No More Learning

Some of the dramas of his
contemporaries resemble mazes in whose artfully interwoven paths
both writers and spectators ran the risk of losing themselves—a
danger which Richard Brome, for instance, perceived and tried to
avoid by drawing attention to particularly difficult complications
by an explicit remark of one of his dramatis personae; Massinger's
best plays convey the impression of being well built and ample
halls, in which we move with a feeling of perfect security.
That he was a severe critic of his own labours is proved by the
clear progress to be noted in the construction of his plots in
the course of years. The Unnaturall Combat, which the author
calls an old work in his dedication, and which appears to be
a free rendering of the story of the crimes of the Cenci family,
has, no doubt, a central figure in Malefort, the destroyer of his own
children; yet it contains not one but two separate tragedies. First,
the tragedy of young Malefort, the son, who revenges the death of
his mother and is himself killed by her murderer, his father; and
then, the tragedy of the daughter, hunted to death by the father's
incestuous passion. In what probably is his second tragedy, The
Duke of Millaine, we meet with a striking proof that the dramatist
had not yet learned to economise his subject : the fate of his
heroine reaches the tragic climax at the end of the fourth act,
so that he was obliged to fill the fifth act with a new action, not
clearly hinted at before, a brother's revenge for the injury done
to his sister. It is true that, in the last tragedy composed by
Massinger alone, The Roman Actor, Paris, the actor, falls a
victim to the jealousy of the emperor also in the fourth act;
nevertheless, the poet was entitled to speak of this drama as
'the most perfect birth of his Minerva,' because the fate of the
player was not his chief object : he wished to present the tragedy
of the bloodthirsty madness of the Roman Caesars, personified in
Domitian, whose ruin is prepared and effected in the fifth act.


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Philip Massinger
Our admiration of Massinger's power of dramatic construction
is further heightened, if we come to look at the raw materials at
his disposal. Nothing, for instance, could be more interesting
than to observe how, in The Roman Actor, the process of blending
the accounts of historians, of Suetonius and Dio Cassius principally,
results in well arranged scenes in which no trace of patchwork is
to be discovered. Not less cunningly the plot of The Renegado
is pieced together out of different works of Cervantes. That
Massinger's predilection for a single action is not to be explained
by the inability to marshal and, finally, to unite a greater number
of figures, is demonstrated by the lively scenes of his Parliament
of Love, for the intrigues in which he availed himself of motives
drawn from Martial d'Auvergne, Shakespeare, Marston and, prob-
ably, also from Middleton. It must be confessed, however, that,
in this case, the fusion is not flawless, Leonora's senseless cruelty
showing that the dramatist's wish to use a striking episode of a
Marstonian drama was stronger than his respect for what the laws
of psychology allow to be possible.
In obedience to the taste of his time, Massinger twice trans-
planted the action of his plays from the localities named in his
sources to the favourite country of the Elizabethan dramatists,
Italy, and, in both cases, with entire success. Without knowledge
of his authorities, it would be impossible to find out that the duke
of Milan and his wife Marcelia, killed by her husband's jealousy,
have been substituted for Herod, king of the Jews, and his wife
Mariamne; or that the story told in his charming comedy The
Great Duke of Florence, with its variation of the motive of the
treacherous friend, is a transformation of an old legend rooted in
the soil of England.
Many of Massinger's independent additions to the stories in
his sources are also well calculated to deepen the impression left
by his works. For a few of his plays, no literary source has been so
far traced; but it would be rash to assert that he entirely invented
any of his plots. A far more striking sign of a certain weakness
in inventive power is his tendency to repeat himself in his tech-
nical artifices and in the means used for eking out his plots. The
necessary revelation of a hidden passion is frequently attained by
the simple stratagem of letting a conversation between lovers be
overheard by their enemies. The passionate attempt of Antoninus
to waken the flame of an earthly love in Dorothea's bosom is
overheard by his father and by the princess in love with the
youth (The Virgin Martir); Cleora and Marullo are surprised
a


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Massinger's Self-repetitions
155
in prison (The Bond-Man); Donusa and Vitelli, Domitia and Paris
are watched by the Turkish princes and Domitian respectively (The
Renegado and The Roman Actor); the rivals of Hortensio listen
to his decisive talk with Matilda (The Bashful Lover). Also, in
other emergencies, the timehonoured artifice of the listener is
freely resorted to. Another of Massinger's favourite situations is
the introduction of one of his male characters with a book in his
hand, like Hamlet, indulging in some short philosophical specula-
tion. By way of amplifying his plot, he repeatedly brings in a
brother revenging a wrong done to his sister. In the last act of
The Duke of Millaine, we are surprised by the statement that the
ultimate scope of Francisco's perfidies was to punish Sforza as the
seducer of his sister Eugenia; Marullo-Pisander acts the part of a
slave in Syracuse only to approach Leosthenes, the faithless lover
of his sister Statilia (The Bond-Man); Vitelli risks his life among
the Turks to liberate or to revenge his sister Paulina, robbed by
the Renegado (in the play of that name). The deserted woman
herself repeatedly appears as the servant of the new object of her
faithless lover's affection: Statilia serves Cleora (The Bond-Man),
Madame Beaupré the clever and resolute Bellisant (The Parlia-
ment of Love).
In view of this inclination of Massinger to repeat himself, we
are not surprised to find, also, that many of his dramatis personae
resemble each other in a pronounced manner; the theory of the
typical characters of a dramatiststands confirmed by many of
his figures. The most typical of his heroines is the passionate
woman who falls violently in love at first sight and runs to the
embraces of her beloved without any reserve.
This class of
women is most characteristically represented by the Turkish
princess Donusa, who offers herself to the unsuspicious Vitelli
and persists in her wooing until he becomes the victim of her
seductive charms, notwithstanding his Christian scruples about her
being an infidel. With the same self-abandonment, the empress
Domitia makes love to the handsome player Paris. Nor can
Aurelia, the duchess of Siena, in The Maid of Honour, who, at
the first sight of young Bertoldo, forgets all about her princely
dignity, and claims him for herself, to his intense surprise and to the
great dissatisfaction of her court, be rated higher than her heathen
sisters, though she retains at least an outward show of decency.
Less objectionable, but not less masterful, appears this form of the
· See, on the subject of typical characters,' Schröer, A. , Über Titus Andronicus
(Marburg, 1891), passim.
.
3


