Preface (continued 2)

The real fault of Massinger lies in an imperfect presentation of character. This point has been felt by many writers, and put in various ways. Coleridge bluntly says: “Massinger's characters have no character.”207 Brander Matthews puts it in another way when he observes that “the plots are not the result of the characters, but the work of the playwright,”208 a criticism we may remark in passing eminently applicable to Fletcher. It has been said that the characters are conventional, like those in the Italian or Spanish sources from which they are derived; the violent tyrant and the arrogant queen are the most familiar of these types. I do not think this statement arrives at the root of the matter. Characters may be conventional and yet interesting and lifelike. A great many of the personages in Massinger's plays, important and unimportant alike, act reasonably; he takes great pains to discriminate them, and the effect is successful and consistent. Let us recall the great characters in Massinger; they are Paris, Luke, Sir Giles Overreach, Durazzo, Marullo, Malefort, Charalois, Antiochus, Camiola, Dorothea, Donusa, Almira. In the second rank we may put Timoleon, Romont, Bertoldo, John Antonio, Mathias, Wellborn, Athenais, Marcelia, Sophia, Cleora. Of these persons, the two that I think most men would like to have known best are Paris and Camiola. Notice, by the way, that there is seldom more than one great character in a play. Now, in Henry VIII there are three, the King, Catherine, and Wolsey. The question arises whether Massinger, even with Fletcher's help, could have worked on this scale. If [pg 072] Massinger wrote Henry VIII it is certainly, with all its faults, his most remarkable achievement.

The point which I wish to emphasize is that there are many characters in Massinger drawn with care and ability. Think, for example, of the skilful contrast between Pulcheria and Athenais in The Emperor of the East, showing how easy it is for two good women to quarrel. Further, it is clear that the attempt to produce composite and developing characters is praiseworthy, even if it be not always successful, because it is more true to life than Ben Jonson's brilliant but illusory delineation of “humours.” Human beings are too complex to be labelled in this slapdash way, however amusing it may be on the stage.

And yet we must allow that a certain number of the more important characters act outrageously; the explanation being that the faults which Massinger loves to portray and censure are such as show themselves in outrageous ways—such as anger, pride, impotence in the Latin sense, uxoriousness, and above all jealousy.209 Take the case of Theophilus in The Virgin Martyr, who kills his daughters because they have been reconverted to Christianity; or of Domitian in The Roman Actor, who goes through life killing people as he would kill flies. It is not enough to say that there are such people in the world; the point is, that in Massinger they shock us without appalling us. Sforza behaves to Marcelia much as Othello behaves to Desdemona; we feel at once a difference of power in the two plays.210 Massinger has many villains, but Shakspere manages better with Richard III and Iago. Think again of the uxoriousness of Ladislas, Theodosius, Domitian, which some have held to be a covert satire on Charles I. We despise these weak and servile husbands.

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Now, is there anything we can urge in Massinger's justification? I think there is. We read his plays nowadays, we do not see them acted. We are therefore apt to forget how impressive and vigorous good acting is. The display of passion on the stage with gesture, attitude, frown, and scorn, would render more tolerable some of these scenes which offend us in the study by their crudeness. Such a part, for instance, as Leosthenes in The Bondman, the jealous and yet guilty lover, has great opportunities for the actor. It might even be urged that Massinger wrote thus because he knew the capabilities of the actors who were going to perform his plays.

The same consideration applies to a feature in Massinger which will strike every reader. He sets himself at times to represent growth, or, at any rate, change, of character. Even Shakspere seldom tries to do this,211 and it was too hard a task for his pupil. His most ambitious venture in this direction is in The Picture. In that play Mathias has a magic portrait, which shows him whether his wife is faithful to him or not in his absence; and the alternations of the mind in husband and wife alike are drawn with considerable power. Luke in The City Madam is perhaps the most skilfully drawn example of a development of character. The hypocrite is quite carried away by the riches to which he unexpectedly succeeds.212 Another successful conversion is that of Theophilus at the end of The Virgin Martyr. It is due partly to his eating the heavenly fruit, for which he had asked Dorothea at her death, partly to the effect which the [pg 074] grace and beauty of Angelo produce on his mind. The gradual growth of his new belief, in spite of all that Harpax can do, is managed with much skill, and it is in itself true to nature that the man who had been violent in one direction should ultimately be violent in another. Moreover, we are bound to remember that when people are soon persuaded, the play gets on. Indeed, I think we have in this consideration the clue to the whole matter; “the Stage Poet” had a practical mind.

Change of mood and vacillation of purpose, under the stress of temptation, or due to the conflict of contrary impulses, are features of some of Massinger's best scenes. The wavering of the love-sick Caldoro while Durazzo is abusing him is very true to life.213 The skill with which the “melancholy” Vitelli's changes of mood are depicted in The Renegado214 suggests the theory that Massinger is drawing his own portrait. The alternation of pride and humility in Honoria in The Picture215 is forcibly shown. The just anger of Sophia at the end of the same play yields skilfully to a combined intercession.

As a rule, however, the changes are too rapid. Thus, in The Maid of Honour, Aurelia, when she hears that Camiola has ransomed Bertoldo and bound him with a promise to marry her, suddenly changes her mind; she has been on the point of marrying the faithless soldier, but, as she says:

On the sudden

I feel all fires of love quench'd in the water

Of my compassion.216

Though the change is natural, it is inartistically effected; it comes too suddenly. Think, however, what an opportunity this would be for a great actress. If we were in the audience, we should see the gradual development reflected in her expression and bearing long before she utters the words which embody her thought.

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Other instances of the same thing are to be found in Donusa's conversion to Christianity in The Renegado,217 in the change of faith effected in Calista and Christeta by Dorothea's story of the King of Egypt and Osiris' image,218 and in the indecision of Lorenzo about matrimony in The Bashful Lover.219

Change of mind is an ungrateful and inartistic experience. It has landed many honest politicians in bitter and undeserved reproaches. From Aristotle's time onwards Euripides has been blamed for his Iphigenia at Aulis, who first feared to die, and then offered herself for her country.220 We certainly feel that in Massinger there are occasionally instances of cheap repentance which do not seem real. Take the case of Corisca in The Bondman; a bad woman repents, but though convinced we are not pleased at the spectacle.221 If Massinger had ever read the Poetics of Aristotle, he forgot or ignored the precept that a character should be ὁμαλόν, or “consistent.”222 If this is not the case there is a danger that [pg 076] the effect will be μιαρόν, or “odious,” to use a word of which Aristotle is fond. I think, then, that this charge is proven. Massinger saw how effective on the stage a sudden change of character might be, but lacked the necessary art to make it convincing. Hence some of his characters are not even ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλοι.223 Perhaps the explanation is this, that, being a master of language, he overvalued the persuasiveness of rhetoric.224 It is not enough to portray the varying emotions which sway the mind at a particular moment; to produce a satisfactory whole they have to be fused together. The reader should not feel that the characters are at the mercy of the situations in which they are placed, or they will appear to be lay-figures or puppets, rather than live flesh and blood.

Yet even here a defence of some sort can be set up for our poet. I will endeavour to make my meaning clear by an analogy from music. It may have occurred to someone to ask what the music of Mozart would have been like if he had lived after Beethoven. Would it have been more serious and sublime than it is? The question is worth asking, even if the only answer to it be this, that without Mozart Beethoven would never have existed. I think it is fair to argue that Massinger, in his constant effort after the representation of change of character, was before his time; he was seeking after a complex but possible effect, which the novelist can undertake but which the limitations of the stage render almost impossible.225

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Is it fanciful to say that if he had lived in the eighteenth century, if he had had before his eyes the work of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, he would have been a good novelist, less cynical than Fielding, more concise than Richardson, more ideal than Smollett? There are authors like Euripides and Virgil whose very failures by a strange paradox seem part of their greatness; and we may perhaps say that Massinger, by pointing the way somewhat tentatively and blindly to subtle psychological studies, has helped to build up the noble fabric of the English novel.

Let us now turn to some miscellaneous points of interest in Massinger; and first, let us note his imitation of Shakspere. It is tempting to suppose that as he was at one time a dependent of a family which was intimate with Shakspere he may have come across the man himself;226 it is, at any rate, simpler to remember that as he was thirty-two years of age when Shakspere died, he can hardly have failed to meet him in his professional relations. But we have no evidence of the fact. All we can say is that his plays, like those of Fletcher, Webster, Tourneur, and others,227 show a constant study of Shakspere.228

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First let me give a few examples of the imitation of incidents. In The Roman Actor,229 Paris refers to a tragedy “in which a murder was acted to the life,” which forced a guilty hearer to make discovery of his secret; this recalls the play scene in Hamlet.230 In A Very Woman231 Almira makes Antonio tell her his history. The hint of this is taken from Othello.232 In The Fatal Dowry233 Beaumelle and her maid arrange to be overheard, like Hero and Ursula in Much Ado about Nothing.234 The device by which Beaupré recovers her husband in The Parliament of Love is imitated from All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure. The banditti in The Guardian235 respect the poor like the outlaws in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.236 The forest scenes in the same play recall As You Like It and Midsummer-Night's Dream.237 In The Bashful Lover238 the pretty tale of a sister which Ascanio tells is a reminiscence of Twelfth Night.239 The incident in the same play of Hortensio with Ascanio in his arms240 is modelled on As You Like It.241 Malefort's behaviour to the tailor242 is imitated from Petruchio's in The Taming of the Shrew.243 The gibberish of the pretended Indians in The City Madam244 reminds us of Parolles' adventure in All's Well.245 The scene in The Emperor of the East246 where Eudocia professes to have eaten the apple is modelled on Othello247, where Desdemona asserts that the handkerchief is not lost. In The Bondman248 Zanthia overhears Corisca's confession of love in her sleep, as Iago [pg 079] does Cassio's.249 In A New Way to pay Old Debts250 Sir Giles Overreach, is carried off for treatment to a dark room like Malvolio in Twelfth Night.251 Almira in A Very Woman252 reminds us of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. The ghosts in The Unnatural Combat253 and The Roman Actor254 are used like those in the finale of Richard III.

