Peele's "The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Tragedie of Absalon," acted about 1591, has, unlike "Arden," many "filed points to make it gratious to the eare and eye." It gains a unique interest as the only extant tragedy of this period based on the biblical narrative. The bible story is treated just as a historical chronicle would have been; and the play, divided by choruses into three "discourses," offers no advance in conception, structure, or characterization on the average tragedy of the period. Yet it is the masterpiece of one of the most active among Shakespeare's predecessors and illustrates his most distinctive contribution to the drama's development. As the author of "Alcazar," "Edward I," and possibly "Locrine," as well as "David and Bethsabe," Peele's contribution deserves some note. His dramatic career began at Oxford, where he made a version of one of the "Iphigenias" of Euripides, which was acted at Christ Church, and where he also aided in the production of Dr. Gager's Latin plays. In London he became the friend of Nash, Greene, and Marlowe, and the versatile adopter of the latest dramatic modes, whether in comedy, pastoral, history, or tragedy. In his best work, however, and especially in "David and Bethsabe," there are graces of style which justify Nash's eulogy of his friend as "primus verborum artifex." The great innovation of this early drama was, after all, in poetic style; and in furthering this Peele may claim a place only second to Marlowe. If Marlowe gave sweep and grandeur to blank verse, Peele brought a sweetness of cadence and, as Professor Ward observes, "a vivacity of fancy and a variety of imagery." As Marlowe turned everything into sonorous phrase, now bombastic, now superb, so Peele turned every thought to music and fancy, sometimes banal, sometimes lovely. "David and Bethsabe," with its oriental setting, though treated with careless dramatic art, proved an inspiration to the stylist. The excess of verbalism, indeed, gives the play a sugary and monotonous effect, and its poetry loses connection with character or situation. Absalon plays with conceits for twenty-five lines while hanging by his hair, and laments melodiously for fifteen lines more after being stabbed. But there is charm and gracefulness everywhere, in the choruses, in the defense of Hamon, and in the parables, and now and again the very allurement and luxury of words, as in the famous, "Now comes my lover tripping like the roe And brings my longings tangled in her hair." While this operatic verbalism with its faults and merits cannot of course be assigned wholly to Peele, he seems to have been in the drama one of its earliest and most influential purveyors.