contain the names of various plays represented at court; and it is to be noted, that it was certainly the practice at a later date, and it was probably the practice at the time to which we are now adverting, to select for performance before the Queen such pieces as were most in favor with public audiences: consequently the mention of a few of the titles of productions represented before Elizabeth at Greenwich, Whitehall, Richmond, or Nonesuch, will show the character of the popular performances of the day. We derive the following names from Mr. P. Cunningham's "Extracts from the Revels' Accounts," printed for the Shakespeare Society: Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes. Mutius Scævola, Portio and Demorantes. Rape of the second Helen. The History of Error. These are only a few out of many dramas, establishing the multiplicity of sources to which the poets of the time resorted. wreck in the same place; then, we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while, in the meantime, two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field? Now, of time they are much more liberal; for ordinary it is that two young princes fall in love: after many traverses she is got with child, delivered of a fair boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to get another child, and all this in two hours' space: which how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine, and art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified." Having thus briefly adverted to the nature and character of dramatic representations from the earliest times to the year 1583, and having established that our romantic drama was of ancient origin, it is necessary shortly to describe the circumstances under which plays were at different early periods performed. There were no regular theatres, or buildings permanently constructed for the purposes of the drama, until after 1575. Miracle-plays were sometimes exhibited in churches and in the halls of corporations, but more frequently upon moveable stages, or Upon the manner in which the materials thus scaffolds, erected in the open air. Moral plays were procured were then handled, we have several con- subsequently performed under nearly similar circumtemporaneous authorities. George Whetstone, (an stances, excepting that a practice had grown up, author who has principally acquired celebrity by among the nobility and wealthier gentry, of having writing an earlier drama upon the incidents employed dramatic entertainments at particular seasons in by Shakespeare in his "Measure for Measure") in their own residences. These were sometimes per the dedication of his "Promos and Cassandra," formed by a company of actors retained in the famgives a compendious description of the nature of ily, and sometimes by itinerant players, who bepopular theatrical representations in 1578. "The longed to large towns, or who called themselves the Englishman," he remarks, "in this quality is most servants of members of the aristocracy. In 14 Eliz. vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds an act was passed allowing strolling actors to perhis work on impossibilities; then, in three hours, runs form, if licensed by some baron or nobleman of he through the world, marries, gets children, makes higher degree, but subjecting all others to the penchildren men, men to conquer kingdoms, murder alties inflicted upon vagrants. Therefore, although monsters, and bringeth gods from heaven, and many companies of players went round the country, fetcheth devils from hell: and, that which is worst, and acted as the servants of some of the nobility, their ground is not so unperfect as their working they had no legislative protection until 1572. It is indiscreet; not weighing, so the people laugh, though a singular fact, that the earliest known company of they laugh them for their follies to scorn. Many players, travelling under the name and patronage times, to make mirth, they make a clown companion of one of the nobility, was that of the Duke of with a king in their grave councils they allow the Gloucester, afterward Richard III. Henry VII. advice of fools; yea, they use one order of speech had two distinct bodies of "actors of interludes" for all persons, a gross indecorum." This, it will be in his pay, and henceforward the profession of a perceived, is an accurate account of the ordinary player became well understood and recognised. In license taken in our romantic drama, and of the the later part of the reign of Henry VII., the playreliance of poets, long before the time of Shake-ers of the Dukes of Norfolk and Buckingham, and speare, upon the imaginations of their auditors. Sir Philip Sidney is believed to have written his "Apology of Poetry" in 1583, and we have already referred to it in connection with "Gorboduc." His observations, upon the general character of dramatic representations in his time, throw much light on the state of the stage a very few years before Shakespeare is supposed to have quitted Stratford-upon-Avon, and attached himself to a