Shakespeare, in his plays, gives several directions for musical interludes, and introduces songs and choruses, more particularly in “As You Like It,” “Twelfth Night,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In the first half of the seventeenth century William Lawes, and Henry, his brother, wrote music to the masques, in which poetry, music, scenery, and mechanical accessories were combined, producing a decided advance in the direction of real opera; but, notwithstanding the patriotic championship of budding English opera by these gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, and notwithstanding the existence of the great school of madrigal writers, they were never encouraged to attempt dramatic work, as the nobility already demanded Italian opera and Italian composers and singers. During the civil war, and until Charles II.’s restoration, the theatres were closed by the Puritans, and even from 1660 they were only opened for five years with an occasional performance of a masque by Sir William Davenant, the then poet laureate, set to music by Locke, in one of which, “The Siege of Rhodes,” we find the recitative style used, and spoken of as new to England, although well known on the Continent. After those five years came the Plague, and following it the Great Fire, so that it was not until nearer the end of the century that a fair start was made in opera, and that the powerful and masterly works of Henry Purcell saw the light. His genius was undoubtedly superior to that of Lulli in France or Scarlatti in Italy, and he became a power, not in England only, but throughout Europe. Alas, that he should have died so young! The form of opera settled by him and his followers was similar to the French and German, in that whilst the important parts would be sung, the subordinate dialogue was spoken, and there was no accompanied recitative, excepting in some of Dr. Boyce’s and Dr. Arne’s operas. Arne’s “Artaxerxes” has the dialogue, _à l’Italienne_, set entirely in recitative form. But these were exceptions. Dibdin, Dr. Arnold, William Jackson (of Exeter), Shield, Storace, Attwood, Sir Henry Bishop, and many others adhered to the spoken dialogue. It should be quite understood that their music, when it occurred, formed an integral portion of the whole work, and, therefore, differed from interpolated pieces, which could be withdrawn without breaking a sequence.