_Tragicall Discourses_ ran into a second edition in 1569. T. Fortescue's
_Foreste or Collection of Histories ... dooen oute of Frenche_ appeared
in 1571 and reached a second edition in 1576. In the latter year
appeared a work of G. Pettie that bore on its title page--_A Petite
Palace of Pettie his Pleasure_--a clear reference to Painter's book.
Notwithstanding Anthony a Wood's contemptuous judgment of his
great-uncle's book it ran through no less than six editions between 1576
and 1613.[17] The year after Pettie's first edition appeared R. Smyth's
_Stravnge and Tragicall histories Translated out of French_. In 1576 was
also published the first of George Whetstone's collections of tales, the
four parts of _The Rocke of Regard_, in which he told over again in
verse several stories already better told by Painter. In the same year,
1576, appeared G. Turberville's _Tragical Tales, translated out of
sundrie Italians_--ten tales in verse, chiefly from Boccaccio.
Whetstone's _Heptameron of Ciuill Discourses_ in 1582 was however a more
important contribution to the English _Novella_, and it ran through two
further editions by 1593.[18] Thus in the quarter of a century 1565-1590
no less than eight collections, most of them running into a second
edition, made their appearance in England. Painter's work contains more
than all the rest put together, and its success was the cause of the
whole movement. It clearly answered a want and thus created a demand. It
remains to consider the want which was thus satisfied by Painter and his
school.

[Footnote 17: The tales are ten--1. Sinorix and Camma
[= Tennyson's _Cup_]; 2. Tereus and Progne; 3. Germanicus and
Agrippina; 4. Julius and Virginia; 5. Admetus and Alcest; 6. Silla
and Minos; 7. Curiatius and Horatia; 8. Cephalus and Procris;
9. Pigmalion and his Image; 10. Alexius.]

[Footnote 18: M. Jusserand gives a list of most of these
translations of French and Italian novels in his just issued
_English Novel in the Elizabethan Age_, 1890, pp. 80-1. He also
refers to works by Rich and Gascoigne in which novels occur.]

The quarter of a century from 1565 to 1590 was the seed-time of the
Elizabethan Drama, which blossomed out in the latter year in Marlowe's
_Tamburlaine the Great_. The only play which precedes that period,
_Gordobuc_ or _Ferrex and Porrex_, first played in 1561, indicates what
direction the English Drama would naturally have taken if not