In any case it is now certain that The Dutchesse Of
Malfy was composed within two or three years of The White
Divell.
Malfy was composed within two or three years of The White
Divell.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
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.
>
## 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.
## p. 178 (#196) ############################################
178
Tourneur and Webster
genius of the dramatist. Still more significant is his place in the
general development of the Elizabethan drama ; and, in particular,
his debt to the dramatists of revenge. Here, he falls into line
with that long succession of writers, beginning with Kyd, who took
up the tale of Seneca's Thyestes and Agamemnon and, during more
than twenty years, rang the changes upon the theme of vengeance
through every key and with every variety of accompaniment. To
explain his position, a slight sketch of the history of this theme,
as handled by Elizabethan dramatists, may be attempted.
In the older versions of the theme there are three essential
features, all of which, in the last resort, are inherited from Seneca
These are, that a murder has been committed that revenge is a
duty from which the next of kin cannot escape, and that this
duty is enforced by the ghost of the murdered man, which appears
at intervals to drive home the demand for blood. So it is with
The Spanish Tragedie; so with Antonios Revenge ; so, allowing
for certain modifications, with The Revenge of Bussy d Ambois
(published 1613) and The Second Maiden's Tragedy (licensed
1611)'; so, unless all indications are misleading, with the lost Hamlet
(in or before 1596), which has been attributed, on probable, but
not conclusive, grounds, to Kyd ; so, finally, with the Hamlet of
Shakespeare. The first change in the outward framework of the
story-in spirit, it need hardly be said that Shakespeare's master-
piece stands poles asunder from the crudities of Kyd, Marston and
the rest-seems to have been made by Chettle, whose Tragedy of
Hoffman belongs to the same year as Antonios Revenge? . The change
is twofold. The ghost disappears; and, what is far more significant,
the avenger of blood is no longer the hero, but the villain, of the
piece. Both innovations are repeated, with important modifica-
tions, in the next play of Marston, The Malcontent (1604, or earlier),
to which, indeed, it is quite possible that the credit of them
may
belong rather than to Hoffman. The modifications are as follows.
The murderer of the original version is replaced by a usurper who
drives the rightful prince into exile. This, necessarily, involves the
disappearance of the ghost. And revenge, though retained, is
retained in a form so softened that the avenger contents himself
with melting one of his enemies to repentance and dismissing the
other with magnanimous contempt.
It was at this point that Tourneur took up the tale. Reverting
to murder as the starting-point of his action, he entirely dispenses
1 As to this play see Ward, vol. 11, p. 672.
? See Henslowe's diary, 7 July, 29 December 1602.
>
## p. 179 (#197) ############################################
6
The White Divel
179
with the ghost and, in the very moment of victory, the cup of
triumph is dashed from the lips of his ‘revenger. It is clear that
he felt the theme of vengeance to be an outworn convention. It
is equally clear that he surrendered it with extreme reluctance.
The whole fabric of the piece is based on the assumption that
revenge is a binding duty. And, when the tables are turned, when
the performance of the duty is visited at the last moment with
condign punishment, it is inevitable that the reader should feel
himself defrauded. Never had a play so lame and impotent a
conclusion as this. And, for that reason, if for no other, it is a
relief to turn from The Revengers Tragoedie to The Atheist's
Tragedie. Here, at any rate, the central thought is consistently
maintained from beginning to end. Here, at any rate, the dramatist
flies without faltering to his mark. The innovation, which he had
been blindly feeling after in The Revengers Tragoedie, is here
boldly carried out. Vengeance is thrust down from the rank of
duties ; forgiveness is exalted in its stead. If the ghost of the
murdered man is restored to something of his former rights, it is
to cry not for revenge, but for mercy; to reiterate, with a fervour
more moral than dramatic, that 'vengeance is the Lord's. ' The
dramatic weakness of the change is obvious enough. But it is
significant as marking the final stage of the tragedies of revenge.
The White Divel, in all probability, was produced during the
very year in which The Atheist's Tragedie was published. At
first sight it might be taken for a reversion to the earlier type of
this class of drama. Revenge for innocent blood is once more the
main theme of the dramatist. It is presented, however, no longer
as a duty, but as a passion; and with the cry of 'wild justice'is
mingled the baser note of wounded pride. Our sympathies, again,
80 far from being with the avengers, are cast, rather, on the side of
their victim. The result of such changes is to reduce the motive
of vengeance to a secondary place. It supplies not the core of the
building, but its scaffolding, or little more. The vital interest
belongs not to the story—this, in truth, might have been told
more clearly-but to the characters who sustain it, and the
passions which are let loose in its course. One more proof is
thus furnished, if proof were needed, that the theme of revenge
was now losing its fascination; that the dramatist, even when
he professed to work on it, was now driven by an overmastering
instinct to degrade it from its original supremacy.
The same tendency appears still more clearly in The Dutchesse
Of Malfy. Here, again, revenge is the nominal theme. It is not,
12-2
## p. 180 (#198) ############################################
180
Tourneur and Webster
however, revenge for murder, but for an outrage on the insensate
pride of family; and it is reinforced by the yet more sordid
motive of avarice-a motive which had been carefully excluded
from the earlier play. The sympathies of the spectator, which,
in The White Divel, are somewhat divided, are, here, solely
and absolutely, with the victim. And, as if to mark the change
in the most glaring manner possible, the whole of the last act
is devoted to the nemesis which falls upon the avengers. The
dramatic interest suffers ; but the intention of the dramatist is
proved beyond all possibility of mistake. The upshot of all this
is that the motive of vengeance, already weakened in the earlier
drama, fades almost out of recognition in the latter; and that,
with The Dutchesse Of Malfy, revenge except in survivals so
obvious as the last act of Women beware Women-may be said
to disappear from among the dominant themes of Elizabethan
tragedy.
With all its great qualities, the first tragedy of Webster is not
without traces of immaturity. The crudeness of incident which
he had inherited from his forerunners, is not entirely purged away;
the plot is wanting in clearness; even the portraiture of the
heroine bears some marks of vacillation. Most, if not all, of these
weaknesses are absent from The Dutchesse Of Malfy. The plot of
this play is perfectly simple; the characters, if we except that of
Bosola, are drawn with an unfaltering hand; in unity of tone, the
play surpasses all others of the period, save those of Shakespeare.
As to the sources of this tragedy, and its date, there is little room
for discussion. The story is certainly taken, with many refinements,
from Painter's Palace of Pleasure, as that, in its turn, drew upon
the Histoires Tragiques of Belleforest, and this upon Bandello.
Crawford has proved that Sidney's Arcadia not only exercised a
deep influence upon the thought and language of the play, but
that it also furnished the hint, and more than the hint, of its most
highly wrought situation : that in which the duchess is persecuted
with every variety of physical and mental torture. It is also more
than probable that the echo song, which Webster had in mind
(act v, sc. 3), and which he turns to purposes of the highest
imaginative effect, is that of the Arcadia (book II) rather than
any other. The play of Lope de Vega", which may have been
written about the same time, has little in common with Webster's,
and can hardly have been known to him. The date of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy, again, can now be determined within very
1 El Mayordomo de la Duquesa de Amalfi.
## p. 181 (#199) ############################################
The Dutchesse Of Malfy
181
a
a
narrow limits. It was not printed until 1623. But, as the part of
Antonio is known to have been created by Ostler, the first per-
formance cannot have been later than 1614, the year of that actor's
death. It is true that the opening dialogue apparently refers to
the execution of Concini, maréchal d'Ancre, which took place in
April 1617, and speedily became known, through translations of
official documents, in this country. There is, however, no difficulty
in supposing that this passage was added by Webster some time
between that event and the date of publication. Indeed, if, as is
practically certain, the play described by Busino, chaplain to the
Venetian embassy, in February 1618, is The Dutchesse Of Malfy.
