fancy wanders to the King of Cilicia. She tempts him in vain with blandishment and song. She faints when Rasni enters, and awakes from her fainting to false protestation of her love for him. Then

“Enter the Priests of the Sun, with mitres on their heads, carrying fire in their hands." Their worship is disturbed: “A hand from out a cloud threatens with a burning sword." The Magi explain it away : "These are but clammy exhalations," etc. Then Rasni, satisfied, prepares a stately feast

"Where Alvida and I, in pearl and gold,
Will quaff unto our nobles richest wine,

In spite of fortune, fate, or destiny.

[Exeunt.

"Oseas. Woe to the trains of women's foolish lust,

In wedlock rites that yield but little trust,

That vow to one, yet common be to all!
Take warning, wantons; pride will have a fall.
Woe to the land where warnings profit nought !
Who say that Nature God's decrees hath wrought;
Who build on fate, and leave the corner-stone,
The God of gods, sweet Christ, the only one.
If such escapes, O London, reign in thee,
Repent, for why, each sin shall punished be:
Repent, amend, repent, the hour is nigh;

Defer not time; who knows when he shall die?"

Then follows a clown scene opened by one masking in devil's attire, who lies in wait to terrify Adam, the smith's man. When Adam enters with the smith's wife, she flies, but Adam remains for a comic dialogue, which ends with his beating the devil. He does this when he has offered, as a smith, to shoe him, and taking his foot in his hand found he was no devil, because he had not a hoof.

Then we see Thrasybulus and Alcon driven by want and injustice to live by theft. The usurer buys stolen goods of Alcon, and bids him be diligent in getting more. All is thus at the worst, when Jonas enters with his cry, "Repent, ye men of Nineveh! Repent!" Oseas is taken away by the Angel. The act ends with a banquet in the palace of Rasni, upon which Adam the smith intrudes for a boon, and at which he is entertained as a causer of mirth.

Then follows the Fifth Act, one lesson of repentance, written with a profound religious earnestness, into the very midst of which a clown scene of broad farce is thrust.

The misdoers all repent in sackcloth and ashes. Fast has been ordained. Searchers are about to see that no manner of food is taken

during the appointed days; they come upon Adam, the smith's man, who has beef and beer in his wide slops. As the fast is to last five days more, he agrees to be hanged rather than endure it; but he will eat up all his meat before he goes.

Repentance brings forgiveness down to all the sinners. At the close of the play Jonas is left alone upon the stage, and thus he speaks his last word to England and to London :

"You islanders, on whom the milder air

Doth sweetly breathe the balm of kind increase,
Whose lands are fattened with the dew of heaven,
And made more fruitful than Actæan plains;
You whom delicious pleasures dandle soft,
Whose eyes are blinded with security,
Unmask yourselves, cast error clean aside!
O London, maiden of the mistress-isle,
Wrapt in the folds and swathing-clouts of shame,
In thee more sins than Nineveh contains !
Contempt of God, despight of reverend age,
Neglect of law, desire to wrong the poor,
Corruption, whoredom, drunkenness, and pride.
Swoln are thy brows with impudence and shame,
O proud adulterous glory of the west !
Thy neighbours burn, yet dost thou fear no fire;
Thy preachers cry, yet dost thou stop thine ears;
The 'larum rings, yet sleepest thou secure.
London, awake, for fear the Lord do frown:
I set a Looking-Glass before thine eyes.
Oh turn, oh turn, with weeping to the Lord,
And think the prayers and virtues of thy Queen
Defer the plague which otherwise would fall!
Repent, O London ! lest, for thine offence,
Thy Shepherd fail, whom mighty God preserve,
That she may bide the pillar of his Church
Against the storms of Romish Anti-Christ!
The hand of mercy overshade her head,

And let all faithful subjects say, Amen!

[Exit.'

Whereupon there arose, it may be, an emphatic "Amen " from the playhouse benches; for although many precisians stayed away, a playhouse audience under Elizabeth represented more nearly than it has done at any later time the

whole people of England. And so we have had here the pulpit on the stage, with Hosea and Jonah for the preachers. The reference to "Romish Antichrist" does not imply necessarily that the play was written before Lodge had become Roman Catholic. If Greene wrote it, and the players wished for it, to please their public and themselves, the opinion of a recusant joint-author would have no weight.

"David and

Bethsabe."

Another example of direct association of the Bible with this teaching by dramatic shows of life, is George Peele's "David and Bethsabe," which has come down to us with its text little impaired, and shows the grace of style that was in all Peele's earlier work.

