their bread, unless they spent it all on sack. In later years, when the stage had a less direct relation to all classes of the people, but was itself debased by Court patronage, this way of escape from the patron became but a narrow one. All hope of independence for the men of genius rested then upon the slow advance of education-till the readers could do gradually, now for one, then for another, and at last for all forms of literature, what in Elizabeth's day the hearers did for one form only. The young men thus established in London, drawing money from the theatres, could add also to their reputations and their incomes by writing for the booksellers tales, poems, or pamphlets upon stirring questions of the day. This they did, and there were some who flung themselves with high glee into paper wars, ready to profit in all possible ways by skill in the amusement of the town.

Peele at
Oxford.

Peele's acquired knowledge caused him to be employed in Oxford, in 1583, as acting manager for two Latin plays, by his friend Dr. Gager, presented at Christ Church before a Polish prince. His first published verse was prefixed to Thomas Watson's "Passionate Centurie of Love," published in 1583.

of Paris.'

Peele published anonymously, in 1584, "The Araygnement of Paris: a Pastorall, presented before the Queenes Maiestie by the Children of her Chapell." It is "The a pastoral play in five acts, not the less but the Arraignment more poetical for a child-like simplicity of dialogue. It is written at first in various rhymed measures, which run into musical songs, passions, and complaints that sing themselves, but the metre becomes blank verse when the arraigned shepherd Paris has to defend himself before the council of the gods against the charge of unjust judgment in awarding the prize of worth to Venus for beauty, and so slighting the mind of Pallas and the majesty of Juno. The gods

greatly puzzled, leave Diana to settle the question, and she settles it by compromise. In the Fifth Act she comes with Juno, Pallas, and Venus, each content to yield the prize, whether for mind, majesty, or outward beauty, to her who is supreme in all, Elizabeth, before whom also the three sisters, "Dames of Destiny," yield up their distaff, reel, and fatal knife. By way of epilogue, the performers at the end of the play pour the good wishes of men and gods on her Majesty in two Latin hexameters.

In 1585, George Peele was the deviser of a Lord Mayor's pageant. Of his other plays, there were none printed before 1590, the year in which Spenser published the first three books of "The Faerie Queene.”

Farewell to

Norris and
Drake.

When, in 1589, Drake was sent as admiral, with Sir John Norris in command of the land forces, to attack the Spanish power over Portugal by making Don Antonio. king, George Peele sang "A Farewell, entituled to the Famous and Fortunate Generalls of our English Forces: Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, knights, and all theyr brave and resolute followers"; to which he added his "Tale of Troy," then first printed. Peele's cry was—

"To arms, to arms, to glorious arms!

With noble Norris and victorious Drake,

Under the sanguine cross, brave England's badge,
To propagate religious piety;

Sail on, pursue your honours to your graves:
Heaven is a sacred covering for your heads,

And every climate virtue's tabernacle.
To arms, to arms, to honourable arms!

You fight for Christ and England's peerless queen,
Elizabeth, the wonder of the world,

Over whose throne the enemies of God

Have thundered erst their vain successful braves:

Oh, ten times treble happy men, that fight

Under the Cross of Christ and England's queen,

And follow such as Drake and Norris are!
All honours do this cause accompany;
All glory on these endless honours waits:
These honours and this glory shall He send,
Whose honour and whose glory you defend."

It was

"The Old

Tale."

Although not printed until 1595, Peele's "Old Wives' Tale" may be taken as an early piece that illustrates the grace by which Peele's work is distinguished, and also pleasantly suggests transition from the story told by Wives' one narrator to the story shown in action. a sort of child's story, told with a poet's playfulness. There was no division into acts. Three men lost in a wood were met by Clunch, and introduced to his old wife Madge, who gave them a supper, over which they sang, and then she began telling them in old wives' fashion "The Old Wives' Tale." It is a tale of a king's daughter stolen by a conjuror, who flew off with her in the shape of a great dragon, and hid her in a stone castle, "and there he kept her I know not how long, till at last all the king's men went out so long that her two brothers went to seek her." While the old woman talked the two brothers entered, and the story-telling passed into the acting of the story: very much as the art of the medieval story-teller had passed into that of the Elizabethan dramatist. The Princess Delia was sought by her brothers, and sought also by Eumenides, her lover. A proper young man, whom the magician had turned into a bear by night and an old man by day, delivered mystic oracles by a wayside cross. Sacrapant triumphed in his spells, until Eumenides had made a friend of the ghost of Jack by paying fifteen or sixteen shillings to prevent the sexton and churchwarden from leaving poor Jack unburied. The ghost of Jack played pranks, and made an end of Sacrapant, whose destiny it was "never to die but by a dead man's hand." The light in the conjuror's mystic glass had been blown out by one that was "neither wife, widow, nor maid." The

piece included a comic braggart, who could deliver himself-in burlesque of Stanihurst-according to the reformed manner of versifying

“Philida, phileridos, pamphilida, florida, flortos;

‘Dub dub-a-dub, bounce,' quoth the guns, with a sulphurous huffsnuff."

The piece might be regarded as a playful child's story, told in nursery-tale fashion with simplicity and grace.

CHAPTER VII.

NOVELS BY ROBERT GREENE-PLAYS BEFORE MARLOWE-BULLEYN'S "DIALOGUE OF DEATH "THE PLAGUE

END OF THE GOSSON CONTROVERSY-THOMAS LODGE

Robert

Greene.

ROBERT GREENE was born at Norwich, as he said, "of parents who, for their gravity and honest life were well known and esteemed among their neighbours." He was bred also at Norwich, and was sent to Cambridge, where he was admitted to St. John's College as a sizar on the twenty-sixth of November, 1575. He graduated as B.A. in 1578-9. From this it may be inferred that the year of his birth was, at latest, 1560-probably 1558 or 1559. There is no reason for suggesting that he went to Cambridge at a more advanced age than seventeen.

Greene wrote in 1592, the year of his death, a short account of his life, as part of "The Repentance of Robert Greene." Since his purpose in this piece was to make much of the evil he had done, we must not accept its phrases of self-condemnation without due allowance. The writer's aim was to help others by putting himself forward as an instance of misconduct that had led to ruin.* Robert

* In less degree there was the same self-condemnation for the benefit of others in La Male Regle de T. Hoccleve (“E. W." vi. 123,