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though touching on themes which would not now be brought to the notice of children, their gaiety should be the gaiety of innocence. Lyly has solved these problems very successfully. Alexander and Campaspe is called a tragicall comedy," but has neither agitation nor suspense. Except for the cynic Diogenes, more bark than bite, all glides pleasantly along, and the interest is chiefly derived from the collision of such various characters. Alexander is the hero in undress, Apelles the accomplished but honest courtier. Lyly has made but little of the opportunity he had for delineating the conflict between love and ambition in the breast of Campaspe; but, even if he had the power, this scarcely entered into his plan. What especially distinguishes his work from his predecessors is his proficiency in light and nimble repartee, as in the scene when Apelles experiences the honour and embarrassment of a royal pupil :

Alex. Lend me thy pencil, Apelles: I will paint, and thou shalt judge.
Apel. Here.

Alex. The coal breaks.

Apel. You lean too hard.
Alex. Now it blacks not.

Apel. You lean too soft.

Alex. This is awry.

Apel. Your eye goeth not with your hand.

Alex. Now it is worse.

Apel. Your hand goeth not with your mind.

Alex. Nay, if all be too hard or soft-so many rules and regards that one's hand, one's eye, one's mind must all draw together-I had rather be setting of a battle than blotting of a board. But how have I done here?

Apel. Like a king.

Alex. I think so, but nothing more unlike a painter.

Sappho and Phaon may be described as a romance dramatised. Galatea turns upon the idea, pretty but perilous if treated by a writer of less than Lyly's delicacy, of the mutual passion of two maidens, which can only obtain fruition by metamorphosing one of them into a youth. Venus takes the matter in hand, and the curtain falls on the pair marching together to the temple where the charm is to be wrought, ignorant upon which of the two it is to take effect. Endymion and Midas are pastorals with a political purpose. In the former (1579?) the Maiden Queen, who appears as Cynthia, having got beyond the age of coquetry, is complimented upon her unwedded state. There is more pith and more poetry in Shakespeare's" fair vestal throned in the West " than in the whole of Lyly, who nevertheless deserves the praise of a graceful imagination, which he seems to have exerted in the interest of Leicester. Midas is Philip of Spain, endowed with the golden touch as a symbol of the wealth of the Indies, and with ass's ears, ostensibly for preferring Pan's music to Apollo's, but really for his invasion of the island realm of Lesbos. He was probably a better judge of poetry than of music, for Pan's song is as much before Apollo's as his pipe is inferior to Apollo's lyre:

1 Charcoal.

Pan's Syrinx was a girl indeed,

Though now she's turned into a reed,

From that dear reed Pan's pipe doth come,

A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb;
Nor flute nor lute nor gittern can
So chant it as the pipe of Pan;
Cross-gartered swains and dairy girls,
With faces smug and round as pearls,
When Pan's shrill pipe begins to play,
With dancing wear out night and day.
The bagpipe's drone his hum lays by
When Pan sounds up his minstrelsy.
His minstrelsy! O base! This quill
Which at my mouth with wind I fill,
Puts me in mind, though her I miss,
That still my Syrinx' lips I kiss.

KIND- HARTS

DREAM E. Conteining fiue Apparitions, vvith their Inucatiues againit abufes raigning. Delivered by feuerall Chofts onto him to be publifht, after Piers Penilcfle Poft had refused the carriage.

Inuita Inuidia.
by H. C.

The death of Marlowe has already brought us beyond the dawn of Shakespeare, who in 1593 was very probably writing Romeo and Juliet and Richard III. Lodge's Marius and Sylla and Nash's Will Summers's Last Will are insignificant. The other dramatic poets of eminence who were on the point of appearing belong to the Shakespearean epoch, if we except ANTHONY MUNDAY (1553-1633) and HENRY CHETTLE (1560? -1607). These industrious playwrights (Chettle alone wrote thirteen plays by himself, and thirty-six in conjunction with others, but only one of the former and four of the latter are preserved) and who were not less industrious as pamphleteers, and in Munday's case in the translation of romances, worked so much in collaboration with each other and other poets that it is well-nigh impossible to allot to each his due. There can be little doubt, however, that the really beautiful portion of Chettle's Patient Grissel proceeds from his colleague Dekker, and as he only had ten shillings for "mending" the first part of "Post Haste Munday's" Robin Hood, and the following charming verses alone would have been clieap at the price, they must be assigned to Munday :

[graphic]

Imprinted at London for William Wright

Title-page of Chettle's "Kind
Heart's Dream"

Marian, thou seest, though courtly pleasures want,

Yet country sport in Sherwood is not scant :

For the soul-ravishing, delicious sound

Of instrumental music we have found

HISTORICAL TRAGEDIES

The wingéd quiristers with divers notes
Sent from their quaint recording pretty throats
On every branch that compasseth our bower,
Without command contenting us each hour:
For arras-hangings and rich tapestry

We have sweet nature's best embroidery:
For thy steel glass, wherein thou wont'st to look
Thy crystal eyes gaze in a crystal brook:

At Court a flower or two did deck thy head,

Now with whole garlands it is circléd;

For what we want in wealth, we have in flowers,

And what we lose in hall, we find in bowers.

