he was assisted by Ben Jonson and Marston, and two others in which he and Shirley joined. One anonymous play, The Second Maiden's Tragedy (printed for the first time in 1824), and five others that are lost, have also been attributed to him. All these pieces were probably produced before the year 1620, although he lived till 1634. Chapman's best known, and probably also his best, plays are his tragedy of Bussy d'Ambois, reprinted in the third volume of Dilke's Old Plays (1814); his comedy of Monsieur d'Olive, in the same collection; and his comedies of All Fools, The Widow's Tears, and Eastward Hoe (the last the piece in which he was assisted by Jonson and Marston), in Dodsley's collection.* "Of all the English play-writers," says Lamb, "Chapman perhaps approaches nearest to Shakspeare in the descriptive and didactic, in passages which are less purely dramatic. Dramatic imitation was not his talent. He could not go out of himself, as Shakspeare could shift at pleasure, to inform and animate other existences; but in himself he had an eye to perceive, and a soul to embrace, all forms." Webster, Middleton, Decker, Chettle, Marston, Robert Tailor, Tourneur, and Rowley, may also be reckoned among the dramatic writers of considerable note who were the contemporaries of Shakspeare, though most, or all, of them survived him, and none of them began to write so early as he did. John Webster was parish clerk of St. Andrew's, Holborn, and a member of the Merchant Tailors' Company. Of four dramatic pieces of which he is the sole author, besides *The comedy of All Fools appeared for the first time in the second (Reed's) edition of Dodsley. † Specimens, i. 107. two comedies which he wrote in conjunction with Rowley, and other two in which he assisted Decker, his tragedies of The White Devil, and The Duchess of Malfy, are the most celebrated. The character of Vittoria Corombona, the White Devil, is drawn with great spirit; and the delineation of the Duchess of Malfy displays not only remarkable power and originality of imagination, but a dramatic skill and judgment which perhaps no one of the other writers we have named along with Webster has anywhere matched. None of them has either so little extravagance, or so much of the true terrific. "To move a horror skilfully," says Lamb,-" to touch a soul to the quick,-to lay upon fear as much as it can bear,-to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit, this only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may upon horror's head horrors accumulate,' but they cannot do this."* Webster seems to have been a slow writer, which it may be presumed few of his contemporaries were. In an advertisement prefixed to his White Devil, he says, "To those who report I was a long time in finishing this tragedy, I confess I do not write with a goose-quill winged with two feathers; and, if they will needs make it my fault, I must answer them with that of Euripides to Alcestides, a tragic writer. Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only in three days composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred; Thou tell'st truth, quoth he; but here's the difference-thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages." It will be seen from this passage that Webster was not wanting in a *Specimens, i. 234. • ... due sense of his own merits; he seems also to have had a sufficient contempt for the public taste of his day, or at least for that of the ordinary audiences of the theatre where his piece had been brought out: "I have noted,” he says, "most of the people that come to that playhouse resemble those ignorant asses who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books ;" and he adds, "Should a man present to such an auditory the most sententious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style and gravity of person; enrich it with the sententious Chorus, and, as it were, enliven death in the passionate and weighty Nuntius; yet, after all this divine rapture, the breath that comes from the uncapable multitude is able to poison it." We cannot discern in all this the modesty which Lamb so much praises.* Neither does Webster greatly shine as a critic of the performances of others in a subsequent paragraph of his advertisement or preface, in which he gives us his opinion of some of his contemporaries:-" I have ever," he observes, "truly cherished my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman; the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson; the no less worthy composures of the most worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher; and lastly, without wrong last to be named, the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakspeare, Master Decker, and Master Heywood." All this may be frank enough, as Lamb calls it, but it is certainly not very discriminating. Thomas Middleton is the author, in whole or in part, of between * Specimens, i. 236. twenty and thirty dramatic pieces; his associates in those which he did not write entirely himself being Decker, Rowley, Jonson, Fletcher, and Massinger. One of his plays, a comedy called The Old Law, which he wrote in conjunction with Rowley (and which was afterwards improved by Massinger), appears to have been acted so early as 1599; and another was published in 1602. The greater number of his pieces are comedies, and, compared with most of his contemporaries, he has a good deal of comic talent; but his most noted dramatic production is his tragi-comedy of The Witch, which remained in manuscript till a small impression of it was printed, in 1778, by Isaac Reed, after it had been suggested by Steevens that it had probably been written before Macbeth, and might have been the source from which Shakspeare borrowed his Witches in that play. The commentators would have everything, in Shakspeare and everybody else, to be borrowed or stolen: they have the genius and the zeal of thief-catchers in ferreting out and exposing all transferences among writers, real and imaginary, of thoughts, words, and syllables; and in the present case, as in many others, their professional ardour seems to have made a great deal out of very little. Lamb, in an admirable criticism, has pointed out the essential differences between the witches of Shakspeare and those of Middleton,* from whose play, however, Shakspeare appears to have taken a few lines of his incantations; unless, indeed —which we think not improbable-the verses in question were common popular rhymes, preserved among the traditions of the nursery or the country fireside. Middleton's witches have little of the supernatural awfulness of * Specimens, i. 187. Shakspeare's. "Their names, and some of the properties," as Lamb observes, "which Middleton has given to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power, too, is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o'er life." Still another and lower species of witch "the plain, traditional, old woman witch, of our ancestors," as Lamb has called her, "poor, deformed, and ignorant, the terror of villages, herself amenable to a justice," is the heroine of the tragi-comedy of The Witch of Edmonton, the joint production of Rowley, Ford, and Decker. Thomas Decker was the author of, or a contributor to, more than thirty plays in all, nearly two-thirds of which, however, have perished. He has not much high imagination, but considerable liveliness of fancy, and also no little power of pathos. His best pieces are his comedies of Old Fortunatus and The Honest Whore; and his spirited Satiromastix, the principal character in which, Horace Junior, is a humourous caricature of Ben Jonson, who had previously ridiculed Decker upon the stage, in Crispinus, the hero of his satirical comedy of The Poetaster. Decker is also supposed to be the author of the best parts of the very touching play of Patient Grissil, which appeared in 1603, and which has been reprinted, from a unique copy of that edition, for the Shakespeare Society, under the care of Mr. Collier, 1841. It was written by him in conjunction with William Haughton, who is the author of several plays of little merit, and Henry Chettle, who was one of the most active and prolific dramatic writers of this time, although of eight-and |