AN English Jesuit.

Robert Southwell.

Born 1560.

Exec. 1595.

A victim to the persecuting laws of that period, he wrote some poems in prison, which were very popular at the time. The following piece, Ben Jonson says, is so written that he could destroy many of his own.

THE BURNING BABE.

As I in hoary winter's night
Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat,
Which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye

To view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright,
Did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat,
Such floods of tears did shed,

As though his floods should quench his flames,
Which with his tears were bred.

"Alas!" quoth he, "but newly born,

In fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts

Or feel my fire, but I ;

My faultless breast the furnace is,

The fuel, wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,
The ashes, shames and scorns ;

The fuel justice layeth on,

And mercy blows the coals

The metal in this furnace wrought
Are men's defiled souls:

For which, as now on fire I am,
To work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath,

To wash them in my blood :"
With this he vanished out of sight,

And swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto mind

That it was Christmas Day.

Christopher Marlowe.

Born 1564.

Killed 1593.

ONE of the greatest of the dramatists contemporary with Shakespeare, he was born at Canterbury on 26th February 1564. His father was a shoemaker, but some kind friends enabled him to attend the King's school in Canterbury, where he received a good education. From thence he proceeded to Cambridge, where he took his degree of A.M. While at Cambridge he wrote his first play "Tamburlaine," which at once became a great favourite. "Faustus," his second play, abounds in passages of thrilling power. In his very short career he occupied a position in the public eye equal to Shakespeare. His power of depicting the terrible: is unsurpassed'; and that highest attribute of genius, originality, was possessed by him in the greatest degree. Shakespeare has founded many of his finest pieces on the suggestions of Marlowe. But Marlowe's great pro

mise was cut short by his being killed in a discreditable brawl in the twenty-ninth year of his age.

FAUSTUS.

FAUSTUS alone.-The Clock strikes Eleven.
Faust. Oh, Faustus,

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease and midnight never come.
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day! or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
O lente lente currite, noctis equi.

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
Oh, I will leap to heaven: who pulls me down?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament:
One drop of blood will save me: Oh, my Christ,
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ.
Yet will I call on him: O spare me, Lucifer.
Where is it now? 'tis gone!

And see a threat'ning arm and angry brow.
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.
No? then I will headlong run into the earth:
Gape earth. Oh no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence have allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist

Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud;
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven.

The Watch strikes.
Oh, half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon.
Oh, if my soul must suffer for my sin,

Impose some end to my incessant pain.
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:
No end is limited to damned souls.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?

Oh, Pythagoras! metempsychosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engendered me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

The Clock strikes Twelve.

It strikes, it strikes; now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
Oh soul, be changed into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean: ne'er be found.

Thunder, and enter the Devils.
Oh mercy, heaven, look not so fierce on me.
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while :
Ugly hell gape not; come not, Lucifer:
I'll burn my books: Oh, Mephistophiles !

William Shakespeare.

Born 1564.

Died 1616.

SHAKESPEARE was born on 23d April 1564, in Henley Street, Stratfordupon-Avon, and though looked on, even in his day, as the greatest poet England had ever produced, the materials of his biography are of the most scanty kind. His father was a wool-dealer and butcher, and though in humble, was never in straitened circumstances. Shakespeare received only a plain education, having at school made no progress beyond the rudiments of Latin. While only eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a small farmer at Shottery, near Stratford. She was con

siderably older than himself. Nothing is known of his occupation at this period, excepting that he was making a figure in the justice of peacecourt for deer-stealing. After one of these visits to the justice-court he appears to have written a satirical ballad on the justice, which he affixed to his park gate. The ballad has been lost, but it is said to have been so bitter that Shakespeare had at last to flee to London, where he began his career at the theatres by holding horses for gentlemen who came to the play. He afterwards was admitted inside the theatres to act the humbler parts of the drama. From this moment he rose rapidly, and although all details are awanting, it is known that in his twenty-fifth year he was a sharer in the profits of the representations. In 1593 appeared his first poem, "Venus and Adonis," and in 1594 "Lucrece." About the same time he appears to have become part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, and on the fair way to fortune. His plays were now issued in rapid succession, though the dates when written are not known. The latter years of Shakespeare's life were spent in ease and retirement; he had accumulated a fortune and retired to his native village, where he passed the remainder of his life. He had three children by Anne Hathaway, two girls and a boy; the daughters only survived their parent. Shakespeare died in his fifty-second year, on his birthday, April 23, 1616. He was buried in the parish church of Stratford, where his monument may still be seen.

MURDER OF KING DUNCAN.

MACBETH and a Servant.

Macbeth. Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

[Exit Servant.

The handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight?- -or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made th' fools o' th' other senses,
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing.
It is the bloody business, which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now, o'er one half the world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep: now witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered Murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rds his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sound and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whilst I threat, he lives-
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me :
Hear it not Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

LOVE SCENE.

[A bell rings.

[Exit.

Romeo. He jests at scars that never felt a woundBut, soft! what light through yonder window breaks; It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

[Juliet appears above at a window.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou her maid are far more fair than she;
Be not her maid since she is envious;

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off-
It is my lady; O! it is my love;

What of that?

O that she knew she were!-
She speaks, yet she says nothing.
Her eye discourses; I will answer it-
I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars of all the heav'n,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp: her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
Oh that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!