immediate management of, the clergy. A miracle play, upon the story of St Katherine, and in the French language, was acted at Dunstable in 1119, and such entertainments may have previously existed in England. From the year 1268 to 1577, they were performed almost every year in Chester; and there were few large cities which were not then regaled in a similar manner; even in Scotland they were not unknown. The most sacred persons, not excluding the Deity, were introduced into these rude dramas.

About the reign of Henry VI. persons representing sentiments and abstract ideas, such as Mercy, Justice, Truth, began to be introduced into the miracle plays, and led to the composition of an improved kind of drama, entirely or chiefly composed of such characters, and termed Moral Plays. These were certainly a great advance upon the miracles, as they all endeavoured to convey sound moral lessons, and at the same time gave occasion to some poetical and dramatic ingenuity, in delineating the characters, and assigning appropriate speeches to each. The character of Satan was still retained; and being represented in grotesque habiliments, and perpetually beaten by an attendant character, called the Vice, served to enliven what must have been at the best a sober, though well-meant entertainment. The Cradle of Security, Hit the Nail on the Head, Impatient Poverty, and the Marriage of Wisdom and Wit, are the names of moral plays which enjoyed popularity in the reign of Henry VIII. It was about this time that acting first became a distinct profession; both miracles and moral plays had previously been represented by clergymen, school-boys, or the members of trading incorporations, and were only brought forward occasionally, as part of some public or private festivity.

between a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedler-who are the only characters-as to which shall tell the grossest falsehood: an accidental assertion of the Palmer, that he never saw a woman out of patience in his life, takes the rest off their guard, all of whom declare it to be the greatest lie they ever heard, and the settlement of the question is thus brought about amidst much mirth. Three of Heywood's interludes are dated 1533-namely: the Play of Love; Johan the Husband, Tyb the Wife, and St Johan the Prester; and The Pardoner and the Frere. Another is entitled Of Gentylnes and Nobylyte, 1535. The dramatist was author of an allegorical poem, The Spider and the Flie, 1556-the spider representing the Protestants, and the fly the Catholics. A Dialogue on English Proverbs, 1546, and a Dialogue of Wit and Folly (first printed by the Percy Society in 1846), with ballads and other pieces in verse; pamphlets containing 600 Epigrams, &c. proceeded from the pen of Heywood. After the death of Queen Mary in 1558, he retired to Mechlin in Brabant (being a zealous Roman Catholic, and fearing persecution), and there he died in 1565.

Another writer of dramatic productions was BISHOP BALE (1495-1563), who was among the first to present a species of mixed drama in which historical characters and incidents were introduced. All Bale's plays were designed to promote the cause of the Reformation; four of them are extant, and one, Kynge Johan, was published in 1838 from the manuscript in the library of the Duke of Devonshire. This ancient drama was probably first performed in the time of Edward VI.; and it embodies a portion of our national annals in the reign of King John, with the abstract impersonations common to the miracle and moral plays. Incidents from classic historyas Appius and Virginia-were also, at an early period, introduced on the stage.

As the introduction of allegorical representations had been an improvement upon those plays which consisted of scriptural characters The regular drama, from its very commenceonly, so was the introduction of historical person-ment, was divided into comedy and tragedy, the ages an improvement upon those which employed elements of both being found quite distinct in the only a set of impersonated ideas. It was soon rude entertainments above described, not to found that a real human being, with a human speak of the precedents afforded by Greece and name, was better calculated to awaken the sym- Rome. pathies, and keep alive the attention of an audience, and not less to impress them with moral truths, than a being that only represented an idea of the mind. The substitution of these for the symbolical characters gradually took place during the earlier part of the sixteenth century; and thus, with some aid from Greek dramatic literature, which now began to be studied, and from the improved theatres of Italy and Spain, the genuine English drama took its rise.

HEYWOOD AND BALE.

UDALL AND STILL.

