at Christ's, when a play was performed there in 1566. But the evidence of his authorship is inconclusive, and the play "made by Mr. S., Master of Arts," may be by William Stevenson, or by some other contemporary. This comedy is slighter in plot and coarser in diction than _Ralph Roister Doister_, but by no means unamusing. In the main, however, early English comedy, while occasionally introducing characters and scenes of thoroughly native origin and complexion (e.g. Grim, the Collier of Croydon),[165] was content to borrow its themes from classical or Italian sources.[166] G. Gascoigne's _Supposes_ (acted at Gray's Inn in 1566) is a translation of _I Suppositi_ of Ariosto, remarkable for the flowing facility of its prose. While, on the one hand, the mixture of tragic with comic motives, which was to become so distinctive a feature of the Elizabethan drama, was already leading in the direction of tragi-comedy, the precedent of the Italian pastoral drama encouraged the introduction of figures and stories derived from classical mythology; and the rapid and diversified influence of Italian comedy, in close touch with Italian prose fiction, seemed likely to affect and quicken continuously the growth of the lighter branch of the English drama. Conditions of the early Elizabethan drama. Out of such promises as these the glories of English drama were ripened by the warmth and light of the great Elizabethan age--of which the beginnings may fairly be reckoned from the third decennium of the reign to which it owes its name. The queen's steady love of dramatic entertainments could not of itself have led, though it undoubtedly contributed, to such a result. Against the attacks which a nascent puritanism was already directing against the stage by the hands of J. Northbrooke,[167] the repentant playwright S. Gosson,[168] P. Stubbes,[169] and others,[170] were to be set not only the frugal favour of royalty and the more liberal patronage of great nobles,[171] but the fact that literary authorities were already weighing the endeavours of the English drama in the balance of respectful criticism, and that in the abstract at least the claims of both tragedy and comedy were upheld by those who shrank from the desipience of idle pastimes. It is noticeable that this period in the history of the English theatre coincides with the beginning of the remarkable series of visits made to Germany by companies of English comedians, which did not come to an end till the period immediately before the Thirty Years' War, and were occasionally resumed after its close. As at home the popularity of the stage increased, the functions of playwright and actor, whether combined or not, began to hold out a reasonable promise of personal gain. Nor, above all, was that higher impulse which leads men of talent and genius to attempt forms of art in harmony with the tastes and tendencies of their times wanting to the group of writers who can be remembered by no