-the amours of a Cardinal, his solemn exchange of a churchman's
for a soldier's garb and his 'poisoning' of his sister are specifically
mentioned and, in spite of the slight inaccuracy, can hardly refer
to any incidents except those of our play-it may well be that the
addition was made for a revival of the play at the beginning of
that year.
In any case it is now certain that The Dutchesse Of
Malfy was composed within two or three years of The White
Divell.
The later play is a marked advance upon the earlier. The old
motives, as we have seen, are retained, but represented in a softer,
a more human, form; and the effect on the imagination is entirely
different. The interest is shifted from the avengers to the deed
which provokes their malice. The real theme of the drama is not . '
revenge, but the graciousness of a noble and loving woman, and
the unflinching firmness with which, in the face of nameless
tortures, she possesses her soul, undismayed by all until a brutal
deception convinces her that the bodies of her murdered child and
husband lie before her. The constancy of the victim, the remorse
which it wakens even in the base nature of her tormentor, are
painted with the fewest possible strokes, and each is charged to the
utmost with imaginative effect. After this, it must be admitted,
the interest flags; the fate of Antonio, the miserable end of the
persecutors and their accomplice, are in the nature of an anti-
climax. _Had the play ended with the fourth act, the tragic
impression would have been yet deeper and more harmonious than
it is. Yet it is easy to see how Webster was drawn into this
by-path. During this period—iņ that which followed it is strangely
different-he was filled with notions of nemesis and poetic justice.
Hence, the necessity for bringing the two brothers and Bosola to
condign punishment. He was also possessed with a gloomy con-
1 See Wallace, C. W. , letters to The Times, 2 and 4 October 1909.
## p. 182 (#200) ############################################
182
Tourneur and Webster
viction, perhaps partly inherited from Marston, of the corruption of
man, and particularly of such men as haunted courts. In the loves
of Julia and the cardinal, he found a text for this sermon too tempt-
ing to be passed by. Finally, he was strangely attracted towards
subtle intricacies of character; and, in the portrait of Bosola, he
strove to probe them to their depth. The general result of all
this is to deepen the gloom of the atmosphere still further, but, at
the same time, to blunt the edge of the tragic effect. The true
tragedy is with the duchess. When she is gone, what are Bosola
Dand Julia, what are Ferdinand and the cardinal, but hateful super-
fluities ? Even Antonio, beautiful as is the poetry which Webster
weaves around him, suffers eclipse when the sun, which gave him
,
Light and warmth, is quenched.
From the tragedies we pass to the closing period of Webster's
activity (1618 ? to his death). The plays which would seem to
belong to this period are five: The Guise (mentioned in the dedi-
cation to The Devils Law-case), and A Late Murther of the Sonne
upon the Mother (in partnership with Ford, 1624), both, unfortu-
nately, lost; The Devils Law-case, published in 1623; Appius and
Virginia, in 1654 ; and A Cure for a Cuckold, in 1661. None of
the three which survive approaches the level of the two tragedies.
All, however, contain occasional flashes of the genius which created
The White Divel and The Dutchesse Of Malfy, though rather of its
poetic, than its dramatic, quality. Save in Appius, which owes
much to the Roman tragedies of Shakespeare, Webster is now
working under quite other, and less inspiring, influences. With
him, as with other dramatists of the period, the star of Fletcher is
in the ascendant.
Appius and Virginia stands apart from the other plays, and
may conveniently be taken first. Its date cannot be fixed by either
external or internal evidence; a play of the name, however, is
mentioned in a list of dramas appropriated to the Lord Chamber-
lain's company (1639), and it may be Webster's. For his materials,
Webster seems to have used Painter's Palace of Pleasure, Livy
and, possibly, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Of his own invention,
apparently, are the plot of Appius for reducing Virginius to
poverty, the quarrel between Virginius and Icilius, the production
of Virginia’s body by the latter for the purpose of nerving Vir-
ginius to vengeance ; above all, the introduction of the clown
Corbulo and the pretentious advocate, the latter being a familiar
butt of the ridicule of Webster. The drama has a certain massive
simplicity, which is probably due to the influence of Shakespeare;
## p. 183 (#201) ############################################
The Devils Law-case
183
and the humorous element has been thought, perhaps rightly, to
point in the same direction. But the general effect is disappoint-
ing. The subject has always proved itself intractable upon the
stage. And not even the pure poetry and pathos of the father's
farewell his daughter can avail to put our sympathies entirely
on his side.
The two remaining plays have proved strangely baffling to the
critics; and that, no less in regard to source and date than to
intrinsic value. The Devils Law-case, as it stands, cannot have
been written before the latter part of 1620; for there is a clear
allusion' to an unhappy affray, in August 1619, with the Dutch in
the East Indies (not Amboina), news of which can hardly have
reached England till the autumn of the following year. There is a
suspicious resemblance in the central incident, the lying self-
slander of Leonora, to incidents in Fletcher's Spanish Curate and
The Faire Maide of the Inne. The latter, however, was not licensed
for acting until January 1626; and it contains an explicit reference
to the massacre of Amboina, which did not become known in
England till May 1624. It can hardly, therefore, have served as
material for Webster in or before 1623. The Spanish Curate,
licensed October 1622, is a more likely source, or Gerardo, itself
the source of Fletcher's play, which was translated into English in
that year. It has been urged, though this seems less probable, that
Webster may have taken the hint from a like incident in Lust's
Dominion, which, probably, dates back to 1600. Other sources of
Webster's incidents are Goulart's Histoires Admirables (2nd ed.
1606), which had already been used by him in the Dutchesse Of
Malfy, and which suggested the cure by stabbing in this play;
perhaps, also, the trials for sorcery conducted in France 1610–11.
An account of these, by Michaelis, had been translated into English
in 1613—the highly protestant introduction may well have appealed
to Webster—and they seem to be alluded to more than once in this
play (especially at the end of act iv, where the reference to France
is quite irrelevant) and may even have suggested its title. It is not
impossible that the very name of Romelio may be an adaptation of
Romillon, who took a leading part in these grim investigations.
But, whatever the exact sources of this puzzling drama, its whole
spirit betrays the influence of Fletcher. This appears in the romantic
cast of the incidents, in the irresponsibility of the characters, and
in the nonchalant charity of the author towards the insufferable
baseness of Romelio. Fletcher's influence, however, is conspicuously
1 Act Iv, 80. 2.
2 Cf. ante, Appendix to chap. v.
## p. 184 (#202) ############################################
184
Tourneur and Webster
absent from the rhythm, unless the marked increase of fluency, as
compared with the two tragedies, may be attributed to this source.
On the whole, however, there is more substance, and more eleva-
tion of spirit, in Webster's tragicomedy than in most of Fletcher's.
As a drama, in spite of obvious blemishes, the former deserves
more praise than it has commonly received. And there are touches
of poetry, as well as of metrical effect, which worthily recall The
Dutchesse Of Malfy.
A Cure for a Cuckold is assigned by its original editor to the joint
workmanship of Webster and William Rowley. Webster's author-
ship, though it has sometimes been questioned, is attested by the
style, as well as by not a few echoes of phrasing. If the underplot,
which gives title to the play, is from his hand, we might be tempted
to see in it a return to the inspiration of Dekker. Yet if any
share belongs to Rowley, it can hardly be other than these scenes.
And the question is too speculative to be profitably discussed.
