the writing of this play to about 1510 (two years before the date of the above Household-Book). The play of ick-Scorner was probably somewhat more ancient, as he still more imperfectly alludes to the American discoveries, under the name of "the Newe founde Ilonde." Sign. A. vij.

It is observable that in the older Moralities, as in that last mentioned, Every-man, &c., there is printed no kind of stage direction for the exits and entrances of the personages, no division of acts and scenes. But in the moral interlude of Lusty Juventus,3 written under Edward VI., the exits and entrances begin to be noted in the margin :* at length in Queen Elizabeth's reign, Moralities appeared formally divided into acts and scenes, with a regular prologue, &c. One of these is reprinted by Dodsley.

Before we quit this subject of the very early printed Plays, it may just be observed that, although so few are now extant, it should seem many were printed before the reign of Queen Elizabeth; as at the beginning of her reign, her INJUNCTIONS, in 1559, are particularly directed to the suppressing of "many Pamphlets, PLAYES, and Ballads; that no manner of person shall enterprize to print any such," &c., but under certain restrictions.-Vide Sect. v.

In the time of Henry VIII. one or two dramatic pieces had been published under the classical names of Comedy and Tragedy," but they appear not to have been intended for popular use: it was not till the religious ferments had subsided that the public had leisure to attend to dramatic poetry. In the reign of Elizabeth, tragedies and comedies began to appear in form, and could the poets have persevered, the first models were good. Garboduc, a regular tragedy, was acted in 1561;6

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"C. Of certeyne points of cosmographye—and of dyvers straunge regyons, -and of the new found landys and the maner of the people." This part is extremely curious, as it shows what notions were entertained of the new American discoveries by our own countrymen.

3 Described in Preface to book 5. The Dramatis Personæ of this piece are, "C. Messenger. Lusty Juventus. Good Counsaill. Knowledge. Sathan the devyll. Hypocrisie. Fellowship. Abominable-lyving [an Harlot]. God's-merciful-promises."

4 I have also discovered some few Exeats and Intrats in the very old Interlude of the Four Elements.

5 Bp. Bale had applied the name of Tragedy to his Mystery of Gods Promises, in 1538. In 1540, John Palsgrave, B.D., had republished a Latin comedy called Acolastus, with an English version. Holingshed tells us (vol. iii. p. 850,) that so early as 1520, the king had "a goodlie comedie of Plautus plaied" before him at Greenwich; but this was in Latin, as Mr. Farmer informs us in his curious "Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare," 8vo, p. 31.

See Ames, p. 316. This play appears to have been first printed under the name of Gorboduc; then under that of Ferrer and Porrex, in 1569; and again, under Garbaduc, 1590. Ames calls the first edit. 4to; Langbane, 8vo; and Tanner, 12mo.

and Gascoigne, in 1566, exhibited Jocasta, a translation from Euripides, as also The Supposes, a regular comedy, from Ariosto: near thirty years before any of Shakespeare's were printed.

The people, however, still retained a relish for their old Mysteries and Moralities,' and the popular dramatic poets seem to ha e made them their models. The graver sort of Moralities appear to have given birth to our modern Tragedy; as our Comedy evidently took its rise from the lighter interludes of that kind. And as most of these pieces contain an absurd mixture of religion and buffoonery, an eniment critic has well deduced from thence the origin of our unnatural Tragi-comedies. Even after the people had been accustomed to tragedies and comedies, Moralities still kept their ground; one of them entitled The New Custom, was printed so late as 1573: at length they assumed the name of Masques,' and with some classical improvements became, in the two following reigns, the favourite entertainments of the court.

IV. The old Mysteries, which ceased to be acted after the Reformation, appear to have given rise to a third species of stage exhibition, which, though now confounded with Tragedy and Comedy, were by our first dramatic writers considered as quite distinct from them both: these were Historical Plays, or HISTORIES, a species of dramatic writing, which resembled the old Mysteries in representing a series of historical events, simply in the order of time in which they happened, without any regard to the three great unities. These pieces seem to differ from Tragedies, just as much as historical poems do from epic: as the Pharsalia does from the Æneid.

What might contribute to make dramatic poetry take this form was that soon after the Mysteries ceased to be exhibited there was published a large collection of poetical narratives, called The Mirrour for Magistrates,2 wherein a great number of the most eminent characters in English history are drawn relating their own misfortunes. This book was popular, and of a dramatic cast, and therefore, as an elegant writer has well observed, might have its influence in producing Historical Plays. These narratives probably furnished the subjects, and the ancient Mysteries suggested the plan.

