King [reads], 'Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god, and body's fostering patron…. So it is,—besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black, oppressing humour to the most wholesome physick of thy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour: when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper.'
[No one who is much acquainted with the style of the author of this letter ought to have any difficulty in identifying him here. There was a method of dramatic composition in use then, and not in this dramatic company only, which produced an amalgamation of styles. 'On a forgotten matter,' these associated authors themselves, perhaps, could not always 'make distinction of their hands.' But there are places where Raleigh's share in this 'cry of players' shows through very palpably.]
'So much for the time when. Now for the ground which; which I mean I walked upon: it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where I mean I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou beholdest, surveyest, or seest, etc….
'Thine in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty.
'DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.'
And in another letter from the same source, the dramatic criticism on that style of literature which it was the intention of this School 'to reform altogether' is thus continued.
… 'The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua, set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon. And it was he that might rightly say, Veni, vidi, vici; which to anatomise in the vulgar, (O base and obscure vulgar!) Videlicet, he came, saw, and overcame… Who came? the king. Why did he come? to see. Why did he see? to overcome. To whom came he? to the beggar. What saw he? the beggar. Who overcame he? the beggar. The conclusion is victory. On whose side? etc.
'Thine in the dearest design of industry.'
[Dramatic comment.]
_Boyet. I am much deceived but I remember the style.