Chapter XIII: Preface: And Critical List of Authors From Select British Poets 365 (13)

The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout are luxuriant and delicate in a high degree. He came near to Spenser in a certain tender and voluptuous sense of natural beauty; he came near to Shakespear in the playful and fantastic expression of it. The whole composition is an exquisite union of dramatic and pastoral poetry; where the local descriptions receive a tincture from the sentiments and purposes of the speaker, and each character, cradled in the lap of nature, paints ‘her virgin fancies wild’ with romantic grace and classic elegance.

The place and its employments are thus described by Chloe to Thenot:

——‘Here be woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled stream, with flow’rs as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o’ergrown with woodbine; caves, and dells;
Chuse where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes, to make many a ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phœbe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother’s light,
To kiss her sweetest.’

There are few things that can surpass in truth and beauty of allegorical description, the invocation of Amaryllis to the God of Shepherds, Pan, to save her from the violence of the Sullen Shepherd, for Syrinx’ sake:

——‘For her dear sake,
That loves the rivers’ brinks, and still doth shake
In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit!’

Or again, the friendly Satyr promises Clorin—

‘Brightest, if there be remaining
Any service, without feigning
I will do it; were I set
To catch the nimble wind, or get
Shadows gliding on the green.’

It would be a task no less difficult than this, to follow the flight of the poet’s Muse, or catch her fleeting graces, fluttering her golden wings, and singing in notes angelical of youth, of love, and joy!

There is only one affected and ridiculous character in this drama, that of Thenot in love with Clorin. He is attached to her for her inviolable fidelity to her buried husband, and wishes her not to grant his suit, lest it should put an end to his passion. Thus he pleads to her against himself:

——‘If you yield, I die
To all affection; ’tis that loyalty
You tie unto this grave I so admire;
And yet there’s something else I would desire,
If you would hear me, but withal deny.
Oh Pan, what an uncertain destiny
Hangs over all my hopes! I will retire;
For if I longer stay, this double fire
Will lick my life up.’

This is paltry quibbling. It is spurious logic, not genuine feeling. A pedant may hang his affections on the point of a dilemma in this manner; but nature does not sophisticate; or when she does, it is to gain her ends, not to defeat them.

The Sullen Shepherd turns out too dark a character in the end, and gives a shock to the gentle and pleasing sentiments inspired throughout.

The resemblance of Comus to this poem is not so great as has been sometimes contended, nor are the particular allusions important or frequent. Whatever Milton copied, he made his own. In reading the Faithful Shepherdess, we find ourselves breathing the moonlight air under the cope of heaven, and wander by forest side or fountain, among fresh dews and flowers, following our vagrant fancies, or smit with the love of nature’s works. In reading Milton’s Comus, and most of his other works, we seem to be entering a lofty dome raised over our heads and ascending to the skies, and as if nature and every thing in it were but a temple and an image consecrated by the poet’s art to the worship of virtue and pure religion. The speech of Clorin, after she has been alarmed by the Satyr, is the only one of which Milton has made a free use.

‘And all my fears go with thee,
What greatness or what private hidden power
Is there in me to draw submission
From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal:
The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal,
And she that bore me mortal: prick my hand,
And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and
The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink,
Makes me a-cold: my fear says, I am mortal.
Yet I have heard, (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it), if I keep
My virgin flow’r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires;
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tole me on
Thro’ mire and standing pools to find my ruin;
Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats
Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there’s a pow’r
In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast
All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites
That break their confines: then, strong Chastity,
Be thou my strongest guard, for here I’ll dwell,
In opposition against fate and hell!’

Ben Jonson’s Sad Shepherd comes nearer it in style and spirit, but still with essential differences, like the two men, and without any appearance of obligation. Ben’s is more homely and grotesque, Fletcher’s is more visionary and fantastical. I hardly know which to prefer. If Fletcher has the advantage in general power and sentiment, Jonson is superior in _naiveté_ and truth of local colouring.

The TWO NOBLE KINSMEN is another monument of Fletcher’s genius; and it is said also of Shakespear’s. The style of the first act has certainly more weight, more abruptness, and more involution, than the general style of Fletcher, with fewer softenings and fillings-up to sheathe the rough projecting points and piece the disjointed fragments together. For example, the compliment of Theseus to one of the Queens, that Hercules

‘Tumbled him down upon his Nemean hide,
And swore his sinews thaw’d’

at sight of her beauty, is in a bolder and more masculine vein than Fletcher usually aimed at. Again, the supplicating address of the distressed Queen to Hippolita,

——‘Lend us a knee:
But touch the ground for us no longer time
Than a dove’s motion, when the head’s pluck’d off’—

is certainly in the manner of Shakespear, with his subtlety and strength of illustration. But, on the other hand, in what immediately follows, relating to their husbands left dead in the field of battle,

‘Tell him if he i’ th’ blood-siz’d field lay swoln,
Shewing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,
What you would do’—

