On New Year's, 1584, John Lyly, the author of _Euphues_, presented in the first Blackfriars Theater[16] his prose comedy, entitled _Campaspe_. This play relates the love story of Alexander the Great's fair Theban captive, Campaspe. The twenty-eight characters necessary to produce this play were obtained from the boys of the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's Cathedral. Two months later Lyly's _Sapho and Phao_ was given in the same theater with a cast of seventeen boys. It should be remembered that these plays, so important in the evolution of the drama, were acted by boys under royal patronage. _Campaspe_ is little more than a series of episodes, divided into acts and scenes, but, unlike _Gorboduc, Campaspe_ has many of the characteristics of an interesting modern play. Lyly wrote eight comedies, all but one in prose. In the history of the drama, he is important for (1) finished style, (2) good dialogue, (3) considerable invention in the way he secured interest, by using classical matter in combination with contemporary life, (4) subtle comedy, and (5) influence on Shakespeare. It is doubtful whether Shakespeare could have produced such good early comedies, if he had not received suggestions from Lyly's work in this field. The chapel boys also presented at Blackfriars in the same year George Peele's (1558-1597) _The Arraignment of Paris_, a pastoral drama in riming verse. In Juno's promise to Paris, Peele shows how the possibilities of the New World affected his imagination:-- "Xanthus shall run liquid gold for thee to wash thy hands; And if thou like to tend thy flock and not from them to fly, Their fleeces shall be curlèd gold to please their master's eye." While _The Arraignment of Paris_ and his two other plays, _David and Bathsabe_ and _The Old Wives' Tale_, are not good specimens of dramatic construction, the beauty of some of Peele's verse could hardly have failed to impress both Marlowe and Shakespeare with the poetic possibilities of the drama. Peele writes without effort-- "Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make," and has David build-- "...a kingly bower, Seated in hearing of a hundred streams." Robert Greene (1560-1592) showed much skill in (1) the construction of plots, (2) the revelation of simple and genuine human feeling, and (3) the weaving of an interesting story into a play. His best drama is the poetic comedy _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_. In this play, he made the love story the central point of interest. Thomas Lodge (1558-1625), author of the story _Rosalynde_, which Shakespeare used to such good advantage, wrote in collaboration with Greene, _A Looking Glass for London and England_, and an independent play, _The Wounds of Civil War_. Thomas Nashe (1567-1601), best known for his picaresque novel, _The Unfortunate Traveler_, wrote a play, _Summer's Last Will and Testament_, but he and Lodge had little dramatic ability.