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 compositions, which intermixed the blank verse introduced on the Stage by Gorboduc with prose, and freely combined or placed side by side tragic and comic ingredients, we have but few distinct examples. One of these is The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, known to have been acted before 1588; in which both the verse and the prose are frequently of a very rude sort, while it is neither divided into acts or scenes nor, in general, constructed with any measure of dramatic skill. But its vigour and freshness are considerable, and in many passages we recognize familiar situations and favourite figures in later masterpieces of the English historical drama. The second is The Troublesome Raigne of King John, in two parts (printed in 1591), an epical narrative transferred to the stage, neither a didactic effort like Bale’s, nor a living drama like Shakespeare’s, but a far from contemptible treatment of its historical theme. The True Chronicle History of King Leir (acted in 1593) in form resembles the above, though it is not properly on a national subject (its story is taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth); but, with all its defects, it seems only to await the touch of the master’s hand to become a tragedy of supreme effectiveness. A yet further step was taken in the Tragedy of Sir Thomas More (c. 1590)—in which Shakespeare’s hand has been thought traceable, and which deserves its designation of “tragedy” not so much on account of the relative nearness of the historical subject to the date of its dramatic treatment, as because of the tragic responsibility of character here already clearly worked out.

Such had been the beginnings of tragedy in England up to the time when the genius of English dramatists was impelled by the spirit that dominates a great creative epoch of literature to seize the form ready to their hands. The birth of English comedy, at all times a process of less labour and eased by an always ready popular responsiveness to the most tentative efforts of art, had slightly preceded that of her serious sister. As has been seen from the brief review given above of the early history of the English academical drama, isolated Latin comedies had been performed in the original or in English versions as early as the reign of Henry VIII.—perhaps even earlier; while the morality and its direct descendant, the interlude, pointed the way towards popular treatment in the vernacular of actions and characters equally well suited for the diversion of Roman, Italian and English audiences. Thus there was no innovation in the adaptation by (q.v.) of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus under the title of Ralph Roister Doister, which may claim to be the earliest extant English comedy. It has a genuinely popular vein of humour, and the names fit the characters after a fashion familiar to the moralities. The second English comedy—in the opinion of at least one high authority our first—is Misogonus, which was certainly written as early as 1560. Its scene is laid in Italy; but the Vice, commonly called “Cacurgus,” is both by himself and others frequently designated as “Will Summer,” in allusion to Henry VIII.’s celebrated jester. Gammer Gurton’s Needle, long regarded as the earliest of all English comedies, was printed in 1575, as acted “not long ago in Christ’s College, Cambridge.” Its authorship was till recently attributed to John Still (afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells), who was a resident M.A. at Christ’s, when a play was performed there in 1566. But the evidence of his authorship is inconclusive, and the play “made by Mr. S., Master of Arts,” may be by William Stevenson, or by some other contemporary. This comedy is slighter in plot and coarser in diction than Ralph Roister Doister, but by no means unamusing.

In the main, however, early English comedy, while occasionally introducing characters and scenes of thoroughly native origin and complexion (e.g. Grim, the Collier of Croydon), was content to borrow its themes from classical or Italian sources. G. Gascoigne’s Supposes (acted at Gray’s Inn in 1566) is a translation of I Suppositi of Ariosto, remarkable for the flowing facility of its prose. While, on the one hand, the mixture of tragic with comic motives, which was to become so distinctive a feature of the Elizabethan drama, was already leading in the direction of tragi-comedy, the precedent of the Italian pastoral drama encouraged the introduction of figures and stories derived from classical mythology; and the rapid and diversified influence of Italian comedy, in close touch with Italian prose fiction, seemed likely to affect and quicken continuously the growth of the lighter branch of the English drama.

Out of such promises as these the glories of English drama were ripened by the warmth and light of the great Elizabethan age—of which the beginnings may fairly be reckoned from the third decennium of the reign to which it owes its name. The queen’s steady love of dramatic entertainments could not of itself have led, though it undoubtedly contributed, to such a result. Against the attacks which a nascent puritanism was already directing against the stage by the hands of J. Northbrooke, the repentant playwright S. Gosson, P. Stubbes, and others, were to be set not only the frugal favour of royalty and the more liberal patronage of great nobles, but the fact that literary authorities were already weighing the endeavours of the English drama in the balance of respectful criticism, and that in the abstract at least the claims of both tragedy and comedy were upheld by those who shrank from the desipience of idle pastimes. It is noticeable that this period in the history of the English theatre coincides with the beginning of the remarkable series of visits made to Germany by companies of English comedians, which did not come to an end till the period immediately before the Thirty Years’ War, and were occasionally resumed after its close. As at home the popularity of the stage increased, the functions of playwright and actor, whether combined or not, began to hold out a reasonable promise of personal gain. Nor, above all, was that higher impulse which leads men of talent and genius to attempt forms of art in harmony with the tastes and tendencies of their times wanting to the group of writers who can be remembered by no nobler name than that of Shakespeare’s predecessors.

The lives of all of these are, of course, in part contemporary with the life of Shakespeare himself; nor was there any substantial difference in the circumstances under which most of them, and he, led their lives as dramatic authors. A distinction was manifestly kept up between poets and playwrights. Of the contempt entertained for the actor’s profession some fell to the share of the dramatist; “even Lodge,” says C. M. Ingleby, “who had indeed never trod the stage, but had written several plays, and had no reason to be ashamed of his antecedents, speaks of the vocation of the play-maker as sharing the odium attaching to the actor.” Among the dramatists themselves good fellowship and literary partnership only at times asserted themselves as stronger than the tendency to mutual jealousy and abuse; of all chapters of dramatic history, the annals of the early Elizabethan stage perhaps least resemble those of Arcadia.

Moreover, the theatre had hardly found its strength as a powerful element in the national life, when it was involved in a bitter controversy, with which it had originally no connexion, on behalf of an ally whose sympathy with it can only have been of a very limited kind. The Marprelate controversy, into which, among leading playwrights, Lyly and Nashe were drawn, in 1589 led to a stoppage