beaumont and fletcher.
john fletcher was born at rye in december, 1579; being the son of that dean of peterborough who troubled the last moments of mary, queen of scots, and later was bishop, successively, of bristol, worcester, and london. very early, aged about 12, the son entered benet college, cambridge, but before he was 17 the death of his father, in poverty, caused him to leave the university. we hear no more of him, on sound authority, till he began to write plays with francis beaumont, born in 1584, the third son of sir francis beaumont of grace-dieu, a judge. in 1597 beaumont entered pembroke college, oxford, then known as broadgates hall; three years later he entered the inner temple. in 1605 beaumont wrote some prefatory verses to jonson's play "the fox (volpone)" as also did fletcher. "philaster" (1610?) is believed to have been the first play composed in their prolific partnership, but it was also attributed to beaumont alone. beaumont died in march, 1616, the death-year of shakespeare; fletcher in 1625.
one need not be a charles lamb to discover that "after all, beaumont and fletcher were but an inferior sort of sidneys and shakespeares". but perhaps only a reader who is himself a poet can discover, with mr. swinburne's certainty, in beaumont "the gifts of tragic pathos and passion, of tender power and broad strong humour"; in fletcher "a more fiery and fruitful force of invention, a more aerial ease and swiftness of action, a more various readiness and fullness of bright original speech".
others cannot pretend to assign to each author, or to their[pg 243] various allies, their own contributions to each of the fifty-two dramas, which mr. swinburne suspected coleridge of "never having really read". whether coleridge did or did not carefully peruse the fourteen stout volumes of weber's edition, it is certain that very few people are more industrious. a french critic, m. jusserand, affirms that a friendly hand could make a pleasing selection of scenes, displaying tragical vigour, eloquence, poetry, wit, and that the selection would give "the falsest idea of their work," for "the lugubrious and the ribald were their chief domain".
at all events other qualities than ribaldry will win their readers at present, and it is unnecessary to direct readers to a play in which a woman "makes the very satyrs blush at her sight." coleridge thought it would be interesting to settle a question of statistics, "how many of these plays are founded on rapes, how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies". mr. swinburne provided the statistics, plays 52, rapes 2, incestuous passions 0, lunacies 2.
in the throng of plays by beaumont and fletcher (of which a folio edition was published in 1647; an uncertain amount of the writing was ascribed to massinger), it must suffice to speak of but a few. the bald analysis of any of these jacobean dramas cannot do justice to its merits. the plots of the greatest dramas, those of the athenian stage and of shakespeare, rest, now on history, now on inventions of prehistoric antiquity, myths and legends. the story of lear has elements as impossible, and as primitive, as the stories of ?dipus or of thyestes. the events are monstrous—"people don't do these things,"—but they afford to the dramatist great situations, and they were already familiar in tradition.
the events in "the maid's tragedy," on the other hand, could not have occurred, and have no traditional source. there have been callous and profligate kings, but charles ii, who declared that "in my reign all tragedies must end happily," and for whom waller later made "the maid's tragedy" end happily, did not seduce innocent girls, hand them over as brides to courtiers who were already betrothed to other ladies, and retain his victims as his mistresses.
[pg 244]
the king in "the maid's tragedy" does these things, and is a moral monster. amintor being in love with aspatia, and she with him, the king forces him—for loyalty and passive obedience are his guiding stars—to reject aspatia, and wed evadne, whom nobody suspects of being the royal mistress. at courts, however, these graces are not hid.
the bridal eve is not much enlivened by a masque of neptune and ?olus, and is saddened by the wails and prophecies of the forlorn aspatia. other bridesmaids talk ribaldry enough, but the bridegroom, whose heart is with aspatia, feels
a grief shoot suddenly through all my veins;
mine eyes rain: this is strange at such a time.
the bride receives him coldly. a man has wronged her, will he slay that man? she names the king: "to cover shame i took thee" she says. the situation,—with the horror-stricken loyalty of amintor; his heart already a chaos of remorse, regret, and desire; the implacable resolution of evadne; "the murderess-magdalen, whose penitence is of one crimson colour with her sin—" is undeniably tragically great. ribaldries as of pandarus in "troilus and cressida" greet the happy pair in the morning. the secret reaches melanthius, brother of evadne and the king's bravest captain. evadne binds the sleeping king in his bed, wakens him, taunts him, and stabs him for her husband, her brother, and herself. aspatia disguises herself as her own avenging brother, challenges amintor who has deserted her, strikes him, kicks him; at last he draws, and she falls by the hand of the man she loves. evadne enters, red-handed from regicide,
am i not fair?
looks not evadne beauteous with these rites?
the seeming dead speaks,—
i am aspatia yet—
and takes farewell. amintor stabs himself, but not before evadne has set him the example. had ophelia fallen by the sword of hamlet the tragedy would not have been "deeper".
