LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN OF GREAT BRITAIN.

THE Drama an_ Dramatic ramatic Authors of the Elizabethan age is the subject of the second volume of this biographical section of Dr.

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s Cycloptedia. t commences with notices of the writers and short descriptive criticisms on the principal plays immedi- HAKSPEARE, or contemporary with his earlier immedi- ately receding the life and works of SHAKSPEARE and his fellows, BEN JONSON, BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, MASSINGER, FORD, and WEBSTER, follow; and the book closes with a coup cited of the minor dramatists; to which is added an appendix of many documents, chiefly relating to SHAKSPEARE. This volume exhibits no strik- ing ability, and is dashed with several defects ; yet it is pleasant, readable,

and suggestive. The matter is not the fruit of much re- search, for it is mostly drawn from books of easy access. These, however, are voluminous, dry, dear, and in the main repulsive to all who are not reading with a purpose ; so that it is a good ser- vice to select the gems of forgotten poets and the pith of their commentators, for in default of this the general reader would have nothing. The defects of the work are resolvable into a narrow and carping spirit. The authors are not devoid of shrewdness and sense; but, from want of largeness of view, their judgments, both on life and literature, are rather specious than sound. From a

similar cause, their criticisms are small and formal ; excrescent faults are more keenly noted titan intrinsic merits; there is more of the spirit of ZOILUS than of ARISTOTLE. Whence, coupled with the antiquarian reading necessary for the undertaking, springs a fault in the composition ; which is coarse, and at times almost clownish. Still the volume, as we have intimated, should be read, not only for what it tells, but for what it suggests. Besides the strange janomalous picture of learning, wit, debauchery, misfor- tune, and low riot, which the lives of GREENE and MARLOWE set before us, the notices of their contemporaries and predecessors throw a strong light on the character of the times. SHAKSPEARE appears no longer that miracle of invention in respect to the form of the drama which he bas been popularly supposed ; his genius as regards structure is to be limited to that of an improver. Neither is the mental activity of the age in dramatic production less ex- traordinary: the stage then seems to have attracted all the poor, irregular, and unpatronized scholarship of the time, as the press does now: Independent of dramas that have come down to us, fifty-two pieces were produced in the twelve years between 1568 and 1580," "of which no vestige remains unless the substance lives in more recent productions,'—for reproduction seems to have been the fashion then as now ; the skilful playwright infusing life into dead dramas, as reviewers in the present day extract some few pages of instruction or amusement from a dull volume. Be- tween 1580 and 1590, many plays, it is inferred, were produced, and have perished. From February 1591 (when SHAKSPEARE had been some few years in London) to July 1597, 110 new pieces were performed ; and from October 1597 to March 1603, 160 more aere added to the list. Between four and five hundred plays, at the least, in less than fifty years But modern antiquarian research is not content with show- ing that SHAKSPEARE was merely the facile prinreps of the Elizabethan dramatists, instead of the founder of the English drama. By inquiry and conjecture, the critics bid fair to prove that he went tar beyond borrowing his plots, as we all admit, from ballads, novels, and old stories, and rewriting or touching up several historical plays. There was a Hamlet played as early as 1589, though no copy of it has yet been discovered ; another Lear existed before the Lear of SHAKSPEARE; it is mooted whether Macbeth was derived from the Witch of MIDIYLETON or the Witch from Macbeth. " The two parts of Henry the Fourth," of which JOHNSON says, perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded more delight, " were certainly founded on two preceding dramas." Even the hint of Falstaff himself is doubtless derived from the play and character of Sir John Oldcastle, whom "stage poets," in the words of FULLER, "have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, Sir John Falstaff bath relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substi- tuted buffoon in his place." To sum up all, "sixteen of SHAK- SPEARE'S dramas, if not more, were immediately constructed on preceding dramas ;" and the plots of all were borrowed. It is lucky for genius that critics can only slay the body—the immortal soul is beyond them. Our compiler indeed does not hold these or any fresh discoveries that may be made as "affecting the glory" of SHAKSPEARE, but he obviously says this rather than feels it. He has not yet sufficient critical acumen and experience to be thoroughly persuaded that the charge of plagiarism is the most ridiculous of charges—that works which survive their own age, must survive by dint of some general and pervading spirit, which gives them wholeness, character, and life. The obligations any author is under to his predecessors, or contemporaries, should un- questionably be told as facts, and freely examined as matter of curious critical speculation ; but the charge of plagiarism will never affect the power of a work. In the generality of cases, it is almost as absurd as to charge an historian with not inventing his characters and incidents. This accusation was, however, urged in SHAKSPEARE'S lifetime ; and if not with any effect, at least with much power, by one who represented himself as a sufferer from the theft. The profligate but repentant GREENE, on his deathbed, addressed a sort of "last SHAESPEARE was born in 1364, :red we s of rotuse only eVIteen at the cud of this :Cud, dying speech and confession " letter to his friends Maetowe, LODGE, and PEELS. After advising the two former, he comes to PEELE, and thus refers to SHAKSPEARE. It is easy to see that the disdain of University-men for the "upstart," as well perhaps as some soreness touching the player and shareowner, is mingled with anger at the plagiarist.

