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ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

1562-1595.

[BORN at Horsham St. Faith's, Norfolk, about 1562; entered the Society of Jesus, 1578, at Rome; accompanied Father Garnet to England, was captured; and was executed at Tyburn, 1594-5. St. Peter's Complaint, with other Poems, was first published in 1595; Maeoniae in the same year; Marie Magdalen's Funerall Teares, 1609.]

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[IN a tract dated 1637, Dekker speaks of himself as a man of threescore years. This is the only clue to his age that has been discovered. He was born in London, and apparently lived all his life there, as playwright, pamphleteer, and miscellaneous literary hack. His plays were published separately at various dates from 1600 to 1636. He frequently worked with other dramatists, Webster, Middleton, Massinger, Ford, etc.]

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CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

1564-1593.

[CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE was born at Canterbury, in February, 1564, and educated at the King's School, in his birth-place, and at Benet (Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge. He was killed in a tavern brawl, and was buried at Deptford, June 1, 1593. The dates and order of his works are somewhat uncertain. Of his plays, the first, Tamburlaine the Great, a tragedy in two parts, must have been acted in public by 1587. It was followed by The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta (probably in 1589 or 1590), The Massacre at Paris (not earlier than the end of 1589), Edward II., and The Tragedy of Queen Dido, which was probably left unfinished at Marlowe's death, and completed by Nash. Another play, Lust's Dominion, was for some time wrongly attributed to Marlowe; but, in return for this injustice, the probability that he may have had at least a share in Shakespeares's 2 and 3 Henry VI., or in the plays on which those dramas were based, is now rather widely admitted. Of his poems, the translations of Ovid's Amores and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia are of uncertain date. The Passionate Shepherd to his Love was first printed complete in England's Helicon, 1600, but is quoted in The few of Malta. Hero and Leander was left unfinished at Marlowe's death; Chapman completed it, dividing Marlowe's fragment into two parts, which now form the first two Sestiads of the poem.]

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD

TO HIS LOVE.

COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, or hill, or field,
Or woods and steepy mountains yield;
Where we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And then a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Slippers, lined choicely for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

Thy silver dishes, for thy meat,
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall, on an ivory table, be
Prepared each day for thee and me.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Come live with me and be my love.

ANSWER BY SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

IF all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love.

But time drives flocks from field to fold, When rivers rage and rocks grow cold, Then Philomel becometh dumb,

And age complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten;
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move,
To come to thee and be thy love.

What should we talk of dainties, then,
Of better meat than's fit for men?
These are but vain: that's only good
Which God hath bless'd and sent for food.

But could youth last, and love still breed, Had joys no date, nor age no need; Then those delights my mind might move, To live with thee and be thy love.

WILLIAM BROWNE.

1588-1643.

[WILLIAM BROWNE was born at Tavistock in 1588, and died, probably, in the year 1643. He went to Oxford as a member of Exeter College; entered the Inner Temple in 1612; published his elegy on Prince Henry in a volume along with another by his friend Christopher Brooke in 1613; the first book of his Britannia's Pastorals in the same year; his Shepherd's Pipe in 1614; and the second book of his Pastorals in 1616, the year of the death of Shakespeare. The third book of his Britannia's Pastorals was unknown till 1851, when it was published for the Percy Society from a manuscript in the Cathedral Library at Salisbury. The most complete edition of Browne is that published in the Roxburghe Library by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt in 1868.]

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[SHIRLEY was born in London about the year 1596, and lived through the Civil War and Commonwealth into the Restoration, dying in 1667. His copious dramatic activity began in 1625, in which year he produced the comedy entitled Love's Tricks. Before this, in 1618, he had published an imitation of Venus and Adonis under the title of Echo. His plays were produced in rapid succession up to 1641. In 1646 he published a volume of poems, chiefly erotic, and two small volumes of Masques, etc., in 1653 and 1659.]

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BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

1579-1625.

[JOHN FLETCHER was born in December, 1579, at Rye in Sussex, where his father, who ultimately became Bishop of London, was minister. He was admitted pensioner at Benet College, Cambridge, in 1591; and little is known of his life between this date and the period of his connection with Beaumont.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT was the son of Sir F. Beaumont, of Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire, and was born at that place, probably in 1585. He resided for a short time at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford, and was entered of the Inner Temple in 1600.

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Not many years after this we may suppose the friendship between the two poets to have begun. "They lived together on the Bank side," in Southwark, not far from the Play-house" (the Globe), and wrote for the theatre. The most celebrated of their joint productions were produced probably between 1608 and 1611. But the common life which has been described by Aubrey, and is itself almost a poem (if partly a comic one), must have been disturbed in 1513, when Beaumont married. In the spring of 1616 he died. So far as is known, Fletcher remained single till his death, which took place in August, 1625.]

FROM "THE MAID'S TRAGEDY."

[By Beaumont and Fletcher.]

LAY a garland on my hearse
Of the dismal yew;
Maidens, willow branches bear;
Say, I died true.

My love was false, but I was firm
From my hour of birth.
Upon my buried body lie
Lightly, gentle earth!

LINES ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER,

[By Beaumont.]

MORTALITY, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones;
Here they lie had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their
hands;

Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust

They preach, "In greatness is no trust."
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest royall'st seed
That the earth did e'er suck in,

Since the first man died for sin:

Here the bones of birth have cried, "Though gods they were, as men they died":

Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings: Here's a world of pomp and state, Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

FROM "THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS." [By Fletcher.]

I.

THE SATYR.

HERE be grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet's good;

Sweeter yet did never crown

The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown

Than the squirrel's teeth that crack

them;

Deign, O fairest fair, to take them!

For these black-eyed Dryope

Hath oftentimes commanded me
With my clasped knee to climb:
See how well the lusty time

Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread.
Here be berries for a queen,
Some be red, some be green;
These are of that luscious meat
The great god Pan himself doth eat:
All these, and what the woods can yield,
The hanging mountain or the field,

I freely offer, and ere long

Will bring you more, more sweet and

strong;

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