I think we perceive the extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher, not contented with truth or strength of description, but hurried away by the love of violent excitement into an image of disgust and horror, not called for, and not at all proper in the mouth into which it is put. There is a studied exaggeration of the sentiment, and an evident imitation of the parenthetical interruptions and breaks in the line, corresponding to what we sometimes meet in Shakespear, as in the speeches of Leontes in the Winter’s Tale; but the sentiment is overdone, and the style merely mechanical. Thus Hippolita declares, on her lord’s going to the wars,

‘We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep,
When our friends don their helms, or put to sea,
Or tell of babes broach’d on the lance, or women
That have seethed their infants in (and after eat them)
The brine they wept at killing ’em; then if
You stay to see of us such spinsters, we
Should hold you here forever.’

One might apply to this sort of poetry what Marvel says of some sort of passions, that it is

‘Tearing our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.’

It is not in the true spirit of Shakespear, who was ‘born only heir to all humanity,’ whose horrors were not gratuitous, and who did not harrow up the feelings for the sake of making mere _bravura_ speeches. There are also in this first act, several repetitions of Shakespear’s phraseology: a thing that seldom or never occurs in his own works. For instance,

——‘Past slightly
_His careless execution_’—

‘_The very lees_ of such, millions of rates
Exceed _the wine_ of others’—

——‘Let _the event_,
That _never-erring arbitrator_, tell us’—

‘Like _old importment’s bastard_’—

There are also words that are never used by Shakespear in a similar sense:

——‘All our surgeons
_Convent_ in their behoof’—

‘We _convent_ nought else but woes’—

In short, it appears to me that the first part of this play was written in imitation of Shakespear’s manner; but I see no reason to suppose that it was his, but the common tradition, which is however by no means well established. The subsequent acts are confessedly Fletcher’s, and the imitations of Shakespear which occur there (not of Shakespear’s manner as differing from his, but as it was congenial to his own spirit and feeling of nature) are glorious in themselves, and exalt our idea of the great original which could give birth to such magnificent conceptions in another. The conversation of Palamon and Arcite in prison is of this description—the outline is evidently taken from that of Guiderius, Arviragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline, but filled up with a rich profusion of graces that make it his own again.

‘_Pal._ How do you, noble cousin?

_Arc._ How do you, Sir?

_Pal._ Why, strong enough to laugh at misery,
And bear the chance of war yet. We are prisoners,
I fear for ever, cousin.

_Arc._ I believe it;
And to that destiny have patiently
Laid up my hour to come.

_Pal._ Oh, cousin Arcite,
Where is Thebes now? where is our noble country?
Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more
Must we behold those comforts; never see
The hardy youths strive for the games of honour,
Hung with the painted favours of their ladies,
Like tall ships under sail: then start amongst ’em,
And as an east wind, leave ’em all behind us
Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite,
Even in the wagging of a wanton leg,
Outstript the people’s praises, won the garlands,
Ere they have time to wish ’em ours. Oh, never
Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses,
Like proud seas under us! Our good swords now
(Better the red-eyed God of war ne’er wore)
Ravish’d our sides, like age, must run to rust,
And deck the temples of those Gods that hate us:
These hands shall never draw ’em out like lightning,
To blast whole armies more.

_Arc._ No, Palamon,
Those hopes are prisoners with us: here we are,
And here the graces of our youth must wither,
Like a too-timely spring: here age must find us,
And which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried;
The sweet embraces of a loving wife
Loaden with kisses, arm’d with thousand Cupids,
Shall never clasp our necks! No issue know us,
No figures of ourselves shall we e’er see,
To glad our age, and like young eaglets teach ’em
Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say,
Remember what your fathers were, and conquer!
The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments,
And in their songs curse ever-blinded fortune,
Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done
To youth and nature. This is all our world:
We shall know nothing here, but one another;
Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes;
The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it;
Summer shall come, and with her all delights,
But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still.

_Pal._ ’Tis too true, Arcite! To our Theban hounds,
That shook the aged forest with their echoes,
No more now must we halloo; no more shake
Our pointed javelins, while the angry swine
Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages,
Struck with our well-steel’d darts! All valiant uses
(The food and nourishment of noble minds)
In us two here shall perish; we shall die
(Which is the curse of honour) lazily,
Children of grief and ignorance.

_Arc._ Yet, cousin,
Even from the bottom of these miseries,
From all that fortune can inflict upon us,
I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,
If the Gods please to hold here; a brave patience,
And the enjoying of our griefs together.
Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish
If I think this our prison!

_Pal._ Certainly,
’Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes
Were twinn’d together; ’tis most true, two souls
Put in two noble bodies, let ’em suffer
The gall of hazard, so they grow together,
Will never sink; they must not; say they could,
A willing man dies sleeping, and all’s done.

_Arc._ Shall we make worthy uses of this place,
That all men hate so much?

_Pal._ How, gentle cousin?

