Although Lyly’s romance itself lay outside the scope of this inquiry, we have already had, in the pastoral work of his imitators, ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with the peculiarities of the style he rendered fashionable.  Its laborious affectation is all the more irritating when we remember that its author, on turning his attention to the more or less unseemly brawling of the Martin Mar-prelate pasquilade, revealed a command of effective vernacular hardly, if at all, inferior to that of his friend Nashe; and its complex artificiality becomes but more apparent when applied to dramatic work.  Nevertheless in an age when prose style was in an even more chaotic state than prosody, Euphuism could claim qualities of no small value and importance, while as an experiment it was no more absurd, and vastly more popular, than those in classical versification.  Its qualities, when we consider the general state of contemporary literature, may well account for the popularity of Lyly’s attempt at novel-writing, but the style was radically unsuited for dramatic composition, and the result is for the most part hardly to be tolerated, and can only have met with such court-favour as fell to its lot, owing to the general fashion for which its success in the romance was responsible.  It is indeed noteworthy that Lyly is the only writer who ever ventured to apply his literary invention in toto to the uses of the stage, while even in the romance he lived to see Euphuism as a fashionable style pale before the growing popularity of Arcadianism[215].  The opening of Gallathea may supply a specimen of the style as it appears in the dramas; the scene is laid in Lincolnshire, and Tyterus is addressing his daughter who gives her name to the piece: 

In tymes past, where thou seest a heape of small pyble, stoode a stately Temple of white Marble, which was dedicated to the God of the Sea, (and in right being so neere the Sea):  hether came all such as eyther ventured by long travell to see Countries, or by great traffique to use merchandise, offering Sacrifice by fire, to gette safety by water; yeelding thanks for perrils past, and making prayers for good successe to come:  but Fortune, constant in nothing but inconstancie, did change her copie, as the people their custome; for the Land being oppressed by Danes, who in steed of sacrifice, committed sacrilidge, in steede of religion, rebellion, and made a pray of that in which they should have made theyr prayers, tearing downe the Temple even with the earth, being almost equall with the skyes, enraged so the God who bindes the windes in the hollowes of the earth, that he caused the Seas to breake their bounds, sith men had broke their vowes, and to swell as farre above theyr reach, as men had swarved beyond theyr reason:  then might you see shippes sayle where sheepe fedde, ankers cast where ploughes goe, fishermen throw theyr nets, where husbandmen sowe their Corne, and fishes throw their scales where fowles doe breede