Chapter XII: Preface: And Critical List of Authors From Select British Poets 365 (12)

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

[_Exeunt._’

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

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

‘_Enter_ Orlando Friscobaldo.

_Omnes._ Signior Friscobaldo.

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

_Carolo._ Ho, Signior! Signior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hipolito.

[_Exeunt._

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

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

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

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

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

_Hip._ You are the happier man, Sir.

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

_Hip._ Is your wife then departed?

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

_Hip._ You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not?

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

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

_Orl._ So ’twas long ago.

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

_Orl._ Ha! dead?

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

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

_Hip._ She’s turn’d to earth.

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

_Hip._ I’m glad you are wax, not marble; you are made
Of man’s best temper; there are now good hopes
That all these heaps of ice about your heart,
By which a father’s love was frozen up,
Are thaw’d in those sweet show’rs fetch’d from your eye:
We are ne’er like angels till our passions die.
She is not dead, but lives under worse fate;
I think she’s poor; and more to clip her wings,
Her husband at this hour lies in the jail,
For killing of a man: to save his blood,
Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown,
The getting of his life preserves your own.

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

_Hip._ Trust me, I think she is.

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

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

_Orl._ Not seventeen summers.

_Hip._ Is your hate so old?

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

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

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

_Hip._ Nay, but Friscobaldo.

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

_Hip._ Hear her but speak.

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

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

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

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

[_Exit._

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

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

‘Oh! who can paint a sun-beam to the blind,
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?’

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

‘I cannot, seeing she’s woven of such bad stuff,
Set colours on a harlot bad enough.
Nothing did make me when I lov’d them best,
To loath them more than this: when in the street
A fair, young, modest damsel, I did meet;
She seem’d to all a dove, when I pass’d by,
And I to all a raven: every eye
That followed her, went with a bashful glance;
At me each bold and jeering countenance
Darted forth scorn: to her, as if she had been
Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail;
’Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail.
She crown’d with reverend praises, pass’d by them;
I, though with face mask’d, could not ‘scape the hem;
For, as if heav’n had set strange marks on whores,
Because they should be pointing-stocks to man,
Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan,
Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown,
Yet she’s betray’d by some trick of her own.’

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

‘Thou wert not so e’en now. Sickness’ pale hand
Laid hold on thee, ev’n in the deadst of feasting:
And when a cup, crown’d with thy lover’s health,
Had touch’d thy lips, a sensible cold dew
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept
To see such beauty altered.’

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

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

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

‘Grant I was tempted:
Condemn you me, for that the Duke did love me?
So may you blame some fair and chrystal river,
For that some melancholic distracted man
Hath drown’d himself in ‘t.’

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

‘She comes not like a widow; she comes arm’d
With scorn and impudence. Is this a mourning habit?’

she coolly replies,

‘Had I foreknown his death as you suggest,
I would have bespoke my mourning.’

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

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

_Gasparo._ Fool! princes give rewards with their own hands,
But death or punishment by the hands of others.

_Lodovico_ (_To_ Flamineo). Sirra, you once did strike me; I’ll strike
you
Unto the centre.

_Flam._ Thou ‘lt do it like a hangman, a base hangman,
Not like a noble fellow; for thou see’st
I cannot strike again.

_Lod._ Dost laugh?

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

_Gasp._ Recommend yourself to Heaven.

_Flam._ No, I will carry mine own commendations thither.

_Lod._ Oh! could I kill you forty times a-day,
And use ‘t four years together, ’twere too little:
Nought grieves, but that you are too few to feed
The famine of our vengeance. What do’st think on?

_Flam._ Nothing; of nothing: leave thy idle questions—
I am i’ th’ way to study a long silence.
To prate were idle: I remember nothing;
There’s nothing of so infinite vexation
As man’s own thoughts.

_Lod._ O thou glorious strumpet!
Could I divide thy breath from this pure air
When ‘t leaves thy body, I would suck it up,
And breathe ‘t upon some dunghill.

_Vit. Cor._ You my death’s-man!
Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough;
Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman:
If thou be, do thy office in right form;
Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness.

_Lod._ O! thou hast been a most prodigious comet;
But I’ll cut off your train: kill the Moor first.

