of the place
    Her name that governs there Eliza is,
    A kingdom that may well compare with mine,
    An auncient seat of kings, a second Troy,
    Y-compass’d round with a commodious sea.

The rest may be easily imagined.  The contending divinities resign their claims: 

    Venus. To this fair nymph, not earthly, but divine,
    Contents it me my honour to resign.

    Pallas. To this fair queen, so beautiful and wise,
    Pallas bequeaths her title in the prize.

    Juno. To her whom Juno’s looks so well become,
    The Queen of Heaven yields at Phoebe’s doom.

The three Fates now enter, and singing a Latin song lay their ‘properties’ at the feet of the queen.  Then each in turn delivers a speech appropriate to her character, and finally Diana ’delivereth the ball of gold into the Queen’s own hands,’ and the play ends with a couple of doggerel hexameters chanted by way of epilogue by the assembled actors: 

    Vive diu felix votis hominumque deumque,
    Corpore, mente, libro, doctissima, candida, casta.

The jingle of these lines would alone suffice to prove that Peele’s ear was none of the most delicate, and he particularly sins in disregarding the accent in the rime-word, a peculiarity which may have been noticed even in the short passages quoted above.  Nevertheless, even apart from its lyrics, one of which is in its way unsurpassed, the play contains passages of real grace in the versification.  The greater part is written either in fourteeners or in decasyllabic couplets with occasional alexandrines, in both of which the author displays an ease and mastery which, to say the least, were uncommon in the dramatic work of the early eighties; while the passages of blank verse introduced at important dramatic points, notably in Paris’ defence and in Diana’s speech, are the best of their kind between Surrey and Marlowe.  The style, though now and again clumsy, is in general free from affectation except for an occasional weakness in the shape of a play upon words.  Such is the connexion of Eliza with Elizium, in a passage already quoted, and the time-honoured non Angli sed angeli—­

    Her people are y-cleped Angeli,
    Or, if I miss, a letter is the most—­

occurring a few lines later; also the words of Lachesis: 

    Et tibi, non aliis, didicerunt parcere Parcae.

With regard to the general construction of the piece it is hardly too much to say that the skill with which the author has enlarged a masque-subject into a regular drama, altered a classical legend to subserve a particular aim, and conducted throughout the multiple perhaps rather than complex threads of his plot, mark him out as pre-eminent among his contemporaries.  We must not, it is true, look for perfect balance of construction, for adequacy of dramatic climax, or for subtle characterization; but what has been achieved