In your unquestion'd wisdom, I beseech you,
The goods of this poor man sold at an outcry,
His wife turn'd out of doors, his children forc'd
To beg their bread; this gentleman's estate
By wrong extorted, can advantage you?

Or that the ruin of this once brave merchant,
For such he was esteem'd, though now decay'd,
Will raise your reputation with good men?
But you may urge (pray you, pardon me, my zeal
Makes me thus bold and vehement), in this
You satisfy your anger, and revenge

For being defeated. Suppose this, it will not
Repair your loss, and there was never yet
But shame and scandal in a victory,

When the rebels unto reason, passions, fought it.
Then for revenge, by great souls it was ever
Contemn'd though offer'd; entertain'd by none
But cowards, base and abject spirits, strangers
To moral honesty, and never yet
Acquainted with religion.

Sir John. Shall I be

Talk'd out of my money?

Luke. No sir, but intreated

*

To do yourself a benefit, and preserve

What you possess entire.

Sir John. How, my good brother?

Luke. By making these your beadsmen. When they eat,
Their thanks, next heaven, will be paid to your mercy;

When your ships are at sea, their prayers will swell

The sails with prosperous winds, and guard them from
Tempests and pirates; keep your warehouses
From fire, or quench them with their tears.

[City Madam.]

Before we pass on to the writers who close this important dramatic period we must very briefly notice their less eminent contemporaries, Taylor, Rowley, Tourneur, Cooke, Nabbes, Field, Day, Glapthorne, Randolph and Brome.

The public demand for theatrical novelties, called forth, at this time, a succession of writers in this popular, and profitable department of literature, who, though not men of the most exalted genius, still left the rich stamp of the age, both in style and thought, upon many of their pages. Of the

personal history of these writers little is known, a few scattered dates usually making up the whole amount of their biography.

Of ROBERT TAYLOR, the author here first mentioned, nothing farther is known than that he wrote an amusing drama under the quaint title, The Hog hath Lost his Pearl, and some other pieces of a similar character.

WILLIAM ROWLEY WAS an actor as well as author. Besides other plays written conjointly with Middleton and Dekker, he produced a tragicomedy, The Witch of Edmonton, in the composition of which Ford also is suspected of having taken a part. His drama embodies, in a striking form, the vulgar superstition respecting witchcraft, which so long debased the popular mind in England. We quote the following passage:

[Mother Sawyer alone.]

Saw. And why on me? why should the envious world
Throw all their scandalous malice upon me?

'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant,
And like a bow buckled and bent together
By some more strong in mischiefs than myself;
Must I for that be made a common sink
For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues
To fall and run into? Some call me witch,

And being ignorant of myself, they go

About to teach me how to be one: urging

That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so)
Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn,
Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse:
This they enforce upon me; and in part

And worse I would, knew I a name more hateful.

What makest thou upon my grounds?

Saw. Gather a few rotten sticks to warm me.

Banks. Down with them when I bid thee, quickly;

I'll make thy bones rattle in thy skin else.

Saw. You won't! churl, cut-throat, miser! there they be. Would they stuck 'cross thy throat, thy bowels, thy maw, thy midriff

Banks. Say'st thou me so. Hag, out of my ground.

Saw. Dost strike me, slave, curmudgeon? Now thy bones aches, thy joints

cramps,

And convulsions stretch and crack thy sinews.

Banks. Cursing, thou hag? take that, and that.

[Exit.]

Saw. Strike, do: and wither'd may that hand and arm,
Whose blows have lam'd me, drop from the rotten trunk.
Abuse me! beat me! call me hag and witch!
What is the name? where, and by what art learn'd?

What spells, or charms, or invocations,
May the thing call'd Familiar be purchased?
I am shunn'd

And hated like a sickness; made a scorn

To all degrees and sexes. I have heard old beldams
Talk of familiars in the shape of mice,

Rats, ferrets, weasels, and I wot not what,

That have appear'd; and suck'd, some say, their blood.
But by what means they came acquainted with them,
I'm now ignorant. Would some powers, good or bad,
Instruct me which way I might be reveng'd

Upon this churl. I'd go out of myself,
And give this fury leave to dwell within
This ruin'd cottage, ready to fall with age:
Abjure all goodness, be at hate with prayer,
And study curses, imprecations,

Blasphemous speeches, oaths, detested oaths,
Or any thing that's ill; so I might work

Revenge upon this miser, this black cur,

That barks, and bites, and sucks the very blood,

Of me, and of my credit. 'Tis all one

To be a witch as to be counted one.

CYRIL TOURNEUR, besides being concerned in the production of many others, wrote, himself, two very good dramas, The Atheist's Tragedy, and The Revenger's Tragedy. From the former we may select the following characteristic description of a Drowned Soldier :—

Walking upon the fatal shore,

Among the slaughter'd bodies of their men,
Which the full-stomach'd sea had cast upon
The sands, it was my unhappy chance to light
Upon a face, whose favour, when it lived,
My astonish'd mind inform'd me I had seen.
He lay in his armour, as if that had been
His coffin; and the weeping sea (like one
Whose milder temper doth lament the death
Of him whom in his rage he slew) runs up
The shore, embraces him, kisses his cheek;
Goes back again, and forces up the sands
To bury him; and every time it parts,
Sheds tears upon him; till at last, (as if
It could no longer endure to see the man
Whom it had slain, yet loath to leave him,)
With a kind of unresolv'd unwilling pace,
Winding her waves one in another, (like
A man that folds his arms, or wrings his hands
For grief,) ebb'd from the body, and descends;
As if it would sink down into the earth,

And hide itself for shame of such a deed.

