But the effect of this Italianisation of the Elizabethan Drama due to Painter goes far deeper than mere externalities. It has been said that after Lamb’s sign-post criticisms, and we may add, after Mr. Swinburne’s dithyrambs, it is easy enough to discover the Elizabethan dramatists over again. But is there not the danger that we may discover too much in them? However we may explain the fact, it remains true that outside Shakespeare none of the Elizabethans has really reached the heart of the nation. There is not a single Elizabethan drama, always of course with the exception of Shakespeare’s, which belongs to English literature in the sense in which _Samson Agonistes_, _Absalom and Achitophel_, _Gulliver’s Travels_, _The Rape of the Lock_, _Tom Jones_, _She Stoops to Conquer_, _The School for Scandal_, belong to it. The dramas have not that direct appeal to us which the works I have mentioned have continued to exercise after the generation for whom they were written has passed away. To an inner circle of students, to the 500 or so who really care for English literature, the Elizabethan dramas may appeal with a power greater than any of these literary products I have mentioned. We recognise in them a wealth of imaginative power, an ease in dealing with the higher issues of life, which is not shown even in those masterpieces. But the fact remains, and remains to be explained, that the Elizabethans do not appeal to the half a million or so among English folk who are capable of being touched at all by literature, who respond to the later masterpieces, and cannot be brought into _rapport_ with the earlier masters. Why is this? Partly, I think, because owing to the Italianisation of the Elizabethan Drama the figures whom the dramatists drew are unreal, and live in an unreal world. They are neither Englishmen nor Italians, nor even Italianate Englishmen. I can only think of four tragedies in the whole range of the Elizabethan drama where the characters are English: Wilkins’ _Miseries of Enforced Marriage_, and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_, both founded on a recent _cause celèbre_ of one Calverly, who was executed 5 August 1605; _Arden of Faversham_, also founded on a _cause celèbre_ of the reign of Edward VI.; and Heywood’s _Woman Killed by Kindness_. These are, so far as I remember, the only English tragedies out of some hundred and fifty extant dramas deserving that name.[25] As a result of all this, the impression of English life which we get from the Elizabethan Drama is almost entirely derived from the comedies, or rather five-act farces, which alone appear to hold the mirror up to English nature. Judged by the drama, English men and English women under good Queen Bess would seem incapable of deep emotion and lofty endeavour. We know this to be untrue, but that the fact appears to be so is due to the Italianising of the more serious drama due to Painter and his school.