The golden stars were whirl'd amid their race,
And on the earth did laugh with twinkling light,
When each thing, nestled in his resting-place,
Forgat day's pain with pleasure of the night :
The hare had not the greedy hounds in sight,
The fearful deer of death stood not in doubt,
The partridge dreamt not of the falcon's foot.

The ugly bear now minded not the stake,
Nor how the cruel mastives do him tear;
The stag lay still unroused from the brake,
The foamy boar feared not the hunter's spear.
All thing was still in desert, bush, and brear.
With quiet heart now from their travails ceast,
Soundly they slept in midst of all their rest."

The tragedy of "Gorboduc" was written by one profoundly interested in grave problems of state, and was designed for an audience whose interests were also deeply political. Gorboduc, a fabulous King of Britain, B.C. 500, takes counsel about dividing his realm in his lifetime between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, and makes the division against the advice of his wisest counsellors. Ferrex and Porrex are jealous of each other: this jealousy is fanned by mischievous flatterers: Porrex, the younger, suddenly issues from his own dominions with an invading army and puts his brother to death: in revenge, he is assassinated by their mother Videna: finally, Videna and Gorboduc are murdered by the populace to avenge the assassination of Porrex, and the race of Brutus being thus extinguished, the kingdom is left a prey to contending factions. The story gives ample scope for the display of political wisdom; and the various opportunities are used with a fulness that no doubt sustained the interest of Elizabeth and her courtiers, though it would be dull enough to the play-goers of our time. But the story contains also tragic materials of universal interest. The unnatural jealousy of Ferrex and Porrex, inflamed by devilish suggestions to the horror of fratricide; the love of Videna for her eldest son, begetting the fierce thirst for a revenge so monstrous; the blind fury

of the populace lighting upon innocent old Gorboduc, whose only crime was infatuated parental fondness; and the final reduction of a well-ordered prosperous kingdom to a confused and embroiled anarchy, form no ordinary complication of human passions and human weakness leading to tragic consequences.

Although, however, Sackville is the author of the first extant tragedy in the English language, and though it deserves all Pope's encomium for its propriety of sentiments, unaffected perspicuity, easy flow of numbers, "chastity, correctness, and gravity," he is not to be called the "founder of English tragedy." That title is reserved for Marlowe. The reason for the seeming inconsistency is, that Sackville adhered to classic models, and did not adapt himself to the changed mode of representation. There is a radical difference between "Gorboduc" and the form of tragedy that established itself on the English stage. The actors of Greek and Roman tragedy, to suit their large public theatres, were raised on thick-soled buskins, and stuffed out to more than human bulk. Thus stiffened, they could not represent animated action, and were forced to suppose such action to take place behind the scenes, and to communicate the state of affairs to the audience, in narrative, soliloquy, and dialogue. English actors, on the other hand, were hampered by no bodily encumbrance, and were free to engage in battle, murder, and violent struggle: and thus it was possible for English dramatists to bring the action on the stage. Apart, therefore, from the debated question of good or bad taste in filling the stage with violent action, it is clear that this was not possible for the classical dramatist, whereas it was possible for the English dramatist. Now Sackville, in our first English tragedy, did not fully avail himself of the possibilities of the modern stage. The war between Porrex and Ferrex, the murder of Porrex by Videna, the storming of the palace and the massacre of old Gorboduc by the rabble, were narrated, not represented, as they would have been by the later Elizabethan actors. It is, however, worthy of notice, that he did to some extent avail himself of the

modern possibilities in the "dumb show" before the Acts. "The order and signification of the dumb show before the Fifth Act," is set down as follows: "First the drums and flutes began to sound, during which there came forth upon the stage a company of harquebushers and of armed men, all in order of battle. These after their pieces discharged, and that the armed men had three times marched about the stage, departed, and then the drums and flutes did cease. Hereby was signified tumults, rebellions, arms, and civil wars to follow, &c." There we have a certain anticipation of the "excursions" and hand-to-hand fighting afterwards incorporated with the play. Although, therefore, we may not call Sackville the "founder," we may very well call him the "pioneer," of English tragedy, as well as of our grand epic.

