NORTON-EDWARDS-WHETSTONE. Tragedy, of later origin than comedy, came directly from the more elevated portions of the moral plays, and from the pure models of Greece and Rome. The earliest known pecimen of English tragedy is entitled Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex,' performed before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall, by members of the Inner Temple, on the 18th January 1561-2. It seems to be settled by Mr. Collier that the first three acts of this tragedy were written by THOMAS NORTON, and the last two by SACKVILLE, LORD BUCKHURST, of whose poetical work, the Induction,' we have already spoken. Norton was a barrister, and associated with Sternbold and Hopkins in the translation of the Psalms. The tragedy of 'Gorboduc' is founded on a fabulous incident in early British history, and is full of slaughter and civil broils. It is written, however, in regular blank verse, consists of five acts, and observes some of the more useful rules of the classic drama of antiquity, to which it bears resemblance in the introduction of a chorus-that is, a person or persons whose business it was to intersperse the play with moral observations and inferences, referring to the action of the drama, and generally expressed in lyrical stanzas. It may occasion some surprise that the first English tragedy should contain lines like the following: ACASTUS. Your grace should now, in these grave years of yours, How short they be, how fading here in earth: Of nothing sure save only of the death, To whom both man and all the world doth owe Than as the naked hand whose stroke assays The armed breast where force doth light in vain. GORBODUC. Many can yield right sage and grave advice Of patient sprite to others wrapped in woe, And can in speech both rule and conquer kind, Or this passage on the ravages of civil war : Whilom in wealth and fame, shall thus be torn, This is the end when in fond princes' hearts Flattery prevails and sage rede [counsel] hath no place. To make new heirs unto the royal crown. Thus wreak the gods, when that the mother's wrath To work revenge and judge their prince's fact. In this style the tragedy is constructed. There is a want of passion and incident, but still proof of the great advance of the drama. Not long after the appearance of Gorboduc,' both tragedies and comedies had become common. RICHARD EDWARDS (circa 15231566), a member of Lincoln's Inn, enjoyed a high reputation as a dramatic poet. His classical drama of Damon and Fythias,' and another play by him, entitled 'Palamon and Arcite,' were both performed before Queen Elizabeth-he latter at Oxford in 1566, when the crowd was so great that part of the building fell, and several persons were killed. This drama was inferior to Gorboduc,' inasmuch as it carried an admixture of vulgar comedy, and was written in rhyme. In the same year, two plays, respectively styled the 'Supposes' and 'Jocasta '-the one, a comedy adapted from Ariosto; the other, a tragedy from Euripides-were acted in Gray's Inn Hall. A tragedy, called 'Tancred and Gismunda,' composed by five members of the Inner Temple, and presented there before the queen in 1568, was the first English play taken from an Italian novel. Various dramatic pieces now followed; and between the years 1568 and 1580, no less than fifty-two dramas were acted at court under the superintendence of the Master of the Revels. Under the date of 1578, we have the play of 'i'romes and Cassandra,' by GEORGE WHETSTONE, on which Shakspeare founded his 'Measure for Measure.' Whetstone was an extensive miscellaneous writer, who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century, but neither the time nor the place of his birth is known. He is said to have been an unsuccessful courtier, then a soldier, serving with Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen, afterwards a farmer, next engaged in Sir Humphry Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland in 1583, and finally a littérateur, seizing upon every passing event as a subject for his pen. His 'Promos and Cassandra' was a translation, with pieces of poetry interspersed, of one of the 'Hundred Tales' of the Italian novelist, Giraldo Cinthio. In February 1502, mention is made of an historical play under the name of Julius Cæsar. Other historical plays were also produced; and the 'Troublesome Reign of King John,' the Famous Victories of Henry V.,' and the Chronicle History of Leir, King of England,' formed the quarry from which Shakspeare constructed his dramas on the same events. The first regularly licensed theatre in London was opened at Blackfriars in 1576; and in ten years it is mentioned by Secretary Walsingham that there were two hundred players in and near the metropolis. This was probably an exaggeration; but it is certain there were five public theatres open about the commencement of Shakspeare's career, 6 and several private or select establishments. Curiosity is naturally excited to learn something of the structure and appearance of the buildings in which his immortal dramas first saw the light, and where he unwillingly made himself a ' motley to the view,' in his character of actor. The theatres were constructed of wood, of a circular form, open to the weather, excepting over the stage, which was covered with a thatched roof. Outside, on the roof, a flag was hoisted during the time of performance, which commenced at three o'clock, at the third sounding or flourish of trumpets. The cavaliers and fair dames of the court of Elizabeth sat in boxes below the gallery, or were accommodated with stools on the stage, where some of the young gallants also threw themselves at length on the rush-strewn floor, while their pages handed them pipes and tobacco, then a fashionable and highly prized luxury. The middle classes were crowded in the pit, or yard, which was not furnished with seats. Movable scenery was first introduced by Davenant after the Restoration,* but rude imitations of towers, woods, animals, or furniture, served to illustrate the scene. To point out the place of action, a board containing the name, painted or written in large letters, was hung out during the performance. Anciently, an allegorical exhibition, called the Dumb Show,' was exhibited before every act, and gave an outline of the action or circumstances to follow. Shakspeare has preserved this peculiarity in the play acted before the king and queen in 'Hamlet; but he never employs it in his own dramas. Such machinery, indeed, would be incompatible with the increased action and business of the stage, when the miracle plays had given place to the 'pomp and circumstance' of historical dramas, and the bustling liveliness of comedy. The chorus was longer retained, and appears in Marlowe's 'Faustus' and in 'Henry VI. Actresses were not seen on the stage till after the Restoration, and the female parts were played by boys, or delicatelooking young men. This may perhaps palliate the grossness of some of the language put into the mouths of females in the old plays, while it serves to point out still more clearly the depth of that innate sense of beauty and excellence which prompted the exquisite pictures of loveliness and perfection in Shakspeare's female characiers. At the end of each performance, the clown, or buffoon actor of the company, recited or sung a rhyming medley called a jig, in which he often contrived to introduce satirical allusions to public men or events; and before dismissing the audience, the actors knelt in front of the stage, and offered up a prayer for the queen! Reviewing these rude arrangements of the old theatres, Mr. Dyce happily remarks: *The air-blest castle, round whose wholesome crest The martlet. guest of summer, chose her nest- Where Jaques fed his solitary vein; No pencil's aid as yet had dared supply, Seen only by the intellectual eye.-C. LAMB. 'What a contrast between the almost total want of scenery in those days and the splendid representations of external nature in our modern play-houses! Yet perhaps the decline of the drama may in a great measure be attributed to this improvement. The attention of an audience is now directed rather to the efforts of the painter than to those of the actor, who is lost amid the marvellous effects of light and shade on our gigantic stages.' The only information we possess as to the payment of dramatic authors at this time is contained in the memoranda of Philip Henslowe, a theatrical manager, preserved in Dulwich College, and quoted by Malone and Collier. Before the year 1600, the price paid by Henslowe for a new play never exceeded £8; but after this date, perhaps in consequence of the exertions of rival companies, larger sums were given, and prices of £20 and £25 are mentioned. The proceeds of the second day's performance were afterwards added to the author's emoluments. Furnishing prologues for new plays, the prices of which varied from five to twenty shillings, was another source of gain; but the proverbial poverty of poets seems to have been exemplified in the old dramatists, even when they were actors as well as authors. The shareholders of the theatre derived considerable profi's from the performances, and were occasionally paid for exhibitions in the houses of the nobility. Nearly all the dramatic