LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH (continued 2)

‘Edward. Weep’st thou already? List awhile to me,

And then thy heart, were it as Gurney’s is,

Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus,

Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.

This dungeon, where they keep me, is the sink

Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.

Lightborn. Oh villains.

Edward. And here in mire and puddle have I stood

This ten days’ space; and lest that I should sleep,

One plays continually upon a drum.

They give me bread and water, being a king;

So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,

My mind’s distempered, and my body’s numbed:

And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.

Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein,

As doth this water from my tatter’d robes!

Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look’d not thus,

When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,

And there unhors’d the Duke of Cleremont.’

There are some excellent passages scattered up and down. The description of the King and Gaveston looking out of the palace window, and laughing at the courtiers as they pass, and that of the different spirit shewn by the lion and the forest deer, when wounded, are among the best. The Song ‘Come, live with me and be my love,’ to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an answer, is Marlowe’s.

Heywood I shall mention next, as a direct contrast to Marlowe in everything but the smoothness of his verse. As Marlowe’s imagination glows like a furnace, Heywood’s is a gentle, lambent flame that 212purifies without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There is nothing supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He makes use of the commonest circumstances of every-day life, and of the easiest tempers, to shew the workings, or rather the inefficacy of the passions, the vis inertiæ of tragedy. His incidents strike from their very familiarity, and the distresses he paints invite our sympathy, from the calmness and resignation with which they are borne. The pathos might be deemed purer from its having no mixture of turbulence or vindictiveness in it; and in proportion as the sufferers are made to deserve a better fate. In the midst of the most untoward reverses and cutting injuries, good-nature and good sense keep their accustomed sway. He describes men’s errors with tenderness, and their duties only with zeal, and the heightenings of a poetic fancy. His style is equally natural, simple, and unconstrained. The dialogue (bating the verse), is such as might be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is beautiful prose put into heroic measure. It is not so much that he uses the common English idiom for everything (for that I think the most poetical and impassioned of our elder dramatists do equally), but the simplicity of the characters, and the equable flow of the sentiments do not require or suffer it to be warped from the tone of level speaking, by figurative expressions, or hyperbolical allusions. A few scattered exceptions occur now and then, where the hectic flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they are not the worse for being rare. Thus, in the play called A Woman killed with Kindness, Wendoll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his obligations to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying

——‘Oh speak no more!

For more than this I know, and have recorded

Within the red-leaved table of my heart.’

And further on, Frankford, when doubting his wife’s fidelity, says, with less feeling indeed, but with much elegance of fancy,

‘Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs,

Like morning dew upon the golden flow’rs.’

So also, when returning to his house at midnight to make the fatal discovery, he exclaims,

——‘Astonishment,

Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart,

Even as a madman beats upon a drum.’

It is the reality of things present to their imaginations, that makes these writers so fine, so bold, and yet so true in what they describe. 213Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them ‘invisible, or dimly seen’ through a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such poetical ornaments are however to be met with at considerable intervals in this play, and do not disturb the calm serenity and domestic simplicity of the author’s style. The conclusion of Wendoll’s declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of its general merits, both as to thought and diction.

‘Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful

Bluntly to give my life into your hand,

And at one hazard, all my earthly means.

Go, tell your husband: he will turn me off,

And I am then undone. I care not, I;

’Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he’ll kill me;

I care not; ’twas for you. Say I incur

The general name of villain thro’ the world,

Of traitor to my friend: I care not, I;

Poverty, shame, death, scandal, and reproach,

For you I’ll hazard all: why what care I?

For you I love, and for your love I’ll die.’

The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to his wife, and her repentant agony at parting with him, are already before the public, in Mr. Lamb’s Specimens. The winding up of this play is rather awkwardly managed, and the moral is, according to established usage, equivocal. It required only Frankford’s reconciliation to his wife, as well as his forgiveness of her, for the highest breach of matrimonial duty, to have made a Woman Killed with Kindness a complete anticipation of the Stranger. Heywood, however, was in that respect but half a Kotzebue!—The view here given of country manners is truly edifying. As in the higher walk of tragedy we see the manners and moral sentiments of kings and nobles of former times, here we have the feuds and amiable qualities of country ‘squires and their relatives; and such as were the rulers, such were their subjects. The frequent quarrels and ferocious habits of private life are well exposed in the fatal rencounter between Sir Francis Acton and Sir Charles Mountford about a hawking match, in the ruin and rancorous persecution of the latter in consequence, and in the hard, unfeeling, cold-blooded treatment he receives in his distress from his own relations, and from a fellow of the name of Shafton. After reading the sketch of this last character, who is introduced as a mere ordinary personage, the representative of a class, without any preface or apology, no one can doubt the credibility of that of Sir Giles Over-reach, who is professedly held up (I should think almost unjustly) as a prodigy of grasping and hardened selfishness. The influence of philosophy 214and prevalence of abstract reasoning, if it has done nothing for our poetry, has done, I should hope, something for our manners. The callous declaration of one of these unconscionable churls,

‘This is no world in which to pity men,’

might have been taken as a motto for the good old times in general, and with a very few reservations, if Heywood has not grossly libelled them.—Heywood’s plots have little of artifice or regularity of design to recommend them. He writes on carelessly, as it happens, and trusts to Nature, and a certain happy tranquillity of spirit, for gaining the favour of the audience. He is said, besides attending to his duties as an actor, to have composed regularly a sheet a day. This may account in some measure for the unembarrassed facility of his style. His own account makes the number of his writings for the stage, or those in which he had a main hand, upwards of 200. In fact, I do not wonder at any quantity that an author is said to have written; for the more a man writes, the more he can write.

The same remarks will apply, with certain modifications, to other remaining works of this writer, the Royal King and Loyal Subject, a Challenge for Beauty, and the English Traveller. The barb of misfortune is sheathed in the mildness of the writer’s temperament, and the story jogs on very comfortably, without effort or resistance, to the euthanasia of the catastrophe. In two of these, the person principally aggrieved survives, and feels himself none the worse for it. The most splendid passage in Heywood’s comedies is the account of Shipwreck by Drink, in the English Traveller, which was the foundation of Cowley’s Latin Poem, Naufragium Joculare.

The names of Middleton and Rowley, with which I shall conclude this Lecture, generally appear together as two writers who frequently combined their talents in the production of joint-pieces. Middleton (judging from their separate works) was ‘the more potent spirit’ of the two; but they were neither of them equal to some others. Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity and naiveté equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton’s style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries. In his Women Beware Women, there is a rich marrowy vein of internal sentiment, with fine occasional insight into human nature, and cool cutting irony of expression. He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement 215of the story. It is like the rough draught of a tragedy, with a number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to the whole. We have fine studies of heads, a piece of richly-coloured drapery, ‘a foot, an hand, an eye from Nature drawn, that’s worth a history’; but the groups are ill disposed, nor are the figures proportioned to each other or the size of the canvas. The author’s power is in the subject, not over it; or he is in possession of excellent materials, which he husbands very ill. This character, though it applies more particularly to Middleton, might be applied generally to the age. Shakespear alone seemed to stand over his work, and to do what he pleased with it. He saw to the end of what he was about, and with the same faculty of lending himself to the impulses of Nature and the impression of the moment, never forgot that he himself had a task to perform, nor the place which each figure ought to occupy in his general design.—The characters of Livia, of Bianca, of Leantio and his Mother, in the play of which I am speaking, are all admirably drawn. The art and malice of Livia shew equal want of principle and acquaintance with the world; and the scene in which she holds the mother in suspense, while she betrays the daughter into the power of the profligate Duke, is a master-piece of dramatic skill. The proneness of Bianca to tread the primrose path of pleasure, after she has made the first false step, and her sudden transition from unblemished virtue to the most abandoned vice, in which she is notably seconded by her mother-in-law’s ready submission to the temptations of wealth and power, form a true and striking picture. The first intimation of the intrigue that follows, is given in a way that is not a little remarkable for simplicity and acuteness. Bianca says,

‘Did not the Duke look up? Methought he saw us.’

To which the more experienced mother answers,

‘That’s every one’s conceit that sees a Duke.

If he looks stedfastly, he looks straight at them,

When he perhaps, good careful gentleman,

Never minds any, but the look he casts

Is at his own intentions, and his object

Only the public good.’

It turns out however, that he had been looking at them, and not ‘at the public good.’ The moral of this tragedy is rendered more impressive from the manly, independent character of Leantio in the 216first instance, and the manner in which he dwells, in a sort of doting abstraction, on his own comforts, in being possessed of a beautiful and faithful wife. As he approaches his own house, and already treads on the brink of perdition, he exclaims with an exuberance of satisfaction not to be restrained—

‘How near am I to a happiness

That earth exceeds not! Not another like it:

The treasures of the deep are not so precious,

As are the conceal’d comforts of a man

Lock’d up in woman’s love. I scent the air

Of blessings when I come but near the house:

What a delicious breath marriage sends forth!

The violet-bed’s not sweeter. Honest wedlock

Is like a banquetting-house built in a garden,

On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight

To cast their modest odours; when base lust,

With all her powders, paintings, and best pride,

Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.