_Vit. Cor._ You shall not kill her first; behold my breast;
I will be waited on in death: my servant
Shall never go before me.

_Gasp._ Are you so brave?

_Vit. Cor._ Yes, I shall welcome death
As princes do some great embassadours;
I’ll meet thy weapon half way.

_Lod._ Thou dost not tremble!
Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air.

_Vit. Cor._ O, thou art deceiv’d, I am too true a woman!
Conceit can never kill me. I’ll tell thee what,
I will not in my death shed one base tear;
Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear.

_Gasp._ (_To_ Zanche). Thou art my task, black fury.

_Zanche._ I have blood
As red as either of theirs! Wilt drink some?
’Tis good for the falling-sickness: I am proud
Death cannot alter my complexion,
For I shall ne’er look pale.

_Lod._ Strike, strike,
With a joint motion.

_Vit. Cor._ ’Twas a manly blow:
The next thou giv’st, murther some sucking infant,
And then thou wilt be famous.’

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

‘Your hand I’ll kiss:
This is the latest ceremony of my love;
I’ll never more live with you,’ &c.

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

‘Alas! he is not dead; he’s in a trance.
Why, here’s nobody shall get any thing by his death:
Let me call him again, for God’s sake.

_Hor._ I would you were deceiv’d.

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

_Hor._ You see he is departed.

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

_Hor._ Your kindest office is to pray for him.

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

_Enter_ Brachiano, _all armed, save the Bearer, with_ Flamineo _and
Page_.

_Brach._ Was this your handy-work?

_Flam._ It was my misfortune.

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

_Brach._ Have comfort, my griev’d mother.

_Corn._ O, you screech-owl!

_Hor._ Forbear, good madam.

_Corn._ Let me go, let me go.

(_She runs to_ Flamineo _with her knife drawn, and coming to him, lets
it fall_).

The God of Heav’n forgive thee! Dost not wonder
I pray for thee? I’ll tell thee what’s the reason:
I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes;
I’d not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well!
Half of thyself lies there; and may’st thou live
To fill an hour-glass with his moulder’d ashes,
To tell how thou should’st spend the time to come
In blest repentance.

_Brach._ Mother, pray tell me,
How came he by his death? What was the quarrel?

_Corn._ Indeed, my younger boy presum’d too much
Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words,
Drew his sword first; and so, I know not how,
For I was out of my wits, he fell with ‘s head
Just in my bosom.

_Page._ This is not true, madam.

_Corn._ I pr’ythee, peace.
One arrow’s graz’d already: it were vain
To lose this; for that will ne’er be found again.’

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

‘_Brach._ Oh! I am gone already. The infection
Flies to the brain and heart. O, thou strong heart,
There’s such a covenant ‘tween the world and thee,
They ‘re loth to part.

_Giovanni._ O my most lov’d father!

_Brach._ Remove the boy away:
Where’s this good woman? Had I infinite worlds,
They were too little for thee. Must I leave thee?

(_To_ Vittoria).

What say you, screech-owls. (_To the Physicians_) Is the venom mortal?

_Phy._ Most deadly.

_Brach._ Most corrupted politic hangman!
You kill without book; but your art to save
Fails you as oft as great men’s needy friends:
I that have given life to offending slaves,
And wretched murderers, have I not power
To lengthen mine own a twelve-month?
Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.
This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence.

_Francesco de Medici_ (_in disguise_). Sir, be of comfort.

_Brach._ Oh thou soft natural death! that art joint-twin
To sweetest slumber!—no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure: the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement: the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.

_Vit. Cor._ I am lost for ever.

_Brach._ How miserable a thing it is to die
‘Mongst women howling! What are those?

_Flam._ Franciscans.
They have brought the extreme unction.

_Brach._ On pain of death let no man name death to me:
It is a word most infinitely terrible.
Withdraw into our cabinet.’

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

‘See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye
Upon the crucifix.’

To which Vittoria answers,

‘Oh, hold it constant:
It settles his wild spirits; and so his eyes
Melt into tears.’

