knot, the whole of the play. Annabella and her brother, feeling one for the other an insurmountable passion, confess it in the most poetical language, having but scorn for men's arbitrary laws and for prohibitions which are only vain customs, empty words. Though pregnant, Annabella marries Soranzo, who, discovering her condition, pours on her a flood of insults, even more deserved than he suspects, for he thinks her guilty only of adultery. He throws her to the ground and drags her about the stage by the hair. Annabella laughs, a maniacal laugh, she sings, extols her guilt, dies voluntarily, by the hand of her lover, who appears at the last act with her heart " upon his dagger." All the personages in the play are poisoned, tortured, have their eyes plucked out, are hacked to pieces; the boards are soaked with blood; spectators fond of sanguinary sights had wherewith to be pleased, and could not regret having gone to the Phoenix that evening instead of to one of the Bankside circuses.

Even with those who have not made the sombre genre their speciality, lugubrious dramas abound. Massinger declares that the "most perfect birth of his Minerva" is his Roman Actor." 2 The "gravity and height of the subject" could not, he says, but displease a public

Shall a peevish sound,

A customary form, from man to man,

Of brother and sister, be a bar

'Twixt my perpetual happiness and me? (i. 1.)

• Performed 1626. No satisfactory edition: "Works," ed. Gifford, 1805-13, 4 vols., re-edited by Cunningham, 1867; select plays in the "Mermaid Series." Philip Massinger, born in 1583, studied at Oxford, wrote for the stage from 1606, first in collaboration with Field, Daborne, and especially Fletcher. He worked principally for the King's men, or servants, Shakespeare's troupe. Being only an author, he lived in poverty; he died suddenly in 1640. The mention "a stranger," in the Southwark registers on the occasion of his burial, has been a traditional cause of melancholy remarks, but it means only that he did not belong to the parish.

"only affected with jigs and ribaldry." Such is the influence of ambient ideas: Massinger was sincere, doubtless, but the grave and high subject treated by him consists in a picture of the ferocity and lubricity of an emperor whom he calls Domitian, but who might have been equally well the usual Duke of Mantua, Padua, or anywhere. If the ribaldry-loving public was not pleased with this, it was really hard to please. The emperor's mistress, as dissolute as himself, tries to force her love upon an unwilling actor, as the Duchess of Malfy had upon Antonio; the scene is nothing short of revolting. Two senators are tortured on the stage and done to death behind the scenes. Shakespeare's favourite devices are resorted to again without scruple. Massinger, who was writing for the "King's Majesties Servants," the former troupe of the great poet, was well acquainted with the contents of the chests for manuscripts at the Globe, and often shows it. He wants, however, to improve on his model, and he succeeds, as he thinks, by that easy method, accessible to all, multiplication. In writing the "Roman Actor" he remembered "Hamlet,' but instead of one play within the play he has three, which is much.

In the "Duke of Milan," by the same, we find again the scene between the servants used as a preparation for the scene between their masters; murders, disguises, and poisonings; an over-credulous Othello matching an over-clumsy Iago.1 Such reminiscences are frequent at this period a new Friar Lawrence, a new Romeo, another Juliet, with a soporific causing apparent death, are in Dekker, one more Friar Lawrence is in Ford; 2

'Marcelia, no less credulous, cannot help acknowledging, towards the end, that she has been preternaturally obtuse: "Oh! I have fooled myself—Into my grave." "Fooled" is certainly not too strong a word. "The Duke of Millaine, a tragedie," performed ab. 1620, pr. 1623.

"The Honest Whore," by Dekker, pr. 1604; "Tis Pitty Shees a Whore,"

another Malvolio in Glapthorne; the duke of "Measure for Measure" reappears in Marmion; silly constables are countless.

Many of these authors hesitate between the two schools; they think themselves very bold if they try to outdo their predecessors; they believe that a treble plot will draw more spectators than a double one, and that three plays within their play will have more effect than only one. Instead of one madman or two, or even three or four, a number Shakespeare does not go beyond, and which may be held sufficient, they let loose on the boards troops of them, the whole contents of asylums: dances of madmen in Webster, scenes in an asylum in Middleton, in Dekker, in Fletcher. They do not suspect that they would have shown much more boldness and originality, and would have won for themselves a more enduring fame if they had dared look less far, observe their neighbour, and speak of what they knew. For, generally, they might have done so if they had chosen to; they lacked neither talent nor the gift of observation; the use they make of their qualities spoils all; they are constantly on the verge of the comedy of manners or of characters, but they allow excellent scenes, worthy of the best adepts of the school of observation, to lie concealed among an extravagant succession of wonders and catastrophes.

In Massinger's "City Madam," "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," "The Bashful Lover," cumbersome incidents divert the attention from excellent studies of character, and remarkable gifts are sadly misused.2 There remain,

by Ford. Another (greatly edulcorated) Iago is in a "A Cure for a Cuckold," by Webster and Rowley.