Parallels in thought and diction are also numerous. Take The Roman Actor255:

Aretinus. Are you on the stage,

You talk so boldly?

Paris. The whole world being one,

This place is not exempted.

This goes back to Jaques in As You Like It.256 In The Maid of Honour257 Jacomo talks of “trailing the puissant pike;” the phrase of Pistol in Henry V.258 In The Emperor of the East259 Athenais makes use of the phrase “prophetic [pg 080] soul,” which we remember in Hamlet.260 Leosthenes uses the same phrase in The Bondman261 when the mutinous slave Cimbrio boasts of the excesses of his friends. The pun which Hircius makes on the cobbler's awl262 occurs in the first scene of Julius Cæsar. The madness of the English slave in A Very Woman263 comes from the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet.264 The “many-headed monster, multitude” of Theodosius in The Emperor of the East265 takes us back to Coriolanus' “beast with many heads”;266 while the reference in the same play267 to the “stomach” reminds us of the fable of Menenius.268 In The Bashful Lover269 Uberti discourses thus:

I look on your dimensions, and find not

Mine own of lesser size; the blood that fills

My veins, as hot as yours, my sword as sharp,

My nerves of equal strength, my heart as good.

This reminds us of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice270 and the King in Henry V.271 Clarindore's language in The Parliament of Love272 is modelled on Malvolio in Twelfth Night.273 The same is true of Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way.274 Shakspere's dislike of spaniels reappears in the same play.275

No doubt we must make deductions for the common [pg 081] idioms of the day,276 but the cumulative evidence of these parallels with the elder dramatist is overwhelming.277

Massinger is very fond of introducing doctors in his plays; so no doubt are the other dramatists of this period. It is interesting to compare Paulo in A Very Woman with Corax in The Lover's Melancholy of Ford, who deals successfully with two cases of mental derangement. Ford is more subtle, Massinger more dignified. Thus we find in The Virgin Martyr278 a consultation about Antoninus' health. Sapritius, the afflicted father, hails the doctors thus:

O you that are half gods, lengthen that life

Their deities lend us; turn o'er all the volumes

Of your mysterious Æsculapian science

T' increase the number of this young man's days.279

Compare with this another passage in The Duke of Milan:

Sforza. O you earthly gods,

You second natures, that from your great master,

Who join'd the limbs of torn Hippolytus,

And drew upon himself the Thunderer's envy,

Are taught those hidden secrets that restore

To life death-wounded men!280

In A Very Woman281 Paulo, on entering with two surgeons, is thus addressed:

Duke. My hand! You rather

Deserve my knee, and it shall bend as to

A second father, if your saving aids

Restore my son.

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Viceroy. Rise, thou bright star of knowledge,

Thou honour of thy art, thou help of nature.

Thou glory of our academies!

The old saying, “Ubi tres medici ibi duo athei,” referred to by Sir T. Browne in Religio Medici is recalled to us by these lines:

Viceroy. Observe his piety; I have heard, how true

I know not, most physicians, as they grow

Greater in skill, grow less in their religion;

Attributing so much to natural causes,

That they have little faith in that they cannot

Deliver reason for; this doctor steers

Another course.282

We find them again in The Emperor of the East,283 where a surgeon is contrasted with an empiric who vends his wares and talks much Latin, like the quack in Ben Jonson's Alchemist, while Paulinus complains of the many medical impostors who prey upon the rich. The crisis of The Duke of Milan284 owes much to the action of doctors. The plot of A Very Woman hinges largely on the skill of the doctor Paulo, to whom we have referred above. In this play we have two victims of melancholy, Almira and Cardenes; the former is cured by falling in love with the disguised John Antonio; the latter is Paulo's patient. The recovery of the avaricious father in The Roman Actor285 is due to Paris acting in the part of a doctor. The physician Dinant in The Parliament of Love gives the gallants a good lesson (IV., 5). And in The Picture286 we find an elaborate simile, in which soldiers are said to be the surgeons of the State. In the same play Hilario,287 when on starvation [pg 083] fare, is accosted by a surgeon, who invites him to sell himself for “a living anatomy to be set up in the surgeons' hall.” Such passages,288 and the zest with which Massinger refers to potatoes, eringos, and the like,289 together with the rather wearisome allusions which he makes to “caudles” and “cullises,”290 lead us to wonder whether at one time of his life he may have seriously studied medicine. There is a significant passage in The Parliament of Love,291 where Chamont says to the doctor Dinant,

Good master doctor, when your leisure serves,

Visit my house; when we least need their art,

Physicians look most lovely.

And close intercourse with doctors may have suggested the lines immediately below:

Novall. The knave is jealous.

Perigot. 'Tis a disease few doctors cure themselves of.

At the same time, let us not forget the passages where he shows a knowledge of the law;292 nor the fact that books have been written to prove that Shakspere must have had a training in this or that profession.293 The really interesting point about the doctors in Massinger is that they are so often praised as the healers of the mind; the dramatist who delights in drawing gloomy, passionate characters seems to have a high opinion for the profession which [pg 084] undertook to cure “melancholy.”294 In A Very Woman he takes care to praise and reward the doctor more highly than the surgeons. On the other hand, like most of his contemporaries, he naturally makes the physician a part of the machinery rather than an individual character. Even the doctor in A Fair Quarrel, who takes an unusually large part in the plot, can hardly be said to be more than a carefully drawn lay figure. The same remark applies to the friars of Shakspere.

The chief question about Massinger which interests the student of English is the authorship of Henry VIII. Did he take part in writing that play with Fletcher? There is a great mass of literature on this subject. As one who has read the undoubted plays of Massinger many times, I am bound to say that while there is much in the play which reminds one of Shakspere and Fletcher, I find little trace of Massinger's style. I do not deny that there are one or two slight reminiscences; thus the word “file”295 is a favourite one with Massinger. We find blushing in the play once or twice,296 but then we find it elsewhere in Shakspere. Anne's remark to the old lady, “Come, you are pleasant,”297 is in Massinger's manner, but he may have taken the turn from Shakspere. The strict metre of such a line as this is like Massinger;298 the same remark applies again:

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Surrey. Has the King this?

Suffolk. Believe it.

Surrey. Will this work?

The fourth scene of the second act is a great law-court Scene, and Massinger has several such, in which he may be copying Shakspere. The combination of courtiers in dialogue which we get in various parts of Henry VIII is like Massinger;299 but, to my mind, the scenes are more clumsy than their parallels in Massinger. Sudden changes of mind are found in Henry VIII;300 and this is probably the strongest bit of evidence in favour of Massinger's authorship. The characters are not harmoniously rounded off: Buckingham's prayers for the King301 do not please us; the King's scruples of conscience are not convincing;302 Wolsey's meekness303 and piety304 do not ring true, though they anticipate the picture of his last year which we get in Cavendish's Life—but all these blemishes may be due to hasty work or dual authorship. Failure in representing vacillation and complexity of character is, as we have seen above, a note of Massinger, but the failures of this kind in Henry VIII are marked by a sentimentality which reminds us of Fletcher.

Let us see now what there is in the play unlike Massinger. To begin with, there are many passages in Shakspere's difficult later style,305 and there is a complete absence of Massinger's sinuous sentences and frequent parentheses, as also of his peculiar vocabulary; there are many flights of high and tender poetry which are beyond his compass; there are brilliant γνῶμαι, such as—

Griffith. Noble madam,

Men's evil manners live in brass, their virtues

We write in water,306

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or,

Chancellor. But we are all men,

In our own natures frail, and capable

Of our flesh; few are angels,307

which are quite out of his range of power.

Again, there is a curious series of links in the play, by which characters who are to come on later are introduced; it seems to be an attempt to give unity to a disconnected work. Thus, the King's belief in Cranmer is early indicated;308 Cromwell's future success is foreshadowed by Wolsey;309 Gardiner's dislike of Cranmer is brought before us.310 This is a method of which I can recall no instance in Massinger's undoubted plays.

In spite of his roughness and ferocity, Henry is more of a man than any of Massinger's tyrants; there is no parallel in Massinger to Anne Boleyn, slight as her portrait is; while Katherine and Wolsey are alike far superior to anything of his. Lastly, the pageantry and processions of the play do not appear in Massinger's simple designs.

The authors of Henry VIII were essaying an impossible task. They were trying to construct an historical play out of materials which were too various to make artistic unity feasible, and they had to make an unattractive character the centre of the piece. Consequently, they decided to end the play at the christening of Elizabeth, and to cover their retreat with gorgeous rhetoric about the Virgin Queen311 and her Stuart successor. It would have been quite impossible to introduce the death of Anne Boleyn, or any further incident of the reign, without harrowing the feelings of the spectator and losing all sense of proportion. But they do make a desperate effort to centre our attention on the King as a commanding figure; he comes before us as “the first gentleman in [pg 087] Europe,” and as the anxious lover of his people; he is represented as torn by conflicting emotions about the divorce, and as badly treated by Rome; all we can say is, these facts are true, however unskilfully the play brings them before us. Whatever the King does, we are meant to like him. His victims all conspire to invoke the blessings of Heaven on his head; Buckingham,312 Wolsey,313 Katherine,314 all agree in this, reminding us of John Stubbs the Puritan, who, when his right hand was cut off for writing a book against Elizabeth's proposed marriage, put off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice, “God save the Queen.” The christening scene in Act V. is skilfully constructed so as to concentrate our interest on Henry; we feel that he is a royal and heroic figure, whose faults may in the last resort be palliated by the consideration that he is the father of Elizabeth.

