dishes with the condiments of actual life; thus studying more the
taste of the guests than showing that of the cook. Prologues and
Epilogues always appealed more to the public at large as the highest
judge; its verdict alone was held to be the decisive one.
Manuscripts--the property of companies whose interest it was not
to make them generally known in print--were continually altered
according to circumstances. Guided by the impressions of the public,
authors struck out what had been badly received; whilst passages
that had earned applause, remained as the encouraging and deciding
factor for the future.

At one time dramas were written almost with the same rapidity as leading
articles are to-day. Even as our journalists do in the press, so the
dramatists of that period carried on their debates about certain
questions of the day on the stage. In language the most passionate,
authors fell upon each other--a practice for which we have to thank them,
in so far as we thereby gain matter-of-fact points for a correct
understanding of 'Hamlet.'

In the last but one decennium of the sixteenth century, the first
dramatists arose who pursued fixed literary tendencies. Often their
compositions are mere exercises of style after Greek or Roman models
which never became popular on the Thames. The taste of the English
people does not bear with strange exotic manners for any length of
time. It is lost labour to plant palm-trees where oaks only can thrive.
Lily and others endeavoured to gain the applause of the mass by words
of finely-distilled fragrance, to which no coarse grain, no breath
or the native atmosphere clung. A fruitless beginning, as little
destined to succeed as the exertions of those who tried to shine by
pedantic learning and hollow glittering words.