Read Jonson's The Alchemist or the selection in Williams's Specimens. A sufficient selection from Philaster may be found in Vol. II. of The Oxford Treasury, in Morley, and in Williams's Specimens.
What points of difference between Shakespeare and Jonson do you notice? What is his object in The Alchemist? Why is its plot called unusually fine? Wherein does Jonson show a decline in the drama?
Who were Beaumont and Fletcher? What movement in the drama do they illustrate? What are the characteristics of some other minor dramatists? What are the chief reasons why the minor dramatists fail to equal Shakespeare? When and why did this period of the drama close?
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV:
[Footnote 1: For additional mention of Elizabethan novelists, see p. 317.]
[Footnote 2: For references to selections from all these prose writers, see p. 215.]
[Footnote 3: Of Youth and Age.]
[Footnote 4: Thomas Heywood's Matin Song.]
[Footnote 5: Suggestions for additional study of Elizabethan lyrics are given on p. 215.]
[Footnote 6: riding.]