Fulk Greville, son of Sir Fulk Greville of Beauchamp Court, Alcester, in Warwickshire, created Lord Brooke in 1620, the friend and kinsman of Sidney, was employed and rewarded both by Elizabeth and by James I. He had a powerful intellect, but one which feeling and fancy did not duly counterpoise. The heroines of his tragedies moralise and argue interminably, and when asked a plain question of fact, usually reply with a philosophical disquisition. Speaking of his two tragedies-Mustapha (1609) and Alaham (1633)Lamb says: 'Their author has strangely contrived to make passion, character, and interest of the highest order subservient to the expression of state dogmas and mysteries. He is nine parts Machiavel or Tacitus, for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this writer's estimate of the faculties of his own mind, the understanding must have held a most tyrannical pre-eminence. Whether we look into his plays, or his most passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with intellect.' The texture of Greville's work is so uniform, that a short extract, taken almost anywhere, is enough to show the lines on which his mind proceeds. In Mustapha, Solyman the emperor believes that his son Mustapha is conspiring against him, a belief which the sister, Camena, tries to dispel : I think tis true, who know their children least, Sol. As any sign of death we hate too much; Twixt sons and fathers; making parents cause, And children pledge of their eternity. Fathers should love this image in their sons. Posthumous poems, Of Monarchy and Religion, appeared in 1670. A complete edition of all Lord Brooke's works was brought out (1870) by the Rev. A. B. Grosart in the Fuller Worthies Library. (See the article in Ward's English Poets.) Giles Fletcher, a Cambridge man and a clergyman, wrote a long religious poem in stanzas, Christ's Victorie and Triumph (1610). His to the Rhapsody, and to him, above all the other contributors, in my opinion at least, may The Lie most reasonably be assigned. 1 English Dramatic Poets, Bohn, brother Phineas, also a clergyman, is the author of The Purple Island or Isle of Man, together with Piscatorie Eclogs and other poetical Miscellanies, published at Cambridge in 1633. It is in seven-lined stanzas, and aims at being an elaborate physiological description of the body and mind of man. Phineas, with considerable powers of description, is a palpable imitator of Spenser. An older Giles Fletcher, father of the two poets, wrote (1591) Of the Russe Commonwealth. All three were of the kindred of John Fletcher the dramatist. On the metres employed by the Fletchers, see App. § 21. 24. Respecting the numerous tribe of translators who were busy in the reign of Elizabeth ample details are given in the fourth volume of Warton's History of Poetry.' Before 1600, Homer, the pseudo-Musæus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Martial, were translated into English verse; most of the versions appeared before 1580. Thomas Phaier brought out seven books of the Æneid, in the fourteen-syllable or Sternhold metre, in 1558. A ridiculous version of four books, executed by Richard Stanihurst, in English hexameters, to be read and scanned in the same way as the Latin, appeared in 1583. Abraham Fleming, in 1575 and 1589, published versions in the same metre of the Bucolics and Georgics. Of Chapman's version of Homer we have already spoken. Thomas Drant published in 1566-7 versions of the Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica of Horace. In 1575 Arthur Golding brought out a complete version, in fourteen-syllable lines, of Ovid's Metamorphoses; this remained popular for many years. Marlowe made a version of Ovid's Elegies, which, along with the pamphlets of Nash and Harvey, was seized under a decree of Archbishop Whitgift in 1599, ordering that all immoral books and satires should be brought in and burnt. The Heroical Epistles of the same author were englished by George Turberville. Marlowe also left a version, in blank verse, of the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia. Thomas Churchyard2 (1578) translated into English verse three books of Ovid's Tristia. Joshua Sylvester, a merchant adventurer, translated (1598) the Creation du Monde or Semaine of the Gascon poet Dubartas into English heroics, with the title of Divine Weekes and Workes. 1 Extract Book, art. 47. 1 2 This writer, who trailed his pike' as a soldier in many wars, lived to a great age, and produced a long list of works, both prose and verse. Among the former is a Description of the woeful wars in Flanders;' the latter include several tragedies in the Mirror for Magistrates. Dramatists:-Origin of the English Drama; Miracle Plays; Moral Plays; Udall, Still, Heywood, Sackville and Norton, Marlowe; the Dramatic Unities; Shakspere, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Greene, Peele, Nash, Massinger, Ford, Webster, Marston, Chapman, Dekker, T. Heywood, Rowley, Tourneur, Shirley. 25. What we have to say on the development of the drama in this period may best be prefaced by a brief sketch of its rise and progress in the middle ages. Five distinct influences or tendencies are traceable as having co-operated, in various degrees and ways, in the development of the drama. These are: 1, the didactic efforts of the clergy; 2, mediaval philosophy; 3, the revival of ancient learning; 4, the influence of the feeling of nationality; 5, the influence of continental literature, especially that of Italy. 