George Cooke was the author of a lively comedy under the title of Greene's Tu Quoque. From the character and finish of this play, we

should infer that it was far from being his only dramatic production, though no other has been presèrved.

THOMAS NABBES, who died about 1645, was the author of a very successful masque, entitled Microcosmus. He also produced several other plays, which were written, either by himself alone, or conjointly with others. In 'Microcosmus' we find the following fine song of love:

Welcome, welcome, happy pair,

To these abodes where spicy air
Breathes perfumes, and every sense
Doth find his object's excellence;
Where's no heat nor cold extreme,

No winter's ice, no summer's scorching beam;
Where's no sun, yet never night,

Day always springing from eternal light.

Chorus.-All mortal suffering laid aside,

Here in endless bliss abide.

NATHANIEL FIELD, who was an actor, and personated one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 'Poetaster,' began to write for the stage about 1609. His principal dramas are Woman is a Weathercock, and Amends for Ladies. He also had the honor of aiding Massinger in the composition of The Fatal Dowry.'

JOHN DAY, in conjunction with Chettle, wrote The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, a popular comedy, and was also the author of two or three other plays, and some miscellaneous poems.

HENRY GLAPTHORNE was a prolific writer, and is mentioned by his contemporaries as 'one of the chief dramatic poets of the reign of Charles the First. A number of his plays were published, the principal of which are, Albertus Wallenstein, The Hollander, Argalus and Parthenia, Wit in a Constable, and the Lady's Privilege. Glapthorne's plays abound with a certain smoothness and prettiness of expression which is very agreeable, but he is deficient in passion and energy.

THOMAS RANDOLPH, whom we have already noticed among the miscellaneous poets of this period, wrote The Muses' Looking-glass, and The Jealous Lovers. An anonymous play, Sweetman, the Woman-hater, with the production of which Randolph is supposed to have been connected, contains the following happy simile :

Justice, like lightning, ever should appear
To few men's ruin, but to all men's fear.

RICHARD BROME, one of the very best of these secondary dramatists, produced several plays, of which The Antipodes, The City Wit and The Couri Beggar, long retained their place upon the stage.

Ford, Heywood, and Shirley close the long and interesting list of dramatic writers who adorned the age of Elizabeth and her two immediate

successors.

JOHN FORD was of a good Devonshire family, and was born in 1586. He received a university education, after which he repaired to London, and entered Gray's Inn, as a student of law. Having completed his legal studies and commenced his profession, he turned his attention to the drama as a pastime. His first efforts as a writer for the stage, were made in connection with Webster and Dekker. He also assisted Rowley in the composition of 'The Witch of Edmonton,' already mentioned, the last act of which is supposed to have been written entirely by Ford. In 1628, appeared The Lover's Melancholy, dedicated to his friends and associates of the society of Gray's Inn. In 1633, were published his three tragedies, The Brother and Sister, The Broken Heart, and Love's Sacrifice. He next wrote Perkin Warbeck, a correct and spirited historical drama. Two other pieces, Fancies Chaste and Noble, and The Lady's Trial, produced in 1638, complete the list of Ford's works. His death occurred in 1639, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.

A tone of pensive tenderness and pathos, with a peculiarly soft and musical style of blank verse, characterizes all the dramas of this poet. The choice of his subjects was unhappy; yet Coleridge suggests, that the selection of horrible stories for his two best plays, may have been merely an exercise of intellectual power. His moral sense was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities of sin, and by compassion for rare extremes of suf fering.' The scenes in his 'Brother and Sister,' describing the criminal loves of Annabella and Giovanni, are painfully interesting, and to the feelings, harrowing in the extreme; and yet they contain his best poetry and finest expression.

The truth is, the old dramatists loved to sport and dally with such forbidden themes, as they tempted the imagination, and thus awoke slumbering fires of pride, passion, and wickedness, that lurk in the recesses of the human heart. They lived in an age of excitement-the newly-awakened intellect warring with the senses--the baser parts of humanity with its noblest qualities. In this struggle, the dramatic poets were plunged; and they depicted. forcibly what they saw and felt. Much as they wrote, their time was not spent in shady retirement: they flung themselves into the full tide of the passions, sounded its depths, wrestled with its difficulties and defilements, and were borne onward in headlong career. A few, like poor Marlow and Greene, sunk early in undeplored misery, and nearly all were unhappy. This very recklessness and daring, however, gave a mighty impulse and freedom to their genius. They were emancipated from ordinary restraints; they were strong in their skeptic pride and self-will; they surveyed the whole of life, and gave expression to those wild half-shaped thoughts and unnatural promptings, which wiser conduct and reflection