45 on the breaking out of the Civil war in England. For a
period of sixty years the splendid genius of the world's greatest
dramatist gave to mankind a series of plays that have no equal in the
literature of any country or age.

Contemporaneous with Shakespeare, or coming after him, were Beaumont
and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Ford, and Shirley; these
Elizabethan dramatists took their subjects from the stories and legends
of all countries and ages--or else they depicted the national life. For
this reason English drama has been called Irregular, in contrast to the
Greek, which is called the Regular, and that of modern France, founded
upon the Greek. The chief rule of the Regular is the Unity of Time,
Place and Action. In the Greek, the time of action was allowed to
extend to twenty-four hours, and the scene to change from place to
place in the same city; but Shakespeare and his contemporaries
acknowledged no fixed limit either of time, place or action. The
operation of their plays covered many different countries, and the time
extended over many years; but the rule that laid down in the Greek
drama the principle that there should be unity of action (everything
being subordinate to a series of events, which form the thread of the
plot), was adopted by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It has been
called "unity of impression," as opposed to unity of time and place.

ARABIAN.

The rise and development of Arabian literature occurs at an epoch when
the rest of Europe was struggling through a period of transition. From
the middle of the sixth to the beginning of the eleventh century, at a
time when the Roman dominions were overrun by Northern hordes, and the
Greek Nation was groaning under the Byzantine power, when both Greek
and Latin literature was exposed to the danger of extinction, the
splendor of Arabian literature reached its zenith and through the
mingling of the Troubadours with the Moors of the Peninsula, and of the
Crusaders with the Arabs, it began to influence the literature of
Europe.

Arabia, peopled by wandering tribes, had no history other than the
songs of the national bards, until after the rise of Mohammed in the
sixth century. The desire of the prophet was to bring his people back
from idolatry and star worship to the primitive and true worship of
God. He studied the Old and New Testament, the legends of the Talmud
and the traditions of Arabian and Persian mythology, then he wrote the
Kora