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semblance which renders a caricature most as reading "Greene's works over and over." effective: "I was altogether unacquainted Some of these tales are full of genius, illwith the man, and never once saluted him regulated no doubt, but so pregnant with inby name: but who in London hath not heard vention, that Shakspere in the height of his of his dissolute and licentious living; his fame did not disdain to avail himself of the fond disguising of a Master of Art with stories of his early contemporary. The draruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more matic works of Greene were probably much unseemly company; his vainglorious and more numerous than the few which have Thrasonical braving; his fripperly extem- come down to us; and the personal character porizing and Tarletonizing; his apish coun- of the man is not unaptly represented in terfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy; these productions. They exhibit great pomp his fine cozening of jugglers, and finer jug- | and force of language; passages which degling with cozeners; his villainous cogging generate into pure bombast from their amand foisting; his monstrous swearing and bitious attempts to display the power of horrible forswearing; his impious profaning words; slight discrimination of character; of sacred texts; his other scandalous and incoherence of incident; and an entire abblasphemous raving; his riotous and out- sence of that judgment which results in harrageous surfeiting; his continual shifting of mony and proportion. His extravagant lodgings; his plausible mustering and ban- pomp of language was the characteristic queting of roysterly acquaintance at his first of all the writers of the early stage except coming; his beggarly departing in every Shakspere; and equally so were those athostess's debt; his infamous resorting to the tempts to be humorous which sank into the Bankside, Shoreditch, Southwark, and other lowest buffoonery. In the lyrical pieces filthy haunts; his obscure lurking in basest which are scattered up and down Greene's corners; his pawning of his sword, cloak, and novels, there is occasionally a quiet beauty what not, when money came short; his im- which exhibits the real depths of the man's pudent pamphleting, fantastical interluding, genius. Amidst all his imperfections of chaand desperate libelling, when other cozening racter, that genius is fully acknowledged by shifts failed?"* This is the bitterness of the best of his contemporaries. revenge, not softened even by the penalty which the wretched man had paid for his offence, dying prematurely in misery and solitariness, and writing from his lodging at a poor shoemaker's these last touching lines to the wife whom he had abandoned: "Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soul's rest, that thou wilt see this man paid for if he and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streets." As a writer he was one amongst the most popular of his day. His little romances of some fifty pages each were the delight of readers for amusement, for half a century. They were the companions of the courtly and the humble, -eagerly perused by the scholar of the University and the apprentice of the City. They reached the extreme range of popularity. In Anthony Wood's time they were "mostly sold on ballad-monger's stalls;" and Sir Thomas Overbury describes his Chambermaid

*Four Letters, &c., 1592.'

He

THOMAS LODGE was Greene's senior in age, and greatly his superior in conduct. had been a graduate of Oxford; next a player, though probably for a short time; was a member of Lincoln's Inn; and, finally, a successful physician of the name of Thomas Lodge is held to be identical with Lodge the poet. He was the author of a tragedy, 'The Wounds of Civil War: lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Sylla.' He had become a writer for the stage before the real power of dramatic blank verse had been adequately conceived. His lines possess not the slightest approach to flexibility; they invariably consist of ten syllables, with a pause at the end of every line-❝each alley like its brother;" the occasional use of the triplet is the only variety. Lodge's tragedy has the appearance of a most correct and laboured performance; and the result is that of insufferable tediousness. In conjunction with Greene he wrote 'A Looking Glass for

London,' one of the most extraordinary pro- | the heavenly Bull by the dewlap.".
ductions of that period of the stage, the cha-
racter of which is evidently derived not from
any desire of the writers to accommodate
themselves to the taste of an unrefined au-
dience, but from an utter deficiency of that
common sense which could alone recommend
their learning and their satire to the popular
apprehension. For pedantry and absurdity
'The Looking Glass for London' is unsur-
passed. Lodge, as well as Greene, was a
writer of little romances; and here he does
not disdain the powers of nature and simpli-
city. The early writers for the stage, indeed,
seem one and all to have considered that
the language of the drama was conventional;
that the expressions of real passion ought
never there to find a place; that grief should
discharge itself in long soliloquies, and anger
explode in orations set forth upon the most
approved forms of logic and rhetoric. There
is some of this certainly in the prose ro-
mances of Greene and Lodge. Lovers make
very long protestations, which are far more
calculated to display their learning than
their affection. This is the sin of most pas-
torals. But nature sometimes prevails, and
we meet with a touching simplicity, which
is the best evidence of real power. Lodge,
as well as Greene, gave a fable to Shak-

spere.

