Dedication

Inscribed To
Frederic G. Kenyon
In Memory Of A Friendship
Of Forty-Four Years

Preface

In confessing that the war made me write a book I do not stand alone. Sensible as I am of its defects, I trust it will help to spread the knowledge of Massinger's works, and will invite others to deal on similar lines with the other dramatists of the great age. The design widened as it went on, and was then contracted. In the end I thought it wiser to confine myself to digesting the knowledge which I had of Massinger's text.

The Clarendon Press undertook to publish this book, but as, owing to war-work, they could fix no date, I asked them to release me. There would be no occasion to mention this fact were it not that it was owing to the original arrangement that I received much valuable help and advice from Mr. Percy Simpson. Many other scholars and friends have kindly aided me in various matters, among whom I should like to mention: Mr. J. C. Bailey, Mr. P. James Bayfield (photographer to Dulwich College), Dr. A. C. Bradley, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. A. H. Bullen, Mr. A. K. Cook, Professor W. Macneile Dixon, Mr. H. H. E. Gaster, the Dean of Gloucester, Mr. E. Gosse, Sir W. H. Hadow, Archdeacon Hobhouse, Sir Sidney Lee, Mr. C. Leudesdorf, Dr. Falconer Madan, Mr. A. W. Pollard, Dr. P. G. Smyly, the Master of University College, Durham, Sir A. Ward, and Sir George F. Warner. Last, but not least, I thank my wife for her skilful and ready help with the proofs.

A. H. Cruickshank.

Philip Massinger

It is interesting to revise the literary judgments of youth; it is pleasant to find them confirmed by a more mature judgment. This train of thought has led me to read Massinger once more; and as I read, the desire arose to treat his works, to the best of my ability, with the attention to detail which modern scholarship requires. A great amount of valuable work has been done in the last fifty years on the writers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages; but no one, perhaps with the exception of Boyle, has applied to Massinger the care which Shakspere, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, to name no others, have secured. There is no reason why any of our great dramatists should be treated with less respect than those of Greece and Rome, of France and Germany.

The first thing to be done was to facilitate references by numbering the lines of Massinger's plays;1 the next was to investigate once more the facts of his life, and to correlate them with the period in which he lived; the third was to read typical plays of the period, so as to arrive at a just estimate of our author.

His life will not detain us long. We know far less of him than we do of Shakspere. None of his sayings have been preserved to us; hardly any incidents of his career. His father was house-steward to two of the Earls of [pg 002] Pembroke, first to Henry Herbert, then to William Herbert,2 Shakspere's friend. The elder Massinger was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and for several years a Member of Parliament. Philip Massinger, the dramatist, was born at Salisbury in 1584. In 1602 he went up to St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, where his father had been an undergraduate. We are told by A. à Wood that he went at Lord Pembroke's expense, but that he did not work hard at the University, and took no degree.3 In or after the year 1606 he seems to have gone to London, and to have speedily engaged in the work of writing plays.4 The wide reading which his plays presuppose probably began at Oxford.

It was the custom in those days, as in the time of Plautus at Rome,5 for playwrights to revise old plays; and still more was it usual for them to collaborate.6 We find Massinger at work in this way with Field,7 Daborne,8 [pg 003] Dekker, Tourneur, and above all, with Fletcher. With the latter he worked from 1613 to 1623. In that year, for some unknown reason, he seceded from the service of the leading company of actors of the day, who went by the name of the King's men, and wrote unaided three plays for the Queen's men, The Parliament of Love, The Bondman, and The Renegado. After Fletcher's death, in 1625, Massinger rejoined the King's men, and wrote for them until his death in 1640.

It has been surmised from the vivid colouring of The Virgin Martyr9 and the plot of The Renegado,10 where a Jesuit plays a leading part and is portrayed in a pleasing light, that Massinger turned Roman Catholic. The evidence for this theory is quite inadequate. Indeed, we might as well argue from Gazet's language that the author followed the Anglican via media.11 Plots derived from French, Spanish, and Italian sources would naturally contain Roman Catholic machinery. We might as well infer that Shakspere was a Roman Catholic because Silvia goes to Friar Patrick's cell,12 or because Friar Laurence is prominent in Romeo and Juliet.13

We know that Massinger lived a life of comparative poverty; on one occasion we find him, with two other dramatic authors, asking for a loan of £5.14

The person who thus obliged the three writers was Philip Henslowe, a dyer, theatrical lessee, and speculator, who acted as a kind of broker between actors and authors, buying from the one and selling to the other; we still possess his diary, containing information as to the prices which he gave for plays.15 The prologue of The Guardian shows us that for two years before 1633 Massinger had been under a cloud, and had abstained from writing. Two of his plays had failed in 1631—The Emperor of the East16 and Believe as You List17—so he appears to have put forth his full strength in The Guardian.

The dedications of Massinger's plays which have been preserved show that he was often dependent for support on the leaders of what he once or twice calls “the nobility.”18

The connexion of the poet with the family of which his father was the loyal and trusted servant has been exaggerated by some;19 in the dedication of The Bondman, written in 1623, to Philip, Earl of Montgomery,20 the poet distinctly states that though the Earl had helped the play at its first performance by his “liberal suffrages” yet he was personally unknown to him.21 Amongst others to whom we find dedications is George Harding, Baron Berkeley, to whom Webster inscribed The Duchess of Malfi. It is pleasant to read in the dedication of The Picture “to my honoured and selected friends of the Noble Society of the Inner Temple” that Massinger received “frequent bounties” from them.

The plays give us no clear evidence that Massinger ever travelled abroad,22 though such a passage as The Great [pg 006] Duke of Florence, II., 2, 5-21, rather suggests a visit to Italy. Nor have we any ground for supposing that he was, like Shakspere, an actor, unless indeed an obscure reference in the Dublin poem to the Earl of Pembroke be so interpreted.23 In London he lived on the Bankside, Southwark. The story of his death is told us by our gossiping old friend Anthony à Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses.24 Massinger went to bed one night well, and [pg 007] was found dead the next morning. He was buried at St. Saviour's on March 18th, 1639/40.25 The funeral was “accompanied by comedians,” a phrase which seems to show that his professional friends did him honour at the last; he is described in the monthly accounts of St. Saviour's as “a stranger”—that is to say, a non-parishioner. His intimate friend Sir Aston Cokaine tells us that he shared the grave of his friend John Fletcher;26 and in 1896 a window in the south aisle of the nave of Southwark Cathedral was unveiled in his honour by Sir Walter Besant.27

What was the atmosphere in which Massinger lived? The days of James I. and Charles I. were less heroic than those of Elizabeth. In foreign politics England intervened once or twice in an ineffective way, and a good deal of sympathy was shown, much of it in a practical fashion, for the cause of the Protestant King of Bohemia. Gardiner28 has pointed out that Charles I. gave permission to the Marquis of Hamilton to carry over volunteers in aid of Gustavus Adolphus just as James I. had allowed [pg 008] Vere to carry over volunteers to the Palatinate. Hamilton sailed in July, 1631, and The Maid of Honour was printed in 1632. The whole plot of this play recalls the relations of England to the Protestant cause on the Continent. Thus, William. Lord Craven, to whom Ford's Broken Heart is dedicated, and who was knighted at the age of seventeen, after his “valiant adventures” in the Netherlands under Henry, Prince of Orange, went to the assistance of Gustavus Adolphus in 1631, when only twenty-two years old.

Wars in the Low Countries are vaguely referred to in various passages, as, e.g., in The Fatal Dowry:29

The date of the play is uncertain, but it must have been written some considerable time before being printed in 1632.30 In The New Way to pay Old Debts Lord Lovell “has purchas'd a fair name in the wars.”31 In The Fatal Dowry, The Picture, and The Unnatural Combat, we have the familiar type of the brave soldier who is disregarded in time of peace, and has come down to poverty and old clothes.

In the wider world of Europe the Turk and the Algerine pirate are still grim realities enough to form an effective scenic background.32 Indeed, it was not so very long since the Battle of Lepanto. We find constant references to galley-slaves,33 to the slave market,34 and to apostates to Islam.35 In the opening scene of The Picture the soldier husband parts from his wife on the frontier of Bohemia “not distant from the Turkish camp above five leagues.” One of the objections urged against the new custom of fighting duels is that thereby lives are lost which might have done service against the Turk.36 The age of chivalry has its faint reflection in schemes to “redeem Christian slaves chain'd in the Turkish servitude” by force of arms, and in the prowess of the Knights of Malta.37 The wealth and power of Turkey are taken for [pg 010] granted. When Malefort senior vows vengeance on Montreville, he cries out:

At home we find the vices of a prolonged peace lending opportunity for some easy satire. On the whole, we may say that we do not learn very much about our country from the poet which we could not find in the other playwrights of the day. Let us rapidly put together some of his references. There were two Englands at this time, drifting inevitably apart, only to clash in fratricidal war under Charles I. The drama was becoming less and less national, more and more an affair of aristocratic patronage. Massinger does not often refer to the Puritans;39 there is nothing so amusing in his plays as the passage in Fletcher's Fair Maid of the Inn, where the Pedant solicits the advice of Forobosco the quack about “erecting four new sects of religion at Amsterdam.”40 The fashionable love of astrology is satirized in The City Madam. The England of Massinger's plays is an England which loves expense,41 amusements, Greek [pg 011] wines,42 masques,43 new clothes,44 and foreign fashions.45 London is a great port, with trade to the Indies and aspirations after the “North passage.” The jealousy of the City and the Court, the ostentations of the one and the refinement of the other, point the moral of The City Madam.46 The high-spirited 'prentices of the City of [pg 012] London take the law into their own hands in days when there are no police,47 and their vices are satirized after the manner of Ben Jonson in the same play. Horse-play, such as tossing in a blanket, is considered a great joke.48 The balladmonger so often referred to in Shakspere is much in evidence,49 though indeed it was an age in which everyone wrote poetry.50 In rural England we find the possibility of an unscrupulous local tyrant, such as is depicted to us in Massinger's masterpiece, Sir Giles Overreach, aided by his jackal, Mr. Justice Greedy.51 That our poet had a keen eye for social evils, for the man who sells food at famine prices, the encloser of commons, the usurer, the worker of iron, the cheating tradesman, is [pg 013] clear from a passage in The Guardian.52 The beautiful description in the same play of the amusements of country life, the hunting and the hawking, with which Durazzo seeks to console his love-sick ward Caldoro,53 probably takes one back to Massinger's own boyhood in Wiltshire. As we should expect, there is a good deal of riding in the country scenes.54 The characters of Sir John Frugal, the successful merchant, and Mr. Plenty, the country gentleman,55 show us that the “John Bull” type of Englishman existed in those days.

The temptation to give a back-hand blow to one's own country in the course of a plot laid abroad is obvious and irresistible; where Shakspere had set the example others were sure to follow,56 and Massinger does not spare the female sex of England. To judge by the passage in The Renegado,57 the women of his day loved expense and luxury, and were very independent in their attitude to their husbands.58 The humiliation of Lady Frugal and her two daughters after their extravagant ambitions is the point of The City Madam. The contrast between a uxorious husband and an imperious wife is one of Massinger's favourite effects.59 Donusa's speech in her own [pg 014] defence in The Renegado might have been written by a suffragette of our own day.60

We do not get much direct evidence as to the characteristics of the playwright's audiences; Dr. Bradley has some good remarks on this subject.61 “Nor is it credible that an appreciation of the best things was denied to the mob, which doubtless loved what we should despise; but appears also to have admired what we admire, and to have tolerated more poetry than most of us can stomach;” “the mass of the audience must have liked excitement, the open exhibition of violent and bloody deeds, and the intermixture of seriousness and mirth.” Dr. Bradley points out elsewhere62 that the Elizabethan actor probably spoke more rapidly than our modern actors. This would make soliloquies less tedious.

To turn to the politics of the age; the rift between the dynasty and the nation grew wider as the century advanced. Though Massinger died before the days of the Long Parliament, we can imagine that he would have been one of those who eventually fought under protest for the King. We find evidence in his plays for supposing that he belonged to the Conservative Opposition, like his patron Philip, the fourth Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. [pg 015] He was a lover of liberty, and there are one or two indications that his plays offended the strict ideas of Charles I.'s censorship.

Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused on January 11th, 1630/31, to license one of his plays63 because “it did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian King of Portugal by Philip II., and there being a peace sworn 'twixt the Kings of England and Spain.”64 The same worthy records that King Charles I. himself read another of his plays,65 while staying at Newmarket, and wrote against one passage, “This is too insolent, and to be changed.” The passage, which is put into the mouth of a King of Spain, runs as follows:

These lines clearly reflect on the autocratic methods which prevailed in England from 1629 to 1640.

There is much in Timoleon's speeches in the senate67 which seems to contain covert references to the England [pg 016] of the day, and notably in lines 203-213, where the unprepared state of the army and navy is referred to.

