one he is come to fetch him home to supper, and now he may carry him home to his grave.

Enter the HOST, OLD FOREST, and SUSAN, his daughter.

Host. You must take comfort, Sir.

For. Is he dead, is he dead, girl?

Sus. Oh dead, Sir, Frank is dead.

For. Alas, alas, my boy! I have not the heart

To look upon his wide and gaping wounds.

Pray tell me, Sir, does this

appear to you

Fearful and pitiful-to you that are

A stranger to my dead boy?

Host. How can it otherwise?

For. O me most wretched of all wretched men !
If to a stranger his warm bleeding wounds
Appear so grisly and so lamentable,

How will they seem to me that am his father?
Will they not hale my eye-brows from their rounds,
And with an everlasting blindness strike them?
Sus. Oh, Sir, look here.

For. Dost long to have me blind?

Then I'll behold them, since I know thy mind.
Oh me!

Is this my son that doth so senseless lie,

And swims in blood? my soul shall fly with his
Unto the land of rest. Behold I crave,

Being kill'd with grief, we both may have one grave.
Sus. Alas, my father's dead too! gentle Sir,
Help to retire his spirits, over travail'd

With age and sorrow.

Host. Mr. Forest

Sus. Father

What's a clock,

For. What says my girl? good morrow.
That you are up so early? call up Frank;
Tell him he lies too long a bed this morning.
He was wont to call the sun up, and to raise
The early lark, and mount her 'mongst the clouds.
Will he not up? rise, rise, thou sluggish boy.
Sus. Alas, he cannot, father.

For. Cannot, why?

Sus. Do you not see his bloodless colour pale? For. Perhaps he's sickly, that he looks so pale. Sus. Do you not feel his pulse no motion keep, How still he lies?

For. Then is he fast asleep.

Sus. Do you not see his fatal eye-lid close?
For. Speak softly; hinder not his soft repose.
Sus. Oh see you not these purple conduits run?
Know you these wounds?

For. Oh me! my murder'd son!

Y. For. Sister!

Enter young MR. FOREST.

Sus. O brother, brother!

Y. For. Father, how cheer you, Sir? why, you were wont To store for others comfort, that by sorrow

Were any ways distress'd.

Have you all wasted,

And spared none to yourself?

O. For. O Son, Son, Son,

See, alas, see where thy brother lies.

He dined with me to-day, was merry, merry,
Aye, that corpse was; he that lies here, see here,
Thy murder'd brother and my son was.

Dost thou not weep for him?

Y. For. I shall find time;

Oh see,

When you have took some comfort, I'll begin
To mourn his death, and scourge the murderer's sin.
O. For. Oh, when saw father such a tragic sight,
And did outlive it? never, son, ah never,

From mortal breast ran such a precious river.

Y. For. Come, father, and dear sister, join with me;
He owed a death, and he hath paid that debt.
Let us all learn our sorrows to forget.

[Act i., Sc. 1.1]

If I were to be consulted as to a Reprint of our Old English Dramatists, I should advise to begin with the collected Plays of Heywood. He was a fellow Actor, and fellow Dramatist, with Shakspeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter; but in all those qualities which gained for Shakspeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to him. Generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism; and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism; shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakspeare, but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry. I love them both equally, but Shakspeare has most of my wonder. Heywood should be known to his countrymen, as he deserves. His plots are almost invariably English. I am sometimes jealous, that Shakspeare laid so few of his scenes at home. I laud Ben Jonson, for that in one instance having framed the first draught of his Every Man in his Humour in Italy, he changed the scene, and Anglicised his characters. The names of them in the First Edition, may not be unamusing.

From Eleusis (mine own shrine)
To thee, a Monarch all divine;
And, as true impost of my grove,
Present it to great Oberon's love.

Ober. Honey dews refresh thy meads.
Cowslips spring with golden heads;
July-flowers and carnations wear
Leaves double-streakt, with maiden-hair;
May thy lilies taller grow,

Thy violets fuller sweetness owe;
And last of all, may Phœbus love

To kiss thee: and frequent thy grove
As thou in service true shalt be
Unto our crown and royalty.

[Ch. xi.]

Oberon holds a Court, in which he sentences the Wasp, the Drone, and the Humble-bee, for divers offences against the Commonwealth of Bees.

OBERON. PROREX, his Viceroy, and other Bees.

