and, accordingly, houses for that purpose were soon erected. The first regular licensed theatre in London was opened at Blackfriar's in 1576; and in ten years from that period, there were, it is estimated, not less than two hundred players in and near the metropolis. When Shakspeare commenced his career, London contained five public theatres, besides several private or select establishments; and curiosity is naturally excited to learn something of the structure and appearance of the buildings in which his immortal dramas first saw the light, and where he unwillingly made himself a 'motley to the view,' in his character of actor. The theatres were constructed of wood, and were of a circular form, open to the weather, excepting over the stage, which was covered with a thatched roof. Outside, on the roof, a flag was hoisted during the time of performance, which commenced at three o'clock, at the third sounding or flourish of trumpets. The courtiers and fair dames of the court of Elizabeth, sat in boxes below the gallery, or were accommodated with stools on the stage, where some of the young gallants also threw themselves at length on the rush-strewn floor, while their pages handed them pipes and tobacco, then a fashionable and highly-prized luxury. The middle classes were crowded in the pit or yard, which was destitute of seats, or any other convenience.

Actresses were not introduced upon the stage until after the Restoration, the female parts being played by boys or delicate-looking young men. This may, perhaps, palliate in some degree, the occasional grossness of the language put into the mouths of females in the old plays, while it serves to point out still more clearly the depth of that innate sense of beauty and excellence which prompted the exquisite pictures of loveliness and perfection in Shakspeare's female characters.

Nearly all the dramatic writers preceding Shakspeare, and contemporary with him, were men who had received a learned education at the university of Oxford, or Cambridge. A profusion of classical imagery, therefore, abounds in their plays, but they did not copy the severe and correct taste of the ancient models. They wrote to supply the popular demand for novelty and excitement—for broad farce or superlative tragedy-to introduce the coarse raillery or comic incidents of low life--to dramatize a murder, or embody the vulgar idea of oriental bloodshed and splendid extravagance. ‘If we seek for a poetical image,' says Henry Mackenzie, 'a burst of passion, or a beautiful sentiment, a trait of nature, we seek not in vain in the works of our very oldest dramatists. But none of the predecessors of Shakspeare must be thought of along with him, when he appears before us like Prometheus, moulding the figures of men, and breathing into them animation and all the passions of life.' Among the immediate predecessors of the great poet, however, are some worthy of a separate notice; and nearly all of them have touches of that happy poetic diction, free, yet choice and select, which gives a permanent value and interest to these elder masters of English dramatic poetry. To a brief sketch of some of them, therefore, we shall now proceed.

JOHN LYLY, the first to be noticed, was born in Kent in 1553, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took his master's degree in 1575. He remained at the university about three years after he had taken his degree, and then removed to London, where he attached himself to the court, and soon became a very great favorite. In 1580 he first appeared as an author, and published his Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit, which being excessively affected in style, exercised a very injurious influence on the fashionable literature of the day. Lyly's plays, nine in number, were chiefly written for court entertainments, and the greater part of them were on mythological subjects, such as Sappho and Phaon, Endymion, and the Maid's Metamorphosis. Hazlitt was a very warm admirer of the Endymion,' but evidently from the feelings and sentiments which it awakened, rather than from the poetry. 'I know few things more perfect in characteristic painting,' he remarks, than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of betraying the secret of Midas's ears, fancy that "the very reeds bow down, as though they listened to their talk;" nor more affecting in sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from his long sleep, "Behold the twig to which thou laidest down thy head is now become a tree.' There are, however, finer things in the 'Metamorphosis' than these, such as the following passage, where the prince laments Eurymene lost in the woods :

Adorned with the presence of my love,

The woods I fear such secret power shall prove,
As they'll shut up each path, hide every way,
Because they still would have her go astray,
And in that place would always have her seen,
Only because they would be ever green,
And keep the winged choristers still there,
To banish winter clean out of the year.

Or the song of the fairies-

By the moon we sport and play,
With the night begins our day:
As we dance the dew doth fall,
Trip it, little urchins all.

Lightly as the little bee,

Two by two, and three by three,

And about go we, and about go we.

Lyly's genius was essentially lyrical, and hence the songs in his plays seem to flow forth from the native fountain of his feelings. The following exquisite little pieces are in his drama of Alexander and Campaspe, which was written about 1585:

CUPID AND CAMPASPE.

Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid.

He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows;
His mother's doves and team of sparrows;

Loses them too, and down he throws

The coral of his lip-the rose

Growing on 's cheek, but none knows how;

With these the crystal on his brow,

And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win;
At last he set her both his eyes;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
Oh Love, hath she done this to thee?
What shall, alas, become of me!

SONG.

What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O'tis the ravish'd nightingale-
Jug, jug, jug, jug,-tereu-she cries.
And still her woes at midnight rise.

Brave prick-song! who is 't now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear,
Now at heaven's gate, she claps her wings,

The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark! but what a pretty note,

Poor Robin red-breast tunes his throat;

Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing
'Cuckoo' to welcome in the spring.

The time of Lyly's death is uncertain; but he is generally supposed to have died about 1600.

