rate and involved of our later Morals, and the characters engaged in it are no less than thirty-two in number: among how many actors they might be divided, we are not informed by the author. It professes to represent 'the manners of men and fashion of the world' at the date when it was produced, but it is anything but a picture of manners, and the author directs his attack in various ways against avarice. On the title-page he terms his work a 'pitiful comedy,' and in the prologue, he tells us that it is also a 'pleasant tragedy,' but it has no pretensions to be considered either the one or the other.

Theology, Science, and Art lament the devotion of all classes to the acquisition of Money. Money then enters, and being taken suddenly ill, on the stage vomits Pleasure, the direction being, 'Here Money

shal make as though he would vomit, and with 'some fine conveyance Pleasure shall appeare from beneath, and be there apparelled:' in her turn, Pleasure vomits Sinne, being the Vyce,' with his wooden dagger*: Sin afterwards in the same way produces Damnation with 'a terrible vizard,' and his garments painted with flames of fire, and Satan soon joins the party. The Devil' cries and roars' lustily when

A moral, and pitieful Comedie, intituled All for Money. Plainly re'presenting the manners of men and fashion of the world nowe adayes. Compiled by T. Lupton.-At London. Printed by Roger Warde ' and Richard Mundee, dwelling at Temple Barre. Anno 1578. 4to. * Just after he is born, he exclaims—

'I was afraied of nothing, but onely of my dagger,

'Lest in the time of my birth it would have sticked my father.'

6

he thinks Sin is about to desert him, who however is stayed by meeting Pride and Gluttony. Long conferences ensue between Learning-with-money, Learning - without - money, Money-without-learning, and Neither-money-nor - learning; after which All-formoney makes his appearance, apparelled like a ruler or magistrate,' to whom the Vice acts as servant. All his suitors and clients come before him-Gregory Graceless, Moneyless-and-friendless, William-withthe-two-wives, Nichol-never-out-of-the-law, Sir Laurence Livingless*, and finally, Mother Croote, the latter of whom, being a hundred years old, wishes to purchase a young husband of twenty-three. Moneyless-and-friendless is kicked out, but to all the rest, on receiving certain presents, All-for-money makes liberal promises. This brings us to the catastrophe, or enforcement of the moral, showing the consequences of avarice:- Judas commeth in like a damned soule in blacke, painted with flames of fire, and with a 'fearefull vizard,' and he is followed by Dives,' with 'such like apparel as Judas hath.' Damnation pursues

* A short quotation from what is said by Sir Laurence Livingless, a Catholic priest, will show the religious tendency of All for Money. Sin asks him, how many Epistles St. Paul wrote, and Sir Laurence thus answers :

'By the masse, he writ to manie. I would they were all burned; For had they not bene, and the New Testament in English [turned] 'I had not lacked living at this time, I wisse.

'Before the people knew so much of the Scripture,

'Then they did obeye us, loved us out of measure;

'And now we can not go in the streetes without a mocke:

'The litle boyes will say, Yonder goes Sir John Smell-smocke?'

them, and drives them before him, while they make 'a pitiefull noyse.' Godly Admonition moralizes on all that has been represented, and being joined by Virtue, Humility, and Charity, the piece concludes.

It would be easy to enumerate more productions of this character, and to extend to a much greater length the analysis of them, without exhausting the subject, however it might exhaust the reader's patience. The Three Ladies of London, 1584*, and The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, 1590, are among the latest specimens of the kind, in which an attempt is made to diversify the performance by a good deal of temporary allusion and general satire. The moral of the first of these productions, as it is stated on the title-page, precisely explains the nature of it: wherein ' is notablie declared and set forth how, by meanes of Lucar, Love and Conscience is so corrupted, that the one is married to Dissimulation, the other fraught with all Abhomination.' An illustration of the temporary allusions may be taken from The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. The Clown of the performance is named Simplicity, and he carries a basket full of wares, ballads, and prints. Among the ballads he enumerates, Chipping Norton, a mile from Chap'pell o' the heath' a lamentable ballad of the burning of the Pope's dog'-' the sweet ballade of

*This performance seems to have been popular, and it is mentioned in more than one tract written shortly after it was produced: after the publication of The Three Lordes, &c. of London, in 1590, The Three Ladies of London was reprinted in 1592.

the Lincolneshire bagpipes'-and Peggy and

Willy,

'But now he is dead and gone,

'Mine own sweet Willy is laid in h's grave.
La, la, la, &c.'

One of the allegorical characters, Will, afterwards takes a picture' out of the Clown's basket, and asks whom it represents. Simplicity replies that it is Tarlton, which is followed by the question, "What was that Tarlton?" Simplicity then informs him that Tarlton was originally a water-bearer, adding—

'O, it was a fine fellow as ere was borne!

'There never will come his like while the earth can corne.

O, passing fine Tarlton! I would thou hadst lived yet....... 'But it was the merriest fellow, that had such jestes in

store,

'That if thou hadst seene him thou wouldst have laughed thy hart sore.'

This Moral was printed two years subsequent to Tarlton's death, which happened on the 3d of September, 1588*, and it was probably first acted soon

*The prologue to The Cuck-queanes Errant and Cockold's Errant is supposed to be spoken by Tarlton's Ghost, and he there mentions his own death in the year of the defeat of the Armada. This play is in MS. in a volume containing five others by the same author (William Percy, writer of Sonnets to the Fairest Cælia,' 1594), in the possession of Mr. Haslewood, to whom I am obliged for the use of it. The name of W. Percy is now, for the first time, connected with our dramatic literature, but his productions of this kind, like his sonnets, have little or no merit; as, however, they importantly illustrate the condition of the stage at the period when they were written (soon after the year 1600), I shall have occasion to refer to them hereafter. They are all

after that event. It is to be observed also, with reference to this production, that the greater part of it is in blank verse, a circumstance that does not belong to any other Moral.

A later, and a duller performance of this class is The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, 1602, which, as is stated on the title-page, and as appears by the epilogue, was acted before Queen Elizabeth. The forty-third year of her reign is mentioned in the body of the piece; but it possesses few of the improvements which, towards the close of the sixteenth century, were introduced into Morals. The only reason for mentioning it is, that it was one of the last, as well as one of the worst, of its kind. It has been attributed to the celebrated Robert Greene, and he may have had some concern in it prior to 1592, as a revival of an older performance.

in the peculiar hand of the author, who subscribes most of them in the following manner :—

eafara vocent.

W.P. Efquier.

His name is no where inserted at length, but his authorship has been clearly ascertained by the owner of the MS.

One of the latest notices of Richard Tarlton occurs in a tract printed in 1642, called The Pigge's Corantoe, or Newes from the North,' where the following lines are attributed to him, which have since often received a different application :

'The King of France, with forty thousand men,
Went up a hill, and so came downe agen.'

This is called, in the tract, old Tarlton's song?