A History of Elizabethan Literature

CHAPTER XI

THE FOURTH DRAMATIC PERIOD

Two great names remain to be noticed in the Elizabethan drama (though neither produced a play till after Elizabeth was dead), some interesting playwrights of third or fourth-rate importance have to be added to them, and in a postscript we shall have to gather up the minor or anonymous work, some of it of very high excellence, of the second division of our whole subject, including plays of the second, third, and fourth periods. But with this fourth period we enter into what may really be called by comparison (remembering always what has been said in the last chapter) a period of decadence, and at its latter end it becomes very decadent indeed. Only in Ford perhaps, of our named and individual authors in this chapter, and in him very rarely, occur the flashes of sheer poetry which, as we have seen in each of the three earlier chapters on the drama, lighten the work of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists proper with extraordinary and lavish brilliance. Not even in Ford are to be found the whole and perfect studies of creative character which, even leaving Shakespere out of the question, are to be found earlier in plays and playwrights of all kinds and strengths, from The Maid's Tragedy and Vittoria Corombona, to The Merry Devil of Edmonton and A Cure for a Cuckold. The tragedies have Ben Jonson's labour without his force, the comedies his coarseness and lack of inspiriting life without his keen observation and incisive touch. As the taste indeed turned more and more from tragedy to comedy, we get attempts on the part of playwrights to win it back by a return to the bloody and monstrous conceptions of an earlier time, treated, however, without the redeeming features of that time, though with a little more coherence and art. Massinger's Unnatural Combat, and Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, among great plays, are examples of this: the numerous minor examples are hardly worth mentioning. But the most curious symptom of all was the gradual and, as it were, imperceptible loss of the secret of blank verse itself, which had been the instrument of the great triumphs of the stage from Marlowe to Dekker. Something of this loss of grasp may have been noticed in the looseness of Fletcher and the over-stiffness of Jonson: it is perceptible distinctly even in Ford and Massinger. But as the Restoration, or rather the silencing of the theatres by the Commonwealth approaches, it becomes more and more evident until we reach the chaotic and hideous jumble of downright prose and verse that is neither prose nor verse, noticeable even in the early plays of Dryden, and chargeable no doubt with the twenty years' return of the English drama to the comparative barbarism of the couplet. This apparent loss of ear and rhythm-sense has been commented on already in reference to Lovelace, Suckling (himself a dramatist), and others of the minor Caroline poets; but it is far more noticeable in drama, and resulted in the production, by some of the playwrights of the transition period under Charles I. and Charles II., of some of the most amorphous botches in the way of style that disfigure English literature.

With the earliest and best work of Philip Massinger, however, we are at any rate chronologically still at a distance from the lamentable close of a great period. He was born in 1583, being the son of Arthur Massinger, a "servant" (pretty certainly in the gentle sense of service) to the Pembroke family. In 1602 he was entered at St. Alban's Hall in Oxford: he is supposed to have left the university about 1609, and may have begun writing plays soon. But the first definite notice of his occupation or indeed of his life that we have is his participation (about 1614) with Daborne and Field in a begging letter to the well-known manager Henslowe for an advance of five pounds on "the new play," nor was anything of his printed or positively known to be acted till 1622, the date of The Virgin Martyr. From that time onwards he appears frequently as an author, though many of his plays were not printed till after his death in 1640. But nothing is known of his life. He was buried on 18th March in St. Saviour's, Southwark, being designated as a "stranger," – that is to say, not a parishioner.

