en right
and wrong, or we watch the gradual decay of goodness by the action of a
poisonous thought introduced into the mind. The plot has undergone a
similar intensification. With resistless evolution it bears the chief
characters along to the fatal hour of decision or action, then drags
them down the descent which the wrong choice or the unwise deed suddenly
places at their feet. Our sympathies are drawn out, we take sides in the
cause, and demand that at least justice shall prevail at the end. There
is an art, too, in this evolution, a close interweaving of events, a
chain of cause and effect; a certain harmony and balance are maintained,
so that our feelings are neither jerked to extremes nor worn out by
strain. Even the history play has freed itself to some extent from the
leading strings of chronology, claiming the right to make the same
appeal to our common instincts as any other play. Verse has taken a
mighty bound from formalism to the free intoxicating air of poetry and
nature. Men and women no longer exchange dull speeches; they converse
with easy spontaneity and delight us by the beauty of their language. A
poet may be a dramatist at last without feeling that his imagination
must be held back like a restive horse lest the decorum of human speech
be violated.

* * * * *

_Arden of Feversham_ (? 1590-2), by its persistent but almost certainly
mistaken association with Shakespeare's name, has received a wider fame
than some better plays. Into the question of its authorship, however, we
need not enter. Of itself it has qualities that call for reference in
this place. Its early date, also, brings it within the sphere of our
discussion of the growth of English drama.

Far more than any play of Kyd's, this drama, though it has no ghost and
slays but one man on the stage, merits the title of a Tragedy of Blood.
Murder is the theme, murder and adulterous love, and it is 'kill! kill!
kill!' all the time. From the pages of Holinshed the writer carefully
gathered up every horrible detail, every dreadful revelation concerning
a brutal crime which had horrified England forty years before; and
while the red and reeking abomination was still hot in his mind, sat
down to the awful task of re-enacting it. The victim was summoned from
his grave, the murderers from the gallows, the woman from the charred
stake at Canterbury, to glut the appetite of a shuddering audience. Too
revolting to be desc