following year both books were burned on account of their licentiousness by the order of the Arch bishop of Canterbury, though Marston had professed a reformatory purpose in both. In 1599 he turned to play-writing; but the turgid style of his Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge brought down on him the ridicule of Jonson in The Poetaster. The Malcontent was written during a period of reconciliation with Jonson, and in 1605 Marston collaborated with him and Chapman in Eastward Ho, a comedy containing a passage reflecting on the Scots, which landed all three dramatists in prison. Marston gave up play-writing in 1607, and later became a clergyman. From 1616 to 1631 he held the living of Christ Church, Hampshire, and in 1634 died in London, and was buried in the Temple Church.

The extreme tendency to fustian which Jonson had attacked in Marston's early work no longer appears to any great extent in The Malcontent, and the play exhibits favorably Marston's capacity for the creation of well marked character and effective stage situations. An attempt has recently been made to show that he exerted a considerable influence on Shakespeare, especially in Hamlet.

THOMAS HEYWOOD

The early records of this, the most prolific of the dramatic writers of the time, are extremely scanty. The date of his birth is conjecturally placed about 1575, and he refers to himself as a native of Lincolnshire, and at one time resident at Cambridge. He begins to figure in Henslowe's accounts in 1526, and he appears as a member of the Lord Admiral's Company in 1598. He began writing plays with The Four Prentices of London, and in the Address to the Reader prefixed to his English Traveller (1633) he claims to have written or had a “main finger" in two hundred and twenty plays. Outside of the drama, he tried his hand at almost all sorts of literature, and the quality of his work is extremely uneven. He was still alive in 1648, but probably died soon thereafter.

Heywood's characteristic power of elicting powerful emotions by a sympathetic treatment of everyday conditions and events, is well illustrated by the play here printed. While much is perfunctory in his work, one constantly finds evidences of a genuine and pious spirit moved by a keen appreci ation of the pathos of human life.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT

Francis Beaumont was born 1584, the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace-Dien, Leicestershire, a judge of the common pleas. He was educated at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford. which he entered in 1597. On the death of his father in 1598, he left the university without a degree, and in 1600 became a member of the Inner Temple. The law, however, if he ever really studied it, was soon abandoned for poetry; and Beaumont became an intimate of Jonson and his circle at the Mer maid. His collaboration with Fletcher began early, and seems to have been brought about by personal preference, not, like most collaboration at that time, by the exigencies of the theatrical manager. Aubrey has preserved the tradition of their domestic intimacy and similarity of tastes. Their jointproduction seems to have begun about 1605, and there is no evidence that Beaumont wrote any playa after 1612. About 1613 he married, and three years later died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He had achieved a high contemporary reputation for his non-dramatic poetry, but he survives as a dramatist.

JOHN FLETCHER

John Fletcher came of a family which has given many distinguished names to English literature. His father was Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London. Giles Fletcher the elder was his uncle, and Giles and Phineas Fletcher his cousins. The dramatist was born at Rye, Sussex, in 1579, and entered Benet College (now Corpus Christi), Cambridge, in 1591; but of the details of his life from this time till th appearance as a dramatist little is known. He collaborated with Beaumont from about 1606 till 1612; and, after Beaumont's withdrawal, with Shakespeare, Jonson, Massinger, and others. He died of the plague in 1625.

The men who laid the foundations of the Elizabethan drama were generally of somewhat obscure origin; and though some of them had been educated at the universities, they were all poor. Beaumont and Fletcher were the first recruits to the profession of play-writing who came of distinguished families and habitually moved in wealthy circles; and this social environment was early suggested a an explanation of their power of representing naturally the conversation of high-born ladies and gentlemen. The general style of their plays has been thus admirably characterized by Thorndike: "Their plots, largely invented, are ingenious and complicated. They deal with royal or noble persons. with heroic actions, and are placed in foreign localities. The conquests, usurpations, and passions that ruin kingdoms are their themes, there are no battles or pageants, and the action is usually confined to the rooms of the palace or its immediate neighborhood. Usually contrasting a story of

gross sensual passion with one of idyllic love, they introduce a great variety of incidents, and aim at constant but varied excitement. The plays depend for interest not on their observation or revelation of human nature, or the development of character, but on the variety of situations, the clever construction that holds the interest through one suspense to another up to the unravelling at the very end, and on the naturalness, felicity, and vigor of the poetry."

