Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure; course." "So -"So fares it with young Locrine"-" So Humber" "So martial Locrine" Guendolen." A writer in the Edinburgh Review' most justly calls Locrine "a characteristic work of its time." If we were to regard these dumb-shows as the most decisive marks of its chronology, we should carry the play back to the age when the form of the moralities was in some degree indispensable to a dramatic performance; when the action could not move and develop itself without the assistance of something ap The dumb-show, as it is called, of 'Locrine' is tolerably decisive as to the date of the performance. It belongs essentially to that period when the respective powers of action and of words were imperfectly under-proaching to the character of a chorus. Thus stood; when what was exhibited to the eye required to be explained, and what was conveyed to the imagination of the audience by speech was to be made more intelligible by a sign-painting pantomime. Nothing could be more characteristic of a very rude state of art, almost the rudest, than the dumb-shows which introduce each act of 'Locrine.' Act I. is thus heralded : "Thunder and lightning. Enter Ate in black, with a burning torch in one hand, and a bloody sword in the other. Presently let there come forth a lion running after a bear; then come forth an archer, who must kill the lion in a dumb show, and then depart. Ate remains." Ate then tells us, in good set verse, that a mighty lion was killed by a dreadful archer; and the seventeen lines in which we are told this are filled with a very choice description of the lion before he was shot, and after he was shot. And what has this to do with the subject of the play? It is an acted simile: 66 a "So valiant Brute, the terror of the world, Whose only looks did scare his enemies, The archer Death brought to his latest end. O, what may long abide above this ground, In state of bliss and healthful happiness?" In the second act we have a dumb-show of Perseus and Andromeda ; in the third " crocodile sitting on a river's bank, and a little snake stinging it;" in the fourth Omphale and Hercules; in the fifth Jason, Medea, and Creon's daughter. Ate, who is the great show-woman of these scenes, introduces her puppets on each occasion with a line or two of Latin, and always concludes her address with "So"-" So valiant Brute" in 'Tancred and Gismunda,' originally acted original publication in 1594, we may be sure just characterization which would allow a drama to be wholly dramatic. He wanted that high gift of imagination which conceives and produces these qualities of a drama; and he therefore dealt as with an unimaginative audience. The same want of the dramatic power renders his play a succession of harangues, in which the last thing thought of is the appropriateness of language to situation. The first English dramatists, and those who worked upon their model, appear to have gone upon the principle that they produced the most perfect work of art when they took their art entirely out of the province of nature. The highest art is a representation of Nature in her very highest forms; something which is above common reality, but at the same time real. The lowest art embodies a principle opposite to nature; something purely conventional, and consequently always uninteresting, often grotesque and ridiculous. Locrine' furnishes abundant examples of the characteristics of a school of art which may be considered as the antithesis of the school of Shakspere. We hopelessly look for any close parallel of the fustian of 'Locrine' in the accredited works of Greene, or Marlowe, or Kyd, who redeemed their pedantry and their extravagance by occasional grandeur and sweetness. The dialogue from first to last is inflated beyond all comparison with any contemporary performance with which we are acquainted. Most readers are familiar with a gentleman who, when he is entreated to to Pluto's damned lake, to go down, says, the infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also." The valiant Pistol had, no doubt, diligently studied 'Locrine;' but he was a faint copyist of such sublime as the following: "You ugly spirits that in Cocytus mourn, You ugly ghosts, that flying from these dogs The speech of Sabren, before she "commended her fair innocence to the flood," with other scattered passages here and there, afford evidence that, if the author possessed little or nothing of what may be properly called dramatic power, he might, could he have shaken off the false learning and extravagance of his school, have produced something which with proper culture might have ripened into poetry : "You mountain nymphs which in these deserts reign, Cease off your hasty chase of savage beasts! Care in my heart so tyrant-like doth deal. You gracious fairies, which at even-tide You savage bears, in caves and darken'd dens, Come wail with me the martial Locrine's death; Come mourn with me for beauteous Estrild's death! Ah! loving parents, little do you know What sorrow Sabren suffers for your thrall." According to Tieck, Locrine is the earliest of Shakspere's dramas. He has a theory that it has altogether a political tendency: "It seems to have reference to the times when England was suffering through the parties formed in favour of Mary Stuart, and to have been written before her execution, while attacks were feared at home, and invasions from abroad." It was corrected by the author, and printed, he further says, in 1595, when another Spanish invasion was feared. We confess ourselves utterly at a loss to recognise in 'Locrine' the mode in which Shakspere usually awakens the love of country. The management in this particular is essentially different from that of King John' and 'Henry V.' 