ddesses,
and Paris in his relation to them, gain nothing at his hands, while
Hobbinol, Diggon and Thenot are the dullest of shepherds. Unapt for
witty or clownish dialogue, Peele rarely attempts, as Lyly and Greene
did, to give fresh piquancy to an old story by the addition of
subordinate humorous episodes; when he does, as in _Edward the First_,
the result can hardly be termed a success.

Peele's eminence as a dramatist, then, must be sought for in the two
features of his work mentioned in our opening sentence, namely,
sweetness of versification and graceful pastoralism. Of these the latter
is found only in a single play, _The Arraignment of Paris_, and is one
of the few products of the author's originality. Lyly was possibly
indebted to it for the background and minor figures of certain scenes in
_Gallathea_, and Greene may have owed something to its influence.
Certainly neither dramatist ever equalled its delicate descriptions of
passive Nature.[56] The preponderance of mythology, however, the dearth
of real human beings, the unnaturalness permitted to invade nature--so
that even the flowers are grouped, as in an absurd parterre, to
represent the forms of goddesses--make Peele's pastoralism, despite the
undeniable charm of many passages, inferior to Greene's representation
of English country life.

Turning next to his verse, we recognize that it is here above all that
his excellence is to be found. Nevertheless a word of caution is needed.
So many of his readers have been charmed by his verse that it seems
almost a pity to remind them that he wrote more than two plays, and
that the same brain that composed the favourite passages in _David and
Bethsabe_ also produced quantities of very indifferent poetry in other
dramas. _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_ is written in tedious
alliterative heptameters. From _Edward the First_ the most ardent
admirer of Peele would be puzzled to find half a dozen speeches meriting
quotation. The verse of _The Battle of Alcazar_ is in all points similar
to that of Greene's Marlowesque plays, imitating and falling short of
the same model. In fact Peele's reputation as a versifier rests almost
entirely on the contents of those two plays which most students of his
work read, _The Arraignment of Paris_ and _David and Bethsabe_. Of the
first it may be said boldly, without fear of contradiction, that,
considered metrically, the verse is unsuited to ordinary drama. The
arbitrary and constantly c