Specimens of English literature from the 'Ploughmans crede' to the ...

.7.XXIV. THOMAS SACKVILLE. 457I49, A good, a good deal.Hardely, boldly, roundly.Act iv. Sc. 5. 4. V?ieih, scarcely, with difficulty.5. Lo and, see if.Sens, since, already.It Tieeded, &c., there was no necessity for it on that occasion.42. So mote I go, so may I retain the power of walking !43. ' Look on your own handwriting (^that is, on your own copy), andI will look on this, the original which I wrote for you.'92. Ralph had threatened to strike the scrivener, but now daies notstrike Merygreeke.98. ' If it were any one else but you, it would be a knave.' ExcellentSo is Merygreeke's expostulation in 1. 101.XXIV.THOMAS SACKVILLE.Prose Prologue. Line i. When I had 7-ead this. Here / is WilliamBaldwyne, and fhis is the preceding piece. This piece is the tragedy of LordHastings, betrayed by Catesby, and murdered in the tower by RichardDuke of Gloucester, in 1483; it was subscribed in Niccols's edition 'MasterD.' that is, John Dolman. It is therefore here supposed that Baldwynehad just been reading out Dolman's tragedy of Hastings, and was nowexpecting criticisms upon it. The chief criticism is that it was consideredrather too dark, i. e. obscure and difficult. It was at first arranged thatthe tragedy of the murder of the two princes, to be written by LordVaulx, should succeed Dolman's piece, but no information about thetragedy was forthcoming. Accordmgly, the editors pass on to the next,which is Sackville's tragedy of Buckingham, whom Richard III socruelly executed.Then Baldwyne announces that Sackville had writtena poetical Induction, or Introduction, which he had originally intendedto serve as a Prologue to all the tragedies from William the Conqueror'stime to the duke of Buckingham ; all which tragedies he hadoriginally offered to write himself, although, in the sequel, he wrote butone. On this account, the Induction was slightly modified, so as toserve for an introduction to the single tragedy of ' Buckingham 'insteadof to the whole series, and was placed accordingly.28. Lydgate folowing Bocchas. The Mirror for Magistrates wasprofessedly an imitation of Boccaccio's De Casibus Principum, whichhad been translated by Lydgate, with the title The Fall of Princes.*'