udience, and they decided for feedom and action,
rather than restraint and recitation. Hence our national drama is of
Shakspere and not of Racine. By 1603 there were twelve play-houses in
London in full blast, although the city then numbered only one hundred
and fifty thousand inhabitants.

Fresh plays were produced every year. The theater was more to the
Englishmen of that time than it has ever been before or since. It was
his club, his novel, his newspaper, all in one. No great drama has ever
flourished apart from a living stage, and it was fortunate that the
Elizabethan dramatists were, almost all of them, actors, and familiar
with stage effect. Even the few exceptions, like Beaumont and Fletcher,
who were young men of good birth and fortune, and not dependent on their
pens, were probably intimate with the actors, lived in a theatrical
atmosphere, and knew practically how plays should be put on.

It had now become possible to earn a livelihood as an actor and
playwright. Richard Burbage and Edward Alleyn, the leading actors of
their generation, made large fortunes. Shakspere himself made enough
from his share in the profits of the Globe to retire with a competence,
some seven years before his death, and purchase a handsome property in
his native Stratford. Accordingly, shortly after 1580, a number of men
of real talent began to write for the stage as a career. These were
young graduates of the universities, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Kyd, Lyly,
Lodge, and others, who came up to town and led a bohemian life as actors
and playwrights. Most of them were wild and dissipated and ended in
wretchedness. Peele died of a disease brought on by his evil courses;
Greene, in extreme destitution, from a surfeit of Rhenish wine and
pickled herring, and Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern brawl.

The Euphuist Lyly produced eight plays between 1584 and 1601. They were
written for court entertainments, mostly in prose and on mythological
subjects. They have little dramatic power, but the dialogue is brisk and
vivacious, and there are several pretty songs in them. All the
characters talk Ephuism. The best of these was _Alexander and Campaspe_,
the plot of which is briefly as follows. Alexander has fallen in love
with his beautiful captive, Campaspe, and employs the artist Apelles to
paint her portrait. During the sittings Apelles becomes enamored of his
subject and declares his passion, which is returned. Alexander discovers
their secret, b