Yet, with all his shortcomings, Shirley preserves in the main the great tradition of the Elizabethans. A further step downwards, a more deadly stage in the history of decadence, is marked by Sir William Davenant. That arch-impostor, as is well known, had the effrontery to call himself the "son of Shakespeare": a phrase which the unwary have taken in the physical sense, but which was undoubtedly intended to mark his literary kinship with the Elizabethans in general and with the greatest of Elizabethan dramatists in particular. So far as dates go, indeed, the work of Davenant may be admitted to fall within what we loosely call the Elizabethan period; or, more strictly, within the last stage of the period that began with Elizabeth and continued throughout the reigns of her two successors. His first tragedy, _Albovine, King of the Lombards_, was brought out in 1629; and his earlier work was therefore contemporary with that of Massinger and Ford. But much beyond this his relation to the Elizabethans can hardly claim to go. Charity may allow him some faint and occasional traces of the dramatic power which is their peculiar glory; and this is perhaps more strongly marked in his earliest play than in any of its successors. What strikes us most forcibly, however--and that, even in his more youthful work--is the obvious anticipation of much that we associate only with the Restoration period. The historical plot, the metallic ring of the verse, [Footnote: I take two instances from _Albovine_.-- (1) Let all glad hymns in one mix'd concord sound, And make the echoing heavens your mirth rebound.--Act i. (2) I am the broom of heaven; when the world grows foul, I'll sweep the nations into the sea, like dust.--Act ii. It is noticeable that both passages are spoken by Albovine himself, a very creditable elder brother of Dryden's Maximin and Almanzor. One more passage may be quoted, from the _Just Italian_ (1630):-- The sacred noise attend that, whilst we hear, Our souls may dance into each others' ear.--Act v. It will be observed that two out of the above passages, coming at the end of scenes, are actually in rhyme, and rhyme which is hardly distinguishable from that of Dryden.] the fustian and the bombast-- we have here every mark, save one, of what afterwards came to be known as the heroic drama. The rhymed couplet alone is wanting. And that was added by Davenant himself at a later stage of his career. It was in _The Siege of Rhodes_, of which the first part was published in 1656, that the heroic couplet, after an interval of about sixty years, made its first reappearance on the English stage. It was garnished, no doubt, with much of what then passed for Pindaric lyric; it was eked out with music. But the fashion was set; and within ten years the heroic couplet and the heroic drama had swept everything before them. [Footnote: A few lines may be quoted to make good the above description of _The Siege of Rhodes_:--