Philip Massinger

By

A. H. Cruickshank

Sometime Scholar and Fellow of New College, Oxford

Canon of Durham, and Professor of Greek and Classical Literature, in the University of Durham

Oxford

Basil Blackwell, Broad Street

1920

Contents

[pg i]

Dedication

Inscribed To
Frederic G. Kenyon
In Memory Of A Friendship
Of Forty-Four Years

Preface

In confessing that the war made me write a book I do not stand alone. Sensible as I am of its defects, I trust it will help to spread the knowledge of Massinger's works, and will invite others to deal on similar lines with the other dramatists of the great age. The design widened as it went on, and was then contracted. In the end I thought it wiser to confine myself to digesting the knowledge which I had of Massinger's text.

The Clarendon Press undertook to publish this book, but as, owing to war-work, they could fix no date, I asked them to release me. There would be no occasion to mention this fact were it not that it was owing to the original arrangement that I received much valuable help and advice from Mr. Percy Simpson. Many other scholars and friends have kindly aided me in various matters, among whom I should like to mention: Mr. J. C. Bailey, Mr. P. James Bayfield (photographer to Dulwich College), Dr. A. C. Bradley, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. A. H. Bullen, Mr. A. K. Cook, Professor W. Macneile Dixon, Mr. H. H. E. Gaster, the Dean of Gloucester, Mr. E. Gosse, Sir W. H. Hadow, Archdeacon Hobhouse, Sir Sidney Lee, Mr. C. Leudesdorf, Dr. Falconer Madan, Mr. A. W. Pollard, Dr. P. G. Smyly, the Master of University College, Durham, Sir A. Ward, and Sir George F. Warner. Last, but not least, I thank my wife for her skilful and ready help with the proofs.

A. H. Cruickshank.

Philip Massinger

It is interesting to revise the literary judgments of youth; it is pleasant to find them confirmed by a more mature judgment. This train of thought has led me to read Massinger once more; and as I read, the desire arose to treat his works, to the best of my ability, with the attention to detail which modern scholarship requires. A great amount of valuable work has been done in the last fifty years on the writers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages; but no one, perhaps with the exception of Boyle, has applied to Massinger the care which Shakspere, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, to name no others, have secured. There is no reason why any of our great dramatists should be treated with less respect than those of Greece and Rome, of France and Germany.

The first thing to be done was to facilitate references by numbering the lines of Massinger's plays;[1] the next was to investigate once more the facts of his life, and to correlate them with the period in which he lived; the third was to read typical plays of the period, so as to arrive at a just estimate of our author.

His life will not detain us long. We know far less of him than we do of Shakspere. None of his sayings have been preserved to us; hardly any incidents of his career. His father was house-steward to two of the Earls of [pg 002] Pembroke, first to Henry Herbert, then to William Herbert,[2] Shakspere's friend. The elder Massinger was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and for several years a Member of Parliament. Philip Massinger, the dramatist, was born at Salisbury in 1584. In 1602 he went up to St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, where his father had been an undergraduate. We are told by A. à Wood that he went at Lord Pembroke's expense, but that he did not work hard at the University, and took no degree.[3] In or after the year 1606 he seems to have gone to London, and to have speedily engaged in the work of writing plays.[4] The wide reading which his plays presuppose probably began at Oxford.

It was the custom in those days, as in the time of Plautus at Rome,[5] for playwrights to revise old plays; and still more was it usual for them to collaborate.[6] We find Massinger at work in this way with Field,[7] Daborne,[8] [pg 003] Dekker, Tourneur, and above all, with Fletcher. With the latter he worked from 1613 to 1623. In that year, for some unknown reason, he seceded from the service of the leading company of actors of the day, who went by the name of the King's men, and wrote unaided three plays for the Queen's men, The Parliament of Love, The Bondman, and The Renegado. After Fletcher's death, in 1625, Massinger rejoined the King's men, and wrote for them until his death in 1640.

It has been surmised from the vivid colouring of The Virgin Martyr[9] and the plot of The Renegado,[10] where a Jesuit plays a leading part and is portrayed in a pleasing light, that Massinger turned Roman Catholic. The evidence for this theory is quite inadequate. Indeed, we might as well argue from Gazet's language that the author followed the Anglican via media.[11] Plots derived from French, Spanish, and Italian sources would naturally contain Roman Catholic machinery. We might as well infer that Shakspere was a Roman Catholic because Silvia goes to Friar Patrick's cell,[12] or because Friar Laurence is prominent in Romeo and Juliet.[13]

We know that Massinger lived a life of comparative poverty; on one occasion we find him, with two other dramatic authors, asking for a loan of £5.[14]

The person who thus obliged the three writers was Philip Henslowe, a dyer, theatrical lessee, and speculator, who acted as a kind of broker between actors and authors, buying from the one and selling to the other; we still possess his diary, containing information as to the prices which he gave for plays.[15] The prologue of The Guardian shows us that for two years before 1633 Massinger had been under a cloud, and had abstained from writing. Two of his plays had failed in 1631—The Emperor of the East[16] and Believe as You List[17]—so he appears to have put forth his full strength in The Guardian.

The dedications of Massinger's plays which have been preserved show that he was often dependent for support on the leaders of what he once or twice calls “the nobility.”[18]

The connexion of the poet with the family of which his father was the loyal and trusted servant has been exaggerated by some;[19] in the dedication of The Bondman, written in 1623, to Philip, Earl of Montgomery,[20] the poet distinctly states that though the Earl had helped the play at its first performance by his “liberal suffrages” yet he was personally unknown to him.[21] Amongst others to whom we find dedications is George Harding, Baron Berkeley, to whom Webster inscribed The Duchess of Malfi. It is pleasant to read in the dedication of The Picture “to my honoured and selected friends of the Noble Society of the Inner Temple” that Massinger received “frequent bounties” from them.

The plays give us no clear evidence that Massinger ever travelled abroad,[22] though such a passage as The Great [pg 006] Duke of Florence, II., 2, 5-21, rather suggests a visit to Italy. Nor have we any ground for supposing that he was, like Shakspere, an actor, unless indeed an obscure reference in the Dublin poem to the Earl of Pembroke be so interpreted.[23] In London he lived on the Bankside, Southwark. The story of his death is told us by our gossiping old friend Anthony à Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses.[24] Massinger went to bed one night well, and [pg 007] was found dead the next morning. He was buried at St. Saviour's on March 18th, 1639/40.[25] The funeral was “accompanied by comedians,” a phrase which seems to show that his professional friends did him honour at the last; he is described in the monthly accounts of St. Saviour's as “a stranger”—that is to say, a non-parishioner. His intimate friend Sir Aston Cokaine tells us that he shared the grave of his friend John Fletcher;[26] and in 1896 a window in the south aisle of the nave of Southwark Cathedral was unveiled in his honour by Sir Walter Besant.[27]

What was the atmosphere in which Massinger lived? The days of James I. and Charles I. were less heroic than those of Elizabeth. In foreign politics England intervened once or twice in an ineffective way, and a good deal of sympathy was shown, much of it in a practical fashion, for the cause of the Protestant King of Bohemia. Gardiner[28] has pointed out that Charles I. gave permission to the Marquis of Hamilton to carry over volunteers in aid of Gustavus Adolphus just as James I. had allowed [pg 008] Vere to carry over volunteers to the Palatinate. Hamilton sailed in July, 1631, and The Maid of Honour was printed in 1632. The whole plot of this play recalls the relations of England to the Protestant cause on the Continent. Thus, William. Lord Craven, to whom Ford's Broken Heart is dedicated, and who was knighted at the age of seventeen, after his “valiant adventures” in the Netherlands under Henry, Prince of Orange, went to the assistance of Gustavus Adolphus in 1631, when only twenty-two years old.

Wars in the Low Countries are vaguely referred to in various passages, as, e.g., in The Fatal Dowry:[29]

Novall Jun. Oh, fie upon him, how he wears his clothes!

As if he had come this Xmas. from S. Omer's

To see his friends, and return'd after Twelfth-tide.

The date of the play is uncertain, but it must have been written some considerable time before being printed in 1632.[30] In The New Way to pay Old Debts Lord Lovell “has purchas'd a fair name in the wars.”[31] In The Fatal Dowry, The Picture, and The Unnatural Combat, we have the familiar type of the brave soldier who is disregarded in time of peace, and has come down to poverty and old clothes.

In the wider world of Europe the Turk and the Algerine pirate are still grim realities enough to form an effective scenic background.[32] Indeed, it was not so very long since the Battle of Lepanto. We find constant references to galley-slaves,[33] to the slave market,[34] and to apostates to Islam.[35] In the opening scene of The Picture the soldier husband parts from his wife on the frontier of Bohemia “not distant from the Turkish camp above five leagues.” One of the objections urged against the new custom of fighting duels is that thereby lives are lost which might have done service against the Turk.[36] The age of chivalry has its faint reflection in schemes to “redeem Christian slaves chain'd in the Turkish servitude” by force of arms, and in the prowess of the Knights of Malta.[37] The wealth and power of Turkey are taken for [pg 010] granted. When Malefort senior vows vengeance on Montreville, he cries out:

The Turkish Empire offer'd for his ransom

Should not redeem his life.[38]

At home we find the vices of a prolonged peace lending opportunity for some easy satire. On the whole, we may say that we do not learn very much about our country from the poet which we could not find in the other playwrights of the day. Let us rapidly put together some of his references. There were two Englands at this time, drifting inevitably apart, only to clash in fratricidal war under Charles I. The drama was becoming less and less national, more and more an affair of aristocratic patronage. Massinger does not often refer to the Puritans;[39] there is nothing so amusing in his plays as the passage in Fletcher's Fair Maid of the Inn, where the Pedant solicits the advice of Forobosco the quack about “erecting four new sects of religion at Amsterdam.”[40] The fashionable love of astrology is satirized in The City Madam. The England of Massinger's plays is an England which loves expense,[41] amusements, Greek [pg 011] wines,[42] masques,[43] new clothes,[44] and foreign fashions.[45] London is a great port, with trade to the Indies and aspirations after the “North passage.” The jealousy of the City and the Court, the ostentations of the one and the refinement of the other, point the moral of The City Madam.[46] The high-spirited 'prentices of the City of [pg 012] London take the law into their own hands in days when there are no police,[47] and their vices are satirized after the manner of Ben Jonson in the same play. Horse-play, such as tossing in a blanket, is considered a great joke.[48] The balladmonger so often referred to in Shakspere is much in evidence,[49] though indeed it was an age in which everyone wrote poetry.[50] In rural England we find the possibility of an unscrupulous local tyrant, such as is depicted to us in Massinger's masterpiece, Sir Giles Overreach, aided by his jackal, Mr. Justice Greedy.[51] That our poet had a keen eye for social evils, for the man who sells food at famine prices, the encloser of commons, the usurer, the worker of iron, the cheating tradesman, is [pg 013] clear from a passage in The Guardian.[52] The beautiful description in the same play of the amusements of country life, the hunting and the hawking, with which Durazzo seeks to console his love-sick ward Caldoro,[53] probably takes one back to Massinger's own boyhood in Wiltshire. As we should expect, there is a good deal of riding in the country scenes.[54] The characters of Sir John Frugal, the successful merchant, and Mr. Plenty, the country gentleman,[55] show us that the “John Bull” type of Englishman existed in those days.

The temptation to give a back-hand blow to one's own country in the course of a plot laid abroad is obvious and irresistible; where Shakspere had set the example others were sure to follow,[56] and Massinger does not spare the female sex of England. To judge by the passage in The Renegado,[57] the women of his day loved expense and luxury, and were very independent in their attitude to their husbands.[58] The humiliation of Lady Frugal and her two daughters after their extravagant ambitions is the point of The City Madam. The contrast between a uxorious husband and an imperious wife is one of Massinger's favourite effects.[59] Donusa's speech in her own [pg 014] defence in The Renegado might have been written by a suffragette of our own day.[60]

We do not get much direct evidence as to the characteristics of the playwright's audiences; Dr. Bradley has some good remarks on this subject.[61] “Nor is it credible that an appreciation of the best things was denied to the mob, which doubtless loved what we should despise; but appears also to have admired what we admire, and to have tolerated more poetry than most of us can stomach;” “the mass of the audience must have liked excitement, the open exhibition of violent and bloody deeds, and the intermixture of seriousness and mirth.” Dr. Bradley points out elsewhere[62] that the Elizabethan actor probably spoke more rapidly than our modern actors. This would make soliloquies less tedious.

To turn to the politics of the age; the rift between the dynasty and the nation grew wider as the century advanced. Though Massinger died before the days of the Long Parliament, we can imagine that he would have been one of those who eventually fought under protest for the King. We find evidence in his plays for supposing that he belonged to the Conservative Opposition, like his patron Philip, the fourth Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. [pg 015] He was a lover of liberty, and there are one or two indications that his plays offended the strict ideas of Charles I.'s censorship.

Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused on January 11th, 1630/31, to license one of his plays[63] because “it did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian King of Portugal by Philip II., and there being a peace sworn 'twixt the Kings of England and Spain.”[64] The same worthy records that King Charles I. himself read another of his plays,[65] while staying at Newmarket, and wrote against one passage, “This is too insolent, and to be changed.” The passage, which is put into the mouth of a King of Spain, runs as follows:

Monies! we'll raise supplies what way we please

And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which

We'll mulct you, as we think fit. The Caesars

In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws

But what their swords did ratify; the wives

And daughters of the senators bowing to

Their will as deities.[66]

These lines clearly reflect on the autocratic methods which prevailed in England from 1629 to 1640.

There is much in Timoleon's speeches in the senate[67] which seems to contain covert references to the England [pg 016] of the day, and notably in lines 203-213, where the unprepared state of the army and navy is referred to.

It has been thought with much probability that the Duke of Buckingham is satirized in the slight sketch of Gisco in The Bondman,[68] and in the more fully drawn character of Fulgentio in The Maid of Honour:[69]

Adorni. Pray you, sir, what is he?

Astutio. A gentleman, yet no lord. He hath some drops

Of the king's blood running in his reins, derived

Some ten degrees off. His revenue lies

In a narrow compass, the king's ear; and yields him

Every hour a fruitful harvest. Men may talk

Of three crops in a year in the Fortunate Islands,

Or profit made by wool; but, while there are suitors,

His sheepshearing, nay, shaving to the quick

Is in every quarter of the moon, and constant.

In the time of trussing a point, he can undo

Or make a man; his play or recreation

Is to raise this up, or pull down that, and though

He never yet took orders, makes more bishops

In Sicily than the Pope himself.

The grumbling of the professional soldier against the royal favourite inspires a passage in The Duke of Milan.[70] A similar freedom of speech is found in The Maid of Honour; for instance, in the following passages:

Gasparo. When you know what 'tis,

You will think otherwise; no less will do it

Than fifty thousand crowns.