theatrical company. "Our tragedies and comedies," says Sidney, "are not without cause cried out against, observing neither rules of honest civility, nor skilful poetry. But if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all the rest, where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player, when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden: by and by we hear news of a ship of the Earls of Arundel, Oxford, and Northumber land, performed at court. About this period, and somewhat earlier, we also hear of companies attached to particular places; and in coeval records we read of the players of York, Coventry, Lavenham, Wycombe, Chester, Manningtree, Evesham, Mile-end, Kingston, &c. In the reign of Henry VIII., and perhaps in that of his predecessor, the gentlemen and singing-boys of the Chapel Royal were employed to act plays and interludes before the court; and afterwards the children of Westminster, St. Paul's, and Windsor, under their several masters, are not unfrequently mentioned in the household books of the palace, and in the accounts of the department of the revels. In 1514 the king added a new company to the dramatic retinue of the court, besides the two companies which had been paid by his father, and the associations of theatrical children. In fact, at this period dramatic entertaiments, masques disguisings, connection with theatrical representations at the opening of the reign of Elizabeth. At first plays were discountenanced, but by degrees they were permitted; and the queen seems at all times to have derived much pleasure from the services of her own players, those of her nobility, and of the minster, St. Paul's, Windsor, and the Chapel Royal. In 1572 the act was passed (which was renewed with additional force in 1597) to restrain the number of itinerant performers. Two years afterward, the Earl of Leicester obtained from Elizabeth a patent under the great seal, to enable his players, James Burbage, John Perkyn, John Lanham, William Johnson, and Robert Wilson, to perform "comedies, tragedies, interludes, and stage-plays,' in any part of the kingdom, with the exception of the metropolis. and revels of every description, were carried to a costly excess. Henry VIII. raised the sum, until then paid for a play, from £6 13s. 4d. to £10. William Cornyshe, the master of the children of the chapel, on one occasion was paid no less a sum than £200, in the money of that time, by way of reward; and John Heywood, the author of inter-different companies of children belonging to Westludes before mentioned, who was also a player upon the virginals, had a salary of £20 per annum, in addition to his other emoluments. During seasons of festivity a Lord of Misrule was regularly appointed to superintend the sports, and he also was separately and liberally remunerated. The example of the court was followed by the courtiers, and the companies of theatrical retainers, in the pay, or acting in various parts of the kingdom under the names of particular noblemen, became extremely numerous. Religious houses gave them encouragement, and even assisted in the getting up and representation of the performances, especially shortly before the dissolution of the monasteries. In 1543 was passed a statute, rendered necessary by the polemical character of some of the dramas publicly represented, although not many years before, the king had himself encouraged such perform ances at court, by being present at a play in which Luther and his wife were ridiculed. The act prohibits "ballads, plays, rhymes, songs, and other fantasies" of a religious or doctrinal tendency, but at the same time carefully provides, that the clauses shall not extend to 66 songs, plays, and interludes" which had for object "the rebuking and reproaching of vices, and the setting forth of virtue; so always the said songs, plays, or interludes meddle not with the interpretations of Scripture." The permanent office of Master of the Revels, for the superintendence of all dramatic performances, was created in 1546, and Sir Thomas Cawarden was appointed to it with an annual salary of £10. A person of the name of John Bernard was made Clerk of the Revels, with an allowance of 8d. per day and livery. It is a remarkable point, established by Mr. Tytler, that Henry VIII. was not yet buried, and Bishop Gardiner and his parishioners were about to sing a dirge for his soul, when the actors of the Earl of Oxford posted bills for the performance of a play in Southwark. This was long before the construction of any regular theatre on the Bankside; but it shows at how early a date that part of the town was selected for such exhibitions. