and Nero by Dr. Matthew Gwinne, printed in 
 1603. This latter tragedy, which is closely written and of 
 great length, is rigorously grounded on the recognized classical 
 authorities for the history of that degenerate Roman emperor, 
 and owes its existence as completely as Jonson's Sejanus to 
 Tacitus and Suetonius. Alabaster's Roxana, on the other hand, 
 has recently been discovered to be little more than a translation 
 of one of the dramas of the Italian, Luigi Groto. But Italian 
 sources such as these were more frequently employed by the 
 collegians for comedy and a long list of plays — few of them 
 rising above mediocrity — can be made out for both colleges, 
 levying on what may be called Plautus Italianized. Such a 
 play, to name only one, is LcbUo, 1590, a translation of Gl'In- 
 gannati of Giovanni della Porta and a suggested source of 
 Shakespeare's Twelfth Night; another translation from the 
 same Italian dramatist is Tomkins' Alhumazor, 1615, which 
 Dryden mixed up for want of information as to its source with 
 Jonson's Alchemist; a third is the celebrated Ignoramus, by far 
 the most popular of all the academic comedies of its time. 
 Ignoramus is the work of George Ruggle. The plot, which 
 is far from wanting either in cleverness or wit, revolves about 
 the character who supplies the title and whose coarse scheming, 
 blundering, and jargon of dog Latin, bad English, and law 
 French proclaim him the very embodiment of blatant, militant 
 Philistinism. Ignoramus was acted for the first time at Cam- 
 bridge before James in 16 15 with a cast chosen, so Oxford 
 hinted, with at least as much care to the social relations of 
 the actors as to their histrionic abilities; and its success with 
 King James (who journeyed up to Cambridge a second time 
 
384 THE PASTORAL DRAMA 
 
 to see the comedy repeated) was, we fear, as much due to its 
 broad obscenities as to any designed encouragement of learn- 
 ing and the arts that governed the purposes of that learned 
 monarch. 
 
 Further into the strictly academic drama our present 
 design does not lead us. In Gwinne's Nero, English-Latin 
 tragedy reached its height; Ignoramus was surpassed in wit 
 and in decency by many following plays. The restrictive 
 sphere of satire and allusion in such plays lent little to the 
 popular comedy of manners which had long since outstripped 
 it. The restrained and narrow rhetoric of Senecan tragedy 
 was equally a thing of the past on the stage of London. On 
 the other hand, plays at college were open from the first to 
 outside influences, more especially those of the court than to 
 those of the popular drama. Of the court influences on the 
 academic drama the most important by far was pastoral; 
 and we turn now to the consideration of pastoral drama during 
 the period of this book. 
 
 It will be recalled that in a previous chapter a succession 
 of literary fashions, so to speak, was noted as characteristic 
 of the latter half of Elizabeth's reign. There was the time of 
 the sonnet, for example, and that when lyrics were more 
 specifically written to be set to music. Preceding both of 
 these was the period of the pastoral, which tinged with its 
 artificial ideals and its preciosity nearly every form of current 
 literature. Thus the pastoral is rather a way of viewing nature 
 and reproducing it in art than, in any strict sense, a variety 
 of literature, much less a form of poetry. Quite enough has 
 been said of the origin of the pastoral in the chapter which 
 deals with its lyric form. In the pastoral, be it remembered 
 (lest we become critical where criticism is unfair), we leave 
 the actual world behind us to hark back to that golden age 
 so besung by the poets, to dwell in the land where all swains 
 are lovers and all nymphs are fair; where their work is the 
 knotting of rushes or the piping of melodies, their play, the 
 prettiest of innocent love-making — but who knows not 
 Arcadia, though his life may no more have compassed it than 
 
"THE SAD SHEPHERD" 385 
 
 his lips have tasted the springs of Helicon or his feet attempted 
 the steeps of Parnassus ? 
 
 In Italy the step from pastoral romance to pastoral drama 
 was soon taken by Tasso, whose Aminta, acted in 1573, was 
 translated by Englishmen in the eighties; twenty years later 
 came Guarini's // Pastor Fido. But well before either of 
 these famous regular pastoral dramas, English poets had 
 employed the pastoral notion in masque-like devices and enter- 
 tainments. Gascoigne used such figures among others in his 
 speeches to Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575, and Sidney 
 in his Lady of May, three years later, gives us a lively little 
 pastoral interlude. In Peele's court play, The Arraignment of 
 Paris, and equally in several of the dramas of Lyly, we have 
 a pastoral atmosphere breathed by the gods of Greece and 
 Rome, incongruous to none but a classical purist who has 
 forgotten intervening history. But in such a drama as Lyly's 
 Lovers Metamorphosis, the manners are pure Arcadia. The 
 pastoral as an element entered into English comedies in other 
 combinations. A "court element," as it has been called, 
 combines with the pastoral in certain well-known plays; such, 
 for example, as Mucedorus, an exceedingly popular little 
 comedy, attributed to Lodge. In the inferior Thracian Won- 
 der, much as in Sidney's Arcadia, the combination of the 
 pastoral is with the heroic. More interesting is the contrast 
 of ideas that arises from a combination of the conventions of 
 the Italian pastoral with the English ideal of free rural life, 
 embodied in the tales of the doings of Robin Hood. Such a 
 drama as this Ben Jonson had in mind in the fragment of 
 The Sad Shepherd, written we may feel certain, whatever the 
 date, at least after the regular English pastoral plays, of which 
 more shortly. Here a tale of Robin and his Maid Marian is 
 interwoven with one of iEglamour, Mellifleur,and Amie, names 
 redolent with the pastoral ideals; and huntsmen and shepherds 
 rub against Puck-Hairy and the Witch of Paplewick. The 
 robust English nature of Jonson could never have realized 
 the rococo landscape of Arcadia or the tinted shepherdesses 
 that dwell simperingly therein. In less striking contrast, 
 
386 THE PASTORAL DRAMA 
 
 these two elements appear once more in As Tou Like It. The 
 uhimate source of Shakespeare's plot, as is well known, is 
 the medieval Tale ofGamelyn, a plain English story of outlawry 
 and vengeance. Into it there enters no woman's figure; and, 
 in the end,the unjust eldest brother is slain and the two younger 
 divide the estate. Lodge translated the story from England 
 to the Arcadian forest of Ardenne, transformed "the maister 
 outlawe" to the banished King of France, turned Gamelyn 
 into the romantic lover, Rosader, and invented Rosalynd to 
 match him, conveying a group of shepherds and shepherdesses 
 into the forest for the human setting. Lodge's Rosalynd is 
 more truly pastoral than any play of Lyly. Shakespeare in 
 As Tou Like It restored the English setting and introduced 
 his veritable English country, folk, Audrey and William, beside 
 the pastoral figures of Silvius and Phoebe; using pastoral 
 love-making in the delicious wooing of Orlando and Rosalind 
 only for delightful burlesque. As Tou Like It is no true pas- 
 toral; and no more readily than Jonson, could the free romantic 
 spirit of Shakespeare be bound within the conventions of a 
 form of literature so exotic and conventional. 
 
 We reach now by process of elimination the slender pro- 
 ducts of the true pastoral drama in England. They consist 
 of scarcely more than a half-dozen English plays within the 
 lifetime of Shakespeare, only two of them, Daniel's Queen s 
 Arcadia and John Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, ranking 
 really high as poetry. Indeed, if we except The Sad Shepherd 
 of Jonson, we must look forward to the Amyntas of Randolph, 
 a product of the revival of pastoral drama in the reign of King 
 Charles, for a play to match these two in its kind. Of Samuel 
 Daniel and his work as one of the earliest of the sonneteers, 
 pastoralists, and writers of narrative poetry, we have heard 
 above. It was in 1605 that The Queen's Arcadia was acted 
 at Christ Church College, Oxford before Anne, the queen of 
 King James. Daniel, as we know, had visited Italy; and, 
 while there, had met Guarini, author of // Pastor Fido. This 
 famous pastoral drama is Daniel's direct inspiration, and the 
 English poet has preserved with a fidelity, complete but by 
 no means slavish, the atmosphere and general milieu of the 
 
"THE QUEEN'S ARCADIA" 387 
 
 pastoral. The story, which involves no very original intrigue, 
 sets forth the usual pastoral figures, illustrating love in its 
 various phases and relations. But Daniel introduces, not 
 without success, a corrupt returned traveler and "a subtle 
 wench of Corinth " who complicate the plot and offer a happy 
 foil, alike to the superlative virtue and the excessive gravity 
 of the pastoral folk. A fair specimen of Daniel's Arcadian 
 style may be caught from the following lament: 
 
 O Silvia, if thou needs wouldst have been gone. 
 
 Thou shouldst have taken all away of thee; 
 
 And nothing left to have remain'd with me. 
 
 Thou shouldst have carried hence the portraiture 
 
 Which thou hast left behind within my heart, 
 
 Set in the table-frame of memory. 
 
 That puts me still in mind of what thou wert, 
 
 Whilst thou wert honest, and thy thoughts were pure; 
 
 So that I might not thus in every place. 
 
 Where I shall set my careful foot, confer 
 
 With it of thee, and evermore be told. 
 
 That here she walked, and lean'd upon mine arm; 
 
 There gathered flowers, and brought them unto me; 
 
 Here by the murmurs of this rustling spring, 
 
 She sweetly lay, and in my bosom slept; 
 
 Here first she showed me comforts when I pined; 
 
 As if in every place her foot had stept, 
 
 It had left Silvia in a print behind. 
 
 As to the comedy of relief, it is in The Queen s 'Arcadia 
 that the well-known descant upon tobacco occurs, a passage 
 tuned to a nicety to the ear of the royal author of A Counter- 
 blast to Tobacco. After telling of the source of this "herb 
 wrapped up in rolls from the island of Nicosia" and describing 
 how 
 
 This in powder made, and fired, he sucks 
 Out of a little hollow instrument 
 Of calcinated clay, the smoke thereof: 
 Which either he conveys out of his nose. 
 Or down into his stomach with a whiff; 
 
388 THE PASTORAL DRAMA 
 
 he continues of the Arcadians, that in place of their former 
 pleasant festivals and meetings : 
 
 Now do they nothing else but sit and suck, 
 
 And spit and slaver all the time they sit, 
 
 That I go by and laugh unto myself, 
 
 That men of sense could ever be so mad 
 To suck so gross a vapor that consumes 
 Their spirits, spends nature, dries up memory, 
 Corrupts the blood, and is a vanity. 
 
 As yet there had been no attempt to popularize the true 
 pastoral drama, although several comedies since the time of 
 Lyly had disclosed pastoral elements, in addition to those 
 already mentioned, especially John Day's Isle of Gulls and 
 Humor out of Breath. The first is a sprightly little piece, 
 founded on an episode of Sidney's Arcadia, but converting 
 the heroic tone of the original into satire and raillery. Humor 
 out of Breath, w^hile containing several charming scenes of a 
 pastoral nature, is otherwise free from the conventions of the 
 type. These comedies belong respectively to 1605 and a 
 couple or more years after. It must have been about 1608 
 that Fletcher staged his poetic pastoral drama, The Faithful 
 Shepherdess. According to the author's own account the 
 play was a failure on the popular boards; and in a preface 
 *'To the Reader," when the drama came to print, Fletcher 
 justifies his scheme and makes it plain that he accepted the 
 pastoral conventions in their integrity. In the story the 
 faithful shepherdess is Clorin who, her lover having died, has 
 set up a bower near his grave wherein she lives the life of an 
 anchoress and practises simple arts of healing. She is assisted 
 in her work by a gentle satyr on whose original nature devotion 
 to this pure mistress has wrought a miracle. . . . Clorin 
 is sought in love by Thenot,. whom she gently but firmly 
 refuses, and at last repulses completely by a momentary pre- 
 tense of yielding; for it was Clorin's constancy, not Clorin, 
 that Thenot adored. Amoret, unkindly wounded by her 
 lover, Perigot, who, practised on, has thought her false, is 
 brought by the satyr to Clorin for cure; and so, too, is Alexis, 
 
"THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS" 389 
 
 justly wounded by a sullen shepherd on account of Cloe, 
 a light-o'-love. All these and other shepherds and shepherd- 
 esses are cured or reclaimed in the end by the holy anchoress, 
 who continues faithful to her dead love. Into the allegory 
 alleged by some to underlie this story it is unnecessary to 
 inquire. The lapses from decorum which stain this otherwise 
 beautiful poem are doubtless best explained by the method 
 of contrast which Fletcher invoked in his earlier plays with 
 Beaumont and carried at times to excess. In execution and 
 within the limits of its artificial kind, The Faithful Shepherdess 
 leaves little to criticism. It became, despite its first failure, 
 exceedingly popular on the stage and was admired by gen- 
 erations of poets. One need not turn far into its pages to 
 find how much even Milton owed to it. The octosyllables 
 given to the gentle-natured satyr are always particularly 
 musical. Thus he offers his forest treasures to Clorin his 
 benefactress: 
 
 Here be grapes, whose lusty blood 
 
 Is the learned poet's good. 
 
 Sweeter yet did never crown 
 
 The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown 
 
 Than the squirrel's teeth that crack them; 
 
 Deign, O fairest fair, to take them! 
 
 For these black-eyed Dryope 
 
 Hath oftentimes commanded me 
 
 With mv clasped knee to climb: 
 
 See how well the lusty time 
 
 Hath decked their rising cheeks in red, 
 
 Such as on your lips is spread! 
 
 Here be berries for a queen, 
 
 Some be red, some be green; 
 
 These are of that luscious meat. 
 
 The great god Pan himself doth eat: 
 
 All these, and what the woods can yield, 
 
 The hanging mountain or the field, 
 
 I freely offer, and ere long 
 
 Will bring you more, more sweet and strong. 
 
 In The Winter s Tale will be found some of the most 
 exquisite outdoor scenes in our drama. But they are pastoral 
 
390 THE PASTORAL DRAMA 
 
 only in the sense that they deal with shepherds and their life. 
 Greene's prose tale of Pandosto, the source, is more pastoral 
 than these scenes, and the atmosphere of the rest of the play 
 is that of the court. The same thing is true of the rare comedy 
 of Robert Daborne called The Poor Mans Comfort, 1613. 
 This pretty romantic play, which has been almost completely 
 forgotten, departs from one of the long accepted conventions 
 of romance to leave the heroine a shepherdess, and no princess, 
 even in the end. In 16 14 Daniel returned to the pastoral 
 drama with Hymen's Triumph, a shorter, maturer work 
 though scarcely equaling the more elaborately planned Queen s 
 Arcadia. Hymen s Triumph was acted before their majesties 
 on the occasion of a noble wedding. The demands of such 
 an event gave to Daniel's play much the sumptuousness in 
 performance of the masque. It is written throughout in that 
 admirable English diction that earned for the author in his 
 own day the sobriquet "well-languaged Daniel." The con- 
 tinued touch of the pastoral with the universities is shown in 
 a strange, but interesting and far from unpoetical, production 
 called Sicelides, the work of Phineas Fletcher, author of The 
 Purple Island, and intended for performance before the king 
 at Cambridge in 16 15. Sicelides is a piscatory comedy in 
 which fisher-folk take the place of the shepherds of the pastoral. 
 This was quite orthodox, at least on the example of the pis- 
 catory eclogue, a variety of the pastoral neither unknown to 
 Sannazaro nor to Theocritus himself. The pastoral drama 
 seems to have fallen into disfavor about this time. At least 
 there are few, even inferior, specimens until the revival of the 
 mode, some ten years later, in the reign of King Charles. 
 Jonson's admirable fragment of a pastoral play has already 
 been mentioned. The Sad Shepherd was never finished and 
 never staged. In it, as in so many of his works, Jonson ap- 
 pears to have come into direct rivalry with Daniel, who was 
 again and again the butt of Jonson's ridicule. It seems not 
 unreasonable to believe The Sad Shepherd a production of 
 about this period and that it was written to emulate the suc- 
 cess of Hymen's Triumph rather than long before or (what 
 is still more improbable) after all his immediate competitors 
 
THE MASQUE DEFINED 391 
 
 for the favor of the court had ceased to write dramas of this 
 kind. 
 
 Masking in the sense of revelry, taking more or less a 
 dramatic form, is as old in England as the drama itself. The 
 masque, as a specific variety of entertainment at court or 
 among the nobility, was a development of the latest years of 
 Elizabeth's reign and the time of James. Moreover, had it 
 not been for the peculiar talents of Ben Jonson and the con- 
 junction with him of Inigo Jones, the royal architect and 
 ingenious designer of scenery and stage devices, the history 
 of the English masque would have been far shorter and poorer. 
 In the restrictive sense of the word with which we are alone 
 concerned, a masque may be defined as a setting, lyric, scenic, 
 and dramatic, for a court ball. It is an entertainment into 
 which songs, dialogue, action, music, scenery, and costume all 
 enter; but the nucleus is always a dance. The precise lan- 
 guage of the day, for example, recognized in the "entertain- 
 ment" a similar amplification of the speech of welcome, and 
 in the word "barriers," a mock tournament, embellished 
 with dialogue and action. Moreover, an examination of the 
 works of the age will disclose an accurate use of these terms. 
 In the masque, from the first, a distinction was drawn between 
 "the masquers," as they were called, and the professional 
 assistants in music, dancing, and acting. The masquers ranged 
 from eight to sixteen, and were the titled people of the court. 
 They were handsomely attired and grouped in positions 
 heightened by scenic arrangement and mechanical contri- 
 vance; but little save the creation of an imposing show was 
 expected of them. As the masque developed, it was soon 
 found necessary to enlist the services of professional actors 
 and singers for the presentation of the more premeditated 
 parts. But care was taken not to bring these people into 
 touch with the masquers. As to the parts of the masque, 
 there was first the appearance of the masquers, with their 
 march or descent from their "sieges" or seata of state in the 
 scene, and their first dance: all this was called the "entry"; 
 then there was the "main" or principal dance. All up to 
 this was planned and premeditated. Then followed two 
 
392 THE JACOBEAN MASQUE 
 
 extemporal parts," the dance with the ladies" and the "revels," 
 the latter made up of galliards, lavoltas, and corantos. Lastly, 
 there was the closing march or "going out. " That the masque 
 is a purely exotic by-form of the drama, derived mainly either 
 from Italy or from France, can hardly be held in view of the 
 long preparation for it in the annals of the festivities at the 
 English court; but that foreign influences affected its nature 
 and the course of its development in England is not to be 
 denied. 
 
 The earliest examples of a masque fulfilling the technical 
 conditions, mentioned above, are to be found in the account 
 of the festivities known as the Gesta Grayorum, "betwixt All- 
 Hollantide and Christmas," 1594. This is the most elaborate 
 "Christmassing" recorded, and its solemnities included a 
 complete royal mock court with all the ceremonials thereof: 
 feastings, dancing, dramas, masques, and what not. Of the 
 three masques of the Gesta Grayorum, the Masque of Proteus 
 presages nearly all the elements subsequently to be so highly 
 developed in the next reign. This production was the work 
 of two well-known young men, Francis Davison, editor a few 
 years later of the last of the lyrical anthologies, The Poetical 
 Rhapsody, and Thomas Campion, the musician and lyrist. 
 This masque is important only for its historical position. 
 It involved an obvious enough compliment to the queen, who 
 is likened to "the adamantine rock" that draws all hearts. 
 
 With the accession of Elizabeth's successor, a new impetus 
 was given to masquing and entertainments of every kind. 
 The king's progress up to London and through the metropolis 
 to his court was one continued scene of welcome in which the 
 "entertainment" in its technical sense was resorted to again 
 and again. The chief rival poets, on the way, were Jonson 
 and Daniel; and the latter in his Vision of the Twelve God- 
 desses, acted in January, 1604, presented the first of the noble 
 series of court masques which grace the annals of King James. 
 Daniel's masque is everything that a masque should be except 
 dramatic. That want Jonson supplied in his Masque of 
 Blackness a year later, adding a wealth and richness of poetic 
 imagination and ingenuity of detail that placed him, at once 
 
EARLIER MASQUES OF JONSON 393 
 
 without a rival, the accepted entertainer of the court. This 
 is not the place in which to list Ben Jonson's masques. His 
 activity in this respect continued for thirty years during which 
 he put forth nine entertainments, three barriers, two anti- 
 masques and no less than two-and-twenty masques proper, 
 some of them of extraordinary completeness. Jonson wrote 
 more than three times as many masques as all his competitors 
 — Campion, Daniel, Beaumont, Chapman, Marston, and 
 Browne — together; and their quality in general may com- 
 pare to advantage with the best. In Hymenal, wherein Jon- 
 son used his notion of the humors and affections issuing from 
 the microcosm or globe figuring a man, in the admirably 
 startling contrasts of the fine Masque of Queens, in The 
 Golden Age in which Pallas turns the Iron Age and all his 
 attendant evils into statues, and in Pleasure Reconciled to 
 Virtue (wherein the character Comus may have been sug- 
 gested to Milton), we have examples of the poetic beauty, 
 dramatic aptitude, inventive ingenuity, and resourcefulness 
 that make Jonson the great master of the masque. 
 
 All of these masques were sumptuously "furnished" and 
 ingeniously staged by the skill of Inigo Jones. In Hymenoei 
 gigantic golden figures of Atlas and Hercules were the support- 
 ers of the scene; in the Viscount Haddington's Masque, 1608, 
 golden pilasters, "charged with spoils and trophies, . . .all 
 wrought round and bold" supported "overhead two personages. 
 Triumph and Victory, in flying postures and twice as large as 
 the life, in place of the arch, and holding a garland of myrtle 
 for a key. " This framing of the scene, utterly in contrast with 
 the practice of the popular stage, was frequent thereafter. 
 In The Masque of Queens, "an ugly hell . . . flaming 
 beneath, smoked unto the top of the roof, " and afforded the 
 setting for the antimasque of witches. Novelty and surprise 
 was carefully preconcerted for the moment of the appearance 
 of the masquers, who were attired with a variety and splendor 
 of costume that readily explains the extravagant cost of these 
 spectacles. At times the masquers were "discovered" sitting 
 in a glittering temple, or seated in "a great concave shell"; 
 at others they descended from the clouds, or emerged from 
 
394 THE JACOBEAN MASQUE 
 
 "a microcosm or globe." This last is described as "filled 
 with countries and those gilded; where the sea was expressed, 
 heightened with silver waves. This stood, or rather hung 
 (for no axle was seen to support it), and turning softly dis- 
 covered the first masque." Landscapes and especially the 
 sea were again and again represented, the waves in motion, 
 with Tritons and sea-horses "bigger than life" among them, 
 and even ships, sailing to and fro. Careful effects were those 
 of light and clouds "made artificially to swell and ride like 
 the rack," and the moon in a "heaven, vaulted with blue silk 
 and set with stars of silver which had in them several lights. " 
 Even the modern Wagnerian device of the rise of steam to 
 obscure a part of the scene was not unknown to these ingenious 
 performances; and there it was further refined, after a classical 
 precedent, into "a mist of delicate perfumes. " 
 
 Not the least service that Jonson rendered to the masque 
 was the development of its dramatic capabilities in the element 
 of relief. This was called the antimasque and was always 
 entrusted to professional hands. Thus, in The Masque of 
 Queens, the antimasque is a bevy of witches grotesquely con- 
 trasted with the beautiful queens that follow. Mercury Vin- 
 dicated from the Alchemists opens with a vivacious scene in 
 which that volatile deity escapes from the furnace of Vulcan 
 and "imperfect creatures with helms and limbecks on their 
 heads" figure in the dances; and in Love Restored the scene 
 opens with a satiric little sketch of the difficulties that a plain 
 man experiences in gaining access to these spectacles. In 
 two of Jonson's works of this kind the antimasque has usurped 
 the whole scene and the masque proper fallen out of existence 
 For example, The \Anti\masque of Christmas introduces that 
 personage of good cheer with his sons and daughters, Carol, 
 Wassel, and Minced-pie; and the later Gipsies Metamorphosed 
 is a humorous if vulgar rendering of a bit of actual low life, 
 appreciated by the king to Jonson's enrichment for the same 
 reason that his majesty so hugely enjoyed Ignoramus. 
 
 Jonson's activity in the masque carries us well over into 
 the time of Charles. But there were other notable masques 
 of the days of King James as well as Jonson's. In 1610 
 
THE GRAND MASQUES OF 1613 395 
 
 Daniel furnished Tethys' Festival for which Inigo Jones de- 
 vised no less than three changes of scenery. Novel features 
 of this masque were Daniel's attempt to restrict the performers 
 in it to "great personages," and its extraordinary cost, reck- 
 oned at ;^i6oo, more than double Jonson's previous masque 
 of that year. Love Free'd from Ignorance. In 1613 three 
 masques of unprecedented grandeur were furnished by nobles 
 and by gentlemen of the Inns of Court to grace the marriage 
 of the Princess Elizabeth to the Palsgrave. The first of these 
 was The Lords' Masque by Campion. The scene changed 
 four times and the masquers were stars and golden statues 
 called to life. Chapman's masque, which followed the next 
 day, was presented by the gentlemen of the Middle Temple 
 and Lincoln's Inn and exhibited the novel departure of a 
 -sumptuous procession to the masquing place by land, in which 
 appeared cars triumphal and a cavalcade attended by two 
 hundred halberdiers, all gorgeously attired. Chapman's work 
 is over-elaborate and its effect could not have been otherwise 
 than tedious. The third grand masque for this wedding was 
 that of Beaumont, presented by the gentlemen of the Inner 
 Temple and Gray's Inn. This was to have been preceded by 
 a water pageant, planned to move up the Thames from Win- 
 chester House in a gallant flotilla with music, torches, and the 
 booming of ordnance. But this plan was only partially car- 
 ried out, as even the Jacobean powers of endurance in pleasure 
 gave out on this third consecutive day of masquing and feasting. 
 Beaumont's masque was performed, however, a few days 
 later, and with the success which its poetic merit deserved. 
 It is of interest to recall that Beaumont offered this masque 
 in his capacity of a member of the Inner Temple, not as a 
 notable writer for the popular stage (a thing that he was con- 
 tent to conceal); and secondly that Sir Francis Bacon, then 
 solicitor-general, was chiefly responsible for the expenses of 
 its furnishing. Another masque on which, as we have seen. 
 Bacon is said to have expended ;^2000 was the Masque of 
 Flowers, 16 14, the work of three gentlemen of Gray's Inn. 
 Among Jacobean masques, those of Campion are conspicuous 
 for the care which the author bestowed on the music both 
 
396 THE JACOBEAN MASQUE 
 
 vocal and instrumental. A masque of poetical quality and 
 — for the masque — of singular coherency of plot is that 
 of William Browne, entitled Ulysses and the Sirens, 1615. 
 The masque continued to rise in expense and sumptuousness 
 until it became in the next reign an impoverishment to the 
 royal purse and a scandal to the serious minded. 
 
 As to the nature of the Jacobean masque, its oldest inher- 
 itance was allegory, which it derived directly from the morality 
 and the allegorical devices, long in vogue in previous courts. 
 But the allegory of the morality was ingenious and didactic; 
 that of the masque was artistic and eulogistic, and by the 
 necessities of the case modeled on simpler lines. To the 
 cultivated people of the court, suggestion was commonly 
 sufficient, and as Jonson well put it, "a writer should trust 
 somewhat to the capacity of the spectators, especially in these 
 spectacles; where men, besides inquiring eyes, are understood 
 to bring quick ears, and not those sluggish ones of porters and 
 mechanics, that must be bored through with narratives. " 
 The Jacobean masque abounds, as might be expected, in 
 classical and mythological personages, imagery, and allusion. 
 This was no affectation in an age in which education came to 
 men, and women too, chiefly by means of the classics. Jon- 
 son's ancient lore stood him in good stead in his masques; but 
 he by no means escaped the pedantry of classical reference 
 and learned quotation, a weakness which Daniel and others 
 were quick to see and caustically report. Neither coherency 
 nor anything like unity of design can be said ever to have 
 distinguished the masque, and even satire — except for cer- 
 tain personal lampoons in the antimasquing parts of Jonson's 
 work — was kept decorously in leash in the royal presence. 
 In a consideration of the masque it must be remembered that 
 this was only the most highly elaborated of a large variety of 
 like entertainments that signalized almost every important 
 social function of the day. Speeches of welcome and fare- 
 well; pageants, interludes, and processions; Maying, Christ- 
 massing, and wassailing; sham tournaments, mock courts 
 with all their ceremonials — such were the incessant pleasures 
 
THE MASQUE AND THE POPULAR STAGE 397 
 
 of the day. For example, the lord mayor was installed with 
 elaborate pageantry year after year. More than thirty of 
 these productions between the years 1580 and 1629 remain 
 extant to disclose the character of this civic pageantry, and 
 some of the "shows" are by the hands of the best poets of 
 their time, Peele, Munday, Dekker, Middleton, Marston, and 
 Shirley. Even Jonson's activity was not wholly absorbed 
 by the court. 
 
 That the popular stage should reflect this fashion of the 
 day was in the very nature of things. Nearly all the drama- 
 tists who wrote in the reign of James employ the elements of 
 the masque more or less organically in plays. To mention 
 only Shakespeare, there is an antic-dance of satyrs in The 
 Winter s Tale and a betrothal masque in The Tempest, in- 
 volving an antimasque of "strange shapes"; while into Cym- 
 heline has been thrust a "dream" with Jupiter descending 
 "on an eagle, " a paltry stage device which only a contemporary 
 demand for such stuff could justify or excuse. A more impor- 
 tant matter is the more general effect which the extravagant 
 and ingenious settings of masques at court must have had on 
 the plays of the London theaters. It seems impossible to 
 believe, as some have believed, that the popular stage was 
 little affected by the devices of Inigo Jones. That an alert 
 and captious audience such as that of Shakespeare, in his 
 later days, should have remained content with bare boards, 
 when the court plays were set handsomely in perspective and 
 with change of scene, is altogether defiant of the probabilities. 
 There must certainly have been under the influences of such 
 examples a gradual improvement alike in the staging and the 
 costuming of popular dramas, although the precise degree 
 of this change must remain a matter indeterminable. And 
 yet the college plays, the pastoral drama, and the masque 
 remain exotic and, at least during the lifetime of Shakespeare, 
 without the direct current of drama that flowed from Marlowe 
 to Shirley; the first because of the collegian's uninformed and 
 conscious attitude of superiority towards the popular drama, 
 together with the tradition that perpetuated the following of 
 
398 THE JACOBEAN MASQUE 
 
 ancient models or their Italian imitationsj the pastoral, because 
 its conventional ideals mark the antithesis of the English con- 
 ception of free country life; and lastly the masque, for its 
 restriction to the entertainment of royalty and because, in its 
 thoughtless pursuit after novelty and its wanton expense and 
 display, the drama evaporated out of it. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND THE NEW DRAMA OF 
 FLETCHER 
 
 IN any history of the literature or poetry of the times of 
 Elizabeth and James, the drama must bulk large, not 
 only because of Shakespeare, jonson, and the rest, but because 
 in no other literary form of that age was expression so untram- 
 meled and life capable of representation, both so faithfully 
 and so ideally. In the previous pages we have endeavored 
 to represent this drama in its sudden rise from the immaturities 
 of the first plays in regular dramatic form to the height of 
 comedy in Dekker, Shakespeare, and Jonson, and the sum- 
 mation of tragedy in Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Webster. 
 We have been more concerned with the variety of Elizabethan 
 drama in its range — from the dainty cleverness of Lyly or 
 the poetic fancy of Dekker to the imaginative fulness of 
 Shakespearean comedy, from the actualism of Arden or the 
 melodrama of Kyd to the passionate idealism of Juliet or the 
 mastery of terror which Lear or The Duchess of Malfi depict 
 — than we have been concerned with individual authors in 
 the integrity of their careers. The group of dramatists 
 popularly known as Shakespeare's predecessors fell early 
 out of the race. Dekker, Chapman, Jonson and Middleton, 
 who began writing in the middle nineties, all continued to 
 write after Shakespeare's death, although the distinctive work 
 of every one of them falls strictly within his lifetime. Mars- 
 ton, Webster, and Tourneur condensed their shorter dramatic 
 careers into a period almost coincident with the last ten years 
 of Shakespeare's life. So that of the great Elizabethans in 
 the drama that remain — Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
 Ford, and Shirley — only the last three are strictly post- 
 Shakespearean. Beaumont was always an amateur, and he 
 gave up writing for the stage early. The triumphs that gave 
 to Fletcher the succession to Shakespeare's primacy were made 
 
 399 
 
400 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 before the latter's death. In the present chapter our concern 
 is with the relations and characteristics of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher as dramatists, with the Fletcherian dramatic departure 
 called tragicomedy and its bearings on the group of Shake- 
 speare's plays known as "dramatic romances." It was 
 tragicomedy, in the hands of Fletcher, that developed a new 
 variety of the romantic drama which was potently to affect 
 what came after; for it is in his plays that we meet, almost for 
 the first time, the exaggerated romanticism that led through 
 successive steps in the next reign to the heroic play of Dave- 
 nant and Dryden. 
 
 While it is obvious that no actual combination of tragic 
 and comic elements could justify so contradictory a term as 
 tragicomedy, the word was employed by writers of the time of 
 James to denote a romantic drama involving serious passion, 
 yet ending happily: and such plays speedily acquired an 
 extraordinary popularity. Tragicomedy is not necessarily 
 melodrama, but it easily degenerates into such. Its dangers 
 are false sentiment and perverted ethics; and it is liable to 
 sacrifice the logic of events to dramatic surprise. The truest 
 tragicomedy is that in which the circumstances of the drama 
 and its clash of personalities are such that the outcome is 
 naturally uncertain. The Merchant of Venice trembles in 
 the balance between tragedy and comedy in the supreme scene 
 of the trial, and only Shylock's final hesitancy to accept, with 
 his own destruction, a full and final revenge preserves the 
 drama within the latter category. 
 
 Of John Fletcher we have already heard in this book as 
 a writer of comedies in the manner of Middleton and as the 
 author of a poetical pastoral drama, The Faithful Shepherdess. 
 Fletcher was born in 1579, the son of Richard Fletcher, Dean 
 of Peterborough and later Bishop of London. The bishop's 
 brother was Giles Fletcher, author of the sonnet-sequence, 
 Licia, and both his sons, Giles the Younger and Phineas 
 Fletcher have found their place in the pages above as followers 
 of the Spenserian allegorized pastoral. John Fletcher, the 
 dramatist, thus came of a notable and literary family. He 
 attended Bene't College, Cambridge, as a pensioner in 1591; 
 
FLETCHER AND BEAUMONT 401 
 
 and, as a younger son, received no patrimony except a part 
 of his father's library. Much praised and esteemed by his 
 contemporaries and frequently mentioned for his poetry, we 
 know surprisingly little what manner of man Fletcher was, 
 and his relations to his fellows, Shakespeare, Beaumont, 
 Massinger, and the rest, are vague and derivable for the most 
 part by inference. The custom of Fletcher's age habitually 
 associated his name with that of Francis Beaumont, a man 
 five years his junior, of much the same station in life, but of 
 whom we know rather more. Beaumont was likewise a 
 younger brother. His father was Sir Francis Beaumont of 
 Grace Dieu in Lancashire, a justice of the Common Pleas. 
 Young Beaumont received his education at Broadgate's Hall, 
 Oxford, where he was admitted a gentleman commoner in 
 1597, and at the Inner Temple, for which society we have 
 already found him writing a masque under the patronage of 
 Sir Francis Bacon. We do not know when Beaumont and 
 Fletcher became intimate; not unlikely it was through the 
 acquaintance of each with Ben Jonson, who drew to himself 
 alike from his convivial habits, his geniality, and his learning 
 and poetry, the Bohemian spirits of his day, and held them 
 in allegiance at the Mermaid and later in the famous Apollo 
 room of the Devil Tavern. We are certain that there was 
 personal friendship and collaboration between Fletcher and 
 Beaumont; and we are equally sure that the publication, in 
 the folio of 1647, of the collected plays of the former vi?^ith 
 those in which the latter had shared, has had the effect of 
 giving greater weight to this association than is at all warranted 
 by the facts. In this very volume we may feel sure that there 
 are more than twice as many plays in which Fletcher's col- 
 laborator or reviser was Philip Massinger. And when it is 
 recalled that Beaumont died a young man in 16 16, just a 
 month before Shakespeare, while Fletcher continued an 
 active dramatist up to his death by the plague nearly ten years 
 later, enough has been said to make patent that the expression, 
 "the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher," applied to any large 
 body of dramas in which the latter had a hand, is a pure mis- 
 nomer. 
 