Camiola. A pretty sum,

The price weighed with the purchase; fifty thousand!

To the king 'tis nothing. He that can spare more

To his minion for a masque, cannot but ransom

Such a brother at a million.[71]

Camiola. With your leave, I must not kneel, sir,

While I reply to this, but thus rise up

In my defence, and tell you, as a man

(Since, when you are unjust, the deity,

Which you may challenge as a king, parts from you,)

'Twas never read in holy writ, or moral,

That subjects on their loyalty, were obliged

To love their sovereign's vices; your grace, sir,

To such an undeserver is no virtue.[72]

There are also passages in The Emperor of the East which seem to attack the Government of the day and its agents.[73] I will quote the chief of these as a specimen of honest indignation:

Pulcheria. How I abuse

This precious time! Projector, I treat first

Of you and your disciples; you roar out,

All is the king's, his will above his laws;

And that fit tributes are too gentle yokes

For his poor subjects; whispering in his ear,

If he would have their fear, no man should dare

To bring a salad from his country garden,

Without the paying gabel; kill a hen,

Without excise; and that if he desire

To have his children or his servants wear

Their heads upon their shoulders, you affirm

In policy 'tis fit the owner should

Pay for them by the poll[74]; or, if the prince wants

A present sum he may command a city

Impossibilities, and for non-performance

Compel it to submit to any fine

His officers shall impose. Is this the way

To make our emperor happy? Can the groans

Of his subjects yield him music? Must his thoughts

Be wash'd with widows' and wrong'd orphans' tears,

Or his power grow contemptible?[75]

The Englishman's love of liberty inspires a vigorous speech delivered by the British slave in The Virgin Martyr.[76]

Further, the impatience which Englishmen felt from time to time at the poor part played by their country in the Thirty Years' War is reflected in The Maid of Honour. Bertoldo there gets leave from the King of Sicily to go to help the beleaguered Duke of Urbin. He is, however, disavowed by the crafty, peace-loving king. In the debate Bertoldo describes Sicily in language which might easily be applied to England, and then proceeds in an eloquent passage to refer to England's glorious naval tradition in the past:

Bertoldo. If examples

May move you more than arguments, look on England,

The empress of the European isles,

And unto whom alone ours yields precedence:

When did she flourish so, as when she was

The mistress of the ocean, her navies

Putting a girdle round about the world?

When the Iberian quaked, her worthies named;

And the fair flower-de-luce grew pale, set by

The red rose and the white! Let not our armour

Hung up, or our unrigg'd Armada make us

Ridiculous to the late poor snakes, our neighbours,

Warm'd in our bosoms, and to whom again

We may be terrible.[77]

Here, at any rate, Massinger differs from Shakspere, who makes no reference to the exploits of our sailors; indeed, it would seem that, like Trafalgar, the defeat of the Armada had no significance for its own generation.[78] But we must not forget that Massinger was the bosom [pg 019] friend of Fletcher, in whose plays sailors occur again and again.[79]

The fact that Massinger was a Cavalier “Radical,” a free lance and grumbler of the Opposition, may in part explain his struggles and his poverty. His natural patrons may have looked askance at his independent attitude, so alien to the passive obedience preached by Fletcher. But, whatever were his politics, it is clear that he was no Puritan. Brought up in close contact with a noble house, educated at Oxford, and well versed in the classics,[80] as many allusions in his works testify, he shows alike in his merits and his faults the Cavalier mind. To this extent he may be judged “felix opportunitate mortis,” for of all sections of the nation those whose hearts were with the King, and their reason with the Opposition, had the hardest part to play after 1640.

In the department of literature the talent of the country had concentrated itself more and more on play-writing. Among Massinger's contemporaries we note Jonson, Chapman, Fletcher, Beaumont, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, Rowley, Tourneur, Shirley—all keen and able dramatists. Massinger, in his grasp of stagecraft, his flexible metre, his desire in the sphere of ethics to exploit both vice and virtue, is typical of an age which had much culture, but which, without being exactly corrupt, lacked moral fibre.

His plays may be divided into three classes: first, those which have come down to us under his name; secondly, [pg 020] those which he wrote with Fletcher or other authors; and, thirdly, those which have disappeared. It is not easy to draw the border-line between the first and second classes. In the last forty years the students of English literature have devoted much attention to verse and other tests, and there are those who profess themselves competent to decide which parts of a composite play were written by the various collaborators. It is clear that the use of these tests requires caution. An author may sometimes experiment in the style of somebody else; it has been held that Shakspere wrote Henry VIII in the manner of Fletcher, his younger rival; and Delius was of opinion that The Two Noble Kinsmen is due to two imitators, one of Shakspere and one of Fletcher. Boyle speaks confidently as follows:[81] “Mr. Fleay used almost exclusively versification to distinguish author from author. Nor is this by any means so bold an undertaking as it seems. I have used other tests apart from the versification, and have almost uniformly found the impressions derived from the latter correct.” Our confidence in Boyle is shaken when he attributes[82] the first two acts of A New Way to pay Old Debts to Fletcher on the evidence of the double endings. He points out that the allusion to the taking of Breda on July 1st, 1625,[83] is just possible, as Fletcher was buried on August 29th, 1625. This is clearly a case where we must take other than metrical considerations into account. Has the comedy the sparkle, the bustle, and the improbability of Fletcher?

Again, it is not too much to say that it is a waste of time to apply verse tests to Tourneur; a great part of the Atheist's Tragedy is not poetry at all, but prose measured off in lengths.

The Virgin Martyr states on its title-page that Dekker was part author. Similarly, The Fatal Dowry was partly [pg 021] due to Field. Part of A Very Woman[84] is held by many critics to be written by Fletcher; certainly the style of the play is in places more tender and more racy than we should expect from Massinger. The Old Law is said to have been written by Massinger, Middleton, and Rowley. It was a popular play, and often revived; its first appearance was in 1599,[85] when our poet was but fifteen years old. His share in it must therefore consist of additions or modifications at a later date. Certainly there is little in the play which reminds one of him; original as is its plot, and tender its pathos, both its tragedy and comedy are in a simpler manner than his.[86]

On the other hand, Boyle arrives at some startling results when he investigates the works of Fletcher.[87] He attributes to Massinger parts of Thierry and Theodoret, The Queen of Corinth, The Knight of Malta, The Custom of the Country, The Little French Lawyer, The Fair Maid of the Inn, and of several other plays.[88]

It may appear strange that in order to estimate Massinger we should have to read Fletcher as well; but to this the scientific study of English brings us.[89] Boyle [pg 022] declares that “we ought in future to have no more editions of Beaumont and Fletcher, but the plays of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger arranged in nine groups.”[90] The verdict of experts cannot be disregarded in this matter; there is a real danger that Massinger's merits will be underrated if we do not attempt to estimate the share which he took in writing the plays attributed to Fletcher. His friend Sir Aston Cokaine might have done us a great service here, but, unfortunately, he missed his opportunity. In a poem[91] relating to Shirley's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's works published in 1647,[92] he points out that the title is inaccurate for two reasons: first, because many of the plays were written after Beaumont's death; secondly, because Massinger wrote parts of some of them; it is a great pity that he did not tell us which these plays were.

But worse still remains behind; if we are to believe Boyle, it is practically certain that Massinger and Fletcher wrote Henry VIII[93] and The Two Noble [pg 023] Kinsmen.[94] It must be pointed out that there are still good critics who attribute a large part of Henry VIII to Shakspere, and a small part of The Two Noble Kinsmen. It would take us too far from our subject to enter in detail on these two difficult problems.

Then, in the third place, there are the plays that are lost. In the eighteenth century there was a certain John Warburton, F.R.S. and F.S.A., Somerset herald, who collected no fewer than fifty-five genuine unpublished dramas of the golden period, which he handed over to the care of his cook until he could find someone to publish them. The cook appropriated these plays leaf by leaf for coverings for her pastry, and a certain number of Massinger's—possibly as many as ten—perished among them. Here are the names of some of them: The Forced [pg 024] Lady, a tragedy; The Noble Choice, a comedy; The Wandering Lovers, a comedy; Philenzo and Hippolita, a tragi-comedy.[95]

It may be a consolation when we grieve over this disaster[96] to reflect that many of the fifty-five plays may not have been worth reading; eight of them were early works of Massinger's, and may have been immature or even unsuccessful. There is a presumption in favour of this supposition, for his more famous plays appeared separately in quarto, and most of them can still be procured from dealers in that form; we must suppose that Mr. Warburton had only what are called actors'—i.e., manuscript—copies. If a play never attained the distinction of being printed there may have been some defect which militated against its success.

Colonel Cunningham in his edition gives us the names of thirty-seven plays in all from Massinger's pen; if the many be added to this total in which he joined with other writers, we have a considerable literary output for a life of fifty-five years.

Massinger, like Shakspere, fell into disfavour after the Restoration, when Beaumont and Fletcher carried everything before them. We learn from Malone's Preface[97] that The Bondman was acted in 1661 and The Virgin Martyr on January 10th, 1662; The Renegado on June 6th in the same year. Pepys saw The Virgin Martyr, and liked it,[98] more, however, for the music than the words. Dryden and Jeremy Collier never mention Massinger. Selections from The Guardian appeared in prose form, with insertions from A Very Woman, in [pg 025] 1680, under the title Love Lost in the Dark, or the Drunken Couple. Adorio and the other names are the same, but the Guardian's part disappears, and his remarks are put in Adorio's mouth. A servant, Calandrino, is brought in, whose name is borrowed from The Great Duke of Florence, and Muggulla, a nurse, is added to be Calandrino's bride. The contents are worthy of the title. Monck Mason deplores the fact that Johnson's dictionary does not once quote Massinger or Beaumont and Fletcher. “They are more correct,” he says, “and grammatical than Shakspere, and appear to have had a more competent knowledge of other languages, which gave them a more accurate idea of their own.” There was a great reaction in the eighteenth century in favour of Massinger. Brander Matthews points out that The New Way is the only Elizabethan or Jacobean play, except Shakspere's, which held the stage until the first quarter of the nineteenth century,[99] and gives a good history of its illustrious career on the English and American stages.

The critics have differed much about Massinger. Gifford[100] and Hallam were enthusiastic in their support; Charles Lamb and Hazlitt[101] were against him, perhaps because they disliked his able Tory editor. The eighteenth-century writers regarded him as the champion of female virtue; and in our own time Sir A. Ward has defended his manly and sane morality in unhesitating language.[102] On the other hand, Boyle deems his heroines to be corrupt and his heroes “the victims of one devouring [pg 026] passion, often in a state of incipient madness, alternately raging and melancholy.”[103]

Like Euripides, Ovid, and Juvenal, Massinger is a writer whose faults are patent; all the more important, therefore, is it to make his merits quite clear. We cannot convince the world if we adopt the famous line of Goethe's heroine:

I cannot reason, I can only feel.[104]

I do not indeed claim to discover much that is new about Massinger, nor to reverse the judgment of time. He is, and he remains, in the second rank of English writers. But it would be a misfortune if undue obscurity were to befall an author who was at once so manly and so skilful. I take up the cudgels for him, partly because the balance of critical judgment has of late gone too far against him; and yet in a sense he has only come into his own in the last thirty years, by reason of the unanimity with which so much good strong work in Fletcher's plays is now deemed to be due to him. He has received much praise and much blame; I should like by careful analysis of the problem to arrive at a juster judgment. But in the main, I must confess, I plead for Massinger because I love him.

What, then, are the chief merits of our author? They are three: his stagecraft, his style, and his metre. And, first, his command of stagecraft has been universally conceded.[105] This is an important point; it is as much as to say that the plays are readable and would act well;[106] [pg 027] when you begin one of them you wish to know what is going to happen. The first act has usually a great breadth and swing; it is admirably proportioned and dignified. The chief characters are introduced, and the train is well laid, without stiffness or delay. Good examples of this fact are to be found in The Bondman and The Emperor of the East. In The Renegado the first scene at once reveals the object of the plot, the rescue of Paulina. In The Bondman Marullo enters at line 38, and our attention is called to him by Leosthenes. As the play progresses you feel that it is what the French call bien charpenté—well constructed. If, as is often the case, there is a mystery or a secret, it is sufficiently well kept to excite the curiosity. The author does not depend very much on soliloquies or disguises; he does not, as a rule, complicate matters by underplots and cross-interests. The stage is not overcrowded; you do not feel the need of constantly referring to the list of dramatis personae. A curious instance of this economy is The Maid of Honour, where there is no Queen of Sicily. Minor characters when they reappear are recognized and provided for, as, for example, Calypso in The Guardian (IV., 3). The conscientious author forgets no detail in order to round off his plot; thus in the same play the blow struck at the beginning is apologized for in V., 3, 250. Nor is there a reckless change of scene. Moreover, a lifelike effect is given by the fact that speeches generally end in the middle of a line. As so often in Euripides, the people say the sort of things that under the circumstances you would expect them to say in real life.[107] A comparison of Massinger [pg 028] with Ben Jonson will make this ease of construction clear at once. Köppel has noted the skill with which the narratives of Suetonius and Dion Cassius are combined in The Roman Actor. It may sound obvious to add that the titles of the plays correspond to the chief subject-matter, were it not that in so many of the Elizabethan plays this is not the case. Take as examples Middleton's Changeling and Mayor of Queenborough.

Yet it would be too much to say that all Massinger's plays are equally successful in this respect. The plot of The Guardian, for example, is unusually intricate. Like Shakspere, he occasionally crowds too much into the fifth act—for instance, in The Unnatural Combat. The device of the apple which produces so much jealousy and trouble in The Emperor of the East is rather trivial for a tragi-comedy.[108] The promise of Cleora to wear a scarf over her eyes until her jealous lover returns from the war is exasperating.[109] Again, Camiola in The Maid of Honour (III., 3, 200) forgets that Bertoldo is “bound to a single life,” as she had herself pointed out to him (I., 2, 148). Nor does Bertoldo (IV., 3, 100) in his acceptance of her offer say anything about the necessary dispensation. On the other hand, Massinger avoids those scenes on board ship of which Fletcher is so fond, and which on the Jacobean stage must have been ineffective to the spectators, and indeed, are so on any stage.[110]

Similarly, it is clear that torture on the stage can hardly be made effective.[111]

One of Massinger's favourite devices is to combine subordinates. He has learnt from Hamlet the lesson of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He has studied the method of such scenes as Henry V., I., 2, 97-135; II., 2; III., 5; III., 7. If something has to be done, two or three people express their eagerness to do it. If someone has to be persuaded, two or three of the characters press home the various arguments. This all works for lucidity and ease, and presents a lifelike combination on the stage.[112] Instances of the device abound; let us take one from The Picture.[113] The great soldier Ferdinand, on his return from [pg 030] the wars, is received courteously by the old Counsellor Eubulus, but the fashionable young men, Ubaldo and Ricardo, think they can do the thing better; the passage runs thus:

Ricardo. This was pretty;

But second me now; I cannot stoop too low

To do your excellence that due observance

Your fortune claims.

