lude was simple, and its wit not too fine for the coarse taste of the time; but it was a true growth of the English soil, free from foreign influence; the virility, the gayety, and the license of the early English spirit were in it.

"Ralph Roister Doister," the earliest comedy, was produced not later than 1550 - perhaps twenty years after the production of the "Four P's." Heywood had shown how to set character in distinct outlines on the stage; Nicholas Udall, an Oxford student, a scholar, holding the head-mastership first of Eton College and later of Westminster School, brought the comedy to completeness by adding to the interest of characters essentially humorous the more absorbing interest of a well-defined plot. Udall was a schoolmaster, but there was no pedantry in him; he felt the deep classical influence which had swept Europe like a tide, but he took his materials from the life about him, and he used good native speech. He had learned from the Latin comedy how to construct both a plot and a play, and his training gave him easy mastery of sound expression; but he composed his comedies in terms of English life. "Roister Doister" was a type of man instantly recognized by an English audience of every social grade; a coward who was also a boaster, whose wooing, like that of Falstaff, affords ample opportunity for the same rollicking fun. The significance of the piece lay in its freshness, its freedom, and its ease qualities which were prophetic of the birth of a true drama.

"Gammer Gurton's Needle," a broad, coarse, but

effective picture of rustic manners, generally believed to have been written by John Still, a Lincolnshire man by birth, a Cambridge man by education, and a Bishop by vocation, marks the first appearance of the fully developed farce in English, and is notable for vigorous characterization in a mass of vulgar buffoonery. That such a piece should come from the hand of the stern divine, with Puritan aspect, who lies at rest in Wells Cathedral, and that it was performed before a college audience in Cambridge, shows that the social and intellectual conditions which permitted so close a juxtaposition of the sacred and the vulgar in the Mystery and Miracle plays still prevailed. The saving grace of this early dramatic writing was its vitality; in this, and in its native flavour and its resistance to foreign influence, lay its promise.

The earlier development of comedy as compared with tragedy is not difficult to account for. Tragedy exacts something from an audience; a certain degree of seriousness or of culture must be possessed by those who are to enjoy or profit by it. Comedy, on the other hand, appeals to the untrained no less than the trained man; it collects its audience at the village blacksmith's or the country shop as readily as in the most amply appointed theatre. Moreover, it kept close to popular life and taste at a time when the influence of the classical literatures was putting its impress on men of taste and culture. Italy, by virtue of its immense service in the recovery of classical thought and art, and in the production of great works of its own in literature, painting, sculpture, and architecture, was the teacher of western Europe ; and such was the splendour of her achievements that what ought to have been a liberating and inspiring influence became a danger to native originality and development. Italian literature came into England like a flood, and, through a host of translations, some of which were of masterly quality, the intellectual inequality of a difference of more than two centuries in culture was equalized with astonishing rapidity. In that age of keen appetite for knowledge, the art and scholarship of a more mature people were assimilated with almost magical ease. The traditions of the classical stage for a time threatened the integrity of English art, but in the end the vigour of the English mind asserted itself; if the classical influence had won the day, Ben Jonson would have secured a higher place, but Shakespeare might have been fatally handicapped.

"Ferrex and Porrex," or, as the play is more generally known, "Gorbordoc," was the earliest English tragedy, and is chiefly interesting as showing how the influence of Seneca and the sturdy vigour of the English genius worked together in a kind of rude harmony. The manner shows the Latin influence, but the story and the spirit in which it is treated are genuinely English. Sir Philip Sidney, whose culture was of the best in point of quality, found "Gorbordoc" full of "stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style," but notes the failure to comply with the traditional unity of time. Sackville, one of the authors of this vigorous play, stood in relations of intimacy with the Court of Elizabeth, became Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and Lord High Treasurer of England. His work in "The Mirrour of Magistrates" brings out still more clearly the deep seriousness of his spirit. Norton, who collaborated with him in the writing of "Gorbordoc," was a man of severe temper, a translator of Calvin's Institutes, and a born reformer. Such men might be affected by the classical influence; they could hardly be subdued by it. In the excess of action, the rush of incident, the swift accumulation of horrors, which characterize this sanguinary play, Seneca would have found few suggestions of his own methods and temper. The blank verse in which it is written, however, came ultimately from Italy through the skilful adaptation of Surrey.

The integrity of the English drama was assured when the playwrights, now rapidly increasing in numbers, turned to English history and produced the long series of Chronicle plays, to which Shakespeare owed so much, and which furnished an inaccurate but liberalizing education for the whole body of the English people. In these plays, probably covering the entire field of English history, the doings and the experiences of the English race were set forth in the most vital fashion; English history dramatically presented became a connected and living story. They developed the race consciousness, deepened the race feeling, made love of country the passion which found splendid expression in "Henry V.," and prepared the way for the popular appreciation of the noblest dramatic works. This dramatic use of national history made the drama the natural and inevitable expression of the English spirit in Elizabeth's time, and insured an art which was not only intensely English but intensely alive. The imagination trained by the Chronicle plays was ready to understand "Hamlet" and

"Lear."

Bale's "King Johan," "The True Tragedy of Richard III.," "The Famous Victories of Henry V.," "The Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster," "Edward III.," and kindred plays, not only furnished material for Shakespeare's hand, but prepared Shakespeare's audiences to understand his work. These plays practically cover a period of four centuries, and bring the story of English history down to the Armada.

In close historical connection with the Chronicle plays must be placed the long list of plays which, like "Cardinal Wolsey," "Duchess of Norfolk," "Duke Humphrey," and "Hotspur," drew upon the treasury of English biography and dramatized individual vicissitude and fate; and the plays which, like the "Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington," developed the dramatic uses of legendary history. It would not be easy to devise a more stimulating method of educating the imagination and preparing the way for a period of free and buoyant creativeness than this visualization of history on the rude but intensely vitalized stage of the sixteenth century.

One more step in this vital expression of the English spirit was taken by Shakespeare's immediate predecessors and by some of his older contemporaries.