'Locrine' is one of the works which Tieck has translated, and his translation is no doubt a proof of the sincerity of his opinions; yet he says, frankly enough, "It bears the marks of a young poet unacquainted with the stage, who endeavours to sustain himself constantly in a posture of elevation, who purposely neglects the necessary rising and sinking of tone and effect, and who, with wonderful energy, endeavours from beginning to end to make his personages speak in the same highly-wrought and poetical language, while at the same time he shakes out all his school-learning on every possible occasion." To reduce this very just account of the play to elementary criticism, Tieck says, first, that the action of the play is not conducted upon dramatic principles; second, that the language is not varied with the character and situation; third, that the poetry is essentially conventional, being the reflection of the author's school-learning. It must be evident to all our readers that these characteristics are the very reverse of Shakspere. Schlegel says of "Locrine,' "The proofs of the genuineness of this piece are not altogether unambiguous; the grounds for doubt, on the other hand, are entitled to attention. However, this question is immediately connected with that respecting 'Titus Andronicus,' and must be at the same time resolved in the affirmative or negative." We dissent entirely from this opinion. It appears to us that the differences are as strikingly marked between 'Locrine' and Titus Andronicus' as between Titus Andronicus' and 'Othello.' Those productions were separated by at least twenty years. The youth might have produced Aaron; the perfect master of his art, Iago. There is the broad mark of originality in the characterization and language of Titus Andronicus.' The terrible passions which are there developed by the action find their vent in the appropriate language of passion, the bold and sometimes rude outpourings of nature. The characters of Locrine' are moved to passion, but first and last they speak out of books. In Shakspere, high poetry is the most natural language of passion. It belongs to the state of excitement in which the character is placed; it harmonizes with the excited state of the reader or of the audience. But the whole imagery of 'Locrine' is mythological. In a speech of twenty lines we have Rhadamanthus, Hercules, Eurydice, Erebus, Pluto, Mors, Tantalus, Pelops, Tithonus, Minos, Jupiter, Mars, and Tisiphone. The mythological pedantry is carried to such an extent, that the play, though unquestionably written in sober sadness, is a perfect travesty of this peculiarity of the early dramatists. Conventional as Greene and Marlowe are in their imagery, a single act of 'Locrine' contains more of this tinsel than all their plays put together, prone as they are to this species of decoration. In the author of 'Locrine' it becomes so entirely ridiculous, that this quality alone would decide us to say that Marlowe had nothing to do with it, or Greene either. It belongs, if not to a period scarcely removed from the rude art of the early stages, at least to a period when the principles of real dramatic poetry had not been generally received. It is essentially of the first transition state, in point of conception and execution. CHAPTER VI. THE DRAMATISTS OF SHAKSPERE'S FIRST PERIOD. THE royal patent of 1574 authorized in the proprietors or shareholders in the general exercise of their art and faculty "James adventure. Of these five original patentees, Burbadge, John Perkyn, John Lanham, Wil- four remained as the "sharers in the Blackliam Johnson, and Robert Wilson," who are friars Playhouse" in 1589, the name only of described as the servants of the Earl of John Perkyn being absent from the subLeicester. Although on the early stage the scribers to a certificate to the Privy Council, characters were frequently doubled, we can that the company acting at the Blackfriars scarcely imagine that these five persons were "have never given cause of displeasure in of themselves sufficient to form a company that they have brought into their plays matof comedians. They had, no doubt, subordi- ters of state and religion." This certificate nate actors in their pay; they being the-which bears the date of November, 1589 exhibits to us the list of the professional | at least a year before the date of this certicompanions of Shakspere in an early stage of his career, though certainly not in the very earliest. The certificate represents the persons subscribing it as "her Majesty's poor players," and sets forth that they are "all of them sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse." Their names are presented in the following order : 1. James Burbadge. 10. Augustine Phillipps. 12. William Shakespeare. ficate; for he was the successor of Tarleton in the most attractive line of characters, and Tarleton died in 1588. We hold that Shakspere had won his position in this company at the age of twenty-five by his success as a dramatic writer; and we consider that in the same manner George Peele had preceded him, and had acquired rank and property amongst the shareholders, chiefly by the exercise of his talents as a dramatic poet. There can be little doubt that upon the early stage, the occupations of actor and "maker of plays" for the most part went together. The dialogue was less regarded than the action. A plot was hastily got up, with rude shows and startling incidents. The characters were little discriminated; one actor took the tyrant line, and another the lover; and ready words were at hand for the one to rant with and the other to whine. The actors were not very solicitous about the words, and often discharged their mimic passions in extemporaneous eloquence. In a few years the necessity of pleasing more refined audiences changed the economy of the stage. Men of high talent sought the theatre as a ready mode of maintenance by their writings; but their connexion with the stage would naturally begin in acting rather than in authorship. The managers, themselves actors, would think, and perhaps In the 'Account of GEORGE PEELE and his Writings,' prefixed to Mr. Dyce's valuable edition of his works (1829), the editor says, "I think it very probable that Peele occasionally tried his histrionic talents, particularly at the commencement