Eubulus. He ne'er thinks on his virtues!

Ricardo. For, being as you are, the soul of soldiers,

And bulwark of Bellona——

Ubaldo. The protection

Both of the court and king——

Ricardo. And the sole minion

Of mighty Mars——

Ubaldo. One that with justice may

Increase the number of the worthies——

Eubulus. Heyday!

Ricardo. It being impossible in my arms to circle

Such giant worth——

Ubaldo. At distance we presume

To kiss your honour'd gauntlet.

Eubulus. What reply now

Can he make to this foppery?

Ferdinand. You have said,

Gallants, so much and hitherto done so little,

That till I learn to speak and you to do,

I must take time to thank you.

Eubulus. As I live,

Answer'd as I could wish, how the fops gape now!

Ricardo. This was harsh and scurvy.

Ubaldo. We will be revenged,

When he comes to court the ladies, and laugh at him.

Another of Massinger's effective devices is to sustain the interest of the spectators by concealing characters [pg 031] and facts; thus, in The Duke of Milan we do not fathom for some time the villainy of Francisco; in The City Madam we ponder from the beginning over the obscure character of Luke. The best instances of this expedient are to be found in The Unnatural Combat and The Bondman. The air of gloom which overhangs the former tragedy is as great in its way as anything which our author has attained; and though the play is what we may call Elizabethan rather than for all time, yet it is in some sense the best specimen of his serious work. The desire of Malefort is that of the father in Shelley's Cenci; and perhaps the only way to prevent the theme from being intolerable was to veil it as long as possible, and to raise the spectators' sympathy at first for a man who had fought well for the State, and who to all appearance was badly treated by his pirate son.[114] In The Bondman, Marullo and Timandra, the brother and sister, are concealed till the very end, when they reveal themselves to be Pisander and Statilia—thereby bringing to an unexpected conclusion a plot which seemed to offer no solution.[115]

In The City Madam the method is varied a little: here we have one of Massinger's greatest creations, the fawning hypocrite, Luke. Indications of his future development are skilfully given from time to time, so that when this alarming person at length shows himself in his true colours we shiver without being surprised. The same idea shows itself in The Renegado,[116] in the skill with which Donusa leads up to her proposal that Vitelli should turn Mahometan; and in The Virgin Martyr,[117] where Artemia prepares the way for the offer of her hand to Antoninus.

Massinger is never so happy as when he has an opportunity in his well-proportioned scenes for displays of rhetoric, such as we find in Euripides, where character argues against character.[118] These scenes are often thrown into the form of a trial at law or a debate in the Senate.[119]

The plays end well and effectively; our author excels in the tragi-comedy, a type much affected by Fletcher. Like all his contemporaries, he felt that the intermixture of a lighter element in a play which ended happily was justifiable.[120] The haste which Shakspere sometimes shows in his fifth act is, as a rule, not apparent in Massinger. For example, in The Virgin Martyr, the death of the heroine occurs at the end of the fourth act. To all appearance there is bound to be an anticlimax in the fifth act. But there is not; on the contrary, the appearance of the heavenly messenger, bearing the fruits of Paradise to the cruel persecutor Theophilus, elevates the mind into a state of surprise and admiration. It has often been pointed out that the appearance of a deity to [pg 033] cut the knot at the end of a play of Euripides, which sometimes irritates the thinker in his study, and provokes him to write essays on the bad art and theology of the poet, is dazzlingly beautiful on the stage, and raises associations of sublimity and awe; it may in the same way be imagined how effective must have been the procession at the end of The Virgin Martyr. The stage directions run as follows: “Enter Dorothea in a white robe, crownes upon her head, led in by Angels, Antoninus, Caliste, and Christeta following, all in white, but lesse glorious, the Angell with a Crowne for him” (i.e., Theophilus). At the sight of the glorious vision the persecutor dies, converted to the Christian faith, and the evil spirit, which has prompted his cruel acts, sinks to his own place with thunder and lightning, while Diocletian and his court look on in amazement. Similarly, in The Roman Actor there is no anticlimax; though Paris dies in the fourth act,[121] we feel that the tragedy is incomplete until it is rounded off by the punishment of the Emperor Domitian, which we breathlessly await.

Secondly, Massinger has a beautiful style. This point again is conceded by all the critics. The elegance of his dedications shows that had he wished he could have written excellent prose.[122] One who depreciates him allows that his style is “pure and free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions.”[123] It has the grace and balance which one would expect from a well-bred and educated man, owing little to ornament or epithets or images. It serves its purpose, which is to tell a story [pg 034] rapidly, and to unfold character rather than to display the author's command of language or subtlety of thought and expression. Seldom trivial, it is never prosaic, and yet it is constantly on the border-line of prose. Massinger thought in blank verse because he was a dramatist rather than because he was a poet. Hence his enemies might say that his lines are prose in lengths; yet that would be an unjust accusation. The poetical “colour” is here, the ideal dignity, the atmosphere, although they obtrude themselves less on the reader than in most poets. Like Ovid, Massinger is one whose amazing facility carries us along like a flood—a writer who should be read in large quantities at a time,

“Whose easy Pegasus will amble o'er

Some three-score miles of fancy in an hour.”[124]

It needs little argument to show that a poet of this order can easily secure the effect of verisimilitude to life, and will owe much of his success to that fact. Style naturally appeals differently to different people; there are those who are captivated by the glamour of Shelley and Swinburne, or the pomp of Jeremy Taylor; there are also those who enjoy the severity of Paradise Regained, and the simplicity of Newman's Sermons. In an age like the present, when many of our poets, like our musicians, whatever else they are, either will not or cannot be simple, it is refreshing to turn to an author who is always lucid, and who is content to tell a story to the best of his ability.

There are times when the style of Massinger rises into solemn eloquence, especially when he indulges in the moralizing vein. Unlike some of his literary contemporaries, Massinger wishes to show Virtue triumphant and Vice beaten. Vice is never glorified in his pages, or condoned. Honest indignation is perhaps the emotion [pg 035] which he handles best. The uncontrollable anger which meanness and unworthiness provoke expresses itself in lofty language. Forcible and plain-spoken rebukes are found, which show that Massinger could be curt when he pleased. The plays are full of high-spirited passages, affording admirable opportunities for a master of elocution.

Let me give a specimen of just anger in the speech of Marullo. Marullo is the leader of the revolt of the slaves at Syracuse, and he is addressing their former lords and masters:

Briefly thus then,

Since I must speak for all,—your tyranny

Drew us from our obedience. Happy those times

When lords were styled fathers of families,

And not imperious masters! when they number'd

Their servants almost equal with their sons,

Or one degree beneath them! when their labours

Were cherish'd and rewarded, and a period

Set to their sufferings; when they did not press

Their duties or their wills, beyond the power

And strength of their performance! all things order'd

With such decorum, as wise lawmakers

From each well-govern'd private house deriv'd

The perfect model of a Commonwealth.

Humanity then lodged in the hearts of men,

And thankful masters carefully provided

For creatures wanting reason. The noble horse

That, in his fiery youth, from his wide nostrils

Neigh'd courage to his rider, and brake through

Groves of opposed pikes, bearing his lord

Safe to triumphant victory, old or wounded,

Was set at liberty and freed from service.

The Athenian mules that from the quarry drew

Marble, hew'd for the temples of the gods,

The great work ended, were dismiss'd and fed

At the public cost; nay, faithful dogs have found

Their sepulchres; but man to man more cruel,

Appoints no end to the sufferings of his slave;

Since pride stepp'd in and riot, and o'erturned

This goodly frame of concord, teaching masters

To glory in the abuse of such as are

Brought under their command; who grown unuseful,

Are less esteem'd than beasts. This you have practis'd,

Practis'd on us with rigour; this hath forced us

To shake our heavy yokes off; and, if redress

Of these just grievances be not granted us,

We'll right ourselves, and by strong hand defend

What we are now possess'd of.[125]

In a lower key of manly dignity is the speech of Charalois before the Judges in The Fatal Dowry. It begins thus:

Thus low my duty

Answers your lordships' counsel. I will use,

In the few words with which I am to trouble

Your lordships' ears the temper that you wish me;

Not that I fear to speak my thoughts as loud,

And with a liberty beyond Romont;

But that I know, for me that am made up

Of all that's wretched, so to haste my end,

Would seem to most rather a willingness

To quit the burden of a hopeless life

Than scorn of death or duty to the dead.[126]

As an example of a high-spirited passage, a speech may be given from The Bondman. Cleora, the heroine, comes forward in a meeting of the Senate to urge patriotic effort on her fellow-countrymen. Timoleon, the general, is in the chair, and she addresses him first:

Cleora. If a virgin,

Whose speech was ever yet ushered with fear;

One knowing modesty and humble silence

To be the choicest ornaments of our sex

In the presence of so many reverend men,

Struck dumb with terror and astonishment,

Presume to clothe her thought in vocal sounds,

Let her find pardon. First to you, great sir,

A bashful maid's thanks, and her zealous prayers,

Wing'd with pure innocence, bearing them to heaven,

For all prosperity that the gods can give

To one whose piety must exact their care,

Thus low I offer.

Timoleon. 'Tis a happy omen.

Rise, blest one, and speak boldly. On my virtue

I am thy warrant, from so clear a spring

Sweet rivers ever flow.

Cleora. Then thus to you,

My noble father, and these lords, to whom

I next owe duty; no respect forgotten

To you my brother, and these bold young men

(Such I would have them) that are, or should be,

The city's sword and target of defence,

To all of you I speak; and if a blush

Steal on my cheeks, it is shown to reprove

Your paleness, willingly I would not say,

Your cowardice or fear; think you all treasure

Hid in the bowels of the earth, or shipwreck'd

In Neptune's wat'ry kingdom, can hold weight,

When liberty and honour fill one scale,

Triumphant Justice sitting on the beam?

Or dare you but imagine that your gold is

Too dear a salary for such as hazard

Their blood and lives in your defence? For me,

An ignorant girl, bear witness! heaven, so far

I prize a soldier, that to give him pay,

With such devotion as our flamens offer

Their sacrifices at the holy altar,

I do lay down these jewels, will make sale

Of my superfluous wardrobe, to supply

The meanest of their wants.[127]

This passage is printed in a broadside (headed “Countrymen”) relating to the expected invasion of England by Bonaparte, to be found at the British Museum. A short [pg 038] statement of the plot of The Bondman is followed by a quotation of Act I., 3, 213-368, with one or two slight omissions. Possibly Gifford inspired its publication.

Perhaps the most eloquent passage in Massinger is the speech of Paris, the Roman actor, before the Senate, in defence of his profession:

Aretinus. Are you on the stage,

You talk so boldly?

Paris. The whole world being one,

This place is not exempted; and I am

So confident in the justice of our cause,

That I would wish Cæsar, in whose great name

All kings are comprehended, sate as judge

To hear our plea, and then determine of us.

If to express a man sold to his lusts,

Wasting the treasure of his time and fortunes

In wanton dalliance, and to what sad end

A wretch that's so given over does arrive at;

Deterring careless youth by his example,

From such licentious courses; laying open

The snares of bawds, and the consuming arts

Of prodigal strumpets, can deserve reproof;

Why are not all your golden principles

Writ down by grave philosophers to instruct us,

To choose fair virtue for our guide, not pleasure,

Condemn'd unto the fire?

Sura. There's spirit in this.

Paris. Or if desire of honour was the base

On which the building of the Roman empire

Was raised up to this height; if, to inflame

The noble youth with an ambitious heat

T'endure the frosts of danger, nay, of death,

To be thought worthy the triumphal wreath,

By glorious undertakings, may deserve

Reward, or favour from the commonwealth;

Actors may put in for as large a share

As all the sects of the philosophers;

They with cold precepts (perhaps seldom read)

Deliver, what an honourable thing

The active virtue is; but does that fire

The blood, or swell the veins with emulation,

To be both good and great, equal to that

Which is presented in our theatres?

Let a good actor, in a lofty scene,

Show great Alcides honour'd in the sweat

Of his twelve labours; or a bold Camillus

Forbidding Rome to be redeem'd with gold

From the insulting Gauls; or Scipio,

After his victories, imposing tribute

On conquer'd Carthage; if done to the life,

As if they saw their dangers, and their glories,

And did partake with them in their rewards,

All that have any spark of Roman in them,

The slothful arts laid by, contend to be

Like those they see presented.

Rusticus. He has put

The consuls to their whisper.

Paris. But, 'tis urged

That we corrupt youth and traduce superiors.

When do we bring a vice upon the stage,

That does go off unpunish'd? Do we teach,

By the success of wicked undertakings,

Others to tread in their forbidden steps?

We shew no arts of Lydian panderism,

Corinthian poisons, Persian flatteries,

But mulcted so in the conclusion, that

Even those spectators that were so inclined,

Go home changed men. And for traducing such

That are above us, publishing to the world

Their secret crimes, we are as innocent

As such as are born dumb. When we present

An heir, that does conspire against the life

Of his dear parent, numbering every hour

He lives, as tedious to him; if there be,

Among the auditors, one whose conscience tells him

He is of the same mould, we cannot help it.

Or, bringing on the stage a loose adulteress,

That does maintain the riotous expense

Of him that feeds her greedy lust, yet suffers

The lawful pledges of a former bed

To starve the while for hunger; if a matron

However great in fortune, birth, or titles,

Guilty of such a foul, unnatural sin,

Cry out 'tis writ for me, we cannot help it.

Or when a covetous man's express'd, whose wealth

Arithmetic cannot number, and whose lordships

A falcon in one day cannot fly over;

Yet he so sordid in his mind, so griping,

As not to afford himself the necessaries

To maintain life; if a patrician

(Though honour'd with a consulship) find himself

Touch'd to the quick in this, we cannot help it.

Or, when we shew a judge that is corrupt,

And will give up his sentence, as he favours

The person, not the cause; saving the guilty,

If of his faction, and as oft condemning

The innocent, out of particular spleen;

If any in this reverend assembly,

Nay, even yourself, my lord, that are the image

Of absent Cæsar, feel something in your bosom

That puts you in remembrance of things past,

Or things intended, 'tis not in us to help it.

I have said, my lord; and now as you find cause,

Or censure us, or free us with applause.[128]

I will quote three more passages: one to show how lifelike in description Massinger can be; the second, to show how he can ennoble the expression of love; the third, to show how tender he is at his best.

The first is from The Maid of Honour. A soldier comes in with news for the besieged general, who is standing on the walls of Siena, looking for aid from his friends:

Enter a Soldier.

