titled Euphues and his England) by consulting the caricature of it which Scott has introduced in the character of the courtier Sir Piercy Shafton in The Monastery. In fact the Euphuism of Lyly was the somewhat exaggerated wit of the style of Sydney, still further outré. Lyly was a man of considerable classical acquirements, and had been educated at Oxford. His lyrics are extremely graceful and harmonious, and even as a playwright his merits are rather lyrical than dramatic. GEORGE PEELE, like Lyly, had received a liberal education at Oxford. He was one of Shakspeare's fellow-actors and fellow-shareholders in the Blackfriars Theater. He had also been employed by the City of London in composing and preparing those spectacles and shows which formed so great a portion of ancient civic festivity. His earliest work, The Arraignment of Paris, was printed anonymously in 1584. His most celebrated dramatic works were the Davia and Bethsabe, and Absolom, in which there are great richness and beauty of language, and occasional indications of a high order of pathetic and elevated emotion; but his versification, though sweet, has little variety; and the luxurious and sensuous descriptions in which Peele most delighted are so numerous that they become rather tiresome in the end. It should be remarked that this poet was the first to give an example of that peculiar kind of historical play in which Shakspeare was afterward so consummate a master. His Edward I. is, though monotonous, declamatory and stiff, in some sense the forerunner of such works as Richard II., Richard III., or Henry V. THOMAS KYD who lived about the same time, is principally noticeable as having probably been the original author of that famous play upon which so many dramatists tried their hands in the innumerable recastings which it received, and which have caused it to be ascribed in succession to almost the whole body of the elder Elizabethan dramatists. Of this piece, in spite of its occasional extravagance, even the greatest of these authors might have been proud. It is called Hieronymo, the Spanish Tragedy. Its popularity was very great, and furnishes incessant allusions to the playwrights of the day. The subject is exceedingly gloomy, bloody and dolorous; but the pictures of grief, despair, revenge, and madness with which it abounds, not only testify high dramatic power of conception, but must have been, as we know they were, exceedingly favorable for displaying the powers of a great tragic actor. THOMAS NASH and ROBERT GREENE, both Cambridge men, both sharp and mercenary satirists, and both alike in the profligacy of their lives and the misery of their deaths, though they may have eked out their income by occasionally writing for the stage, were in reality rather pasquinaders and pamphleteers than dramatists-condottieri of the press, shamelessly advertising the services of their ready and biting pen to any person or any cause that would pay them. They were both unquestionably men of rare powers-Nash probably the better man and the abler writer of the two. Nash is famous for the bitter controversy he maintained with the learned Gabriel Harvey, whom he has caricatured and attacked in numerous pamphlets, in a manner equally humorous and severe. He was concerned with other dramatists in the production of a piece entitled Summer's Last Will and Testament, and in a satirical comedy, The Isle of Dogs, which drew down upon him the anger of the Government, for we know that he was imprisoned for some time in consequence. Greene was, like Nash, the author of a multitude of tracts and pamphlets on the most miscellaneous subjects. Sometimes they were tales, often translated or expanded from the Italian novelist; sometimes amusing exposures of the various arts of conycatching, i. e. cheating and swindling, practiced at that time in London, and in which, it is to be feared, Greene was personally not unversed; sometimes moral confessions, like Nash's Pierce Pennilesse, his Supplication to the Devil, or Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, purporting to be a warning to others against the consequences of unbridled passions. Some of these confessions are exceedingly pathetic, and would be more so could the reader divest himself of a lurking suspicion that the whole is often a mere trick to catch a penny. The popularity of these tracts, we know was very great. The only dramatic work we need specify of Greene's was George-a-Greene, the legend of an old English popular hero, recounted with much occasional vivacity and humor. THOMAS LODGE (1556-1625 ?) is described by Mr. Collier as "second to Kyd in vigor and boldness of conception; but as a drawer of character, so essential a part of dramatic poetry, he unquestionably has the advantage." His principal work is a tragedy entitled The Hounds of Civil War, lively set forth in the Two Tragedies of Marius and Sylla (1594). He also composed, in conjunction with Greene, A Looking-Glass for London and England, the object of which is a defense of the stage against the Puritanical party. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. creation of Mephistopheles, nor anything like the pathetic episode of Margaret. The witch element, which reigns so wildly and picturesquely in the German poem, is here entirely absent. But on the other hand, there is certainly no passage in the tragedy of Goethe in which terror, despair and remorse are painted with such a powerful hand, as the great closing scene of Marlowe's piece, when Faustus, after the twenty-four years of sensual pleasure which were stipulated in his pact with the Evil One, is waiting for the inevitable arrival of the Fiend to claim his bargain. This is truly dramatic, and is assuredly one of the most impressive scenes that ever was placed upon the stage. The tragedy of the Jew of Malta, though inferior to Faustus, is characterized by similar merits and defects. The hero, Barabbas, is the type of the Jew as he appeared to the rude and bigoted imaginations of the fifteenth century a monster, half terrific, half ridiculous, impossibly rich, inconceivably bloodthirsty, cunning, and revengeful, the bugbear of an age of ignorance and persecution. Though the exploits of cruelty and retaliation upon his Christian oppressors make Barabbas a fantastic personage, the intense expression of his rage, his triumph, and his despair give occasion for many noble bursts of Marlowe's powerful declamation. The tragedy of Edward II., which was the last of this great poet's works, shows that in some departments of his art, and particularly in that of moving terror and pity, he might, had he lived, have become no insignificant rival of Shakspeare himself. The scene of the assassination of the unhappy king is worked up to a very lofty pitch of tragic pathos. Charles Lamb observes that "the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakspeare scarce improved in his Richard II.; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted." Marlowe was the morning star that heralded the rising of the great dramatic Sun, But by far the most powerful genius among the dramatic poets who immediately preceded Shakspeare was CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1563 ?