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A FEW OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS.
From the nature of their adopted mode, we cannot look for much poetry of
a devotional kind from the dramatists. That mode admitting of no
utterance personal to the author, and requiring the scope of a play to
bring out the intended truth, it is no wonder that, even in the dramas of
Shakspere, profound as is the teaching they contain, we should find
nothing immediately suitable to our purpose; while neither has he left
anything in other form approaching in kind what we seek. Ben Jonson,
however, born in 1574, who may be regarded as the sole representative of
learning in the class, has left, amongst a large number of small pieces,
three Poems of Devotion, whose merit may not indeed be great, but whose
feeling is, I think, genuine. Whatever were his faults, and they were not
few, hypocrisy was not one of them. His nature was fierce and honest. He
might boast, but he could not pretend. His oscillation between the
reformed and the Romish church can hardly have had other cause than a
vacillating conviction. It could not have served any prudential end that
we can see, to turn catholic in the reign of Elizabeth, while in prison
for killing in a duel a player who had challenged him.
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