Another of the chosen companions of Robert Greene was THOMAS NASH, who in his "beardless years" had thrown himself upon the town, having forfeited the honours which his talents would have commanded in the due course of his University studies. In an age before that of newspapers and reviews, this young man was a pamphleteering critic; and very sharp, and to a great extent very just, is his criticism. The drama, even at this early period, is the bow of Apollo for all ambitious poets. It is Nash who, in the days of Locrine, and Tamburlaine, and perhaps Andronicus, is the first to laugh at "the servile imitation of vainglorious tragedians, who contend not so seriously to excel in action, as to embowel the clouds in a speech of comparison; thinking themselves more than initiated in poets' immortality if they but once get Boreas by the beard, and

It is

he who despises the "idiot art-masters that intrude themselves to our ears as the alchymists of eloquence, who, mounted on the stage of arrogance, think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse." In a year or two Nash was the foremost of controversialists. There are few things in our language written in a bitterer spirit than his pamphlets in the "Marprelate" controversy, and his letters to Gabriel Harvey. Greene, as it appears to us, upon his deathbed warned Nash of the danger of his course: "With thee [Marlowe] I join young Juvenal, that biting satirist, that lastly with me together writ a comedy. Sweet boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words: inveigh against vain men, for thou canst do it, no man better, no man so well: thou hast a liberty to reprove all, and name none: for one being spoken to, all are offended; none being blamed, no man is injured. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage; tread on a worm, and it will turn: then blame not scholars who are vexed with sharp and bitter lines, if they reprove thy too much liberty of reproof." It is usual to state that Thomas Lodge is the person thus addressed. So say Malone and Mr. Dyce. The expression, "that lastly with me together writ a comedy," is supposed to point to the union of Greene and Lodge in the composition of 'The Looking-Glass for London.' But it is much easier to believe that Greene and Nash wrote a comedy which is unknown to us, than that Greene should address Lodge, some years his elder, as "young Juvenal," and "sweet boy." Neither have we any evidence that Lodge was a "biting satirist," and used "bitter words" and personalities never to be forgiven. We hold that the warning was meant for Nash. It was given in vain; for he spent his high talents in calling others rogue and fool, and having the words returned upon him with interest; bespattering, and bespattered.

That impatient spirit, with the flashing eye and the lofty brow, is CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. It is he who addressed his first audience in words which told them that one of high pre-petual trumpet, perpetual scarlet. One of tensions was come to rescue the stage from the courtiers of Tamburlaine says,the dominion of feebleness and buffoonery:

* Epistle prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon.' † Ibid.

"From jiggling veins of rhyming mother wits, As such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We 'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine,

Threat'ning the world with high astounding terms." *

His daring was successful. It is he who is accounted the "famous gracer of tragedians."† It is he who has "gorgeously invested with rare ornaments and splendid habiliments the English tongue." It is he who. after his tragical end, was held

"Fit to write passions for the souls below."§

It is he of the "mighty line." || The name of Tamburlaine was applied to Marlowe himself by his contemporaries. It is easy to imagine that he might be such a man as he has delighted to describe in his Scythian

Shepherd :

"Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned,
Like his desire lift upward and divine;
So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly

bear

Old Atlas' burthen.

Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion,

Thirsting with sovereignty and love of arms.
His lofty brows in folds do figure death,
And in their smoothness amity and life;
About them hangs a knot of amber hair,
Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was,
On which the breath of heaven delights to
play,

Making it dance with wanton majesty.
His arms and fingers, long and snowy-white,
Betokening valour and excess of strength."[

The essential character of his mind was that of a lofty extravagance, shaping itself into words that may be likened to the trumpet in music, and the scarlet in painting-per

"You see, my lord, what working words he hath."

