of the drama's
development from such semi-moralities as _Cambises_ and _The Nice
Wanton_ to the last plays of Massinger and Shirley.

For nearly a quarter of a century he was a sharer in this dramatic
movement, working in London as actor, manager, and playwright. While no
playwright was more desirous than he to find in the stage full
opportunity for his genius, he was as keen as any in gauging the
immediate theatrical demand and in meeting the varying conditions of a
highly competitive profession. As we have already noted, he began by
imitating those who had won success, and to the end he was adroit in
taking advantage of a new dramatic fashion or discovery. Like his
fellows, he often took his plots from novels, histories, or other
narratives; but his very choice of stories might be determined by the
theatrical taste of the moment, and in his treatment of those stories he
shows in person, situation, or scene, a consideration of current
practices, traditions, and conventions. In every field of literature, a
writer is conditioned by the work of his predecessors and
contemporaries, and this dependence on current taste is especially
important in the drama, where practice tends to fix itself in
convention, and where innovation to be successful requires cooeperation
from the actors and approval from the audience as well as genius from
the author. Though Shakespeare is for all time, he is part and parcel of
the Elizabethan drama. If his plays are Elizabethan in their defects and
limitations, such as their trivial puns and word-play, their overcrowded
imagery, their loose and broken structure, their paucity of female
roles, their mixture of comic and tragic, their reliance on disguise and
mistaken identity as motives, their use of improbable or absurd stories;
they are Elizabethan also in the qualities of their greatness, their
variety of subject, their intense interest in the portrayal of
character, the flexibility and audacity of their language, their noble
and opulent verse, the exquisite idealism of their romantic love, and
their profound analysis of the sources of human tragedy.

[Page Heading: Beginnings of the Drama]

The Elizabethan drama was a continuation of the medieval drama
transformed by the influence of classical models, especially the
comedies of Terence and Plautus and the tragedies of Seneca. In England,
by the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Miracle and Mystery plays
were declining and were soon to