Before
that blight had fallen upon the country of Shakespeare, the variety and
fertility of dramatic form and dramatic energy which distinguished the
typical imagination or invention of his countrymen can only be
appreciated or conceived by students of what yet is left us of the
treasure bequeathed by the fellows and the followers of Shakespeare.
Every other man who could speak or write at all was a lyric poet, a
singer of beautiful songs, in the generation before Shakespeare's: every
other such man in Shakespeare's was a dramatic poet above or beyond all
comparison with any later claimant of the title among Shakespeare's
countrymen. One peculiarly and characteristically English type of drama
which then flourished here and there among more ambitious if not more
interesting forms or varieties, and faded forever with the close of the
age of Shakespeare, was the curious and delightful kind of play dealing
with records or fictions of contemporary adventure. The veriest failures
in this line have surely something of national and historical interest;
telling us as they do of the achievements or in any case of the
aspirations and the ideals, the familiar traditions and ambitions and
admirations, of our simplest and noblest forefathers.
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