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

‘I prythee, look thou giv’st my little boy
Some syrop for his cold, and let the girl
Say her pray’rs ere she sleep. Now what death you please—’

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

‘I think not so; her infelicity
Seem’d to have years too many.

_Ferdinand._ She and I were twins:
And should I die this instant, I had liv’d
Her time to a minute.’

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

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

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

‘Books, dreams, are both a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good,
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow.

· · · · ·
Two let me mention dearer than the rest,
The gentle lady wedded to the Moor,
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.

Blessings be with them and eternal praise,
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays.
Oh, might my name be number’d among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days!’

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

LECTURE IV
ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, with all their prodigious merits, appear to me the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine tragic style of the age of Shakespear. They thought less of their subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and passion; but they availed themselves too often of common-place extravagances and theatrical trick. Men at first produce effect by studying nature, and afterwards they look at nature only to produce effect. It is the same in the history of other arts, and of other periods of literature. With respect to most of the writers of this age, their subject was their master. Shakespear was alone, as I have said before, master of his subject; but Beaumont and Fletcher were the first who made a play-thing of it, or a convenient vehicle for the display of their own powers. The example of preceding or contemporary writers had given them facility; the frequency of dramatic exhibition had advanced the popular taste; and this facility of production, and the necessity for appealing to popular applause, tended to vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing to pamper that of the public for novelty and extraordinary effect. There wants something of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers. They do not wait nature’s time, or work out her materials patiently and faithfully, but try to anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They would have a catastrophe in every scene; so that you have none at last: they would raise admiration to its height in every line; so that the impression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. They pitch the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust themselves by the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find all the prodigality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running riot, beauty dissolving in its own sweetness. They are like heirs just come to their estates, like lovers in the honey-moon. In the economy of nature’s gifts, they ‘misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the Gods amiss.’ Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are two goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and with the verdure springing at their feet; but they do not strike their roots far enough into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the flowers!

It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and descriptive poets of the first order; every page of their writings is a _florilegium_: they are dramatic poets of the second class, in point of knowledge, variety, vivacity, and effect; there is hardly a passion, character, or situation, which they have not touched in their devious range, and whatever they touched, they adorned with some new grace or striking feature; they are masters of style and versification in almost every variety of melting modulation or sounding pomp, of which they are capable: in comic wit and spirit, they are scarcely surpassed by any writers of any age. There they are in their element, ‘like eagles newly baited’; but I speak rather of their serious poetry;—and this, I apprehend, with all its richness, sweetness, loftiness, and grace, wants something—stimulates more than it gratifies, and leaves the mind in a certain sense exhausted and unsatisfied. Their fault is a too ostentatious and indiscriminate display of power. Every thing seems in a state of fermentation and effervescence, and not to have settled and found its centre in their minds. The ornaments, through neglect or abundance, do not always appear sufficiently appropriate: there is evidently a rich wardrobe of words and images, to set off any sentiments that occur, but not equal felicity in the choice of the sentiments to be expressed; the characters in general do not take a substantial form, or excite a growing interest, or leave a permanent impression; the passion does not accumulate by the force of time, of circumstances, and habit, but wastes itself in the first ebullitions of surprise and novelty.