It has been thought with much probability that the Duke of Buckingham is satirized in the slight sketch of Gisco in The Bondman,68 and in the more fully drawn character of Fulgentio in The Maid of Honour:69

The grumbling of the professional soldier against the royal favourite inspires a passage in The Duke of Milan.70 A similar freedom of speech is found in The Maid of Honour; for instance, in the following passages:

There are also passages in The Emperor of the East which seem to attack the Government of the day and its agents.73 I will quote the chief of these as a specimen of honest indignation:

The Englishman's love of liberty inspires a vigorous speech delivered by the British slave in The Virgin Martyr.76

Further, the impatience which Englishmen felt from time to time at the poor part played by their country in the Thirty Years' War is reflected in The Maid of Honour. Bertoldo there gets leave from the King of Sicily to go to help the beleaguered Duke of Urbin. He is, however, disavowed by the crafty, peace-loving king. In the debate Bertoldo describes Sicily in language which might easily be applied to England, and then proceeds in an eloquent passage to refer to England's glorious naval tradition in the past:

Here, at any rate, Massinger differs from Shakspere, who makes no reference to the exploits of our sailors; indeed, it would seem that, like Trafalgar, the defeat of the Armada had no significance for its own generation.78 But we must not forget that Massinger was the bosom [pg 019] friend of Fletcher, in whose plays sailors occur again and again.79

The fact that Massinger was a Cavalier “Radical,” a free lance and grumbler of the Opposition, may in part explain his struggles and his poverty. His natural patrons may have looked askance at his independent attitude, so alien to the passive obedience preached by Fletcher. But, whatever were his politics, it is clear that he was no Puritan. Brought up in close contact with a noble house, educated at Oxford, and well versed in the classics,80 as many allusions in his works testify, he shows alike in his merits and his faults the Cavalier mind. To this extent he may be judged “felix opportunitate mortis,” for of all sections of the nation those whose hearts were with the King, and their reason with the Opposition, had the hardest part to play after 1640.

In the department of literature the talent of the country had concentrated itself more and more on play-writing. Among Massinger's contemporaries we note Jonson, Chapman, Fletcher, Beaumont, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, Rowley, Tourneur, Shirley—all keen and able dramatists. Massinger, in his grasp of stagecraft, his flexible metre, his desire in the sphere of ethics to exploit both vice and virtue, is typical of an age which had much culture, but which, without being exactly corrupt, lacked moral fibre.

His plays may be divided into three classes: first, those which have come down to us under his name; secondly, [pg 020] those which he wrote with Fletcher or other authors; and, thirdly, those which have disappeared. It is not easy to draw the border-line between the first and second classes. In the last forty years the students of English literature have devoted much attention to verse and other tests, and there are those who profess themselves competent to decide which parts of a composite play were written by the various collaborators. It is clear that the use of these tests requires caution. An author may sometimes experiment in the style of somebody else; it has been held that Shakspere wrote Henry VIII in the manner of Fletcher, his younger rival; and Delius was of opinion that The Two Noble Kinsmen is due to two imitators, one of Shakspere and one of Fletcher. Boyle speaks confidently as follows:81 “Mr. Fleay used almost exclusively versification to distinguish author from author. Nor is this by any means so bold an undertaking as it seems. I have used other tests apart from the versification, and have almost uniformly found the impressions derived from the latter correct.” Our confidence in Boyle is shaken when he attributes82 the first two acts of A New Way to pay Old Debts to Fletcher on the evidence of the double endings. He points out that the allusion to the taking of Breda on July 1st, 1625,83 is just possible, as Fletcher was buried on August 29th, 1625. This is clearly a case where we must take other than metrical considerations into account. Has the comedy the sparkle, the bustle, and the improbability of Fletcher?

Again, it is not too much to say that it is a waste of time to apply verse tests to Tourneur; a great part of the Atheist's Tragedy is not poetry at all, but prose measured off in lengths.

The Virgin Martyr states on its title-page that Dekker was part author. Similarly, The Fatal Dowry was partly [pg 021] due to Field. Part of A Very Woman84 is held by many critics to be written by Fletcher; certainly the style of the play is in places more tender and more racy than we should expect from Massinger. The Old Law is said to have been written by Massinger, Middleton, and Rowley. It was a popular play, and often revived; its first appearance was in 1599,85 when our poet was but fifteen years old. His share in it must therefore consist of additions or modifications at a later date. Certainly there is little in the play which reminds one of him; original as is its plot, and tender its pathos, both its tragedy and comedy are in a simpler manner than his.86

On the other hand, Boyle arrives at some startling results when he investigates the works of Fletcher.87 He attributes to Massinger parts of Thierry and Theodoret, The Queen of Corinth, The Knight of Malta, The Custom of the Country, The Little French Lawyer, The Fair Maid of the Inn, and of several other plays.88

It may appear strange that in order to estimate Massinger we should have to read Fletcher as well; but to this the scientific study of English brings us.89 Boyle [pg 022] declares that “we ought in future to have no more editions of Beaumont and Fletcher, but the plays of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger arranged in nine groups.”90 The verdict of experts cannot be disregarded in this matter; there is a real danger that Massinger's merits will be underrated if we do not attempt to estimate the share which he took in writing the plays attributed to Fletcher. His friend Sir Aston Cokaine might have done us a great service here, but, unfortunately, he missed his opportunity. In a poem91 relating to Shirley's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's works published in 1647,92 he points out that the title is inaccurate for two reasons: first, because many of the plays were written after Beaumont's death; secondly, because Massinger wrote parts of some of them; it is a great pity that he did not tell us which these plays were.

But worse still remains behind; if we are to believe Boyle, it is practically certain that Massinger and Fletcher wrote Henry VIII93 and The Two Noble [pg 023] Kinsmen.94 It must be pointed out that there are still good critics who attribute a large part of Henry VIII to Shakspere, and a small part of The Two Noble Kinsmen. It would take us too far from our subject to enter in detail on these two difficult problems.

Then, in the third place, there are the plays that are lost. In the eighteenth century there was a certain John Warburton, F.R.S. and F.S.A., Somerset herald, who collected no fewer than fifty-five genuine unpublished dramas of the golden period, which he handed over to the care of his cook until he could find someone to publish them. The cook appropriated these plays leaf by leaf for coverings for her pastry, and a certain number of Massinger's—possibly as many as ten—perished among them. Here are the names of some of them: The Forced [pg 024] Lady, a tragedy; The Noble Choice, a comedy; The Wandering Lovers, a comedy; Philenzo and Hippolita, a tragi-comedy.95

It may be a consolation when we grieve over this disaster96 to reflect that many of the fifty-five plays may not have been worth reading; eight of them were early works of Massinger's, and may have been immature or even unsuccessful. There is a presumption in favour of this supposition, for his more famous plays appeared separately in quarto, and most of them can still be procured from dealers in that form; we must suppose that Mr. Warburton had only what are called actors'—i.e., manuscript—copies. If a play never attained the distinction of being printed there may have been some defect which militated against its success.

Colonel Cunningham in his edition gives us the names of thirty-seven plays in all from Massinger's pen; if the many be added to this total in which he joined with other writers, we have a considerable literary output for a life of fifty-five years.

Massinger, like Shakspere, fell into disfavour after the Restoration, when Beaumont and Fletcher carried everything before them. We learn from Malone's Preface97 that The Bondman was acted in 1661 and The Virgin Martyr on January 10th, 1662; The Renegado on June 6th in the same year. Pepys saw The Virgin Martyr, and liked it,98 more, however, for the music than the words. Dryden and Jeremy Collier never mention Massinger. Selections from The Guardian appeared in prose form, with insertions from A Very Woman, in [pg 025] 1680, under the title Love Lost in the Dark, or the Drunken Couple. Adorio and the other names are the same, but the Guardian's part disappears, and his remarks are put in Adorio's mouth. A servant, Calandrino, is brought in, whose name is borrowed from The Great Duke of Florence, and Muggulla, a nurse, is added to be Calandrino's bride. The contents are worthy of the title. Monck Mason deplores the fact that Johnson's dictionary does not once quote Massinger or Beaumont and Fletcher. “They are more correct,” he says, “and grammatical than Shakspere, and appear to have had a more competent knowledge of other languages, which gave them a more accurate idea of their own.” There was a great reaction in the eighteenth century in favour of Massinger. Brander Matthews points out that The New Way is the only Elizabethan or Jacobean play, except Shakspere's, which held the stage until the first quarter of the nineteenth century,99 and gives a good history of its illustrious career on the English and American stages.

The critics have differed much about Massinger. Gifford100 and Hallam were enthusiastic in their support; Charles Lamb and Hazlitt101 were against him, perhaps because they disliked his able Tory editor. The eighteenth-century writers regarded him as the champion of female virtue; and in our own time Sir A. Ward has defended his manly and sane morality in unhesitating language.102 On the other hand, Boyle deems his heroines to be corrupt and his heroes “the victims of one devouring [pg 026] passion, often in a state of incipient madness, alternately raging and melancholy.”103

Like Euripides, Ovid, and Juvenal, Massinger is a writer whose faults are patent; all the more important, therefore, is it to make his merits quite clear. We cannot convince the world if we adopt the famous line of Goethe's heroine:

I do not indeed claim to discover much that is new about Massinger, nor to reverse the judgment of time. He is, and he remains, in the second rank of English writers. But it would be a misfortune if undue obscurity were to befall an author who was at once so manly and so skilful. I take up the cudgels for him, partly because the balance of critical judgment has of late gone too far against him; and yet in a sense he has only come into his own in the last thirty years, by reason of the unanimity with which so much good strong work in Fletcher's plays is now deemed to be due to him. He has received much praise and much blame; I should like by careful analysis of the problem to arrive at a juster judgment. But in the main, I must confess, I plead for Massinger because I love him.

What, then, are the chief merits of our author? They are three: his stagecraft, his style, and his metre. And, first, his command of stagecraft has been universally conceded.105 This is an important point; it is as much as to say that the plays are readable and would act well;106 [pg 027] when you begin one of them you wish to know what is going to happen. The first act has usually a great breadth and swing; it is admirably proportioned and dignified. The chief characters are introduced, and the train is well laid, without stiffness or delay. Good examples of this fact are to be found in The Bondman and The Emperor of the East. In The Renegado the first scene at once reveals the object of the plot, the rescue of Paulina. In The Bondman Marullo enters at line 38, and our attention is called to him by Leosthenes. As the play progresses you feel that it is what the French call bien charpenté—well constructed. If, as is often the case, there is a mystery or a secret, it is sufficiently well kept to excite the curiosity. The author does not depend very much on soliloquies or disguises; he does not, as a rule, complicate matters by underplots and cross-interests. The stage is not overcrowded; you do not feel the need of constantly referring to the list of dramatis personae. A curious instance of this economy is The Maid of Honour, where there is no Queen of Sicily. Minor characters when they reappear are recognized and provided for, as, for example, Calypso in The Guardian (IV., 3). The conscientious author forgets no detail in order to round off his plot; thus in the same play the blow struck at the beginning is apologized for in V., 3, 250. Nor is there a reckless change of scene. Moreover, a lifelike effect is given by the fact that speeches generally end in the middle of a line. As so often in Euripides, the people say the sort of things that under the circumstances you would expect them to say in real life.107 A comparison of Massinger [pg 028] with Ben Jonson will make this ease of construction clear at once. Köppel has noted the skill with which the narratives of Suetonius and Dion Cassius are combined in The Roman Actor. It may sound obvious to add that the titles of the plays correspond to the chief subject-matter, were it not that in so many of the Elizabethan plays this is not the case. Take as examples Middleton's Changeling and Mayor of Queenborough.

Yet it would be too much to say that all Massinger's plays are equally successful in this respect. The plot of The Guardian, for example, is unusually intricate. Like Shakspere, he occasionally crowds too much into the fifth act—for instance, in The Unnatural Combat. The device of the apple which produces so much jealousy and trouble in The Emperor of the East is rather trivial for a tragi-comedy.108 The promise of Cleora to wear a scarf over her eyes until her jealous lover returns from the war is exasperating.109 Again, Camiola in The Maid of Honour (III., 3, 200) forgets that Bertoldo is “bound to a single life,” as she had herself pointed out to him (I., 2, 148). Nor does Bertoldo (IV., 3, 100) in his acceptance of her offer say anything about the necessary dispensation. On the other hand, Massinger avoids those scenes on board ship of which Fletcher is so fond, and which on the Jacobean stage must have been ineffective to the spectators, and indeed, are so on any stage.110

Similarly, it is clear that torture on the stage can hardly be made effective.111

One of Massinger's favourite devices is to combine subordinates. He has learnt from Hamlet the lesson of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He has studied the method of such scenes as Henry V., I., 2, 97-135; II., 2; III., 5; III., 7. If something has to be done, two or three people express their eagerness to do it. If someone has to be persuaded, two or three of the characters press home the various arguments. This all works for lucidity and ease, and presents a lifelike combination on the stage.112 Instances of the device abound; let us take one from The Picture.113 The great soldier Ferdinand, on his return from [pg 030] the wars, is received courteously by the old Counsellor Eubulus, but the fashionable young men, Ubaldo and Ricardo, think they can do the thing better; the passage runs thus:

Another of Massinger's effective devices is to sustain the interest of the spectators by concealing characters [pg 031] and facts; thus, in The Duke of Milan we do not fathom for some time the villainy of Francisco; in The City Madam we ponder from the beginning over the obscure character of Luke. The best instances of this expedient are to be found in The Unnatural Combat and The Bondman. The air of gloom which overhangs the former tragedy is as great in its way as anything which our author has attained; and though the play is what we may call Elizabethan rather than for all time, yet it is in some sense the best specimen of his serious work. The desire of Malefort is that of the father in Shelley's Cenci; and perhaps the only way to prevent the theme from being intolerable was to veil it as long as possible, and to raise the spectators' sympathy at first for a man who had fought well for the State, and who to all appearance was badly treated by his pirate son.114 In The Bondman, Marullo and Timandra, the brother and sister, are concealed till the very end, when they reveal themselves to be Pisander and Statilia—thereby bringing to an unexpected conclusion a plot which seemed to offer no solution.115

In The City Madam the method is varied a little: here we have one of Massinger's greatest creations, the fawning hypocrite, Luke. Indications of his future development are skilfully given from time to time, so that when this alarming person at length shows himself in his true colours we shiver without being surprised. The same idea shows itself in The Renegado,116 in the skill with which Donusa leads up to her proposal that Vitelli should turn Mahometan; and in The Virgin Martyr,117 where Artemia prepares the way for the offer of her hand to Antoninus.

