Chapter XI: Preface: And Critical List of Authors From Select British Poets 365 (11)

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

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

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

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

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

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

To which the more experienced mother answers,

‘That’s every one’s conceit that sees a Duke.
If he looks stedfastly, he looks straight at them,
When he perhaps, good careful gentleman,
Never minds any, but the look he casts
Is at his own intentions, and his object
Only the public good.’

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

‘How near am I to a happiness
That earth exceeds not! Not another like it:
The treasures of the deep are not so precious,
As are the conceal’d comforts of a man
Lock’d up in woman’s love. I scent the air
Of blessings when I come but near the house:
What a delicious breath marriage sends forth!
The violet-bed’s not sweeter. Honest wedlock
Is like a banquetting-house built in a garden,
On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight
To cast their modest odours; when base lust,
With all her powders, paintings, and best pride,
Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.
When I behold a glorious dangerous strumpet,
Sparkling in beauty and destruction too,
Both at a twinkling, I do liken straight
Her beautified body to a goodly temple
That’s built on vaults where carcasses lie rotting;
And so by little and little I shrink back again,
And quench desire with a cool meditation;
And I’m as well, methinks. Now for a welcome
Able to draw men’s envies upon man:
A kiss now that will hang upon my lip,
As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,
And full as long; after a five days’ fast
She’ll be so greedy now and cling about me:
I take care how I shall be rid of her;
And here ‘t begins.’

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

‘_Bian._ Oh, sir, you’re welcome home.

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

_Lean._ (_Aside._) Is that all?
Why this is dreadful now as sudden death
To some rich man, that flatters all his sins
With promise of repentance when he’s old,
And dies in the midway before he comes to ‘t.
Sure you’re not well, Bianca! How dost, prithee?

_Bian._ I have been better than I am at this time.

_Lean._ Alas, I thought so.

_Bian._ Nay, I have been worse too,
Than now you see me, sir.

_Lean._ I’m glad thou mendst yet,
I feel my heart mend too. How came it to thee?
Has any thing dislik’d thee in my absence?

_Bian._ No, certain, I have had the best content
That Florence can afford.

_Lean._ Thou makest the best on ‘t:
Speak, mother, what ‘s the cause? you must needs know.

_Moth._ Troth, I know none, son; let her speak herself;
Unless it be the same gave Lucifer a tumbling cast; that’s pride.

_Bian._ Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind;
I’d have some pleasant lodging i’ th’ high street, sir;
Or if ’twere near the court, sir, that were much better;
’Tis a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman
To stand in a bay-window, and see gallants.

_Lean._ Now I have another temper, a mere stranger
To that of yours, it seems; I should delight
To see none but yourself.

_Bian._ I praise not that;
Too fond is as unseemly as too churlish:
I would not have a husband of that proneness,
To kiss me before company, for a world:
Beside, ’tis tedious to see one thing still, sir,
Be it the best that ever heart affected;
Nay, were ‘t yourself, whose love had power you know
To bring me from my friends, I would not stand thus,
And gaze upon you always; troth, I could not, sir;
As good be blind, and have no use of sight,
As look on one thing still: what’s the eye’s treasure,
But change of objects? You are learned, sir,
And know I speak not ill; ’tis full as virtuous
For woman’s eye to look on several men,
As for her heart, sir, to be fixed on one.

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

_Bian._ No matter for a kiss, sir; let it pass;
’Tis but a toy, we ‘ll not so much as mind it;
Let’s talk of other business, and forget it.
What news now of the pirates? any stirring?
Prithee discourse a little.

_Moth._ (_Aside._) I am glad he ‘s here yet
To see her tricks himself; I had lied monst’rously
If I had told ’em first.

_Lean._ Speak, what ‘s the humour, sweet,
You make your lips so strange? This was not wont.

_Bian._ Is there no kindness betwixt man and wife,
Unless they make a pigeon-house of friendship,
And be still billing? ’tis the idlest fondness
That ever was invented; and ’tis pity
It ‘s grown a fashion for poor gentlewomen;
There ‘s many a disease kiss’d in a year by ‘t,
And a French court’sy made to’t: Alas, sir,
Think of the world, how we shall live, grow serious;
We have been married a whole fortnight now.

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

_Bian._ ’Tis time to leave off dalliance; ’tis a doctrine
Of your own teaching, if you be remember’d,
And I was bound to obey it.

_Moth._ (_Aside._) Here’s one fits him;
This was well catch’d i’ faith, son, like a fellow
That rids another country of a plague,
And brings it home with him to his own house.

[_A Messenger from the Duke knocks within._

Who knocks?

_Lean._ Who’s there now? Withdraw you, Bianca;
Thou art a gem no stranger’s eye must see,
Howe’er thou ‘rt pleas’d now to look dull on me.

[_Exit Bianca._

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

‘_The Witches’ Habitation._

_Enter_ Heccat, Stadlin, Hoppo, _and other Witches_.