_Arc._ Let’s think this prison a holy sanctuary
To keep us from corruption of worse men!
We’re young, and yet desire the ways of honour:
That, liberty and common conversation,
The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be, but our imaginations
May make it ours? And here, being thus together,
We are an endless mine to one another;
We’re father, friends, acquaintance;
We are, in one another, families;
I am your heir, and you are mine; this place
Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience,
We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us:
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth; were we at liberty,
A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men
Crave our acquaintance; I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the Gods: a thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.

_Pal._ You have made me
(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton
With my captivity; what a misery
It is to live abroad, and every where!
’Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here,
I’m sure a more content; and all those pleasures,
That woo the wills of men to vanity,
I see thro’ now: and am sufficient
To tell the world, ’tis but a gaudy shadow
That old time, as he passes by, takes with him.
What had we been, old in the court of Creon,
Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance
The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,
Had not the loving Gods found this place for us,
We had died as they do, ill old men unwept,
And had their epitaphs, the people’s curses!
Shall I say more?

_Arc._ I would hear you still.

_Pal._ You shall.
Is there record of any two that lov’d
Better than we do, Arcite?

_Arc._ Sure there cannot.

_Pal._ I do not think it possible our friendship
Should ever leave us.

_Arc._ Till our deaths it cannot.’

Thus they ‘sing their bondage freely:’ but just then enters Æmilia, who parts all this friendship between them, and turns them to deadliest foes.

The jailor’s daughter, who falls in love with Palamon, and goes mad, is a wretched interpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy of Ophelia. But they readily availed themselves of all the dramatic common-places to be found in Shakespear, love, madness, processions, sports, imprisonment, &c. and copied him too often in earnest, to have a right to parody him, as they sometimes did, in jest.—The story of the Two Noble Kinsmen is taken from Chaucer’s Palamon and Arcite; but the latter part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic power and interest, degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of the principal events, and possesses little value or effect.—It is not improbable that Beaumont and Fletcher’s having dramatised this story, put Dryden upon modernising it.

I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher’s dramas (52 in number), but I have mentioned some of the principal, and the excellences and defects of the rest may be judged of from these. The Bloody Brother, A Wife for a Month, Bonduca, Thierry and Theodoret, are among the best of their tragedies: among the comedies, the Night Walker, the Little French Lawyer, and Monsieur Thomas, come perhaps next to the Chances, the Wild Goose Chase, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife.—Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding, is one of the most admirable productions of these authors (the last I shall mention); and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealousy of Philaster, are beyond all praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty and high-wrought passion that I might quote, are out of number. One only must suffice, the account of the commencement of Euphrasia’s love to Philaster.

——‘Sitting in my window,
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God
I thought (but it was you) enter our gates;
My blood flew out, and back again as fast
As I had puffed it forth and suck’d it in
Like breath; then was I called away in haste
To entertain you. Never was a man
Heav’d from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais’d
So high in thoughts as I: you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you forever. I did hear you talk
Far above singing!’

And so it is our poets themselves write, ‘far above singing.’[23] I am loth to part with them, and wander down, as we now must,

‘Into a lower world, to theirs obscure
And wild—To breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.’

Ben Jonson’s serious productions are, in my opinion, superior to his comic ones. What he does, is the result of strong sense and painful industry; but sense and industry agree better with the grave and severe, than with the light and gay productions of the Muse. ‘His plays were works,’ as some one said of them, ‘while others’ works were plays.’ The observation had less of compliment than of truth in it. He may be said to mine his way into a subject, like a mole, and throws up a prodigious quantity of matter on the surface, so that the richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have. His fault is, that he sets himself too much to his subject, and cannot let go his hold of an idea, after the insisting on it becomes tiresome or painful to others. But his tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.

‘_Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma._’

He was equal, by an effort, to the highest things, and took the same, and even more successful pains to grovel to the lowest. He raised himself up or let himself down to the level of his subject, by ponderous machinery. By dint of application, and a certain strength of nerve, he could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less than to mine Host of the New Inn. His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic. The principal character gives one the idea of a lofty column of solid granite, nodding to its base from its pernicious height, and dashed in pieces, by a breath of air, a word of its creator—feared, not pitied, scorned, unwept, and forgotten. The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked out the historian’s outline, so that the vices and passions, the ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisoned atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described in fuller or more glowing colours.—I am half afraid to give any extracts, lest they should be tortured into an application to other times and characters than those referred to by the poet. Some of the sounds, indeed, may bear (for what I know), an awkward construction: some of the objects may look double to squint-eyed suspicion. But that is not my fault. It only proves, that the characters of prophet and poet are implied in each other; that he who describes human nature well once, describes it for good and all, as it was, is, and I begin to fear, will ever be. Truth always was, and must always remain a libel to the tyrant and the slave. Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius Natta, two public informers in those days, are described as

‘Two of Sejanus’ blood-hounds, whom he breeds
With human flesh, to bay at citizens.’