"philaster," again, is a romantic comedy, that deserves its[pg 245] second title "love lies a'bleeding". philaster is kept out of his royalty by the king, who is wedding his daughter, arethusa, beloved by philaster, to pharamond, prince of spain, a random debauchee. his intrigue with the audacious wanton megra, a court lady, and the besetting of him by the armed burgesses, devoted to philaster, yield the grim comic material. philaster gives his page, bellario (really the disguised euphrasia, who loves him), to arethusa. she is accused of an intrigue with the page, who is the soul of loyalty to her and to philaster. he, in jealousy, rejects both his lady and his page: they meet in a forest: he dismisses bellario, and bids arethusa stab him, or he will stab her.
we are two
earth cannot bear at once.
he does stab her, and is attacked by a country fellow, who wounds him; he then flies from some of the court who are approaching. finding bellario asleep in a glade, philaster wounds her; so that the pursuers, who
have no mark to know me but my blood,
may suppose bellario to be the assailant of arethusa! "oh, my heart, what a varlet's this, to offer manslaughter upon the harmless gentlewoman," we may cry, with the grocers wife in "the knight of the burning pestle". we "could hurl things at him," at philaster: whose jealousy does not palliate his cruelty and treachery.
through many complications the plot winds its way; bellario, who is about to be tortured, proves to be a woman; both she and arethusa survive; philaster, of whom nobody thinks the worse, marries arethusa; pharamond is mobbed; all ends happily except for that most pathetic of patient grizels, bellario, who remains contented in the happiness of the others. the purity and sweetness of arethusa, the loyalty of the loving bellario, and her beautiful speeches, cannot enable this play to escape the blame of being unnatural and repulsive.
the naked analysis of the plays of this age, is, of course, no fair criterion of their merit. a bare exposure of the plot of[pg 246] "cymbeline" would deter a man from reading it. the authors are protected by the magic of their poetry, which conveys them off in a golden cloud as aphrodite saved ?neas. a bare analysis of "a king and no king" (1611), with the alternate valour and nobility, brag, and unintelligible clemencies and ferocities of arbaces, king of iberia, who has defeated and captured tigranes, king of armenia, would move the most austere to mirth. but there is a method in the apparent madness of arbaces; and bessus, the braggart poltroon, is an officer worthy to fight under the same standard as parolles and bobadil, while virtue and happiness are kept for arbaces and panthea, tigranes and the faithful spaconia, through the sudden revelation of gobrias, the lord protector, that arbaces is a warming-pan pretender, and neither son of queen arane (who unceasingly tries to have him stabbed or poisoned), nor the brother of panthea.
the last tragedies are "the false one," and "valentinian". concerning "thierry and theodoret" it is not pleasant to speak out, and it is not honest to be silent. "derived," we are told, "from the french chronicles of the reign of clotaire the second," the play is rancid with the humours of the lowest london haunts; marked by wild anachronisms—the merovingian troops carry muskets,—and crammed with impossible crimes. for a contrast we have the eloquence of thierry (poisoned by a handkerchief that robs him of sleep, after he has been drugged to deprive him of offspring), and the spotless virtues of his wife ordella, whom thierry has been on the point of sacrificing to the gods. the blank verse almost uniformly moves with a loose superfluous foot; as
the most remarkable thing in which kings differ,
from private men,
and so on, is a specimen. there is a pearl to be found on this dust-heap, the stainless ordella, "the most perfect idea of the female heroic character," says lamb; but she is found after we have passed through a malodorous labyrinth of "unnatural and violent situations".
plays like this, or even like "the spanish comedy," which opens pleasantly and humorously, and in the cure and his sexton[pg 247] suggests the influence of cervantes, but closes in a mist of evil passions, give some show of reason to the opinion of our french critic. "a friendly hand selecting with care" might give all of beaumont and fletcher's that can please readers not specially devoted to the study of the drama. even in the beautiful scenes of "the faithful shepherdess," in poetry worthy of spenser's pastoral vein, the author, quite needlessly, introduces a shepherdess who resembles the brunhault of "thierry and theodoret" as brunhault may have been in girlhood.
"the knight of the burning pestle," on the other hand, with the grocer-critic who insists on a play in which a grocer shall "do admirable things"; with the humours of the grocer's wife, and the quixotic adventures of ralph, the apprentice, is lively, and, says the prologue, "has endeavoured, to be far from unseemly words to make your ears glow". yet, in the jail delivery of the barber, the authors go out of their way to find ugly ribaldries. famous among the comedies are "the scornful lady," "the humorous lieutenant," "the wild-goose chase," and "the little french doctor". the lyrics and songs are especially beautiful, even in the elizabethan wealth of song.
a peculiarity of fletcher's blank verse is his fondness for redundant syllables at the close, and indeed anywhere in the line. this manner was gaining on shakespeare in his latest plays, and, in authors after fletcher, led to the decay, almost to the death, of blank verse. yet fletcher's lines, as before marlowe and shakespeare, were often "end-stopped": the sense closed with the close of each line; this is not the manner of shakespeare, or of beaumont. in his later days fletcher went for his plots to spanish tales and romances.
chapman.
