well-spoken euphuism. It is like listening to a song in a language one
does not understand: provided that the harmony is beautiful one is not
distressed about the verbal message. Besides, there is some plot, slight
though it be, and its theme is love, chiefly of the languishing,
half-hopeless kind which was supposed to be cherished by every bachelor
courtier for the queen. There is, too, for those who can read it, an
allegory often concealed in the story of disappointed love or ambition
which moves round Cynthia or Diana or Sapho. Was there no lover who
aspired as Endymion aspired, no Spanish king meriting the fate of Mydas,
no man favoured as was Phao by Sapho? Even at this distance of time we
can amuse ourselves by guessing names, and so catch something of the
interest which, at the time of the play's appearance, would set eyebrows
arching with surprise, and send, at each daring reference or well-aimed
compliment, a nod of approving intelligence around the audience.

Lyly wrote eight comedies: _Campaspe_ (printed 1584), _Sapho and Phao_
(printed 1584), _Endymion_ (printed 1591), _Gallathea_ (printed 1592),
_Mydas_ (printed 1592), _Mother Bombie_ (printed 1594), _The Woman in
the Moon_ (printed 1597), _Love's Metamorphoses_ (printed 1601). All
these, with the exception of the seventh--which is in regular and
pleasing, though not vigorous, blank verse--were written in prose, as we
should expect from the founder of so famous a prose style; but as _The
Supposes_, a translation by Gascoigne of Ariosto's _I Suppositi_, had
previously appeared in prose, Lyly's claim as an innovator is weakened.
The fact, however, that Ariosto wrote a prose, as well as a poetic,
version of his play, and that Gascoigne made use of both in his
translation, gives to the latter's prose a borrowed quality, and leaves
Lyly fully entitled to whatever credit belongs to the earliest native
productions of this kind. He was the first to announce, by practice, the
theory that English comedy could find fuller expression in prose than in