I agree with the critics who regard the play as a failure from the artistic point of view; it lacks unity, and it moves awkwardly. It might even be called a spectacular experiment. But I rate it higher than they seem to do; its faults are largely due to the subject; it has much of Shakspere in it, as for example, the conscientious way in which the historical details are introduced.315 It is full of superb and moving passages, and it uses the eleven-syllable line with skill and tenderness. If some of its defects remind us faintly of Massinger, its excellences are altogether beyond his abilities. Doubtless, it is natural to wish that each play of Shakspere should excel its predecessor, and to be unwilling to confess that he ended his career with something that was not supremely excellent. In the same way we may be sorry that one [pg 088] of Mozart's last works, Titus, was a failure. But it is better to take things as we find them than to seek to twist them into something else on inadequate grounds.

Boyle's attribution of Henry VIII to Fletcher and Massinger316 was coldly received by the New Shakspere Society.317 Let us look at his arguments. I trust that condensation will do them no injustice.

1. There is a change in the conception of the character of Buckingham. Such changes constantly occur in the plays which Fletcher and Massinger wrote together, notably in the character of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt. Therefore Massinger wrote part of Henry VIII. This line of argument, even if valid, would only prove collaboration by Fletcher with someone else.

2. The Shakspere play All is True may have perished in the “Globe” fire of 1613. Henry VIII was written to take its place, but not produced before 1616. The evidence quoted for the date 1616-17 is very weak, and does nothing to prove Massinger's co-operation.

3. If it be urged that the reputed authors of the play were alive in 1623, when it was published as Shakspere's work in the Folio, Boyle replies,318 “that, with the exception perhaps of Ben Jonson, it would never have occurred to a dramatist of that age to claim as his property what was published under another's name.” This is a bold statement. Can an instance of such indifference be quoted? Or are we merely bidden to remember that Massinger was poor?

4. Boyle then works through the scenes which he ascribes to Massinger.

I., 1.—The opening is like The Emperor of the East, III., 1. “An untimely ague” corresponds to “a sudden fever.” The resemblance of the scenes is undoubted, and the parallel phrases are remarkable. Note, however, [pg 089] that the writer says the same thing twice (lines 4 and 13), while lines 9-12 are not like Massinger.

I., 4.—Lines 1-18, and 60 to the end. I find no trace of Massinger's style in these passages. He never wrote lines 75-6:

The fairest hand I ever touch'd! O beauty,

Till now I never knew thee!

or such a phrase as “let the music knock it” ad finem.

II., 1.—Lines 1-54, and 136 to the end. I find no trace of Massinger's style in these passages. Boyle has to allow that Fletcher altered several lines in 1-54; this is precarious and subjective reasoning.

II., 3.—Lines 1-11 are in the parenthetic manner, but quite unlike Massinger's. “Soft cheveril conscience” in line 31, and “you'd venture an emballing” in line 47, are instances of the strong vocabulary which marks the play.319 Picturesque phrases of this kind are not characteristic of Massinger's style.

Nor did Massinger ever sink so low as line 64:

A thousand pound a year, annual support.320

II., 4.—No doubt Massinger loves a forensic scene, but this one leads to nothing and leaves the mind in confusion. Now, Massinger was too good an artist to do that. The things the people say in this scene must have passed through their minds in real life, but they are combined in such a way as to be true to history rather than to dramatic propriety. The author aims at telling what happened, and what happened does not always make a good play. It might even be urged from what we know of Massinger that he was too good a “stage-poet” to undertake an English historical play with its necessary limitations.

III., 2, 1-203.—The scene, like so much else in the play, lacks the refinement and courtliness which Massinger [pg 090] always has at his command. It may be noted that the bluff, coarse atmosphere of the “Shaksperian” scenes is very suitable to the central figure of the play.321 Henry VIII infects his surroundings with himself, and this might be quoted as an indication of Shaksperian skill.

IV., 1.—The prosaic details of this scene are unlike anything in Massinger.322

V., 1.—The point of this scene is to concentrate our attention on Elizabeth's birth. The scene “sprawls” sadly, to use Boyle's description of Fletcher's method. First we have Gardiner and Lovell, then Henry and Suffolk, then Henry and Cranmer, then Henry and the old lady. Massinger constructed better than this.

V., 3, 1-113.—Such a speech as Cranmer makes (lines 58-69) is too short for Massinger's ample method, and its terse, broken style is singularly unlike his.

5. The few parallels of diction which Boyle brings forward are either from plays which are not certainly by Massinger, or may be explained as due to reminiscence or common phraseology.

6. Boyle has much of value to say in his criticisms of the characters. But again and again he seems to forget that the author is hampered by the story. He could not treat Henry VIII as Schiller treated Mary Stuart; to idealize the events would have been an act of lèse-majesté.

It is true that Anne Boleyn is not a creation of the same order as Shakspere's later heroines—Imogen, Miranda, Marina, Perdita. Though beautiful and charming, she is shallow and commonplace. Is not this, however, the Anne Boleyn of real life?

“Katherine is inferior to Hermione in The Winter's Tale.” But why should not her portrait be drawn on different lines? Is she not a proud Spanish princess? She is certainly one of the great figures of English Tragedy.

Wolsey is meant to be great but is really vulgar, while [pg 091] “his utter collapse after disgrace is unnatural.” The reply is that Wolsey is a mixed character, and none the worse dramatically for that; very able, very unscrupulous in his use of the courtier's tricks, very fond of power; but not wholly bad. His repentance is true at once to human nature and to history.

“The king is unintelligible.” The fact is, it was impossible to make a hero of Henry VIII; it does not, therefore, follow that Massinger helped to write the play! Boyle is correct when he says that it is with Henry as it is with Wolsey: “we receive our impressions of the characters from the opinions formed of them by others.” In other words, the characterization of the play is faulty. Some critics have supposed that this fact is due to loss of mental power by Shakspere; it is simpler to hold the collaboration with Fletcher as responsible for the jolts and jars which the play gives the reader. If anyone still holds that Shakspere wrote the whole play, he might plausibly take the line that Shakspere was experimenting in the new style and metre of his popular young rival Fletcher. If, however, Shakspere in his retreat at Stratford, in days when posts were infrequent and locomotion slow, forwarded scenes and suggestions for Fletcher to work up at his own sweet will, something like what we have would be the result. Fletcher was evidently on his mettle on this occasion. I cannot prove that Fletcher did not invite Massinger to help him in such an enterprise, and I know how fond Massinger was of studying Shakspere. The latter argument, however, cuts both ways. Again, Massinger may have had an earlier Shaksperian style, very unlike his mature style; but this is pure hypothesis. The evidence which we have does not justify us in saying more than this, that he knew the play of Henry VIII well.323

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It would take me too far from my purpose to discuss the authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen in detail, interesting as the problem is, but as many critics have assigned the “un-Fletcherian” parts of the play to Massinger, I have, as in duty bound, read the play carefully several times. There is very little trace of his style, or method, or metre. The only passage which reads to me like Massinger is assigned by Boyle to Fletcher.324 Mr. Dugdale Sykes, in an acute article,325 has produced some parallels between Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen; but though one or two of them are striking, they do not prove his case when they are looked at in connexion with the context.

Take, for example:

3rd Queen. He that will all the treasure know o' th' earth

Must know the centre too.326

Mr. Sykes compares these lines in The Parliament of Love:

Cleremond. And I should gild my misery with false comforts,

If I compared it with an Indian slave's,

That with incessant labour to search out

Some unknown mine, dives almost to the centre.327

On this passage I make two remarks: first, such similarity of thought as is found here may be due to imitation or unconscious reminiscence of The Two Noble Kinsmen. A man who constantly repeats himself is surely the sort of person who would delight to borrow thoughts and phrases from other writers, and to imitate whole scenes and incidents. [pg 093] Are we to suppose that Massinger confined his studies to Shakspere?

Secondly, let us judge the passage as a whole; it runs thus:

He that will all the treasure know o' th' earth

Must know the centre too; he that will fish

For my least minnow, let him lead his line

To catch one at my heart.

Anything more unlike Massinger than this fishing for minnows cannot be imagined.

Take again the parallel,328 “which alone should be conclusive of Massinger's authorship”:

Pirithous. Though I know

His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they

Must yield their tribute there. My precious maid,

Those best affections, that the heavens infuse

In their best temper'd pieces, keep enthroned

In your dear heart.329

In Believe as You List we have:

Though I know

The ocean of your apprehensions needs not

The rivulet of my poor cautions, yet,

Bold from my long experience, I presume, etc.330

Though the similarity of thought and expression in the first three lines is manifest, the archaic simplicity of the first passage differs greatly from the mature flow of the second.

