“Edwards,” writes Collier,[4] “enjoyed a very high reputation as a dramatic poet, but he seems to have owed much of it to the then comparative novelty of his undertakings.” Thomas Twine, in an epitaph upon his death, calls him-- “The flower of our realm And Phœnix of our age,” and specifically mentions two of his plays, “Damon and Pythias” and “Palamon and Arcyte,” adding, however, that he had written more equally fit for the ears of princes-- “Thy tender Tunes and Rimes Wherein thou woont’st to play, Eche princely Dame of Court and Towne, Shall beare in minde alway. Thy Damon and his Friend, Arcyte and Palemon, With moe full fit for princes’ eares, Though thou from earth art gone, Shall still remain in fame,” &c. He is mentioned in Webbe’s “Discourse of English Poetry,” 1586, and Puttenham, in his “Art of English Poesie,” 1589, tells us that the Earl of Oxford (of whose dramatic productions there is no other trace) and Edwards deserve the highest prize for “comedy and interlude; and Lord Buckhurst and Master Edward Ferrys [George Ferrers] for tragedy.” Meres, in his “Palladis Tamia,” 1598, repeats the applause given by Puttenham, with the omission of the word “interlude,” then out of fashion, terming Edwards “one of the best for comedy.” “The earliest notice we have of Edwards as a dramatic poet,” continues Collier, “occurs in 1564-5, when a tragedy by him, the name of which is not given, was performed by the children of the chapel, under his direction, before the Queen at Richmond. This might possibly be his ‘Damon and Pythias,’ termed by Lord Burghley, in the uncertain phraseology of that time, ‘a tragedy,’ or it might be one of the other dramatic performances of which, according to Twine, Edwards was the author. ‘Damon and Pythias,’ however, is the only extant specimen of his talents in this department of Poetry.” Besides his dramatic productions, Edwards was the author of several poems in “The Paradyse of Daynty Devises” (1576), the _sundry pithie and learned inventions_ of which, indeed, are announced in the title to have been “devised and written for the most part by M. Edwards, sometime of her Majesties Chapel.” Two of these _learned inventions_ are given by Ellis, in his “Specimen of Early English Poets,” vol. ii., and one of them in especial has aroused the enthusiasm of Mr Haslewood by the happiness of the illustration, the facility, elegance, and tenderness of the language, and the exquisite turn of the whole.[5] “When he was in extremitie of his sickness,” writes Wood, narrating our author’s death, “he composed a noted poem, called ‘Edwards’ Soul Knil’ (knell), or the ‘Soul Knil of M. Edwards,’ which was commended for a good piece. In support of this tradition, Anthony quotes Gascoigne, whereas Gascoigne, on the contrary, only refers to the story for the purpose of ridiculing the idea that the ‘Knil’ was written under any such circumstances.”[6]