THE ELIZABETHANS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 739, 23 January 1915, Page 3

THE ELIZABETHANS.

THEIR STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. Every one of the' great plays of the Elizabethans shows an, extraordinarily close observation of , humanity each is filled to the brim roth vitality and passion- But if they have tbe strength they have also the weakness of popular art ; there is never a sufficient economy of means, and the superfluity ends ia incoherence. Everything is> enormous, carnal, luxurious. Wo are wearied eventually, and ta 1: :e the humour of laughing at the melodrama and pathos intended to excite our terror and pity. But at every tuin we come upon moments of pure comedy or poignant grief. Webster in "The Duchess of Malfi" shows a n individual quality of his ov. n for which no equivalent can be found in Shakespeare,, and Jonson in his realistic comedies suggests Moliere rather than Shakespeare, but all the others bring us the gift of tears and mirth.

They learned their comedies and tragedies from their own experience. Marlowe met his death in a sordid brawl; Peele, died at the age of thirty after a Ufa of dissipation ;; Greene at thirty-two, leaving the following letter to his deserted wife—"Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth and by nay soul's rest that thou wilt see this man paid, for if lis. and his wife had not succoured me I had died in the streets." That glanic backward upon life, and forward to the soul's rest," needs no comment. It is too full of tca^s. In spite of the mud and tarnished! glories, we look back upon them all echoing the words of Nash —"If there be any spark of Adam's paradised perfection yet embered up. in the brcastes of mortall men, certainely God hath bestowed that his perfectest image on poets." alien we smile again.—"Spectator. '