rweaving of many actions into one which is the
characteristic of the Romantic Drama of Marlowe and his compeers.

[Footnote 19: A partial exception is to be made in favour of the
Spanish school, which broke loose from the classical tradition
with Lope de Vega.]

[Footnote 20: It is probable however that the "mixture of tones"
came more directly from the Interludes.]

[Footnote 21: _Euphorion_, by Vernon Lee. Second edition, 1885,
pp. 55-108.]

[Footnote 22: It has, of course, been suggested that Shakespeare
visited Venice. But this is only one of the 1001 mare's nests of
the commentators.]

That Painter was the main source of plot for the dramatists before
Marlowe, we have explicit evidence. Of the very few extant dramas before
Marlowe, _Appius and Virginia_, _Tancred and Gismunda,_ and _Cyrus and
Panthea_ are derived from Painter.[23] We have also references in
contemporary literature showing the great impression made by Painter's
book on the opponents of the stage. In 1572 E. Dering, in the Epistle
prefixed to _A briefe Instruction_, says: "To this purpose we have
gotten our Songs and Sonnets, our Palaces of Pleasure, our unchaste
Fables and Tragedies, and such like sorceries.... O that there were
among us some zealous Ephesian, that books of so great vanity might be
burned up." As early as 1579 Gosson began in his _School of Abuse_ the
crusade against stage-plays, which culminated in Prynne's
_Histriomastix_. He was answered by Lodge in his _Defence of Stage
Plays_. Gosson demurred to Lodge in 1580 with his _Playes Confuted in
Five Actions_, and in this he expressly mentions Painter's _Palace of
Pleasure_ among the "bawdie comedies" that had been "ransacked" to
supply the plots of plays. Unfortunately very few even of the titles of
these early plays are extant: they probably only existed as prompt-books
for stage-managers, and were not of sufficient literary value to be
printed when the marriage of Drama and Literature occurred with Marlowe.

[Footnote 23: Altogether in the scanty notices of this period we
can trace a dozen derivatives of Painter. See Analytical Table on
Tome I. nov. iii., v., xi., xxxvii., xxxix., xl., xlviii., lvii.;
Tome II. nov. i., iii., xiv., xxxiv.]

But we have one convincing proof of the predominating influence of the
plots of Painter and his imitators on the Elizabethan Drama.
Shakespeare's works in the first folio, and the edi