the date of the birth (near hitchin) of george chapman, conjecturally placed in 1559, is unknown. he was at oxford in 1574. the exactness of his scholarship must not be estimated by his translation of homer; translations, whether in prose or verse, did not then aim at precision. in 1594 he published "the shadow of night," containing verses which have been used to[pg 248] support the theory that he was the poet concerning whose favour shakespeare expresses uneasiness in his sonnets. he wrote a conclusion to marlowe's "hero and leander"; attempted the luscious (which did not suit his genius), in ovid's "banquet of sense"; celebrated henry, prince of wales, in "the tears of peace," is mentioned as a dramatist by meres in 1598, and in that year published his version of "seven books of the 'iliad'" (not the first seven), while he finished his "iliad" in 1611, his "odyssey," some years later.
thanks mainly to the perfect sonnet of keats, chapman's homer is the work by which his memory is kept green except among special students of the elizabethan drama. to have made homer "common coin" was a great benefit to the english public, that had known only the mediaeval romances based on ionian (700 b.c.), athenian, and roman perversions of the poet. the "iliad" he did into "fourteeners," a jigging old measure,—[1] "a splendid swinging metre," says saintsbury, "better able than any other english metre to cope with the body as well as the rhythm of the english hexameter". tastes differ! here are four lines ("iliad" xv, 596-600). the poet speaks of zeus,
for hector's glory still he stood, and ever went about
to make him cast the fleet such fire as never should go out;
heard thetis' foul petition, and wished in any wise
the splendour of the burning ships might satiate his eyes.
"the last line alone would suffice to exhibit chapman's own splendour at his best," says a critic, and this may be the best of chapman. but it does not express the meaning of homer, who says nothing about the "foulness" of the prayer of thetis, and whose zeus does not desire to satiate his eyes with "the splendour of the burning ships," but to see one ship set on fire; as, on that signal, he intends to cause the instant rout of the trojans. it will be observed that chapman here compresses four greek hexameters into four english "fourteeners"; and that the movement[pg 249] of his verse is as rapid as the nature of the "fourteener" permits. he is, however, rugged and obscure and overloads the simplicity of homer with elizabethan conceits of his own invention. the "odyssey" he rendered into heroic couplets with a free movement, and, had he been more sparing of his own conceits, the version would be more satisfactory. unhappily no english measure represents the homeric hexameter.
in 1604-5, chapman with marston was imprisoned for a very faint piece of satire on the scots, in "eastward ho"; and ben jonson, who had been no partner to the passage, as a collaborator in tie play magnanimously insisted on sharing the punishment.
chapman's comedy, "all fools" opens with an imitation of a play of terence (followed by molière in "l'école des pères"). we have the sensible and indulgent, and the severe and deceived father. but the plot becomes painfully involved, and jokes on cuckolds are no longer so delightful as they were for two centuries to english taste. his other comedies are not below the level of his contemporaries, excluding shakespeare and jonson.
among chapman's plays on contemporary french history, the two on bussy d'amboise vary much from "byron's' (biron's) conspiracy," and "the tragedy of charles, duke of byron". "bussy d'ambois" has all the faults of fustian, obscurity, bloodshed, torture exercised on the stage, and great palpable ghosts. a friar is the go-between of le brave bussy and madame de monsoreau, chapman's "tamyra, countess of mountsurry". he appears and disappears through a trap door, and when he dies "umbra friar" (the ghost of the holy man), "keeps on the business still". mountsurry (monsoreau) too, disguised as the friar, is very busy. a magician summons behemoth, a monstrous fiend with whom joan of arc was accused of being too familiar. tamyra is stabbed frequently on the stage, to make her write a letter inviting bussy to a fatal tryst; and next, being tortured, she complies and writes in her own blood. bussy is overpowered by numbers and slain. charles lamb admired a long description of a duel between six minions of henry iii, three on each side. the nuntius (the messenger), a looker-on, tells how bussy charged[pg 250] his foe exactly as, in his youth, the nuntius had seen a unicorn charge an armenian jeweller, and
nailed him with his rich antler to a tree.
in "the revenge of bussy" his ghost enters and dances with the ghosts of the duc de guise, the cardinal, and chatillon. the lookers-on are surprised, believing the guises to be alive and well, when aumale enters with the news that both have just teen assassinated! the "revenge" contains some very noble passages of reflection, in which chapman always shines, and some reminiscences of homer. the ghosts, though "affable familiar sprites," might be excused by the example of seneca's tragedies. dryden found in "bussy d'ambois" "a hideous mingle of false poetry and true nonsense," but not all of the poetry is false. there are, indeed, in chapman's blank verse, passages of exquisite beauty and charm: praise which cannot be denied to passages in the works of all his contemporaries in dramatic writing.
john marston.
john marston was of an old shropshire family: he is supposed to have been born in 1575 and educated at coventry school. he was a member of brasenose college, oxford. his father intended him to be a barrister, but observes in his will that "man proposeth but god disposeth". he wrote satires first, and then plays, later took orders, in 1616 received the living of christchurch in hampshire, and died in london in 1634. his plays had been collected and published in 1633. marston's earliest publications, under the assumed name of kinsayder, 1598, were "the metamorphosis of pygmalion's image, with certain satires," and, in the same year, "the scourge of villainy". as to "pygmalion,"
my wanton muse lasciviously doth sing,
he says: the verses are in the stanza of "venus and adonis". with a cheerful anachronism, pygmalion, having made his ivory statue of a woman, invokes the shade of ovid—who lived much after his time. at his prayer the statue lives, and marston ceases to sing lasciviously.