When I behold a glorious dangerous strumpet,

Sparkling in beauty and destruction too,

Both at a twinkling, I do liken straight

Her beautified body to a goodly temple

That’s built on vaults where carcasses lie rotting;

And so by little and little I shrink back again,

And quench desire with a cool meditation;

And I’m as well, methinks. Now for a welcome

Able to draw men’s envies upon man:

A kiss now that will hang upon my lip,

As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,

And full as long; after a five days’ fast

She’ll be so greedy now and cling about me:

I take care how I shall be rid of her;

And here ‘t begins.’

This dream is dissipated by the entrance of Bianca and his Mother.

‘Bian. Oh, sir, you’re welcome home.

Moth. Oh, is he come? I am glad on ‘t.

Lean. (Aside.) Is that all?

Why this is dreadful now as sudden death

To some rich man, that flatters all his sins

With promise of repentance when he’s old,

And dies in the midway before he comes to ‘t.

Sure you’re not well, Bianca! How dost, prithee?

Bian. I have been better than I am at this time.

Lean. Alas, I thought so.

Bian. Nay, I have been worse too,

Than now you see me, sir.

217Lean. I’m glad thou mendst yet,

I feel my heart mend too. How came it to thee?

Has any thing dislik’d thee in my absence?

Bian. No, certain, I have had the best content

That Florence can afford.

Lean. Thou makest the best on ‘t:

Speak, mother, what ‘s the cause? you must needs know.

Moth. Troth, I know none, son; let her speak herself;

Unless it be the same gave Lucifer a tumbling cast; that’s pride.

Bian. Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind;

I’d have some pleasant lodging i’ th’ high street, sir;

Or if ’twere near the court, sir, that were much better;

’Tis a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman

To stand in a bay-window, and see gallants.

Lean. Now I have another temper, a mere stranger

To that of yours, it seems; I should delight

To see none but yourself.

Bian. I praise not that;

Too fond is as unseemly as too churlish:

I would not have a husband of that proneness,

To kiss me before company, for a world:

Beside, ’tis tedious to see one thing still, sir,

Be it the best that ever heart affected;

Nay, were ‘t yourself, whose love had power you know

To bring me from my friends, I would not stand thus,

And gaze upon you always; troth, I could not, sir;

As good be blind, and have no use of sight,

As look on one thing still: what’s the eye’s treasure,

But change of objects? You are learned, sir,

And know I speak not ill; ’tis full as virtuous

For woman’s eye to look on several men,

As for her heart, sir, to be fixed on one.

Lean. Now thou com’st home to me; a kiss for that word.

Bian. No matter for a kiss, sir; let it pass;

’Tis but a toy, we ‘ll not so much as mind it;

Let’s talk of other business, and forget it.

What news now of the pirates? any stirring?

Prithee discourse a little.

Moth. (Aside.) I am glad he ‘s here yet

To see her tricks himself; I had lied monst’rously

If I had told ’em first.

Lean. Speak, what ‘s the humour, sweet,

You make your lips so strange? This was not wont.

Bian. Is there no kindness betwixt man and wife,

Unless they make a pigeon-house of friendship,

And be still billing? ’tis the idlest fondness

That ever was invented; and ’tis pity

It ‘s grown a fashion for poor gentlewomen;

There ‘s many a disease kiss’d in a year by ‘t,

218And a French court’sy made to’t: Alas, sir,

Think of the world, how we shall live, grow serious;

We have been married a whole fortnight now.

Lean. How? a whole fortnight! why, is that so long?

Bian. ’Tis time to leave off dalliance; ’tis a doctrine

Of your own teaching, if you be remember’d,

And I was bound to obey it.

Moth. (Aside.) Here’s one fits him;

This was well catch’d i’ faith, son, like a fellow

That rids another country of a plague,

And brings it home with him to his own house.

[A Messenger from the Duke knocks within.

Who knocks?

Lean. Who’s there now? Withdraw you, Bianca;

Thou art a gem no stranger’s eye must see,

Howe’er thou ‘rt pleas’d now to look dull on me.

[Exit Bianca.

The Witch of Middleton is his most remarkable performance; both on its own account, and from the use that Shakespear has made of some of the characters and speeches in his Macbeth. Though the employment which Middleton has given to Hecate and the rest, in thwarting the purposes and perplexing the business of familiar and domestic life, is not so grand or appalling as the more stupendous agency which Shakespear has assigned them, yet it is not easy to deny the merit of the first invention to Middleton, who has embodied the existing superstitions of the time, respecting that anomalous class of beings, with a high spirit of poetry, of the most grotesque and fanciful kind. The songs and incantations made use of are very nearly the same. The other parts of this play are not so good; and the solution of the principal difficulty, by Antonio’s falling down a trap-door, most lame and impotent. As a specimen of the similarity of the preternatural machinery, I shall here give one entire scene.

‘The Witches’ Habitation.

Enter Heccat, Stadlin, Hoppo, and other Witches.

Hec. The moon’s a gallant: see how brisk she rides.

Stad. Here’s a rich evening, Heccat.

Hec. Aye, is ‘t not, wenches,

To take a journey of five thousand miles?

Hop. Our’s will be more to-night.

Hec. Oh, ‘twill be precious. Heard you the owl yet?

Stad. Briefly, in the copse,

As we came thro’ now.

Hec. ’Tis high time for us then.

Stad. There was a bat hung at my lips three times

219As we came thro’ the woods, and drank her fill:

Old Puckle saw her.

Hec. You are fortunate still,

The very scritch-owl lights upon your shoulder,

And woos you like a pidgeon. Are you furnish’d?

Have you your ointments?

Stad. All.

Hec. Prepare to flight then.

I’ll overtake you swiftly.

Stad. Hye then, Heccat!

We shall be up betimes.

Hec. I’ll reach you quickly.

[They ascend.

Enter Firestone.

Fire. They are all going a birding to-night. They talk of fowls i’ th’ air, that fly by day, I’m sure they’ll be a company of foul sluts there to-night. If we have not mortality affeared, I’ll be hang’d, for they are able to putrify it, to infect a whole region. She spies me now.

Hec. What, Firestone, our sweet son?

Fire. A little sweeter than some of you; or a dunghill were too good for me.

Hec. How much hast there?

Fire. Nineteen, and all brave plump ones; besides six lizards, and three serpentine eggs.

Hec. Dear and sweet boy! What herbs hast thou?

Fire. I have some mar-martin, and man-dragon.

Hec. Marmarittin, and mandragora, thou would’st say.

Fire. Here’s pannax, too. I thank thee; my pan akes, I am sure, with kneeling down to cut ’em.

Hec. And selago,

Hedge-hissop too! How near he goes my cuttings!

Were they all cropt by moon-light?

Fire. Every blade of ’em, or I’m a moon-calf, mother.

Hec. Hie thee home with ’em.

Look well to th’ house to-night: I’m for aloft.

Fire. Aloft, quoth you! I would you would break your neck once, that I might have all quickly (Aside).—Hark, hark, mother! They are above the steeple already, flying over your head with a noise of musicians.

Hec. They are indeed. Help me! Help me! I’m too late else.

SONG, (in the air above).

Come away, come away!

Heccat, Heccat, come away!

Hec. I come, I come, I come, I come,

With all the speed I may,

With all the speed I may.

Where’s Stadlin?

(Above). Here.

220Hec. Where’s Puckle?

(Above). Here:

And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too:

We lack but you, we lack but you.

Come away, make up the count!

Hec. I will but ‘noint, and then I mount.

(A Spirit descends in the shape of a Cat).

(Above). There’s one come down to fetch his dues;

A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood;

And why thou stay’st so long, I muse, I muse,

Since th’ air’s so sweet and good?

Hec. Oh, art thou come,

What news, what news?

Spirit. All goes still to our delight,

Either come, or else

Refuse, refuse.

Hec. Now I am furnish’d for the flight.

Fire. Hark, hark! The cat sings a brave treble in her own language.

Hec. (Ascending with the Spirit).

Now I go, now I fly,

Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.

Oh, what a dainty pleasure ’tis

To ride in the air

When the moon shines fair,

And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss!

Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,

Over seas our mistress’ fountains,

Over steep towers and turrets,

We fly by night, ‘mongst troops of spirits.

No ring of bells to our ears sounds,

No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds:

No, not the noise of water’s breach,

Or cannon’s roar, our height can reach.

(Above.) No ring of bells, &c.

Fire. Well, mother, I thank you for your kindness. You must be gamboling i’ th’ air, and leave me here like a fool and a mortal.

[Exit.’

The Incantation scene at the cauldron, is also the original of that in Macbeth, and is in like manner introduced by the Duchess’s visiting the Witches’ Habitation.

‘The Witches’ Habitation.

Enter Duchess, Heccat, Firestone.

Hec. What death is’t you desire for Almachildes?

Duch. A sudden and a subtle.

Hec. Then I’ve fitted you.

Here lie the gifts of both; sudden and subtle;

221His picture made in wax, and gently molten

By a blue fire, kindled with dead men’s eyes,

Will waste him by degrees.

Duch. In what time, pr’ythee?

Hec. Perhaps in a month’s progress.

Duch. What? A month?

