and concentrated expression, the full maturity of the
man and the artist. Hardly in the great tragedies themselves is there
clearer proof of Shakespeare's supremacy in thought and language.

CHAPTER V

THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

Shakespeare's lifetime was coincident with a period of extraordinary
activity and achievement in the drama. By the date of his birth Europe
was witnessing the passing of the religious drama that had held its
course for some five centuries, and the creation of new and mixed forms
under the incentive of classical tragedy and comedy. These new forms
were at first mainly written by scholars and performed by amateurs, but
in England, as everywhere else in western Europe, the growth of a class
of professional actors was threatening to make the drama popular,
whether it should be new or old, classical or medieval, literary or
farcical. Court, school, organizations of amateurs, and the strolling
actors were all rivals in supplying a widespread desire for dramatic
entertainment; and no boy who went to a grammar school could be ignorant
that the drama was a form of literature which gave glory to Greece and
Rome and might yet bestow its laurels on England.

When Shakespeare was twelve years old the first public playhouse was
built in London. For a time literature held aloof from this public
stage. Plays aiming at literary distinction were written for schools or
court, or for the choir boys of St. Paul's and the royal chapel, who,
however, gave plays in public as well as at court. But the professional
companies prospered in their permanent theaters, and university men with
literary ambitions were quick to turn to these theaters as offering a
means of livelihood. By the time that Shakespeare was twenty-five, Lyly,
Peele, and Greene had made comedies that were at once popular and
literary; Kyd had written a tragedy that crowded the pit; and Marlowe
had brought poetry and genius to triumph on the common stage--where they
had played no part since the death of Euripides. A native literary drama
had been created, its alliance with the public playhouses established,
and at least some of its great traditions had been begun.

The development of the Elizabethan drama for the next twenty-five years
is of exceptional interest to students of literary history, for in this
brief period, in connection with the half-dozen theaters of a growing
city and the demands of its varied population, we may trace the
beginni