-1593). This man, if destiny had granted to him a longer life, which might have enabled him to correct the luxuriance of an ardent temperament and an unregulated imagination, might have left works that would have placed him very high among the foremost poets of his age. As it is, his remains strike us with as much regret as admiration-regret that such rare powers should have been so irregularly cultivated. Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1563, and was educated at Cambridge. On leaving the University he joined a troop of actors, and is recorded to have broken his leg upon the stage. His mode of life was remarkable for vice and debauchery, even in a profession so little scrupulous; and he was strongly suspected by his contemporaries of having been little better than an Atheist. His career was as short as it was disgraceful; he was stabbed in the head with his own dagger, which he had drawn in a disreputable scuffle with a disreputable antagonist, in a disreputable place: and he died of this wound at the age of thirty. His works are not numerous, but they are strongly distinguished from those of preceding and contemporary dramatists by an air of astonishing power, energy, and elevation-an elevation, it is true, which is sometimes exaggerated into bombast, and an energy which occasionally degenerates into extravagance. His first work was the tragedy of Tamburlaine, and the rants of the declamation in this piece furnished rich materials for satire and caricature; but in spite of this bombast the piece contains many passages of great power and beauty. Marlowe's best work is incontestably the drama of Faustus, founded upon the very same popular legend which Goethe adopted as the groundwork of his tragedy; but the point of view taken by Marlowe is far simpler than that of Goethe; and the English poem contains no trace of the profound self-questioning of the German hero, of the extraordinary We pass over the names of a number of comparatively insignificant authors who appeared about this time, whose dramatic works have not yet been collected and printed. They in some instances, according to the custom of that age, either composed plays in partnership, or revised and altered plays written before, so that it is exceedingly difficult to assign to each playwright his just share of merit. merce he appears to have added that of glover or manufacturer of the many articles of dress that were then made of leather. He unquestionably belonged to the burgher or shopkeeper class, but had married an heiress of ancient and even knightly descent, Isabella Arden or Arderne, the scion of a family which had figured in the courtly and warlike annals of preceding reigns; and thus in the veins of the great poet of humanity ran blood derived from both the aristocratic and popular portions of the community. Isabella Arderne had brought her husband in dowry a small freehold property; but this acquisition, though apparently advantageous, seems to have been ultimately the cause of misfortune to the family; for John Shakspeare, who had originally been a thriving and prosperous tradesman, gradually descended, during the boyhood and youth of his illustrious son, to a condition of comparative indigence. This is to be attributed, as far as may be guessed, to his acquisition of land having tempted him to engage, without experience, in agricultural pursuits, which ended disastrously in his being obliged at different times to mortgage and sell not only his farm, but even one of the houses in Stratford of which he had been owner. He at last retained nothing but that small but now venerable dwelling, consecrated to all future ages by being the spot where the greatest of poets first saw the light, and which will ever be carefully preserved as the shrine of England's greatest glory. That John Shakspeare SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTH-PLACE AT STRATFORD. had been originally in flourishing circumstances is amply proved by his having long been one of the Aldermen of Stratford, and having served the office of Bailiff or Mayor in 1568. His distresses appear to have become severe in 1579, when he was excused by his brethren of the municipality from contributing a small sum at a time of public calamity, an exemption grounded, probably, on his poverty. He also, most likely from the same cause, was obliged to resign his post of Alderman; and seems at the end of his life to have been entirely dependent upon the assistance of his son, when the latter, as he speedily did, raised himself to a position of competence, and even of affluence. These details will not be regarded as trivial by any one who will reflect how closely connected they are with the important and much-agitated question of the kind and degree of education enjoyed by William Shakspeare-a question to the very deepest import in fixing our estimate of his works and our appreciation of his genius. That he could have derived even the most elementary instruction from his parents is impossible; for we know that neither John nor Isabella Shakspeare could write-an accomplishment, however, which, it should be remarked, was comparatively rare in Elizabeth's reign, in even a higher class of society than the one to which such persons belonged. But we are not to conclude from this, as is done by those who think to elevate the genius of the great poet by denying him all the advantages of regular instruction, that the poverty and ignorance of his parents necessarily deprived him of education. There existed at that time, and there exists at the present day, in the borough of