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen succeeded in excluding the players from the strict boundaries of the city, but they were not able to shut them out of the liberties; and it is not to be forgotten that James Burbage and his associates were supported by court favor generally, and by the powerful patronage of the Earl of Leicester in particular. Accordingly, in the year after they had obtained their patent, James Burbage and his fellows took a large house in the precinct of the dissolved monastery of the Black Friars, and converted it into a theatre. This was accomplished in 1576, and it is the first time we hear of any building set apart for theatrical representations. Until then the various companies of actors had been obliged to content themselves with churches, halls, with temporary erections in the streets, or with inn yards, in which they raised a stage, the spectators standing below, or occupying the galleries that surrounded the open space. Just about the same period two other edifices were built for the exhibition of plays in Shoreditch, one of which was called "The Curtain," and the other "The Theatre." Both these are mentioned as in existence and operation in 1577. Thus we see that two buildings close to the walls of the city, and a third within a privileged district in the city, all expressly applied to the purpose of stage-plays, were in use almost immediately after the date of the Patent to the players of the Earl of Leicester. It is extremely likely, though we have no distinct evidence of the fact, that one or more play-houses were opened about the same time in Southwark ; and we know that the Rose theatre was standing there not many years afterward. John Stockwood, a puritanical preacher, published a sermon in 1578, in which he asserted that there were "eight ordinary places" in and near London for dramatic exhibitions, and that the united profits were not less than £2000 a year, equal to £12,000 of money now. Another divine, of the name of White, equally opposed to such performances, preaching in 1576, called the play-houses at that time erected, 44 Very soon after Edward VI. came to the throne, severe measures were taken to restrain not only dramatic performances, but the publication of dramas. Playing and printing plays were first entirely suspended; then, the companies of noblemen were allowed to perform, but not without special authority; and, finally, the sign manual, or the names of six of the Privy Council were required to their licenses. The objection stated was, that the plays had a political, not a polemical, sumptuous theatres." No doubt, the puritanical purpose. One of the first acts of Mary's govern- zeal of these divines had been excited by the openment, was to issue a proclamation to put a stop to ing of the Blackfriars, the Curtain, and the Theatre, the performance of interludes calculated to advance in 1576 and 1577, for the exclusive purpose of the the principles of the Reformation; and we may be drama; and the five additional places, where plays, sure that the play ordered at the coronation of the according to Stockwood, were acted before 1578, queen was of a contrary description. It appears on were most likely a play-house at Newington-butts, other authorities, that for two years there was an or inn-yards, converted occasionally into theatres. entire cessation of public dramatic performances; We have thus brought our sketch of dramatic perbut in this reign the representation of the old Ro-formances and performers down to about the same man Catholic miracle plays was partially and authoritatively revived. It is not necessary to detail the proceedings in period, the year 1583. We propose to continue it to 1590, and to assume that as the period not, of course, when Shakespeare first joined a theatrical company, but when he began writing original pieces | for the stage. This is a matter which is more distinctly considered in the biography of the poet; but it is necessary here to fix upon some date to which we are to extend our introductory account of the progress and condition of theatrical affairs. What we have still to offer will apply to the seven years from 1583 to 1590. The accounts of the revels at court about this period afford us little information, and indeed for several years, when such entertainments were certainly required by the Queen, we are without any details either of the pieces performed, or of the cost of preparation. We have such particulars for the years 1581, 1582, 1584, and 1587, but for the intermediate years they are wanting. The accounts of 1581, 1582, and 1584, give us the following names of dramatic performances of various kinds exhibited before the Queen: A comedy called Delight. A comedy of Beauty and Love and Fortune, This list of dramas (the accounts mention that others were acted without supplying their titles) establishes that moral plays had not yet been excluded. The "Game of the Cards" is expressly called "a comedy or moral," in the accounts of 1582; and we may not unreasonably suppose that "Delight," and "Beauty and Housewifry," were of the same class. "The Story of Pompey," and Agamemnon and Ulysses," were evidently performances founded upon ancient history, and such may have been the case with "The History of Telomo." "Love and Fortune" has been called "the play of Fortune" in the account of 1573; and we may feel assured that "Ariodante and Genevora" was the story told by Ariosto, which also forms part