ter of Arts," may be by William Stevenson, or by
some other contemporary. This comedy is slighter in plot and coarser in
diction than _Ralph Roister Doister_, but by no means unamusing.

In the main, however, early English comedy, while occasionally
introducing characters and scenes of thoroughly native origin and
complexion (e.g. Grim, the Collier of Croydon),[165] was content to
borrow its themes from classical or Italian sources.[166] G. Gascoigne's
_Supposes_ (acted at Gray's Inn in 1566) is a translation of _I
Suppositi_ of Ariosto, remarkable for the flowing facility of its
prose. While, on the one hand, the mixture of tragic with comic motives,
which was to become so distinctive a feature of the Elizabethan drama,
was already leading in the direction of tragi-comedy, the precedent of
the Italian pastoral drama encouraged the introduction of figures and
stories derived from classical mythology; and the rapid and diversified
influence of Italian comedy, in close touch with Italian prose fiction,
seemed likely to affect and quicken continuously the growth of the
lighter branch of the English drama.

Conditions of the early Elizabethan drama.

Out of such promises as these the glories of English drama were ripened
by the warmth and light of the great Elizabethan age--of which the
beginnings may fairly be reckoned from the third decennium of the reign
to which it owes its name. The queen's steady love of dramatic
entertainments could not of itself have led, though it undoubtedly
contributed, to such a result. Against the attacks which a nascent
puritanism was already directing against the stage by the hands of J.
Northbrooke,[167] the repentant playwright S. Gosson,[168] P.
Stubbes,[169] and others,[170] were to be set not only the frugal favour
of royalty and the more liberal patronage of great nobles,[171] but the
fact that literary authorities were already weighing the endeavours of
the English drama in the balance of respectful criticism, and that in
the abstract at least the claims of both tragedy and comedy were upheld
by those who shrank from the desipience of idle pastimes. It is
noticeable that this period in the history of the English theatre
coincides with the beginning of the remarkable series of visits made to
Germany by companies of English comedians, which did not come to an end
till the period immediately before the Thirty Years' War, and were
occasionally resumed after its close. As at home the