authors preceding and contemporary with Shakspeare were men who had received a learned education at the university of Oxford or Cambridge. A profusion of classical imagery abounds in their plays, but they did not copy the severe and correct taste of the ancient models. They wrote to supply the popular demand for novelty and excitement-for broad farce or superlative tragedy—to introduce the coarse raillery or comic incidents of low life-to dramatise a murder, or embody the vulgar idea of oriental bloodshed and splendid extravagance. If we seek for a poetical image,' says a writer on our drama, 'a burst of passion, a beautiful sentiinent, a trait of nature, we seek not in vain in the works of our very oldest dramatists. But none of the predecessors of Shakspeare must be thought of along with him, when he appears before us like Prometheus, moulding the figures of men, and breathing into them the animation and all the passions of life.' * Among the immediate predecessors of the great poet are some worthy of separate notice. A host of playwrights abounded, and nearly all of them have touches of that happy poetic diction, free, yet choice and select, which gives a permanent value and interest to these elder masters of English poetry. JOHN LYLY. JOHN LYLY, born in Kent in tween the years 1579 and 1600. 1553 or 1554, produced nine plays beThey were mostly written for court *Blackwood's Magazing, vol. ii. from Essays on the Old Drama,' said to have been contributed by Henry Mackenzie, author of the Man of beeling. entertainments, and performed by the scholars of St. Paul's. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford; and many of his plays are on mythological subjects, as Sappho and Phaon,' (1584), Endymion' (1991), the Maid's Metamorphosis,'' Galathea' (1592), ' Midas' (1592), Mother Bombie' (1594), &c. His style is affected and unnatural, yet, like his own Niobe in the 'Metamorphosis,'' oftentimes he had Sweet thoughts, sometimes hard conceits; betwixt both a kind of yielding.' Queen Elizabeth is said to have patronised Lyly; ut in a petition for the office of Master of the Revels, he tells the queen: 'For these ten years I have attended with an unwearied patience, and now I know not what crab took me for an oyster, that in the midst of your sunshine, of your most gracious aspect, hath thrust a stone between the shells to cat me alive that only live on dead hopes.' There was probably real feeling in the following speech which Lyly puts into the mouth of his Phaon, a poor ferryman, in his comedy of Sappho and Phaon:' PHAON. Thou art a ferryman, Phaon, yet a freeman; possessing for riches content, and for honours quiet. Thy thoughts are no higher than thy fortunes, nor thy desires greater than thy calling. Who climeth, standeth on glass, and falleth on thorn. Thy heart's thirst is satisfied with thy hand's thrift, and thy gentle labours in the day turn to sweet slumbers in the night. As much doth it delight thee to rule thy oar in a calm stream, as it doth Sappho to sway the sceptre in her brave court. Envy never casteth her eye low, ambition pointeth always upward, and revenge barketh only at stars Thou farest delicately, if thou have a fare to buy anything. Thine angle is ready, when thy oar is idle; and as sweet is the fish which thou gettest in the river, as the fowl which others buy in the market. Thou needest not fear poison in thy glass, nor treason in thy guard. The wind is thy greatest enemy, whose might is withstood by policy. O sweet life! seldom found under a golden covert, often under a thatched cottage. · This affords a favourable specimen of Lyly's affected poetical prose. By his Euphues,' or the 'Anatomy of Wit,' he exercised a powerful though injurious influence on the fashionable literature of his day, in prose composition as well as in discourse. His plays were not important enough to found a school. Hazlitt was a warm admirer of Lyly's Endymion,' but evidently from the feelings and sentiments it awakened, rather than the poetry. I know few things more perfct in characteristic painting,' he remarks, 'than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of betraying the secret of Midas's cars, fancy that "the very reeds bow down as though they listened to their talk," nor more affecting in sentiment than the apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from his long sleep: "Behold the twig to which thou laidest down thy head is now become a tree.' There are finer things in the Metamorphosis,' as where the prince laments Eurymene lost in the woods: Adorned with the presence of my love, The woods I fear such secret power shall prove, |