as by some has been supposed, they would ascertain that he had acquired a considerable share of celebrity as a dramatick writer, some years before the end of 1590, when that piece was first published. That the reader may be fully master of the question, I shall here transcribe the whole passage. The subject of the poem, it should be remembered, is the decay of literature and patronage, which the Nine Muses in succession pathetically lament. After Calliope and Melpomene have uttered their complaints, Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, is introduced speaking as follows: "Where be the sweete delights of learning's treasure 3, "The painted theatres, and fill with pleasure "The listeners' eyes and eares with melodie; "O, all is gone, and all that goodly glee 5 The words in this stanza exhibited in Italicks, are not so printed in the original edition of Spencer's poem. They are here thus distinguished, because some argument is founded upon them. 6 "Unseemly Sorrow,........ ugly Barbarisme." We learn from Spencer's Ruins of Time, that he was in England in the latter end of the year 1588. In the summer of the following year, Sir Walter Ralegh having visited him in Ireland, he accompanied Ralegh in the autumn to England, and he appears to have resided there during the remainder of that year and part of the next, during which time, the first three books of his Faery Queen were printed. His representation of the degraded state of the stage, therefore, may be supposed to relate "With hollow brows and greisly countenaunce principally to this period, and was doubtless drawn from his own observation. During several preceding years, his time was chiefly passed in Ireland; yet occasional visits even during that period gave him an opportunity of partaking of the "unhurtful sport then furnished by theatrical exhibitions. The present poem, though in its title-page we find 1591, was certainly written in 1590 or before, and published probably in January or February, 1590-91; for in the Stationers' Register, I find the following entry: "William Ponsonby, 29 December, 1590. For his copie under the hands of D'cor Stuller and both the Wardens, a booke entituled, Complaints, conteyning sundrye small poemes of the worlds vanity, vid." The wretched state of the stage in 1589 and 1590, is ascertained by the history and the productions of that period. Of the tragedies which were then in vogue, or, as the poet expresses it, "tyranized over the minds of men," and which, though the "offspring of ugly barbarism and brutish ignorance,' were preferred to any of the productions of the comick muse, the greater part have perished. Such of them, however, as have been preserved, fully justify the description here given of the miserable taste of that period. See particularly Tamburlain the Great, The Spanish Tragedy, The Battle of Alcazar, Selimus Emperour of the Turkes, The Wars of Cyrus, Solyman and Perseda, &c. The preface to Tamburlaine, 8vo. 1590, as well as the piece itself, may afford a good comment on the poet's words: "Gentlemen, and courteous Readers whatsoever. I have herein published in print for your sakes the tragicall discourse of the Scythian Shepheard, My hope is, that it will be now no lesse acceptable unto you, to reade after your serious affairs and studies, than it hath been latelie delightfull for manie of you to see, when the same was shewed in London upon stages. I have purposely omitted and left out some fond and frivolous gestures, digressing and in my opinion farre unmeet for the matter; which I thought might seeme rather tedious unto the wise, then any way else to be regarded; though happilye they have bene of some con "And, him beside, sits ugly Barbarisme, "Where being bredd, he light and heaven doth hate: 66 They in the mindes of men now tyrannize, "And the faire scene with rudenes foule disguize. ceited fondlings greatly gaped at, what times they were shewed upon the stage in their graced deformities." Of the comedies of this period, very few have come down to us; but Wily Beguiled, Mucedorus, and the old Taming of a Shrew, which were highly admired, may serve to show, of what materials those of an inferior quality, which have perished, were made. The jiggs and other buffooneries, with which both tragedies and comedies were then frequently accompanied, are almost all lost. In the plays exhibited at this period, the authors and actors took such liberties, that the state was obliged to interfere. Strype, in his Additions to Stowe's Survey, mentions that in 1589, the servants of the Lord Strange and the Lord Admiral were, on the suggestion of Mr. Tylney [then Master of the Revels], restrained from playing, for their scurrilitie and licentiousness. In the same year (Nov. 12), the very period when Spencer appears to have visited England, and to which his verses seem particularly to relate, the Privy Council wrote a letter to the Lord Mayor of London (of which a minute may be found in the History of the English Stage), commanding him "to ap point a sufficient person, learned and of judgment, to join with the Master of the Revels and a Divine to be named by the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the reforming of the plays daily exercised and presented publickly about the city of London; where [in] the players take upon them without judgment or decorum to handle matters of divinity and state." This is the first notice which is found of a licenser for stage entertainments, to which appointment the "scoffing scurrility" alluded to by Spencer, appears to have given rise; as, in the last century, a similar degree of licentiousness produced an Act of Parliament for the same purpose. In an old tract entitled Martin's Months Mind, which also ap "All places they with follie have possesst, peared in 1589, we find a further confirmation of what has been here stated: Never," says the writer, "were greater tragedies tendered abroad, nor higher comedies traversed at home."-" Roscius plays in the Senate house; asses play upon harpes, the stage is brought into the church, and Vices make plaies of church-matters." 7 By counterfaisance, Spencer appears to have meant counterfeit or fictitious representation, imitating real life. So, again, in Mother Hubbard's Tale : the fond ape him selfe uprearing hy, "And boldly doth among the boldest go: 'Supports his credit and his countenance." Again, in The Faery Queen, b. i. e. viii. st. 49 : "Such is the face of falshood, such the sight "Of fowle Duessa, when her borrowed light "Is ta'en away, and counterfaisance knowne." Again, ibid. b. iii. c. viii. st. 8: "A wicked spright, "Him needed not instruct which way were best "Ne how to speake, ne how to use his gest, See also Cotgrave's French Dict. fol. 1611: "Farcerie. A playing, jesting, &c. a counterfeiting. "Farceur. A comedian or stage-player; a common jeaster, or counterfeiter of mens gestures." See also Puttenham's Arte of Poesie, 4to. 1589, p. 228, "the boy-bishop with his counterfeit speeches," and p. 243, - a buffoon or counterfeit clown." 66 "All these, and all that els the comick stage "Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced; "And those sweete witts, which wont the like to frame, "Are now despiz'd, and made a laughing game. 8 One of the comick writers whom Spencer had here in contemplation, I have no doubt, was a person who was bred at the same college where he had been educated, and who is highly praised by his contemporary Meres, in the following passage: "The best for comedye amongst us bee, Edward Earl of Oxford, Dr. Gager of Oxford, Maister Rowley, once a rare scholar of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwards of her Majesties Chapell, eloquent and wittie John Lillye, &c." Wit's Treasury, 1598, p. 280, b. The time when Mr. Rowley flourished, as well as his Christian name, have been hitherto unascertained; and in consequence of a mistake of Antony Wood, he has been confounded with William Rowley, who was originally an actor about the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and became a popular dramatick writer in that of her successor. Wood in his first work, published in 1674, grounding himself manifestly on the passage above quoted from Meres, rightly describes this rare schollar, in the account which he has given of their poet's contemporaries : "Gulielmus Gager (says his Latin translator) poeta eximius erat, et quoad comedias conscribendas primum semper locum inter coævos obtinebat; posthabitis, nimirum, Edwardo Comiti Oxoniensi, Magistro Rowley, (is Aulam Pembrochianam apud Cantabrigienses ingenio ornavit), Ricardo Edwards, Johanni Lilly," &c. (Hist. et Antiq. Acad. Oxon. P. II. p. 267); but he was afterwards led into an error, probably by having met in Phillips or Winstanley with the name of William Rowley as a dramatick writer; and in his subsequent English work (Ath. Oxon. 1690, i. col. 366), he observes, that "Gager was reputed the best comedian of his time, whether it was Edward Earl of Oxford, William Rowley, the once ornament for wit and ingenuity of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, Richard Edwards John Lilly," &c. Here first we find the Christian name of this comick poet: but Wood was unquestionably mistaken; for “the |