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156
Philip Massinger
1
passion of love in the character of another duchess, Fiorinda of
Urbino, in The Great Duke of Florence, who abjectly endeavours
to induce the unwilling Sanazarro to take herself and her duchy,
though she knows that he loves another, the charming Lidia.
Another copy of the same type is the inconstant Almira in
A Very Woman, who obstinately refuses to listen favourably to
the wooing of the prince of Tarent, but, later, when he crosses her
way once more in the habit of a slave, is immediately charmed
with him to such a degree that she, the daughter of the viceroy of
Sicily, does not hesitate to offer a nocturnal meeting to him,
a slave. Massinger himself so much affected scenes in which a
woman acts the part of the wooer, that he introduced a similar
situation in a play where there was no pressing need for it:
queen Honoria in The Picture seeks to seduce the knight Mathias,
only in order to be able to refuse him, and, in this manner, to
punish him for having praised the beauty and the chastity of his
wife.
A somewhat subtler art of character painting we observe in
Massinger's delineation of the nature of those women who are not
the powerless victims of a sudden passion. Nevertheless, it cannot
be denied that the utterances and the behaviour of his virtuous
women often reveal that, in drawing female characters, he could
rarely escape from the region of the senses. But, though most of
Massinger's women are of the earth, earthy, we must not forget
that he was able to create at least two women in another mould:
the chaste Camiola and the lovable Lidia. Camiola, the Maid of
Honour, deserves this appellation, though, perhaps, the poet
impaired the nobleness of her presence and of her actions by two
superfluous additions : the violence of her refusal of an unwelcome,
boisterous wooer-whose bodily defects she criticises in a strain
approaching, though by no means equalling, the invectives which
the passionate Donusa hurls at the head of the unfortunate basha
of Aleppo when he comes to court her-and the cautious contract
(taken from the source of the play) by which Bertoldo, to liberate
whom Camiola spent a fortune, is placed under an obligation to
marry her. Perfectly delightful is Lidia, the youthful heroine
of The Great Duke of Florence. In her, everything is charm-
ing: the simplicity with which she talks of her love for prince
Giovanni; her naïve conviction that the fiercest enemy 'would let
fall his weapon' when looking on the sweetness of her lover ; her
anxious pleading at the feet of the duke, who is righteously angry
with his deceitful nephew, and her trembling readiness to sacrifice


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Massinger's Women and Men
157
her own hopes to the happiness of the prince. Nothing could be
more winning than the manner of her receiving the fatal, letter of
her boy lover: she kisses it, she scarcely dares to hurt it by
breaking the seal fastened by the beloved hand-even Shake-
speare's Julia did not prattle more tenderly when kissing and
piecing together the fragments of the letter of her beloved Proteus.
With this exception, a comparative survey of the women of
Shakespeare and Massinger is the surest means for convincing us
how rapidly the moral character of the English stage had changed
since the days of the greater poet. The effrontery of Donusa and
Massinger's other women of the same stamp would suffice to indicate
the rise of a taste demanding stronger stimulants ; but he went far
beyond the loss of dignity and of delicacy of feeling which they
exhibit. He created the Syracusan Corsica, the lewd wife of old
Creon, who tries to seduce her stepson (The Bond-Man); Iolante,
who, in the absence of her husband, is ready to accept the first
handsome stranger as lover (The Guardian)-not to speak of bawds
like Calipso in the same play, or the drunken hag Borachia in A
Very Woman. We are but rarely allowed to forget that Massinger
is separated from Shakespeare by Fletcher, whose plays had accus-
tomed the public to the open licence of women.
Massinger's male characters, as a rule, are more interesting
than his women. If we except one short scene of the patriotic
Cleora, his women think and talk of nothing but the dominating
passion of love in its different gradations; while their lovers, though
meeting their desires, are yet, at the same time, not rarely made
the interpreters of the views of the author. The Venetian Vitelli,
whose virtue is too weak to resist the temptations of the infidel
Donusa, is, by the admonitions of his ghostly counsellor, the
Jesuit Francisco, filled with a repentance which rises to religious
ecstasy, so that, in the end, he even aspires to the glory of the
death of a martyr, becoming the most eloquent exponent of
Massinger's religious feelings. Still more distinctly, we hear the
voice of the poet himself in one of the speeches of Paris, the
Roman actor, in a splendid apology for the stage and its poets
and players. Paris, 'the favourite of the Roman public, is cited
before the senate, being accused of satirical attacks on persons of
rank and of being a libeller against the state and Caesar. ' The
gist of the actor's defence is that he and his companions cannot
help it, if the conscience of the spectators is shaken by what is
done and said on the stage. The energetic flow of this oratio
pro domo, one of Massinger's rhetorical masterpieces, and its


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158
Philip Massinger
superfluousness from the dramatic point of view—for it stands
quite outside the action of the tragedy-show how willingly he
availed himself of the opportunity offered by the part of the actor
to speak against the detractors of his art in general, and against
those ‘Catos of the stage' of whose persecutions he bitterly
complains in one of his rare prologues.
In several plays, the passion of Massinger's heroes takes
the form of violent, though groundless, jealousy. The jealous
whims of Leosthenes irritate the noble Cleora and, finally, estrange
her from him ; Mathias doubts the fidelity of his wife; the sus-
picions of Theodosius, the Emperor of the East, threaten the life
of Athenais ; Marcelia, the proud wife of Sforza, is murdered by
the selfish passion of her husband. A far more imposing figure
than these egoists, tormented by their own folly, is the hero of
the tragedy The Fatall Dowry, the sombre Charolais, who kills his
adulterous wife and her gallant, and himself falls a victim to his
revenge.
Besides these men who, fighting the battle of life, are not
entirely absorbed by the passion of love-for, even in the sketch of
the murderous Sforza, much stress is laid by the poet on his war-
like qualities and the astuteness of the Italian politician who,
standing between the French king and the emperor, knows how
to reconcile his loyalty with his advantage—we find among
Massinger's lovers, also, the conventional types of the contem-
porary drama : the devoted lover who lives on the smile of
his lady, such as Ladislaus, the humble husband of the proud
Honoria, Caldorio and the over-bashful Hortensio, and young
libertines like Adorio and Alonzo, whose conversion, usually, is
as incredible as it is sudden. Massinger's most attractive boy
lover, who really has no other hopes, as yet, than 'to stonden in
his lady grace,' and who utters his feelings with charming fresh-
ness, is prince Giovanni, the 'north-star' to whom Lidia looks up
adoringly.
Guilty women of the stamp of lady Macbeth and the two
daughters of king Lear, in whose lives not the passion of love but
a stormy, and, if need be, sanguinary, ambition is the dominant
influence, are not to be found in Massinger's dramas ; only his
men appear capable of conceiving and executing criminal plans.
His villains, generally, are monsters of the darkest dye; they
resemble each other in being free of any redeeming quality.
Even if they act as avengers, they display so much baseness of
mind that the wrong suffered by them is forgotten in our indigna-