Ferdinand. What news with thee?

Soldier. From the turret of the fort,

By the rising clouds of dust, through which, like lightning

The splendour of bright arms sometimes brake through,

I did descry some forces making towards us;

And from the camp, as emulous of their glory,

The general, for I know him by his horse,

And bravely seconded, encounter'd them.

Their greetings were too rough for friends; their swords,

And not their tongues, exchanging courtesies.

By this the main battalias are join'd;

And if you please to be spectators of

The horrid issue, I will bring you where,

As in a theatre, you may see their fates

In purple gore presented.[129]

The second is from The Duke of Milan, where Marcelia expresses her love for her lord, Sforza, the Duke of Milan.

Marcelia. My worthiest lord!

The only object I behold with pleasure,

My pride, my glory, in a word, my all!

Bear witness, heaven, that I esteem myself

In nothing worthy of the meanest praise

You can bestow, unless it be in this,

That in my heart, I love and honour you.

And, but that it would smell of arrogance

To speak my strong desire and zeal to serve you,

I then could say, these eyes yet never saw

The rising sun, but that my vows and prayers

Were sent to heaven for the prosperity

And safety of my lord, nor have I ever

Had other study, but how to appear

Worthy your favour; and that my embraces

Might yield a fruitful harvest of content

For all your noble travail, in the purchase

Of her that's still your servant; by these lips,

Which pardon me that I presume to kiss——

Sforza. O swear, for ever swear!

Marcelia. I ne'er will seek

Delight but in your pleasure; and desire,

When you are sated[130] with all earthly glories,

And age and honours make you fit for heaven,

That one grave may receive us.

The third is from A Very Woman; the disguised John Antonio is telling his story at Almira's request:

Not far from where my father lives, a lady,

A neighbour by, blest with as great a beauty

As nature durst bestow without undoing,

Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,

And bless'd the house a thousand times she dwelt in.

This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,

When my first fire felt no adulterate incense,

Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness;

In all the bravery my friends could show me,

In all the faith my innocence could give me,

In the best language my true tongue could tell me,

And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me,

I sued and serv'd; long did I love this lady,

Long was my travail, long my trade to win her;

With all the duty of my soul I serv'd her.[131]

At times the poet rises to what is not far removed from inspiration; and such lines as the following from The Parliament of Love make good the claim of English to be the imperial language of the world. King Charles seeks to justify the honours which he, the “most Christian king,” gives to the statue of Cupid; he then continues thus:

Charles. 'Tis rather to instruct deceived mankind,

How much pure love that has his birth in heaven,

And scorns to be received a guest, but in

A noble heart prepared to entertain him,

Is by the gross misprision of weak men,

Abused and injured. That celestial fire,

Which hieroglyphically is described

In this his bow, his quiver, and his torch,

First warm'd their bloods, and after gave a name

To the old heroic spirits; such as Orpheus,

That drew men, differing little then from beasts,

To civil government; or famed Alcides

The tyrant-queller, that refused the plain

And easy path leading to vicious pleasures,

And ending in a precipice deep as hell,

To scale the rugged cliffs on whose firm top

Virtue and Honour, crown'd with wreaths of stars,

Did sit triumphant.[132]

But there is another characteristic of Massinger's style and that perhaps more obvious still; it is full of courtliness and grace. A perusal of The City Madam, where the subject is the absurdity of the ladies of the Mansion House who ape the manners of the West End, suggests the question whether Massinger was ever attached to the Court. We do not know. He must, at any rate, have moved amongst refined and educated people. Napoléon said that Corneille's plays ought to be performed to an audience of ambassadors and ministers of state;[133] in the same way, in reading Massinger, we feel that we are moving freely in the palaces of the great. There is comparatively little here of dialect[134] or low life; we are at once taken up [pg 044] into high life with all its virtues and its faults. The kings and courtiers behave and express themselves as we should expect them to do; the politeness and the compliments which we hear on every side have the merit of being entirely natural. And if there is little to remind us of Dickens, there is still less to recall Thackeray. There is no air of snobbishness; such is the dexterity of our author that we do not feel like Jeames Yellowplush, that we are awkward menials watching the doings of the titled and the great. Not only do the characters move with an inborn grace which is free from self-analysis and self-contempt, but they take the audience up into their company; and as the gallants of that era used sometimes to sit upon the stage, close among the actors,[135] so in reading Massinger we feel that we are unconsciously present at the scenes he portrays.

This is as much as to say that the stage of those days responded to a real and living need in the minds of the audience; there was nothing exotic or artificial about it, as there seems to have been about our plays ever since the Puritans turned things upside down. It will be said [pg 045] that this enchanted atmosphere belongs to all the greater playwrights of the age alike. And this is true; it is one of the secrets of their abiding charm. Brander Matthews, in dealing with the unreality of Massinger's atmosphere, says that “some of Shakspere's most delightful plays, The Merchant of Venice for one, and Much Ado for another, are charming to us now only because we are quite willing to make believe with the poet” (op. cit., p. 311). And so, when Leslie Stephen asks if we are “invigorated” by the perusal of Massinger's plays,[136] I reply to that apostle of common sense that I am not only charmed and delighted, but invigorated. And why? Because I am admitted to a world of heroism and romance.

But may we not put the matter more broadly still? When we read the Cavalier lyrics of Suckling, Herrick, and Lovelace, when we think of Falkland, when we stand before the portraits of Vandyck, do we not feel that modern England was in danger until lately of losing something? There is an aroma there of chivalry which had almost faded from our ken. And yet there is an element in our shy and dumb English nature to which this atmosphere is congenial, however overgrown with money-making our minds had seemed to be. Nor, as the student of history knows well, had the Puritans in the Civil War the monopoly of religion and duty. Indeed, the Civil War was a true tragedy, because both sides had right, both fought and bled for what they believed to be [pg 046] the truth. To-day, in spite of our many domestic discords, no party spirit discounts the gallant deeds of which we have read daily, and of which of necessity only a fraction has been publicly rewarded. Perhaps the flame of romance will breathe once more in our midst, now the War is over, purified by suffering, and quickened by the memory of those serene yet manly spirits whom we have lost on the battlefield, whose departure in the dayspring of life seems, as it were, to have extinguished so many stars in the vault of heaven. They put aside the calls of culture and pleasure, and the natural ambition to do something in the world before they were abolished by death. They have willingly given for their country all that they had; they have given themselves. If we remember their devotion with gratitude it may purify us from the commonplace, the vulgar, and the selfish. They, at any rate, can address the power of evil, which for the moment seemed to triumph, in the words of Dorothea:

What is this life to me? Not worth, a thought:

Or, if it be esteem'd, 'tis that I lose it

To win a better; even thy malice serves

To me but as a ladder to mount up

To such a height of happiness, where I shall

Look down with scorn on thee and on the world;

Where, circled with true pleasures, placed above

The reach of death or time, 'twill be my glory

To think at what an easy price I bought it.

There's a perpetual spring, perpetual youth;

No joint-benumbing cold, or scorching heat,

Famine, nor age, have any being there.

Forget for shame your Tempe; bury in

Oblivion your feign'd Hesperian orchards;

The golden fruit, kept by the watchful dragon,

Which did require a Hercules to get it,

Compared with what grows in all plenty there,

Deserves not to be named. The Power I serve

Laughs at your happy Araby, or the

Elysian shades; for He hath made His bowers

Better in deed than you can fancy yours.[137]

As an instance of Massinger's courtliness I will quote a short passage from The Great Duke of Florence: Contarino has come from the court of the Duke to fetch his nephew Giovanni, who has been brought up by a tutor, Charomonte by name, in the country. As the prince comes in, Charomonte addresses Contarino:

Charomonte. Make your approaches boldly; you will find

A courteous entertainment. (Contarino kneels.)

Giovanni. Pray you, forbear

My hand, good signior; 'tis a ceremony

Not due to me. 'Tis fit we should embrace

With mutual arms.

Contarino. It is a favour, sir,

I grieve to be denied.

Giovanni. You shall o'ercome;

But 'tis your pleasure, not my pride, that grants it.

Nay, pray you, guardian and good sir, put on;

How ill it shews to have that reverend head

Uncover'd to a boy!

Charomonte. Your excellence

Must give me liberty, to observe the distance

And duty that I owe you.[138]

Take another instance, from The Duke of Milan:

Sforza. Excuse me, good Pescara.

Ere long I will wait on you.

Pescara. You speak, sir,

The language I should use.[139]

And this, from The Bashful Lover:

Farnese. Madam, I am bold

To trench so far upon your privacy

As to desire my friend (let not that wrong him,

For he's a worthy one) may have the honour

To kiss your hand.

Matilda. His own worth challenges

A greater favour.

Farn. Your acknowledgment

Confirms it, madam.[140]

I have used the word “lucid” of Massinger's style; perhaps a more appropriate word would be dexterous; not that he is obscure like Chapman, or like Shakspere in his later manner, far less turgid, but he is not afraid of somewhat long sentences. What he is really afraid of, unlike Fletcher, is a full-stop at the end of the verse. There are two devices which the reader will notice, often in combination; in the first place, Massinger is very fond of the “absolute” construction, and loves to multiply parentheses. The following passages from A New Way will serve as illustrations:

Furnace. She keeps her chamber, dines with a panada,

Or water gruel, my sweat never thought on.[141]

Woman. And the first command she gave, after she rose,

Was, her devotions done, to give her notice

When you approach'd here.[142]

Or again, from The Emperor of the East:

Astraea once more lives upon the earth,

Pulcheria's breast her temple.[143]

Or from The Bondman:

And, to those that stay,

A competence of land freely allotted

To each man's proper use, no lord acknowledged.[144]

We find the “absolute” construction occasionally in Shakspere, as in The Merchant of Venice:

So are those crisped snaky golden locks

Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,

Upon supposed fairness, often known

To be the dowry of a second head,

The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.[145]

Or in Hamlet:

Folded the writ up in form of the other,

Subscribed it, gav't th' impression, placed it safely,

The changeling never known.[146]

A passage from The Fatal Dowry will show an elaborate use of parenthesis:

What though my father

Writ man before he was so, and confirm'd it,

By numbering that day no part of his life

In which he did not service to his country;

Was he to be free therefore from the laws

And ceremonious form in your decrees?

Or else because he did as much as man,

In those three memorable overthrows,

At Granson, Morat, Nancy, where his master,

The warlike Charalois, with whose misfortunes

I bear his name, lost treasure, men, and life,

To be excused from payment of those sums

Which (his own patrimony spent) his zeal

To serve his country forced him to take up![147]

Compare also these lines from The Guardian:

And if you shew not

An appetite, and a strong one, I'll not say

To eat it, but devour it, without grace too,

For it will not stay a preface, I am shamed,

And all my past provocatives will be jeer'd at.[148]

From The Picture:

Honoria. That you please, sir,

With such assurances of love and favour,

To grace your handmaid, but in being yours, sir,

A matchless queen, and one that knows herself so,

Binds me in retribution to deserve

The grace conferr'd upon me.[149]

From A Very Woman:

Paulo. This friend was plighted to a beauteous woman,

(Nature proud of her workmanship) mutual love

Possessed them both, her heart in his heart lodged

And his in hers.[150]

From The Bashful Lover:

Alonzo. By me, his nephew,

He does salute you fairly, and entreats

(A word not suitable to his power and greatness)

You would consent to tender that, which he

Unwillingly must force, if contradicted.[151]

From The Parliament of Love:

What coy she, then,

Though great in birth, not to be parallel'd

For nature's liberal bounties, (both set off

With fortune's trappings, wealth); but, with delight,

Gladly acknowledged such a man her servant?[152]

It has been pointed out by Zielinski that “the perfection of language in regard to the formation of periods depends upon the presence and prevalence of abbreviated [pg 051] by-sentences,”[153] by which expression he describes “absolute” constructions.

Secondly, he delights in an expedient which the poems of Robert Browning have made familiar to this generation, the frequent omission of the relative pronoun.[154] And so his sentences meander with a seemingly negligent grace to an unexpected conclusion. It is clear that such a style both requires and repays a careful study of the rhetorical art.

I give as an instance of this combination the words of Paulinus in The Emperor of the East. He is talking of the Emperor's sister and Prime Minister Pulcheria:

She indeed is

A perfect phœnix, and disdains a rival.

Her infant years, as you know, promised much,

But grown to ripeness she transcends, and makes

Credulity her debtor. I will tell you

In my blunt way, to entertain the time

Until you have the happiness to see her,

How in your absence she hath borne herself,

And with all possible brevity; though the subject

Is such a spacious field, as would require

An abstract of the purest eloquence

(Deriv'd from the most famous orators

The nurse of learning, Athens, shew'd the world)

In that man that should undertake to be

Her true historian.[155]

The style of Massinger is not only lucid and dexterous; it is strong, partly because of its ease, and more mature and modern than that of many of his contemporaries. Milton's prose would have gained much in directness if he [pg 052] had studied Massinger. This strength does not show itself so much in isolated fine lines, for, as we have already seen, epigram was foreign to his nature, though from time to time we get such lines, as, for example, in The Duke of Milan:

One smile of hers would make a savage tame;

One accent of that tongue would calm the seas,

Though all the winds at once strove there for empire.[156]

Or, again, in the same play:

How coldly you receive it! I expected

The mere relation of so great a blessing,

Borne proudly on the wings of sweet revenge,

Would have call'd on a sacrifice of thanks.[157]

Or, again, in A New Way:

Overreach. The garments of her widowhood laid by,

She now appears as glorious as the spring.[158]

Or in The Roman Actor:

Could I imp feathers to the wings of time,

Or with as little ease command the sun

To scourge his coursers up heaven's eastern hill.[159]

We may remark in passing that Massinger's best single lines are usually decasyllabic.

It has been remarked by Mr. Swinburne, whose discerning judgment of the Jacobean dramatists has lavished just praise on Massinger's art and style, that in the second act of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, “the student will say, ‘This tune goes manly,’ ” and it is remarkable that our poet had formed in 1619 the style which marked him to the end of his life.[160]

An instance of this simple strength may be given from [pg 053] The City Madam, where Luke debates whether he shall agree to the proposition of the pretended Indians:

Luke. Give me leave—(walks aside)

I would not lose this purchase. A grave matron!

And two pure virgins! Umph, I think my sister,

Though proud, was ever honest, and my nieces

Untainted yet. Why should not they be shipp'd

For this employment? They are burthensome to me,

And eat too much.[161]

When rudeness is necessary it is uttered with some vigour, as in The Fatal Dowry, where this is what Romont gets for his well-meant pains:

Rochfort. Sir, if you please

To bear yourself as fits a gentleman,

The house is at your service; but if not,

Though you seek company elsewhere, your absence

Will not be much lamented.[162]

The rejected lover in such a scene as the following has no illusions left him:

Mustapha. All happiness—

Donusa. Be sudden.