402 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 The most conspicuous difference between these two authors 
 consists in the fact that Fletcher was a professional dramatist; 
 Beaumont was not. Beaumont does not appear to have 
 sanctioned the publication of any of his works, his name ap- 
 pearing during his lifetime only on the title of his Masque of 
 the Inner Temple and Grays Inn. It seems not improbable 
 that the two young men began authorship independently, 
 Fletcher in that direct picturing of London life that we asso- 
 ciate with the name of Middleton; Beaumont in a closer fol- 
 lowing of Jonson's comedy of humors to which he added a 
 quality of burlesque all his own. Beaumont, it has been 
 surmised, first wrote for the Children of Paul's from about 
 1604 to 1606 or 1607, Fletcher's earliest unaided work being 
 for the Children of his Majesty's Revels. In 1610 both authors 
 were writing for the King's company, having brought with 
 them work previously written together. Tradition relates 
 that Beaumont's part in this collaboratioa was advisory and 
 critical; and even Ben Jonson, his senior by ten years, addressed 
 him enthusiastically in an epigram beginning: "How I do 
 love thee, Beaumont, and thy Muse," and elsewhere with a 
 deference surprising in a man of Jonson's temper. However, 
 it is not to be questioned that Beaumont did more than advise 
 and criticize in some of the dramas attributed to him and 
 Fletcher in their immortal partnership. Indeed, without the 
 charmed Shakespearean circle, there is no question of criticism 
 relating to Elizabethan drama that has been so much argued 
 and exploited. Into its niceties the purposes of this book can 
 not demand that we enter. But this much must be said, for 
 Beaumont falls entirely within our period, however the Flet- 
 cherian plays at large may extend beyond it. A consideration 
 of work which we have reason to believe only Beaumont's 
 discloses — according to the critics — that he was the truer 
 Elizabethan, that is, his was the higher artistic earnestness. 
 A genius for tragedy, a deeper insight into character, especially 
 in the realization of the nature of his women, a power of pathos, 
 a breadth of humor and good-natured satire — all these things 
 are posited of the younger dramatist. While in contrast, 
 Fletcher is accused of a want of artistic seriousness, allowed 
 
FLETCHER AND BEAUMONT 403 
 
 to possess "a pretty, playful fancy," abundant wit but a 
 lighter quality of humor, and a more superficial insight into 
 human nature and conduct. Fletcher's genius is clever, 
 ready, and off-hand, but often careless and morally irrespon- 
 sible : and the styles of the two men bear out this contrast. 
 Beaumont, after the custom of the older dramatists, employs 
 prose and rime at times to vary his blank-verse, the phrasing 
 of which exhibits a moderate freedom not unlike the self- 
 contained and more carefully wrought verse of Jonson. Beau- 
 mont is, moreover, as careful as Jonson himself as to the 
 numbering of his syllables, seldom admitting a redundancy to 
 alter the strict decasyllabic character of his lines. 
 
 Presumptuous Iris, I could make thee dance, 
 Till thou forgott'st thy lady's messages. 
 And ran'st back crying to her. Thou shalt know 
 My power is more; only my breath and this 
 Shall move fix'd stars, and force the firmament 
 To yield the Hyades, who govern showers 
 And dewy clouds, in whose dispersed drops 
 Thou form'st the shape of thy deceitful bow. 
 
 In contrast with these lines from Beaumont's Masque, we 
 may take these opening words of Bonduca, as unquestionably 
 Fletcher's in his confirmed later manner: 
 
 The hardy Romans! oh, ye gods of Britain! 
 
 The rust of arms, the blushing shame of soldiers! 
 
 Are these the men that conquer by inheritance ? 
 
 The fortune-makers ? these the Julians, 
 
 That with the sun measure the end of nature, 
 
 Making the world but one Rome and one Czesar ? 
 
 Shame, how they flee! Caesar's soft soul dwell's in 'em, 
 
 Their mothers got 'em sleeping, Pleasure nursed 'em; 
 
 Their bodies sweat with sweet oils, love's allurements, 
 
 Not lusty arms. 
 
 Here all is in contrast. The style is easy and rapid; the con- 
 struction loose, cumulative, and at times rambling; the verse 
 distinguished by an incessant use of redundant syllables, 
 commonly at the end of each line, transmuting the usual 
 measure of ten syllables to one habitually of eleven with a 
 
404 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 pause at the end of each line. To speak technically, the 
 hendecasyllabic verse end-stopped is characteristic of Fletcher 
 as it is characteristic of no other poet within the range of 
 English letters; and out of this departure in dramatic verse, 
 Fletcher made not only a novel, but a remarkably success- 
 full and adaptable medium for the conveyance of dramatic 
 dialogue. 
 
 With these criteria of contrast, scholars have portioned 
 out the parts of those plays which, from their dates or for 
 other reasons, may be supposed to be the work of both Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher, with a further corrective, referable to a 
 later revision in some cases by Massinger. The last-named 
 dramatist does not concern us, as his work falls beyond our 
 period. In general it may be said that these tests of author- 
 ship are satisfactory; but it is easy to exaggerate their impor- 
 tance and to forget that after all joint authorship, in a product 
 like a play, means the presence of both authors throughout, 
 or we can expect no such unity as even these Elizabethan 
 productions often present. The present writer professes a 
 profound distrust of the glib assignments of scenes, passages, 
 and lines to given authors and given periods of their activity; 
 and he believes that, in the Beaumont-Fletcher-Massinger 
 group of plays, Beaumont has been assigned, in general, 
 rather too large a part, and Massinger much too subtly traced. 
 
 With King James a few years on his throne, the taste of 
 the time had undergone certain changes and modifications. 
 While we can hardly say that men had surfeited of tragedy, 
 at least they had become less fond of that strong wine, or 
 rather, of the wholesome drug in shape of a moral application 
 which it frequently involved; and they preferred to go home 
 pleased rather than thoughtful. Again, the new performances 
 at court, called masques, suddenly developed, as we have seen, 
 into extraordinary cost and splendor, and the popular stage 
 was immediately affected. The craving, too, and demand for 
 novelty strained the drama in every direction to make the 
 realistic more actual and coarse, the romantic more extrav- 
 agant and unnatural; to deepen the motives of passion and 
 crime, if such were possible, and lighten comedy into greater 
 
PHILASTER" 
 
 405 
 
 frivolity, farce, and fantasticality. At this juncture came 
 Fletcher, one of the cleverest playwrights in the range of 
 letters, to combine the courage of the innovator with a ready 
 aptitude for seizing the occasion. The result was the invention 
 of a new kind of romantic drama, founded on contrast and 
 heightened situation, which proceeded with great rapidity of 
 action and was carried on, to a certain degree, by means of 
 personages more or less presented in types. This novel 
 drama he served in the new, lithe, and supple variety of blank- 
 verse described above, so colloquial that it did away with the 
 necessity of interlarded prose and yet retained the power to 
 become eminently poetical at need. 
 
 The typical play of this new class is Philaster, referred to 
 in an epigram of Davies of Hereford in 16 10, and the work 
 of both Beaumont and Fletcher. Philaster abounds in con- 
 trasts. There is first the usurping king and the true prince 
 Philaster, in his role as the true lover and as a noble gentleman, 
 also set off against the ignoble voluptuary, Prince Pharamond. 
 Both are suitors to the peerless princess, Arethusa, whose 
 steadfastness and pure love is thrown into relief as compared 
 with the wanton conduct of her waiting-woman, Megra; and 
 whose love, requited by Philaster, is once more contrasted 
 with the pathetic, unrequited devotion of the page, Bellario^ 
 who serves Philaster and aids him in his courtship of Arethusa,. 
 though actually a maiden devotedly in love with him. We 
 have here a drama of sentimental interest thrust into the 
 midst of elements heroically tragic. The action is swift, 
 full of event and of varied emotion; and the personages are 
 governed by prearranged ruling qualities from first to last. 
 Types are the result. Philaster gave to the drama the heroic 
 but unreasoning hero; the blunt, out-spoken soldier; the dis- 
 consolate and love-lorn maiden; and the semi-comic poltroon. 
 None the less Philaster is in many respects an admirable 
 drama and deserving of the popularity that it long enjoyed. 
 Its novelty must have been startling in its time; and while the 
 heroic conception of some of its characters, especially the 
 prince, has given him an irrational inconsistency and sapped 
 somewhat the moral basis of his conduct, the poetry of the 
 
4o6 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 play, its sentiment and pathos, are worthy of all the praise 
 that they customarily receive. The source of Philaster has 
 not been discovered by the indefatigable seekers in the quar- 
 ries of literature, and although a more or less direct influence 
 of the Spanish comedias de capa y espada has been surmised, 
 the ingenious plotting of Philaster is doubtless the invention 
 of the authors. 
 
 The likelihood of this origin is strengthened when we find 
 almost the same range of material employed again and again 
 with ingenious variety to repeat the same effective result. 
 The Maid's Tragedy, Cupid's Revenge, and A King and No 
 King, all first staged between 1609 and 161 1, are plays closely 
 resembling Philaster in plot, construction, style and char- 
 acterization; and further examples of this likeness are not far 
 to seek within the range of the Beaumont-Fletcher-Massinger 
 plays. On the other hand these general likenesses are readily 
 exaggerated. The Maid's Tragedy is a powerful drama in 
 which the heroic but unreasoning hero becomes the bewildered 
 and unstable Amintor; and the evil and spiteful trull, Megra 
 (in Philaster), is replaced by the tragic figure of Evadne, 
 w^rought to evil by ambition atoned in death. In A King and 
 No King, correspondingly, the heroic Philaster is replaced 
 by the pseudo-king, Arbaces, intentionally represented as a 
 boaster and ignoble, while Spaconia, who corresponds to the 
 love-lorn maidens, Euphrasia and Aspasia of the other two 
 plays, is a young woman of resources and contrives in the end 
 to keep her prince for herself 
 
 An ingenious theory, which has recently obtained much 
 currency through the sanction of recognized authority,^ ex- 
 tends the criteria of this group of Beaumont and Fletcher to 
 the later work of Shakespeare. This theory holds, in a word, 
 that Shakespeare was seriously affected, in these latest ro- 
 mances, by the new Fletcherian tragicomedy, and that this 
 influence worked to the detriment of Shakespeare's art, de- 
 stroying especially the strong lines of his characterization and 
 
 ^ See especially A. H. Thorndike, The Influence of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher on Shakespeare, 1901, and his excellent edition of The 
 Maid's Tragedy and Philaster, 1906. 
 
THE "ROMANCES" OF SHAKESPEARE 407 
 
 reducing his art to the measure of the man he imitated. This 
 theory would make Imogen, Hermione, Perdita, and Miranda 
 women less vital than their elder sisters of tragedy or comedy, 
 and regard them as the kindred of the heroines of Fletcher. 
 Now if the list of Shakespeare's plays be examined, we shall 
 find besides the clearly defined group of comedies, histories, 
 and tragedies, several about which there may well arise a 
 doubt as to whether they belong to any of these accepted 
 categories. Troilus and Cressida, which we have already 
 considered, is a problematic drama, too serious and bitter 
 for comedy yet rising neither to the height of tragic passion 
 nor disposing of its dramatis personae in death to expiate 
 crime. So, too, Timon of Athens, though it concludes with 
 the death of the hero, is rather a biographical narrative dram- 
 atized than a tragedy as that term is ordinarily employed. 
 Timon is a story of the ancient world; and perhaps as classically 
 set forth as we could expect of the master of romantic art, 
 with Painter's Palace of Pleasure as an immediate model. 
 But Troilus is redolent of medieval romance; and so too is 
 Pericles, doubtless on the stage by 1608. In short, to the 
 three dramas, Cymhehne, The Winter s Tale, and The Tempest, 
 usually included in this group called "dramatic romances," 
 we may add Troilus, Timon, and Pericles before, and perhaps 
 The Two Noble Kinsmen, if Shakespeare had a hand in it, 
 after. Common characteristics of these plays are considerable 
 looseness in construction, recalling the epic qualities of the 
 old chronicle plays; far less strenuous passion than that of the 
 tragedies; and though there is comedy in them all, merriment 
 is far from their dominant tone. Once more, these dramas 
 delight in strange lands or wanderings over unknown seas, 
 in shipwreck and other adventure, in children and kindred 
 lost or estranged, found and reconciled. Moreover, these 
 dramas at times trespass imaginatively, as in The Tempest, 
 on the supernatural. , It may be noted in passing that these 
 are elements altogether distinguishable from the courtly 
 atmosphere of intrigue and the incessant dramatic contrast 
 of the Philaster group. 
 
 Pericles, Prince of Tyre, was first published in 1609 and 
 
4o8 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 went through five quartos before it was collected into the third 
 folio of Shakespeare's works in 1664. The story of Apol- 
 lonius of Tyre, of which Pericles is a dramatized version, is 
 one of the most generally diffused in fiction; and the immediate 
 sources of the drama appear to have been the tale as told by 
 Gower in his Confessio Jmajjtis, and the prose version of 
 Lawrence Twine in his Pattern of Painful Adventures, IS7^- 
 The circumstance that Pericles was not included in the first 
 folio, that the workmanship is exceedingly unequal, and the 
 text corrupt has caused doubt to be cast on Shakespeare's 
 sharing in it; and WiUiam Rowley and George Wilkins, a 
 minor dramatist who published a novel on the subject about 
 the date of the play, have been named as Shakespeare's pos- 
 sible collaborators. There are scenes unmistakably Shake- 
 speare's, however, in Pericles, no matter what inferior hand 
 may have supphed the wooden choruses spoken by Gower, 
 and several unworthy scenes. As to Shakespearean quality, 
 few scenes are lovelier than that in which the distracted Peri- 
 cles, sunk in melancholy, is restored to his faculties by the 
 sweet singing of his own lost daughter. 
 
 Pericles. I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping. 
 My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one 
 My daughter might have been. My queen's square brows; 
 Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight; 
 As silver-voic'd; her eyes as jewel-like 
 And cas'd as richly; in pace another Juno; 
 Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry, 
 The more she gives them speech. Where do you live ? 
 
 Marina. Where I am but a stranger. From the deck 
 You may discern the place. 
 
 Per. Where were you bred ? 
 And how achiev'd you these endowments, which 
 You make more rich to owe .'' 
 
 Mar. If I should tell my history, it would seem 
 Like lies disdain'd in the reporting. 
 
 Per. Prithee, speak. 
 Falseness cannot come from thee; for thou look'st 
 Modest as Justice, and thou seem'st a palace 
 For the crown'd Truth to dwell in. I will believe thee, 
 
"PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE" 409 
 
 And make my senses credit thy relation 
 To points that seem impossible; for thou look'st 
 Like one I lov'd indeed. What were thy friends ? 
 Didst thou not say, when I did push thee back — 
 Which was when I perceiv'd thee — that thou cam'st 
 From good descending ? 
 Mar. So indeed I did. 
 
 And so the beautiful lines run on to the joy of certainty: 
 Per. O Helicanus, strike me, honored sir; 
 Give me a gash, put me to present pain; 
 Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me 
 O'erbear the shores of my mortality, 
 And drown me with their sweetness. O, come hither, 
 Thou that beget'st him that did thee beget; 
 Thou that wast born at sea, buried at Tarsus, 
 And found at sea again! O Helicanus, 
 Down on thy knees, thank the holy gods as loud 
 As thunder threatens us. This is Marina. 
 
 Now, blessing on thee! Rise, thou art my child. 
 Give me fresh garments. Mine own, Helicanus; 
 She is not dead at Tarsus, as she should have been, 
 By savage Cleon. She shall tell thee all; 
 When thou shalt kneel, and justify in knowledge 
 She is thy very princess. 
 
 All this and much more of Pericles we may feel assured is the 
 very Shakespeare. 
 
 Pericles may be said to unite the "romance" vs^ith the tale 
 of adventure as Timon touches classical story. So Cymheline 
 combines the apparently discordant elements of legendary 
 chronicle history with the "romance." Cymheline was first 
 printed in the folio and may be dated about 1609. The 
 legendary history of King Cymheline, Shakespeare derived 
 from his habitual source, Holinshed's Chronicles, the romantic 
 story from some version (French, Italian, or English) of a 
 tale of the Decameron of Boccaccio. In fact, all the features 
 of the wager of Posthumous, the repulse of lachimo, the false 
 tokens, the attempted punishment and wandering of Imogen 
 are to be found in a tale of exceedingly wide diffusion, a point 
 
410 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 to be remembered when "the indefensible conduct of Post- 
 humous" is dilated on by the psychologic critic. To the 
 present author Cymheline is one of the most beautiful of the 
 Shakespearean plays. He does not look for a closely-knit 
 and intricately-woven plot in a drama of this kind, and can 
 enjoy, without strictures, a story that straggles from Britain 
 to Rome and back again and unites a romantic tale of the 
 Renaissance with a hotchpotch of legendary battles. Tragic 
 as is the theme of a pair of married lovers parted for the nonce 
 by villainous practices, he does not look for the storm of pas- 
 sionate agony that destroyed Othello in every story involving 
 jealousy; and he registers no complaints that King Cymbeline 
 is not King Lear. Moreover, he feels that he can appreciate 
 the wholly adequate portraiture of the lachimo without dis- 
 cant on the stronger acid with which the picture of lago is 
 bitten in, and delight in the sweet wifely devotion of Imogen 
 without remembering that Cleopatra, on the stage in the pre- 
 vious year, is a more astonishing personage. Wisdom, 
 poetry, happiness of phrase, and sufficiency in dramatic por- 
 traiture, so far as dramatic portraiture comports with the 
 quality of the play, all are as characteristic of Cymheline as 
 of other and earlier plays of Shakespeare. It is time to pro- 
 test against the "discovery" that Shakespeare was prema- 
 turely old and decaying in his genius at forty-five, careless in 
 his art, and content to leave his throne to sit on the footstools 
 of his younger contemporaries. 
 
 The Winter s Tale, on the stage by i6io or i6ii, is a 
 dramatized version of Pandosto, one of the most pleasing 
 pastoral stories of Shakespeare's old competitor, Robert 
 Greene. But when we say of any play of Shakespeare's that 
 it is "a dramatized version," we are really noting one of its 
 most trivial similarities to something that has gone before, 
 a thing perhaps little more important than a mention of the 
 material out of which the David of Michael Angelo had been 
 chiseled or the Perseus of Cellini cast. Shakespeare, in 
 The Winter s Tale, preserves the life of Hermione instead of 
 permitting her, after her original, Bellaria in Greene's story, 
 to die of grief Shakespeare's King Leontes, when his un- 
 
"THE WINTER'S TALE" 411 
 
 reasonable jealousy and his wicked defiance of the oracle have 
 lost him his wife and children, spends years, we are led to 
 infer, in repentance and remains true to the memory of his 
 unparalleled queen. This makes possible the reconciliation 
 in the end and the joy and hope that springs from the res- 
 toration of the lost ones and Perdita's marriage to her Prince 
 Florizel. But it is not only in these and in several minor ^ 
 changes that Shakespeare betters Greene's plot for dramatic 
 use, but in the invention and introduction of new characters, 
 Antigonus, incomparable Paulina, Mopsa, Dorcas, the clown, 
 and above all Autolycus — all these are Shakespeare's inven- 
 tion. Where in all Vagabondia shall we find so fascinating, 
 so disreputable a rogue as Autolycus ? 
 
 When daffodils begin to peer. 
 
 With heigh ! the doxy over the dale, 
 Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year; 
 
 For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. 
 
 The white sheet bleaching on the hedge 
 
 With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing! 
 
 Doth set my pugging tooth on edge; 
 
 For a quart of ale is a dish for a king. 
 
 My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. 
 My father nam'd me Autolycus, who being, as I am, litter'd under 
 Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With 
 die and drab I purchas'd this caparison, and my revenue is the silly 
 cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway; beating 
 and hanging are terrors to me; for the life to come, I sleep out the 
 thought of it. 
 
 Last of the plays of Shakespeare comes The Tempest, 
 acted, we know, during the festivities attending the marriage 
 of the Princess Elizabeth to the Palsgrave in 1613, along with 
 many other plays and the grand masques of Campion, Chap- 
 man, and Beaumont, though certainly not written (as some 
 have over-ingeniously surmised) for the occasion. In the 
 autumn of 1610, news of the shipwreck of an EngHsh vessel, 
 the Sea Venture, on the island of Bermuda, reached London. 
 To the strangeness of the tropical landscape and the fact that 
 
412 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 the island was overrun by wild hogs, the superstition of the 
 sailors had added that it was visited by strange sounds and 
 haunted by the devil. Several pamphlets appeared on the 
 topic. On this hint of the moment, Shakespeare seems to 
 have constructed the plot of The Tempest, adding to the con- 
 ception of a sea-isle haunted by unclean beasts (embodied in 
 Caliban), the enchantment of Ariel, breathing in musical 
 zephyrs and doing the will of a beneficent magician. The 
 story of The Tempest is slight enough. It has recently been 
 referred with confidence to "a collection of mediocre stories" 
 entitled Noches de Invierno by an obscure Spanish author, 
 Antonio de Eslava, published at Pamplona in the year 
 1609. But, once more, do we read The Tempest any more 
 than we read A Midsummer-Night's Dream only for the story ? 
 And are we to expect any more of these lovely citizens of an 
 enchanted island — with their ministering spirits and demons, 
 even of their foils of the world without, on whom enchantments 
 work miracles — those strong lines of personality that belong 
 to the personages of Shakespeare whose struggle is with the 
 primary passions of human nature ? Delicacy and elevation, 
 as terms applied to the imagination, are not synonymous with 
 weakness and attenuation. It is not "the big pow-pow man- 
 ner," as Sir Walter Scott somewhere calls it, that alone in- 
 dicates genius and the maintenance of poetic power. There 
 are defects in The Tempest, exquisite production of a controlled 
 imagination that it is; but these are less, if at all, the defects 
 of failing powers, or due to the imitation of lesser men, than 
 of that carelessness as to things in which he is not immediately 
 interested which Shakespeare shows everywhere, but in smaller 
 degree than almost any of his contemporaries among the 
 dramatists. The Tempest was an immediate success and with 
 The Winter s Tale continued popular long after the author's 
 death, to be revived after the Restoration. There are those 
 whose imaginations can not reach to the dramatist's art, and 
 who therefore disbelieve in that high impersonality in which 
 the author loses himself in his creations. To such The Tem- 
 pest is only a last leaf in what they call Shakespeare's auto- 
 biography, and explainable as an elaborated allegory in which 
 
"THE TEMPEST" 413 
 
 Shakespeare took leave of the stage in the person of the magi- 
 cian Prospero, abjuring his art in the well-known passage, 
 concluding: 
 
 I '11 break my staff, 
 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
 And deeper than did ever plummet sound 
 I '11 drown my book. 
 
 To those who recognize the larger nature of drama, who can 
 grasp the idea of an art higher than that of the egotist, in the 
 power of the true dramatic poet to thrill with a responsive 
 sympathy for the emotion of any one of his personages, how- 
 ever differently situated in life and feeling from himself, there 
 is no need to interpret Prospero (nor any other of the characters 
 that crowd his pages) as a projection of Shakespeare himself 
 into his creative work. 
 
 On the external side there is not much to chronicle as to 
 the last years of the great poet's life. There seems reason to 
 believe, from lately discovered material, that Shakespeare 
 was later in London than 161 1, the usual date set by the 
 biographers for his retirement to Stratford. It may be doubted 
 if he gave up the stage altogether; though he must have parted 
 with his shares in the Blackfriars and the Globe at some time 
 between 1613, when he is recited in a legal document as a 
 sharer, and the date of his death, when he was no longer such. 
 Whatever the date of Shakespeare's retirement, he must have 
 left in the hands of his company some plays incomplete and 
 unfinished. We know that his position as chief dramatist 
 to the King's company was immediately filled by Fletcher, 
 and abundant evidence exists to show the association of the 
 two men for a time in their craft. For example, in 1653 a 
 bookseller named Moseley licensed for publication a play 
 described as "The History ofCardenio by Fletcher and Shake- 
 speare. " This was doubtless the play described as Cardenno 
 or Cardenna, twice acted by the company of Shakespeare in 
 1613. No trace of it exists, and it is doubtful if Moseley ob- 
 tained the right to publish it. The Double Falsehood, a 
 drama on what was doubtless the original in the Spanish of 
 
414 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 Cervantes of Cardenio, was published as Shakespeare's by 
 Theobald in 1727; but there are no traces of the master's 
 hand in it. 
 
 Two plays, the work of Shakespeare and Fletcher, survive. 
 These are The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry Fill. The 
 former was first printed in 1634, with this statement on the 
 title: "by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John 
 Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare." Many critics have 
 agreed to accept this ascription of authorship, though differ- 
 ences of opinion have arisen as to how much is Shakespeare's 
 and whether parts, at one time attributed to him, may not be 
 revisions by the hand of Massinger. If Shakespeare is in 
 The Two Noble Kinsmen, his part is confined to the main 
 plot, Chaucer's Knight's Tale of Palamon and Arcite, already 
 twice dramatized on the English stage. As for the rest of 
 The Two Noble Kinsmen, it is not notable among the dramas 
 of Beaumont and Fletcher, in the second folio of whose works, 
 that of 1679, it was included. The question of authorship in 
 Henry VHI is not dissimilar. It was during a performance of 
 this play in June, 16 13, that a blazing wadding from a cannon 
 on the stage of the Globe Theater ignited the thatch on the 
 roof and burned the edifice to the ground. There is no proof 
 that this was a first preformance, and it seems reasonable to 
 believe (on the basis of allusions in the prologue oi Henry VHI 
 to a play of Samuel Rowley, entitled JVhen Tou See Me Tou 
 Know Me, 1604)5 that an earlier form of the Shakespearean 
 play at some time existed. It is much more likely that Shake- 
 speare should first have used such a subject when the recent 
 death of Queen Elizabeth caused a momentary revival of 
 interest in her history and in that of her parents, than it is to 
 think that Shakespeare revived, without assignable reason, 
 a kind of drama, out of fashion in 16 13 for nearly ten years. 
 None the less we may feel sure that the play of Henry VIII 
 as we have it is of approximately the latter period, and the 
 hand of Fletcher seems unmistakable in it. The parts of 
 King Henry, Katherine of Aragon, and Cardinal Wolsey for 
 the most part, are written in the best manner of Shakespeare. 
 Those who hold the alternative view, which assumes that 
 
FLETCHER'S COMEDIES OF MANNERS 415 
 
 Shakespeare, in the parts that resemble Fletcher, deliberately 
 imitated the latter, must explain why the mimicry was confined 
 only to certain scenes and followed only the minor personages. 
 
 Let us return to the dramatic career of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher within the period of Shakespeare's life. Aside from 
 Beaumont's Masque and his Woman Hater, 1606, a frank 
 following of the Jonsonian comedy of humors, to Beaumont's 
 single authorship is now usually assigned the diverting bur- 
 lesque of the old heroical drama. The Knight of the Burning 
 Pestle, 1607, a satire which the influence of Jonson, once 
 more, may have suggested, and one by no means appreciated 
 by the bourgeois auditors of the old plays therein ridiculed. 
 On the other hand, Fletcher, too, indulged in experiment; 
 and his attempt to popularize the exotic pastoral drama in 
 The Faithful Shepherdess was, as we have seen, not more 
 successful. There seems reason to believe that another early 
 effort of Fletcher v.^as the comedy entitled The Woman's 
 Prize or the Tamer Tamed, an entertaining sequel to Shake- 
 speare's Taming of the Shrew, described above as the play in 
 which Katherina, having died early, is succeeded by a second 
 wife, Maria, who proceeds to tame the valiant Petruchio in 
 a manner as vigorous as it is resourceful and complete. It 
 was by way of such experiments that these clever young 
 dramatists made their way to the inventive comedy of manners 
 that Fletcher especially later practised and to the new drama 
 of Philaster-type already described. 
 
 Fletcherian comedy includes an interesting group of dramas 
 of London life in which Middleton's art is at times bettered. 
 Such plays are The Scornful Lady and Wit at Several Weapons, 
 repeating several familiar comedy figures; Monsieur Thomas, 
 in which a diverting variety of scapegrace who gives his name 
 to the play is treated in foil with another of Fletcher's witty 
 and capable women. Even better is Wit Without Money, 
 in which the right of a free spirit to scorn what all men love 
 is upheld with results which, thanks to another clever and 
 understanding woman, the world does not always mete cut 
 to such unthrifts. The Night Walker or the Little Thief is 
 intricate and well plotted; but it descends in its representation 
 
4i6 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 of the lower haunts of the London of its day to a realism that 
 outdoes Middleton at his lowest and suggests the degenerate 
 comedies of Restoration times. All these plays fall between 
 1607 and 16 15 and the dates of their writing, as well as the 
 relations of the authorship of most of them, remain in dispute 
 among the critics. In several plays Fletcher carried the 
 comedy of contemporary manners over into foreign countries, 
 sketching, none the less, from his countrymen about him. The 
 Coxcomb, of indeterminate scene, mingles characters with 
 Italian and EngUsh names, and combines a plot containing 
 romantic elements with comedy of manners. Ricardo, the 
 hero, seems in his weakness for the wine-cup and his remorse 
 for the consequences of that weakness, a reminiscence of 
 Cassio. Other examples of such plays within our period are 
 The Captain, an unpleasing story, the scene Venice; and The 
 Honest Mans Fortune, laid in Paris. In this last excellent 
 comedy is set forth the effects, on true friends and false, of 
 a loss of fortune in the case of a gentleman, Montaigne, of 
 admirable character and fortitude. Both these plays have 
 been dated near to 1613. In the latter, Fletcher was only the 
 ruling spirit of four collaborators. 
 
 More akin to the tragicomedies of Philaster-type for the 
 romantic element in them are such comedies as The Beggars^ 
 Bush, which has been thought to have been originally the 
 work of Beaumont, and the several beautiful tragicomedies 
 in which Fletcher laid under contribution the wealth of story 
 which the literature of Spain, then in the height of its bloom, 
 was spreading over Europe. Although The Knight of the 
 Burning Pestle is directly referable to Don Quixote, it was not 
 until a year or two before Shakespeare's death that Fletcher, 
 apparently, showed English dramatists the way to the treasures 
 of Spanish literature. Strange as it may seem, there is no 
 reason to believe that Fletcher was acquainted with the Span- 
 ish language, for all his sources of this kind are traceable in 
 translations, principally French. Even more strange is it 
 that no one of the contemporaries of Shakespeare has as yet 
 been proved to have borrowed unmistakably from the con- 
 temporary Spanish drama. Cervantes and several of his 
 
"THE MAID'S TRAGEDY" 417 
 
 countrymen furnished material to the playwrights of the 
 later time of James and of Charles, but all these sources are 
 in fiction. The drama of Lope de Vega and Cervantes had 
 practically no touch with that of Shakespeare and Fletcher. 
 In The Chances, 16 15, perhaps Fletcher's earliest play on a 
 Spanish original, levy is made on the famous Novelas Exem- 
 plares of Cervantes with the result of a very charming comedy, 
 somewhat hardened in line and broadened in humor as 
 compared with its admirable original. The Chances con- 
 tinued long a popular play. Of none of the other Spanish 
 plays in which Fletcher had a hand can we be sure that they 
 were written within the period before us. 
 
 With respect to Fletcherian tragedy, there can be little 
 question of the excellence of The Maid's Tragedy however 
 its " Philaster-types, " if critics will so have it, were staled on 
 the later stage by incessant repetition. There is a quality 
 so truly heroic in worldly and wicked Evadne, suddenly 
 awakened from the security of her sin to the enormity of it, 
 there is ' something, too, so pitiful in the faltering Amintor, 
 whose spaniel-like fidelity to the king who has wronged and 
 outraged him almost as man was never wronged and outraged 
 before, that we are carried away by the originality of their 
 story as well as by the pathos of the unhappy page-maiden 
 Aspasia and the pervading poetic spirit of the whole drama. 
 Fletcher never bettered The Maid's Tragedy. Perhaps he 
 never again in tragedy worked in such perfect adjustment 
 with his friend Beaumont. But several other Fletcherian 
 tragedies are memorable. Passing Cupid's Revenge, a lesser 
 play of the Philaster-group, we find the next tragedy, now to 
 be placed before 16 14, in Bonduca which from its subject, the 
 clash of ancient Britain with Rome, suggests the background 
 o£ Cymbeline, Bonduca is a signal example of Fletcher's 
 happy art in construction. The story of Boadicea and that 
 of Caractacus, in defiance of history, are happily combined 
 in one plot; and the touch of a genuine pathos infused in the 
 invented story of the little Prince Hengo. Fletcher's Caratach 
 is a fine heroic character, sure to be effective in the hands of 
 a robust and declamatory actor; and the difiicult war scenes 
 
4i8 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 are handled with a restraint and ability to suggest where 
 portrayal is impossible, that causes us to reaHze how far we 
 have traveled from the crude realism of the old chronicle 
 plays. In the following passage we can feel Fletcher's power 
 of pathos. Caratach is in flight with the little Prince Hengo 
 whom he has preserved among many perils, and the Roman 
 soldiers are close upon their tracks : 
 
 Caratach. How does my boy ? 
 
 Hengo. I would do well; my heart's well; 
 I do not fear. 
 
 Car. My good boy! 
 
 Hengo. I know, uncle, 
 We must all die; my little brother died, 
 I saw him die, and he died smiling; sure. 
 There 's no great pain in 't, uncle. But, pray, tell me, 
 Whither must we go when we are dead ? 
 
 Car. Strange questions! — [Aside. 
 
 Why, the blessed'st place, boy! ever sweetness 
 And happiness dwells there. 
 
 Hengo. Will you come to me ? 
 
 Car. Yes, my sweet boy. 
 
 Hengo. Mine aunt too, and my cousins ? 
 
 Car. All, my good child. 
 
 Hengo. No Romans, uncle ? 
 
 Car. No, boy. 
 
 Hengo. I should be loth to meet them there. 
 
 Car. No ill men. 
 That live by violence and strong oppression. 
 Come hither; 't is for those the gods love, good men. 
 
 Hengo. Why, then, I care not when I go, for surely 
 I am persuaded they love me: I never 
 Blasphemed 'em, uncle, nor transgressed my parents; 
 I always said my prayers. 
 
 Car. Thou shalt go, then, 
 Indeed thou shalt. 
 
 Hengo. When they please. 
 
 Car. That 's my good boy! 
 Art thou not weary, Hengo ? 
 
 Hengo. Weary, uncle! 
 I have heard you say you have marched all day in armor. 
 
"BONDUCA" AND "VALENTINIAN" 419 
 
 Car. I have, boy. 
 
 Hengo. Am not I your kinsman ? 
 
 Car. Yes. 
 
 Hengo. And am not I as fully allied unto you 
 In those brave things as blood ? 
 
 Car. Thou art too tender — 
 
 Hengo. To go upon my legs ? they were made to bear me. 
 I can play twenty mile a-day; I see no reason, 
 But, to preserve my country and myself, 
 I should march forty. 
 
 Car. What wouldst thou be, living 
 To wear a man's strength! 
 
 Hengo. Why, a Caratach, 
 A Roman-hater, a scourge sent from Heaven 
 To whip these proud thieves from our kingdom. Hark! 
 
 [Drum wtthtn. 
 
 Scarcely less interesting is the only other tragedy of Fletcher 
 that falls within our scope, Valentinian, also now to be placed 
 before 16 14. This contribution of Fletcher to tragedy on 
 classic story is almost as pervasively romantic in tone as that 
 which touches the field of chronicle history. Here, out of an 
 obscure anecdote of Procopius, the dramatist has constructed 
 a tragedy in which, although his favorite types — the lustful 
 tyrant, the steadfast wife, the bluff heroic soldier — recur, all 
 is so adequately and so admirably expressed and handled with 
 so sure a hand that we wonder why the Fletcherian art, not- 
 withstanding, does not fully satisfy.^ 
 
 Fletcher, when all has been said, is the completest of Eng- 
 lish dramatists, and this was alike his distinction and his se- 
 rious limitation. The poetry of Marlowe, more commonly his 
 passion, bore forward his drama, until he attained the control 
 oi Edward II, and even then the art of tragedy was as yet form- 
 ative. Jonson was the playwright of theory, though often of 
 
 ^ The only two other plays of Fletcher, usually dated prior to 
 1616, are Thierry and Theodoret which, however, based on an earlier 
 play, is, as we have it and for its political allusions, properly placed 
 after 161 7. Love's Cure, sometimes placed at 1606, is founded on a 
 play of De Castro, printed in Spain for the first time about a month 
 before Fletcher's death. It is probably not his. 
 
420 SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER 
 
 most triumphant practice. But he went ever his own way, 
 gratified and complaisant if the public went with him, stubborn 
 and intractable when the tide was against him. Shakespeare 
 had the finer gift, to seem to follow where he really led, to guide 
 his public and raise it to an appreciation of his own artistic 
 standards. This he did less by the persistent presentation of 
 ideals, impossible of attainment, than by that human element in 
 his art that offers to each man some one intimate point of 
 contact thus to touch life at innumerable points. Fletcher 
 was above all an adaptable genius. There was a great drama- 
 tic literature behind him to warn him and to guide There 
 were the great men, his fellow dramatists, practising their art 
 around him. And there was the stage itself, with its traditions 
 and its practical lessons, and that difficult, exacting, and untam- 
 able Jacobean audience. To all these things Fletcher read- 
 ily adjusted himself and determined from the first that his aud- 
 itors should have what they craved. To this end he toned 
 up his plays, heightening every contrast, hastening the rapidity 
 of the action, sharpening the surprise of climax and the unex- 
 pectedness of the outcome. And in this process he unknit the 
 sequence of cause and effect. The plays of Fletcher and his 
 group are less true to the ethics of life and of art than the 
 greater drama that preceded them. Dryden thought that 
 Fletcher could draw a better gentleman for the stage than could 
 Shakespeare; and, as to the conventions, doubtless, of social 
 life and intercourse, the gentlemen of Fletcher's drawing were 
 nearer in their conduct and conversation to the gentlemen 
 of Dryden's time than were the latter to the larger and more 
 universally veritable figures of Shakespeare. Elizabethan 
 drama rose rapidly from the flats ofGorhoJuc and Gammer Gur- 
 /o?z, reaching beetling cliffs in Marlowe, and heights that pierced 
 the sky, with much that was more pleasant and habitable at 
 lower levels in the royal domain of Shakespeare and his immedi- 
 ate fellows. Fletcher leads us downward in a long, but not too 
 precipitous decline, diversified from time to time with highland 
 kindred to the mountainous region that we have left behind us; 
 reproducing much of its fauna and, in particular, its lovely poet- 
 ical flora. There are other highlands on the broad map of Eng- 
 
PROSE AT SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH 421 
 
 lish drama; but they concern us not. The range of Elizabethan 
 drama, too, is to be measured by its depths as well as by its 
 heights, by its deserts as well as by its cultivatable lands. 
 To vary the figure, there has been no drama of such an ampli- 
 tude of vibration, so tuned to respond, a universal resonator, 
 to the infinite varieties and degrees of the emotions and pas- 
 ions of men. 
 
