Knock. Why, Urse, why, Urse? thou'lt ha' vapours i' thy leg again presently, pray thee go in, 't may turn to the scratches else.

Urs. Hang your vapours, they are stale, and stink like 75 you! Are these the guests o' the game you promised to fill my pit withal to-day?

Knock. Ay, what ail they, Urse?

Urs. Ail they! they are all sippers, sippers o' the city; they look as they would not drink off twopenn'orth of bottle80 ale amongst 'hem.

Moon. A body may read that i' their small printed ruffs. Knock. Away, thou art a fool, Urse, and thy Mooncalf too: i' your ignorant vapours now! hence; good guests, I say, right hypocrites, good gluttons. In, and set a couple 85 o' pigs o' the board, and half a dozen of the biggest bottles afore 'hem. [Exit Mooncalf.] I do not love to hear innocents abused: fine ambling hypocrites! and a stone-puritan with a sorrel head and beard! good-mouthed gluttons; two to a pig. Away!

90

Urs. Are you sure they are such?

Knock. O' the right breed; thou shalt try 'hem by the teeth, Urse.

G. THE SAD SHEPHERD

ACT I, Sc. II.

'Robin Hood, having invited all the shepherds and shepherdesses of the vale of Belvoir to a feast in the forest of Sherwood,... receives the relation of the Sad Shepherd, Aeglamour, who is fallen into a deep melancholy for the loss of his beloved Earine, reported to have been drowned in passing over the Trent. (Argument.) Karolin, and Clarion, are respectively the Kind, and the Rich, Shepherd; and Amie, the Gentle Shepherdess.

Enter Karolin.

Kar. Sure, he's here about.

Cla. See where he sits.

upon a bank hard by.]

Aeg.

[Points to Aeglamour, sitting

It will be rare, rare, rare!

An exquisite revenge! but peace, no words!
Not for the fairest fleece of all the flock:

If it be known afore, 'tis all worth nothing!
I'll carve it on the trees, and in the turf,
On every green sworth, and in every path,
Just to the margin of the cruel Trent.

There will I knock the story in the ground,
In smooth great pebble, and moss-fill it round,

5

10

Till the whole country read how she was drowned;
And with the plenty of salt tears there shed,
Quite alter the complexion of the spring.
Or I will get some old, old, grandam thither,
Whose rigid foot, but dipped into the water,
Shall strike that sharp and sudden cold throughout,
As it shall lose all virtue; and those nymphs,
Those treacherous nymphs pulled in Earine,
Shall stand curled up like images of ice,
And never thaw! mark, never! a sharp justice !
Or stay, a better! when the year's at hottest,
And that the dog-star foams, and the stream boils,
And curls, and works, and swells ready to sparkle,
To fling a fellow with a fever in,

To set it all on fire, till it burn

Blue as Scamander, 'fore the walls of Troy,
When Vulcan leaped into him to consume him.

Rob. A deep-hurt phant'sie!
Aeg.

[They approach him.]

Do you not approve it?

Rob. Yes, gentle Aeglamour, we all approve,
And come to gratulate your just revenge:
Which since it is so perfect, we now hope
You'll leave all care thereof, and mix with us,
In all the proferred solace of the spring.

Aeg. A spring, now she is dead! of what? of thorns,
Briars and brambles? thistles, burs, and docks?
Cold hemlock, yew? the mandrake, or the box?
These may grow still; but what can spring beside ?
Did not the whole earth sicken when she died?

As if there since did fall one drop of dew,
But what was wept for her! or any stalk
Did bear a flower, or any branch a bloom,
After her wreath was made! In faith, in faith,
You do not fair to put these things upon me,
Which can in no sort be: Earine,
Who had her very being, and her name,

With the first knots or buddings of the spring,
Born with the primrose and the violet,

Or earliest roses blown; when Cupid smiled,
And Venus led the Graces out to dance,
50 And all the flowers and sweets in nature's lap
Leaped out and made their solemn conjuration,
To last but while she lived! Do not I know
How the vale withered the same day? how Dove,
Dean, Eye, and Erwash, Idel, Snite, and Soare,
55 Each broke his urn, and twenty waters more,

That swelled proud Trent, shrunk themselves dry? that since
No sun or moon, or other cheerful star,

Looked out of heaven, but all the cope was dark,
As it were hung so for her exequies!

60 And not a voice or sound to ring her knell,

65

But of that dismal pair, the scritching owl,

And buzzing hornet! Hark! hark! hark! the foul
Bird! how she flutters with her wicker wings!

Peace! you shall hear her scritch.

Cla.

Help to divert this phant'sie.

Good Karolin, sing,

Kar. All I can. [Sings, while Aeglamour reads the song.]

