hero.

_The Rich Jew of Malta_ is of value, as presenting to us Barabas the Jew
as he appeared to Christian suspicion and hatred in the fifteenth century.
As he sits in his country-house with heaps of gold before him, and
receives the visits of merchants who inform him of the safe arrival of his
ships, it is manifest that he gave Shakspeare the first ideal of his
Shylock, upon which the greater dramatist greatly improved.

_The Tragicall Life and Death of Doctor John Faustus_ certainly helped
Goethe in the conception and preparation of his modern drama, and contains
many passages of rare power. Charles Lamb says: "The growing horrors of
Faustus are awfully marked by the hours and half-hours which expire and
bring him nearer and nearer to the enactment of his dire compact. It is
indeed an agony and bloody sweat."

_Edward II._ presents in the assassination scene wonderful power and
pathos, and is regarded by Hazlitt as his best play.

Marlowe is the author of the pleasant madrigal, called by Izaak Walton
"that smooth song":

Come live with me and be my love.

The playwright, who had led a wild life, came to his end in a tavern
brawl: he had endeavored to use his dagger upon one of the waiters, who
turned it upon him, and gave him a wound in the head of which he died, in
1593.

His talents were of a higher order than those of his contemporaries; he
was next to Shakspeare in power, and was called by Phillips "a second
Shakspeare."

OTHER DRAMATIC WRITERS BEFORE SHAKSPEARE.

Thomas Lodge, 1556-1625: educated at Oxford. Wrote _The Wounds of
Civil-War_, and other tragedies. Rosalynd, a novel, from which Shakspeare
drew in his _As You Like It_. He translated _Josephus_ and _Seneca_.

Thomas Kyd, died about 1600: _The Spanish Tragedy, or, Hieronymo is Mad
Again_. This contains a few highly wrought scenes, which have been
variously attributed to Ben Jonson and to Webster.

Robert Tailor: wrote _The Hog hath Lost his Pearl_, a comedy, published in
1614. This partakes of the character of the _morality_.

John Marston: wrote _Antonio and Mellida_, 1602; _Antonio's Revenge_,
1602; _Sophonisba, a Wonder of Women_, 1606; _The Insatiate Countess_,
1603, and many other plays. Marston ranks high among the immediate
predecessors of Shakspeare, for the number, variety, and vigorous handling
of his plays.

George Peele, born about 1553: educated at Oxford. Many of his pieces are
broadly comic. The principal plays