Out upon pictures! If they be so tedious,

Give me things with some life.

Hec. Then seek no farther.

Duch. This must be done with speed, dispatched this night,

If it may possibly.

Hec. I have it for you:

Here’s that will do ‘t. Stay but perfection’s time,

And that’s not five hours hence.

Duch. Can’st thou do this?

Hec. Can I?

Duch. I mean, so closely.

Hec. So closely do you mean too?

Duch. So artfully, so cunningly.

Hec. Worse and worse; doubts and incredulities,

They make me mad. Let scrupulous creatures know,

Cum volui, ripis ipsis mirantibus, amnes

In fontes rediere suos: concussaque sisto,

Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello,

Nubilaque induco: ventos abigoque vocoque.

Vipereas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces;

Et silvas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere montes,

Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchres.

Te quoque luna traho.

Can you doubt me then, daughter?

That can make mountains tremble, miles of woods walk;

Whole earth’s foundations bellow, and the spirits

Of the entomb’d to burst out from their marbles;

Nay, draw yon moon to my involv’d designs?

Fire. I know as well as can be when my mother’s mad, and our great cat angry; for one spits French then, and th’ other spits Latin.

Duch. I did not doubt you, mother.

Hec. No? what did you?

My power’s so firm, it is not to be question’d.

Duch. Forgive what’s past: and now I know th’ offensiveness

That vexes art, I’ll shun th’ occasion ever.

Hec. Leave all to me and my five sisters, daughter.

It shall be conveyed in at howlet-time.

Take you no care. My spirits know their moments;

Raven or scritch-owl never fly by th’ door,

But they call in (I thank ’em), and they lose not by ‘t.

I give ’em barley soak’d in infants’ blood:

They shall have semina cum sanguine,

Their gorge cramm’d full, if they come once to our house:

222We are no niggard.

[Exit Duchess.

Fire. They fare but too well when they come hither. They ate up as much t’ other night as would have made me a good conscionable pudding.

Hec. Give me some lizard’s brain: quickly, Firestone!

Where’s grannam Stadlin, and all the rest o’ th’ sisters?

Fire. All at hand, forsooth.

Hec. Give me marmaritin; some bear-breech. When?

Fire. Here’s bear-breech and lizard’s brain, forsooth.

Hec. Into the vessel;

And fetch three ounces of the red-hair’d girl

I kill’d last midnight.

Fire. Whereabouts, sweet mother?

Hec. Hip; hip or flank. Where is the acopus?

Fire. You shall have acopus, forsooth.

Hec. Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm.

A CHARM SONG,

(The Witches going about the Cauldron).

Black spirits, and white; red spirits, and gray;

Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.

Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in;

Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky;

Liard, Robin, you must bob in.

Round, around, around, about, about;

All ill come running in; all good keep out!

1st Witch. Here’s the blood of a bat.

Hec. Put in that; oh, put in that.

2d Witch. Here’s libbard’s-bane.

Hec. Put in again.

1st Witch. The juice of toad; the oil of adder.

2d Witch. Those will make the yonker madder.

Hec. Put in: there’s all, and rid the stench.

Fire. Nay, here’s three ounces of the red-hair’d wench.

All. Round, around, around, &c.

Hec. See, see enough: into the vessel with it.

There; ‘t hath the true perfection. I’m so light

At any mischief: there’s no villainy

But is in tune, methinks.

Fire. A tune! ’Tis to the tune of damnation then. I warrant you that song hath a villainous burthen.

Hec. Come, my sweet sisters; let the air strike our tune,

Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.

[The Witches dance, and then exeunt.

I will conclude this account with Mr. Lamb’s observations on the distinctive characters of these extraordinary and formidable personages, as they are described by Middleton or Shakespear.

‘Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in 223Macbeth and the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality of Shakespear. His witches are distinguished from the witches of Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet Macbeth’s, he is spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body; those have power over the soul.—Hecate, in Middleton, has a son, a low buffoon: the Hags of Shakespear have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them.—Except Hecate, they have no names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties which Middleton has given to his Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot consist with mirth. But in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They “raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o’er life.“’

LECTURE III ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, AND WEBSTER

The writers of whom I have already treated, may be said to have been ‘no mean men’; those of whom I have yet to speak, are certainly no whit inferior. Would that I could do them any thing like justice! It is not difficult to give at least their seeming due to great and well-known names; for the sentiments of the reader meet the descriptions of the critic more than half way, and clothe what is perhaps vague and extravagant praise with a substantial form and distinct meaning. But in attempting to extol the merits of an obscure work of genius, our words are either lost in empty air, or are ‘blown stifling back’ upon the mouth that utters them. The greater those merits are, and the truer the praise, the more suspicious and disproportionate does it almost necessarily appear; for it has no relation to any image previously existing in the public mind, and therefore looks 224like an imposition fabricated out of nothing. In this case, the only way that I know of is, to make these old writers (as much as can be) vouchers for their own pretensions, which they are well able to make good. I shall in the present Lecture give some account of Marston and Chapman, and afterwards of Deckar and Webster.

Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him. He was first on terms of great intimacy, and afterwards at open war, with Ben Jonson; and he is most unfairly criticised in The Return from Parnassus, under the name of Monsieur Kinsayder, as a mere libeller and buffoon. Writers in their life-time do all they can to degrade and vilify one another, and expect posterity to have a very tender care of their reputations! The writers of this age, in general, cannot however be reproached with this infirmity. The number of plays that they wrote in conjunction, is a proof of the contrary; and a circumstance no less curious, as to the division of intellectual labour, than the cordial union of sentiment it implied. Unlike most poets, the love of their art surmounted their hatred of one another. Genius was not become a vile and vulgar pretence, and they respected in others what they knew to be true inspiration in themselves. They courted the applause of the multitude, but came to one another for judgment and assistance. When we see these writers working together on the same admirable productions, year after year, as was the case with Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, with Chapman, Deckar, and Jonson, it reminds one of Ariosto’s eloquent apostrophe to the Spirit of Ancient Chivalry, when he has seated his rival knights, Renaldo and Ferraw, on the same horse.

‘Oh ancient knights of true and noble heart,

They rivals were, one faith they liv’d not under;

Besides, they felt their bodies shrewdly smart

Of blows late given, and yet (behold a wonder)

Thro’ thick and thin, suspicion set apart,

Like friends they ride, and parted not asunder,

Until the horse with double spurring drived

Unto a way parted in two, arrived.’^[20]

Marston’s Antonio and Mellida is a tragedy of considerable force and pathos; but in the most critical parts, the author frequently breaks 225off or flags without any apparent reason but want of interest in his subject; and farther, the best and most affecting situations and bursts of feeling are too evidently imitations of Shakespear. Thus the unexpected meeting between Andrugio and Lucio, in the beginning of the third act, is a direct counterpart of that between Lear and Kent, only much weakened: and the interview between Antonio and Mellida has a strong resemblance to the still more affecting one between Lear and Cordelia, and is most wantonly disfigured by the sudden introduction of half a page of Italian rhymes, which gives the whole an air of burlesque. The conversation of Lucio and Andrugio, again, after his defeat seems to invite, but will not bear a comparison with Richard the Second’s remonstrance with his courtiers, who offered him consolation in his misfortunes; and no one can be at a loss to trace the allusion to Romeo’s conduct on being apprized of his banishment, in the termination of the following speech.

‘Antonio. Each man takes hence life, but no man death:

He’s a good fellow, and keeps open house:

A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate,

To his wide-mouthed porch: when niggard life

Hath but one little, little wicket through.

We wring ourselves into this wretched world

To pule and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail,

To fret and ban the fates, to strike the earth

As I do now. Antonio, curse thy birth,

And die.’

The following short passage might be quoted as one of exquisite beauty and originality—

—‘As having clasp’d a rose

Within my palm, the rose being ta’en away,

My hand retains a little breath of sweet;

So may man’s trunk, his spirit slipp’d away,

Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.’

Act IV. Scene 1.

The character of Felice in this play is an admirable satirical accompaniment, and is the favourite character of this author (in all probability his own), that of a shrewd, contemplative cynic, and sarcastic spectator in the drama of human life. It runs through all his plays, is shared by Quadratus and Lampatho in What you Will (it is into the mouth of the last of these that he has put that fine invective against the uses of philosophy, in the account of himself and his spaniel, ‘who still slept while he baus’d leaves, tossed o’er the dunces, por’d on the old print’), and is at its height in the Fawn and Malevole, in 226his Parasitaster and Malcontent. These two comedies are his chef d’œuvres. The character of the Duke Hercules of Ferrara, disguised as the Parasite, in the first of these, is well sustained throughout, with great sense, dignity, and spirit. He is a wise censurer of men and things, and rails at the world with charitable bitterness. He may put in a claim to a sort of family likeness to the Duke, in Measure for Measure: only the latter descends from his elevation to watch in secret over serious crimes; the other is only a spy on private follies. There is something in this cast of character (at least in comedy—perhaps it neutralizes the tone and interest in tragedy), that finds a wonderful reciprocity in the breast of the reader or audience. It forms a kind of middle term or point of union between the busy actors in the scene and the indifferent byestander, insinuates the plot, and suggests a number of good wholesome reflections, for the sagacity and honesty of which we do not fail to take credit to ourselves. We are let into its confidence, and have a perfect reliance on its sincerity. Our sympathy with it is without any drawback; for it has no part to perform itself, and ‘is nothing, if not critical,’ It is a sure card to play. We may doubt the motives of heroic actions, or differ about the just limits and extreme workings of the passions; but the professed misanthrope is a character that no one need feel any scruples in trusting, since the dislike of folly and knavery in the abstract is common to knaves and fools with the wise and honest! Besides the instructive moral vein of Hercules as the Fawn or Parasitaster, which contains a world of excellent matter, most aptly and wittily delivered; there are two other characters perfectly hit off, Gonzago the old prince of Urbino, and Granuffo, one of his lords in waiting. The loquacious, good-humoured, undisguised vanity of the one is excellently relieved by the silent gravity of the other. The wit of this last character (Granuffo) consists in his not speaking a word through the whole play; he never contradicts what is said, and only assents by implication. He is a most infallible courtier, and follows the prince like his shadow, who thus graces his pretensions.