Though I am young and cannot tell

Either what Death or Love is well,
Yet I have heard they both bear darts,
And both do aim at human hearts:

70

And then again, I have been told,

75

80

Love wounds with heat, as Death with cold;
So that I fear they do but bring

Extremes to touch, and mean one thing.

As in a ruin we it call

One thing to be blown up, or fall;
Or to our end like way may have

By flash of lightning, or a wave:
So Love's inflamèd shaft or brand
May kill as soon as Death's cold hand,
Except Love's fires the virtue have

To fright the frost out of the grave.

Aeg. Do you think so? are you in that good heresy,

I mean, opinion? if you be, say nothing:

I'll study it as a new philosophy,

85 But by myself alone: now you shall leave me.

Some of these nymphs here will reward you; this,
This pretty maid, although but with a kiss.

[He forces Amie to kiss Karolin.] Lived my Earine, you should have twenty; For every line here, one: I would allow 'hem From mine own store, the treasure I had in her: Now I am poor as you.

Kar.

90

[Exit.]

And I a wretch !

[Exit Karolin.]

Cla. Yet keep an eye upon him, Karolin.

XI

GEORGE CHAPMAN

1559(?)-1634.

GEORGE CHAPMAN was born about 1559 near Hitchin in Hertfordshire. In 1574 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, but left after two years without taking a degree. His earliest extant play, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, was produced in 1596, but not printed till 1598, in which year he is mentioned by Meres in the Palladis Tamia, with Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, as 'mightily enriching' the English tongue. In the same year he published the first part of his translation of Homer containing seven books of the Iliad, the complete work not appearing till 1616. In 1605 he was imprisoned, with Jonson and Marston, for his share in Eastward Ho. All Fools, finished in 1599, was printed in 1605, and The Gentleman Usher and Monsieur D'Olive the following year. In 1607 appeared Bussy d'Ambois, followed in 1608 by The Conspiracy and The Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron. Two comedies, May Day and The Widow's Tears, probably written much earlier, were published in 1611 and 1612, the Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois appearing the next year. Caesar and Pompey, written 'long since,' was not printed before 1631. Other plays, of doubtful authenticity, are attributed to Chapman, and he collaborated with Jonson, Marston, and Shirley. Besides translations of parts of Hesiod and Juvenal, he wrote masques, in which Jonson ranked him with Fletcher as next himself. He died in 1634, and was buried at St. Giles in the Fields.

The fame of Chapman's translation of Homer should not be allowed to obscure the fact that, as a dramatic poet, both in tragedy and in comedy, he is one of the greatest of Shakespeare's contemporaries. The description of his personal appearance given by Wood, that he was of a most reverend aspect, religious and temperate,' is singularly in keeping with his own

definition of the function of tragedy, that it should convey ' material instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her contrary,' as well as with the lofty morality, the serious and profound view of life (σnovdaιórns), revealed in his writings. In his dramatization of history he differs from Ben Jonson, asking 'who, worth the respecting, will expect the authentical truth of either person or action, in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth?' His merit as a dramatist is to be found perhaps rather in language, versification, and particular passages, than in the development of character by action, and the conduct of the play as a whole. Webster (preface to The White Devil) speaks of his 'full and heightened style,' and, in the Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois, Chapman is doubtless thinking of his own theory of composition, when he says:

'Worthiest poets

Shun common and plebeian forms of speech,
Every illiberal and affected phrase,

To clothe their matter; and together tie

Matter and form with art and decency.'

His diction is lucid', vigorous, and graceful; his versification, fluent and sonorous. His apt and illuminative similes, in which perhaps he owes something to Homer, are deservedly famous. The influence of Homer may also be detected in his long narrative speeches of an epic character. His language sometimes becomes rhetorical, turgid, and even bombastic; and his strongly marked ethical tendencies tempt him into occasional passages of tedious philosophical or satirical declamation. Like Jonson he was a learned poet, but he wore his learning more lightly, using it with taste and judgement, and never allowing it to become his master. Unlike him he never reveals the possession of any lyrical gift.

The following extracts are taken from the early Quartos, corrected and modernized.

Fortunio, elder son of Marc Antonio, an honest knight, but much too much indulgent,' is in love with Bellonora, daughter of Gostanzo, another knight, covetous, austere, and' Machiavellian,' whose son Valerio is secretly married to Gratiana. Gostanzo believes Valerio to be the most tame and thrifty groom in Europe, but he is really given to dice, cards, and tennis. Rinaldo, Marc Antonio's younger son, scholar and misogynist,

This epithet may be questioned, but I think much of the alleged obscurity of Chapman is due to the fact that he has never been properly edited.