 When Shakespeare died, in April, 1616, King James was at 
 the height of his reign; and the Stuart tenets of absolute king- 
 ship in church and state had already hardened the Puritan tem- 
 per and provoked the parliamentary struggle that, leading 
 inevitably to rebellion, was to cost his son and successor his 
 throne and his life. These things concerned the future, and 
 as yet little affected English daily life. The king's weak and 
 disgraceful rule, on the other hand, was more patent to the 
 world; his infatuation for his favorites, his condoning of folly 
 and worse, the extravagance that prompted extortion and ille- 
 gal taxation, the corruption of the courts, and the suppression 
 of Parliament: these were some of the portents of the day. 
 And yet to the superficial observer, the times were prosper- 
 ous and the arts were as flourishing as in the days of Elizabeth. 
 
 Richard Hakluyt died in the same year with Shakespeare; 
 with him closed the long and interesting chapter of England's 
 early maritime adventure. An occasional pamphlet or drama 
 of old fashion, or a belated adventurer, like Captain John 
 Smith, might respond to the memory of the perils and escapes, 
 the bravery and heroic daring that made the old sea-dogs 
 the terror of the Spanish ocean. But with the execution of 
 Raleigh, two years later, the last of the old Devonian heroes 
 was gone, and the sons of the men who had hunted the Armada 
 to the Hebrides and back into the Irish sea, now contemplated 
 with indifference the alliance of an English prince with an In- 
 fanta of Spain. But if one form of English prose had lost its 
 old insular national spirit, English style in general continued to 
 develop into a simpler and less labored instrument for the ex- 
 pression of the complexities of modern thought, leaving Euphu- 
 ism and Arcadianism behind it, and much of its Latinism as 
 
422 NEW BOOKS AND OLD 
 
 well, though still destined to undergo a relapse into the florid, 
 the cumbrous and involved, before it reached the reasonable 
 directness of Dryden. As to the varieties of prose, none fol- 
 lowed in the reign of the second Stuart which had not been 
 abundantly presaged before King James had been long on his 
 throne. The pamphlet and occasional broadside continued, 
 assuming more and more the character of the newspaper that 
 was yet to be, and taking on with the trend of the time an in- 
 creasingly bitter political and satirical nature. Wither is an 
 example of a sweet poet and amiable man turned to the 
 austerity of Puritanism and the rancor of the libeler by 
 this spirit of his day. The essay, for the same reason, was 
 succeeded in popular esteem by the "character," wherein 
 much was sacrificed to the" palpable hit"; and even history, 
 as later with Clarendon, was conceived as meriting praise 
 when it sparkled with the wit of satirical portraiture cleverly 
 essayed. 
 
 Among new books in prose, in the closing years of Shake- 
 speare's life, were Daniel's History of England and Hall's Con- 
 templations, Alexander's completion of the Arcadia, Raleigh's 
 History of the World, Selden's Titles of Honor, and his History 
 of Tithes. Camden's Annals of Queen Elizabeth appeared in 
 1615. In this same year Breton's Characters showed the 
 immediate influence of the second edition of Bacon's Essays, 
 published three years earlier. As to Breton's pamphlets at 
 large, of the thirty or more titles attributed to him, at least 
 twenty had appeared by 1616. Dekker, too, to mention only 
 one other pampheteer, had put out some thirteen booklets of 
 this class — few of them reprinted — up to this date. But 
 later editions of old books, better than new, disclose contem- 
 porary taste. In 16 10, Foxe's Book of Martyrs reached a sixth 
 edition, not to be reprinted until 1632. The year 16 12 saw the 
 fourth edition of North's Plutarch; the following year the 
 Arcadia in a sixth, and Euphues in a ninth issue. Lower down 
 in the scale of fiction, Munday's Palmerin of England attained 
 a third edition in 16 16, his A mad is de Gaule, a second three 
 years later. 
 
 As to non-dramatic poetry, Spenser, Sidney, Drayton, and 
 
POETRY AT SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH 423 
 
 Daniel were the four most popular Elizabethan poets. The 
 first collected edition of Spenser appeared in 161 1, following 
 thirteen issues of separate poems or partial collections, within 
 the poet's life. Astrophel and Stella, after three editions in the 
 single year 1591, was always reprinted with the Arcadia, thus 
 issuing for the seventh time in 1613. Daniel edited his non- 
 dramatic poetry four times in his lifetime (he died in 16 19) 
 and there were fifteen separate editions of his poems, and 
 dramas besides; while Drayton edited the third and best 
 edition of his works in 16 19, three more appearing later, and 
 issued, besides, seventeen separate editions of individual works. 
 One of the most popular poems of the time was Warner's Al- 
 bion s England, which reached an eighth edition by 1612; a 
 fourth edition of Sir John Davies' Nosce Teipsum appeared in 
 161 8, a fifth before the date of the Shakespeare folio. 
 Fletcher's Christ's Victory and Triumph, Browne's Britannia' s 
 Pastorals, and Wither's The Shepherd's Pipe disclose the con- 
 tinued popularity of the Spenserian mode between 1610 and 
 1 6 16. Lower in the scale of literature, Davies of Hereford 
 had issued a dozen pamphlets in verse, Breton more than a 
 score up to the same date; whilst in translation the year 1616 
 was signalized by the final collection of The Whole Works of 
 Homer by Chapman, a sixth edition of the earliest parts, and 
 this, besides the laborious poet's other activities in the drama 
 and in nearly a dozen other volumes of original verse. Well 
 may we pause to consider such an activity (only partially in- 
 dicated here) in a metropoUtan community that had not yet 
 reached two hundred thousand souls, the center of a nation 
 scarcely numbering three millions; a community, moreover, in 
 which the proportion of readers by reason of illiteracy must 
 have been perhaps three in ten, and one in which the high 
 proportionate cost of books must still further have limited the 
 possible number of purchasers. 
 
 But the most important single volume, published in the year 
 of Shakespeare's death, was the first folio of the collected 
 works of Ben Jonson. Jonson is the earliest English dra- 
 matic poet so to appear, and the only one to superintend such 
 an edition of his works himself. His popularity demanded a 
 
4-24 WORKS OF THE DRAMATISTS 
 
 second edition in 1632, which was completed in 1641, some 
 four years after the poet's death. Jonson is also the only Eliz- 
 abethan dramatist who saw a collected edition of his own works 
 in print; for although a larger number of Shakespeare's plays, 
 singly and in quarto, "escaped into print" during his lifetime 
 than of any other playwright, the great dramatist had been dead 
 seven years before the famous first folio of 1623 ^^^ printed. 
 Jonson's works were published, for a third time, in 1692; the 
 two foHo editions of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher date 
 1647 and 1679. But Shakespeare demanded publication four 
 times — in 1623, 1632, 1663-1664, and 1685 — within the 
 period up to 1700. Only two other of Shakespeare's actual 
 dramatic contemporaries were collected even imperfectly before 
 the time of the Restoration: these were Lyly, whose Six Court 
 Comedies dates 1 632, and Marston, whose Works, containing 
 an equal number of his plays, appeared in the next year. 
 
 In the drama, the exit of Shakespeare and the next few 
 years marked a momentous change. Henslowe died in the 
 same year with Shakespeare and with him passed away the old 
 methods of theatrical management; for his son-in-law, Alleyn 
 the actor, now long since retired and married to his second wife, 
 a daughter of Dr. Donne, the poet and Dean of St. Paul's, 
 had put away his humble and sordid past, and had founded 
 Dulwich College to preserve therein Henslowe's Diary and 
 other treasures for the antiquarian of our Elizabethan drama. 
 In 1619 Richard Burbage died. Burbage had made the title 
 roles of Shakespeare as Alleyn had made those of Marlowe. 
 With these two gone, and some of the elder comedians as well, 
 the older ways of acting, too, must have suffered a change 
 which, in view of the greater prevalence of melodrama, senti- 
 mentality, masquing, and scenic display, could scarcely have 
 been altogether a change for the better. But although the 
 drama, strictly Elizabethan, was now succeeded in the popu- 
 lar esteem by tragicomedies and comedies of contemporary 
 life, and its range and artistic appeal was becoming more and 
 more restricted, with Puritanism withdrawn from the theaters 
 and the more serious-minded intent on the political struggle 
 impending, we must remember that Shakespeare's plays and 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF SHAKESPEARE 425 
 
 the earlier successes of Marlowe, Jonson, and others still held 
 the stage with Fletcher and Shirley and what came after. 
 
 The age of Shakespeare knew, as every age in English- 
 speaking lands since has known, that in Shakespeare the world 
 has aUke its truest dramatist and its greatest poet. To escape 
 his rule and sway it is not in the nature of ignorance nor 
 criticism to effect, however the alien moralist may display the 
 limitations of his own comprehension or native Philistinism 
 may deliver its diatribes against Shakespeare's poetry, his eth- 
 ics, or his art. It is not in the nature of things human 
 to withstand forever the inroads of time. The beautiful 
 imagery of the poets that tells of gold-laden galleons, ly- 
 ing in the depths of the ocean, their treasures jeweling, the 
 floor of the sea, is denied by the stubborn facts of science. 
 Sea-water is the universal solvent wherein even gold is 
 tarnished and all at last reduced to the universal sHme. So, 
 too, the wealth of this great literature of Shakespeare and his 
 fellows must yield perceptibly to the universal solvent, time; 
 what was bright becomes tarnished, what was vitally signifi- 
 cant, recoverable by the plodding student alone, to him an ob- 
 ject of curious lore far more than the inevitable reality or the 
 adored ideal that it was to the man of Elizabeth's day. Yet 
 who will say that this is all ? Homer still lives, and he is 
 bold who will set limits to his immortality. And there remains, 
 too, in this incomparable literature of the greatest age of 
 modern times, more than enough that will continue sound, 
 significant, and potent for generations and generations to 
 come, long after our petty triumphs of to-day shall have 
 perished, irrevocably from the memories of men. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 This bibliography makes no pretensions to completeness. 
 Its chief concern is the representation, in a condensed form, of 
 the Hterary activity of the writers discussed in this book; its 
 second, an indication as to where these authors may be read 
 in modern available editions. Works of critical comment 
 have been to a large degree ignored, not from a want of 
 appreciation of the admirable results of modern scholarship, 
 but from a conviction that, in the study of literature, a knowl- 
 edge at first hand of what the author has written is the one 
 supreme and important thing. 
 
 The following items are arranged first by the name of the 
 author; secondly by title, where the book is anonymous or 
 the work of several authors. A few subject-titles are added 
 where the matter is not otherwise covered. A few abbrevia- 
 tions, mostly obvious, are employed. An exponent (thus 
 1632^) means that more than one edition was issued in the 
 same year. Well known collections, such as Dodsley's Old 
 English Plays, and Chalmers' English Poets are alluded to 
 by the author's name only. Garner signifies Arhers English 
 Garner, new edition by Sidney Lee; D. N. B., the Dictionary 
 of National Biography. 
 
 Addlington, William, fl. 1565. The Golden Ass of Apuleius. 
 1566, four edd. to 1596. Tudor Translations, ed. C. Whibley, 1892. 
 
 Alabaster, William, 1567-1640. Roxana Tragedia, 1632, 
 Controversial works and a few scattered poems. 
 
 Alexander, Sir William (Earl of Stirling), 1567-1640. Aurora, 
 1604; Monarchic Tragedies, 1 603-1 607. Ed. Rogers, 1877, 2 vols. 
 
 Allott, Robert, fl. 1600. Editor of Wit's Theater; extracts from 
 ancient authors, 1599; England's Parnassus, 1600, repr. Park, 
 Heliconia, 1815. 
 
 Andrews. Lancelot (Bishop of Winchester), 1 555-1 626. Russel, 
 Life and Works, 1863; Church, in Masters of English Theology, iSjy. 
 
 427 
 
428 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Anton, Robert, fl. 1616. Moriomachia, 1613; Philosophers' 
 Satires, 1616; Vice's Anatomy, 1 61 7. 
 
 Arden of Feversham, 1592, 1599, 1 633. Ed. Bullen, 1887; ed. 
 Bayne, Temple Dramatists, 1897. 
 
 Armin, Robert, fl. 1610. Fool upon Fool, 1605, repr. as A Nest 
 of Ninnies, 1608, in Sh. Soc. Publ., 1842. The Two Maids of 
 Moreclacke, 1609. 
 
 AwDELEY, John, fl. 1559-1577. Fraternity of Vagabonds, 1565, 
 three edd. Repr. The Shakespeare Library, 1907. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626. Controversies in the Church, 1587; 
 Essays, 1597, 1612, 1625; ^^^ Advancement of Learning, 1605, ed. 
 Chase, 1906; De Sapientia Veterum, 1609; Certain Considerations 
 touching the Plantation in Ireland, 1609; Novum Organum, 1620— 
 1658 in various separate publications, ed. Fowler, 1878; History of 
 Henry VH, 1622; De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, 1623; 
 Apophthegms, 1624; Psalms, 1625; Sylva Sylvarum, 1627; The New 
 Atlantis, 1629; Maxims of the Law, 1630; and various other post- 
 humous publications, 1 638-1 671. Collected ed. Spedding, Ellis and 
 Heath, 1857-59, 7 vols. See also Spedding, Life and Times of Bacon, 
 1878, 2 vols.; and Church, in Men of Letters Series, 1889; Essays 
 often reprinted. Poems, ed. Grosart, Fuller Worthies' Miscellanies, 
 i, 1870. See Bibliography, Cambridge History of Literature, 1 9 10, 
 vol. iv. 
 
 Baldwin, William, fl. 1559. See Mirror for Magistrates. 
 
 Barnes, Barnabe, l569?-l6o9. Parthenophil and Parthenope, 
 1593; repr. Garner, Sonnets, i; A Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets, 
 1595, repr. Park, Heliconia, ii. 1815. The Devil's Charter, 1607, ed. 
 McKerrow, Mater ialien zur Kunde, vi, 1904. 
 
 Barnfield, Richard, i 574-1 627. The Affectionate Shepherd, 
 1594; Cynthia, 1595; Lady Pecunia, 1598, 1605; the last two reprinted 
 by Collier, Reprints, 1866, i. Poems, ed. Arber, English Scholar's 
 Library, 1 882, and Garner, Longer Elizabethan Poems, 1903. 
 
 Barrey, Lodowick, Ram-Alley, 1611, 1636, 1639, Dodsley x. 
 
 Basse, William, 1583-1653. Sword and Buckler, 1602; various 
 elegies and commendatory poems, between 1602 and 1653; Pastorals, 
 first printed by Collier, Miscellaneous Tracts, 1870; Polyhymnia, first 
 printed in Poetical Works of W. B^, ed. Bond, 1893. 
 
 Bastard, Thomas, 1566-16 18. Chrestoleros, 1598. Poems, ed. 
 Grosart, Occasional Issues, 1880. 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 1584-1616. Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, 
 1602; Poems, 1640, enlarged 1 653, and reprinted as The Golden 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 429 
 
 Remains of Beaumont and Fletcher, 1660. All these are doubtfully 
 Beaumont's. Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, 1613. 
 For the dramas see Fletcher, John. Poems, repr. in modern edd. of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 Bedingfield, Thomas, d. 1613. Cardanus' Comfort, 1573; 
 The Florentine History of Macchiavelli, 1595; repr. Tudor Transla- 
 tions, 1905; and other works. 
 
 Bellum Grammaticale, 1635. Not reprinted. See Sh. Jahrbuch, 
 xxxiv. 
 
 Bible, Erasmus, New Testament, Lat. (with Gk. text), 151 6, 
 various edd. and Latin paraphrases, to 1524. Tyndale, New Testa- 
 ment in English, 1525^, facsimile repr. Fry, 1862, ed. Arber, 1871; 
 Pentateuch, 1530, some forty edd. of these two (usually together) to 
 1553. Coverdale Bible (complete), 1535^ (one of these, the first Bible 
 printed in England); 1537, New Testament, 1538, revised; whole 
 Bible, 1539; Matthews, 1537, 1539; Taverner, 1539; Great Bible, 
 1539, 1540^ 1541^. Whittingham, 1557 (part), Geneva Bible, 1560, 
 eighty-six edd. to 161 1 ; Bishops' Bible (Parker), 1568, revised 1572, 
 twenty edd. to 1606; Rheims New Testament^ 1582, Douay Old 
 Testament, 1609, few edd.; Authorized Version or King James' Bible, 
 1 6 1 1 . Upwards of a score of edd. to 1 6 1 6. 
 
 F. H. A. Scrivener, The Authorized Edition of the Bible, 1884; 
 A. S. Cook, The Bible and English Prose Style, 1892; F. A. Gasquet, 
 The Old English Bible, 1897; R. G. Moulton, The Literary Study of 
 the Bible, 1 899; A. Wright, A General History of the Bible, 1 905; 
 J. H. Gardiner, The Bible as Literature, 1906; J. I. Mombert, English 
 Versions of the Bible, 1907. 
 
 Blenerhasset, Thomas, 1550 ?-i625 ?. The Second Part of the 
 Mirror for Magistrates, 1 578, See Mirror for Magistrates. 
 
 BoDENHAM, John, fl. 1597. Reputed editor of Wit's Common- 
 wealth, 1597; Belvedere or the Garden of the Muses, 1600, repr. Spenser 
 Society, 1875; England's Helicon, 1 600, ed. Bullen, 1887. 
 
 ?BowER, Richard. Appius and Virginia, 1575, repr. Dodsley, iv. 
 
 Braithwaite, Richard, 1588 ?-i673. The Golden Fleece, 161 1; 
 The Poet's Willow, The Prodigal's Tears, and The Scholar's Medley, 
 all in 1614; A Strappado for the Devil, 1615; and twenty-four later 
 tracts in verse or prose. 
 
 Breton, Nicholas, 1545 ?-i626 ?. The Works of a Toung Wit, A 
 Flourish upon Fancy, both 1577, the latter in part reprinted in Park, 
 Heliconia, 1815; Pasquil's Madcap, Fool's Cap, Pasquil's Pass, all 
 1600, the first also 1605; The Soul's Harmony, 1602; The Passionate 
 
430 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Shepherd, 1604, and fifteen other volumes of verse to An Invective 
 Against Treason, 1616. Wit's Trenchamour, 1597; A Packet of 
 Madcap Letters, 1603, many edd. to 1685; An Old Man's Lesson, 1605^ 
 Characters upon Essays, 1615; The Good and the Bad, 1616, 1648 
 and seventeen other prose pamphlets to Fantastics, 1626. 
 
 Some seventeen other works have been attributed to Breton; see 
 bibliography in Morley, English Writers, xi. Collected ed. Grosart^ 
 1879 (not quite complete), 2 vols. See Tappan, The Poetry of B. 
 Publ. Mod. Lang. Asso., 1898; Kuskop, B. und seine Prosaschriften,. 
 1902. 
 
 Bright, Timothy, 1551 ?-i6i5. Abridgement of Foxe's Book of 
 Martyrs, 158 1, 1 589; various medical pamphlets; Character ie, "an art 
 of short, swift and secret writing," 1588; repr. J. H. Ford, 1888. 
 
 Brinsley, John, fl. 161 2. Ludus Liter arius, or the Grammar 
 School, 1612, 1627, and several other educational works and transla- 
 tions. 
 
 Brooke, Arthur, d. 1563. Romeus and Juliet, 1562. Ed. 
 Munro, The Shakespeare Library, 1908. 
 
 Brooke, Christopher, d. 1628. The Ghost of Richard Illy 
 1614; contributor to Britannia's Pastorals, 1613, and The Shepherd's 
 Pipe, 1614. See Browne, William, and Wither. Ed. Grosart, Fuller 
 Worthies' Miscellanies, 1872, iii. 
 
 Brooke, Lord, see Greville, Fulke. 
 
 Browne,William (of Tavistock), 1591-1643 .^ Britannia's Pas- 
 torals, 1613-16, 1625; The Shepherd's Pipe, 161 i\.; Masque of the Inner 
 Temple {Ulysses and Circe), in Works, ed. Davies, 1772, 3 vols.; 
 Poems, ed. G. Goodwin, The Muses' Library, 1 894, See also F. 
 W. Moorman, William Browne, 1897. 
 
 Brydges, John (Dean of Salisbury). Alleged author oi Gammer 
 Gurton. See Ross, in Anglia, xix; but see Stevenson, William. 
 
 Bryskett, Lodowick, fl. 1571-1611. Discourse of Civil Life, 
 i6o62. 
 
 Buc, Sir George, d. 1623. Daphnis Poly Stephanos, 1605, 2nd 
 ed. (under title The Great Plantagenet), 1635; The Third University of 
 England, 1615; History of Richard III, 1646. 
 
 Byrd, William, 1538 .''-1623. Musician and publisher of music; 
 probably not a poet. Psalms, Sontiets, 1588; Songs of Sundry 
 Natures, 1589, 1610; Second Book of Songs, 1611. All in Garner, 
 Shorter Poems, 1903. 
 
 Camden, William, 1551-1623. Britannia, 1586, six edd. to 1607, 
 transl. 1610, 1637; repr. R. Gough, 1806, 4 vols.; Remains Concerning 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 431 
 
 Britain, 1605, seven edd. to 1674; Annals, 1615 and nine edd. to 1688, 
 repr. ed. Hearne, 171 7, 3 vols. Other minor works. 
 
 Campion, Edmund, 1540-1581. See Simpson, Edmund Campion, 
 a Biography, 1867. 
 
 Campion, Thomas, d. 161 9. Poemata, 1595, 161 9; A Book of 
 Airs, 1601; Observations in the Art of Poesy, 1602; The Lord's 
 Masque, pr. Nichols, Progresses of King James, 1828, ii; Two 
 Books of Airs, 1613; Songs of Mourning, 1613; Counterpoint, 1613; 
 Third and Fourth Book of Airs, 161J; Works (complete), ed. Bullen, 
 1889. Selections, E. Rhys, The Lyric Poets, 1895. The Song Books 
 also in Garner, Shorter Poems, 1903. Ed. S. P. Vivain, English 
 Poems, 1910. 
 
 Carew, Richard, 1555-1620. Godfrey of Bulloigne, transl. 1594. 
 Repr. Grosart, Occasional Issues, 1 881. See Retrospective Review, 
 1 82 1, and Koeppel in Anglia, xi. 
 
 Carey, Robert (Earl of Monmouth), 1560-1639. Memoirs, first 
 printed by Walpole, 1759. "Account of the death of Elizabeth," 
 Garner, Stuart Tracts, 1 903. 
 
 Cecil, William (Lord Burleigh), 1 520-1 598. Certain Precepts 
 for the Well-ordering of a Man's Life, 1 61 7, six edd. to 1783. In 
 later ones called Lord Burleigh's Advice to his Son. 
 
 Chapman, George, 1559 .''-1634. The Shadows of Night, 1594. 
 The Tears of Peace, 1609; Andromeda Liberata, 1614; and seven other 
 publications of original verse to A Justification of Nero, 1629. 
 
 Ovid's Banquet of Sense, 1 595; Hero and Leander, completed, 
 1598; Homer, Iliad, 1598-1611; Odyssey, 1614; Whole Works of 
 Homer, 1616; Hymns, etc., 1624; Hesiod, 1618; Juvenal, Satire V, 
 1629. 
 
 The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 1598; A Humorous Day's Mirth, 
 1599; All Fools, 1605; Eastward Hoe (with Jonson and Marston), 
 1605^; Monsieur D'Olive, 1606; The Gentleman Usher, 1606; Bussy 
 D'Ambois, 1607, five edd. to 1657; The Conspiracy of Byron, 1608, 
 1625; May Day, 1611; The Widow's Tears, 1612; The Revenge of 
 Bussy D'Ambois, 1613; Pompey and Caesar, 1631^, 1653; The Ball, 
 1639; Chabot, 1639 (these two with Shirley); Alphonsus of Germany, 
 and Revenge for Honor, both 1 654, are not by Chapman. Dramatic 
 Works, ed. Pearson, 1873, 3 vols.; Complete Works, ed. Shepherd 
 (inferior), 1874-75, 3 vols. Selected dramas, ed. Mermaid (Phelps), 
 1895; Belles Lettres Series (Boas, 1905, Parrott, 1907), four plays, 2 
 vols. Homer, ed. Hooper, 1857, 5 vols. Bibliography, Morley, En' 
 glish Writers, xi. 
 
432 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Characters. See Hall, Joseph; Overbury; Breton. H. Morley, 
 Character Writing of the Seventeenth Century ^ 1 891; Greenough, 
 Studies in the Development of Character Writing, 1 898; Whibley, in 
 Blackwood's, 1909. 
 
 Chester, Robert, I566?-i640.\ Love's Martyr, 1601; repr. 
 New Sh. Soc, 1878. 
 
 Chettle, Henry, 1564-5 ?-l6o7 ?. Kind-Heart's Dream, 1 593, 
 repr. Sh.Allusion Books,New Sh. iSoc.,1874; Pierce Plain's Apprentice- 
 ship, 1593; Downfall and Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington (2 parts 
 with Munday), 1601, repr. Hazlitt's Dodsley, viii, 1874; Patient 
 Grissil (with Dekker and Haughton), 1603, repr. Sh. Soc., 1841; 
 Hoffman, 1631, repr. Ackermann, 1894, with bibliography. Eng- 
 land's Mourning Garment, 1604, also in Sh. Allusion Books, as above. 
 
 Chronicle Plays. See Schelling, The English Chronich Play, 
 1902; and Bibliographical Essay, Elizabethan Drama, 1908, by the 
 same. 
 
 Churchyard, Thomas, 1520 ?-i6o4. Between Shore's Wife con- 
 tributed to The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. 1 563, and Churchyard's 
 Good Will, 1603, some forty tracts in verse mostly, moral, devotional, 
 historical, personal, elegiac, etc. The best is The Worthies of Wales, 
 1587, ed. Spenser Soc. 1 87 1. Select works are reprinted in Nichol's 
 Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, The Harleian Miscellany, and Collier's 
 English Poetical Miscellanies. 
 
 College Drama. See Elizabethan Drama, chapter xiv, and biblio- 
 graphy. Also Churchill and Keller, Sh. Jahrbuch, xxxiv, 1898. 
 
 Constable, Henry, i 562-1 61 3. Diana, 1592, 1594, Gamer, 
 Sonnets, ii; Spiritual Sonnets, first pr. Park, Heliconia, ii. Ed. Hazlitt, 
 complete, 1859. 
 
 Contention between the Houses of Tork and Lancaster, I and 2, see 
 Pseudo-Shakespeare. 
 
 Cooke, Joshua, fl. 1602. How a Man may Choose a Good 
 Wife, 1602, repr. Dodsley, ix. 
 
 Cooper, Thomas (Bishop of Winchester), 1517 ?-i594. See 
 Marprelate Controversy. 
 
 CoRYATE, Thomas, 1577-1617. Crudities, 161 1; repr. Glasgow, 
 1905, 2 vols; Coryate's Crambe, 161 1; The Oldcombian Banquet, 1611; 
 Traveller of the English Wits, 1616; Letter from Agra, 1616. 
 
 CovERDALE, MiLES, 1488-1568, See Bible. 
 
 Cranmer, Thomas (Archbishop of Canterbury), 1489-1556. 
 Remains, Parker Soc, 1844-6, 2 vols.; and see Bible. 
 
 Criticism, Elizabethan Poetic, and Verse. See Haslewood, Ancient 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 433 
 
 Critical Essays, l8ll, 2 vols.; Schelling, Elizabethan Verse Criticism, 
 1893; Saintsbury, History of English Criticism, 1900-1904, 3 vols. 
 G. G. Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, 1904. 
 
 Cromwell, Chronicle History of Thomas Lord, 1602, 1613, Hazlitt, 
 Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare, 1887. See Pseudo-Shakespeare. 
 
 Daborne, Robert, fl. 1613. The Christian Turned Turk, 1612; 
 The Poor Man's Comfort, 1 655, both reprinted in Anglia, xx, xxi, 
 1897-98. 
 
 Danett, Thomas, fl. 1600. Description of the Low Countries, 
 1593; History of C amines, 1 596. 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, 1562-1619. Delia, i^gi; Delia with The Com- 
 plaint of Rosamund, 1592^, 1594; Cleopatra, 1594; Civil Wars, 1595- 
 1609; Musophilus, 1599; Defense of Rime, 1602; Vision of the Twelve 
 Goddesses, 1604; Philotas, 1605; The Queen s Arcadia, 1606; Tethys' 
 Festival, 1610; History of England, 1612-1617; Hymen's Triumph, 
 1615. Five collective edd. of varying contents, 1599 to 1623. Ed. 
 Grosart, Huth Library, 1885, 5 vols.; Selections with Drayton, H. C. 
 Beaching, 1899. Inedited Poems, Philobiblon Soc, 1854. 
 
 Davies, John (of Hereford), i565?-i6i8. Microcosmus, 1603; — 
 Wit's Pilgrimage, 1610-I1; The Scourge of Folly, 1611; and nine 
 other poetical booklets between 1602 and 1617. The Writing School- 
 master, first known ed., 1633. Collected ed, Grosart, Chertsey 
 Worthies' Library, 1 878, 2 vols. 
 
 Davies, Sir John, 1569-1626. Orchestra, 1596, 1622; Nosce 
 
 Teipsum, 1599, and six other edd. to 1697; Epigrams, n. d.; Hymns 
 
 "to A straea, iJ^i^. Irish tracts and legal papers, l6i2to 1656. Coll. 
 
 ed. Grosart, Fuller Worthies' Library, 1869-76, 3 vols.; ed. Morley, 
 
 1889. 
 
 Davison, Francis, 1575 ?-i6i9. Poetical Rhapsady, 1602, 1611, 
 1 62 1, repr. Bullen, 1890, 2 vols. 
 
 Day, John, i 574-1 640. The Isle of Gulls, 1606^, 1633; The 
 Travails of Three English Brothers, 1 607; Humor out of Breath, 
 1608; Law Tricks, 1608; The Parliament of Bees, 1641; The Blind 
 Beggar of Bethnal Green, 1659. Collected ed. Bullen, 1881, 2 vols. 
 See also Nero and other Plays, Mermaid Series, 1888. 
 
 Dee, Dr. John, 1527-1608. The author of seventy-nine works 
 in Latin and English from A Supplication for the Preservation of 
 Ancient Writers and Monuments, 1 556, to The Private Diary of Dr. 
 Dee, first printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, Camden Society, 1842, and 
 later in part by J. E. Bailey, 1880. 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 1570 .^-1641 .^ Twenty pamphlets from ~^^> 
 
434 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Canaan's Calamity, 1598, 1618, to Wars, Wars, Wars, 1628; chief 
 among them The Wonderful Tear, The Bachelor s Banquet, both 1603; 
 The Dead Term, The Bellman of London, both 1 608; Lanthorn and 
 Candlelight, 1608, 1609; Four Birds of Noah's Ark, 1609, The Gulls' 
 Hornbook, 1 609, repr. the King's Classics, 1895. Old Fortunatus, 
 Comedy of, 1600; The Shoemakers' Holiday, 1600, six edd. to 1657; 
 Satiromastix, 1602; Patient Grissel, 1 603; The Honest Whore, 1604, 
 six edd. to 1635; Northward Hoe, 1607; Westward Hoe, 1607; The 
 Whore of Babylon, 1607; Sir Thomas Wyatt, 1607, l6l2; If It be Not 
 Good the Devil is in It, 1612; 2nd part of The Honest Whore, 1630; 
 Match Me in London, 1631; The Wonder of a Kingdom, 1636. Four 
 pageants, one for King James, the rest for the Lord Mayors, between 
 1604 and 1629. ^^^ Percy Soc, x. Collective edd: Dramas, ed. 
 Shepherd, 1873, 4 vols.; Mermaid ed. five plays, 1887. Non-dramatic 
 Works, ed. Grosart, 1884, 5 vols. 
 
 Deloney, Thomas, 1543-1600. The Gentle Craft, 1598, many 
 edd. to 1696, repr. Lange, Palcestra, xviii, 1903; Thomas of Reading, 
 [1599 lost], six edd. to 1636, repr. Thorns, Early English Prose Roman- 
 ces, 1858. The Garland of Good Will, 1 604, eight edd. to 1664, repr. 
 Percy Soc, xxx, 1853; Strange Histories, 1607, four edd. to 1681; 
 John of Newberry, eighth ed. 1 619, ten others to 1672, repr. R. Sievers, 
 Palcestra, xxxvi, 1 904. Broadside ballads, between 1583 and 1591. 
 
 De Vere, Edward, see Oxford, Earl of. 
 
 Dickenson, John, fl. 1594. The Shepherd's Complaint (in 
 hexameters), n. d.; Arisbas, Euphues amidst his Slumbers, both 1594; 
 Greene in Concetpt, 1598. Repr. Grosart, Occasional Issues, vi., 1878. 
 
 Donne, John, 1573-1631. Ignatius his Conclave, Biathanatos, 
 1608; Pseudo Martyr, 1610; An Anatomy of the World, 1611, 1612, 
 1621, 1625; Elegy on Prince Henry, 1613; Various Sermons singly 
 issued, 1623-33; Moral Sentences, 1631; His Funeral Sermon, 1632 
 and other edd.; Poems, 1633, six edd. to 1669; Eighty Sermons, 1640; 
 Fifty Sermons, 1 649; Essays in Divinity, 1 651; Letters to Several 
 Persons, 1651, 1654; Twenty-six Sermons, 1669. Collected edd. 
 Grosart, 1872, 2 vols.; ed. E. K. Chambers, The Muses' Library, 
 1896, 2 vols. 
 
 Dow.LAND, John, 1563 .''-1626 ?. The First Book of Songs, 1597, 
 five edd. to 1613; The Second Book of Songs, 1600; The Third and Last 
 Book of Songs, 1603; A Pilgrim's Solace, l6i2, all in Garner, Shorter 
 Poems, 1903. 
 
 Drama. See F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, 1908, 2 vols., 
 where a comprehensive Bibliography of the subject will be found. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 435 
 
 See also W. W. Greg, A List of English Plays, Bibliographical Society, 
 1900. 
 
 Drant, Thomas, d. 1580. Latin verses and English sermons, 
 1564 to 1574. Horace, his Art of Poetry, Epistles and Satires Eng- 
 lished, 1567; parts of the Iliad unpublished. 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 1563-1631. The Harmony of the Church, 
 1591, Percy Soc, 1843, vol. vii.; Idea the Spheherd's Garland, 1593, 
 1606, repr. Spenser Soc, 1891, 3rd ed. 1619, repr. Garner, Sonnets, ii, 
 1904, 4th ed. 1620; Legends of Gaveston, Matilda, Robert of Normandy, 
 Cromwell, each separate, 1594-1607 in several edd.; Idea's Mirror, 
 1594, seven edd. to 1620, repr. Garner, Sonnets, ii, 1904, and often 
 elsewhere, ed. Esdaile, with Daniel's Delia, 1908; Mortimeriados, 
 1596 (repr. Collier, Roxburghe Club, 1856), altered into The Barons' 
 Wars, 1603, 1605 (repr. Spenser Soc, Poems, 1888); England's 
 Heroical Epistles, 1598, five other edd. variously combined to 1603; 
 The Owl, 1604; Polyolbton, 1613, completed in 1622 (repr. Hooper, 
 1876, 3 vols.); The Battle of Agincourt, 1627 (repr. Garnett, 1893); 
 The Muses' Elizium, 1630 (repr. with Nymphidia, 1896); and nine 
 other separate publications in verse. Ten collective edd. of varying 
 contents between 1605 and 1637. 
 
 The dramas of Drayton are lost, except possibly for his share in 
 The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608, Dodsley, x; and Sir John Old- 
 castle, 1600. A complete ed. of Drayton, projected by Hooper, 
 gave out on the completion of Polyolbion and Hymns of the Church, 
 1876, 3 vols.; Selections: by Bullen, 1883; by Garnett, The Battle of 
 Agincourt, 1893; Nymphidia and The Muses' Elizium, 1896. Selec- 
 tions, with Daniel, ed. Beaching, 1899. See also Elton, Introduction 
 to Drayton, 1895, and Whitaker, Drayton as a Dramatist, Publ. Mod. 
 Lang. Asso., 1903. 
 
 Drummond, William (of Hawthornden), 1585-1649. Tears on 
 the Death of Meliades, 1613, 1614; Poems, 1616^, 1656, 1659; Forth 
 Feasting, 1617; Flowers of Sion, 1623, 1630^; The Cypress Grove, 
 1623, '•^SS' Entertainment of King Charles, 1633; History of Scotland, 
 1655; Works collected by Ruddiman, 171 1 ; Conversations with Ben 
 Jonson, Sh. Soc, 1842. Modern ed. Turnbull, 1890; ed. W. C. Ward, 
 Muses' Library, 1894, 2 vols.; see also Masson, Drummond of Haw- 
 thornden, 1873. 
 