GEORGE PEELE, a contemporary of Lyly, was born about 1556, and was educated at Christ's Church College, Oxford. Immediately after he left the university he repaired to London, and commenced his career as an actor in connection with the same company to which Shakspeare afterward belonged. He also held the situation of city poet, and conductor of pageants for the court; and in 1584, his Arraignment of Paris, a court show, was represented before the queen. In 1593, Peele gave an example of an English historical play in his Edward the First. The style of this piece is turgid and monotonous; yet in the following allusion to England, we see some

thing of the high-sounding kingly speeches which are found in Shakspeare's historical plays:

Illustrious England, ancient seat of kings,
Whose chivalry hath royaliz'd thy fame,

That, sounding bravely through terrestrial vale,
Proclaiming conquests, spoils, and victories,

Rings glorious echoes through the farthest world!
What warlike nations, train'd in feats of arms,
What barbarous people, stubborn, or untam'd,
What climate under the meridian signs,

Or frozen zones under his brumal stage,

Erst have not quak'd and trembled at the name
Of Briton and her mighty conquerors?

Her neighbour realms, as Scotland, Denmark, France,

Awed with their deeds, and jealous of her arms,
Have begg'd defensive and offensive leagues.
Thus Europe, rich and mighty in her kings,
Hath fear'd brave England, dreadful in her kings.
And now, to eternize Albion's champions,
Equivalent with Trojan's ancient fame,
Comes lovely Edward from Jerusalem,
Veering before the wind, ploughing the sea;
His stretched sails fill'd with the breath of men,
That through the world admire his manliness.
And lo, at last arrived in Dover road,

Longshank, your king, your glory, and our son,
With troops of conquering lords and warlike knights,
Like bloody-crested Mars, o'erlooks his host,
Higher than all his army by the head,
Marching along as bright as Phoebus' eyes!
And we, his mother, shall behold our Son,

And England's peers shall see their sovereign.

Peele was the author of a number of other dramas, such as Old Wives' Tale, and the Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe; the former of which written part in prose and part in blank verse, afforded Milton a rude outline of his fable of 'Comus.' The latter, which is Peele's greatest work, with the tragedy of Absolem, Campbell terms, 'the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry.' This play was not published till 1599, after Shakspeare had written some of his finest comedies, and opened up a fountain compared with which the feeble tricklings of Peele were wholly insignificant. We may, however, allow to Peele the merit of a delicate poetical fancy, and smooth musical versification. The defect in his blank verse is want of variety: the art of varying the pauses and modulating the verse without the aid of rhyme, had not yet been generally adopted. In 'David and Bethsabe' this monotony is less observable, because his lines are smoother, and there is, in some of the scenes, a play of peculiarly rich and luxuriant fancy. We have, however, only space for a single passage from this important work:

PROLOGUE TO KING DAVID AND FAIR BETHSABE.

Of Israel's sweetest singer now I sing,

His holy style and happy victories;

Whose muse was dipt in that inspiring dew,
Archangels 'stilled from the breath of Jove,
Decking her temples with the glorious flowers
Heaven rain'd on tops of Sion and Mount Sinai.
Upon the bosom of his ivory lute

The cherubim and angels laid their breasts;

And when his consecrated fingers struck

The golden wires of his ravishing harp,

He gave alarum to the host of heaven,

That, wing'd with lightning, brake the clouds, and cast

Their crystal armour at his conquering feet.

Of this sweet poet, Jove's musician,

S

And of his beauteous son, I press to sing;
Then help, divine Adonai, to conduct
Upon the wings of my well-temper'd verse,
The hearers' minds above the towers of heaven,
And guide them so in this thrice haughty flight,
Their mounting feathers scorch not with the fire
That none can temper but thy holy hand :
To thee for succour flies my feeble muse,
And at thy feet her iron pen doth use.

Peele, like most of his dramatic brethren of that period, led a very irregular life, and died in the midst of poverty, in 1599.

THOMAS KID follows in the order of succession, the dramatists just noticed. He was born about 1560, and apparently liberally educated, but under what circumstances is unknown. In 1588, he produced his play of Hieronimo or Jeronimo, and a few years afterward a second part under the title of the Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again. The latter tragedy is said. to have gone through more editions than any other play of that period. It was revived in 1602, when Ben Jonson is supposed to have improved it by the addition of new scenes. These new scenes are said, by Lamb, to be 'the very salt of the old play,' and so superior to Jonson's acknowledged works that he attributes them to Webster, or even to Shakspeare. The following scene, whoever may have been the author of it, is so exquisite that we can not withhold it. Hieronimo, whose son had been murdered, goes distracted, and he wishes the painter to represent the fatal catastrophe on canvas. He finds that the artist is suffering under a bereavement similar to his own, and the following dialogue ensues :—

THE PAINTER ENTERS.

Paint. God bless you, Sir!

Hieron. Wherefore? why, thou scornful villain !

How, where, or by what means should I be blest?

Isab. What would you have, good fellow?

Paint. Justice, Madam.

Hieron. Oh! ambitious fellow, would'st thou have that

That lives not in the world?

Why all the undelved minds can not buy

An ounce of justice; 'tis a jewel so inestimable.

I tell thee, God has engrossed all justice in his hand,

And there is none but what comes from him.

Paint. Oh! then I see that God must right me for my murder'd son!
Hieron. How! was thy son murder'd?

Paint. Ay, Sir; no man did hold a son so dear.

Hieron. What! not as thine? That's a lie

As massy as the earth! I had a son,

Whose least unvalued hair did weigh

A thousand of thy sons! and he was murder'd!

Paint. Alas! Sir, I had no more but he.

Hieron. Nor I, nor I; but this same one of mine

Was worth a legion.'