[Footnote 37: Froude's "History of England," vol. 8, p. 429.]
[Footnote 38: Stone, "Chronicles of Fashion."]
[Footnote 39: Holinshed, vol. I, p. 315; Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times", vol. 1, p. 72.]
[Footnote 40: Holinshed, vol. I, p. 275; Drake's "Shakespeare", vol. 1, p. 99.]
[Footnote 41: Harrison's "Description"; Drake's "Shakespeare," vol. 1, p. 101.]
[Footnote 42: Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. 1, p. 101.]
[Footnote 43: Henry Peacham, "Compleat Gentleman," 1624.]
[Footnote 44: Bourne; Drake's "Shakespeare," vol. 1, p. 153.]
[Footnote 45: Stubbes, "Anatomie of Abuses," p. 168.]
[Footnote 46: Douce, "Illustrations of Shakespeare."]
[Footnote 47: Stubbes; Drake's "Shakespeare," vol. 1, ch. vi.]
[Footnote 48: Laevinius Lemnius; Drake, vol. 2, p. 113.]
[Footnote 49: Nichol's "Progresses of Elizabeth," vol. 2, p. 391.]
[Footnote 50: Harrison: Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. 2, p. 87.]
[Footnote 51: Harrison's "Description of England"; Holinshed, vol. I, pp. 289-90; Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times" vol. 2, pp. 88, 89.]
[Footnote 52: "Nugæ Antique", Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. 2, p. 90.]
[Footnote 53: "The Gull's Horn Book"; Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times", vol. 2, p. 184.]
[Footnote 56: Green, "Short History of the English People," p. 429.]
It is to the drama that we must look for the most complete literary expression of the social condition of the period. The student of history must regret, indeed, that the realistic novel, with its study of human thoughts and motives, with its illustration of manners and customs, so valuable in a reconstruction of the past, should have been delayed till the end of the seventeenth century. But though there be regret, there cannot be surprise. The reigns of Elizabeth and the Stuarts cover the period of court life; when men lived in public, and sought their intellectual entertainment in crowds at a theatre, as now, in a time of citizen-life, they seek it in private, by the study-lamp.[57] In a dramatic age the creations of the imagination will be placed behind the footlights, and in a period of quiet and reflection they will be placed between the covers of a book. In the age of Elizabeth the writers of fiction neither studied the characters and manners of the men about them, nor aimed at any reflection of actual life. But their tales and romances were the natural fruit of their intellectual condition, and form an interesting if not a valuable portion of English fiction. In them are reflected the happiness, the poetry, the love of novelty, and the ideality of the time. The stirring incidents of chivalric romance were no longer in vogue, and the subject became an idealized love. But the most striking feature of Elizabethan fiction is the great importance attached to style. The writer cared more to excite admiration by the turn of his phrases and the ornaments of his language, than to interest his reader by plot or incident.