_Rom_. Thou hast no choice. _Nero_. O hither must I flye: hard is his happe Who from death onely must by death escape. Where are they yet? O may not I a little Bethinke my selfe? _Rom_. They are at hand; harke, thou maist heare the noise. _Nero_. O _Rome_, farewell! farewell, you Theaters Where I so oft with popular applause In song and action--O they come, I die. (_He falls on his sword_.) _Rom_. So base an end all iust commiseration Doth take away: yet what we doe now spurne The morning Sunne saw fearefull to the world. _Enter some of Galbaes friends, Antoneus and others, with Nimphidius bound_. _Gal_. You both shall die together, Traitors both He to the common wealth and thou to him And worse to a good Prince.--What? is he dead? Hath feare encourag'd him and made him thus Prevent our punishment? Then die with him: Fall thy aspiring at thy Master's feete. (_He kils Nimph_). _Anton_. Who, though he iustly perisht, yet by thee Deserv'd it not; nor ended there thy treason, But even thought oth' Empire thou conceiv'st. _Galbaes_ disgrace[d] in receiving that Which the sonne of _Nimphidia_ could hope. _Rom_. Thus great bad men above them find a rod: People, depart and say there is a God. [_Exeunt_. FINIS. INTRODUCTION TO THE MAYDES METAMORPHOSIS. The anonymous comedy of the _Maydes Metamorphosis_ (1600), usually attributed to Lilly, shews few traces of the mannerisms of the graceful but insipid Euphuist. It is just such a play as George Wither or William Browne might have written in very early youth. The writer was evidently an admirer of Spenser, and has succeeded in reproducing on his Pan-pipe some thin, but not unpleasing, echoes of his master's music. Mr. Edmund W. Gosse has suggested that the _Maydes Metamorphosis_ may be an early work of John Day; and no one is better able to pronounce on such a point than Mr. Gosse. The scene at the beginning of Act ii., and the gossip of the pages in Acts ii. and iii., are certainly very much in Day's manner. The merciless harrying of the word "kind" at the beginning of Act v. reminds one of similar elaborate trifling in _Humour out of Breath_; and the amoebaean rhymes in the contention between Gemulo and Silvio (Act i.) are, in their sportive quaintness, as like Day's handiwork as they are unlike Lilly's. In reading the pretty echo-scene, in Act iv., the reader will recall a similar scene in _Law Trickes_ (Act v., Sc. I). On the other hand, the delightful songs of the fairies[97] (in Act iii.), if not written by Lilly, were at least suggested by the fairies' song in _Endymion_. It would be hard to say what Lilly might not have achieved if he had not stultified himself by his detestable pedantry: his songs (_O si sic omnia_) are hardly to be matched for silvery sweetness.