gs, but
possessing in their fellow Shakespere a champion unparalleled in ancient
and modern times, borrowed the improvements of the University Wits, added
their own stage knowledge, and with Shakespere's aid achieved the master
drama of the world.

A very few lines will suffice for the first group, who are the merest
literary curiosities. Indeed the actual number of Senecan dramas in English
is very small indeed, though there may possibly be some undiscovered in MS.
The _Tancred and Gismund_ of Robert Wilmot (acted 1568, and of some merit),
the _Cornelia_ of Garnier, translated by Kyd and printed in 1594, the
curious play called _The Misfortunes of Arthur_, acted before the Queen in
the Armada year, with "triumphs" partly devised by Francis Bacon, the two
plays of Samuel Daniel, and a very few others, complete the list; indeed
_Cornelia_, _Cleopatra_, and _Philotas_ are almost the only three that keep
really close to the model. At a time of such unbounded respect for the
classics, and when Latin plays of the same stamp were constantly acted at
the universities, such a paucity of examples in English can only testify to
a strong national distaste--an instinctive feeling that this would never
do.

The nondescript followings of morality and farce are infinitely more
numerous, and perhaps intrinsically more interesting; but they can hardly
be said to be, except in bulk, of much greater importance. Their real
interest to the reader as he turns them over in the first seven or eight
volumes of Dodsley, or in the rarer single editions where they occur, is
again an interest of curiosity--a desire to trace the various shiftings and
turnings of the mighty but unorganised genius which was soon to find its
way. Next to the difficulty of inventing a conveniently plastic form seems
to have been the difficulty of inventing a suitable verse. For some time
the swinging or lumbering doggerel in which a tolerably good rhyme is
reached by a kind of scramble through four or five feet, which are most
like a very shuffling anapaest--the verse which appears in the comedies of
Udall and Still--held its ground. We have it in the morality of the _New
Custom_, printed in 1573, but no doubt written earlier, in the Interlude
of _The Trial of Treasure_, in the farcical comedy of _Like Will to Like_,
a coarse but lively piece, by Ulpian Fulwell (1568). In the very curious
tragi-comedy of _Cambyses_ this doggerel appears partly, but is alternated
with t