What is Mr. Sykes' theory? “If we admit Massinger's collaboration in this play, at the very outset of his literary career, before his style was definitely formed, and when the influence of the foremost dramatist of the age was strongest upon him, the apparently ‘Shaksperian’ quality of its verse can readily be explained.” On this proposition I make two remarks; [pg 094] first, that as we have none of Massinger's early works, I cannot prove that he never wrote in the style of The Two Noble Kinsmen; I can only assert with absolute certainty that none of his extant works has the least resemblance to it. Secondly, as to the supposed “Shaksperian” colour of the play, this is a point on which one's judgment varies each time one reads it. There is a great deal in the “un-Fletcherian” parts which reminds one of Shakspere; some of it is so like his later style that it is not surprising to find that many great critics have assigned it to him; many other passages, however, seem just not to ring true; they are obscure because they have little meaning. For let not the fact be disguised, in spite of one great lyric, several splendid scenes, and some fine speeches, there is much poor stuff in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

The simplest explanation of the double ascription in the quarto of 1634 is to suppose that Shakspere helped Fletcher in some way. He may even have written the un-Fletcherian parts,331 though, personally, I find traces of Fletcher in them also; he may have left material which Fletcher worked up; he may have merely suggested the construction of the plot, a department in which Fletcher is weak.

If, however, the “Shaksperian” parts be deemed unworthy of Shakspere, why assign them to Massinger, whose work they do not resemble? Could no one else have imitated Shakspere except Massinger? Why should not Fletcher himself for once have caught the Shaksperian manner? Why should he not have confided the execution of a part to someone else who was soaked in Shakspere's style? Why should not Beaumont have helped him here as elsewhere,332 or possibly Heywood?

The archaic flavour of the play is to me the outstanding fact about it; we know that plays on this subject were acted [pg 095] in 1566 and 1594. The archaic flavour may be due to the influence of Chaucer on the writers; it is more likely to be due to an earlier play having been taken and altered. It might also be due to the collaboration of someone like Heywood, who, though late in time, is surprisingly simple and early in style. The rustic scenes are an instance of this very early manner.333 If Shakspere and Fletcher took an old play, and the former contributed a few turns to the revised edition, then everything would be accounted for.334 It will be said that there are scenes which remind us of Lady Macbeth and Ophelia; why should not an already existing play have suggested to Shakspere something which he worked up in those two characters into a far finer result? We know for a fact that much of his best work is based on older plays. This random hypothesis is quite as probable as the supposition that Massinger had anything to do with The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Let us next consider Mr. Tucker Brooke's position.335 After a searching and masterly analysis of the merits and defects of the play, he ends with a guarded tendency towards assigning the “un-Fletcherian” parts to Massinger on the following grounds: “The metrical tests give him an even better title than his master [i.e., Shakspere] to the doubtful parts of our play.” To this I reply that style is a more important test than metre. There are, secondly, “the structural and psychological imperfections of the work”; thirdly, “the tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language”; fourthly, “the feeble imitation of Shakspere”; fifthly, “the frequent similarity to Massinger's acknowledged writings.” The only serious argument against the assumption is that there is nothing in Massinger to compare with “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian part.”

Let us briefly look at these arguments. The work [pg 096] is “structurally and psychologically imperfect.” True, and this point might be quoted to support the theory that the play is based on an old and immature tragedy. As far as concerns structure, Massinger's plays are always strong; so that part of the argument falls to the ground. No doubt his psychology is his weak point, but its weakness is of a different kind from that which we find in The Two Noble Kinsmen. There are no violent emotions of the sort in which he rejoices in it. There are no characters in Massinger resembling Palamon and Arcite. Mr. Brooke refers to their “spinelessness,” and it is true that they are not much differentiated. I suppose, however, that he would allow that they start by being a romantic pair of friends, that their quarrel when they first see Emilia is lifelike, and that their subsequent behaviour is chivalrous. When he refers to “the really revolting wishy-washiness and ingrained sensuality of Emilia” he uses exaggerated language. The fact is, that Emilia is in a very difficult position, and if her character is ambiguous it is the fault of the story rather than of the author.

“The tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language.” This is based in the main on Hippolyta's language,336 with which Mr. Sykes compares a passage in The Unnatural Combat.337 I have discussed the supposed coarseness of Massinger's heroines elsewhere. In spite of everything that Boyle can say, with his catalogue of twenty-two passages, I wonder who is right about Massinger's women, Boyle or Courthope, who says that “his portraits of women show more delicacy of feeling and imagination than those of any English dramatist with the exception of Shakspere.”338 I, at any rate, feel that Courthope is nearer the truth than Boyle and his followers.

“Feeble imitation of Shakspere.” That there is imitation of Shakspere in Massinger we all know; but I deny that it is feeble, and we know that others of the same age, [pg 097] like Fletcher, Webster, and Tourneur, have delighted to imitate him.

“The frequent similarity to Massinger's writings.” In the first place, I do not feel that the similarity is frequent; and secondly, as has already been pointed out, what similarity there is may be due to imitation of The Two Noble Kinsmen by Massinger. Are we to suppose that the only author he imitated or borrowed from was Shakspere?

The final reservation raises mixed feelings. I am tired of those writers who grudgingly attribute to Massinger the leavings of other playwrights, making him the whipping boy of his age, and who proceed to qualify their theories by doubts as to his ability to attain to the excellences which they perforce discover in them. I will be so far generous to Mr. Brooke as to allow that “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian parts” is unlike Massinger, because there is no reason for supposing that he wrote any of these parts. Massinger's fame can stand on its own merits without these churlishly conceded ascriptions of doubtful work.

And now let us pass to Boyle's notable article on this subject.339 Much as I admire his learning and zeal, I am amazed at the perversity of his judgment and the thinness of his arguments. Let us take them in order. “There is a want of development in the dramatic character”340 of The Two Noble Kinsmen. This Boyle ascribes to the fact that, as elsewhere, Massinger's conceptions were blurred by Fletcher's co-operation in other parts of the play. As this argument begs the question it has no weight. “Allusions to Shakspere are characteristic both of Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen.”341 Are we to suppose that no one imitated Shakspere except Massinger? “The metrical structure of the play corresponds closely with Massinger's general style.”342 Here, however, Boyle [pg 098] has to allow that the percentages for double endings are not what you would expect. And I look with suspicion on a writer who professes to be so certain of these tests that he can assign I., 1-40, and V., 1-19, to Fletcher. “Massinger is fond of classical allusions, as is the author of The Two Noble Kinsmen.”343 This argument deserves no consideration when we remember that the fact is true of other Elizabethan writers. For example, we find “the helmeted Bellona,”344 and Massinger is fond of the sonorous word.345 Yes, but Bellona is not unknown in Shakspere. M. Arnold has pointed out that she occurs in a weak passage of Macbeth.346 “Medical and surgical similes occur in both.”347 When we come to investigate these we find that the remarks in question are of a commonplace kind. “The characters of The Two Noble Kinsmen resemble those of Massinger.”348 Theseus, for example, resembles Lorenzo in The Bashful Lover. I see no resemblance. “Palamon and Arcite may be met with in many of Massinger's plays.”349 I fail to find them anywhere. “The three ladies are grossly sensual in their remarks.”350 I have dealt with this point before, and it really amounts to a mischievous obsession in Boyle's mind. Let us take the passages seriatim; Emilia is talking privately to Hippolyta351 about a dead girl friend to whom she was devoted when young. In the course of this beautiful passage she says:

The flower that I would pluck

And put between my breasts, then but beginning

To swell about the blossom, oh! she would long

Till she had such another, and commit it

To the like innocent cradle, where phœnix-like

They died in perfume.

[pg 099]

I am ashamed to waste words in vindicating this passage, which Boyle sets by the language of Iachimo in Cymbeline in describing the mole on Imogen's breast352 to a company of gentlemen.

The next one is “decisive of the question of the authorship of our play.”

1st Queen. When her arms,

Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall

By warranting moonlight corslet thee, O when

Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall353

Upon thy tasteful lips, what wilt thou think

Of rotten kings and blubbered queens? What care

For what thou feel'st not, what thou feel'st being able

To make Mars spurn his drum? O, if thou covet

But one night with her, every hour in't will

Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and

Thou shalt remember nothing more than what

That banquet bids thee to.354

Though there are passages in Massinger of which the thought is similar to that presented here, I do not judge it or them as severely as Boyle. The point, however, which I wish to make is this: these lines are typical of what I have called the archaic flavour of the play. Where in Massinger's works will you find “warranting moonlight,” “tasteful lips,” “twinning cherries,” “rotten kings and blubbered queens,” or “Mars' drum”? The idea that Massinger wrote this passage is quite preposterous; the only thing in it which reminds one of him is the “and” at the end of line 204.

Lastly, we have Hippolyta's words in the same scene:

Yet I think

Did I not by the abstaining of my joy,

Which breeds a deeper longing, cure their surfeit

[pg 100]

That craves a present medicine, I should pluck

All ladies' scandal on me.355

Hippolyta agrees in these lines to postpone her wedding in order that the Queens should be avenged on Creon. No doubt the lines are crude, but Boyle goes too far with his “cloven hoof,” his “effluvia of social corruption,” his “thick miasma.”

“There is a close parallel between The Two Noble Kinsmen and A Very Woman in the treatment of madness.”356 I do not see much similarity between the prose of the one play and the poetry of the other, but so far as any exists it is due to the common ideas of the age as to the way in which to treat the mad. “The reflections in the dialogue of Palamon and Arcite,357 on the corruptions of Thebes, the neglect of soldiers, the extravagance of fashion, are allusions such as Massinger makes to contemporary English life.”358 The allusions are such as any moralist might make, and if the rough and immature style in which they are expressed is not like Massinger's the argument falls to the ground.

“There are a good many expressions in common between The Two Noble Kinsmen and Massinger.”359 This is the really serious argument; but let me repeat that similarity of thought and expression in isolated phrases does not prove unity of authorship. Let us, however, look at some of these parallels.

