e been muddled up ruthlessly. We do
not know the exact dates of many of those which are (many of the plays of
the earlier time are not) extant; and of those which are extant, and of
which the dates are more or less known, the authors are in not a few most
important cases absolutely undiscoverable. Yet in the plays which belong to
this period, and which there is no reason to attribute wholly to any of the
Marlowe group, or much reason to attribute to them under the guidance, or
perhaps with the collaboration of practical actors (some at least of whom
were like Shakespere himself, men of no known regular education), there are
characteristics which promise at least as well for the future as the
wonderful poetic outbursts of the Marlowe school itself. Of these outbursts
we find few in this other division. But we find a growing knowledge of what
a play is, as distinguished from a series of tableaux acted by not too
lifelike characters. We find a glimmering (which is hardly anywhere to be
seen in the more literary work of the other school) of the truth that the
characters must be made to work out the play, and not the play be written
in a series of disjointed scenes to display, in anything but a successful
fashion, the characters. With fewer flights we have fewer absurdities; with
less genius we have more talent. It must be remembered, of course, that the
plays of the university school itself were always written for players, and
that some of the authors had more or less to do with acting as well as with
writing. But the flame of discord which burns so fiercely on the one side
in the famous real or supposed dying utterances of Greene, and which years
afterwards breaks out on the other in the equally famous satire of _The
Return from Parnassus_,[22] illuminates a real difference--a difference
which study of the remains of the literature of the period can only make
plainer. The same difference has manifested itself again, and more than
once in other departments of literature, but hardly in so interesting a
manner, and certainly not with such striking results.

[22] The outburst of Greene about "the only Shakescene," the "upstart crow
beautified with our feathers," and so forth, is too well known to need
extracting here. _The Return from Parnassus_, a very curious tripartite
play, performed 1597-1601 but retrospective in tone, is devoted to the
troubles of poor scholars in getting a livelihood, and incidentally gives
much matter on