 Dyer, Sir Edward, 1540-1607. See Hannah, Raleigh and Other 
 Courtly Poets, 1875, and ed. Grosart, Fuller Worthies' Library, iv, 
 1872. 
 
 Eden, Richard, 1521 ?-I576. The Decades of the New World, 
 
436 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 ^555' ^^^ History of Travel, 1577; and other translations of voyages 
 and science. See Arber, The First Three English Books on America, 
 1885. 
 
 Edwards, Richard, 1523 ?-i566. Damon and Pithias, 1571, 
 Dodsley, i; and see Miscellanies. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 1533-1603. Various translations, ed. C. 
 Pemberton, Early English Text Soc, 1899; see Fliigel in Anglia, 
 xiv, 1 89 1. For specimens of the queen's letters, Camden Soc, 1849. 
 
 England's Parnassus, see Allott, Robert. 
 
 Essay, The. See Bibliography, Cambridge History, 1910, vol. iv; 
 also Littleboy, Relations between French and English Literature, 1 895; 
 and Upham, French Influence in English Literature, 1 908. 
 
 Euphuism, see C. G. Child, John Lyly and Euphuism, Miinchener 
 Beitrage, vii, 1894; Bond, Works of Lyly, 1902, 3 vols.; Fuillerat, 
 John Lyly, 1910. 
 
 Every Woman in her Humor, 1609, BuUen's Old Plays, iv. 
 
 Fair Em [n. d.], 1631; Simpson, School of Shakspere, 1878, vol. 
 ii. 
 
 Fairfax, Edward, d. 1635. Godfrey of Bulloigne, 1600, 1624, 
 repr. Routledge, British Poets, 1868; Twelve Eclogues, in part first 
 printed in Cooper's Muses' Library, 1737. See Anglia, xii. 
 
 Fenton, Sir Geoffrey, 1539 ?-i6o8. Certain Tragical Dis- 
 courses, 1567, repr. Tudor Translations, 2 vols., 1898; Guevara's 
 Golden Epistles, 1 575, 1577, 1582; The History of Guicciardini, 
 1579, and other translations. 
 
 Fiction, Elizabethan, see Jusserand, The English Novel in the 
 Reign of Elizabeth, 1895; and Bibliography in Cambridge History of 
 Literature, vol. iii. 
 
 Field, Nathaniel, i 587-1 633. A Woman is a Weathercock, 
 1612; Amends for Ladies, 1618, 1639; ed. Mermaid, Nero and Other 
 Plays, [n. d.]. 
 
 FiTZGEOFFREY, Charles, fl. 1601. Affaniae (Latin epigrams), 
 1601. Ed. Grosart, Occasional Issues, xvi, 1881. Also Sir Francis 
 Drake, 1 596. 
 
 Fletcher, Giles (the elder), 1549 ?-l6l i. Of the Russe Common- 
 wealth, 1591, Hakluyt Soc, ed. E. A. Bond, 1856; Licia and The 
 Rising to the Crown of Richard III, 1593, repr. Grosart, Fuller 
 Worthies' Miscellanies, iii, 1872; Licia also in Garner, Sonnets, ii. 
 
 Fletcher, Giles (the younger), 1 588-1 623. Christ's Victory and 
 Triumph, 1610, 1632, 1640. Ed. Grosart, Early English Poets, 
 1876; ed. W. T. Brooke, n. d. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 437 
 
 Fletcher, John, i 579-1 625 (including plays with Beaumont). 
 ^he Woman Hater, 1 607 2, 1648, 1649; ^^^ Faithful Shepherdess, n. 
 d., five add. to 1665; The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1613, 1635^; 
 Cupid's Revenge, 1615, 1630, 1635; The Scornful Lady, 1616, seven 
 edd. to 1651; The Maid's Tragedy, 1619, seven edd. to 1661; King 
 and No King, 1619, seven edd. to 1661; Philaster, 1620, seven edd. 
 to 1652; Thierry and Theodoret, 1621, 1648, 1649; ^^^ ^'"^0 Noble 
 Kinsmen (with Shakespeare?) 1634; The Elder Brother, 1637^, ^^^ 
 edd. to 1661; The Bloody Brother, 1639, 1640; Monsieur Thomas, 
 1639; fFit Without Money, 1639, 1661; The Night Walker, 1640, 
 1661; Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, 1640; Beggars' Bush, 1641^; 
 The Wild goose Chase, 1652 (foho form). Collected edd. First folio, 
 1647, contains thirty-four other plays; the following are mentioned in 
 the text: The Woman's Prize, The Coxcomb, The Captain, Love's 
 Cure, Wit at Several Weapons, The Chances, Bonduca, Valentinian. 
 Second folio, 1679, reprints all the plays of the first folio and all of the 
 quartos just enumerated except Beggar's Bush; it adds The Coronation 
 from the quarto of 1640, a play later claimed by Shirley. Third 
 folio (repr. of the second), 171 1. Critical edd. begin with Theobald 
 and others, 1750, 10 vols.; and continue to Weber, 1812, 14 vols.; 
 and Dyce, 1843-46, ii vols. Recent edd. are that of A. Glover, 
 Cambridge English Classics, 1905, 10 vols, to date; and the Variorum 
 Ed. by various scholars (BuUen), also 1905 and not yet completed^ 
 Barnavelt was first printed by Bullen, Old English Plays, ii, 1883. 
 
 Fletcher, Phineas, 1582-1650. Locustae, 1627; Britain's Ida, 
 1628; Sicelides, 1631; The Purple Island, Piscatory Eclogues, Mis- 
 cellanies, etc., 1633; other lesser books. Poems, ed. Grosart, Fuller 
 Worthies' Miscellanies, 1869, 4 vols. 
 
 Florio, John, i 553-1 625. Italian and English Dictionary, 
 \^()Z; Montaigne's Essays Englished, 1603,1613, repr. J. H.Mc Carthy, 
 1889. Ed. Saintsbury, Tudor Translations, 1892-93. Other works 
 between 1578 and 1603. 
 
 Ford, Emanuel, fl. 1607. Parismus, 1598, 2nd part, 1599, many 
 subsequent edd.; Ornatus and Artesia, 1607 ^^^ other (^dA.;Montelion, 
 earlier edd. lost, 1633, and later edd. See Dunlop, History of Fiction^ 
 1814. 
 
 FoRMAN, Dr. Simon, 1552-1611. Diary, Camden Society, 1843. 
 The parts relating to Shakespeare were first reprinted by Collier, 
 New Particulars, etc., 1836. 
 
 Fortescue, Thomas, fl. 1570. The Forest or Collection of His- 
 tories, I ^y I. Not reprinted. 
 
438 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 FoxE, John, 1516-1587. Acts and Monuments (Book of Martyrs), 
 1562, and eight other edd. to 1684. Earlier Latin edd. Strassburg, 
 1554; Basel, 1 559-1 562. Ed. Stoughton, 1 877, 8 vols. Christus 
 Triumphans, 1556, five later edd. to 1677. 
 
 Fraunce, Abraham, fl. 1 587-1633. Tasso-Watson, Aminta, 
 transl. 1587; The Arcadian Rhetoric, 1588; The Lawyer s Logic, 1588; 
 The Countess of Pembroke's Emanuel, 1591; repr. Grosart, Fuller 
 Worthies' Miscellanies, iii. 1871; The Countess of Pembroke's Ivy- 
 church, 1591-92; and other works. 
 
 Gager, William, fl. 1580-1619. Ulysses Redux, Meleager, both 
 1592. Other works not printed. 
 
 Gascoigne, George, 1525 ?-i577. A Hundreth Sundry Flowers, 
 1572; The Posies of G., 1575; The Whole Works, 1587. These contain 
 The Steel Glass, separately published, 1576, repr. Arber, English 
 Reprints, 1868; the plays, Supposes, Jocasta, The Glass of Government, 
 1575; The Adventures of Master F. /. 1572; and Certain Notes of In- 
 struction; besides other tracts. Ed. CunlifFe, Cambridge English 
 Classics, 1907-9, 2 vols. See also Schelling, Life and Writings of G., 
 1893. 
 
 GiFFORD, Humphrey, fl. 1580. A Posie of Gilliflowers, 1580; 
 ed. Grosart, Occasional Issues, 1875. 
 
 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 1539 ?-i583. Discourse of a New 
 Passage to Cataia, edited by Gascoigne, 1576; Queen Elizabeth's 
 Academy, pr. E. E. Text Soc, 1869. 
 
 GoLDiNG, Arthur, 1536 ?-i 605?. Seneca de Beneficiis, 1558; 
 Aretino's History of the Goths in Italy, 1 563; Caesar, transl. 1565; 
 Ovid's Metamorphosis, 1 565, 1 567, repr. The King's Library, ed. 
 Rouse, 1904. 
 
 GooGE, Barnabe, 1540-1594. Eclogues, Epitaphs and Sonnets, 
 1563; ed. Arber, Reprints, 1871. Various translations, 1560 to 1579. 
 
 GossoN, Setphen, 1555-1624. The School of Abuse, 1579, 1587, 
 repr. Arber, Reprints, 1868; Ephimerides of Phialo, 1579, 1586; 
 Plays Confuted, 1582; Pleasant Quips for Upstart New-Fangled 
 Gentlewomen, 1 595. 
 
 GouGH, Henry, fl. 1570. Offspring of the House of the Otto- 
 mans, 1570. 
 
 Grafton, Richard, fl. 1543-1595. Besides edd. of Harding's 
 and of Hall's Chronicles, 1543 and 1548, in which Grafton was printer 
 and reviser; Abridgment of Chronicles, 1562, five edd. to 1572; 
 Chronicle at Large of England, 1586-69, 2 vols., two edd. Manual of 
 English History, 1 595. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 439 
 
 Greene, Robert, 1560 ?-i592. Thirty pamphlets between 
 Mamillia, [1580], 1583; and Greene's Vision, 1592, chief among them 
 Planetomachta, 1585; Euphues his Censure to Philautus, 1587; 
 Penelope's Weh, 1587; Perimedes, 1588; Pandosto, 1588, ed. P. G, 
 Thomas, Shakespeare Classics, 1907; Menaphon, 1589; The Spanish 
 Masquerado, 1589; The Mourning Garment, 1590, 1616; Farewell to 
 Folly, 1591, 1617; Philomela, 1592, 1631; A Quip for an Upstart 
 Courtier, 1592^, 1 606, 1 620, 1635; the Conycatching tracts, 1592. 
 The Black Book's Messenger, 1592, A Groatsworth of Wit, 1592, 
 eight edd. to 1637, repr. Saintsbury, Elizabethan and Jacobean 
 Pamphlets, 1902; Greene's Repentance, 1592. 
 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1594, four edd. to 1655; ^^- ^- ^• 
 Ward, with Faustus, 1892; Orlando Furioso, 1594, 1599; Selimus, 
 1594, 1638, both in Malone Soc, 1907, 1908; James IF, 1598; Al- 
 phonsus of Ar agon, 1 599; George a Greene, 1599, doubtfully accepted 
 as by G. Life and Complete Works, ed. Grosart, Huth Library, 1881- 
 86, 15 vols.; Plays and Poems, ed. J. C. Collins, 1905, 2 vols.; 
 Dramas, ed. Dickinson, Mermaid Series, 1909. 
 
 Greville, Sir Fulke (Lord Brooke), 1554-1628. Mustapha, 
 1609, Certain Learned and Elegant Works, 1633; -'^'/^ 0/ Sidney, 
 1652; repr. ed. Brydges, 1816, 2 vols.; also by N. Smith, 1907. Re- 
 mains, 1670. Collective ed. Grosart, 1870, 4 vols. 
 
 Griffin, Bartholomew, d. 1602. Fidessa, 1596, Garner, 
 Sonnets, ii. 
 
 Grtm the Collier of Croydon, GratiaeTheatrales, 1662, Dodsley, viii. 
 
 Grimald, Nicholas, 1519-1562. See Miscellanies. 
 
 Grimestone, Edward, fl. 1610. General Inventory of the His- 
 tory of France, 1607; History of the Netherlands, 1608; History of 
 Spain, 1612; and other like works, none reprinted. See Boas in 
 Modern Philology, iii, 1905. 
 
 Grove, Matthew, fl. 1587, Pelops and Hippodamia, Epigrams, 
 Songs and Sonnets, 1587. Repr. Grosart, Occasional Issues, 1878. 
 
 GuiLPiN, Edward, fl. 1598. Skialetheia, 1598, repr. Collier 
 Miscellaneous Tracts, 1868; and Grosart, Occasional Issues, 1878. 
 
 GwiNNE, Matthew, 1558 }-i62j. Nero, 1603, 1639; Fertumnus, 
 1607; other works, J. Ward, Lives of Gresham Professors, 1740. 
 
 Hake, Edward, fl. 1579. News Out of Paul's Churchyard, 
 1568, 1579, Isham Reprints, 1872; many devotional and commenda- 
 tory works. 
 
 Hakluyt, Richard, I552.?-i6i6. Divers Foyages Touching 
 America, 1 582, ed. J. W. Jones, Hakluyt Soc, 1 850; Four Foyages 
 
440 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 into Florida, 1587; The Principal Navigations, 1589, enlarged 1598- 
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 12 vols.; Galvano's Discovery of the World, i6oi; repr. Bethune, 1862; 
 Virginia Richly Valued, 1609, ed. Rye, W. B., 1851; Discourse con- 
 cerning Western Discoveries (wr. 1584), first printed by Maine 
 Historical Society, ed. Woods, 183 1, ed. Deane, Hakluyt Soc, 1 877. 
 
 Hall, Arthur, 1540 i*-l 604. Ten Books of Homer's Iliad, 1581. 
 
 Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656. Virgidemiarum Six Books, 1597- 
 98, 1599, 1602; Mundus Alter et Idem, 1605, 1607, transl. by Healey 
 as The Discovery of a New World, 1608, repr. Morley, Universal 
 Library, 1885; Characters of Virtues and Vices, 1608; Epistles, 1608, 
 2 vols.; Contemplations on Scriptures, 1612-1626, 6 vols. Works, ed. 
 Wynter, 1863, 10 vols.; Poems, ed, Grosart, 1879; Satires, ed. S. W. 
 Singer, The Muses' Library, 1907. 
 
 Hannay, Patrick, d. 1629. Epigrammaton Centuriae Sex, 
 1616; other later verses. Collective ed., 1622, repr. Hunterian Club, 
 1875. 
 
 Harbert, William, fl. 1604. J Prophecy of Cadwallader, 1604. 
 Ed. Grosart, Fuller Worthies' Library, 1870. 
 
 Harington, Sir John, 1561-1612. Orlando Furioso, transl. 
 1591, 1607, 1634. {Apology of Poetry prefixed, repr. Haslewood. 
 Ancient Critical Essays, ii, 1811-15); Epigrams, 1613, five edd. to 
 1634. Various political and other tracts, most important a View of 
 Ireland in 1605, ed. Macray, 1879; Nugae Antiquae, 1769-75, ed. 
 Park, 1804. 
 
 Harman, Thomas, fl. 1567. A Caveat for Common Cursetors, 
 1566 (lost), 1567, Repr. New Sh. Soc, 1880, and The Shakespeare 
 Library, 1907. 
 
 Harrison, William, i 534-1 593. Description of England, pre- 
 fixed to Holinshed's Chronicles, 1577, 1 587; ed. Furnivall, New Sh. 
 Soc, 1 877-1 88 1. Abridgement, Camelot Series, n. d. 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel, i545?-i630. Various Letters, 1580, 1592, 
 1593; Pierce's Supererogation, 1593; The Trimming of Thomas 
 Nash, 1597. Latin works, 1577-78. Collected ed. Grosart, Huth 
 Library, 1 884-85, 3 vols. 
 
 Haughton, William, fl. 1598. A Woman will Have her Will, 
 1 616, 1626, 1 63 1, otherwise called Englishmen for my Money, Dodsley, 
 X. 
 
 Hayward, Sir John, 1564-1627. History of Henry IV, 1599; 
 Union of England and Scotland, 1604; Lives of Three Norman Kings, 
 1613; Sanctuary of a Troubled Soul, 1616, many edd.; other devotional 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 441 
 
 pamphlets; Edward VI, 1630, 1636; Beginning of the Reign of Eliza- 
 beth, 1636 (Camden Society, repr. 1840); History of Henry HI and 
 IF, with Cotton, 1642. 
 
 Henslowe, Philip, d. 1616. Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier, Sh. 
 Soc, 1845 (unsafe); ed. Greg, 1 904-1 908, 2 vols, (authoritative). 
 
 Heywood, Jasper, i 535-1 598, See Seneca Translated. 
 
 HEYVi^ooD, Thomas, 1575 ?-i650. Edward IF, 1600, five edd. to 
 1626; // Tou Know Not Me, 1605, eight edd. to 1623; J Woman 
 Killed with Kindness, 1607, 1 61 7; The Fair Maid of the Exchange, 
 1607, three edd. to 1637; ^^^ Rape of Lucrece, 1608, four edd. to 
 1638; The Golden Age, l6li; The Silver Age, 1613; The Brazen Age, 
 1613; The Four Prentices of London, 1615, 167,2; The Fair Maid of the 
 West, 1 631; The Iron Age, 1632; The English Traveller, 1 633; 
 The Lancashire Witches, 1634; A Maidenhead Well Lost, 1634; 
 Love's Mistress, 1636, 1640; A Challenge for Beauty, 1636; Royal 
 King and Loyal Subject, 1637; The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, 1638; 
 Fortune by Land and Sea, 1655; The Captives, Bullen, Old Plays, iv, 
 1883. 
 
 Troia Britannica, 1609; An Apology for Actors, i6l2, repr. 
 Sh. Soc, 1841; Gunaikaton, 1624; England's Elizabeth, 1632; The 
 Hierarchy of Blessed Angels, 1 635; Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, 
 1637; The General History of Women, 1657. Elegies, Epithalamia, 
 six city Pageants (for which see Percy Society, x, 1843), additional 
 translations and pamphlets. Dramatic Works, ed. Pearson, 1874, 6 
 vols. 
 
 HiGGlNS, John, I 545-1 602. See Mirror for Magistrates. 
 
 Htstriomastix, 1610, probably by Marston, School of Shakspere, 
 1878. 
 
 HoBY, Sir Thomas, i 530-1 566. The Courtier of Count Baldessar 
 Castillo, 1561, five edd. to 1603. Repr. Tudor Translations, 1900. 
 
 HOLINSHED, Ralph, d. 1580 ?. Chronicles of England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland, 1577, 1586-87. Repr. 1807-08, 6 vols. See also Bos- 
 well-Stone, Shakespeare's Holinshed, 1896. 
 
 Holland, Philemon, 1552-1637. Livy's Roman History, 1600; 
 Pliny's History of the World, 1601 ; Plutarch's Morals, 1603; Suetonius, 
 Twelve Caesars, 1606, repr. Tudor Translations, ed. Whibley, 1899; 
 Marcellinus, Roman History, 1609; Camden's Britannia, Englished, 
 1610; Xenophon's Cyropaedia, 1632. 
 
 Holyday, Barten, 1593-1661. Persius' Satires, translated, 1616, 
 1617, 1635, 1673; Technogamia, a comedy, 1618, 1630; and other 
 later works. 
 
442 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Hooker, Richard, i 554-1 600. Ecclesiastical Polity, four books, 
 1594. 1604; Book V, 161 1, 1617; Books VI, VIII, 1648, 1651; Book 
 VII, 1862. Sermons and Tracts, ed. Church and Paget, 1888, 3 
 vols. For Bibliography see Cambridge History of Literature, iii. 
 
 Hopkins, Richard, d. 1594?. Granada's Prayer and Medita- 
 tion, 1582, 1592, 1612; Granada's Memorial of a Christian Life, 1586, 
 1599, 1612, 1625. 
 
 Howell, Thomas, fl. 1568. New Sonnets and Pretty Pamphlets, 
 1567-68; The Arhor of Amity, 1 568; Howell his Devise, 1 58 1. Ed. 
 Grosart, Occasional Issues, viii. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, fl. 1587. The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587, ed. 
 Grumbine, 1900. 
 
 Hume, Tobias, d. 1645. •^""j/ Part of Airs, 1605; Captain 
 Hume's Musical Humors, 1607. See Rimbault, Bibliotheca Madriga- 
 liana, 1847. 
 
 HuNNis, William, fl. 1 530-1 597. A Hive full of Hunney, 1578; 
 Seven Sobs, 1 583; Hunnis' Recreations, 1 588. See Slopes, in Sh. 
 Jahrbuch, xxvii, and repr. 1892 for an account of Hunnis. 
 
 Jack Drum's Entertainment, 1601, School of Shakspere, 1878. 
 
 James I, King, i 566-1 625. Essays of a Prentice, 1584, repr. 
 Arber, Reprints, 1869; Demonology, lS97'y Basilikon Doron, 1599; 
 True Law of free Monarchies, 1603; A Counterblast to Tobacco, 1604; 
 religious meditations and political tracts. Collected ed. 1616, 1619, 
 1689; a convenient ed. of extracts by Rait, A Royal Rhetorician, 1900. 
 
 J. C, Alcilia, Parthenophen's Loving Folly, 1595. Repr. W. 
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 Jewell, John (Bishop of Salisbury) 1522-1571. Works, 1609. 
 Ed. Ayre, 1845-50, 4 vols. 
 
 John, The Troublesome Reign of King, 1591. Ed. Furnival, 
 facsimile repr. 1888. 
 
 Johnson, Richard, 1573-1659 ?. The Nine Worthies of London, 
 1592; The Seven Champions of Christendom, 1596-97, fourteen edd. 
 to 1690; A Crown Garland of Golden Roses, 1 61 2, seven edd. to 1685, 
 repr. Percy Soc, vi, 1842; Walks in Moorfields, 1607; Look on Me, 
 London, 1613; both repr. in Collier, Early English Popular Poetry, 
 vol. ii, 1864; Tom Thumb, 1621; Tom a Lincoln, 1631, twelve edd. to 
 1682. Several other like pamphlets. 
 
 Jones, Robert, d. 1616. Book of Songs, 1601; First Set of Madri- 
 gals, 1607; Ultimum Vale, 1608; A Musical Dream, 1609; The Muses* 
 Garden of Delights, 1610, ed. W. B. Squire, 1901. 
 
 JoNSON, Ben, 1573-1635. Every Man Out of his Humor, 1600^; 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 443 
 
 Cynthia's Revels, i6oi; Every Man in his Humor, l6oi; Poetaster, 
 1602; Sejanus, 1605; Eastward Hoe (with Chapman and Marston), 
 1605^; Volpone, 1607; The Case is Altered, 1609^; Catiltne, l6ll, 
 1635; The Alchemist, l6l2; The Silent Woman, l6l2 ?, 1620. (All 
 in folio 161 6 except The Case is Altered.) 
 
 King James' Entertainment, 1604; Hymencei, 1606; The Viscount 
 Haddington's Masque, 1608; The Queen's Masques \of Blackness and 
 of Beauty'^, 1609, The Masque of Queens, 1609; Love Freed from Ignor- 
 ance, 161 2 ?; Oberon, Love Restored, Mercury Vindicated, The Golden 
 Age, znd three other pieces, folio 1616. Epigrams, The Forest, both 
 folio 1 61 6. 
 
 The New Inn, 1629, ^^3^ > Bartholomew Fair, four other comedies, 
 The Sad Shepherd, folio 1640; The Masque of Lethe, 1617; Neptune's 
 Triumph, 1623; ^^^ Fortunate Isles, [n. d.]; Chloridia, 1630?; 
 Love's Triumph, 1630; these and twelve other masques and enter- 
 tainments, folio 1640; Execration upon Vulcan and Divers Epigrams, 
 quarto, 1640; Horace Art of Poetry, The Masque of Gipsies, and 
 Epigrams, octavo, 1640; Discoveries, English Grammar, folio 1640 
 with contents of folio 161 6. Leges Convivales, in third folio, 1692, 
 with all the foregoing. Modern collective edd., Gifford, 1816, 9 
 vols.; Cunningham-GifFord, 1875, 9 vols; Mermaid, ed., n. d. 3 vols, 
 and many more. See especially Swinburne, A Study of B. J., 1889; 
 M. Castelain, Ben Jonson, 1909. 
 
 Knolles, Richard, 1550-1610. General History of the Otto- 
 man Turks, 1603. 
 
 Kyd, Thomas, 1557 ?-i595. Soliman and Perseda [1593 ?], 1599'; 
 Spanish Tragedy, 1592 .'' twelve quartos to 1633, repr. ed. Schick, 
 Archive, xc, and Temple Dramatists, iSgS; Cornelia, 1594, 1595; The 
 First Part of Jeronimo, 1605, i^ "O* ^Y Kyd. Three pamphlets 
 between 1588 and 1592. Collective ed. Boas, 1901. 
 
 Larum for London, A, l6l2, Simpson. School of Shakspere, 1872. 
 
 Legge, Thomas, 1595-1607. Richardus Tertius, Sh. Soc, 1844. 
 
 Leir, The History of King, 1 605, repr. Malone Society, 1907; 
 also Shakespeare Classics, ed. S. Lee, 1907. 
 
 LiTHGOW, William, i 582-1 645. A Total Discourse of the Rare 
 Adventures and Painful Perigrinations, 1614, complete in 1632. 
 
 Locrine, The Tragedy of, 1 595, repr. Malone Society, 1908. See 
 Pseudo-Shakespeare. 
 
 Lodge, Thomas, 1558-1625. Defense of Poetry and Stage Plays, 
 1579, repr. Sh. Soc, 1853; An Alarum for Usurers, 1 584, repr. in the 
 same; Rosalynd, 1590 and eight other edd. to 1642, often repr'd., ed. 
 
44+ BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Greg, Shakespeare Classics, 1907, and sixteen other romances, trans- 
 lations, and moral tracts including A Margaret of America, and Wit's 
 Misery, both 1 596; A Treatise on the Plague, 1603; The Works of 
 Seneca, 1614; and A Summary upon Du Bartas, 1 62 1. S cilice's 
 Metamorphosis, 1589, 1610; repr. Chiswick Press, 1819; Phillis, 
 1593, Garner Sonnets, ii; A Fig for Momus, 1595. Repr. Auchinleck 
 Press, 1817. The Wounds of Civil War, 1594, Dodsley, vii; A Look- 
 ing-glass for London, 1594, 1598, 1602, 1617. Works, ed. Gosse 
 (exclusive of the plays), Hunterian Club, 1872-82. 
 
 LoK, Henry, fl. 1593-1597. Ecclesiastes, whereunto are annexed 
 sundry Sonnets of Christian Passions, ed. Grosart, Fuller Worthies' 
 Library, 1 87 1. 
 
 London Prodigal, 1605, Tyrrel, Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare. 
 See Pseudo-Shakespeare. 
 
 Lust's Dominion," hyyiarlowe," 1657. Ed. Pickering, Mar/ow^, 
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 Lyly, John, 1553-4 — 1606. Euphues, isjg^ and twelve other 
 edd. to 1636; Euphues and his England, 1580^, and eleven edd. to 
 1636. Repr. Arber, 1868. Cam pas pe, 1584^, 1591 ; Sapho and Phao, 
 1584, 1591; Endimion, 1591; Gallathea, 1592; Midas, 1592; Mother 
 Bomhie, 1594, 1598; The Woman in the Moon, 1 597; The Maid's 
 Metamorphosis, 1 600; Love's Metamorphosis, 1 60 1. Pap with a 
 Hatchet, 1598, has been attributed to L. Collective edd.: Six 
 Court Comedies, 1632; ed. Fairholt, 1858, 2 vols.; complete Works, 
 ed. Bond, 1902, 3 vols. See also A. Feuillerat, John Lyly, Rennes, 
 1910. 
 
 Lynche, Richard, fl. 1596-1601. Diella, Certain Sonnets, 1596, 
 repr. Garner, Sonnets, 1904; The Fountain of Ancient Fiction, 1599. 
 
 Lyrics, Elizabethan. Lyrical Poems, Percy Society, xiii, 1844; 
 Arber, English Garner, 1879-83, 8 vols.; Bullen, Lyrics from Song 
 Books, 1887, More Lyrics from Song Books, 1888, Lyrics from the 
 Dramatists, 1889-90, Lyrics from Romances, 1890, Garner, Shorter 
 Elizabethan Poems, 1903; Schelling, Book of Elizabethan Lyrics, 1895; 
 F. I. Carpenter, English Lyrical Poetry, 1906. 
 
 Machin, Lev^^is, fl. 1607. Eclogues with Barkstead's Mirrha, 
 1607; y^^ Z)Mr«^^nz^/z/, with Markham, 1608,1633. Repr. Dodsley x. 
 
 Madrigal. See F. A. Cox, English Madrigals in the Time of 
 Shakespeare, 1899. Also T. Oliphant, Musa Madrigalesca, 1837, 
 and E. F. Rimbault, Bibliotheca Madrigaliana, 1 847. 
 
 Manningham, John, d. 1622. Diary, ed. Bruce, Camden 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 445 
 
 Markham, Gervais, 1568-1637. Ariosto's Satires, 1608, 1611; 
 thirty or more pamphlets on horsemanship, husbandry, angling, 
 archery, the art of letter-writing, and other subjects between 1593 and 
 1654. Repr. Tears of the Beloved, 1600; Marie Magdalene's Tears, 
 1601, ed. Grosart, Fuller Worthies' Library, 1871. 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 1564-1593. Tamburlaine, 1590, 1592, 
 1605, 1606; Edward II, 1594, four quartos to 1622; Dido (with Nash) 
 1594; Hero and Leander, 1598^, seven edd. to 1637; Lucan's Pharsalia 
 (Book I), 1600; Ovid's Amores, 3 edd. n. d. ; Massacre at Paris, 
 1600?; Faustus, 1604 (first extant quarto) and seven other edd. to 
 1631 ; The Jew of Malta, 1633 (first extant quarto). Lust's Dominion, 
 1657, is not Marlowe's. Collective edd. Bullen, 1885, 3 vols.; 
 Mermaid ed., 1887; Breymann and Wagner, 1885-89; C. F.T. Brooke, 
 1910. See also J. H. Ingram, Marlowe and his Associates, 1904. 
 
 Marston, John, 1576-1634. Pigmalion's Image, 1598, 1613, 
 1638; The Scourge of Villainy, 1598, 1599^. Antonio and Mellida, 
 1602; The Malcontent, 1604^; The Dutch Courtezan, 1605; The Fawn, 
 1606^; Sophonisha, 1606; What Tou Will, 1607; The Insatiate Count- 
 ess, 1613, 1616, 1631; one or two other plays doubtfully his, and two 
 imsques.Tragedtes and Comedies, 16^^. Works, ed. Bullen, 1887, 3 vols. 
 
 Martin Marprelate Controversy, 1 587-1 590. Preliminary works : 
 A Defence of the Government, by Bridges, 1 587; Diotrephes, by J. 
 Udall; The Demonstration of Discipline, anon, (both Puritan replies), 
 1588. Puritan tracts: The Epistle; The Epitome; A Supplication to 
 Parliament, by Penry; Hay any Work for Cooper; The Protestation; 
 with others, in all nine tracts, all 1589. Church pamphlets; An 
 Admonition, etc., by T. Cooper; Mar-Martin; Anti-Martinus; Pas- 
 quil of England; Martin's Month's Mind; Pap with a Hatchet; An 
 Almond for a Parrot; with other tracts, in all some eighteen, all 1589 or 
 early in 1590. Bacon, Controversies of the Church, 1587. On the 
 topic see Arber, "Introductory Sketch to the M. M. Controversy," 
 English Scholars' Library, viii, ix, xi, xv, wherein several of the 
 tracts are reprinted. See also W. Pierce, An Historical Introduc- 
 tion to the Marprelate Tract, 1908; and Bibliography in Cambridge 
 History of Literature, 1909, vol. iii. 
 
 Masque, H. A. Evans, English Masques, 1897; R. Brotanek, Z)i^ 
 englischen Maskenspiele, Wiener Beitrdge, 1902; P. Reyher, Le 
 Masque Anglais, 1909; see also W. W. Greg, A List of Masques, etc., 
 1902. 
 
 Melbancke, Brian, fl. 1583. Philotimus, the War betwixt 
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446 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Melville, James, 1556-1614. Diary, pr. for the Bannatyne 
 Club, 1829. 
 
 Melville, Sir James, 1535-1617. Memoirs of his own Life^ 
 1683; repr, for the Bannatyne Club, 1827. 
 
 Meres, Francis, i 565-1 647. Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury, 
 1598, 1634. Repr. in part. New Sh. Soc, 1874. Also certain religious 
 works. 
 
 Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608, five edd. to 1655. See Dray- 
 ton. 
 
 Microcynicon, Six Snarling Satyres, by T. M. Gent, 1599. (Not 
 by Middleton.) 
 
 MiDDLETON, Thomas, i 570-1 627. The Wisdom of Solomon 
 Paraphrased, 1597; Blurt, Master Constable, l6o2; Michaelmas Term, 
 1607, 1630; Tour Five Gallants, 1 607 ?; The Phoentx, 1 607, 1630; 
 The Family of Love, 1 608; A Trick to Catch the Old One, 1 608 2, 
 1 61 6; A Mad World my Masters, 1608, 1640; The Roaring Girl, 
 1611; A Fair Quarrel, 1617^, 1622; The Inner Temple Masque, 1619-, 
 The World Well Tossed at Tennis, 1620; A Game at Chess, 1625*; 
 A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 1630; The Changeling, 1653, 1668; 
 The Spanish Gipsy, 1653; Two New Plays: More Dissemblers Besides 
 Women, Women Beware Women, 1657; No Wit, No Help like a 
 Woman's, 1657; The Mayor of Queenborough, 1661; Anything for a 
 Quiet Life, 1662; The Witch, first pr. 1778 by Reed; eight pageants 
 between 1613 and 1626. See Percy Society, x; and several pamphlets. 
 Works, ed. Dyce, 1840, 5 vols.; Bullen, 1885, 8 vols. 
 
 Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Baldwin, 1559, 1 563 (Sackville's 
 work first included), 1571, 1574, 1575, 1578; The First Part of the M. 
 for M., ed. Higgins, 1574, 1575; The Second Part of the M. for M., ed. 
 Blennerhasset, 1578; The M. for M. "with the addition of divers 
 tragedies," ed. Newton, 1587; M. for M. "newly enlarged," ed. 
 Niccols, 1610. Repr. Haslewood, 1815, 3 vols. 
 
 Miscellanies (Lyrical). TotteVs Miscellany (Songs and Sonnets 
 by Wyatt, Surrey, and others, ed. Grimald), 1557, seven edd. to 1587, 
 repr. Arber, 1870; The Paradise of Dainty Devices, ed. Edwards, 
 1576, eight edd. to 1600, repr. Brydges, British Bibliographer, iii, 
 1810; A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions, ed. Proctor, I57^> 
 repr. Park, Heliconia, i, 1815; A Handful of Pleasant Delights, ed. 
 Robinson, 1584, repr. Arber, English Scholar's Library, iii, 1878; 
 The Phoenix Nest, editor R. S. (unknown) 1593, repr. Heliconia, ii; 
 England's Helicon, ed. Bodenham, 1600, 1614, repr. Bullen, 1887; 
 A Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Davison, 1602, 161 1, 1621, repr. Bullen, 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 447 
 
 1890, 2 vols. Collective ed. Collier, Seven English Miscellanies, 
 1867, includes all of these but ^ Handful of Pleasant Delights. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, Chronicle History of, first published by Dyce, 
 Sh, Soc, 1844 ed. Brooke, Shakespeare yipocrypha, 1908. 
 
 MoRLEY, Thomas, fl. 1594. Canzonets, 1593; Madrigals, 1594, 
 1600, 1601; The First Book of Ballets, 1595, and ten other like works 
 to The Triumphs of Oriana, 1601, repr. Garner, Shorter Poems, 1903. 
 
 MoRYSON, Fynes, 1566-1616. An Itinerary Containing Ten 
 Tears' Travel, 1617. Ed. Hughes, as Shakespeare's Europe^ 1903; 
 also in part (as to Ireland) in 1735 and by Morley, Carishrook Library, 
 1890. 
 
 Mucedorus, A Most Pleasant Comedy of, 1 598, sixteen edd. to 
 1668. Dodsley, vii. 
 
 MuLCASTER, Richard, I530?-i6ii. Positions for the Training 
 up of Children, 1581; Elementary of the Right Writing of the English 
 Tongue, 1582; Catechismus Paulinus, 1599. See Quick, R. M. and 
 his Elementary, 1893; Klackr, Lehen und Werke R. M.'s, 1 893. 
 
 Munday, Anthony, i 553-1 633. A score of pamphlets, tracts, 
 and broadsides verse and prose from 1577 to i6ix, chief among them 
 The Mirror of Mutability, 1579; Sundry Examples, 1580; The Taking 
 of Campion, 1 58 1, etc. M.'s principle stories and romances trans- 
 lated are, Zelauto, 1580; Paladino of England, 1588; Palmarin d'Oliva, 
 1588-1597; Palmendos, 1589, 1653; Amadis de Gaule, 1589-1619; 
 Gerileon of England, 1592; Sir John Oldcastle, 1600 (vpith others); 
 The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601, 
 repr. Dodsley, viii; Palmerin of England, 1602, five edd. to 1664; 
 Primaleon of Greece, 1619, (lost ed. 1595); John a Kent, a play, pr. 
 Sh. Soc, 1851. Civic pageants, eight between 1605 and 1623^ see 
 Percy Soc. Publ., x. 
 