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

_Stad._ Here’s a rich evening, Heccat.

_Hec._ Aye, is ‘t not, wenches,
To take a journey of five thousand miles?

_Hop._ Our’s will be more to-night.

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

_Stad._ Briefly, in the copse,
As we came thro’ now.

_Hec._ ’Tis high time for us then.

_Stad._ There was a bat hung at my lips three times
As we came thro’ the woods, and drank her fill:
Old Puckle saw her.

_Hec._ You are fortunate still,
The very scritch-owl lights upon your shoulder,
And woos you like a pidgeon. Are you furnish’d?
Have you your ointments?

_Stad._ All.

_Hec._ Prepare to flight then.
I’ll overtake you swiftly.

_Stad._ Hye then, Heccat!
We shall be up betimes.

_Hec._ I’ll reach you quickly.
[_They ascend._

_Enter_ Firestone.

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

_Hec._ What, Firestone, our sweet son?

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

_Hec._ How much hast there?

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

_Hec._ Dear and sweet boy! What herbs hast thou?

_Fire._ I have some mar-martin, and man-dragon.

_Hec._ Marmarittin, and mandragora, thou would’st say.

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

_Hec._ And selago,
Hedge-hissop too! How near he goes my cuttings!
Were they all cropt by moon-light?

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

_Hec._ Hie thee home with ’em.
Look well to th’ house to-night: I’m for aloft.

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

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

SONG, (_in the air above_).

Come away, come away!
Heccat, Heccat, come away!
_Hec._ I come, I come, I come, I come,
With all the speed I may,
With all the speed I may.
Where’s Stadlin?

(_Above_). Here.

_Hec._ Where’s Puckle?

(_Above_). Here:
And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too:
We lack but you, we lack but you.
Come away, make up the count!

_Hec._ I will but ‘noint, and then I mount.

(_A Spirit descends in the shape of a Cat_).

(_Above_). There’s one come down to fetch his dues;
A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood;
And why thou stay’st so long, I muse, I muse,
Since th’ air’s so sweet and good?

_Hec._ Oh, art thou come,
What news, what news?

_Spirit._ All goes still to our delight,
Either come, or else
Refuse, refuse.

_Hec._ Now I am furnish’d for the flight.

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

_Hec._ (_Ascending with the Spirit_).
Now I go, now I fly,
Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.
Oh, what a dainty pleasure ’tis
To ride in the air
When the moon shines fair,
And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss!
Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,
Over seas our mistress’ fountains,
Over steep towers and turrets,
We fly by night, ‘mongst troops of spirits.
No ring of bells to our ears sounds,
No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds:
No, not the noise of water’s breach,
Or cannon’s roar, our height can reach.

(_Above._) No ring of bells, &c.

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

[_Exit._’

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

‘_The Witches’ Habitation._

_Enter_ Duchess, Heccat, Firestone.

_Hec._ What death is’t you desire for Almachildes?

_Duch._ A sudden and a subtle.

_Hec._ Then I’ve fitted you.
Here lie the gifts of both; sudden and subtle;
His picture made in wax, and gently molten
By a blue fire, kindled with dead men’s eyes,
Will waste him by degrees.

_Duch._ In what time, pr’ythee?

_Hec._ Perhaps in a month’s progress.

_Duch._ What? A month?
Out upon pictures! If they be so tedious,
Give me things with some life.

_Hec._ Then seek no farther.

_Duch._ This must be done with speed, dispatched this night,
If it may possibly.

_Hec._ I have it for you:
Here’s that will do ‘t. Stay but perfection’s time,
And that’s not five hours hence.

_Duch._ Can’st thou do this?

_Hec._ Can I?

_Duch._ I mean, so closely.

_Hec._ So closely do you mean too?

_Duch._ So artfully, so cunningly.

_Hec._ Worse and worse; doubts and incredulities,
They make me mad. Let scrupulous creatures know,
_Cum volui, ripis ipsis mirantibus, amnes
In fontes rediere suos: concussaque sisto,
Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello,
Nubilaque induco: ventos abigoque vocoque.
Vipereas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces;
Et silvas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere montes,
Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchres.
Te quoque luna traho._
Can you doubt me then, daughter?
That can make mountains tremble, miles of woods walk;
Whole earth’s foundations bellow, and the spirits
Of the entomb’d to burst out from their marbles;
Nay, draw yon moon to my involv’d designs?

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

_Duch._ I did not doubt you, mother.

_Hec._ No? what did you?
My power’s so firm, it is not to be question’d.

_Duch._ Forgive what’s past: and now I know th’ offensiveness
That vexes art, I’ll shun th’ occasion ever.