189

The play was first performed in February 1599, shortly, as is probable Historicat before As You Like It, for which it may have afforded hints.

Another set of plays not to be entirely overlooked are the historical, all anonymous. One, Locrine, was attributed to Shakespeare in his lifetime, not, assuredly, on the ground of its merits. Another, Leir, served as the groundwork for one of the greatest of his plays. Of the chronicle dramas from English history, Edward III. is by far the most important, and the underplot of Edward and the Countess of Salisbury has been thought to betray the hand of Shakespeare. Shakespeare is but little indebted to the early plays on Henry V. and Richard III., but he has observed the dramatic economy of The Troublesome Reign of King John very exactly, although the diction is almost entirely his own. Although the language of the old play is in general but poor, it has passages suggesting that a superior writer may have had a hand in it. Such is the delineation of Fauconbridge's hesitation between the solid advantage of being acknowledged the son of one's reputed father and the lustre of illegitimate royal birth :

Methinks I hear a hollow echo sound,
That Philip is the son unto a king.

The whistling leaves upon the trembling trees
Whistle in concert I am Richard's son ;

The bubbling murmur of the water's fall

Records Philippus Regis Filius.

Birds in their flight make music with their wings,

Filling the air with glory of my birth:

Birds, bubbles, leaves, and mountains' echoes all
Ring in my ear that I am Richard's son.

Fond man! ah, whither art thus carriéd?
How are thy thoughts enwrapt in honour's heaven,
Forgetful what thou art, and whence thou camest?
Thy father's land cannot maintain these thoughts:
These thoughts are far unfitting Fauconbridge ;
And well they may, for why? this mounting mind
Doth soar too high to stoop to Fauconbridge.

It remains to mention a play differing in subject and style from any of the rest. This is The Misfortunes of Arthur, chiefly by Thomas Hughes of Gray's

1 In all the editions this soliloquy is continued by six more lines, attributed to Fauconbridge. It seems to us clear that the first two are spoken by John, urging Fauconbridge to make up his mind and announce his decision without further ado; and the remainder by Lady Fauconbridge, dissuading him from yielding up his estate.

Plays

Inn, and performed by members of the Inn before Queen Elizabeth in February 1588. It is remarkable, as shown by Mr. Cunliffe, for the great indebtedness of the author to Seneca, and possesses considerable literary merit, but none of the requisites of popularity. The contrast between the world-weary Arthur, sated with battle and victory, and almost ready to resign his crown to his usurping kinsman, and the fierce eager ambition of Mordred, is original and impressive.

CHAPTER V

SHAKESPEARE

WHEN the Greeks spoke of Homer, they did not always name him. They Shakespeare said the poet, certain that no vestige of doubt could exist as to the application as world-poet of the description. Englishmen might thus speak of Shakespeare with no less security from misapprehension. In a literature eminent beyond most for the multitude of its great poets, many of whom may have excelled Shakespeare in this or that branch of art, not one could be selected as a possible rival to Shakespeare, and for this plain reason, that their excellence is particular, and his is universal. There is nothing within the compass of poetry in which he has not either achieved supremacy or shown that supremacy lay within his power; there is no situation of human fortune or emotion of the human bosom for which he has not the right word; if he cannot be described as of imagination all compact, it is only because his observation is still more extraordinary. His art is as consummate as his genius, and save when he wrote or planned in haste, impeccable. Infallibility may equally be predicated of the other two supreme poets of the world, Homer and Dante, but the restriction of their spheres forbids any claim to Shakespeare's distinguishing characteristic of universality. The knowledge, and by consequence the sympathy, of their periods was narrow in comparison with his; he was in contact with a thousand things of which they had no cognisance; while, since Shakespeare's day, human interests and activities have so greatly multiplied that, unless civilisation should retrograde, the occurrence of another universal poet may well be deemed impossible.

This overawing vastness of Shakespeare renders it almost impossible to obtain a point of view from which he can be contemplated as a whole. The critic will do best to gradually wind into his subject by a recital of the ordinary, and in Shakespeare's case the obscure, circumstances of ancestry and parentage.

tory

That the apparent etymology of the surname Shakespeare is also the Shakespeare's correct one is proved by the existence of an Italian representative, Crolla- family hislanza, which cannot possibly be a corruption of anything, but must have been bestowed upon the original bearer from some connection between him and the wielding of the spear. A similar cause would originate in England the name Shakespeare, which is of considerable antiquity in the south midland counties. Unfortunately, the earliest record of its occurrence discovered so

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