As to the influence of Fletcher on the main theme, there can be
no manner of doubt; and it is yet more marked than in The
Devils Law-case. The action is yet more full of startling and
romantic incident; the shiftings of mood and purpose are still
more sudden ; the stress thrown on scenic effect, at the expense of
character, is still stronger. That the plot is modelled on anything
to be found in Fletcher, cannot be asserted. The Little French
Lawyerl is the only play which, in this respect, offers any analogy;
and the analogy is not very close. On the other hand, there is the
strongest resemblance between the plot of Webster's play and that
of Massinger's The Parliament of Love (licensed November 1624).
The central incident of both is a duel imposed on a man, without
reason, by his mistress—an incident, the germ of which is to be
found in The Dutch Courtezan of Webster's early partner,
Marston? And, considering Webster's docility, it is hard to resist
the conclusion that the debt, probably, was on his side. Nor is there
anything against this supposition save the opinion, which, after all,
has no evidence to support it, that Webster died in 1625 (August-
September) and that he worked too slowly to have produced a
play in the interval. The point, however, is not of first importance.
For the influence of Massinger, at any rate in his earlier work, bore
entirely in the same direction as that of Fletcher; and the younger
poet may fairly be called the disciple of the elder. Thus, the last
play of Webster carries on the tradition of that which had gone
before it. Alike in plot and in general spirit, it belongs, directly
i Cf. ante, chap. v.
? Ci. ante, chap. II.
## p. 185 (#203) ############################################
Webster's Dramatic Genius
185
or indirectly, to the school of Fletcher, and reflects his influence.
The seriousness of the two tragedies has completely vanished ;
and it is ill replaced by the honest highwayman, the seafight,
the groundless jealousies and the no less groundless returns to
reason, which form the staple of A Cure for a Cuckold. In
the graver part of the play, there is only one scene, that on the
sands of Calais, where the genius of Webster can be said worthily
to assert itself. And the comic scenes, which are more likely to
be the work of Rowley, are far better sustained than the main
plot with which they are interwoven. Fletcher, with all his
brightness and poetic feeling, has much to answer for; and no-
where was his influence less happily put forth than upon the
essentially serious genius of Webster.
Of The Thracian Wonder, published in 1661 by the same editor
(Kirkman) as A Cure for a Cuckold, there is no need to speak.
No one, except that editor, has ever supposed that Webster can
have had a hand in it. A word will suffice as to Monuments of
Honor, a city pageant, or A Monumental Column, an elegy on
the death of prince Henry (1613), the only poem of length by
Webster which has come down to us. It contains a few fine lines,
more than one of which were subsequently transferred to his
dramasan apologue conceived in the same vein as that of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy, and a few turns of thought and phrase which
recall the author's spiritual affinity with Donne.
It remains only to ask: what is the secret of Webster's genius ?
What are the qualities which give the distinctive seal to his
imaginative creations ? For the answer to this question we need
hardly go beyond the two tragedies. His later works offer
reflections, more or less faint, more or less intermittent, of the
qualities we associate with his genius. But the authentic image,
the clear-cut features, the colour and the harmony, are here
alone.
! First, then, within somewhat narrow limits, Webster shows
a profound knowledge of human character and a keen sense of the
tragic issues of human life. Vittoria and the duchess are among
the great creations of the Elizabethan drama. Setting Shakespeare
aside, there is no character of that drama which surpasses them in
vividness; only two or three which approach them. Nor, in the
duchess, at any rate, is there any marked quality to lay hold of. It
is by atmosphere and temperament, by her sweet womanliness and
unstudied dignity, that she becomes known to us. And these are
just the things which are most impalpable, which only the highest
## p. 186 (#204) ############################################
186
Tourneur and Webster
genius can bring home to the imagination. No less important,
perhaps even more so, is the sense of tragic issues. And, here
again, Webster comes nearer to Shakespeare than any other of the
Elizabethans, with the possible exception of Ford. Shakespeare
found the deepest tragedy in the resistance of inborn heroism to all
assaults from without; in the triumph of the inner self, when all
outward happiness is dashed in pieces. So it is in Hamlet, King
Lear and Othello. And something of the same effect is attained
in The White Divel and The Dutchesse Of Malfy. It is attained,
also, in Ford's The Broken Heart.
Webster, however, is not only a great tragic dramatist. He is
also a great poet. And the same sombre cast of thought which
made him the one appears also in the other. His imagination
loves to linger round thoughts and symbols of mortality, to take
shape in 'strange images of death. ' The grim horrors of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy will at once recur to the memory; the yew tree
of Vittoria spreads its gloom over the whole drama. Yet nothing
is more remarkable than the thrift with which Webster uses this
perilous material. His reserve presents the strongest contrast
with the wild waste of the other dramatists of blood. Everything
in the two tragedies is subordinated to imaginative ends ; every-
thing is presented with the self-restraint of the artist. Nowhere
is the essentially poetic genius of the dramatist more manifest
than here; nowhere does his kinship with all that is best in the
other arts, particularly that of the painter, appear more plainly.
The latter point has hardly received due attention. Yet no reader
can fail to notice the eagerness with which this poet provides a
pictorial setting for the action of his drama; the pains he takes to
imprint upon the eye the countenance, gestures and bearing of
the characters in his most significant scenes. The opening scene
of The Dutchesse Of Malfy is devoted largely to this purpose.
The same appears in the trial scene of The White Divel. And other
instances, mainly from The Dutchesse Of Malfy, will readily suggest
themselves. It is doubtful whether this quality is so persistently
marked in any other dramatist, with the single exception of
Marston. And no one will claim that the pictures of Marston
approach those of Webster in imaginative genius. Allied with
this, perhaps, is his love of connecting a whole train of thought
with a tangible image, of embodying his reflections on life in
symbols which, at the first moment, may seem insignificant or
repulsive, but which acquire a curious fascination from the sur-
roundings in which he places them. It was this that made him,
## p. 187 (#205) ############################################
Webster's Imaginative Power 187
like Donne or Sir Thomas Browne, a lover of strange learning or
forgotten fragments of erudition, and led him, like Burton, to ran-
sack the dustbeaps of antiquarian research. The instinct is typical
of his age; but no man put it to uses more imaginative. With this
peculiar cast of imagination, the style of Webster is in marvellous
accord: compressed and pregnant; full, at once, both of grace and
of severity; capable of sudden flashes—'Cover her face; mine eyes
dazzle ; she died young'-capable, also, of a sustained musical
cadence, as in Cornelia’s dirge, or the wonderful lyric of Leonora.
## p. 188 (#206) ############################################
CHAPTER VIII
FORD AND SHIRLEY
ONE of the most significant facts in connection with the two
poets who close the list of the major dramatists of the great period is
that their work was produced in the years following the publication
of the first collected edition of the plays of Shakespeare. Previous
playwrights had studied and imitated their predecessors; but, for
the most part, such study had been carried on in the theatre.
Gradually, the drama had been winning acknowledgment of its
right to be regarded as literature, and the appearance of the first
folio of Shakespeare, in 1623, may fairly be taken as marking
the achievement of victory. The result of this new attitude was
twofold: first, the works of the master and his contemporaries
could now be brooded over and assimilated in the study, and,
secondly, the younger playwrights wrote with a view to being
read as well as heard and seen. Evidences of the coming of the
change are, of course, to be found before this date, certainly as
early as the Jonson folio of 1616; but Ford and Shirley stand out
as belonging exclusively to this literary' stage. Ford is never
tired of insisting that he was a gentleman of letters, not a theatrical
hack; and Shirley wrote at least one closet drama. In dealing
with their works, then, we are discussing not merely the last
phase of Elizabethan theatrical activity, but, also, the first chapter
of what may be called, in a special sense, modern dramatic
literature.