of the plot of "Much Ado about Nothing." "The History of Ferrar" was doubtless "The History of Error" of the account of 1577, the clerk having written the title by his ear; and we may reasonably suspect that "Felix and Philiomena" was the tale of Felix and Felismena, narrated in the "Diana" of Montemayor. It is thus evident, that the Master of the Revels and the actors exerted themselves to furnish variety for the entertainment of the Queen and her nobility; but we still see no trace ("Gorboduc" excepted) of any play at court, the materials for which were obtained from the English Chronicles. It is very certain, however, that anterior to 1588 such pieces had been written, and acted before public audiences; but those who catered for the court in these matters might not consider it expedient to exhibit, in the presence of the Queen, any play which involved the actions or conduct of her predecessors. About this date the number of companies of actors performing publicly in and near London seems to have been very considerable. A person, who calls himself " a soldier," writing to Secretary Walsingham, in January, 1586, tells him, that " every day in the week the players' bills are set up in sundry places of the city," and after mentioning the actors of the Queen, the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Oxford, and the Lord Admiral, he goes on to state that not fewer than two hundred persons, thus retained and employed, strutted in their silks about the streets. It may be doubted whether this statement is much exaggerated, recollecting the many noblemen who had players acting under their names at this date, and that each company consisted probably of eight or ten performers. On the same authority we learn that theatrical representations upon the Sabbath had been forbidden; but this restriction does not seem to have been imposed without a considerable struggle. Before 1581 the Privy Council had issued an order upon the subject, but it was disregarded in some of the suburbs of London; and it was not until after a fatal exhibition of bear-baiting at Paris Garden, upon Sunday, June 13, 1583, when many persons were killed and wounded by the falling of a scaffold, that the practice of playing, as well as bear-baiting, on the Sabbath was at all generally checked. In 1586, as far as we can judge from the information that has come down to our day, the order which had been issued in this respect was pretty strictly enforced. At this period, and afterwards, plays were not unfrequently played at court on Sunday, and the chief difficulty therefore seems to have been to induce the Privy Council to act with energy against similar performances in public theatres. The annual official statement of the Master of the Revels merely tells us, in general terms, that between Christmas, 1586, and Shrovetide, 1587, "seven plays, besides feats of activity, and other shows by the children of Paul's, her Majesty's servants, and the gentlemen of Gray's Inn," were prepared and represented before the Queen at Greenwich. No names of plays are furnished, but in 1587 was printed a tragedy, under the title of "The Misfortunes of Arthur," which purports to have been acted by some of the members of Gray's Inn before the Queen, on Feb. 28, 1587: this, in fact, must be the very production stated in the revels' accounts to have been got up and performed by these parties; and it requires notice, not merely for its own intrinsic excellence as a drama, but because, in point of date, it is the second play founded upon English history represented at court, as well as the second original theatrical production in blank-verse that has been preserved. The example, in this particular, had been set, as we have already shown, in "Gorbodue," fifteen years before; and it is probable, that in that interval not a few of the serious compositions exhibited at court were in blank-verse, but it had not yet been used on any of our public stages. The main body of "The Misfortunes of Arthur" was the authorship of Thomas Hughes, a member of Gray's Inn; but some speeches and two choruses (which are in rhyme) were added by William Fulbecke and Francis Flower, while no less a man than Lord Bacon assisted Christopher Yelverton and John Lancaster in the preparation of the dumbshows. Hughes evidently took "Gorboduc" as his model, both in subject and style, and, like Sackville and Norton, he adopted the form of the Greek and Roman drama, and adhered more strictly than his predecessors to the unities of time and place. The author possessed a very bold and vigorous genius; his characters are strongly drawn, and the language they employ is consistent with their situations and habits; his blank-verse, both in force and variety, is superior to that of either Sackville or Norton. It is very clear, that up to the year 1580, about which date Gosson published his "Plays confuted in Five Actions," dramatic performances on the public stages of London were sometimes in prose, but more constantly in rhyme. In his "School of Abuse," 1579, Gosson speaks of "two prose