But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, debating the point of his own character with two Senators whom he has entrapped, boldly asserts, in a more courtly strain,

‘——To be a spy on traitors,
Is honourable vigilance.’

This sentiment of the respectability of the employment of a government spy, which had slept in Tacitus for near two thousand years, has not been without its modern patrons. The effects of such ‘honourable vigilance’ are very finely exposed in the following high-spirited dialogue between Lepidus and Arruntius, two noble Romans, who loved their country, but were not fashionable enough to confound their country with its oppressors, and the extinguishers of its liberty.

‘_Arr._ What are thy arts (good patriot, teach them me)
That have preserv’d thy hairs to this white dye,
And kept so reverend and so dear a head
Safe on his comely shoulders?

_Lep._ Arts, Arruntius!
None but the plain and passive fortitude
To suffer and be silent; never stretch
These arms against the torrent; live at home,
With my own thoughts and innocence about me,
Not tempting the wolves’ jaws: these are my arts.

_Arr._ I would begin to study ’em, if I thought
They would secure me. May I pray to Jove
In secret, and be safe? aye, or aloud?
With open wishes? so I do not mention
Tiberius or Sejanus? Yes, I must,
If I speak out. ’Tis hard, that. May I think,
And not be rack’d? What danger is’t to dream?
Talk in one’s sleep, or cough! Who knows the law?
May I shake my head without a comment? Say
It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown
Upon the Gemonies? These now are things,
Whereon men’s fortunes, yea, their fate depends:
Nothing hath privilege ’gainst the violent ear.
No place, no day, no hour (we see) is free
(Not our religious and most sacred times)
From some one kind of cruelty; all matter,
Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madman’s rage,
The idleness of drunkards, women’s nothing,
Jesters’ simplicity, all, all is good
That can be catch’d at.’

’Tis a pretty picture; and the duplicates of it, though multiplied without end, are seldom out of request.

The following portrait of a prince besieged by flatterers (taken from Tiberius) has unrivalled force and beauty, with historic truth.

——‘If this man
Had but a mind allied unto his words,
How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome?
Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall
Under a virtuous prince. Wish’d liberty
Ne’er lovelier looks than under such a crown.
But when his grace is merely but lip-good,
And that, no longer than he airs himself
Abroad in public, there to seem to shun
The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within
Are lechery unto him, and so feed
His brutish sense with their afflicting sound,
As (dead to virtue) he permits himself
Be carried like a pitcher by the ears
To every act of vice; this is a case
Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh
And close approach of bloody tyranny.
Flattery is midwife unto princes’ rage:
And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant
Than that, and whisperers’ grace, that have the time,
The place, the power, to make all men offenders!’

The only part of this play in which Ben Jonson has completely forgotten himself, (or rather seems not to have done so), is in the conversations between Livia and Eudemus, about a wash for her face, here called a _fucus_, to appear before Sejanus. Catiline’s Conspiracy does not furnish by any means an equal number of striking passages, and is spun out to an excessive length with Cicero’s artificial and affected orations against Catiline, and in praise of himself. His apologies for his own eloquence, and declarations that in all his art he uses no art at all, put one in mind of Polonius’s circuitous way of coming to the point. Both these tragedies, it might be observed, are constructed on the exact principles of a French historical picture, where every head and figure is borrowed from the antique; but somehow, the precious materials of old Roman history and character are better preserved in Jonson’s page than on David’s canvas.

Two of the most poetical passages in Ben Jonson, are the description of Echo in Cynthia’s Revels, and the fine comparison of the mind to a temple, in the New Inn; a play which, on the whole, however, I can read with no patience.

