The sprightly art of the "Arraignment" would seem but stale in a quotation. The most elaborate joke in it seems intended to ridicule the amorous pining of Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar.' Colin is introduced bewailing the cruelty of Love, and commiserated by his friends Hobinol, Diggon, and Thenot: shortly afterwards his hearse is brought in, and shepherds sing welladay over his untimely death. His sweetheart Thestylis woos and is rejected by a "foul crooked churl." Our knowledge of the personal jealousies and friendships of the period is imperfect and perplexing; but it is probable that the "Palin" whom Spenser mentions in Colin Clout as "envying at his rustic quill" was George Peele, and that this was the expression of the envy.

V.-THOMAS NASH (1558-1600?).

Marlowe's unfinished tragedy of "Dido" was completed by Thomas Nash; and though this clever writer is memorable chiefly as a prose satirist, yet his name will always be remembered most naturally in connection with his poetical associates, Greene, Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele. Nash was educated at Cambridge, which he seems to have left in some disgrace, and his first essay in print was the dashing critical preface to Greene's "Menaphon" in 1587. A clever harum-scarum fellow, with a quick sense of the ludicrous, and an unsparing tongue, he found admirable scope for his powers in replying to the Martin Marprelate tracts, which he did in some four or five different pamphlets in and about the year 1589. In the same year he opened up a vein of general prose satire in his Anatomy of Absurdity,' a general attack on whatever struck him as ridiculous in contemporary literature and manners-ranging consequently within a wide circle. In 1592

he continued his exercitations in this vein with 'Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil.' But meantime he had become involved in a quarrel with Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, and his brothers, of which a full account is given in D'Israeli's 'Quarrels of Authors.' The original cause of Nash's ire seems to have been the offensive conceit of Richard Harvey, who in the Marprelate controversy had tried "to play Jack of both sides," sneering at all parties to the dispute, and had repeated the offence in a subsequent publication, in which he went the length of terming all poets and writers about London "piperly make-plays and make-baits.' Nash was thoroughly in his element in taking up such a taunt. Throughout the various pamphlets of the celebrated logomachy, he seems never to lose for a moment his feeling of complete and easy mastery over his opponent, writing always with good-humoured assurance of victory, and with the unsparing

In the opening of his

derision of one who fears no retort. 'Strange News,' a reply to Harvey's attack on the deceased Greene, he bids the Lord have mercy on poor Gabriel, for he is fallen into hands that will plague him. Harvey's poetical pretensions, and, above all, his hexameters, are ridiculed in this pamphlet with wonderful spirit and direct freshness and copiousness of language. It confirms Nash's protestations that the quarrel was none of his seeking, to find him in his Christ's Tears over Jerusalem,' a religious and moral performance strangely different from the writer's previous effusions, making certain overtures towards reconciliation. These overtures being rejected, he returned with redoubled incisiveness to his former ways of warfare, which continued till the mouths of the antagonists were shut by the intervention of the scandalised Government.

Nash was imprisoned in 1597 for his share in a play called the "Isle of Dogs," which has not been preserved. "Summer's Last Will and Testament" is the only play of his that has come down to us. It is of the nature of a Masque, in which the seasons are the prominent figures; was written for representation on the private stage of some nobleman, whose name is unknown, and was acted in 1592, though not published till 1600. On the whole it is a somewhat dull production, as the author himself seems to have felt. Frantic efforts are made to say witty and pretty things about the seasons, and to deliver striking saws about miscellaneous objects, dogs and drunkards, bookish theorists, and misanthropists. The best part of it is the song quoted in Palgrave's Treasury. Nash has no marked dramatic talent. His forte lay in what Mr Collier calls "humorous objurgation": he throws himself into that vein with a sad want of continence, but with unflagging vivacity, and unfailing copiousness both of words and of conceptions. He tried also a tale-" Jack Wilton"-but did not succeed: he never is anything except when in the full swing of harum-scarum raillery.

VI. THOMAS KYD. (?)

The author of "Jeronimo" (produced in 1588) and its continuation "The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is mad again," belongs to the "robustious" school of rampant heroism. Ben Jonson's calling him the "sportive Kyd" is a joke. Kyd, however, possesses merits and a character of his own. In direct and vivid energy of language, in powerful antithesis of character, and in skilful and effective construction of plot, in the chief qualities that make a good acting play, "The Spanish Tragedy" will bear comparison with the best work of any of Shakespeare's predecessors. That it passed through more editions than perhaps any play

of the Elizabethan age is not at all surprising; it offered many points for ridicule to the wits of the time, but its unflagging interest and strong emotions of pity and suspense went straight to the popular heart.

The prominence of "Hieronimo" in the public mind is shown by the mention made of it in Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels," the "Return from Parnassus," Thomas May's "Heir," and other writings of the time. A less obtrusive evidence-but more complimentary to Kyd if it arose from choice and not from necessity— is the fact of Shakespeare's familiarity with the play, as proved by numerous echoes and adaptations of its phraseology and its situations.