Massinger is never so happy as when he has an opportunity in his well-proportioned scenes for displays of rhetoric, such as we find in Euripides, where character argues against character.118 These scenes are often thrown into the form of a trial at law or a debate in the Senate.119

The plays end well and effectively; our author excels in the tragi-comedy, a type much affected by Fletcher. Like all his contemporaries, he felt that the intermixture of a lighter element in a play which ended happily was justifiable.120 The haste which Shakspere sometimes shows in his fifth act is, as a rule, not apparent in Massinger. For example, in The Virgin Martyr, the death of the heroine occurs at the end of the fourth act. To all appearance there is bound to be an anticlimax in the fifth act. But there is not; on the contrary, the appearance of the heavenly messenger, bearing the fruits of Paradise to the cruel persecutor Theophilus, elevates the mind into a state of surprise and admiration. It has often been pointed out that the appearance of a deity to [pg 033] cut the knot at the end of a play of Euripides, which sometimes irritates the thinker in his study, and provokes him to write essays on the bad art and theology of the poet, is dazzlingly beautiful on the stage, and raises associations of sublimity and awe; it may in the same way be imagined how effective must have been the procession at the end of The Virgin Martyr. The stage directions run as follows: “Enter Dorothea in a white robe, crownes upon her head, led in by Angels, Antoninus, Caliste, and Christeta following, all in white, but lesse glorious, the Angell with a Crowne for him” (i.e., Theophilus). At the sight of the glorious vision the persecutor dies, converted to the Christian faith, and the evil spirit, which has prompted his cruel acts, sinks to his own place with thunder and lightning, while Diocletian and his court look on in amazement. Similarly, in The Roman Actor there is no anticlimax; though Paris dies in the fourth act,121 we feel that the tragedy is incomplete until it is rounded off by the punishment of the Emperor Domitian, which we breathlessly await.

Secondly, Massinger has a beautiful style. This point again is conceded by all the critics. The elegance of his dedications shows that had he wished he could have written excellent prose.122 One who depreciates him allows that his style is “pure and free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions.”123 It has the grace and balance which one would expect from a well-bred and educated man, owing little to ornament or epithets or images. It serves its purpose, which is to tell a story [pg 034] rapidly, and to unfold character rather than to display the author's command of language or subtlety of thought and expression. Seldom trivial, it is never prosaic, and yet it is constantly on the border-line of prose. Massinger thought in blank verse because he was a dramatist rather than because he was a poet. Hence his enemies might say that his lines are prose in lengths; yet that would be an unjust accusation. The poetical “colour” is here, the ideal dignity, the atmosphere, although they obtrude themselves less on the reader than in most poets. Like Ovid, Massinger is one whose amazing facility carries us along like a flood—a writer who should be read in large quantities at a time,

It needs little argument to show that a poet of this order can easily secure the effect of verisimilitude to life, and will owe much of his success to that fact. Style naturally appeals differently to different people; there are those who are captivated by the glamour of Shelley and Swinburne, or the pomp of Jeremy Taylor; there are also those who enjoy the severity of Paradise Regained, and the simplicity of Newman's Sermons. In an age like the present, when many of our poets, like our musicians, whatever else they are, either will not or cannot be simple, it is refreshing to turn to an author who is always lucid, and who is content to tell a story to the best of his ability.

There are times when the style of Massinger rises into solemn eloquence, especially when he indulges in the moralizing vein. Unlike some of his literary contemporaries, Massinger wishes to show Virtue triumphant and Vice beaten. Vice is never glorified in his pages, or condoned. Honest indignation is perhaps the emotion [pg 035] which he handles best. The uncontrollable anger which meanness and unworthiness provoke expresses itself in lofty language. Forcible and plain-spoken rebukes are found, which show that Massinger could be curt when he pleased. The plays are full of high-spirited passages, affording admirable opportunities for a master of elocution.

Let me give a specimen of just anger in the speech of Marullo. Marullo is the leader of the revolt of the slaves at Syracuse, and he is addressing their former lords and masters:

In a lower key of manly dignity is the speech of Charalois before the Judges in The Fatal Dowry. It begins thus:

As an example of a high-spirited passage, a speech may be given from The Bondman. Cleora, the heroine, comes forward in a meeting of the Senate to urge patriotic effort on her fellow-countrymen. Timoleon, the general, is in the chair, and she addresses him first:

This passage is printed in a broadside (headed “Countrymen”) relating to the expected invasion of England by Bonaparte, to be found at the British Museum. A short [pg 038] statement of the plot of The Bondman is followed by a quotation of Act I., 3, 213-368, with one or two slight omissions. Possibly Gifford inspired its publication.

Perhaps the most eloquent passage in Massinger is the speech of Paris, the Roman actor, before the Senate, in defence of his profession:

I will quote three more passages: one to show how lifelike in description Massinger can be; the second, to show how he can ennoble the expression of love; the third, to show how tender he is at his best.

The first is from The Maid of Honour. A soldier comes in with news for the besieged general, who is standing on the walls of Siena, looking for aid from his friends:

The second is from The Duke of Milan, where Marcelia expresses her love for her lord, Sforza, the Duke of Milan.

The third is from A Very Woman; the disguised John Antonio is telling his story at Almira's request:

At times the poet rises to what is not far removed from inspiration; and such lines as the following from The Parliament of Love make good the claim of English to be the imperial language of the world. King Charles seeks to justify the honours which he, the “most Christian king,” gives to the statue of Cupid; he then continues thus:

But there is another characteristic of Massinger's style and that perhaps more obvious still; it is full of courtliness and grace. A perusal of The City Madam, where the subject is the absurdity of the ladies of the Mansion House who ape the manners of the West End, suggests the question whether Massinger was ever attached to the Court. We do not know. He must, at any rate, have moved amongst refined and educated people. Napoléon said that Corneille's plays ought to be performed to an audience of ambassadors and ministers of state;133 in the same way, in reading Massinger, we feel that we are moving freely in the palaces of the great. There is comparatively little here of dialect134 or low life; we are at once taken up [pg 044] into high life with all its virtues and its faults. The kings and courtiers behave and express themselves as we should expect them to do; the politeness and the compliments which we hear on every side have the merit of being entirely natural. And if there is little to remind us of Dickens, there is still less to recall Thackeray. There is no air of snobbishness; such is the dexterity of our author that we do not feel like Jeames Yellowplush, that we are awkward menials watching the doings of the titled and the great. Not only do the characters move with an inborn grace which is free from self-analysis and self-contempt, but they take the audience up into their company; and as the gallants of that era used sometimes to sit upon the stage, close among the actors,135 so in reading Massinger we feel that we are unconsciously present at the scenes he portrays.

This is as much as to say that the stage of those days responded to a real and living need in the minds of the audience; there was nothing exotic or artificial about it, as there seems to have been about our plays ever since the Puritans turned things upside down. It will be said [pg 045] that this enchanted atmosphere belongs to all the greater playwrights of the age alike. And this is true; it is one of the secrets of their abiding charm. Brander Matthews, in dealing with the unreality of Massinger's atmosphere, says that “some of Shakspere's most delightful plays, The Merchant of Venice for one, and Much Ado for another, are charming to us now only because we are quite willing to make believe with the poet” (op. cit., p. 311). And so, when Leslie Stephen asks if we are “invigorated” by the perusal of Massinger's plays,136 I reply to that apostle of common sense that I am not only charmed and delighted, but invigorated. And why? Because I am admitted to a world of heroism and romance.

But may we not put the matter more broadly still? When we read the Cavalier lyrics of Suckling, Herrick, and Lovelace, when we think of Falkland, when we stand before the portraits of Vandyck, do we not feel that modern England was in danger until lately of losing something? There is an aroma there of chivalry which had almost faded from our ken. And yet there is an element in our shy and dumb English nature to which this atmosphere is congenial, however overgrown with money-making our minds had seemed to be. Nor, as the student of history knows well, had the Puritans in the Civil War the monopoly of religion and duty. Indeed, the Civil War was a true tragedy, because both sides had right, both fought and bled for what they believed to be [pg 046] the truth. To-day, in spite of our many domestic discords, no party spirit discounts the gallant deeds of which we have read daily, and of which of necessity only a fraction has been publicly rewarded. Perhaps the flame of romance will breathe once more in our midst, now the War is over, purified by suffering, and quickened by the memory of those serene yet manly spirits whom we have lost on the battlefield, whose departure in the dayspring of life seems, as it were, to have extinguished so many stars in the vault of heaven. They put aside the calls of culture and pleasure, and the natural ambition to do something in the world before they were abolished by death. They have willingly given for their country all that they had; they have given themselves. If we remember their devotion with gratitude it may purify us from the commonplace, the vulgar, and the selfish. They, at any rate, can address the power of evil, which for the moment seemed to triumph, in the words of Dorothea:

As an instance of Massinger's courtliness I will quote a short passage from The Great Duke of Florence: Contarino has come from the court of the Duke to fetch his nephew Giovanni, who has been brought up by a tutor, Charomonte by name, in the country. As the prince comes in, Charomonte addresses Contarino:

Take another instance, from The Duke of Milan:

And this, from The Bashful Lover:

I have used the word “lucid” of Massinger's style; perhaps a more appropriate word would be dexterous; not that he is obscure like Chapman, or like Shakspere in his later manner, far less turgid, but he is not afraid of somewhat long sentences. What he is really afraid of, unlike Fletcher, is a full-stop at the end of the verse. There are two devices which the reader will notice, often in combination; in the first place, Massinger is very fond of the “absolute” construction, and loves to multiply parentheses. The following passages from A New Way will serve as illustrations:

Or again, from The Emperor of the East:

Or from The Bondman:

We find the “absolute” construction occasionally in Shakspere, as in The Merchant of Venice:

Or in Hamlet:

A passage from The Fatal Dowry will show an elaborate use of parenthesis:

Compare also these lines from The Guardian:

From The Picture:

From A Very Woman:

From The Bashful Lover:

From The Parliament of Love:

It has been pointed out by Zielinski that “the perfection of language in regard to the formation of periods depends upon the presence and prevalence of abbreviated [pg 051] by-sentences,”153 by which expression he describes “absolute” constructions.

Secondly, he delights in an expedient which the poems of Robert Browning have made familiar to this generation, the frequent omission of the relative pronoun.154 And so his sentences meander with a seemingly negligent grace to an unexpected conclusion. It is clear that such a style both requires and repays a careful study of the rhetorical art.

I give as an instance of this combination the words of Paulinus in The Emperor of the East. He is talking of the Emperor's sister and Prime Minister Pulcheria:

The style of Massinger is not only lucid and dexterous; it is strong, partly because of its ease, and more mature and modern than that of many of his contemporaries. Milton's prose would have gained much in directness if he [pg 052] had studied Massinger. This strength does not show itself so much in isolated fine lines, for, as we have already seen, epigram was foreign to his nature, though from time to time we get such lines, as, for example, in The Duke of Milan:

Or, again, in the same play:

Or, again, in A New Way:

Or in The Roman Actor:

We may remark in passing that Massinger's best single lines are usually decasyllabic.

It has been remarked by Mr. Swinburne, whose discerning judgment of the Jacobean dramatists has lavished just praise on Massinger's art and style, that in the second act of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, “the student will say, ‘This tune goes manly,’ ” and it is remarkable that our poet had formed in 1619 the style which marked him to the end of his life.160

An instance of this simple strength may be given from [pg 053] The City Madam, where Luke debates whether he shall agree to the proposition of the pretended Indians:

When rudeness is necessary it is uttered with some vigour, as in The Fatal Dowry, where this is what Romont gets for his well-meant pains:

The rejected lover in such a scene as the following has no illusions left him:

Two minor features of Massinger's style may be mentioned here:

1. The catalogue line, so familiar to the student of Lucretius—e.g.:

2. A more marked feature is the repetition of words or short phrases in various parts of the line.164 The following instances may be given from (a) The Great Duke of Florence:

And, thirdly, the versification of Massinger is musical and melodious. Boyle says that Milton's blank verse owes much to the study of it. “In the indefinable touches which make up the music of a verse, in the artistic distribution of pauses, and in the unerring choice and grouping of just those words which strike the ear as the perfection of harmony, there are, if we leave Cyril Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy out of the question, only two masters in the drama, Shakspere in his latest period and Massinger.”165 Coleridge says that it is “an excellent metre, a better model for dramatists in general to imitate than Shakspere's. Read Massinger aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate, none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment.”166 Be it noted that this praise comes from a master of his art, for no one who has once appreciated Coleridge's command of vowel-syzygy and the velvet-like texture of his blank verse can refuse him that title.

