In that prodigious monument of learning and labor, Mr. Fleay's
_Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, the common attribution of
these two plays to Heywood is impeached on the aesthetic score that
"they are far better than his other early work." I have carefully
endeavored to do what justice might be done to their modest allowance of
moderate merit; but whether they be Heywood's or--as Mr. Fleay, on
apparent grounds of documentary evidence, would suggest--the work of
Chettle and Day, I am certainly rather inclined to agree with the
general verdict of previous criticism, which would hardly admit their
equality and would decidedly question their claim to anything more than
equality of merit with the least admirable or memorable of Heywood's
other plays. Even the rough-hewn chronicle, "If you know not me you know
nobody," by which "the troubles of Queen Elizabeth" before her accession
are as nakedly and simply set forth in the first part as in the second
are "the building of the Royal Exchange" and "the famous victory" over
the Invincible Armada, has on the whole more life and spirit, more
interest and movement, in action as in style. The class of play to which
it belongs is historically the most curious if poetically the least
precious of all the many kinds enumerated by Heywood in earnest or by
Shakespeare in jest as popular or ambitious of popularity on the stage
for which they wrote.
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