The eighteenth of January 1561 ought to be celebrated as the birthday of the English drama; for it was on this day that Thomas Sackville caused to be represented at Whitehall, for the entertainment of Elizabeth and her court, the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, otherwise called Gorboduc, the joint production of himself and Thomas Norton. From the unrivalled force of imagination, the vigor and purity of diction, and the intimate knowledge and tasteful adaptation of the beauties of the Latin poets displayed in the contributions of Sackville to the Mirror of Magistrates, a lettered audience would conceive high expectations from his attempt in a new walk of poetry; but in the then barbarous state of our Theatre, such a performance as Gorboduc must have been hailed as not only a novelty but a wonder. It was the first piece composed in English on the ancient tragic model, with a regular division into five acts, closed by lyric choruses.

It offered the first example of a story from British history, or what passed for history, completely dramatized and represented with an attempt at theatrical illusion; for the earlier pieces published under the title of tragedies were either ballads or monologues, which might indeed be sung or recited, but were incapable of being acted. The plot of the play was fraught with those circumstances of the deepest horror by which the dormant sensibilities of an inexperienced audience require and delight to be awakened.