Thirty-seven plays in all, or thirty-eight if we add Mr. Bullen's conjectural discovery, Sir John Barneveldt, are attributed to Massinger; but of these many have perished, Massinger having somehow been specially obnoxious to the ravages of Warburton's cook. Eighteen survive; twelve of which were printed during the author's life. Massinger was thus an industrious and voluminous author, one of many points which make Professor Minto's comparison of him to Gray a little surprising. He was, both at first and later, much given to collaboration, – indeed, there is a theory, not without colour from contemporary rumour, that he had nearly if not quite as much to do as Beaumont with Fletcher's great work. But oddly enough the plays which he is known to have written alone do not, as in other cases, supply a very sure test of what is his share in those which he wrote conjointly. The Old Law, a singular play founded on a similar conception to that in the late Mr. Anthony Trollope's Fixed Period, is attributed also to Rowley and Dekker, and has sometimes been thought to be so early that Massinger, except as a mere boy, could have had no hand in it. The contradictions of critics over The Virgin Martyr (by Massinger and Dekker) have been complete; some peremptorily handing over all the fine scenes to one, and some declaring that these very scenes could only be written by the other. It is pretty certain that the argumentative theological part is Massinger's; for he had a strong liking for such things, while the passages between Dorothea and her servant Angelo are at once more delicate than most of his work, and more regular and even than Dekker's. No companion is, however, assigned to him in The Unnatural Combat, which is probably a pretty early and certainly a characteristic example of his style. His demerits appear in the exaggerated and crude devilry of the wicked hero, old Malefort (who cheats his friend, makes away with his wife, kills his son in single combat, and conceives an incestuous passion for his daughter), in the jerky alternation and improbable conduct of the plot, and in the merely extraneous connection of the farcical scenes. His merits appear in the stately versification and ethical interest of the debate which precedes the unnatural duel, and in the spirited and well-told apologue (for it is almost that) of the needy soldier, Belgarde, who is bidden not to appear at the governor's table in his shabby clothes, and makes his appearance in full armour. The debate between father and son may be given: —

Malef. sen. "Now we are alone, sir;And thou hast liberty to unload the burthenWhich thou groan'st under. Speak thy griefs.Malef. jun. I shall, sir;But in a perplex'd form and method, whichYou only can interpret: Would you had notA guilty knowledge in your bosom, ofThe language which you force me to deliverSo I were nothing! As you are my fatherI bend my knee, and, uncompell'd professMy life, and all that's mine, to be your gift;And that in a son's duty I stand boundTo lay this head beneath your feet and runAll desperate hazards for your ease and safety:But this confest on my part, I rise up,And not as with a father (all respect,Love, fear, and reverence cast off) but asA wicked man I thus expostulate with you.Why have you done that which I dare not speak,And in the action changed the humble shapeOf my obedience, to rebellious rageAnd insolent pride? and with shut eyes constrain'd me,I must not see, nor, if I saw it, shun it.In my wrongs nature suffers, and looks backward,And mankind trembles to see me pursueWhat beasts would fly from. For when I advanceThis sword as I must do, against your head,Piety will weep, and filial duty mourn,To see their altars which you built up in meIn a moment razed and ruined. That you could(From my grieved soul I wish it) but produceTo qualify, not excuse your deed of horror,One seeming reason that I might fix hereAnd move no farther!Malef. sen. Have I so far lostA father's power, that I must give accountOf my actions to my son? or must I pleadAs a fearful prisoner at the bar, while heThat owes his being to me sits a judgeTo censure that which only by myselfOught to be question'd? mountains sooner fallBeneath their valleys and the lofty pinePay homage to the bramble, or what else isPreposterous in nature, ere my tongueIn one short syllable yield satisfactionTo any doubt of thine; nay, though it wereA certainty disdaining argument!Since though my deeds wore hell's black lining,To thee they should appear triumphal robes,Set off with glorious honour, thou being bound,To see with my eyes, and to hold that reasonThat takes or birth or fashion from my will.Malef. jun. This sword divides that slavish knot.Malef. sen. It cannot:It cannot, wretch, and if thou but rememberFrom whom thou had'st this spirit, thou dar'st not hope it.Who trained thee up in arms but I? Who taught theeMen were men only when they durst look downWith scorn on death and danger, and contemn'dAll opposition till plumed VictoryHad made her constant stand upon their helmets?Under my shield thou hast fought as securelyAs the young eaglet covered with the wingsOf her fierce dam, learns how and where to prey.All that is manly in thee I call mine;But what is weak and womanish, thine own.And what I gave, since thou art proud, ungrateful,Presuming to contend with him to whomSubmission is due, I will take from thee.Look therefore for extremities and expect notI will correct thee as a son, but kill theeAs a serpent swollen with poison; who survivingA little longer with infectious breath,Would render all things near him like itselfContagious. Nay, now my anger's up,Ten thousand virgins kneeling at my feet,And with one general cry howling for mercy,Shall not redeem thee.Malef. jun. Thou incensed PowerAwhile forbear thy thunder! let me haveNo aid in my revenge, if from the graveMy mother —Malef. sen. Thou shalt never name her more."[They fight.

