Leads at her train the ancient golden world, Fair Peace, the goddess of our graces here, The fields of Israel, and the heart of David, Beth. Then is the pleasure of my sovereign's So wrapt within the bosom of that son, Whom God in naming hath anointed king. Sal. My royal father, if the heavenly zeal, Dar. Wade not too far, my boy, in waves so The feeble eyes of our aspiring thoughts 1 Salomon, my love, is David's lord-corrupted.-DYCE. 2 counterfeit-portrait, likeness, image. That now art framing of the future world, Know'st all to come, not by the course of heaven, By frail conjectures of inferior signs, By monstrous floods, by flights and flocks of birds, Or by the figures of some hidden art; O thou great God, ravish my earthly sprite! 2 And, when I speak, I may be made by choice Nath. See, David, how his haughty spirit Even now of height to wield a diadem: I promise thee and lovely Bethsabe, Beth. He that hath touch'd thee with this Preserve the harbour of thy thoughts in peace! Dav. Tell me, Ahimaas, lives my Absalon ? Ahi. I saw a troop of soldiers gathered, But know not what the tumult might import. Dav. Stand by, until some other may inform The heart of David with a happy truth. Enter CUSAY. Cu. Happiness and honour live with David's Whom God hath bless'd with conquest of his foes. Dav. Hath Absalon sustain'd the stroke of death? [Goes to his pavilion and sits close a while. Beth. Die, Bethsabe, to see thy David mourn, To hear his tunes of anguish and of hell. Oh, help, my David, help thy Bethsabe, Whose heart is pierced with thy breathy swords,? And bursts with burden of ten thousand griefs! [Lies down. Now sit thy sorrows sucking of my blood: David and Bethsabe offend the Highest, Dav. [looking forth.] O Absalon, Absalon! O Would God that I had died for Absalon! [Sits close again. Enter JOAB, ABISAI, ITHAY, and their train. Joab. Why lies the queen so prostrate on the Why is this company so tragic-hu'd? And marcheth not in triumph through the gates? Dav. Thou man of blood, thou sepulchre of death, Whose marble breast intombs my bowels quick,' That Juda and the fields of Israel Should cleanse their faces from their children's blood? What! art thou weary of thy royal rule? And call another battle to the field, Fame still may bring thy valiant soldiers home, And for their service happily confess She wanted worthy trumps to sound their prowess: Take thou this course and live; refuse and die. Abis. Come, brother, let him sit there till he sink; Some other shall advance the name of Joab. [Offers to go out with JOAB. Beth. [rising.] Oh, stay, my lords, stay! David mourns no more, 1 quick-alive. 2 preservèd-held, taken, grasped. The passage of Scripture to which our author here alludes is as follows: And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. 'Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands [The Vulgate quæ non tolluntur manibus']: But the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear,' &c. 3 swarming-swarm, crowd. 4 battle-army. 2 SAM. xxiii. 4 sqq. But riseth to give honour to your acts. 1 sequester'd-separated, withdrawn. joy-enjoy. Shall reap a sevenfold grace for all thy griefs; Courage, brave captains! Joab's tale hath stirr'd, Joab. Bravely resolv'd, and spoken like a king: Now may old Israel and his daughters sing. [Exeunt omnes. ROBERT GREENE. [ROBERT GREENE, the contemporary and friend of Peele, and one of the most profligate and unfortunate of the Elizabethan dramatists, was born in Norwich, probably about 1560; Dyce, however, dating his birth ten years earlier. He was educated at Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1578, and that of M.A. in 1583. He was also connected in some way with Oxford, -he himself vaunting that he was a Master of Arts of both Universities. The interval between 1578 and 1583 he spent in travelling through Spain, Italy, and other parts of the continent. The following extract from his work, The Repentance of Robert Greene (1592), will give the reader an idea of the life he led while there, and after he returned home :: 'For, being at the University of Cambridge, I lit amongst wags as lewd as myself, with whom I consumed the flower of my youth; who drew me to travel into Italy and Spain, in which places I saw and practised such villany as is abominable to declare. Thus, by their counsel, I sought to furnish myself with coin, which I procured by cunning sleights from my father and my friends; and my mother pampered me so long, and secretly helped me to the oil of angels, that I grew thereby prone to all mischief: so that, being then conversant with notable braggarts, boon companions, and ordinary spendthrifts, that practised sundry superficial studies, I became as a scion grafted into the same stock, whereby I did absolutely participate of their nature and qualities. At my return into England, I ruffled out in my silks in the habit of malcontent, and seemed so discontent, that