‘We would be private, only Faunus stay; he is a wise fellow, daughter, a very wise fellow, for he is still just of my opinion; my Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know you’ll say nothing.’

And again, a little farther on, he says—

‘Faunus, this Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent discourse, and never speaks; his signs to me and men of profound reach instruct abundantly; he begs suits with signs, gives thanks with signs, puts off his hat leisurely, maintains his beard learnedly, keeps his lust privately, makes a nodding leg courtly, and lives happily.’—‘Silence,’ replies Hercules, 227‘is an excellent modest grace; but especially before so instructing a wisdom as that of your Excellency.’

The garrulous self-complacency of this old lord is kept up in a vein of pleasant humour; an instance of which might be given in his owning of some learned man, that ‘though he was no duke, yet he was wise;’ and the manner in which the others play upon this foible, and make him contribute to his own discomfiture, without his having the least suspicion of the plot against him, is full of ingenuity and counterpoint. In the last scene he says, very characteristically,

‘Of all creatures breathing, I do hate those things that struggle to seem wise, and yet are indeed very fools. I remember when I was a young man, in my father’s days, there were four gallant spirits for resolution, as proper for body, as witty in discourse, as any were in Europe; nay, Europe had not such. I was one of them. We four did all love one lady; a most chaste virgin she was: we all enjoyed her, and so enjoyed her, that, despite the strictest guard was set upon her, we had her at our pleasure. I speak it for her honour, and my credit. Where shall you find such witty fellows now a-days? Alas! how easy is it in these weaker times to cross love-tricks! Ha! ha! ha! Alas, alas! I smile to think (I must confess with some glory to mine own wisdom), to think how I found out, and crossed, and curbed, and in the end made desperate Tiberio’s love. Alas! good silly youth, that dared to cope with age and such a beard!

Hercules. But what yet might your well-known wisdom think,

If such a one, as being most severe,

A most protested opposite to the match

Of two young lovers; who having barr’d them speech,

All interviews, all messages, all means

To plot their wished ends; even he himself

Was by their cunning made the go-between,

The only messenger, the token-carrier;

Told them the times when they might fitly meet,

Nay, shew’d the way to one another’s bed?’

To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of exulting dotage:

‘May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing? Doth there breathe such an egregious ass? Is there such a foolish animal in rerum natura? How is it possible such a simplicity can exist? Let us not lose our laughing at him, for God’s sake; let folly’s sceptre light upon him, and to the ship of fools with him instantly.

Dondolo. Of all these follies I arrest your grace.’

Molière has built a play on nearly the same foundation, which is not much superior to the present. Marston, among other topics of satire, has a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time, 228who were ‘full of wise saws and modern instances.’ Thus he freights his Ship of Fools:

‘Dondolo. Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them proved themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were let go: there’s none left now in our ship but a few citizens that let their wives keep their shop-books, some philosophers, and a few critics; one of which critics has lost his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus’ verses; another has vowed to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing.

Hercules. But what philosophers ha’ ye?

Dondolo. Oh very strange fellows; one knows nothing, dares not aver he lives, goes, sees, feels.

Nymphadoro. A most insensible philosopher.

Dondolo. Another, that there is no present time; and that one man to-day and to-morrow, is not the same man; so that he that yesterday owed money, to-day owes none; because he is not the same man.

Herod. Would that philosophy hold good in law?

Hercules. But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all the fools shipped out of his dominions?

Dondolo. Marry, because he would play the fool alone without any rival.’

Act IV.

Molière has enlarged upon the same topic in his Mariage Forcé, but not with more point or effect. Nymphadoro’s reasons for devoting himself to the sex generally, and Hercules’s description of the different qualifications of different men, will also be found to contain excellent specimens, both of style and matter.—The disguise of Hercules as the Fawn, is assumed voluntarily, and he is comparatively a calm and dispassionate observer of the times. Malevole’s disguise in the Malcontent has been forced upon him by usurpation and injustice, and his invectives are accordingly more impassioned and virulent. His satire does not ‘like a wild goose fly, unclaimed of any man,’ but has a bitter and personal application. Take him in the words of the usurping Duke’s account of him.

‘This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever conversed with Nature; a man, or rather a monster, more discontent than Lucifer when he was thrust out of the presence. His appetite is unsatiable as the grave, as far from any content as from heaven. His highest delight is to procure others vexation, and therein he thinks he truly serves Heaven; for ’tis his position, whosoever in this earth can be contented, is a slave, and damned; therefore does he afflict all, in that to which they are most affected. The elements struggle with him; his own soul is at variance with herself; his speech is halter-worthy at all hours. I like him, faith; he gives good intelligence to my spirit, makes me understand those weaknesses which others’ flattery palliates.

Hark! they sing.

229Enter Malevole, after the Song.

Pietro Jacomo. See he comes! Now shall you hear the extremity of a Malcontent; he is as free as air; he blows over every man. And—Sir, whence come you now?

Malevole. From the public place of much dissimulation, the church.

Pietro Jacomo. What didst there?

Malevole. Talk with a usurer; take up at interest.

Pietro Jacomo. I wonder what religion thou art of?

Malevole. Of a soldier’s religion.

Pietro Jacomo. And what dost think makes most infidels now?

Malevole. Sects, sects. I am weary: would I were one of the Duke’s hounds.

Pietro Jacomo. But what’s the common news abroad? Thou dogg’st rumour still.

Malevole. Common news? Why, common words are, God save ye, fare ye well: common actions, flattery and cozenage: common things, women and cuckolds.’

Act I. Scene 3.

In reading all this, one is somehow reminded perpetually of Mr. Kean’s acting: in Shakespear we do not often think of him, except in those parts which he constantly acts, and in those one cannot forget him. I might observe on the above passage, in excuse for some bluntnesses of style, that the ideal barrier between names and things seems to have been greater then than now. Words have become instruments of more importance than formerly. To mention certain actions, is almost to participate in them, as if consciousness were the same as guilt. The standard of delicacy varies at different periods, as it does in different countries, and is not a general test of superiority. The French, who pique themselves (and justly, in some particulars) on their quickness of tact and refinement of breeding, say and do things which we, a plainer and coarser people, could not think of without a blush. What would seem gross allusions to us at present, were without offence to our ancestors, and many things passed for jests with them, or matters of indifference, which would not now be endured. Refinement of language, however, does not keep pace with simplicity of manners. The severity of criticism exercised in our theatres towards some unfortunate straggling phrases in the old comedies, is but an ambiguous compliment to the immaculate purity of modern times. Marston’s style was by no means more guarded than that of his contemporaries. He was also much more of a free-thinker than Marlowe, and there is a frequent, and not unfavourable allusion in his works, to later sceptical opinions.—In the play of the Malcontent we meet with an occasional mixture of comic gaiety, to relieve the more serious and painful business of the scene, as in the easy loquacious effrontery of the old intriguante Maquerella, and in 230the ludicrous facility with which the idle courtiers avoid or seek the notice of Malevole, as he is in or out of favour; but the general tone and import of the piece is severe and moral. The plot is somewhat too intricate and too often changed (like the shifting of a scene), so as to break and fritter away the interest at the end; but the part of Aurelia, the Duchess of Pietro Jacomo, a dissolute and proud-spirited woman, is the highest strain of Marston’s pen. The scene in particular, in which she receives and exults in the supposed news of her husband’s death, is nearly unequalled in boldness of conception and in the unrestrained force of passion, taking away not only the consciousness of guilt, but overcoming the sense of shame.^[21]

Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose name is better known as the translator of Homer than as a dramatic writer. He is, like Marston, a philosophic observer, a didactic reasoner: but he has both more gravity in his tragic style, and more levity in his comic vein. His Bussy d’Ambois, though not without interest or some fancy, is rather a collection of apophthegms or pointed sayings in the form of a dialogue, than a poem or a tragedy. In his verses the oracles have not ceased. Every other line is an axiom in morals—a libel on mankind, if truth is a libel. He is too stately for a wit, in his serious writings—too formal for a poet. Bussy d’Ambois is founded on a French plot and French manners. The character, from which it derives its name, is arrogant and ostentatious to an unheard-of degree, but full of nobleness and lofty spirit. His pride and unmeasured pretensions alone take away from his real merit; and by the quarrels and intrigues in which they involve him, bring about the catastrophe, which has considerable grandeur and imposing effect, in the manner of Seneca. Our author aims at the highest things in poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination and passion, to fill up the epic moulds of tragedy with sense and reason alone, so that he often runs into bombast and turgidity—is extravagant and pedantic at one and the same time. From the nature of the plot, which turns upon a love intrigue, much of the philosophy of this piece relates to the character of the sex. Milton says,

‘The way of women’s will is hard to hit.’

