in their grave counsels they allow the advice of fools; yea, they use one order of speech for all persons, a gross indecorum, for a crow will counterfeit ill the nightingale's sweet voice: even so, affected speech doth misbecome a clown. For to work a comedy kindly, grave old men should instruct; young men should show the imperfections of youth; strumpets should be lascivious; boys unhappy; and clowns should be disorderly.

The substance of much of this had been worded fourteen years before in the Prolog to Damon and Pythias:

In comedies the greatest skill is this: rightly to touch

All things to the quick; and eke to frame each per

son so,

That by his common talk you may his nature know:

A royster ought not preach, that were too strange to hear,

But as from virtue he doth swerve, so ought his word 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 nowise do agree; So correspondent to their kind their speeches ought to be;

With speeches well-pronounced, with action lively framed.1

1 These two quotations voice the rigid principle of de

Though the attitude assumed in these two extracts is opposed to Romanticism, it is nevertheless not that of classicism. It rather voices another spirit, which is also opposed to classicism-viz.: Realism. It is fortunate that this spirit existed; for Romanticism unchecked would run wild. The former tempering the latter, saved the English drama from running into the fantastic extravagances of the contemporary Spanish theater.

H. The Prolog.

It was customary to give the contents of the play in the prolog. That some dramatists early became conscious of the uselessness and formality of the procedure is indicated by what the already quoted Prolog to Like Will to Like (pub. 1568) says:

It is not my meaning your ears for to weary, With harkening what is the effect of our matter.

We shall find the later dramatists had more to say about this peculiar dramatic feature, now totally rejected in play-making.

corum insisted on by all the critics of the Renascence. Cf. Spingarn, Lit. Crit., p. 85.

REFINEMENT.

In view of the fact that so much of the Elizabethan drama is unfit for indiscriminate family reading even where due allowance is made for differences in conventional standards, it is perhaps amusing to discover the frequency with which the playwrights of the time condemned any violation of moral propriety in situation or speech. The Prolog to Like Will to Like tells of the author:

But no lascivious toys he purposeth for to use.

Whetstone says in the passage above quoted from the Dedication of Promus and Cassandra:

For at this day the Italian is so lascivious in his comedies that honest hearers are grieved at his actions.

Lily. Sappho and Phao. Prolog at Blackfriars (1584):

We have endeavored to be as far from unseemly speeches to make your ears glow, as we hope you will be free from unkind reports to make our cheeks blush.

Lily. Galatea. Prolog (1588):

so have we endeavored with all care that what we present your Highness, should neither offend in scene nor syllable.

Robert Wilmot. Tancred and Gismunda. Ist Dedication (1591):

Which being a discourse of two lovers, perhaps it may seem a thing neither fit to be offered unto your ladyships, nor worthy me to busy myself withal. Yet can I tell you, Madams, it differeth so far from the ordinary amorous discourses of our days, as the manners of our time do from the modesty and innocency of that age.

Ibid...2nd Dedication (1592):–

the Tragedian Tyrants of our time, who are not ashamed to affirm that there can no amorous poem savor of any sharpness of wit, unless it be seasoned with scurrilous words.

This is valuable information concerning professional opinion at the time.

DICTION.

As early as 1578, we find evidence that the playwright was very diligent about the literary aspect of his work. This is natural, for it is in the early stages of the sophisticated drama that more attention is paid to the literary qualities of a play than to the dramatur

gic. The printer of Promus and Cassandra says to the reader:

Gentle Reader, this labor of Master Whetstone came into my hands in his first copy, whose leisure was so little (being then ready to depart his country) that he had no time to work it anew, nor to give apt instructions to print so difficult a work, being full of variety, both matter, speech, and verse; for that every sundry author hath in all these a sundry grace.

Thomas Heywood was also anxious about the literary qualities of his plays. The Epilog to The Brazen Age (1598) declares:

The bombastic style developed by the imitators of Marlow is ridiculed by Marston in the induction to the first part of Antonio and Mellida (1600) :—

Matzagante. By the bright honor of a Milanoise and the resplendent fulgor of this steel, I will defend the feminine to the death, and ding his spirit to the verge of hell, that dares divulge a lady's prejudice.

Feliche. Rampum, scrampum, mount tufty Tamburlaine. What rattling thunderclap breaks from his lips?

Alberto. O! 'tis native to his part. For act