I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with some account of Massinger and Ford, who wrote in the time of Charles I. I am sorry I cannot do it _con amore_. The writers of whom I have chiefly had to speak were true poets, impassioned, fanciful, ‘musical as is Apollo’s lute;’ but Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford finical and fastidious. I find little in the works of these two dramatists, but a display of great strength and subtlety of understanding, inveteracy of purpose, and perversity of will. This is not exactly what we look for in poetry, which, according to the most approved recipes, should combine pleasure with profit, and not owe all its fascination over the mind to its power of shocking or perplexing us. The Muses should attract by grace or dignity of mien. Massinger makes an impression by hardness and repulsiveness of manner. In the intellectual processes which he delights to describe, ‘reason panders will:’ he fixes arbitrarily on some object which there is no motive to pursue, or every motive combined against it, and then by screwing up his heroes or heroines to the deliberate and blind accomplishment of this, thinks to arrive at ‘the true pathos and sublime of human life.’ That is not the way. He seldom touches the heart or kindles the fancy. It is in vain to hope to excite much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the will, or intricate contrivances of the understanding, to obtain that which is better left alone, and where the interest arises principally from the conflict between the absurdity of the passion and the obstinacy with which it is persisted in. For the most part, his villains are a sort of _lusus naturæ_; his impassioned characters are like drunkards or madmen. Their conduct is extreme and outrageous, their motives unaccountable and weak; their misfortunes are without necessity, and their crimes without temptation, to ordinary apprehensions. I do not say that this is invariably the case in all Massinger’s scenes, but I think it will be found that a principle of playing at cross-purposes is the ruling passion throughout most of them. This is the case in the tragedy of the Unnatural Combat, in the Picture, the Duke of Milan, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and even in the Bondman, and the Virgin Martyr, &c. In the Picture, Matthias nearly loses his wife’s affections, by resorting to the far-fetched and unnecessary device of procuring a magical portrait to read the slightest variation in her thoughts. In the same play, Honoria risks her reputation and her life to gain a clandestine interview with Matthias, merely to shake his fidelity to his wife, and when she has gained her object, tells the king her husband in pure caprice and fickleness of purpose. The Virgin Martyr is nothing but a tissue of instantaneous conversions to and from Paganism and Christianity. The only scenes of any real beauty and tenderness in this play, are those between Dorothea and Angelo, her supposed friendless beggar-boy, but her guardian angel in disguise, which are understood to be by Deckar. The interest of the Bondman turns upon two different acts of penance and self-denial, in the persons of the hero and heroine, Pisander and Cleora. In the Duke of Milan (the most poetical of Massinger’s productions), Sforza’s resolution to destroy his wife, rather than bear the thought of her surviving him, is as much out of the verge of nature and probability, as it is unexpected and revolting, from the want of any circumstances of palliation leading to it. It stands out alone, a pure piece of voluntary atrocity, which seems not the dictate of passion, but a start of phrensy; as cold-blooded in the execution as it is extravagant in the conception.

Again, Francesco, in this play, is a person whose actions we are at a loss to explain till the conclusion of the piece, when the attempt to account for them from motives originally amiable and generous, only produces a double sense of incongruity, and instead of satisfying the mind, renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours to seduce the wife of his benefactor, he then (failing) attempts her death, slanders her foully, and wantonly causes her to be slain by the hand of her husband, and has him poisoned by a nefarious stratagem, and all this to appease a high sense of injured honour, that ‘felt a stain like a wound,’ and from the tender overflowings of fraternal affection, his sister having, it appears, been formerly betrothed to, and afterwards deserted by, the Duke of Milan. Sir Giles Overreach is the most successful and striking effort of Massinger’s pen, and the best known to the reader, but it will hardly be thought to form an exception to the tenour of the above remarks.[24] The same spirit of caprice and sullenness survives in Rowe’s Fair Penitent, taken from this author’s Fatal Dowry.

Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some others, from whose judgment I dissent with diffidence. It has been lamented that the play of his which has been most admired (’Tis Pity She’s a Whore) had not a less exceptionable subject. I do not know, but I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is that which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The repulsiveness of the story is what gives it its critical interest; for it is a studiously prosaic statement of facts, and naked declaration of passions. It was not the least of Shakespear’s praise, that he never tampered with unfair subjects. His genius was above it; his taste kept aloof from it. I do not deny the power of simple painting and polished style in this tragedy in general, and of a great deal more in some few of the scenes, particularly in the quarrel between Annabella and her husband, which is wrought up to a pitch of demoniac scorn and phrensy with consummate art and knowledge; but I do not find much other power in the author (generally speaking) than that of playing with edged tools, and knowing the use of poisoned weapons. And what confirms me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency of his other plays. Except the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I think extravagant—others may think it sublime, and be right) they are merely exercises of style and effusions of wire-drawn sentiment. Where they have not the sting of illicit passion, they are quite pointless, and seem painted on gauze, or spun of cobwebs. The affected brevity and division of some of the lines into hemistichs, &c. so as to make in one case a mathematical stair-case of the words and answers given to different speakers,[25] is an instance of frigid and ridiculous pedantry. An artificial elaborateness is the general characteristic of Ford’s style. In this respect his plays resemble Miss Baillie’s more than any others I am acquainted with, and are quite distinct from the exuberance and unstudied force which characterised his immediate predecessors. There is too much of scholastic subtlety, an innate perversity of understanding or predominance of will, which either seeks the irritation of inadmissible subjects, or to stimulate its own faculties by taking the most barren, and making something out of nothing, in a spirit of contradiction. He does not _draw along with_ the reader: he does not work upon our sympathy, but on our antipathy or our indifference; and there is as little of the social or gregarious principle in his productions as there appears to have been in his personal habits, if we are to believe Sir John Suckling, who says of him in the Sessions of the Poets—

‘In the dumps John Ford alone by himself sat
With folded arms and melancholy hat.’

I do not remember without considerable effort the plot or persons of most of his plays—Perkin Warbeck, The Lover’s Melancholy, Love’s Sacrifice, and the rest. There is little character, except of the most evanescent or extravagant kind (to which last class we may refer that of the sister of Calantha in the Broken Heart)—little imagery or fancy, and no action. It is but fair however to give a scene or two, in illustration of these remarks (or in confutation of them, if they are wrong) and I shall take the concluding one of the Broken Heart, which is held up as the author’s master-piece.