Reference is twice made in The Two Noble Kinsmen to “the wheaten garland” of brides.360 Massinger refers to “the garland” of a bridegroom in three passages.361 I fail to see the connexion. Notice also that Massinger does not use the epithet “wheaten” in these passages.

[pg 101]

Theseus says, “Troubled I am,” and turns away.362 It was quite natural that he should think twice before postponing his wedding. Boyle compares a passage where Ladislas is in uncertainty363:

I am much troubled,

And do begin to stagger.

People in Massinger's plays are often perplexed, and so they are in real life. Note that Theseus ends his remark with these words at the beginning of a line. When Massinger's characters are in perplexity their way of expressing themselves is quite different; it is more full and rounded off.

Theseus says: “Forward to the temple,”364 being anxious to be married. “Similar words in similar situations occur in Massinger.”365 In neither case, however, is it a bridegroom who speaks.

The Two Noble Kinsmen, I., 165, 166:

1st Queen. And that work presents itself to th' doing;

Now 'twill take form, the heats are gone to-morrow.

Boyle says this is obscure, but can be explained by Empress of the East:

That resolution which grows cold to-day

Will freeze to-morrow.366

The thought is a familiar one; and can anyone suppose that Massinger wrote line 165?

The expression “our undertaker”367 recalls a word used by Shakspere.368 Massinger also has it twice;369 the parallel is interesting, but the word was a cant political term of Jacobean times.

[pg 102]

The fact that apes imitate is referred to in these lines:370

'Tis in our own power—

Unless we fear that apes can tutor's—to

Be masters of our manners.

In The Emperor of the East we find:

You are master of the manners and the habit,

Rather the scorn of such as would live men,

And not, like apes, with servile imitation

Study prodigious fashions.371

Surely there is no need to assume common authorship here. The imitative ape has been common property for a long time.

A peculiarity of a sick man is referred to, thus:

I must no more believe thee in this point

Than I will trust a sickly appetite,

That loathes even as it longs.372

Massinger in A Very Woman has:

No more of Love, good father,

It was my surfeit, and I loathe it now,

As men in fevers meat they fall sick on.373

The simile is a part of ordinary experience and literary convention. You might as well argue that Massinger wrote Euphues.

The jailer's daughter leaves the scene with this remark:

It is a holiday to look on them; Lord, the difference of men.374

Lidia, in The Great Duke of Florence, when Sanazarro seems to be treating her rudely, exclaims:

Oh, the difference of natures!375

But she does not leave the stage.

[pg 103]

We might say: Oh, the difference of styles! In the one case we have a rustic maiden of low birth; in the other, a lady justly offended.

I do not deny that some of the parallels are remarkable, but they may be due to imitation or reminiscence. Take the words:

Thou, O jewel,

O' th' wood, o' th' world, hast likewise blest a place

With thy sole presence.376

In The Great Duke of Florence we find:

And what place

Does he now bless with his presence?377

The phrase is one which Massinger's courtly mind would treasure and delight to use.

Theseus, addressing Artesius, says:

Forth and levy

Our worthiest instruments, whilst we despatch

This grand act of our life, this daring deed

Of fate in wedlock.378

Phrases like this are found in Massinger; thus in The Maid of Honour, Roberto says of the wedding of Bertoldo and Aurelia:

And rest assur'd that, this great work despatch'd,

You shall have audience.379

They may be due to reminiscence, though it is simpler to regard them as the current English of the day.

The strongest evidence for Boyle's theory is contained in Palamon's invocation to Venus:380

[pg 104]

I never practised

Upon man's wife, nor would the libels read

Of liberal wits; I never at great feasts

Sought to betray a beauty.

These words certainly remind us of Leosthenes in The Bondman, both in thought and style:

Nor endeavour'd

To make your blood run high at solemn feasts,

With viands that provoke; the speeding philtres;

I worked no bawds to tempt you; never practised

The cunning and corrupting arts they study

That wander in the wild maze of desire.381

I think, however, that reminiscence will suffice to account for the parallel. The man who could write the last line of this passage has no need to buttress up his fame with The Two Noble Kinsmen, though it is of course conceivable that he edited it for publication in 1634.

Lastly, the method of Massinger calls for a few words. It has been noticed by all the critics that he often repeats himself. As is the case with Plautus the same metaphors, thoughts, and words recur from time to time in similar situations. It is clear that this characteristic might help us to trace those parts of Fletcher's plays in which Massinger collaborated.

One or two simple instances of this fact may be quoted: the characters in Massinger are very fond of blushing;382 [pg 105] references to the talkativeness of women are frequent;383 metaphors from the sea and sailing are very common;384 people are fond of saying that they mean to do something but they do not know what;385 the exact courtier kneels and kisses the robe of a lady or her foot, and is sometimes rebuked for doing so.386

[pg 106]

As a good moralist, Massinger dislikes suicide387 and duelling.388 The latter practice is referred to in his plays as a new-fangled importation from abroad.

Let us now quote some of his favourite words: references need not be given for “honour”; wherever we find “atheist” for a bad man,389 or “magnificent” for munificent,390 [pg 107] or the Latin phrase “nil ultra,”391 or the Greek words “apostata”392 and “embryon”;393 wherever we find “frontless”394 impudence and “sail-stretched” wings395 and “libidinous”396 Caesars; wherever the moisture of the lips is compared to nectar,397 wherever we read of “the centre”398 or of “horror,”399 or of washing an [pg 108] Ethiop,400 there we are on familiar ground. Again, it is a characteristic of Massinger, which offends some of his readers more than others, that he is always ready with the obvious remark. Thus, when Marrall, after a career of tergiversation is finally kicked off the stage, he says:

This is the haven

False servants still arrive at.401

In The Emperor of the East, when the complications about Paulinus' apple are getting rather serious, the Princess Flaccilla makes the remark, which is certainly in the mind of the reader:

All this pother for an apple!402

When Leosthenes allows himself to be intolerably coarse in his language to Cleora, we read these words:

Cleora. You are foul-mouth'd.

Archedamus. Ill-manner'd, too.403

When Hilario seeks to amuse his mistress with an absurd message from the front, and she observes, “This is ridiculous,”404 we feel inclined to say, “Not only ridiculous, but not worth writing.” When Cardenes, after lying as dead [pg 109] for some time, gives signs of life, the Viceroy very justly observes:

This care of his recovery, timely practis'd,

Would have expressed more of a father in you,

Than your impetuous clamours for revenge.405

It will be remembered that Shakspere had used this device in his day. Compare Richard II: “Can sick men play so nicely with their names?”406 Midsummer-Night's Dream: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”407 1 Henry VI: “Here is a silly stately style indeed!”408

What impression do we get of Massinger from his writings? He was the intimate friend and associate of Fletcher; how far was he a man of the same stamp? Both as a poet and a stylist Fletcher is his superior; he is more tender and more varied; in isolated scenes he attains a high degree of pathos. From time to time the bursts of lovely poetry which illustrate his plays make us bow the head as though in the presence of an enchanter. The fifty plays which are currently associated with his name, with all their faults, are a veritable fairyland. Again, there is a terse piquancy about him, which expresses itself in clear-cut, vigorous lines, such as we find rarely in our poet. And he has a real vein of humour, which makes one laugh heartily.409 Nor is his direct and lucid prose style to be despised. On the other hand, he was not a great artist; his plots, though usually bustling, are often improbable; his character-drawing is constantly fickle and inconsequent. Thus, according to Boyle,410 in The Honest Man's Fortune, Tourneur and Massinger make Montague a gentleman; in Act V. Fletcher destroys all that was good in Massinger, but makes good sport for [pg 110] the groundlings. He maintains that the same thing happens to Buckingham in Henry VIII and to Barnavelt. Though there are many life-like characters in his works, to whom we feel attracted, such as Leon in Rule a Wife and have a Wife and Valerio in The Wife for a Month, they are too often made to do improbable things. Again, as a moralist Fletcher falls far behind Massinger. He shows from time to time a high-flown and tainted sentimentality which is far removed from real life. Indeed, the bad use to which he puts his great talent is often enough to make angels weep. He more than anyone is responsible for the Puritan reaction; he more than anyone is responsible for most of what was bad in the Restoration drama, and he has had his reward. Except by the student, his work is forgotten. It can hardly be doubted that the death of Fletcher was a gain to Massinger in emancipating him from the co-operation of a fascinating but unsafe guide.411 In standing alone he learnt to perfect all that was best in his own gifts.

It is difficult to form a clear judgment of Beaumont. The more I read what scholars attribute to him, the more I feel disposed to agree with Sir A. Ward that Beaumont and Fletcher were men of the same mind and tastes. It is plain that the author of Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, and A King and No King had a range of passion and pathos beyond Massinger. Philaster is incomparable, and as we [pg 111] read the other two plays we hurry on from scene to scene; when we put the book down we are perturbed. They have carried us away in spite of their grave faults. The glorious nonsense of The Knight of the Burning Pestle is equally beyond Massinger. On the other hand, such disagreeable plays as The Coxcomb and Cupid's Revenge do not invite a second perusal. I do not feel that Beaumont was cleaner in mind than Fletcher, or more balanced in judgment. When we come to the department of metre we seem to be on surer ground; the metre of Beaumont has high qualities, and his decasyllabic verse reminds me of the cold purity of a waterfall. In style his lines constantly have a marked simplicity and directness which anticipate Wordsworth. He can write a line in which the words run in the order which they would have in prose, and hence his great strength. On the other hand, he is often careless about the length of his lines, possibly from a love of variety. He is fond of rhyme, and introduces prose freely into his scenes. His models appear to have been Marlowe for metre and Ben Jonson for treatment. He has a liking for burlesque, as witness The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Woman-Hater, and Arbaces in A King and No King.412 All this is very unlike Massinger.