no place would please me to abide in, nor no vocation cause me to stay myself in; but, after I had by degrees proceeded Master of Arts, I left the University and away to London, where, after I had continued some short time, and driven myself out of credit with sundry of my friends, I became an author of plays, and a penner of line-pamphlets, so that I soon grew famous in that quality, that who, for that trade, known so ordinary about London as Robin Greene? Young yet in years, though old in wickedness, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was profitable; whereupon I grew so rooted in all mischief, that I had as great a delight in wickedness as sundry have in godliness, and as much felicity I took in villany as others had in honesty.' It is doubtful whether our author was the 'Robert Greene' mentioned as being one of the Queen's chaplains in 1576, although there is good reason for believing that he did enter the Church, and was presented to the vicarage of Lollesbury in Essex in 1584, resigning it, however, next year, probably because he found the clerical profession and a country life incompatible with his unholy tastes. That Greene was married is certain,-Dyce thinks in 1586,-and it is as certain, that although on his own authority his wife was a most amiable and loving woman, he ere long forsook her to indulge without restraint his passion for debauchery and every species of self-indulgence. After leaving his wife, he lived with a woman, the sister of an infamous character, well known then under the name of 'Cutting Ball,' and by her he had a son who died the year after his father. After leading one of the maddest lives on record, he died a miserable death on the 3d of September 1592, his last illness being caused by a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings. On his deathbed he was deserted by all his former boon companions except his mistress, and was indebted to the wife of a poor shoemaker for the last bed on which he laid his miserable body-his dying injunction to his compassionate and admiring hostess being to crown his vain head after death with a garland of bays. This request, it seems, the poor woman attended to. On his deathbed he wrote his Repentance, in which he expresses the greatest contrition for his misspent life, and beseeches all his old companions to take warning by his sad fate and repent ere it be too late. Appended to his Groat's Worth of Wit, which is to a great extent autobiographical, and which he finished on his deathbed, is a sad and tender letter to his wife, expressing great sorrow for his treatment of her, and imploring her forgiveness. He also left a note to her, beseeching her, 'by the love of our youth and my soul's rest,' to reimburse the shoemaker, whose wife had befriended him in his last and friendless days. Although Greene's character may have been made blacker than it really was by the enmity of Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, still there is no room for doubt that a sadder life and death could not possibly be imagined. Greene wrote many prose stories, and pamphlets of various kinds, many of which are interesting, and all were highly popular and extensively read; but it is only with his dramatic works we are concerned here. Five dramas are still extant which were undoubtedly written by Greene: The History of Orlando Furioso, one of the Twelve Peers of France, not printed till 1594, but probably one of his earliest plays; The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, first published in 1594, but written much earlier; The Scottish History of James the Fourth, slain at Flodden (1598); The Comical History of Alphonsus, King of Arragon (1599); and, along with Lodge, A Looking-Glass for London and England (1594). Another play, superior to any of the above, is by some authorities attributed to Greene, but the testimony as to its authorship is very slender; it is entitled George-a-Green, the Pinner of Wakefield (1599). As a dramatist, Greene occupies about the same rank as Peele, and was one of the first to introduce blank verse on the stage. His versification is not so smooth as that of Peele; but as it is more broken, it is less tedious. His dramas possess no very striking merit, although there is an occasional vigour of language, richness of fancy, originality of thought, and a distinctness and consistency in the portrayal of character. They are, however, much disfigured by bombast, affectation, and pedantry, his lowest boors and most ignorant dairy-maids being made to interlard their talk with classical allusions that would be pedantic even in an Oxford Don. The drama we have selected as a specimen is by many considered his best, and in it he has followed the wellknown prose tract, entitled The Famous History of Friar Bacon. The character of Margaret, the fair maid of Fressingfield, is, however, original; the humour of Miles is often genuine and pleasing.] |