of his career, but that he was ever engaged as a regular actor I altogether disbelieve." But the pub-rightly, that an actor would be the best lication, in 1835, by Mr. Collier, of the above certificate of the good conduct in 1589 of the Blackfriars company, which he discovered amongst the Bridgewater Papers, would appear to determine the question contrary to the belief of Mr. Dyce. Mr. Collier, in the tract in which he first published this important document *, says, with reference to the enumeration of Peele in the certificate, 'George Peele was unquestionably the dramatic poet, who, I conjectured some years ago, was upon the stage early in life." name of George Peele stands ninth on this list; that of William Shakespeare the twelfth. The name of William Kempe immediately follows that of Shakspere. Kempe must have become of importance to the company 66 *New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare.' The judge of dramatic effect; and a Master of Arts, unless he were thoroughly conversant with the business of the stage, might better carry his taffeta phrases to the publishers of sonnets. The rewards of authorship through the medium of the press were in those days small indeed; and paltry as was the dramatist's fee, the players were far better paymasters than the stationers. To become a sharer in a theatrical speculation offered a reasonable chance of competence, if not of wealth. If a sharer existed who was excellent" enough in "the quality" he professed to fill the stage creditably, and added to that quality "a facetious grace in writing," there is no doubt that with "uprightness of dealing" he would, in such a company as that of the Blackfriars, advance rapidly to distinction, and have the counte- | brought to the task a higher poetical feeling, nance and friendship of “ divers of worship." |and more scholarship, than had been pre Such was the character given to Shakspere himself in 1592. One of the early puritanical attacks upon the stage has this coarse invective against players: "Are they not notoriously known to be those men in their life abroad, as they are on the stage, roysters, brawlers, ill-dealers, boasters, lovers, loiterers, ruffians? So that they are always exercised in playing their parts and practising wickedness; making that an art, to the end that they might the better gesture it in their parts?" By the side of this silly abuse may be placed the modest answer of Thomas Heywood, the most prolific of writers, himself an actor: "I also could wish that such as are condemned for their licentiousness might by a general consent be quite excluded our society; for, as we are men that stand in the broad eye of the world, so should our manners, gestures, and behaviours, savour of such government and modesty, to deserve the good thoughts and reports of all men, and to abide the sharpest censure even of those that are the greatest opposites to the quality. Many amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of sober lives, and temperate carriages, housekeepers, and contributory to all duties enjoined them, equally with them that are ranked with the most bountiful; and if, amongst so many of sort, there be any few degenerate from the rest in that good demeanour which is both requisite and expected from their hands, let me entreat you not to censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some, but rather to excuse us, as Ovid doth the generality of women :'Parcite paucarum diffundere crimen in omnes; Spectetur meritis quæque puella suis.'"* Those of Peele's dramatic works which have come down to us afford evidence that he possessed great flexibility and rhetorical power, without much invention, with very little discrimination of character, and with that tendency to extravagance in the management of his incidents which exhibits small acquaintance with the higher principles of the dramatic art. He no doubt became a writer for the stage earlier than Shakspere. He 66 viously employed in the rude dialogue which varied the primitive melodramatic exhibitions, which afforded a rare delight to audiences with whom the novel excitement of the entertainment compensated for many of its grossnesses and deficiencies. Thomas Nash, in his address 'To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities,' prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon,' mentions Peele amongst the most celebrated poets of the day, as the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum artifex; whose first increase, the 'Arraignment of Paris,' might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold variety of invention, wherein (me judice) he goeth a step beyond all that write." "The Arraignment of Paris,' which Nash describes as Peele's first increase, or first production, was performed before the Queen in 1584, by the children of her chapel. It is called in the title-page "a pastoral." It is not improbable that the favour with which this mythological story of the Judgment of Paris was received at the Court of Elizabeth might in some degree have given Peele his rank in the company of the Queen's players, who appear to have had some joint interest with the children of the chapel. The pastoral possesses little of the dramatic spirit ; but we occasionally meet with passages of great descriptive elegance, rich in fancy, though somewhat overlaboured. The goddesses, however, talk with great freedom, we might say with a slight touch of mortal vulgarity. This would scarcely displease the courtly throng; but the approbation would. be overpowering at the close, when Diana bestows the golden ball, and Venus, Pallas, and Juno cheerfully resign their pretensions in favour of the superior beauty, wisdom, and princely state, of the great Eliza. Such scenes were probably not for the multitude who thronged to the Blackfriars. Peele was the poet of the City as well as of the Court. He produced a Lord Mayor's Pageant in 1585, when Sir Wolstan Dixie was chief magistrate, in which London, Magnanimity, Loyalty, the Country, the Thames, the Sol |