performed by the students of Gray's Inn under the
title of The Supposes; which was the first specimen in our language of a
drama in prose. Italian literature was at this period cultivated amongst
us with an assiduity unequalled either before or since, and it possessed
few authors of merit or celebrity whose works were not speedily
familiarized to the English public through the medium of translations.
The study of this enchanting language found however a vehement opponent
in Roger Ascham, who exclaims against the "enchantments of Circe,
brought out of Italy to mar men's manners in England; much by examples
of ill life, but more by precepts of fond books, of late translated out
of Italian into English, and sold in every shop in London." He
afterwards declares that "there be more of these ungracious books set
out in print within these few months than have been seen in England many
years before." To these strictures on the moral tendencies of the
popular writers of Italy some force must be allowed; but it is obvious
to remark, that similar objections might be urged with at least equal
cogency against the favorite classics of Ascham; and that the use of so
valuable an instrument of intellectual advancement as the free
introduction of the literature of a highly polished nation into one
comparatively rude, is not to be denied to beings capable of moral
discrimination, from the apprehension of such partial and incidental
injury as may arise out of its abuse. Italy, in fact, was at once the
plenteous store-house whence the English poets, dramatists and romance
writers of the latter half of the sixteenth century drew their most
precious materials; the school where they acquired taste and skill to
adapt them to their various purposes; and the Parnassian mount on which
they caught the purest inspirations of the muse.

Elizabeth was a zealous patroness of these studies; she spoke the
Italian language with fluency and elegance, and used it frequently in
her mottos and devices: by her encouragement, as we shall see,
Harrington was urged to complete his version of the Orlando Furioso, and
she willingly accepted in the year 1600 the dedication of Fairfax's
admirable translation of the great epic of Tasso.

But to return to our dramatic writers:... Thomas Kyd was the author of a
tragedy entitled Jeronimo, which for the absurd horrors of its plot, and
the mingled puerility and bombast of its language, was a source of
perpetual ridicule t