_Hec._ Leave all to me and my five sisters, daughter.
It shall be conveyed in at howlet-time.
Take you no care. My spirits know their moments;
Raven or scritch-owl never fly by th’ door,
But they call in (I thank ’em), and they lose not by ‘t.
I give ’em barley soak’d in infants’ blood:
They shall have _semina cum sanguine_,
Their gorge cramm’d full, if they come once to our house:
We are no niggard.
[_Exit_ Duchess.

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

_Hec._ Give me some lizard’s brain: quickly, Firestone!
Where’s grannam Stadlin, and all the rest o’ th’ sisters?

_Fire._ All at hand, forsooth.

_Hec._ Give me marmaritin; some bear-breech. When?

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

_Hec._ Into the vessel;
And fetch three ounces of the red-hair’d girl
I kill’d last midnight.

_Fire._ Whereabouts, sweet mother?

_Hec._ Hip; hip or flank. Where is the acopus?

_Fire._ You shall have acopus, forsooth.

_Hec._ Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm.

A CHARM SONG,

(_The Witches going about the Cauldron_).

Black spirits, and white; red spirits, and gray;
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.
Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in;
Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky;
Liard, Robin, you must bob in.
Round, around, around, about, about;
All ill come running in; all good keep out!

_1st Witch._ Here’s the blood of a bat.

_Hec._ Put in that; oh, put in that.

_2d Witch._ Here’s libbard’s-bane.

_Hec._ Put in again.

_1st Witch._ The juice of toad; the oil of adder.

_2d Witch._ Those will make the yonker madder.

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

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

_All._ Round, around, around, &c.

_Hec._ See, see enough: into the vessel with it.
There; ‘t hath the true perfection. I’m so light
At any mischief: there’s no villainy
But is in tune, methinks.

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

_Hec._ Come, my sweet sisters; let the air strike our tune,
Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.

[_The Witches dance, and then exeunt_.

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

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

LECTURE III
ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, AND WEBSTER

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

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

‘Oh ancient knights of true and noble heart,
They rivals were, one faith they liv’d not under;
Besides, they felt their bodies shrewdly smart
Of blows late given, and yet (behold a wonder)
Thro’ thick and thin, suspicion set apart,
Like friends they ride, and parted not asunder,
Until the horse with double spurring drived
Unto a way parted in two, arrived.’[20]

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

‘_Antonio._ Each man takes hence life, but no man death:
He’s a good fellow, and keeps open house:
A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate,
To his wide-mouthed porch: when niggard life
Hath but one little, little wicket through.
We wring ourselves into this wretched world
To pule and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail,
To fret and ban the fates, _to strike the earth
As I do now_. Antonio, curse thy birth,
And die.’

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

—‘As having clasp’d a rose
Within my palm, the rose being ta’en away,
My hand retains a little breath of sweet;
So may man’s trunk, his spirit slipp’d away,
Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.’
_Act IV. Scene_ 1.

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

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

And again, a little farther on, he says—

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

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

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

_Hercules._ But what yet might your well-known wisdom think,
If such a one, as being most severe,
A most protested opposite to the match
Of two young lovers; who having barr’d them speech,
All interviews, all messages, all means
To plot their wished ends; even he himself
Was by their cunning made the go-between,
The only messenger, the token-carrier;
Told them the times when they might fitly meet,
Nay, shew’d the way to one another’s bed?’

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

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

_Dondolo._ Of all these follies I arrest your grace.’

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

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

_Hercules._ But what philosophers ha’ ye?

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

_Nymphadoro._ A most insensible philosopher.

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

_Herod._ Would that philosophy hold good in law?

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

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

_Act IV._

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

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

Hark! they sing.

_Enter_ Malevole, _after the Song._

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

_Malevole._ From the public place of much dissimulation, the church.

_Pietro Jacomo._ What didst there?

_Malevole._ Talk with a usurer; take up at interest.

_Pietro Jacomo._ I wonder what religion thou art of?

_Malevole._ Of a soldier’s religion.

_Pietro Jacomo._ And what dost think makes most infidels now?

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

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

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

_Act I. Scene 3._

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

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

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

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

‘_Enter_ D’Olive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Mug._ Perhaps more than the whole piece beside.

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

_Rhod._ Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers.

_D’Ol._ By your wits?

_Mug._ Nay, not turned poets neither.

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

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

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

_Mug._ How think you, are we not met now?

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

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

_D’Ol._ As why, wits? as why?

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

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

_Mug._ Admirable D’Olive!

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

_Rhod._ And do not you?

_D’Ol._ Not I, I admire nothing but wit.

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

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

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

_D’Ol._ Not for me.

_Rhod._ No? what exceptions lie against the choice?

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

_Mug._ Indeed that’s the savingest way.

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

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

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

_Rhod._ That he may do, and never marry.

_D’Ol._ As how, wits? i’ faith as how?

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

_D’Ol._ Ever good i’ faith!

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

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

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

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

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

_Mug._ We shall be troublesome t’ ye.

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

[_Exit._

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

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

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

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