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His Types of Villains
159
tion at their perfidiousness. Francisco, the treacherous favourite
of the duke of Milan, is spurred on by his desire to punish Sforza
for having dishonoured his sister, an impulse of which we are
informed much too late, long after he has forfeited all our
sympathy by the wickedness of the means he uses to gain his
end. First of all, he tries to seduce Sforza's wife, and, as he is
foiled in this attempt by the resistance of the duchess, he accuses
her of having made love to him, and succeeds in instigating her
jealous and credulous husband to kill her. Finally, after having
been bitterly reviled by his sister for cautiously sparing the life of
her seducer, he enters the ducal palace in the disguise of a Jewish
doctor and covers the lips and hands of the corpse of Marcelia
with poisonous paint, so that Sforza is killed by kissing her:
from beginning to end he acts the part of a perfidious coward,
carefully abstaining from any direct attack on his mighty adver-
sary himself. A still more despicable villain is Montreville, who,
pretending to be the friend of old Malefort, avenges himself on him
for injuries borne in silence during many years by dishonouring
his innocent daughter Theocrine. As to the murderous and in-
cestuous Malefort himself, one would feel inclined to regard him
as an impossible monster, an isolated creature of the poet's
fantasy, did not this very isolation strengthen our belief that
Massinger's freely treated model was a historical personage, an
Italian villain—that Francesco Cenci who had been killed, by
murderers hired by his own daughter, some twenty years before the
composition of Massinger's tragedy. Through the enormity of his
crimes, Malefort's dark shape assumes gigantic dimensions, and
we are not astonished that the poet himself felt the need of
annihilating his monstrous creation, not by mortal agents, but by
the direct interference of Heaven itself.
Massinger's imperial malefactor, the bloodthirsty tyrant Domi-
tian, does not stand so entirely beyond the limits of humanity as
Malefort. He becomes vulnerable by his infatuation for the
profligate Domitia, and this one human weakness proves fatal to
him : he spares her life, forfeited by her adulterous passion for
Paris, and when, later, infuriated by her imprecations at the
murder of the player, he resolves to kill her, it is too late;
Domitia herself heads the crowd of his assassins. By a skilful
arrangement of the historical background, the dramatist succeeds
in making us believe in the life-likeness of his tyrant as the
natural outcome of a cruel
age.
These criminals, who are finally struck down by the nemesis of
1


## p. 160 (#178) ############################################

160
Philip Massinger
their evil deeds, are the central figures of tragedies whose action
lies in the far past and in foreign lands. But, even in those two
comedies whose dramatis personae are intended to represent
countrymen and contemporaries of the poet, we meet with two
great villains : with the heartless, usurer Sir Giles Overreach in
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and with the hypocrite Luke Frugal
in The City-Madam. Sir Giles Overreach, who tries to bring his
spendthrift nephew, one of the victims of his extortions, to the
gallows, who commands his amiable daughter to offer herself to
the lord to whom he wishes to marry her, and who boasts of his
cruelties towards his debtors, be they widows or orphans, becomes
so tremendous a villain, that, in order to free humanity of the
fiend, the conclusion of the comedy-as, indeed, the whole con-
ception of this ruthless character-touches the borders of tragedy.
Deluded in all his ambitious hopes, the infuriated usurer goes mad.
In the case of Luke Frugal, who has not hesitated to cause the
betrayal of the women entrusted to his care-the wife and two
daughters of his brother—the poet contents himself with stripping
him of all his splendour and with exposing him to the contempt
of all around him. In these two domestic comedies, one of the
most glaring defects of Massinger's dramatic world, its frequent
want of truth, strikes us most forcibly. The usurer's bragging
proclamation of his vices and his crimes, which reminds us of the
equally impressive and equally unlikely self-accusation of Chaucer's
pardoner, is quite as incredible as is the obtuseness of the insidious
Luke, when confronted by the gross deception practised on him.
The sober light of day is unfavourable to Massinger's characters;
they stand in need of the romantic twilight of the past, in order
to gain a certain, but too often limited, likeness to life.
As to Massinger's comical scenes, in which the male element
again preponderates, his tragedies indicate an evident tendency to
re-establish the purity of the tragic style. In what probably was
his earliest tragedy, The Unnaturall Combat, a comical character
appears in the person of Belgarde, a needy and ever hungry soldier,
a
who, at a sudden favourable turn of his fortunes, is overwhelmed
by claims of paternity something like Molière's Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac; but his chief scene is in harmony with the serious
tenor of the whole work. Finding himself excluded from a banquet
in the governor's palace on account of his threadbare old suit, he
comes to it in the habit which he had worn for the welfare of his
country 'in the heat and fervour of a bloody fight'-in his armour,
eloquently and bitterly blaming the ingratitude of the world which


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Tragicomic Characters and Scenes
161
lets soldiers starve in times of peace. In The Duke of Millaine,
the report of the jailor as to the effect of a whipping on some of
his former prisoners is more satirical than comical ; and in The
Roman Actor the dignity of tragedy is never disturbed by an
attempt to raise a laugh. In the comedies, on the other hand,
the usual stock of servants and gulls, of pert pages and humorous
old men is to be found. There appear Calandrino, the boorish
servant, aping the manners of the court; Gazet, the ambitious
servant, who aspires to the office of an eunuch ; and many others.
The slaves of Syracuse, who, in The Bond-Man, rebel against their
oppressors, are represented as ridiculous and abject creatures,
with that curious indifference to the sufferings and rights of the
people frequently to be noted in the drama of the period. Two
of Massinger's comical old men, the voracious and venal judge
Greedy in A New Way, and the courtier Cuculo, who, in view of
his frequent hints at his statesmanship, appears to be a weak
reproduction of the Polonius type, are farcical, while the free-
spoken Eubulus and the merry Durazzo sometimes speak very
much to the purpose between their jokes: Eubulus, like Belgarde,
in favour of the neglected soldiers for whom the poet, patriotically
anxious about the defence of his country, puts in a good word on
every occasion; Durazzo, chanting the praise of healthy country
life and of the delights of the chase, especially of falconry, of which
‘royal sport' he gives a very pleasing description.
One cannot help observing with what persistency the satire
with which dramatists frequently combined the fun of their lighter
scenes is by Massinger aimed at the inmates of the courts of
princes. In two of his plays, depraved courtiers, who, persuaded
of the force of their own fascinations, think the seduction of women
an easy task, become the victims of practical jokes and are ex-
posed to general contempt. The exaggerated importance attached
to exterior appearance and to more or less worthless ceremonies,
the frequent neglect of true merit, the ridiculous pride shown by
noblemen of the last edition'—these and many other unpleasant
peculiarities of court life are referred to by the poet repeatedly,
and with a force of expression which might lead us to think that
his bitterness was caused by disagreeable personal experiences.
Other objects of Massinger's satire are the projector and the
monopolist, the empiric and the astrologer. Now and then, he
attacks his countrymen in general, dishing up once more the
well worn complaints about their fondness for hard drinking and
for aping in their dress and manners outlandish, particularly
11
EL VI.
CH, VÍ.