But old Chapman professes to have found the clue to it, and winds his uncouth way through all the labyrinth of love. Its deepest recesses ‘hide nothing from his view.’ The close intrigues of court policy, the subtle workings of the human soul, move before him like a sea dark, deep, and glittering with wrinkles for the smile of beauty. 231Fulke Greville alone could go beyond him in gravity and mystery. The plays of the latter (Mustapha and Alaham) are abstruse as the mysteries of old, and his style inexplicable as the riddles of the Sphinx. As an instance of his love for the obscure, the marvellous, and impossible, he calls up ‘the ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus,’ as prologue to one of his tragedies; a very reverend and inscrutable personage, who, we may be sure, blabs no living secrets. Chapman, in his other pieces, where he lays aside the gravity of the philosopher and poet, discovers an unexpected comic vein, distinguished by equal truth of nature and lively good humour. I cannot say that this character pervades any one of his entire comedies; but the introductory sketch of Monsieur D’Olive is the undoubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, and infinitely delightful class of character, of the professed men of wit and pleasure about town, which we have in such perfection in Wycherley and Congreve, such as Sparkish, Witwoud and Petulant, &c. both in the sentiments and in the style of writing. For example, take the last scene of the first act.

‘Enter D’Olive.

Rhoderique. What, Monsieur D’Olive, the only admirer of wit and good words.

D’Olive. Morrow, wits: morrow, good wits: my little parcels of wit, I have rods in pickle for you. How dost, Jack; may I call thee, sir, Jack yet?

Mugeron. You may, sir; sir’s as commendable an addition as Jack, for ought I know.

D’Ol. I know it, Jack, and as common too.

Rhod. Go to, you may cover; we have taken notice of your embroidered beaver.

D’Ol. Look you: by heaven thou ‘rt one of the maddest bitter slaves in Europe: I do but wonder how I made shift to love thee all this while.

Rhod. Go to, what might such a parcel-gilt cover be worth?

Mug. Perhaps more than the whole piece beside.

D’Ol. Good i’ faith, but bitter. Oh, you mad slaves, I think you had Satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you, I must take pleasure in you, and i’ faith tell me, how is’t? live I see you do, but how? but how, wits?

Rhod. Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers.

D’Ol. By your wits?

Mug. Nay, not turned poets neither.

D’Ol. Good in sooth! but indeed to say truth, time was when the sons of the Muses had the privilege to live only by their wits, but times are altered, Monopolies are now called in, and wit’s become a free trade for all sorts to live by: lawyers live by wit, and they live worshipfully: soldiers live by wit, and they live honourably: panders live by wit, and they live honestly: in a word, there are but few trades but live by wit, only bawds and midwives live by women’s labours, as fools and fiddlers do by making 232mirth, pages and parasites by making legs, painters and players by making mouths and faces: ha, does’t well, wits?

Rhod. Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as country gentlemen follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare.

D’Ol. Well, well, let’s leave these wit skirmishes, and say when shall we meet?

Mug. How think you, are we not met now?

D’Ol. Tush, man! I mean at my chamber, where we may take free use of ourselves; that is, drink sack, and talk satire, and let our wits run the wild-goose chase over court and country. I will have my chamber the rendezvous of all good wits, the shop of good words, the mint of good jests, an ordinary of fine discourse; critics, essayists, linguists, poets, and other professors of that faculty of wit, shall, at certain hours i’ th’ day, resort thither; it shall be a second Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences of learning, honour, duellism, criticism, and poetry, shall be disputed: and how, wits, do ye follow the court still?

Rhod. Close at heels, sir; and I can tell you, you have much to answer to your stars, that you do not so too.

D’Ol. As why, wits? as why?

Rhod. Why, sir, the court’s as ’twere the stage: and they that have a good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press thither to grace them, and receive their due merit.

D’Ol. Tush, let the court follow me: he that soars too near the sun, melts his wings many times; as I am, I possess myself, I enjoy my liberty, my learning, my wit: as for wealth and honour, let ’em go; I’ll not lose my learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an alderman.

Mug. Admirable D’Olive!

D’Ol. And what! you stand gazing at this comet here, and admire it, I dare say.

Rhod. And do not you?

D’Ol. Not I, I admire nothing but wit.

Rhod. But I wonder how she entertains time in that solitary cell: does she not take tobacco, think you?

D’Ol. She does, she does: others make it their physic, she makes it her food: her sister and she take it by turn, first one, then the other, and Vandome ministers to them both.

Mug. How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece the Countess’s sister? there were a paragon, Monsieur D’Olive, to admire and marry too.

D’Ol. Not for me.

Rhod. No? what exceptions lie against the choice?

D’Ol. Tush, tell me not of choice; if I stood affected that way, I would choose my wife as men do Valentines, blindfold, or draw cuts for them, for so I shall be sure not to be deceived in choosing; for take this of me, there’s ten times more deceit in women than in horse-flesh; and I say still, that a pretty well-pac’d chamber-maid is the only fashion; if she grows full or fulsome, give her but sixpence to buy her a hand-basket, and send her the way of all flesh, there’s no more but so.

Mug. Indeed that’s the savingest way.

D’Ol. O me! what a hell ’tis for a man to be tied to the continual 233charge of a coach, with the appurtenances, horses, men, and so forth: and then to have a man’s house pestered with a whole country of guests, grooms, panders, waiting-maids, &c. I careful to please my wife, she careless to displease me; shrewish if she be honest; intolerable if she be wise; imperious as an empress; all she does must be law, all she says gospel: oh, what a penance ’tis to endure her! I glad to forbear still, all to keep her loyal, and yet perhaps when all’s done, my heir shall be like my horse-keeper: fie on’t! the very thought of marriage were able to cool the hottest liver in France.

Rhod. Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt coney’s wool, we shall have you change your copy ere a twelvemonth’s day.

Mug. We must have you dubb’d o’ th’ order; there’s no remedy: you that have, unmarried, done such honourable service in the commonwealth, must needs receive the honour due to ‘t in marriage.

Rhod. That he may do, and never marry.

D’Ol. As how, wits? i’ faith as how?

Rhod. For if he can prove his father was free o’ th’ order, and that he was his father’s son, then, by the laudable custom of the city, he may be a cuckold by his father’s copy, and never serve for ‘t.

D’Ol. Ever good i’ faith!

Mug. Nay how can he plead that, when ’tis as well known his father died a bachelor?

D’Ol. Bitter, in verity, bitter! But good still in its kind.

Rhod. Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your forefathers.

Mug. His forefathers? S’body, had he more fathers than one?

D’Ol. Why, this is right: here’s wit canvast out on ‘s coat, into ‘s jacket: the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too much o’ th’ frets: I must love your wits, I must take pleasure in you. Farewell, good wits: you know my lodging, make an errand thither now and then, and save your ordinary; do, wits, do.

Mug. We shall be troublesome t’ ye.

D’Ol. O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with wit: I love a good wit as I love myself: if you need a brace or two of crowns at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond at all times: I carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your call. Farewell, wits; farewell, good wits.

[Exit.

Rhod. Farewell the true map of a gull: by heaven he shall to th’ court! ’tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart; the compound of a poet and a lawyer; he shall sure to th’ court.

Mug. Nay, for God’s sake, let’s have no fools at court.

Rhod. He shall to ‘t, that’s certain. The Duke had a purpose to dispatch some one or other to the French king, to entreat him to send for the body of his niece, which the melancholy Earl of St. Anne, her husband, hath kept so long unburied, as meaning one grave should entomb himself and her together.

Mug. A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D’Olive is for an embassador agent; and ’tis as suitable to his brain, as his parcel-gilt beaver to his fool’s head.

Rhod. Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. Oh, ’tis a most 234accomplished ass; the mongrel of a gull, and a villain: the very essence of his soul is pure villainy; the substance of his brain, foolery: one that believes nothing from the stars upward; a pagan in belief, an epicure beyond belief; prodigious in lust; prodigal in wasteful expense; in necessary, most penurious. His wit is to admire and imitate; his grace is to censure and detract; he shall to th’ court, i’ faith he shall thither: I will shape such employment for him, as that he himself shall have no less contentment, in making mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and the whole court shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave, if he be rich, is fit to make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, is fit to make an intelligencer.

[Exeunt.’

