of living were uncertain, for literature was not yet a recognized profession. Some of them wrote romances, poems, or pamphlets, as well as plays. Some of them were mere literary adventurers: scholars acquainted with the London slums, the associates of actors, if not actors themselves, struggling to live by their wits as best they could.

JOHN LYLY (1553-1606) is the first of this group. His plays were produced by two companies of child-actors known as "the children of Paul's" (i.e. the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral) and " the children of the Chapel (i.e. the choristers of the Royal Chapel at Whitehall), and they were undoubtedly acted before the Queen. Lyly's plays were noted more for their rhetoric than for their poetry. In fact, Lyly first became famous by a certain artificial and highly rhetorical prose, known as Euphuism, from his two stories, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579), and Euphues and His England (1580). Euphuism as a manner of writing and speaking, it seems, was much imitated at the Court, becoming almost a fad. GEORGE PEELE (1558–1597) likewise wrote plays for the Court, but he wrote also for the public theaters. In his dramas he gave full expression to a strong poetic genius. THOMAS KYD (1558-1595) was famous for his Spanish Tragedy, which, though not without dramatic power, was poetically inferior to the best work of Kyd's contemporaries. ROBERT GREENE (1558-1592), in his Scottish History of King James IV and his pleasing comedy of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, gives us two plays which in part suggest the romantic comedies of Shakespeare. The scene of the latter play is laid in the country, and there is in it a wholesome atmosphere of sunshine and open air. Greene has left us the story of his pitiable life in his singular tract, A Groat's Worth of Wit Bought

with a Million of Repentance. It was a sordid and dissipated life among the outcasts of London society; but in the midst of debauchery and riot he kept a mind open to the influence of higher and finer things; and his drama is free from the taint of his habits.

Christopher Marlowe. But greater than all these in the tragic intensity of his genius and the swelling majesty of his "mighty line" was CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593), the immediate forerunner of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's closest rival in dramatic construction and poetic power. When Marlowe began to write, the form of the English drama was still unsettled. Under the influence of its classic models tragedy was inclined to be stilted and formal; while in contrast with the work of the scholarly and somewhat artificial writers there were rude, popular interludes in jingling rimes, full of rough, clownish tricks and jests. Marlowe did much to reduce this confusion to order and to introduce new themes for dramatic treatment. His verse is the finest before Shakespeare's; and stormy and riotous as was his life, his work shows the true artist's unselfish devotion to a high and beautiful ideal. Marlowe was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, and was born two months before Shakespeare. He graduated at Cambridge and came to London in 1581 to plunge into the vortex of reckless and lawless life that circled round the theater. Passionate, unquiet, ambitious, Marlowe was spoken of, though it seems unjustly, as an atheist and a blasphemer. He died before he reached thirty; stabbed, we are told, in a low tavern at Deptford. The touch of the unknown, which he thirsted for like his own Faustus, stopped him in the midst of his doubts, his passionate longings, his defiance, his love-making, and his fameand at length he was but "poor deceased Kit Marlowe."

His Dramas. Marlowe's dramas, like Shakespeare's, show a gradual development toward artistic perfection. Though all are stamped with genius and certain magnificent bursts of poetry, the earliest are marred in part by exaggeration and extravagance. Yet into most of his plays Marlowe succeeded in throwing genuine tragic passion. He was the first of the Elizabethan dramatists to give his work universal interest, for he was the first to paint with power and truth through the medium of genuine and exalted poetry the sterner and more awful passions of man.

Marlowe's earliest play, Tamburlaine (1587), portrays the insatiable thirst for power, the spirit of the typical conqueror longing for "the sweet fruition of an earthly crown." Another of Marlowe's tragedies, The Jew of Malta, is generally thought to have furnished Shakespeare with some hints for his Shylock in The Merchant of Venice; while Dr. Faustus, with the accumulating terror of its tragic close, is full of that longing for the unattainable which seems to have been the strongest characteristic of Marlowe's restless nature. In these famous lines from Tamburlaine, Marlowe himself seems to speak to us:

"Nature, that framed us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds;
Our souls whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest -."

In Marlowe's Edward II we have the first great historical tragedy produced in England. The play is a

picture, clearly and truly drawn, of a weak king who is forced with tragic pride and reluctance to give up his crown and finally his life. Here Marlowe is distinctively the predecessor of Shakespeare as a master of historical tragedy. Charles Lamb has said of this play, "the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted."

Theaters. For the production of so many plays on such varied subjects, one might suppose many theaters would be needed in London even before Shakespeare's time. But we must remember that the development of the playhouse, like that of the drama, was gradual. Indeed, plays were acted in England long before any theaters were built. The interludes or the early dramas were often played before the Queen in the royal palace, or before some great noble on a platform at one end of the huge hall, perhaps at a great banquet or festival. And when plays became a popular pastime, they were often performed in the open courtyards of the inns, such as the Bull, the Bell, and the Cross Keys in London. These square inn-yards, overlooked by the balconies which ran around the enclosing walls of the inn, are supposed to have furnished the model for the regular theaters. The growing delight in play-going seems to have produced a general demand for more permanent and roomy accommodations. The first building devoted especially to plays was The Theatre, erected in 1576 in Shoreditch, just outside of London. The Puritan citizens of London at first opposed the production of plays and the building of theaters within the city walls; plays were godless, they said, and not only caused disturbances of the peace, but increased the danger of the plague. The first theater built in London proper was The Blackfriars

(1596). From this time the playhouses increased rapidly. Shakespeare's theater, The Globe, built in 1599, lay across the Thames on the Bankside in Southwark, near London bridge. Other famous theaters of the day were The Curtain, The Rose, The Swan, and The Fortune. The Swan was the largest and finest. It was

built, we are told, of 66 a concrete of flintstones," and it had wooden columns painted in imitation of marble. The theaters were of two kinds, public and private. The first were large four-or six-sided buildings, partly roofed over above the stage, that the costumes of the players, which were often costly, might be protected from the weather. The greater part of the stage, however, on which the principal action

in the drama took place, was uncovered and extended into the yard. The pit or yard was open to sun and rain. Galleries ran round the walls as in the inn-yards. The stage projected into the pit, which was alive with disorderly crowds who stood on the bare ground, joking, fighting, or shoving to gain the best places. A penny admission was charged, and if a young gallant wished