ds the two
successive primates Parker and Grindal, will furnish a sufficiently
accurate notion of the spirit of her religious policy, besides affording
a valuable addition to the characteristic traits illustrative of her
temper and opinions.

CHAPTER XIIIa.

1561.

Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex.--Translations of ancient tragedies.--Death
of Francis II.--Mary refuses to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh--returns
to Scotland.--Enmity between Mary and Elizabeth.--Philip II. secretly
encourages the English papists.--Measures of rigor adopted against them
by Elizabeth.--Anecdote of the queen and Dr. Sampson.--St. Paul's struck
by lightning.--Bishop Pilkington's sermon on the occasion.--Paul's
Walk.--Precautions against the queen's being poisoned.--The king of
Sweden proposes to visit her.--Steps taken in this matter.

The eighteenth of January 1561 ought to be celebrated as the birthday of
the English drama; for it was on this day that Thomas Sackville caused
to be represented at Whitehall, for the entertainment of Elizabeth and
her court, the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, otherwise called Gorboduc,
the joint production of himself and Thomas Norton. From the unrivalled
force of imagination, the vigor and purity of diction, and the intimate
knowledge and tasteful adaptation of the beauties of the Latin poets
displayed in the contributions of Sackville to the Mirror of
Magistrates, a lettered audience would conceive high expectations from
his attempt in a new walk of poetry; but in the then barbarous state of
our Theatre, such a performance as Gorboduc must have been hailed as
not only a novelty but a wonder. It was the first piece composed in
English on the ancient tragic model, with a regular division into five
acts, closed by lyric choruses.

It offered the first example of a story from British history, or what
passed for history, completely dramatized and represented with an
attempt at theatrical illusion; for the earlier pieces published under
the title of tragedies were either ballads or monologues, which might
indeed be sung or recited, but were incapable of being acted. The plot
of the play was fraught with those circumstances of the deepest horror
by which the dormant sensibilities of an inexperienced audience require
and delight to be awakened. An unwonted force of thought and dignity of
language claimed the patience, if not the admiration, of the hearers,
for the long political disquisitions by which the b