John Ford was a native of Ilsington in Devonshire, where
he was baptised on 17 April 1586. On his father's side, he belonged
to an old landed family, and, on his mother's, he was related to
lord chief justice Popham. He may have studied at Oxford, since
there is a record of the matriculation of a John Ford at Exeter
college in 1601 ; but his university career must, in any case, have
been short, as he became a member of the Middle Temple in the
November of the following year. Further information about his
## p. 189 (#207) ############################################
Ford's Non-dramatic Productions
189
career is confined to what can be gathered from the dedications
of his works, and from the exchange of commendatory verses of
the conventional sort. After the publication of his last play,
in 1639, he disappears from view. He seems to have been a man
a
of a somewhat melancholy temperament, independent in his
attitude towards the public taste, and capable of espousing un-
popular causes.
An instance of this last named quality appears in his first
publication, Fame's Memorial (1606), an elegy on the death of
Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire, second husband of the famous
Penelope Devereux. No reason is known why Ford should have
chosen to publish a eulogy of a man who had died out of favour at
court; but the fact is noteworthy as hinting an interest in a story
which, as we shall see, may not improbably have suggested to him
part of the plot of one of his most famous plays. The poem itself !
is long and tiresome, smooth in versification, abstract in diction,
often obscure and affected in style.
His romantic tendencies were further displayed in the same
year in his Honor Triumphant ; or the Peeres Challenge. In
the prose part of this pamphlet, Ford supplies a highflown defence
of four 'positions' which four young nobles had undertaken to
support in a tournament in honour of the visit to England of king
Christian IV of Denmark. The positions were that knights in
ladies' service have no free will; that beauty is the maintainer
of valour; that fair lady was never false ; that perfect lovers are
only wise. The triteness of the matter, the prevailing hyperbole and
the lingering traces of Euphuism that mark the style, would hardly
call for mention here, were it not that, in the very theses which
Ford is half seriously upholding, we find a significant connection
with the motives underlying some of his most important mature
work. What we must note is that Ford, at the age of twenty, is
writing prose and verse highly romantic in spirit, and involving
a tolerant, if not an admiring, attitude towards conduct entirely at
variance with conventional standards. The Monarches Meeting,
appended to this pamphlet, is an early instance of the stanza of
Gray's Elegy.
Ford's non-dramatic work closes with A Line of Life (1620),
a didactic tract on conduct, apparently influenced by Bacon's
Essays, but lacking their pithiness and epigrammatic vigour.
It may be significant of Ford's personal attitude towards religion
that this serious lay sermon is purely pagan in inspiration and
in spirit.
## p. 190 (#208) ############################################
190
Ford and Shirley
a
Omitting consideration of works no longer extant, we find
Ford's earliest attempts at dramatic writing made in collaboration
with Dekker. The Witch of Edmonton is based on the story
of Elizabeth Sawyer, who was executed for witchcraft in 1621,
and it was probably written soon after that date. The respective
shares of Dekker and Ford in this production are still unsettled,
perhaps William Rowley, too, had a share in it'; but the direct-
ness of the moral lesson conveyed, the witch plot with its comedy
and its realism in the treatment of humble life and the picture
of the yeoman's household, are as characteristic of Dekker as
they are unlike anything certainly Ford's. On the other hand,
Frank, whose weakness and crime bring about the main tragedy,
finds his defence in laying the blame on Fate in the fashion of
Ford's other sinners; and in the scenes where this character is
prominent, possibly the larger part of Ford's share is to be
found. The play is a domestic tragedy of great impressiveness, its
a
chief flaw being the failure of the attempt to join the two plots.
The Sun's-Darling: A Moral Masque (acted 1624, but not
published till 1656) is generally believed to have been originally
written by Dekker and revised, with additions, by Ford?
The first independent drama printed by Ford was The Lover's
Melancholy, acted in 1628 and published in the following year.
This somewhat slow-moving romance turns on the melancholy of
a prince grieving over the disappearance of his sweetheart. The
girl, whose loss has also deprived her father of his senses and
delayed the marriage of her sister, is present throughout in the
disguise of a man, and the love she inspires in the princess is,
in turn, the obstacle that prevents her cousin from winning that
lady. The discovery of the lost girl's identity, which might as well
have occurred in the first act, solves all the entanglements and
permits a happy ending; but this discovery is delayed in order to
enable Ford to occupy his scenes with a psychological analysis
of the 'lover's melancholy. ' This analysis is strongly influenced
by Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, from which are directly
taken the materials for the Masque of Melancholy in the third
act. The account of the finding of the disguised girl is reminiscent
of Philaster, and is made the occasion for the telling of the story of
the nightingale's death from Strada's Prolusiones. The main plot
has recently been traced by Stuart Pratt Sherman to Daniel's
Hymens' Triumph, and reminiscences of Hamlet, Lear and other
Shakespearean plays are obvious. In spite of all these borrowings,
1
1 Cf. ante, chap. II.
3 See ibid.
## p. 191 (#209) ############################################
The Broken Heart
191
and of the fact that many of the characters belong to well recognised
stage types, the play afforded the contemporary observer abundant
evidence of the advent of a new dramatist. The delicacy shown in
the treatment of emotion, the sweetness of the verse and the
happiness of the phrasing pointed to a poet who only needed
discipline in stagecraft to achieve distinction.
Ford acquired this technical skill with wonderful rapidity, if
we are correct in supposing The Broken Heart (printed in 1633)
to have been his next play. The plot of this tragedy shows much
originality, and it is conducted through many intricacies to a highly
effective catastrophe. The princess Calantha loves and is loved
by Ithocles, a brilliant young warrior, who had forced his sister
Penthea, in spite of her love for Orgilus, into a marriage with the
jealous Bassanes. Penthea remains faithful to her husband to
the despair of her lover, and Orgilus, repulsed, turns to seek
revenge. Penthea goes mad and dies, and, beside her dead body,
Orgilus causes to be placed a chair in which he induces Ithocles to
sit, and which closes on him and holds him helpless while Orgilus
stabs him to death. In the last act, news is brought to Calantha
in the midst of revels at court of the death of her father, then
of those of Penthea and of Ithocles; but she dances on to the end.
Orgilus is condemned, and, in the final scene, Calantha, before the
altar, puts a wedding ring on the finger of the dead Ithocles, hands
over her newly inherited crown to the prince of Argos and dies of
a broken heart. The last two scenes, if somewhat deliberately
theatrical, are among the most beautiful and memorable in the
drama of the period. No source has been found for the story
of Calantha, though suggestions from Sidney's Arcadia seem to
have been used throughout. In the prologue, it is implied that
the plot has a foundation in fact, and Sherman has ingeniously
argued that, in the situation of Penthea, the dramatist consciously
treated the story of that Stella whom Ford had long before sought
to justify in Fame's Memorial. Burton's influence is again dis-
cernible in the treatment of the jealousy of Bassanes ; but, on
the whole, this play is much less imitative than its predecessor.
Since something will have to be said on the subject of Ford's
dubious morality, it is only just to point out that, in this play,
Penthea reaches a lofty standard in her perception of the essential
unchastity of a loveless marriage. Yet, as we shall see, her con-
viction is not unconnected with the theory that undermines the
morality of the later plays——the dogma of the supremacy and
inevitableness of passion.
## p. 192 (#210) ############################################
192
Ford and Shirley
The influence of Sidney and Shakespeare persists in the next
tragedy, Loves Sacrifice (printed 1633). Illicit passion is here the
dominant theme. The duke of Pavy has married the beautiful
but humbly born Bianca, who is loved by his favourite Fernando.
The duchess's virtuous resistance to Fernando's suit leads him
to change his passion to friendship, and his strength is soon tested
by the weakening of Bianca, who comes at night to his chamber
and offers herself to him, purposing to kill herself afterwards.
