United States or Bosnia and Herzegovina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Marlowe, Greene, and Peele had got under the shades of a large vine, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their college, still haunted with the sharp and satirical spirit that followed him here upon earth; for Nash inveighed bitterly, as he had wont to do, against dry-fisted patrons, accusing them of his untimely death, because if they had given his Muse that cherishment which she most worthily deserved, he had fed to his dying day on fat capons, burnt sack and sugar, and not so desperately have ventured his life and shortened his days by keeping company with pickle herrings."
There was not a man riding with the hunt, worth having as a friend, who was not on friendly terms with him. But all these he must leave altogether. In whatever spot he might find for himself a future residence, that spot could not be at Peele Newton. After what had occurred he could not remain there, now that he was not the heir.
Nor, at a more recent date, was Lamb uncritically enthusiastic when he said of Peele's play that 'had it been in all parts equal, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in this sort of Writing. Before leaving Peele, mention must be made of one other play from his pen, namely the Hunting of Cupid, known to us unfortunately from a few fragments only.
There is not a maid in any tavern in Fleet Street who does not think George Peele the properest man in London. And yet, Greene being absent, scouring the street with Cutting Ball whose sister is mother of poor Fortunatus Greene Peele is the most dissolute man in the Globe to-night. There is a sad little daughter sitting up for him at home, and she will have to sit wearily till morning.
The young man of twenty-four, at the White Horse in Friday Street, is Tom Nash; and it is Peele who is swearing that he is a monstrous clever fellow, and helping him to finish his wine. But Peele is glad to see Ned and Cowley in the doorway, for Tom has a weakness for reading aloud the good things from his own manuscripts.
To this decade belong songs by Lyly and Peele, Lodge and Greene, which have already caught the delicate daintiness and the exquisite lilt of Shakespeare's songs and a host of others found in the later songbooks qualities of which there is little more than a rare hint here and there in the earlier Miscellanies, for all the bravery of such titles as A Paradise of Dainty Devises : A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions : or A Handefull of Pleasant Delites .
Five authors, John Lyly, George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Nashe, all graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, were sufficiently versatile to be called "university wits." Amid various other activities, all of them were impelled by the spirit of the age to write plays.
When we speak of the drama that existed before the coming of Marlowe, and that vanished at his advent, we think usually of the rhyming plays written wholly or mainly in ballad verse of fourteen syllables of the Kings Darius and Cambyses, the Promos and Cassandra of Whetstone, or the Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes of George Peele.
In style it is not, I think, above the range of George Peele at his best: and to have written even the last of those scenes can add but little discredit to the memory of a man already disgraced as the defamer of Eleanor of Castile; while it would be a relief to feel assured that there was but one English poet of any genius who could be capable of either villainy.
The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field; Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher. The secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the first importance to the poet who works for it. He loses no time in idle experiments.
Word Of The Day