and mighty men who have fought her battles, the Queen descends from her "chariot throne" to make her "hearty prayers on her bended knees." Leicester, the favourite to whose weak hand was nominally intrusted the command of the troops, has not lived to see this triumph. But Essex, the new favourite, would be there; and Hunsdon, the General for the Queen. There too would be Raleigh, and Hawkins, and Frobisher, and Drake, and Howard of Effingham-one who forgot all distinctions of sect in the common danger of his country. Well might the young poet thus apostrophize this country! "This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 'This other Eden, demi-paradise; Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." But, glorious as was the contemplation of the attitude of England during the year of the Armada, the very energy that had called forth this noble display of patriotic spirit exhibited itself in domestic controversy when the pressure from without was removed. The poet might then, indeed, qualify his former admiration : "O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What mightst thou do that honour would thee do, The same season that witnessed the utter destruction of the armament of Spain saw London excited to the pitch of fury by polemical disputes. It was not now the quarrel between Protestant and Romanist, but between the National Church and Puritanism. The theatres, those new and powerful teachers, lent themselves to the controversy. In some of these their licence to entertain the people was abused by the introduction of matters connected with religion and politics; so that in 1589 Lord Burghley not only directed the Lord Mayor to inquire what companies of players had offended, but a commission was appointed for the same purpose. How Shakspere's company proceeded during this inquiry has been made out most clearly by the valuable document discovered at Bridgewater House by Mr. Collier, wherein they disclaim to have conducted themselves amiss. These are to certify your right Honourable Lordships that her Majesty's poor players, Janies Burbage, Richard Burbage, John Laneham, Thomas Greene, Robert Wilson, John Taylor, Anth. Wadeson, Thomas Pope, George Peele, Augustine Phillipps, Nicholas Towley, William Shakespeare, William Kempe, William Johnson, Baptiste Goodale, and Robert Armyn, being all of them sharers in the Blackfriars playhouse, have never given cause of displeasure, in that they have brought into their plays matters of state and religion, unfit to be handled by them or to be presented before lewd spectators neither hath any complaint in that kind ever been preferred against them or any of them. Wherefore they trust most humbly in your Lordships' consideration of their former good behaviour, being at all times ready and willing to yield obedience to any command whatsoever your Lordships in your wisdom may think in such case meet," &c. "Nov. 1589." In this petition, Shakspere, a sharer in the theatre, but with others below him in the list, says, and they all say, that "they have never brought into their plays matters of state and religion." The public mind in 1589-90 was furiously agitated by "matters of state and religion." A controversy was going on which is now known as that of Martin Marprelate, in which the constitution and discipline of the Church were most furiously attacked in a succession of pamphlets; and they were defended with equal violence and scurrility. Izaak Walton says,There was not only one Martin Marprelate, but other venomous books daily printed and dispersed, — books that were so absurd and scurrilous, that the graver divines disdained them an answer." Walton adds,"And yet these were grown into high esteem with the common people, till Tom Nash appeared against them all, who was a man of a sharp wit, and the master of a scoffing, satirical, merry pen." Connected with this controversy, there was subsequently a more personal one between Nash and Gabriel Harvey; but they were each engaged in the Marprelate dispute. John Lyly was the author of one of the most remarkable pamphlets produced on this occasion, called Pap with a Hatchet.' Harvey, it must be observed, was the intimate friend of Spenser; and in a pamphlet which he dates from Trinity Hall, November 5, 1589, he thus attacks the author of Pap with a Hatchet,' the more celebrated Euphuist, whom Sir Walter Scott's novel has made familiar to us: I am threatened with a bable, and Martin menaced with a comedy—a fit motion for a jester and a player to try what may be done by employment of his faculty. Bables and comedies are parlous fellows to decipher and discourage men (that is the point) with their witty flouts and learned jerks, enough to lash any man out of countenance. Nay, if you shake the painted scabbard at me, I have done; and all you that tender the preservation of your good names were best to please Pap-Hatchet, and fee Euphues betimes, for fear lest he be moved, or some one of his apes hired, to make a play of you, and then is your credit quite undone for ever and ever. Such is the public reputation of their plays. He must needs be discouraged whom they decipher. Better anger an hundred other than two such that have the stage at commandment, and can furnish out vices and devils at their pleasure." * We thus see that Harvey, the friend of Spenser, is threatened by one of those who "have the stage at commandment" with having a play made of him. * Pierce's 'Supererogation.' Reprinted in 'Archaica,' p. 137. Such plays were made in 1589, and Nash thus boasts of them in one of his tracts printed in 1589:-" Methought Vetus Comedia began to prick him at London in the right vein, when he brought forth divinity with a scratched face, holding of her heart as if she were sick, because Martin would have forced her; but missing of his purpose, he left the print of his nails upon her cheeks, and poisoned her with a vomit, which he ministered unto her to make her cast up her dignities." Lyly, taking the same side, writes, —“Would those comedies might be allowed to be played that are penned, and then I am sure he [Martin Marprelate] would be deciphered, and so perhaps discouraged." Here are the very words which Harvey has repeated," He must needs be discouraged whom they decipher." Harvey, in a subsequent passage of the same tract, refers to this prostitution of the stage to party purposes in very striking words:-"The stately tragedy scorneth the trifling comedy, and the trifling comedy flouteth the new ruffianism." These circumstances appear to us very remarkable, with reference to the state of the drama about 1590. Shakspere's great contemporary, Edmund Spenser, in a poem entitled The Tears of the Muses,' originally published in 1591, describes, in the Complaint' of Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, the state of the drama at the time in which he is writing "Where be the sweet delights of learning's treasure, That wont with comic sock to beautify O! all is gone; and all that goodly glee, And in her room unseemly Sorrow sits, And him beside sits ugly Barbarism, And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm, Where being bred, he light and heaven does hate; They in the minds of men now tyrannize, And the fair scene with rudeness foul disguise. All places they with folly have possess'd, That whilom wont to wait upon my train, Fine Counterfesance, and unhurtful Sport, Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort." Spenser was in England in 1590-91, and it is probable that The Tears of the Muses' was written in 1590, and that the poet described the prevailing state of the drama in London during the time of his visit. The four stanzas which we have quoted are descriptive, as we think, of a |