‘SCENE—_A Room in the Palace._

_Loud Music._—_Enter_ Euphranea, _led by_ Groneas _and_ Hemophil:
Prophilus, _led by_ Christalla _and_ Philema: Nearchus _supporting_
Calantha, Crotolon, _and_ Amelus.—(_Music ceases_).

_Cal._ We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus; on whom attend
they?

_Crot._ My son, gracious princess,
Whisper’d some new device, to which these revels
Should be but usher: wherein I conceive
Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors.

_Cal._ A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes,
Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes
Is with the king?

_Crot._ He is.

_Cal._ On to the dance!
Dear cousin, hand you the bride: the bridegroom must be
Entrusted to my courtship. Be not jealous,
Euphranea; I shall scarcely prove a temptress.
Fall to our dance!

(_They dance the first change, during which enter_ Armostes).

_Arm._ (_in a whisper to_ Calantha). The king your father’s dead.

_Cal._ To the other change.

_Arm._ Is’t possible?

_Another Dance._—_Enter_ Bassanes.

_Bass._ (_in a whisper to_ Calantha). Oh! Madam,
Panthea, poor Panthea’s starv’d.

_Cal._ Beshrew thee!
Lead to the next!

_Bass._ Amazement dulls my senses.

_Another Dance._—_Enter_ Orgilus.

_Org._ Brave Ithocles is murder’d, murder’d cruelly.

(_Aside to_ Calantha).

_Cal._ How dull this music sounds! Strike up more sprightly:
Our footings are not active like our heart,[26]
Which treads the nimbler measure.

_Org._ I am thunderstruck.

_The last Change._—_Music ceases._

_Cal._ So; Let us breathe awhile. Hath not this motion
Rais’d fresher colours on our cheek?

_Near._ Sweet princess,
A perfect purity of blood enamels
The beauty of your white.

_Cal._ We all look cheerfully:
And, cousin, ’tis methinks a rare presumption
In any who prefers our lawful pleasures
Before their own sour censure, to interrupt
The custom of this ceremony bluntly.

_Near._ None dares, lady.

_Cal._ Yes, yes; some hollow voice deliver’d to me
How that the king was dead.

_Arm._ The king is dead,’ &c. &c.

This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in masquerade. Nor is it, I think, accounted for, though it may be in part redeemed by her solemn address at the altar to the dead body of her husband.

‘_Cal._ Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow
Of my contracted lord! Bear witness all,
I put my mother’s wedding-ring upon
His finger; ’twas my father’s last bequest:

(_Places a ring on the finger of_ Ithocles).

Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am:
Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords,
I but deceiv’d your eyes with antic gesture,
When one news strait came huddling on another
Of death, and death, and death: still I danc’d forward;
But it struck home and here, and in an instant.
Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries
Can vow a present end to all their sorrow’s,
Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.
They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings:
Let me die smiling.

_Near._ ’Tis a truth too ominous.

_Cal._ One kiss on these cold lips—my last: crack, crack:
Argos, now Sparta’s king, command the voices
Which wait at th’ altar, now to sing the song
I fitted for my end.’

And then, after the song, she dies.

This is the true false gallop of sentiment: any thing more artificial and mechanical I cannot conceive. The boldness of the attempt, however, the very extravagance, might argue the reliance of the author on the truth of feeling prompting him to hazard it; but the whole scene is a forced transposition of that already alluded to in Marston’s Malcontent. Even the form of the stage directions is the same.

‘_Enter_ Mendozo _supporting the Duchess_; Guerrino; _the Ladies that
are on the stage rise_. Ferrardo _ushers in the_ Duchess; _then
takes a Lady to tread a measure_.

_Aurelia._ We will dance: music: we will dance....

_Enter_ Prepasso.

Who saw the Duke? the Duke?

_Aurelia._ Music.

_Prepasso._ The Duke? is the Duke returned?

_Aurelia._ Music.

_Enter_ Celso.

The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not.

_Aurelia._ We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private retirement; we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves.

_Enter a_ Page.

_Celso._ Boy, thy master? where’s the Duke?

_Page._ Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless limbs; he told me he was heavy, would sleep: bid me walk off, for the strength of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams: I strait obeyed, nor ever saw him since; but wheresoe’er he is, he’s sad.

_Aurelia._ Music, sound high, as in our heart; sound high.

_Enter_ Malevole _and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit._

_Malevole._ The Duke? Peace, the Duke is dead.

_Aurelia._ Music!’

