The Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth; Delivered at the Surrey Institution, By William Hazlitt, were published in 8vo (8¾ × 5¼), in the year of their delivery, 1820, and they were reviewed in the same year in The Edinburgh Review. A second edition was published in 1821, of which the present issue is a reprint. The half-title reads simply ‘Hazlitt’s Lectures,’ and the imprint is ‘London: John Warren, Old Bond-Street, MDCCCXXI.’ An ‘Erratum,’ behind the Advertisement, ‘Page 18, l. 20, for “wildnesses,” read wildernesses,’ has been corrected in the present text.
| LECTURE I. | |
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| Introductory.—General view of the Subject | 175 |
| LECTURE II. | |
| On the Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shakespear, Lyly, Marlow, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley | 192 |
| LECTURE III. | |
| On Marston, Chapman, Deckar, and Webster | 223 |
| LECTURE IV. | |
| On Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Ford, and Massinger | 248 |
| LECTURE V. | |
| On single Plays, Poems, &c., the Four P’s, the Return from Parnassus, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, and other Works | 274 |
| LECTURE VI. | |
| On Miscellaneous Poems, F. Beaumont, P. Fletcher, Drayton, Daniel, &c., Sir P. Sidney’s Arcadia, and Sonnets | 295 |
| LECTURE VII. | |
| Character of Lord Bacon’s Work—compared as to style with Sir Thomas Brown and Jeremy Taylor | 326 |
| LECTURE VIII. | |
| On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature—on the German Drama, contrasted with that of the Age of Elizabeth | 345 |
By the Age of Elizabeth (as it relates to the History of our Literature) I would be understood to mean the time from the Reformation, to the end of Charles I. including the Writers of a certain School or style of Poetry or Prose, who flourished together or immediately succeeded one another within this period. I have, in the following pages, said little of two of the greatest Writers of that Age, Shakespear and Spenser, because I had treated of them separately in former Publications.