classical subjects increase and multiply, and it becomes more and more impossible to enumerate them all. In the space of twelve years eighteen of such dramas were acted before the Queen, amongst which we find "Orestes," Iphigenia," "Ajax and Ulysses," "Narcissus," "Alemæon," "Quintus Fabius," "Mutius Scævola," and "Perseus and Andromeda."

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In 1584, George Peele, one of Shakespeare's companions at the Blackfriars theatre, wrote a play entitled The Arraignment of Paris." It was written for the court, and contains an extravagant compliment to the Queen. The actual text is unknown to me, but Collier states that it was the same as one addressed by Udall, fifty years before, to Anne Boleyn on her entrance into London after her marriage, when a dramatic pageant took place, in which the judgment of Paris was represented. Five persons appear on the scene, Mercury, Paris, Juno, Pallas, and Venus, and speak as follows:

"Mercury. Juppiter, this aple unto thee hath sent, Commanding in this cause to geve true judgement.

Paris. Juppiter a straunge office hath geven me, To judge whiche is fairest of these ladies three.

Juno. All riches and kingdomes bee at my behest: Give me the aple, and thou shalt have the best.

Pallus. Adjuge it to me, and for a kingdome

I shall geve the incomparable wisdome.

Venus. Preferre me, and I shall rewarde thee, Paris,

With the fairest ladie that on the erthe is.

Paris. I should breke Juppiter's high commaundement,
If I should for mede or rewarde geve judgement.
Therefore, ladie Venus, before both these twain,
Your beautie moche exceding, by my sentence
Shall win and have this aple. Yet, to bee plain,
Here is the fouerthe ladie, now in presence,
Moste worthie to have it of due congruence,
As pereless in riches, wit and beautie,
Which are but sundrie qualities in you three.
But for hir worthyness, this aple of gold
Is too symple a reward a thousand fold."
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There was nothing ridiculous in such a compliment addressed to Anne Boleyn in all the freshness of her youth and beauty, but bearing in mind that it was served up again for Elizabeth, who had never been handsome and was then fifty-one years old, and that flattery thus thickly laid on was a sure means of pleasing her, we can but wonder where the limits to human illusion and feminine vanity are to be found.

In 1586, or soon afterwards, Thomas Lodge wrote a tragedy called "The Wounds of Civil War," founded upon Plutarch's lives of Marius and Scylla. And here it would be necessary, if it were my intention to present a complete picture of dramatic art in the Elizabethan period, to give a prominent place to two very considerable authors, John Lyly and Christopher Marlowe. Lyly was the celebrated author of a new style of writing called Euphuism, from the title of his principal work "Euphues," a prose romance full of quaint affectation and extravagant conceits. Euphuism was in England pretty much what, either a little earlier or later, gongorism was in Spain, marinism in Italy, and l'esprit précieux in France. But it is not from this point of view that Lyly here chiefly concerns us, and we must turn to his dramatic works, of all of which, with one exception, the subjects are taken from classical anti

quity, such as "Galathea," "Endymion," "Midas,"

Alexander and Campaspe," etc. In the last-mentioned one, all the witty anecdotes and sayings that have been handed down from antiquity of Alexander and Diogenes. are collected and put together, as in a mosaic.

One remark may be made in passing, about Lyly and his school. Like the poets of the Pleiad in France, these followers of the classics had the most thorough aristocratic contempt for the vulgar and the tastes of the vulgar. The line from Horace, "Odi profanum vulgus et arceo," was their motto. They looked upon