The Duke of Milan is sometimes considered Massinger's masterpiece; and here again there are numerous fine scenes and noble tirades. But the irrationality of the donneé (Sforza the duke charges his favourite not to let the duchess survive his own death, and the abuse of the authority thus given leads to horrible injustice and the death of both duchess and duke) mars the whole. The predilection of the author for sudden turns and twists of situation, his neglect to make his plots and characters acceptable and conceivable as wholes, appear indeed everywhere, even in what I have no doubt in calling his real masterpiece by far, the fine tragi-comedy of A New Way to Pay Old Debts. The revengeful trick by which a satellite of the great extortioner, Sir Giles Overreach, brings about his employer's discomfiture, regardless of his own ruin, is very like the denouement of the Brass and Quilp part of the Old Curiosity Shop, may have suggested it (for A New Way to Pay Old Debts lasted as an acting play well into Dickens's time), and, like it, is a little improbable. But the play is an admirable one, and Overreach (who, as is well known, was supposed to be a kind of study of his half namesake, Mompesson, the notorious monopolist) is by far the best single character that Massinger ever drew. He again came close to true comedy in The City Madam, another of the best known of his plays, where the trick adopted at once to expose the villainy of the apparently reformed spendthrift Luke, and to abate the ruinous extravagance of Lady Frugal and her daughters, is perhaps not beyond the limits of at least dramatic verisimilitude, and gives occasion to some capital scenes. The Bondman, The Renegado, the curious Parliament of Love, which, like others of Massinger's plays, is in an almost Æschylean state of text-corruptness, The Great Duke of Florence, The Maid of Honour (one of the very doubtful evidences of Massinger's supposed conversion to Roman Catholicism), The Picture (containing excellent passages, but for improbability and topsy-turviness of incident ranking with The Duke of Milan), The Emperor of the East, The Guardian, A Very Woman, The Bashful Lover, are all plays on which, if there were space, it would be interesting to comment; and they all display their author's strangely mixed merits and defects. The Roman Actor and The Fatal Dowry must have a little more attention. The first is, I think, Massinger's best tragic effort; and the scene where Domitian murders Paris, with his tyrannical explanation of the deed, shows a greater conception of tragic poetry – a little cold and stately, a little Racinish or at least Cornelian rather than Shakesperian, but still passionate and worthy of the tragic stage – than anything that Massinger has done. The Fatal Dowry, written in concert with Field and unceremoniously pillaged by Rowe in his once famous Fair Penitent, is a purely romantic tragedy, injured by the unattractive character of the light-of-love Beaumelle before her repentance (Massinger never could draw a woman), and by not a few of the author's favourite improbabilities and glaring or rather startling non-sequiturs of action, but full also of fine passages, especially of the quasi-forensic kind in which Massinger so much delights.

To sum up, it may seem inconsistent that, after allowing so many faults in Massinger, I should protest against the rather low estimate of him which critics from Lamb downwards have generally given. Yet I do so protest. It is true that he has not the highest flashes either of verbal poetry or of dramatic character-drawing; and though Hartley Coleridge's dictum that he had no humour has been exclaimed against, it is only verbally wrong. It is also true that in him perhaps for the first time we perceive, what is sure to appear towards the close of a period, a distinct touch of literary borrowing – evidence of knowledge and following of his forerunners. Yet he had a high, a varied, and a fertile imagination. He had, and was the last to have, an extensive and versatile command of blank verse, never perhaps reaching the most perfect mastery of Marlowe or of Shakespere, but singularly free from monotony, and often both harmonious and dignified. He could deal, and deal well, with a large range of subjects; and if he never ascends to the height of a De Flores or a Bellafront, he never descends to the depths in which both Middleton and Dekker too often complacently wallow. Unless we are to count by mere flashes, he must, I think, rank after Shakespere, Fletcher, and Jonson among his fellows; and this I say, honestly avowing that I have nothing like the enthusiasm for him that I have for Webster, or for Dekker, or for Middleton. We may no doubt allow too much for bulk of work, for sustained excellence at a certain level, and for general competence as against momentary excellence. But we may also allow far too little; and this has perhaps been the general tendency of later criticism in regard to Massinger. It is unfortunate that he never succeeded in making as perfect a single expression of his tragic ability as he did of his comic, for the former was, I incline to think, the higher of the two. But many of his plays are lost, and many of those which remain come near to such excellence. It is by no means impossible that Massinger may have lost incomparably by the misdeeds of the constantly execrated, but never to be execrated enough, minion of that careless herald.

