is certain that comedy entered upon the English stage much in advance of her elder sister. It is barely possible that a play upon the story of Romeo and Juliet was performed in London before the year 1562; but the earliest tragedy extant in our language is Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc, all of which was probably written by Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, but to the first three acts of which Thomas Norton has a disputed claim. This play is founded on events in the fabulous chronicles of Britain. The principal personages are Gorboduc, King of Britain, about B. C. 600, Videna, his wife, and Ferrex and Porrex, his sons. But nobles, councillors, parasites, a lady, and messengers make the personages number thirteen. The first Act is occupied with the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc to his sons, and the talk thereupon. The second, with the fomenting of a quarrel between the brothers for complete sovereignty. The third, with the events of a civil war, in which Porrex kills Ferrex. In the fourth, the queen, who most loved Ferrex, kills Porrex while he is asleep at night in his chamber; the people rise in wrath and avenge this murder by the death of both Videna and Gorboduc. The fifth Act is occupied by a bloody suppression of this rebellion by the nobles, who, in their turn, fall into dissension; and the land, without a rightful king, and rent by civil strife, becomes desolate. This tragedy was written for one of the Christmas festivals of the Inner Temple, to be played by the gentlemen of that society; and by desire of Queen Elizabeth it was performed by them at White-hall on the 18th of January, 1561. It is plain that the author of this play meant to be very elegant, decorous, and classical; and he succeeded. Of all the stirring events upon which the tragedy is built, not one is represented; all are told. Even Ferrex and Porrex are not brought together on the stage, and Videna does not meet either of them before the audience after the first act. Each act is introduced by a dumb show, intended to be symbolical of what will follow-a common device on our early stage which was ridiculed by Shake

speare in the third Act of Hamlet;* and each act, except the last, is followed by a moralizing and explanatory chorus recited by "four ancient and sage men of Britain."

Ferrex and Porrer is remarkable as being the first English play extant in blank verse, and probably it was the first so written. It is to be wondered that even in this respect it was ever taken as a model. For although Sir Philip Sidney in his Defence of Poesy, finding fault with Ferrex and Porrex for its violation of the unities of time and place, admits that it is so "full of stately speeches and well sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his stile, and full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach," yet it may be safely said that another play so lifeless in movement, so commonplace in thought, so utterly undramatic in motive, so oppressively didactic in language, so absolutely without distinction of character among its personages, cannot be found in our dramatic literature. From Ferrer and Porrer we turn even to the miracle-plays and moral-plays with relief, if not with pleasure. Some notion of its tediousness may be gathered from the fact that it closes with a speech one hundred lines in length, and that the first act is chiefly occupied with three speeches by three councillors, which to*"The Order and Signification of the Domme Shew before the fourth Act.

"First the musick of howeboies began to playe, during which came from under the stage, as though out of hell, three furies, Alecto, Megera, and Ctisiphone clad in blacke garmentes sprinkled with bloud and flames, their bodies girt with snakes, their heds spred with serpentes in stead of heire, the one bearing in hand a snake, the other a whip, and the third a burning firebrand; ech driving before them a king and a queene, which moved by the furies unnaturally had slaine their owne children. The names of the kings and queenes were these, Tantalus, Medea, Athamas, Ino, Cambises, Althea; after that the furies and these had passed about the stage thrise, they departed, and than the musick ceased: hereby was signified the unnatural murders to follow, that is to say, Porrex, slaine by his owne mother; and of king Gorboduc and queene Videna, killed by their owne subjects."

gether make two hundred and sixty verses.* This play demands notice because it is our first tragedy, our first

*The following passage, in which the death of Porrex is announced, is a favourable example of the style of this play :Marcella. Oh where is ruth or where is pitie now?

