Chaucer, we saw, died in 1400, and his _Canterbury Tales_ brought the first taste of the new spirit to England. But constant war kept in check the development of culture and during the next two hundred years few writers appeared whom one could call classics. An obscure knight, Sir Thomas Malory, is almost the only one now read. He collected (chiefly from French literature) the old English legends about King Arthur and his court, since made more familiar by Tennyson in his _Idylls_, and wrought them in a poem of distinction called the _Morte d’Arthur_ (“The Death of Arthur”). In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas More (beheaded in 1535), at one time Lord Chancellor, wrote his famous _Utopia_, which is based on Plato’s _Republic_. More was at the time very liberal in his ideas. The _Utopia_ (a sketch of an ideal state), however, had to be written in Latin and published abroad. It was not translated into English until forty years later. Then, within little more than ten years of each other, were born Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson, the five giants of a wonderful literary age. Spenser’s (1552-99) great work is _The Faery Queene_. It is an allegorical poem of remarkable grace and beauty, though at times rather obscure in meaning, purporting to represent the excellences of the English character. Chris Marlowe (1564-93), “the father of English tragedy,” was, as these dates show, a great poet who never reached his full development. He shared the turbulent life of the time and was killed in a tavern brawl. His chief tragedies, _Tamburlaine_ and _Dr. Faustus_ (a model for Goethe’s famous work), reveal a poetical and dramatic genius of a high order. Born in the same year, Shakespeare (1564-1616) survived his early robustness and gave the world the series of poems and plays which award him still the first place in all literature. Alike in light verse, comedy, tragedy, and moral play--you see his personal moral development reflected in this order of production--he is the supreme master. It is, in fact, needless to say much about him here. The little that I should have space to say must be known to everybody, and even a short appreciation or analysis of his work would fill a long chapter in this book. Let me note two things. It is extremely interesting, as I have already hinted, to take Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order: to proceed from the loose comedies (suggested by the Italian Renaissance comedians who imitated Plautus) to the historical plays and tragedies, in which one may trace a half-conscious and gradually deepening moral sentiment, to such later plays as _The Winter’s Tale_, _As You Like It_, etc., in which he uses his genius to make character attractive.