_Act IV. Scene 3._

The passage in Ford appears to me an ill-judged copy from this. That a woman should call for music, and dance on in spite of the death of her husband whom she hates, without regard to common decency, is but too possible: that she should dance on with the same heroic perseverance in spite of the death of her husband, of her father, and of every one else whom she loves, from regard to common courtesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The passions may silence the voice of humanity, but it is, I think, equally against probability and decorum to make both the passions and the voice of humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form of outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the strongest and most uncontroulable feelings can only be justified from necessity, for some great purpose, which is not the case in Ford’s play; or it must be done for the effect and _eclat_ of the thing, which is not fortitude but affectation. Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy on this passage in the Broken Heart has failed (as far as I can judge) in establishing the parallel between this uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the story of the Spartan Boy.

It may be proper to remark here, that most of the great men of the period I have treated of (except the greatest of all, and one other) were men of classical education. They were learned men in an unlettered age; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age. This circumstance should be taken into the account in a theory of the dramatic genius of that age. Except Shakespear, nearly all of them, indeed, came up from Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately began to write for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to London in those days must have had a singular effect upon a young man of genius, almost like visiting Babylon or Susa, or a journey to the other world. The stage (even as it then was), after the recluseness and austerity of a college-life, must have appeared like Armida’s enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like

‘Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees; while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’

So our young novices must have felt when they first saw the magic of the scene, and heard its syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the scholar’s pride: and the joy that streamed from their eyes at that fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all its pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic throng, still has left a long lingering glory behind it; and though now ‘deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue,’ lives in their eloquent page, ‘informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die!’

LECTURE V
ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC., THE FOUR P’S, THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS,
GAMMER GURTON’S NEEDLE, AND OTHER WORKS.

I shall, in this Lecture, turn back to give some account of single plays, poems, etc.; the authors of which are either not known or not very eminent, and the productions themselves, in general, more remarkable for their singularity, or as specimens of the style and manners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poetical excellence. There are many more works of this kind, however, remaining, than I can pretend to give an account of; and what I shall chiefly aim at, will be, to excite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to satisfy it.

The FOUR P’S is an interlude, or comic dialogue, in verse, between a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each exposes the tricks of his own and his neighbours’ profession, with much humour and shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood, the Epigrammatist, who flourished chiefly in the reign of Henry VIII., was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems to have had a congenial spirit, and died abroad, in consequence of his devotion to the Roman Catholic cause, about the year 1565. His zeal, however, on this head, does not seem to have blinded his judgment, or to have prevented him from using the utmost freedom and severity in lashing the abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have looked ‘with the malice of a friend.’ The Four P’s bears the date of 1547. It is very curious, as an evidence both of the wit, the manners, and opinions of the time. Each of the parties in the dialogue gives an account of the boasted advantages of his own particular calling, that is, of the frauds which he practises on credulity and ignorance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In fact, they all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the contest becomes a jest, and it ends in a wager, who shall tell the greatest lie? when the prize is adjudged to him, who says, that he had found a patient woman.[27] The common superstitions (here recorded) in civil and religious matters, are almost incredible; and the chopped logic, which was the fashion of the time, and which comes in aid of the author’s shrewd and pleasant sallies to expose them, is highly entertaining. Thus the Pardoner, scorning the Palmer’s long pilgrimages and circuitous route to Heaven, flouts him to his face, and vaunts his own superior pretensions.

‘_Pard._ By the first part of this last tale,
It seemeth you came of late from the ale:
For reason on your side so far doth fail,
That you leave reasoning, and begin to rail.
Wherein you forget your own part clearly,
For you be as untrue as I:
But in one point you are beyond me,
For you may lie by authority,
And all that have wandered so far,
That no man can be their controller.
And where you esteem your labour so much,
I say yet again, my pardons are such,
That if there were a thousand souls on a heap,
I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep,
As you have brought yourself on pilgrimage,
In the last quarter of your voyage,
Which is far a this side heaven, by God:
There your labour and pardon is odd.
With small cost without any pain,
These pardons bring them to heaven plain:
Give me but a penny or two-pence,
And as soon as the soul departeth hence,
In half an hour, or three-quarters at the most,
The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.’

The Poticary does not approve of this arrogance of the Friar, and undertakes, in mood and figure, to prove them both ‘false knaves.’ It is he, he says, who sends most souls to heaven, and who ought, therefore, to have the credit of it.

‘No soul, ye know, entereth heaven-gate,
‘Till from the body he be separate:
And whom have ye known die honestly,
Without help of the Poticary?
Nay, all that cometh to our handling,
Except ye hap to come to hanging....
Since of our souls the multitude
I send to heaven, when all is view’d
Who should but I then altogether
Have thank of all their coming thither?’

The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously—

‘If ye kill’d a thousand in an hour’s space,
When come they to heaven, dying out of grace?’

But the Poticary not so baffled, retorts—

‘If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied;
When come they to heaven, if they never died?

· · · · ·

But when ye feel your conscience ready,
I can send you to heaven very quickly.’

The Pedlar finds out the weak side of his new companions, and tells them very bluntly, on their referring their dispute to him, a piece of his mind.

‘Now have I found one mastery,
That ye can do indifferently;
And it is neither selling nor buying,
But even only very lying.’