[pg 251]
of the satires we may say in the words addressed by mr. toots to the chicken, "the language is coarse and the meaning is obscure". the first attacks one ruscus, for writing, like mr. toots, letters to himself. parasites and boasting soldadoes are also satirized. a quarrel with hall who styled himself "the first english satirist," arose; the authors of "the return from parnassus" (1601) spoke of marston with coarse but effective contempt. in 1599 this "new poet" sold a play to henslowe. his "antonio and mellida," "sophonisba," "what you will," and "the malcontent" (a misanthrope, as in molière and wycherley), do not receive much praise even from the greatest enthusiasts for the old drama. in the dedication to "the malcontent" marston made up his quarrel with ben jonson, whom he had assailed in "satiromastix" in reply to ben's "poetaster" (1601), not before ben, according to his own account, had beaten him. in 1605 marston joined chapman and ben in composing "eastward ho". the remarks on the scots, for which the authors were imprisoned, are merely such as dr. johnson used to make for the purpose of teasing boswell. the play, on the whole, is a very good-humoured study of life in london—rather in hogarth's manner,—with the honest goldsmith, his industrious and his idle apprentice; his ambitious daughter, who would marry a knight with a castle in the air; his quiet daughter, betrothed to the industrious apprentice; the usual number of jokes connected with "horns," and local colour that was useful to scott in "the fortunes of nigel". probably marston did little in this favourite comedy; he wearied of play-writing, and was contemptuous of his own works, and careless of his own fame.
dekker.
thomas dekker, as genial as marston is crabbed, was a playwright and bookseller's hack, concerning whose life little is known except that he was one of henslowe's "hands" in 1597; was redeemed by henslowe from prison in the poultry in 1598; and was still producing pamphlets in 1637. a londoner by birth, he knew some dutch, and as his bryan in "the honest whore" proves, a little gaelic. his most popular work in prose was "the[pg 252] gull's hornbook," which is full of the details of life in the taverns; the thieves; the bona robas, usurers, fops, gamblers, all the world which is best known to the modern reader in "the fortunes of nigel".
the social historian finds matter gloomy enough as a rule, in "the wonderful year" of the accession of james i; and "the seven deadly sins of london" shows a helpless horror of the crowded poverty of the town. mr. swinburne found in one of dekker's tracts a genius akin to goldsmith's, thackeray's, sterne's, molière's, dickens's, and not unlike shakespeare's; with goldsmith he is often compared; he has given men medicines to make them love him.
dekker collaborated with other playwrights, and his contributions are discerned by the bewildering light of internal evidence. of his own pieces, "the shoe maker's holiday" (1600) is a broadly cheerful comedy; the jolly son of st. hugh, simon eyre, becomes lord mayor, and, in the upper plot, the hero, lacy, is very readily pardoned after deserting his regiment in france to woo another mayor's daughter in the disguise of a shoemaker.
"the honest whore," in two parts, shows bellafront as a magdalen redeemed by a sudden love which does not find its earthly close; she marries a scamp to whom, in the second part, she plays the patient grizel, backed by her father disguised as an old serving-man. there is abundance of the inevitable ribaldry.
in a play devoted to "patient grissil," that ideal of the dramatists, occurs the lovely lyric "art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers"; in "old fortunatus" (in the story of the magical purse) is "fortune's kind, cry holiday": other pretty songs occur in "the sun's darling" (ford and dekker).
"satiromastix," as we have seen, secures for dekker the praise of audacity, for no craven would have attacked ben jonson. there are fine tirades of imaginative blank verse in "fortunatus". dekker admired a thoroughly good woman, whether converted or needing no conversion, as most of his fraternity and as fielding did. but fortune, if she sometimes "cried holiday" to dekker, was never "kind". he is best remembered for his songs and for the words
[pg 253]
the best of men
that e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer,
a soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
the first true gentleman that ever breathed.
when lamb tells us that dekker "had poetry enough for anything": when mr. swinburne declares that dekker "was endowed in the highest degree with the gifts of graceful and melodious fancy, tender and cordial humour, vivid and pathetic realism, a spontaneous refinement, and an exquisite simplicity of expression," we wish to search for his privately reprinted works in prose, and the solitary edition of his plays.
but on the other hand we are told that his "satiromastix" is not too severely called "a preposterous medley": that his "besetting vice" is "reckless and sluttish incoherence"; that one play can be best explained as the work of an intoxicated man in a debtor's prison; that "there are times when we are tempted to denounce the muse of dekker as the most shiftless and shameless of slovens and of sluts." dekker wrote several pamphlets, which, in a sort, resemble some minor work of daniel de foe.
middleton.