Pro. And whither must these flies be sent ?
Ober. To Everlasting Banishment.

Underneath two hanging rocks

(Where babbling Echo sits and mocks
Poor travellers) there lies a grove,
With whom the Sun's so out of love,
He never smiles on't: pale Despair
Calls it his Monarchal Chair.
Fruit half-ripe hang rivell'd and shrunk
On broken arms, torn from the trunk:
The moorish pools stand empty, left
By water, stol'n by cunning theft
To hollow banks, driven out by snakes,
Adders, and newts, that man these lakes:
The mossy leaves, half-swelter'd, serv'd
As beds for vermin hunger-sterv'd:
The woods are yew-trees, bent and broke
By whirlwinds; here and there an oak,
Half-cleft with thunder. To this grove
We banish them.

Culprits. Some mercy, Jove!

Ober. You should have cried so in your youth,
When Chronos and his daughter Truth

Sojourn'd among you; when you spent

Whole years in riotous merriment.

[Day's Works, ed. Bullen, 1881.]

Thrusting poor Bees out of their hives,
Seizing both honey, wax, and lives.
You should have call'd for mercy when
You impaled common blossoms; when,
Instead of giving poor Bees food,

You ate their flesh, and drank their blood.
Fairies, thrust 'em to their fate.1

Oberon then confirms Prorex in his Government; and breaks

Ober.

up Session.

-now adieu !

Prorex shall again renew

His potent reign: the massy world
Which in glittering orbs is hurl'd
About the poles, be Lord of: we
Only reserve our Royalty-

Field Music.2 Oberon must away;

For us our gentle Fairies stay:
In the mountains and the rocks

We'll hunt the Grey, and little Fox,

Who destroy our lambs at feed,

And spoil the nests where turtles feed.

[Ch. xii.3]

DAVID AND BETHSABE. A SACRED DRAMA.1

GEORGE PEELE, 1599

NATHAN. DAVID.

Nath. Thus Nathan saith unto his Lord the King:
There were two men both dwellers in one town;

The one was mighty, and exceeding rich

In oxen, sheep, and cattle of the field;
The other poor, having nor ox, nor calf,

Nor other cattle, save one little lamb,

Which he had bought, and nourish'd by his hand,
And it grew up, and fed with him and his,
And ate and drank as he and his were wont,
And in his bosom slept, and was to live

[Sixteen lines omitted.] [See also page 401.]

BY

2 The hum of Bees.
"[Not divided into acts.]

As was his daughter or his dearest child.-
There came a stranger to this wealthy man,
And he refused and spared to take his own,
Or of his store to dress or make his meat,

But took the poor man's sheep, partly poor man's store;
And drest it for this stranger in his house.

What, tell me, shall be done to him for this?

Dav. Now, as the Lord doth live, this wicked man

Is judged, and shall become the child of death;

Fourfold to the poor man he shall restore,

That without mercy took his lamb away.

Nath. THOU ART THE MAN, AND THOU HAST JUDGED THYSELF.David, thus saith the Lord thy God by me:

I thee anointed King in Israel,

And saved thee from the tyranny of Saul;

Thy master's house I gave thee to possess,
His wives unto thy bosom I did give,

And Juda and Jerusalem withal;

And might, thou know'st, if this had been too small,

Have given thee more.

Wherefore then hast thou gone so far astray,

And hast done evil, and sinned in my sight?
Urias thou hast killed with the sword,

Yea with the sword of the uncircumcised

That hast him slain; wherefore from this day forth
The sword shall never go from thee and thine :
For thou hast ta'en this Hithite's wife to thee;
Wherefore behold I will, saith Jacob's God,
In thine own house stir evil up to thee,
Yea I before thy face will take thy wives,
And give them to thy neighbour to possess.
This shall be done to David in the day,
That Israel openly may see thy shame

Dav. Nathan, I have against the Lord, I have

Sinned, oh sinned grievously, and lo!

From heaven's throne doth David throw himself,

And groan and grovel to the gates of hell.

Nath. David, stand up; thus saith the Lord by me,

David the King shall live, for he hath seen

The true repentant sorrow of thy heart;
But for thou hast in this misdeed of thine
Stirr'd up the enemies of Israel

To triumph and blaspheme the Lord of Hosts,
And say, "He set a wicked man to reign
Over his loved people and his tribes;