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XXIX.

early in 1603, after James' accession. There is a doubtful tradition that, on its being performed at Trinity, Oliver Cromwell acted the part of Tactus in it, from which he first imbibed his sentiments of ambition.' This cannot of course refer to the original performance, when Cromwell was about three years old. Mr Fleay has an ingenious theory that the play was first performed at the matchless entertainment' given at Hinchinbrook before James I., by Cromwell's uncle, when the heads of the University came to meet the king on his entrance-journey to London; if so, it is not unlikely that on this occasion the part of Small Beer, consisting of two words only, Beer forsooth! Beer forsooth!' was taken by the three-year-old youngster.

THE MERRY DEVIL OF EDMONTON: as it hath been sundry times acted by his Majesty's servants, at the Globe on the Bankside. 4to, 1608, 1612, &c. Anonymous. No evidence has as yet been discovered as to its authorship; the play has been variously assigned to Shakespeare, Drayton, and Heywood. As far as Drayton's claims are concerned, Mr Fleay ingeniously maintains his authorship of the piece, but the problem cannot be considered finally solved. Drayton was certainly writing for the stage between 1597 and 1602, though he never allowed his name to appear in print as an author for the stage (cp. Chronicle History, vol. i., p. 152). Written probably about 1597, the comedy soon became one of the most popular productions of the time. Jonson, in his Prologue to The Devil is an Ass, refers to it enthusiastically:--

'And show this but the same face you have done
Your dear delight, the Devil of Edmonton !'

The charm of the play has certainly never been more
delightfully expressed than by Mr Swinburne in his
eighteenth Sonnet :-

'And that sweet pageant of the kindly fiend,

Who, seeing three friends in spirit and heart made one,

Crowned with good hap the true-love wiles he screened

In the pleached lanes of pleasant Edmonton.' Lamb evidently used Dodsley's edition (1744) of the text, which was in its turn based on an edition

published in 1655. The following are among the more important emendations :

P. 101, 1: my Clare' (Hazlitt's suggestion) for 'by Clare,' the old reading; 101, 20: brined,' old eds. brinish; 104, 10: your happy soul,' old eds. your soul;' 104, 25: 'toll,' old eds. tell;' 105, 9: 'bid your beads;' old eds. 'bind.'

LODOWICK BARRY (temp. James I.).

RAM ALLEY; or Merry Tricks; a Comedy divers times XXX. heretofore acted by the Children of the King's Revels. 4to, 1611. Probably first performed Christmas 1609-10. The 'home-bred mirth,' for which apology is made in the Prologue, is the Author's euphemism for the extreme coarseness of his production.

SAMUEL DANIEL (1562-1619).

TETHYS FESTIVAL: or the Queen's Wake; celebrated XXXI. at Whitehall the 5th day of June 1610. Devised by S.D. one of the grooms of her Majesty's most Honourable Privy Chamber. 4to, 1610. Written and performed to celebrate the Creation of King James's eldest son Henry as Prince of Wales.

HYMEN'S TRIUMPH; A Pastoral Tragi-Comedy. XXXII. Presented at the Queen's Court in the Strand at her Majesty's magnificent entertainment of the King's most excellent Majesty, being at the nuptials of the Lord Roxbrough. By Samuel Daniel. 8vo, 1615.

In Chapter XVIII. of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria there is the famous criticism on Daniel and special reference to this 'fine and almost faultless Extract, eminent as for other beauties so for its perfection in this species of diction,' (i.e., that style, which, as neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both). Daniel must have been among Lamb's earliest Elizabethan friends. Already in 'Rosamond Gray' he quotes the lines at the beginning of the Extract entitled 'Love in Infancy.'

P. 106, 31 length,' old eds. 'lengthen'; 108, 37: 'sudden,' old eds. 'suddenly'; 108, 41: name of woman,' old eds. 'name of a woman'; 109, 3: 'these,' old eds. those'; 109, 36: dear mother, hear, it is for me,' old eds. 'dear mother, it's for me'; 109, 39: 'thy;' old eds. 'the'; 110, 35: 'rapt'; old eds. 'wrapt.'

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XXXIII.-
XL.

XLI.-
XLIX.

L.-LI.

BEN JONSON (1573-1635).

THE CASE IS ALTERED (1598-9). 4to, 1609. Poetaster, or His Arraignment, A Comical Satire (1601). 4to, 1602. Sejanus, His Fall; A Tragedy (1603). 4to, 1605. Volpone, or the Fox: A Comedy (1605). 4to, 1607. Catiline, His Conspiracy, A Tragedy (1611). 4to, 1611. Alchemist, A Comedy (1610). 4to, 1612. The New Inn, or The Light Heart (1629). 8vo, 1631. The Sad Shepherd, or A Tale of Robin Hood (fragment), fol. 1641.

The

Lamb's Extracts from the old editions of the plays have been corrected throughout; the minute corrections, for the most part unimportant, need not be specified. [Nota bene.--(p. 148), Extract XXXIX. should precede Extract XXXVIII.; the final sentence in the Note at the end of The New Inn refers to the passages quoted from The Alchemist. In this particular case the chronological arrangement of the plays should have been sacrificed.]

Lamb's criticism on Jonson's genius is intentionally meagre; his business was rather with the less known of Shakespeare's contemporaries. He wisely eschewed to bring the drama of Jonson into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. As Coleridge finely puts it"This should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned, but, at the same time, as the inferiority of an altogether different genius of the drama. On this ground old Ben still maintains his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare, stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master, though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw.'