though ben jonson said in his haste that middleton was "a base fellow," he was of a gentle house. the date of his birth is unknown (1570?), as early as 1597 he was writing for the press; by 1602 he was working at plays in which five or six other men collaborated. probably they settled on a plot, or rather on two plots, upper and under, and each author wrote an act: a little ready money came in, but the dramas must have been "in the veniable part of things lost". middleton frequently worked with dekker, also with rowley. they are usually thought to have mainly contributed the noisy and incoherent underplots, but dekker's admirers credit him with the dénouement of "the old law" (middleton, massinger, dekker).
mr. bullen finds this passage the drollest of things droll. there can be no doubt that it must have evoked hearty laughter on the stage.
easily are hoard and lucre gulled in "a trick to catch the[pg 254] old one," namely the uncle of the young profligate witgood. granting that these ancient chuffs were incredibly credulous, the play is a bustling comedy, with abundance of tricks and turns. the mayor of queenburgh in the play so styled was contemporary with hengist and horsa; is full of very serious matter, merrily set down. we must not approach in a spirit of historical pedantry a drama in which the earls of devonshire and staffordshire, the sons of constantine (namely aurelius ambrosius, constantius, and uther pendragon), with vortiger and horsus, hengist, the tanner mayor of quinborough, aminada, and a number of button-makers and professional murderers, also two monks, play their parts. the incoherencies, the button-makers, the chaste constantius, an unwilling monarch, his murder by the minions of vortiger, their murder (in macbeth's manner) by vortiger, are the drollest of unconscious drolleries. this monstrous medley of dull disconnected humours, unspeakable villainies, and speeches in excellent blank verse, with the sufferings of the angelic castiza, contains, as usual, a pearl of wronged and innocent womanhood.
middleton is thought by some to walk more closely in shakespeare's footsteps than even webster, and his acknowledged masterpiece is "the changeling," so called from the underplot (by rowley), in which two sane men smuggle themselves as maniac and idiot into a private lunatic asylum. the cheerful interludes of lunacy set off the tragedy.
beatrice joanna, betrothed to alonzo de piracquo, loves alsemero at first sight, and for piracquo's murderer suborns de flores, a man whom she loathes, and whose face seems charged with disaster. de flores has a violent physical passion for beatrice, endures her insults, haunts her, and accepts her murderous command. after slaying her betrothed, and cutting off his finger that wears the ring of betrothal, he has that scene with beatrice in which he rejects all her offers, even her whole fortune, and, by threatening to divulge her crime, compels her to be his mistress. this scene is justly celebrated; it does indeed move terror, and pity for the pitiless. but the adventures of beatrice's bridal night with alsemero; the absurd affair of the glasses marked m and c; the burning by de flores of the girl who here plays the part of[pg 255] brangwain in the romance of tristram and iseult; all these things prove middleton's inability to keep on the level of his own high conception.
after some powerful passages and the reappearance of the bleeding finger with the ring, de flores murders beatrice, and dies rejoicing in his success. tragedy, as shakespeare and aristotle understood it, was not concerned with resolute ruffians and girls with violent passions, but with cordelia and hamlet, othello and desdemona, noble souls; with fate-driven and fallen macbeth and lady macbeth; or coriolanus ruined by the excess of his own qualities.
middleton's comedy of "the roaring girl," a contemporary virago with pipe and sword, idealized as the champion of her sex; his prodigal old sir bounteous in "a mad world," and his "chaste maid in cheapside" were long popular; while the humours of the duel, and the sterling excellence of captain ager in "a fair quarrel," are contrasted with the horseplay of middleton's constant partner, rowley. in 1620, middleton was appointed chronologer to the city, and did the work for which he was paid. he continued to write for the stage, and his "spanish gipsy," an intermezzo of a very serious plot with the humours of gentlefolks playing gipsies; his "the witch," with curious resemblances to the witches in "macbeth," and the highly successful "topical" play, "a game of chess," with the intrigues in the affairs of the spanish match for charles, prince of wales, are among the most notable of his many dramas. the spanish ambassador, in august, 1624, caused the political "game of chess" to be withdrawn, for "his majesty," james i, "remembers well there was a commandment and restraint given against the representing of any modern christian kings in those stage plays". james might well remember it! in 1604 shakespeare's company had brought him on the stage, playing his part in the mysterious affair of 1600, the gowrie conspiracy. the play was stopped on the third night.
middleton also wrote many city masques. he died on 4 july, 1627.
[pg 256]
heywood.
thomas heywood was born in lincolnshire, was a cambridge man, and by 1596-1598 was an actor and a writer for the stage and the press. he says that it is no custom of his to print his plays, being faithful to the actors (who lost their rights in a play, when printed). he confesses to having "had a hand or at least a main finger" in two hundred and twenty plays.
the strong point in heywood is his study of domestic manners in englishmen at home, and as adventurers abroad, as in "the english traveller," and "the fair maid of the west". here clem, the son of a baker who, "when corn grew to be at a high rate, never doughed after," frankly says of four sea captains, "i believe they be little better than pirates".