JOHN WEBSTER

The dates 1580-1625 are usually given as conjectures for Webster's birth and death, exact information being entirely lacking. His father was a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company, of which the son was likewise a freeman; but this does not imply that he was actually a tailor. In 1602, we find him collaborating with seven others in the production of four plays for Henslowe, and the rest of his biography consists in the discussion of the dates of his works.

Webster's tragedies come towards the close of the great series of tragedies of blood and revenge in which The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet are landmarks, but before decadence can fairly be said to have set in. Webster, indeed, loads his scene with horrors almost past the point which modern taste can bear; but the intensity of his dramatic situations, and his superb power of flashing in a single line a light into the recesses of the human heart at the crises of supreme emotion, redeem him from mere sensationalism, and place his best plays in the first rank of dramatic writing.

THOMAS MIDDLETON

The date of Middleton's birth is unknown, but is conjecturally placed about 1570. He came of good family, and his writings indicate that he received a good education. We know, however, nothing about his early training before his entering Gray's Inn, probably in 1593. His plays abound in allusions to law and pictures of lawyers.

The earliest evidence of his writing for the stage is in the date of The Old Law, which was probably composed by Middleton about 1599, and later revised by Massinger and W. Rowley. He was much employed in the writing of pageants and masques, especially by the city, and in 1621 he obtained the post of city chronologer. In 1624 he gave expression to the popular hatred of Spain in his allegorical play, A Game at Chess, which scored a great success, but which was ultimately suppressed at the instigation of the Spanish ambassador, and led to a warrant for Middleton's arrest. He died in 1627. In his comedies Middleton shows himself a keen observer of contemporary life and manners, and few writers of the time have left a more vivacious picture of the London of James I. "His later plays," says Herford, "show more concentrated as well as more versatile power. His habitual occupation with depraved types becomes an artistic method; he creates characters which fascinate without making the smallest appeal to sympathy, tragedy which harrows without rousing either pity or terror, and language which disdains charm, but penetrates by remorseless veracity and by touches of strange and sudden power."

WILLIAM ROWLEY

William Rowley was born about 1585. He was an actor as well as a dramatist, and is sometimes confused with two other actors, Ralph and Samuel Rowley. In his earlier years he wrote some non-dramatic verse, mostly of a conventional kind. His most important work was done in collaboration with Middleton, with whom he worked from 1614, but he had many other literary partners. His verse is apt to be rough and irregular, his humor broad and rollicking rather than fine, his serious scenes tending to extravagance and bombast. But his constant employment to coöperate with greater men, or revise their work, points to a general serviceableness and a capacity for theatrical effectiveness. His death is conjecturally placed about 1642.

PHILIP MASSINGER

Philip Massinger was born at Salisbury, in November, 1583. His father was in the service of the Earls of Pembroke, and it has been conjectured that the future dramatist was named after the Countess's brother, Sir Philip Sidney. He entered St. Alban Hall, Oxford, in 1602, and left four years later without a degree, having, according to Wood, "applied his mind more to poetry and romances than to logic and philosophy." On coming to London he seems to have turned at once to writing for the stage; and, after Beaumont retired from play-writing, Massinger became Fletcher's chief partner and warm friend. All Massinger's relations with his fellow-authors of which we have record seem to have been pleasant; and the impression of his personality which one derives from his work is that of a dignified, hard-working, and conscientious man. He seems to have been much interested in public affairs, and he at times came into collision with the authorities on account of the introduction into

** megt dat conventional; few of them are read ruia in ess chiedy romantic comedies and come1721 CORK & De Wet a uis predecessors, and he reproduced many 1. nace es va s de baal à «INIDer zomie gift, and his power in tragedy may be Stres we: Than with any it as fellow-playwrights, one feels the damage are in the aerogement à mis phase of the drama that originality of APPLE LIKk Ipeshe. That he is so wie to amuse and to thrill with the old instruaad he should not be denied the possession of

Yang Ware le Lagage soucites at magma al U18 2013.