o rival poets, while from a certain wild pathos
combined with its imposing grandiloquence it was long a favorite with
the people. The same person also translated a play by Garnier on the
story of Cornelia the wife of Pompey;--a solitary instance apparently of
obligation to the French theatre on the part of these founders of our
national drama.

By Thomas Hughes the misfortunes of Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, were
made the subject of a tragedy performed before the queen.

Preston, to whom when a youth her majesty had granted a pension of a
shilling a day in consideration of his excellent acting in the play of
Palamon and Arcite, composed on the story of Cambyses king of Persia "A
lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth," which is now only
remembered as having been an object of ridicule to Shakespeare.

Lilly, the author of Euphues, composed six court comedies and other
pieces principally on classical subjects, but disfigured by all the
barbarous affectations of style which had marked his earlier production.

Christopher Marlow, unquestionably a man of genius, however deficient in
taste and judgement, astonished the world with his Tamburlain the
Great, which became in a manner proverbial for its rant and
extravagance: he also composed, but in a purer style and with a pathetic
cast of sentiment, a drama on the subject of king Edward II., and
ministered fuel to the ferocious prejudices of the age by his fiend-like
portraiture of Barabas in The rich Jew of Malta. Marlow was also the
author of a tragedy, in which the sublime and the grotesque were
extraordinarily mingled, on the noted story of Dr. Faustus; a tale of
preternatural horrors, which, after the lapse of two centuries, was
again to receive a similar distinction from the pen of one of the most
celebrated of German dramatists: not the only example which could be
produced of a coincidence of taste between the early tragedians of the
two countries.

Of the works of these and other contemporary poets, the fathers of the
English theatre, some are extant in print, others have come down to us
in manuscript, and of no inconsiderable portion the titles alone
survive. A few have acquired an incidental value in the eyes of the
curious, as having furnished the ground-work of some of the dramas of
our great poet; but not one of the number can justly be said to make a
part of the living literature of the country.

It was reserved for the transcendent genius of Sha