 Narcissus, a Twelfth Night Merriment, ed. M. L. Lee, 1893. 
 
 Nash, Thomas, 1567-1601. The Anatomy of Absurdity, 1589, 
 1590; A Countercuff to Martin Junior, Martins Month's Mind, 
 The Return of Pasquil of England, 1589; Pasquil's Apology, 1590, 
 these four Marprelate Tracts; Astrological Prognostications, 1591; 
 Pierce Penniless, Four Letters Confuted, both 1592, the last repr. 1593; 
 Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, 1 593, 1594, 1 61 3; The Terrors of the 
 Night, 1594; The Unfortunate Traveler or Jack Wilton, 1 594, repi. 
 ed. Gosse, 1892; The Tragedy of Dido, 1594 (pr. in edd. of Marlowe); 
 Have With Tou to Saffron- Walden, 1596; Lenten Stuff, 1600; Summer's 
 Last Will, 1600, Dodsley J viii. Collective ed. Grosart, Huih Library, 
 1883-85, 6 vols.; McKerrow, 1904-08, 4 vols. Several of Nash's 
 
448 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 tracts were reprinted by Collier in his Reprints, Temp. Eliz. and Jac. 
 I; see also Selections from Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. G. Smith, 
 1904. 
 
 Naunton, Sir Robert, 1563-1635. Fragmenta Regalia, 1641, 
 ed. Arber, Reprints, 1870. 
 
 Nevile, Alexander, 1544-1614. See Seneca Translated. 
 
 NiccoLS, Richard, fl. 1610. See Mirror for Magistrates. 
 
 North, Sir Thomas, 1535 ?-i6oo ?. The Dial of Princes, 1557; 
 Philosophy of Doni, 1^70, 1601, ed. Jacobs, Earliest English Version 
 of the Fables of Bidpai, 1888; The Lives of the Noble Grecians and 
 Romans, by Plutarch, 1597, eight edd. to 1676. Modern ed., Tudor 
 Translations, 1895; also Shakespeare's Plutarch, ed. Skeat, 1875. 
 
 NoRTHBROOKE, JoHN, fl. 1570. A Treatise wherein Dicing, 
 Dancing and Vain Plays are Reproved, ISJJ, 1579. Sh. Soc, 1843. 
 
 Norton, Thomas, 1532-1584. See Sackville. 
 
 NucE, Thomas, d. 1617. See Seneca Translated. 
 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, The first part of, see Pseudo-Shakespeare. 
 
 OvERBURY, Sir Thomas, 1581-1613. The Character of a Wife, 
 1614; Characters with a Wife "now a Widow," 1614, 1615* 1616^, 
 sixteen edd. to 1638, repr. Carisbrook Library, 1891; Works, ed. 
 Rimbault, 1856. 
 
 Owen, John, d. 1622. Epigrams in Latin, four edd., each 
 adding to the last between 1606 and 1613. Collected 1624 ^nd often 
 after; Englished, 1619, and six edd. to 1678 by various hands; transl. 
 French, German, and Spanish. 
 
 Oxford, Earl of, Edward de Vere, 1550-1604. Verse con- 
 tributed mostly to contemporary anthologies. Collected by Grosart, 
 Fuller Worthies' Library, 1 872. 
 
 Painter, William, fl. 1537. The Palace of Pleasure, 1566, 1569, 
 1575; "the second time," 1567, 1575. Ed. Jacobs, 1890, 3 vols. 
 
 Parker, Matthew (Archbishop of Canterbury), 1 504-1 575. 
 For Bibliography see D. N. B., xliii. 
 
 Parnassus Plays, The. The Pilgrimage to Parnassus; I, Return 
 Return from Parnassus; 2, Return from Parnassus, 1606. All in ed. 
 W. D. Macray, 1886, the first two there for the first time printed. 
 
 Parsons, Robert, 1546-1610. For the thirty-two items of his 
 controversial writings between 1580 and 1612 see D. N. B., xliii. 
 P.'s most popular work was J Christian Directory, 1582, 1585, and 
 other edd. Leicester's Commonwealth, 1584, 1641^, 1661, was re- 
 pudiated by him as not his. 
 
 Pastor Fido, II, of Guarini, translated, "by a kinsman of Sir 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 449 
 
 Edward Dymocke," 1602. See W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and 
 Pastoral Drama, 1906, p. 242. 
 
 Pastoral, The. See especially W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and 
 Pastoral Drama, 1906; and the collection of English Pastorals, by 
 E. K. Chambers, 1895. 
 
 Pedantius, see Wingfield. 
 
 Peele, George, 1552 ?-i598 ?. The Arraignment of Paris, 1584; 
 Edward I, 1593, 1599; Battle of Alcazar, 1594, repr. Malone Soc, 
 1906; The Old Wives Tale, 1595, repr. by the same 1908, David and 
 Bethsabe, 1 599. Eight or more pageants and pieces of occasional 
 verse between 1585 and 1592. Merry Conceited Jests, 1607, sixedd. 
 to 1671. Collective ed. Bullen, 1888, 2 vols. 
 
 Pembroke, Mary, Countess of, I555?-i62i. A Discourse of 
 Life and Death, 1592, 1600; Garnier's Antonie, 1592, ed. Luce, 
 Litterar-htstorische Forschungen, iii, 1897. 
 
 Penry, John, fl. 1587. See Marprelate Controversy. 
 
 Percy, William, d. 1648. Coelia, 1594; repr. Garner, Sonnets, 
 1904, ii; Four plays, ed. Lloyd, for Roxburghe Club, 1824, 2 vols. 
 
 Pettie, George, i 548-1 589. Palace of Pettie his Pleasure, 
 lS7^f fi'^e edd. to 1613. Ed. Gollancz, 1908. 
 
 Phaer, Thomas, d. 1560. Seven Books of the Mneid, 1 558; 
 Nine Books, 1562; 1573 (completed by Twyne to twelve books); 
 1583; six further edd. to 1620. 
 
 Playhouse, see Stage. 
 
 Porter, Henry, fl. 1600. The Two Angry Women of Abington, 
 1599^, Dodsley, vii. And see Gayley, Representative Comedies, 1903. 
 
 Preston, Thomas, fl. 1560. Cambises, 1570?, 1585? Repr. 
 Manly, Specimens, ii, 1897. 
 
 Proctor, Thomas. See Miscellanies. 
 
 Proteus and the Rock Adamantine, Masque of, Gesta Grayorum, 
 1688, repr. Nichols' Progresses of Elizabeth, ii. 
 
 Pseudo-Shakespeare. Locrine, The Lamentable Tragedy of, 
 1595; Sir John Oldcastle, 1600^; Cromwell, The Chronicle History of 
 Thomas Lord, 1602, 1 61 3; The London Prodigal, 1 605; The Puritan 
 or the Widow of Watling Street, 1 607; A Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608, 
 1619; Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609^, eight edd. to 1635; all of these 
 plays were added to Shakespeare's in the third folio 1664, and re- 
 printed in the fourth, 1685. See R. Sachs, in Sh. Jahrbuch, xxvii, 
 1892; and A. F. Hopkinson, Shakespeare's Doubtful Plays, 1890-95; 
 also Shakespeare Apocrypha, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke, 1908, who 
 reprints them. 
 
450 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Pulpit, The English. See Bibliography Cambridge History of 
 Literature, 1910, vol. iv. 
 
 Purchase, Samuel, I575?-i626, Purchase his Pilgrimage, 
 1613, 1614, 1617, 1626. Purchase his Pilgrim, 1619; Hakluytus 
 Posthumus or Purchase his Pilgrims, 1625, repr. Glasgow, 1905, 20 
 vols. 
 
 Puritan, The, 1 607. See Pseudo-Shakespeare. 
 
 Puritan Attack on the Stage. Northbrooke, A Treatise wherein 
 Dancing and Vain Plays are Reproved, 1577; Gosson, The School of 
 Abuse, 1579; Munday?, A Second and Third Blast of Retreat from 
 Plays, 1580; Lodge, A Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays, 
 1580 ?; Gosson, Apology of the School of Abuse, 1581; Gosson, Plays 
 Confuted in five Actions, 1582; Field, J., A Godly Exhortation, 1 583; 
 Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuse, 1583, five edd. to 1593; Whetstone, A 
 Touchstone for the Time, 1 584; Rankins, A Mirror of Monsters, 
 1587; Rainolds, The Overthrow of Stage-plays, 1599; Heywood, 
 Apology for Actors, 1612; Greene, J., A Refutation of the Apology, 
 1615; Field, N., Remonstrance, 1616; Anon., A Short Treatise Against 
 Stage Plays, 1625. ^" *^^ general subject see E. N. S. Thompson, 
 The Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage, Tale Studies, 1 903. 
 
 PuTTENHAM, George, 1532-1590 .?. The Art of English Poesy, 
 1589, repr. Arber, 1869; Partheniades, first pr. ed. Haslewood, 
 Art of English Poesy, 1 81 1. 
 
 Rainolds, Dr. John, i 549-1 607. De Romanae Ecclesiae 
 Jdolatria, 1596; Overthrow of Stage-Plays, 1599. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, i 552-1 61 8. A Report of the Fight about 
 the Isles of Azores, 1951, repr. by Hakluyt, 1595, and Arber, 1871; 
 Discovery of the Empire of Guiana, 1596^, repr. by Hakluyt, 1598, 
 ed. Schomburgk, Hakluyt Society, 1848. The History of the World, 
 1614, fourteen edd. to 1687, repr. Edinburgh, 1820, 6 vols. Pre- 
 rogatives of Parliament, ed. by Milton, 1658. Poems now first Col- 
 lected, 1813. Contained in Hannah, Raleigh and other Courtly 
 Poets, 1870. Bibliography by Brushfield, 1 908. 
 
 Rankins, William, fl. 1587, d. 1601. A Mirror for Monsters, 
 1587; The English Ape, 1588; Seven Satyres, 1598. No play of R. is 
 extant. 
 
 Reynolds, John, fl. 1606. Dolarnys Primrose, 1606; Epigram- 
 mata, 161 1 ; The Triumphs of God's Revenge Against Mudrer, 1622- 
 24; and other pamphlets. 
 
 Richard II, A Tragedy of, first printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, 
 1870. See Sh. Jahrbuch, xxxv. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 451 
 
 Richard III, The True Tragedy of, 1 595, repr. Sh. Soc., 
 1844. 
 
 RiCHE, Barnabe, fl. 1574-1624. Don Simonides, 1581, 1584; 
 Riche his Farewell to the Military Profession, 1581, 1606, lepr. Sh. 
 Soc, 1846; Brusanus, Prince of Hungaria, 1592. Other pamphlets 
 see Haslitt, Handbook, 503-506. 
 
 Robinson, Clement, see Miscellanies. 
 
 Rogers, Thomas, d. 161 6. Celestial Elegies, 1598, repr. Rox- 
 burghe Club, Lamport Garland, 1887. Also the author of many 
 reiigious tracts between 1576 and 1608. 
 
 Rowlands, Samuel, 1573 ?-i628 ?. The Letting of Humor's 
 Blood in the Head-Fein, 1600, seven edd. to 1613; 'T is Merry When 
 Gossips Meet, 1602, seven edd. to 1675; Greene's Ghost, 1604, 1626; 
 Diogenes Lanthorne, 1 607, eight edd. to 1 659; Doctor Merry-man, 
 1607, thirteen other edd. Guy of Warwick, 1607, twelve other edd.; 
 and twenty other like pamphlets of similar vogue. Collected ed. 
 Gosse, Hunterian Club, 1 880, 3 vols. 
 
 Rowley, Samuel, d. 1633 ?. When Tou See Me Tou Know Me, 
 1605, four ^^^- to 1632; The Noble Soldier, 1634. 
 
 Rowley, William, 1585-1642. A Search for Money, 1609; ''^P''' 
 Percy Society, x, 1840; A New Wonder, 1632, Dodsley, xii; A Match 
 at Midnight, 1633; Dodsley, vii; All's Lost by Lust, 1633; A Shoe- 
 maker a Gentleman, 1638, both repr. by Stork, Publ. University of 
 Pennsylvania, 1910; The Witch of Edmonton, 1658; Mermaid ed. 
 Dekker, 1887; The Birth of Merlin, 1662, ed. Warnke and Proe- 
 scholdt, 1887. 
 
 RuGGLE, George, 1575-1622. Ignoramus, 1630^, 1658, 1659, 
 1668 and four later. Transl. by Codrington, 1662; by Ravenscroft, 
 1678. See Dissertation by J. L. Van Gundy, Jena, 1905. 
 
 Sabbie, Francis, fl. 1595. The Fisherman's Tale, 1595, repr. 
 Halliwell-Phillipps, 1867; Pan's Pipe, 1595; repr. by Bright and 
 Mustard in Modern Philology, vii, 1910. Adam's Complaint, 1596. 
 
 Sackville, Thomas (Earl Buckhurst), 1530-1608. The Com- 
 plaint of the Duke of Buckingham, in The Mirror for Magistrates 
 ed. 1563, and subsequent edd.; Gorboduc (with Norton), 1565, 1570, 
 1590, repr. Manly, Specimens, ii, 1 897. For other works see 
 Athenae Cantabrigienses, ii. 
 
 Sandys, George, 1678-1644. The Relation of a Journey, 1615, 
 six edd. to 1673; Ovid's Metamorphosis, transl. 1 621-1626, 1628, 
 1632, 1640, 1656; Paraphrase of the Psalms, 1636; A Paraphrase 
 upon the Divine Poems, 1 638; Solomon, 1641 2, 1642. 
 
452 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Satire, Elizabethan, see R. M. Alden, The Rise of Formal Satire 
 in England, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, vii, 1899. 
 
 ScoLOKER, Antony, fl. 1604. Daiphantus, 1604. Garner, 
 Longer Elizabethan Poems, 1903. 
 
 Scott, Reginald, 1538-1599. The Hop Garden, 1574; The 
 Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, repr. ed. Nicholson, i886. 
 
 Selden, John, 1584-1654. Latin and English Writings, 1610; 
 Notes on Polyolbion, 1612, 1613; Titles of Honor, 1614; History of 
 Tithes, 1 61 8; Table Talk, 1689 and many edd. Works, ed. Wilkins, 
 1726, 3 vols. 
 
 Seneca, translated. Troas, 1559, Thyestes, 1560, Hercules 
 Furens, 1561, these three by Jasper Heywood; CEdipus, 1563, by 
 Alexander Nevile; Medea, Agamemnon, both 1566, Hippolytus, and 
 Hercules CEtaeus, 1581, these four by John Studley; Octavia, [n.d.], 
 by Thomas Nuce; Thebias, by Thomas Nuce, who collected the work 
 of his predecessors as Seneca his ten Tragedies translated, 1 581. 
 Repr. Spenser Soc, 1887, 2 vols. See J. W. Cunliffe, The Influence 
 of Seneca on English Tragedy, 1893. 
 
 Shakespeare, Willi,\m, 1564-1616. Quartos: Venus and 
 Adonis, 1593, eleven edd. to 1675; Lucrece, 1594, eight edd. to 161 1; 
 Titus Andronicus, 1594, 1600, 161 1 ; Richard H, 1597, five edd. to 
 1634; Richard HI, 1 597, eight edd. to 1629; Romeo and Juliet, 1597, 
 four edd. to 1637; I Henry IF, 1598, eight edd. to 1639; Love's 
 Labor 's Lost, 1598, 1631 ; The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, (2nd ed. lost), 
 1612; The Merchant of Venice, 1600, four edd. to 1652; Henry V, 
 1600, 1602, (1619); Much Ado About Nothing, 1600; 2 Henry IV, 
 1600; A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 1600, (1619); The Merry Wives 
 of Windsor, 1602, 1619, 1630; Hamlet, 1603, 1604-05, 1611, 1637; 
 King Lear, 1608, (1619), 1655; Troilus and Cressida, 1609^; Pericles, 
 1609, four issues to 1619; Sonnets, 1609, 1640; Othello, 1622, 1630, 
 1655. Folios: First folio (contains these and the rest of the plays 
 except Pericles), 1623; Second folio, repr. of the first, 1632; Third 
 folio (contains all of the foregoing, Pericles, and six plays not Shake- 
 speare's), 1664; Fourth folio, a reprint of the third, 1685. The fifteen 
 additional quartos of single plays issued after the first folio, all of 
 them, except The Taming of the Shrew, 1 63 1, are reprints of former 
 quartos. 
 
 The best of many reproductions of the Sh. folios is that of the first 
 by Lee, 1902; and all four by Methuen & Co., 1903-06. The 
 quartos were reproduced under the superintendence of Furnivall, 
 1880-89, also by photography. The latest words on the Bibliography 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 
 
 of the early edd. of Sh. are Lee, Bihlingraphical History of the First 
 Folio, 1905, and Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, 1909, an 
 admirable work. 
 
 Critical edd. of Sh. began with Rowe, 1709; and through the edd. 
 of Pope, 1723-25; Theobald, 1733; Johnson, 1765; Capell, 1767; 
 Malone, "the first Variorum," 1790 and many more to Dyce, 1857; 
 Halliwell, 1853-65; the Cambridge ed., 1863-56, which established 
 practically our modern text, and many more to the monumental 
 Variorum ed. of Furness 1873, 16 vols, to date and still in progress. 
 
 In addition to the Life of Sh. by Halliwell- Phillipps, 1 88 1, most 
 important of a score of recent biographies are those of Fleay, 1886, 
 Dowden, 1893, Brandl, 1894, Brandes, 1896, Lee, 1898, Rolfe, 1904; 
 Raleigh, 1907, Furnivall, 1909. Further references to Sh. Biblio- 
 graphy may be found in the present author's Elizabethan Drama, 
 1908, Bibliographical Essay, where previous bibliographies are noted. 
 
 Shelton, Thomas, 1531-1620. The Delightful History of the 
 Witty Knight, Don Quixote, l6i2, 2nd part, 1620, 1652, 1675; ed. 
 Kelly, Tudor Translations, 1 896, 3 vols. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, i 554-1 586. Arcadia, 1590, reproduced ed. 
 Sommer, 1891; sixteen edd. to 1674; Astrophel and Stella, 1591', 
 repr. An English Garner, 1904; Defense of Poesie (An Apology for 
 Poetry), 1 595, 1 598 with Arcadia and thereafter so printed, ed. Cook, 
 1890; Certain Sonnets, 1 598, ed. of Arcadia; The Lady of May, 
 1613 ed. of the same; Psalms, first printed 1823. Poems, ed. Grosart, 
 1873, 3 vols.; Miscellaneous Works, ed. Gray, 1829; ed. Flijgel, 
 Astrophel and Stella, 1 889. Life by Greville, 1 652; Symonds, Men 
 of Letters, 1886. 
 
 Smith, William, fl. 1596. See Sonnet Sequences. 
 
 Sonnet Sequences and like Lyrical Collections. Puttenham, 
 Partheniads, 1 579. GifFord, Posie of Gilli flowers, 1 580. Watson, 
 Passionate Century of Love, 1 582. Soothern, Pandora, 1584, Munday, 
 Banquet of Dainty Conceits, 1 588. Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, 
 1591. Constable, Diana; Daniel, Delia, 1592. Barnes, Partheno- 
 phil; G. Fletcher, Licia; Lodge, Phillis; Watson, Tears of Fancy, 
 1593. Barnfield, Affectionate Shepherd; Drayton, Idea's Mirror; 
 Percy, Coelia; Willobie his Avisa; Zepheria, 1 594. Barnes, Century 
 of Spiritual Sonnets; Chapman, A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy; 
 E. C, Emaricdulph; J. C, Alcilia, 4 edd., Davies, Gulling Sonnets; 
 Spenser, Amoretti, 1595. Griffin, Fidessa, Lynche, Diella; Smith, 
 Chloris, 1596. Breton, Arbor of Amorous Devices; Lok, Sundry 
 Sonnets; Tofte, Laura, 1597. Tofte, Alba, the Month's Mind, 1598; 
 
454 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Passionate Pilgrim (Shakespeare), 1599. Chester Love's 
 Martyr, 1601. Alexander, Aurora; Breton, The Passionate Shepherd; 
 ScolokeT,Daiphantus,i6o4: Dolarny's Primrose, 1^06. Drummond, 
 Poems, 1607. Shakespeare, Sonnets, 1609. Davies, Wit's Pil- 
 grimage, 1610. Browne, Caelia, [1616]. Wither, Fidelia, 1617. 
 Davies, Hymns to Astrcea, 1618. Wither, Fair Virtue, 1622. Gre- 
 ville, Coelica, 1633. Constable, Spiritual Sonnets -1 8 15. See 
 Schelling, Elizabethan Lyrics, 1895; S. Lee, Introduction to English 
 Garner, Elizabethan Sonnets, 1904; Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, 
 1896-98. 
 
 Southwell, Robert, 1562-1595. Saint Peters Complaint, 
 1595^; eight edd. to 1615; Maonia, 1595, 1596, 1597; some half-dozen 
 prose tracts between 1593 and 1595, chief among them, Mary Mag- 
 dalen's Tears, 1594 and three other edd.; and The Triumphs over 
 Death, 1595, 1596. Collected works, ed. Grosart, Fuller Worthies' 
 Library, 1 872. 
 
 Speed, John, 1552 ?-i629. History of Great Britain, 161 1, 1623, 
 1632, 1650; Genealogies in Scripture, l6ll, 23 ^dd. to 1640. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, i 552-1 599. Epigrams and Sonnets in The 
 Theater for Worldlings, 1569; The Shepherds' Calendar, 1 579, six 
 edd. to 161 1 ; The Faery Queen, 1590-96, 1609, ed. Warren, 1896- 
 1900; Complaints, 1591; Daphnatda, 1591, 1596; Coltn Clout's Come 
 Home Again, Amoretti, Epithalamium, 1595; Four Hymns, Pro- 
 thalamium, 1596, ed. Winstanley, 1907; A View of the Present State 
 of Ireland, 1633. Collected Works, first folio 161 1 (second folio only 
 of The Faery Queen), ed. Child, 1855, 5 vols.; Globe ed., by Hales and 
 Morris, 1869; Grosart, 1882-84, 10 vols ; J. C. Smith, 1910, 3 
 vols., in progress. Lives: Church, Men of Letters, 1879; Dowden, 
 1888; and see Bibliography in Cambridge History of Literature. 
 
 Stage, Elizabethan. See bibliography in Schelling, Elizabethan 
 Drama; also W. Archer, The Elizabethan Stage, Quarterly Review, 
 1908; V. G. Albright, The Shakespearian Stage, 1909; A. R. Skemp, 
 Some Characteristics of the English Stage before the Restoration, Sh. 
 Jahrbuch, xlv, 1909. 
 
 Stanihurst, Richard, 1547-1618. Four Books of Vergil, 1582, 
 1583, repr. Arber, English Scholar's Library, 1880; Description and 
 History of Ireland contributed to Holinshed, ed. 1577; several Latin 
 religious tracts. 
 
 Stapleton, Thomas, i 535-1 598. History of the Church of 
 England, 1 565; many controversial writings. Opera Omnia, 1620, 
 includes the Apology for Philip II. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 455 
 
 Stevenson, William, fl, 1550. Gammer Gurtons Needle, 
 1562-3 (Diccon of Bedlam, Stationers' Register, this ed. lost); 1575. 
 In Gayley, English Comedies, 1903. As to authorship, see Bradley in 
 Athenceum, Aug. 6, 1898, and Chambers, Medieeval Drama, ii, 457. 
 
 Still, John, i 543-1 608. Sometime reputed author of Gammer 
 Gurton's Needle. See Stevenson, William. 
 
 Stow, John, 1525-1605. Editor of Chaucer, 1561, assisting in 
 Speight's ed. of the same, 1598; Summary of English Chronicles, 
 1565, ten edd. to 1604; editor, Matthew of Westminster, 1567, of 
 Matthew of Paris, 1571, of Thomas of Walsingham, 1574; Annals of 
 England, 1580, five edd. to 1631; Survey of London, 1598, four edd. 
 to 1633. 
 
 Stubbs, Philip, fl. 1580-1593. The Anatomy of Abuse, two parts, 
 1583, four edd. to 1595. Repr. AT^^i/iSA. 5oc., 1877 and 1882. Several 
 religious tracts between 1581 and 1593, for which see Sh. Sac. Papers, 
 iii and iv, and Collier, Broadside Black Letter Ballads, 1868. 
 
 Studley, John, fl. 1566-81. See Seneca Translated. 
 
 Stukeley, The Famous {Chronicle) History of Captain Thomas^ 
 1605, Simpson, School of Shakspere, 1878. 
 
 Surrey, Earl of (Henry Howard), I5I7?-I547. See Miscel- 
 lanies. 
 
 Swetnam, Joseph, fl. 1615. The Arraignment of Women, 1615, 
 five edd. to 1690; and other satirical pamphlets. See Grosart, repr. 
 Swetnam the Woman Hater, 1 620, Occasional Issues, 1880. 
 
 Sylvester, Joshua, 1563-1618. A Canticle of the Victory at 
 Ivry, 1590; fragments of transl. of La Semaine, 1 592-1 605; Du 
 Bartas, his Divine Weeks and Works, 1606, six edd. to 1641. Also 
 several minor works, mostly translations. Collective ed. Grosart, 
 Chertsey Worthies' Library, 1880, 2 vols. 
 
 Taming of a Shrew, The, 1594. Repr. Sh. Quartos, 1886; Shake- 
 speare Classics, ed. Boas, 1908. 
 
 Tarlton, Richard, d. 1588. See Halliwell-Phillipps, ed. 
 Tarltons Jests, Sh. Soc, Publ. 1844. Famous History of Henry V, 
 1598, facsimile ed. Furnivall, 1887. 
 
 Thracian Wonder, The, "Webster and Rowley," Two New Plays, 
 1 66 1. Dyce's Webster. 
 
 ToFTE, Robert, d. 1619 ?. Two Tales of Ariosto, 1597; Laura, 
 1597, Garner, Sonnets, ii; Alba the Month s Mind, 1598, Grosart, 
 Occasional Issues, 1880; Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato, 1598. 
 
 Tomkins, Thomas, 1614. Albumazar, 1615, 1634, 1668; Lingua, 
 1617, five edd. to 1657 doubtfully by Tomkins. Dodsley, ix and xi. 
 
456 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Tom Tyler and his Wife^ 1 66 1, ed. Schelling, Mod. Lang. Publ., 
 XV, 1900. 
 
 TotteVs Miscellany, 1557. See Miscellanies. 
 
 ToURNEUR, Cyril, i 575-1 626. The Transformed Metamorphosis, 
 1600; two or three panegyrics, between 1609 and 1613; The Revenger s 
 Tragedy, 1607; The Atheist's Tragedy, 161 1. Plays and Poems, tA. 
 Collins, 1878, 2 vols. 
 
 Tragedy, for the Bibliography of, see Bibliographical Essay, 
 Schelling, Elizabethan Drama; and A. H. Thorndike, Tragedy, 
 T ypes of English Literature, 1909. 
 
 Tragicomedy. See A. H. Thorndike, The Influence of Beaumont 
 and Fletcher on Shakespeare, 1901; and Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, 
 chapter xvii. 
 
 Translators. For an excellent bibliography of English trans- 
 lation during this period see The Cambridge History of English 
 Literature, vol. iv, 1910, Also, W. J. Harris, The First Printed 
 Translations of Great Foreign Classics, 1909; T. G. Tucker, The 
 Foreign Debt of English Literature, 1907. 
 
 Trial of Chivalry, The, 1605. Bullen, Old Plays, vol. iii. 
 
 Turberville, George, 1530-1594?. Epitaphs, Epigrams, etc., 
 1567^, 1570, 1597, Collier Reprints, vol. ii; Eclogues of Mantuan, 
 1567, 1572, 1594, 1597; Heroical Epistles of Ovid, 1567, five edd. to 
 1605; A Plain Path to Virtue, 1568; The Book of Falconry, 1575; 
 The Noble Book of Venery, iS75i repr. together, 161 1 ; Tragical Tales 
 (chiefly from Boccaccio), 1576, 1587, repr. Edinburgh, 1837. 
 
 Tusser, Thomas, fl. 1525-1580. A Hundredth Good Points of 
 Husbandry, 1 557; Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, 1573, 
 fifteen edd. to 1672; repr. English Dialect Society, 1878; The Book of 
 Huswifery, 1562, appended to edd. of the last. 
 
 Two Tragedies in One (Yarington, R.), i6or. Repr. Bullen, Old 
 Plays, iv. 
 
 Twine, Lawrence, fl. 1576. The Pattern of Painful Adventures, 
 [1576 ?], 1595, 1607. Repr. Shakespeare's Library, 1843. 
 
 Udall, John, 1560 ?-i592. See Martin Marprelate Controversy. 
 
 Udall, Nicholas, 1505.?-! 556. Flowers of Latin Speaking out 
 of Terence, 1 533, several later edd.; Apophthegms of Erasmus, 1542; 
 Ralph Roister Doister, 1566, repr. Arber, 1869, in Gayley, Representa- 
 tive English Comedies, 1 903. 
 
 Valiant Welshman, The, 1615, 1663; repr. by Kreb, Miinchener 
 Beitrage, 1902. 
 
 Voyages. See Garner, Travelers' Tales, 1 903, 2 vols. E. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 457 
 
 J. Payne, Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen, 1893-igoo, 4 vols.; 
 J. A. Froude, English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, 1901. Bib- 
 liography, Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. iv, 19 10 and 
 see Hakluyt. 
 
 Wadeson, Anthony, fl. 1600. Look About Tou, 1600. Dodsley, 
 vii. 
 
 Warner, William, 1558-1609. Pan his Syrinx, 1584, 1597; 
 Albion's England, completed by accretions in nine edd., 1586 to 161 2; 
 repr. Chalmers' English Poets, 1810, vol. iv. Menaechmi of Plautus, 
 transl., 1595. 
 
 Warning for Fair Women, A, 1599, Simpson, School of Shakspere, 
 1878. 
 
 War of the Theaters, see J. H. Penniman, monograph of that 
 title, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, 1897; R. A. Small, 
 in Forschungen zur englischen Sprache, i, 1899; H. C. Hart, in Notes 
 and Queries, series ix, 1903; and the forthcoming ed. by Penniman of 
 Poetaster and Satiromastix, Belles Lettres Series. 
 
 Wars of Cyrus, The, 1594, repr. Sh. Jahrbuch, xxxvii, 1 901. 
 
 Watson, Thomas, 1557-1592. Hecatompathia or the Century 
 of Love, 1582, repr. Arber, 1869; Italian Madrigals Englished, 1590; 
 The Tears of Fancy, 1 593, Garner, Sonnets, i, 1 904. Latin verses 
 in transl. of Greek and Italian authors between 1 581 and 1592. 
 
 Weakest Goeth to the Wall, The, by "Webster and Dekker," 1600. 
 
 Webbe, William, fl. 1 568-1 586. A Discourse of English Poetry, 
 1586, repr. Arber, 1870. 
 
 Webster, John, 1580 f-lSz^. Sir Thomas Wyatt, Westward Hoe, 
 Northward Hoe (all with Dekker) and each in 1607; ^^^ White 
 Devil, 1 61 2, 1 63 1, 1665, 1672; The Duchess of Malfi, 1623, 1640, 
 1678, 1708; The Devil's Law Case, 1623; Appius and Virginia, 1654; 
 two new plays: A Cure for a Cuckold, The Thracian Wonder, "by 
 Webster and William Rowley," 1661, neither of them Webster's. 
 Works ed. Dyce, 1830, 4 vols.; Mermaid ?)tnes,Webster and Tourneur, 
 contains the two great tragedies as does Webster ed. Sampson, Belles 
 Letters Series, 1904. 
 
 Weelkes, Thomas, fl. 1597. Madrigals, 1597, repr. Musical 
 Antiquarian Society, 1845; Ballets and Madrigals, 1 598, 1608; 
 Madrigals for Viols and Voices, 1600; Madrigals, 1 600; Airs or 
 Fantastic Sprites, 1 608. Also contributions to other musical collections. 
 
 Weever, John, 1576-1632. Epigrams, 1599; The Mirror of 
 Martyrs, 1601, repr. Roxburghe Club, 1873; Agnus Dei, "a thumb 
 book," 1606; Ancient Funeral Monuments, 1 63 1. 
 
458 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Whetstone, George, fl. 1576-1587. The Rock of Regard, 1576; 
 repr. Collier Reprints; Remembrances (metrical lives), 1577-85; 
 Promos and Cassandra, 1578, repr. Shakespeare's Library, ed. Collier- 
 Hazlitt, 1875; An Heptameron of Civil Discourses, 1582, 1593 (under 
 title Aurelia); and other prose tracts. 
 
 Whitehorne, Peter, fl. 1560. The Art of Waroi Macchiavelli, 
 1560, 1573. Tudor Translations, 1905. 
 
 Whitgift, John (Archbishop of Canterbury), 1530 ?-l6o4. For 
 Bibliography see D. N. B., Ixi. 
 
 WlLBYE, John, fl. 1598-1614. Two sets of Madrigals in 1598 
 and 1608. Also contributor to other musical collections. Ed. J. 
 Turle, 1840-41, and ed. Budd, 1846. 
 
 Wilkins, George, fl. 1608. The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 
 1607; repr. Dodsley, x; The Travails of Three English Brothers, 1607, 
 Bullen, ed. Day. The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of 
 Tyre, 1608. 
 
 WiLLES, Richard, fl. 1558-1573. Latin poems, 1573; editor with 
 Richard Eden of The History of Travel, 1577; and of articles in 
 Hakluyt's Voyages. 
 
 Willobie his Avisa, 1 594, five edd. to 1635. Ed. Grosart, Occa- 
 sional Issues, 1880. 
 
 WiLMOT, Robert, fl. 1568-16 19. Tancred and Gismund, 1591, 
 Dodsley, vii. 
 
 Wilson, Robert (the elder) fl. 1 584-1 600. The Three Ladies of 
 London, 1584; The Three Lords and Three Ladtes of London, 1590, 
 both in Dodsley, vi; The Cobbler s Prophecy, 1594, repr. Sh. Jahrbuch, 
 1897; The Pedlar s Prophecy, 1595. 
 
 Wilson, Sir Thomas, fl. 1550. The Rule of Reason, Containing 
 the Art of Logic, 1551, seven edd. to 1580; The Art of Rhetoric, 1553, 
 five edd. to 1585. 
 
 Wingfield, Anthony, or Forsett, Edward. Pedantius, 1631. 
 Ed. J. C. M. Smith, Materialien zur Kunde, 1905. 
 
 Wither, George, 1588-1667. Prince Henry s Obsequies, jf6i2, 
 1617; Epithalamia, 1613, 1620; Abuses Stript and Whipt, 1613, 1614, 
 1615, 1617; A Satyre, 1615; The Shepherd's Hunting, 1615, 1620; 
 Fidelia, 1617^, 1619, 1620; Wither s Motto, 1621^; Fair Virtue, 1622. 
 Works, 1620 (a surreptitious volume), Juvenilia, 1622, 1626, 1633. 
 The rest of Wither's copious bibliography belongs to controversy and 
 uninspired religious edification. Mod. edd. Spenser Soc, 1870-83, 
 in 20 parts. Selections ed. Morley, Companion Poets, 1 89 1. 
 
 Woodstock, The Tragedy of Thomas of, see Richard //. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 459 
 
 WoTTON, Henry, fl. 1580. A Courtly Controversy of Cupid's 
 Cautels, 1581. 
 
 WoTTON, Sir Henry, 1568-1639. Elements of Architecture, 1624; 
 Ad Re gem, 1633; The State of Christendom, 1 637; ReliquicB Wotton- 
 ianae, 1651, four edd. to 1685. Poems, ed. Dyce, 1842; with Raleigh, 
 ed. Hannah, 1870. 
 
 Yarington, Robert, fl. 1600. Two Lamentable Tragedies, 1601, 
 Bullen, Old Plays, iv. 
 
 Yorkshire, Tragedy, The, 1608, 1619. See Pseudo-Shakespeare. 
 
 Young, Bartholomew, d. 1621. Guazzo's Civil Conversation, 
 1586; Amorous Fiametta, 1587; Montemayor's Diana, 1598, in part 
 repr'd. Collier, Sh. Library, ii, 1843. 
 
 Yonge, Nicholas, d. 1619. Musica Transalpina, 1588, words 
 reprinted in Garner, Shorter Poems, 1903. 
 
