Of course the argument is a bad one, for the actor is only an element in an artistic work which makes it appeal to the spectator. The actor does not see the play. With equally poor logic he argues that playwrights are in no position to reprimand others, being evil themselves. Furthermore, in keeping with the general practise of his time to fortify one's position by an appeal to authority, he cited Cicero as defining comedy as "imitatio vitae, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis." Gosson, evidently appreciating the power of such a weapon, challenged Lodge to locate it in Cicero. The fact was that Lodge had found the definition in Donatus. The strangest thing about it is that such a thorough scholar as Jonson should have attributed the phrase to Cicero nearly twenty years later.

THE MECHANICS OF PLAYMAKING.

A. Laws.

We now come to the most important phase of the subject before us; namely, that phase which comprehends the various problems pertaining to the mechanics of playwriting. Early in our period the dramatists realized that there were laws governing the making of a play. That they were conscious of the

fundamental difference between the drama and other forms of literature is evidenced by what the printer of Whetstone's Promus and Cassandra (pub. 1578) says in his address to the reader:

If by chance thou light on some speech that seemeth dark, consider of it with judgment before thou condemn the work; for in many places he is driven both to praise and blame in one breath; which in reading will seem hard and in action appear plain.

What is rather clumsily expressed here proves that at least one dramatist, in writing a play, had in view an action before an audience, and constructed his work accordingly. That it was the printer and not the author who said this, is no argument, for the author was editing his own work and must have directed the printer what to say. Among the things Whetstone himself had to say in the dedication, we find:

I divided the whole history into two comedies; for that, decorum used, it would not be conveyed in one.

say

"Decorum used" is here another way of ing: "the laws of the drama being observed."

On the same topic, Thomas Heywood says in the Epilog to The Brazen Age (1598) :

He that expects five short acts can contain
Each circumstance of these things we represent,
Methinks should show more barrenness than
brain.

In 1568, the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple presented before the Queen a tragedy entitled Gismond of Salerne, written by five members of their body. In 1591, Robert Wilmot, one of the five, took the trouble to rewrite the play in order, to bring it up to date, proving that there had come a change over the accepted rules of the art. A comparison between the two versions is a most instructive lesson in the development of the English drama between the respective dates. In the later version, the diction is altered, the rimes are largely dropped, the dialog is more spirited, long speeches are broken up, set devices are introduced-innovations all making for increased theatrical effectiveness. Prefaced to the revised edition is a letter by William Webbe, author of the famous Discourse. This epistle being for the purpose of advertizement, the views expressed in it may be regarded as those of Wilmot himself, perhaps

even as suggested by him. Here is a relevant extract:

I cannot sufficiently commend your charitable zeal and scholarly compassion towards him [i. e., the play], that have not only rescued and defended him from the devouring jaws of oblivion but vouchsafed also to apparel him in a new suit at your own charges, wherein he may again more boldly come abroad, and by permission return to his old parents, clothed, perhaps, not in richer or more costly furniture than it went from them, but in handsomeness and fashion more answerable to these times, wherein fashions are so often altered. Let one word suffice for your encouragement herein: namely, that your commendable pains in disrobing him of his antique curiosity, and adorning him with the approved guise of our stateliest English terms (not diminishing, but more augmenting his artificial colors of absolute poesy derived from his first parents) cannot but be grateful to most men's appetites, who upon our experience we know highly to esteem such lofty measures of sententiously composed tragedies.

Some of these statements remind the reader of the one great source of influence that had been opened on the English drama. One cannot read such expressions as our "stateliest English terms" and "lofty measures of sententiously composed tragedies" without thinking of Marlow, who, in 1587, created an

epoch by springing upon the world his Tamburlaine, with the much famed vaunt that

From jigging veins of riming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,

Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
Threat'ning the world with high astounding terms,
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering
sword.

This is for us a most significant utterance. More than any other author of the time, Marlow has succeeded in impressing a feeling of spontaneity. With none do we so little connect the thought of deliberate method. Yet we see that even he was aware what the drama was before him, and just what he intended to make of it. It seems to me that this is strong evidence for the existence of a critical consciousness among the playwrights.

B. Dramatic Species.

The question of dramatic species was one early to arise. The scholastic view of the difference between tragedy and comedy is thus expressed by Webbe in his Discourse of English Poetry (ed. Arber, p. 39) :

There grew at last to be a greater diversity between tragedy writers and comedy writers, the one