Massinger's blank verse is equal to all the emotions which the author can express and kindle. It never fails him, nor, on the other hand, does it obtrude itself unduly on the sense conveyed. Only after reading a considerable passage of our poet do we understand how much the [pg 056] versification contributes to his lifelike and dignified atmosphere.

Moreover, the metre of Massinger is admirably suited to his style. There seems a hidden but real harmony between them. Some might call his metre at times slipshod and undignified, from the fact that, except in elevated passages, the characters speak in rhythmical sentences which approximate to prose. Boyle, who declares that “Marlowe and Massinger are the two extremes of the metrical movement in the dramatists,”167 has pointed out that “Massinger's blank verse shows a larger proportion of run-on lines and double endings in harmonious union than any of his contemporaries.168 Cartwright [pg 057] and Tourneur have more run-on lines, but not so many double endings. Fletcher has more double endings, but very few run-on lines. Shakspere and Beaumont alone exhibit a somewhat similar metrical style.”169 This is interesting, because we shall see later on that Massinger was a devoted admirer and imitator of Shakspere in thought, device, and expression. It is not strange, therefore, that he should also copy his metre, or rather, develop his own on the same lines. To show how flexible and dexterous the metre of Massinger is, I will give two instances from The Bashful Lover. In the first Uberti encourages Gonzaga to persevere with the contest:

In the second Gonzaga refuses the hand of his daughter Matilda to Lorenzo:

Anyone who compares the metre of Massinger with that of Fletcher will find that our author observes far stricter [pg 059] laws than his friend. The plays of Massinger abound in lines divided between two speakers, or even three, which, nevertheless, observe the strict rule of the metre.172

The way in which Massinger's style and metre suit one another can best be illustrated by a passage or two from The Parliament of Love; the first is where Bellisant speaks about the decay of chivalry.

The second is a speech of Leonora exposing Cleremond's baseness:

The critics may differ in their estimate of Massinger's style and metre; but it is simple truth to say that they are unique in our literature, in their correctness, dignity, ease, and classical frugality.

Let us now turn to the poet's faults. It is said that his range of thought is limited, and this may be at once conceded. It might also be said that Greek tragedy is limited, and the statement is true of all our Elizabethan playwrights; yet we return to them again and again, for they have something to give us which we cannot do without. It is idle to depreciate one period of our literature [pg 061] at the expense of another. Are not the old madrigal writers limited, and Farrant and Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Blow? and yet we enjoy them; nay, to take even Purcell himself, when we confess that the pleasure he gives us is due to the fact that he is more daring, less shackled than his generation, “so modern” as we say, are we not in the end forced to confess that he too is unmistakably limited, “bewrayed” by his quaint and stately rhythms to be one of the seventeenth century?

Our age has a wider and subtler range of psychology; to revert from “The Georgian Poets” of 1911 to Massinger is like going back from the films of a cinema palace to a tondo of Luca Signorelli. Both films and tondo have their uses. We may take a single illustration of this point from The Brothers Karamazov. The great Russian novelist, among other problems, deals in that book with the case of the young man who is in love with two women at once. That is the sort of complicated interest which we do not expect our Elizabethan writers to cope with, in as great detail as a modern writer uses. The problem occurs in The Bondman, where the heroine, Cleora, is distracted between her plighted love to Leosthenes and her warm sense of obligation to Marullo;176 it is interesting and instructive to see how simply the whole thing is touched upon, and how soon the doubt is solved by the discovery of Leosthenes' former intrigue with Statilia. May we not say, with Aristophanes, in comparing Massinger and Dostoevsky:

Then it is said that Massinger's work is not free from coarseness. The answer to this accusation may be made in more ways than one. I might with confidence reply to such critics: If you wish for real vulgarity of diction, [pg 062] read Marston; if you wish for real vulgarity of mind, read Middleton; if you wish for poisoned morals, read Ford and Tourneur; and then revise your judgment of Massinger. It is notorious that all the stage writers of the Elizabethan age are tarred with the same brush; there is much in Shakspere himself that we wish he had not written; still more is this true of Ben Jonson. In The Virgin Martyr, where we have the odious servants, Hircius and Spungius, it is generally believed that the parts of the play in which they appear are due to Dekker, not to Massinger, whose other works present nothing so disgusting. There are, at any rate, no lapses of taste in Massinger like those which we find in Fletcher; nothing like the fate of Rutilio in The Custom of the Country, or of Merione in The Queen of Corinth, or of the Father in The Captain. It must be confessed that Massinger's conception of love is apt to be earthly, physical, sensuous; there is but little in his plays about the marriage of true minds,178 too much about “Hymen's taper” and “virgin forts.” Captivated by the charms of female beauty, his intellect is too concrete in its ideals to rise above mere morality to the mysteries of the diviner love. So far it must be allowed that his art interests and stimulates the passions of his audience without elevating them. But if at times we feel a monotonous limitation in his outlook in these matters, if we miss the healthy breezes of bracing commonsense and cheerful self-restraint, we are never pained by the triumph of what is low, corrupt, or morbid.

When it is said that his women are impure it is necessary to enter a clear protest.179 There are offensive and [pg 063] heartless women in Massinger, such as Domitia in The Roman Actor, and Beaumelle in The Fatal Dowry;180 there are odious old women, like Borachia and Corisca. There are pert and vulgar ladies' maids; but you have only to read The Bondman, The Bashful Lover, A Very Woman, The Maid of Honour, The Great Duke of Florence, The Emperor of the East, The Picture, to see that his world includes some charming female characters—not, indeed, so lovely as those of Shakspere, but still, types which show that he had not lost his faith in human nature, as, when we read Fielding, we feel regretfully almost obliged to allow, in spite of Sophia Western and Amelia, is the case with our great novelist.

It is true that there are ladies in Massinger's plays who offer their hands in marriage to the men they love, and very charmingly the thing is done, though there is nothing equal to the scene between the Duchess and Antonio in Webster's masterpiece; as, for example, Artemia in The Virgin Martyr, the Duchess of Urbin in The Great Duke, Calista in The Guardian.181 This feature is not confined to Massinger among the writers of his age; to mention no other instances, what about Arethusa in Philaster, Bianca in The Fair Maid of the Inn, Beliza and the Queen in The Queen of Corinth,182 Frank in The Captain, Clara in Love's Cure (IV., 2), Martia in The Double Marriage (II., 3), Lamira in The Honest Man's Fortune (V., 3), Erota in The Laws of Candy? Or, what about Desdemona in Othello,183 or Olivia in Twelfth Night?184 What about the [pg 064] plot of All's Well that Ends Well? To the vulgar mind all things are vulgar. Honi soit qui mal y pense.185 It may certainly be conceded that in some of Massinger's plays, as, for instance, The Unnatural Combat and Believe as You List, the feminine interest is comparatively slight. Brander Matthews tells us that Massinger's women “are all painted from the outside only”;186 “they are not convincing; they lack essential womanliness.” This may be due to the fault which the same critic points out in our author, that “he is heavy-handed and coarse-fibred ethically as well as æsthetically.” One may reply that if the theatre be the mirror of life Massinger had an undoubted right to bring bad women on the stage; there are good and noble women also among his characters, and if they are not “convincing,” perhaps we may quote Coleridge's remark about Shakspere, that “he saw it was the perfection of women to be characterless.” However far our author may fall short of his great model in grace, charm, and delicacy, he at any rate deserves credit for having imagined female characters who are full of passions and made of “flesh and blood.”187

Massinger resembles other dramatists of his age; at times we feel that they talk like the little boys on the links in Stevenson's Lantern-Bearers. But Massinger is a robuster mind than Fletcher, for example; if he brings vice upon the stage, and if he speaks too freely about things which we prefer not to have mentioned, if “like Hogarth, he enjoys his own portrayal of degrading vice and its appalling consequences,”188 we must, to do him [pg 065] justice, take his work as a whole. Indeed, most of the critics have singled out as one of his special claims to praise his sturdy morality,189 and the general effect on any fair mind of a perusal of his plays is a conviction that he loved virtue. Vitelli190 may make the best of both worlds, but he converts Donusa, and faces death and torture with fortitude. Goodness emerges from Massinger's plays, sometimes compromised for the moment, but always triumphant in the end. There is considerable outspokenness, but not much lubricity, and no perverted morality. Passages which offend can nearly always, as in Shakspere, be omitted without damaging the course of the plot. Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the works of Massinger are almost wholly free from blasphemy and profanity, and attacks on the clergy, such as moved the wrath of Jeremy Collier in later times.

It may be a fanciful suggestion, but it is possible that the drama of that day suffered from the fact that boys took the female parts.191 No one would deny the artistic [pg 066] loss thereby involved, but there was a moral loss as well. It made it possible for things to be said that would not have been said by men to women, still less by women to men. It unconsciously invested the love-scenes with an air of unreality and grossness. It prevented the relation of the sexes from being depicted with that union of passion and purity which, though difficult, is possible.

It has been said that Massinger is hard and metallic, and devoid of pathos. This charge, again, is largely true. You will not find in him scenes which clutch the heart like those of Dr. Faustus, or The Duchess of Malfi, or The Broken Heart, or The Maid's Tragedy, or The Wife for a Month; you will not find the sublimity of Ordella's self-sacrifice in Thierry and Theodoret, or the chivalry of A Fair Quarrel; still less will you find anything so appalling as the end of King Lear, or Othello, or Romeo and Juliet. There is plenty of passion in Massinger; like the legendary lion, he lashes with his tail, and you can almost see him in the act; but his rhetoric does not entirely carry you away. Let me recall the fine passage which was quoted just now from The Roman Actor.192 I hope everyone will allow its eloquence; but the repetition of the commonplace phrase, “we cannot help it,”193 natural and forcible as it is, falls short of the ideal grandeur at which the passage aims. We feel that Fletcher could have made a finer thing of the prison-scene in The Emperor of the East.

It is significant that the most tender passage in Massinger,194 where Leonora bids Almira take consolation, has been assigned by some to Fletcher. In other words, Massinger is not in the front rank of genius, but no one would claim for him such a place.

Again, one might urge that his plays are not stores of worldly wisdom, like Shakspere's; his aphorisms are not deep; they do not bite.195 Consequently he does not lend [pg 068] himself to quotation. Yet this does not of necessity detract from his greatness. No one would question the excellence of the Waverley Novels, but Leslie Stephen has pointed out that we only make one quotation from Scott's novels.196 Aristotle has told us that “excessive brilliance of diction obscures characters and sentiments.”197 There [pg 069] are few passages of high poetical emotion in Massinger; there is little magic in the rhythm of individual lines. Like most of his contemporaries he shows at times a strange insensibility to smooth rhythm in the heroic couplet. He has an anapæstic lilt in various parts of the line, inherited from Shakspere, and found in Milton's early poems, which is not ineffective in its way, and which seems to have aimed at varying the monotony of the ten-syllable line.198 He has not much power of rhyme,199 nor are his plays studded with such lyrics as Shakspere and Fletcher could write upon occasion.200

Again, the comic element in Massinger is at times dull, forced, and ordinary; it does not take us very far to label a foolish Florentine gentleman with the name of “Sylli”;201 the hungry soldier is rather a time-worn type,202 nor [pg 070] can Greedy compare with Lazarillo. Though the situations are humorous, we do not split with laughter over Massinger, as we do in reading Aristophanes, or Shakspere, or Molière.203 We do not find in him the mercurial lightness of A Trick to Catch the Old One, or the invincible absurdity of “The Roarers” in The Fair Quarrel. But it is necessary to remember that the comic business is of the kind which gains by acting, or indeed requires it, and to allow that towards the end of his life Massinger came forward as a grave and powerful satirist of contemporary men, reminding us of Ben Jonson, but, to my mind, excelling him; for he shows less asperity with greater lucidity and ease.204 He is not unduly morose or bitter, yet he wins conviction with an admirable sanity and sobriety. The plays will repay good acting, and, after all, plays are meant to be acted; it is significant that the last of Massinger's plays to hold the stage was his comedy, The New Way to pay Old Debts, and it is very much to be wished that it should be revived in England.205

Some critics have accused Massinger of redundancy in style, a characteristic which clearly will strike different people in different ways. Thus, Hallam regards this feature as on the whole meritorious, giving “fulness, or what the painters would call impasto, to his style, and if it might not always conduce to effect on the stage, suitable on the whole to the character of his composition.” Mr. Bullen,206 after an eloquent tribute to “Massinger's admirable ease and dignity,” and to “his rare command of an excellent work-a-day dramatic style, clear, vigorous, and [pg 071] free from conceit and affectation,” proceeds to allow that “he is apt to grow didactic and tax the reader's patience; and there is often a want of coherence in his sentences, which amble down the page in a series of loosely linked clauses.” I do not myself feel that this charge comes to very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compare with this another passage in The Duke of Milan:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or,

which are quite out of his range of power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nor did Massinger ever sink so low as line 64:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take, for example:

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

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

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

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

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

In Believe as You List we have:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Emperor of the East we find:

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

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

Massinger in A Very Woman has:

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

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

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

But she does not leave the stage.

