neous writers--Critics--
Webbe--Puttenham--Lyly--_Euphues_ and Euphuism--Sidney--His style and
critical principles--Hooker--Greville--Knolles--Mulcaster 28-49

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST DRAMATIC PERIOD

Divisions of Elizabethan Drama--Its general character--Origins--_Ralph_
_Roister Doister_--_Gammer Gurton's Needle_--_Gorboduc_--The Senecan
Drama--Other early plays--The "university wits"--Their lives and
characters--Lyly (dramas)--The Marlowe group--Peele--Greene--Kyd--
Marlowe--The actor playwrights 50-81

CHAPTER IV

"THE FAERIE QUEENE" AND ITS GROUP

Spenser--His life and the order of his works--_The Shepherd's Calendar_
--The minor poems--_The Faerie Queene_--Its scheme--The Spenserian
stanza--Spenser's language--His general poetical qualities--
Comparison with other English poets--His peculiar charm--The
Sonneteers--Fulke Greville--Sidney--Watson--Barnes--Giles Fletcher
the elder--Lodge--_Avisa_--Percy--_Zepheria_--Constable--Daniel--
Drayton--_Alcilia_--Griffin--Lynch--Smith--Barnfield--Southwell--The
song and madrigal writers--Campion--Raleigh--Dyer--Oxford, etc.--
Gifford--Howell, Grove, and others--The historians--Warner--The
larger poetical works of Daniel and Drayton--The satirists--Lodge--
Donne--The poems of Donne generally--Hall--Marston--Guilpin--Tourneur
82-156

CHAPTER V

THE SECOND DRAMATIC PERIOD--SHAKESPERE

Difficulty of writing about Shakespere--His life--His reputation in
England and its history--Divisions of his work--The Poems--The
Sonnets--The Plays--Characteristics of Shakespere--Never unnatural--
His attitude to morality--His humour--Universality of his range--
Comments on him--His manner of working--His variety--Final remarks--
Dramatists to be grouped with Shakespere--Ben Jonson--Chapman--
Marston--Dekker 157-206

CHAPTER VI

LATER ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN PROSE

Bacon--Raleigh--The Authorised Version--Jonson and Daniel as
prose-writers--Hakluyt--The Pamphleteers--Greene--Lodge--Harvey--Nash
--Dekker--Breton--The Martin Marprelate Controversy--Account of it,
with specimens of the chief tracts 207-252

CHAPTER VII