kespeare and his
Times", vol. 1, p. 72.]

[Footnote 40: Holinshed, vol. I, p. 275; Drake's "Shakespeare", vol. 1,
p. 99.]

[Footnote 41: Harrison's "Description"; Drake's "Shakespeare," vol. 1,
p. 101.]

[Footnote 42: Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. 1, p. 101.]

[Footnote 43: Henry Peacham, "Compleat Gentleman," 1624.]

[Footnote 44: Bourne; Drake's "Shakespeare," vol. 1, p. 153.]

[Footnote 45: Stubbes, "Anatomie of Abuses," p. 168.]

[Footnote 46: Douce, "Illustrations of Shakespeare."]

[Footnote 47: Stubbes; Drake's "Shakespeare," vol. 1, ch. vi.]

[Footnote 48: Laevinius Lemnius; Drake, vol. 2, p. 113.]

[Footnote 49: Nichol's "Progresses of Elizabeth," vol. 2, p. 391.]

[Footnote 50: Harrison: Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. 2, p.
87.]

[Footnote 51: Harrison's "Description of England"; Holinshed, vol. I,
pp. 289-90; Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times" vol. 2, pp. 88, 89.]

[Footnote 52: "Nugae Antique", Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times," vol.
2, p. 90.]

[Footnote 53: "The Gull's Horn Book"; Drake's "Shakespeare and his
Times", vol. 2, p. 184.]

[Footnote 54: Lodge's "Illustrations."]

[Footnote 55: _Idem._]

[Footnote 56: Green, "Short History of the English People," p. 429.]

II.

It is to the drama that we must look for the most complete literary
expression of the social condition of the period. The student of
history must regret, indeed, that the realistic novel, with its study
of human thoughts and motives, with its illustration of manners and
customs, so valuable in a reconstruction of the past, should have been
delayed till the end of the seventeenth century. But though there be
regret, there cannot be surprise. The reigns of Elizabeth and the
Stuarts cover the period of court life; when men lived in public, and
sought their intellectual entertainment in crowds at a theatre, as now,
in a time of citizen-life, they seek it in private, by the
study-lamp.[57] In a dramatic age the creations of the imagination will
be placed behind the footlights, and in a period of quiet and
reflection they will be placed between the covers of a book. In the age
of Elizabeth the writers of fiction neither studied the characters and
manners of the men about them, nor aimed at any reflection of actual
life. But their tales and romances were the natural fruit of their
intellectual condition, and form an interesting if not a valuable
portion of English fiction. In them are reflec