It may be asked, how does Massinger compare with Webster? This question naturally rises in the mind at a moment when a gifted writer, snatched from us before his time, has left us an interesting and scholarly study of Webster. Mr. Rupert Brooke makes no secret of his contempt for Fletcher, and “the second-rate magic” of Massinger; he regards Webster as the last of the strong school of Elizabethan dramatists.

Are we to compare Westward Ho!, Northward Ho!, and The Cure for a Cuckold with A New Way to pay Old Debts and The City Madam? They are less refined, less [pg 112] skilfully constructed. The stage is more crowded, and the characters are worse drawn. The same considerations apply to the Malcontent413 and The Devil's Law-case. Mr. Brooke practically allows that he means by Webster, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, and these plays alone. Let it be said at once that it is an ungrateful task to magnify one poet at the expense of another. We allow that in these two plays Webster comes nearer to Shakspere than any of his compeers. He has a great, a subtle, a well-stored mind; he produces isolated tragic effects of the most poignant kind; he is a master of atmosphere; he plays with the feelings of his auditors; he can dazzle them by “his miraculous touches of poetic beauty.”

On the other hand, he is not a clear thinker, nor are his plays skilfully planned. I should imagine that they read better than they act. For instance, the scene in The Duchess of Malfi, where Ferdinand gives the heroine the dead hand, fills us with horror. I doubt if it would be effective on the stage. Webster's rhymes are poor, and his prose worse than Massinger's. Sir Sidney Lee414 says his blank verse is “vigorous and musical”; to me it seems too often ragged and halting. But the chief objection to Webster is that he lives in “a world of repulsive themes and fantastic crimes.” He revels in the sinister suggestions aroused by skulls, dead hands, ghosts, echoes, and madmen. His mind was morbid, and his successes are like lightning flashes of splendid power piercing a gloomy and sullen background.

The fact that he was not a productive writer may weigh less with some critics than with others; more important is it to remember that Massinger's plays held the stage much longer than Webster's. This fact may fairly be taken to prove the appeal which the former has successfully [pg 113] made to the human heart. Webster, in short, compared with Shakspere, reminds us somewhat of the contrast between Mantegna and Raphael.

In one or two respects Webster has affinities with Massinger. Both frequently imitate Shakspere; and both repeat themselves continually, though in different ways. Whereas Massinger used the same vocabulary and terms of thought again and again, Webster quotes whole sentences from one of his plays in another, as if he felt, like some of the Greek writers of antiquity, that when he had said a thing as it should be said, he had the right to use it again.415

It is difficult to compare Massinger with Ben Jonson: both wrote Roman plays and domestic comedies; but Ben Jonson has at once a greater mind and a wider range of experiment. He was a learned man, a great figure in society, the dictator of a circle of wits, the centre of many friendships and enmities. He would probably regard Massinger as a pale-featured, gentle hack. We know more about his full-blooded personality than about any other writer of the period, and while there is much in him to offend, there is more to inspire our respect.

Our immediate object is to compare the two writers as dramatists. It is at once clear that they work on different lines. Massinger is a follower of Shakspere and Fletcher, though we can trace in some of his tragedies the influence of Webster and Tourneur. In his comedies, we see some approximation to Ben Jonson; it is instructive to compare Eastward Ho! with The City Madam. A fundamental difference of method is at once seen; Massinger deliberately eschews the use of prose. It must at once be conceded that he has left nothing on so colossal a scale as Every Man in his Humour, Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. Here we find skilful plot, masterly characterization, and ludicrous combinations. [pg 114] How heartily we laugh over the Plautine scene before Cob's house in Every Man in his Humour,416 or at the intrusion of unbidden guests at Morose's wedding, or at the deception practised on the two knights in the gallery.417 How dazzled we are with the kaleidoscopic “vapours” of the great Fair. On the other hand, in what Dryden calls the “dotages,” we find a great falling off. Ben Jonson can be very dull. Still even in The Devil is an Ass and The Staple of News there is a vein of original fancy, which reminds us that we are dealing with no imitator, but with an original and poetical mind. Nor must we forget the splendid series of Masques, into which Ben Jonson put some of his best work; to this Massinger has but little to oppose. And then, as we all know, Ben Jonson bursts out from time to time with a great lyric, whereas Massinger's songs are commonplace. Lastly, in The Case is Altered, we have a plot in the manner of Fletcher which is so successful as to make us regret that Jonson did not try this type of play again. Though it has not the atmosphere of Massinger, it has something of the mellow graciousness at which he, like Fletcher, aimed.

It would be silly to deny Jonson's superiority of intellect, and of attainment when at his best. His faults are, however, very serious. Though he can draw a man of good breeding, his women are very ordinary. He is too fond of incorporating long passages from the classical authors whom he knew so well; he would have been more attractive if he had used Aristophanes and Plautus, Ovid and Libanius, as inspirations rather than as materials. The notes on Sejanus are a liberal education, but after all, “the play's the thing.” The use of “humour” and “vapours,” though at first brilliant and captivating, even becomes artificial and tedious; no one is the embodiment of one passion or weakness. Let us be thankful that human nature is not so simple or consistent, for in that case it would cease to interest. More serious still, Jonson [pg 115] has no sense of proportion; we read Knowell's soliloquy in Every Man in his Humour,418 and we say, “Fine! but too long”; and we say this again and again as we read his works. The great length of the fifth act of Sejanus is a good instance of this fault. Indeed, it is impossible that the play was acted in the form which we now have—it would have emptied the house, like Burke's speeches. When Jonson gets on to some subject of which he knows the technical terms, such as “fucuses”419 or “alchemy,” he is almost as tedious as Kipling's Macandrew. His plots are at times too skilful; thus, even Brainworm in time gets on our nerves. His coarseness is that of a common soldier, and his puns are bad.

Are there any points of contact between the two authors? I do not wish to suggest that Massinger owed nothing to the older writer, though parallels of diction may mean little but the simultaneous use of the idioms of the day. Thus in The Staple of News we find, “I do write man,”420 “blacks,”421 “kiss close,”422 “nectar,”423 “magnificent”424; tossing in a blanket is referred to,425 and the saints426 at Amsterdam, while the cook's fortifications427 remind us of a passage in A New Way to pay Old Debts. In Sejanus we find “passive fortitude” commended.428 “He puts them to their whisper,”429 reminds us [pg 116] of The Roman Actor. Sejanus' change of temper to his satellites430 when he fancies danger is past resembles that of Domitian in the same play. The City Madam has touches of plot and style which recall Volpone.

There is, however, little contact between Ben Jonson and Massinger. Their births were separated by only ten years, but a much longer period than that seems to divide them. Friend of the great as he was, Ben Jonson was yet an Aristophanic, nay, a Rabelaisian democrat; Massinger is a gentleman and a courtier. The one has the vigour and immaturity of the Elizabethan age, and in him we feel in contact with the obsolete Mystery and Morality plays;431 the other has the refinement and romance of the Caroline era. The one is a powerful satirist and a pugnacious fighter; the other lives in an ideal world. On the one side is vis consili expers; on the other, a more limited intellect with a surer artistic sense. If I may venture to say so, they differ from one another as an apple from a pear. I do not deny that Ben Jonson was the greater man, but I find him more archaic and more difficult to read than Massinger. Much of the interest of his plays is dead for us, his local colour and topical allusions, which require so many notes, are more tedious; his personal likes and dislikes, his egotism, his vanity, are wearisome; and though his blank verse is strong and manly, it is not so melodious as Massinger's. The older man stands foursquare and solitary; the younger man reaches forward to posterity, and we feel him to be linked by his art and grace to ourselves. Though Dryden never mentions Massinger, there is a dignified capacity which is common to the two authors.

Massinger's chief rival in the latter part of his life was Shirley. Shirley's plays are full of interest; his graceful [pg 117] style rises occasionally into poetry, at which the author himself seems to smile; his plots are full of ingenious turns; his female characters are more confidently developed than Massinger's, nor is he unable to draw a lifelike man, as we see from Lorenzo in The Traitor and Columbo in The Cardinal. He excels in the battledore and shuttlecock of love-making; he tells us far more of the manner of well-bred contemporary society than Massinger. Indeed, it is probable that he had a greater success in his day than his rival, and was more in touch with Court circles, though even the loyal Shirley discreetly satirizes from time to time the government of Charles I. He is not devoid of humour and epigram; his dialogue is light and sprightly. He reaches back to Fletcher and forward to Dryden; we seem, as we read his plays, to be a long way removed from the labour of Jonson, the pomp of Chapman, the vernal simplicity of Heywood. On the other hand, we miss in him the breadth and strength, the dignity, the nobility, and the fire of Massinger. He is more of a photographer than a painter. Though his style has eloquence, the thought is often far from clear, and the long sentences are clumsy. There is something slight and unsubstantial about the whole thing, while the metre is continually careless and lame.

In assigning Massinger's place in the drama of his age, we have to remember that the period falls into two well-defined parts. He has very little in common with Marlowe, Greene, and Peele, and still less with the charming Dresden china of Lyly. Marlowe's generation breathes the freshness and vehemence of the spring, while Massinger reflects the silver lights of September. So rapid was the development of fifty years, that to pass from the one to the other is like going from the lancet windows of Salisbury Cathedral to the tracery of William of Wykeham. While we miss the purity and simplicity of Early English, it would be foolish to ignore the strength of design and proportion that maturity and experience brought. The [pg 118] towers and battlements, the lierne vaulting, the large windows, and generous clerestories of Perpendicular do much to atone for the spiritless detail and mechanical wall-panelling. A similar consideration applies to the Jacobean dramatists when compared with their Elizabethan predecessors.

