of the drama. Everyman and Other Miracle Plays (Everyman’s Library, 35 cents) is a good inexpensive volume.  Manly’s’ Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama (three volumes, $1.25 each) covers this field more fully.  Morley’s English Plays (published as Vol.  III. of Cassell’s Library of English Literature, at eleven and one half shillings) contains good selections from nearly all the plays mentioned below, except those by Shakespeare and Jonson.  Williams’s Specimens of the Elizabethan Drama, from Lyly to Shirley, 1580-1642 (Clarendon Press, 576 pp., $1.90) is excellent for a comprehensive survey of the field covered.  Lamb’s Specimens of English Poets Who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare (Bohn’s Library, 552 pp.) contains a large number of good selections.

Miracle Plays.—­Read the Chester Play of Noah’s Flood, Pollard,[32] 8-20, and the Towneley Play of the Shepherds, Pollard, 31-43; Manly’s Specimens, I, 94-119; Morley’s English Plays, 12-18.  These two plays best show the germs of English comedy.

Moralities.—­The best Morality is that known as Everyman, Pollard, 76-96; also in Everyman’s Library.  If Everyman is not accessible, Hycke-Scorner may be substituted, Morley; 12-18; Manly’s Specimens, I., 386-420.

Court Plays, Early Comedies, and Gorboduc.—­The best Interlude is The Four P’s.  Adequate selections are given in Morley, 18-20, and in Symonds’s Shakespeare’s Predecessors in the English Drama, 188-201.  Pollard and Manly give several good selections from other Interludes.

Ralph Royster Doyster may be found in Arber’s Reprints; in Morley’s English Plays, pp. 22-46; in Manly’s Specimens, II., 5-92; in Oxford Treasury, II., 161-174, and in Temple Dramatists (35 cents).

Gorboduc is given in Oxford Treasury, II. pp., 40-54 (selections); Morley’s English Plays, pp. 51-64; and, under the title of Ferrex and Porrex, in Dodsley’s Old Plays.

What were some of the purposes for which Interludes were written?  How did they aid in the development of the drama?

In what different forms are The Four-P’s, Ralph Royster Doyster, and Gorboduc written?  Why would Shakespeare’s plays have been impossible if the evolution of the drama had stopped with Gorboduc?

Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists.—­Selections from Lyly, Peele, Green, Lodge, Nashe, and Kyd may be found in Williams’s Specimens.  Morley and Oxford Treasury also contain a number of selections.  Peele’s The Arraignment of Paris and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy are in Temple Dramatists.  Greene’s best plays are in Mermaid Series.

What are the merits of Lyly’s dialogue and comedy?  What might Shakespeare have learned from Lyly, Peele, Greene, and Kyd?  In what different form did these dramatists write?  What progress do they show?