'Twas saucy rudeness in you, sir, to press

On my retirements; but ridiculous folly

To waste the time that might be better spent,

In complimental wishes.

Corisca. There's a cooling

For his hot encounter! (aside)

Donusa. Come you here to stare?

If you have lost your tongue and use of speech,

Resign your government; there's a mute's place void

In my uncle's court, I hear; and you may want me

To write for your preferment.[163]

Two minor features of Massinger's style may be mentioned here:

1. The catalogue line, so familiar to the student of Lucretius—e.g.:

Believe as You List, I., 2, 85. The sapphire, ruby, jacinth,

amber, coral.

Believe as You List II, 2, 312. All circumstances,

Answers, despatches, doubts, and difficulties.

Picture, V., I, 59. The comfortable names of breakfasts,

dinners,

Collations, supper, beverage.

Emperor of East, 2 Prol., 8. With his best of fancy, judgment,

language, art.

I., 2, 194. To his merchant, mercer, draper,

His linen-man, and tailor.

V., 2, 88. As sacred, glorious, high, invincible.

City Madam, II., 1, 72. Tissue, gold, silver, velvets, satins,

taffetas.

IV., 3, 69. Entreaties, curses, prayers, or imprecations.

Unnatural Combat, II., 1, 128. All respect,

Love, fear, and reverence cast

off.

Great Duke of Florence, II., 1, 7. We of necessity must be

chaste, wise, fair.

2. A more marked feature is the repetition of words or short phrases in various parts of the line.[164] The following instances may be given from (a) The Great Duke of Florence:

I., 1, 154. It is the duke!

The duke.

I., 2, 41. Our duchess; such a duchess.

I., 2, 95. See, signiors, see our care.

I., 2, 131. Take up, take up.

II., 1, 71. Fie! fie! the princess.

III., 1, 102. Tells

His son, this is the prince, the hopeful prince.

(b) The City Madam:

II., 1, 58. I blush for you,

Blush at your poverty of spirit.

III., 1, 11. I am starv'd,

Starv'd in my pleasures.

V., 1, 12. Far, far above your hopes.

V., 1, 81. The height

Of honour, principal honour.

V., 2, 67. A manor pawn'd,

Pawn'd, my good lord.

And, thirdly, the versification of Massinger is musical and melodious. Boyle says that Milton's blank verse owes much to the study of it. “In the indefinable touches which make up the music of a verse, in the artistic distribution of pauses, and in the unerring choice and grouping of just those words which strike the ear as the perfection of harmony, there are, if we leave Cyril Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy out of the question, only two masters in the drama, Shakspere in his latest period and Massinger.”[165] Coleridge says that it is “an excellent metre, a better model for dramatists in general to imitate than Shakspere's. Read Massinger aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate, none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment.”[166] Be it noted that this praise comes from a master of his art, for no one who has once appreciated Coleridge's command of vowel-syzygy and the velvet-like texture of his blank verse can refuse him that title.

Massinger's blank verse is equal to all the emotions which the author can express and kindle. It never fails him, nor, on the other hand, does it obtrude itself unduly on the sense conveyed. Only after reading a considerable passage of our poet do we understand how much the [pg 056] versification contributes to his lifelike and dignified atmosphere.

Moreover, the metre of Massinger is admirably suited to his style. There seems a hidden but real harmony between them. Some might call his metre at times slipshod and undignified, from the fact that, except in elevated passages, the characters speak in rhythmical sentences which approximate to prose. Boyle, who declares that “Marlowe and Massinger are the two extremes of the metrical movement in the dramatists,”[167] has pointed out that “Massinger's blank verse shows a larger proportion of run-on lines and double endings in harmonious union than any of his contemporaries.[168] Cartwright [pg 057] and Tourneur have more run-on lines, but not so many double endings. Fletcher has more double endings, but very few run-on lines. Shakspere and Beaumont alone exhibit a somewhat similar metrical style.”[169] This is interesting, because we shall see later on that Massinger was a devoted admirer and imitator of Shakspere in thought, device, and expression. It is not strange, therefore, that he should also copy his metre, or rather, develop his own on the same lines. To show how flexible and dexterous the metre of Massinger is, I will give two instances from The Bashful Lover. In the first Uberti encourages Gonzaga to persevere with the contest:

Uberti. Sir, these tears

Do well become a father, and my eyes

Would keep you company as a forlorn lover,

But that the burning fire of my revenge

Dries up those drops of sorrow. We, once more,

Our broken forces rallied up, and with

Full numbers strengthen'd, stand prepared t' endure

A second trial; nor let it dismay us

That we are once again t' affront the fury

Of a victorious army; their abuse

Of conquest hath disarm'd them, and call'd down

The Powers above to aid us. I have read

Some piece of story, yet ne'er found but that

The general, that gave way to cruelty,

The profanation of things sacred, rapes

Of virgins, butchery of infants, and

The massacre in cold blood of reverend age,

Against the discipline and law of arms,

Did feel the hand of heaven lie heavy on him

When most secure.[170]

In the second Gonzaga refuses the hand of his daughter Matilda to Lorenzo:

Gonzaga. Two main reasons

(Seconding those you have already heard)

Give us encouragement; the duty that

I owe my mother country, and the love

Descending to my daughter. For the first,

Should I betray her liberty, I deserv'd

To have my name with infamy razed from

The catalogue of good princes; and I should

Unnaturally forget I am a father,

If, like a Tartar, or for fear or profit,

I should consign her, as a bondwoman,

To be disposed of at another's pleasure;

Her own consent or favour never sued for,

And mine by force exacted. No, Alonzo,

She is my only child, my heir; and if

A father's eyes deceive me not, the hand

Of prodigal nature hath given so much to her,

As, in the former ages, kings would rise up

In her defence and make her cause their quarrel;

Nor can she, if that any spark remain

To kindle a desire to be possess'd

Of such a beauty, in our time, want swords

To guard it safe from violence.[171]

Anyone who compares the metre of Massinger with that of Fletcher will find that our author observes far stricter [pg 059] laws than his friend. The plays of Massinger abound in lines divided between two speakers, or even three, which, nevertheless, observe the strict rule of the metre.[172]

The way in which Massinger's style and metre suit one another can best be illustrated by a passage or two from The Parliament of Love; the first is where Bellisant speaks about the decay of chivalry.

Bellisant. Ere they durst

Presume to offer service to a lady,

In person they perform'd some gallant acts

The fame of which prepar'd them gracious hearing,

Ere they made their approaches; what coy she, then,[173]

Though great in birth, not to be parallel'd

For nature's liberal beauties (both set off

With fortune's trappings, wealth); but with delight,

Gladly acknowledg'd such a man her servant,

To whose heroic courage and deep wisdom,

The flourishing commonwealth, and thankful king,

Confess'd themselves for debtors? Whereas, now,

If you have travelled Italy, and brought home

Some remnants of the language, and can set

Your faces in some strange and ne'er-seen posture,

Dance a la volta, and be rude and saucy,

Protest and swear and damn (for these are acts

That most think grace them), and then view yourselves

In the deceiving mirror of self-love,

You do conclude there hardly is a woman

That can be worthy of you.[174]

The second is a speech of Leonora exposing Cleremond's baseness:

I, burning then with a most virtuous anger,

Razed from my heart the memory of his name,

Railed and spit at him; and knew 'twas justice

That I should take those deities he scorn'd,

Hymen and Cupid, into my protection,

And be the instrument of their revenge;

And so I cast him off, scorn'd his submission,

His poor and childish winnings, will'd my servants

To shut my gates against him; but, when neither

Disdain, hate, or contempt could free me from

His loathsome importunities, and fired too

To wreak mine injur'd honour, I took gladly

Advantage of his execrable oaths,

To undergo what penance I enjoin'd him;

Then, to the terror of all future ribalds,

That make no difference between love and lust,

Imposed this task upon him. I have said, too;

Now, when you please, a censure.[175]

The critics may differ in their estimate of Massinger's style and metre; but it is simple truth to say that they are unique in our literature, in their correctness, dignity, ease, and classical frugality.

Let us now turn to the poet's faults. It is said that his range of thought is limited, and this may be at once conceded. It might also be said that Greek tragedy is limited, and the statement is true of all our Elizabethan playwrights; yet we return to them again and again, for they have something to give us which we cannot do without. It is idle to depreciate one period of our literature [pg 061] at the expense of another. Are not the old madrigal writers limited, and Farrant and Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Blow? and yet we enjoy them; nay, to take even Purcell himself, when we confess that the pleasure he gives us is due to the fact that he is more daring, less shackled than his generation, “so modern” as we say, are we not in the end forced to confess that he too is unmistakably limited, “bewrayed” by his quaint and stately rhythms to be one of the seventeenth century?

Our age has a wider and subtler range of psychology; to revert from “The Georgian Poets” of 1911 to Massinger is like going back from the films of a cinema palace to a tondo of Luca Signorelli. Both films and tondo have their uses. We may take a single illustration of this point from The Brothers Karamazov. The great Russian novelist, among other problems, deals in that book with the case of the young man who is in love with two women at once. That is the sort of complicated interest which we do not expect our Elizabethan writers to cope with, in as great detail as a modern writer uses. The problem occurs in The Bondman, where the heroine, Cleora, is distracted between her plighted love to Leosthenes and her warm sense of obligation to Marullo;[176] it is interesting and instructive to see how simply the whole thing is touched upon, and how soon the doubt is solved by the discovery of Leosthenes' former intrigue with Statilia. May we not say, with Aristophanes, in comparing Massinger and Dostoevsky:

Τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἡγοῦμαι σοφόν, τῷ δ ἥδομαι.[177]

Then it is said that Massinger's work is not free from coarseness. The answer to this accusation may be made in more ways than one. I might with confidence reply to such critics: If you wish for real vulgarity of diction, [pg 062] read Marston; if you wish for real vulgarity of mind, read Middleton; if you wish for poisoned morals, read Ford and Tourneur; and then revise your judgment of Massinger. It is notorious that all the stage writers of the Elizabethan age are tarred with the same brush; there is much in Shakspere himself that we wish he had not written; still more is this true of Ben Jonson. In The Virgin Martyr, where we have the odious servants, Hircius and Spungius, it is generally believed that the parts of the play in which they appear are due to Dekker, not to Massinger, whose other works present nothing so disgusting. There are, at any rate, no lapses of taste in Massinger like those which we find in Fletcher; nothing like the fate of Rutilio in The Custom of the Country, or of Merione in The Queen of Corinth, or of the Father in The Captain. It must be confessed that Massinger's conception of love is apt to be earthly, physical, sensuous; there is but little in his plays about the marriage of true minds,[178] too much about “Hymen's taper” and “virgin forts.” Captivated by the charms of female beauty, his intellect is too concrete in its ideals to rise above mere morality to the mysteries of the diviner love. So far it must be allowed that his art interests and stimulates the passions of his audience without elevating them. But if at times we feel a monotonous limitation in his outlook in these matters, if we miss the healthy breezes of bracing commonsense and cheerful self-restraint, we are never pained by the triumph of what is low, corrupt, or morbid.

When it is said that his women are impure it is necessary to enter a clear protest.[179] There are offensive and [pg 063] heartless women in Massinger, such as Domitia in The Roman Actor, and Beaumelle in The Fatal Dowry;[180] there are odious old women, like Borachia and Corisca. There are pert and vulgar ladies' maids; but you have only to read The Bondman, The Bashful Lover, A Very Woman, The Maid of Honour, The Great Duke of Florence, The Emperor of the East, The Picture, to see that his world includes some charming female characters—not, indeed, so lovely as those of Shakspere, but still, types which show that he had not lost his faith in human nature, as, when we read Fielding, we feel regretfully almost obliged to allow, in spite of Sophia Western and Amelia, is the case with our great novelist.

It is true that there are ladies in Massinger's plays who offer their hands in marriage to the men they love, and very charmingly the thing is done, though there is nothing equal to the scene between the Duchess and Antonio in Webster's masterpiece; as, for example, Artemia in The Virgin Martyr, the Duchess of Urbin in The Great Duke, Calista in The Guardian.[181] This feature is not confined to Massinger among the writers of his age; to mention no other instances, what about Arethusa in Philaster, Bianca in The Fair Maid of the Inn, Beliza and the Queen in The Queen of Corinth,[182] Frank in The Captain, Clara in Love's Cure (IV., 2), Martia in The Double Marriage (II., 3), Lamira in The Honest Man's Fortune (V., 3), Erota in The Laws of Candy? Or, what about Desdemona in Othello,[183] or Olivia in Twelfth Night?[184] What about the [pg 064] plot of All's Well that Ends Well? To the vulgar mind all things are vulgar. Honi soit qui mal y pense.[185] It may certainly be conceded that in some of Massinger's plays, as, for instance, The Unnatural Combat and Believe as You List, the feminine interest is comparatively slight. Brander Matthews tells us that Massinger's women “are all painted from the outside only”;[186] “they are not convincing; they lack essential womanliness.” This may be due to the fault which the same critic points out in our author, that “he is heavy-handed and coarse-fibred ethically as well as æsthetically.” One may reply that if the theatre be the mirror of life Massinger had an undoubted right to bring bad women on the stage; there are good and noble women also among his characters, and if they are not “convincing,” perhaps we may quote Coleridge's remark about Shakspere, that “he saw it was the perfection of women to be characterless.” However far our author may fall short of his great model in grace, charm, and delicacy, he at any rate deserves credit for having imagined female characters who are full of passions and made of “flesh and blood.”[187]

Massinger resembles other dramatists of his age; at times we feel that they talk like the little boys on the links in Stevenson's Lantern-Bearers. But Massinger is a robuster mind than Fletcher, for example; if he brings vice upon the stage, and if he speaks too freely about things which we prefer not to have mentioned, if “like Hogarth, he enjoys his own portrayal of degrading vice and its appalling consequences,”[188] we must, to do him [pg 065] justice, take his work as a whole. Indeed, most of the critics have singled out as one of his special claims to praise his sturdy morality,[189] and the general effect on any fair mind of a perusal of his plays is a conviction that he loved virtue. Vitelli[190] may make the best of both worlds, but he converts Donusa, and faces death and torture with fortitude. Goodness emerges from Massinger's plays, sometimes compromised for the moment, but always triumphant in the end. There is considerable outspokenness, but not much lubricity, and no perverted morality. Passages which offend can nearly always, as in Shakspere, be omitted without damaging the course of the plot. Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the works of Massinger are almost wholly free from blasphemy and profanity, and attacks on the clergy, such as moved the wrath of Jeremy Collier in later times.