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.
>
## 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.
## p. 178 (#196) ############################################
178
Tourneur and Webster
genius of the dramatist. Still more significant is his place in the
general development of the Elizabethan drama ; and, in particular,
his debt to the dramatists of revenge. Here, he falls into line
with that long succession of writers, beginning with Kyd, who took
up the tale of Seneca's Thyestes and Agamemnon and, during more
than twenty years, rang the changes upon the theme of vengeance
through every key and with every variety of accompaniment. To
explain his position, a slight sketch of the history of this theme,
as handled by Elizabethan dramatists, may be attempted.
In the older versions of the theme there are three essential
features, all of which, in the last resort, are inherited from Seneca
These are, that a murder has been committed that revenge is a
duty from which the next of kin cannot escape, and that this
duty is enforced by the ghost of the murdered man, which appears
at intervals to drive home the demand for blood. So it is with
The Spanish Tragedie; so with Antonios Revenge ; so, allowing
for certain modifications, with The Revenge of Bussy d Ambois
(published 1613) and The Second Maiden's Tragedy (licensed
1611)'; so, unless all indications are misleading, with the lost Hamlet
(in or before 1596), which has been attributed, on probable, but
not conclusive, grounds, to Kyd ; so, finally, with the Hamlet of
Shakespeare. The first change in the outward framework of the
story-in spirit, it need hardly be said that Shakespeare's master-
piece stands poles asunder from the crudities of Kyd, Marston and
the rest-seems to have been made by Chettle, whose Tragedy of
Hoffman belongs to the same year as Antonios Revenge? . The change
is twofold. The ghost disappears; and, what is far more significant,
the avenger of blood is no longer the hero, but the villain, of the
piece. Both innovations are repeated, with important modifica-
tions, in the next play of Marston, The Malcontent (1604, or earlier),
to which, indeed, it is quite possible that the credit of them
may
belong rather than to Hoffman. The modifications are as follows.
The murderer of the original version is replaced by a usurper who
drives the rightful prince into exile. This, necessarily, involves the
disappearance of the ghost. And revenge, though retained, is
retained in a form so softened that the avenger contents himself
with melting one of his enemies to repentance and dismissing the
other with magnanimous contempt.
It was at this point that Tourneur took up the tale. Reverting
to murder as the starting-point of his action, he entirely dispenses
1 As to this play see Ward, vol. 11, p. 672.
? See Henslowe's diary, 7 July, 29 December 1602.
>
## p. 179 (#197) ############################################
6
The White Divel
179
with the ghost and, in the very moment of victory, the cup of
triumph is dashed from the lips of his ‘revenger. It is clear that
he felt the theme of vengeance to be an outworn convention. It
is equally clear that he surrendered it with extreme reluctance.
The whole fabric of the piece is based on the assumption that
revenge is a binding duty. And, when the tables are turned, when
the performance of the duty is visited at the last moment with
condign punishment, it is inevitable that the reader should feel
himself defrauded. Never had a play so lame and impotent a
conclusion as this. And, for that reason, if for no other, it is a
relief to turn from The Revengers Tragoedie to The Atheist's
Tragedie. Here, at any rate, the central thought is consistently
maintained from beginning to end. Here, at any rate, the dramatist
flies without faltering to his mark. The innovation, which he had
been blindly feeling after in The Revengers Tragoedie, is here
boldly carried out. Vengeance is thrust down from the rank of
duties ; forgiveness is exalted in its stead. If the ghost of the
murdered man is restored to something of his former rights, it is
to cry not for revenge, but for mercy; to reiterate, with a fervour
more moral than dramatic, that 'vengeance is the Lord's. ' The
dramatic weakness of the change is obvious enough. But it is
significant as marking the final stage of the tragedies of revenge.
The White Divel, in all probability, was produced during the
very year in which The Atheist's Tragedie was published. At
first sight it might be taken for a reversion to the earlier type of
this class of drama. Revenge for innocent blood is once more the
main theme of the dramatist. It is presented, however, no longer
as a duty, but as a passion; and with the cry of 'wild justice'is
mingled the baser note of wounded pride. Our sympathies, again,
80 far from being with the avengers, are cast, rather, on the side of
their victim. The result of such changes is to reduce the motive
of vengeance to a secondary place. It supplies not the core of the
building, but its scaffolding, or little more. The vital interest
belongs not to the story—this, in truth, might have been told
more clearly-but to the characters who sustain it, and the
passions which are let loose in its course. One more proof is
thus furnished, if proof were needed, that the theme of revenge
was now losing its fascination; that the dramatist, even when
he professed to work on it, was now driven by an overmastering
instinct to degrade it from its original supremacy.
The same tendency appears still more clearly in The Dutchesse
Of Malfy. Here, again, revenge is the nominal theme. It is not,
12-2
## p. 180 (#198) ############################################
180
Tourneur and Webster
however, revenge for murder, but for an outrage on the insensate
pride of family; and it is reinforced by the yet more sordid
motive of avarice-a motive which had been carefully excluded
from the earlier play. The sympathies of the spectator, which,
in The White Divel, are somewhat divided, are, here, solely
and absolutely, with the victim. And, as if to mark the change
in the most glaring manner possible, the whole of the last act
is devoted to the nemesis which falls upon the avengers. The
dramatic interest suffers ; but the intention of the dramatist is
proved beyond all possibility of mistake. The upshot of all this
is that the motive of vengeance, already weakened in the earlier
drama, fades almost out of recognition in the latter; and that,
with The Dutchesse Of Malfy, revenge except in survivals so
obvious as the last act of Women beware Women-may be said
to disappear from among the dominant themes of Elizabethan
tragedy.
With all its great qualities, the first tragedy of Webster is not
without traces of immaturity. The crudeness of incident which
he had inherited from his forerunners, is not entirely purged away;
the plot is wanting in clearness; even the portraiture of the
heroine bears some marks of vacillation. Most, if not all, of these
weaknesses are absent from The Dutchesse Of Malfy. The plot of
this play is perfectly simple; the characters, if we except that of
Bosola, are drawn with an unfaltering hand; in unity of tone, the
play surpasses all others of the period, save those of Shakespeare.
As to the sources of this tragedy, and its date, there is little room
for discussion. The story is certainly taken, with many refinements,
from Painter's Palace of Pleasure, as that, in its turn, drew upon
the Histoires Tragiques of Belleforest, and this upon Bandello.
Crawford has proved that Sidney's Arcadia not only exercised a
deep influence upon the thought and language of the play, but
that it also furnished the hint, and more than the hint, of its most
highly wrought situation : that in which the duchess is persecuted
with every variety of physical and mental torture. It is also more
than probable that the echo song, which Webster had in mind
(act v, sc. 3), and which he turns to purposes of the highest
imaginative effect, is that of the Arcadia (book II) rather than
any other. The play of Lope de Vega", which may have been
written about the same time, has little in common with Webster's,
and can hardly have been known to him. The date of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy, again, can now be determined within very
1 El Mayordomo de la Duquesa de Amalfi.
## p. 181 (#199) ############################################
The Dutchesse Of Malfy
181
a
a
narrow limits. It was not printed until 1623. But, as the part of
Antonio is known to have been created by Ostler, the first per-
formance cannot have been later than 1614, the year of that actor's
death. It is true that the opening dialogue apparently refers to
the execution of Concini, maréchal d'Ancre, which took place in
April 1617, and speedily became known, through translations of
official documents, in this country. There is, however, no difficulty
in supposing that this passage was added by Webster some time
between that event and the date of publication. Indeed, if, as is
practically certain, the play described by Busino, chaplain to the
Venetian embassy, in February 1618, is The Dutchesse Of Malfy.