Stratford, one of those endowed "free grammar-schools" of which so many country towns in England offer examples, where the pious charity of past ages has provided for the gratuitous education of posterity. In these establishments provision is always made for the children of the burgesses of the town; and to the old grammar-school in Stratford, founded in the reign of Edward IV., it is quite certain that John Shakspeare had the right, as Alderman and Past Bailiff of the town, of sending his son without expense. It is inconceivable that he should have neglected to avail himself of so useful a privilege; and that William enjoyed, at all events, the advantage of such elementary instruction as was offered by the grammar-schools of those days is rendered more than probable, not only by the extensive though irregular reading of which his works give evidence, but by one among the vague traditions which have descended to us. This legend relates that the poet had been "in his youth a schoolmaster in the country "—a fact which cannot, of course, be strictly true, as we know at what an early age he left his native town to enter upon his career of actor and author in the Globe Theater in London. It may, however, be the misrepresentation of fact, namely, that after passing through the lower classes of Stratford Grammar-School he may have been employed, as a lad of his aptitude would not improbably have been, in assisting the master in instructing the junior pupils. SHAKSPEARE'S EARLY LIFE AND MAR- Among the various legends connected with the realize so great a man as Shakspeare, we are naturally reluctant to renounce our belief in so striking a story; but, though the deer-stealing story may very possibly be not altogether devoid of foundation, the romantic incidents connected with his leaving Stratford and embracing the theatrical career are to be explained in a different and much less improbable manner. It is quite certain that he left his native town in 1586, at the age of twenty-two; and it is quite possible that the distressed situation in which his parents then were, and, what is no less likely, the imprudence and irregularity of his own youthful conduct, may have contributed to render a longer stay in Stratford disagreeable, if not impossible. One event, which had occurred about four years before, most probably contributed more powerfully to send him forth "to seek his fortune" than the ire of Sir Thomas Lucy, or the perhaps not very enviable reputation which his boyish escapades had probably acquired among the steady burgesses of the little town, who probably shook their heads at the young scapegrace, prophesying that he would never come to any good. This event was his marriage, contracted when he was only eighteen, in 1582, with Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a small farmer, little above the rank of a laboring man, who resided at the hamlet of Shottery, about two miles from Stratford. Anne Hathaway was seven years and a half older than her boy-husband; and the marriage appears to have been pressed on with eager haste, probably by the relatives of the bride, who may have forced young Shakspeare to heal a breach which he had made in the young woman's reputation. There is still in existence the undertaking, legally signed by the parties, giving Shakspeare, then a minor, the power of contracting marriage. The whole of this important episode in the poet's life bears strong traces of a not over-reputable family mystery. The fruit of this union was first a daughter, Susanna, the poet's favorite child, born in 1583, and in the following year twins, Judith and Hamnet. The latter, the poet's only son, died at twelve years of age; his two daughters survived. him. After these he had no more children; and there are several facts which seem to point, significantly though obscurely, to the conclusion that the married life of the poet was not marked by that love and confidence which is the usual result of well-considered and well-assorted unions. Thus, though Shakspeare passed the most active portion of his life, from 1586 to 1611, almost constantly in London, there is evidence to show that his wife, during the whole of that long period, never resided with her husband, but with his parents in Stratford, and therefore could only have seen him on the occasions, probably pretty frequent, of his flying visits to his native place. In the great poet's will, too, which invaluable document gives us so many details concerning his private life, Mrs. Shakspeare appears to be treated in a manner very different from that which a beloved and respected wife might have expected from so generous and gentle a character as William Shakspeare's unquestionably was. To his wife the poet leaves only "his second-best bed, with the hangings "-a very slighting and inconsiderable legacy when we reflect that he died comparatively rich.* Concerning the boyhood and youth of the great painter of nature and of man we know little or nothing. It is more than probable that his education was neglected, his passions strong, and his conduct far from regular: yet we may in some sort rejoice at the destiny which allowed him to draw his earliest impressions of nature from the calm and graceful scenery of Warwickshire, and placed him in a situation to study the passions and characters of men among the unsophisticated inhabitants of a small town. Perhaps, too, the very imperfection of his intellectual training was an advantage to his genius, in allowing his gigantic powers to develop themselves, untrammeled by the bonds of regular education. It is not improbable that at one period of his youth he had been placed in the office of some country practitioner of the law in all his works he shows an extraordinary knowledge of the technical language of that profession, and frequently draws his illustrations from its vocabulary. Besides, such terms as he employs he almost always employs correctly; which would hardly be possible but to one who had been professionally versed in them: add to which in one of the few ill-natured and satirical allusions made to Shakspeare by his contemporary rivals, there is a distinct indication of the poet's having in his youth exercised "the trade of Noverint," that is, the occupation of a lawyer's clerk; this * It should be remembered, however, that, as Shakspeare's property was chiefly freehold, his wife was entitled to dower. |