There appears indeed to have been one instance of an attempt at an HISTORICAL PLAY itself, which was perhaps as early as any Mystery on a religious subject; for such, I think, we may pronounce the representation of a memorable event in English history, that was EXPRESSED IN ACTION AND RHYMES. This was the old Coventry play of Hock

7 The general reception the old Moralities had upon the stage, will account for the fondness of all our first poets for allegory. Subjects of this kind were familiar to everybody.

Bp. Warburt. Shaksp. vol. v.

Reprinted among Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. i.

1 In some of these appeared characters full as extraordinary as in any of the old Moralities. In Ben Jonson's Masque of Christmas, 1616, one of the personages is Minced Pye.

2 The first part of which was printed in 1559.

3 Walpole, Catal. of Royal and Noble Authors, vol. i. p. 166, 7.

Tuesday, 4 founded on the story of the massacre of the Danes, as it happened on St. Brice's night, November 13th, 1002.5 The play in question was performed by certain men of Coventry among the other shows and entertainments at Kenilworth Castle in July, 1575, prepared for Queen Elizabeth; and this the rather, "because the matter mentioneth how valiantly our English women, for the love of their country, behaved themselves."

The writer, whose words are here quoted, hath given a short description of the performance; which seems on that occasion to have been without recitation or rhymes, and reduced to mere dumb-show; consisting of violent skirmishes and encounters, first between Danish and English, "lance-knights on horseback," armed with spear and shield; and afterwards between "hosts" of footmen: which at length ended in the Danes being "beaten down, overcome, and many led captive by our English women."7

8

This play, it seems, which was wont to be exhibited in their city yearly, and which had been of great antiquity and long continuance there, had of late been suppressed, at the instance of some well-meaning but precise preachers, of whose "sourness" herein the townsmen complain; urging that their play was "without example of ill manners, papistry, or any superstition;" which shows it to have been entirely distinct from a religious Mystery. But having been discontinued, and, as appears from the narrative, taken up of a sudden after the sports were begun, the players apparently had not been able to recover the old rhymes, or to procure new ones, to accompany the action; which, if it originally represented "the outrage and importable insolency of the Danes, the grievous complaint of Huna, King Ethelred's chieftain in wars:" his counselling and contriving the plot to dispatch them; con

4 This must not be confounded with the Mysteries acted on Corpus Christi day by the Franciscans at Coventry, which were also called COVENTRY PLAYS, and of which an account is given from T. Warton's History of English Poetry, &c., in Malone's Shakspeare, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 13, 14.

5 Not 1012, as printed in Laneham's letter, mentioned below.

6 Ro. Laneham, whose LETTER containing a full description of the Shows, &c., is reprinted at large in Nichols's "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth," &c., vol. i. 4to, 1788. That writer's orthography being peculiar and affected, is not here followed.

Laneham describes this play of Hock Tuesday, which was "presented in an historical cue by certain good-hearted men of Coventry" (p. 32), and which was "wont to be play'd in their citie yearly" (p. 33), as if it were peculiar to them, terming it "THEIR old storial show (p. 32). And so it might be as represented and expressed by them "after their manner" (p. 33), although we are also told by Bevil Higgons, that St. Brice's EVE was still celebrated by the northern English in commemoration of this massacre of the Danes, the women beating brass instruments, and singing old rhymes, in praise of their cruel ancestors. See his Short View of Eng. History, 8vo, p. 17. (The Preface is dated 1734.) 7 Laneham, p. 37. 8 Ibid. p. 33. 9 Ibid. 1 Ibid. p. 32.

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cluding with the conflicts above mentioned, and their final suppression, 'expressed in actions and rhymes " after their manner,2 one can hardly conceive a more regular model of a complete drama, and if taken up soon after the event, it must have been the earliest of the kind in Europe.3

Whatever this old play, or "storial show," was at the time it was exhibited to Queen Elizabeth, it had probably our young Shakspeare for a spectator, who was then in his twelfth year, and doubtless attended with all the inhabitants of the surrounding country at these "princely pleasures of Kenelworth," "5 whence Stratford is only a few miles distant. And as the queen was much diverted with the Coventry Play, "whereat Her Majesty laught well,” and rewarded the performers with two bucks, and five marks in money: who, "what rejoicing upon their ample reward, and what triumphing upon the good acceptance, vaunted their Play was never so dignified, nor ever any Players before so beatified:" but especially if our young bard afterwards gained admittance into the castle to see a Play, which the same evening, after supper, was there "presented of a very good theme, but so set forth by the actors' well-handling, that pleasure and mirth made it seem very short, though it lasted two good hours and more," we may imagine what an impression was made on his infant mind. Indeed, the dramatic cast of many parts of that superb entertainment, which continued nineteen days, and was the most splendid of the kind ever attempted in this kingdom; the addresses to the queen in the personated characters of a Sybille, a Savage Man, and Sylvanus, as she approached or departed from the castle; and, on the water, by Arion, a Triton, or the Lady of the Lake, must have had a very great effect on a young imagination, whose dramatic powers were hereafter to astonish the world.