-the amours of a Cardinal, his solemn exchange of a churchman's
for a soldier's garb and his 'poisoning' of his sister are specifically
mentioned and, in spite of the slight inaccuracy, can hardly refer
to any incidents except those of our play-it may well be that the
addition was made for a revival of the play at the beginning of
that year.
In any case it is now certain that The Dutchesse Of
Malfy was composed within two or three years of The White
Divell.
The later play is a marked advance upon the earlier. The old
motives, as we have seen, are retained, but represented in a softer,
a more human, form; and the effect on the imagination is entirely
different. The interest is shifted from the avengers to the deed
which provokes their malice. The real theme of the drama is not . '
revenge, but the graciousness of a noble and loving woman, and
the unflinching firmness with which, in the face of nameless
tortures, she possesses her soul, undismayed by all until a brutal
deception convinces her that the bodies of her murdered child and
husband lie before her. The constancy of the victim, the remorse
which it wakens even in the base nature of her tormentor, are
painted with the fewest possible strokes, and each is charged to the
utmost with imaginative effect. After this, it must be admitted,
the interest flags; the fate of Antonio, the miserable end of the
persecutors and their accomplice, are in the nature of an anti-
climax. _Had the play ended with the fourth act, the tragic
impression would have been yet deeper and more harmonious than
it is. Yet it is easy to see how Webster was drawn into this
by-path. During this period—iņ that which followed it is strangely
different-he was filled with notions of nemesis and poetic justice.
Hence, the necessity for bringing the two brothers and Bosola to
condign punishment. He was also possessed with a gloomy con-
1 See Wallace, C. W. , letters to The Times, 2 and 4 October 1909.
## p. 182 (#200) ############################################
182
Tourneur and Webster
viction, perhaps partly inherited from Marston, of the corruption of
man, and particularly of such men as haunted courts. In the loves
of Julia and the cardinal, he found a text for this sermon too tempt-
ing to be passed by. Finally, he was strangely attracted towards
subtle intricacies of character; and, in the portrait of Bosola, he
strove to probe them to their depth. The general result of all
this is to deepen the gloom of the atmosphere still further, but, at
the same time, to blunt the edge of the tragic effect. The true
tragedy is with the duchess. When she is gone, what are Bosola
Dand Julia, what are Ferdinand and the cardinal, but hateful super-
fluities ? Even Antonio, beautiful as is the poetry which Webster
weaves around him, suffers eclipse when the sun, which gave him
,
Light and warmth, is quenched.
From the tragedies we pass to the closing period of Webster's
activity (1618 ? to his death). The plays which would seem to
belong to this period are five: The Guise (mentioned in the dedi-
cation to The Devils Law-case), and A Late Murther of the Sonne
upon the Mother (in partnership with Ford, 1624), both, unfortu-
nately, lost; The Devils Law-case, published in 1623; Appius and
Virginia, in 1654 ; and A Cure for a Cuckold, in 1661. None of
the three which survive approaches the level of the two tragedies.
All, however, contain occasional flashes of the genius which created
The White Divel and The Dutchesse Of Malfy, though rather of its
poetic, than its dramatic, quality. Save in Appius, which owes
much to the Roman tragedies of Shakespeare, Webster is now
working under quite other, and less inspiring, influences. With
him, as with other dramatists of the period, the star of Fletcher is
in the ascendant.
Appius and Virginia stands apart from the other plays, and
may conveniently be taken first. Its date cannot be fixed by either
external or internal evidence; a play of the name, however, is
mentioned in a list of dramas appropriated to the Lord Chamber-
lain's company (1639), and it may be Webster's. For his materials,
Webster seems to have used Painter's Palace of Pleasure, Livy
and, possibly, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Of his own invention,
apparently, are the plot of Appius for reducing Virginius to
poverty, the quarrel between Virginius and Icilius, the production
of Virginia’s body by the latter for the purpose of nerving Vir-
ginius to vengeance ; above all, the introduction of the clown
Corbulo and the pretentious advocate, the latter being a familiar
butt of the ridicule of Webster. The drama has a certain massive
simplicity, which is probably due to the influence of Shakespeare;
## p. 183 (#201) ############################################
The Devils Law-case
183
and the humorous element has been thought, perhaps rightly, to
point in the same direction. But the general effect is disappoint-
ing. The subject has always proved itself intractable upon the
stage. And not even the pure poetry and pathos of the father's
farewell his daughter can avail to put our sympathies entirely
on his side.
The two remaining plays have proved strangely baffling to the
critics; and that, no less in regard to source and date than to
intrinsic value. The Devils Law-case, as it stands, cannot have
been written before the latter part of 1620; for there is a clear
allusion' to an unhappy affray, in August 1619, with the Dutch in
the East Indies (not Amboina), news of which can hardly have
reached England till the autumn of the following year. There is a
suspicious resemblance in the central incident, the lying self-
slander of Leonora, to incidents in Fletcher's Spanish Curate and
The Faire Maide of the Inne. The latter, however, was not licensed
for acting until January 1626; and it contains an explicit reference
to the massacre of Amboina, which did not become known in
England till May 1624. It can hardly, therefore, have served as
material for Webster in or before 1623. The Spanish Curate,
licensed October 1622, is a more likely source, or Gerardo, itself
the source of Fletcher's play, which was translated into English in
that year. It has been urged, though this seems less probable, that
Webster may have taken the hint from a like incident in Lust's
Dominion, which, probably, dates back to 1600. Other sources of
Webster's incidents are Goulart's Histoires Admirables (2nd ed.
1606), which had already been used by him in the Dutchesse Of
Malfy, and which suggested the cure by stabbing in this play;
perhaps, also, the trials for sorcery conducted in France 1610–11.
An account of these, by Michaelis, had been translated into English
in 1613—the highly protestant introduction may well have appealed
to Webster—and they seem to be alluded to more than once in this
play (especially at the end of act iv, where the reference to France
is quite irrelevant) and may even have suggested its title. It is not
impossible that the very name of Romelio may be an adaptation of
Romillon, who took a leading part in these grim investigations.
But, whatever the exact sources of this puzzling drama, its whole
spirit betrays the influence of Fletcher. This appears in the romantic
cast of the incidents, in the irresponsibility of the characters, and
in the nonchalant charity of the author towards the insufferable
baseness of Romelio. Fletcher's influence, however, is conspicuously
1 Act Iv, 80. 2.
2 Cf. ante, Appendix to chap. v.
## p. 184 (#202) ############################################
184
Tourneur and Webster
absent from the rhythm, unless the marked increase of fluency, as
compared with the two tragedies, may be attributed to this source.
On the whole, however, there is more substance, and more eleva-
tion of spirit, in Webster's tragicomedy than in most of Fletcher's.
As a drama, in spite of obvious blemishes, the former deserves
more praise than it has commonly received. And there are touches
of poetry, as well as of metrical effect, which worthily recall The
Dutchesse Of Malfy.
A Cure for a Cuckold is assigned by its original editor to the joint
workmanship of Webster and William Rowley. Webster's author-
ship, though it has sometimes been questioned, is attested by the
style, as well as by not a few echoes of phrasing. If the underplot,
which gives title to the play, is from his hand, we might be tempted
to see in it a return to the inspiration of Dekker. Yet if any
share belongs to Rowley, it can hardly be other than these scenes.
And the question is too speculative to be profitably discussed.