It may be a fanciful suggestion, but it is possible that the drama of that day suffered from the fact that boys took the female parts.[191] No one would deny the artistic [pg 066] loss thereby involved, but there was a moral loss as well. It made it possible for things to be said that would not have been said by men to women, still less by women to men. It unconsciously invested the love-scenes with an air of unreality and grossness. It prevented the relation of the sexes from being depicted with that union of passion and purity which, though difficult, is possible.

It has been said that Massinger is hard and metallic, and devoid of pathos. This charge, again, is largely true. You will not find in him scenes which clutch the heart like those of Dr. Faustus, or The Duchess of Malfi, or The Broken Heart, or The Maid's Tragedy, or The Wife for a Month; you will not find the sublimity of Ordella's self-sacrifice in Thierry and Theodoret, or the chivalry of A Fair Quarrel; still less will you find anything so appalling as the end of King Lear, or Othello, or Romeo and Juliet. There is plenty of passion in Massinger; like the legendary lion, he lashes with his tail, and you can almost see him in the act; but his rhetoric does not entirely carry you away. Let me recall the fine passage which was quoted just now from The Roman Actor.[192] I hope everyone will allow its eloquence; but the repetition of the commonplace phrase, “we cannot help it,”[193] natural and forcible as it is, falls short of the ideal grandeur at which the passage aims. We feel that Fletcher could have made a finer thing of the prison-scene in The Emperor of the East.

It is significant that the most tender passage in Massinger,[194] where Leonora bids Almira take consolation, has been assigned by some to Fletcher. In other words, Massinger is not in the front rank of genius, but no one would claim for him such a place.

Again, one might urge that his plays are not stores of worldly wisdom, like Shakspere's; his aphorisms are not deep; they do not bite.[195] Consequently he does not lend [pg 068] himself to quotation. Yet this does not of necessity detract from his greatness. No one would question the excellence of the Waverley Novels, but Leslie Stephen has pointed out that we only make one quotation from Scott's novels.[196] Aristotle has told us that “excessive brilliance of diction obscures characters and sentiments.”[197] There [pg 069] are few passages of high poetical emotion in Massinger; there is little magic in the rhythm of individual lines. Like most of his contemporaries he shows at times a strange insensibility to smooth rhythm in the heroic couplet. He has an anapæstic lilt in various parts of the line, inherited from Shakspere, and found in Milton's early poems, which is not ineffective in its way, and which seems to have aimed at varying the monotony of the ten-syllable line.[198] He has not much power of rhyme,[199] nor are his plays studded with such lyrics as Shakspere and Fletcher could write upon occasion.[200]

Again, the comic element in Massinger is at times dull, forced, and ordinary; it does not take us very far to label a foolish Florentine gentleman with the name of “Sylli”;[201] the hungry soldier is rather a time-worn type,[202] nor [pg 070] can Greedy compare with Lazarillo. Though the situations are humorous, we do not split with laughter over Massinger, as we do in reading Aristophanes, or Shakspere, or Molière.[203] We do not find in him the mercurial lightness of A Trick to Catch the Old One, or the invincible absurdity of “The Roarers” in The Fair Quarrel. But it is necessary to remember that the comic business is of the kind which gains by acting, or indeed requires it, and to allow that towards the end of his life Massinger came forward as a grave and powerful satirist of contemporary men, reminding us of Ben Jonson, but, to my mind, excelling him; for he shows less asperity with greater lucidity and ease.[204] He is not unduly morose or bitter, yet he wins conviction with an admirable sanity and sobriety. The plays will repay good acting, and, after all, plays are meant to be acted; it is significant that the last of Massinger's plays to hold the stage was his comedy, The New Way to pay Old Debts, and it is very much to be wished that it should be revived in England.[205]

Some critics have accused Massinger of redundancy in style, a characteristic which clearly will strike different people in different ways. Thus, Hallam regards this feature as on the whole meritorious, giving “fulness, or what the painters would call impasto, to his style, and if it might not always conduce to effect on the stage, suitable on the whole to the character of his composition.” Mr. Bullen,[206] after an eloquent tribute to “Massinger's admirable ease and dignity,” and to “his rare command of an excellent work-a-day dramatic style, clear, vigorous, and [pg 071] free from conceit and affectation,” proceeds to allow that “he is apt to grow didactic and tax the reader's patience; and there is often a want of coherence in his sentences, which amble down the page in a series of loosely linked clauses.” I do not myself feel that this charge comes to very much.

The real fault of Massinger lies in an imperfect presentation of character. This point has been felt by many writers, and put in various ways. Coleridge bluntly says: “Massinger's characters have no character.”[207] Brander Matthews puts it in another way when he observes that “the plots are not the result of the characters, but the work of the playwright,”[208] a criticism we may remark in passing eminently applicable to Fletcher. It has been said that the characters are conventional, like those in the Italian or Spanish sources from which they are derived; the violent tyrant and the arrogant queen are the most familiar of these types. I do not think this statement arrives at the root of the matter. Characters may be conventional and yet interesting and lifelike. A great many of the personages in Massinger's plays, important and unimportant alike, act reasonably; he takes great pains to discriminate them, and the effect is successful and consistent. Let us recall the great characters in Massinger; they are Paris, Luke, Sir Giles Overreach, Durazzo, Marullo, Malefort, Charalois, Antiochus, Camiola, Dorothea, Donusa, Almira. In the second rank we may put Timoleon, Romont, Bertoldo, John Antonio, Mathias, Wellborn, Athenais, Marcelia, Sophia, Cleora. Of these persons, the two that I think most men would like to have known best are Paris and Camiola. Notice, by the way, that there is seldom more than one great character in a play. Now, in Henry VIII there are three, the King, Catherine, and Wolsey. The question arises whether Massinger, even with Fletcher's help, could have worked on this scale. If [pg 072] Massinger wrote Henry VIII it is certainly, with all its faults, his most remarkable achievement.

The point which I wish to emphasize is that there are many characters in Massinger drawn with care and ability. Think, for example, of the skilful contrast between Pulcheria and Athenais in The Emperor of the East, showing how easy it is for two good women to quarrel. Further, it is clear that the attempt to produce composite and developing characters is praiseworthy, even if it be not always successful, because it is more true to life than Ben Jonson's brilliant but illusory delineation of “humours.” Human beings are too complex to be labelled in this slapdash way, however amusing it may be on the stage.

And yet we must allow that a certain number of the more important characters act outrageously; the explanation being that the faults which Massinger loves to portray and censure are such as show themselves in outrageous ways—such as anger, pride, impotence in the Latin sense, uxoriousness, and above all jealousy.[209] Take the case of Theophilus in The Virgin Martyr, who kills his daughters because they have been reconverted to Christianity; or of Domitian in The Roman Actor, who goes through life killing people as he would kill flies. It is not enough to say that there are such people in the world; the point is, that in Massinger they shock us without appalling us. Sforza behaves to Marcelia much as Othello behaves to Desdemona; we feel at once a difference of power in the two plays.[210] Massinger has many villains, but Shakspere manages better with Richard III and Iago. Think again of the uxoriousness of Ladislas, Theodosius, Domitian, which some have held to be a covert satire on Charles I. We despise these weak and servile husbands.

Now, is there anything we can urge in Massinger's justification? I think there is. We read his plays nowadays, we do not see them acted. We are therefore apt to forget how impressive and vigorous good acting is. The display of passion on the stage with gesture, attitude, frown, and scorn, would render more tolerable some of these scenes which offend us in the study by their crudeness. Such a part, for instance, as Leosthenes in The Bondman, the jealous and yet guilty lover, has great opportunities for the actor. It might even be urged that Massinger wrote thus because he knew the capabilities of the actors who were going to perform his plays.

The same consideration applies to a feature in Massinger which will strike every reader. He sets himself at times to represent growth, or, at any rate, change, of character. Even Shakspere seldom tries to do this,[211] and it was too hard a task for his pupil. His most ambitious venture in this direction is in The Picture. In that play Mathias has a magic portrait, which shows him whether his wife is faithful to him or not in his absence; and the alternations of the mind in husband and wife alike are drawn with considerable power. Luke in The City Madam is perhaps the most skilfully drawn example of a development of character. The hypocrite is quite carried away by the riches to which he unexpectedly succeeds.[212] Another successful conversion is that of Theophilus at the end of The Virgin Martyr. It is due partly to his eating the heavenly fruit, for which he had asked Dorothea at her death, partly to the effect which the [pg 074] grace and beauty of Angelo produce on his mind. The gradual growth of his new belief, in spite of all that Harpax can do, is managed with much skill, and it is in itself true to nature that the man who had been violent in one direction should ultimately be violent in another. Moreover, we are bound to remember that when people are soon persuaded, the play gets on. Indeed, I think we have in this consideration the clue to the whole matter; “the Stage Poet” had a practical mind.

Change of mood and vacillation of purpose, under the stress of temptation, or due to the conflict of contrary impulses, are features of some of Massinger's best scenes. The wavering of the love-sick Caldoro while Durazzo is abusing him is very true to life.[213] The skill with which the “melancholy” Vitelli's changes of mood are depicted in The Renegado[214] suggests the theory that Massinger is drawing his own portrait. The alternation of pride and humility in Honoria in The Picture[215] is forcibly shown. The just anger of Sophia at the end of the same play yields skilfully to a combined intercession.

As a rule, however, the changes are too rapid. Thus, in The Maid of Honour, Aurelia, when she hears that Camiola has ransomed Bertoldo and bound him with a promise to marry her, suddenly changes her mind; she has been on the point of marrying the faithless soldier, but, as she says:

On the sudden

I feel all fires of love quench'd in the water

Of my compassion.[216]

Though the change is natural, it is inartistically effected; it comes too suddenly. Think, however, what an opportunity this would be for a great actress. If we were in the audience, we should see the gradual development reflected in her expression and bearing long before she utters the words which embody her thought.

Other instances of the same thing are to be found in Donusa's conversion to Christianity in The Renegado,[217] in the change of faith effected in Calista and Christeta by Dorothea's story of the King of Egypt and Osiris' image,[218] and in the indecision of Lorenzo about matrimony in The Bashful Lover.[219]

Change of mind is an ungrateful and inartistic experience. It has landed many honest politicians in bitter and undeserved reproaches. From Aristotle's time onwards Euripides has been blamed for his Iphigenia at Aulis, who first feared to die, and then offered herself for her country.[220] We certainly feel that in Massinger there are occasionally instances of cheap repentance which do not seem real. Take the case of Corisca in The Bondman; a bad woman repents, but though convinced we are not pleased at the spectacle.[221] If Massinger had ever read the Poetics of Aristotle, he forgot or ignored the precept that a character should be ὁμαλόν, or “consistent.”[222] If this is not the case there is a danger that [pg 076] the effect will be μιαρόν, or “odious,” to use a word of which Aristotle is fond. I think, then, that this charge is proven. Massinger saw how effective on the stage a sudden change of character might be, but lacked the necessary art to make it convincing. Hence some of his characters are not even ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλοι.[223] Perhaps the explanation is this, that, being a master of language, he overvalued the persuasiveness of rhetoric.[224] It is not enough to portray the varying emotions which sway the mind at a particular moment; to produce a satisfactory whole they have to be fused together. The reader should not feel that the characters are at the mercy of the situations in which they are placed, or they will appear to be lay-figures or puppets, rather than live flesh and blood.

Yet even here a defence of some sort can be set up for our poet. I will endeavour to make my meaning clear by an analogy from music. It may have occurred to someone to ask what the music of Mozart would have been like if he had lived after Beethoven. Would it have been more serious and sublime than it is? The question is worth asking, even if the only answer to it be this, that without Mozart Beethoven would never have existed. I think it is fair to argue that Massinger, in his constant effort after the representation of change of character, was before his time; he was seeking after a complex but possible effect, which the novelist can undertake but which the limitations of the stage render almost impossible.[225]

Is it fanciful to say that if he had lived in the eighteenth century, if he had had before his eyes the work of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, he would have been a good novelist, less cynical than Fielding, more concise than Richardson, more ideal than Smollett? There are authors like Euripides and Virgil whose very failures by a strange paradox seem part of their greatness; and we may perhaps say that Massinger, by pointing the way somewhat tentatively and blindly to subtle psychological studies, has helped to build up the noble fabric of the English novel.

Let us now turn to some miscellaneous points of interest in Massinger; and first, let us note his imitation of Shakspere. It is tempting to suppose that as he was at one time a dependent of a family which was intimate with Shakspere he may have come across the man himself;[226] it is, at any rate, simpler to remember that as he was thirty-two years of age when Shakspere died, he can hardly have failed to meet him in his professional relations. But we have no evidence of the fact. All we can say is that his plays, like those of Fletcher, Webster, Tourneur, and others,[227] show a constant study of Shakspere.[228]

First let me give a few examples of the imitation of incidents. In The Roman Actor,[229] Paris refers to a tragedy “in which a murder was acted to the life,” which forced a guilty hearer to make discovery of his secret; this recalls the play scene in Hamlet.[230] In A Very Woman[231] Almira makes Antonio tell her his history. The hint of this is taken from Othello.[232] In The Fatal Dowry[233] Beaumelle and her maid arrange to be overheard, like Hero and Ursula in Much Ado about Nothing.[234] The device by which Beaupré recovers her husband in The Parliament of Love is imitated from All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure. The banditti in The Guardian[235] respect the poor like the outlaws in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.[236] The forest scenes in the same play recall As You Like It and Midsummer-Night's Dream.[237] In The Bashful Lover[238] the pretty tale of a sister which Ascanio tells is a reminiscence of Twelfth Night.[239] The incident in the same play of Hortensio with Ascanio in his arms[240] is modelled on As You Like It.[241] Malefort's behaviour to the tailor[242] is imitated from Petruchio's in The Taming of the Shrew.[243] The gibberish of the pretended Indians in The City Madam[244] reminds us of Parolles' adventure in All's Well.[245] The scene in The Emperor of the East[246] where Eudocia professes to have eaten the apple is modelled on Othello[247], where Desdemona asserts that the handkerchief is not lost. In The Bondman[248] Zanthia overhears Corisca's confession of love in her sleep, as Iago [pg 079] does Cassio's.[249] In A New Way to pay Old Debts[250] Sir Giles Overreach, is carried off for treatment to a dark room like Malvolio in Twelfth Night.[251] Almira in A Very Woman[252] reminds us of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. The ghosts in The Unnatural Combat[253] and The Roman Actor[254] are used like those in the finale of Richard III.

Parallels in thought and diction are also numerous. Take The Roman Actor[255]:

Aretinus. Are you on the stage,

You talk so boldly?

Paris. The whole world being one,

This place is not exempted.

