s _Edward
I._ in construction, but far surpasses it in beauty of language and
versification, besides treating its subject with greatly superior
dignity. If the difference between Peele and Shakespeare is still, in
many respects besides that of genius, an immeasurable one, we seem to
come into something like a Shakespearian atmosphere in more than one
passage of the plays of the unfortunate Robert Greene--unfortunate
perhaps in nothing more enduringly than in the proof which he left
behind him of his supercilious jealousy of Shakespeare. Greene's genius,
most conspicuous in plays treating English life and scenes, could,
notwithstanding his academic self-sufficiency, at times free itself from
the pedantry apt to beset the flight of Peele's and at times even of
Marlowe's muse; and his most delightful work[176] seems to breathe
something of the air, sweet and fresh like no other, which blows over an
English countryside. Thomas Lodge, whose dramatic, and much less of
course his literary activity, is measured by the only play that we know
to have been wholly his;[177] Thomas Nashe, the redoubtable pamphleteer
and the father of the English picaresque novel;[178] Henry Chettle, who
worked the chords of both pity[179] and terror[180] with equal vigour,
and Anthony Munday, better remembered for his city pageants than for his
plays, are among the other more important writers of the early
Elizabethan drama, though not all of them can strictly speaking be
called predecessors of Shakespeare. It is not possible here to enumerate
the more interesting of the anonymous plays which belong to this
"pre-Shakespearian" period of the Elizabethan drama; but many of them
are by intrinsic merit as well as for special causes deserving of the
attention of the student.

Common characteristics of the early Elizabethans.

The common characteristics of nearly all these dramatists and plays were
in accordance with those of the great age to which they belonged.
Stirring times called for stirring themes, such as those of "Mahomet,
Scipio and Tamerlane"; and these again for a corresponding vigour of
treatment. Neatness and symmetry of construction were neglected for
fulness and variety of matter. Novelty and grandeur of subject seemed
well matched by a swelling amplitude and often reckless extravagance of
diction. As if from an inner necessity, the balance of rhymed couplets
gave way to the impetuous march of blank verse; "strong lines" were as
inev