dramatic blank-verse, it will be necessary to examine his plays with a little more attention, although he did not adopt it, in those which were publicly performed, until after the adventurous muse of Marlow had led the way. How Peele wrote it for the Court in 1584, two or three years before Marlow's Tamburlaine was acted, may be seen by the subsequent extract from his Arraignment of Paris. It is part of the 'oration' of the hero in his own defence, before Jupiter and the Immortals assembled in the Bower of Diana.

'And if, in verdict of their forms divine,

My dazzled eye did swerve, or surfeit more
On Venus' face than any face of theirs,

It was no partial fault, but fault of his,
Belike, whose eyesight not so perfect was,
As might discern the brightness of the rest.
And if it were permitted unto men,

Ye Gods! to parley with your secret thoughts,
There be that sit upon that sacred seat
That would with Paris err in Venus' praise.
But let me cease to speak of error here ;

Sith what my hand, the organ of my heart,

Did give with good agreement of mine eye,

My tongue is void [bold?] with process to maintain.'

Here it will be remarked that nearly every line is formed alike, and the terminations, if not all monosyllables, are so for the purposes of the verse, which runs with all the regularity and formality of rhyme: it is, in fact, the blank-verse of a person accustomed to write rhyme, and whose ear required a ponderous syllable at the end of each line as a substitute. This remark will, in fact, apply to nearly all the blank-verse

1 In Vol. i, p. 276, we have already given a specimen of what we may consider Peele's skill for courtly blank-verse: he was then selected, on account of it, to write a long address to old Lord Burghley.

that Peele has left behind him he rarely varies his lines even by the insertion of a trochee for its termination, and then only as if he used it because it could not be avoided without inconvenience. He seems, in fact, for some time to have deemed this great ornament a defect; and even in his historical play, Edward I, of which more will be said presently, he has been comparatively sparing in the adoption of it.

Of the plays of Peele, written for public representation, we take The Battle of Alcazar to be the oldest. The proofs adduced to establish the authorship of Peele are so supported by internal evidence, that we feel no hesitation in assigning it to him.1 It was written, as far as we can now decide, soon after Marlow's Tamburlaine, the success of which encouraged Peele to make an attempt of the same kind, and from which it contains a quotation. Peele himself speaks of his Battle of Alcazar in a poem he published in 1589,2 and it is known to have been acted in 1591, if not earlier. When it was written, the history of the adventurer Thomas Stukely, who fell in the battle of Alcazar on

'Monday, the fourth of August seventy eight'

(as Peele with particularity gives the date from the mouth of the hero himself) was well remembered; and he no doubt took the story because it was likely to be popular, because he could abuse the Catholics and compliment Elizabeth, and because it afforded the opportunity of introducing a vast deal of business in the action, and variety in the characters. The plot is conducted with unbounded licence, and the scène is changed from Portugal to Africa, and vice versa, at the pleasure and convenience of the author. It is written in an ambitious strain, not very well maintained, as if the writer wished

1 See Peele's Works, by the Rev. A. Dyce, i, xxvii, edit. 1829.

2 A Farewell, entituled to, etc., Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, anno 1589. Stukely was also the hero of a later play.

to rival the vigour, without the fire and imagination, of Marlow.
Undoubtedly the best lines in the piece are some which were
meant to flatter the Queen and her government; but, though
harmonious, they give us the idea of labour, and of pumping
up on the part of the author to say something fine without
attaining his object. The following are some of them-
'Sacred, imperial, and holy is her seat,

Shining with wisdom, love, and mightiness.
Nature, that everything imperfect made,
Fortune, that never yet was constant found,
Time, that defaceth every golden show,
Dare not decay, remove, or be impure:
Both Nature, Time, and Fortune all agree
To bless and serve her royal majesty.

The wallowing ocean hems her round about,
Whose raging floods do swallow up her foes,
And on the rocks their ships in pieces split,
And even in Spain (where all the traitors dance
And play themselves upon a sunny day)
Securely guard the west part of her isle :
The south the narrow Britain sea begirts,
Where Neptune sits in triumph to direct
Their course to hell that aim at her disgrace.
The German seas along the east do run,
Where Venus banquets all her water nymphs,
That with her beauty glancing on the waves
Disdains the check of fair Proserpina.'