This goes back to Jaques in As You Like It.[256] In The Maid of Honour[257] Jacomo talks of “trailing the puissant pike;” the phrase of Pistol in Henry V.[258] In The Emperor of the East[259] Athenais makes use of the phrase “prophetic [pg 080] soul,” which we remember in Hamlet.[260] Leosthenes uses the same phrase in The Bondman[261] when the mutinous slave Cimbrio boasts of the excesses of his friends. The pun which Hircius makes on the cobbler's awl[262] occurs in the first scene of Julius Cæsar. The madness of the English slave in A Very Woman[263] comes from the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet.[264] The “many-headed monster, multitude” of Theodosius in The Emperor of the East[265] takes us back to Coriolanus' “beast with many heads”;[266] while the reference in the same play[267] to the “stomach” reminds us of the fable of Menenius.[268] In The Bashful Lover[269] Uberti discourses thus:

I look on your dimensions, and find not

Mine own of lesser size; the blood that fills

My veins, as hot as yours, my sword as sharp,

My nerves of equal strength, my heart as good.

This reminds us of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice[270] and the King in Henry V.[271] Clarindore's language in The Parliament of Love[272] is modelled on Malvolio in Twelfth Night.[273] The same is true of Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way.[274] Shakspere's dislike of spaniels reappears in the same play.[275]

No doubt we must make deductions for the common [pg 081] idioms of the day,[276] but the cumulative evidence of these parallels with the elder dramatist is overwhelming.[277]

Massinger is very fond of introducing doctors in his plays; so no doubt are the other dramatists of this period. It is interesting to compare Paulo in A Very Woman with Corax in The Lover's Melancholy of Ford, who deals successfully with two cases of mental derangement. Ford is more subtle, Massinger more dignified. Thus we find in The Virgin Martyr[278] a consultation about Antoninus' health. Sapritius, the afflicted father, hails the doctors thus:

O you that are half gods, lengthen that life

Their deities lend us; turn o'er all the volumes

Of your mysterious Æsculapian science

T' increase the number of this young man's days.[279]

Compare with this another passage in The Duke of Milan:

Sforza. O you earthly gods,

You second natures, that from your great master,

Who join'd the limbs of torn Hippolytus,

And drew upon himself the Thunderer's envy,

Are taught those hidden secrets that restore

To life death-wounded men![280]

In A Very Woman[281] Paulo, on entering with two surgeons, is thus addressed:

Duke. My hand! You rather

Deserve my knee, and it shall bend as to

A second father, if your saving aids

Restore my son.

Viceroy. Rise, thou bright star of knowledge,

Thou honour of thy art, thou help of nature.

Thou glory of our academies!

The old saying, “Ubi tres medici ibi duo athei,” referred to by Sir T. Browne in Religio Medici is recalled to us by these lines:

Viceroy. Observe his piety; I have heard, how true

I know not, most physicians, as they grow

Greater in skill, grow less in their religion;

Attributing so much to natural causes,

That they have little faith in that they cannot

Deliver reason for; this doctor steers

Another course.[282]

We find them again in The Emperor of the East,[283] where a surgeon is contrasted with an empiric who vends his wares and talks much Latin, like the quack in Ben Jonson's Alchemist, while Paulinus complains of the many medical impostors who prey upon the rich. The crisis of The Duke of Milan[284] owes much to the action of doctors. The plot of A Very Woman hinges largely on the skill of the doctor Paulo, to whom we have referred above. In this play we have two victims of melancholy, Almira and Cardenes; the former is cured by falling in love with the disguised John Antonio; the latter is Paulo's patient. The recovery of the avaricious father in The Roman Actor[285] is due to Paris acting in the part of a doctor. The physician Dinant in The Parliament of Love gives the gallants a good lesson (IV., 5). And in The Picture[286] we find an elaborate simile, in which soldiers are said to be the surgeons of the State. In the same play Hilario,[287] when on starvation [pg 083] fare, is accosted by a surgeon, who invites him to sell himself for “a living anatomy to be set up in the surgeons' hall.” Such passages,[288] and the zest with which Massinger refers to potatoes, eringos, and the like,[289] together with the rather wearisome allusions which he makes to “caudles” and “cullises,”[290] lead us to wonder whether at one time of his life he may have seriously studied medicine. There is a significant passage in The Parliament of Love,[291] where Chamont says to the doctor Dinant,

Good master doctor, when your leisure serves,

Visit my house; when we least need their art,

Physicians look most lovely.

And close intercourse with doctors may have suggested the lines immediately below:

Novall. The knave is jealous.

Perigot. 'Tis a disease few doctors cure themselves of.

At the same time, let us not forget the passages where he shows a knowledge of the law;[292] nor the fact that books have been written to prove that Shakspere must have had a training in this or that profession.[293] The really interesting point about the doctors in Massinger is that they are so often praised as the healers of the mind; the dramatist who delights in drawing gloomy, passionate characters seems to have a high opinion for the profession which [pg 084] undertook to cure “melancholy.”[294] In A Very Woman he takes care to praise and reward the doctor more highly than the surgeons. On the other hand, like most of his contemporaries, he naturally makes the physician a part of the machinery rather than an individual character. Even the doctor in A Fair Quarrel, who takes an unusually large part in the plot, can hardly be said to be more than a carefully drawn lay figure. The same remark applies to the friars of Shakspere.

The chief question about Massinger which interests the student of English is the authorship of Henry VIII. Did he take part in writing that play with Fletcher? There is a great mass of literature on this subject. As one who has read the undoubted plays of Massinger many times, I am bound to say that while there is much in the play which reminds one of Shakspere and Fletcher, I find little trace of Massinger's style. I do not deny that there are one or two slight reminiscences; thus the word “file”[295] is a favourite one with Massinger. We find blushing in the play once or twice,[296] but then we find it elsewhere in Shakspere. Anne's remark to the old lady, “Come, you are pleasant,”[297] is in Massinger's manner, but he may have taken the turn from Shakspere. The strict metre of such a line as this is like Massinger;[298] the same remark applies again:

Surrey. Has the King this?

Suffolk. Believe it.

Surrey. Will this work?

The fourth scene of the second act is a great law-court Scene, and Massinger has several such, in which he may be copying Shakspere. The combination of courtiers in dialogue which we get in various parts of Henry VIII is like Massinger;[299] but, to my mind, the scenes are more clumsy than their parallels in Massinger. Sudden changes of mind are found in Henry VIII;[300] and this is probably the strongest bit of evidence in favour of Massinger's authorship. The characters are not harmoniously rounded off: Buckingham's prayers for the King[301] do not please us; the King's scruples of conscience are not convincing;[302] Wolsey's meekness[303] and piety[304] do not ring true, though they anticipate the picture of his last year which we get in Cavendish's Life—but all these blemishes may be due to hasty work or dual authorship. Failure in representing vacillation and complexity of character is, as we have seen above, a note of Massinger, but the failures of this kind in Henry VIII are marked by a sentimentality which reminds us of Fletcher.

Let us see now what there is in the play unlike Massinger. To begin with, there are many passages in Shakspere's difficult later style,[305] and there is a complete absence of Massinger's sinuous sentences and frequent parentheses, as also of his peculiar vocabulary; there are many flights of high and tender poetry which are beyond his compass; there are brilliant γνῶμαι, such as—

Griffith. Noble madam,

Men's evil manners live in brass, their virtues

We write in water,[306]

or,

Chancellor. But we are all men,

In our own natures frail, and capable

Of our flesh; few are angels,[307]

which are quite out of his range of power.

Again, there is a curious series of links in the play, by which characters who are to come on later are introduced; it seems to be an attempt to give unity to a disconnected work. Thus, the King's belief in Cranmer is early indicated;[308] Cromwell's future success is foreshadowed by Wolsey;[309] Gardiner's dislike of Cranmer is brought before us.[310] This is a method of which I can recall no instance in Massinger's undoubted plays.

In spite of his roughness and ferocity, Henry is more of a man than any of Massinger's tyrants; there is no parallel in Massinger to Anne Boleyn, slight as her portrait is; while Katherine and Wolsey are alike far superior to anything of his. Lastly, the pageantry and processions of the play do not appear in Massinger's simple designs.

The authors of Henry VIII were essaying an impossible task. They were trying to construct an historical play out of materials which were too various to make artistic unity feasible, and they had to make an unattractive character the centre of the piece. Consequently, they decided to end the play at the christening of Elizabeth, and to cover their retreat with gorgeous rhetoric about the Virgin Queen[311] and her Stuart successor. It would have been quite impossible to introduce the death of Anne Boleyn, or any further incident of the reign, without harrowing the feelings of the spectator and losing all sense of proportion. But they do make a desperate effort to centre our attention on the King as a commanding figure; he comes before us as “the first gentleman in [pg 087] Europe,” and as the anxious lover of his people; he is represented as torn by conflicting emotions about the divorce, and as badly treated by Rome; all we can say is, these facts are true, however unskilfully the play brings them before us. Whatever the King does, we are meant to like him. His victims all conspire to invoke the blessings of Heaven on his head; Buckingham,[312] Wolsey,[313] Katherine,[314] all agree in this, reminding us of John Stubbs the Puritan, who, when his right hand was cut off for writing a book against Elizabeth's proposed marriage, put off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice, “God save the Queen.” The christening scene in Act V. is skilfully constructed so as to concentrate our interest on Henry; we feel that he is a royal and heroic figure, whose faults may in the last resort be palliated by the consideration that he is the father of Elizabeth.

I agree with the critics who regard the play as a failure from the artistic point of view; it lacks unity, and it moves awkwardly. It might even be called a spectacular experiment. But I rate it higher than they seem to do; its faults are largely due to the subject; it has much of Shakspere in it, as for example, the conscientious way in which the historical details are introduced.[315] It is full of superb and moving passages, and it uses the eleven-syllable line with skill and tenderness. If some of its defects remind us faintly of Massinger, its excellences are altogether beyond his abilities. Doubtless, it is natural to wish that each play of Shakspere should excel its predecessor, and to be unwilling to confess that he ended his career with something that was not supremely excellent. In the same way we may be sorry that one [pg 088] of Mozart's last works, Titus, was a failure. But it is better to take things as we find them than to seek to twist them into something else on inadequate grounds.

Boyle's attribution of Henry VIII to Fletcher and Massinger[316] was coldly received by the New Shakspere Society.[317] Let us look at his arguments. I trust that condensation will do them no injustice.

1. There is a change in the conception of the character of Buckingham. Such changes constantly occur in the plays which Fletcher and Massinger wrote together, notably in the character of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt. Therefore Massinger wrote part of Henry VIII. This line of argument, even if valid, would only prove collaboration by Fletcher with someone else.

2. The Shakspere play All is True may have perished in the “Globe” fire of 1613. Henry VIII was written to take its place, but not produced before 1616. The evidence quoted for the date 1616-17 is very weak, and does nothing to prove Massinger's co-operation.

3. If it be urged that the reputed authors of the play were alive in 1623, when it was published as Shakspere's work in the Folio, Boyle replies,[318] “that, with the exception perhaps of Ben Jonson, it would never have occurred to a dramatist of that age to claim as his property what was published under another's name.” This is a bold statement. Can an instance of such indifference be quoted? Or are we merely bidden to remember that Massinger was poor?

4. Boyle then works through the scenes which he ascribes to Massinger.

I., 1.—The opening is like The Emperor of the East, III., 1. “An untimely ague” corresponds to “a sudden fever.” The resemblance of the scenes is undoubted, and the parallel phrases are remarkable. Note, however, [pg 089] that the writer says the same thing twice (lines 4 and 13), while lines 9-12 are not like Massinger.

I., 4.—Lines 1-18, and 60 to the end. I find no trace of Massinger's style in these passages. He never wrote lines 75-6:

The fairest hand I ever touch'd! O beauty,

Till now I never knew thee!

or such a phrase as “let the music knock it” ad finem.

II., 1.—Lines 1-54, and 136 to the end. I find no trace of Massinger's style in these passages. Boyle has to allow that Fletcher altered several lines in 1-54; this is precarious and subjective reasoning.

II., 3.—Lines 1-11 are in the parenthetic manner, but quite unlike Massinger's. “Soft cheveril conscience” in line 31, and “you'd venture an emballing” in line 47, are instances of the strong vocabulary which marks the play.[319] Picturesque phrases of this kind are not characteristic of Massinger's style.

Nor did Massinger ever sink so low as line 64:

A thousand pound a year, annual support.[320]

II., 4.—No doubt Massinger loves a forensic scene, but this one leads to nothing and leaves the mind in confusion. Now, Massinger was too good an artist to do that. The things the people say in this scene must have passed through their minds in real life, but they are combined in such a way as to be true to history rather than to dramatic propriety. The author aims at telling what happened, and what happened does not always make a good play. It might even be urged from what we know of Massinger that he was too good a “stage-poet” to undertake an English historical play with its necessary limitations.

III., 2, 1-203.—The scene, like so much else in the play, lacks the refinement and courtliness which Massinger [pg 090] always has at his command. It may be noted that the bluff, coarse atmosphere of the “Shaksperian” scenes is very suitable to the central figure of the play.[321] Henry VIII infects his surroundings with himself, and this might be quoted as an indication of Shaksperian skill.

IV., 1.—The prosaic details of this scene are unlike anything in Massinger.[322]

V., 1.—The point of this scene is to concentrate our attention on Elizabeth's birth. The scene “sprawls” sadly, to use Boyle's description of Fletcher's method. First we have Gardiner and Lovell, then Henry and Suffolk, then Henry and Cranmer, then Henry and the old lady. Massinger constructed better than this.

V., 3, 1-113.—Such a speech as Cranmer makes (lines 58-69) is too short for Massinger's ample method, and its terse, broken style is singularly unlike his.

5. The few parallels of diction which Boyle brings forward are either from plays which are not certainly by Massinger, or may be explained as due to reminiscence or common phraseology.

6. Boyle has much of value to say in his criticisms of the characters. But again and again he seems to forget that the author is hampered by the story. He could not treat Henry VIII as Schiller treated Mary Stuart; to idealize the events would have been an act of lèse-majesté.

It is true that Anne Boleyn is not a creation of the same order as Shakspere's later heroines—Imogen, Miranda, Marina, Perdita. Though beautiful and charming, she is shallow and commonplace. Is not this, however, the Anne Boleyn of real life?

“Katherine is inferior to Hermione in The Winter's Tale.” But why should not her portrait be drawn on different lines? Is she not a proud Spanish princess? She is certainly one of the great figures of English Tragedy.

Wolsey is meant to be great but is really vulgar, while [pg 091] “his utter collapse after disgrace is unnatural.” The reply is that Wolsey is a mixed character, and none the worse dramatically for that; very able, very unscrupulous in his use of the courtier's tricks, very fond of power; but not wholly bad. His repentance is true at once to human nature and to history.