As in the case of Clarendon, almost absolutely contradictory opinions have been delivered, by critics of great authority, about John Ford. In one of the most famous outbursts of his generous and enthusiastic estimate of the Elizabethan period, Lamb has pronounced Ford to be of the first order of poets. Mr Swinburne, while bringing not a few limitations to this tremendous eulogy, has on the whole supported it in one of the most brilliant of his prose essays; and critics as a rule have bowed to Lamb's verdict. On the other hand, Hazlitt (who is "gey ill to differ with" when there are, as here, no extra-literary considerations to reckon) has traversed that verdict in one of the most damaging utterances of commonsense, yet not commonplace, criticism anywhere to be found, asking bluntly and pointedly whether the exceptionableness of the subject is not what constitutes the merit of Ford's greatest play, pronouncing the famous last scene of The Broken Heart extravagant, and fixing on "a certain perversity of spirit" in Ford generally. It is pretty clear that Hartley Coleridge (who might be paralleled in our own day as a critic, who seldom went wrong except through ignorance, though he had a sublime indifference as to the ignorance that sometimes led him wrong) was of no different opinion. It is not easy to settle such a quarrel. But I had the good fortune to read Ford before I had read anything except Hartley Coleridge's rather enigmatic verdict about him, and in the many years that have passed since I have read him often again. The resulting opinion may not be exceptionally valuable, but it has at least stood the test of frequent re-reading of the original, and of reading of the main authorities among the commentators.

John Ford, like Fletcher and Beaumont, but unlike almost all others of his class, was a person not compelled by need to write tragedies, – comedies of any comic merit he could never have written, were they his neck verse at Hairibee. His father was a man of good family and position at Ilsington in Devon. His mother was of the well-known west-country house of the Pophams. He was born(?) two years before the Armada, and three years after Massinger. He has no university record, but was a member of the Middle Temple, and takes at least some pains to assure us that he never wrote for money. Nevertheless, for the best part of thirty years he was a playwright, and he is frequently found collaborating with Dekker, the neediest if nearly the most gifted gutter-playwright of the time. Once he worked with Webster in a play (The Murder of the Son upon the Mother) which must have given the fullest possible opportunity to the appetite of both for horrors. Once he, Rowley, and Dekker combined to produce the strange masterpiece (for a masterpiece it is in its own undisciplined way) of the Witch of Edmonton, where the obvious signs of a play hastily cobbled up to meet a popular demand do not obscure the talents of the cobblers. It must be confessed that there is much less of Ford than of Rowley and Dekker in the piece, except perhaps its comparative regularity and the quite unreasonable and unintelligible bloodiness of the murder of Susan. In The Sun's Darling, due to Ford and Dekker, the numerous and charming lyrics are pretty certainly Dekker's; though we could pronounce on this point with more confidence if we had the two lost plays, The Fairy Knight and The Bristowe Merchant, in which the same collaborators are known to have been engaged. The Fancies, Chaste and Noble, and The Lady's Trial which we have, and which are known to be Ford's only, are but third-rate work by common consent, and Love's Sacrifice has excited still stronger opinions of condemnation from persons favourable to Ford. This leaves us practically four plays upon which to base our estimate —'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Lover's Melancholy, The Broken Heart, and Perkin Warbeck. The last-named I shall take the liberty of dismissing summarily with the same borrowed description as Webster's Appius and Virginia. Hartley Coleridge, perhaps willing to make up if he could for a general distaste for Ford, volunteered the strange judgment that it is the best specimen of the historic drama to be found out of Shakespere; and Hazlitt says nothing savage about it. I shall say nothing more, savage or otherwise. The Lover's Melancholy has been to almost all its critics a kind of lute-case for the very pretty version of Strada's fancy about the nightingale, which Crashaw did better; otherwise it is naught. We are, therefore, left with 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and The Broken Heart. For myself, in respect to the first, after repeated readings and very careful weighings of what has been said, I come back to my first opinion – to wit, that the Annabella and Giovanni scenes, with all their perversity, all their availing themselves of what Hazlitt, with his unerring instinct, called "unfair attractions," are among the very best things of their kind. Of what may be thought unfair in them I shall speak a little later: but allowing for this, the sheer effects of passion – the "All for love and the world well lost," the shutting out, not instinctively or stupidly, but deliberately, and with full knowledge, of all other considerations except the dictates of desire – have never been so rendered in English except in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra. The comparison of course brings out Ford's weakness, not merely in execution, but in design; not merely in accomplishment, but in the choice of means for accomplishment. Shakespere had no need of the haut goût of incest, of the unnatural horrors of the heart on the dagger. But Ford had; and he in a way (I do not say fully) justified his use of these means.