His May-Day is not so good. All Fools, The Widow’s Tears, and Eastward Hoe, are comedies of great merit, (particularly the last). The first is borrowed a good deal from Terence, and the character of Valerio, an accomplished rake, who passes with his father for a person of the greatest economy and rusticity of manners, is an excellent idea, executed with spirit. Eastward Hoe was written in conjunction with Ben Jonson and Marston; and for his share in it, on account of some allusions to the Scotch, just after the accession of James I. our author, with his friends, had nearly lost his ears. Such were the notions of poetical justice in those days! The behaviour of Ben Jonson’s mother on this occasion is remarkable. ‘On his release from prison, he gave an entertainment to his friends, among whom were Camden and Selden. In the midst of the entertainment, his mother, more an antique Roman than a Briton, drank to him, and shewed him a paper of poison, which she intended to have given him in his liquor, having first taken a portion of it herself, if the sentence for his punishment had been executed.’ This play contains the first idea of Hogarth’s Idle and Industrious Apprentices.

It remains for me to say something of Webster and Deckar. For these two writers I do not know how to shew my regard and admiration sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Deckar, how may I hope to ‘express ye unblam’d,’ and repay to your neglected manes some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for proud and soothing recollections? I pass by the Appius and Virginia of the former, which is however a good, sensible, solid tragedy, cast in a frame-work of the most approved models, with little to blame or praise in it, except the affecting speech of Appius to Virginia just before he kills her; as well as Deckar’s Wonder of a Kingdom, his Jacomo Gentili, that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron, and Old Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap, which last has the idle garrulity of age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon its cheek and in its heart. These go into the common catalogue, and are lost in the 235crowd; but Webster’s Vittoria Corombona I cannot so soon part with; and old honest Deckar’s Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I shall never forget! I became only of late acquainted with this last-mentioned worthy character; but the bargain between us is, I trust, for life. We sometimes regret that we had not sooner met with characters like these, that seem to raise, revive, and give a new zest to our being. Vain the complaint! We should never have known their value, if we had not known them always: they are old, very old acquaintance, or we should not recognise them at first sight. We only find in books what is already written within ‘the red-leaved tables of our hearts.’ The pregnant materials are there; ‘the pangs, the internal pangs are ready; and poor humanity’s afflicted will struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ But the reading of fine poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or pour balm and consolation into them, or sometimes even close them up for ever! Let any one who has never known cruel disappointment, nor comfortable hopes, read the first scene between Orlando and Hippolito, in Deckar’s play of the Honest Whore, and he will see nothing in it. But I think few persons will be entirely proof against such passages as some of the following.

‘Enter Orlando Friscobaldo.

Omnes. Signior Friscobaldo.

Hipolito. Friscobaldo, oh! pray call him, and leave me; we two have business.

Carolo. Ho, Signior! Signior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hipolito.

[Exeunt.

Orlando. My noble Lord! the Lord Hipolito! The Duke’s son! his brave daughter’s brave husband! How does your honour’d Lordship? Does your nobility remember so poor a gentleman as Signior Orlando Friscobaldo? old mad Orlando?

Hip. Oh, Sir, our friends! they ought to be unto us as our jewels; as dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as when we wear them in our hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of your blood; for all time’s sickle hath gone over you, you are Orlando still.

Orl. Why, my Lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, and stript bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again? Though my head be like a leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade, green?

Hip. Scarce can I read the stories on your brow, Which age hath writ there: you look youthful still.

Orl. I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have a wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem! with a clear voice. * *

Hip. You are the happier man, Sir.

Orl. May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha? I have a little, have all things, have nothing: I have no wife, I have no child, have no chick, and why should I not be in my jocundare?

236Hip. Is your wife then departed?

Orl. She’s an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from me: here, she’s here; a good couple are seldom parted.

Hip. You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not?

Orl. Oh, my Lord! this old tree had one branch, and but one branch, growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was strait: I pruned it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, help’d it to the sun; yet for all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore crabs: I hew’d it down. What’s become of it, I neither know nor care.

Hip. Then can I tell you what’s become of it: that branch is wither’d.

Orl. So ’twas long ago.

Hip. Her name, I think, was Bellafront; she’s dead.

Orl. Ha! dead?

Hip. Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping, Even in my sight, was thrown into a grave.

Orl. Dead! my last and best peace go with her! I see death’s a good trencherman; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the daintiest——Is she dead?

Hip. She’s turn’d to earth.

Orl. Would she were turned to Heaven. Umph! Is she dead? I am glad the world has lost one of his idols: no whoremonger will at midnight beat at the doors: in her grave sleep all my shame and her own; and all my sorrows, and all her sins.

Hip. I’m glad you are wax, not marble; you are made

Of man’s best temper; there are now good hopes

That all these heaps of ice about your heart,

By which a father’s love was frozen up,

Are thaw’d in those sweet show’rs fetch’d from your eye:

We are ne’er like angels till our passions die.

She is not dead, but lives under worse fate;

I think she’s poor; and more to clip her wings,

Her husband at this hour lies in the jail,

For killing of a man: to save his blood,

Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown,

The getting of his life preserves your own.

Orl. In my daughter you will say! Does she live then? I am sorry I wasted tears upon a harlot! but the best is, I have a handkerchief to drink them up, soap can wash them all out again. Is she poor?

Hip. Trust me, I think she is.

Orl. Then she’s a right strumpet. I never knew one of their trade rich two years together; sieves can hold no water, nor harlots hoard up money: taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, fiddlers, swaggerers, fools, and knaves, do all wait upon a common harlot’s trencher; she is the gallypot to which these drones fly: not for love to the pot, but for the sweet sucket in it, her money, her money.

Hip. I almost dare pawn my word, her bosom gives warmth to no such snakes; when did you see her?

Orl. Not seventeen summers.

Hip. Is your hate so old?

237Orl. Older; it has a white head, and shall never die ‘till she be buried: her wrongs shall be my bed-fellow.

Hip. Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame.

Orl. No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out of the world; I hate him for her: he taught her first to taste poison; I hate her for herself, because she refused my physic.

Hip. Nay, but Friscobaldo.

Orl. I detest her, I defy both, she’s not mine, she’s—

Hip. Hear her but speak.

Orl. I love no mermaids, I’ll not be caught with a quail-pipe.

Hip. You’re now beyond all reason. Is’t dotage to relieve your child, being poor?

Orl. ’Tis foolery; relieve her? Were her cold limbs stretcht out upon a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my nails, to buy her an hour’s breath, nor give this hair, unless it were to choak her.

Hip. Fare you well, for I’ll trouble you no more.

[Exit.

Orl. And fare you well, Sir, go thy ways; we have few lords of thy making, that love wenches for their honesty.—‘Las, my girl, art thou poor? Poverty dwells next door to despair, there’s but a wall between them: despair is one of hell’s catchpoles, and lest that devil arrest her, I’ll to her; yet she shall not know me: she shall drink of my wealth as beggars do of running water, freely; yet never know from what fountain’s head it flows. Shall a silly bird pick her own breast to nourish her young ones: and can a father see his child starve? That were hard: the pelican does it, and shall not I?’

The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning. The execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and masterly. There is the least colour possible used; the pencil drags; the canvas is almost seen through: but then, what precision of outline, what truth and purity of tone, what firmness of hand, what marking of character! The words and answers all along are so true and pertinent, that we seem to see the gestures, and to hear the tone with which they are accompanied. So when Orlando, disguised, says to his daughter, ‘You’ll forgive me,’ and she replies, ‘I am not marble, I forgive you;’ or again, when she introduces him to her husband, saying simply, ‘It is my father,’ there needs no stage-direction to supply the relenting tones of voice or cordial frankness of manner with which these words are spoken. It is as if there were some fine art to chisel thought, and to embody the inmost movements of the mind in every-day actions and familiar speech. It has been asked,

‘Oh! who can paint a sun-beam to the blind,

Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?’

But this difficulty is here in a manner overcome. Simplicity and extravagance of style, homeliness and quaintness, tragedy and comedy, 238interchangeably set their hands and seals to this admirable production. We find the simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry. The stalk grows out of the ground; but the flowers spread their flaunting leaves in the air. The mixture of levity in the chief character bespeaks the bitterness from which it seeks relief; it is the idle echo of fixed despair, jealous of observation or pity. The sarcasm quivers on the lip, while the tear stands congealed on the eye-lid. This ‘tough senior,’ this impracticable old gentleman softens into a little child; this choke-pear melts in the mouth like marmalade. In spite of his resolute professions of misanthropy, he watches over his daughter with kindly solicitude; plays the careful housewife; broods over her lifeless hopes; nurses the decay of her husband’s fortune, as he had supported her tottering infancy; saves the high-flying Matheo from the gallows more than once, and is twice a father to them. The story has all the romance of private life, all the pathos of bearing up against silent grief, all the tenderness of concealed affection:—there is much sorrow patiently borne, and then comes peace. Bellafront, in the two parts of this play taken together, is a most interesting character. It is an extreme, and I am afraid almost an ideal case. She gives the play its title, turns out a true penitent, that is, a practical one, and is the model of an exemplary wife. She seems intended to establish the converse of the position, that a reformed rake makes the best husband, the only difficulty in proving which, is, I suppose, to meet with the character. The change of her relative position, with regard to Hippolito, who, in the first part, in the sanguine enthusiasm of youthful generosity, has reclaimed her from vice, and in the second part, his own faith and love of virtue having been impaired with the progress of years, tries in vain to lure her back again to her former follies, has an effect the most striking and beautiful. The pleadings on both sides, for and against female faith and constancy, are managed with great polemical skill, assisted by the grace and vividness of poetical illustration. As an instance of the manner in which Bellafront speaks of the miseries of her former situation, ‘and she has felt them knowingly,’ I might give the lines in which she contrasts the different regard shewn to the modest or the abandoned of her sex.

