naturally sweet and spontaneous delicacy of the later poet
must not be looked for in the homely and audacious realism of Heywood;
in whose work the style of the Knight's Tale and the style of the
Miller's Tale run side by side and hand in hand.

From the Golden Age to the Iron Age the growth and ascent of Heywood's
dramatic power may fairly be said to correspond in a reversed order with
the degeneracy and decline of human heroism and happiness in the
legendary gradation or degradation of the classical four ages. "The
Golden Age" is a delightful example of dramatic poetry in its simplest
and most primary stage; in "The Silver Age" the process of evolution is
already visible at work. Bellerophon and Aurea cannot certainly be
compared with the Joseph and Phraxanor of Charles Wells: but the curt
and abrupt scene in which they are hastily thrust on the stage and as
hastily swept off it is excellently composed and written. The highest
possible tribute to the simple and splendid genius of Plautus is paid by
the evidence of the fact that all his imitators have been obliged to
follow so closely on the lines of his supernatural, poetical, and
farcical comedy of Amphitryon. Heywood, Rotrou, Moliere, and Dryden have
sat at his feet and copied from his dictation like school-boys. The
French pupils, it must be admitted, have profited better and shown
themselves apter and happier disciples than the English. I cannot think
that even Moliere has improved on the text of Rotrou as much, or nearly
as much, as he has placed himself under unacknowledged obligation to his
elder countryman: but in Dryden's version there is a taint of greasy
vulgarity, a reek of obtrusive ruffianism, from which Heywood's version
is as clean as Shakespeare's could have been, had he bestowed on the
"Amphitruo" the honor he conferred on the "Menaechmi." The power of
condensation into a few compact scenes of material sufficient for five
full acts is a remarkable and admirable gift of Heywood's.

After the really dramatic episode in which he had the advantage of
guidance by the laughing light of a greater comic genius than his own,
Heywood contentedly resumes the simple task of arranging for the stage a
mythological chronicle of miscellaneous adventure. The jealousy of Juno
is naturally the mainspring of the action and the motive which affords
some show of connection or coherence to the three remaining acts of "The
Silver Age": the rape of Proserpine, the mourning