inheritance, and was seeking in the excitement of travel some relief to that melancholy which was produced by the sudden bereavement of his betrothed mistress-a loss which embittered his life, but gave to his genius much of its delicacy and tenderness. The mind of Drummond was too refined for the rough work which belongs to a court, even amongst its glittering :

"O how more sweet is bird's harmonious moan,

Or the hoarse sobbings of the widow'd dove,

Than those smooth whisp'rings near a prince's throne,
Which good make doubtful, do the evil approve."

There was another maker of verses-a Scot-in the Court of James, who, though not without talent, would in his inmost heart despise the "love of peace and lonely musing" which were characteristic of the poet of Hawthornden.

William Alexander had essentially a prosaic mind; though he did accomplish four monarchic tragedies, which some wise critics have put in the same class with the Roman plays of Shakspere. Whether he was engaged in the manufacture of plays or copper money, he had essentially an eye to his own advancement; and if James called him his philosophical poet, we may still believe that the King thought there was more true philosophy in Alexander's money-making scheme for a new order of baronets than in the many thousand lines of laborious writing and reading which by courtesy were called Recreations with the Muses.' We may without much want of charity suspect that Jonson's Prince's Masque'

and Shakspere's Winter's Tale might be regarded by the Earl of Stirling as Pepys regarded the Midsummer Night's Dream-"It is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."

The refinements of the Court extended to the people. The Bear-Garden was adapted to theatrical performances; and rendered "convenient in all things both for players to play in, and for the game of bears and bulls to be baited in the same."* The gorgeousness of the scenic displays of Whitehall became at this period a subject of imitation at the public theatres. Sir Henry Wotton thus writes to his nephew on the 6th of July, 1613:-" Now to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The King's players had a new play, called All is True,' representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous." This description, as we believe, applies to the original representation of Shakspere's play of Henry VIII. We believe also that Shakspere on this occasion introduced such a compliment to the government of the King as was consistent with the independence of his character and that genuine patriotism that was a part of his nature:

"Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,

His honour, and the greatness of his name,

Shall be, and make new nations."

This is somewhat different from Jonson's compliment to the man:

"His meditations, to his height, are even:

All, all their issue is akin to heaven-

He is a god o'er kings." ↑

And yet it has been said, either that Shakspere condescended to be a flatterer, or that he did not write the compliment to James implied in Cranmer's prophecy. We believe that he did write the lines; that they are not an interpolation; and that, although they may have been written in the spirit of gratitude for personal favours, it is gratitude of the loftiest kind, honourable alike to the giver and to the receiver, because wholly free from adulation.

There was a catastrophe at this representation of the new play of Henry VIII. which may possibly have had some influence upon the future life of Shakspere. Sir Henry Wotton thus describes the burning of the Globe Theatre:-" Now King Henry, making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes being more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, within less than an hour, the whole house to the very ground." The Globe was re-built in the ensuing *Collier's Annals of the Stage,' vol. iii., p. 285.

+ See Introductory Notice to Henry VIII.

Masque of Oberon.

spring. The conflagration was so rapid that Prynne wished to show it was a judgment of Providence upon players-"The sudden fearful burning even to the ground." Jonson, in his Execration upon Vulcan,' says the Globe was

"Raz'd, ere thought could urge, this might have been."

It appears likely that this calamity terminated the direct and personal connexion of Shakspere with the London stage. We do not find him associated with the rebuilding of the Globe, nor with any of the schemes for new theatres with which Alleyn and Henslow were so busy. We have no record whatever of any new play of Shakspere's being produced after this performance of Henry VIII. at the Globe. Was he wholly idle as a writer? We apprehend not. Of the three Roman plays we have yet to speak. In the meanwhile let us take a rapid survey of the state of dramatic poetry, and of the later disciples of the school of Shakspere. We have already given a sketch of the more remarkable of the contemporaries with whom he would necessarily be associated in the last years of the previous century.