heywood's most celebrated play, "a woman killed with kindness," reads as much like a modern novel as a jacobean drama. there is no ribaldry, no horrors, only a duel between two sets of men over a disputed hawking match. the hero, frankford, shelters and entertains a broken gentleman who flees from the field, and the man, though thoroughly conscious of his own villainy, seduces frankford's wife, who is beautiful and hitherto a pearl of virtue. she yields at a word: frankford discovers and spares them, the lady makes a pathetic end, and, dying of remorse (of which her lover has his full share), she is "killed with kindness".
the pathos and the details of manners are entirely in the style of many modern novels, and the underplot, also serious, if improbable, has the favourite stainless heroine, susan; a girl of great nobility.
there is a most amusing list of the practising "mediums" of the day, in "the wise woman of hogsdon". they have their specialities, one "doth pretty well for a thing that is lost mother sturton deals in prevision—"is for fore-speaking"; another "practised the book and key" (an automatism, the key is tied into the book, the fingers hold it up under the handle of the key, and the book turns in answer to questions). "all do well," says the witch, "according to their talent. for myself, let the world speak there are some good speeches and good blank verse in[pg 257] "the iron age," one of four dramas on the "four ages of hesiod's mythology". in "the rape of lucrece" is an extraordinary set of popular songs, some coarse enough, one in dutch, and among them the beautiful lyric,
pack, clouds, away, and welcome day,
which, more than his twenty-four surviving dramas, keeps heywood's memory green and fragrant. he wrote miscellaneous pamphlets and books with enormous industry.
there is something sympathetic in his very carelessness,—what lamb precisely meant when he called heywood "a prose shakespeare" is disputed. possibly he meant that heywood has sweetness of nature, humour, and knowledge of character, without much poetry.
webster.
concerning the life and adventures of john webster next to nothing is known. in 1602 the account books of henslowe, the financier of the stage, mention two lost plays as being, the first by dekker, drayton, middleton, munday, and webster; and the second by webster, chettle, t. heywood, wentworth smith, and dekker. dramas by so many hands cannot be masterpieces. webster was a great and busy collaborator; in the bustling "citizen comedies," "northward ho" and "westward ho" he worked with dekker. he is best known by lamb's extracts from his "white devil" and "duchess of malfi".
"the white devil" (printed in 1612) is a chronicle play of the career of vittoria corombona, but webster has altered the facts as he pleased. the more tragic humours of the betrayed husband (our liberal fathers gave him a shorter name) are exemplified in her lord camillo, who, in the interests of her lover, the duke of brachiano, is murdered in a manner intended to disguise the crime: the device is about as subtle as the blowing up of darnley with gunpowder. the duchess, another patient grizel, except so far as vittoria is concerned, men slay by poisoning the portrait of her faithless husband, which she kisses, and thus imbibes the infection. cornelia, the mother of vittoria and of[pg 258] her leading murderer flamineo, is a pathetic figure, and it is she who sings the beautiful lyric.
call for the robin red breast and the wren.
lamb says of cornelia, "she speaks the dialect of despair; her tongue has a smatch of tartarus and the souls in bale. to move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit, this only a webster can do." but if this is all that a webster can do, and if to do this he needs an accumulation of unnatural horrors—fratricide, the murderer of a brother contemplating the madness which his deed has wrought in his mother; if the slain brother has just been kicking his strumpet sister; then we may ask whether an art that flourishes in these odious and extravagant conditions produces "one of the imperishable and ineradicable landmarks of literature".
the serene and audacious impudence of vittoria, when accused of her first husband's, camillo's, murder; and the ophelia-like laments and the song of cornelia; with the all-but imperturbable wickedness of flamineo, yield the extracts which charles lamb made current coin. webster, in fact, returned, with abundant genius, but without discretion, to the class of revenge-plays opened by kyd in "the spanish tragedie".
the behaviour of the duchess of malfi, in the play of that name (printed 1623), introduced as she is by a noble panegyric, does not prepare us for her sudden wooing of her steward, antonio. her brothers, like the brothers of keats's isabella, determine to punish her: their instrument, bosolo, is a character not wholly lost, who deliberately sells himself to guilt; and the scene in which eight madmen are let loose to dance round the duchess—they do not shake her resolution,—is much admired. she is strangled, the children are strangled on all sides, the servant cariola is strangled, though "she bites and scratches". the fifth act is a scene of the kilkenny cats; almost everybody, including bosolo, is stabbed, and ford, in commendatory verses, applauds webster, as at least the equal of the athenian tragedians.
[pg 259]
webster's genius was confessedly "subdued to that it worked in". in the preface to "the white devil" he complains that the public will not endure a tragedy which observes the critical laws; "the sententious chorus," and "the passionate and weighty nuntius," the messenger who, in greek tragedy, reports the horrors done off the stage. deprived of the messenger, obliged to work his massacres on the scene, webster was unsparing in horrors. his "devil's lawsuit" is a complicated web of squalid intrigue; the blank verse is utterly degenerate; and "appius and virginia" is not remarkable for originality in the representation of that famous roman story.