26. The first rude attempts in this country to revive those theatrical exhibitions, which in their early and glorious forms, had been involved in the general destruction of the ancient world, were due to the clergy. They arose out of a perception that what we see with our eyes makes a greater impression upon us than what we merely hear with our ears. It was seen that many events in the life of Christ, as well as in the history of the Christian Church, would easily admit of being dramatised, and thus brought home, as it were, to the feelings and consciences of large bodies of men more effectually than by sermons. As to books, they of course were, at the time now spoken of, accessible only to an insignificant minority. The early plays which thus arose were called 'miracles,' or 'miracle plays,' because miraculous narratives, taken from Scripture or from the lives of the saints, formed their chief subject. The earliest known specimens of these miracle plays, according to Mr. Wright,' were composed in Latin by one Hilarius, an English monk, and a disciple of the famous Abelard, in the early part of the twelfth century. The subjects of these are the raising of Lazarus, a miracle of St. Nicholas, and the life of Daniel. Similar compositions in French date from the thirteenth century; but Mr. Wright does not believe that any were composed in English before the fourteenth. The following passage, from Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, will give a general notion of the mode in which they were performed. 1 Introduction to the Chester Plays, published for the Shakespeare Society. A note of doubtful authority, found in a MS. of these plays written at the end of the sixteenth century, ascribes them to Ralph Higden, author of the Polychronicon. (See Morley's English Writers, ii. 350.) It relates to the famous Coventry Mysteries, of which a nearly complete set has been preserved, and published by the Shakespeare Society: Before the suppression of the monasteries, this cittye was very famous for the pageants that were played therein, upon Corpus Christi day. These pageants were acted with mighty state and reverence by the fryers of this house (the Franciscan monastery at Coventry), and conteyned the story of the New Testament, which was composed into old English rime. The theatres for the severall scenes were very large and high; and being placed upon wheeles, were drawn to all the eminent places of the cittye, for the better advantage of the spectators. These travelling show-vans remind one of Thespis, the founder of Greek tragedy, who is said to have gone about in his theatrical cart, from town to town, exhibiting his plays. According to older authorities, the movable theatre itself was originally signified by the term 'pageant,' not the piece performed in it. The Coventry Mysteries were performed in Easter week. The set which we have of them is divided into fortytwo parts, or scenes, to each of which its own 'pageant,' or moving theatre, was assigned. Traversing, by a prescribed round, the principal streets of the city, each pageant stoppedat certain points along the route, and the actors whom it contained, flinging open the doors, proceeded to perform the scenes allotted to them. Stage properties and gorgeous dresses were not wanting; we even meet, in the old corporation accounts, with such items as money advanced for the effective exhibition of hell-fire. Two days were occupied in the performance of the forty-two scenes, and a person standing at any one of the appointed halting-places would be able to witness the entire drama. The following passage presents a fair sample of the roughness of style and homeliness of conception which characterise these mysteries throughout; it is taken from the pageant of the Temptation: '— 'Now if thou be Goddys Sone of might, Ryght down to the erthe anon thou falle, And save thisylf in every plyght From harm and hurt and peinys alle; For it is wretyn, aungelys bright That ben in hevyn, thy faderes halle, Thee to kepe bothe day and nyght, That thou stomele not ageyn the stone, It is wretyn in holy book, The Towneley Mysteries, so named because the only existing MS. (from which they were printed for the Surtees Society in 1836) belonged to the old Catholic family of 'Towneley of Towneley' in Lancashire, might perhaps with more propriety be named the Wakefield Mysteries, as having been written for the guilds of that town. This is Mr. Morley's conjecture, (English Writers, II. 357), who gives an interesting analysis of a grotesque little pastoral comedietta, annexed to that member of the series which treats of the appearance of the angel to announce the Nativity to the shepherds. A shepherd called Mak steals a sheep; makes ludicrous efforts, aided by his wife, to conceal the theft; is detected, and soundly beaten by the other shepherds. These pieces seem to be mostly of north-country origin, but they vary among each other in style, language, and dramatic power.' On the whole they are later in date than either the Chester or the Coventry Mysteries. 27. The philosophy of the middle ages, which we have named as the second influence co-operating to the development of the drama, dealt much in abstract terms, and delighted in definitions and logical distinctions. Debarred, partly by external hindrances, partly by its own experience, from profitable inquiry into nature and her laws, the mind was thrown back upon itself, its own powers, and immediate instruments; and the fruits were, an infinite number of metaphysical cobwebs, logical subtleties, and quips or plays upon words. Thus, instead of proceeding onward from the dramatic exhibition of scriptural personages and scenes to that of real life and character, the mediaval playwrights perversely went backwards, and refined away the scriptural personages into mere moral abstractions. Thus, instead of the Jonathan and Satan of the mystery, we come to the Friendship and the Vice of the moral play, or morality,-a dramatic form which seems to have become popular in this country about the middle of the fifteenth century. How far this folly would have gone it is impossible to say; fortunately it was cut short by the third influence mentioned-the revival of ancient learning. When the plays of Terence and Sophocles, nay, even those of Seneca, became |