Fearful and pitiful-to you that are
A stranger to my dead boy?

Host. How can it otherwise?

For. O me most wretched of all wretched men!

If to a stranger his warm bleeding wounds
Appear so grisly and so lamentable,

How will they seem to me that am his father?
Will they not hale my eyebrows from their rounds,
And with an everlasting blindness strike them?
Sus. O, sir, look here.

For. Dost long to have me blind?

Then I'll behold them, since I know thy mind.
O me!

Is this my son that doth so senseless lie,

And swims in blood? my soul shall fly with his
Unto the land of rest. Behold, I crave,

Being kill'd with grief, we both may have one grave. Sus. Alas, my father's dead too! gentle sir,

Help to retire his spirits, over-travail'd

With age and sorrow.

Host. Mr. Forest

Sus. Father

For. What says my girl? good morrow.

What's a clock,

That you are up so early? call up Frank; Tell him he lies too long a-bed this morning. He was wont to call the sun up, and to raise The early lark, and mount her 'mongst the clouds. Will he not up? rise, rise, thou sluggish boy! Sus. Alas, he cannot, father,

For. Cannot, why?

Sus. Do you not see his bloodless colour pale?
For. Perhaps he's sickly, that he looks so pale.
Sus. Do you not feel his pulse no motion keep;
How still he lies?

For. Then he is fast asleep.

Sus. Do you not see his fatal eyelid close?
For. Speak softly; hinder not his soft repose.
Sus. O, see you not these purple conduits run?

Know you these wounds?

For. O me! my murder'd son!

Y. For. Sister!

Enter Young MR. FOREST.

Sus. O brother, brother!

Y. For. Father, how cheer you, sir? why, you were wont
To store for others comfort, that by sorrow

Were any ways distress'd. Have you all wasted,
And spared none to yourself?

O. For. O son, son, son,

See, alas, see where thy brother lies.

He dined with me to-day, was merry, merry,
Ay, that corpse was; he that lies here, see here,
Thy murder'd brother and my son was.

Dost thou not weep for him?

Y. For. I shall find time;

O see,

When you have took some comfort, I'll begin
To mourn his death, and scourge the murderer's sin.
O. For. O, when saw father such a tragic sight,
And did outlive it? never, son, ah! never,

From mortal breast ran such a precious river.
Y. For. Come, father, and dear sister, join with me;
Let us all learn our sorrows to forget.

He owed a death, and he hath paid that debt.

[If I were to be consulted as to a reprint of our old English dramatists, I should advise to begin with the collected plays of Heywood. He was a fellow actor, and fellow dramatist, with Shakspeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter; but in all those qualities which gained for Shakspeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to him ;-generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism, and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism, shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakspeare, but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry. I love them both equally, but Shakspeare has most of my wonder. Heywood should be known to his countrymen, as he deserves. His plots are almost invariably English. I am sometimes jealous, that Shakspeare laid so few of his scenes at home. I laud Ben Jonson, for that in one instance having framed the first draught of his Every Man in his Humour in Italy, he changed the scene, and anglicised his characters. The names of them, in the first edition, may not be unamusing.

Lorenzo, sen.

Lorenzo, jun.

Prospero.

Thorello.

Stephano (Master Stephen).

Men.

Bobadilla (Bobadil).
Musco.

Cob (the same in English).
Peto.

Pizo.

Dr. Clement (Justice Clement). Matheo (Master Mathew).

Guilliana.

Biancha.

Women.

Hesperida.

Tib (the same in English).

How say you, reader? Do not Master Kitely, Mistress Kitely, Master Knowell, Brainworm, &c. read better than these Cisalpines ?]

TANCRED AND GISMUND: ACTED BEFORE THE COURT BY THE GENTLEMEN OF THE INNER TEMPLE, 1591.

A Messenger brings to GISMUND a cup from the King her Father, enclosing the heart of her Lord, whom she had espoused without his sanction.

Mess. Thy father, O Queen, here in this cup hath sent
The thing to joy and comfort thee withal,

Which thou lovedst best; ev'n as thou wast content
To comfort him with his best joy of all.

Gis. I thank my father, and thee, gentle squire;
For this thy travail: take thou for thy pains
This bracelet, and commend me to the king.

So, now is come the long-expected hour,
The fatal hour I have so looked for.
Now hath my father satisfied his thirst
With guiltless blood, which he so coveted.
What brings this cup? ay me! I thought no less;
It is my earl's, my county's pierced heart.
Dear heart, too dearly hast thou bought my love
Extremely rated at too high a price.