books played at the Bell Savage ;" but in his "Plays confuted" he tells us, that "poets send their verses to the stage upon such feet as continually are rolled up | as Nash and Greene ridicule; but we are to recollect that Marlowe was at this time endeavoring to wean audiences from the "jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits," and that, in order to satisfy the ear for the loss of the jingle, he was obliged to give what Nash calls "the swelling bombast of bragging blank-verse." This consideration will of itself account for breaches of a more correct taste to be found in "Tamburlaine." In the Prologue, besides what we have already quoted, Marlowe tells the audience to expect "high astounding terms," and he did not disappoint expectation. Perhaps the better to reconcile the ordinary frequenters of public theatres to the change, he inserted various scenes of low comedy, which the printer of the edition in 1590 thought fit to exclude, as "digressing, and far unmeet for the matter." Marlowe likewise be remembered, that having accomplished his object of substituting blank-verse by the first part of "Tamburlaine," he did not, even in the second part, think it necessary by any means so frequently to introduce occasional rhymes. In those plays which there is ground for believing to be the first works of Shakespeare, couplets, and even stanzas, are more fre in rhyme." With one or two exceptions, all the plays publicly acted, of a date anterior to 1590, that have come down to us, are either in prose or in rhyme. The case seems to have been different, as already remarked, with some of the court-shows and private entertainments; but we are now adverting to the pieces represented at such places as the theatre, the Curtain, Blackfriars, and in inn-yards adapted temporarily to dramatic amusements, to which the public was indiscriminately admitted. The earliest work, in which the employment of blank verse for the purpose of the common stage is noticed, is an epistle by Thomas Nash introducing to the world his friend Robert Greene's "Menaphon," in 1587; there, in reference to "vain-glorious tragedians," he says, that they are "mounted on the stage of arrogance," and that they "think to out-brave better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank-sprinkled couplets here and there, although it is to verse." He afterwards talks of the "drumming decasyllibon" they employed, and ridicules them for reposing eternity in the mouth of a player." This question is farther illustrated by a production by Greene, published in the next year, "Perimedes, the Blacksmith," from which it is evident that Nash had an individual allusion in what he had said in 1587. Greene fixes on the author of the tragedy of "Tam-quent than in any of the surviving productions of burlaine," whom he accuses of "setting the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse," and who, it should seem, had somewhere accused Greene of not being able to write it. 66 We learn from various authorities, that Christopher Marlowe was the author of "Tamburlaine the Great," a dramatic work of the highest celebrity and popularity, printed as early as 1590, and affording the first known instance of the use of blankverse in a public theatre: the title-page of the edition, 1590, states, that it had been "sundry times shown upon stages in the city of London." In the prologue the author claims to have introduced a new form of composition: 66 "From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, Accordingly, nearly the whole drama, consisting of That the attempt was viewed with jealousy, there can be no doubt, after what we have quoted from Nash and Greene. It is most likely that Greene, who was older than Nash, had previously written various dramas in rhyme; and the bold experiment of Marlowe having been instantly successful, Greene was obliged to abandon his old course, and his extant plays are all in blank-verse. Nash, who had attacked Marlowe in 1587, before 1593 (when Marlowe was killed in an affray arising out of an amorous intrigue) had joined him in the production of a blank-verse tragedy on the story of Dido, which was printed in 1594. It has been objected to "Tamburlaine," that it is written in a turgid and ambitious style, such indeed Marlowe. This circumstance is, perhaps, in part to be accounted for by the fact (as far as we may so call it) that our great poet retained in some of his performances portions of old rhyming dramas, which he altered and adapted to the stage; but in early plays, which are to be looked upon as entirely his own, Shakespeare appears to have deemed rhyme more necessary to satisfy the ear of his auditory than Marlowe held it when he wrote his "Tamburlaine the Great." As the first employment of blank-verse upon the public stage by Marlowe is a matter of much importance, in relation to the history of our more ancient drama, and to the subsequent adoption of that form of composition by Shakespeare, we ought not to dismiss it without affording a single specimen from "Tamburlaine the Great." The