But that the Historical Play was considered by our old writers, and by Shakspeare himself, as distinct from Tragedy and Comedy, appears from numberless passages of their works. "Of late days," says Stow, "instead of those Stage-Playes' hath been used Comedies, Tragedies, Enterludes, and HISTORIES, both true and fayned."-Survey of London. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the prologue to The Captain,

say,

"This is nor Comedy, nor Tragedy,

Nor HISTORY,"

Polonius in Hamlet commends the actors, as the best in the world,

2 Laneham, p. 33.

3 The rhymes, &c., prove this play to have been in English; whereas Mr. Thomas Warton thinks the Mysteries composed before 1328 were in Latin. Malone's Shaksp. vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 9.

4 Laneham, p. 32.

5 See Nichols's Progresses, vol. i. p. 57.

• Laneham, p. 38, 39. This was on Sunday evening, July 9.

The Creation of the World, acted at Skinners-well in 1409.

8 See Stow's Survey of London, 1603, 4to, p. 94 (said in the title-page to be "written in 1598 "). See also Warton's Observations on Spenser, vol. ii. p. 109.

"either for Tragedie, Comedie, Historie, Pastorall," &c. And Shakspeare's friends, Heminge and Condell, in the first folio edition of his Plays, in 1623,9 have not only entitled their book "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, HISTORIES, and Tragedies," but in their table of contents have arranged them under those three several heads; placing in the class of Histories, "King John, Richard II., Henry IV. two parts, Henry V., Henry VI. three parts, Richard III., and Henry VIII.;" to which they might have added such of his other Plays as have their subjects taken from the old Chronicles, or Plutarch's Lives.

Although Shakspeare is found not to have been the first who invented this species of drama,1 yet he cultivated it with such superior success, and threw upon this simple inartificial tissue of scenes such a blaze of genius, that his HISTORIES maintain their ground in defiance of Aristotle and all the critics of the classic school, and will ever continue to interest and instruct an English audience.

Before Shakspeare wrote, Historical Plays do not appear to have attained this distinction, being not mentioned in Queen Elizabeth's licence, in 1574,2 to James Burbage and others, who are only empowered "to use, exercyse, and occupie the arte and facultye of playenge Comedies, Tragedies, Enterludes, Stage-Playes, and such other like." But when Shakspeare's HISTORIES had become the ornaments of the stage, they were considered by the public, and by himself, as a formal and necessary species, and are thenceforth so distinguished in public instruments. They are particularly inserted in the licence granted by King James I. in 16033 to W. Shakspeare himself, and the Players his fellows, who are authorised "to use and exercise the arte and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, HISTORIES, Interludes, Morals, Pastorals, Stage-Plaies, and such like." The same merited distinction they continued to maintain after his death, till the theatre itself was extinguished; for they are expressly mentioned in a warrant in 1622, for licensing certain "late Comedians of Queen Anne deceased, to bring up children in the qualitie and exercise of playing Comedies, Histories, Interludes, Morals, Pastorals, Stage-Plaies, and such like." The same appears in an admonition issued in 1637,5 by Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, then Lord Chamberlain, to the Master and Wardens of the Company of Printers and Stationers: wherein is set forth the complaint of His Majesty's servants the Players, that

9 The same distinction is continued in the 2d and 3d folios, &c. 1 See Malone's Shaksp. vol. i. part ii. p. 31.

2 Ibid. vol. i. part ii. p. 37.

3 Ibid. vol. i. part ii. p. 40.

4 Ibid. p. 49. Here Histories, or Historical Plays, are found totally to have excluded the mention of Tragedies; a proof of their superior popularity. In an order for the king's comedians to attend King Charles I. in his summer's progress, 1636 (ibid. p. 144), Histories are not particularly mentioned; but so neither are Tragedies: they being briefly directed to "act Playes, Comedyes, and Interludes, without any lett," &c.

5 Ibid. p. 139.