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

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

In The Great Duke of Florence we find:

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

Theseus, addressing Artesius, says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or in Allworth's speech about his love:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For sheer vitality and strength three of the plays stand out conspicuously: The Bondman, The Renegado, and The Guardian. Though they are disfigured by one or two coarse scenes, one is carried along in reading them as if one were in a sailing-boat, dancing along a fresh sea. Of The Bondman Monck Mason says: “I don't recollect any play whatsoever that begins or ends in a manner so pleasing, uncommon, and striking.” It contains four well-drawn characters—Timoleon, Marullo, Leosthenes, and Cleora. The plot is lively, though some critics, I think unjustly, have accused the author of cutting the knot in the fifth act. The disguised brother and sister who meet in Act III., I should perhaps indicate their relationship. Timandra does not explicitly mention her brother till V., 1, 64. A reference earlier in the play to the wrong which Leosthenes had done her would certainly make for clearness. There is much fine eloquence in the play. The one or two offensive comic scenes are not essential to the plot.

The Renegado has an Oriental setting, which alone would make it attractive on the stage. The character of Donusa is on the grand scale, one of Massinger's successes; the Merchant, the Jesuit, and Grimaldi are all well drawn. There is some fine oratory and a good plot, which works up to an exciting end. There is not much in the comic line of value here.

The plot of The Guardian is more complicated than is usual with Massinger. It contains some charming banditti scenes, while Alphonso's fictitious narrative in the last act is one of the strongest pieces of writing in our author. The guardian, Durazzo, the kind-hearted but cynical and quick-tempered old man of the world, is one of Massinger's most successful creations. On the other hand, it will be allowed that there is too much concession in The Guardian to a corrupt taste, due perhaps to poverty [pg 135] and the depression of failure. The character of Iolante is unattractive; her intrigue with a man who turns out to be her brother is odious; her repentance is cheap and unconvincing. The earlier part of the play in its movement and morals alike reminds us of Fletcher.

The Picture is full of power, and enriched with some good strokes of satire; the alternations of mood in the chief characters are represented with skill, while the magic portrait on which the plot hinges seems to take a natural place in the story. There is, however, a crudeness and hardness of texture about the play, though Mathias and Sophia are well drawn, especially the latter. Everything comes right at the last, and true love is vindicated after the display of some proper pride; but one feels that the three venture their honour too far. “He comes too near who comes to be denied.” The King's faults are overdrawn; the Queen very nearly spoils the play; the young courtiers, though realistic, are unpleasant; the comic element is poor and farcical.482 In dealing with a psychological theme, Massinger was trying to adjust to the hard-and-fast concrete outlines of the drama a story which would have been easier to manage and more attractive to read if it had been cast in the form of a novel. There would then have been possible gradations of light and shade, which would have made the treatment less bald. It would have supplied Richardson with a problem worthy of his heart-breaking and long-drawn analysis.

The Duke of Milan is a gloomy play, with a somewhat intricate plot, presenting to us that strange “Italianate”483 world of treachery and poison with which Webster, Ford, and Tourneur make us familiar. We must remember, on the other hand, that Italy gives an atmosphere which [pg 136] domestic plays like The Yorkshire Tragedy and Arden of Feversham lack. As in The Bondman and The Unnatural Combat, the plot is developed late, though hints are given before. Thus, the ill-treated sister is early referred to,484 while the last words of the same act prepare us for Francisco's villainy. The finest scene in the play is Act III., 1, which is bathed in the romantic atmosphere so congenial to our author. Sforza submits to his enemy, the Emperor Charles, without forfeiting our esteem, while the Emperor shows a noble magnanimity. There is a subdued comic element in the person of Graccho, the musician.

The Duke of Milan is carefully written485 and skilfully constructed; the author has taken great pains to draw the characters of Sforza and Marcelia, though Francisco is perhaps more successful than either.486 The Duke's last words are the clue to his character:

The chief “frenzy” of his life was his devotion to his wife Marcelia. This peerless beauty combines pride488 with a kindly simplicity which is no match for Francisco; while she dearly loves her husband and forgives him in her last words, she is not altogether attractive. On the other hand, her anger with Sforza for leaving orders that she should be killed if he did not return safe from his [pg 137] hazardous enterprise is natural, and the scene in which she receives him coldly and provokes his violent anger would be effective when acted.489 We are inevitably reminded of Othello, and the comparison is most instructive as revealing the great gap which separates the pupil from the master. Marcelia is not so gracious as Desdemona, nor Sforza so strong as Othello, nor Francisco so devilish as Iago. As is usually the case with Massinger, the fifth act carries along our interest to the end. We do not weep, but we are certainly moved by the horror of the Duke's death. The princesses of the Ducal House are responsible for an improbable scene490 when they flout Marcelia in the absence of her lord. Their behaviour reminds us of the ladies in The Roman Actor. In style The Duke of Milan is marked by several passages of fine poetry and a comparative absence of the parenthetic construction.

The Fatal Dowry is a famous and much-admired play, adapted by Nicholas Rowe in the eighteenth century to form the basis of his Fair Penitent.491 There are some fine scenes here, notably the funeral, which is as effective as anything our poet has written. On the other hand, the scene in which Rochfort is robed and blindfolded, and [pg 138] assents to his daughter's death, recalls Fletcher in its improbability; nor is it likely that Beaumelle would marry Charalois at such short notice. All we can say about this is that hurried weddings are one of the presuppositions of the Jacobean drama.492 There are an heroic atmosphere, a fine friendship, and much rhetoric of a high order in The Fatal Dowry. Moreover, as the moral lines at the end point out, there is the clash of law and natural vengeance in this play, which is a legitimate source of dramatic power. Charalois, Romont, Malotin, and Pontalier are all well drawn: the “sweet and gentle nature” of Charalois is particularly attractive, though he is not incapable of passionate anger,493 which makes the punishment he inflicts on his guilty wife in IV., 4 more credible. On the other hand, a story is at a disadvantage in which the father, though generous and dignified, is impulsive and quixotic, the heroine is worthless, and her lover contemptible.494 The style in places is less lucid than usual, which may be due to the co-operation of Field; moreover, the metre is more halting than Massinger's is wont to be, and I think it probable that the play has been carelessly printed. There is much spirited sarcasm in Act III., and some fun in Act IV.495

The Unnatural Combat is full of splendid rhetoric; indeed, there are perhaps too many soliloquies. This early work is grim as an iron-bound coast; yet the affairs of the honest, brave, and poverty-stricken captain, Belgarde, provide a lighter element, and the moralizing of the pert page in III., 2 is both sensible and light-handed in execution. The reason for the son's antipathy to his father is hinted at from time to time in the first act; its disclosure is postponed too late. We should [pg 139] also have been prepared for the wrongs and treachery of Montreville, which burst upon us too suddenly in the last act. The evil passion of Malefort is powerfully depicted; here, again, we have a careful study of conflicting emotions. Though he struggles against his evil desires, we feel that a bad man must come to a bad end.496 The play would have been better rounded off if in the initial part some indication had been given that he seemed to everyone a man whose mind, for some mysterious reason, was unbalanced and unhinged.497 Once allow that such a theme can be tolerable as that which we have here, and the hints which Montreville drops from time to time are adequate to stir the suspicion of the spectator.

The style is more like rhythmical prose than that of any other of Massinger's plays. Here alone in our author do children occur, and that in an unpleasing context.498 The ghosts of Malefort's victims, which appear in the last scene, seem to me a legitimate and powerful episode. It was natural to compare this violent play with Chapman's tragedies; Malefort reminding us of Bussy d'Ambois and Byron; but there is little in common between the two authors. In the first place, Massinger knows how to construct a play; in the second place, there is hardly a line in The Unnatural Combat which is obscure, whereas in the last act of Bussy d'Ambois, Chapman's masterpiece, there is hardly a line which is intelligible.

The Parliament of Love contains much fine poetry499 and one great forensic scene, such as our author loves.500 It is, however, in too fragmentary a state for us to judge [pg 140] it fairly.501 The atmosphere is unreal, the interest flags, the boisterous comedy is unattractive. There are more women than is usual in Massinger, and duelling and friendship inspire two noble scenes (III., 2; IV., 2). Though vice is humbled, we ask here, as in The Picture, does virtue gain by the way in which its opposite is portrayed? And are not the characters, male and female alike, undiscriminated? The interest, in other words, is concentrated in the triple story, and doubtless we feel some satisfaction in the punishment of Clarindore, the betrayer of secrets.502 There are a good many half-lines in the manner of Fletcher.

Though Believe as You List503 is full of dignity and poetry, it has a plot without much nexus, of the sort which Aristotle would blame as ἐπεισοδιώδης.504 We are wafted from Carthage to Bithynia, from Bithynia to Lusitania, from Lusitania to Sicily. Though Antiochus is truly a king even in his misfortunes, and excites our respect and compassion, the play can hardly have been a success. The melancholy tinge is too uniform; the improbabilities of the recognitions are too glaring. The Courtesan and Berecinthius cannot be said to have added to the gaiety of nations; of the other characters Flaminius alone has individuality. The peculiar circumstances under which the play was written may help to explain the fiasco.

The Old Law does not owe much to Massinger. As it was a favourite play, it may have owed its association with his name to revision on his part.505 There is a charming tenderness in places and a rollicking improbability about the whole scheme, both alien to the staid Massinger. The humour is not his, but better; his phraseology is markedly absent;506 the prose scenes show another conception [pg 142] of art; the careless metre suggests Rowley. It is clear that whoever wrote the comic parts of The Old Law was responsible for Chough, Trimtram, and the Roarers in A Fair Quarrel. The scene is laid in “Epire,” a region which seems to have been regarded by our ancestors as a place for strange things to happen, and a vague background like the city of Callipolis;507 it seems to have the same character in the present day. A King of “Epire” figures among Diocletian's court in The Virgin Martyr, and in The Dumb Knight508 we find a Duke of Epire. The classical allusions and Latin phrases suggest that the author of The Old Law was a man of some culture.

My task is now ended. I shall consider myself happy if I persuade some of my readers to make the acquaintance of Massinger's plays.509 We have lately been celebrating the tercentenary of Shakspere's death. The best way of honouring a great author is to read his writings; but to appreciate aright the greatness of Shakspere we should be wise to combine with our study a just estimate of his contemporaries and satellites; and, of the many dramatists of that century, none seem to me more worthy of affectionate consideration than Philip Massinger. It is especially instructive to return to his writings from the perusal of the masterpieces of his contemporaries; though from time to time they display rich gifts of pathos, poetry, and humour, they are too often marred by waywardness, unnaturalness, want of proportion, and grossness; it is a relief to resume the study of an author whose work is sober, well balanced, dignified, and lucid. While he shares with them the modern atmosphere of romance and adventure, he is the most Greek of his generation; and this is the real secret of his abiding charm. The [pg 143] passionate, the abnormal, the lurid, the farcical elements, in which his contemporaries revel, are not, indeed, entirely absent, but they are less conspicuous; the luxuriance of the thicket does not hinder the wayfarer from following the path; we pluck the roses without tearing our flesh on the thorns; and as we contemplate the marble splendour of his verse we almost forget that sculpture has its limitations.

Appendix I. The Small Actor In Massinger's Plays

There are several passages in our author in which reference is made to the low stature of the actor of a female part.

The part of Domitilla was taken by I. Hunniman; that of Paulina by Theo. Bourne; that of Corisca (in The Picture) by W. Trigge. It would appear, therefore, that these references are not all due to the stature of any one individual actor, but that Massinger took care to have actors of different height brought into juxtaposition in his plays. He may here be copying the well-known passages in Midsummer Night's Dream (III., 2, 288-298, 324, 329). Cf. also Antony and Cleopatra, II., 5, 118; III., 3, 13; Much Ado, I., 1, 172 and 216; As You Like It, I., 2, 284; Twelfth Night, I., 5, 219; II., 5, 16; King Lear, I., 1, 201. Cf. Bradley's Shakspearean Tragedy, p. 317, n. 1.

In Dekker's Honest Whore, Pt. 2. III., 1, the heroine, Bellafront, is “a little tiny woman.” So are Pretiosa in Middleton's Spanish Gipsy (I., 5), and Isabella in Women, beware Women (III., 2). Cf. also The Case is Altered (III., 3), “'Fore God, the taller is a gallant lady.” We find the same idea in The Fair Maid of the West, II., 3; III., 1, 2. Celestina, in Shirley's Lady of Pleasure (III., 2), is “a puppet.” Spaconia in A King and no King (III., 1) is “that little one”; Viola in The Coxcomb (V., 3) is “not high.” Cf. also The Prophetess (I., 3, 59), a play which bears many marks of Massinger's work:

The Sea Voyage (IV., 3): Morillat: “This little gentlewoman that was taken with us,” referring to Aminta. As Cleopatra in The False One (II., 3) arrives in a parcel, she must have been small. Margarita in Rule a Wife (III., 4) is “of a low stature.” Ismenia in The Maid of the Mill “was of the lowest stature” (I., 2); cf. also V., 2, 7. Evanthe in A Wife for a Month, IV., 3 is “this little fort.” Cf. also The Noble Gentleman, IV., 3.

