plays. supposes them all to be presented in celebration of the marriage of King Emmanuel of Portugal to the Infanta Isabella of Castile (1497). "Quadruple Composite bills," such as this, to digress a moment, were not unknown to the earlier stage. Henslowe mentions a play of the same title, Four Plays in One, in 1592,1 which Fleay identifies with a revival of Tarlton's Seven Deadly Sins; and Five Plays in One, in 1597, which the same authority assigns to Heywood. Earlier still, in 1585, the Accounts of the Revels refer to a production of the same title which was acted before the queen, and to another, Three Plays in One, prepared for performance at court by the Queen's men but not shown. Returning to Beaumont and Fletch- Four Plays in er's Four Plays, they are made up of two comedies, One, 1608? The Triumph of Honor and of Love, a tragedy, The Triumph of Death, and a "moral," The Triumph of Time. The tragedy is of the revenge type, and is based on a novel of Bandello. The two comedies are derived from the Decameron and are adequate but of no unusual merit. It is difficult to believe that these plays belong to 1608, the year of Philaster, according to some. The chronology of the earlier plays of Beaumont and Fletcher is especially uncertain, and many surmises of plays once in earlier form, partially revised, or wholly rewritten by the original or by other authors have been indulged in by the knowing and the ingenious. Thus, if we are to follow Fleay, Oliphant, and Thorndike, both Love's Cure and The Coxcomb come early, the first in 1606 or 1608, the 1 Henslowe, 13, and Fleay, ii, 298. 3 Revels' Accounts, 189. Thomdike, 85. 1609-10. latter in 1609 or 1610.1 But Love's Cure has recently been discovered by two critics, working independently, to draw for its source on a Spanish play of Guillen de Castro which was not printed in Spain until 1625, a few months before the death of Fletcher." This play will therefore be deferred to a later and The Coxcomb, more appropriate consideration. The Coxcomb may be as early as indicated. This comedy, like Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable, is a comedy of manners possessing a romantic tone in one of its plots. In The Coxcomb, otherwise an unpleasant play, we have the beautiful character, Viola, whose lover, proving recreant through drink on the night appointed for their elopement, is stripped of her gown by thieves and put to other adventures, until found at last by her now repentant lover among the milkmaids of the neighboring countryside. Ricardo, Viola's lover, offers an interesting parallel to Shakespeare's Cassio in his weakness for the wine cup and in his like consequent remorse. The inventiveness of such plots as those of Chapman's Monsieur D'Olive and Middleton's Old Law is worthy of note. For such productions mark the consummate craft of the playwright who has become a past master of his art. But the face of the artist is now turned, once and for all, away from nature. The realistic element of such art turns to satire; the ideal element to ingenuity and 1 Fleay, i, 180; Oliphant, Englische Studien, xv, 348; Thorndike, 92. 2 Stiefel in Archiv, xcix, 271, and Rosenbach in a MS. referred to below, ii, p. 214. The latter refers Love's Cure to the authorship of Massinger. 3 Below, ii. pp. 206-216, where the subject of Spanish influence on Fletcher is discussed. Cf. The Coxcomb, 1, v, 6; 11, iv, and Othello, 11, iii. a clever representation of the hypothetical case. In such productions romantic art finds its grave. comedy. In the foregoing pages we have followed the well- Summary known course of Shakespeare's earlier growth in comedy, from the dominating influence of lightsome and fantastic Lyly, through the buoyant and joyous comedies of Shakespeare's own young manhood to the deeper ponderings on human life and conduct, relieved as they are by a riper, fuller humor, which characterize such mature dramas as All's Well and Measure for Measure. We have seen how, during the years that intervened between the death of Marlowe and the uprise of Dekker, Jonson, and Middleton, Shakespeare stood in romantic comedy, as in history, without a rival: and this although some few scattering comedies of the school of Lyly continued, and the intermittent vogue of the pastoral and the "romance" to come were not wanting. In another aspect we found Jonson representing the popular folk and fairy lore of his day in masque and pastoral with the scholar's precision, and Shakespeare transforming the same popular folk-lore of the countryside into the inimitable fairies of his fancy and thus giving to English literature - nay to the literature of the world a new order of beings. We considered, too, not only this fantastic manifestation of the supernatural in Elizabethan drama, but likewise that equally romantic phase of the traffic with the other world which deals in charms and enchantments, from the conventional hags and wizards of classically derived Italian comedy to the tragic barterings of soul with the father of evil. But Heywood, Dekker, Chapman, and Middleton all now begin to appear as claimants for honors in romantic comedy, each after his kind: Heywood with the pseudo-romance of the Four Prentices, Dekker with sincere and poetical Fortunatus, Chapman with inventive romantic drama of contemporary life, and Jonson and Middleton with their faces towards the comedy of manners, Jonson's broad shoulders braced against the protecting wall of the ancients. But enough; save for the possible exceptions in the early plays already mentioned, with Beaumont and Fletcher a new age dawns in romantic comedy. This we defer for the present, as it links forward, not with the past. IX HISTORICAL DRAMA ON FOREIGN THEMES WE of the chronicle E have already seen the historical conscious- The method ness of England awakening in chronicle plays ide history dealing with English subject-matter more or less extended to foreign subepically. We have discovered this variety of drama, jects. moreover, straying into other fields, those of pseudohistory, folk-lore, and the celebration of local and minor heroes, and substituting other interests, such as that of the homely comedy of daily life or stirring fictitious adventure, for the genuine historical interest which at first animated them. It was not to be supposed that a species of drama so popular and so varied could be limited in its themes to stories of England; and we are not surprised to find side by side with the chronicle plays on English history, dramas of much the same type, the subjects of which have been derived from the annals and the chronicles of other nations; and have been chosen, for the most part, because of their tragic capabilities. Such were plays like Marlowe's Massacre at Paris and A Larum for London, in which all but contemporary events were treated chronicle-wise; and such, though less unmistakably, was the popular Elizabethan treatment of classical history as well. Inasmuch, however, as the last was restricted to a certain extent by sources and models of a very different type, plays dealing with classical historical subjects will be treated elsewhere. The distinction which justifies a separation |