INTRODUCTION. XVll
Shakespeare. The Puritans were bitter enemies of the stage, and all connected with it; and their dislike was reciprocated most heartily by the playwrights and players. Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, speaking of the treatment of the Puritans, says, —
" every stage, and every table, and every puppet-play, belched forth pi'ofane scoffs upon them, the drunkards made them their songs, and all fiddlers and mimics learned to abuse them, as finding it the most gameful way of fooling." *
In i6ii, the common version of the Bible was published. We have already seen how early Mrs. Bradstreet began to find comfort in this volume, which was to be the solace of her lonely and melancholy hours, for the rest of her life. The charming essays of Montaigne, with their varied learn- ing and keen insight into human nature, had been "done into Englilh" by John Florio, and had attracted the atten- tion of the immortal dramatist himself. Burton had tried in vain to drive away his melancholy, by writing its "Anat- omy." Chapman had given to the world his grand version of Homer. Sir Thomas North had translated " Plutarch's Lives" in a manner most aptly suited to the easy storj^- telling style of the original ; and his book was to be " a household book, for the whole of the seventeenth century." f The "silver-tongued" Sylvester, who was himself the author of many poems, had translated the works of the fa- vorite French poet, the " divine " Du Bartas, of whom we- shall hear more farther on. The poets of this period were numerous, and the writings of many of them are even now read. Some of them are noted for their sensuousness,
- Life of Col. Hutchinson, Bohn's ed. p. 82.
t Hooper's Introduction to Chapman's Homer's Iliad, p. ix.
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