GEORGE CHAPMAN (1557 or 9-1634).

BUSSY D'AMBOIS, A TRAGEDY. 4to, 1607 ('revised by the Author,' 1641). All Fools. 4to, 1605. The Gentleman Usher. 4to, 1606. Cæsar and Pompey, A Roman Tragedy, declaring their wars out of whose events is evicted this proposition—Only a just man is a free man, 4to. 1631. The Conspiracy, and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, Marshall of France; 'Acted lately in two Plays;' 4to, 1608. The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois. 4to, 1613..

GEORGE CHAPMAN AND JAMES SHIRLEY.

THE TRAGEDY OF CHABOT Admiral of France; 4to, 1639.

Lamb's selections from Chapman, all from

the 4to editions in the 'Garrick Collection' were fairly correct. The following corrections in the present edition may be noted:-p. 151, 23: old eds. other's spirit'; 155, 4: old eds. "tries clink'; 156, 1: old eds. 'the' (for 'ye '); 157, 27: old eds. 'man 158, 23: old eds. I step me'; 161, 22: old eds. ' in air'; 161, 27: old eds. when our,' for 'therefore when our '; 162, 20: old eds. 'Faint'; 162, 27: old eds. 'those invocations'; 167, 23: old eds. 'both possess'; 172, 2: old eds. 'swearer'; 178, 23: old eds. 'in vapour,' &c.

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Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses appeared in the same year as the famous panegyric on Chapman (p. 170), at the end of Extract XLVIII. In the preface to The Adventures he wrote:

"If I were to state the obligations which I have had to one obsolete version, I should have run the hazard of depriving myself of the very slender degree of reputation which I would hope to acquire from a trifle like the present undertaking." Years after, in a letter to Bernard Barton, he again gave vent to his admiration for the great translator:-"You like the Odyssey. Did you ever read my 'Adventures of Ulysses,' founded on Chapman's old translation for children or men? Chapman is divine; and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity."

JOHN MARSTON (c. 1575-1634).

THE HISTORY OF ANTONIO AND MELLIDA; The LII.First Part, 1602. Antonio's Revenge; The Second Part of LVIII. A. and M., 1602. The Malcontent, 1604 (three eds.; the third, Augmented by M. with the additions by John Webster'). Parasitaster, or, The Fawn, 1606 (two eds.). The Wonder of Women, or, The Tragedy of Sophonisba, 1606. What you Will, 1607. The Insatiate Countess, 1613.*

In these selections, Lamb has done Marston more than justice. Mr Bullen, in his excellent edition of Marston's Works, referring to Extract LII., rightly

*This play was not included in the 1633 edition of Marston's plays. It is the opinion of Marston's latest editor that the tragedy was left in a fragmentary state, and was completed by the actor Barksteed, in whose poem Myrrha are found the two picturesque lines that occur at the close of the last scene of the play :

Night, like a masque, is enter'd heav'n's great hall,
With thousand torches ushering the way.

(BULLEN, MARSTON, p. xlix.

LIX.LXIII.

LXIV.

observes:-"That scene deserves the eloquent praise that it received at the hands of Lamb; and if Marston had been able to keep the rest of the play at that level, the First Part of Antonio and Mellida would rank with the masterpieces of Webster. But what is to be said of a writer, who, in describing a shipwreck, gives us such lines as the following:

'Lo! the sea grew mad,
His bowels rumbling with wind-passion;

Straight swarthy darkness popp'd out Phoebus' eye,
And blurred the jocund face of bright-cheek'd day,' &c.

This is hardly a fair specimen of Marston's powers, but it exhibits to perfection his besetting fault of straining his style a peg too high; of seeking to be impressive by the use of exaggerated and unnatural imagery. When he disencumbers himself of this fatal habit his verse is clear and massive," &c.

P. 180, 7: 'open'; so old eds. ; properly 'chaune,' the reading of the 4tos; the word was evidently too archaic for Lamb; 180, 28; spoke,' old eds. 'speak'; 183, 32 cleaves,' old eds. 'clears'; 186, 23: pain, old eds. 'pierce'; 188, 5: old eds. From half-rot searcloths; and she,' &c.; 190, 19: hot philosophers'; so old eds.; the 4tos read ho philosophers' (cp. Bullen). THOMAS DEKKER (1570-?1461).

OLD FORTUNATUS, 1600; Satiro-mastix, or, The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet, 1602. The Honest Whore, with the humours of the Patient Man and the Longing Wife (Part I.), by Thomas Dekker, assisted by Thomas Middleton,' 1604; Part II., 1630.

THOMAS DEKKER AND JOHN WEBSTER. WESTWARD HOE, as it hath been divers times acted by the Children of Paul's, 1607.

Lamb's final verdict on Dekker finds expression in a note to a later Extract, from The Virgin Martyr (vol. ii. p. 167):-"Dekker, who wrote Fortunatus, had poetry enough for anything." It might well be added that when the Muses dowered him so richly, wayward Fortune denied him power to exercise his gifts save at rare intervals. Much of Dekker's work contains mere dross; the residuum of gold is precious indeed. Lamb's enthusiasm for the character of Orleans (p. 199) is by some critics considered excessive; on the other hand, Mr Swinburne, in his eloquent study of Dekker, (Nine

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