Appendix II

Did Massinger know Greek? It is perhaps worth while collecting the scanty evidence on the subject. We find a pun on the name Philanax in The Emperor of the East,510 and Mathias plays on the name of his wife Sophia.511 The phrase κατ᾽ ἐξοήν is used in The Guardian.512 We find a Greek construction in The Emperor of the East:513

On the other hand, we notice Theseus scanned as a trisyllable.514

There are one or two passages where the unexpected turn [pg 149] of the thought rather suggests a Greek original. Thus, in The Renegado515 we are reminded of The Acharnians:516

Another passage of The Renegado517 reminds us of a famous fragment of Euripides,518 often mistranslated:

In The Virgin Martyr519 we find a parallel to The Hecuba:520

In The Emperor of the East521 occurs a parallel quoted by Dr. Walter Headlam in his notes to Agamemnon:522

It is the general opinion of scholars that our Elizabethan dramatists owed very little to the Greek drama directly, but we cannot forget that Massinger had had a good education at Oxford, and was a widely read man.523 His forensic skill [pg 150] often reminds us of Euripides; and if he did not know the works of his illustrious predecessor, he would have found in them a congenial spirit.524

The speech of Sanazarro to Giovanni in The Great Duke of Florence525 reminds us of Creon's arguments in Sophocles' Œdipus Tyrannus, line 596 κ.τ.λ.

The scene in The Bondman,526 when the senators frighten the mutinous slaves by shaking their whips, reminds us of the Scythians in Herodotus,527 but it is also found in Justin,528 and Gifford points out that it may really have been borrowed from a contemporary book of travels, Purchas's Pilgrims.529

Massinger had a good working knowledge of mythology; thus, references in his plays to Hercules and Alcides abound, as they do in Shakspere. We find several false quantities in proper names: Caesarĕa, in The Virgin Martyr; Archidămus, in The Bondman; Eubŭlus, in The Picture; Nomothētae, in The Old Law530; Cybēle, in Believe as You List.531 We may compare Shakspere's Andronĭcus; Anthrŏpos in Four Plays in One, The Triumph of Time; and Euphānes in The Queen of Corinth.532

It seems scarcely worth while to collect the passages which show Massinger's knowledge of Latin; the authors he seems to have known best are Ovid, Juvenal, and Horace. Swinburne and others have commented on his indulgence in “the commonplace tropes and flourishes of the schoolroom or the schools.”533

Appendix III. The Collaborated Plays

The plays in which Massinger is supposed to have collaborated with other authors are here set down, with the analyses made by Boyle (D. N. B., xxxvii., pp. 10-16) and the views of Mr. A. H. Bullen in his article on Fletcher (D. N. B., xix., pp. 303-311).534

1. The Honest Man's Fortune. (Field, Daborne, Massinger, Fletcher.)

M.: Act III. or part of it.

A. H. B. agrees.

A. H. C.: I doubt whether Massinger had any share in this play. There are passages of ten-syllable lines in Act III., 1 which are quite unlike him, while 2 and 3 are interspersed with prose passages, a feature which Massinger as a rule avoids.

2. Thierry and Theodoret. (Massinger, Field, Fletcher, and possibly a fourth writer.)

M: Act I., 2; Act II., 1, 3; Act IV., 2.

A. H. B. attributes largely to Massinger, assigning Act III. to an unknown author.

A. H. C. assigns to Massinger Act II., 1 and 3, and with some hesitation Act I., 2; Act IV., 2.

3. The Bloody Brother. (Massinger, Field, Fletcher, and possibly a fourth writer.)

M.: Act I., Act V., 1.

A. H. B. thinks that Fletcher and Jonson wrote the play, and that Massinger revised it for a performance at Hampton Court in January, 1636-37.

A. H. C.: There are clearly three hands at work here, one of whom writes obscurely and uses a good deal of rhyme. Act I., 1 reminds us of Massinger in several touches, especially lines 269-70. The broken lines in this scene are complete, as is Massinger's unfailing practice, but the ten-syllable line is more common than is usually the case with him. While Act V., 1 has some sentences cast in the parenthetic form, the expressions used are less lucid than we expect from Massinger.

4. The Knight of Malta. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act III., 2, 3; Act IV., 1; possibly part of Act V., 2.

A. H. B. agrees, assigning Act II. and Act III., 1 to Fletcher.

“Some third person wrote Act I. and part of Act V.”

A. H. C.: I trace Massinger only in Act III., 2.

5. The Queen of Corinth. (Massinger, Fletcher (?), Field.)

M.: Act I., Act V.

A. H. B. assigns Act II. to Fletcher, the rest to Middleton and Rowley.

A. H. C.: Massinger wrote Act I., 1, 2, 3 from “Enter Agenor,” V., 2. Fletcher wrote Act I., 3; Act II., 1, 2, 3, 4; Act III., 1, 2; Act V., 3. As usual, he is responsible for the comic parts. Act V., 4 is a vigorous trial scene, not due, I think, to Massinger. The impression that I get from Act III. is that Massinger drafted it, and Fletcher worked over it.

6. Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt. (Massinger, Fletcher.)

M.: Act I., 1, 2; Act II., 1; Act III., 2, 3, 5; Act IV., 4, 5; Act V., 1 to “Enter Provost.”

A. H. B. agrees on the whole.

A. H. C.: Act III., 5, and Act IV., 5 seem to me unworthy of Massinger. Perhaps a third hand wrote Act I., 3; Act II., 2-7; Act III., 1, as far as “will ripen the [pg 153] imposture”; Act III., 3; Act V., 1, as far as “Exeunt wife and daughter.”

7. Henry the Eighth. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

A. H. B. agrees, attributing a few passages to Shakspere, notably the trial scene of Catherine.

Sir A. Ward thinks that Massinger and Fletcher wrote most of the play, Shakspere only a little (H. E. D., ii., 246).

Macaulay ascribes it to Shakspere and Fletcher, “perhaps revised by Massinger.”

For a fuller discussion of this problem, cf. pp. 84-91.

8. The Two Noble Kinsmen. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act I.; Act II., 1; Act III., 1, 2; Act IV., 3; Act V., 1 from line 19, 3, 4.

A. H. B. thinks that Shakspere wrote additions for the revival of an old play, Palamon and Arsett, which came into the hands of Fletcher and Massinger after the death of Shakspere. Massinger has interpolated his own work in some of the Shakspere passages.

For a fuller discussion of this problem, cf. pp. 92-104.

9. The Custom of the Country. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act II., 1, 2, 3, 4; Act III., 4, 5; Act IV., 1, 2; Act V., 1, 2, 3, 4.

A. H. B. agrees.

Macaulay adds part of Act V., 5 to Massinger.

A. H. C.: This play owes very little to Massinger. Boyle, in attributing Act II. to him, must have been guided solely by metrical considerations. There is not a trace of his style in the Act. No doubt it is true that Hippolyta is a type familiar in Massinger's plays; and her sudden change of mind in the last act reminds us of him. Again, the mental treatment to which Duarte owes his cure (Act IV., 1), and the praises of the medical profession (Act V., 4), recall A Very Woman (II., 2, 26).

But we have to set a good deal against these facts. The plot is more elaborate, bustling, and improbable than we expect from Massinger. It is improbable that the young men (Act II., 2) should leap into the sea and [pg 154] leave Zenocia in the lurch. It is improbable that they should swim a league to shore with their swords erect in the air, though swords no doubt they must have if they are to behave as Fletcher's gentlemen behave. It is improbable that Rutilio in his flight (Act II., 4) should take refuge in a palace and find himself in the bedroom of the lady of the house. Difficulties of this kind are familiar enough in Fletcher. It need scarcely be said that Sulpicia and her establishment are due to Fletcher alone.

To sum up, if Massinger had any share in this play, he may have given hints or added touches in connexion with Hippolyta and Duarte. The simplest supposition is that he edited the play for a revival. The Prologue and Epilogue “at a revival” contain expressions which remind us of him. The Prologue ends thus (lines 18-20):

The parenthesis is in Massinger's manner.

Again, in the second Epilogue, line 7, we find “qualification,” with which compare “fortification” in A New Way, I., 2, 25.

10. The Elder Brother. (Fletcher (?), Beaumont; probably revised generally by Massinger.)

M.: Act I., 1, 2; Act V., 1, 2.

A. H. B. thinks that Massinger revised and completed it after Fletcher's death, but says nothing about Beaumont.

A. H. C.: There are traces of Massinger in Act I., 1 and Act V., 1, in which scenes we find careful metre and a good many parentheses. While Act I., 2 resembles Massinger, it seems to me to have a lighter touch than his. In Act V., 1 we find a speech or two very much in his manner, and characteristic also is the skill with which an ambiguity is prolonged for some time in this scene, and then dissipated. I doubt if he wrote Act V., 2.

11. The Sea Voyage. (Massinger, Fletcher.)

M.: Act II., 1, 2; Act III., 1, from “Enter Rosellia”; Act V., 1, 2, 3, 4.

A. H. B. says nothing about Massinger here. Macaulay doubts if he had any share in the play.

A. H. C.: The metre is throughout too rough for Massinger. The plot does not recall his work in any way.

12. The Double Marriage. (Massinger, Fletcher.)

M.: Act I., 1; Act III., 1; Act IV., 1, 2; Act V., 2, to “Enter Pandulfo.”

A. H. B. agrees.

Macaulay assigns all Act I. to Massinger.

A. H. C: I find no trace of Massinger in this improbable play.

13. The Beggars' Bush. (Massinger, Fletcher.)

M.: Act I., 1, 2, 3; Act V., 1, latter part; V., 2, lines 1-110.

A. H. B. does not think Massinger's part is clearly marked.

Macaulay assigns to Massinger Acts I., II., III., and V.

A. H. C.: I find no trace of Massinger. Neither the plot is lucid nor the expression. The commercial scenes and the beggars' slang are both unlike anything in Massinger, and alien to his courtly mind.

14. The False One. (Massinger, Fletcher.)

M.: Act I.; Act V.

A. H. B. agrees.

A. H. C.: Massinger wrote Act I., a good deal of Act IV., and Act V. There is hardly a scene except the Masque in Act III., 4 which reads like Fletcher's unaided work. The dignified rhetoric throughout the play has the stamp of Massinger; more than that, the character-drawing is like his. The outspoken Sceva reminds us of the old courtier Eubulus in The Picture. The rudeness of Eros to Septimius in Act III., 2, reminds us of Donusa in The Renegado. The continual changes of mind on the part of Septimius are an effect which Massinger loves. (Cf. also Arsinoe and Photinus in Act V., 4.)

15. The Prophetess. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Acts II., IV., V., 1, 2.

A. H. B. thinks Massinger's share “very considerable.”

A. H. C.: Fletcher wrote Act I., 1, 2, and the Geta scenes (Act I., 3; Act III., 2; Act IV., 3, 5; Act V., 3). Perhaps some hack wrote the choruses (Act IV., 1; Act V., 1) or are they inherited from an old play? The main part of the play is due to Massinger. He certainly had a hand in Act III., 1. Maximinian is a skilfully drawn character on his lines.

16. The Little French Lawyer. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act I.; Act III., 1; Act V., 1, from “Enter Cleremont,” with traces of his hand in other scenes.

A. H. B. agrees.

A. H. C.: Massinger can be traced at the beginning of Act I., 1 and in Act III., 1 and Act IV., 5. The resemblances are rather slight, and it is possible that they are due to the fact that Fletcher occasionally imitated Massinger.

17. The Lover's Progress. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act I., 1, 2 (to “Enter Malefort”); Act II., 2; Act III., 4, 6 (last two speeches); Act IV.; Act V.

A. H. B. thinks it is “by Fletcher, with large alterations by Massinger.” He refers to the explicit statement in the Prologue where the reviser declares himself to be—

a statement in harmony with Massinger's well-known modesty.

A. H. C.: Massinger wrote Act I., 1, Act II., 2. There are traces of his work in Act III., 4, 6; Act IV., 2, 4; Act V., 1, 3. The improbabilities of the plot—e.g., the action of Clarangé—are due to Fletcher. It is clear from the Prologue that the original play was too long. Massinger probably cut it down, by leaving out, among other things, scenes in which Lisander killed his two foes. The play is probably to be identified with The [pg 157] Wandering Lovers or The Picture, entered as by Massinger in the Stationers' Register, September 9th, 1653.

18. The Spanish Curate. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act I.; Act III., 3; Act IV., 1, 4; Act V., 1, 3.

A. H. B. agrees.

Macaulay adds Act IV., 2 to Massinger.

A. H. C.: Massinger can be clearly traced in Act I., 1, Act V., 1; not in Act V., 3. The trial scene (Act III, 3), though on slighter lines than he uses as a rule, may be due to him.

19. The Fair Maid of the Inn. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act I.; Act III., 2; Act V., 3.

A. H. B. attributes to Rowley and Massinger, and thinks Fletcher's share very small.

Macaulay assigns to “Massinger and another (not Fletcher).”

A. H. C.: Massinger wrote Act I., Act V., 3 as far as Clarissa's speech. Fletcher wrote Act II., Act III., Act IV., Act V., 1, 2. The mother's device to save her son is the sort of improbability from which Fletcher does not shrink.

20. A Very Woman. (Massinger and Fletcher.)

M.: Act I.; Act II., 1, 2, 3 down to “Enter Pedro”; Act IV., 1, 3.