“The king is unintelligible.” The fact is, it was impossible to make a hero of Henry VIII; it does not, therefore, follow that Massinger helped to write the play! Boyle is correct when he says that it is with Henry as it is with Wolsey: “we receive our impressions of the characters from the opinions formed of them by others.” In other words, the characterization of the play is faulty. Some critics have supposed that this fact is due to loss of mental power by Shakspere; it is simpler to hold the collaboration with Fletcher as responsible for the jolts and jars which the play gives the reader. If anyone still holds that Shakspere wrote the whole play, he might plausibly take the line that Shakspere was experimenting in the new style and metre of his popular young rival Fletcher. If, however, Shakspere in his retreat at Stratford, in days when posts were infrequent and locomotion slow, forwarded scenes and suggestions for Fletcher to work up at his own sweet will, something like what we have would be the result. Fletcher was evidently on his mettle on this occasion. I cannot prove that Fletcher did not invite Massinger to help him in such an enterprise, and I know how fond Massinger was of studying Shakspere. The latter argument, however, cuts both ways. Again, Massinger may have had an earlier Shaksperian style, very unlike his mature style; but this is pure hypothesis. The evidence which we have does not justify us in saying more than this, that he knew the play of Henry VIII well.[323]

It would take me too far from my purpose to discuss the authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen in detail, interesting as the problem is, but as many critics have assigned the “un-Fletcherian” parts of the play to Massinger, I have, as in duty bound, read the play carefully several times. There is very little trace of his style, or method, or metre. The only passage which reads to me like Massinger is assigned by Boyle to Fletcher.[324] Mr. Dugdale Sykes, in an acute article,[325] has produced some parallels between Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen; but though one or two of them are striking, they do not prove his case when they are looked at in connexion with the context.

Take, for example:

3rd Queen. He that will all the treasure know o' th' earth

Must know the centre too.[326]

Mr. Sykes compares these lines in The Parliament of Love:

Cleremond. And I should gild my misery with false comforts,

If I compared it with an Indian slave's,

That with incessant labour to search out

Some unknown mine, dives almost to the centre.[327]

On this passage I make two remarks: first, such similarity of thought as is found here may be due to imitation or unconscious reminiscence of The Two Noble Kinsmen. A man who constantly repeats himself is surely the sort of person who would delight to borrow thoughts and phrases from other writers, and to imitate whole scenes and incidents. [pg 093] Are we to suppose that Massinger confined his studies to Shakspere?

Secondly, let us judge the passage as a whole; it runs thus:

He that will all the treasure know o' th' earth

Must know the centre too; he that will fish

For my least minnow, let him lead his line

To catch one at my heart.

Anything more unlike Massinger than this fishing for minnows cannot be imagined.

Take again the parallel,[328] “which alone should be conclusive of Massinger's authorship”:

Pirithous. Though I know

His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they

Must yield their tribute there. My precious maid,

Those best affections, that the heavens infuse

In their best temper'd pieces, keep enthroned

In your dear heart.[329]

In Believe as You List we have:

Though I know

The ocean of your apprehensions needs not

The rivulet of my poor cautions, yet,

Bold from my long experience, I presume, etc.[330]

Though the similarity of thought and expression in the first three lines is manifest, the archaic simplicity of the first passage differs greatly from the mature flow of the second.

What is Mr. Sykes' theory? “If we admit Massinger's collaboration in this play, at the very outset of his literary career, before his style was definitely formed, and when the influence of the foremost dramatist of the age was strongest upon him, the apparently ‘Shaksperian’ quality of its verse can readily be explained.” On this proposition I make two remarks; [pg 094] first, that as we have none of Massinger's early works, I cannot prove that he never wrote in the style of The Two Noble Kinsmen; I can only assert with absolute certainty that none of his extant works has the least resemblance to it. Secondly, as to the supposed “Shaksperian” colour of the play, this is a point on which one's judgment varies each time one reads it. There is a great deal in the “un-Fletcherian” parts which reminds one of Shakspere; some of it is so like his later style that it is not surprising to find that many great critics have assigned it to him; many other passages, however, seem just not to ring true; they are obscure because they have little meaning. For let not the fact be disguised, in spite of one great lyric, several splendid scenes, and some fine speeches, there is much poor stuff in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

The simplest explanation of the double ascription in the quarto of 1634 is to suppose that Shakspere helped Fletcher in some way. He may even have written the un-Fletcherian parts,[331] though, personally, I find traces of Fletcher in them also; he may have left material which Fletcher worked up; he may have merely suggested the construction of the plot, a department in which Fletcher is weak.

If, however, the “Shaksperian” parts be deemed unworthy of Shakspere, why assign them to Massinger, whose work they do not resemble? Could no one else have imitated Shakspere except Massinger? Why should not Fletcher himself for once have caught the Shaksperian manner? Why should he not have confided the execution of a part to someone else who was soaked in Shakspere's style? Why should not Beaumont have helped him here as elsewhere,[332] or possibly Heywood?

The archaic flavour of the play is to me the outstanding fact about it; we know that plays on this subject were acted [pg 095] in 1566 and 1594. The archaic flavour may be due to the influence of Chaucer on the writers; it is more likely to be due to an earlier play having been taken and altered. It might also be due to the collaboration of someone like Heywood, who, though late in time, is surprisingly simple and early in style. The rustic scenes are an instance of this very early manner.[333] If Shakspere and Fletcher took an old play, and the former contributed a few turns to the revised edition, then everything would be accounted for.[334] It will be said that there are scenes which remind us of Lady Macbeth and Ophelia; why should not an already existing play have suggested to Shakspere something which he worked up in those two characters into a far finer result? We know for a fact that much of his best work is based on older plays. This random hypothesis is quite as probable as the supposition that Massinger had anything to do with The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Let us next consider Mr. Tucker Brooke's position.[335] After a searching and masterly analysis of the merits and defects of the play, he ends with a guarded tendency towards assigning the “un-Fletcherian” parts to Massinger on the following grounds: “The metrical tests give him an even better title than his master [i.e., Shakspere] to the doubtful parts of our play.” To this I reply that style is a more important test than metre. There are, secondly, “the structural and psychological imperfections of the work”; thirdly, “the tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language”; fourthly, “the feeble imitation of Shakspere”; fifthly, “the frequent similarity to Massinger's acknowledged writings.” The only serious argument against the assumption is that there is nothing in Massinger to compare with “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian part.”

Let us briefly look at these arguments. The work [pg 096] is “structurally and psychologically imperfect.” True, and this point might be quoted to support the theory that the play is based on an old and immature tragedy. As far as concerns structure, Massinger's plays are always strong; so that part of the argument falls to the ground. No doubt his psychology is his weak point, but its weakness is of a different kind from that which we find in The Two Noble Kinsmen. There are no violent emotions of the sort in which he rejoices in it. There are no characters in Massinger resembling Palamon and Arcite. Mr. Brooke refers to their “spinelessness,” and it is true that they are not much differentiated. I suppose, however, that he would allow that they start by being a romantic pair of friends, that their quarrel when they first see Emilia is lifelike, and that their subsequent behaviour is chivalrous. When he refers to “the really revolting wishy-washiness and ingrained sensuality of Emilia” he uses exaggerated language. The fact is, that Emilia is in a very difficult position, and if her character is ambiguous it is the fault of the story rather than of the author.

“The tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language.” This is based in the main on Hippolyta's language,[336] with which Mr. Sykes compares a passage in The Unnatural Combat.[337] I have discussed the supposed coarseness of Massinger's heroines elsewhere. In spite of everything that Boyle can say, with his catalogue of twenty-two passages, I wonder who is right about Massinger's women, Boyle or Courthope, who says that “his portraits of women show more delicacy of feeling and imagination than those of any English dramatist with the exception of Shakspere.”[338] I, at any rate, feel that Courthope is nearer the truth than Boyle and his followers.

“Feeble imitation of Shakspere.” That there is imitation of Shakspere in Massinger we all know; but I deny that it is feeble, and we know that others of the same age, [pg 097] like Fletcher, Webster, and Tourneur, have delighted to imitate him.

“The frequent similarity to Massinger's writings.” In the first place, I do not feel that the similarity is frequent; and secondly, as has already been pointed out, what similarity there is may be due to imitation of The Two Noble Kinsmen by Massinger. Are we to suppose that the only author he imitated or borrowed from was Shakspere?

The final reservation raises mixed feelings. I am tired of those writers who grudgingly attribute to Massinger the leavings of other playwrights, making him the whipping boy of his age, and who proceed to qualify their theories by doubts as to his ability to attain to the excellences which they perforce discover in them. I will be so far generous to Mr. Brooke as to allow that “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian parts” is unlike Massinger, because there is no reason for supposing that he wrote any of these parts. Massinger's fame can stand on its own merits without these churlishly conceded ascriptions of doubtful work.

And now let us pass to Boyle's notable article on this subject.[339] Much as I admire his learning and zeal, I am amazed at the perversity of his judgment and the thinness of his arguments. Let us take them in order. “There is a want of development in the dramatic character”[340] of The Two Noble Kinsmen. This Boyle ascribes to the fact that, as elsewhere, Massinger's conceptions were blurred by Fletcher's co-operation in other parts of the play. As this argument begs the question it has no weight. “Allusions to Shakspere are characteristic both of Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen.”[341] Are we to suppose that no one imitated Shakspere except Massinger? “The metrical structure of the play corresponds closely with Massinger's general style.”[342] Here, however, Boyle [pg 098] has to allow that the percentages for double endings are not what you would expect. And I look with suspicion on a writer who professes to be so certain of these tests that he can assign I., 1-40, and V., 1-19, to Fletcher. “Massinger is fond of classical allusions, as is the author of The Two Noble Kinsmen.”[343] This argument deserves no consideration when we remember that the fact is true of other Elizabethan writers. For example, we find “the helmeted Bellona,”[344] and Massinger is fond of the sonorous word.[345] Yes, but Bellona is not unknown in Shakspere. M. Arnold has pointed out that she occurs in a weak passage of Macbeth.[346] “Medical and surgical similes occur in both.”[347] When we come to investigate these we find that the remarks in question are of a commonplace kind. “The characters of The Two Noble Kinsmen resemble those of Massinger.”[348] Theseus, for example, resembles Lorenzo in The Bashful Lover. I see no resemblance. “Palamon and Arcite may be met with in many of Massinger's plays.”[349] I fail to find them anywhere. “The three ladies are grossly sensual in their remarks.”[350] I have dealt with this point before, and it really amounts to a mischievous obsession in Boyle's mind. Let us take the passages seriatim; Emilia is talking privately to Hippolyta[351] about a dead girl friend to whom she was devoted when young. In the course of this beautiful passage she says:

The flower that I would pluck

And put between my breasts, then but beginning

To swell about the blossom, oh! she would long

Till she had such another, and commit it

To the like innocent cradle, where phœnix-like

They died in perfume.

I am ashamed to waste words in vindicating this passage, which Boyle sets by the language of Iachimo in Cymbeline in describing the mole on Imogen's breast[352] to a company of gentlemen.

The next one is “decisive of the question of the authorship of our play.”

1st Queen. When her arms,

Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall

By warranting moonlight corslet thee, O when

Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall[353]

Upon thy tasteful lips, what wilt thou think

Of rotten kings and blubbered queens? What care

For what thou feel'st not, what thou feel'st being able

To make Mars spurn his drum? O, if thou covet

But one night with her, every hour in't will

Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and

Thou shalt remember nothing more than what

That banquet bids thee to.[354]

Though there are passages in Massinger of which the thought is similar to that presented here, I do not judge it or them as severely as Boyle. The point, however, which I wish to make is this: these lines are typical of what I have called the archaic flavour of the play. Where in Massinger's works will you find “warranting moonlight,” “tasteful lips,” “twinning cherries,” “rotten kings and blubbered queens,” or “Mars' drum”? The idea that Massinger wrote this passage is quite preposterous; the only thing in it which reminds one of him is the “and” at the end of line 204.

Lastly, we have Hippolyta's words in the same scene:

Yet I think

Did I not by the abstaining of my joy,

Which breeds a deeper longing, cure their surfeit

That craves a present medicine, I should pluck

All ladies' scandal on me.[355]

Hippolyta agrees in these lines to postpone her wedding in order that the Queens should be avenged on Creon. No doubt the lines are crude, but Boyle goes too far with his “cloven hoof,” his “effluvia of social corruption,” his “thick miasma.”

“There is a close parallel between The Two Noble Kinsmen and A Very Woman in the treatment of madness.”[356] I do not see much similarity between the prose of the one play and the poetry of the other, but so far as any exists it is due to the common ideas of the age as to the way in which to treat the mad. “The reflections in the dialogue of Palamon and Arcite,[357] on the corruptions of Thebes, the neglect of soldiers, the extravagance of fashion, are allusions such as Massinger makes to contemporary English life.”[358] The allusions are such as any moralist might make, and if the rough and immature style in which they are expressed is not like Massinger's the argument falls to the ground.

“There are a good many expressions in common between The Two Noble Kinsmen and Massinger.”[359] This is the really serious argument; but let me repeat that similarity of thought and expression in isolated phrases does not prove unity of authorship. Let us, however, look at some of these parallels.

Reference is twice made in The Two Noble Kinsmen to “the wheaten garland” of brides.[360] Massinger refers to “the garland” of a bridegroom in three passages.[361] I fail to see the connexion. Notice also that Massinger does not use the epithet “wheaten” in these passages.

Theseus says, “Troubled I am,” and turns away.[362] It was quite natural that he should think twice before postponing his wedding. Boyle compares a passage where Ladislas is in uncertainty[363]:

I am much troubled,

And do begin to stagger.

People in Massinger's plays are often perplexed, and so they are in real life. Note that Theseus ends his remark with these words at the beginning of a line. When Massinger's characters are in perplexity their way of expressing themselves is quite different; it is more full and rounded off.

Theseus says: “Forward to the temple,”[364] being anxious to be married. “Similar words in similar situations occur in Massinger.”[365] In neither case, however, is it a bridegroom who speaks.

The Two Noble Kinsmen, I., 165, 166:

1st Queen. And that work presents itself to th' doing;

Now 'twill take form, the heats are gone to-morrow.

Boyle says this is obscure, but can be explained by Empress of the East:

That resolution which grows cold to-day

Will freeze to-morrow.[366]

The thought is a familiar one; and can anyone suppose that Massinger wrote line 165?

The expression “our undertaker”[367] recalls a word used by Shakspere.[368] Massinger also has it twice;[369] the parallel is interesting, but the word was a cant political term of Jacobean times.

The fact that apes imitate is referred to in these lines:[370]

'Tis in our own power—

Unless we fear that apes can tutor's—to

Be masters of our manners.

In The Emperor of the East we find:

You are master of the manners and the habit,

Rather the scorn of such as would live men,

And not, like apes, with servile imitation

Study prodigious fashions.[371]

Surely there is no need to assume common authorship here. The imitative ape has been common property for a long time.

A peculiarity of a sick man is referred to, thus: