The writers merely strung together with the loosest possible thread of interest a series of historical scenes; the action dragged over a long space of time, there was no coherence of parts, and in the end it was discovered that after all the piece had been leading no whither. Infinitely better to my mind than the

the Marlowe-Shakspere group, viz. Richard III. Various dates are assigned to its production. Mr Fleay says 'probably 1595' (Shakespeare Manual, p. 31); Professor Dowden gives 1593. In the Clarendon Press edition the date 1593 or 1594 is 'conjecturally' assigned to it (Introduction, p. v). Now Edward II. was entered at Stationers' Hall July 6, 1593, and may well have been produced some time earlier. Warton, for instance, definitely states that it "was written in the year 1590"; unfortunately he does not give any evidence in support of his statement. Perhaps 1591-92 would be a fair date to assign. In this way it would have preceded Richard III., as it obviously did Richard II. It may be worth while to note that we could fix the date of Edward II. at least as early as 1593 (independently of the fact that Marlowe died in that year) from what appears to me to be an obvious reference to the play in Peele's Order of the Garter (1593). Peele has these lines:

And Mortimer a gentle trusty lord,

More loyal than that cruel Mortimer,

That plotted Edward's death at Chillingworth,
Edward the Second, father to this King,

Whose tragic cry even now methinks I hear,

When graceless wretches murdered him by night.

Surely these lines refer to Marlowe's play, especially as Peele mentions Marlowe in the prologue; I have not seen the point noticed. Peele, by the way, puts the death of Edward at Kenilworth. May he not be following Marlowe's account, and may not the editors be wrong in giving Berkeley as the scene in Act v. s. 7? At the end of scene 3. 49, Edward is taken to Kenilworth; from that point to the murder scene we do not hear of his leaving the Castle, cf. however, v. 2. 63. Marlowe, we may remember, was careless about such historical points. Cf. Act II. in the same play, scene 2. 188-193 and Mr Fleay's note.

ordinary chronicle-histories are Peele's Edward I., and Greene's Fames IV.; the only two plays that approximated at all to the form of drama initiated in Edward II. But neither is to be compared to Marlowe's work. Fames IV., as we have said, is a play within a play, and that alone is enough to condemn the piece: the historical of all forms of drama requires the simplest and most realistic presentment. Moreover the play is really a love-story; it reads like the dramatisation of some old Scottish ballad, where true love is faithful to the last and has its reward. Dorothea and Ida are the characters that interest us; the king is a mere puppet. Some fragments, too, of the old 'jigging wits' cling to the piece. As Bohan says at the end of Act III.

The rest is ruthful, yet to beguile the time,
Tis interlaced with merriment and rhyme.

On the same level as Greene's work stands Peele's Edward I., printed 1593. Mr Dyce calls it 'one of the earliest of our chronicle-histories.' It seems to me decidedly better in many respects than the ordinary chronicle-play; it represents a definite effort to write a consecutive, coherent drama. But Peele's attempt falls far short of Marlowe's achievement. The dramatist displays no sense of proportion and but little power of characterisation, the scene changes with bewildering frequency, and the incidents are often grotesque, or brutal, or both. And yet these

two pieces, James IV. and Edward I.' may fairly, I think, be regarded as at least equal to anything approximating to the historical drama that had been

1 It is by no means quite clear that either of these dramas preceded Edward II. I take them however as typical plays to show what the best playwrights of the time-Marlowe excepted-could, or rather could not, do. With regard to James IV. it must have been written at least as early as 1592, as that was the year of Greene's death. It was published in 1598. Edward II. was printed 1593. "It may be reasonably conjectured that it was played some years before it was published." Collier, iii. 198. The writer of the Article in the Quarterly Review (October 1885) strongly expresses the opinion that Edward I. was written before Edward II. I have noticed a curious case of plagiarism in the two plays, though which dramatist was the plagiarist we cannot say; it is this:

Peele has (Dyce's Edition, p. 413) the following lines:

Unhappy king, dishonoured is thy stock

Hence feigned weeds, unfeigned is my grief.

Sweet Spenser, gentle Baldock, part we must—
Hence feigned weeds, unfeigned are my woes.

It is obvious that one writer—which, we do not know—has plagiarised from the other. A somewhat similar instance occurs in Peele's 'David and Bethsabe', where we have the line (p. 465)

'And makes their weapons wound the senseless winds.'

This is clearly an imitation of Marlowe's

'And make your strokes to wound the senseless light',
Tamburlaine, III. 3, 158.

That David and Bethsabe was written after the production of Tamburlaine is obvious from the verse: in David and Bethsabe occurs the well-known simile (p. 473) taken from the Faery Queen, bk 1. canto 5, 2. And yet one more instance of 'conveying'; in Anglorum Feria (1595) the expression

'the rising sun

Gallops the zodiac in his fiery wain'

is strongly suggestive of Titus Andronicus, II. 1, 7.

written previous to the production of Edward II.
But with that play an immense advance was made.
Edward II. exhibits Marlowe's powers as a dramatist
at their highest. The play is full of sober strength,
very different from the Titanic force that overflowed
in Tamburlaine. The characters stand out in the
boldest relief; their motives are clearly defined, and
the events of the drama are made to flow naturally
from one central cause. The whole action of Edward
II. turns on the king's abuse-infatuated abuse-of
his power.
Edward has no sense of the difficulties of
his position; he resolutely shuts his eyes to the
harshness of facts. He is a king, and will suffer no
limitation of his prerogative-'Am I a king, and
must be overruled,' is his perpetual reply to all
objections, and this point, emphasized at the outset,
is never lost sight of. A wide gulf of time has to
be bridged over, but the poet connects the two parts
of his play with marked skill. In the first two acts
Gaveston is the cause of dissension between the king
and his nobles: in the third and fourth acts, up to
the point where the king is defeated and deposed,
the Spencers take the place of Gaveston.
Gaveston is first banished Edward exclaims,

And thou must hence, or I shall be deposed,
But I will reign to be revenged on them.

When

And he is as good as his word. He determines to vindicate his own honour-for Edward never forgets that he is a king-and to avenge the wrong done to

his friend. But fate is too strong for him. Gaveston returns, only to be eventually taken and killed, and again the king swears a solemn revenge.

Edward. By Earth the common mother of us all,

By heaven, and all the moving orbs thereof,
By this right hand, and by my father's sword,
And all the honours 'longing to my crown,
I will have lives and heads for him, as many
As I have manors, castles, towns and towers.

And in this place of honour and of trust,
Spencer, sweet Spencer, I adopt thee here:
And merely of our love we do create thee
Earl of Gloucester, and Lord Chamberlain,
Despite of times, despite of enemies."

With the blind tenacity of a weak nature he clings desperately to his purpose. He refuses to dismiss the Spencers at the demand of the barons; they are installed as his favourites, and thus we have the required balance between the two divisions of the play. From this point Edward's character is worked out on the same lines. When fortune declares for him, almost his first words are—

Methinks you hang the heads,

But we'll advance them, traitors: now 'tis time
To be avenged on you for all your braves,
And for the murder of my dearest friend.

Here again he strikes the two keynotes of the piece, vindication of his honour, fidelity to his friends. But once more his purpose is defeated. The barons escape; Edward has to fight for his throne, and at