A. H. B. identifies this play with The Woman's Plot, acted at Court in 1621. In its present state it is a version of a play by Fletcher, revised for a revival by Massinger in 1634.

Macaulay assigns Act III. and Act IV., 1, 2, 3 to Fletcher. For a discussion of this play cf. pp. 129-131.

21. The Second Maiden's Tragedy. (Massinger, Tourneur.)

M.: Act I., Act II.

In Eng. Stud., ix. 234, Boyle, with some hesitation, regards this play as “an early, anonymous, and unsuccessful attempt of Massinger's.” Whoever wrote it, the work is immature.

A. H. C. I find no trace of Massinger in this play, but a great deal of Tourneur's manner. Cf. Appendix XIII.

22. Love's Cure. (Massinger and (?) Middleton.)

M.: Act I.; Act IV.; Act V., 1, 2.

A. H. B. agrees that the play is due to Massinger and Middleton.

Fleay thinks that Massinger altered a play by Beaumont and Fletcher.

A. H. C.: It is to be noted that the Prologue expressly attributes the play to Beaumont and Fletcher. I find nothing like Massinger except a few touches in Act I., 1 and 3. The lightheartedness of the play reminds us alike of Fletcher and Middleton; the romantic atmosphere reminds us of the former, the inferiority of the metre of the latter.

23. The Fatal Dowry. (Massinger and Field.)

M.: Act I.; Act III. (to “Enter Novall junior”); Act IV., 2, 3, 4; Act V., 1, 2.

For further discussion cf. Appendix XI.

24. The Virgin Martyr. (Massinger and Dekker.)

M.: Act I.; Act III., 1, 2; Act IV., 3; Act V., 2.

For a discussion of this verdict cf. Appendix X.

25. The Old Law. (Massinger, Middleton, Rowley.)

Massinger's share was slight, and can only have consisted in revision for a later performance. Cf. supra, pp. 141-2.

Other Plays attributed in Part to Massinger.

26. The Laws of Candy.

A. H. B. thinks a large part was written by Massinger, and that Fletcher cannot be traced.

Boyle (Eng. Stud., vii. 75) thinks that though the metrical treatment is like Beaumont's, the play is evidently later in date, perhaps due to Shirley. Fleay (Eng. Stud., ix. 23) assigns it to Massinger and Field.

Macaulay says “probably by Massinger and another author (not Fletcher).”

A. H. C.: I find no trace here of the Massinger that we know.

27. The Captain.

Macaulay: “By Fletcher and another, perhaps Massinger.”

A. H. C.: This is one of the many plays in the Fletcher corpus which begins admirably and falls away into improbability. I find no trace of Massinger here, though the incident in Act IV., 5 reminds one of the banquet in The Guardian, Act III., 6.

28. The Cure for a Cuckold, “a pleasant comedy written by John Webster and William Rowley; London, 1661.”

It has been supposed by Fleay that the first act is due to Massinger. It must be pointed out that a large part of the play is written in prose, and that the verse parts are not like Massinger. If one or two phrases remind us of his style the stage is too crowded to make it likely that it is his design. The real reason, no doubt, for the assumption is that the incident of Clare and Lessingham is similar to one in The Parliament of Love. Clare sends a letter to Lessingham in which she tells him she will marry him if he will kill his dearest friend.

But even so the incident is worked out with much variety in detail.

Mr. Rupert Brooke in his Study on Webster (Appendix J) arrives at the conclusion that Webster's play is subsequent to Massinger's, both of them bearing a general resemblance to Marston's Dutch Courtesan. The stinging and incisive vigour of Marston's play is a great contrast to the romantic treatment of the subject in The Parliament of Love.

29. The Island Princess.

This is rather a dull play, though it contains some fine passages and isolated lines. It is well constructed, and contains one or two touches, such as “I love a soldier” (I., 2) and “something shall be thought on” (II., 7), which recall Massinger. And compare “When the streams flow clear and fair, what are the fountains?” (V., 2) with The Bondman, I., 3, 282. The King in gaol reminds us of Believe as You List; the attempt of the Queen Quisara to convert Armusia to her faith reminds [pg 160] us of The Renegado. On the other hand, the metre is singularly like Fletcher's throughout; the diction in many details is unlike Massinger, and there are no parentheses. Perhaps Fletcher was helped in this play by some young man such as Brome who was acquainted with Massinger's style.

30. The Double Falsehood, or The Distressed Lovers.

This play scarcely deserves serious consideration. Cf. Appendix XV.

It will at once be seen how precarious and subjective is much of this attribution. For example, to trace four styles in a play is a difficult feat, yet Boyle does this in (2) and (3). Brander Matthews, in discussing the relation of Massinger and Fletcher, has some interesting remarks, illustrated by modern parallels. He points out that collaboration may be either a chemical union or a mechanical mixture of the authors' qualities, so that it is hard to decide which process has taken place in a particular play. These considerations lead him to doubt the finality of Boyle's distribution of scenes.

Boyle's strong points are his argument from metrical details and his intimate knowledge of the texts. I feel, however, that the metrical test is open to the charge of being mechanical when weighed against the impressions which we gain from the evidence of construction, style, and expressions. Massinger constructed his plays well, and modelled his characters carefully, whereas Fletcher, while excelling in isolated scenes, shrank from no improbability which might be necessary to carry the plot through. I am more conservative, therefore, than Professor Gayley, who says that “in The Spanish Curate, The Little French Lawyer, The Prophetess, and The Beggars' Bush Massinger's contribution was fully as important as Fletcher's. The general design appears to be the work of the former. Fletcher fills in the details of comic business”;535 and that [pg 161] “he has no doubt about Massinger's part in The Knight of Malta, The Lover's Progress, and The Elder Brother.”536

Next, with regard to style and expression, when we remember the intimacy of the two men, it is quite possible that Massinger imitated Fletcher consciously or unconsciously at some time of his life, and vice versa. Or we may put it in this way: there was a certain amount of conventional stock-in-trade common to the two writers, such a phrase, for instance, as, “To the temple” when the inevitable marriage ceremony is to take place. It would be absurd to suppose that Fletcher never used such a phrase as “write nil ultra,” which is no doubt a distinguishing mark of Massinger's style. Again, Fletcher may have worked over drafts of scenes in the first instance written by Massinger, and there is evidence for supposing that in many cases revision for a revival rather than co-operation is the clue. Massinger's good judgment would make him an excellent reviser.

It must, however, be allowed that the large amount of agreement between two experts such as Boyle and Bullen is remarkable. We cannot acquit those who produced the Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1647 of negligence in omitting to give their due to Massinger and other collaborators. On the other hand, it might be argued that if Massinger's share in Fletcher's plays were as large as Boyle believes it to have been, the Folio would for very shame have acknowledged it; and it must be pointed out that the large mass of commendatory verses prefixed to the Folio entertains no doubt of the traditional authorship.537

Believing that the matter of first importance is to estimate Massinger from the plays which he undoubtedly wrote, I have not given above my evidence in full for the impressions which I have formed of the “collaborated” plays. The results of my study of these plays may be [pg 162] summarised as follows: Massinger wrote considerable portions of The Prophetess, The False One, and Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt. His work can be traced in Thierry and Theodoret and The Bloody Brother. He wrote the greater part of Acts I. and V. of The Queen of Corinth, and of Acts I. and V. of The Elder Brother. He wrote much of the same acts in The Little French Lawyer, The Spanish Curate, The Fair Maid of the Inn. He may have assisted in The Knight of Malta. He revised for subsequent performance The Custom of the Country and The Lover's Progress. He had nothing to do with The Honest Man's Fortune, The Sea Voyage, The Double Marriage, The Beggars' Bush, Love's Cure, The Laws of Candy, The Captain, The Cure for a Cuckold, The Island Princess. In my opinion, Massinger's hand can be most clearly discerned in (1) serious plays; (2) the serious parts of plays; (3) the first and last acts of a joint composition.538

Appendix IV. On The Influence Of Shakspere

The instances quoted in the text can be supplemented by many others. Compare the diction and thought of the following passages:

We may infer that Massinger studied the Folio of 1623 carefully.

Appendix V. Warburton's List

(Lansdowne MSS., B. M., 807.)

This volume contains three plays, the only survivors of Warburton's collection: The Queen of Corsica, by Fran. Jaques, The Second Maiden's Tragedy, and The Bugbears, together with a fragment of a fourth, R. Wild's Benefice.

On the back of the first leaf of this volume is attached the list of Warburton's collection, in his own hand. The entries referring to Massinger are as follows: I preserve the spelling.

The Parliament of Love is attributed to Wm. Rowley. The versification of the play which we have under that name is far above Rowley's powers, nor are there signs of collaboration in the play, as far as we can tell.

The list has been carefully discussed by Mr. W. W. Greg in his article, “The Bakings of Betsy,” in The Library (July, 1911).

He puts the matter thus: Warburton enters Minerva's Sacrifice and The Forc'd Lady as above. In the Stationers' Register, Sept. 9, 1653, these titles are given as alternatives for the same play. This might mean that Moseley was trying to smuggle through two plays for a single fee. Mr. Greg is inclined to give Moseley the benefit of the doubt, and to suppose that there were plays existing in divergent versions, which would justify the double titles. If, however, Moseley was honest, Warburton cannot be correct. Mr. Greg suggests that Warburton, being interested in old plays, and having access to the Stationers' Register, drew up for his own use a list, mainly based on Moseley's entries, containing the titles of such pieces as he thought it might be possible to recover, and added the names of those in his possession. The cook destroyed some of the plays, and Warburton, discovering his loss, added the famous memorandum to the text without remembering that it contained the names of plays which he did not possess. In this case the damage done by “Betsy” would not be so extensive as has been believed.

Appendix VI. A Metrical Peculiarity In Massinger

Our dramatic writers must have often felt that their metre required variety to relieve it from the dangers of facility and monotony. No doubt the same problem suggested itself to Homer and the Greek dramatists. In the former, the frequent pauses after the first foot or in the middle of the second foot, in the latter, the much-discussed pauses after the first foot, are as likely to be due to a desire for variety as to any special emphasis on the particular words thus singled out.542

In what ways did the Elizabethans secure variety?543

1. By the use of rhyme. This was the early solution. Massinger does not often resort to rhyme, though in some of his plays, notably in The Roman Actor, he several times employs the well-known couplet at the end of a scene.

2. By the free use of the eleven-syllable line. This was Fletcher's solution. It is astonishing how the pleasure which the occasional use of this licence gives us turns to a feeling of satiety and weakness when it is too freely employed, so that many passages in Fletcher sound like a horse with a fit of roaring.

3. In the free use of trisyllabic feet. This fact has been recently brought before the public by Mr. Bayfield in connexion with Shakspere. There is no need to quote instances of this common and easy expedient.

4. By the occasional use of short lines. As has been pointed out above,544 Massinger is a strict metrist, and does not often resort to this liberty, even in rapid conversation.

5. By skilful variation of pauses, such as we find in Milton, Tennyson, and most of our modern writers of blank verse. Massinger's flexible and meandering sentences contain many examples of such variation.

I believe that he had another shaft in his quiver. He occasionally suppressed a short syllable at the close of the line, and more rarely in the early part, with the result that an anapaestic lilt of some effectiveness makes its appearance. An example from The Emperor of the East will make this clear.

If the stresses are placed as above, it is clear that there is a syllable suppressed after the word “forlorn,” a three-syllable foot in the third place, and an anapaestic lilt, “the forlorn.”

Nor is Massinger alone in this device; instances from other poets are quoted below. This theory conflicts with the dictum [pg 171] of Schmidt in his Shaksperian lexicon, that words like “forlorn,” “complete,” “supreme,” “conceal'd,” can be stressed either on the first or second syllable, the stress being on the first syllable when the stress in the following word falls on the first syllable. Presumably Schmidt would have scanned the line in question thus:

Schmidt's dictum, however, will not explain all the cases quoted below, and it is worth considering whether it is not a simpler solution of the problem to suppose that our Elizabethan poets combined uniformity of accent with variety in the metre, sometimes applied more than once in the same line. It is clear that lines which contain a past participle like “condemned” cannot be used for the purposes of this argument, as such words may have been scanned as two syllables or three.

The following cases will support my suggestion. The list does not profess to be a complete summary of the evidence.

1. The Emperor of the East, III., 4, 139:

2. The Duke of Milan, III., 1, 32:

(Here the first foot is a trochee. Cf. infra, Nos. 6, 8, 20, 21, 36, 43, 48.)