Shall I be thought presumptuous in setting Massinger against Shakspere? The attempt may, at any rate, help to elicit a true estimate; the suggestion has often been made before. Shakspere seems to have been from his writings a man of great receptivity, unerring knowledge of human nature, profound wisdom, and infinite sweetness, the master of all the arts which we associate with a good poet. Massinger reminds us of Ben Jonson, though he is less consciously clever, less cumbered with learning, less combative.432 He is modest,433 manly, lucid, sane, and [pg 119] sensible, capable of just indignation, one who respects himself, a faithful friend,434 and a wide reader; he knows a gentleman when he sees him; he can pay compliments with good breeding; he has had his ups and downs in life;435 he is one who understood men better than women, and who, like Sir Thomas Browne, “loved a soldier”;436 a vigorous and business-like artist, he is never worsted by his theme, but makes it lifelike and interesting, with an unerring instinct for what is effective on the stage, his very faults being largely due to this useful knowledge. That there was a strain of noble melancholy in his mind can hardly be denied.437 The character which seems to me to embody Massinger himself is Charalois in The Fatal [pg 120] Dowry. Whether he was musical I should doubt after the perfunctory reference to the art in The Fatal Dowry.438 We find nothing in his plays like the famous idyllic description in Ford's Lover's Melancholy.439 On the other hand, he knew that vocal and instrumental music were effective in a play; we need go no farther than the end of Act IV. in The Virgin Martyr for proof of this.440 And Cario uses the terms of music with great precision in The Guardian.441 On the whole we get the impression that he was an example of a rare combination, modesty with independence of mind, a fact which, considering what the circumstances of the literary life then were, is quite enough to explain the hard struggle he seems to have undergone.

It may be said that I am comparing a mighty genius with a second-rate intellect. Are there any points in which Massinger can hold his own against Shakspere? Granted that he falls short in passion, imagination,442 wit, diction, rhythm, lyric rapture, where does he shine?

[pg 121]

It may at first hearing sound snobbish to point out that he was a University man, but a good deal of truth lies hidden in that simple phrase. Shakspere's plays are marked by many faults of construction, taste, and detail; he who never blotted a line should certainly, as Ben Jonson remarked, have blotted a good many. It always seems to me that this is a line of thought which is too much ignored by those who believe that Shakspere wrote his own plays, and that Bacon had nothing to do with them. The Baco-Shaksperians point, and very justly, to the surprising knowledge and culture shown in the plays; they refuse to believe that all this can have come from the brain of a Warwickshire rustic, forgetting the faults which are so glaring, faults which are precisely those which a learned and accurate scholar like Bacon would have avoided.

Now Massinger is a correct and artistic writer. The little tricks of style which were so dear to his mighty predecessor, the pun, the alliteration,443 the conceit, the verbal quibble,444 are far less obtrusive; he is free from [pg 122] that affectation and precious obscurity which are so marked in Shakspere's later style. And one small point may be noticed in passing here, as an indication of good breeding: the characters in Massinger very seldom address one another by name. It is significant that Greedy and Overreach both offend in this way.445

Though it is true that these faults were common to the age, they are so marked in Shakspere that it is impossible to ignore them in any estimate of the man. In the details of style, then, Massinger can claim credit for being more correct. In a word, what he lacks in genius and poetry he supplies to a certain extent by good taste and education. He shares this advantage with his age, which was learning to correct the errors of the past; the English language was advancing rapidly to more maturity and balance than it had in the previous generation.

I have already pointed out the careful study of Shakspere which we find in Massinger, and the copious use of his imperial vocabulary. When we take into account all the elements of the problem, when we make allowance for quantity of work done, as well as for quality, would it be too much to say that Massinger is as the pupil to the master, and that, though separated by “a long interval,” he comes second?446 This may seem a hard saying, [pg 123] unless it is explained. I allow that Ben Jonson had a greater intellect; that Beaumont and Fletcher had more genius, more pathos, more humour; that Marlowe, Webster, and Ford, each in his own way, were greater poets. I put Massinger next to Shakspere as a dramatist pure and simple, because his best work is well-constructed and interesting, his style and metre entrancing, his atmosphere charming and easy, yet ideal, his morality mature and sane. And in praising his morality, I do not lay stress on the benefits to be derived from the use of his plays as a school-book, though that consideration is not to be despised but rather maintain that in avoiding abnormal, tainted, and morbid themes he is in advance of his age; consequently he is easier for us to read and understand than other writers whose gifts were greater than his; he makes a successful and enduring appeal to the communis sensus of mankind.

I now proceed to a short critical estimate of Massinger's plays. The most famous are The Virgin Martyr in tragedy, and A New Way to pay Old Debts in comedy. Opinions have differed strangely about The Virgin Martyr. It went through four editions in quarto in the seventeenth century, a fact which testifies to its immediate popularity. Davies447 considered it far inferior to any of his other productions, and Mason was equally severe. Even Hallam confessed that parts of it were far from pleasing. There can be no doubt that these parts of the play, which the critics now unanimously ascribe to Dekker, are responsible for giving Massinger a bad name for coarseness. It is hard to carry supernatural machinery through, as Fletcher's Prophetess shows, and we have here an Angel, and a Devil, but they are on the whole managed successfully. The first act is admirably proportioned; the fourth and fifth also are masterly. There are a thrill and a glamour in the style of this play unlike anything else in Massinger, due perhaps to the religious problem dealt [pg 124] with.448 The only fault of Dorothea is that, like other good people, she is a bad judge of character. It gives us a shock to find Spungius and Hircius members of her household, and at least we feel she should not have put her charities in their hands, but should have attended to the poor herself.449 The Princess Artemia is a type common in Massinger.450

In A New Way to pay Old Debts we have an ingenious plot which never flags, adequate comedy, and characters which are appropriately, if not very carefully, drawn. The style is strong and natural; it is not far from this play to Goldsmith, and indeed the eighteenth century must have owed much to it. In its atmosphere of ease and propriety there are no harsh lights or discordant tints.

The central idea of the plot was probably borrowed from a play of admirable vivacity and dexterity, Middleton's Trick to catch the Old One, which appeared in 1607. What has Massinger added to Middleton? He has made the plot more probable, refining the characters, and raising the whole thing from prose to poetry. We laugh less, but we admire more, for we feel that we are seeing something transacted which might have happened.

Sir Giles Overreach is Massinger's masterpiece, a superman of colossal wickedness, with no belief in the honour or virtue of men or women.451 Though fond of [pg 125] money, he is not a miser, but loves to lavish his gains; power is rather his foible; repeated success has made him reckless; his aim is to increase his estates by bullying his poorer neighbours, and by employing the sharp practices of the law. But he has yet one other ambition, to see his only daughter married to a lord and to hear her styled “Right Honourable.” His unscrupulousness is expressed in often-quoted passages of great power; his frantic anger in the fifth act is depicted with a skill which leaves no sympathy in our minds for a father whose only daughter has treated him badly. Here Massinger is more successful than his great model in the case of Shylock and Jessica. I cannot agree that it is inconsistent with the character of Sir Giles that he should be anxious for his daughter to marry a lord—there are several passages in the earlier part of the play which show that he is not only a bully but a base-born snob.452

Where so much is admirable it is difficult to make selection, but we may point out that Wellborn's character is a fine piece of work; we pity his disgrace, we rejoice in his success, we believe in his desire to do better in the future. The grief of Lady Allworth for her husband and the jealous fears of young Allworth when Lord Lovell is to meet Margaret are excellently drawn. There are, moreover, touches of poetry in the play of a high order, as, for instance:

Allworth. If ever

The queen of flowers, the glory of the spring,

The sweetest comfort to our smell, the rose,

Sprang from an envious briar, I may infer,

There's such disparity in their conditions,

Between the goodness of my soul, the daughter,

And the base churl, her father.453

[pg 126]

Or in Allworth's speech about his love:

Add this too; when you feel her touch, and breath

Like a soft western wind, when it glides o'er

Arabia, creating gums and spices;

And in the van, the nectar of her lips,

Which you must taste, bring the battalia on,

Well-arm'd, and strongly lined with her discourse,

And knowing manners, to give entertainment;

Hippolytus himself would leave Diana,

To follow such a Venus.454

The play which Massinger himself at one time esteemed the most highly was The Roman Actor,455 but we have to remember that much of his best work was done after 1626, the date of the play. The Roman Actor, though most admirable, is strong and hard rather than inspired. More than any other of his works it shows us an element of greatness in the author's mind, which reveals itself in many ways; in the attractive and noble character of Paris, in the mastery shown in dealing with a Roman theme, the local colour of which is put on with a light and yet sure hand, in the skill with which the story is invested with the atmosphere of tyranny, in the breathless interest with which we follow the last moments of Domitian in Act V., in the dexterity with which three smaller plays are introduced into the action without in the least confusing the construction. In making an actor the hero of the play, and in giving him so many opportunities of showing his art, Massinger no doubt felt every confidence in the genius of J. Taylor, but perhaps the chief charm of the play is due to the reflection which it inspires in the mind of the reader, that it expresses with fire and conviction the struggling author's high ideal for the theatre as a social institution, and his esteem for actors. On the other hand, there is little comic relief, and little female [pg 127] interest beyond the infatuation of the Empress. Indeed, the women who take part in the play are one and all unattractive, and though it might be fairly urged that they are probably adequate portraits of the originals, we cannot help feeling that the author ought to have seen that they were timid sketches. In other words, we are face to face here with an acknowledged limitation of Massinger's art. Nor should it be forgotten that while the play is full of noble and even impassioned rhetoric,456 there are one or two prosy passages457 and several small improbabilities.458 In the third of the inserted plays Domitian, taking the part of an actor, avenges himself on Paris. This device by which characters in a play avenge themselves by taking parts in a subordinate play, occurs in the famous Spanish Tragedy of Kyd, and in Middleton's Women, beware Women. Most successful of all is the splendid climax of Act IV., where we have the clash of interest required by the highest form of tragedy; we sympathize with Paris, and yet we feel that the Emperor, who has been wronged, must avenge himself signally and at once.

