iel, never needed much
incentive to treat a national theme.

About this time, we find Drayton writing for the stage. It seems
unnecessary here to discuss whether the writing of plays is evidence of
Drayton's poverty, or his versatility;[17] but the fact remains that he
had a hand in the production of about twenty. Of these, the only one
which certainly survives is _The first part of the true and honorable
historie, of the life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham,_ &c.
It is practically impossible to distinguish Drayton's share in this
curious play, and it does not, therefore, materially assist the
elucidation of the question whether he had any dramatic feeling or
skill. It can be safely affirmed that the dramatic instinct was nor
uppermost in his mind; he was a Seneca rather than a Euripides: but to
deny him all dramatic idea, as does Dr. Whitaker, is too severe. There
is decided, if slender, dramatic skill and feeling in certain of the
_Nymphals_. Drayton's persons are usually, it must be said, rather
figures in a tableau, or series of tableaux; but in the second and
seventh _Nymphals_, and occasionally in the tenth, there is real
dramatic movement. Closely connected with this question is the
consideration of humour, which is wrongly denied to Drayton. Humour is
observable first, perhaps, in the _Owle_ (1604); then in the _Ode to his
Rival_ (1619); and later in the _Nymphidia_, _Shepheards Sirena_, and
_Muses Elyzium_. The second _Nymphal_ shows us the quiet laughter, the
humorous twinkle, with which Drayton writes at times. The subject is an
[Greek: agon] or contest between two shepherds for the affections of a
nymph called Lirope: Lalus is a vale-bred swain, of refined and elegant
manners, skilled, nevertheless, in all manly sports and exercises;
Cleon, no less a master in physical prowess, was nurtured by a hind in
the mountains; the contrast between their manners is admirably
sustained: Cleon is rough, inclined to be rude and scoffing, totally
without tact, even where his mistress is concerned. Lalus remembers her
upbringing and her tastes; he makes no unnecessary or ostentatious
display of wealth; his gifts are simple and charming, while Cleon's are
so grotesquely unsuited to a swain, that it is tempting to suppose that
Drayton was quietly satirizing Marlowe's _Passionate Shepherd_. Lirope
listens gravely to the swains in turn, and makes demure but provoking
answers, raising each to the height of hope, and