 Zepheria, see Sonnet Sequences. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Actors, see players 
 
 Adams, Thomas, 315 
 
 Admiral's players, the, 81, 96, 
 183, 329, 232 
 
 ^schylus, 250, 371 
 
 Alabaster, William, alluded to 
 by Spenser, 53; his Roxana, 
 383 
 
 Alamanni, 318 
 
 Albright, V. E., 87 
 
 Alengon, Due d', 70 
 
 Alengon, Marguerite d', 49 
 
 Alexander, Sir William, his 
 Aurora, 135; 373; the Mon- 
 archic Tragedies of, 240; 
 praised by Drummond, 374; his 
 completion of Sidney's Arcadia, 
 
 Allen, Cardinal, 298, 302 
 
 Alleyn, Edward, 67, builds the 
 Fortune theater, 84; creation of 
 the title roles of Marlowe, 87; 
 Hieronimo in The Spanish 
 Tragedy, a favorite role of, 94; 
 96 ; his association with Hens- 
 lowe and success as an actor, 
 100, loi ; befriends Dekker, 
 173 ; founds Dulwich College, 
 182; 183, 232, 424 
 
 Amyot, Jaques, Bishop of Auxerre, 
 translator of Plutarch, 273 ; 
 Sir Thomas North meets, 278 
 
 Anacreon, imitated by Sidney, 27; 
 246 
 
 Andrews, Launcelot, notable in 
 theological controversy, 307; his 
 eloquence, 315 
 
 Angelo, Michael, 410 
 
 Anne, Queen, of James I, 386, 
 her Children of the Revels, 82, 
 402 
 
 Anthologies of lyrics, 22, 191, 192 
 
 Antiquarian studies, books of, 
 Camden's, 292, 293 ; Selden, 
 Speed and Cotton, their interest 
 in, 297; Stow and his, of Lon- 
 don, 297, 298 ; Wotton and, 298 
 
 Anton, Robert, his Vice's Anat- 
 omy, 327 
 Apuleius, translated, 273 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 312 
 Arcadianism, 43, 44 
 Archer, W., 85 note 
 Arden of Feversham, 89, 90; most 
 notable of the murder plays, 
 184, 185; why not by Shakes- 
 peare, 184, 185; 250 
 Areopagus, the, 25, 26; Spenser 
 
 and the, 46 
 Argyle, Countess of, 135 
 Ariosto, Spenser and, 47, 48, 56; 
 112; translated, 280, 281; 318 
 Aristophanes, 235 
 Aristotle, 268 
 Armin, Robert, his jests, 104; his 
 
 satfrical tracts, 329 
 Arnold, Matthew, 44, 277 
 Arundel, Earl of, interested in 
 
 madrigals, 195 
 Ascham, Roger, 4; on English 
 prose, 8, 9 ; on classical versifi- 
 cation in English, 26; 39, 54, 
 299 
 Aubrey, John, 47, his opinion of 
 the Latin of Shakespeare, 151; 
 on Jonson's Carlo Buffone, 234 
 Audeley, John, his Fraternity of 
 
 Vagabonds, 328 
 Augustine, St., 290 
 Babington conspiracy, the, 106 
 Bacon, Anthony, 347 
 Bacon, Francis, 4, 9, 13, 34, Bre- 
 ton dedicates his Essays to, 107; 
 protests against religious con- 
 troversy, 115, 338; 151, 169, 
 219, 249, 272, 291, 293, on the 
 plagiarism of Hayward, 294; 
 298, 299 ; on the administration 
 of Ireland, 300; Jonson's opin- 
 ion of, 306; 313; influence of 
 the Essays of, 335; reasons for 
 the prominence of, 337; his life, 
 337-342; his friendship with 
 Essex, 338-340; rivalry with 
 
 461 
 
462 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Coke, 338, 339, 341; Elizabeth's 
 and Burleigh's mistrust of, 339, 
 340; honored by King James, 
 340; conducts the trial of Essex 
 and of Raleigh, 340, 341 ; raised 
 to the peerage, and Lord Chan- 
 cellorship, 340; his trial and 
 disgrace, 341, 342; his legal 
 works, 342; The Advancement 
 of Learning of, 342-344; The 
 Great Instauratio (or Restora- 
 tion), 343-346; The Novum 
 Organum or new method, 342, 
 343 ; the philosophical system 
 of, 343 ; other parts of the sys- 
 tem of, 344; his experimental 
 philosophy, 344; not the discov- 
 erer of induction, 344, 345 ; un- 
 fruitfulness of the method of, 
 345 ; his distrust of scientific 
 discoveries and limitations as 
 a philosopher, 346; literary 
 works of, 346-349 ; the Essays 
 of, 346-348 ; the matchless style 
 and worldly wisdom of the 
 Essays of, 347, 348 ; Jonson on 
 the eloquence of, 348 ; ceaseless 
 revision of his work by, 349 ; 
 his History of Henry VH and 
 Neiv Atlantis, 349; variety of 
 the literary style of, 349 ; his 
 mistrust of English and pref- 
 erence for Latin, 349, 350; his 
 insensibility to the literature of 
 his age, 350; his interest in 
 court drama, 350; his support 
 of masques and condescension 
 as to them, 350, 351; 395; his 
 contempt for poetry, 351; the 
 "poems," their mediocrity and 
 pessimism, 351-353; the verse 
 of, contrasted with the poetry 
 of Shakespeare, 353, 354; the 
 writer of the Shakespearean 
 plays contrasted with, 354, 355; 
 incredibility of the notion of any 
 part in the Shakespearean plays 
 by, 355. 356; 363, 401, 422 
 Bacon, Nicholas, Sir, 337 
 Bagehot, Walter, 138, 151 
 Baldwin, William, chief author 
 of The Mirror for Magistrates, 
 7. 10s 
 Bale, John, his King Johan, 63 
 Ballade, employed by Wyatt, 21, 
 misunderstood by Grimald, 21 
 
 Bandello, a source for Shakes- 
 peare, 164, 283; Painter's debt 
 to, 282 
 
 Bannister, John, 204 
 
 Barclay, Alexander, 49, 317 
 
 Barkstead, William, his Mtrrha, 
 225 
 
 Barnes, Barnabe, continues the 
 Italian impulse of Sidney, 126; 
 his Parthenope, 126, 127; 
 French sources of, 130; 131; 
 Spiritual Sonnets of, 132; 144, 
 145 ; his Tragedy of Pope 
 Alexander, 257 
 
 Barnfield, Richard, 123, poems of, 
 attributed to Shakespeare, 124, 
 191, 198; a writer of eclogues, 
 223 
 
 Barrey, Lodowick, his comedy of 
 Ram Alley, 187 
 
 Barrow, Henry, antimartinist exe- 
 cuted, 114 
 
 Basse, William, pastoral elegies 
 of, 224 
 
 Bastard, Thomas, his Chrestoleros, 
 326,327 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 179, 182, 
 cynical vein in the lyrics of, 
 207; his Salmacis and Herma- 
 phoditus, 217, 218; not the 
 author of Britain's Ida, 218; 
 Bacon a "chief contriver" in 
 the masque of, 350, 395; 358, 
 389? 393 ; his Masque of the 
 Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, 
 395 > 399; the relations of 
 Fletcher to, 400-404; life of, 
 401 ; the "Plays of Beaumont 
 and Fletcher" a misnomer, 401 ; 
 not a professional dramatist, 
 402; Jonson and, 402; style and 
 verse of, contrasted with those 
 of, 402-404; Philaster ?nd its 
 type, 405, 406 ; other plays in 
 which Fletcher had hand with, 
 406; 411; his Woman Hater 
 and Knight of the Burning 
 Pestle influenced by Jonson, 
 415; romantic comedies of, with 
 Fletcher, 416, 417; The Maid's 
 Revenge, 417; the folio edd. of, 
 and Fletcher, 424 
 
 Beaumont, Sir Francis, 401 
 
 Bedford, Earl of, 25 
 
 Bedford, Lucy Harington, Coun- 
 tess of, 25 ; a patron of Drayton, 
 
INDEX 
 
 463 
 
 212; complimented in verse by 
 Jonson, 245, 246; a friend and 
 patron of Donne, 363, 371 
 
 Bedingfield, Thomas, translator 
 of Macchiavelli's Florentine 
 History, 284 
 
 Bellarmine, Cardinal, 298, 315 
 
 Belleforest, his collection of tales 
 a source for English translators 
 and playwrights, 282, 283 
 
 Bellenden, John, translator of 
 Livy, 273 
 
 Bellum Grammaticale, 379, 381 
 
 Belvidere or the Garden of the 
 Muses, a book of quotations, 
 193 
 
 Be-reblock, John, on the setting of 
 a college play, 78 
 
 Bernard, Edward, astronomer, his 
 strictures on the philosophical 
 system of Bacon, 346 
 
 Berners, John Bouchier, Lord, 
 translator of Guevara, 284 
 
 Beza, Theodore, assists in the 
 Geneva Version of the Bible, 
 289 
 
 Bible, considered as an English 
 classic, 286; not characterized 
 by likeness of parts, 286, 287; 
 its extraordinary diction and 
 style, 287; Tyndale fixes the 
 literary style of the, 287; his 
 version complete called the 
 Matthews, 288 ; Coverdale and 
 
 ■ the, 288 ; the Great, or Cran- 
 mer's, 288 ; Taverner's, 288 ; 
 The Geneva, 289; The Bish- 
 ops', 289; the Roman Catholic 
 version of the, in English, 289, 
 290; the Authorized Version of 
 the, 290; reasons for the super- 
 lative quality of the English, 
 290, 291 
 
 Billy, Jacques de, 130 
 
 Blackfriars, the theater at, 68, 69, 
 78; boy actors at, 68, 69; cost 
 ef, 79 ; relations of Burbage 
 and Shakespeare to, 82; loi, 
 232, 413 
 
 Blair, Robert, 133 
 
 Blank-verse, the earliest, 21 ; of 
 Peele, 76; 97, 100; of Shakes- 
 peare, 169-171; of Beaumont 
 and Fletcher distinguished, 
 
 403, 404 
 Blennerhasset, Thomas, an editor 
 
 of The Mirror for Magistrates, 
 
 7 
 Boas, F. S., 93 
 Boccaccio, 282, 409 
 Bodenham, John, 191 
 Bodin, 301 
 Bodley, Thomas, founder of the 
 
 Library at Oxford, 297 
 Boece, Hector, ii 
 Boiardo, translated, 281 
 Boisteau, 282, 283 
 Boleyn, Anne Queen, 64 
 Bower, Richard, minor play- 
 wright, 67 
 Boy-actors, 67, 68 ; impressment 
 
 of under royal patent, 68, 69 ; 
 
 78; women's parts taken by. 87; 
 
 prominence of the, in the war 
 
 of the theaters, 2'?2 
 Boyle, Elizabeth, wife of Spenser, 
 
 53, 139 
 
 Bradstreet, Mistress Anne, iii 
 
 Braithwaite, Richard, his Strap- 
 pado of the Devil, 327 
 
 Breton, Nicholas, 49, pamphlets 
 of, 103, 105-107; his life, 106; 
 pastoral lyrics of, 123, 124, 132; 
 devotional sonnets of, 133; his 
 Passionate Shepherd, 135; in 
 England's Helicon, 191; 192; 
 his Characters, 335, 422; con- 
 temporary popularity of, 423 
 
 Bridges, John, Bishop of Oxford, 
 sometime Dean of Salisbury, 
 64, 114 
 
 Bright, Dr Timothy, founder of 
 the art of stenography, and his 
 Charactery, 299 
 
 Brinsley, John, his educational 
 writings, 299 
 
 Brooke. Arthur, his Romeus and 
 Juliet, 3, 282, 283 
 
 Brooke, Christopher, friend and 
 collaborator with Browne in 
 the pastoral, 223, 225 ; friend 
 of Donne, 358 ; committed to 
 prison for his part in Donne's 
 marriage, 362 
 
 Brooke, Lord, See Greville, Fulke 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 10 
 
 Brewne, William, of Tavistock, 
 135; influenced by Spenser, 223; 
 life of, 225 ; his Britannia's 
 Pastorals and other poetry, 225- 
 227; his patriotism and other 
 qualities, 226, 227; influenced 
 
464 
 
 INDEX 
 
 by Sylvester, 285 ; an intimate 
 of Donne, 358; 371, 393; his 
 masque Ulysses and the Sirens, 
 396 
 
 Browning, Robert, 143, 368 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, and Sidney, 19, 
 24 
 
 Bryskett, Lodowick, 51, 57 
 
 Buc, Sir George, 225 
 
 BuUen, A. H., 197, 198 
 
 Burbage, Cuthbert, 81, 82 
 
 Burbage, James, 68 ; fits up the 
 Priory House in Blackfriars as 
 a playhouse, 79 ; builds the 
 Theatre in Shoreditch, 83 ; loi, 
 232 
 
 Burbage, Richard, 67, 69 ; leases 
 the theater in Blackfriars to a 
 sharing company, 82 ; demol- 
 ishes the Theater to build the 
 Globe, 83, 84; creator of the 
 chief roles of Shakespeare, 87, 
 100; his career, 100; emblazons 
 an impressa of Shakespeare's 
 designs, 100; alleged painter of 
 a portrait of Shakespeare, 100; 
 retired with a competence from 
 the stage, 183; mimicked on the 
 academic stage, 381 ; 424 
 
 Burleieh, William Cecil, Lord, 
 35, reduces Spenser's pension 
 for The Faery Queen, 52; a 
 patron of Lyly, 69 ; 149 ; his 
 Precepts to his Son, 299 ; his 
 mistrust of Bacon, 338 
 
 Burns, Robert, 201 
 
 Burton, Robert, 299 
 
 Byrd, William, a publisher of 
 song-books, 195, 196 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 3 ; translated, 273, 
 274 
 
 Calvin, John, 289, his conception 
 of a Christian republic, 308, 
 309 ; his influence on English 
 Puritanism, 309 
 
 Camden, William, loi, 151, be- 
 friends Jonson, 229 ; 249, 278 ; 
 his Britannia, 278, 292 ; his idea 
 of research, 292; his Annals of 
 Elizabeth and Remains, 293, 
 294; member of an antiquarian 
 society, 297 ; 422 
 
 Campion, Edmund, the Jesuit, 11 
 
 Campion, Thomas, 27, 192 ; 
 author of the words and music 
 of his song books, 197; 198; 
 
 life of, 199; his Observations in 
 Poesy, 199; classical inspiration 
 of, 199, 200; his secular and 
 reliirious lyrics, 199, 200; 203; 
 masques of, 392, 393, 395; 411 
 
 Canzone, the, 27 
 
 Cardenio, a lost play attributed 
 to Shakespeare, 413 
 
 Carew, Richard, translator of 
 Tasso, 281 
 
 Carew, Thomas, 249,372 
 
 Carey, Robert, Earl of Monmouth, 
 300 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 103 
 
 Carr, Sir Robert, Viscount Ro- 
 chester, Earl of Somerset, friend 
 of Overbury and party to his 
 murder, 333, 334 
 
 Casaubon, Isaac, 298, translator 
 of Theophrastus, 331 
 
 Castiglione, Baldassare, The 
 Courtier of, translated, 3, 4; 
 his picture of the cultivated so- 
 ciety of the Renaissance, 19, 20, 
 24; Sir Thomas Hoby, transla- 
 tor of, 284 
 
 Castro, de, author of the source 
 of Love's Cure, attributed to 
 Fletcher, 419 note 
 
 Cato, 3 
 
 Catullus, 200, 246 
 
 Cavendish, William, his Life of 
 Wolsey, 6, 292 
 
 Cawarden, Sir Thomas, Master 
 of the Revels, 78 
 
 Cayet, 285 
 
 Cecil, Sir Robert, refuses the use 
 of the council-chest for histori- 
 cal research, 293 ; his apathy 
 towards his cousin Bacon, 338 
 
 Cellini, 410 
 
 Cervantes, his Don Quixote, trans- 
 lated, 285 ; a source for English 
 plays, 413, 416, 417 
 
 Chamberlain, the Lord, his play- 
 ers, the company of Shakes- 
 peare, 80; at the Theater, the 
 Curtain and the Globe, 81 ; 
 leadership of, 183, 184; Shakes- 
 peare prominent in, 230; and 
 its rivals in the latter years of 
 Elizabeth, 232; act Every Man 
 In His Humor, 234 
 
 Chapel Royal, Children of the, 
 early plays of the, 67, 68 ; at 
 Blackfriars, 69 ; alleged to have 
 
INDEX 
 
 465 
 
 been under the royal patronage, 
 69 ; 79, 100, 232 ; their prom- 
 inence, 235 ; their part in the 
 war of the theaters, 236, 238, 
 239 
 Chapman, George, his Coronet of 
 Sonnets, 132, dedicatory sonnets 
 prefixed to his Homer, 134; 
 perhaps' the other poet of 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets, 144; 
 ■i55> 192, 208 ; completes Mar- 
 lowe's Hero and Leander, 215, 
 216; 224; his practice of the 
 comedy of humors, 230, 231; 
 collaborates with Jonson and 
 Marston, 242; 249; his tragedy 
 on Cassar and Pompey, 254; 
 255; Bussy D'Ambois and other 
 tragedies on French history, 
 256, 257; his clumsiness in 
 treatment of the supernatural, 
 260; his translation of Homer, 
 273 ; life of, 274, 275 ; early 
 comedies of, 275 ; his romantic 
 comedies, 275 ; original poetry 
 of, 275 ; his translation of 
 Homer, 275-278 ; as a trans- 
 lator, 277, 278 ; on obscurity in 
 poetry, 323 ; 371 ; a writer of 
 masques, 393 ; his Masque of 
 the Middle Temple and Lin- 
 coln's Inn, 395; 399; 411, his 
 Whole Works of Homer, 423 
 
 "Characters," defined, 331; their 
 origin in Theophrastus, 331; 
 forerunners of, in Chaucer and 
 Jonson, 331, 332; of Hall, 332, 
 of Overbury, 333-335; of Bre- 
 ton, 107, 335; of others, 336 
 
 Charlemagne, the heroical drama 
 of, 178 
 
 Charles I, King, 34, 244, 256, 322, 
 371, 382, 390, 394, 417 
 
 Charles H, King, 9 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 9, 20, 21, 29 ; 
 an inspiration to Spenser, 46, 
 48; 56; influence of meters of, 
 on Spenser, 60; his Knighfs 
 Tale dramatized, 67, 112; a 
 source for The Midsummer- 
 Nighfs Dream, 157; the Troilus 
 story as treated by Shakespeare 
 and, 167; 175, 331, 378 
 
 Chester, Charles, supposedly ridi- 
 culed by Jonson, 234, 235 
 
 Chester, Robert, his Love's Mar- 
 tyr, 192 
 Chettle, Henry, his recognition of 
 Shakespeare, 149, 159; his col- 
 laboration with Munday, 161, 
 163 ; his Hoffman and its in- 
 ventive horrors, 259 
 Child, C. G._, 128 note 
 Chrashaw, Richard, 222 
 Chronicle history in prose, its 
 forerunners, 5 ; variety of, 5, 6 ; 
 of Fabyan, Grafton, Stow and 
 others, 6 ; of Holinshed, 6, 10- 
 13; Elizabethan conception of, 
 13 ; as a source for Shakespeare, 
 13, 14; Foxe's Book of Mar- 
 tyrs as a, 14, 15 
 Chronicle play, 89 ; nature of the, 
 157, 158 ; apprenticeship of 
 Shakespeare in the, 158; rivalry 
 of Shakespeare and Marlowe in 
 the, 160, i6i ; Peele, Heywood 
 and others in the, 161; height 
 of the, 162; obituary group of, 
 163 ; legendary history in, 163, 
 164 
 Churchyard, Thomas, 3 ; his con- 
 tribution to The Mirror for 
 Magistrates, 7; 23, 52; pam- 
 phlets of, 105, 106 ; 209 
 Cicero, 3, 9, 35, 43 
 Cinthio, 155, his Hecatommithi a 
 source for Shakespeare, 265 ; 
 282 
 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Lord, 
 
 422 
 Clifton, Henry, 68, 69 
 Cobham, Lord, 11 
 Coke, Sir Edward, a rival and 
 enemy of Bacon, 338, 339, 341 
 Coleridge, S. T., on Shakespeare's 
 
 narrative poems, 217; 277 
 Colet, John, 287 
 
 College drama, its character and 
 limitations, 378, 379 ; early 
 writers of, 379; Pedantius and 
 Helium Grammaticale, 379 ; 
 the Parnassus trilogy, 379-381; 
 Lingua and Narcissus, 381, 382; 
 theatromania at Oxford, 382; 
 Alabaster's Roxana and 
 
 Gwinne's Nero, 383 ; Ignora- 
 mus, 383, 384 
 Collins, Churton, 151 
 Comedians, see Players 
 Comedy, first regular, 64, 65 ; 
 
466 
 
 INDEX 
 
 early romantic, 65, 66, 89; Lyiy 
 in, 70-73; Peele in, 74-76; pre- 
 sentation of early, 77, 78; 
 Greene in, 91, 92 ; experimen- 
 tal, of Shakespeare, 154; early 
 romantic, of Shakespeare, 155- 
 158; of Dekker, 173-177; Hey- 
 wood in, 178, 179, 181 ; minor 
 writers of, 182; Middleton in, 
 of manners, 186, 187; lesser, of 
 manners, 187, 188; Middieton 
 in romantic, 188-190; Jonson 
 and the, of humors, 230, 231; 
 satirical, of Jonson, 232-238, 
 242; Jonson's of London life, 
 242-244; last, of Jonson, 244, 
 245 ; Roman, in imitation at the 
 universities, 378, 379; academic 
 379-384; pastoral, 384-391; 
 Fletcher follows Middleton in, 
 400; Fletcher in, 415-417 
 
 Comines, 9 
 
 Companies of players, see under 
 Shakespeare, Chamberlain's, 
 
 Pembroke's, King's players, etc. 
 
 Conceit, the conventional 32, de- 
 veloped under influence of 
 Petrarch, 127, 128 ; examples 
 of, in Sidney, Drayton and 
 others, 128 ; in the sonnet- 
 sequences, 134, 135; not an in- 
 vention of Donne, 368 ; the 
 Donnian, distinguished from 
 that of his successors, 369-371 
 
 Condell, Henry, a sharer with 
 Shakespeare in the Globe 
 theater and Blackfriars, 82; 141 
 
 Conqueror plays, 100 
 
 Constable, Henry, a pastoralist, 
 123 ; his sonnets to Diana, 129 ; 
 a borrower from the French, 
 130; 131; "spiritual sonnets" of, 
 132, 133; conceits in, 134 
 
 Controversy, the Nash-Harvey, 
 300; classical verse in English 
 poetry, 300; Puritan, as to 
 social abuses, 301 ; concerning 
 witches, 301 ; religious, 306 ; 
 between Protestantism and 
 Rome, 307, 308 ; between the 
 Church of England and Jesuit- 
 ism, 307; between the Church 
 of England and Puritanism, 
 307-309; Hooker and Travers 
 in, 310; and see Marprelate 
 controversy 
 
 Cooke, Anne, mother of Bacon, 
 337 
 
 Cooke, Joshua, his Hoiv a Man 
 May Choose a Good Wife from 
 a Bad, 175 
 
 Cooper, Thomas, Bishop of Win- 
 chester, 114 
 
 Correggio, 214 
 
 Coryate, Thomas, strange person- 
 ality of, 302, 303 ; his Crudities 
 and other books, 303 
 
 Costume, in early court plays, 77; 
 sumptuous variety of, in Lin- 
 gua, 382; handsome, of the 
 masques, 391, 393 
 
 Coterie, literature of the, 19, 24- 
 34 
 
 Cotton, Charles, 21, 286 
 
 Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, collector 
 of old manuscripts, 297 
 
 Court, the, as the center of cul- 
 ture, 20, 24, 25; Spenser at, 51; 
 the drama at, 63-79 ; struggle 
 between the city and the, as to 
 the popular drama, 88 ; later 
 influence of the, on the drama, 
 378; plays of Daniel at, 386; 
 Jonson and the masque at, 391- 
 398 
 
 Courthope, W. J., 37, 219 
 
 Coverdale, Miles, his work as a 
 translator of the Bible, 288; 
 becomes Bishop of Exeter, 289; 
 escapes overseas, 289 ; assists in 
 the revision of the Gene'va 
 Version, 289 
 
 Cowley, Abraham, mistakes about 
 Donne and, 364, 365; the Donn- 
 ian conceit distinguishable from 
 that of, 369, 370 
 
 Cox, F. A., 195 
 
 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, his part in the 
 m,aking of the English Bible, 
 288, 289; his controversial writ- 
 ings, 307 
 
 Crashaw, Thomas, 370 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, Cavalier story 
 of, an actor in Lingua, 382 
 
 Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of Essex, 
 encourages Coverdale in the 
 making of the English Bible, 
 288 
 
 Cross-Keys, the playhouse, 81 
 
 Curtain, the, in Moorsfield, 81, 
 83 
 
INDEX 
 
 467 
 
 Curtius, Quintus, 3 
 
 Cynicism in the lyrics, of Beau- 
 mont, 207; of Donne, 360 
 
 Daborne, Robert, his pastoral 
 play. The Poor Man's Comfort, 
 390 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, 8 ; a later member 
 of the Areopagus, 26 ; his De- 
 fense of Rime, 27, 52; the suc- 
 cessor of Lyly as the entertainer 
 of the court, 79, loi ; life of, 
 129 ; his sonnets, Delia, 129, 
 i34> 137. 138; Nash procures the 
 publication of sonnets of, 142, 
 144; answers Campion, 199; 
 song in the masques of, 207 ; of 
 the Sidneian circle, 209, 210; 
 narrative poetry of, 210, 211; 
 his Musophilus, 219, 220; 224; 
 ridiculed by Jonson, 234, 235, 
 248 ; Senecan tragedies of, 240 ; 
 his Cleopatra, 240, 255; 286; 
 his History of England, 294, 
 422 ; on obscurity in poetry, 
 323 ; 373 ; his Queen's Arcadia, 
 386-388; his Hymen's Triumph, 
 390; a rival of Jonson in the 
 masque, 392, 393 ; his Tethys' 
 Festival, 395 ; criticizes pedan- 
 try in Jonson, 396; 422; the 
 many edd. of his works, 423 
 
 Dante, 27, 32 
 
 Davenant, Sir William, 249, 400 
 
 Davey, H., 197 
 
 Davies, John, of Hereford, his 
 sonnets, Wifs Pilgrimage, 133, 
 135, 226; his Scourge of Folly, 
 327; refers to Philaster, 405 
 
 Davies, Sir John, 130; his Gulling 
 Sonnets, 132; his Astraa, 134; 
 192; Nosce Teipsum, 218, 219; 
 his Discovery of the State of 
 Ireland, 299, 300; Epigrams of, 
 326 ; popularity of, 423 
 
 Davison, Francis, his Poetical 
 Rhapsody, 192, 195 ; 373 ; his 
 masque of the Gesta Grayorum 
 
 392 
 Davison, William, 192 
 Day, John, 100, 188 ; his Isle of 
 
 Gulls, and Humor Out of 
 
 Breath, 388 
 Dedekind, Friedrich, 117 
 Dee, Dr. John, his Diary, 300 
 Defoe, Daniel, ii6, 117 
 Dekker, Thomas, on the use of 
 
 scenery, 86; 100, 103, 105; 
 pamphlets of, 117, 118; his 
 conycatching tracts, 117, 329; 
 The Gulls' Hornbook, 117, 118, 
 328; humanity of, 118, 163; 
 life of, 172, 173 ; Old Fortuna- 
 tus quoted, 173, 174; The Shoe- 
 makers' Holiday, 174; 175 J 
 early collaboration of, 175; do- 
 mestic dramas of, 176, 177; 178; 
 value of the work of, 181; in 
 the employ of Henslowe, 182; 
 collaboration with Middleton, 
 187; realism of, 190; lyrics of, 
 201, 202; 233, Daniel ridiculed 
 by, in Patient Grissel, 234; his 
 Satirosnastix and part in the 
 war of the theaters, 236, 237; 
 243, 256, 257; collaboration with 
 Webster, 261; 328, 329; writes 
 pageants for the Lord Mayor, 
 397; 399, 422 
 
 Delone}', Thomas, 104, his prose 
 tales, 105, 174, 214 
 
 Demosthenes, 35 note 
 
 De Serres, 285 
 
 Desportes, 129, 130 
 
 Devereux, Lady Penelope, Sid- 
 ney's Stella, 30, 31 
 
 Diaries and like writings, 300 
 
 Diccon of Bedlam, see Gammer 
 Gurton's Needle 
 
 Dickenson, John, his Arisbas, 40 
 
 Divinity, see Theological writ- 
 ings and Controversy 
 
 Dolci, 6S 
 
 Domestic Drama, 174-181 
 
 Donne, Henry, 358 
 
 Donne, John, loi, possible influ- 
 ence of Greville on, 125 ; his 
 Corona and Holy Sonnets, 133; 
 192, 202, 207, 225, 249, 272; 
 a friend of Wotton, 298 ; Ser- 
 mon of, quoted, 313, 314; his 
 sermons, 314; the Satires of, 
 319-322, 324, 359; life of, 357- 
 364; his education and early 
 friends, 358; his descriptive 
 realism, 359, 360; secular 
 lyrical poetry of, 360, 361; 
 lyrical cynicism of, 360, 361; 
 his romantic lovematch, 361, 
 362; friendship with the Her- 
 berts, 362; Biathanatos of, 363; 
 religious controversy and prepa- 
 ration, 363, 364; his liberali^ 
 
468 
 
 INDEX 
 
 on opinion, 364; becomes Dean 
 of St. Paul's, 364; and Cowley, 
 364; and the "metaphysical 
 school of poetry"; 364, 365; 
 salient qualities of the poetry 
 of, 365-371 ; The Anatomy of 
 the World, 367; his originality, 
 368; his use of conceit, 368, 
 369; his use of technical 
 imagery, 370, 371 ; a lost ed. of 
 the poetry of, 371 ; influence of, 
 37i> 372; Jonson and, 371, 372; 
 Herbert and, 372, 373 ; Drum- 
 mond's opinion of, 374; 375; 
 strictly an Elizabethan, 376; 
 Izaak Walton and, 377, 424 
 
 Douglas, Lady, 53 
 
 Dove, John, 49 
 
 Dowden, E, 41 
 
 Dowland, John, the lutenlst, 197, 
 198 
 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 15, i6, 24 
 
 Drama, before Elizabeth, 63 ; 
 Elizabethan, its origin at court 
 64, 66 ; classical influence on 
 the, 65 ; Italian influence on, 
 66; before the Armada, 66, 67; 
 amateur nature of earlier, 67; 
 of the boy companies, 68, 69 ; 
 presentation of, at court, 76- 
 78 ; popular, its origin, 80 ; pre- 
 Shakespearean popular, 89, 90; 
 main influences on the, 90; play- 
 wrights preceding Shakespeare, 
 90-100; the new romantic, 100; 
 popular vernacular, 148-190; 
 Shakespeare in the, 148-171 ; 
 Dekker Heywood and Middle- 
 ton in the, 172-190; domestic, 
 174-182; Henslow's exploita- 
 tion of the, 182-184; murder 
 plays in the, 184, 185 ; of Lon- 
 don life, 186-188 ; of romantic 
 type, 188 ; the problem, 188, 
 189; songs in the, 201-208; of 
 humors, 230-232; war of the 
 theaters, 232-237 ; personal 
 rivalry in the, 232-240; Sene- 
 can influence on academic, 
 240; Jonson and Shakespeare in 
 the, 240-242; Jonson in, 230- 
 245 ; heydey of the tragic, 250- 
 271 ; later Senecan influence in, 
 250, 251, earliest tragedies of 
 Shakespeare, 251-255; Roman 
 history in the, 252-254; Cleo- 
 
 patra in, 255; Chapman in 
 tragic, 255 ; of revenge, 257- 
 260; other tragic topics for, 
 260; Webster in, 261-264; 
 Shakespeare in the height of 
 his tragic, 264-271 ; Bacon and 
 the, 350, 351; at the universi- 
 ties, 378-384; early college 
 plays, 378, 379; royal patron- 
 age of, at the universities, 378, 
 379 ; nature and limitation of 
 the college, 379 ; the Parnas- 
 sus trilogy, 379-381; Lingua 
 and other allegorical college, 
 381-383; tragical, at college, 
 383, 384; the pastoral, 384-392; 
 the masque, 392-398; character 
 of Elizabethan, 399; Fletcher 
 and the heroic, 400 ; tragicomedy, 
 400 ; Beaumont and Fletcher in 
 the, 400-406 ; the Philaster-type 
 of, 405, 406 ; the "romances" of 
 Shakespeare, 407-414; Shakes- 
 peare and Fletcher in the, 413- 
 415; Fletcher's comedies of 
 manners, 415, 416; romantic 
 comedies of Fletcher, 416; 
 Fletcher in tragic, 417-419; 
 the new, of Fletcher, 420 
 
 Drant, Thomas, experimenter in 
 classical verse and translator of 
 Horace, 26, 274; and of Homer, 
 274, 275, 317 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 7, 8 ; commends 
 The Shepherds' Calendar, 49 ; 
 alluded to in Colin Clout, 53 ; 
 a pastoralist, 123 ; his use of 
 conceit, 128, 134; his Idea's 
 Mirror, 129, 130, 137, 138; his 
 borrowings of the French 
 lyrists, 130; 131, 134; parallels 
 with Shakespeare, 138; his part 
 in the play of Oldcastle, 162; 
 his part in The Merry Devil of 
 Edmonton, 175 ; a writer for 
 Henslow, 182; alleged author of 
 the words to Morley's First 
 Book of Ballets, 197; 200; nar- 
 rative poems of, 211, 212; his 
 
 ■ Ballad of Agincourt, 212 ; life 
 of, 212, 213 ; contemporary 
 repute of, 213; Polyolbion of, 
 220, 221; eclogues of, 223, 224; 
 Browne a disciple of, 225, 226; 
 227, 278; 358, 371, 422, 423 
 
INDEX 
 
 469 
 
 Droeshout, portrait of Shake- 
 speare, 100 
 
 Drummond, William, loi, 135, 
 239 ; his Notes of Conversations 
 imth Jonson, 24.8, 300; 359; his 
 Poems, 372; life of, 373, 374; 
 his reading, 373, 374; his opin- 
 ion of Sidney and Donne, 374; 
 his logical poetry, 374, 375; 
 later works of, 375 ; 376 
 
 Drury, Elizabeth, celebrated by 
 Donne, 366, 367 
 
 Drury, Sir Robert, 363 
 
 Dryden, Sir Erasmus, 47 
 
 Dryden, John, 34, 121, 219; calls 
 Jonson's latest plays "his do- 
 tages," 244 ; 249 ; his portrait of 
 Cleopatra, 255, 316, 318; his 
 deliverance as to Donne, Cow- 
 ley and "metaphysics," 364, 
 365; 400; on the "gentlemen" 
 of Fletcher and Shakespeare, 
 420; 422 
 
 Du Bartas, 130, translated by 
 Sylvester, 285 
 
 Du Bellay, 46, a source for Spen- 
 ser, 285 
 
 Dudley, Robert, see Earl of 
 Leicester 
 
 Dumb shows, 76, 77 
 
 Dyer, Sir Edward, 25 
 
 Dyneley, Rose, supposed to be 
 Spenser's Rosalind, 47 
 
 Earle, John, Characters of, 336 
 
 Eclogues, English, 223 
 
 Educational writings, 299 
 
 Edward VI, King, i, 9, 10, 63, 
 64, 78, 288 
 
 Edwards, Richard, Master of the 
 Chapel Royal, his dramas, 29, 
 67, 68 ; his jests, 104, 194, 379 
 
 Egerton, Sir Thomas, a friend 
 of Donne, 359-360, 362 
 
 Einstein, L., 273 note 
 
 Elderton, William, 68 
 
 Elegiacs, 27 
 
 Elizabeth, Princess, Queen of 
 Bohemia, 298, 350; grand 
 masques of the marriage of, 
 
 395. 4" 
 Elizabeth, Queen, i, 2, 4-6, 8, 10, 
 II ; welcomed with poetry at 
 Kenilworth, 22, 23 ; 39 ; orders 
 Spenser a pension, 52; 54; The 
 Faery Queen dedicated to, 55; 
 figured in the same, 59 ; 63 ; 
 
 Gorboduc acted before, 65 ; 
 character of, as an encourager 
 of the drama, 67 ; 69 ; figured 
 in plays of Lyly, 70-73 ; com- 
 plimented in The Arraign- 
 ment of Paris, 75, 76; 82, 84, 
 94, 102, 103, 113; eulogized by 
 Greville, 125, 304; 145, 157; 
 suggests Falstaff of The 
 Merry Wives, 162; 164, 168; 
 proposes visiting Queen Mary 
 in disguise of a page, 172 ; rep- 
 resented on the stage in obit- 
 uary plays, 178; 182, 193, 194, 
 206, 209, 216, 219, 221; Shake- 
 speare and other poets criti- 
 cised for not celebrating the 
 death of, 224, 225 ; 232, 255, 
 272, 276 ; commands Hkrington 
 to translate Orlando Furioso, 
 280; the Bishops' Bible the offi- 
 cial Bible of, 289; 292, Cam- 
 den's Annals of, 293 ; Hay- 
 ward's Annals of, 294; 297; an 
 auspicious day calculated for 
 the accession of, by Dr. Dee, 
 300; 309; 317, 337; mistrusts 
 Bacon, 339, 341, 355; para- 
 phrases certain psalms, 351 ; 
 356, 357; regaled with plays 
 at Cambridge, 378, 379; 383, 
 384; pastoral interludes before, 
 
 385; 392, 414, 421. 425 
 Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, 359; 
 
 Donne secretary to, 360; his 
 
 opinion of Donne, 362 
 Ellis, R. L., 343 
 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 2, 299 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 305 
 England's Helicon, contributors 
 
 to, 123; 124; 191, 192 
 
 England's Parnassus, 192 
 Epic, Elizabethan poetry, 209-212 
 Epigrams, and satire, 326; of Sir 
 
 John Davies, 326 ; of Davies of 
 
 Hereford, 327; of Wither, 
 
 Rowlands and Harington, 327 ; 
 
 of Jonson, 327, 328 ; in prose, 
 
 328 
 Erasmus, Desiderlus, 2, 4, 287, 
 
 307 
 Eslava, Antonio de, his Noches 
 
 de Invierno alleged the source 
 
 of The Tempest, 412 
 Essays, of Breton, 335; of Bacon, 
 
 346-350 
 
470 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Essex, Frances Howard, Countess 
 of, 71 ; celebrated by Chapman, 
 275 ; her flirtation with Somer- 
 set and marriage to him, 333; 
 her murder of Overbury, 334 
 