Besides these more critical objections, there is a too frequent mixture of voluptuous softness or effeminacy of character with horror in the subjects, a conscious weakness (I can hardly think it wantonness) of moral constitution struggling with wilful and violent situations, like the tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame that dazzles and consumes it. In the hey-day of their youthful ardour, and the intoxication of their animal spirits, they take a perverse delight in tearing up some rooted sentiment, to make a mawkish lamentation over it; and fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes into forbidden grounds, to see how they will shoot up and vegetate into luxuriance, to catch the eye of fancy. They are not safe teachers of morality: they tamper with it, like an experiment tried _in corpore vili_; and seem to regard the decomposition of the common affections, and the dissolution of the strict bonds of society, as an agreeable study and a careless pastime. The tone of Shakespear’s writings is manly and bracing; theirs is at once insipid and meretricious, in the comparison. Shakespear never disturbs the grounds of moral principle; but leaves his characters (after doing them heaped justice on all sides) to be judged of by our common sense and natural feeling. Beaumont and Fletcher constantly bring in equivocal sentiments and characters, as if to set them up to be debated by sophistical casuistry, or varnished over with the colours of poetical ingenuity. Or Shakespear may be said to ‘cast the diseases of the mind, only to restore it to a sound and pristine health’: the dramatic paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher are, to all appearance, tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity and laxity of principle. I do not say that this was the character of the men; but it strikes me as the character of their minds. The two things are very distinct. The greatest purists (hypocrisy apart) are often free-livers; and some of the most unguarded professors of a general license of behaviour, have been the last persons to take the benefit of their own doctrine, from which they reap nothing, but the obloquy and the pleasure of startling their ‘wonder-wounded’ hearers. There is a division of labour, even in vice. Some persons addict themselves to the speculation only, others to the practice. The peccant humours of the body or the mind break out in different ways. One man _sows his wild oats_ in his neighbour’s field: another on Mount Parnassus; from whence, borne on the breath of fame, they may hope to spread and fructify to distant times and regions. Of the latter class were our poets, who, I believe, led unexceptionable lives, and only indulged their imaginations in occasional unwarrantable liberties with the Muses. What makes them more inexcusable, and confirms this charge against them, is, that they are always abusing ‘wanton poets,’ as if willing to shift suspicion from themselves.

Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also who laid the foundation of the artificial diction and tinselled pomp of the next generation of poets, by aiming at a profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by translating the commonest circumstances into the language of metaphor and passion. It is this misplaced and inordinate craving after striking effect and continual excitement that had at one time rendered our poetry the most vapid of all things, by not leaving the moulds of poetic diction to be filled up by the overflowings of nature and passion, but by swelling out ordinary and unmeaning topics to certain preconceived and indispensable standards of poetical elevation and grandeur.—I shall endeavour to confirm this praise, mixed with unwilling blame, by remarking on a few of their principal tragedies. If I have done them injustice, the resplendent passages I have to quote will set every thing to rights.

THE MAID’S TRAGEDY is one of the poorest. The nature of the distress is of the most disagreeable and repulsive kind; and not the less so, because it is entirely improbable and uncalled-for. There is no sort of reason, or no sufficient reason to the reader’s mind, why the king should marry off his mistress to one of his courtiers, why he should pitch upon the worthiest for this purpose, why he should, by such a choice, break off Amintor’s match with the sister of another principal support of his throne (whose death is the consequence), why he should insist on the inviolable fidelity of his former mistress to him after she is married, and why her husband should thus inevitably be made acquainted with his dishonour, and roused to madness and revenge, except the mere love of mischief, and gratuitous delight in torturing the feelings of others, and tempting one’s own fate. The character of Evadne, however, her naked, unblushing impudence, the mixture of folly with vice, her utter insensibility to any motive but her own pride and inclination, her heroic superiority to any signs of shame or scruples of conscience from a recollection of what is due to herself or others, are well described; and the lady is true to herself in her repentance, which is owing to nothing but the accidental impulse and whim of the moment. The deliberate voluntary disregard of all moral ties and all pretence to virtue, in the structure of the fable, is nearly unaccountable. Amintor (who is meant to be the hero of the piece) is a feeble, irresolute character: his slavish, recanting loyalty to his prince, who has betrayed and dishonoured him, is of a piece with the tyranny and insolence of which he is made the sport; and even his tardy revenge is snatched from his hands, and he kills his former betrothed and beloved mistress, instead of executing vengeance on the man who has destroyed his peace of mind and unsettled her intellects. The king, however, meets his fate from the penitent fury of Evadne; and on this account, the Maid’s Tragedy was forbidden to be acted in the reign of Charles II. as countenancing the doctrine of regicide. Aspatia is a beautiful sketch of resigned and heart-broken melancholy; and Calianax, a blunt, satirical courtier, is a character of much humour and novelty. There are striking passages here and there, but fewer than in almost any of their plays. Amintor’s speech to Evadne, when she makes confession of her unlooked-for remorse, is, I think, the finest.

——‘Do not mock me:
Though I am tame, and bred up with my wrongs,
Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap,
Like a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness,
And do an outrage. Prithee, do not mock me!’

