Magnitude and splendour of language when the thought is too shrunken to fill it out, becomes mere inflation.

He was a butt of the parodists of the day.

And Shakespeare, though he honoured him "on this side idolatry," did his share of ridicule.

Ancient Pistol is fed and stuffed with relic and rags of Marlowesque affectation-- "Holla! ye pampered jades of Asia, Can ye not draw but twenty miles a day." is a quotation taken straight from _Tamburlaine_.
(3) A study of Shakespeare, who refuses to be crushed within the limits of a general essay is no part of the plan of this book.

We must take up the story of the drama with the reign of James and with the contemporaries of his later period, though of course, a treatment which is conditioned by the order of development is not strictly chronological, and some of the plays we shall have to refer to belong to the close of the sixteenth century.