webster's idea of a ghost was rather unconventional; brachiano's phantasm in "the white devil" wore no common sheet, but "leather cassock and breeches, and boots; with a cowl, in his hand a pot of lily flowers, with a skull in't". dekker advises his gull at the play to laugh aloud in the crisis of the tragedy, and probably there were some hardy or hysterical spectators who thus received the too, too solid spirit of brachiano. the tragedy of revenge inspired cyril tourneur's "revenger's tragedy," and horror has her home in this play and his "atheist's tragedy". what in them deserves reading may be found in lamb's extracts.
massinger.
philip massinger (born 1583) was the son of a gentleman patronized by the noble house of pembroke. the poet was educated at st. alban hall, oxford, but left without taking a degree (1606). he had fallen into debt, and commenced play-writing in 1614; his earliest known piece, in which dekker took part, "the virgin martyr," was acted in 1622. the period represented is that of the persecution under diocletian, and the piece is old-fashioned enough; introducing the angelic companion of st. dorothea, and the devil who attends the persecutor, theophilus, a very late convert. torture is introduced on the stage, and theophilus slays his daughters, whom he had tortured out of christianity back into the olympian faith, and whom dorothea reconverts by arguments with which they must already have long been familiar. there is a tendency to credit dekker both with[pg 260] the most gracious passages of verse in the piece and with the stupid but energetic ribaldries of hircius and spungius.
"the unnatural combat" (duel between a son and a father who rivals cenci in shelley's tragedy), "the duke of milan," with a most unnatural plot, "the roman actor," "the fatal dowry," are among massinger's tragedies; some twelve of his plays were burned in manuscript by betty baker, or barnes, the cook of warburton, the herald. if they contained such scenes as that of "the ghost of young malefort," slain by his father, "naked from the waist, full of wounds, leading in the shadow of a lady, her face leprous," our regret for them may not be overwhelming. we have plays enough in which a man is poisoned by the venomed paint on a canvas or on a dead lady's face; plays enough in which victims (as in "the roman actor") are cruelly tortured on the stage.
that massinger has noble passages and great tirades is undeniable, and he is one of the four or five successors of shakespeare who are said by their admirers to follow most closely in his footsteps. the play which keeps massinger's memory green in common recollection is his "a new way to pay old debts". the great part is that of sir giles overreach, a financial ruffian, suggested probably by a real character equally nefarious, sir giles mompesson. a victim of overreach's in his own nephew, wellborn, and the play shows how wellborn, with the aid of a rich and virtuous widow, lady allworth, cozens overreach into advancing money; how his creature, marrall, chouses him; and how his daughter, margaret, marries young allworth, and not the peer for whom the usurer designed her. described as "both lion and fox," overreach, always ready to fight, is more successful in the furious than in the furtive part of his nature. he bullies man and defies god in seeking satisfaction of his two chief desires, to ruin and humiliate his social superiors and to plunder the widow and the orphan or any other victim whose loss may be his gain.
but like the mammon-worshippers in "a trick to catch the old one," overreach himself is credulous enough, an easy victim of the conspirators against his pride and pocket. massinger's indelicacy "has not always the apology of wit," indeed he is not[pg 261] remarkable for humour, any more than most of his contemporaries, who sought and doubtless got a laugh by stereotyped and witless ribaldries.
the character part of greedy, a parasite of overreach's, remarkable for his appetite,—a shield of brawn and a barrel of colchester oysters "were to him a dish of tea" before breakfast,—must have been diverting on the stage; and when marrall turns against his master, we are reminded of similar surprises by mr. micawber and newman noggs, though they were not accomplices in the iniquities which they exposed.
massinger's plays are often interwoven with the work of other hands, and deal, in a more or less veiled way, with the political situations of his time. he lived in poverty, as his petitions to the herbert family prove; and he died in 1640. he was dissatisfied with his fortunes and with public indifference; poverty had forced him into poetry, and hunger had made him hasty in his work; the too common calamity of poor authors.
ford.
john ford was a native of ilsington in devonshire, baptized on 17 april, 1586. he was of good family, entered the inns of court, and is said to have practised in his profession. a contemporary rhymer speaks of him "deep in a dump," "with folded arms and melancholy hat". he worked at plays with dekker, and in "the witch of edmonton" (1622?).
four of his comedies were burned or otherwise put out of being by betty barnes, or baker, the celebrated cook of warburton, somerset herald, who made away with at least fifty manuscripts of old plays: his earliest known comedy (1613) was among betty's victims. his earliest independent surviving piece, "the lover's melancholy," was played in 1628. the more serious part has a rather improbable plot turning on the disguise of a girl as a man, but there are many beautiful romantic passages in the loves of palador, prince of cyprus, and eroclea. a masque of bedlamites within the play indicates the strange contemporary taste for the terrors and humours of maniacs.
[pg 262]
in 1633 the famous plays "'tis pity she's a whore," and "the broken heart," were printed. the former has a plot of incestuous loves, ending in a pretty general massacre. given the inspiration of the unnatural, ford could do great things. in the prologue to "the broken heart" (the scene is sparta, of all unlikely places) ford reprobates the staple of low contemporary comedy, "jests fit for a brothel court's applause," "apish laughter," "lame jeers at place or persons"; perhaps ford was not unaffected by prynne's famous attack on the stage, "histriomastix" (1632).
