tecture, 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 Eliza

beth, 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.

Such a play as "Arden of Feversham," which has been credited to Shakespeare by a number of critics, brought the dramatic form to a stage where it needed but the hand of a poet of genius to perfect it. There was still a long distance between the plays of this period, however, and the balance, harmony, and restraint of Shakespeare. "Arden of Feversham," and a host of dramas of the same period, are charged with power; but he who reads them is fed with horrors. Lyly's comedies were acted, with one or two exceptions, before Queen Elizabeth, and were mainly, as Mr. Symonds suggests, elaborately decorated censers in which incense was lavishly burned to a Queen incredibly avid of adulation and flattery. As a writer of comedies for the Court, the author of "Euphues" influenced the language of the later dramatists far more deeply than he influenced the drama itself. He made an art of witty dialogue, and repartee became in his hands a brilliant fence of words; it remained for Shakespeare to carry both to perfection in "Much Ado About Nothing."

When Shakespeare reached London about 1586, he found the art of play-writing in the hands of a group of men of immense force of imagination and of singularly varied gifts of expression. During the decade in which he was serving his apprenticeship to his art England lost Peele, Kyd, Greene, and Marlowe; Lodge, having become a physician, died in 1625. Every member of this group, with the exception of Marlowe, was born to good conditions; they were gentlemen in position, and scholars by virtue of

university training. They were careless and, in some cases, violent and criminal livers; men born out of due time, so far as adjustment between genius and sound conditions was concerned; or committed by temperament to unbalanced, disorderly, and tragical careers. Greene, after a life of dissipation, died in extreme misery of mind and body; Peele involved himself in many kinds of misfortune, and became the victim of his vices; Nash lived long enough to lament the waste and confusion of his career; and the splendid genius of Marlowe was quenched before he had reached his thirtieth year. He who would pass a sweeping and unqualified condemnation on this fatally endowed group of ardent young writers would do well to study the times in which they lived, the attitude of society towards the playwright, the absence of normal conditions for the expression of genius such as they possessed, and the perilous combination of temperament and imagination which seems to have been made in each. It is futile and immoral to conceal or minimize the faults and vices of men of genius; but it is equally futile and immoral to attempt to determine in any individual career the degree of moral responsibility.

Greene was a born story-teller, without having any marked gift for the construction of strong and wellelaborated plots; his study of character was neither vigorous nor convincing. Nash was, on the other hand, a born satirist, with a coarse but very effective method and a humour often grotesque but always virile. Peele was preeminently a poet of taste, with a