Drake, Sir Francis (1545-1595), the famous sailor, hero of the Armada.
Coke, Sir Edward (1552-1634), the great jurist, whose “Institutes,” better known as Coke upon Littleton, became a famous legal text-book.
Hooker, Richard (1553-1600), theologian, author of the “Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” (1593), a defense of the Anglican Church against the Puritans and notable also as a masterpiece of English prose.
[P. 2.] mere oblivion. “As You Like It,” ii, 7, 165.
poor, poor dumb names [mouths]. “Julius Cæsar,” iii, 2, 229.
Marston, John (1575-1634). In the third lecture on the “Age of Elizabeth,” Hazlitt calls him “a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him.” Works, V, 224. His chief tragedy is “Antonio and Mellida.”
Middleton, Thomas (1570?-1627), and Rowley, William (1585?-1642?). In the second lecture on the “Age of Elizabeth,” Hazlitt associates these two names. “Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman Never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity and naïveté equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton’s style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries.... He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement of the story. It is like the rough draft of a tragedy with a number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to the whole.... The author’s power is in the subject, not over it; or he is in possession of excellent materials which he husbands very ill.” Works, V, 214-5. For characters of other dramatists see notes to p. [326].
How lov’d. Pope’s “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.”
[P. 3.] draw the curtain of time. Cf. “we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.” “Twelfth Night,” i, 5, 251.
within reasonable bounds. At this point Hazlitt digresses to reprove the age for its affectation of superiority over other ages and the passage, not being relevant, has been omitted.