unmistakably wanting in the subtle strength, the dramatic grip and
profound poetry, of its model. The villainy of the Cardinal is mere
mechanism beside the satanic, yet horribly human, iniquity of Ferdinand
and Bosolo. And, at least in one scene, Shirley sinks--it is true, in
the person of a subordinate character--to a foul-mouthed vulgarity
which recalls the shameless bombast of the heroes and heroines of
Dryden. [Footnote:

I would this soldier had the Cardinal
Upon a promontory; with what a spring
The churchman would leap down! It were a spectacle
Most rare to see him topple from the precipice,
And souse in the salt water with a noise
To stun the fishes. And if he fell into
A net, what wonder would the simple sea-gulls
Have to draw up the o'ergrown lobster,
So ready boiled! He shall have my good wishes.
--_The Cardinal_, act v. sc, 2.]

Yet, with all his shortcomings, Shirley preserves in the main the great
tradition of the Elizabethans. A further step downwards, a more deadly
stage in the history of decadence, is marked by Sir William Davenant.
That arch-impostor, as is well known, had the effrontery to call himself
the "son of Shakespeare": a phrase which the unwary have taken in the
physical sense, but which was undoubtedly intended to mark his literary
kinship with the Elizabethans in general and with the greatest of
Elizabethan dramatists in particular.

So far as dates go, indeed, the work of Davenant may be admitted to
fall within what we loosely call the Elizabethan period; or, more