about the commencement of Shakspeare's career, and several private or select establishments. Curiosity is naturally excited to learn something of the structure and appearance of the buildings in which his immortal dramas first saw the light, and where he unwillingly made himself a motley to the view,' in his character of actor. The theatres were constructed Globe Theatre. ness of some of the language put into the mouths of females in the old plays, while it serves to point out still more clearly the depth of that innate sense of beauty and excellence which prompted the exquisite pictures of loveliness and perfection in Shakspeare's female characters. At the end of each performance, the clown, or buffoon actor of the company, recited or sung a rhyming medley called a jig, in which he often contrived to introduce satirical allusions to public men or events; and before dismissing the audience, the actors knelt in front of the stage, and offered up a prayer for the queen! Reviewing these rude arrangements of the old theatres, Mr Dyce happily remarks- What a contrast between the almost total want of scenery in those days, and the splendid representations of external nature in our modern playhouses! Yet perhaps the decline of the drama may in a great measure be attributed to this improvement. The attention of an audience is now directed rather to the efforts of the painter than to those of the actor, who is lost amid the marvellous effects of light and shade on our gigantic stages." The only information we possess as to the payment of dramatic authors at this time, is contained in the memoranda of Philip Henslowe, a theatrical manager, preserved in Dulwich college, and quoted by Malone and Collier. Before the year 1600, the price paid by Henslowe for a new play never exceeded £8; but after this date, perhaps in consequence of the exertions of rival companies, larger sums were given, and prices of £20 and £25 are mentioned. The proceeds of the second day's performance were afterwards added to the author's emoluments. Furnishing prologues for new plays, of wood, of a circular form, open to the weather, the prices of which varied from five to twenty shilexcepting over the stage, which was covered with a lings, was another source of gain; but the proverbial thatched roof. Outside, on the roof, a flag was poverty of poets seems to have been exemplified in hoisted during the time of performance, which com- the old dramatists, even when they were actors as menced at three o'clock, at the third sounding or well as authors. The shareholders of the theatre flourish of trumpets. The cavaliers and fair dames derived considerable profits from the performances, of the court of Elizabeth sat in boxes below the and were occasionally paid for exhibitions in the houses gallery, or were accommodated with stools on the of the nobility. In 1602, a sum of ten pounds was stage, where some of the young gallants also threw given to Burbidge's players' for performing Othello themselves at length on the rush-strewn floor, while before Queen Elizabeth, at Harefield, the seat of Sir their pages handed them pipes and tobacco, then a Thomas Egerton. Nearly all the dramatic authors fashionable and highly-prized luxury. The middle preceding and contemporary with Shakspeare were classes were crowded in the pit, or yard, which was men who had received a learned education at the not furnished with seats. Moveable scenery was university of Oxford or Cambridge. A profusion first introduced by Davenant, after the Restoration," of classical imagery abounds in their plays, but they but rude imitations of towers, woods, animals, or did not copy the severe and correct taste of the furniture, served to illustrate the scene. To point ancient models. They wrote to supply the popular out the place of action, a board containing the name, demand for novelty and excitement-for broad farce painted or written in large letters, was hung out or superlative tragedy-to introduce the coarse during the performance. Anciently, an allegorical raillery or comic incidents of low life-to dramatise exhibition, called the Dumb Show, was exhibited before every act, and gave an outline of the action bloodshed and splendid extravagance. 'If we seek a murder, or embody the vulgar idea of oriental or circumstances to follow. Shakspeare has pre- for a poetical image,' says a writer on our drama, served this peculiarity in the play acted before thea burst of passion, a beautiful sentiment, a trait of king and queen in Hamlet; but he never employs it in his own dramas. Such machinery, indeed, would be incompatible with the increased action and business of the stage, when the miracle plays had given place to the pomp and circumstance' of historical dramas, and the bustling liveliness of comedy. The chorus was longer retained, and appears in Marlow's Faustus, and in Henry VI. Actresses were not seen on the stage till after the Restoration, and the female parts were played by boys, or delicate-looking young men. This may perhaps palliate the gross *The air-blest castle, round whose wholesome crest No pencil's aid as yet had dar'd supply, Seen only by th' intellectual eye.'