hing but pompous rhetoric from the lips of his
characters. His prologue begins his speech with the sounding line:

Who doth desire the trump of fame to sound unto the skies--

Virginius's wife makes her debut upon the stage with this encouraging
remark to her companion:

The pert and prickly prime of youth ought chastisement to have,
But thou, dear daughter, needest not, thyself doth show thee grave.

To which Virginia most becomingly answers:

Refell your mind of mournful plaints, dear mother, rest your mind.

After this every one feels that the wicked judge, Appius, has done no
more than his duty when he exclaims, at his entrance:

The furrowed face of fortune's force my pinching pain doth move.

Virginius slays his daughter on the stage and serves her head up in a
charger before Appius, who promptly bursts into a cataclysm of C's ('O
curst and cruel cankered churl, O carl unnatural'); but there is not a
suggestion of the pathos noticed in _Cambyses_. Instead there is in one
place a sort of frantic agitation, which the author doubtless thought
was the pure voice of tragic sorrow. It is in the terrible moment when,
after the heroic strain of the sacrifice is over, Virginius realizes the
meaning of what he has done. Presumably wild with grief, he raves in
language so startlingly akin to the ludicrous despairs of Pyramus and
Thisbe that the modern reader, acquainted with the latter, is almost
jarred into laughter.

O cruel hands, O bloody knife, O man, what hast thou done?
Thy daughter dear and only heir her vital end hath won.
Come, fatal blade, make like despatch: come, Atropos: come, aid!
Strike home, thou careless arm, with speed; of death be not afraid.

Of such eloquence we might truly say with Theseus, 'This passion, and
the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.'

In 1562 Tragedy, as we have said, took refuge in an imitation of the
Senecan stage: translations of Seneca's tragedies had begun to appear in
1559. _The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex_, or _Gorboduc_, as it was
originally and is now most commonly named, marks a new departure for
English drama. To understand this we ought perhaps to say something
about the essential features of a Greek tragedy (Seneca's own model),
and make a note of any special Senecan additions. What strikes one most
in reading a play of Aeschylus is the prominence given to a composite
and almost colourless character k