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 indif ferently 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, therefore, 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.

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. Situations 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

acts or in the midst of the business of the scene. But there was a particular expectation that the clown should exhibit his talents at the conclusion of a play in an entertainment called a jig, in which he danced, sung, and chanted metrical nonsense, to the accompaniment of a pipe and tabor.

It would be unjust to associate the name of Marlow with those of Green, Lodge, Peele, Nash, Lily and Kyd, the principal authors during the earliest age of the English drama.

Marlow's first undoubted play was produced in 1590, and he died in 1593. His appearance, therefore, was contemporaneous with that of Shakspeare, from whom he borrowed nothing. His own vigorous understanding taught him to despise, and he had the courage to discard, the puerility and diffusion, and, in a great measure, the low buffoonery and vulgar witticisms also, that disgraced the works of his predecessors. His conceptions were striking and original, his intellect grasped his subject as a whole, and bending every faculty of his mind to the topic immediately before him, he never shrunk from the expression of his boldest thoughts. Sublimity is Marlow's perpetual aim, and to his over strenuous efforts for its attainment, and his indistinct notions of the difference between sublimity and

horror, his most glaring faults are attributable. He heaps crime on crime, and one disgusting incident upon another, till a mass of deformity is accumulated which both nature and probability disclaim. The richest success is often, however, the reward of his noble daring, and his dramas exhibit many scenes both of deep pathos and true sublimity. Marlow's language harmonises exactly with his thoughts. Its characteristics are depth, clearness, and strength, but, partaking of the over-grown boldness of his designs, it is distorted by far-fetched images, forced comparisons, and turgid and bombastic phrases. Marlow's greatest misfortune was want of taste. The arrangement of his scenes is generally bad, the incidents are awkwardly and coarsely introduced, and the whole plot so loosely hung together, that he might literally join with Polonius in asserting, that he used "no art at all."

While the subjects of dramatic entertainments were sacred, and the stage accessary to the views of the priesthood, churches and chapels, and their immediate vicinities, were deemed perfectly appropriate for dramatic exhibition. But as mysteries yielded to profane subjects, and lessons of instruction, in the shape of moralities, gave way to scenes of mere amusement, the profanation of sacred edifices was loudly protested