As to the influence of Fletcher on the main theme, there can be
no manner of doubt; and it is yet more marked than in The
Devils Law-case. The action is yet more full of startling and
romantic incident; the shiftings of mood and purpose are still
more sudden ; the stress thrown on scenic effect, at the expense of
character, is still stronger. That the plot is modelled on anything
to be found in Fletcher, cannot be asserted. The Little French
Lawyerl is the only play which, in this respect, offers any analogy;
and the analogy is not very close. On the other hand, there is the
strongest resemblance between the plot of Webster's play and that
of Massinger's The Parliament of Love (licensed November 1624).
The central incident of both is a duel imposed on a man, without
reason, by his mistress—an incident, the germ of which is to be
found in The Dutch Courtezan of Webster's early partner,
Marston? And, considering Webster's docility, it is hard to resist
the conclusion that the debt, probably, was on his side. Nor is there
anything against this supposition save the opinion, which, after all,
has no evidence to support it, that Webster died in 1625 (August-
September) and that he worked too slowly to have produced a
play in the interval. The point, however, is not of first importance.
For the influence of Massinger, at any rate in his earlier work, bore
entirely in the same direction as that of Fletcher; and the younger
poet may fairly be called the disciple of the elder. Thus, the last
play of Webster carries on the tradition of that which had gone
before it. Alike in plot and in general spirit, it belongs, directly
i Cf. ante, chap. v.
? Ci. ante, chap. II.
## p. 185 (#203) ############################################
Webster's Dramatic Genius
185
or indirectly, to the school of Fletcher, and reflects his influence.
The seriousness of the two tragedies has completely vanished ;
and it is ill replaced by the honest highwayman, the seafight,
the groundless jealousies and the no less groundless returns to
reason, which form the staple of A Cure for a Cuckold. In
the graver part of the play, there is only one scene, that on the
sands of Calais, where the genius of Webster can be said worthily
to assert itself. And the comic scenes, which are more likely to
be the work of Rowley, are far better sustained than the main
plot with which they are interwoven. Fletcher, with all his
brightness and poetic feeling, has much to answer for; and no-
where was his influence less happily put forth than upon the
essentially serious genius of Webster.
Of The Thracian Wonder, published in 1661 by the same editor
(Kirkman) as A Cure for a Cuckold, there is no need to speak.
No one, except that editor, has ever supposed that Webster can
have had a hand in it. A word will suffice as to Monuments of
Honor, a city pageant, or A Monumental Column, an elegy on
the death of prince Henry (1613), the only poem of length by
Webster which has come down to us. It contains a few fine lines,
more than one of which were subsequently transferred to his
dramasan apologue conceived in the same vein as that of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy, and a few turns of thought and phrase which
recall the author's spiritual affinity with Donne.
It remains only to ask: what is the secret of Webster's genius ?
What are the qualities which give the distinctive seal to his
imaginative creations ? For the answer to this question we need
hardly go beyond the two tragedies. His later works offer
reflections, more or less faint, more or less intermittent, of the
qualities we associate with his genius. But the authentic image,
the clear-cut features, the colour and the harmony, are here
alone.
! First, then, within somewhat narrow limits, Webster shows
a profound knowledge of human character and a keen sense of the
tragic issues of human life. Vittoria and the duchess are among
the great creations of the Elizabethan drama. Setting Shakespeare
aside, there is no character of that drama which surpasses them in
vividness; only two or three which approach them. Nor, in the
duchess, at any rate, is there any marked quality to lay hold of. It
is by atmosphere and temperament, by her sweet womanliness and
unstudied dignity, that she becomes known to us. And these are
just the things which are most impalpable, which only the highest
## p. 186 (#204) ############################################
186
Tourneur and Webster
genius can bring home to the imagination. No less important,
perhaps even more so, is the sense of tragic issues. And, here
again, Webster comes nearer to Shakespeare than any other of the
Elizabethans, with the possible exception of Ford. Shakespeare
found the deepest tragedy in the resistance of inborn heroism to all
assaults from without; in the triumph of the inner self, when all
outward happiness is dashed in pieces. So it is in Hamlet, King
Lear and Othello. And something of the same effect is attained
in The White Divel and The Dutchesse Of Malfy. It is attained,
also, in Ford's The Broken Heart.
Webster, however, is not only a great tragic dramatist. He is
also a great poet. And the same sombre cast of thought which
made him the one appears also in the other. His imagination
loves to linger round thoughts and symbols of mortality, to take
shape in 'strange images of death. ' The grim horrors of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy will at once recur to the memory; the yew tree
of Vittoria spreads its gloom over the whole drama. Yet nothing
is more remarkable than the thrift with which Webster uses this
perilous material. His reserve presents the strongest contrast
with the wild waste of the other dramatists of blood. Everything
in the two tragedies is subordinated to imaginative ends ; every-
thing is presented with the self-restraint of the artist. Nowhere
is the essentially poetic genius of the dramatist more manifest
than here; nowhere does his kinship with all that is best in the
other arts, particularly that of the painter, appear more plainly.
The latter point has hardly received due attention. Yet no reader
can fail to notice the eagerness with which this poet provides a
pictorial setting for the action of his drama; the pains he takes to
imprint upon the eye the countenance, gestures and bearing of
the characters in his most significant scenes. The opening scene
of The Dutchesse Of Malfy is devoted largely to this purpose.
The same appears in the trial scene of The White Divel. And other
instances, mainly from The Dutchesse Of Malfy, will readily suggest
themselves. It is doubtful whether this quality is so persistently
marked in any other dramatist, with the single exception of
Marston. And no one will claim that the pictures of Marston
approach those of Webster in imaginative genius. Allied with
this, perhaps, is his love of connecting a whole train of thought
with a tangible image, of embodying his reflections on life in
symbols which, at the first moment, may seem insignificant or
repulsive, but which acquire a curious fascination from the sur-
roundings in which he places them. It was this that made him,
## p. 187 (#205) ############################################
Webster's Imaginative Power 187
like Donne or Sir Thomas Browne, a lover of strange learning or
forgotten fragments of erudition, and led him, like Burton, to ran-
sack the dustbeaps of antiquarian research. The instinct is typical
of his age; but no man put it to uses more imaginative. With this
peculiar cast of imagination, the style of Webster is in marvellous
accord: compressed and pregnant; full, at once, both of grace and
of severity; capable of sudden flashes—'Cover her face; mine eyes
dazzle ; she died young'-capable, also, of a sustained musical
cadence, as in Cornelia’s dirge, or the wonderful lyric of Leonora.
## p. 188 (#206) ############################################
CHAPTER VIII
FORD AND SHIRLEY
ONE of the most significant facts in connection with the two
poets who close the list of the major dramatists of the great period is
that their work was produced in the years following the publication
of the first collected edition of the plays of Shakespeare. Previous
playwrights had studied and imitated their predecessors; but, for
the most part, such study had been carried on in the theatre.
Gradually, the drama had been winning acknowledgment of its
right to be regarded as literature, and the appearance of the first
folio of Shakespeare, in 1623, may fairly be taken as marking
the achievement of victory. The result of this new attitude was
twofold: first, the works of the master and his contemporaries
could now be brooded over and assimilated in the study, and,
secondly, the younger playwrights wrote with a view to being
read as well as heard and seen. Evidences of the coming of the
change are, of course, to be found before this date, certainly as
early as the Jonson folio of 1616; but Ford and Shirley stand out
as belonging exclusively to this literary' stage. Ford is never
tired of insisting that he was a gentleman of letters, not a theatrical
hack; and Shirley wrote at least one closet drama. In dealing
with their works, then, we are discussing not merely the last
phase of Elizabethan theatrical activity, but, also, the first chapter
of what may be called, in a special sense, modern dramatic
literature.
