clouds scowl, make the moon dark, the stars extinct, the
winds blowing, the bells tolling, the owls shrieking, the
toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock stri-
king twelve. And then at last, sir, starting, behold a
man hanging, and tottering, and tottering, as you know
the wind will wave a man, and I with a trice to cut him
down. And looking upon him by the advantage of my
torch, find it to be my son Horatio. There you may
show a passion, there you may show a passion. Draw
me like old Priam of Troy, crying, The house is a-fire,
the house is a-fire; and the torch over my
head; make
me curse, make me rave, make me cry, make me mad,
make me well again, make me curse hell, invocate, and
in the end leave me in a trance, and so forth.

Pain. And is this the end?

Hier. O no, there is no end: the end is death and madness; And I am never better than when I am mad;

Then methinks I am a brave fellow;

Then I do wonders; but reason abuseth me;
And there's the torment, there's the hell.
At last, sir, bring me to one of the murderers;
Were he as strong as Hector,

Thus would I tear and drag him up and down.
(He beats the Painter in.)

[These scenes, which are the very salt of the old play (which without them is but a caput mortuum, such another piece of flatness as Locrine), Hawkins, in his republication of this tragedy, has thrust out of the text into the notes; as omitted in the Second Edition, "printed for Ed. Allde, amended of such gross blunders as passed in the first:" and thinks them to have been foisted in by the players.-A late discovery at Dulwich College has ascertained that two sundry payments were made to Ben Jonson by the Theatre for furnishing additions to Hieronimo. See last edition of Shakspeare by Reed. There is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would authorize us to suppose that he could have supplied the scenes in question. I should suspect the agency of some more potent spirit." Webster might have furnished them. They are full of that wild solemn preternatural cast of grief which bewilders us in the Duchess of Malfy.]

THE LOVE OF KING DAVID AND FAIR BETHSABE, WITH THE TRAGEDY OF ABSALOM: BY GEORGE PEELE. Bethsabe, with her maid, bathing. She sings: and David sits above, viewing her.

The song.

Hot sun, cool fire, temper'd with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair:
Shine sun, burn fire, breathe air and ease me;
Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me;
Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning,
Make not my glad cause, cause of mourning.
Let not my beauty's fire

Inflame unstaid desire,

Nor pierce any bright eye

That wandereth lightly.

Bethsabe. Come, gentle Zephyr, trick'd with those perfumes That erst in Eden sweeten'd Adam's love,

And stroke my

bosom with the silken fan :

This shade (sun-proof) is yet no proof for thee,
Thy body smoother than this waveless spring,
And purer than the substance of the same,
Can creep through that his lances1 cannot pierce.
Thou and thy sister soft and sacred Air,
Goddess of life, and governess of health,
Keep every fountain fresh and arbour sweet;
No brazen gate her passage can repulse,
Nor bushy thicket bar thy subtle breath.
Then deck thee with thy loose delightsome robes,
And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes,

To play the wantons with us through the leaves. David. What tunes, what words, what looks, what wonders pierce

My soul, incensed with a sudden fire!

What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise,

Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame!

Fair Eva, placed in perfect happiness,

Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens,

Struck with the accents of Archangels' tunes,

1 The sun's rays.

Wrought not more pleasure to her husband's thoughts,
Than this fair woman's words and notes to mine.
May that sweet plain that bears her pleasant weight,
Be still enamel'd with discolour'd flowers;
That precious fount bear sand of purest gold;
And for the pebble, let the silver streams
That pierce earth's bowels to maintain the source,
Play upon rubies, sapphires, chrysolites;
The brim let be embraced with golden curls
Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make
For joy to feed the fount with their recourse;
Let all the grass that beautifies her bower
Bear manna every morn instead of dew;
Or let the dew be sweeter far than that
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,
Or balm which trickled from old Aaron's beard.
Enter CUSAY.

