CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

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there was a gallery for the orchestra. The upper classes occupied little rooms or boxes ranged round the theatre, while the middle classes stood in the pit. There was no grand painting or gilding such as we have in the theatres of our time; nor had they any scenery except of the very simplest description. The usual way of informing the audience what the stage was to represent for the time being was to hang up a placard bearing the name of the place intended as the scene of the play. The actors were all males, the female parts being taken by boys and delicate looking young men. In the time of good Queen Bess, the players, before dismissing the audience, knelt at the front of the stage, and offered up a prayer for the Queen! It may be interesting to know that theatrical performances did not take place in the evening, as with us, but in the afternoon, about three o'clock. A flag was usually hoisted to inform the public that the play was about to begin.

THE EARLY DRAMATISTS.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (b. at Canterbury, about 1563, d. 1593). Of all the writers for the stage before Shakespeare's time, Kit Marlowe was the greatest. After leaving the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his degree, he seems to have begun a wild and reckless course of life. Having joined a company of actors, most of whom were either drunkards or gamblers, or both, the gay, witty, jovial poet speedily became their boon companion, and abandoned himself to all kinds of wickedness, frequenting the worst places in London, despising everything that was good, and even denying the existence of a God. His death was in keeping with his life. Having quarrelled with a serving man in a low gambling house, he was stabbed with his own dagger, which "pierced through eye and brain." He died of his wound in 1593, aged only thirty years.

His principal works are the drama of Faustus and the tragedy of Edward II. The former represents Dr.

Faustus as a learned man thirsting for more knowledge and greater enjoyment than his studies have been able to afford him. By the aid of magic, he is made to call up the Evil One, who promises him all kinds of delight, on condition that his soul shall be forfeited to Satan at the end of four-and-twenty years. Caring nothing for the future, Faustus signs the agreement with his blood, and, under the guidance of Mephistopheles, a fallen angel, enjoys every possible kind of pleasure. In this way the years glide on until the awful moment draws nigh when he must fulfil his pact. Then Faustus would pray, but cannot; and, in an agony of remorse and terror, he begs piteously for another day, another hour, in order to have more time for repentance; but the fatal moment came, and when some of his friends entered his room next day, they found his body torn limb from limb.

In the tragedy of Edward II. we have the story of that poor, favourite-loving, English King, who slighted his beautiful but revengeful Queen, Isabella, and suffered in consequence a cruel imprisonment and a violent death. The last scene of the play represents the murderer, Lightborn, entering the cell of the imprisoned King, and pretending to weep at the miserable condition in which he finds him. Thinking that Lightborn really sympathizes with him, Edward reveals his sufferings in these words

"This dungeon where they keep me is a sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls

And there, in mire and puddle have I stood

This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,

One plays continually upon a drum.

They give me bread and water, being a king;
So that for want of sleep and sustenance
My mind's distempered and my body numbed,
And whether I have limbs or no I know not.
O would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes!
Tell Isabel, the queen, I looked not thus,
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France."

After a while, the king feels convinced that Lightborn

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has come to kill him; and yet he would fain close his eyelids in sleep

"Now, as I speak, they fall, and yet with fear

Open again.

At length the murderer thinks he sleeps; but suddenly the king awakes again, and cries to Lightborn—

"Something still buzzeth in mine ears,
And tells me, if I sleep, I never wake:

This fear is that which makes me tremble thus;
And therefore, tell me wherefore art thou come?

LIGHT. To rid thee of thy life; Matrevis, come !
ED. I am too weak and feeble to resist :

Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul."

In the two plays above referred to, Marlowe shows himself to possess a power as great as that of Shakespeare himself. The terrible language of Faustus in the last scene of the drama, and the touching and piteous words of Edward II. in the closing scene of the tragedy, are perhaps as fine as any similar passages in the whole range of English literature. But Marlowe wrote other plays which are characterized by excess in everything. His loves are mad passions; his angers, rages; his tragedies, massacres. In other words, he makes a lover speak to his mistress as though he would devour her; when his characters get angry, they stamp, and tear their hair, and gnash their teeth; and when they kill, they must stab, burn, drown, wholesale. In some of his shorter pieces, however, he is gentle, natural, and melodious.

Other Dramatists.-These were mostly of the same set to which Marlowe belonged. They were very reckless and profligate; but their plays are so excellent that, had there been no Shakespeare, they would have stood in the front rank of the dramatic poets of England. The most distinguished were GEORGE PEELE, who acted along with Shakespeare, and wrote the first historical drama (Edward I.); THOMAS KYD, the author of a very

popular tragedy called Hieronymo, the Spanish Tragedy; THOMAS NASH and ROBERT GREENE, who wrote satirical plays, but who would have abused anybody, if paid to do so; and THOMAS LODGE, who, with Greene's help, wrote a play defending the stage from the attacks of the Puritans, for they heartily hated the theatre and everybody connected with it.

CHAPTER VI.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE DRAMATISTS OF HIS AGE. A.D. 1558-1660.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS-Ben Jonson— Beaumont and Fletcher-Massinger-Other Dramatic Poets.

WE have now to consider the life, writings, and leading characteristics of the greatest of all poets. William Shakespeare was born on the 23rd of April, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon, a town in Warwickshire. His father, John Shakespeare, was a respectable shopkeeper, and dealt in wool, skins, leather gloves, &c.; but his mother, Isabella Arden, was a lady born, and an heiress to boot. For many a year John and his wife lived happily, and things prospered with them; and we learn that he was made alderman, and afterwards mayor of his native town. Then he seems to have taken to farming, about which he knew little or nothing, and the consequence was that in his later days he was so poor that his son William had to support him. The poet was born during the prosperous part of his father's life, but, by the time he was fifteen, there was poverty in the household. William got little or no instruction from his parents, for neither of them could read or write; but he was sent to the Free Grammar School, where he received a very plain education, and where, also, he sometimes acted as monitor to the junior boys. On leaving school he is supposed to

have been, for some time at least, in a lawyer's office, because he uses so many law words in his writings. After this he seems to have been a wild young fellow; for there are stories of his having stolen deer from Sir Thomas Lucy's park, at Charlecote, near Stafford, and of his having been severely punished by that knight for so doing. In revenge, he wrote verses befooling Sir Thomas, and stuck them on the park gate, where everybody read and laughed at them. The indignant knight so tormented the life of Shakespeare, that he was obliged to leave Stratford altogether. But there was another reason for his going away. When only eighteen years old he had foolishly married a farmer's daughter called Anne Hathaway—a woman nearly eight years older than himself-and the ill-matched pair seem to have been very unhappy, for after leaving her he came but seldom to see her; and, when he died, he left her only "his second best bed with the hangings."

Shakespeare went to London, and was probably invited by two Warwickshire actors to join the company at the Globe Theatre. His duties were to prepare old plays for the stage, and to act occasionally when required. By and bye, he became one of the partners in the concern, wrote splendid plays of his own, and became part proprietor of a new theatre (the Blackfriars) on the north side of the river, and built on the very spot where the Times' office now stands. From this it will be seen that Shakespeare was unlike the other actors and play writers of his time, in that he saved his money, instead of spending it in the wild way these men usually did. Soon he became a wealthy man, and was able to buy an estate called New Place, near his native town, where he spent the remainder of his days, and where he died in the year 1616. He was buried in the parish church of Stratford. Shakespeare's private character seems to have been that of an "amiable, gentle, and generous man, beloved by everybody, except the very few who were jealous of his greatness."

He wrote thirty-seven plays, which may be divided into