Hear a few of these "working words :"-
"The god of war resigns his room to me,
Meaning to make me general of the world:
Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan,
Fearing my power should pull him from his
throne.

Where'er I come the fatal sisters sweat,
And grisly death, by running to and fro,
To do their ceaseless homage to my sword;
And here, in Afric, where it seldom rains,
Since I arriv'd with my triumphant host,
Have swelling clouds, drawn from wide-gasp-

ing wounds,

Been oft resolv'd in bloody, purple showers,
A meteor that might terrify the earth,
And make it quake at every drop it drinks."**

Through five thousand lines have we the same pompous monotony, the same splendid exaggeration, the same want of truthful simplicity. But the man was in earnest. His poetical power had nothing in it of affectation and pretence. There is one speech of Tamburlaine which unveils the inmost mind of Tamburlaine's author. It is by far the highest passage in the play, revealing to us something nobler than the verses which "jet on the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of

Bow-Bell."

"Nature that form'd us of four elements,
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds;
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,

Until we reach the ripest fruit of all."++ The "ripest fruit of all," with Tamburlaine, was an "earthly crown;" but with Marlowe, there can be little doubt, the "climbing after knowledge infinite" was to be rewarded with wisdom, and peace, the fruit of wisdom. But he sought for the "fruit" in dark and forof wild and profligate men, lighting up their murky caves with his poetical torch, and gaining nothing from them but the renewed power of scorning the unspiritual things of our being, without the resolution to seek for wisdom in the daylight track which every man may tread. If his life had not been fatally cut short, the fiery spirit might have learnt the value of meekness, and the daring sceptic have cast away the bitter "fruit" of half-knowledge. He did not long survive the fearful exhortation of his dying companion, the unhappy Greene:-"Wonder not, thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene, who hath said with thee, like the fool in his heart, there is no God, should now give glory unto His greatness: for penetrating is His power, His hand lies heavy upon me, He hath spoken unto me with a voice of thunder, and I have felt He is a God that can punish ene

* Prologue to 'Tamburlaine the Great." + Meres.

§ Peele. Tamburlaine, Part I., Act 11.

† Greene. Jonson.

**Tamburlaine, Part I., Act v ++ Ibid. Part I., Act II. * Meres. Webbe's 'Discourse of English Poetry, '1586. ley's Old Plays, 1825, vol. il.

bidden paths. He plunged into the haunts | to. Nash, " he is but a little fellow, but he the talk is everything. Hephæstion exhorts Alexander against the danger of love, in a speech that with very slight elaboration would be long enough for a sermon. Apelles soliloquizes upon his own love for Campaspe in a style so insufferably tedious, that we could wish to thrust the picture that he sighs over down his rhetorical throat (even as Pistol was made to swallow the leek), if he did not close his oration with one of the prettiest songs of our old poetry :

mies. Why should thy excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded that thou shouldest give no glory to the giver?" Marlowe resented the accusation which Greene's words conveyed. We may hope that he did more; that he felt,

to use other words of the same memorable exhortation, that the "liberty" which he sought was an "infernal bondage."

"Eloquent and witty JOHN LYLY" was called, by a bookseller who collected his plays some forty years or more after their appearance, "the only rare poet of that time, the witty, comical, facetiously quick, and unparalleled John Lyly, Master of Arts." Such is the puff-direct of a title-page of 1632. The title-pages and the puffs have parted company in our day, to carry on their partnership in separate fields, and sometimes looking loftily on each other, as if they were not twin-brothers. He it was that took hold of the somewhat battered and clipped but sterling coin of our old language, and, minting it afresh, with a very sufficient quantity of alloy, produced a sparkling currency, the very counters of court compliment. It was truly said, and it was meant for praise, that he "hath stepped one step further than any either before or since he first began the witty discourse of his 'Euphues."† According

hath one of the best wits in England."‡ The little man knew

"What hell it is in suing long to bide." He had been a dreary time waiting and petitioning for the place of Master of the Revels. In his own peculiar phraseology he tells the Queen, in one of his petitions,"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 middest of your sunshine, of your most gracious aspect, hath thrust a stone between the shells to rate me alive that only live on dead hopes."§ Drayton described him truly, at a later period, when poetry had asserted her proper rights, as

"Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, Playing with words, and idle similies."