3. The Bondman, I., 1, 65:

4. The Bondman, II., 1, 143:

5. The Bondman, III., 3, 89:

6. The Bondman, IV., 3, 192:

7. The Bondman, V., 2, 20:

8. The Renegado, I., 1, 81:

9. The Renegado, I., 3, 152:

10. The Renegado, II., 4, 58:

11. The Renegado, III., 2, 36:

12. The Renegado, IV., 3, 79:

13. The Renegado, V., 1, 7:

14. The Great Duke of Florence, I., 1, 127:

15. The Great Duke of Florence, I., 2, 29:

16. The Great Duke of Florence, II., 1, 133:

17. The Great Duke of Florence, II., 3, 66:

18. The Great Duke of Florence, III., 1, 66:

19. The Great Duke of Florence, IV., 1, 102:

20. The Great Duke of Florence, V., 2, 3:

21. The Great Duke of Florence, V., 3, 127:

22. The City Madam, III., 3, 78:

23. The Bashful Lover, III., 3, 90:

24. The Bashful Lover, IV., 2, 60:

25. The Bashful Lover, V., 3, 179:

26. A Very Woman, II., 3, 42:

27. The Unnatural Combat, IV., 1, 35:

28. Believe as You List, I., 1, 144:

29. Believe as You List, I., 2, 10:

30. Believe as You List, II., 2, 265:

31. The Guardian, I., 1, 285:

32. The Guardian, I., 2, 21:

33. Epilogue 2:

34. The Parliament of Love, II., 3, 26:

35. The Parliament of Love, III., 2, 149:

36. The Parliament of Love, IV., 1, 95:

37. The Parliament of Love, V., 1, 69:

38. The Parliament of Love, V., 1, 184:

39. The Parliament of Love, V., 1, 520:

40. The Picture, I., 1, 48:

(A highly irregular line.)

41. The Picture, I., 2, 73:

42. The Picture, I., 2, 106:

43. The Picture, I., 2, 184:

(The third foot here is u u u u.)

44. The Picture, I., 2, 248:

45. The Picture, II., 1, 35:

46. The Picture, II., 1, 66:

47. The Picture, II., 1, 165:

48. The Picture, II., 2, 286:

49. The Picture, III., 2, 40:

50. The Picture, III., 5, 161:

51. The Picture, IV., 4, 64:

52. The Picture, V., 3, 11:

(The fourth foot is u u u —.)

53. The Picture, V., 3, 40:

It will be noted that the rhythm often occurs in a broken line—i.e., a line divided between two speakers. Cf. Nos. 7, 20, 36, 44, 50, 51, 52, 53. (Cf. also The Emperor of the East, I., 1, 342.)

Cf. The False One, I., 1:

The False One, V., 4:

The Prophetess, I., 3:

The Prophetess, I., 3:

The Prophetess, III., 1:

The Lover's Progress, I., 1:

The Fair Maid of the Inn, I., 1:

Thierry and Theodoret, IV., 2:

Thierry and Theodoret, IV., 2:

Jew of Malta, I., 2:

Dr. Faustus, I., 1:

Nero, I., 4:

Rule a Wife, I., 1:

The Maid in the Mill, I., 3:

Henry VIII, II., 1, 11:

I believe that many of the rhythms from Shakespeare quoted by Schmidt and by Mr. R. Bridges in his “Milton's Prosody,” can be explained in this way.

Appendix VII. “Believe As You List”

This play was edited by Mr. T. Crofton Croker, with a short Preface, in the Percy Society's Publications, Vol. XXVII., 1849. The Tudor Society has published a photographic facsimile of the MS., now in the British Museum (Egerton MSS., 2828). Cf. B.M. Catalogue of Additions, 1907, p. 384. The MS. was purchased for the Museum at a sale on November 27, 1900, for £69. It is of paper. The original document, measuring 12-1/2 inches by 7-1/2 inches, comprises folios 5 to 29; folios 2 and 3 are the old vellum cover.

Mr. Croker's account of the MS. (Pref., p. ix) runs as follows:

“The MS., from its commencement to the termination of the licence, was written on forty-eight pages of foolscap paper, in a small hand, sometimes not easy to be read. Of the second leaf only an inconsiderable portion remains, and the top and bottom of the paper have been injured in some places by damp. In four additional pages after the licence, the Prologue, Epilogue, and property directions are preserved. The MS. is stitched up in a parchment cover, which appears to have been a cancelled ‘Indenture’ of Elizabeth's reign. On the outside page of this parchment, or back of the cancelled indenture, is written the title, in what I agree with Mr. Beltz in regarding as Massinger's autograph.”545

From the letter of Mr. S. Beltz, given by Mr. Crofton Croker, we learn that Gifford had more than once lamented to Mr. Croker the disappearance of this MS., which Colley Cibber had seen;546 and that the MS. had formerly been in David Garrick's hands. Mr. S. Beltz also says: “It is well known from other sources that the play was acted on May 7, 1631.”

The MS. had belonged to George Beltz, Lancaster Herald, and executor of Garrick's widow. His brother Samuel found it among “a mass of rubbish.” It was in the possession of J. O. Halliwell Phillips at one time. This well-known Shaksperian scholar inserted a note about it on p. 1, in which he says, inter alia: “This is one of the few play-house copies of any English plays before the suppression of theatres known to exist. I strongly suspect it has some corrections in Massinger's own autograph.”

Sir George F. Warner, in the Athenæum (January 19, 1901) discusses the MS. He believes it is in Massinger's own hand, as the alterations are made currente calamo. This fact can easily be verified from a perusal of the MS. Sir G. Warner, after comparing the MS. with the Henslowe document at Dulwich, arrived at the conviction that the writing was Massinger's. He considers that the title and marginal stage-directions are due to the manager, and that the Prologue and Epilogue are in a third hand. He points out that “Carthage” is written over “Venice” (Crofton Croker, p. 41), “Affricque” over “Europe” (p. 44), and “Berecinthius” over “Sampayo” (p. 79).547 He proceeds to explain the reason for these alterations, and then emends some of Mr. Croker's mistakes.

With all due deference to the great authority of Sir G. Warner, I do not feel certain that this hand is that of the appeal to Henslow. On the other hand, we must remember that seventeen years had elapsed, and that it is unlikely that a poor man like Massinger would have employed an amanuensis. Capital “I,” “s,” “f,” and “e” are alike in the two documents; but “ve” in “have ever” did not seem to me to be the same, nor did any of the “r's” at Dulwich resemble the hand in the play.548

There are few mistakes in the MS. beyond those which the writer has corrected himself. The corrections and additions all appear to be in the same hand. The simplest explanation of the MS. is to suppose that Massinger had before him the MS. of the play which had been condemned by the Censor, and that he copied it out again, making the necessary changes of name, etc. This would account for one or two mistakes which the writer has corrected.549 In other passages we can see his judgment at work, altering the phraseology,550 or expanding one line into two.551 Sometimes a word is repeated from a previous line and then cancelled,552 as if the writer had been tired, as he might well be. The writing combines German and Italian forms.

The play was remodelled from its original form by order of the Censor.553 Sir G. Warner has pointed out that it is derived from “the strangest adventure that ever happened, either in the ages passed or present: containing a discourse concerning the successe of the King of Portugal, Dom Sebastian. London: printed for Frances Henson, dwelling in the Blackfriers, 1601.”554

This book is the story of a claimant to the throne of Portugal. On p. 78 we have “the markes and signes which the King of Portugall Dom Sebastian beares naturally on his body.” Twenty-two in all are given. Among them are:

Compare these statements with the words erased in the MS., folio 8.555

Compare the original reading in the play,560 “His nose! his German lippe!” Over German “very” has been written, and underneath is traceable the “A” of Austrian.

These passages leave no doubt as to the derivation of the earlier part of the story which Massinger dramatised.

On p. 45 of The Strangest Adventure we read that Dom Sebastian comes to Venice “very poorely, and robbed by five of his own servants, which he entertained in Cicilie.” This incident occurs in Believe as You List, Act I. At Venice he was persecuted by the “embassadour of Castile,” whose name is not given, but whose place in the play is taken by Flaminius. On p. 49 he is said to have been beaten by the Moors in Africa in 1578, and to be now (1600) a prisoner at Venice. In Believe as You List the period of twenty-two years is referred to as the interval during which Antiochus has been travelling about the world.561 On p. 50 Dom Sebastian arrives at Venice with “but one poor gazete.” In the play Antiochus, after being robbed by his servants, finds “a waste paper” lying near him, and speaks as follows:

On p. 67 Sebastian is set free, and on p. 86 he goes to Florence, on his way to Marseilles, with some talk of trying to establish his identity in Holland. But the narrative closes abruptly, and we know no more of the claimant to the Portuguese throne from The Strangest Adventure.

The ineffectiveness of the play may be partly due to the necessity of altering the original modern setting to an ancient [pg 181] one. It is hard, for example, to see how the monk Sampayo was metamorphosed into Berecinthius, the fat priest of Cybele.

Mr. Croker's reprint was the cause of a very pretty literary quarrel between the Shakespeare Society and the Percy Society. A writer who signed himself “A Member of both Societies” published a pamphlet animadverting on Mr. Croker's abilities as an editor,563 and Mr. Croker replied in no measured terms. The documents may be seen at the British Museum.

The anonymous writer, working on the many indications given in the marginal notes, reconstructed the cast of Believe as You List.564 “My cast,” he says, “has been a work of difficulty, and, in the case of some of the minor performers, a matter of considerable doubt, more especially as a few of them doubled or even trebled their parts; and as we here see (the only instance of the kind I am acquainted with), perhaps exchanged characters during the progress of the play.

“With regard to the three female parts, and another of a Moorish woman,566 we are left much in the dark, and I have placed names against them with considerable hesitation.

“The actors who doubled their parts were W. Penn, who was also a Jailor; Rowland, who was also King Prusias; Patrick, who was also a Captain; and Baxter, who was also an officer and a servant, besides, as well as we can judge, delivering a speech or two as Demetrius. Rowland must also have trebled his small parts. Besides these, we hear in the course of the play of W. Mago, Gascoine, Herbert, and Harry Wilson; the last was a singer.... It need hardly be added that the 'tragedy' was got up and acted by the Company called the King's Players, all the names being those of performers in that association in 1631.”

Appendix VIII. Collation Of Ms. Of “Believe As You List”

This play is accessible to the general public at present in Colonel Cunningham's edition of Massinger, and in Mr. Arthur Symons's edition in “The Mermaid Series.” An examination of the original MS., now in the British Museum, shows that Cunningham's text is not always correct. Though an exhaustive collation of the MS. is not necessary, several points of interest emerge from a study of the original document, which I have digested here. (C. = Cunningham's edition; MS. = Manuscript reading. Brackets signify Cunningham's conjectural additions, which he has not always taken the trouble to indicate.)

Page 595. There is no list of dramatis personae in MS.

I., 1.—C.: Enter Antiochus and a Stoic. The three servants enter after line 118.

MS.: Antiochus Stoic in philosopher's habits; Chrysalus with a writing, Syrus, Geta, bondmen.

I., 1, 26.—C.: Stoic.

MS.: Stoic: Hermit (cancelled).

I., 1, 56.—C.:

MS.: The line is much damaged, being the last on the page. A mention of the old after the young (lines 52 to 55) seems to be required.

I read it thus: Olde men with sil ... in vain. There is no trace of 57, but it is required by the sense.

I., 1, 60.—MS.: The soldiers' greedy lusts. “Greedy” deleted.

I., 1, 85.—C.: A prey so precious and so dearly purchased.

MS.: A prey so precious and dearly purchased.

“Precious” is scanned as a trisyllable.

I., 1, 117.—C.:

MS.: “Of my” is not in MS. The last word of 118 is “Swollen.” The word “Marvell” can be seen at the end of a line after 118.

Here comes a hiatus of two pages. No doubt Antiochus had a fairly long soliloquy. It is impossible to tell how many lines are lost here, as the characters seem to be conducting a rapid dialogue, in which it is not necessary to suppose that a whole line was assigned to each speaker at a time.

I., 1, 119.—C.:

MS.: Ore my head. A verb is wanted. (?) Sail-stretch'd flies o'er my head.

I., 1, 121.—MS.: ... ius furnished me. The line begins with a name to which there is no clue, probably introduced in the part now lost.

I., 1, 122.—C.: (And) make my first appearance like myself.

I., 1, 123.—C.: (Have these) disloyal villains ravished from me. Addition required by sense.

I., 1, 124.—C.: (Wret)ch that I was.

MS.: “ch” at end of a word which has disappeared. “Wretch” gives the sense.

I., 1, 125.—C.: (With) such a purchase.

MS.: Such a purchase. The first word in the line has disappeared.

I., 1, 126.—C.: Without (the) gold to fee an advocate.

MS.: Without gold to fee an advocate. The first word in the line has disappeared. (?) And.

I., 1, 127.—C.: (To) plead my royal title, nourish hope.

MS.: Plead my royal title, nourish hope. The first word in the line has disappeared. “To” is required.

I., 1, 129.—C.: Wanting the outer gloss.

MS.: Wanting the outward gloss.

I., 1, 153.—C.:

I., 1, 155.—C.:

MS. has: To make me live or die less than a king!—i.e., “that” in 156 is the demonstrative, not the relative.

I., 2, 2.—C.: Keeps us at such (a) distance.

MS.: Keeps us off at such distance.

I., 2, 20.—C.: Sans doubt, he's bent on mischief.

MS.: Sans doubt he's bent to mischief.

I., 2, 24.—C.:

MS.: Chant, and aloud too.

I., 2, 53.—C.: 'T had perfected thy life.

MS.: It had.

I., 2, 66.—C.: (to task). Not in MS. Traces of a word in the beginning of a line now lost at the foot of 66.

I., 2, 67.—C.:

“You'll find and feel” cancelled in line 68—i.e., the author changed his mind as he wrote.

I., 2, 72.—C.: These Asiatic merchants whom you look on.

MS.: These Asiatic merchants whom you look upon.