They deal in the familiar situations of low comedy--the clown, the thrifty citizen and his frivolous wife, the gallant, the bawd, the good apprentice and the bad portrayed vigorously and tersely and with a careless kindly gaiety that still charms in the reading.

The best writers in this kind were Middleton and Dekker--and the best play to read as a sample of it _Eastward Ho!_ in which Marston put off his affectation of sardonical melancholy and joined with Jonson and Dekker to produce what is the masterpiece of the non-Shakespearean comedy of the time.
For all our habit of grouping their works together it is a far cry in spirit and temperament from the dramatists whose heyday was under Elizabeth and those who reached their prime under her successor.

Quickly though insensibly the temper of the nation suffered eclipse.

The high hopes and the ardency of the reign of Elizabeth saddened into a profound pessimism and gloom in that of James.

This apparition of unsought melancholy has been widely noted and generally assumed to be inexplicable.