One remarkable point in the plot of this double play is the breadth and scope of the action. Lorenzo, an antitype of Iago, plans the murder of his brother-in-law Andrea, and the dishonour of his sister Belimperia. Jeronimo and his son Horatio, the friend of Andrea, become aware of the plot, and write to Andrea warning him of his danger. Were the villain at this point to be exposed and the intended victim preserved for a happy life, or were all the principal personages to perish tragically, the action of the play would still be of ordinary breadth. But this is only half of the action of the First Part of Jeronimo. Jeronimo's letter never reaches Andrea, and Lorenzo's plot miscarries by an ingeniously conceived accident; yet, after all, the man whose assassination was arranged is dishonourably killed in battle by the myrmidons of Balthazar, the young prince of Portugal, and the First Part ends with Andrea's ghost bequeathing to Horatio the duty of revenge. In the Second Part, a marriage is contrived between Balthazar, who has been taken prisoner, and Belimperia the widow of Andrea. She loathes him and falls in love with Horatio. Horatio, the appointed revenger of Andrea's death, is hanged in his father's garden by Lorenzo and Balthazar. This takes place in the first two Acts. The remaining three are occupied with Hieronimo's madness at the loss of his only son, partly real, partly feigned. Like Hamlet, he is not at first certain of the murderers, and even when he discovers them indubitably, he bides his time. At last he hits upon the scheme of representing a play before the Court, and procuring that the actors be Lorenzo, Balthazar, Belimperia, and himself. They kill in earnest where they should kill but in jest: Belimperia stabs Balthazar, whose servants had killed her husband, and then stabs herself; Hieronimo stabs Lorenzo, the murderer of his son, then makes a speech disclosing to the horrified Court the "realism" of the play, and hangs himself.

VII. ANTHONY MUNDAY (1553–162–?).

Munday is known to have been employed in fourteen plays between 1597 and 1603, and he was probably a constant writer for the stage for many years before that date. When quite a youth he seems to have been seized with a passion for travel, and to have run away from his father's with as much money as he could scrape together, and crossed the Channel strange countries for to see. He and his companion were robbed on their way through France, and after some adventures were persuaded to join the English Seminary in Rome. After a time he made his way back to England, and published an account of his experiences under the title The English Roman Life,' “discoursing the lives of such Englishmen as by secret escape leave their own country to live in Rome under the servile yoke of the Pope's government." This was in 1582, and he would seem to have now made his living by translating from French and Italian, and composing rhymed plays. A rhymed play of his—“ Fidele and Fortunatus,' was entered on the Stationers' Books in 1584. The "Downfal of Robert Earl of Huntingdon," which was published in 1601, is supposed to have been originally and chiefly the work of Munday, modified by Chettle. Later in life, he seems to have abandoned the stage for the counter: he devised and wrote the Lord Mayor's pageant in 1605, entitling it-"The Triumphs of Reunited Britannia," and is described on the title-page as "citizen and draper." He was several times employed after this to write these pageants, and was driven to complain of the difficulty of finding new subjects. The Golden Fleece being the drapers' coat of arms, he twice made use of the voyage of the Argo: and when the Mayor happened to be a fishmonger, he treated the citizens to " Chrysanaleia, or the Golden Fishing," to signify the close alliance between the Fishmongers and the Goldsmiths.

There is nothing in Munday's compositions above the tamest mediocrity, and he is worth mentioning only as a specimen of the literary journey man of the time.

VIII.-HENRY CHETTLE (1563-160-?).

Chettle, the editor of Greene's posthumous "Groatsworth of Wit," which contained the memorable attack on Shakespeare, was very much superior to Munday. He seems to have been originally a printer or stationer (he subscribes himself "stationer" in a note of acknowledgment to Henslowe in 1598), and probably took to writing plays about the same time as Marlowe. Between 1597 and 1603, during which time he was

often in distress from want of money, his name is connected with the production of forty-seven plays, of sixteen of which he was sole author. Of his sixteen original plays, only one survives, "Hoffman, or a Revenge for a Father," a tragedy, written probably about 1602, to compete with Shakespeare's "Hamlet," then in course of successful performance at the Globe Theatre. Of the thirty-one plays that he had a share in, all but three are lost-"Patient Grissell" (Chettle, Dekker, and Haughton), "Robin Hood" (Chettle and Munday), "Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green" (Chettle and Day). In 1607, Dekker speaks of Chettle as being in the Elysian fields, and gives the only record we have of his personal appearance-namely, that he was a fat man.

"Hoffman" is a horrid inflated thing, absurd and bloody. The hero in revenging his father certainly does not suffer from the weakness of irresolution. Fortune throws an opportunity in his way, and he seizes it pitilessly, and makes it beget other opportunities, till a long list of enemies, their relatives, and the stranger within their gates, perish by poison or steel. His mission of slaughter is very nearly fulfilled when he has the weakness to fall in love with the Duchess of Luneberg, one of his intended victims, who pretends to listen to his addresses, and betrays him to his father's death by a red-hot crown of iron. It is remarkable that Chettle, like so many other of the Elizabethan poets, no matter how inflated he is in expressing vehement passions of rage, hatred, and revenge, displays considerable felicity in the expression of the tender feelings. One might apply to the poets of that age two lines used by old Janicolo in "Patient Grissell"

"Indeed, my child, men's eyes do nowadays

Quickly take fire at the least spark of beauty."

The beginning of the Third Act of "Hoffman" is very beautiful. It is a moonlight scene between the runaways Lodowick and Lucibella, imitated apparently from the "Merchant of Venice." They have walked till they are weary, the moon strewing silver on their path, and weeping a gentle dew on the flower-spotted earth. The flowers are beguiled by the light of Lucibella's eyes to open their petals "as when they entertain the lord of May." They rest on a bank of violets, and talk themselves asleep.

"Lod. O Love's sweet touch! with what a heavenly charm

Do your soft fingers my war-thoughts disarm!

Prussia had reason to attempt my life,

Enchanted by the magic of thy looks

That cast a lustre on the blushing stars.

Pardon, chaste Queen of Beauty! make me proud,

To rest my toiled head on your tender knee!