At this game of imposture, the cunning dealer in pins and laces undertakes to judge their merits; and they accordingly set to work like regular graduates. The Pardoner takes the lead, with an account of the virtues of his relics; and here we may find a plentiful mixture of Popish superstition and indecency. The bigotry of any age is by no means a test of its piety, or even sincerity. Men seemed to make themselves amends for the enormity of their faith by levity of feeling, as well as by laxity of principle; and in the indifference or ridicule with which they treated the wilful absurdities and extravagances to which they hood-winked their understandings, almost resembled children playing at blindman’s buff, who grope their way in the dark, and make blunders on purpose to laugh at their own idleness and folly. The sort of mummery at which Popish bigotry used to play at the time when this old comedy was written, was not quite so harmless as blind-man’s buff: what was sport to her, was death to others. She laughed at her own mockeries of common sense and true religion, and murdered while she laughed. The tragic farce was no longer to be borne, and it was partly put an end to. At present, though her eyes are blindfolded, her hands are tied fast behind her, like the false Duessa’s. The sturdy genius of modern philosophy has got her in much the same situation that Count Fathom has the old woman that he lashes before him from the robbers’ cave in the forest. In the following dialogue of this lively satire, the most sacred mysteries of the Catholic faith are mixed up with its idlest legends by old Heywood, who was a martyr to his religious zeal without the slightest sense of impropriety. The Pardoner cries out in one place (like a lusty Friar John, or a trusty Friar Onion)—

‘Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen,
For ghostly riches they have no cousin;
And moreover, to me they bring
Sufficient succour for my living.
And here be relics of such a kind,
As in this world no man can find.
Kneel down all three, and when ye leave kissing,
Who list to offer shall have my blessing.
Friends, here shall ye see even anon,
Of All-Hallows the blessed jaw-bone.
Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper;
My friends unfeigned, here is a slipper
Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure.—
Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk:
Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work,
May happily lose part of his eye-sight,
But not all till he be blind outright.
Kiss it hardly with good devotion.

_Pot._ This kiss shall bring us much promotion:
Fogh, by St. Saviour I never kiss’d a worse.

· · · · ·

For by All-Hallows, yet methinketh,
That All-Hallows’ breath stinketh.

_Palm._ Ye judge All-Hallows’ breath unknown:
If any breath stink, it is your own.

_Pot._ I know mine own breath from All-Hallows,
Or else it were time to kiss the gallows.

_Pard._ Nay, Sirs, here may ye see
The great toe of the Trinity;
Who to this toe any money voweth,
And once may roll it in his mouth,
All his life after I undertake,
He shall never be vex’d with the tooth-ache.

_Pot._ I pray you turn that relic about;
Either the Trinity had the gout;
Or else, because it is three toes in one,
God made it as much as three toes alone.

_Pard._ Well, let that pass, and look upon this:
Here is a relic that doth not miss
To help the least as well as the most:
This is a buttock-bone of Penticost.

· · · · ·

Here is a box full of humble bees,
That stung Eve as she sat on her knees
Tasting the fruit to her forbidden:
Who kisseth the bees within this hidden,
Shall have as much pardon of right,
As for any relic he kiss’d this night....
Good friends, I have yet here in this glass,
Which on the drink at the wedding was
Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly:
If ye honour this relic devoutly,
Although ye thirst no whit the less,
Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless.
After which drinking, ye shall be as meet
To stand on your head as on your feet.’

The same sort of significant irony runs through the Apothecary’s knavish enumeration of miraculous cures in his possession.

‘For this medicine helpeth one and other,
And bringeth them in case that they need no other.
Here is a _syrapus de Byzansis_,
A little thing is enough of this;
For even the weight of one scrippal
Shall make you as strong as a cripple....
These be the things that break all strife,
Between man’s sickness and his life.
From all pain these shall you deliver,
And set you even at rest forever.
Here is a medicine no more like the same,
Which commonly is called thus by name....
Not one thing here particularly,
But worketh universally;
For it doth me as much good when I sell it,
As all the buyers that take it or smell it.
If any reward may entreat ye,
I beseech your mastership be good to me,
And ye shall have a box of marmalade,
So fine that you may dig it with a spade.’

After these quaint but pointed examples of it, Swift’s boast with respect to the invention of irony,

‘Which I was born to introduce,
Refin’d it first, and shew’d its use,’

can be allowed to be true only in part.

The controversy between them being undecided, the Apothecary, to clench his pretensions ‘as a liar of the first magnitude,’ by a _coup-de-grace_, says to the Pedlar, ‘You are an honest man,’ but this home-thrust is somehow ingeniously parried. The Apothecary and Pardoner fall to their narrative vein again; and the latter tells a story of fetching a young woman from the lower world, from which I shall only give one specimen more as an instance of ludicrous and fantastic exaggeration. By the help of a passport from Lucifer, ‘given in the furnace of our palace,’ he obtains a safe conduct from one of the subordinate imps to his master’s presence.