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Philip Massinger
8
French, fashions; and, once, he even permits a connoisseur of
human wares, a slave merchant, the remark that all English
people, men and women, are stark mad—remembering, very likely,
one of the best known jokes of the grave digger in Hamlet. Not-
withstanding such occasional humorous criticisms, we are made
to feel that the poet himself was proud of being an Englishman,
At the end of an uncomplimentary conversation of some Italian
servants about the gross feeding and the correspondingly gross
understanding of Englishmen stands the telling line: 'They can
fight and that's their all,' and Bertoldo, the faithless lover of The
Maid of Honour, utters a sincere panegyric on England, the
empress of the European isles,' though it is true that we can
discover a melancholy inflection in the poet's voice, the eulogy
referring not to the present but to a past state of things.
Concerning the political situation of his own days, Massinger
shared the dissatisfaction felt by many patriotic contemporaries.
It is noteworthy that Massinger's satirical allusions avoid two
themes frequently treated by other dramatists of his time: neither
satirical remarks of a literary kind, parodies of passages of the
works of older writers, nor violent invectives to the address of the
irreconcilable enemies of the stage, the puritans, are to be found
in his plays, the nearest approach to such an attack being the
statement of the jailor in The Duke of Millaine, that a sectary
who would not yield to any argument of reason was made a 'fine
pulpit-man' by a trussing of his haunches. Probably, Massinger,
who was himself prone to religious meditation, admired in secret
the moral rectitude of the puritans and their energy of purpose;
he may even have felt oppressed by the consciousness that he was
helping to heighten the animosity of their adversaries by partici-
pating in the scurrility and viciousness then characteristic of the
stage. As it is, his comic dialogue abounds in coarse innuendos,
Massinger's comic characters, advisedly, perorate in blank verse;
the quacksalver, however, and the star-gazer are allowed to an-
nounce their wisdom in prose, possibly because it would have been
a difficult task to versify smoothly the strange, half-Latin terms of
their pseudoscientific galimatias.
As to versification and poetic diction, Massinger's mastership
is indisputable; his dramas contain many passages in which the
beauty of the style equals the vigour of the thought. He is a
great orator, excelling in speeches in which, after the fashion of
lawyers, speakers have to defend some particular position and to
put their case in the most favourable light. Belgarde, insisting


## p. 163 (#181) ############################################

His Style
a
163
on the merits of the soldier; Sforza, endeavouring to convince the
emperor that he, too, might find him a faithful and useful ally, not-
withstanding his loyalty towards the French king; Timoleon of
Corinth, soundly rating the Syracusans for having shamefully
neglected the means of defence of their country ; Paris, in his
apology for the stage ; Lidia, in her pathetic pleading for her
lover ; Athenais, appealing to the compassion of Pulcheria—these
and many other heroes and heroines of Massinger’s are never at a
loss for powerful, convincing or moving words when in critical
situations. The mechanical tricks of the Euphuistic style are, for
Massinger, a thing of the past; his use of alliteration is very
discreet, in most cases undoubtedly unconscious, and the insertion
of Latin words or quotations, in which the older dramatists de-
lighted, is a great rarity with him—in these respects, he strikes us
as a far more modern writer than his predecessors and many of
his contemporaries. But, on the other hand, it cannot be denied
that he also has his peculiar blemishes and tricks of style, and,
among them, one which is very obtrusive and for which he has
been frequently censured-a mania for repeating himself. He
possesses a considerable store of set phrases, metaphors and similes,
which he strews around on every occasion without troubling him-
self to vary and individualise his expressions. Especially numerous
and monotonous are his classical illustrations : Aeson and Medea,
Hippolytus, Diana and Phaedra, Pasiphaë and her bull, Alcides
and his poisoned shirt, and a great many other figures and objects
of classical mythology continually remind us of Massinger's having
received a classical education, a fact which is also recalled to us by
the frequent translations of famous passages of ancient authors
noticeable in his verse.
On the other hand, many of Massinger’s similes, however book-
ish, mirror genuinely English impressions, originally received from
the contemplation of the sea, its coasts and the life of sailors.
The foam-covered rock, the stream which loses its name in the
ocean, the ship, returning or outward bound, the small boat
wrecked by the weight of its own sails, and many other maritime
incidents, are frequently mentioned. In certain situations, which
repeat themselves in his dramas, stereotyped formulas are sure
to be used: if a beautiful lady is to be won, Massinger's person-
ages never forget to talk of her virgin fort'; the charms of his
passionate ladies, when they take the wooing upon themselves, are
so powerful that even an ascetic hermit would be at a loss how to
resist them; Lidia and Camiola, both of them in love with men of
6
11-2


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Philip Massinger
a higher social position, talk of their north-star and of the impossi-
bility of the wren's building near the eagle. Too often the tinsel of
these colourless phrases reminds us of the haste of the dramatist,
sacrificing one of the greatest charms of any poem, its freshness
of expression, to the wish to have done with his work.
Massinger's fatal fondness for conventional repetitions, which
has been pointed out in the situations, characters, thoughts and
words of his plays, apprises us of the limits of his merits as a
dramatic artist. Notwithstanding our readiness to admire the
firmness of his construction and the splendour of his diction,
we are too often offended by the monotony of his characters
and by the narrow range of their ideas; and his treatment
of them exhibits hardly any process of development.
playwright, it is true, he seeks to perfect himself in the tech-
nical part of his art; as a psychologist, he is too much inclined
to remain on the surface, from beginning to end. We feel
that the dramatist does not sufficiently identify himself with
his creations, that he does not live in them, that they are
formed more from the outside than from the inside. In con-
sequence of this coldness of their maker, we do not recognise in
his figures living beings of our own flesh and blood; too many
of them remain cleverly formed and ably managed theatrical
puppets. It is a great pity that the straitened circumstances of
his life, which obliged him to work rapidly, prevented him from
devoting a greater measure of love and care to the delineation
of his characters. That he would have been able to rouse them
to an intenser, fuller life, is impressed upon us as we look on the
thoroughly lovable Lidia, on the pure presence of Camiola and
at some of his secondary characters, as, for instance, the faithful
Adorni, whose love for Camiola is deeper than the selfish desire to
win her for himself.
As to the reception of Massinger's plays by the public of his
own days, we know very little. In his dedications, he repeatedly
laments the neglect shown by his contemporaries to poetry in
general, mentioning, with bitterness in one instance, his own
despised studies’; and the cutting remark that he presumes his
Roman Actor will, in consequence of the severity and height of
the subject distaste such as are only affected with jigs and ribaldry,'
indicates, perhaps, that this tragedy had not been successful on
the stage. On the other hand, he alludes to the friendly reception
of The Bond-Man; and, in the dedication of The Picture, one of
his most entertaining dramas, he is able to mention the general


## p. 165 (#183) ############################################

Contemporary and Posthumous Reputation 165
approbation the play had found at its presentment. Of prologues
expressive of his sentiments, we have but few, because, with cha-
racteristic, and, in this case, very justifiable, conservatism, he
strongly objected to this innovation, not falling in with it before
the performance of his tragicomedy The Emperour of the East,
printed in 1631, the first prologue to which begins with a few
angry words about the imperiousness of custom. Nevertheless,
we are indebted to his poems of this kind for a few noteworthy
biographical details. In the two prologues composed for The
Emperour of the East, he complains of the censures of those
who delight
To misapply whatever he shall write,
and of
the rage
>
And envy of some Catos of the stage
by whom 'this poor work' had suffered; while, in the prologue of
The Guardian, he informs us of the failure of two of his dramatic
ventures, which was followed by a silence of two years. We are
ignorant of the nature of those two unfortunate plays, because many
of Massinger's dramas were never printed and the manuscripts
were inadvertently destroyed by Warburton's cook.
The posthumous popular fame of Massinger is chiefly based on
his comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which has kept the
stage till recently, the brilliant part of the bold usurer captivating
many famous actors. In a more indirect way, the appreciation of
the dramatic power of the tragedy The Fatall Dowry, printed as a
joint production of Massinger and Field, but, undoubtedly, chiefly
Massinger's work, has been proved by the adaptations of later
poets : by Nicholas Rowe's tragedy The Fair Penitent, composed
in 1703, which did more for the preservation of Rowe's name as
a dramatist than all his independent plays; and by the recent
successful version of Beer-Hofmann, entitled Der Graf von
Charolais, which revived the memory of Massinger all over
Germany. The first traces of his influence on the German stage
date back to his lifetime: in 1626, an imitation of his and
Dekker's dramatisation of the legend of Dorothea was performed
at Dresden, where his attractive Great Duke of Florence also
appeared on the boards in 1661. Later, Massinger attracted the
attention of the poets of the romantic school of Germany as one of
the most fascinating of Shakespeare's successors: count Baudissin
translated several of his plays, and, within the last decades, German
translators have repcatedly had recourse to him.