-C. LAMB. nature, we seek not in vain in the works of our very oldest dramatists. But none of the predecessors of Shakspeare must be thought of along with him, when he appears before us like Prometheus, moulding the figures of men, and breathing into them the animation and all the passions of life.'t Among the immediate predecessors of the great poet are some worthy of separate notice. A host of playwrights abounded, and nearly all of them have touches of that happy poetic diction, free, yet choice and select, which gives a permanent value and interest to these elder masters of English poetry. * Memoir of Shakspeare-Aldine Poets. † Blackwood's Magazine, vol. ii., from Essays on the Old Drama, said to have been contributed by Henry Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling.' ་ JOHN LYLY. They JOHN LYLY, born in Kent in 1554, produced nine plays between the years 1579 and 1600. were mostly written for court entertainments, and performed by the scholars of St Paul's. He was educated at Oxford, and many of his plays are on mythological subjects, as Sappho and Phaon, Endymion, the Maid's Metamorphosis, &c. His style is affected and unnatural, yet, like his own Niobe, in the Metamorphosis, oftentimes he had sweet thoughts, sometimes hard conceits; betwixt both a kind of yielding.' By his Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit, Lyly exercised a powerful though injurious influence on the fashionable literature of his day, in prose composition as well as in discourse. His plays were not important enough to found a school. Hazlitt was a warm admirer of Lyly's Endymion, but evidently from the feelings and sentiments it awakened, rather than the poetry. I know few things more perfect in characteristic painting,' he remarks, than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of betraying the secret of Midas's ears, fancy that "the very reeds bow down, as though they listened to their talk;" nor more affecting in sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from his long sleep, "Behold the twig to which thou laidest down thy head is now become a tree."' There are finer things in the Metamorphosis, as where the prince laments Eurymene lost in the woods Adorned with the presence of my love, The woods I fear such secret power shall prove, Or the song of the fairies By the moon we sport and play, And about go we, and about go we. The genius of Lyly was essentially lyrical. The songs in his plays seem to flow freely from nature. The following exquisite little pieces are in his drama of Alexander and Campaspe, written about 1583: Cupid and Campaspe. Cupid and my Campaspe play'd He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows, Song. What bird so sings, yet so does wail? Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear? GEORGE PEELE. GEORGE PEELE held the situation of city poet and conductor of pageants for the court. He was also an actor and a shareholder with Shakspeare and others, in 1589, in the Blackfriars theatre. In 1584, his Arraignment of Paris, a court show, was represented before Elizabeth. The author was then a young man, who had recently left Christ-church, Oxford. In 1593, Peele gave an example of an English historical play in his Edward I. The style of this piece is turgid and monotonous; yet, in the following allusion to England, we see something of the high-sounding kingly speeches in Shakspeare's historical plays :- Illustrious England, ancient seat of kings, Her neighbour realms, as Scotland, Denmark, France, Peele was also author of the Old Wires' Tale, a legendary story, part in prose, and part in blank verse, which afforded Milton a rude outline of his fable of Comus. The Old Wives' Tale was printed in 1595, as acted by the Queen's Majesty's Players.' The greatest work of Peele is his Scripture drama, the Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the tragedy of Absalom, which Mr Campbell terms 'the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry.' The date of representation of this drama is not known; it was not printed till 1599, after Shakspeare had written some of his finest comedies, and opened up a fountain compared with which the feeble tricklings of Peele were wholly insignificant. It is not probable that Peele's play was written before 1590, as one passage in it is a direct plagiarism from the Faery Queen of