It is the tragi-comedies which give me the most pleasure, the romantic plays with a happy ending, such as The Great Duke of Florence, The Emperor of the East, The Bashful Lover (the last of Massinger's plays which we possess), A Very Woman; closely allied with these is The Maid of Honour. The Great Duke of Florence is full of [pg 128] courtesy and grace; there are some charming passages of poetry, and the metre is liquid and easy. The whole play is bathed in the sunshine of youth, and while there is some good comedy in it, there is little for the expurgator to do. The characters are all drawn with skill and propriety, especially the Duke, the Duchess of Urbin, and Lidia. Petronella in disguise is Massinger's best comic creation.

In The Emperor of the East, with a trivial plot and some improbability in details, there is much admirable work, especially at the beginning. The two courtiers get to the point at once, mentioning Pulcheria in I., 1, 10. It was a play at which the author worked hard, and of which he thought highly.459 The two good women, the sister and the wife, are well drawn, and we understand how natural it is that they should be antipathetic; we welcome the allowance they make for one another,460 we sympathize with the humiliation of each in her turn, and we rejoice in their reconciliation. Especially pleasing are the gentle dignity of Eudocia in III., 4, and her slowness to take up Chrysapius' suggestion in IV., 1. The Emperor is not an attractive character, as he is at once weak and violent; but we have to remember that he is very young, and also that he has been kept in leading-strings all the earlier part of his life. I should like to believe, with many critics, that the prose scene, in which the Empiric figures, is not due to Massinger. It is a study in the manner of Ben Jonson. Another touch of the older master is “The Projector,”461 who is, however, on very much fainter lines than Meercroft in The Devil is an Ass. Imitation of Shakspere is prominent in The Emperor of the East. Scenes I., 1, and III., 1, remind us of Henry VIII's courtiers. The pictures in Act II. [pg 129] seem to be suggested by a similar scene in The Merchant of Venice. Act IV., 5 recalls Othello, III., 4; Act V., 2, 105-8 is modelled on Othello III., 3, 330-3.462

A Very Woman or The Prince of Tarent is based, as the Prologue tells us, on an old play; the author's modesty cannot forbear saying that, good as it was before, it is “much better'd now.” By this he probably means that substantial additions have been made, that the plot has been put into better shape,463 and that perhaps the comic element is cut down. Boyle assigns about two-fifths of the play to Massinger, including the quarrel between Cardenes and Antonio, and the great love scene between Antonio and Almira, but excluding the careful treatment of Cardenes' melancholy by Paulo the doctor.464 I should myself unhesitatingly assign the latter scene to Massinger. The only scenes which can be safely attributed to Fletcher are those of the slave-market,465 and that where Leonora seeks to console Almira.466 The sprightly vivacity of the former and the tenderness of the latter are good evidence for this assignation. A perusal of this admirable masterpiece leads us to the conclusion that if Massinger, instead of collaborating with Fletcher, had rewritten the plays of the latter, our literature would have been greatly enriched.

I would not deny that a man may have several styles, and may write in the manner of another; especially is this possible when the other has been his bosom friend. Still there are a grace and delicacy about A Very Woman which seem to suggest the hand of Fletcher. The characters are drawn with great refinement and vividness. There is a pair of devoted friends, Antonio and Pedro, and over against them two charming ladies, Leonora and Almira, [pg 130] the former at once sensible and kind, the latter almost worthy of a place beside Shakspere's heroines. The great love scene, though suggested by Desdemona and Othello, is not unworthy of Shakspere himself.467 Cuculo is an amusing study of the old courtier, such as we get elsewhere in Massinger. Borachia, the lady who loves wine, is drawn with a lighter hand than Massinger's; yet I feel that Fletcher, unassisted or unpruned, would have made the scenes in which she appears grosser than they are. Antonio, the Prince of Tarent, reminds us of a clean-limbed, honest English public-school boy; he is slow to take offence, but brave when provoked, sorry for the mischance of which he is the innocent cause, courteous, and ready on all occasions.

The plot has been shaped with great attention to detail. Thus, when Antonio, disguised as a slave, first meets his friend Pedro, his master Cuculo does not allow him to speak,468 so that Pedro has no chance of identifying him by his voice. Later on, however, Pedro has an intuition that the slave is other than he seems to be:

“I do see something in this fellow's face still

That ties my heart fast to him.”469

He treats him as a friend, as though his intuition pierced through the external disguise,470 and when the recognition takes place he naturally remarks:

“Have I not just cause,

When I consider how I could be so stupid,

As not to see a friend through all disguises.”471

Again, we have an indication at the end of the slave-market scene that the slave who followed Paulo will be an important link in the plot:

Paulo. Follow me, then;

The knave may teach me something.

[pg 131]

Slave. Something that

You dearly may repent; howe'er you scorn me,

The slave may prove your master.472

It is this slave who leads the pirates in their attempt to carry off Leonora and Almira.

When Antonio appears in his former dress473 we ask, how did he get it? The answer is, from the Captain, his fellow-slave, whose life he had saved in the past by interceding with the Viceroy.474 Lastly, the Duke's reference (V., 2, 130) to the advice which the Viceroy had given him in II., 2, is one of those careful touches making for unity of design in which Massinger delights.475

No doubt the plot is not free from improbabilities; in real life Antonio would have revealed himself to Pedro, and Pedro and Almira would both have recognized him. We have already seen that Massinger is so fond of a story that he sometimes forgets to let his characters guide it. To round off the play harmoniously, Antonio should have had a soliloquy, to explain to the audience who he was, to lament over the change of his fortunes, to express a hope that all would come right in the end, to reassert his devotion to Pedro, and to protest his loyalty in spite of everything to Almira. Perhaps something of the sort was cut out.

The Bashful Lover is the last play of “the strange old fellow”476 that we possess; it reminds us in several respects of Fletcher; in the romantic atmosphere,477 the overwrought devotion of the hero, the bustling action and the complexity of the plot, and in a metrical detail.478 On the [pg 132] other hand, the smooth and careful construction, the subordination of the comedy, the constant use of parentheses, and, above all, the vacillations of the violent Lorenzo, are characteristics of Massinger. There are many noble personages in the play, and considerable tenderness. Matilda's character is drawn well at the start; in the latter part she rather tends to become a lay figure. A princess with three aspirants to her hand, of whom two are princes, while the one she loves is to all appearance of lowly birth, is awkwardly placed. The same fault, as Boyle points out,479 might be found with the hero, Hortensio; the fact is that the story rather carries the characters along in its sweep than is developed by them; moreover, Massinger seems in the last two acts to be more interested in the psychological study of Lorenzo's emotions than in his hero's fortunes. With all its beauties, the play betrays the advancing years of the author by a certain heaviness of touch, although the episode of Ascanio, the disguised page, is carried through with great delicacy and skill, and the varied incidents of Act II. make the battle one of the most lifelike in literature.

The Maid of Honour is well planned, and the characters well contrasted. Indeed, anyone who doubts Massinger's skill in this respect will be convinced by this play. Though the end is sombre, it is, as Leslie Stephen has pointed out, dignified and inevitable. As Bertoldo was sworn to celibacy, Camiola could not have married him, even if her self-respect had allowed it.480 Here again we get an imperious lady, the Duchess Aurelia, who changes her mind too rapidly, but cannot be charged with viciousness. The comic touches, a foolish lover and a pair of effeminate courtiers, are quite good. The various moods of Adorni—his deepening devotion to Camiola, his humility at her rebuke, his fidelity in doing her commands, his temptation [pg 133] to commit suicide—are admirably portrayed. The King, too, is well drawn; he is a complex character, who is not wholly bad. The rough old soldier Gonzaga is a lifelike study, but the figure who dominates the play is the high-spirited and beautiful heroine. The careful skill of the author is shown in many details, among others, in the way in which Camiola, before taking the veil, persuades the King to forgive Fulgentio. For this to be possible the way is paved by the King's change of mind as to Camiola's character in IV., 5. The end of the play shows in what way Massinger is a greater artist than Fletcher. The latter would certainly have married off the Duchess Aurelia to the King or the Duke of Urbin, and provided Gonzaga with a wife.

No student of our comic drama can ignore the brilliant vigour of The City Madam.481 The characters one and all contribute to an harmonious unity, the most lifelike perhaps being Sir John Frugal, the bluff, successful British merchant, tender-hearted, yet ashamed of being unbusinesslike, and a good judge of men. The plot moves easily, not overloaded with satire. The women remind us of Ben Jonson's women, but with less strength there is a greater art shown here than Ben Jonson had at his command. The great triumph of the play is the hypocrite Luke, to whom some splendid rhetoric is assigned. He arrests our attention from the first; though not on the grand scale like Sir Giles Overreach, he is an innate villain, who only lacks opportunity to be capable of anything, a sordid soul, who does not know what goodness is. The [pg 134] two 'prentices are of the same kidney as Quicksilver in Eastward Ho.