Whether is gentle hart and mercy fled?
Are they exiled out of our stony brestes,
Never to make returne? is all the world
Drowned in blood and sonke in crueltie?
If not in woman mercy may be found
If not (alas) within the mother's brest

To her owne childe to her owne flesh and blood;
If ruthe be banished thence, if pitie there

May have no place, if there no gentle hart

Do live and dwell, where should we seek it then?
Gorboduc. Madame (alas) what means your wofull tale?
Marcella. O silly woman I! why to this houre

Have kinde and fortune thus deferred my breath,
That I should live to see this dolefull day?
Will ever wight beleve that such hard hart
Could rest within the cruell mother's brest,
With her owne hande to slaye her only sonne?
But out (alas) these eyes behelde the same,
They saw the driery sight, and are become
Most ruthfull recordes of the bloody fact.
Porrex (alas) is by his mother slaine,
And with her hand and wofull thing to tell;
While slumbering on his carefull bed he restes,
His hart stabde in with knife is reft of life.
Gorboduc. O Eubulus, oh draw this sword of ours,

And pearce this hart with speed! O hateful light,
O lothsome life, O sweete and welcome death,
Deare Eubulus, worke this we thee besech!
Eubulus. Pacient your grace, perhappes he liveth yet,
With wound receaved, but not of certain death.
Gorboduc. O let us then repayre unto the place,

And see if Porrex live, or thus be slaine.

Marcella. Alas he liveth not, it is to true,

That with these eyes of him a perelesse prince,
Sonne to a king and in the flower of youth,
Even with a twinkle a senselesse stock I saw.

play written in blank verse, but for no other reason. It had no perceptible effect upon the English drama, and marks no stage in its progress. In that regard it might as well have been written in Greece and in Greek, or in ancient British by Gorboduc himself; for in either case its motive and plan could not then have been more foreign to the genius of English dramatic literature. And it is now proper to say that translated plays adapted from Greek and Latin authors, of which there were many performed in the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign, are here passed by without notice, not merely because they were translations and adaptations, but because, not being an outgrowth of the English character, they were entirely without influence upon the development of the English drama, in an account of which they have no proper place. The Supposes translated from Ariosto by George Gascoigne, and acted at Gray's Inn in 1566, must be mentioned as the earliest extant play in English prose. The fact is significant indeed, that none of the many plays written especially for the court and for the learned societies and the elegant people of that day have left any traces even of a temporary influence upon our stage. The English drama, unlike that of France, had its germ in the instincts, and its growth with the growth, of the whole English people.

Up to, and even past, the Elizabethan era, the English drama was rude in style and in construction, gross in sentiment and in language. Its personages had little character or keeping, its incidents little probability or connection. A true dramatic style, by which character is evolved and emotion revealed, was yet unformed. The cultivated people of that time saw these defects, except the last, but devised for them the wrong remedy. With their heads full of the ancient classics, they judged their own theatre by a foreign standard, to which they would have forced it to conform.* In this English drama, rude, * George Whetstone, in the dedication of his " Promos and Cassandra," the incidents of which Shakespeare used in his Measure

coarse and confused, there was yet an inherent vitality. It was native to the English mind, and it sought to present even in tragedy an idealized picture of real life which had never yet been attempted.

for Measure, and which was published in 1578, gives us the following criticism upon the English drama of that day: "The Englishman in this qualitie is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order he first groundes his worke on impossibilities: then, in three howers, ronnes he throwe the worlde: marryes, gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven, and fetcheth divils from Hel. And (that which is worst) their ground is not so imperfect as their workinge indiscreete; not waying, so the people laugh, though they laugh them (for their follies) to scorn. Manye tymes, to make myrthe, they make a clowne companion with a Kinge: in theyr grave Councils they allow the advice of fools; yea, they use one order of speach for all persons, a grose Indecorum," etc.

Sir Philip Sidney, in a passage of his Defence of Poesy (written about 1583) which has been often quoted, but which is too important to be omitted here, says: “Our Tragedies and Comedies are not without cause cried out against, observing rules neither of honest civilitie nor skilfull Poetrie. Excepting Gorboduck (againe I say of those that I have seene) which notwithstanding, as it is full of statelie speeches, and well sounding phrases, climing to the height of Seneca his stile, and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtaine the verie end of Poesie, yet in truth it is very defectious in the circumstances, which grieves me, because it might not remaine as an exact modell of all Tragedies. For it is faulty in place and time, the two necessarie companions of all corporall actions. For where the Stage should alway represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it, should be both by Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day, there is both many dayes and manie places artificially imagined. But if it bee so in Gorboduck, how much more in all the rest, where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Africk of the other, and so many other under kingdoms, that the Player, when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now you shall have three ladies walke to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By