What is here said of Spanish traitors and of the waves swallowing the foes of Elizabeth, may allude to the destruction of the Armada, and would fix the date of the piece in the end of 1588, or in the beginning of 1589. The passage is not very intelligible as it stands, and perhaps something has been lost. The versification of the whole differs little from this specimen, and no pains have been taken by the

author to render his lines less ponderous and monotonous. Couplets are scattered here and there as they could be brought in, and Stukely dies after four lines of rhyme, which is rather an unusual number in succession in this drama.

Warton has traced with considerable patience a degree of resemblance between Peele's Old Wives' Tale and Milton's Comus; expressing his opinion, which we hardly think well founded, that the latter was derived from the former.1 It remains to be seen whether each did not make use of the same original narrative, which has not yet come to light:2 in the one case, a smooth versifier mingled it with a disgusting quantity of trash and absurdity; in the other case, a noble poet invested it with grandeur and dignity, set off by an equal portion of sweetness and simplicity. The old Wives' Tale is nothing but a beldam's story, with little to recommend it but heavy prose and not much lighter blank-verse; and allowing for the early date of its production, Peele seems to have used his materials with very moderate skill, and with the display of but little fancy. Although it was not printed until 1595, it seems to bear marks of having been an early production, perhaps then printed by the author to supply some temporary necessity. That he was often put to severe trials by his poverty, and that he was not very scrupulous as to the mode of obtaining relief3 is evident from his Merry

1 In his edition of Milton's Minor Poems, p. 136.

2 One incident is met with in The Three Kings of Colchester, and no doubt others might be traced. Vide Peele's Works, i, 205, edit. 1829.

3 One of the latest acts of his life was an imposition attempted (perhaps successfully) upon Lord Burghley: in order to obtain money from that nobleman, in January 1596, he sent to him The Tale of Troy, a MS. poem of about 500 lines, as a new production, when, in fact, Peele had printed the piece in 1589, at the end of his 'Farewell, etc., to Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake'. Peele had been married, and we may hope, from the cause of his death, prior to 1598 (if Meres, in his

Conceited Fests, to the representations of which we are disposed to give more credit than is attached to them by the recent editor of Peele's Works. They were published soon after his death, and some of them were made the incidents of a favourite comedy, attributed to Shakespeare, but probably the work of Wentworth Smith, who was Peele's contemporary, and doubtless his acquaintance.1

Peele's Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First is one of our most ancient 'Chronicle Histories' in blank-verse,2 and deserves attention rather on this account than because it possesses much merit as a theatrical production. It is in every point of view inferior to Marlow's Edward II, which seems to have set the pattern in this species of composition. Peele's characters are not distinct, and only that of the king can be said to be drawn with any degree of force or fidelity: the truth of history is most grossly violated as far as regards the Palladis Tamia, be correct), that he was at that date a widower. He sent the poem to Lord Burghley by his 'eldest daughter', so that he had more than one. His original letter to the Lord Treasurer on this occasion is among the Lansdowne MSS., vol. 99. It is in a fine bold handwriting; but Peele also wrote a small, cramped, old-English hand, as may be seen in the poetical and playful address he presented to Lord Burghley not long before the old statesman's death; see a former note on page 276 of vol. i.

1 The earliest known edition of Peele's Fests is dated in 1607, and a copy of it was sold among the books of Major Pearson. The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street, in which Peele figures under the name of George Pieboard, was printed in the same year. He was intimate with Singer, the celebrated low-comedian, and in more than one old MS. it appears that they joined in a joke (rather a stale one), by which they cheated a country-drover out of a sheep.

2 It was printed in 1593, and again in 1599; the death of the author, shortly before the last-mentioned year, having perhaps attracted fresh attention to it. It may be reasonably conjectured that it was played some years before it was published. It is reprinted in the last edition of Dodsley's Old Plays.

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