Spenser. We may allow Peele the merit of a delicate poetical fancy and smooth musical versification. The defect of his blank verse is its want of variety: the art of That precious fount bear sand of purest gold; See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel, That, wing'd with lightning, brake the clouds, and cast And comelier than the silver clouds that dance Their crystal armour at his conquering feet. Of this sweet poet, Jove's musician, And of his beauteous son, I press to sing; BETHSABE and her maid bathing. King DAVID above. The Song. Hot sun, Nor pierce any bright eye That wandereth lightly. Bethsabe. Come, gentle zephyr, trick'd with those perfumes That erst in Eden sweeten'd Adam's love, My soul, incensed with a sudden fire! 1 The sun's rays. On zephyr's wings before the King of Heaven. [Exit. David. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's bower In water mixed with purest almond flower, * * Now comes my lover tripping like the roe, Mr Lamb says justly, that the line 'seated in hearing of a hundred streams' is the best in the above passage. It is indeed a noble poetical image. Peele died before 1599, and seems, like most of his dramatic brethren, to have led an irregular life, in the midst of severe poverty. A volume of Merry Conceited Jests, said to have been by him, was published after his death in 1607, which shows that he was not scrupulous as to the means of relieving his necessities. THOMAS KYD. In 1588, THOMAS KYD produced his play of Hieronimo or Jeronimo, and some years afterwards a second part to it, under the title of the Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again. This second part is supposed to have gone through more editions than any play of the time. Ben Jonson was afterwards engaged to make additions to it, when it was revived in 1601, and further additions in 1602. These new scenes are said by Lamb to be the very salt of the old play,' and so superior to Jonson's acknowledged works, that he attributes them to Webster, or some 'more potent spirit' than Ben. This seems refining too much in criticism. Kyd, like Marlow, often verges upon bombast, and deals largely in blood and death.' THOMAS NASII. THOMAS NASH, a lively satirist, who amused the town with his attacks on Gabriel Harvey and the Puritans, wrote a comedy called Summer's Last Will and Testament, which was exhibited before Queen Elizabeth in 1592. He was also concerned with Marlow in writing the tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage. He was imprisoned for being the author of a satirical play, never printed, called the Isle of Dogs. Another piece of Nash's, entitled the Supplication of Pierce Penniless to the Devil, was printed in 1592, which was followed next year by Christ's Tears over Jerusalem. Nash was a native of Leostoff, in Suffolk, and was born about the year 1564; he was of St John's college, Cambridge, He died about the year 1600, after a 'life spent,' he says, in fantastical satirism, in whose veins heretofore I mispent my spirit, and prodigally conspired against good hours.' He was the Churchill of his day, and was much famed for his satires. One of his contemporaries remarks of him, in a happy coupletHis style was witty, though he had some gall, Something he might have mended, so may all. Return from Parnassus. The versification of Nash is hard and monotonous. The following is from his comedy of Summer's Last Will and Testament,' and is a favourable specimen of his blank verse: great part of the play is in prose : I never lov'd ambitiously to climb, In his poem of Pierce Penniless, Nash draws a harrowing picture of the despair of a poor scholar Ah, worthless wit! to train me to this woe: ROBERT GREENE. ROBERT GREENE, a more distinguished dramatist, is conjectured to have been a native of Norfolk, as he adds Norfolciensis' to his name, in one of his productions. He was educated at Clare-Hall, Cambridge, and in 1583 appeared as an author. He is supposed to have been in orders, and to have held the vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex, as, in 1585, Robert Greene, the vicar, lost his preferment. The plays of Greene are the History of Orlando, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Alphonsus, King of Arragon, George-aGreen, the Pinner of Wakefield, James IV., and the Looking-glass for London and England: the latter was written in conjunction with Lodge. Greene died in September 1592, owing, it is said, to a surfeit of red herrings and Rhenish wine! Besides his plays, he wrote a number of tracts, one of which, Pandosto, the Triumph of Time, 1588, was the source from which Shakspeare derived the plot of his Winter's Tale. Some lines contained in this tale are very beautiful : Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair, Tread she these lawns ?