 Essex, Robert Devereux, second 
 Earl of, 15, 54, io6, 141, allu- 
 sion to the popularity of, in 
 Henry V, 168, 192, 223, Chap- 
 man's Homer first dedicated to 
 the, 276. 293 ; accompanied by 
 Raleigh in the expedition 
 against Cadiz, 295 ; 320, his 
 friendship for Bacon, 338-340; 
 Bacon of counsel against, in 
 his trial for treason, 340, 341, 
 350; Donne a volunteer on the 
 Cadiz expedition of the, 359 
 
 Essex, Robert Devereux, third 
 Earl of, 333 
 
 Essex, Walter Devereux, first 
 Earl of, 30 
 
 Est, Thomas, 196 
 
 Etheridge, Sir George, 249 
 
 Euphuism, of Lyly, 37-40; its 
 nature, 37-39; vogue of, 40; 
 imitations of Lyly, 40, 41 ; and 
 Arcadianism, 41, 44 
 
 Euripides, 29, 74, 250 
 
 Evans, Henry, manager of the 
 theater in Blackfriars, 68 
 
 Fabyan, Robert, his Chronicle, 6 
 
 Fair Em the Miller's Daughter, 
 89 
 
 Fair Maid of the Exchange, The, 
 a comedy attributed to Hey- 
 wood, 179 
 
 Fairfax, Edward, translator of 
 Tasso, 281, 225 
 
 Faithful wife, the, as a theme for 
 drama, 175 
 
 Featley, Daniel, 307, 315 
 
 Fenton, Sir Geoffrey, 22, his 
 Tragical Discourses, 282; his 
 translation of Guiccardini's 
 Wars of Italy, 284 
 
 Ferrant, Richard, 68 
 
 Ferrero, F. L., 271 
 
 Feuillerat, A., note, 77 
 
 Field, John, theologian, 307 
 
 Field, Nathaniel, Jonson's scholar 
 in the drama, 231; his Woman 
 is a Weathercock and Amends 
 for Ladies, 187 
 
 Fisher, Thomas, xoz 
 
 Fitzgeoffrey, Charles, Latin epi- 
 grams of, 327 
 
 Fletcher, Giles, the elder, his 
 Licia, 130; his conceits, 134; 
 his frankness as to his inspira- 
 tion, 138, 139; 221 
 
 Fletcher, Giles, the younger, 210, 
 life of, 231 ; his Christ's Vic- 
 tory, 221, 222; 400 
 
 Fletcher, John, 67, 149, 163, 176, 
 181, 182, i88; as a lyrist, 206, 
 207, 221, 224; his portrait of 
 Cleopatra, 225; 257, 271; 355, 
 386; his Faithful Shepherdess, 
 388, 389, 399; life of, 400, 401; 
 his relations to Beaumont and 
 Massinger, 401-404; a follower 
 of Middleton in comedy, 402; 
 style and verse of, contrasted 
 with those of Beaumont, 402- 
 404; Philaster sets a new type, 
 405, 406 ; The Maid's Tragedy 
 and other plays of the Philaster 
 type, 406 ; alleged influence of, 
 on Shakespeare, 406, 407 ; sup- 
 posed collaboration of, with 
 Shakespeare, 413, 414; his share 
 in Henry VIII; Shakespeare's 
 Shreix) and The Tamer Tamed 
 of, 415; The Scornful Lady and 
 other comedies of manners by, 
 
 415, 416; The Beggar's Bush, 
 and other romantic comedies of, 
 
 416, 417; in tragedy, 4I7;Bom- 
 duca of, quoted, 417-419; his 
 Valentintan, 419; the new dra- 
 matic art of, 420; decadent 
 quality in, 420; the folio edd. 
 of Beaumont and, 424 
 
 Fletcher, Joseph, 221 
 
 Fletcher, Laurence, a member of 
 Shakespeare's company, 168 
 
 Fletcher, Phineas, probably the 
 author of Britain's Ida, 218 ; 
 life of, 221 ; his Purple Island, 
 221, 222; his piscatory drama, 
 Sicelides, 390, 400 
 
 Fletcher, Richard, Bishop of Lon- 
 don, 400 
 
 Florio, John, his translation of 
 Montaigne, 286 
 
 Ford, Emanuel, his Parismus, 40 
 
 Ford, John, 204, 399 
 
 Forman, Dr. Simon, Diary of, 300 
 
INDEX 
 
 471 
 
 Fortescue, Thomas, his Forest, 
 282 
 
 Fortune playhouse, the, 183, 232 
 
 Foxe, John, his Book of Martyrs, 
 6, 14, 15, 18, 422 
 
 Frampton, John, 284 
 
 Francis I, King of France, 49 
 
 Francis II, King of France, 2 
 
 Fraunce, Abraham, a practicer of 
 English hexameter verse, 26 ; 
 translator of Tasso's Aminta, 
 281 
 
 Freitag, G., 268 
 
 Fresnayne, 318 
 
 Frobisher, Martin, 15, 24, 105 
 
 Froissart, 9 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, 229, 278, 310 
 
 Furness, Horace Howard, 37 
 
 Gager, William, Latin college 
 plays of, 378, 379 
 
 Galileo, 346 
 
 Gamelyn, The Tale of, 386 
 
 Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of 
 Winchester, 6 
 
 Garnier, Robert, his Cornelia 
 translated by Kyd, 93 ; influ- 
 ence of, on English academic 
 tragedy, 240; his Antoine trans- 
 lated by Lady Pembroke, 285 
 
 Gascoigne, George, life and liter- 
 ary career of, 22, 23 ; 24, 26, 28 ; 
 his tragedy Jocasta, 65, 67; 75, 
 78, 105; stepfather to the poet, 
 Breton, 106 ; advice as to fram- 
 ing a lyric, 127; procures the 
 publication of a tract of Gil- 
 bert, 142; his Supposes, 154, 
 155, 164; on music for lyrics, 
 193 ; 213 ; his Ferdinando Jero- 
 nimo, 282; his Steel Glass, 319; 
 his use of pastoral figures at 
 Kenil worth, 385 
 
 Georgievitz, 295 
 
 Gesta Grayorum of 1594, 
 masques of Campion and Davi- 
 son in the, 392 
 
 Gibbons, Orlando, 198 
 
 Gifford, Humphrey, 23 
 
 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 15, 16, 
 24, 105 ; his Discourse of a New 
 Passage published by Gas- 
 coigne, 142; half-brother to 
 Raleigh, 295 
 
 Giles, Nathaniel, Master of the 
 Chapel Royal, his illegal use of 
 
 the royal commission to kidnap 
 children for actors, 68 ; 232 
 
 Glraldus, Cambrensls, 11 
 
 Globe Theater, the, 81, 82; value 
 of shares in, 82; 84, loi, 232, 
 413; burnt, 414 
 
 Goethe, 143 
 
 Golding, Arthur, his translation 
 of Ovid, 274 
 
 Gongora, not responsible for the 
 conceit in English poetry, 127; 
 369 
 
 Goodere, Sir Henry, a friend of 
 Drayton, Donne and other 
 poets, 212, 363, 364, 371 
 
 Googe, Barnabe, 3 ; his eclogues, 
 23, 49, 213 
 
 Gosson, Stg^phen, his School of 
 Abuse, 28, no; his account of a 
 play on the subject of The 
 Merchant of Venice, 66, 156; 
 253; satirical pamphlets of, 
 -3^9. 330 ; 
 
 Gough, Henry, historian, 295 
 
 Gower, John, 9, 20, 112, 408 
 
 Grafton, Richard, his chronicle 
 histories, 6 
 
 Granada, Luis de, translated by 
 Hopkins, 284 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 219 
 
 Greene, Robert, Euphulstic novels 
 of, 40, 41 ; a writer for 
 the stage, 81 ; his allusion to 
 Shakespeare and other play- 
 wrights. In A Groatsiuorth of 
 Wit, 88, 149, 158, 159; his Or- 
 lando Furioso, 89, 91 ; Friar 
 Bacon and other dramas of, 91, 
 92 ; his success in comedy ; 92 ; 
 the pamphlets of, 107-110; love 
 stories of, 107, 108 ; Pandosto, 
 source of The Winter's Tale, 
 108 ; autobiographical pam- 
 phlets of, 109, no; conycatch- 
 ing tracts, 109, 329; pathos of 
 the ungoverned life of, no; 
 abused by Harvey, m; pas- 
 toral lyrics of, 124; spirit of 
 Troilus and Cressida caught 
 from, 167; 172, 173, 178, 
 187, 188; lyrics of. In his pam- 
 phlets, 201 ; 202, 224, 251, 390, 
 410, 411 
 
 Greg, W. W., 8i; 182 note 
 
 Grenvllle, Sir Richard, 17, i8, 
 295 
 
472 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gresham, Sir Thomas, 178 
 Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, 
 friendship at school with Sid- 
 ney, 24; a member of the 
 Areopagus, 25 ; appears with 
 Sidney at tilt, 31; on Sidney's 
 character, 33 ; 76, I2i ; his lyrics 
 Coelica, 125, 126; 132; poetical 
 Treatises, 219; influence of 
 Gamier on, 240; his tragedies, 
 Alaham and Mustapha, 240; 
 his ideals of writing history, 
 293 ; his Life of Sidney, 304, 
 305 ; his qualities as an author, 
 
 305, 376 . . , 
 
 Griffin, Bartholomew, his Fidessa, 
 
 131 
 
 Grimald, Nicholas, 21 
 
 Grimestone, Edward, various his- 
 torical writings of, 285, 295 
 
 Grim the Collier of Croydon, 89 
 
 Grindal, Edmund, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, 49 
 
 Grocyn, William, 287 
 
 Grosart, A., 86 note, 105, II2, 
 222, 351, 352 
 
 Groto, Luigi, 383 
 
 Grove, Mathew, 23 
 
 Guarini, his Pastor Fido trans- 
 lated, 281; 385, 386 
 
 Guevara, 3, 19, 39, his Golden 
 Book translated, 284 
 
 Guiccardini, 284 
 
 Guilpin, Edward, his Skialetheia, 
 326 
 
 Gwinne, Matthew, his tragedy on 
 Nero, 253, 384 
 
 Hake, Edward, his News out of 
 Paul's Churchyard, 318 
 
 Hakluyt, Richard, account of 
 IS, 16; his Principal Naviga- 
 tions and other works, 16, 17; 
 his successors, 17; 18, 19, 284, 
 421 
 
 Hall, Arthur, his translation of 
 the Iliad, 275, 285 
 
 Hall, Edward, his Chronicle, 6, 
 
 13 
 Hall, Joseph, 234, the Contem- 
 plations of, 314, 315; the 
 Satires of, 321-326 ; life of, 
 322; Milton on the "toothless 
 satires" of, 322; the meter of, 
 323, 324; his obscurity, 323; 
 his problematic allusions, 324; 
 his Mundus Alter et Idem, 332; 
 
 his Characters, 332, 333; 335, 
 422 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 145 
 
 Hannay, Patrick, his poem Philo- 
 mela, 193 
 
 Harbert, Sir William, his Proph- 
 ecy of Cadivallader, 214 
 
 Hardyng, John, his Chronicle, 6 
 
 Harington, Lucy, 25 
 
 Harington, Sir John, 59, 76, his 
 translation of Orlando Furioso, 
 280, 281 ; his Apology for 
 Poetry, 281; his Epigrams, 327 
 
 Harman, Thomas, his Caveat for 
 Common Cursetors, 328, 329, 
 
 331 
 
 Harrison, William, his Descrip- 
 tion of England, ii, 12, 16 
 
 Harvey Gabriel, 23, and the Are- 
 opagus club, 25, 26; the friend 
 of Spenser, 46-49 ; attacks 
 Greene, 11 1; and Nash, 112, 
 113, 116; 126; his Four Letters, 
 134; 300, 326; supposedly ridi- 
 culed in Pedantius, 579 
 
 Harvey, William, 222; his mis- 
 trust of Bacon's method, 346 
 
 Hathaway, Ann, 149 
 
 Hathway, Richard, 162, 182 
 
 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 339 
 
 Hawkins, Sir John, 15, 16 
 
 Hay, Lord, 363 
 
 Hayward, John, 3, 6; education 
 of, 293 ; his History: of Henry 
 IF, and other like work, 293, 
 294; his attempt to improve the 
 writing of history, 204; accused 
 by Bacon of plagiarism, 294 
 
 Heisius, defines satire, 316 
 
 Heliodorus, 274 
 
 Heming, John, 81, a sharer with 
 Shakespeare in the Globe thea- 
 ter and Blackfriars, 82 ; r^i 
 
 Henley, W. E., 49, 201 
 
 Henry VH, 5, 13 
 
 Henry VHI, 1, 4-6, 10, 20, 39, 63, 
 78, 121, 163 ; a poet and musi- 
 cian, 193; 284, 288, 357 
 
 Henry, King, of Navarre, 134 
 
 Henry, Prince, 275. 276, 347, 372 
 
 Henryson, Robert, 49 
 
 Henslowe, Philip, 100, loi, 162, 
 178; and his Diary, 182-184; 
 186, 202, 213, 229, 230, 251, 253, 
 261, 424 
 
 Herbert, George, a friend of 
 
INDEX 
 
 473 
 
 Donne, 362; influence of Donne 
 on, 372, 373 ; Bacon dedicates 
 his Psalms, to, 351 
 
 Herbert, Edward Lord, of Cher- 
 bury, 362 
 
 Herbert, Lady Magdalen, a per- 
 sonal friend of Donne, 362 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 249, 372 
 
 Hesiod,' translated, 274 
 
 Hexameters in English, 26, 27, 
 274 
 
 Heyes, Thomas, 102 
 
 Heywood, Elizabeth, 357 
 
 Heywood, Jasper, 3, 357, 358 
 
 Heywood, John, 3, 63, 64, 357^ 
 
 Heywood, Thomas, chronicle 
 plays of, 161, 163; in domestic 
 drama, 176-182; life of, 178 
 an actor for Iljnslowe, 178 
 mythological plays of, 178, 240 
 his dramatic glorification of the 
 London 'prentice, 179 ; A Wom- 
 an Killed ivit/i Kindness, 179- 
 181 ; "a prose Shakespeare," 
 i8i; other plays of, 181; his 
 method of writing, 181, 182; 
 i88, 190; lyrics in the plays of, 
 207, 208 ; The Rape of Lucrece, 
 
 .^53 
 Higden, Ralph, his Polychronicon, 
 
 5 
 
 Higgins, John, 7 
 
 Hilton, John, 204 
 
 History, Elizabethan interest in, 
 5-9 ; chronicles in prose, 6, 10- 
 15; in verse, 6, 7; Elizabethan 
 conception of, 292 ; earlier writ- 
 ing of, annals, 292; Cam- 
 den's idea of research in, 292 ; 
 Greville and his ideals as to 
 the writing of, 293 ; English, of 
 Stow, Speed and Daniel, 294; 
 of various nations by Grime- 
 stone, 295 ; Knolles and his, of 
 the Turks, 295 ; Raleigh as a 
 writer of, 295, 296 ; of antiqui- 
 ties, 297-299 
 
 Hoby, Sir Thomas, translator of 
 The Courtier of Castiglione 
 
 Hblinshed, Ralph, Chronicles, 6, 
 10-14; 17, 18; source of Arden, 
 184; source of King Lear, 265; 
 the source of Macbeth, 266; 
 Stanihurst, a contributor to, 
 274; 292, 409 
 
 Holland, Philemon, his transla- 
 tions, 278, 292 
 
 Holyday, Barten, Perseus Eng- 
 lished by, 317 
 
 Homer, translated, 56, 256, 273 ; 
 by Drant, 275 ; by Hall, 275, 
 276 ; by Chapman, 275-278 ; the 
 Iliad quoted, 276, 277 
 
 Hooker, John, 12 
 
 Hooker, Richard, 4, 34; life of, 
 309-311; his controversy with 
 Travers, 310; personality of, 
 310, 311; his Ecclesiastical 
 Polity, 310-313 • character of the 
 prose of, 312; commonly over- 
 rated, 313; quoted, 313; his 
 prose contrasted with that of 
 Donne, 313; 349 
 
 Hope theater, the, 84 
 
 Hopkins, John, 352 
 
 Hopkins, Richard, translator of 
 Granada, 294 
 
 Horestes, the tragedy of, 71 
 
 Horace, 26, a model for Jonson, 
 246, 248 ; translated, 273 ; by 
 Drant, 274, 317; 316; nature of 
 the satires of, 317; imitated by 
 Wyatt, 318; spirit of, in the 
 satires of Donne, 320; 322, 328 
 
 Houghton, William, 100; his 
 comedy Englishmen for my 
 Money, 175 ; 182 
 
 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, 
 
 2, 3, 4 
 Howell, Thomas, 23 
 Hughes, Thomas, his play of The 
 
 Misfortunes of Arthur, 77 
 Hume, Tobias, the lyrist and 
 
 musician, 198 
 Humors, see Comedy of humors 
 Hunnis, William, plays of, 68, 194 
 Illiteracy in Elizabeth's time, 102, 
 
 103 
 Interludes, of Heywood, 63 
 Ireland, state documents concern- 
 ing, by Bacon, Spenser and 
 
 others, 299, 300 
 Jacobean, press, the, 103 
 Jack Drum's Entertainment, a 
 
 play in the war of the theaters 
 
 attributed to Marston, 235 
 Jaggard, Edward, publisher of 
 
 The Passionate Pilgrim, 144, 
 
 198 
 James I, King, of Scotland, 20 
 James I, King of England, 8, his 
 
474 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Art of Poesy, 26; 82, 90, io6, 
 136, 168, 207, 222, 225, 240, 
 245, 278, 286; and the Author- 
 ized Version of the Bible, 287, 
 290, 291; 293, 294, 296-298; 
 Basilikon Doron, and other 
 writings of, 301 ; his opinions 
 on witchcraft, education and 
 tobacco, 301, 302, 305, 315, 320, 
 329; and Overbury, 333, 334; 
 his favors and promotions of 
 Bacon, 340, 341, 355 ; and 
 Donne, 364; 373; welcomed to 
 Scotland by Drummond, 375; 
 Lingua acted before, 382; Igno- 
 ramus acted before, 383, 384; 
 386, 390; progress of, to London 
 characterized by pageantry, 
 
 392, 394, 397, 399, 404, 4i7, 42i, 
 
 422 
 J. C.'s Alalia, 132 
 Jerome, Saint, 290, 351 
 Jessopp, A., 357, 361 
 Jest-books, 104 
 Jew, the, in Elizabethan drama, 
 
 156 
 Jewell, John, Bishop of Salisbury, 
 
 309 
 John, The Troublesome Reign of, 
 
 Johnson, Richard, the musician, 
 197, 203 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 10, 244; 
 the "metaphysical school of 
 poetry" invented by, 365 
 
 Jones, Inigo, his services in scenic 
 devices for the masque, 391 ; 
 devises change of scenery for 
 Tethys' Festival, 395; 397 
 
 Jones, Robert, the musician, 198, 
 203 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 34, the first poet lau- 
 reate, 52 ; applies the adjective 
 "gentle" to Shakespeare, 53 ; 55, 
 79; on the use of scenery, 86; 
 revises The Spanish Tragedy, 
 94; 96, loi ; on Southwell, 126; 
 on the "requisites" of a poet, 
 130; 149; Shakespeare an actor 
 in plays of, 150; his opinion of 
 Shakespeare's Latin, 151; 155; 
 mentioned in Hensloive, 182 ; 
 186, 187, 191, 195; as a lyrist, 
 206, 207; 224; earlier life of, 
 229, 230; Every Man in his 
 Humor, 230; the comedy of 
 
 humors of, 231; and the war of 
 the theaters, 232-237; the dra- 
 matic satires of, 234-237; 
 attacks of, on fellow play- 
 wrights, 234-236; his complai- 
 sant picture of himself, 235; 
 Poetaster, 236, 237; and Shake- 
 speare in classic tragedy, 241 ; 
 Sejanus and Catiline, 241, 242 ; 
 writes Eastivard Hoe with 
 Dekker and Marston, 242; Vol- 
 fone of, 242, 243 ; nature of the 
 comedies of, 243 ; English scene 
 preferred by 243, 244; The 
 Alchemist, The Silent Woman, 
 and Bartholomew Fair, 243, 
 244; the last comedies of, 244, 
 245.; the folio of 161 6 of, 245; 
 non-dramatic poetry of, 245, 
 246 ; classicality of, 246 ; lyrical 
 and gnomic poetry of, 246-248 ; 
 opinions of, 248 ; catholicity of 
 the taste of, 248, 249 ; respon- 
 sible for the classic reaction, 
 249 ; revises The Spanish Trag- 
 edy, 258 ; in rivalry with 
 Shakespeare in the tragedy of 
 revenge, 258; technique of, 
 268, 272, 274, 275, 278, 291, 292; 
 contributes to Raleigh's History, 
 296; visits Drummond in Scot- 
 land, 300; 303; his Discoveries, 
 304-306 ; his opinion of Bacon 
 and Shakespeare, 306; 316, 
 317, 324, 326; Epigrams of, 
 327, 328 ; "characters" in plays 
 of, 331, 332; 344; on the elo- 
 quence of Bacon, 348; 349, 355, 
 358; and Donne, 359, 366, 371, 
 372; and Drummond, 373, 374; 
 376, 377; 381; The Sad Shep- 
 herd of, 385, 386, 390; and the 
 masque, 391-395; his rivalry 
 with Daniel, 392; invents the 
 antimasque, 394 ;_ 395, 396, 397, 
 399; his conviviality and Bo- 
 hemianism, 401 ; and Beaumont, 
 402; 403, 415; the playwright of 
 theory, 420; the first folio of 
 the works of, 423, 424; 425 
 Josephus, translated, 273 
 Jusserand, J. J., 36, 40, 115 
 Juvenal, translated, 273 ; nature of 
 the satires of, 317; his method 
 of direct rebuke, 317; 323 
 Keats, John, 62, 215 
 
INDEX 
 
 475 
 
 Kemp, William the comedian, 8i; 
 
 taken off in The Return from 
 
 Parnassus, 380 
 King Leir, a comedy attributed 
 
 to Lodge, 163, 265 
 King's company of players, 80; 
 
 recognized in Scotland, 168 ; 
 
 183, 185 
 Kingsley, Charles, 36 
 Kinwelmarsh, Francis, 23 
 Kirke, Edward, the "E. K." of 
 
 the gloss to The Shepherds' 
 
 Calendar, 45-48 
 Kirkman, Francis, publisher on 
 
 Hey wood, i8i 
 Knolles, Richard, his History of 
 
 the Turks, 295 
 Kyd, Thomas, a schoolmate of 
 
 Spenser's, 45; 80; a playwright 
 
 for various companies, 81; 89; 
 
 life of, 93 ; The Spanish Trag- 
 edy and other plays of, 93-95 ; 
 
 influence of Seneca on, 95 ; 
 
 author of the lost Hamlet, 95 ; 
 
 influence of, on tragedy, 100; 
 
 attack of Greene on, in; 155, 
 
 236, 240, 251; revival of The 
 
 Spanish Tragedy of, 257, 258; 
 
 translation by, of Garnier's 
 
 Antoine, 285 ; 378, 399 
 Luelia, a college comedy, 383 
 Lamb, Charles, 181, 189, 208, 220, 
 
 273 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 376 
 Langland, John, 3 
 Languet, Hubert, 24 
 Latimer, Hugh, 4 
 Latin, an example to English, 8 ; 
 
 the only language of learning, 
 
 9 ; construction of Elizabethan 
 
 prose, 9, lo 
 Latinism and Latinists, 10, 22, 
 
 34, 44, "6 
 Learning, the New, in England, 
 
 2, 3 
 Lee, S., 30 note 
 Legge, Thomas, 379 
 Leicester, Earl of, Robert Dudley, 
 
 23, 24, 47, 59, 71, 80, 153, 318; 
 
 his company of players, 80, 153 
 Leland, John, the antiquary, lo, 
 
 221 
 Lessing, 28 
 
 Liebig, Justus von, 346 
 Lilly, William, the grammarian, 
 
 381 
 
 Literature, of fact, the, 5-18; state 
 of English in 1564, 2, 3 ; histor- 
 ical, 5-15, 292-299; of travel, 
 15-18, 302-304; of the coterie 
 and the court, 19-45, 52-62, 63- 
 79; 385-398; poetical, 29-33, 
 45-62, 120-147, 191-208, 357- 
 377; dramatic; 80-101, 148-190, 
 250-271, 378-425 ; of contro- 
 versy, 102-119; the classical 
 reaction in, 229-249 ; of trans- 
 lation, 272-291 ; of contempo- 
 rary comment, 292-315; satiri- 
 cal, 316-336 
 
 Lithgow, William, his travels and 
 sufferings from the Inquisition, 
 
 303 
 
 Livy, translated by Holland, 278, 
 294 
 
 Locrine, the tragedy of, attributed 
 to Peele, 163 
 
 Lodge, Thomas, his Defense of 
 Poesy, 28 ; his Rosalynd, 40, 
 41 ; a follower of Lyly's Eu- 
 phuism, 41 ; at school with 
 Spenser, 45; 49, 81; his contract 
 with the drama, 90; collabora- 
 tion with Greene, 91 ; alluded to 
 by Greene, 92; 93, 105; pamph- 
 lets of, no, in; pastoral ele- 
 ment in Rosalynd of, 122 ; 123 ; 
 a borrower from the French, 
 130; perhaps the author of 
 Mucedorus, 155, 385, 386; 
 alluded to by Greene, 159; 
 possible author of King heir, 
 163 ; his Rosalynd, the source 
 of As You Like It, 165; 
 in England's Helicon, 191 ; 
 his Glaucus and Sylla, 216; a 
 writer of pastoral, 223, 224; 
 ridiculed by Jonson on the 
 stage, 234, 235; his Wounds of 
 Civil War, 240, 253 ; a notori- 
 ous borrower from the French 
 lyrists 285 ; his Fig for Momus, 
 321, 322 
 
 Lok, Henry, his devotional son- 
 nets, 132, 133 
 
 London, Elizabethan, 83, 84; 
 shops and signs of, 102; popula- 
 tion of, 103 
 
 Longfellow, H. W., 91 
 
 Long, P. W, 72 
 
 Lopez, Roderigo, physician to 
 Queen Elizabet'n, 156 
 
476 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lorenzo the Magnificent, 20 
 Love's Labor's Won, a play of 
 Shakespeare mentioned by 
 Meres, 164 
 Lucan, translated, 273 
 Lucian, 254 
 Lucilius, 347 
 
 Lusfs Dominion, the tragedy, 100 
 Lusty Jwven'tus, the morality, 3 
 Lydgate, John, 3, 5, 7, "2 
 Lyly, John, 4, 24; life of, 34,35, 
 69, 70; Euphues and Euphuism, 
 35-40; Euphuistic imitators of, 
 40, 41 ; and the office of the 
 revels, 69 ; Endimion, and other 
 comedies of, 70-73; staging of 
 plays of, 77, 78 ; as a dramatist, 
 79 ; influence of, 79 ; 80, 89, 90, 
 108 ; in the Marprelate Contro- 
 versy, 114, 115; 121, 142, 148; 
 comedies of, an example to 
 Shakespeare, 153, 154, 156; 
 epigrammatic nature of the 
 lyrics of, 201, 203 ; lyrics vyith- 
 in the comedies of, 204; 233, 
 355, 369, 379, 385, .388, 399; his 
 Six Court Comedies, 424 
 Lynche, Thomas, his sonnets, 
 Diella, 131; his conceits, 135, 
 
 145 , 
 
 Lyric, the, defined, 120, 121 ; of 
 art, 121 ; origin of the, 121 ; 
 in the miscellanies, 121 ; con- 
 ventional character of the 
 Elizabethan, 122; the pastoral 
 period of the, 120-125 ; conceit 
 in the, 127, 128 ; the sonnet, 128- 
 147; of Shakespeare, 142-147; 
 anthologies of the, 191, 192; 
 set to music, 193-208 ; songs of 
 the drama, 201-208 ; of Jonson, 
 246-248 ; of Donne, Drummond 
 and others, 357-377 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., 9 
 
 Macchiavelli, 3, 4, 284 
 
 Machin, Levpis, 225 
 
 Maddan, D. H., his Diary of 
 Master William Silence, 152 
 
 Madrigal, the, 27, defined, 194; 
 its introduction into England, 
 195, 196; writers of, 196-200 
 
 Major, John, 11 
 
 Malory, Sir Thomas, 5 
 
 Manningham, John, Diary of, 300 
 
 Mantuan, 48, 49; his eclogues a 
 
 model for English poets, 224; 
 translated by Turberville, 280 
 
 Margaret of Navarre, 20 
 
 Marino, not responsible for the 
 conceit, 127 
 
 Markham, Gervais, translator of 
 the Satires of Ariosto, 281 ^....-i 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 4, 21, 46, 
 49, 74, 7,6, 80, 87, 89-93, life of, 
 
 95, 96 ; Tamburlaijie, 96, 97^^ [ 
 
 Faustus, 97, quoted, 98 ; oth'er 
 plays, 99, 100; followers of, 100; 
 168, 173 ; as^ a lyrist,; 91, 201 ; a 
 translator ofT)vld, 214; Hero 
 and Leander, 215, 216; his 
 Dido, 240; 250; influence of, inJ 
 Shakespeare in tragedy, 1251; 
 his Massacre at Paris, 255 ; 26q4__, 
 and Chapman, 274 ; a friend of / 
 Raleigh's, 296; 355, 397, 399,j 
 419, 425 
 
 Marot, Clement, 49, pastorals of, 
 employed by Spenser, 285 
 
 Marprelate Controversy, the, 113- 
 115; Puritan tracts in, 114; de- 
 fenders of the church, 114, 115; 
 plays in, 233; 300, 309; Bacon's 
 part in, 338 
 
 Marston, John, 192, 208 ; his Plg- 
 malion's Image, 217; life of, 
 233; the war of the theaters, 
 233-236; his Sophonisba and 
 attitude towards Jonson, 241, 
 253 ; writes Eastivard Hoe with 
 Jonson and Dekker, 242 ; re- 
 vives the tragedy of revenge in 
 Antonio and Mellida, 257, 258 ; 
 ingenious horrors of, 259, 260; 
 The Insatiate Countess of, 260; 
 his Dutch Courtezan, 261 ; 270, 
 274; his Satires, 324-326; his 
 literary coxcombry, 325 ; his 
 works ordered burned, 3^6 ; a 
 writer of masques, 393; writes 
 pageants for the Lord Mayor, 
 397; brief dramatic career of, 
 399; Dramatic Works of, 424 
 
 Martial, 328 
 
 Martin, Gregory, his part in the 
 , Douay Bible, 290 
 
 Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, i, 
 71, 172, 192 
 
 Mary Tudor, Queen, i, 63, 64, 
 163, 229, 288 
 
 Masking, familiar in early times, 
 76 
 
INDEX 
 
 477 
 
 Masque, the, Bacon and, 350, 351; 
 defined, 301; not wholly of 
 foreign origin, 392; in Eliza- 
 beth's day, 392; Daniel earliest 
 rival of Jonson in the Jacobean, 
 392; Jonson and the, 392-394, 
 397; other writers of the, 393; 
 sumptuous setting of the, 393- 
 395; Jonson develops the anti- 
 masque, a foil for the, 395 ; 
 grand masques of the wedding 
 of the Princess Elizabteh, 395 ; 
 great cost of the, 395 ; allegory 
 in the, 396; place of the, among 
 other like entertainments of the 
 day, 397; effect of the, on the 
 popular stage, 3Q7; later degen- 
 eration of the, 398 
 
 Massinger, Philip, 399, a collabo-^ 
 rator and reviser of Fletcher, 
 401, 404; 406 
 
 Masuccio di Salerno, 282 
 
 Matthew, Sir Toby, 350 
 
 Matthew of Paris, 6 
 
 Matthew of Westminster, 6 
 
 Matthieu, 285 
 
 Melbancke, Brian, his Philotimus, 
 40 
 
 Melville, James, the reformer, his 
 Diary, 300 
 
 Melville, Sir James, i-jz-yAuto- 
 biography of, 300 
 
 Memoirs and like works, 300 
 
 Meres, Francis, his recognition of 
 Shakespeare, 164; his mention 
 of Love's Labor's Won, 166; 
 his mention of Jonson, 229 
 
 Mermaid Tavern, the, 358 
 
 "Metaphysical School of poetry," 
 the, 365, 366; origin of the 
 term in Dryden, 366; miscon- 
 ception of it by Johnson, 366 
 
 Middleton, Thomas, 172, collabo- 
 ration with Dekker in domestic 
 drama, 176, 177; 178; life of, 
 186; his comedies of London 
 Life, 186, 187; romantic come- 
 dies of, 188; collaboration of, 
 with Rowley, 188, 189; A Fair 
 Quarrel, 189, 190, 257; Women 
 Beiuare Women of, 260; The 
 Witch of, and Macbeth, 266; 
 271 ; Micro cynicon not by, 326 ; 
 writes Lord Mayors' pageants, 
 397; 399! a model for Fletcher 
 
 in comedy, 400, 402, 415, 416 
 
 Milton, John, 9, 21, 61, i2i ; Syl- 
 vester an influence on, 285; 315; 
 on "toothless satire," 322; 375; 
 his indebtedness to Fletcher's 
 Faithful Shepherdess, 389; his 
 figure and name of Comus sug- 
 gested by Jonson, 393 
 
 Minshull, Geoffrey, "characters" 
 of, 336 
 
 Mirror for Magistrates, The, 3, 
 6-8, 105, 209, 2IO, 265 
 
 Montaigne, 9 ; Florio's translation 
 of, 286; Bacon derives the title 
 Essays from, 347 
 
 Montgomery, Earl of, Philip Her- 
 bert, the first folio of Shakes- 
 peare dedicated to the, and 
 Pembroke, his brother, 141 
 
 Montemayor, his Diana Enamo- 
 rada, plot of Love's Labor's 
 Lost in, 155 ; Sidney's acquaint- 
 ance with, 284; 373 
 
 More, Anne, marries Donne, 362 
 
 More, Sir George, 362 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 2, 4, 9, 13; 
 play on, 163 ; 307 
 
 Morley, Thomas, the musician, 
 196, 197, 203 
 
 Moryson, Fynes, on Ireland, 299 ; 
 his Itinerary, 302 
 
 Mount] oy, Christopher, landlord 
 of Shakespeare, 149 
 
 Mucedorus, the comedy of, possi- 
 bly by Lodge, 15?, 385 
 
 Mulcaster, Richard, Master of 
 the Merchant Tailors' School, 
 45 ; 68 ; his educational writ- 
 ings, 299. 
 
