ed with, and to some
extent belongs to the post-Reformation school, he is ours for other
purposes than that of mere mention. His Shakespere travesties (in one of
which he was assisted by a greater than he), and even the operas and
"entertainments" with which he not only evaded the prohibition of stage
plays under the Commonwealth, but helped to produce a remarkable change in
the English drama, do not concern us. But it must be remembered that
Davenant's earlier, most dramatic, and most original playmaking was done at
a time far within our limits. When the tragedy of _Albovine_ (Alboin) was
produced, the Restoration was more than thirty years distant, and Jonson,
Chapman, Dekker, and Marston--men in the strictest sense of the Elizabethan
school--were still living, and, in the case of all but Marston, writing.
_The Cruel Brother_, which, though printed after, was licensed before,
dates three years earlier; and between this time and the closing of the
theatres Davenant had ten plays acted and printed coincidently with the
best work of Massinger, Shirley, and Ford. Nor, though his fame is far
below theirs, is the actual merit of these pieces (the two above mentioned,
_The Wits_, _News from Plymouth_, _The Fair Favourite_, _The Unfortunate
Lovers_, etc.), so much inferior as the fame. The chief point in which
Davenant fails is in the failing grasp of verse above noted. This is
curious and so characteristic that it is worth while to give an example of
it, which shall be a fair average specimen and not of the worst:--

"O noble maid, what expiation can
Make fit this young and cruel soldier for
Society of man that hath defiled
The genius of triumphant glorious war
With such a rape upon thy liberty!
Or what less hard than marble of
The Parian rock can'st thou believe my heart,
That nurst and bred him my disciple in
The camp, and yet could teach his valour no
More tenderness than injured Scytheans use
When they are wroth to a revenge? But he
Hath mourned for it: and now Evandra thou
Art strongly pitiful, that dost so long
Conceal an anger that would kill us both."

_Love and Honour_, 1649.

Here we have the very poetical counterpart of the last of Jaques' ages, the
big manly voice of the great dramatists sinking into a childish treble that
stutters and drivels over the very alphabet of the poetical tongue.

In such a language as this poetry became