The nearly contemporary _Apius and Virginia_ (c. 1563), though it takes its subject--destined to become a perennial one on the modern stage--from Roman story; the _Historie of Horestes_ (pr. 1567); and T. Preston's _Cambises King of Percia_ (1569-1570), are somewhat rougher in form, and, the first and last of them at all events, more violent in diction, than _Gorboduc_. They still contain elements of the moralities (above all the Vice) and none of the formal features of classical tragedy. But a _Julyus Sesyar_ seems to have been performed, in precisely the same circumstances as _Gorboduc_, so early as 1562; and, four years later, G. Gascoigne, the author of the satire _The Steele Glass_, produced with the aid of two associates (F. Kinwelmersh and Sir Christopher Yelverton, who wrote an epilogue), _Jocasta_, a virtual translation of L. Dolce's _Giocasta_, which was an adaptation, probably, of R. Winter's Latin translation of the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides.[163] Between the years 1567 and 1580 a large proportion of the plays presented at court by choir- or school-boys, and by various companies of actors, were taken from Greek legend or Roman history; as was R. Edwardes' _Damon and Pithias_ (perhaps as early as 1564-1565), which already shades off from tragedy into what soon came to be called tragi-comedy.[164] Simultaneously with the influence, exercised directly or indirectly, of classical literature, that of Italian, both dramatic and narrative, with its marked tendency to treat native themes, asserted itself, and, while diversifying the current of early English tragedy, infused into it a long-abiding element of passion. There are sufficient grounds for concluding that a play on the subject of _Romeo and Juliet_, which L. da Porto and M. Bandello had treated in prose narrative--that of the latter having through a French version formed itself into an English poem--was seen on an English stage in or before 1562. _Gismonde of Salerne_, a play founded on Boccaccio, was acted before Queen Elizabeth at the Inner Temple in 1568, nearly a generation before it was published, rewritten in blank verse by R. Wilmot, one of the performers, then in holy orders; G. Whetstone's _Promos and Cassandra_, founded on G. Cinthio (from which came the plot of _Measure for Measure_), followed, printed in 1578; and there were other "casts of Italian devices" belonging to this age, in which the choice of a striking theme still seemed the chief preoccupation of English tragic poets.