‘I cannot, seeing she’s woven of such bad stuff,

Set colours on a harlot bad enough.

Nothing did make me when I lov’d them best,

To loath them more than this: when in the street

A fair, young, modest damsel, I did meet;

She seem’d to all a dove, when I pass’d by,

And I to all a raven: every eye

That followed her, went with a bashful glance;

239At me each bold and jeering countenance

Darted forth scorn: to her, as if she had been

Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail;

’Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail.

She crown’d with reverend praises, pass’d by them;

I, though with face mask’d, could not ‘scape the hem;

For, as if heav’n had set strange marks on whores,

Because they should be pointing-stocks to man,

Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan,

Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown,

Yet she’s betray’d by some trick of her own.’

Perhaps this sort of appeal to matter of fact and popular opinion, is more convincing than the scholastic subtleties of the Lady in Comus. The manner too, in which Infelice, the wife of Hippolito, is made acquainted with her husband’s infidelity, is finely dramatic; and in the scene where she convicts him of his injustice by taxing herself with incontinence first, and then turning his most galling reproaches to her into upbraidings against his own conduct, she acquits herself with infinite spirit and address. The contrivance, by which, in the first part, after being supposed dead, she is restored to life, and married to Hippolito, though perhaps a little far-fetched, is affecting and romantic. There is uncommon beauty in the Duke her father’s description of her sudden illness. In reply to Infelice’s declaration on reviving, ‘I’m well,’ he says,

‘Thou wert not so e’en now. Sickness’ pale hand

Laid hold on thee, ev’n in the deadst of feasting:

And when a cup, crown’d with thy lover’s health,

Had touch’d thy lips, a sensible cold dew

Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept

To see such beauty altered.’

Candido, the good-natured man of this play, is a character of inconceivable quaintness and simplicity. His patience and good-humour cannot be disturbed by any thing. The idea (for it is nothing but an idea) is a droll one, and is well supported. He is not only resigned to injuries, but ‘turns them,’ as Falstaff says of diseases, ‘into commodities.’ He is a patient Grizzel out of petticoats, or a Petruchio reversed. He is as determined upon winking at affronts, and keeping out of scrapes at all events, as the hero of the Taming of a Shrew is bent upon picking quarrels out of straws, and signalizing his manhood without the smallest provocation to do so. The sudden turn of the character of Candido, on his second marriage, is, however, as amusing as it is unexpected.

Matheo, ‘the high-flying’ husband of Bellafront, is a masterly 240portrait, done with equal ease and effect. He is a person almost without virtue or vice, that is, he is in strictness without any moral principle at all. He has no malice against others, and no concern for himself. He is gay, profligate, and unfeeling, governed entirely by the impulse of the moment, and utterly reckless of consequences. His exclamation, when he gets a new suit of velvet, or a lucky run on the dice, ‘do we not fly high,’ is an answer to all arguments. Punishment or advice has no more effect upon him, than upon the moth that flies into the candle. He is only to be left to his fate. Orlando saves him from it, as we do the moth, by snatching it out of the flame, throwing it out of the window, and shutting down the casement upon it!

Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Deckar, if he had the same originality; and perhaps is so, even without it. His White Devil and Duchess of Malfy, upon the whole perhaps, come the nearest to Shakespear of any thing we have upon record; the only drawback to them, the only shade of imputation that can be thrown upon them, ‘by which they lose some colour,’ is, that they are too like Shakespear, and often direct imitations of him, both in general conception and individual expression. So far, there is nobody else whom it would be either so difficult or so desirable to imitate; but it would have been still better, if all his characters had been entirely his own, had stood out as much from others, resting only on their own naked merits, as that of the honest Hidalgo, on whose praises I have dwelt so much above. Deckar has, I think, more truth of character, more instinctive depth of sentiment, more of the unconscious simplicity of nature; but he does not, out of his own stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of imagination, or the same glowing colours of language. Deckar excels in giving expression to certain habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much the same in all circumstances, the simple uncompounded elements of nature and passion:—Webster gives more scope to their various combinations and changeable aspects, brings them into dramatic play by contrast and comparison, flings them into a state of fusion by a kindled fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of oscillation from the impulse of unbridled passion, and carries both terror and pity to a more painful and sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is contented with the historic picture of suffering; Webster goes on to suggest horrible imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and for itself; the other adorns his sentiments with some image of tender or awful beauty. In a word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or Boccaccio; as Webster’s mind appears to have been cast more in the mould of Shakespear’s, as well naturally as from studious emulation. 241The Bellafront and Vittoria Corombona of these two excellent writers, shew their different powers and turn of mind. The one is all softness; the other ‘all fire and air.’ The faithful wife of Matheo sits at home drooping, ‘like the female dove, the whilst her golden couplets are disclosed’; while the insulted and persecuted Vittoria darts killing scorn and pernicious beauty at her enemies. This White Devil (as she is called) is made fair as the leprosy, dazzling as the lightning. She is dressed like a bride in her wrongs and her revenge. In the trial-scene in particular, her sudden indignant answers to the questions that are asked her, startle the hearers. Nothing can be imagined finer than the whole conduct and conception of this scene, than her scorn of her accusers and of herself. The sincerity of her sense of guilt triumphs over the hypocrisy of their affected and official contempt for it. In answer to the charge of having received letters from the Duke of Brachiano, she says,

‘Grant I was tempted:

Condemn you me, for that the Duke did love me?

So may you blame some fair and chrystal river,

For that some melancholic distracted man

Hath drown’d himself in ‘t.’

And again, when charged with being accessary to her husband’s death, and shewing no concern for it—

‘She comes not like a widow; she comes arm’d

With scorn and impudence. Is this a mourning habit?’

she coolly replies,

‘Had I foreknown his death as you suggest,

I would have bespoke my mourning.’

In the closing scene with her cold-blooded assassins, Lodovico and Gasparo, she speaks daggers, and might almost be supposed to exorcise the murdering fiend out of these true devils. Every word probes to the quick. The whole scene is the sublime of contempt and indifference.

‘Vittoria. If Florence be i’ th’ Court, he would not kill me.

Gasparo. Fool! princes give rewards with their own hands,

But death or punishment by the hands of others.

Lodovico (To Flamineo). Sirra, you once did strike me; I’ll strike you

Unto the centre.

Flam. Thou ‘lt do it like a hangman, a base hangman,

Not like a noble fellow; for thou see’st

242I cannot strike again.

Lod. Dost laugh?

Flam. Would’st have me die, as I was born, in whining?

Gasp. Recommend yourself to Heaven.

Flam. No, I will carry mine own commendations thither.

Lod. Oh! could I kill you forty times a-day,

And use ‘t four years together, ’twere too little:

Nought grieves, but that you are too few to feed

The famine of our vengeance. What do’st think on?

Flam. Nothing; of nothing: leave thy idle questions—

I am i’ th’ way to study a long silence.

To prate were idle: I remember nothing;

There’s nothing of so infinite vexation

As man’s own thoughts.

Lod. O thou glorious strumpet!

Could I divide thy breath from this pure air

When ‘t leaves thy body, I would suck it up,

And breathe ‘t upon some dunghill.

Vit. Cor. You my death’s-man!

Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough;

Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman:

If thou be, do thy office in right form;

Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness.

Lod. O! thou hast been a most prodigious comet;

But I’ll cut off your train: kill the Moor first.

Vit. Cor. You shall not kill her first; behold my breast;

I will be waited on in death: my servant

Shall never go before me.

Gasp. Are you so brave?

Vit. Cor. Yes, I shall welcome death

As princes do some great embassadours;

I’ll meet thy weapon half way.

Lod. Thou dost not tremble!

Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air.

Vit. Cor. O, thou art deceiv’d, I am too true a woman!

Conceit can never kill me. I’ll tell thee what,

I will not in my death shed one base tear;

Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear.

Gasp. (To Zanche). Thou art my task, black fury.

Zanche. I have blood

As red as either of theirs! Wilt drink some?

’Tis good for the falling-sickness: I am proud

Death cannot alter my complexion,

For I shall ne’er look pale.

Lod. Strike, strike,

With a joint motion.

Vit. Cor. ’Twas a manly blow:

The next thou giv’st, murther some sucking infant,

And then thou wilt be famous.’

243Such are some of the terrible graces of the obscure, forgotten Webster. There are other parts of this play of a less violent, more subdued, and, if it were possible, even deeper character; such is the declaration of divorce pronounced by Brachiano on his wife:

‘Your hand I’ll kiss:

This is the latest ceremony of my love;

I’ll never more live with you,’ &c.

which is in the manner of, and equal to, Deckar’s finest things:—and others, in a quite different style of fanciful poetry and bewildered passion; such as the lamentation of Cornelia, his mother, for the death of Marcello, and the parting scene of Brachiano; which would be as fine as Shakespear, if they were not in a great measure borrowed from his inexhaustible store. In the former, after Flamineo has stabbed his brother, and Hortensio comes in, Cornelia exclaims,

‘Alas! he is not dead; he’s in a trance.

