added. Hence

Hence may be deduced those most incongruous productions, masques; hence ideas were derived of the introduction of profane characters on the stage, and the mixture, subsequently met with, of pantomime and dialogue in the same play, and the allegorical representation in dumb shew of the matter of the scenes which followed.

It is to the universities, inns of court, and public seminaries, however, that we are indebted for the first regular dramas which our language boasts. The scholars of these establishments assiduously engaged in free translations of the classical models of antiquity, and in the composition and performance of plays constructed on their model. The earliest tragedy, Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, the joint effort of Sackville Lord Buckhurst, and Thomas Norton, was performed at the Inner Temple in 1561-2; and the first comedy, Gammar Gurton's Needle, a juvenile production of Bishop Still, was acted at Christ's Church, Cambridge, in 1566.

There is a general similarity between all the plays that preceded Shakspeare's dramatic ef forts. Their authors had no notion of a plot comprehending one great design, nor of a plot consisting of several actions emanating from the same source, or combining for the promotion of

the same end, consistent with, though varying from, each other. They either ran into the error of framing their story with such bald simplicity, that it was scarcely worthy the name of story at all, or they placed in the same play two, or more, stories unconnected by one single link. Incidents are either made the subject of long and tedious conference, or they follow each other in such quick succession, that actions and their results, which a lapse of time only could produce, stand in immediate contact, so that the passing scene wears the appearance of arbitary arrangement, rather than of a natural progress of events. One of two faults generally marks the concluding act. The denouement is delayed, after the result is obvious, and all interest in it has evaporated, or, the main story being finished, the author's ingenuity is put to the rack to eke out his scene to its prescribed extent, with whatever extraneous circumstances he could graft upon it.

The chorus very commonly formed a portion of the earlier English plays, sometimes taking a part in the performance, sometimes supplying the deficiencies of the action by narrative or explanation, and sometimes performing the office of a moral commentator on the passing events. A more incongruous accompaniment was the cumbrous machinery of the dumb-shew which

preceded the several acts, prefiguring their contents by allegorical and pantomimic exhibition. Into such extensive use was this mute mimickry sometimes stretched, that it was made to cover the want of business in the play; and where an author was extremely fastidious, and attentive to probability, it was used to fill up the interval that was necessary to pass while a hero was expected from the holy land, or a princess imported, married, or brought to bed.

Prose, rhyme, and blank-verse, were indifferently the mental vehicles of the early dramatists: occasionally plays were composed in one or other of them entirely; the mixture of two was very frequent, and instances of the presence of all three in the same play were by no means

common.

That our early dramatists were well acquainted with the laws which antiquity prescribed for the regulation of the drama, is a circumstance that admits not of question, for they were all scholars. Their neglect of the unities, there. fore, and other proprieties, more essential, and of much easier observance, was wilful, and they had, apparently, no hesitation in committing to paper all the suggestions of their imaginations : hence the occurrences of many years are crowded into five acts; in a single play the scene is often

shifted to different quarters of the globe; hence the mixture of characters of different countries; and while the scene is laid in Greece or Rome, the customs, manners, sentiments, and allusions proclaim all the personages to be English. In short, their anachronisms and anomalies are without end.

Situ

The leading characteristic of the early English tragedy, in which the ancients were not imitated, was exaggeration. The plot generally embodied, some circumstance of extraordinary horror or wickedness, and all its accompaniments were attuned to a turgid and unnatural pitch. ations such as could scarcely be produced by any possibility were diligently sought after; passions were overstrained till no distinction remained between what was intended for their expression and the ravings of lunacy; language was inflated till it lost its connection with sense; and metaphors the most unlicensed, and conceits of thought and expression the most fanciful, were used with the utmost freedom. It was impossible that the heart could speak from beneath so cumbrous a load of folly and absurdity: attempts were indeed made to imitate the voice of nature, but rarely with such success- as to be productive of even a momentary delusion.

We turn to comedy, but meet with no superior

gratification: much greater diversity of scene and incident she certainly exhibits, but she entails even greater evils on her reader than those already enumerated. Low buffoonery, horrible obscenity, petty conceits, quibbles, puns, crosspurposed questions and replies, and, in short, every variety of rhodomontade was produced, and accepted as substitutes for wit. The most prominent characters in the old comedies were waiters, pages, servants, and other personages of the same humble description: the meanness of their rank may be urged as some excuse for their vulgarity.

The union of serious and comic business in the same play was very common from the first dawnings of dramatic literature in England. The Vice and the Devil obtruded their impertinent buffoonery on scenes of the most serious and solemn import, and the audiences, who witnessed such absurdity with delight, may well be supposed incapable of relishing performances of pure and simple beauty. The grossness of their taste was administered to by a clown who thrust himself upon the scene, on all occasions, to vent the ebullitions of his folly or his wit. He was privileged to notice what was passing in the audience part of the theatre, to enter into familiar conversation with the spectators, either between the