. SELF-REVELATION OF SHAKESPEARE are young; only think twice before you buy your dram of poison. As you grow older be a soldier, a hero, or a statesman, or, if you can be nothing better, be a playwright, so long as the inspiration comes with spontaneous and overpowering force. But always remember to keep your passions in check, and don't forget that the prize, even if you win it, may turn to ashes in your mouth. Fate is always playing ugly tricks, punishing the reckless, and exposing illusions. The struggle is fascinating while it lasts because it rouses the energies; but when the energies decay the position which it has won loses its charm. Literary glory, though one may talk about it in sonnets, is a trifle. Your rivals are many of them very good fellows, and make excellent society; it is both pleasant and prudent to be on good terms with them, and nothing is so contemptible as the rivalry of authors. But, after all, success only means a position among jealous dependents of great men, who themselves are very apt to get into the Tower and even to the scaffold. When youthful passions have grown feeble, and the delight of being applauded by the mob has rather palled upon one, the best thing will be to break the magical wand and sit down with, we will hope, good Mistress Hall" for a satisfactory Miranda, at Stratford-upon-Avon. Though we can no longer write ballads to our mistress' eyebrow, we can heartily appreciate gentle, pure, and obedient womanhood, and may hope that some specimens may be found, while we still enjoy a chat and a convivial meeting with an old theatrical friend. This view of life suggests, I think, a very real person, and does not go beyond what is substantially admitted by literary critics. 66 The English Drama.* BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE. The English drama, like the Greek, has a purely religious origin. The same is true of the drama of every civilized people of modern times. It is worthy of particular remark that the theatre, denounced by churchmen and by laymen of eminently evangelical profession, as base, corrupting, and sinful, not in its abuse and its degradation, but in its very essence, should have been planted and nourished by churchmen, having priests for its first authors and actors, and having been for centuries the chief school of religion and of morals to an unlettered people. Theatrical representations have probably continued without interruption from the time of Eschylus. Even in the dark ages, which we look back upon too exclusively as a period of gloom, tumult, and bloodshedding, people bought and sold, and were married and given in marriage, and feasted and amused themselves as we do now; and we may be sure that among their amusements dramatic representations of some sort were not lacking. The earliest dramatic performances in the modern languages of Europe of which we have any record or tradition were representations of the most striking events recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the Christian Gospels, of some of the stories told in the Pseudo Evangelium, or Spurious Gospel, or of legends of the saints. On the continent these were called Mysteries; In England both Mysteries and Miracle-plays. * An account of the Rise and Progress of the English Drama to the time of Shakespeare. The ancient Hebrews had at least one play. It was founded upon the exodus of their people from Egypt. Fragments of this play in Greek iambics have been preserved to modern times in the works of various authors. The principal characters are Moses, Zipporah, and God in the Bush. The author, one Ezekiel, is called by Scaliger the tragic poet of the Jews. His work is referred by one critic to a date before the Christian era; others suppose that he was one of the Seventy Translators; but Warton, my authority in this instance, supposes that he wrote his play after the destruction of Jerusalem, hoping by its means to warm the patriotism and revive the hopes of his dejected countrymen. The Eastern Empire long clung to all the glories to which its name, its language, and its position gave it a presumptive title; and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides were performed after some fashion at Constantinople until the fourth century. At this period Gregory Nazianzen, archbishop, patriarch, and one of the fathers of the church, banished the pagan drama from the Greek stage, and substituted plays founded on subjects taken from the Hebrew or the Christian Scriptures. St. Gregory wrote many plays of this kind himself; and Warton says that one of them, called Χριστος Πάσχων, or Christ's Passion, is still extant. In this play, which, according to the Prologue, was written in imitation of Euripides, the Virgin Mary was introduced upon the stage, making then, as far as we know, her first appearance. St. Gregory died about A. D. 390. His dramatic productions more than rivalled his other theological writings in the favour of the people; for, as Warton also mentions, St. Chrysostom, who soon succeeded Gregory in the see of Constantinople, complained that in his day people heard a comedian with much more pleasure than a minister of the gospel. St. Chrysostom held the see of Constantinople from A. D. 398 to A. D. 404. In this quarter also another kind of dramatic representation—that of mummery or masking-developed itself in a Christian or a |