Why, here’s nobody shall get any thing by his death:

Let me call him again, for God’s sake.

Hor. I would you were deceiv’d.

Corn. O you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me! How many have gone away thus, for want of ‘tendance? Rear up ‘s head, rear up ‘s head; his bleeding inward will kill him.

Hor. You see he is departed.

Corn. Let me come to him; give me him as he is. If he be turn’d to earth, let me but give him one hearty kiss, and you shall put us both into one coffin. Fetch a looking-glass: see if his breath will not stain it; or pull out some feathers from my pillow, and lay them to his lips. Will you lose him for a little pains-taking?

Hor. Your kindest office is to pray for him.

Corn. Alas! I would not pray for him yet. He may live to lay me i’ th’ ground, and pray for me, if you’ll let me come to him.

Enter Brachiano, all armed, save the Bearer, with Flamineo and Page.

Brach. Was this your handy-work?

Flam. It was my misfortune.

Corn. He lies, he lies; he did not kill him. These have killed him, that would not let him be better looked to.

Brach. Have comfort, my griev’d mother.

Corn. O, you screech-owl!

Hor. Forbear, good madam.

Corn. Let me go, let me go.

(She runs to Flamineo with her knife drawn, and coming to him, lets it fall).

The God of Heav’n forgive thee! Dost not wonder

I pray for thee? I’ll tell thee what’s the reason:

244I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes;

I’d not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well!

Half of thyself lies there; and may’st thou live

To fill an hour-glass with his moulder’d ashes,

To tell how thou should’st spend the time to come

In blest repentance.

Brach. Mother, pray tell me,

How came he by his death? What was the quarrel?

Corn. Indeed, my younger boy presum’d too much

Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words,

Drew his sword first; and so, I know not how,

For I was out of my wits, he fell with ‘s head

Just in my bosom.

Page. This is not true, madam.

Corn. I pr’ythee, peace.

One arrow’s graz’d already: it were vain

To lose this; for that will ne’er be found again.’

This is a good deal borrowed from Lear; but the inmost folds of the human heart, the sudden turns and windings of the fondest affection, are also laid open with so masterly and original a hand, that it seems to prove the occasional imitations as unnecessary as they are evident. The scene where the Duke discovers that he is poisoned, is as follows, and equally fine.

‘Brach. Oh! I am gone already. The infection

Flies to the brain and heart. O, thou strong heart,

There’s such a covenant ‘tween the world and thee,

They ‘re loth to part.

Giovanni. O my most lov’d father!

Brach. Remove the boy away:

Where’s this good woman? Had I infinite worlds,

They were too little for thee. Must I leave thee?

(To Vittoria).

What say you, screech-owls. (To the Physicians) Is the venom mortal?

Phy. Most deadly.

Brach. Most corrupted politic hangman!

You kill without book; but your art to save

Fails you as oft as great men’s needy friends:

I that have given life to offending slaves,

And wretched murderers, have I not power

To lengthen mine own a twelve-month?

Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.

This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence.

Francesco de Medici (in disguise). Sir, be of comfort.

Brach. Oh thou soft natural death! that art joint-twin

To sweetest slumber!—no rough-bearded comet

Stares on thy mild departure: the dull owl

Beats not against thy casement: the hoarse wolf

245Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse,

Whilst horror waits on princes.

Vit. Cor. I am lost for ever.

Brach. How miserable a thing it is to die

‘Mongst women howling! What are those?

Flam. Franciscans.

They have brought the extreme unction.

Brach. On pain of death let no man name death to me:

It is a word most infinitely terrible.

Withdraw into our cabinet.’

The deception practised upon him by Lodovico and Gasparo, who offer him the sacrament in the disguise of Monks, and then discover themselves to damn him, is truly diabolical and ghastly. But the genius that suggested it was as profound as it was lofty. When they are at first introduced, Flamineo says,

‘See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye

Upon the crucifix.’

To which Vittoria answers,

‘Oh, hold it constant:

It settles his wild spirits; and so his eyes

Melt into tears.’

The Duchess of Malfy is not, in my judgment, quite so spirited or effectual a performance as the White Devil. But it is distinguished by the same kind of beauties, clad in the same terrors. I do not know but the occasional strokes of passion are even profounder and more Shakespearian; but the story is more laboured, and the horror is accumulated to an overpowering and insupportable height. However appalling to the imagination and finely done, the scenes of the madhouse to which the Duchess is condemned with a view to unsettle her reason, and the interview between her and her brother, where he gives her the supposed dead hand of her husband, exceed, to my thinking, the just bounds of poetry and of tragedy. At least, the merit is of a kind, which, however great, we wish to be rare. A series of such exhibitions obtruded upon the senses or the imagination must tend to stupefy and harden, rather than to exalt the fancy or meliorate the heart. I speak this under correction; but I hope the objection is a venial common-place. In a different style altogether are the directions she gives about her children in her last struggles;

‘I prythee, look thou giv’st my little boy

Some syrop for his cold, and let the girl

Say her pray’rs ere she sleep. Now what death you please—’

and her last word, ‘Mercy,’ which she recovers just strength enough 246to pronounce; her proud answer to her tormentors, who taunt her with her degradation and misery—‘But I am Duchess of Malfy still’^[22]—as if the heart rose up, like a serpent coiled, to resent the indignities put upon it, and being struck at, struck again; and the staggering reflection her brother makes on her death, ‘Cover her face: my eyes dazzle: she died young!’ Bosola replies:

‘I think not so; her infelicity

Seem’d to have years too many.

Ferdinand. She and I were twins:

And should I die this instant, I had liv’d

Her time to a minute.’

This is not the bandying of idle words and rhetorical common-places, but the writhing and conflict, and the sublime colloquy of man’s nature with itself!

The Revenger’s Tragedy, by Cyril Tourneur, is the only other drama equal to these and to Shakespear, in ‘the dazzling fence of impassioned argument,’ in pregnant illustration, and in those profound reaches of thought, which lay open the soul of feeling. The play, on the whole, does not answer to the expectations it excites; but the appeals of Castiza to her mother, who endeavours to corrupt her virtuous resolutions, ‘Mother, come from that poisonous woman there,’ with others of the like kind, are of as high and abstracted an essence of poetry, as any of those above mentioned.

In short, the great characteristic of the elder dramatic writers is, that there is nothing theatrical about them. In reading them, you only think how the persons, into whose mouths certain sentiments are put, would have spoken or looked: in reading Dryden and others of that school, you only think, as the authors themselves seem to have done, how they would be ranted on the stage by some buskined hero or tragedy-queen. In this respect, indeed, some of his more obscure contemporaries have the advantage over Shakespear himself, inasmuch as we have never seen their works represented on the stage; and there is no stage-trick to remind us of it. The characters of their heroes have not been cut down to fit into the prompt-book, nor have we ever seen their names flaring in the play-bills in small or large capitals.—I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of the stage; but I think 247higher still of nature, and next to that, of books. They are the nearest to our thoughts: they wind into the heart; the poet’s verse slides into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to others; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be had every where cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books: we owe every thing to their authors, on this side barbarism; and we pay them easily with contempt, while living, and with an epitaph, when dead! Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps; Mrs. Siddons has left the stage and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so, there are neither picture-galleries nor theatres-royal on Salisbury-plain, where I write this; but here, even here, with a few old authors, I can manage to get through the summer or the winter months, without ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit with me at breakfast; they walk out with me before dinner. After a long walk through unfrequented tracks, after starting the hare from the fern, or hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my head, or being greeted by the woodman’s ‘stern good-night,’ as he strikes into his narrow homeward path, I can ‘take mine ease at mine inn,’ beside the blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo, as the oldest acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Heywood, are there; and seated round, discourse the silent hours away. Shakespear is there himself, not in Cibber’s manager’s coat. Spenser is hardly yet returned from a ramble through the woods, or is concealed behind a group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an altar, never taken up or laid down without reverence. Lyly’s Endymion sleeps with the moon, that shines in at the window; and a breath of wind stirring at a distance seems a sigh from the tree under which he grew old. Faustus disputes in one corner of the room with fiendish faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront soothes Matheo, Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chapman repeats one of the hymns of Homer, in his own fine translation! I should have no objection to pass my life in this manner out of the world, not thinking of it, nor it of me; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by my friends; careless of the future, but sometimes dreaming of the past, which might as well be forgotten! Mr. Wordsworth has expressed this sentiment well (perhaps I have borrowed it from him)—

‘Books, dreams, are both a world; and books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good,

Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness may grow.

· · · · ·

248Two let me mention dearer than the rest,

The gentle lady wedded to the Moor,

And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.

Blessings be with them and eternal praise,

The poets, who on earth have made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays.

Oh, might my name be number’d among theirs,

Then gladly would I end my mortal days!’

I have no sort of pretension to join in the concluding wish of the last stanza; but I trust the writer feels that this aspiration of his early and highest ambition is already not unfulfilled!