-kind Flora, boast thy pride: Ah thought, my heaven! Ah heaven, that knows my thought! Smile, joy in her that my content hath wrought. Passages like this prove that Greene succeeds well, as Hallam remarks, in that florid and gay style, a little redundant in images, which Shakspeare frequently gives to his princes and courtiers, and which renders some unimpassioned scenes in the historic plays effective and brilliant.' Professor Tieck gives him the high praise of possessing a happy talent, a clear spirit, and a lively imagination.' His comedies have a good deal of boisterous merriment and farcical humour. George-a-Green is a shrewd Yorkshireman, who meets with the kings of Scotland and England, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, &c., and who, after various tricks, receives the pardon of King Edward George-a-Green, give me thy hand there is Jenkin. This fellow comes to me, I took my cloak, spread it all along, And his horse on the midst of it. epicures, whose loose life hath made religion-loathsome to your ears; and when they soothe you with terms of mastership, remember Robert Greene (whom they have often flattered) perishes for want of comfort. Re George. Thou clown, did'st thou set his horse upon member, gentlemen, your lives are like so many lightthy cloak? Jenkin. Ay, but mark how I served him. Madge and he were no sooner gone down into the ditch, But I plucked out my knife, cut four holes in my cloak, And made his horse stand on the bare ground. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay' is Greene's best comedy. His friars are conjurors, and the piece concludes with one of their pupils being carried off to hell on the back of one of Friar Bacon's devils. Mr Collier thinks this was one of the latest instances of the devil being brought upon the stage in propria persona. The play was acted in 1591, but may have been produced a year or two earlier. In some hour of repentance, when death was nigh at hand, Greene wrote a tract called A Groat's Worth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance, in which he deplores his fate more feelingly than Nash, and also gives ghostly advice to his acquaintances, that spend their wit in making plays.' Marlow he accuses of atheism: Lodge he designates young Juvenal,' and 'a sweet boy;' Peele he considers too good for the stage; and he glances thus at Shakspeare:- For there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country.' The punning allusion to Shakspeare is palpable: the expressions, tiger's heart,' &c. are a parody on the line in Henry VI., part third O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide. The Winter's Tale is believed to be one of Shakspeare's late dramas, not written till long after Greene's death; consequently, if this be correct, the unhappy man could not allude to the plagiarism of the plot from his tale of Pandosto. Some forgotten play of Greene and his friends may have been alluded to; perhaps the old dramas on which Shakspeare constructed his Henry VI., for in one of these, the line, O tiger's heart,' &c., also occurs. These old plays, however, seem above the pitch of Greene in tragedy. The 'Groat's Worth of Wit' was pub-. lished after Greene's death by a brother dramatist, Henry Chettle, who, in the preface to a subsequent work, apologised indirectly for the allusion to Shakspeare. I am as sorry,' he says, 'as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art.' This is a valuable statement: full justice is done to Shakspeare's moral worth and civil deportment, and to his respectability as an actor and author. Chettle's apology or explanation was made in 1593. The conclusion of Greene's' Groat's Worth of Wit' contains more pathos than all his plays: it is a harrowing picture of genius debased by vice, and sorrowing in repentance : 'But now return I again to you three (Marlow, Lodge, and Peele), knowing my misery is to you no news and let me heartily intreat you to be warned by my harms. Delight not, as I have done, in irreligious oaths, despise drunkenness, fly lust, abhor those : tapers that are with care delivered to all of you to maintain; these, with wind-puffed wrath, may be extinguished, with drunkenness put out, with negligence let fall. The fire of my light is now at the last snuff. My hand is tired, and I forced to leave where I would begin; desirous that you should live, though himself be dying.-ROBERT GREENE.' Content--A Sonnet. Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content : [Sephestia's Song to her Child, After escaping from Shipwreck.] Weep not my wanton, smile upon my knee; Weep not my wanton, smile upon my knee; The Shepherd and his Wife. It was near a thicky shade, That breast and bosom in did wrap, |