Lyly was undoubtedly the predecessor of Shakspere. His 'Alexander and Campaspe,' acted not only at Court but at the Blackfriars, was printed as early as 1584. It is not easy to understand how a popular audience could ever have sat it out; but the incomprehensible and the excellent are sometimes confounded. What should we think of a prologue, addressed to a gaping pit, and hushing the cracking of nuts into silence, which commences thus? "They that fear the stinging of wasps make fans of peacocks' tails, whose spots are like eyes: and Lepidus, which could not sleep for the chattering of birds, set up a beast whose head was like a dragon: and we, which stand in awe of report, are compelled to set before our owl Pallas's shield, thinking by her virtue to cover the other's deformity." Shakspere was a naturalist, and a true one; but Lyly was the more inventive, for he made his own natural history. The epilogue to the same play informs the confiding audience that "Where the rainbow toucheth the tree no caterpillars will hang on the leaves; where the glow-worm creepeth in the night no adder will go in the day." 'Alexander and Campaspe' is in prose. The action is little,

Apology of Pierce Pennilesse."
Petition to the Queen in the Harleian MSS.: Dods-

D

hard one. Without the vices of men of higher talent, he had to endure poverty and disappointment, doomed to spin his "pithy sentences and gallant tropes" for a thankless Court and a neglectful multitude; and, with a tearful merriment, writing to his Queen, "In all humility I intreat that I may dedicate to your Sacred Majesty Lyly de Tristibus, wherein shall be seen patience, labours, and misfortunes."

THOMAS KYD was the author of 'Jeronimo,' which men long held as the only best and judiciously penned play in Europe."* Wherever performed originally, the principal character was adapted to an actor of very small stature. It is not impossible that a precocious boy, one of the children of

"Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid;
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves and team of sparrows;
Loses them, too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how), Paul's, might have filled the character.

With these the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes,
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this to thee?

What shall, alas! become of me?"

The dramatic system of Lyly is a thing unique in its kind. He never attempts to deal with realities. He revels in pastoral and mythological subjects. He makes his gods and goddesses, his nymphs and shepherds, all speak a language which common mortals would disdain to use. In prose or in verse, they are all the cleverest of the clever. They are, one and all, passionless beings, with no voice but that of their showman. But it is easy to see how a man of considerable talent would hold such things to be the proper refinements to banish for ever the vulgarities of the old comedy. He had not the genius to discover that the highest drama was essentially for the people; and that its foundations must rest upon the elemental properties of mankind, whether to produce tears or laughter that should com

Jeronimo the Spanish marshal, and Balthazar the Prince of Portugal, thus exchange compliments :

"Balthazar. Thou inch of Spain,

Thou man, from thy hose downward scarce so
much,

Thou very little longer than thy beard,
Speak not such big words; they'll throw thee

down,

Little Jeronimo: words greater than thyself!
It must be.

Jeronimo. And thou, long thing of Por-
tugal, why not?

Thou that art full as tall
As an English gallows, upper beam and all,
Devourer of apparel, thou huge swallower,
My hose will scarce make thee a standing
collar:

What! have I almost quited you?"

There can be no doubt that 'Jeronimo,' whatever remodelling it may have received,

belongs essentially to the early stage. There is killing beyond all reasonable measure. Lorenzo kills Pedro, and Alexandro kills Rogero: Andrea is also killed, but he does not so readily quit the scene. After a decent

mand a lasting and universal sympathy. interval, occupied by talk and fighting, the

Lyly came too early, or too late, to gather any enduring fame; and he lived to see a new race of writers, and one towering above the rest, who cleared the stage of his tinselled puppets, and filled the scene with noble copies of humanity. His fate was a

man comes again in the shape of his own ghost, according to the following stagedirection: "Enter two, dragging of ensigns; then the funeral of Andrea: next

* Jonson's Induction to 'Cynthia's Revels.'

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