History of Forbonius and Prisaeria, with Truth’s Complaint over England.

Euphue’s Golden Legacy.

The Wounds of a Civil War livelily set forth, in the true Tragedies of
Marius and Sylla, London 1594.

Looking Glass for London and England, a Tragi-Comedy printed in 4to.  London 1598, in an old black letter.  In this play our author was assisted by Mr. Robert Green.  The drama is founded upon holy writ, being the History of Jonah and the Ninevites, formed into a play.  Mr. Langbain supposes they chose this subject, in imitation of others who had writ dramas on sacred themes long before them; as Ezekiel, a Jewish dramatic poet, writ the Deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt:  Gregory Nazianzen, or as some say, Apollinarius of Laodicea, writ the Tragedy of Christ’s Passion; to these may be added

Hugo Grotius, Theodore Beza, Petavius, all of whom have built upon the foundation of sacred history.

Treatise on the Plague, containing the nature, signs, and accidents of the same, London 1603.

Treatise in Defence of Plays.  This (says Wood) I have not yet seen, nor his pastoral songs and madrigals, of which he writ a considerable number.

He also translated into English, Josephus’s History of the Antiquity of the Jews, London 1602.  The works both moral and natural of Seneca, London 1614.  This learned gentleman died in the year 1625, and had tributes paid to his memory by many of his cotemporary poets, who characterised him as a man of very considerable genius.  Winstanley has preserved an amorous sonnet of his, which we shall here insert.

If I must die, O let me chuse my death:  Suck out my soul with kisses, cruel maid!  In thy breasts crystal balls, embalm my breath, Dole it all out in sighs, when I am laid; Thy lips on mine like cupping glasses clasp; Let our tongues meet, and strive as they would sting:  Crush out my wind with one straight-girting grasp, Stabs on my heart keep time while thou dost sing.  Thy eyes like searing irons burn out mine; In thy fair tresses stifle me outright:  Like Circe, change me to a loathsome swine, So I may live forever in thy sight.  Into heaven’s joys can none profoundly see, Except that first they meditate on thee.

When our author wishes to be changed into a loathsome swine, so he might dwell in sight of his mistress, he should have considered, that however agreeable the metamorphosis might be to him, it could not be so to her, to look upon such a loathsome object.

[Footnote 1:  Langbaine’s Lives of the Poets.]

[Footnote 2:  There is a coarseness of dialogue, even in their genteelest characters, in comedy, that appears now almost unpardonable; one is almost inclined to think the language and manners of those times were not over-polite, this fault appears so frequent; nor is the great Shakespear entirely to be acquitted hereof.]