Tormenting therewithall the damned soules of them 'Heer upon earth, that carelesse live of thy commaunde

ment.

'I am the same.'

It is clear that these lines have been ill regulated by the printer they would run better thus; but still no change, without a change of words, would make measure of part of what is above quoted.

O Jupiter, thou dreadfull king, of gods

And men the father hie, to whose commaund

The heavens, the earth, and lowest hell obey,

Tysiphone, the daughter of eternall night,

'Bred in the bottom of the deepest pitt of hell,

'Brought up in blood and cherisht with scrauling snakes,

Tormenting therewithall the damned soules

"Of them heer upon earth, that carelesse live

' Of thy commaundement-I am the same.'

After delivering this answer, she proceeds in a new measure of twelve-syllable blank-verse :—

'I am the same whom both my lothsom sisters hate, 'Whom hell itself complaines to keep within her race, 6 Whom every fearfull soule detesteth with a curse.'

She then relates, in the same kind of verse, that she had been sent to Olympus by Pluto, 'King of hell and golden mines,' to complain that Venus had proudly endeavoured to destroy the power of Fortune, in order that she might be thought the only goddess of the world.' Jupiter requires to hear Fortune, and while Tysiphone is gone to hell for her, and in her absence, in ten-syllable rhymes, calls upon Venus for her justification. She asserts her supe

riority in alternate twelve and fourteen-syllable lines, and denies the power of Fortune over the mind :'Yet divers things there be that Fortune cannot tame, 'As are the riches of the minde, or else an honest name, 'Or a contented hart, still free from Fortune's power.' Fortune, when she arrives, maintains her original accusation; after which, at the bidding of Jupiter, Mercury exhibits six dumb shows of persons slain by Love or Fortune, viz., Troilus and Cressida, Alexander, Dido, Pompey, Cæsar, and Hero and Leander. Music is played during the spectacle.

In the intervals between each, Mercury interprets and explains, and Vulcan comments with some humour, but more grossness, sometimes alluding to the manners of the day; as, for instance, of Cæsar and Pompey he observes,

They were served well enough: why could not they be

content

With a roche and a red herring in the holy time of
Lent?'

from whence we may, perhaps, infer that the piece was performed before the Queen, as was customary, at Shrovetide. Venus and Fortune afterwards renew their contention, and Jupiter interposes :

'Content ye both, I'le hear no more of this;
'And, Mercury, surcease, call out no more.
'I have bethought me how to worke their wishe,
'As you have often prov'd it heertofore.
'Heere in this land, within that princely bower,
'There is a Prince beloved of his love,

6

'On whom I meane your soverainties to prove.

Venus, for that thy love, thy sweet delight,

Thou shalt endure to encrease their joy,

And, Fortune, thou to manifest thy might,

'Their pleasures and their pastimes thou shalt destroye, Overthwarting them with newes of freshe anoye:

And she that most can please them or dispight, 'I will confirme to be of greatest might.

The Prince and his love' are Hermione, a young courtier, and Fidelia, daughter to Duke Phizantius ; and then follows a silly, meagre story (commencing with the second act) of Fidelia's escape from her father's court, in search of her lover who had been banished, and who has taken shelter with an old necromancer called Bomelio, who afterwards turns out to be the father of Hermione. Fidelia is pursued by her brother Armenio, who is struck dumb by Bomelio, and subsequently restored to speech by the blood of Fidelia, flowing from a slight wound inflicted by her own father. In the end Hermione and Fidelia are united, all parties are reconciled, and the old magician, having lost his books, (which were taken away by his son,) renounces his art. At the end of the acts, the triumphs of Venus and Fortune are alternately sounded by different instruments, as each goddess has been successful in aiding or defeating the lovers: the success of Venus is celebrated by a noise of viols,' while trumpets, drums, cornets, and guns' resound for Fortune. The best lines in that part of the performance which relates to the lovers are the following, part of a soliloquy by Bomelio.

Now weary lay thee downe thy fortune to fulfill, 'Goe yeeld thee captive to thy care to save thy life, or

spill.

The pleasures of the feelde, the prospect of delight,
The blooming trees, the chirping birdes, are greevous

to thy sight;

'The hollow craggy rocke, the shriking owle to see, 'To heare the noyse of serpentes hisse-that is thy her

mony.

For as unto the sicke all pleasure is in vaine,

'So mirth unto the wounded minde encreaseth but his pain.'

The piece ends with a speech from Fortune, who has been reconciled to Venus by Jupiter, and who compliments the Queen in a strain of less adulation than usual.

There is a species of dramatic representation, different from any of which we have yet spoken, and which may be said to form a class of itself:-it may be called domestic tragedy, and pieces of this kind were founded upon comparatively recent events in our own country. Of these several are extant, such as Arden of Feversham, the story of which relates to a murder committed in the reign of Edward VI.; A Warning for Fair Women, arising out of a similar event in 1573; Two Tragedies in one, part of which is founded upon the assassination of a merchant of London of the name of Beech, by a person called Thomas Merry *, *, and

*This play was by Robert Yarrington, and it deserves notice, inasmuch as two very different stories, occurring in two distant countries, England and Italy, are brought into one play, forming a double plot, without the slightest connexion between the two. One of them, as is stated above, dramatically related the events connected with the murder of a Mr. Beech, in Thames-street; and the other is upon the story of 'The Babes in the Wood,' the difference being, that in the latter there VOL. III. E

The Fair Maid of Bristol, which had its origin also in a recent tragical incident: indeed, it seems to have been the constant practice of the dramatists of that day, to avail themselves (like the ballad-makers) of any circumstances of the kind, which attracted attention, in order to construct them into a play, often treating the subject merely as a dramatic narrative of a known occurrence, without embellishing, or aiding it with the ornaments of invention. Shakespeare is supposed to have been concerned, at least, in one production of this description, The Yorkshire Tragedy (founded

was only one child concerned, instead of two. The scene alternates, exactly at the will of the author, between England and Italy, and it is the only piece, precisely of this kind, with which I am acquainted. It was printed in 1601; but the murder of Beech had been adopted as the subject for another play, by Haughton and Day, as appears by Henslowe's Diary, where in one place it is called 'The tragedy of Thomas Merry,' and in another, Mr. Beech's Tragedy,' under the date of November 1599. Henslowe's MS. also contains traces of several other pieces of the same kind, as The Stepmother's Tragedy,' 'The Tragedy of John Cox of Collumpton,' 'The Lamentable Tragedy of Page of Plymouth,' Black Bateman of the North,' &c. &c. The Lamentable Tragedy of Page of Plymouth,' which he found in Henslowe's Diary spelt in various ways, puzzled Malone past his finding out; but had he turned to the works of Taylor the Water Poet, 1630, fol. p. 135, a book he has over and over again quoted, but, it seems, little read, he would have found all his difficulty removed, for there, in reference to a recent murder by a person of the name of John Rowse, Taylor says, 'Arden ' of Feversham, and Page of Plymouth, both their murders are fresh ' in memory, and the fearful ends of their wives and aiders, in those 'bloody actions, will never be forgotten.' The Lamentable Tragedy of Page of Plymouth was, in fact, nothing more than a play, like Arden of Feversham, founded upon an actual occurrence.