Of comedy, which was an improvement upon the interludes, and may be more remotely traced in the ludicrous parts of the moral plays, the earliest specimen that has yet been found bears the title of Roister Doister, and was the production of NICOLAS UDALL, born in Hampshire about 1504, and successively master of Eton College, rector of Braintree, prebend of Windsor, rector of Calborne, and master of Westminster School. He died in December 1556. His As specimens of something between the moral comedy was written before the close of the plays and the modern drama, the Interludes of reign of Edward VI. in 1553. The scene is in JOHN HEYWOOD may be mentioned. Heywood London, and the characters, thirteen in number, was supported at the court of Henry VIII. exhibit the manners of the middle orders of partly as a musician, partly as court jester, and the people of that day. It is divided into partly as a writer of plays. His dramatic compo- five acts, and the plot is amusing and well consitions, some of which were produced before 1531, structed. Mr J. Payne Collier, who has devoted generally represented ludicrous familiar incidents years of anxious study to the history and illusin a style of the broadest and coarsest farce, tration of dramatic literature, has discovered four yet with no small degree of skill and talent. acts of a comedy, which he assigns to the year One, called the Four P.'s, turns upon a dispute | 1560. This play is entitled Mesogonus, and bears

This, this ensues when noble men do fail
In loyal truth, and subjects will be kings.
And this doth grow when, lo! unto the prince
Whom death or sudden hap of life bereaves,
No certain heir remains.

In this style the tragedy is constructed. There is a want of passion and incident, but still proof of the great advance of the drama.

The

Not long after the appearance of Gorboduc, both tragedies and comedies had become common. RICHARD EDWARDS (circa 1523-1566), a member of Lincoln's Inn, enjoyed a high reputation as a dramatic poet. His classical drama of Damon and Pythias, and another play by him, entitled Palamon and Arcite, were both performed before Queen Elizabeth-the latter at Oxford in 1566, when the crowd was so great that part of the building fell, and several persons were killed. This drama was inferior to Gorboduc, inasmuch as it carried an admixture of vulgar comedy, and was written in rhyme. In the same year, two plays, respectively styled the Supposes and Focasta | -the one, a comedy adapted from Ariosto; the other, a tragedy from Euripides were acted in Gray's Inn Hall. A tragedy, called Tancred and Gismunda, composed by five members of the Inner Temple, and presented there before the queen in 1568, was the first English play taken from an Italian novel. Various dramatic pieces now followed; and between the years 1568 and 1580, no less than fifty-two dramas were acted at court under the superintendence of the Master of the Revels. Under the date of 1578, we have the play of Promos and Cassandra, by GEORGE WHETSTONE, on which Shakspeare founded his Measure for Measure. Whetstone was an extensive miscellaneous writer, who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century, but neither the time nor the place of his birth is known. He is said to have been an unsuccessful courtier, then a soldier, serving with Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen, afterwards a farmer, next engaged in Sir Hum-loveliness and perfection in Shakspeare's female phry Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland in 1583, and finally a littérateur, seizing upon every passing event as a subject for his pen. His Promos and Cassandra was a translation, with pieces of poetry interspersed, of one of the Hundred Tales of the Italian novelist, Giraldo Cinthio.

In February 1562, mention is made of an historical play under the name of Julius Cæsar. Other historical plays were also produced; and the Troublesome Reign of King John, the Famous Victories of Henry V. and the Chronicle History of Leir, King of England, formed the quarry from which Shakspeare constructed his dramas

on the same events.

The theatres were constructed of wood, of a cir-
cular form, open to the weather, excepting over
the stage, which was covered with a thatched roof.
Outside, on the roof, a flag was hoisted during the
time of performance, which commenced at three
o'clock, at the third sounding or flourish of trum-
pets. The cavaliers and fair dames of the court
of Elizabeth sat in boxes below the gallery, or
were accommodated with stools on the stage,
where some of the young gallants also threw them-
selves at length on the rush-strewn floor, while
their pages handed them pipes and tobacco, then
a fashionable and highly prized luxury.
middle classes were crowded in the pit, or yard,
which was not furnished with seats. Movable
scenery was first introduced by Davenant after
the Restoration, but rude imitations of towers,
woods, animals, or furniture, served to illustrate
the scene. To point out the place of action, a
board containing the name, painted or written in
large letters, was hung out during the performance.
Anciently, an allegorical exhibition, called the
Dumb Show, was exhibited before every act, and
gave an outline of the action or circumstances to
follow. Shakspeare has preserved this peculiarity
in the play acted before the king and queen in
Hamlet; but he never employs it in his own
dramas. Such machinery, indeed, would be in-
compatible 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
Marlowe's Faustus and in Henry VI. Actresses
were not seen on the stage till after the Restora-
tion, and the female parts were played by boys,
or delicate-looking young men.
This may per-
haps palliate the grossness of some of the lan-
guage 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 excel-
lence which prompted the exquisite pictures of
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 play-houses! 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 first regularly licensed theatre in London was opened at Blackfriars in 1576; and in ten years it is mentioned by Secretary Walsingham that there were two hundred players in and near The only information we possess as to the paythe metropolis. This was probably an exaggera- ment of dramatic authors at this time is contained tion; but it is certain there were five public in the memoranda of Philip Henslowe, a theattheatres open about the commencement of Shak-rical manager, preserved in Dulwich College, and speare's career, and several private or select estab- quoted by Malone and Collier. Before the year lishments. 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 air-blest castle, round whose wholesome crest
The martlet, guest of summer, chose her nest-
The forest-walks of Arden's fair domain,
Where Jaques fed his solitary vein;
No pencil's aid as yet had dared supply,
Seen only by the intellectual eye.-C. LAMB.

