DRAMATIC criticism in England began with Sir Philip Sidney. Casual references to the drama can be found in critical writings anterior to the _Defence of Poesy_; but to Sidney belongs the credit of having first formulated, in a more or less systematic manner, the general principles of dramatic art. These principles, it need hardly be said, are those which, for half a century or more, had been undergoing discussion and modification in Italy and France, and of which the ultimate source was the _Poetics_ of Aristotle. Dramatic criticism in England was thus, from its very birth, both Aristotelian and classical, and it remained so for two centuries. The beginnings of the Elizabethan drama were almost contemporary with the composition of the _Defence of Poesy_, and the decay of the drama with Jonson's _Discoveries_. Yet throughout this period the romantic drama never received literary exposition. The great Spanish drama had its critical champions and defenders, the Elizabethan drama had none. It was, perhaps, found to be a simpler task to echo the doctrines of others, than to formulate the principles of a novel dramatic form. But the true explanation has already been suggested. The sources of the dramatic criticism were the writings of the Italian critics, and these were entirely classical. In creative literature, however, the Italian Renaissance influenced the Elizabethans almost entirely on the romantic side. This, perhaps, suffices to explain the lack of fundamental coordination between dramatic theory and dramatic practice during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Ascham, writing twenty years before Sidney, indicated "Aristotle's precepts and Euripides' example" as the criteria of dramatic art;[499] and in spirit these remained the final tests throughout the Elizabethan age. I. _Tragedy_