of the common foe. Admiral
Howard, who commanded the English naval forces against the Armada, was a
Catholic.

But during the reign of James I. (1603-1625) and Charles I. (1625-1649)
Puritanism grew stronger through repression. "England," says the
historian Green, "became the people of a book, and that book the Bible."
The power of the king was used to impose the power of the bishops upon
the English and Scotch Churches until religious discontent became also
political discontent, and finally overthrew the throne. The writers of
this period divided more and more into two hostile camps. On the side of
Church and king was the bulk of the learning and genius of the time. But
on the side of free religion and the Parliament were the stern
conviction, the fiery zeal, the exalted imagination of English
Puritanism. The spokesman of this movement was Milton, whose great
figure dominates the literary history of his generation, as Shakspere
does of the generation preceding.

The drama went on in the course marked out for it by Shakspere's example
until the theaters were closed by Parliament, in 1642. Of the Stuart
dramatists the most important were Beaumont and Fletcher, all of whose
plays were produced during the reign of James I. These were fifty-three
in number, but only thirteen of them were joint productions. Francis
Beaumont was twenty years younger than Shakspere, and died a few years
before him. He was the son of a judge of the Common Pleas. His
collaborator, John Fletcher, a son of the bishop of London, was five
years older than Beaumont, and survived him nine years. He was much the
more prolific of the two and wrote alone some forty plays. Although the
life of one of these partners was conterminous with Shakspere's, their
works exhibit a later phase of the dramatic art. The Stuart dramatists
followed the lead of Shakspere rather than of Ben Jonson. Their plays,
like the former's, belong to the romantic drama. They present a poetic
and idealized version of life, deal with the highest passions and the
wildest buffoonery, and introduce a great variety of those daring
situations and incidents which we agree to call romantic. But, while
Shakspere seldom or never overstepped the modesty of nature, his
successors ran into every license. They sought to stimulate the jaded
appetite of their audience by exhibiting monstrosities of character,
unnatural lusts, subtleties of crime, virtues and vices both in excess.

Beaumont and Fl