[528] Puritans. Strict Protestants who became so powerful in England that in the time of the Commonwealth they controlled the political and religious affairs of the country.
[529] Anglican Church. The Established Church of England; the Episcopal church.
[530] Punch. The chief character in a puppet show, hence the puppet show itself.
[531] Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, etc. For an account of these dramatists consult a text book on English literature. The English drama seems to have begun in the Middle Ages with what were called Miracle plays, which were scenes from Bible history; about the same time were performed the Mystery plays, which dramatized the lives of saints. These were followed by the Moralities, plays in which were personified abstract virtues and vices. The first step in the creation of the regular drama was taken by Heywood, who composed some farcical plays called Interludes. The people of the sixteenth century were fond of pageants, shows in which classical personages were introduced, and Masques, which gradually developed from pageants into dramas accompanied with music. About the middle of the sixteenth century, rose the English drama,—comedy, tragedy, and historical plays. The chief among the group of dramatists who attained fame before Shakespeare began to write were Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, and Peele. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher rank next to Shakespeare among his contemporaries, and among the other dramatists of the period were Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Ford, and Massinger.
[532] At the time when, etc. Probably about 1585.
[533] Tale of Troy. Drama founded on the Trojan war. The subject of famous poems by Latin and Greek poets.
[534] Death of Julius Cæsar. An account of the plots which ended in the assassination of the great Roman general.
[535] Plutarch. See note on Heroism(264). Shakespeare, like the earlier dramatists, drew freely on Plutarch's Lives for material.
[536] Brut. A poetical version of the legendary history of Britain, by Layamon. Its hero is Brutus, a mythical King of Britain.
[537] Arthur. A British King of the sixth century, around whose life and deeds so many legends have grown up that some historians say he, too, was a myth. He is the center of the great cycle of romances told in prose in Mallory's Morte d'Arthur and in poetry in Tennyson's Idylls of the King.