In the Address to the Reader prefixed to the first edition, published in 1612, of The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona,' of John Webster, is the following passage:-"Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance: for mine own part, I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman; the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson; the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher; and lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker, and Master Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light; protesting that, in the strength of mine own judgment, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martial:

Webster was formed upon Shakspere. He had no pretensions to the inexhaustible wit, the all-penetrating humour of his master; but he had the power of approaching the terrible energy of his passion, and the profoundness of his. pathos, in characters which he took out of the great muster-roll of humanity, and placed in fearful situations, and sometimes with revolting imaginings almost beyond humanity. Those who talk of the carelessness of Shakspere may be surprised to find that his praise is that of a "right happy and copious industry." It is clear what dramatic writers were the objects of Webster's love. He did not aspire to the "full and heightened style of Master Chapman," nor would his genius be shackled by the examples of "the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson." He belonged to the school of the romantic dramatists. Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher are "worthily excellent;" but his aspiration was to imitate "the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker, and Master Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light." There were critics, then, who

regarded the romantic drama as a diversion for the multitude only; and Webster thinks it necessary to apologize for his deliberate choice-" Willingly and not ignorantly in this kind have I faulted." He says "If it be objected this is no true dramatic poem, I shall easily confess it, non potes in nugas dicere plura meas, ipse ego quam dixi; willingly, and not ignorantly, in this kind have I faulted: for should a man present, to such an auditory, the most sententious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style, and gravity of person, enrich it with the sententious Chorus, and, as it were, 'liven death, in the passionate and weighty Nuntias; yet, after all this divine rapture, O dura messorum ilia, the breath that comes from the uncapable multitude is able to poison it; and, ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix to every scene this of Horace

Hæc porcis hodie comedenda relinques.""

As early as 1602, Webster was a writer for Henslow's theatre, in conjunction with Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Chettle, Heywood, and Wentworth Smith. At a later period he was more directly associated with Dekker alone. His great tragedies of The White Devil' and 'The Duchess of Malfi' were produced at the period when Shakspere had almost ceased to write; and it is probably to this circumstance we owe these original and unaided efforts of Webster's genius. There was a void to be filled up, and it was worthily filled up.

Webster has placed his coadjutor Dekker next to Shakspere. We have before pointed attention to this remarkable man's early career. As he advanced in years he was wielding greater powers, and dealing with higher things than belonged to the satirist. In his higher walk he is of the school of nature and

simplicity. Hazlitt speaks of one of his plays, perhaps the best, with true artistical feeling :-"The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning. The execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and masterly. There is the least colour possible used; the pencil drags; the canvas is almost seen through: but then, what precision of outline, what truth and purity of tone, what firmness of hand, what marking of character!. . . It is as if there were some fine art to chisel thought, and to embody the inmost movements of the mind in every-day actions and familiar speech.' Dekker acquired some of his satirical propensities, but the tenderness of his heart was also called forth, in the crooked ways and dark places of misfortune. Almost the first record of his life is a memorandum by Henslow of the loan of forty shillings, “to discharge Mr. Dicker out of the Counter in the Poultry." Oldys, in his manuscript notes upon Langbaine, affirms that he was in the King's Bench Prison from 1613 to 1616. His own calamities furnish a commentary to the tenderness of many such passages as the following, in which a father is told of the miseries of his erring daughter:

"I'm glad you are wax, not marble; you are made

Of man's best temper; there are now good hopes

That all these heaps of ice about your heart,

By which a father's love was frozen up,

Are thaw'd in these sweet show'rs fetch'd from your eyes:
We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies.

She is not dead, but lives under worse fate;

I think she's poor." †

The praise of industry belongs to Dekker, though its fruits were poverty. He lived to a considerable age, and he laboured to the last at play or pamphlet. But the amount of his productions becomes almost insignificant when compared with the more than "copious industry" of Thomas Heywood. He was a scholar, having been educated at Cambridge-at Peterhouse, it is said; but he became an actor as early as 1598, being then a sharer in Henslow's company. In 1633 he claimed for himself the authorship, entirely or in part, of two hundred and twenty dramas. We have expressed an opinion that Heywood might have been the writer of The Yorkshire Tragedy.' Many of his two hundred and twenty dramas were probably such short pieces as that clever performance. Heywood had the power of stirring the affections, of moving pity and terror by true representations of the course of crime and misery in real life. Charles Lamb has summed up the character of his writings in three lines:-" Heywood is a sort of prose Shakspeare. His scenes are to the full as natural and affecting. But we miss the poet, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above the surface of the nature." Winstanley, not a very trustworthy authority, speaking of Heywood's wonderful fertility, says "He not only acted himself almost every day, but also wrote each day a sheet; and that he might lose no time, many of his plays were composed in the tavern, on the back side of tavern bills; which may be an occasion that so many of them are lost."