they comprise all extant plays acted before 1586-87 which can be classed as tragedies or tragicomedies. Our knowledge of the professional drama may be supplemented from the titles of non-extant plays and from the Revels Accounts of performances at court; but it should be observed that our information in regard to the development of popular tragedy is very meagre, especially for the important period after 1570, and that the group of Senecan plays, which we are to examine first, owed their existence to no popular favor, but to amateur performances under special conditions. "Gorboduc," or "Ferrex and Porrex," printed surreptitiously in 1565 and with an authoritative text about 1570, was written by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, the author of "The Complaint of Buckingham" and "The Induction" in "The Mirror for Magistrates," and afterwards Lord Buckhurst, Lord High Treasurer. It was performed before the Queen as a part of the elaborate Christmas entertainment of the Inner Temple in 1561-62. The plot is taken from a British legend that was introduced into literature by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and relates the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, the murder of the elder by the younger, the murder of the younger by his mother, the murder of both father and mother by their subjects, the slaughter of the people by the nobles, and the resulting civil wars. The story, evidently chosen because of its likeness to Seneca's "Thebais," is treated in Senecan manner, each of the first four acts being followed by a chorus of "Foure auncient and sage men of Brittaine." The murders are not enacted but are related by messengers, but the unities of time and place are violated, as Sir Philip Sidney noted with disapproval. There is little characterization, much political moralizing, which delighted Sidney, and an abundance of long declamations, about eight hundred lines, nearly half of the play, being comprised in ten speeches. The play is written in blank verse, already used in Surrey's translation from the Æneid, and perhaps adopted in imitation of the unrhymed verse of the Italian tragedies. After the Italian fashion, each act is preceded by a dumb show, symbolizing the following action, and these dumb shows seem to have been utilized to provide the spectacle that was entirely wanting in the play proper. Supernatural visitants appear in the three furies before act iv; and before the last act the dumb show consists of a battle-scene, similar to those which later became the invariable accompaniments of the chronicle history play: "there came forth upon the stage a company of hargabusiers and of armed men all in order of battaile," who discharged their pieces and marched three times about the stage.