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poetry, and even the stage, as an art of delicate refinement and graceful luxury, intended to delight, not the people, but a small and elect circle of dainty admirers. But unless the dramatic poet be in close communion with the large and mighty heart of humanity, the stage necessarily loses the character of a popular institution, and becomes the amusement merely of a small group of learned persons, great lords and courtiers. Very different is Marlowe, in spite of all his learning. His passionate and powerful dramas of "Tamburlaine," "Edward II.," and the "Jew of Malta," stand out in marked contrast to classical tendencies in literature; but neither these nor his masterpiece, "Dr. Faustus," must here receive more than a parenthetical notice, and the only one of his works that claims mention at our hands is "Dido, Queen of Carthage," which he wrote in conjunction with the poet Nash. It does not rank among his best plays, though it contains many poetical passages; there is much that is glaring and extravagant in it, which Shakespeare may possibly have intended to parody in "Hamlet" (Act II., Sc. 2)-possibly, because there is reason to doubt, in the first place, whether there is any connection between the lines that Hamlet bids the player recite and those of Marlowe, and also whether Hamlet's real intention was as ironical as is taken for granted by French translators of Shakespeare.

In 1594, Thomas Kyd, who owes his celebrity, however, to other works, published the tragedy of " Cornelia,” a translation from the French of Garnier, who closely imitated Seneca and Lucian. Towards the close of the sixteenth century there were three purely and exclusively classical poets: Daniel, who complained of the barbarism of the time, and blamed the "idle fictions" and "gross follies" of the romantic drama, and, in order to show how things ought to be done, wrote his "Cleopatra" and Philotus;" the Countess of Pembroke, sister to Sir

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Philip Sidney, who translated Garnier's tragedy of Anthony;" and Brandon, the author of "Virtuous Octavia." All these plays are sufficiently tedious, possessed of even less interest than "Gorboduc" while sharing in all its faults. Brandon, when he wishes to say that it is evening, deems it necessary to use a periphrasis of four lines long. The following remarks on Daniel's tragedy of "Cleopatra " are borrowed from a critic who has had the courage to read it:

"In order that the unities of time and place may be respected, Cleopatra appears only during the last hours of her life; even at the moment of her deepest suffering, she never dares to utter a moan, from fear of failing in tragic dignity, and she dilates upon her sorrow instead of expressing it. She dies behind the scenes, and her death is related by a messenger in a most rhetorical style, with a lavish profusion of periphrases and ornamental details." *

We have now come to Ben Jonson, who, by virtue of his great talents and strongly marked individuality, sums up the whole classical school in England at the close of the sixteenth century. He is a man over whom it is scarcely permissible to throw a rapid and hasty glance as over the other contemporaries of Shakespeare, and to abstain from any attempt to estimate his true value is preferable to judging him inadequately.

It is enough therefore for the present simply to recall him as the author of "Sejanus" and "Catilina," tragedies full of classical allusions and entirely inspired by the spirit and the letter of antiquity, and to mention that Shakespeare acted a part in "Sejanus" when it appeared on the stage in 1603.

And here the examination into the classical tastes, knowledge, and studies in England in the sixteenth century may be interrupted, to point out a conclusion that further researches will only confirm.

At the time of Shakespeare's death in 1616, the

* Mézières, "Prédécesseurs et Contemporains de Shakespeare," p. 56,

Greco-Latin renaissance, a little slower and more tardy than in France, had gone through all the natural phases of its development. When Shakespeare, born in 1564, entered upon his literary career about the year 1590, the lovers of classical literature were gradually forming a school, of which every day the followers became more numerous. To the end of his life, works written in imitation of the ancients never ceased multiplying around him, so that if he deviated from the steps of Sackville and Jonson it was because it was his wish and intention to do so. In the preference he has given to a different form of drama must be seen the voluntary choice of a clear-sighted intelligence, not the impulse of a blind and unreflecting instinct. It is time to leave off representing Shakespeare as a sort of rude, uncultivated genius, richly dowered by nature alone; no fatal necessity of race, or time, or circumstances determined his decision, and he went on his way, of his own free choice, with perfect knowledge and conviction. It was quite open to him, had he thought good, to have founded the neo-classic drama in England, just as Corneille, when he first conceived the idea of "The Cid," might, with the help of a little audacity, have founded the romantic drama in France.