" And thou, no less deserving than the other two, in some things rarer io no- thing inferior, driven, as myself, to extreme shifts; a little have I to say to thee : and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would swear by sweet Saint George, thou art unworthy better hap, sith thou dependest ou so mean a stay. Base. minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned ; for unto none of you (like me) sought those burs to cleave; those puppets (I mean) that speak from our mouths; those antics garnished in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding, shall (were ye in that ease that I am now) be left of them at once forsaken? Yee, trust them not ; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's bide, supposeShe is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and, being an absolute John Factotum, is, in !doom' conceit, the only shake-scene in a country. Oh that I might entreat your rare wits to to be employed in more profitable courses ! and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inven- tions. 1 know the best husband of you all will never prove an usurer, and the kindest of them all will never prove a kind nurse; yet, whilst you may, seek you better masters ; for it is a pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude grooms."

Nor, it would seem, does tine life of " sweet Willy " bear much closer scrutiny than that of other men. He is made out a person vain of heraldic distinctions ; and as inciting his old father, who of yore had been too poor to pay " his taxes or his baker," to get a coat of arms from the Herald's College, by dint of lying repre- sentations about the family. He is proved by " imputation and strong circumstances, which lead directly to the door of truth," to

have left Mrs. SHAKSPEARE and family at Stratford-upon-Avon, x last lie enjoyed his London prosperity en bachelier in a very

loose and bachelor-like way. He is accused of loving a glass;

but it may be inferred that lie thought, with DIOGENES, " that wine is the best which is drunk at another's expense." According

to a satirical dialogue, published when he had achieved greatness, he was a close-listed person. A strolling player is advised to try his luck in town-

" There thou shalt learn to be frugal (for players never were so thrifty as they are now about London), and to feed upon all men, to let none feed upon thee; to make thy hand a stranger to thy pocket, thy heart slow to perform thy.

tongue's promise ; and when thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place of lordship in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy money may there bring thee to dignity and reputation : then thou nerviest care for no man ; no, not for them that before made thee proud with speaking their words on the stage." " Sir, I thank you (quoth the player) for this good council : I

promise you I will make use of it; for I have heard, indeed, of some that have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding wealthy."

As the phrase is, "when things come to be looked into !" But we must think of the reprobate lives of dramatists and players in his time, before we admit SHAKSPEARE to have been closer than prudence imperatively commanded. To GREENE and MARLOWE. and all those wits who, in the words of ASCHAM, " live men know

not how and die men know not where," care must have appeared

a crime. PEELE was such an adept in tricking and duping, that a volume of swindling exploits was published under the title of the "Meri Conceited Jests of George Peek." GREENE himself admits that, when in Italy, he " practised such villanies as were too abominable to be mentioned." But this volume affords a prkis of his life and death. The author is alluding to two fic- titious narratives, in which GREENE is said to have sketched his own career- " That much of this melancholy relation is applicable to Greene, is beyond

dispute. He himself assures us, that the life of this Roberto agreed, fur the most part, with his. We know, too, from other authority, that be forsook an amiable wife; that he kept the vilest company ; that to warn society against the tricks of thieves, cheats, gamblers, and knaves of every kind, he wrote no lest. than four treatises to expose their arts, and that too notwithstanding their

threats of veng, a 'ice; that he kept as his mistress the sister of the infamous

Cutting Ballw NA a band of ruffians long protected him from arrest, and who was he: g at 3 burn ; that by this woman he had an illegitimate son, who survived bin.; that he ran into debt with impunity, at once unable and un-

willing to pay ; that when his credit failed him, he had recourse to the vilest shifts; that he scoffed at religion, at God, at another world ; that, in short, he

was thoroughly reprobate. Such a life could not and did nut end in peace: lie was, as we proceed to show, cut off in the prime of his days—as early, it is believed, as his thirty second year ; and his eyes were closed amidst circum- stances as melancholy us any that are to be found in the whole range of biography. It was early in August 1592 that Greene held the fatal banquet which ter- minated in his death. It consisted of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine,—the most injurious meal he could have chosen ; and he indulged immoderately in both. His chief guest was Nash, a well-known dramatist of the period. He was immediately seized by a complaint in the bowels, accompanied by inflam- mation and swelling, which gradually spread upwards towards his heart. During the month which intervened between this attack and his death, his condition was truly wretched : his lodgings were at a poor shoemaker's in the Dowgate, and there can be no doubt but that for the compassion shown hint he must have perished for the want of the common necessaries of life. The poor man could ill afford to maintain him a month, little as he required ; but he did what lie could without complaining ; and the kindness of the shoemaker's wife, who acted as his nurse, is mentioned with praise. She had admired, she now pitied him ; and she no doubt grieved that she could not furnish him with the things which his appetite craved. She wept as she afterwards related how plaintively lie had begged for a pennyworth of malmesbury : whether he pro- cured it, we know not. She and the mother of his illegitimate child were, we are told, the only persons who visited him on his bed of death : in this, his hour of need, lie was forsaken by all, even by Nash, the campanion of his drunkenness. This, however, is not strictly true; for certainly Henry Chettle,

a fertile !nit forgotten writer, who published both his Groats-worth of Mt and his Itiveniu fire, who tia.tscribed a portion of both, and added something at the close, must have recci red his dying instructions: however, this is scarcely a tclicf to the dark and melancholy parts of the picture. To heighten the plc- time of his destitution, we need only observe, that he was in a sad state of filth for want of clean linen ; that he had but one shirt, and when it was washed, be was glad to borrow one from the shoemaker ; that his mistress and his son were equally ragged, and equally consumed by vermin. In that state he died September the 3d ; and the same charity that had supported him in his last days, bore his expenses to the tomb."