t hold of _Gallathea_, while we are uncertain as to the
date of _Love's Metamorphosis_. None of these plays are worth
considering in detail, but each has its own particular point of
interest. In _Gallathea_ this is the introduction of girls in boys'
clothes. As far as I know, Lyly is the first to use the convenient
dramatic device of disguise. How effective a trick it was, is proved by
the manner in which later dramatists, and in particular Shakespeare,
adopted it. Its full significance cannot be appreciated by us to-day,
for the whole point of it was that the actors, who appeared as girls
dressed up as boys, were, as the audience knew, really boys themselves;
a fact which doubtless increased the funniness of the situation. _The
Woman in the Moon_ gives us a man disguised in his wife's clothes, which
is a variation of the same trick. But the importance of _The Woman_ lies
in its poetical form. Most Elizabethan scholars have decided that this
play was Lyly's first dramatic effort, on the authority of the Prologue,
which bids the audience

"Remember all is but a poet's dream,
The first he had in Phoebus' holy bower,
But not the last, unless the first displease."

But the maturity and strength of the drama argue a fairly considerable
experience in its author, and we shall therefore be probably more
correct if we place it last instead of first of Lyly's plays,
interpreting the words of the Prologue as simply implying that it was
Lyly's first experiment in blank verse, inspired possibly by the example
of Marlowe in _Tamburlaine_ and of Shakespeare in _Love's Labour's
Lost_[121]. But, whatever its date, _The Woman in the Moon_ must rank
among the earliest examples of blank verse in our language, and, as
such, its importance is very great. In _Love's Metamorphosis_ there is
nothing of interest equal to those points we have noticed in the other
two plays of the same class. The only remarkable thing, indeed, about it
is the absence of that farcical under-current which appears in all his
other plays. Mr Bond suggests, with great plausibility, that such an
element had originally appeared, but that, because it dealt with
dangerous questions of the time, perhaps with the _Marprelate_
controversy, it was expunged.

[121] Bond, III. p. 234.

It now remains to say a few words upon _Mother Bombie_, which forms the
fourth division of Lyly's dramatic writings. Though it presents many
points of similarity in detail to