Ah, my dear heart, sweet wast thou in thy life.
But in thy death thou provest passing sweet.
A fitter hearse than this of beaten gold
Could not be lotted to so good a heart.
My father therefore well provided thus
To close and wrap thee up in massy gold
And therewithal to send thee unto me,
To whom of duty thou dost best belong.
My father hath in all his life bewray'd
A princely care and tender love to me;
But this surpasseth, in his latter days
To send me this my own dear heart to me.
Wert not thou mine, dear heart, whilst that my love
Danced and play'd upon thy golden strings?
Art thou not mine, dear heart, now that my love
Is fled to heaven, and got him golden wings?
Thou art mine own, and still mine own shall be ;
Therefore my father sendeth thee to me.
Ah pleasant harbourer of my heart's thought!
Ah sweet delight, the quickener of my soul!
Seven times accursed be the hand that wrought
Thee this despite, to mangle thee so foul;
Yet in this wound I see my own true love,

And in this wound thy magnanimity,

And in this wound I see thy constancy.
Go, gentle heart, go rest thee in thy tomb;

Receive this token as thy last farewell. [She kisseth it.
Thy own true heart anon will follow thee,
Which panting hasteth for thy company.

Thus hast thou run, poor heart, thy mortal race,
And rid thy life from fickle fortune's snares;
Thus hast thou lost this world and worldly cares,
And of thy foe, to honour thee withal,
Received a golden grave to thy desert.
Nothing doth want to thy just funeral,
But my salt tears to wash thy bloody wound;
Which to the end thou mightst receive, behold,
My father sends thee in this cup of gold:

And thou shalt have them; though I was resolved
To shed no tears; but with a cheerful face
Once did I think to wet thy funeral

Only with blood, and with no weeping eye.
This done, my soul forthwith shall fly to thee;
For therefore did my father send thee me.

[Nearly a century after the date of this drama, Dryden produced his admirable version of the same story from Boccacio. The speech here extracted may be compared with the corresponding passage in the Sigismonda and Guiscardo, with no disadvantage to the elder performance. It is quite as weighty, as pointed, and as passionate.]

THE TWO ANGRY WOMEN OF ABINGDON: A
COMEDY. BY HENRY PORTER, 1599.

Proverb-monger.

This formal fool, your man, speaks nought but proverbs;
And, speak men what they can to him, he'll answer
With some rhyme-rotten sentence, or old saying,
Such spokes as the ancient of the parish use;
With "Neighbour, it is an old proverb and a true,
Goose giblets are good meat, old sack better than new:"
Then says another, "Neighbour, that is true."
And when each man hath drunk his gallon round,
(A penny pot, for that is the old man's gallon),
Then doth he lick his lips, and stroke his beard,
That is glued together with the slavering drops
Of yesty ale; and when he scarce can trim
His gouty fingers, thus he 'll fillip it,

And with a rotten hem say, “Hey my hearts"

Merry go sorry!" "Cock and pie, my hearts!"
And then their saving-penny proverb comes,

And that is this,

66

They that will to the wine,

By our lady, mistress, shall lay their penny to mine."
This was one of this penny-father's bastards;
For on my life he never was begot

Without the consent of some great proverb-monger.
She-wit.

Why, she will flout the devil, and make blush
The boldest face of man that ever man saw.
He that hath best opinion of his wit,

And hath his brain-pan fraught with bitter jests
(Or of his own, or stolen, or howsoever),
Let him stand ne'er so high in his own conceit,
Her wit's a sun that melts him down like butter,
And makes him sit at table pancake-wise,
Flat, flat, and ne'er a word to say;

Yet she 'll not leave him then, but like a tyrant
She'll persecute the poor wit-beaten man,
And so be-bang him with dry bobs and scoffs,
When he is down (most cowardly, good faith!),
As I have pitied the poor patient.

There came a farmer's son a-wooing to her,
A proper man, well-landed too he was,
A man that for his wit need not to ask
What time a year 't were need to sow his oats,
Nor yet his barley, no, nor when to reap,
To plough his fallows, or to fell his trees,
Well-experienced thus each kind of way;
After a two months' labour at the most,
(And yet 't was well he held it out so long),
He left his love; she had so laced his lips,

He could say nothing to her but "God be with ye!”
Why, she, when men have dined, and call'd for cheese,

Will straight maintain jests bitter to digest;

And then some one will fall to argument,

Who if he over-master her with reason,
Then she 'll begin to buffet him with mocks.

MASTER GOURSEY proposes to his son a wife.

Frank Goursey. Ne'er trust me, father, the shape of marriage,
Which I do see in others, seems so severe,
I dare not put my youngling liberty
Under the awe of that instruction;
And yet I grant, the limits of free youth
Going astray are often restrain'd by that.

But Mistress Wedlock, to my summer thoughts,