In Webster's "Dutchesse of Malfy," Middleton and Rowley's “Changeling." Dekker's "Honest Whore," Fletcher's "Pilgrim.'

2 "The City-Madam," acted in 1632, perhaps earlier (character of Luke, of a ferocity and credulity equally unnatural; the usual parts of Bawd, Courtesan, etc. As samples of surprises, see towards the end the scenes

I

however, lively dialogues, sketches from life, and as, with all his ribaldry, which he thought indispensable to success, Massinger could attain elegant and refined comedy, he has some scenes of marivaudage worthy of Marivaux himself. Long before the French dramatist, he brought out, in his "Great Duke of Florence," the "Jeux de l'Amour et du Hasard," but by an unfortunate lack of boldness, he deemed needful to mix with these pretty things a mass of commonplace adventures, wars between Florence and Mantua, with a battle on the stage, incidents in the depths of a forest where the heroine is on the verge of suffering violence from (horrible to say) a wicked ambassador. He fears his public, and feels safe only in the land of romance; in the streets of London he is afraid. After having drawn the remarkable portrait of a Sir Giles Overreach, no more than Volpone the usual miser, but the man athirst at once for money, land, and worldly rank, who gives as a servant to his daughter a lady reduced to poverty, adding, "Trample on her," Massinger resumes with alacrity his romantic ways, and offers us disguises, rapes, murders, surprises, or, at least, sketches painted in such crude colours that it is no longer a proud or wicked

with the sham Indians, the supposed apparitions, the pretended portraits with the originals walking down from the frames, etc.)—“A New Way to Pay Old Debts," acted about 1625, pr. 1633; remarkable character of Sir Giles Overreach, proving, however, very unwary when he sends his daughter at night, in the company of Allworth whom she loves, to a lord whom he wants her to marry; he had provided her with a note directed to the parson and thus worded: 66 Marry her to this gentleman." On sight of this sort of cheque to bearer, the parson, who knows no better, marries her to Allworth. -"The Bashful Lover," acted in 1636; pretty scenes between the lover and the lady, amused at his timidity.

* Performed in 1627; in act iv. Petronella playing the part of her mistress, Lidia. See also, in act ii., the pretty scene between Fiorinda and Giovanni, destined by the duke to marry each other, but who both love elsewhere, and who, without confessing as much, greatly embarrassed, but very well bred, exchange polite phrases through which both end by suspecting the other's 2" Bashful Lover," iii. 3.

secret.

woman who paces the boards, but Pride or Iniquity.1 One more clever man who retrogrades, and who, with all his talent, brings us back to the moralities of old.

Dekker, who knew the capital so well, and whose prose essays contain so many scenes perfectly true to nature, whose speech is unshackled and who has the poetical gift, manages to write a comedy on London manners which would be less improbable if transferred to the more appropriate land of fairies, and the time when kings married shepherdesses.2 Day once expressly assigns to himself the task of delineating characters, but he cannot help giving more room to fancy than to observation in the succession of little scenes forming his "Parliament of Bees."3 Thomas Heywood 4 chooses excellent subjects for

See, in the "City Madam," the scene where Anne and Mary notify to their betrothed their views on the conjugal state, ii. 2. It is almost as if they said: Do not marry us, we are monsters of pride and iniquity; and it is, in fact, thus that Pride and Iniquity would have spoken in former days.

2 "The Shomakers Holiday," acted in 1599, pr. 1600; with its gaiety and surprising adventures, it could easily be turned into a Christmas pantomime; the more so that "nothing is purposed but mirth; mirth lengtheneth long life," says the author in his dedication. His "Old Fortunatus," pr. 1600, is

a real fairy tale put on the stage (a tragedy by Hans Sachs on the same subject). The devil is one of the personages of his "If It Be Not Good"; "Dramatic Works," ed. Shepherd, 1873, 4 vols. 8vo. The name of Thomas Dekker, born about 1570 begins to appear in 1598, in Henslowe's Diary; he wrote enormously, at great speed, remained very poor, was more than once imprisoned, collaborated with fifteen or twenty of his contemporaries, and died in 1641. One of the prettiest plays to which he contributed is "Patient Grissill," written in conjunction with Haughton and Chettle, 1603, reprinted by the Shakespeare Society. On his prose works, see above, vol. II. p. 548. 3 Written 1607 (?), perhaps never acted, printed 1641. 'Works now first collected," ed. Bullen, London, 1881, 4to. John Day, born in 1574, figures in Henslowe's Diary from 1598; a quick wit and facile pen, he wrote much in collaboration. The " Pilgrimage to [and Return from] Parnassus" has been attributed to him. Lively dialogues in his "Humour out of breath," printed 1608 (example, ii. 2, Lucia and Hermia), a play with Italian dukes, one having expelled the other; one has two daughters and a boy, the other two boys and a daughter; one can imagine how it all ends-less tragically than in "Romeo."

4 "Dramatic Works, now first collected," London, Pearson, 1874, 6 vols.,