A

Phaon. Thou art a ferryman, Phaon, yet a freeman; possessing for riches content, and for honours quiet. Thy thoughts are no higher than thy fortunes, nor thy desires greater than thy calling. Who climbeth, standeth on glass, and falleth on thorn. Thy heart's thirst is satisfied with thy hand's thrift, and thy gentle labours in the day turn to sweet slumbers in the night. As much doth it delight thee to rule thy oar in a calm stream, as it doth Sappho to sway the sceptre in her brave court. Envy never casteth her eye low, ambition pointeth always upward, and revenge barketh only at Thou farest delicately, if thou have a fare to buy anything. Thine angle is ready, when thy oar is idle; and as sweet is the fish which thou gettest in Thou needest not fear poison in thy glass, nor treason the river, as the fowl which others buy in the market. in thy guard. The wind is thy greatest enemy, whose might is withstood by policy. O sweet life! seldom found under a golden covert, often under a thatched cottage.

stars.

1600, the price paid by Henslowe for a new play puts into the mouth of his Phaon, a poor ferryman, never exceeded £8; but after this date, perhaps in his comedy of Sappho and Phaon: 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, the prices of which varied from five to twenty shillings, was another source of gain; but the proverbial poverty of poets seems to have been exemplified in the old dramatists, even when they were actors as well as authors. The shareholders of the theatre derived considerable profits from the performances, and were occasionally paid for exhibitions in the houses of the nobility. Nearly all the dramatic authors preceding and contemporary with Shakspeare were men who had received a learned education at the university of Oxford or Cambridge. profusion of classical imagery abounds in their plays, but they did not copy the severe and correct taste of the ancient models. They wrote to supply the popular demand for novelty and excitement for broad farce or superlative tragedy -to introduce the coarse raillery or comic incidents of low life-to dramatise a murder, or embody the vulgar idea of oriental bloodshed and splendid extravagance. 'If we seek for a poetical image,' says a writer on our drama, 'a burst of passion, a beautiful sentiment, a trait of 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.'* 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.

JOHN LYLY.

This affords a favourable specimen of Lyly's affected poetical prose. By his Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit, he 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,
As they'll shut up each path, hide every way,
Because they still would have her go astray,
And in that place would always have her seen,
Only because they would be ever green,
And keep the winged choristers still there,
To banish winter clean out of the year.

By the moon we sport and play;
With the night begins our day:
As we dance the dew doth fall;
Trip it, little urchins all.
Lightly as the little bee,
Two by two, and three by three,

JOHN LYLY, born in Kent in 1553 or 1554, produced nine plays between the years 1579 and 1600. They were mostly written for court entertainments, and performed by the scholars of St Paul's. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford; and many of his plays are on mythological subjects, as Sappho and Phaon (1584), Endymion (1591), Or the song of the fairies : the Maid's Metamorphosis, Galathea (1592), Midas (1592), Mother Bombie (1594), &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.' Queen Elizabeth is said to have patronised Lyly; but in a petition for the office of Master of the Revels, he tells the queen : 'For these ten years I have attended with an unwearied patience, and now I know not what crab took me for an oyster, that in the midst of your sunshine, of your most gracious aspect, hath thrust a stone between the shells to eat me alive that only live on dead hopes.' There was probably real feeling in the following speech which Lyly

*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.

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, performed before the queen in 1584.

Cupid and Campaspe.

Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid.