Note 312 — Chapter VI

It is printed in Hazlitt's Webster, vol. iv. Fleay, with characteristic assurance, identifies the Thracian Wonder with a lost play of Heywood's, known only from Henslowe's Diary, and there called 'War without blows and love without suit.' He argues: 'in i. 2, "You never shall again renew your suit;" but the love is given at the end without any suit; and in iii. 2, "Here was a happy war finished without blows."' The identification, however, will not bear examination. No battle, it is true, is fought at Sicily's first appearance, but the title, War without Blows could hardly be applied to a play in which the whole of the last act is occupied with fierce fighting between three different nations. So with the second title, Love without Suit. Serena indeed grants her love in the end without any reason whatever, but only after her lover has 'suited' himself clean out of his five wits. Moreover, it is not certain that this second title should not be Love without Strife. Heywood's play, I have little doubt, was a mere love-comedy (cf. such titles as The Amorous War, and similar expressions in the dramatists passim). The identification, moreover, would necessitate the date 1598, though this does not prevent Fleay from stating that the piece is founded on William Webster's poem published in 1617. So early a date seems to me rather improbable. Since William Webster's poem has nothing to do with the present piece, the suggestion that Kirkman's attribution of the play to John Webster was due to a confusion of course falls to the ground.