found occasion to introduce, I shall return at the proper opportunity.

Nash's fame as a dramatist rests upon three plays. The first of these, and probably the most characteristic of his genius, was never printed. It bore the title of the 'Isle of Dogs,' was possibly, but not certainly, a political satire, and cost its author an imprisonment in gaol. This punishment brought him, however, rather reputation than disgrace. Meres, in his Palladis Tamia,' alludes kindly to the incident: Dogs were the death of Euripides; but be not disconsolate, gallant young Juvenal; Linus, the son of Apollo, died the same death. Yet God forbid that so brave a wit should so basely perish! Thine are but paper dogs; neither is thy banishment, like Ovid's, eternally to converse with the barbarous Getes.' When Nash came out of prison, he took credit to himself for the past consequences of his caustic speech; whence we may infer that, if not political, the satire of his 'Isle of Dogs' concerned some persons of importance, to libel whom was not less honourable than perilous.

Nash had some share, but what share it is impossible to settle, in a dramatic adaptation of the Fourth Æneid, which appeared in 1594 under Marlowe's name. It is possible that the MS. was left unfinished, and that Nash, a friend of Marlowe, did no more than to edit and prepare it for the stage. All that is original and striking in this tragedy, especially the opening scene in Olympus, and the part assigned to Cupid, may with certainty be ascribed to Marlowe. There remains, perhaps, a sufficiency of plain pedestrian blank verse, to establish the inferior poet's title to

NASH AS DRAMATIST.

577

collaboration. But after careful study of 'Queen Dido,' I am inclined to think that Nash's share in it was small, and that the play was one of Marlowe's earlier essays, thrust aside for some uncertain reason, and brought forth when death had added lustre to his name. It abounds in rhyming lines and assonances, which points to an early date of composition; but its style is distinguished throughout by traces of Marlowe's peculiar manner.

It

Of what dramatic work, in conception and in versification, Nash himself was capable, is apparent from his sole surviving piece, 'Will Summer's Testament.' This is a Court Comedy, or Show, without a plot, depending for its now evaporated interest on learned quips and fashionable cranks served up with masquerade and satire for the Queen's amusement. represents a bygone phase of taste, before the world had learned to read, when word-of-mouth tirades on things in general had their savour. The motive is a play of words maintained upon the name of Summer. Will Summer, the Court fool of Henry VIII., whose portrait by Holbein still exists at Kensington, speaks prologue, and conducts the piece. He or his ghost appears in clown's costume, and nodding to the audience, opens with 'I'll show you what a scurvy prologue our play-maker has made in an old vein of similitudes.' Summer then pulls forth and reads a pornpous parody of Euphuism in a long preposterously laboured diatribe of nonsense. This, when he has played with it for a few paragraphs, the fool tosses carelessly aside, and speaks in his own person to the audience. 'How say you, my masters? Do you not laugh at him for

PP

a coxcomb? Why, he hath made a prologue longer than his play! Nay, 'tis no play neither, but a show.' After this box-on-the-ears to Lyly, Summer, the Season, enters, holds his Court, reviews the revolutions of the year, and makes his will, reserving all the honours of the prime to Queen Elizabeth :

Unto Eliza, that most sacred dame,

Whom none but saints and angels ought to name.

Το

While the Seasons in their masquing dresses pass across the stage and furnish forth appropriate entertainment, Summer, the Court fool, sits by and comments. modern readers the fun of the show, if fun it ever had, is withered and gone by-more withered than the roses, and more wasted than the snows of yester-year. Ingenious, fluent, facetious Thomas Nash,' wrote genial Dekker; 'from what abundant pen flowed honey to thy friends, and mortal aconite to thy enemies!' Alas, poor Tom Nash! Little enough is left of thee, thy humour and thy satire! The men of our days cannot taste thy honey, and thy aconite has lost its venom. Dust too are the pedants and the puritans on whom it was so freely spilt. Yet something still survives from this dry caput mortuum of an ephemeral medley. The first lyric printed in the Golden Treasury,' that gift-book to all children of our time and vade-mecum of all lovers of old literature, is a spring song from Will Summer's Testament.' Nor is there. wanting in its scenes a second ditty, of less general application, but sweeter still and sadder, in which the dying Summer proves that our 'young gallant Juvenal'

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579

was a real poet. Let one of its stanzas serve to vindicate this claim, and satisfy his disappointed ghost:

Beauty is but a flower,

Which wrinkles will devour :
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair :
Dust hath closed Helen's eye :

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

IX.

One more dramatist of Greene's brood must be mentioned. Thomas Lodge, Lord Mayor's son, master of arts, law student, perhaps actor, buccaneer, physician, poet of Scylla and of Rosalynde, satirist of manners, defender of the stage, exposer of moneylenders and their myrmidons-this man of multifarious ability and chequered experience, was also a playwright. In proportion to his other works, the plays of Lodge are insignificant. He aided his friend Greene in The Looking Glass for London,' and quarried a tragedy from Plutarch on the rivalries of Marius and Sylla. The Wounds of Civil War' is disappointing in execution-especially in the versification, which shows no effort to profit by Marlowe's invention, and in the comic parts, which fall below the usual level of such stuff. Lodge may indeed be credited with an honest effort to trace firm outlines of his principal male characters. Yet his reputation as an English poet will not rest upon this lifeless

play, but on the charming lyrics which are scattered through his novels.

X.

It is time to leave the little coterie of friends who clustered around Greene in London, and to concentrate attention upon Marlowe, himself a member of their society, but far superior in all qualities which make a dramatist and poet. In the prose romances of this group, the influence of Lyly's style is still discernible. But Greene marks a new departure in dramatic literature. The romantic play, the English Farsa, may be called in a great measure his discovery. Nash marks a no less noticeable departure in the prose of controversy and satire. Peele is a sweet versifier and an artist gifted with a sense of proportion unusual in his age. Lodge distinguishes himself as a rarely musical and natural lyrist. Marlowe, intervening at the height of Greene's popularity, imposed his style in a measure on these contemporaries. But none of them were able effectively to profit by the contact of this fiery spirit. He took the town by storm; they adopted some of his inventions, without understanding their importance and without assimilating the more potent influences of his art.

1 Lodge has found so genial and able an expositor in Mr. Gosse, that I have purposely curtailed the above notice of his interesting career and distinguished literary work. See the first essay in that charming collection, Seventeenth Century Studies, by G. W. Gosse.