## p. 166 (#184) ############################################

CHAPTER VII
TOURNEUR AND WEBSTER
THE two dramatists who are to be considered in the present
chapter have certain points in common. Both, at their best,
display a peculiarly sombre genius. The tragedies of both belong
to the same school; and both are utterly unknown to us, except
by their writings. In point of date, Tourneur would seem slightly
to precede Webster. And, for this reason, as well as for others
which are more material, it will be convenient to take him first.
Of Cyril Tourneur's life, we know nothing beyond the dates at
which his various plays and poems were published. They are as
follows: The Transformed Metamorphosis, 1600; A Funeral
Poem on Sir Francis Vere, 1609; A Griefe on the Death of
Prince Henry, 1613; and his two dramas, The Revengers Tragoedie,
1607 and The Atheists Tragedie, 1611! It should be noted that
two of these, the poem on Vere and The Revengers Tragoedie, have
no name on the title-page, and that nothing more than tradition
connects them with the name of Tourneur. There is a tepid
reference to the author, 'as not to be despised nor too much
praised,' by an anonymous contemporary; and that is all.
On his poems, it is not necessary to dwell. None of them has
any merit; and the most elaborate of them, The Metamorphosis,
is written in that uncouth jargon which had been brought into
fashion by Marston in his satires (1598), and which is assailed by
Jonson in Poetaster. It is, moreover, an involved allegory, the key
to which is lost, but which Churton Collins ingeniously interpreted
as a cryptic reference to the fortunes of Essex.
We pass at once to the two dramas, for it is by these alone that
Tourneur survives. A question has been raised as to the relative
priority of their composition. The order of publication makes a
presumption in favour of The Revengers Tragoedie ; but it is a
presumption which might easily yield to substantial arguments on
the other side. The only argument, however, which has been
brought forward is the inferiority, or, as it has been called, the
1 A tragicomedy, The Nobleman, acted at court in 1613, is now lost.


## p. 167 (#185) ############################################

Tourneur's Two Tragedies
167
'immaturity,' of The Atheist's Tragedie. Such an argument is
manifestly perilous and, if applied to the works of other writers,
would lead to curious results. On the other side must be set the
fact that The Revengers Tragoedie, though it abounds in striking
passages and scenes, is singularly lacking in originality of concep-
tion; that it belongs to a type of tragedy which had been in vogue
for many years before its appearance; that, in fact, it is a rearrange-
ment of the material already treated by Marston in Antonios
Revenge (1602). The Atheist's Tragedie, on the other hand,
though, doubtless, inferior in some respects, is strikingly original in
its central conception. And it would seem improbable that, after
following his own path with much boldness, the dramatist should,
in a later play, have fallen back obediently into the well worn rut.
The same conclusion is suggested by the metre, which, in The
Revengers Tragoedie, is exceptionally regular, while, in The Atheist's
Tragedie, it is inarked by what can only be called an abuse of the
light endings which abound in the later plays of Shakespeare. We
have other grounds for saying that Tourneur was a zealous student
of Shakespeare; and it is surely more natural to suppose that, after
the example of his master, he passed from the stricter to the looser
system, than from the looser to the stricter. The point is by no
means certain. On the whole, however, it would appear likely that
the order of publication is, also, the order of composition; in other
words, that The Revengers Tragoedie was written in or before 1607,
and that The Atheist's Tragedie falls some time between it and 1611.
Neither play can be said to show much trace of dramatic power.
The plots are poor in themselves, and one of them is largely bor-
rowed. The characters are, at best, little more than types; and, in
one instance, at any rate, the revenger's mother, the type is hardly
improved by an incredible conversion. The most original character
in the whole gallery is that of D'Amville, the atheist. But even he
has a fatal resemblance to the Machiavellian monster who, from
the time of Kyd and Marlowe, had been a familiar figure to the
Elizabethan playgoer. The other characters are either puppets or
incarnate abstractions of the various virtues and vices. The wanton
personages of The Atheist's Tragedie are frankly caricatures. It is
as poet that Tourneur claims our attention: a poet whose imagina-
tion is poisoned by the sense of universal vanity and corruption, but
who lights up this festering material with flashes of high genius, and
who is capable, at rare moments, of rising to visions of true beauty,
and even grace : ‘To have her train borne up, and her soul Trail
1 See ante, chap. II.


## p. 168 (#186) ############################################

168
Tourneur and Webster
in the dirt' is an instance of the one; the alleged discovery of
Charlemont's body by Borachio, of the other. And, to the former,
at any rate, many parallels could be brought. His imagination
needed a dramatic matter to kindle it; but, when kindled, it
followed its own path and paid little heed to any but the purely
formal requirements of the drama. To him, a tragedy was an
outlet for the expression of his bitter judgment on man and his
essentially gloomy view of human life. To this, all personages, all
,
incidents, are subordinated. Of this, all that is memorable in his
dramas is the imaginative symbol. In these points, he presents a
certain analogy to Webster, but an analogy which, at the same
time, is a faint reflection and a caricature.
The outward life of John Webster is as much a blank to us as
that of Tourneur. The years of his birth and death are, alike,
unknown to us. It may be conjectured, from the known dates,
that he was born in the decade 1570_80; and he must have
survived at least until 1624, the year of the production of the
Monuments of Honor. Further than that we cannot go. It
would be unsafe to accept the statement-not made until 1698,
and not confirmed by the parish registers—that he was clerk of
St Andrew's, Holborn. And the one outward fact with which we
are left-a fact recorded on the title-page of the Monuments of
Honor—is that he was a member of the Merchant Taylors'
company. With this, we must rest content.
His literary activity falls, naturally, into three periods: the
first, that of collaboration and apprenticeship (1602—7); the
second, that of the two great tragedies (1610 to 1614); the third,
that of the tragicomedies and, probably, of Appius and Virginia,
beginning about 1620, the probable date of The Devils Lav-
case, and ending at a time unknown. It will be well to take
each of these periods singly, and then to consider the charac-
teristics of his genius as a whole.
During the first period, Webster produced no independent
work. He was engaged in collaboration with other dramatists,
particularly Dekker; and, owing to a peculiarity of his genius,
his individuality was entirely merged in that of his fellow
workers. After joining with Middleton and others in two plays,
Caesar's Fall and The Two Harpies', which have perished, he
is found in partnership with Dekker, Heywood and Wentworth
Smith over a play entered as Lady Jane? , and immediately
followed by a Second Part (27 October), apparently from the
1 See Henslowe's diary, 22, 29 May 1602.
3 Ibid. 15 October 1602.


