Ben Jonson.  Texts in Mermaid Series, Temple Dramatists, Morley’s Universal Library, etc.; Masques and Entertainments of Ben Jonson, edited by Morley, in Carisbrooke Library; Timber, edited by Schelling, in Athenaeum Press Series.

Beaumont, Fletcher, etc.  Plays in Mermaid Series, Temple Dramatists, etc.; Schelling’s Elizabethan Drama; Lowell’s Old English Dramatists; Lamb’s Specimens of English Dramatic Poets; Fleay’s Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama; Swinburne’s Essays, in Essays in Prose and Poetry, and in Essays and Studies.

Bacon.  Texts, Essays in Everyman’s Library, etc.; Advancement of Learning in Clarendon Press Series, Library of English Classics, etc.; Church’s Life of Bacon, in English Men of Letters Series; Nichol’s Bacon’s Life and Philosophy; Francis Bacon, translated from the German of K. Fischer (excellent, but rare); Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon.

Minor Prose Writers.  Sidney’s Arcadia, edited by Somers; Defense of Poesy, edited by Cook, in Athenaeum Press Series; Arber’s Reprints, etc.; Selections from Sidney’s prose and poetry in the Elizabethan Library; Symonds’s Life of Sidney, in English Men of Letters; Bourne’s Life of Sidney, in Heroes of the Nations; Lamb’s Essay on Sidney’s Sonnets, in Essays of Elia.

Raleigh’s works, published by the Oxford Press; Selections by Grosart, in Elizabethan Library; Raleigh’s Last Fight of the Revenge, in Arber’s Reprints; Life of Raleigh, by Edwards and by Gosse.  Richard Hooker’s works, edited by Keble, Oxford Press; Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in Everyman’s Library, and in Morley’s Universal Library; Life, in Walton’s Lives, in Morley’s Universal Library; Dowden’s Essay, in Puritan and Anglican.

Lyly’s Euphues, in Arber’s Reprints; Endymion, edited by Baker; Campaspe, in Manly’s Pre-Shaksperean Drama.

North’s Plutarch’s Lives, edited by Wyndham, in Tudor Library; school edition, by Ginn and Company.  Hakluyt’s Voyages, in Everyman’s Library; Jones’s introduction to Hakluyt’s Diverse Voyages; Payne’s Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen; Froude’s Essay, in Short Studies on Great Subjects.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 1.  What historical conditions help to account for the great literature of the Elizabethan age?  What are the general characteristics of Elizabethan literature?  What type of literature prevailed, and why?  What work seems to you to express most perfectly the Elizabethan spirit?

2.  Tell briefly the story of Spenser’s life.  What is the story or argument of the Faery Queen?  What is meant by the Spenserian stanza?  Read and comment upon Spenser’s “Epithalamion.”  Why does the “Shepherd’s Calendar” mark a literary epoch?  What are the main qualities of Spenser’s poetry?  Can you quote or refer to any passages which illustrate these qualities?  Why is he called the poets’ poet?

3.  For what is Sackville noted?  What is the most significant thing about his “Gorboduc”?  Name other minor poets and tell what they wrote.