"the broken heart" is free from the customary ribaldries; it is a tragedy of fate, the characters are noble. ithocles is noble, despite the original wrong which he has committed in separating orgilus and penthea, and wedding penthea to "the grey dissimulation" of the jealous bassanes. orgilus, who murders ithocles, is noble in his death, the death of seneca without the bath. penthea is noble, and the wanderings of her mind at the end of her slow suicide, are beautiful in their sad fantasy; finally the dancing of calantha, while one after another come messengers with the tidings that break her heart, is noble, and probably her endurance is the reason for the placing of the scene in sparta. as in greek tragedy, all are doomed by fate; the oracle of delphi has spoken truth, with the wonted obscurity which only time can unriddle. it is true that the interest shifts, in the last scenes, from penthea to calantha, whom we have scarcely looked on previously. but ford aimed high, and came near to hitting his mark. he ought never to have, attempted his crazy low comedy scenes.
ford's "perkin warbeck" is by far the most readable historical play of the old stage, after marlowe's "edward ii," and shakespeare's chronicle plays. perkin's character is resolute and princely, as is that of his gordon bride, "the white rose". "if he lost his life he died a king" in royal bearing. as king henry says
the custom, sure, of being called a king
has fastened in his thought that he is such.
ford, in his tragedies, is not to be reckoned among mr. swinburne's "splendid slovens". his blank verse never degenerates into skimble-skamble slackness, but, compared with most of his[pg 263] contemporaries, he does not shine as a lyric poet. he retired to the country after the overthrow of the stage and the beginning of the civil war.
shirley.
james shirley, of an honourable family, was born in london, in 1596. he entered the merchant taylors' school, and, in 1612, went to st. john's, oxford, where laud was then master. laud, who believed in "the beauty of holiness," is said to have prevented shirley, as a blemished man, with a large mole on his face, from taking holy orders. he migrated to cambridge, to st. catherine's hall, published a poem in 1616, did take orders, received a living; left it on becoming a catholic, turned schoolmaster at st. albans, and then went to town as a playwright.
his "love's tricks" was licensed in 1624-1625,—"a silly play," writes mr. pepys in 1667. shirley was prolific; his "witty fair one" (acted 1628) is thought one of his best comedies. these dramas have a touch of the modern; we hear of "balls," a new name then for dancing parties. in "the lady of pleasure" (1635) lady bornwell's contempt for the country life and for country gentlemen, and her determination to spend her husband's fortune on the gaieties of the court, are amusing, and we expect her to be a lady teazle. but, despite her husband's stratagem of beating her at her own game, and the humours of the nephew whom she has brought from oxford, the piece can hardly be read with enthusiastic delight. it is deemed shirley's masterpiece in comedy, and preludes to the comic drama of the restoration and the revolution of 1688. dryden expresses extreme contempt for both hey wood and shirley; it is to be feared that his own plays are now no more popular than theirs.
after residing at dublin under the great earl of strafford, and producing plays at the viceregal court, and after insulting in an ironic dedication of "the bird in a cage," the puritan prynne, who had been most cruelly punished for allusions in his work against the stage ("histriomastix"), shirley returned to london. his "the cardinal" is imitated from webster's "duchess of malfi," and with "the traitor" is reckoned (though shirley preferred "the cardinal"), "the best of his flock" in tragedy.[pg 264] pepys (1662) writes "there is no great matter in it," but pepys's dramatic criticisms are no great matter. in 1642 came the shutting up of the theatres, and shirley, after seeing the wars under his patron, the duke of newcastle, returned to his old profession as a schoolmaster.
he wrote a preface (1647) to some hitherto unprinted plays of beaumont and fletcher, commending their stage as a school of moral discipline, "in this silence of the stage thou hast a liberty to read these inimitable plays". in 1659 shirley published his "contention of ajax and ulysses," containing the noble lines which embalm his memory:—
the glories of our blood and state.
are shadows, not substantial things.
his
bid me no more good night, because
'tis dark, must i away?
is also a pretty piece, like his "song" (attributed wrongly to carew).
shirley's works were often acted at the beginning of the restoration, but he refused to write more dramas. the shock of the great fire of 1666 is said to have caused the deaths, on the same day, of himself and of his wife. the blank verse of shirley is seldom distinguished. his numerous works suffer somewhat because they come at the end of a long period in which talent like his, with defects of taste often greater than his, have satiated and wearied all but the special student and enthusiastic devotee of the drama. the minor stars in the galaxy of playwrights almost defy enumeration.
space does not permit estimates of the last dramatists of "the first temple," randolph, suckling—whose dramatic verse is as chaotically bad as several of his lyrics are exquisite; davenant, who tried to keep alive a semblance of the drama at the end of cromwell's protectorate; brome, cartwright, mayne, and others. the blank verse in which the elder poets had so often excelled was left to the care of milton; the blank verse of the stage became formless, and, during the restoration, rhymed heroic couplets usurped its place.
[1] as i write, an accidental "fourteener" meets the eyes in the heading of a magazine article—"discovery of the missing link by georgiana knight". this metre does not seem the best in which to render homer.