See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel,
The fairest daughter that obeys the king
In all the land the Lord subdued to me.
Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well,

Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar,
Sweeter than flames of fine perfumed myrrh ;
And comelier than the silver clouds that dance
On Zephyr's wings before the King of Heaven.
Cusay. Is it not Bethsabe the Hethite's wife

Urias, now at Rabath siege with Joab?
David. Go now and bring her quickly to the King;
Tell her, her graces have found grace with him.
Cusay. I will, my Lord.
David. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's bower
In water mix'd with purest almond flower,
And bathe her beauty in the milk of kids;
Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires,
Verdure to earth, and to that verdure flowers,
To flowers sweet odours, and to odours wings,
That carries pleasures to the hearts of kings.

Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair.

[Exit.

To 'joy her love I 'll build a kingly bower,
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,
That, for their homage to her sovereign joys,
Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests,
In oblique turnings wind the nimble waves
About the circles of her curious walks,

And with their murmur summon easeful sleep
To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.

[There is more of the same stuff, but I suppose the reader has a sur feit; especially as this Canticle of David has never been suspected to contain any pious sense couched underneath it, whatever his son's may. -The kingly bower, "seated in hearing of a hundred streams," is the best of it].

LUST'S DOMINION, OR THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN:
A TRAGEDY, BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

The Queen Mother of Spain loves an insolent Moor1.

QUEEN. ELEAZAR, the Moor.

Queen. Chime out your softest strains of harmony,
And on delicious Music's silken wings
Send ravishing delight to my love's ears;
That he may be enamour'd of your tunes.
Eleaz. Away, away.

Queen. No, no, says ay; and twice away, says stay.
I'll have a kiss; but if you

Come, come,

For one denial you shall forfeit five.

Eleaz. Be gone, be gone.

Queen. What means my love?

'll strive,

Burst all those wires; burn all those instruments;

For they displease my Moor.

Or wert thou now disturb'd?

Art thou now pleased?
I'll wage all Spain

To one sweet kiss, this is some new device
To make me fond and long. O, you men
Have tricks to make poor women die for you.

Eleaz. What, die for me?_away.

Queen. Away, what way? I prithee, speak more kindly. Why dost thou frown? at whom?

1 Such another as Aaron in Titus Andronicus.

Eleaz. At thee.

Queen. At me?

O, why at me? for each contracted frown,
A crooked wrinkle interlines my brow:
Spend but one hour in frowns, and I shall look
Like to a beldam of one hundred years.
I prithee, speak to me, and chide me not.
I prithee, chide, if I have done amiss;
But let my punishment be this, and this.
I prithee, smile on me, if but a while;
Then frown on me, I'll die: I prithee, smile.
Smile on me; and these two wanton boys,
These pretty lads that do attend on me,
Shall call thee Jove, shall wait upon thy cup
And fill thee nectar: their enticing eyes
Shall serve as crystal, wherein thou mayst see
To dress thyself; if thou wilt smile on me.
Smile on me; and with coronets of pearl
And bells of gold, circling their pretty arms,
In a round ivory fount these two shall swim,
And dive to make thee sport:

Bestow one smile, one little little smile,
And in a net of twisted silk and gold
In my all-naked arms thyself shalt lie.

[Kit Marlowe, as old Isaac Walton assures us, made that smooth song which begins "Come live with me and be my love." The same romantic invitations "in folly ripe, in reason rotten," are given by the queen in the play, and the lover in the ditty. He talks of "beds of roses, buckles of gold:"

Thy silver dishes for thy meat,
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be

Prepared each day for thee and me.

The lines in the extract have a luscious smoothness in them, and they were the most temperate which I could pick out of this Play. The rest is in King Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart puft." lines such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol "but coldly imitates."-Blood is made as light of in some of these old dramas as money in a modern sentimental comedy;

* Take a specimen from a speech of the Moor's :

Now Tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pue-fellow, to thee I'll sing