But the maturity and strength of the drama argue a fairly considerable experience in its author, and we shall therefore be probably more correct if we place it last instead of first of Lyly's plays, interpreting the words of the Prologue as simply implying that it was Lyly's first experiment in blank verse, inspired possibly by the example of Marlowe in _Tamburlaine_ and of Shakespeare in _Love's Labour's Lost_[121]. But, whatever its date, _The Woman in the Moon_ must rank among the earliest examples of blank verse in our language, and, as such, its importance is very great. In _Love's Metamorphosis_ there is nothing of interest equal to those points we have noticed in the other two plays of the same class. The only remarkable thing, indeed, about it is the absence of that farcical under-current which appears in all his other plays. Mr Bond suggests, with great plausibility, that such an element had originally appeared, but that, because it dealt with dangerous questions of the time, perhaps with the _Marprelate_ controversy, it was expunged. [121] Bond, III. p. 234. It now remains to say a few words upon _Mother Bombie_, which forms the fourth division of Lyly's dramatic writings. Though it presents many points of similarity in detail to his other plays, its general atmosphere is so different (displaying, indeed, at times distinct errors of taste) that I should be inclined to assign it to a friend or pupil of Lyly, were it not bound up with Blount's _Sixe Court Comedies_[122], and therein said to be written by "the onely Rare Poet of that time, the wittie, comical, facetiously quicke, and unparalleled John Lilly master of arts." It is clever in construction, but undeniably tedious. It shows that Lyly had learnt much from Udall, Stevenson, and Gascoigne, and perhaps its chief point of interest is that it links these writers to the later realists, Ben Jonson, and that student of London life, who is surely one of the most charming of all the Elizabethan dramatists, whimsical and delightful Thomas Dekker. _Mother Bombie_ was an experiment in the drama of realism, the realism that Nash was employing so successfully in his novels. It has been labelled as our earliest pure farce of well-constructed plot and literary form, but, though it is certainly on a much higher plane than _Roister Doister_, it would only create confusion if we denied that title to Udall's play. Yet, despite its comparative unimportance, and although it is evident that Lyly is here out of his natural element, _Mother Bombie_ is interesting as showing the (to our ideas) extraordinary confusion of artistic ideals which, as I have already noticed, is the remarkable thing about the Renaissance in England. Here we have a courtier, a writer of allegories, of dream-plays, the first of our mighty line of romanticists, producing a somewhat vulgar realistic play of rustic life. There is nothing anomalous in this. "Violence and variation," which someone has described