d the composition
of the first English tragedy which we possess. Of _Gorboduc_ (afterwards
re-named _Ferrex and Porrex_), first acted on the 18th of January 1562
by the members of the Inner Temple before Queen Elizabeth, the first
three acts are stated to have been written by T. Norton; the rest of the
play (if not more) was the work of T. Sackville, afterwards Lord
Buckhurst and earl of Dorset, whom Jasper Heywood praised for his
sonnets, but who is better known for his leading share in The _Mirror
for Magistrates_. Though the subject of _Gorboduc_ is a British legend,
and though the action is neither copied nor adapted from any treated by
Seneca, yet the resemblance between this tragedy and the _Thebais_ is
too strong to be fortuitous. In all formal matters--chorus, messengers,
&c.--_Gorboduc_ adheres to the usage of classical tragedy; but the
authors show no respect for the unities of time or place. Strong in
construction, the tragedy is--like its model, Seneca--weak in
characterization. The dialogue, it should be noticed, is in blank verse;
and the device of the _dumb-show_, in which the contents of each act are
in succession set forth in pantomime only, is employed at once to
instruct and to stimulate the spectator.

The nearly contemporary _Apius and Virginia_ (c. 1563), though it takes
its subject--destined to become a perennial one on the modern
stage--from Roman story; the _Historie of Horestes_ (pr. 1567); and T.
Preston's _Cambises King of Percia_ (1569-1570), are somewhat rougher in
form, and, the first and last of them at all events, more violent in
diction, than _Gorboduc_. They still contain elements of the moralities
(above all the Vice) and none of the formal features of classical
tragedy. But a _Julyus Sesyar_ seems to have been performed, in
precisely the same circumstances as _Gorboduc_, so early as 1562; and,
four years later, G. Gascoigne, the author of the satire _The Steele
Glass_, produced with the aid of two associates (F. Kinwelmersh and Sir
Christopher Yelverton, who wrote an epilogue), _Jocasta_, a virtual
translation of L. Dolce's _Giocasta_, which was an adaptation, probably,
of R. Winter's Latin translation of the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides.[163]
Between the years 1567 and 1580 a large proportion of the plays
presented at court by choir- or school-boys, and by various companies of
actors, were taken from Greek legend or Roman history; as was R.
Edwardes' _Damon and Pithias_ (perhaps as ear