semblance which renders a caricature most effective: "I was altogether unacquainted with the man, and never once saluted him by name: but who in London hath not heard of his dissolute and licentious living; his fond disguising of a Master of Art with ruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more unseemly company; his vainglorious and Thrasonical braving; his fripperly extemporizing and Tarletonizing; his apish counterfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy; his fine cozening of jugglers, and finer juggling with cozeners; his villainous cogging and foisting; his monstrous swearing and horrible forswearing; his impious profaning of sacred texts; his other scandalous and blasphemous raving; his riotous and outrageous surfeiting; his continual shifting of lodgings; his plausible mustering and banqueting of roysterly acquaintance at his first coming; his beggarly departing in every hostess's debt; his infamous resorting to the Bankside, Shoreditch, Southwark, and other filthy haunts; his obscure lurking in basest corners; his pawning of his sword, cloak, and what not, when money came short; his impudent pamphleting, fantastical interluding, and desperate libelling, when other cozening shifts failed?"* This is the bitterness of 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." as reading "Greene's works over and over." Some of these tales are full of genius, illregulated no doubt, but so pregnant with invention, that Shakspere in the height of his fame did not disdain to avail himself of the stories of his early contemporary. The dramatic works of Greene were probably much more numerous than the few which have come down to us; and the personal character of the man is not unaptly represented in these productions. They exhibit great pomp and force of language; passages which degenerate into pure bombast from their ambitious attempts to display the power of words; slight discrimination of character; incoherence of incident; and an entire absence of that judgment which results in harmony and proportion. His extravagant pomp of language was the characteristic of all the writers of the early stage except Shakspere; and equally so were those attempts to be humorous which sank into the lowest buffoonery. In the lyrical pieces which are scattered up and down Greene's novels, there is occasionally a quiet beauty which exhibits the real depths of the man's genius. Amidst all his imperfections of character, that genius is fully acknowledged by the best of his contemporaries. THOMAS LODGE was Greene's senior in age, and greatly his superior in conduct. He 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 i London,' one of the most extraordinary pro- | the heavenly Bull by the dewlap." 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."t 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 bidden paths. He plunged into the haunts | to Nash, "he is but a little fellow, but he * Epistle prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon.' † Ibid. tensions was come to rescue the stage from the dominion of feebleness and buffoonery : the courtiers of Tamburlaine says, "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, bear Old Atlas' burthen. Pale of complexion, wrought in him with Making it dance with wanton majesty. 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 :"- Where'er I come the fatal sisters sweat, ing wounds, Been oft resolv'd in bloody, purple showers, 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, 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 for * Prologue to Tamburlaine the Great.' + Meres. § Peele. Tamburlaine, Part I., Act 11. + Greene. Jonson. **Tamburlaine, Part I., Act v ++ Ibid. Part I., Act II. of 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 enemies. 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 * Meres, Webbe's Discourse of English Poetry, 1586. 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.; Dodsley's Old Plays, 1825, vol. it. D the talk is everything. Hephæstion exhorts | hard one. Without the vices of men of Alexander against the danger of love, in a 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 Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how), Paul's, might have filled the character. With these the crystal of his brow, The dramatic system of Lyly is a thing 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 Thou very little longer than thy beard, down, Little Jeronimo: words greater than thyself! Jeronimo. And thou, long thing of Por- Thou that art full as tall What! have I almost quited you?" not the genius to discover that the highest belongs essentially to the early stage. There 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 command a lasting and universal sympathy. 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 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 interval, occupied by talk and fighting, the man comes again in the shape of his own ghost, according to the following stage direction: "Enter two, dragging of en signs; then the funeral of Andrea: next * Jonson's Induction to 'Cynthia's Revels.' |