ingenuity of device under the
influence of Flemish and other foreign examples. Costumed figures
represented before gaping citizens the heroes of mythology and history,
and the abstractions of moral, patriotic, or municipal allegory; and the
city of London clung with special fervour to these exhibitions, which
the Elizabethan drama was neither able nor--as represented by most of
its poets who composed devices and short texts for these and similar
shows--willing to oust from popular favour. Some of the greatest and
some of the least of English dramatists were the ministers of pageantry;
and perhaps it would have been an advantage for the future of the
theatre if the legitimate drama and the _Triumphs of Old Drapery_ had
been more jealously kept apart. With the reign of Henry VIII. there also
set in a varied succession of entertainments at court and in the houses
of the great nobles, which may be said to have lasted through the Tudor
and early Stuart periods; but it would be an endless task to attempt to
discriminate the dramatic elements contained in these productions. The
"mask," stated to have been introduced from Italy into England as a new
diversion in 1512-1513, at first merely added a fresh element of
"disguising" to those already in use; as a quasi-dramatic species
("mask" or "masque") capable of a great literary development it hardly
asserted itself till quite the end of the 16th century.

11. THE MODERN NATIONAL DRAMA

Influence of the Renaissance.

The literary influence which finally transformed the growths noticed
above into the national dramas of the several countries of Europe, was
that of the Renaissance. Among the remains of classical antiquity which
were studied, translated and imitated, those of the drama necessarily
held a prominent place. Never altogether lost sight of, they now became
subjects of devoted research and models for more or less exact
imitation, first in Greek or Latin, then in modern tongues; and these
essentially literary endeavours came into more or less direct contact
with, and acquired more or less control over, dramatic performances and
entertainments already in existence. This process it will be most
convenient to pursue _seriatim_, in connexion with the rise and progress
of the several dramatic literatures of the West. For no sooner had the
stream of the modern drama, whose source and contributories have been
described, been brought back into the ancient bed, than its flow