## p. 169 (#187) ############################################

Sir Thomas Wyat. The Malcontent 169
hand of Dekker only.
It has been universally assumed that
these two plays are either wholly or in part identical with
that which has come down to us under the title The Famous
History of Sir Thomas Wyat (published 1607); and there is no
reason for questioning this assumption! As to the exact relation
of the two parts of Lady Jane to the existing Wyat, there is
considerable doubt. The most plausible conjecture is that of
Dyce, who held the published version to be rudely cobbled to-
gether, with many omissions, from the two parts as originally
composed. And the shapeless build of the drama, together with
the entire absence of the coming in of King Philip' mentioned
on the title-page, is in favour of this explanation. The only
names occurring on the title-page are those of Dekker and
Webster; and it would seem tolerably plain that the former was
the predominant partner. He was already an old hand at historical
subjects. French history, Scottish, Portuguese and, above all,
English, had all, during the last four years, been freely dramatised
by him. Moreover, the treatment of character, the peculiarities
of versification, the general cast of sentiment—all these have
analogies in his unaided work. And there are few things, if any,
which remind us of the unaided work of Webster.
We turn, therefore, to the next recorded work—the contribu-
tions of Webster to the second edition of Marston's The Malcontent
(published 1604)? It would seem probable that Webster is
responsible for nothing more than the induction to that strange
and 'bitter' drama. Such is the natural interpretation of the
words on the title-page, and in the heading to the induction itself.
It is confirmed by the manifest identification of 'additions'-and
this is the word which has caused much misunderstanding-
with ‘induction' in the opening dialogue (1l. 87—91). And no
argument, except such as rests upon a strained construction of
the title-page, has hitherto been brought to the contrary. The
body of the play, which the induction describes as having been
‘lost, found' and subsequently “played by the King's Servants,
is of earlier date. There are strong reasons, as Stoll points
out, for fixing it as early as 1600, though this view is not
wholly free from difficulties. But it was not printed until 1604,
and that year saw two distinct editions: the first without, the
second with, the induction. The second edition also contains
the ‘augmentations, which, it may well be, are rather restora-
tions of the ‘lost'text, as originally written by Marston. The
1 Cf. ante, chap. II.
3 Cf. ibid.


## p. 170 (#188) ############################################

170
Tourneur and Webster
6
6
induction and it is that alone with which we are concerned can
hardly have been written much before the moment of publication.
Its composition would naturally fall between the dates of the first
and second editions. And this intrinsic probability is supported
by internal evidence. The main object of the piece, seemingly, is
to justify the king's company for performing a play in which a rival
company, that of the Blackfriars, had certain rights. And that
company, in its 'decimo-sexto’ shape—the little egases' of the
second quarto of Hamlet—was not licensed until January, 16041.
Any allusion to it in its earlier form, before it passed into the
hands of the children,' would be irrelevant. It may be added that,
in the words of Sly, ‘No, in good faith, for mine ease,' there is a
manifest quotation from the Osric of the second quarto of Hamlet
(1604). Altogether, then, we can hardly be wrong in dating the
composition of the induction within the year 1604. And, on the
evidence of the title-page, we are justified in saying that Webster
was sole author. That he had much reason to be proud of it, no
one will assert. The 'additions,' as Burbage modestly remarks,
are not greatly needed'; and, save in so far as they serve to
introduce a hit against the children of the queen's revels, they
do little more than 'entertain time and abridge the not received
custom of music. ' The induction was a common device of the
Elizabethan stage. It had been employed, for instance, in The
taming of a Shrew (printed 1594), in Every Man out of His
Humour, in Cynthia's Revels and in Antonio and Mellida. And
it must be confessed that Webster's effort is both flatter in itself
and stands in a looser relation to the play which follows than any
of these.
We now pass to what have been called the citizen comedies,
West-Ward Hoe and North-Ward Hoe, both written in partner-
ship with Dekker. Both were printed in 1607; but the former was
entered at Stationers' hall as early as March, 1605; the latter not
until August, 1607. The first three acts of West-Ward Hoe have
been thought by some critics to belong to 1603, and their authorship
assigned to Webster. But there is no valid reason for passing the
hatchet between these acts and the last two. And, as the fourth
act (sc. 2) contains an allusion to the fall of Ostend-an allusion
which is probably, though not certainly, anticipated in the first
act (sc. 1)and as Ostend did not surrender until the autumn of
1604, it is likely that the composition of the whole falls into the
last quarter of 1604, and that it was first acted at the beginning
1 See Collier, Annals of the Stage, vol. 1, pp. 352—3. : Cf. ante, chap. II.
a


## p. 171 (#189) ############################################

West-Ward Hoe and North-Ward Hoe 171
of 1605. In no case can North-Ward Hoe be dated earlier than
about the middle of 1605, seeing that it is plainly a reply to East-
ward Hoe (by Jonson, Chapman and Marston), which was almost
certainly written, as a retort to West-Ward Hoe, in the earlier part
of that year. And if, as seems probable, it contains a borrowing
from Marston's Parasitaster, Or The Fawne', which appears to
have been first acted, as well as registered, early in 1606, then the
composition of Dekker and Webster's second comedy must be
placed in 1606—7. In any case, it is clear that, during the time of
partnership, long or short, the intercourse between Webster and
Dekker, begun (as we have seen) in 1602, must have been of the
most intimate kind. And, once more, it was the younger and
deeper poet who sat at the feet of the elder and more facile.
The plays in question bring us into the thick of one of those
battles of the dramatists which give much liveliness to the history
of the Elizabethan stage. It may be called an afterswell of the
storm which had raged between Jonson, on the one hand, and
Dekker and Marston, on the other, in 1601–2; the storm of which
Cynthia's Revels, Poetaster and Satiro-mastix are the abiding
record? Times had changed since the first round of the contest.
Marston was now the partner of his terrible enemy; and, on both
sides, the game was now played with the best temper, a compli-
ment which could certainly not be paid to Jonson's share in the
earlier encounter. The main plot of West-Ward Hoe is a tale of
three merry wives who, putting their husbands on a false scent,
jaunt off with three gallants to spend the night at Brentford, then
a familiar trysting-place. They are pursued by their husbands and
run to earth at the inn, but, thanks to a sudden freak of respecta-
bility, are able to prove their innocence; all ends in good temper
and reconciliation. With this is ingeniously interwoven the story
of Mistress Justiniano, who is wooed by a rakish earl and yields to
his entreaties, but, at the critical moment, is seized with scruples
and joins with her husband to work a like repentance on her lover.
Having thus set his own house in order, Justiniano acts as managing
director to the comedy of the three citizens and their wives, which
forms the staple of the drama. The reply of Jonson and his partners
in Eastward Hoe is notably respectful. In the main, it is a piece
of friendly emulation rather than of satire. And the picture of
citizen life is among the most pleasing, as well as vivid, which have
come down to us. The theme is plainly suggested by the citizen
and prentice portraits in which Dekker was past master. The
i See Bullen's Marston, vol. 11, p. 21; Stoll, p. 16. ? See ante, chap. II.
a
a