KING AND NO KING, which is on a strangely chosen subject as strangely treated, is very superior in power and effect. There is an unexpected reservation in the plot, which, in some measure, relieves the painfulness of the impression. Arbaces is painted in gorgeous, but not alluring colours. His vain-glorious pretensions and impatience of contradiction are admirably displayed, and are so managed as to produce an involuntary comic effect to temper the lofty tone of tragedy, particularly in the scenes in which he affects to treat his vanquished enemy with such condescending kindness; and perhaps this display of upstart pride was meant by the authors as an oblique satire on his low origin, which is afterwards discovered. His pride of self-will and fierce impetuosity, are the same in war and in love. The haughty voluptuousness and pampered effeminacy of his character admit neither respect for his misfortunes, nor pity for his errors. His ambition is a fever in the blood; and his love is a sudden transport of ungovernable caprice that brooks no restraint, and is intoxicated with the lust of power, even in the lap of pleasure, and the sanctuary of the affections. The passion of Panthea is, as it were, a reflection from, and lighted at the shrine of her lover’s flagrant vanity. In the elevation of his rank, and in the consciousness of his personal accomplishments, he seems firmly persuaded (and by sympathy to persuade others) that there is nothing in the world which can be an object of liking or admiration but himself. The first birth and declaration of this perverted sentiment to himself, when he meets with Panthea after his return from conquest, fostered by his presumptuous infatuation and the heat of his inflammable passions, and the fierce and lordly tone in which he repels the suggestion of the natural obstacles to his sudden phrenzy, are in Beaumont and Fletcher’s most daring manner: but the rest is not equal. What may be called the love-scenes are equally gross and commonplace; and instead of any thing like delicacy or a struggle of different feelings, have all the indecency and familiarity of a brothel. Bessus, a comic character in this play, is a swaggering coward, something between Parolles and Falstaff.

The FALSE ONE is an indirect imitation of Antony and Cleopatra. We have Septimius for Œnobarbas and Cæsar for Antony. Cleopatra herself is represented in her girlish state, but she is made divine in

‘Youth that opens like perpetual spring,’

and promises the rich harvest of love and pleasure that succeeds it. Her first presenting herself before Cæsar, when she is brought in by Sceva, and the impression she makes upon him, like a vision dropt from the clouds, or

‘Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love.’

are exquisitely conceived. Photinus is an accomplished villain, well-read in crooked policy and quirks of state; and the description of Pompey has a solemnity and grandeur worthy of his unfortunate end. Septimius says, bringing in his lifeless head,

‘’Tis here, ’tis done! Behold, you fearful viewers,
Shake, and behold the model of the world here,
The pride and strength! Look, look again, ’tis finished!
That that whole armies, nay, whole nations,
Many and mighty kings, have been struck blind at,
And fled before, wing’d with their fear and terrors,
That steel War waited on, and Fortune courted,
That high-plum’d Honour built up for her own;
Behold that mightiness, behold that fierceness,
Behold that child of war, with all his glories,
By this poor hand made breathless!’

And again Cæsar says of him, who was his mortal enemy (it was not held the fashion in those days, nor will it be held so in time to come, to lampoon those whom you have vanquished)—

——‘Oh thou conqueror,
Thou glory of the world once, now the pity,
Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus?
What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on
To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian?
The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger,
That honourable war ne’er taught a nobleness,
Not worthy circumstance shew’d what a man was?
That never heard thy name sung but in banquets,
And loose lascivious pleasures? to a boy,
That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness,
No study of thy life to know thy goodness?
Egyptians, do you think your highest pyramids,
Built to outdure the sun, as you suppose,
Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes,
Are monuments fit for him! No, brood of Nilus,
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his greatness,
To which I leave him.’

It is something worth living for, to write or even read such poetry as this is, or to know that it has been written, or that there have been subjects on which to write it!—This, of all Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, comes the nearest in style and manner to Shakespear, not excepting the first act of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which has been sometimes attributed to him.

The FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS by Fletcher alone, is ‘a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.’ The author has in it given a loose to his fancy, and his fancy was his most delightful and genial quality, where, to use his own words,

‘He takes most ease, and grows ambitious
Thro’ his own wanton fire and pride delicious.’