Amongst the most remarkable dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare, or those who immediately followed him, were Chapman, Ben Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Marston, Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Ford, Heywood, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. George Chapman (_born_, 1557; _died_, 1634) wrote sixteen plays, and, conjointly with Ben Jonson and Marston, one more, as well as three in conjunction with Shirley. The tragedies of Chapman are written in a grave and eloquent diction, and abound with fine passages, but you feel at once that they are not calculated, like Shakespeare's, for acting. They want the inimitable life, ease, and beauty of the great dramatist. Perhaps his tragedy of _Bussy D'Ambois_ is his best, and next to that his _Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron_. Of his comedies, the best are, _Eastward Ho!_ partly composed by Jonson and Marston, _Monsieur d'Olive_, and his _All Fools_. But Chapman's fame now rests on his translation of Homer, which, with all its rudeness of style and extreme quaintness, has always seized on the imagination of poets, and has been declared to be the best translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" that we possess. Pope was greatly indebted to it, having borrowed from it almost all the felicitous double epithets which are found in him. The most celebrated of Webster's tragedies, _The Duchess of Malfi_, was revived by Richard Hengist Horne, and put on the stage at Sadler's Wells by Phelps with considerable success. He was the author of three tragedies, _Appius and Virginia_, _Duchess of Malfi_, and _The White Devil, or, Vittoria Corombona_; a tragic comedy, _The Devil's Law Case, or, When Women Go to Law, the Devil is full of Business_, besides two comedies in conjunction with Rowley, and two others in conjunction with Dekker. Webster exhibits remarkable power of language, and an imagination of wonderful vigour, but rather too fond of horrors. Undoubtedly he was one of the best dramatists of his age, and seemed fully conscious of it. That he had a true poetic vein in him is evidenced by such passages as the "Dirge of Marcello," sung by his mother, which reminds one of the like simple homely ditties in Shakespeare:-- "Call for the robin red-breast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm, And when grey tombs are robbed, sustain no harm." There are fine truths also scattered through his dramas as:--"To see what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divided friends, and made great houses inhospitable, so now, O justice, where are their flatterers? Flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible."