IN my Introduction to the Reading of Shakespeare I have
given some suggestions to those who are beginning
the study of Shakespeare's plays and poems and I have
indicated what are likely to be helpful lines of approach
to them. The question has been asked:

What does he know of England
Who only England knows?

So, in a measure, it is with England's master-dramatist.
He does not stand alone in isolated majesty. His work
is the climax, the consummation of the efforts and
achievements of forerunners for a century before he
began to write. Unless we know something of what they
were and did, of what they contributed to the English
stage before Shakespeare came both to crown and to
eclipse what they had so far accomplished, we shall not
be able to see his own work in its true proportion and
perspective. Some knowledge of predecessors and con-
temporaries in the field of drama is therefore necessary
to every reader of Shakespeare after he has become more
or less familiar with the plays preserved in the First
Folio of 1623.

This is alone a sufficient reason for the study of early
Tudor drama. But that study is also an end in itself.
We understand Shakespeare all the better if we have
made acquaintance with Medwall and Heywood, Lyly
and Greene, Kyd and Marlowe, and with school and
university playwrights. But these would be well worth
our attention, and would more than repay our pains

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