PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 1075 
say, their poems were often as pure as their lives were worthless. 
Greene’s last words were : 
Time, loosely spent, will not again be won ! 
My time is loosely spent—and I undone. 
Marlowe's life has been said to consist of ‘a few daring jests, a 
brawl, and a fatal stab” ; but his Jew of Malta was the predecessor 
of Shylock; his ‘Edward II” stood as the commencement of 
that grand series in which are “ King John,” “ Henry VI,” and 
“ Richard III.” The appearance of Marlowe’s ‘“ Tamburlaine” on 
the English stage drove from the boards at once and for ever the 
boorish farces and colourless imitations of Italian comedy which 
had preceded it. 
Like Chaucer, Shakespeare possessed that joze de vivre which 
seems to be steadily disappearing under the pressure of the 
mental and bodily dyspepsia of the nineteenth century. Leaving 
his native city, endowed with a keen wit, a charming facility of 
expression, and a thorough delight in inspecting as by a search- 
light the actions and characters of men, he commenced with 
a light heart his gigantic task. 
The ‘ Faerie Queene” had been before an English public for 
three years, when Shakespeare launched what he calls “ the first- 
fruit of my invention,” “Venus and Adonis.” The stage had 
been cleared for him about the same time by the death of his 
rivals, Greene and Marlowe. From this time onwards his literary 
activity was incessant. Of the order of his plays we know 
nothing definite. His earlier works are separated from those of 
later date through the list published by Francis Meres, in 1598. 
In all these works breathe the spirit of youth, of success, and of 
happiness. Shakespeare now enjoyed the patronage of Essex and 
Pembroke, and the friendship of Southampton. With the death 
of Essex, and the imprisonment or dispersal of his friends, the 
spirit of his work changes. Joy and delight in life disappear 
from ‘Julius Cesar, “ Hamlet,” “Othello,” and “ Lear.” In his 
prosperous days of ease and affluence, when living a life of calm 
content at Stratford, he regains his belief in the triumph of good 
over evil ; and, separated from the turmoils of the great world, 
he revels in pure poetic fancy in “The Tempest” and in a 
 Wanter's Pale.” 
The rapid creation of the Elizabethan dramatic stage is one of 
the most astonishing of the literary phenomena of the time ; and 
when Shakespeare died he left behind him a line of worthy suc- 
cessors in Jonson, Webster, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont, and 
Fletcher; but while Shakespeare was the exponent of his age 
these became more and more the voices of a party, cut off from 
the mass of the nation by that cleavage which led to the war of 
1642-9. 
