_Campaspe_. The
dialogue is less euphuistic, and therefore much more effective. The
conversation between Sapho and Phao, in the scene where the latter comes
with his herbs to cure the Queen, is very charming, and well expresses
the passion which the one is too humble and the other too proud to
show.

PHAO. I know no hearb to make lovers sleepe but Heartesease, which
because it groweth so high, I cannot reach: for--

SAPHO. For whom?

PHAO. For such as love.

SAPHO. It groweth very low, and I can never stoop to it, that--

PHAO. That what?

SAPHO. That I may gather it: but why doe you sigh so, Phao?

PHAO. It is mine use Madame.

SAPHO. It will doe you harme and mee too: for I never heare one
sighe, but I must sigh't also.

PHAO. It were best then that your Ladyship give me leave to be gone:
for I can but sigh.

SAPHO. Nay stay: for now I beginne to sighe, I shall not leave
though you be gone. But what do you thinke best for your
sighing to take it away?

PHAO. Yew, Madame.

SAPHO. Mee?

PHAO. No, Madame, yewe of the tree.

SAPHO. Then will I love yewe the better, and indeed I think it
should make me sleepe too, therefore all other simples set
aside, I will simply use onely yewe.

PHAO. Doe Madame: for I think nothing in the world so good as
yewe[116].

[116] _Sapho and Phao_, Act III. Sc. IV. 60-85.

Altogether there is a great increase in general vitality in this play.
Lyly draws nearer to the conception of ideal comedy. "Our interest," he
tells us in his Prologue, "was at this time to move inward delight not
outward lightnesse, and to breede (if it might be) soft smiling, not
loud laughing"; and to this end he tends to minimize the purely farcical
element. The pages are still present, but they are balanced by a group
of Sapho's maids-in-waiting who discuss the subject of love upon the
stage with great frankness and charm. Mileta, the leader of this chorus,
is, we may suspect, a portrait drawn from life; she is certainly much
more convincing than the somewhat shadowy Campaspe. The figures in
Lyly's studio are limited in number--Camilla, Lucilla, Campaspe, Mileta,
all come from the same mould: in Pandion we may discover Euphues under a
new name, and the surly Vulcan is only another edition of the "crabbed
Diogenes." And yet each of th