is
eloquence, his learning, his charity, and integrity.

Warton's statement of the plot is brief and accurate, as follows:
"Gorboduc, a king of Britain about six hundred years before Christ,
made in his lifetime a division of his kingdom to his two sons Ferrex
and Porrex. The two young princes within five years quarrelled for
universal sovereignty. A civil war ensued, and Porrex slew his elder
brother Ferrex. Their mother, Videna, who loved Ferrex best, revenged
his death by entering Porrex's chamber in the night, and murdering him
in his sleep. The people, exasperated at the cruelty and treachery of
this murder, rose in rebellion, and killed both Gorboduc and Videna.
The nobility then assembled, collected an army, and destroyed the
rebels. An intestine war commenced between the chief lords; the
succession of the crown became uncertain and arbitrary, for want of a
lineal royal issue; and the country, destitute of a king, and wasted
by domestic slaughter, was reduced to a state of the most miserable
desolation."

Each Act of the tragedy is preceded by a dumb-show significant of what
is forthcoming, and the first four are followed by choruses,
moralizing the events. But the most notable fact about it is, that all
except the choruses is in blank-verse; in which respect it was a
great and noble innovation. And the versification runs abundantly
smooth; beyond which little can be said in its favour; though that was
a good deal for the time. With considerable force of thought and
language, the speeches are excessively formal, stately, and didactic;
every thing is told, nothing represented; the dialogue is but a series
of studied declamation, without any pulses of life, or any relish of
individual traits; in brief, all is mere State rhetoric speaking in
the same vein, now from one mouth, now from another. From the
subject-matter, the unities of time and place are necessarily
disregarded, while there is no continuity of action or character to
lift it above the circumscriptions of sense. The Acts and scenes
follow one another without any innate principle of succession: there
is nothing like an organic composition of the parts, no weaving of
them together by any law of dramatic sequence and development. Still,
the piece marks an era in the English Drama. In the single article of
blank-verse, though having all the monotony of the most regular
rhyming versifier, it did more for dramatic improvement than, perhaps,
could have been