"David and Bethsabe " was probably one of Peele's earlier works, although not printed until 1599. The grace of style shown in "The Arraignment of Paris" here enters into the treatment of a theme that gives room for pathos and tenderness, for the alarms of battle dear to an Elizabethan audience, and for true utterances of human passion. Peele, at his best, writes English into music, and he is at his best in "David and Bethsabe," a tale of which the action is continued to the death of Absalom. The play is simply a dramatic poet's paraphrase of the eleventh and next following chapters of the Second Book of Samuel, as far as the eighth verse of the nineteenth chapter. Its temper is expressed in the closing lines of the Prologue

"Of this sweet poet, Jove's musician,
And of his beauteous son I press to sing.
Then help, divine Adonai, to conduct
Upon the wings of my well-tempered verse
The hearers' minds above the towers of heaven,
And guide them so in this thrice-haughty flight,
Their mounting feathers scorch not with the fire
That none can temper but thy holy hand :
To Thee for succour flies my feeble Muse,
And at thy feet her iron pen doth use."

But Peele, like Greene, yielded in time to the temptations with which the young Elizabethan dramatists were all beset. Lodge passed through them unhurt, and, having left the stage, ended a long life as a prosperous physician. Shakespeare stood firm, without denying any of its dues to kindly fellowship. What are now the hospitalities of home have taken the place that among young wits of Elizabeth's time could be represented only by companionships of the tavern. The tavern was a resort not only of wits; and jovialities of tavern life were beset inevitably with temptations to all forms of sensual excess. Peele married early, he had daughters, and a life of constant care. He may have been among those who, like Greene, were at last caught by the spells of Circe. The only note we have of his death is from Francis Meres, who said in his "Palladis Tamia," published in 1598, "As Anacreon died by the pot, so George Peele by the pox." One never knows how much there is of plain truth in this kind of English; but, when we have allowed for what Meres took to be style, there seems to remain the fact that Peele yielded, more or less, to the temptations that beset his calling.

Of Peele
Himself.

In January, 1596, pressed by sickness and poverty, Peele sent a letter to Lord Burghley with his "Tale of Troy," published six years before, in avowed hope of a return gift that would help his housekeeping. He presumed, he said, "a scholar of so mean merit," to present his wisdom with it "by this simple messenger, my eldest daughter and necessity's servant. Long sickness having so enfeebled me maketh bashfulness almost become impudency," and then followed significant allusions to a passage in the Prologue to the Satires of Persius that made Hunger a Master of Arts. At some unknown date between the writing of that letter in January, 1596, and the writing of "Palladis Tamia" by Francis Meres in 1598, Peele died. There was a play of Peele's printed in 1593 as "The

Famous Chronicle of King Edward the first, sirnamed Edward Longshankes with his returne from the holy land.

Also the life of Lleuellen rebell in Wales. Lastly the sinking of Queene Elinor,

Peele's
"Edward I."

who sunck at Charing crosse, and rose again at Pottershith, now named Queenhith." This play, commonly known as "Longshanks," was popular; and, after allowance for unusual mangling of the text under all the disadvantages of careless printing from a rough copy that, however obtained, was confused and inaccurate, we cannot think the play into a form that would have any artistic unity. It is full of life and action. The audience was kept alive with drumming, trumpeting, and calls to arms; pomps, processions, and clown-play. Edward I. has Wales and Scotland in his hands-Llewelyn and Baliol. He has in his hands also a proud, beautiful, and cruel Spanish queen, Elinor, to whom he is devoted, and who is poetical in her devotion to fine clothes.

Llewelyn yields Wales for another Elinor, with whom he goes into the woods. Then he and his followers, all dressed in green, play humours of " Robin of the Wood, alias Robin Hood," with Llewelyn's Elinor for a Maid Marion. A brawny Friar Hugh ap David, stout in play with a stick that he calls Richard, stands for Friar Tuck.

When Queen Elinor is about to become the mother of a Prince of Wales, there are twistings of her right hand that express a great longing to box her husband's ears. King Edward comes in good humour to take the buffet, counting it good omen of a jolly boy. When the prince is born, the Welshmen, become loyal, present him with their national coat of frieze, which gives a shock to the proud mother's notions of fine clothing

"Her boy shall glister like the summer's sun,
In robes as rich as Jove when he triumphs.
His pap should be of precious nectar made,