GEORGE, an English dramatist of the Elizabethan age, is said to have been born in Devonshire in 1552 or 1553. He was a member of Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1564. He took his bachelor's degree in 1577; and was made Master of Arts in 1579. Soon after this date, and with the reputation, according to Anthony Wood, of being "a most noted poet in the university," young Peele repaired to the metropolis, adopted the profession of authorship, and occasionally tried his hand at the histrionic art. He seems to have enjoyed a tolerable share of the distinction ordinarily accorded to poets of his time,—viz., extreme poverty. He associated with Marlowe, Greene, Nash, Lodge, and Watson, and seems to have mingled as eagerly in the dissipations of the metropolis as the most dissolute of those gifted men. Peele's character has doubtless suffered, however, from the absurd and obviously fictitious tract entitled The Merrie Conceived Tests of George Peele, which represents him as a low and vulgar sharper, rejoicing in rascality, and glorying in the meanest frauds. It is doubtless a counterpart to Ben Johnson's Jests, or the yet more preposterous Merry and Diverting Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King's Fool. Honest old Dekker introduces us to Peele and his set in the Elysian fields amid the "Grove of Bay Trees," where, seated amid thick laurel, by a stream "that made music in the running," "from them came forth such harmonious sounds that birds build nests only in the trees there to teach tunes to their young ones prettily." Peele was not the sweetest singer there, however, for young Kit Marlowe was among them. The date of Peele's death is unknown. He was dead in 1598, as appears from the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, who informs us, with what truth it is difficult to say, that his end was hastened by his vices.

The earliest of Peele's productions known to us is a copy of verses prefixed to Watson's Exercitatio, published about 1581. Besides a number of miscellaneous poems, some of them possessing very great merit, speeches for pageants, &c., we find in Mr Dyce's collection of Peele's writings six dramas in all, but forming not more, in the estimation of that judicious critic, than one-half of his entire dramatic works. In 1584 his pastoral drama of the Arraignment of Paris was printed anonymously; but the allusion to it by Peele's friend Nash, in the Preface to Greene's Arcadia, 1587, leaves no doubt as to the authorship. The Famous Chronicle History of King Edward I., appeared in 1593, and possesses much interest, as well from its extravagance as from its occasional tragic energy. In 1594 was published the anonymous tragedy of The Battle of Alcazar, which Malone and Dyce, with some hesitancy, agree in ascribing to Peele. The Old Wives Tale, a pleasant conceited Comedic, had been frequently performed before 1595, when it was first published; and possesses the interest of having partly furnished Milton with the plan and character of his Comus. It is highly imaginative, but disfigured by buffoonery and extravagance. Peele's greatest performance, The Love of David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Tragedy of Absolom, was first printed in 1599, and is characterized by Thomas Campbell (Spec. of Brit. Poets, vol. i.) as "the earliest fount of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry." Charles Lamb, while not quite so enthusiastic about "this canticle of David," has nevertheless rendered the "kingly bower, seated in hearing of a hundred streams," familiar to all readers. (See Specimens of Eng. Dram. Poets.) The Historie of the Two Valiant Knights Sir Clymon and Sir Clamydes, printed anonymously in 1599, is attributed to Peele by Mr Dyce, partly on the faith of a manuscript marking on the title-page of an old copy, and partly on internal evidence. Such are the remains of what gained Peele his fame as a dramatist among his contemporaries. "His comedies and tragedies," says Wood, "were often acted with great applause, and did endure reading with due commendation many years after their author's death." (Athene Oxonienses, vol. i., p. 688.) Peele's close relation to Marlowe and Greene naturally provokes comparison with them. While not to be named beside Marlowe in respect to the depth and power of his tragic genius, and while decidedly below Greene in comic power, he nevertheless deserves a higher place than either as a felicitous versifier. Thomas Campbell alleges,—"There is no such..." sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare." (See The Works of George Peele, with some Account of his Life and Writings, by Rev. Alex. Dyce, 2 vols., 1828. Improvements and additions appeared with the reprint of 1829; and in 1839 a third volume was added by the same editor.)