Dub—dub a-dub, bounce! quoth the guns
With a sulpherous huff-snuff!”
This play is further notable for having supplied much of the motive for the machinery and movement of Milton’s noble poem of Comus. It is worth one’s while to compare the two. Of course Peele will suffer—as those who make beginnings always do.
This writer is said to have been sometime a shareholder with Shakespeare in the Blackfriars Theatre; he was an actor, too, like his great contemporary; and besides the plays which carried a wordy bounce in them, wrote a very tender scriptural drama about King David and the fair Bethsabe, with charming quotable things in it. Thus—
“Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires,
Verdure to earth, and to that verdure—flowers;
To flowers—sweet odors, and to odors—wings
That carries pleasure to the hearts of Kings!”
And again:—
“Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,