VII. - RICHARD EDWARDS (1523-1566): Damon and Pythias-Paradise of Dainty Devices.

About the time of the first representation of "Gorboduc," was presented also for the entertainment of her Majesty the comedy of "Damon and Pythias," which is in some respects of a higher order than the imitations of Plautus and Terence, composed for the boys of Eton or the undergraduates of the Universities. The author was Richard Edwards, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, a poet and a musician, formerly a student of Christ Church, Oxford: and he would seem to have kept in mind in whose presence his play was to be acted. It is to be presumed, from bloodthirsty Mary's preference for Heywood and Udall, that she enjoyed a hearty laugh for its own sake; but her successor, if we may judge from her warm commendations of "Damon and Pythias," though not averse to comic scenes of a broad character, desired to encourage a more decorous order of play with some pretence to gravity, wisdom, and refined sentiment-an easy, pleasant, witty play, enforcing a lofty sentiment and a lesson of state, such as she and her statesmen might listen to with pleasure, and

without incurring the charge of frivolity. At any rate this was the kind of play that Edwards furnished and that her Majesty commended. It is a praise of true friendship and an exposure of false friendship, ending with the moral that

"The strongest guard that kings can have
Are constant friends their state to save"-

and a prayer that God grant such friends to Queen Elizabeth. Edwards goes to classical story for a pair of noble friends, Damon and Pythias, and exhibits them at the Court of the tyrant Dionysius the younger in glaring contrast to two false friends, two men who pretend friendship from interested motives-Aristippus, the worldly-wise philosopher, a type of an urbane courtier, and Carisophus, a vile type of spy and informer. The devotion of the two faithful friends is fiercely tried and nobly maintained, while the other partnership is dissolved the moment it ceases to be useful to one of the parties. A good deal of amusing action and witty dialogue is got out of the relations of Aristippus and Carisophus to the Court and to each other: and a passage of more boisterous entertainment is rather forcibly provided by introducing Grim, a collier of Croydon, as purveyor of coals to Dionysius.

Edwards starts in his prologue with very sound principles for the composition of comedy:

"In Comedies the greatest skill is this, rightly to touch All things to the quick, and eke to frame each person so, That by his common talk you may his nature rightly know : A Roister ought not to preach, that were too strange to hear, But as from virtue he doth swerve, so ought his words appear: The old man is sober, the young man rash, the Lover triumphing in joys,

The Matron grave, the Harlot wild and full of wanton toys. Which all in one course they no wise do agree :

So correspondent to their kind their speeches ought to be."

And it must be owned that he fulfils these conditions with no small success. He is not particular to realise the politi

cal or religious talk that may be supposed to have taken place at the Court of Syracuse, but he makes the most of the common hints of the character of Dionysius, and developes Aristippus with considerable spirit from the famous line of Horace

"Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res."

One very striking passage in the play is that where Damon quotes the description of Ulysses in Horace's version of the opening lines of the Odyssey as the description of "a perfect wise man"-qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes-one who had seen cities and the manners of many different men. This ideal is significant of the coming excellence of English drama; and there are not wanting other evidences that observation of character was then quite a mania among literary men.

Edwards was the author also of a play on "Palamon and Arcite," which has not been preserved. We have, however, another monument of his poetical taste and talent in the 'Paradise of Dainty Devices,' a miscellany of amatory and moral pieces, similar to Tottell's Miscellany. It was not published till 1576, ten years after the death of its editor. It ran through several editions before the end of the century. This paradise was described by a critic of the period as "a packet of bald rhymes;" and the description could not easily be improved. It is lugubrious and barren of genius to a degree. All the contributors write in the same doleful strain. As a whole, it gives an impression of dismal monotony; and when we put together the productions of the several writers, we find them one and all in doleful dumps. Edwards laments the prevalence of flattery, the subtle sleights practised at Court, the slow fulfilment of promises, the general want of truth, the rapid decay of worldly beauties, the delay of his desires, the cruel power of Fortune. He denounces the frauds that beguile simple honesty :