tions derived from
it, are, as is well known, divided into three parts--Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies. The division is founded on a right instinct,
and applies to the whole Elizabethan Drama.[24] Putting aside the
Histories, which derive from Holinshed, North, and the other historians,
the _dramatis personae_ of the Tragedies and Comedies are, in nineteen
cases out of twenty, provided with Italian names, and the scene is
placed in Italy. It had become a regular convention with the
Elizabethans to give an Italian habitation and name to the whole of
their dramas. This convention must have arisen in the pre-Marlowe days,
and there is no other reason to be given for it but the fact that the
majority of plots are taken from the "Palace of Pleasure" or its
followers. A striking instance is mentioned by Charles Lamb of the
tyranny of this convention. In the first draught of his _Every Man in
his Humour_ Ben Jonson gave Italian names to all his _dramatis personae_.
Mistress Kitely appeared as Biancha, Master Stephen as Stephano, and
even the immortal Captain Bobabil as Bobadilla. Imagine Dame Quickly as
Putana, and Sir John as Corporoso, and we can see what a profound
influence such a seemingly superficial thing as the names of the
_dramatis personae_ has had on the Elizabethan Drama through the
influence of Painter and his men.

[Footnote 24: In the _Warning for Fair Women_ there is a scene in
which Tragedy, Comedy, and History dispute for precedence.]

But the effect of this Italianisation of the Elizabethan Drama due to
Painter goes far deeper than mere externalities. It has been said that
after Lamb's sign-post criticisms, and we may add, after Mr. Swinburne's
dithyrambs, it is easy enough to discover the Elizabethan dramatists
over again. But is there not the danger that we may discover too much in
them? However we may explain the fact, it remains true that outside
Shakespeare none of the Elizabethans has really reached the heart of the
nation. There is not a single Elizabethan drama, always of course with
the exception of Shakespeare's, which belongs to English literature in
the sense in which _Samson Agonistes_, _Absalom and Achitophel_,
_Gulliver's Travels_, _The Rape of the Lock_, _Tom Jones_, _She Stoops
to Conquer_, _The School for Scandal_, belong to it. The dramas have not
that direct appeal to us which the works I have mentioned have continued
to exercise after the generation for whom they were writt