ain course and fashions of the drama. After the
publication of his plays in 1623, this incidental influence increased,
and is distinctly noticeable in the plays of Ford and Shirley.

[Page Heading: Pastoral and Masque]

A glance must suffice for two dramatic forms that had only slight
connection with the public theaters, the Pastoral Play and the Court
Masque. Pastoral elements are found in many early entertainments and in
the plays of Lyly and Peele. Later, in imitation of Guarini's _Il Pastor
Fido_, attempts were made to inaugurate a pastoral drama, presenting a
full-fledged dramatic exposition of the golden age. Daniel's _Queen's
Arcadia_ (1605) and Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_ (1609) had many
later followers, but the form won no permanent hold on the popular
taste. Traces of its influence, however, may often be seen, as in
Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, or Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster_.
The masque, originally only a masquerade, soon acquired some dramatic
accompaniment, and in the court of James I developed into an elaborate
form of entertainment. The masked dance of the ladies and gentlemen of
the court was merely the focus for dialogue, elaborate setting,
spectacle, music, and grotesque dances by professionals. These shows,
costing vast sums for staging, costumes, and music, depended for their
success mainly on the architect Inigo Jones, but in some degree also on
Ben Jonson, who was the creator of the Court Masque as a literary form.
Such expensive spectacles were far beyond the reach of the public
theater, but provoked considerable imitation, as in Shakespeare's
_Tempest_, or several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. Later Milton
immortalized the form in _Comus_.

The most hasty review of the Elizabethan drama must suggest how
constantly Shakespeare responded to its prevailing conditions. There
are, of course, great variations in the signs which different plays
offer of contemporary influence and peculiarity. So it is with most of
his fellow dramatists. _Lear_ and _Othello_ were perhaps written within
the same year, yet _Othello_, in its unity, its technical excellence,
and its depiction of character, is the most modern of the tragedies,
while _Lear_, with its impossible story, its horrors, its treatment of
madness, its likeness to the chronicle plays, its prolonged passage from
crisis to catastrophe, in its very conception, is the most Elizabethan,
though perhaps the most impressive of the tragedi