## p. 172 (#190) ############################################

172
Tourneur and Webster
spirit of Simon Eyre and Candido is caught with such skill that,
a few phrases and other touches apart, the play might easily have
been taken for the work of Dekker himself. Yet, in the edifying
conversion of Master Francis Quicksilver, the idle apprentice, and
most engaging of scapegraces, there is, manifestly, a spice of
burlesque; and it is hard not to believe that the shaft was aimed
at such scenes as the sudden conversion of Bellafront (1604), or of
Mistress Justiniano in West-Ward Hoe itself. The satire, however,
is unexpectedly genial; not comparable to that which had been
showered on Dekker and Marston in Poetaster, nor even to that
which was aimed at king James and his countrymen in this
very play, and which brought the authors within danger of the
law. Equally good humoured is the satire of the rejoinder.
Jonson is let off without a scratch. The banter-for it is nothing
more—falls entirely on Chapman. There can be no doubt that
the 'little hoary poet' of North-Ward Hoe is intended for the
latter. His Caesar and Pompey, his liking for French themes,
his 'full and heightened style,' his professional vanity-all come in
for gentle mockery. But the banter consists in nothing worse
than placing the reverend’ and moral poet in impossible situa-
tions; in bringing him to the house of a courtesan who falls
violently in love with him and in causing him to be seized, if only
for a moment, as a fit subject for confinement in Bedlam. And, on
the whole, the portrait of Bellamont is the most attractive thing
in the whole piece ; Chapman himself can hardly have taken it
amiss. Apart from such quizzing, the plot of the comedy is un-
commonly simple. Mistress Mayberry, the wife of a rich citizen,
is persecuted by the attentions of two worthless gallants. After
repeated rejections, one of them snatches the ring from her finger
and shows it to her husband, as a proof of her infidelity. Guided
by Bellamont, Mayberry is soon able to convince himself of her
innocence, and bides his time for an appropriate revenge. He
beguiles the two slanderers into a trip to Ware, in the course of
which he brings conclusive proof that one of them has corrupted
the wife of the other. The injured husband is overwhelmed with
confusion, and Mayberry completes his vengeance by entrapping
the other rogue into marriage with the lady who has already
figured gaily in the satire on Chapman. It can hardly be said that
either this comedy, or that which opened the series, is so vivid or
so full of sparkle as that of Jonson and his associates. But the
merit of Eastward Hoe is so extraordinary that a play may
well fall short of it and yet be extremely good. And that will


## p. 173 (#191) ############################################

The Honest Whore. The White Divel 173
be the verdict of most readers both on West-Ward Hoe and North-
Ward Hoe.
It remains to ask whether there is any means of determining
the part played by Webster in the composition of these plays. The
two are strictly of a piece. In both—whether we regard construc-
tion, situations, characters or phrases--we can trace reminiscences
or anticipations of Dekker's acknowledged work and there is little
or nothing which can be said to bear the stamp of Webster. Which-
ever of the partners held the pen, it can hardly be doubted that the
inspiration, alike in small things and in great, was Dekker's. If there
be any one scene where the reader might be tempted to recognise
the hand of Webster, it is that in which the earl, expecting to find his
mistress, is confronted by her husband in disguise, while a curtain
is drawn aside so as to reveal the apparently lifeless body of the
woman he had expected to see at his mercy. But even this scene,
as Swinburne and others have pointed out, is, so far as the central
situation goes, to be closely paralleled from the Satiro-mastix and
The Honest Whore of Dekker. And, though the disguise of Jus-
tiniano and some touches both before and after his entry are well in
accordance with what we know of Webster, the style of the whole
passage, in the main, is rather that of Dekker; and where so much
is his, it is hazardous to assume that anything of moment was
contributed by his partner. Of the citizen comedies then, as of
Wyat, it may be said that the conception is Dekker's and that the
execution whether as regards characters, incidents, or style-is,
on the whole, entirely in his spirit. That they contain a good deal
of Webster's work, need not be doubted. But such work is
executive rather than original, derived rather than creative.
So ends the period of Webster's apprenticeship and collabora-
tion. We now pass to the earlier of the two periods which contain
his original and unaided work (1610—18). This is the period of The
White Divel (afterwards known as Vittoria Corombona) and The
Dutchesse Of Malfy. Some three or four years separate their period
from the preceding. For The White Divel was printed in 1612; and
the repeated borrowings from Rich's New Description of Ireland,
published in 1610, forbid us to place its composition earlier than
that year; it may well have been written in 1611. The exact source
of this great tragedy is a problem which still remains unsolved.
That it is based on events connected with the life of Paolo Giordano,
duke of Bracciano, and that these events took place in 1581–5,
that is, within the lifetime of Webster himself, is certain. Beyond
1 Cf. Stoll, pp. 64–79.
>


## p. 174 (#192) ############################################

174
Tourneur and Webster
that, all is obscure. The case, so far as our present knowledge
goes, is as follows. Many versions of the story, contemporary or
nearly so, exist in Italian? ; one, by François de Rosset? , is known
in French. All these are in substantial agreement with each other;
and all differ, in many crucial points, from Webster's. The question
at once arises : how are Webster's variations to be accounted for?
Had he before him a written account differing from all those
which have come down to us? Or had he heard an oral statement
substantially agreeing with that given in his play and traceable in
the last resort to one who had either travelled in Italy, or come,
as visitor, from Italy to the north? Or had he read a version
corresponding more or less closely with those accessible to us, and
retained nothing more than a confused and indistinct memory of
it? Or, finally, having, from written or oral sources, a tolerably
accurate knowledge of the true facts, did he deliberately alter
them for purposes of dramatic effect ?
This is not the place to discuss the question in detail. So much,
however, may be said. The first supposition, so far as it relates to
any record professing to be historical, may be dismissed as highly
improbable. The story, as we have seen, was well known and accu-
rately recorded. The actors in it were among the most marked
figures of their times: Francesco, grand duke of Florence, the typi-
cal Italian 'despot' of his day; Sixtus V, the soul of the League and
the Armada, the last of the popes who can fairly be described as
great. The heroine of the story was niece by marriage of the latter,
The circumstances of her second marriage and her murder had
formed the subject of trials—one at Rome, the other at Padua
and Venice-familiar to all Italy. It is hardly to be conceived
that any chronicler should have departed widely from facts thus
generally known. Novels and dramas remain. And it is not im-
possible that, some day, either a novel or, less probably, a drama
may be discovered which criticism will recognise as the source
from which Webster drew. None such, however, has hitherto been
found; though Tempesti, writing a century and a half later (1754),
says that the 'story was known all over Europe' and had been
told by 'hundreds of authors. ' The only novel at present known
is the 'tragic history' of de Rosset; and that, with the exception
of the assumed names and minute additions of obviously romantic
embroidery, is in complete accordance with the chronicles; so that,
even if it can be proved to have appeared before The White Divel
1 Cf. Gnoli, D. , Vittoria Accoramboni (1870), pp. 2–6.
Histoires tragiques de nostre temps, in or shortly before 1615.


