extraordinary power, more especially lyrical. His great works are
_Doctor Faustus_ and _Edward II_.

SHAKESPEARE.--Then (at the same time as the rest, for they are of about
the same age, though Marlowe appeared the earlier) came William
Shakespeare, who is perhaps the greatest known dramatic poet. His immense
output, which includes plays carelessly put together and, one may venture
to say, negligibly, also contains many masterpieces: _Othello_, _Romeo
and Juliet_, _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _The Merry
Wives of Windsor_, _As You Like It_, and _The Tempest_. The _types_ and
personages of Shakespeare, which have remained celebrated and are still
daily cited in human intercourse, include Othello, that tragic figure of
jealousy; Romeo and Juliet, the young lovers separated by the feuds of
their families but united in death; Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, the
ambitious criminals; Hamlet, the young man with a great mind and a great
heart but with a feeble will which collapses under too heavy a task and
comes to the verge of insanity; Cordelia, the English Antigone, the
devoted daughter of the proscribed King Lear; Falstaff, glutton, coward,
diverting and gay, a kind of Anglo-Saxon Panurge. A whole dramatic
literature has come from Shakespeare. To France he was introduced by
Voltaire and then scorned by him because he had succeeded only too well
in popularising him; subsequently he was exalted, praised to hyperbole,
and imitated beyond discretion by the romantics. In addition to his
dramatic works, Shakespeare left _Sonnets_, some of which are obscure,
but the majority are perfect.

BEN JONSON.--Ben Jonson, classical, exact, pretty faithful imitator of
the writers of antiquity, interested in unusual characters and customs,
gifted with a ready and lively imagination in both comedy and tragedy
like Shakespeare, succeeded especially in comedy (_Every Man in his