... A comparatiue discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latine, and Italian poets....
... As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For Comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loue Labors Lost, his Loue Labours Wonne, his Midsummers Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; For Tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King Iohn, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Iuliet....
... These are our best for Tragedie, The Lorde Buckhurst, Doctor Leg of Cambridge, Doctor Edes of Oxford, Master Edward Ferris, the author of the Mirror for Magistrates, Marlow, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker, and Beniamin Iohnson.
As M. Anneus Lucanus writ two excellent tragedies, one called Medea, the other De incendio Troiae cum Priami calamitate: so Doctor Leg hath penned two famous tragedies, the one of Richard the 3, the other of The Destruction of Ierusalem....
... The best for Comedy amongst vs bee Edward, Earle of Oxforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Master Rowley, once a rare scholler of learned Pembrooke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes, one of Her Maiesties Chappell, eloquent and wittie Iohn Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Mundye, our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle....
As Georgius Buchananus’ Iepthae amongst all moderne Tragedies is able to abide the touch of Aristotle’s precepts and Euripedes’s examples: so is Bishop Watson’s Absalon. As ... Watson for his Antigone out of Sophocles, ha got good commendations: so these versifiers for their learned translations are of good note among vs ... the Translators of Seneca’s Tragedies, ... As Antipater Sidonius was famous for extemporall verse in Greeke, and Ouid for his Quicquid conabar dicere versus erat: so was our Tarleton, of whome Doctor Case, that learned physitian, thus speaketh in the Seuenth Booke and seuenteenth chapter of his Politikes: Aristoteles suum Theodoretum laudauit quendam peritum Tragœdiarum actorem, Cicero suum Roscium: nos Angli Tarletonum, in cuius voce et vultu omnes iocosi affectus, in cuius cerebroso capite lepidae facetiae habitant. And so is now our wittie Wilson, who for learning and extemporall witte in this facultie is without compare or compeere, as, to his great and eternall commendations, he manifested in his challenge at the Swanne on the Banke Side.
liii. 1603. Henry Crosse.
[From Vertues Commonwealth: Or The Highway to Honour, reprinted in A. B. Grosart, Occasional Issues, vii (1878), 111.]
Must the holy Prophets and Patriarkes be set vpon a Stage, to be derided, hist, and laught at? or is it fit that the infirmities of holy men should be acted on a Stage, whereby others may be inharted to rush carelessly forward into vnbrideled libertie?... Furthermore, there is no passion wherwith the king, the soueraigne maiestie of the Realme was possest, but is amplified, and openly sported with, and made a May-game to all the beholders.... If a man will learne to be proud, fantasticke, humorous, to make love, sweare, swagger, and in a word closely doo any villanie, for a twopenny almes hee may be throughly taught and made a perfect good scholler.... And as these copper-lace gentlemen growe rich, purchase lands by adulterous Playes, & not fewe of them vsurers and extortioners, which they exhaust out of the purses of their haunters, so are they puft vp in such pride and selfe-loue, as they enuie their equalles, and scorne theyr inferiours.... But especially these nocturnall and night Playes, at vnseasonable and vndue times, more greater euils must necessarily proceed of them, because they do not onely hide and couer the thiefe, but also entice seruants out of their maisters houses, wherby opportunitie is offered to loose fellowes, to effect many wicked stratagems.... To conclude, it were further to be wished, that those admired wittes of this age, Tragædians, and Comædians, that garnish Theaters with their inuentions, would spend their wittes in more profitable studies, and leaue off to maintaine those Anticks, and Puppets, that speake out of their mouthes: for it is pittie such noble giftes, should be so basely imployed, as to prostitute their ingenious labours to inriche such buckorome gentlemen.