John Ford was a native of Ilsington in Devonshire, where
he was baptised on 17 April 1586. On his father's side, he belonged
to an old landed family, and, on his mother's, he was related to
lord chief justice Popham. He may have studied at Oxford, since
there is a record of the matriculation of a John Ford at Exeter
college in 1601 ; but his university career must, in any case, have
been short, as he became a member of the Middle Temple in the
November of the following year. Further information about his
## p. 189 (#207) ############################################
Ford's Non-dramatic Productions
189
career is confined to what can be gathered from the dedications
of his works, and from the exchange of commendatory verses of
the conventional sort. After the publication of his last play,
in 1639, he disappears from view. He seems to have been a man
a
of a somewhat melancholy temperament, independent in his
attitude towards the public taste, and capable of espousing un-
popular causes.
An instance of this last named quality appears in his first
publication, Fame's Memorial (1606), an elegy on the death of
Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire, second husband of the famous
Penelope Devereux. No reason is known why Ford should have
chosen to publish a eulogy of a man who had died out of favour at
court; but the fact is noteworthy as hinting an interest in a story
which, as we shall see, may not improbably have suggested to him
part of the plot of one of his most famous plays. The poem itself !
is long and tiresome, smooth in versification, abstract in diction,
often obscure and affected in style.
His romantic tendencies were further displayed in the same
year in his Honor Triumphant ; or the Peeres Challenge. In
the prose part of this pamphlet, Ford supplies a highflown defence
of four 'positions' which four young nobles had undertaken to
support in a tournament in honour of the visit to England of king
Christian IV of Denmark. The positions were that knights in
ladies' service have no free will; that beauty is the maintainer
of valour; that fair lady was never false ; that perfect lovers are
only wise. The triteness of the matter, the prevailing hyperbole and
the lingering traces of Euphuism that mark the style, would hardly
call for mention here, were it not that, in the very theses which
Ford is half seriously upholding, we find a significant connection
with the motives underlying some of his most important mature
work. What we must note is that Ford, at the age of twenty, is
writing prose and verse highly romantic in spirit, and involving
a tolerant, if not an admiring, attitude towards conduct entirely at
variance with conventional standards. The Monarches Meeting,
appended to this pamphlet, is an early instance of the stanza of
Gray's Elegy.
Ford's non-dramatic work closes with A Line of Life (1620),
a didactic tract on conduct, apparently influenced by Bacon's
Essays, but lacking their pithiness and epigrammatic vigour.
It may be significant of Ford's personal attitude towards religion
that this serious lay sermon is purely pagan in inspiration and
in spirit.
## p. 190 (#208) ############################################
190
Ford and Shirley
a
Omitting consideration of works no longer extant, we find
Ford's earliest attempts at dramatic writing made in collaboration
with Dekker. The Witch of Edmonton is based on the story
of Elizabeth Sawyer, who was executed for witchcraft in 1621,
and it was probably written soon after that date. The respective
shares of Dekker and Ford in this production are still unsettled,
perhaps William Rowley, too, had a share in it'; but the direct-
ness of the moral lesson conveyed, the witch plot with its comedy
and its realism in the treatment of humble life and the picture
of the yeoman's household, are as characteristic of Dekker as
they are unlike anything certainly Ford's. On the other hand,
Frank, whose weakness and crime bring about the main tragedy,
finds his defence in laying the blame on Fate in the fashion of
Ford's other sinners; and in the scenes where this character is
prominent, possibly the larger part of Ford's share is to be
found. The play is a domestic tragedy of great impressiveness, its
a
chief flaw being the failure of the attempt to join the two plots.
The Sun's-Darling: A Moral Masque (acted 1624, but not
published till 1656) is generally believed to have been originally
written by Dekker and revised, with additions, by Ford?
The first independent drama printed by Ford was The Lover's
Melancholy, acted in 1628 and published in the following year.
This somewhat slow-moving romance turns on the melancholy of
a prince grieving over the disappearance of his sweetheart. The
girl, whose loss has also deprived her father of his senses and
delayed the marriage of her sister, is present throughout in the
disguise of a man, and the love she inspires in the princess is,
in turn, the obstacle that prevents her cousin from winning that
lady. The discovery of the lost girl's identity, which might as well
have occurred in the first act, solves all the entanglements and
permits a happy ending; but this discovery is delayed in order to
enable Ford to occupy his scenes with a psychological analysis
of the 'lover's melancholy. ' This analysis is strongly influenced
by Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, from which are directly
taken the materials for the Masque of Melancholy in the third
act. The account of the finding of the disguised girl is reminiscent
of Philaster, and is made the occasion for the telling of the story of
the nightingale's death from Strada's Prolusiones. The main plot
has recently been traced by Stuart Pratt Sherman to Daniel's
Hymens' Triumph, and reminiscences of Hamlet, Lear and other
Shakespearean plays are obvious. In spite of all these borrowings,
1
1 Cf. ante, chap. II.
3 See ibid.
## p. 191 (#209) ############################################
The Broken Heart
191
and of the fact that many of the characters belong to well recognised
stage types, the play afforded the contemporary observer abundant
evidence of the advent of a new dramatist. The delicacy shown in
the treatment of emotion, the sweetness of the verse and the
happiness of the phrasing pointed to a poet who only needed
discipline in stagecraft to achieve distinction.
Ford acquired this technical skill with wonderful rapidity, if
we are correct in supposing The Broken Heart (printed in 1633)
to have been his next play. The plot of this tragedy shows much
originality, and it is conducted through many intricacies to a highly
effective catastrophe. The princess Calantha loves and is loved
by Ithocles, a brilliant young warrior, who had forced his sister
Penthea, in spite of her love for Orgilus, into a marriage with the
jealous Bassanes. Penthea remains faithful to her husband to
the despair of her lover, and Orgilus, repulsed, turns to seek
revenge. Penthea goes mad and dies, and, beside her dead body,
Orgilus causes to be placed a chair in which he induces Ithocles to
sit, and which closes on him and holds him helpless while Orgilus
stabs him to death. In the last act, news is brought to Calantha
in the midst of revels at court of the death of her father, then
of those of Penthea and of Ithocles; but she dances on to the end.
Orgilus is condemned, and, in the final scene, Calantha, before the
altar, puts a wedding ring on the finger of the dead Ithocles, hands
over her newly inherited crown to the prince of Argos and dies of
a broken heart. The last two scenes, if somewhat deliberately
theatrical, are among the most beautiful and memorable in the
drama of the period. No source has been found for the story
of Calantha, though suggestions from Sidney's Arcadia seem to
have been used throughout. In the prologue, it is implied that
the plot has a foundation in fact, and Sherman has ingeniously
argued that, in the situation of Penthea, the dramatist consciously
treated the story of that Stella whom Ford had long before sought
to justify in Fame's Memorial. Burton's influence is again dis-
cernible in the treatment of the jealousy of Bassanes ; but, on
the whole, this play is much less imitative than its predecessor.
Since something will have to be said on the subject of Ford's
dubious morality, it is only just to point out that, in this play,
Penthea reaches a lofty standard in her perception of the essential
unchastity of a loveless marriage. Yet, as we shall see, her con-
viction is not unconnected with the theory that undermines the
morality of the later plays——the dogma of the supremacy and
inevitableness of passion.
## p. 192 (#210) ############################################
192
Ford and Shirley
The influence of Sidney and Shakespeare persists in the next
tragedy, Loves Sacrifice (printed 1633). Illicit passion is here the
dominant theme. The duke of Pavy has married the beautiful
but humbly born Bianca, who is loved by his favourite Fernando.
The duchess's virtuous resistance to Fernando's suit leads him
to change his passion to friendship, and his strength is soon tested
by the weakening of Bianca, who comes at night to his chamber
and offers herself to him, purposing to kill herself afterwards.
