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Moralities no longer interested men, because their characters were not real; the History play was a step towards bringing the serious drama nearer to real life; it introduced historical characters, celebrated for some vice or virtue. Bishop Bale wrote several of these histories; his King John combines historical and allegorical characters, and thus forms the transition between the Morality and the Elizabethan Historical play. But neither Tragedy nor Comedy could possibly have attained to the excellence which we find in the Elizabethan drama, but for the quickening influence of the revival of classical learning which followed on the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1453. I cannot enter into the history of that revival; suffice it to say that about the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century in England, men's minds were occupied with the study of the classical poets, whose works opened to them a new world of beauty and art.

The first English Tragedies which deserve that name, bear a strong impression of the classical drama, especially of the Roman plays of Seneca and Terence. These early tragedies were remarkable for the seriousness of their thought and language, the number of murders introduced, the gravity and dulness of their style. Sackville's Gorboduc is a good example of them. I will just quote the argument which prefaced it, to give you some idea of the general slaughter accomplished in the play: 'Gorboduc, king of Britain, divided his realm in his life-time to his sons, Ferrex and Porrex. The sons fell to dissention. The younger killed the elder. The mother, that more dearly loved the elder, for revenge killed the younger. The people moved with the cruelty of the fact rose in rebellion, and slew both father and mother. The nobility assembled and most terribly destroyed the rebels; and afterwards, for want of issue of the Prince, they fell to civil war, in which both they and many of their issues were slain, and the land for a long time almost desolate and miserably wasted.'

We see marks of classical imitation in this play, in the introduction of the chorus, who make moral reflections at the end of each act, and in the fact that there is no action on the stage, it being all reported by a messenger. The play of Gorboduc is intensely dull, there is throughout an absence of all life and interest. No one reading it would imagine that the same country which produced it would, in thirty years time, give birth to the plays of Shakespeare. The study of classical learning enormously increased the material for plays, and also quickened the sense for form. There was a danger lest the drama in England should become a mere classical imitation; the problem was to unite the advantages conferred by the classical drama with a truly national character. Happily the Elizabethan drama succeeded in doing this.

The Elizabethan age in England offers a parallel to the epoch in Athens following the Persian war. The last twenty years of Elizabeth's reign were a period succeeding to one of excitement by which the national mind had been deeply stirred. The struggle of the Reformation had put new life into the nation; the great triumph over Spain in 1588 roused a sense of national pride; the discoveries of voyagers opened new worlds and new wonders to the minds of men. Here also, as in Greece, the great outburst of literary fertility had been preceded by a period of preparation. the beginning of the sixteenth century new forms of poetry and prose were being tried; the influence of classical learning was penetrating into men's minds, and sowing seeds there which bore fruit later on. A great many translations were made, introducing new words which enriched the language; the spirit of theological reform did a great deal to develop the art of writing; for it gave birth to numbers of religious pamphlets; also it is impossible to over-estimate the influence of the translation and circulation of the Bible

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It is written in blank verse, which is rendered very monotonous by there being no variety of pause, the sentence almost always ending with the line.

in refining and ennobling the language. The last twenty years of Elizabeth's reign were a period of immense activity and life. There was a feeling of joy in the world based on a sense of the importance of human interests and passions. There was a sense of beauty and gladness in life, combined with a sense of seriousness. Later on these two feelings became narrowed and separated in the two parties of Cavaliers and Puritans.

To the Elizabethan writers human life, with its good and evil, its great and its ridiculous sides, was of supreme interest. Hence the drama, with its life and action, would naturally be the form of poetry we should expect to find most highly developed in this time. The age of Elizabeth is essentially a play-writing age. There was a regular manufacture of plays; at this time every festival was celebrated by some dramatic entertainment. Numbers of masques, pageants, and plays, many of them translations or imitations of classical works, were produced by the scholars at the Universities, or the students of the Inns of Court. A large share in the dramatic movement was taken by young University men. Writing plays was then the only way for a literary man to gain his living, except by patronage. Many young men of genius, fresh from the University, and disliking the trammels of patronage, came up to London, where they gained their living by writing plays, and led riotous lives, thus fostering the opposition which the city authorities offered from the very first to the drama. When Shakspere came up to London in 1586 he would find that the chief writers for the stage were these young University men, who were rather proud of their scholarship, and inclined to look down on the actors. The chief of this band were Peele, Marlowe, Green and Nash. Of these by far the greatest is Marlowe. He had real dramatic genius, and there is no saying what he might not have accomplished if he had not died young. We know that he influenced Shakspere, probably even assisted him in one

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of his plays, Henry VI, and he perhaps might have rivalled him if death had not cut him off before his dramatic talent had attained its full development.

In speaking of Marlowe we draw near to Shakspere, and therefore to the limits of my essay. Shakspere is the thorough representative of the Elizabethan age. He has the Elizabethan delight in the world and joy in life, and also the Elizabethan depth and moral seriousness. It is impossible to get at any definite idea of his personality, because he was so many-sided. He must have had the widest sympathies, the most universal interests, in order to be able to draw such various characters as we find in his plays. His character must have shown an harmonious development of all faculties, one side not being strongly marked at the expense of another. Even his sonnets, though they show us his personality to a certain extent yet have a touch of general humanity which distinguishes them from all other personal poems. No one has been able, like Shakspere, to represent the permanent characteristics of human nature in all ages, in contradistinction to the manners and customs which are but the feature of an age, and whose interest is therefore transient. In his writings the drama in England attained its highest development. He stands at the summit, and after him comes the decline. M.

LIFE-WORK.

Surely in this dark world of sin and shame,
Most good it is to have some lofty aim,
Some keen desire to reach some far-off goal
Which lifts, ennobles, purifies the soul.

And ever as we move along Life's way

This thought should cheer us thro' the livelong day, 'Great, noble work is mine to do on earth,

Is mine till death, and was mine from my birth.'

Mists of despair oft hide it from our sight,
In vain we seem to seek one ray of light;

But not for long are we oppressed with doubt,
The clouds disperse, sunlike our work shines out.

How sweet 'twould seem in that far country bright,
What soul-felt bliss, and oh! what dear delight,
With trembling joy and ecstasy complete
To lay our life-work at the Master's feet.

EPITAPHS.

ALL over England are old village churchyards in which are ancient moss-grown tombstones, where many a quaint verse of memorial or panegyric of the departed has been written. Time and weather have almost obliterated most of them and perhaps this is hardly a matter for regret, for many show a strange levity and what might even appear to us profanity. Numbers of books have been published containing collections of epitaphs, but the difficulty is to discover whether these be authentic or only imaginary. However, some that I read in my schooldays greatly amused me, and I was fired with the idea to see if I could find some odd epitaphs in churches and churchyards around Oxford. On many and many a Saturday holiday did I and my constant companion in all expeditions (a High School girl then and now), start off early in the morning to spend the day 'epitaphing' as we called it, and numberless were the colds we caught burrowing in damp churches and churchyards in cold weather; the summer was of course better in this respect, but then we could not walk such long distances in the heat. We thought nothing of spending hours over one stone, sometimes over two or

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