Hitherto we have met with no instance of regular tragedy, which was in England of later growth than comedy; though we have seen that some beginnings of tragedy were made in the older species of drama. The Tragedy of Gorboduc, or, as it is sometimes called, Of Ferrex and Porrex, is on several accounts deserving of special attention.  It was acted before the Queen at Whitehall, by gentlemen of the Inner Temple, in January, 1562; and was printed in 1565, the title-page informing us that three Acts were written by Thomas Norton, and the last two by Thomas Sackville.  Norton made and published a translation of Calvin’s Institutes, which went through five editions during his lifetime.  Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset, succeeded Burghley as Lord Treasurer in 1599, which office he held till his death, in 1608; and was eulogized by divers pens, Lord Bacon’s being one, for his eloquence, his learning, his charity, and integrity.

Warton’s statement of the plot is brief and accurate, as follows:  “Gorboduc, a king of Britain about six hundred years before Christ, made in his lifetime a division of his kingdom to his two sons Ferrex and Porrex.  The two young princes within five years quarrelled for universal sovereignty.  A civil war ensued, and Porrex slew his elder brother Ferrex.  Their mother, Videna, who loved Ferrex best, revenged his death by entering Porrex’s chamber in the night, and murdering him in his sleep.  The people, exasperated at the cruelty and treachery of this murder, rose in rebellion, and killed both Gorboduc and Videna.  The nobility then assembled, collected an army, and destroyed the rebels.  An intestine war commenced between the chief lords; the succession of the crown became uncertain and arbitrary, for want of a lineal royal issue; and the country, destitute of a king, and wasted by domestic slaughter, was reduced to a state of the most miserable desolation.”

Each Act of the tragedy is preceded by a dumb-show significant of what is forthcoming, and the first four are followed by choruses, moralizing the events.  But the most notable fact about it is, that all except the choruses is in blank-verse; in which respect it was a great and noble innovation.  And the versification runs abundantly smooth; beyond which little can be said in its favour; though that was a good deal for the time.  With considerable force of thought and language, the speeches are excessively formal, stately, and didactic; every thing is told, nothing represented; the dialogue is but a series of studied declamation, without any pulses of life, or any relish of individual traits; in brief, all is mere State rhetoric speaking in the same vein, now from one mouth, now from another.  From the subject-matter, the unities of time and place are necessarily disregarded, while there is no continuity of action or character to lift it above the circumscriptions of sense.  The Acts and scenes follow one another without any innate principle of succession:  there is nothing like an organic composition of the parts, no weaving of them together by any law of dramatic sequence and development.  Still, the piece marks an era in the English Drama.  In the single article of blank-verse, though having all the monotony of the most regular rhyming versifier, it did more for dramatic improvement than, perhaps, could have been done in a century without that step being taken.