there may perhaps yet be room for an attempt yet unessayed; for a study
by the ear alone of Shakespeare's metrical progress, and a study by light
of the knowledge thus obtained of the corresponsive progress within,
which found expression and embodiment in these outward and visible
changes. The one study will be then seen to be the natural complement
and the inevitable consequence of the other; and the patient pursuit of
the simpler and more apprehensible object of research will appear as the
only sure method by which a reasonable and faithful student may think to
attain so much as the porch or entrance to that higher knowledge which no
faithful and reasonable study of Shakespeare can ever for a moment fail
to keep in sight as the haven of its final hope, the goal of its ultimate
labour.

When Christopher Marlowe came up to London from Cambridge, a boy in
years, a man in genius, and a god in ambition, he found the stage which
he was born to transfigure and re-create by the might and masterdom of
his genius encumbered with a litter of rude rhyming farces and tragedies
which the first wave of his imperial hand swept so utterly out of sight
and hearing that hardly by piecing together such fragments of that buried
rubbish as it is now possible to unearth can we rebuild in imagination so
much of the rough and crumbling walls that fell before the trumpet-blast
of _Tamburlaine_ as may give us some conception of the rabble dynasty of
rhymers whom he overthrew--of the citadel of dramatic barbarism which was
stormed and sacked at the first charge of the young conqueror who came to
lead English audiences and to deliver English poetry

From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay.

When we speak of the drama that existed before the coming of Marlowe, and