find herself infected and degraded by their company. Moreover, the
bustle of incident, the abrupt changes from grave to gay and to grave
again, jangled her sad majestic harmonies with shrill interrupting
discords. It had not been so in Greece. It had not been so even in
Italy, where Roman Seneca, fearing the least decline to a lower plane of
dignity and impressiveness, had disciplined tragedy by an imposition of
artificial but not unskilful restraints. In place of the strong
unbroken sweep of a resistless current, which characterized the
evolution of an Aeschylean drama, he had insisted on an orderly division
of a plot into acts and scenes, as though one should break up the sheer
plunge of a single waterfall into a well-balanced group of cascades. Yet
he was wise in his generation, securing by this means a carefully
proportioned development which, in the absence of that genius which
inspired the Greek dramatists, might otherwise have been lost. Once
strong and free in the plays of Aeschylus and his compeers, hampered and
constantly under guidance but still dignified and noble in the Senecan
drama, Tragedy now found herself debased and almost caricatured in the
English Interlude stage. Fortunately the danger was seen in time.
English writers, face to face with self-conscious tragedy, realized that
here at least was more than unaided native art could compass. Despairing
of success if they persisted in the old methods, they fell back
awkwardly upon classical imitation and, by assiduous study tempered by a
wise criticism, achieved success.

Only two plays with any claim to the designation of tragedies have
survived to us from the Interludes, neither of them of much interest.
_Cambyses_ (1561), by Thomas Preston, has all the qualities of an
imperfect Interlude. There are the base fellows and the clowns, Huff,
Ruff, Snuff, Hob and Lob; the abstractions, Diligence, Shame, Common's
Complaint, Small Hability, and the like; the Vice, Ambidexter, who