 Munday, Anthony, his Zelauto, 
 40 ; as a lyrist, 123 ; his part in 
 plays of Robin Hood^ and 
 Oldcastle, 161-163 ; mentioned 
 in Henslowe, 182; i86; verse of, 
 192; ridiculed by Jonson and 
 others on the stage, 234, 235; 
 his translations of romances of 
 chivalry, 284, 285 ; writes Lord 
 Mayors' pageants, 397; popu- 
 larity of the translations of, 422 
 
 Murder plays, the, Arden of 
 Feversham, 184, 185; The 
 Yorkshire Tragedy and minor, 
 i8s 
 
 Musaeus, translated, 273, by Mar- 
 
478 
 
 INDEX 
 
 lowe in Hero and Leander, 274 
 
 Music in Elizabeth's age, 120, 
 193, 194.; quality of theatrical, 
 206 
 
 Narcissus, a college interlude, 382 
 
 Nash, Thomas, 29 ; not a Euphuist, 
 41 ; 46 ; commends Spenser, 49 ; 
 his part in the drama, 90; col- 
 laboration of, with Marlowe, 
 96, 99 ; pamphlets of, 103, 105 ; 
 his controversy with Harvey, 
 III, 113; his part in the Mar- 
 prelate Controversy, 113-115; 
 social and satirical tracts, 115; 
 Jack Wilton, 115, 116; other 
 tracts, 115, 116; on poets, 118, 
 119, 126; procures a surrepti- 
 tious publication of Astrophel 
 and Stella, 129, and of Delia, 
 142 ; allusion of, to Henry VI, 
 158; lyrics of, 202, 203; his and 
 Marlowe's Dido, 240; 303, 326, 
 328 
 
 Naunton, Sir Robert, his Frag- 
 menta Regalia, 300 
 
 Nevile, Alexander, translator of 
 Seneca, 3, 23 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 287 
 
 Newington-Butts, the theater at, 
 
 Niccols, Richard, an editor of 
 The Mirror for Magistrates, 7 
 
 Nice Wanton, The, 3 
 
 Nichols, Thomas, 284 
 
 Niebelungen Lied, the, 278 
 
 Noot, John van der, Spenser con- 
 tributes to The Theater of 
 Voluptuous Worldlings of, 46 
 
 North, Roger Lord, 278 
 
 North, Sir Thomas, his Dial of 
 Princes, 29, 273 ; life of, 278 ; 
 his translation of Plutarch, 278- 
 280; the source of Shakespeare's 
 Roman plays, 252, 279 ; quoted, 
 279; 285, 422 
 
 Norris, Sir Thomas, 55 
 
 Norton, Thomas, with Sackville 
 the author of Gorboduc, 65 
 
 Novellieri, Italian, translated and 
 imitated, 281, 282 
 
 Novum Organum, the, 342, 346; 
 and see Bacon 
 
 Obscurity as a quality of poetry, 
 323 
 
 Osteler, William, an actor in 
 
 Shakespeare's company, 82, 
 262 
 
 Ortelius, Abraham, 292 
 
 Overbury, Sir Thomas, his defi- 
 nition of the character, 331 ; 
 life of, 333 ; his tragic murder, 
 334; his Character of a Wife, 
 and other characters, ,334-336 
 
 Ovid, translated, by Sandys, m, 
 303; by Marlowe, 214, 274; by 
 Golding, 274; by Chapman, 
 274, 275; 381 
 
 Owen, John, Latin epigrams of, 
 
 327 
 
 Oxford, theatromania at, 382, 383 
 
 Oxford, Earl of, 23, 69; his play- 
 ers, 81 
 
 Painter, William, 22, his Palace 
 of Pleasure, 155, source of The 
 Duchess of Malfi, 262; 281-282; 
 a source for Timon, 407 
 
 Palestrina, uprise of Italian music 
 with, 193 
 
 Palmer, G. H., 372 note 
 
 Pamphlet, the, forerunner of the 
 newspaper, 103 ; defined, 103, 
 104; diversity of, 104 
 
 Paradise of Dainty: Devices, The, 
 121 
 
 Parker, Matthew, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, 6 ; his part in the 
 making of the Bible, 289; his 
 interest in antiquities, 297; 352 
 
 Parnassus trilogy, the. The Pil- 
 grimage to Parnassus, 379; the 
 two parts of The Return from 
 Parnassus, 380; Shakespeare 
 quoted and appraised in the, 
 380, 381; Burbage and Kemp 
 taken off in the, 381 
 
 Parrot, Henry, "characters" of, 
 336 
 
 Parsons, Robert, 125 ; his Chris- 
 tian Directory and other writ- 
 ings, 307 
 
 Passionate Pilgrim, The, 191 
 
 Pastoral drama, 384; its origin in 
 Italy, 385 ; elements of, in Gas- 
 coigne, Sidney, Lyly and Peele, 
 385 ; The Sad Shepherd and As 
 You Like It, 385, 386; of regu- 
 lar type, 386; Daniel's Queen's 
 Arcadia, 386-388; Fletcher's 
 Faithful Shepherdess, 388-390; 
 other specimens of, 390, 391 
 
 Pastoral narrative verse, 220-228, 
 
INDEX 
 
 479 
 
 inspired by Spenser, 221 ; the 
 Fletchers in, 221-223 ; other 
 writers of, 223-225 ; Browne 
 and his group of writers of, 
 225-228 
 
 Paul's boys, 78, their playhouse, 
 84; their prominence, 232 
 
 Peele, George, his life, 73, 74; his 
 dramas, 73-76 ; his Arraignment 
 of Paris, 74; quoted 75, 76; 89; 
 imaginative quality of, 90, 
 91; Mrrey Jests of, 104; 121; 
 pastoral lyrics of, 123 ; alluded 
 to by Greene, 159; transfers 
 Senecan tragedy in Locrine to 
 the popular stage, 163 ; in 
 England's Helicon, 191 ; lyrics 
 in the dramas of, 201, 203 ; 223, 
 
 251, 378, 379, 397 
 
 Pembroke, Mary Sidney, Countess 
 of, 20 ; the Arcadia dedicated 
 to, 24; patronizes Breton, 106; 
 translator of Garnier's Antoine, 
 285 
 
 Pembroke, William Herbert, Earl 
 of, 24; his company of players, 
 81; a probable patron of 
 Shakespeare, 141 ; by some 
 identified with the "W. H." of 
 the dedication of Shakespeare's 
 Sonnets, 142, 144 
 
 Penniman, J. H., 234 
 
 Penry, John, antimartinist execu- 
 ted, 114 
 
 Percy, William, minor sonneteer 
 and playwright, 126, 131 
 
 Persius, Satires of, Englished by 
 Holyday, 317; his method of 
 direct rebuke, 317; 322 
 
 Petrarch, the sonnets of, imitated 
 by Wyatt, 20; by Sidney, 30- 
 32; 46; the conceit in English 
 developed under the influence 
 of, 127 ; universal imitation of, 
 130, 131, 134; Spenser influ- 
 enced by, 140; 368; Drummond 
 influenced by, 374, 375 
 
 Pettie, George, his Palace of 
 Pleasure, 39, 40, 282 
 
 Pico, della Mirandola, 20 
 
 Pindar, 248 
 
 Phaer, Thomas, his translation of 
 the Mneid, 3, iii 
 
 Philaster group, the, of plays, 405, 
 406 
 
 Philip II, King, i, 19, 70 
 
 Philips, Augustine, 81 
 
 Phoenix' Nest, The, 191 
 
 Plato, 38, 331, 378 
 
 Plautus, a model for early comedy, 
 64, 65 ; influence of, 90, 201, 
 on Shakespeare, 154, 155; on 
 Jonson, 231; translated, 273 
 
 Play, acting of an Elizabethan, at 
 court, 76-78 ; at the university, 
 78 ; in the city, 87 ; cost of a 
 new, 183 
 
 Players, classes of Elizabethan, 
 67 ; choirboys as, 68, 69 ; stroll- 
 ing, and mountebanks, 80; early 
 companies of professional, 80, 
 81; boy, for women's parts, 87; 
 .importance and success of, 87- 
 89 ; attacks upon, 88 ; extem- 
 poral wit of, 89; success of, 
 100, loi, 183; and see under 
 Allej^n and Burbage 
 
 Playhouse, construction of the 
 Elizabethan, 82-85; the inn- 
 yard, the original of the, 82, 
 83; stage of the, 85: balcony of 
 the, 85; behavior of gallants at 
 the, 87 
 
 Playwrights, varieties of, 64; 
 choirmasters as, 67, 68 ; popular 
 professional and actor, 89; pre- 
 Shakespearean group of, 90-101 
 
 Pleiade, the, 24, 30 
 
 Pliny, translated by Holland, 278 
 
 Plutarch, a source of The Mid- 
 summer-Night's Dream, 157; 
 Shakespeare's general source for 
 Roman history, 254; 273; trans- 
 lated by Holland, 278 ; by 
 North, 280 
 
 Poel, W., 156 note 
 
 Poetomachia, see War of the 
 Theaters 
 
 Poliziano, 20 
 
 Pontoux, Claude de, 130 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 249 
 
 Pope, Thomas, a fellow actor of 
 Shakespeare, 81 
 
 Porter, Henry, his comedy T'wo 
 Angry Women of Abington, 
 
 Portes, Phillipe des, 285 
 Porta, Giovanni, della, 383 
 Porto, Luigi da, 282 
 Poseidippus, an epigram of, para- 
 phrased by Bacon, 352 
 Poulter's measure, 21 
 
48o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Prayer Book, the English, 306 
 
 Preston, Thomas, 29, 46, his 
 Cambyses, 68; 379 
 
 Priscian, 381 
 
 Problem play, the Elizabethan, 
 189 
 
 Properties on the Elizabethan 
 stage, 85-87 
 
 Prose, English, early disrepute of, 
 8, 9 ; Ascham on, 8, 9 ; fit for 
 history, 8, 9; historical, 8-15, 
 292-296; of travel, 15-18, 302- 
 304; in the leading-strings of 
 Latin, 9, 10; the new cultivated, 
 34-44; Euphuism, 37-40; Arca- 
 dianism, 43 ; the pamphlet and, 
 of controversy, 8o-ioi, 300-302, 
 306-315; translation in, 278- 
 280, 281-284, 286-291 ; miscel- 
 laneous, 296-302 ; satirical, 328- 
 336; Bacon and the, essay, 
 346-350 
 
 Prynne, William, 330 
 
 Psalms, universally translated, 
 
 351, 352 
 Pulci, 20 
 
 Pulpiters, minor, 315 
 Purcell, Henry, 204 
 Purchase, Samuel, continuator of 
 
 Hakluyt, 17, 303 
 Puritan idea, the, 308, 309 
 Pythagoras, 37 
 Puttenham, George, his Art of 
 
 English Poesy, 27, 29 ; his Par- 
 
 theniads in praise of Queen 
 
 Elizabeth, 134 
 Quarles, Francis, 286 
 Queen Hester, the play of, 71 
 Queen's players, the, 81, 88, 153, 
 
 183 
 
 Queen's Revels, Children of the, 82 
 
 Quintilian, 35 note, 248 
 
 Rabelais, 9 
 
 Rainolds, John, 307, his contro- 
 versial writings, 308 ; his Over- 
 throvj of Stage Plays, 326, 329 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, his report of 
 The Last Fight of the Revenge, 
 17, 18 ; with Spenser in Ireland, 
 51; mentioned in Colin Clout, 
 52 ; Spenser's letter to, as to 
 The Faery Queen, 56; a per- 
 sonal friend of Marlowe, 96 ; 
 lyrical poetry of, I36, 137; 2344^ 
 149, 234; life of, 295, 296; his 
 History of the JVorld, 295 ; his 
 
 expeditions, 296; varied inter- 
 ests, 296 ; his poetry, 296 ; as- 
 sisted by Jonson and other 
 scholars in his History, 296 ; 
 Bacon conducts the trial of, for 
 high treason, 340, 341 ; 349, 421, 
 422 
 Raleigh, W., 152 
 Randolph, Thomas, 382, 386 
 Rankins, William, his satires, 326, 
 
 329 
 Regnier, 318 
 Renaissance, In England and 
 
 Italy, 3, 4; conception of a gen- 
 tleman, 19, 20 
 Respublica, the morality, 63 
 Return from Parnassus, The, 
 
 allusion in, to the war of the 
 
 theaters, 238 
 Reynolds, John, 135 
 Rich, Lady, see Lady Penelope 
 
 Devereux 
 Rich, Lord, 30 
 Richard II, an anonymous play 
 
 on, see Thomas of Woodstock 
 Richard III, King, 13 
 Riche, Barnabe, his Don Sim- 
 
 onides, 40; his Fareivell to the 
 
 Military Profession, 282 
 Rochester, Viscount, see Carr, Sir 
 
 Robert 
 Roe, Sir John, 328 
 Rogers, John, revision of the 
 
 Bible, 288, 289 
 Rogers, Thomas, obituary poems 
 
 of, 133, 134 
 
 "Romances" the, of Shakespeare, 
 407-413 ; their epic quality and 
 contrast with the Philaster type, 
 407 
 
 Ronsard, 30, 31, 130, 285 
 
 Rose theater, the, 81, 84, 183 
 
 Rossiter, Philip, 198 
 
 Rowlands, Samuel, 103 ; paraph- 
 lets of, 107, 327, 329 
 
 Rowley, Samuel, his play on 
 Henry VIII, 163, 414 
 
 Rowley, William, his Shoemaker 
 a Gentleman, 105 ; 188 writes 
 Fortunes by Land and Sea with 
 Heywood, 181 ; his collabora- 
 tion with Middleton in The 
 Changeling and other plays, 
 186, 188-190; an actor, 188; A 
 Fair Quarrel of Middleton and, 
 189, 190; 257, 408 
 
INDEX 
 
 481 
 
 Ruggle, George, his If[noramus, 
 acted before King James, 383, 
 384 
 
 Ruskin, John, 270 
 
 Rutland, Earl of, Francis Man- 
 ners, sixth, a patron of Shake- 
 speare, loi, 141 
 
 Sabbie, Francis, his Pan's Pipe, 
 223,_ 224 
 
 Sackville, Thomas, a contributor 
 to The Mirror for Magistrates, 
 7; perhaps alluded to in Colin 
 Clout, 53 ; one of the authors of 
 Gorboduc, 6$, 67, 240 
 
 Sallust, 3 
 
 Sampson, M. W., 262 note 
 
 Sandys, George, translator of 
 Ovid, paraphraser of the Bible 
 and traveller, iii, 249, 303, 
 304; his travels and credulity, 
 304 
 
 Sannazaro, 390 
 
 Sapphics, 27 
 
 Satire, in the drama, 233-238; de- 
 fined, 316, 318; irregular and 
 formal, 316; origin of formal, 
 in Elizabeth's time, 317; earlier, 
 317; Roman writers of, 317; 
 influence of French, 318; of 
 Wyatt and Surrey, 318; of 
 Hake and Gascoigne, 318, 319; 
 of Donne, 319, 320; of Lodge, 
 321, 322; of Hall, 322-324; of 
 Marston, 324, 325 ; summary of 
 Elizabethan, 325, 326 ; minor 
 irregular, 326 ; order to sup- 
 press, 326; and Epigram, 326; 
 in prose, 328-331 
 
 Scenery on the Elizabethan stage, 
 85-87 
 
 Schick, J., 93 
 
 Scoggin, Henry, 104 
 
 Scoloker, Anthony, 135 
 
 Scott, Miss M. A., 273 note 
 
 Scott, Reginald, his Discovery of 
 IVitchcraft, 301, 302 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 37, 412 
 
 Selden, John, contributes notes to 
 Drayton's Polyolbion, 221 ; 249 
 his History of Tithes and other 
 works, 297, 298 
 
 Seneca, 3, 23, a model for early 
 tragedy, 65, 74; 90, 95, 100; in- 
 fluence of, on academic tragedj^, 
 240; on the popular stage, 240, 
 
 250, 251; translated, 273, 274; 
 his epistles described as "essays" 
 by Bacon, 347; 358 
 Sestina, the, 27 
 Seve, Maurice, 129 
 Shakespeare, Edmund, 150 
 Shakespeare, Hamnet, 150 
 Shakespeare, John, 102, 150 
 Shakespeare, Judith, 102 
 Shakespeare, Susanna, 1^0 
 Shakespeare, William, literature 
 at the birth of, 1-4; Holinshed 
 a source for, 10, 13, 14: 16, 21, 
 28, 34, 40; his use of language, 
 48; 51; did Spenser know, 53; 
 55 ; not the originator of Eliza- 
 bethan drama, 66 ; a profes- 
 sional actor, 67 ; satirizes Cam- 
 byses, 68 ; 69, 76, 79 ; the com- 
 pany of, 80, 81; interests of, in 
 the Globe and Blackfriars, 81, 
 82 ; 84-88 ; the inventor of no 
 new kind of drama, 89 ; 90-92, 
 94, 96, 99, 100; designs an im- 
 pressa, loi ; 103, 104, 108, no, 
 117; lyrics of, incidental, 123; 
 a poem of Barnfield attributed 
 to, 124; 129, 131; not a concet- 
 tist, 134; 137; Drayton and, 
 138; patrons of, 141; imitative 
 in earlier work, 141, 142; the 
 Sonnets of, 142-147, (and see 
 Sonnets) ; biographical material 
 concerning, 148, 149 ; facts of 
 the life of, 149, 150; education 
 and learning of, 150, 151 ; avo- 
 cations of, 151, 152; and nature, 
 152; in London, 153; tutors of, 
 in the drama, 153 ; chronology 
 of the works of, 153, 154; influ- 
 ence of Lyly on, 154; experi- 
 mental comedies, 154, 155; The 
 Tivo Gentlemen of Verona, 
 I55>. iS<5; The Merchant of 
 Venice, 156; A Midsummer- 
 Nighfs Dream, 157; apprentice- 
 ship of, in the chronicle play, 
 
 157, 158; the Henry VI trilogy, 
 
 158, 159; Greene's allusion to, 
 159; King John, and Richard 
 HI, 159, 160; Richard H, 160, 
 161 ; Marlowe and, 161 ; height 
 of, in chronicle history in Henty 
 IV and Henry V, i6i, 162; 
 Falstaff the most popular char- 
 acter of, 162; Henry VIII, 162; 
 
482 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Meres' allusion to, 164; height 
 of, in comedy, 164-167; Much 
 Ado, 164; As You Like It, 165; 
 Tnuelfth Night, All's JVell, and 
 Measure for Measure, 165-167; 
 the problem of Troilus, 167; 
 Essex and, 168; the company of, 
 in Scotland, 168; development 
 of the genius of, 168-171; 
 changes in the blank- verse of, 
 169; growth in the style and 
 diction of, 171; 175, 178, 182; 
 thrift in the management of the 
 company of, 183; Arden as- 
 cribed to, 184, 185; 189; son- 
 nets of, in The Passionate Pil- 
 grim, 191, 196; 197; songs of, 
 203, 204; metrical felicity of, 
 205 ; folk-poetry in the songs 
 of, 206; 210, 213; narrative 
 poems of, 216, 217, 222, 223; 
 arraigned for not celebrating 
 the death of Elizabeth, 224, 
 225 ; 229 ; acts in Every Man 
 in His Humor, 230; 231, 232; 
 the War of the Theaters and, 
 238-240; and Jonson in tragedy 
 on Roman history, 241, 242; 
 and Jonson contrasted, 243 ; 244, 
 250; influences of Kyd and 
 Marlowe on, in tragedy, 251, 
 252; Titus Andronicus, 251, 
 252; Romeo and Juliet, 252; 
 Julius Casar, 252, 253 ; a leader 
 in Roman tragedies, 253 ; 
 Antony and Cleopatra, Corio- 
 lanus, Timon and Pericles, 254, 
 255; his treatment of mobs, 
 254; the Cleopatra of, and of 
 others, 255; 256; rewrites Kyd's 
 Hamlet to rival Jonson's addi- 
 tions to The Spariisk Tragedy, 
 258; Hamlet of, 258, 259; 
 transcendence of the ghosts of, 
 260; Othello, 264, 265; lago 
 and other villains, 265 ; King 
 Lear, 265, 266 ; Macbeth, 266 ; 
 the prodigy of the tragic art of, 
 266, 267; development in the 
 technique of the art of,^ 267- 
 269; tempo in the tragedies of, 
 268, 269 ; changing points of the 
 view of life by, 269; morals 
 and manners in, 270; ethical 
 certainty of touch of, 270; atti- 
 tude of, towards women, 270, 
 
 271 ; 272, 273, 275, 278 ; his use 
 of North's Plutarch as a source, 
 279, 280; 281; fidelity of, in the 
 use of material, 282-284; 286, 
 291; 293; and shorthand, 299; 
 300, 303, 305, 313, 315, 317; 
 Marston parodies, 325 ; 327, 
 337; the verse of Bacon con- 
 trasted with the poetry of, 
 3S3> 354; 2nd Shakespeare con- 
 trasted, 354-356; 358, 360, 371, 
 374, 376, 378 ; academic esti- 
 mate of, 380; 381, 382, 386, 399, 
 401 ; alleged influence of 
 Fletcher on, 406, 407; the dra- 
 matic romances of, 407; charac- 
 teristics of these plays of, 407; 
 Pericles, 407-409 ; Cymbeline, 
 410; the late art of, not deca- 
 dent, 410; The Winter's Tale, 
 410, 411; The Tempest, 411, 
 413 ; alleged Spanish source of 
 the last, 412; late retirement of, 
 from London, 413; collabora- 
 tion of Fletcher with, 413, 414; 
 The T1U0 Noble Kinsmen and 
 Henry FHI, 414; 415, 417, 420; 
 literature at the death of, 421- 
 425 ; contemporary popularity 
 of the works of, 424 ; thorough 
 appreciation of, by his own 
 time, 425 
 
 Shaw, Bernard, 259, 271 
 
 Sheffield, Countess of, 71 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 41, 62 
 
 Shelton, Thomas, his translation 
 of Don Quixote, 285 
 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 231 
 
 Shirley, James, his Narcissus, 
 218 ; his revision of Chapman's 
 Chabot. 256; 397, 399, 425 
 
 Shrew, the, as a theme fo"- com- 
 edy, 175, 176 
 
 Sibbes, Richard, 315 
 
 Sidney, Sir Henry, 23 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 4, 5 ; books 
 dedicated to, 19; life of, 23, 24; 
 his personal character and ap- 
 preciation by his contempo- 
 raries, 24; h!s writings the lit- 
 erature of a coterie, 24, 25 ; and 
 the Areopagus, 25, 26 ; his ex- 
 periments in Italian and classi- 
 cal versification, 27 ; his De- 
 fense of Poesy, 28, 29; his dis- 
 content with the literature of 
 
INDEX 
 
 483 
 
 his age, 29; his criticism of 
 contemporary drama, 29 ; of 
 alliteration, 29; his lofty ideals, 
 29; the poetry of, 29-33; 
 Astrophel and Stella, 29-32; 
 biographical import of, 30, 31; 
 Petrarchan inspiration in, 30; 
 French influences on, 31; poe- 
 try of the Arcadia, 32; popu- 
 larization of the conceit by, 32, 
 33; services of, to literature, 
 33; the Arcadia of, 42-44; 
 prose style of, 43, 44; The 
 Shepherds' Calendar dedicated 
 to, 45; and Spenser, 47-49; 51; 
 alluded to in Colin Clout, 52, 
 53; 62, 76, 101, 121, 123, 125, 
 126, 127, his use of conceit, 128, 
 129, 131, 134, 137; genuine na- 
 ture of, 141, 149, 155, 169, 191, 
 194, 219 ; empirical classicism 
 of, 246; source of the underplot 
 of King Lear in the Arcadia, 
 265 ; 281 ; his interest in Span- 
 ish, 284; 299, 301; Greville's 
 Life of, 304; 349, 351, 368, 369; 
 an example to Drummond, 374, 
 375; 376; his Lady of May, 
 385; 388, 422 
 Simier, M. de, 71 
 Skelton, John, 46, 104, 317 
 Smith, Captain John, 421 
 Smith, Henry, "pulpiter," 315 
 Smith, William, sonneteer, 131 
 Socrates, 37 
 Somerset, Earl of, see Carr, Sir 
 
 Robert 
 Song-books, Elizabethan, 194-201 ; 
 popularity of, 196, writers of, 
 1.96-200; relation of words to 
 music in the, 197 
 Songs of the drama, early, 201 ; 
 of the predecessors of Shake- 
 speare, 201 ; of Dekker, 202, 
 203; of Shakespeare, 203-206; of 
 Fletcher, Jonson and other play- 
 wrights, 206-208 
 Sonnet, introduced by Wyatt, 21 ; 
 decade of the, 128 ; equally 
 indebted to France and Italy, 
 129 ; Astrophel and Stella, 129 ; 
 other earlier sequences, 129; 
 French influence on the, 129, 
 130; borrowing not plagiarism, 
 130; height of the fashion of 
 the, 130, 131; form of the, 131; 
 
 varieties of the, 131, 132; the 
 devotional, 132, 133 ; as an oc- 
 casional poem, 133, 134; con- 
 ceit in the. 134.; after-his- 
 tory of the, 135; the five great 
 sequences of the, 137; Idea, 137, 
 138; Amoretti, 139-141; the 
 Sonnets of Shakespeare, 141- 
 146, their imitative nature, 142 ; 
 difficulties about, 142 ; publica- 
 tion and dedication of, 142, 143 ; 
 story of, 144; the "other poet," 
 144; Southampton and, 144, 
 145 ; autobiographical interpre- 
 tation of, 145 ; poetic quality 
 of, 14s, 146 
 
 Sophocles, 29, 250, 267, 271 
 
 Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, 
 third Earl of, a patron of 
 Shakespeare, 141 ; and Shake- 
 speare's sonnets, 143, 144; Venus 
 and Adonis and Lucrece dedi- 
 cated to the, 149 ; an adherent 
 of Essex, 192; 2i6; an enemy of 
 Bacon, 341 
 
 Southey, Robert, 315 
 
 Southwell, Robert, 125 ; his devo- 
 tional poetry, 125, 126 ; a con- 
 cettist, 128; 193, 213, 249 
 
 Spagnuoli, Battista, see Mantuan 
 
 Spanish influence, supposed in 
 Philaster, 406; on English 
 drama, 416, 417 
 
 Spanish Moor's Tragedy, The, 
 100 
 
 Spedding, J., 294, 343, 346, 352, 
 
 355 
 
 Speed, John, continuator of Stow, 
 294; his History of England, 
 294, 297 
 
 Spencer, Gabriel, actor, killed in 
 duel by Jonson, 229 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 19, 23 ; his poe- 
 try that of the coterie, 24; and 
 the Areopagus, 25, 26, 28 ; life 
 of, 45-48; 50, 51, S3, 55, 56; 
 early translations, 46; and the 
 Areopagus, 46 ; lost works of, 
 47; The Shepherds' Calendar, 
 48-50; in Ireland, 50-52, 54, 55: 
 not poet laureate, 52 ; and 
 Shakespeare, 52, 53; Colin 
 Clout, 52, 53 ; The Faery 
 Queen, 56-62 ; nature of the 
 genuis of, 61, 62 ; 69, 80, 95 ; 104, 
 iii; Nash on 112; i2i ; songs of 
 
484 
 
 INDEX 
 
 The Calendar, 122; limitations 
 of, as a lyrist, 123, 125, 208 ; 
 the Amoretti of, 130, 131, 139- 
 141; occasional sonnets of, 134; 
 169; in England's Helicon, 191, 
 2IO, 213 ; contrasted with Mar- 
 lowe, 214; influence of, 221, 
 222, 224, 226, 227 ; stanza of, 
 disliked by Jonson, 248 ; 249, 
 278, 280, 285, 286, 291 : friend- 
 ship for Raleigh, 296 ; Vieiu of 
 the State of Ireland, 299, 300, 
 312; his Mother Hubberd's Tale, 
 319 ; 323, 324, 349, 355, 376, 378 ; 
 the most popular poet of the 
 age, 422; the first folio of, 423 
 
 Spenserian stanza, the, 59-61 
 
 Stafford, Sir Thomas, on Ireland, 
 299 
 
 Staging, of, a play at court, 76- 
 78 ; at the university, 78 ; at a 
 popular playhouse, 85-88; of a 
 masque, 391, 394 
 
 Stanihurst, Richard, contributor 
 to Holinshed's Chronicle, 11; 
 his translation of the JEneid 
 into hexameters, 26, 274; 
 Nash's ridicule of, iit, 112 
 
 Stapleton, Thomas, controversial 
 writings of, 307 
 
 Stationers' company, the, 114 
 
 Stenography or "charactery" in- 
 vented by Bright, 299 
 
 Sternhold, Thomas, translator of 
 the Psalms, 352 
 
 Stevenson, William, author of 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle, 64; 
 bacchanal song in, 201 
 
 Still, John Bishop, alleged author 
 of Gammer Gurton's Needle, 
 46, 64 
 
 Stow, John, his Chronicles, 12, 13, 
 292, 294; his Survey of Lon- 
 don, 297, 298 
 
 St. Paul's boys, 67, 84, 232 
 
 Strange, Lord, his players, 80, 81, 
 183 
 
 Stuart, Lady Arabella, 296 
 
 Stubbes, Philip, his Anatomy of 
 Abuse, 330, 331 
 
 Suarez, 312 
 
 Suetonius, translated, 273 ; by 
 Holland. 278, 383 
 
 Surrey, Earl of, Henry Howard, 
 20, 21, 22, 29, n6, 121 ; his 
 
 translation of the Mneid, 274; 
 his Satire against the Citizens 
 of London, 318 
 
 Sussex players, the Earl of, 81, 
 183 
 
 Swan theater, the, 183 
 
 Swetnam, Joseph, his attack on 
 women, 329; Siuetnam the 
 Woman Hater, 330 
 
 Swinburne, A. C, 184, 354 
 
 Sylvester, Joshua, his sonnets to 
 Henry of Navarre, 134; his 
 translation of Du Bartas, 192, 
 285, 286 
 
 Tacitus, 241 ; translated, 273 ; 294, 
 348, 383 
 
 Taming of a Shreia, The, a 
 source of Shakespeare's Taming 
 of the Shreiv, 164, 165 
 
 Tarlton, Richard, 74, 88^ his 
 Famous Victories of Henry V, 
 89 ; 90, 104 
 
 Tarviso, 195 
 
 Tasso, inspires Spenser, 48, 130; 
 56, 225 ; translated by Haring- 
 ton, 380; by Carew, 281; by 
 Fraunce, 281 ; his Aminta trans- 
 lated and imitated, 385 
 
 Taverner, Richard, 288 
 
 Taylor, John, the "water poet," 
 68, 214 
 
 Tennyson, 62 
 
 Terence, 3, translated, 273, 378 
 
 Theater, the, in Shoreditch, 81, 
 83, lOI 
 
 Theobald, Lewis, his publication 
 of The Double Falsehood as a 
 play of Shakespeare's, 413, 414 
 
 Theocritus, translated, 273, 390 
 
 Theological writines, 306 ; their 
 contemporaneousness, 306, 307 
 
 Theophrastus, Casaubon's Latin 
 translation of the Characters of, 
 inspires the "Character" in 
 English literature, 331 
 
 Thersites, the interlude of, 3 
 
 Thomas, William, 3, 384 
 
 Thomas of Walsingham, 6 
 
 Thomas of Woodstock, the trag- 
 edy of, 163 
 
 Thorndike, A. H., on the influ- 
 ence of Fletcher on Shakespeare, 
 406, 407 
 
 Thracian Wonder, The, 89, 178 
 
 Thucydides, 294 
 
 Tibullus, 200 
 
INDEX 
 
 485 
 
 Titus and Gisippus. the play of, 
 3 
 
 Tofte, Robert, his Alba, 132; his 
 conceits; his translation of 
 Orlando Inamorata, 281 
 
 Tomkins, Thonnias, his Lingua, 
 281, 382 
 
 Tom Tyler and his Wife, 89, 90 
 
 Tottel's Miscellany, 2, 121 
 
 Tourneur, Cyril, life of, 259 ; his 
 Atheist's and Revenger's Trag- 
 edy, 259, 260; his tragic inten- 
 sity, 260; 270, 399 
 
 Tragicomedy, defined, 4.00; of 
 Philaster type, 405, 406 ; the 
 "romances" of Shakespeare and, 
 406, 407, 414; of Fletcher, 416, 
 
 417 
 Tragedy, first regular, 65 ; of the 
 choirmasters, 67, 68 ; Peele in, 
 74; presentation of early, at 
 court, 77 ; at the university, 78 ; 
 early historical and other, 89 ; 
 Greene in, 91; Kyd in, 93-95; 
 Marlowe in, 95-100; earliest, 
 of Shakespeare, 153, 154, 251, 
 252; Heywood in, 179, 180; the 
 murder plays, 184, 185; aca- 
 demic Senecan, of Daniel, Gre- 
 ville and Alexander, 240; Jon- 
 son in classical, 241 ; variety of 
 Elizabethan, 250; Shakespeare 
 and others in popular classical, 
 252-255 ; on contemporary his- 
 tory by Chapman and others, 
 255-257; Marston, Shakespeare, 
 Chettle and Tourneur in the, 
 of revenge, 257-260; of per- 
 verted womanhood of Middle- 
 ton, Marston and Webster, 260, 
 261; Webster in, 261-264; 
 Shakespeare at his height in, 
 264-266 ; the prodigy of Shake- 
 speare's art in, 266, 267; the 
 technique and realism of 
 Shakespeare in Elizabethan, its 
 range and variety, 250; Sene- 
 can influence on, 250, 251 ; 
 Shakespeare in, 251-255; Chap- 
 man in, 255-257; of revenge, 
 257-260; Marston in, 257, 260, 
 261; Chettle in, 259; other 
 themes of, 260; Webster in, 261- 
 264; later, of Shakespeare, 264- 
 268 ; technique of, 268 ; realistic 
 quality of, 269 ; morals and 
 
 manners in, 270; height of, in 
 Shakespeare and Webster, 271 ; 
 qualities of Elizabethan, 269- 
 270; Senecan tragedy at the 
 universities, 378, 383 ; Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher in, 406, 417, 
 419 
 
 Translation, Elizabeth's the age 
 of, 272; commemoration of 
 books of, 272, 273 ; from the 
 Italian, 272, 280-284; from the 
 Spanish, 273, 284, 285 ; from 
 the French, 273, 285, 286; from 
 the Dutch and Flemish, 273 ; 
 from the classics, 273-280; of 
 the Bible, 287-291 
 
 Travel, books of, 302-304; by 
 Moryson, 302; by' Coryate, 
 Sandys and Lithgow, 302, 303 
 
 Travers, Walter, 310 
 
 Turberville, George, 49, 121 ; 
 translator of Mantuan, 280; 
 Tragical Tales of, 282 
 
 Tusser, Thomas, his Hundreth 
 Good Points of Husbandry, 3 
 
 Twine, Lawrence, 408 
 
 Types in the dramas of Fletcher, 
 405, 406 _ _ 
 
 Tyndale, William, his one idea 
 the translation of the Bible, 287 ; 
 fixes the style of the Bible, 287 ; 
 his version employed by later 
 revisers, 288 ; his expurgation 
 of ecclesiastical terms, 290; his 
 Practices of Prelates, 307 
 
 Tyrtamus, of Lesbos, see Theo- 
 phratus 
 
 Udall, John, his Diotrephes, 114 
 
 Udall, Nicholas, author of Ralph 
 Roister Doister, 3, 64; songs of, 
 201 
 
 Underbill, J. G., 273 note 
 
 Upham, A. H., 273, note 
 
 Uter Pendragon, source of Row- 
 ley's Birth of Merlin, a play, 
 188 
 
 Vanbrugh, Sir John, 249 
 
 Vega, Lope de, 417 
 
 Vergil, 3, 56, 122, 236, translated, 
 
 273 . . 
 
 Verse, foreign, in English, 21, 26, 
 27; classic and English, con- 
 trasted, 27 
 Vives, Lodovico, at Oxford, 284 
 Vowell, see Hooker, John 
 
486 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Wager, William, Latin play- 
 wright, 14 
 
 Wallace, C. W., 69, 79, 81, 82, 
 149, 15a 
 
 Walsinghara, Sir Thomas, 96, 223 
 
 Walton, Izaak, 106, 124, 132, 298, 
 310-312, 344, 364. 377 
 
 Warham, Archbishop, 287 
 
 War of the theaters, 232-240; 
 Jonson in the, 233-237; Mars- 
 ton in the, 233, 235; Dekker's 
 part in the, 236; Shakespeare 
 and the, 238-240 
 
 Warner, William, 8 ; his Pan his 
 Syrinx, 40; his translation of 
 the Mencechmi, 154; his Al- 
 bion's England, 213, 214; 224; 
 his popularity, 423 
 
 Warning for Fair Women, A 
 anonymous murder play, 185 
 
 Wars of Cyrus, The, a conquer- 
 or play, loo, 240 
 
 Watson, Thomas, 121 ; lyrics and 
 translations of, 126, 127; avows 
 his sources, 130; his Madrigals, 
 196; 223 
 
 Webbe, William, his Discourse of 
 English Poetry, 26; appreciates 
 Spenser, 45, 49 
 
 Webster, John, 90, 149, 186, 187; 
 lyric quality of, 208; 250, 260; 
 life of, 261 ; his comedies with 
 Dekker, 261; Appius and Vir- 
 ginia, 261; The White Devil, 
 261, 262; The Duchess of Malfi, 
 262-264; qualities of the tragic 
 art of, 262, 263 ; his intense 
 dramatic moments, 264; his 
 characters, 265 ; his excess of 
 horror, 270; height of tragedy 
 in Shakespeare and, 271 ; 399 
 
 Weelkes, Thomas, song writer, 
 198, 204 
 
 Weever, John, his Epigrams, 
 326 
 
 Weier, J., 301 
 
 Wescott, Sebastian, 68 
 
 Whetstone, George, 23, 29; his 
 Promos and Cassandra, 66, 90, 
 155, 167; his Rock of Regard, 
 282; his Heptameron, 282 
 
 Whitefriars, the theater in, 84 
 
 Whitehorne, Peter, translator of 
 Macchiavelli's Art of War, 284 
 
 Whitgift, John, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, 113, 307, 310 
 
 Whittingham, William, translator 
 of the Bible, 289 
 
 Wilbye, John, song- writer, 197 
 
 Wilkins, George, his Miseries of 
 Enforced Marriage, 185 ; 188 ; 
 his novel of Pericles, 408 
 
 William the Silent, 24 
 
 Willobie, Henry, his A visa, 132 
 
 Wilmot, Robert, his Tancred and 
 Gismunda, 66 
 
 Wilson, John, composer of melo- 
 dies for songs of Shakespeare, 
 203 
 
 Wilson, Robert, the elder, a fore- 
 runner of Shakespeare in the 
 popular drama, 74; mentioned 
 by Greene, 88 ; 90, 91 ; his 
 Three Ladies of. London, 153, 
 156 
 
 Wilson, Robert, the younger, 162, 
 182 
 
 Wilton, Lord Grey de, 22, 50 
 
 Wily Beguiled, the comedy of, 175 
 
 Witchcraft, Scott's Discovery of, 
 301, 302 ; King James on, 301 
 
 Wither, George, his Fidelia, 135; 
 136; 223, 226, 286; his Abuses 
 Whipt and Stript, 327; a Pu- 
 ritan satirist, 330; 358, 422 
 
 Wolfe, Reginald, his plan for a 
 universal history, 10, 11 
 
 Wooley, Sir Francis, 362 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 225 
 
 Wotton, Henry, his Courtly Con- 
 troversy, 282 
 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 192, his pro- 
 jected works and slender 
 achievement, 298 ; his friend- 
 ship with Donne, 358, 377 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 2, 4, 20-22, 
 24, 63, 131, 128, 131, 318 
 
 Wyclif, John, 287 
 
 Xenophon, translated by Holland, 
 278 
 
 Xenophon of Ephesus, 283 
 
 Yonge, Nicholas, introduces the 
 madrigal, 195-196