## p. 175 (#193) ############################################

The White Divel
175
was written, it will in no way account for Webster's departure from
the historical facts. Of dramas, previous to Webster's, still less is
to be said. Santorio, indeed, a contemporary chronicler (1562—
1635) says: Scio ego apud quosdam actitatum tragoediæ argu-
mentum, datumque spectantibus haud suppressis personis nomini-
busyue. But in what language this tragedy was written—whether,
as we shall see in the analogous case of The Dutchesse Of Malfy,
the reference may not even be to The White Divel itself-unfor-
tunately does not appear.
The other alternatives are not mutually exclusive. It is per-
fectly possible that an oral statement, for which either an English
traveller or an Italian visitor was ultimately responsible, may have
reached Webster and that some, at least, of his inaccuracies may
be due to the natural negligence of his informant. Intercourse
with Italy had never been broken off. France was a common
.
meeting ground of English and Italian. We know, for instance,
that Vittoria's own stepson, Virginio Orsini, the Giovanni of the
play, had been sent as envoy to England by his uncle Ferdinand,
successor to Francesco, at the close of Elizabeth's reign. We
know that the same Virginio was reputed lover to Marie de
Medici, and that the attention of English dramatists was at this
time keenly directed to the doings of the French court, and not
least to the love affairs of the royal house! All this would make
it natural enough that rumours, more or less accurate, relating to
the Orsini and Medici, should reach the ears of Webster. But,
once again, there is no evidence. Some, indeed, of Webster's
inaccuracies are almost certainly due to lapse of memory. For
instance, he has given the official name of Sixtus V wrongly, and
has inverted the parts of Flamineo and Marcello. Neither of these
changes can plausibly be set down to deliberate intention.
There remains the final possibility that Webster had read an
account not substantially different from that given by the
chronicles, and that most of his variations are made of set pur-
pose ; that is, with a view either to suit his own conception of
what the leading characters in such a tragedy should be, or to
secure a more impressive effect. Among the changes made with
the former object would be reckoned the transformation of the
characters of Vittoria's husband and mother, the one for ill, the
other for good ; the strain of hypocrisy, not, however, very con-
sistently worked out, in the character of Vittoria ; the obvious
i See the circumstance connected with the performance of The Conspiracie, And
Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, 1608, ante, chap. II.


## p. 176 (#194) ############################################

176 Tourneur and Webster
adaptation of her circumstances to those of her kinswoman, Bianca
Capello (the heroine of Middleton's undated drama, Women beware
Women)"; above all, the change in the character of Lodovico
who, in the play, is moved neither by avarice, nor by the desire
to assert the honour of his family, but by the fixed resolve to
exact vengeance for the murder of an adored mistress, Isabella.
Among the alterations made for the sake of effect might be counted
the appearance of the 'lieger ambassadors' at Vittoria's trial and
‘
the election of Sixtus (the presence of the English envoy is
historically impossible), the murders of Marcello and Brachiano,
the appearance of Francesco as a direct agent in the latter crime,
the ghastly scene at Brachiano's deathbed and, very possibly, the
transference of the riddling Manet alta mente repostum from
Lodovico to Isabella. It would clearly have weakened the dramatic
force of the tragedy to reserve the final act, or even a closing
scene, for the nemesis of Lodovico. And it may well be for this
reason that, in defiance of historical facts, Webster placed his
death within a few moments of his victim's. That would at once
bar out the situation in which the memorable phrase was
actually uttered—the formal questioning of Lodovico by the magis-
trates of Padua. And Webster, impressed (as he well might be) by
the phrase, was, on this assumption, at the pains to introduce it
under circumstances entirely different, but hardly less dramatic.
If this be the true explanation-and many things point that
way-it would follow that Webster's treatment of his subject
is far more original than has sometimes been supposed. If we
may believe him to have worked on a chronicle such as those
embodied in Tempesti's Vita di Sisto V, or on a novel resembling
that of de Rosset, he has, manifestly, made far more sweeping
changes in his ‘source' than seems to be implied by those who
speak of his play as drawn from 'an Italian novel' He would,
in fact, have breathed a new spirit into the whole train of in-
cidents. The figure of Vittoria, indeed, remains much as we might
divine it to have been from the historical records ; though the
lines are deepened, the colours heightened and harmonised, by the
hand of genius. The same applies, though in a less degree, to
the defiant figure of Brachiano and the deep dissimulation of
Francesco and Monticelso. The last, indeed, is the one case in
which the dramatist has fallen short of the model supplied by
history. In a drama where he could not be the central figure
there was no room for the grand, yet sinister, figure of Sixtus. All
1 See ante, chap. III.
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## p. 177 (#195) ############################################

Webster's Position among the Dramatists 177
else, however, would be the creation of Webster: the tragic
resignation of Isabella, the fatuity of Camillo, the pathos of
Cornelia, the profoundly interesting and subtle portrait of Lodovico.
The crucial change, alike for its own sake and for its bearing on
the whole structure of the tragedy, is that in the character and
motives of Lodovico. The attribution of his long cherished
schemes to outraged love and the thirst for vengeance alters the
whole nature of the action. It provides the atmosphere of doom
which hangs over the drama from beginning to end, and which is
deepened by the scenic effects, the sombre episodes, of which
Webster was master without rival.
But, whether the positive changes made by Webster in his
unknown authority be large or small, the advance of The White
Divel on any or all of his previous work is incalculable. To the
'prentice, seeing through the eyes and speaking with the voice of his
master, has succeeded the skilled craftsman, with an almost perfect
command of his material and instruments, with the keenest eye for
the hidden possibilities of his task and the utmost originality in
handling it. During the half dozen years or so which followed,
Webster was by far the most striking figure, Shakespeare excepted,
in the long roll of contemporary dramatists. With the men of his
own day, he had not the vogue of Beaumont and Fletcher or
the personal authority of Jonson. But modern criticism, with
one voice, has pronounced his genius to be of a higher and rarer
kind. And, though we can still trace a certain awkwardness in
bis management of the plot-a defect from which he never shook
himself entirely free-his work, in other respects, is singularly
self-contained, as well as absolutely original. There is, perhaps, no
poet on record who leaped so suddenly into the full possession of
his powers. It is, of course, true that the influence of other writers
can be traced very plainly in this, as in his other, tragedy. His
debt to Shakespeare has often been pointed out. It appears in
many turns of thought and phrase ; in the portrait of the boy,
Giovanni; in the haunting beauty of Cornelia’s dirge ; in the con-
summate art, bold yet unostentatious, with which the figure of
the heroine is painted : above all, in that union of imaginative
reflection, pure poetry and dramatic genius which brings him
nearer than any of his fellow dramatists to the author of Hamlet.
In his fusion of the two former of these qualities, again, we cannot
fail to recognise his relationship, perhaps his indebtedness, to the
greatest lyric poet of the period, Donne.
These, however, are matters which concern the individual
12
E. L. VI.
CH. VII.