following is a portion of a speech by the hero to Zenocrate, when first he meets and sues to her: "Disdains Zenocrate to live with me, Or you, my lords, to be my followers? Which with thy beauty will be soon dissolv'd." Nash having alluded to "Tamburlaine" in 1587, it is evident that it could hardly have been written later than 1585 or 1586, which is about the period when it has been generally, and with much appearance of probability, supposed that Shakespeare arrived in London. In considering the state of the stage just before our great dramatist became a writer for it, it is clearly, therefore, necessary to advert briefly to the other works of Marlowe, observing in addition, with reference to "Tamburlaine," that it is an historical drama, in which not a single unity is TO THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. regarded; time, place, and action, are equally set at defiance, and the scene shifts at once to or from Persia, Scythia, Georgia, and Morocco, as best suited the purpose of the poet. | xiii possible, as he was ten years older than Shake- Marlowe was also, most likely, the author of a play in which the Priest of the Sun was prominent, as Greene mentions it with "Tamburlaine" in 1588, but no such piece is now known: he, however, wrote "The Tragical History of the Life and Death "The Massacre at Paris," of Doctor Faustus," "The rich Jew of Malta," and an English historical play, called "The troublesome Reign and lamenta ble Death of Edward the Second," besides aiding Nash in "Dido Queen of Carthage," as already mentioned. If they were not all of them of a date anterior to any of Shakespeare's original works, they were written by a man who had set the example of the employment of blank-verse upon the public stage, and perhaps of the historical and romantic drama in all its leading features and characteristics His "Edward the Second" affords sufficient proof of both these points: the versification displays, though not perhaps in the same abundance, nearly all the excellences of Shakespeare; and in point of construction, as well as in interest, it bears a strong resemblance to the "Richard the Second" of the great dramatist. It is impossible to read the one without being reminded of the other, and we can have no difficulty in assigning "Edward the Sec-resentation of the state in which it came from the ond" to an anterior period. The same remark as to date may be made upon the plays which came from the pen of Robert Greene, who died in September, 1592, when Shakespeare was rising into notice, and exciting the jealousy of dramatists who had previously furnished the public stages. This jealousy broke out on the part of Greene in, if not before, 1592, (in which year his "Groatsworth of Wit," a posthumous work, was published by his contemporary, Henry Chettle,) when he complained that Shakespeare had "beautified himself" with the feathers of others: he alluded, as we apprehend, to the manner in which Shakespeare had availed himself of the two parts of the Contention between the Houses, York and Lancaster," in the authorship of which there is much reason to suppose Greene had been concerned. "The True Tragedy of Richard III." is a drama of about the same period, which has come down to us in a much mere imperfect state, the original manuscript having been obviously very corrupt. It was printed in 1594, and Shakespeare, finding it in the possession of the company to which he was attached, probably had no scruple in constructing his "Richard the Third" of some of its rude materials. It seems not unlikely that Robert Greene, and perhaps some other popular dramatists of his day, had been engaged upon "The True Tragedy of Richard III." Another of the dramatists who is entitled to be considered a predecessor of Shakespeare was Thomas Lodge. Only one play in which he was unassisted has descended to us, and it bears the title of "The Wounds of Civil War, lively set forth in the True Tragedies of Marius and Scylla." It was not printed until 1594, but the author began to write as early as 1580, and we may sufely consider his tragedy anterior to the original works of Shakespeare: it was probably written about 1587 or 1588, as a not very successful experiment in blank-verse, in imitation of that style which Marlowe had at once rendered popular. As regards the dates when his pieces came from the press, John Lyly is entitled to earlier notice than Greene, Lodge, or even Marlowe; and it is George Peele was about the same age as Lyly; of "The Arraignment of Paris," printed in 1584, but his theatrical productions (with the exception and written for the court) are of a different description, having been intended for exhibition at the or"famous chronicle," and most of the incidents dinary theatres. His "Edward the First" he calls are derived from history: it is, in fact, one of our earliest plays founded upon English annals. It was printed in 1593 and in 1599, but with so many imperfections, that we cannot accept it as any fair rep a His author's pen. The most remarkable feature belong- |