The Broken Heart stands far lower. I own that I am with Hazlitt, not Lamb, on the question of the admired death scene of Calantha. In the first place, it is certainly borrowed from Marston's Malcontent; in the second, it is wholly unnatural; in the third, the great and crowning point of it is not, as Lamb seemed to think, Calantha's sentimental inconsistency, but the consistent and noble death of Orgilus. There Ford was at home, and long as it is it must be given: —

Cal. "Bloody relator of thy stains in blood,For that thou hast reported him, whose fortunesAnd life by thee are both at once snatch'd from him,With honourable mention, make thy choiceOf what death likes thee best, there's all our bounty.But to excuse delays, let me, dear cousin,Intreat you and these lords see executionInstant before you part.Near. Your will commands us.Org. One suit, just queen, my last: vouchsafe your clemencyThat by no common hand I be dividedFrom this my humble frailty.Cal. To their wisdomsWho are to be spectators of thine endI make the reference: those that are deadAre dead; had they not now died, of necessityThey must have paid the debt they owed to nature,One time or other. Use dispatch, my lords;We'll suddenly prepare our coronation.[Exeunt Cal., Phil., and Chris.Arm. 'Tis strange, these tragedies should never touch onHer female pity.Bass. She has a masculine spirit,And wherefore should I pule, and, like a girl,Put finger in the eye? Let's be all toughnessWithout distinction betwixt sex and sex.Near. Now, Orgilus, thy choice?Org. To bleed to death.Arm. The executioner?Org. Myself, no surgeon;I am well skilled in letting blood. Bind fastThis arm, that so the pipes may from their conduitsConvey a full stream; here's a skilful instrument:[Shows his dagger.Only I am a beggar to some charityTo speed me in this executionBy lending the other prick to the other armWhen this is bubbling life out.Bass. I am for you,It most concerns my art, my care, my credit,Quick, fillet both his arms.Org. Gramercy, friendship!Such courtesies are real which flow cheerfullyWithout an expectation of requital.Reach me a staff in this hand. If a proneness[They give him a staff.Or custom in my nature, from my cradleHad been inclined to fierce and eager bloodshed,A coward guilt hid in a coward quaking,Would have betray'd me to ignoble flightAnd vagabond pursuit of dreadful safety:But look upon my steadiness and scorn notThe sickness of my fortune; which since BassanesWas husband to Penthea, had lain bed-rid.We trifle time in words: thus I show cunningIn opening of a vein too full, too lively.[Pierces the vein with his dagger.Arm. Desperate courage!Near. Honourable infamy!Hem. I tremble at the sight.Gron. Would I were loose!Bass. It sparkles like a lusty wine new broach'd;The vessel must be sound from which it issues.Grasp hard this other stick – I'll be as nimble —But prithee look not pale – Have at ye! stretch outThine arm with vigour and unshaken virtue.[Opens the vein.Good! oh I envy not a rival, fittedTo conquer in extremities: this pastimeAppears majestical; some high-tuned poemHereafter shall deliver to posterityThe writer's glory, and his subjects triumph.How is't man? – droop not yet.Org. I feel no palsies,On a pair-royal do I wait in death:My sovereign as his liegeman; on my mistressAs a devoted servant; and on IthoclesAs if no brave, yet no unworthy enemy:Nor did I use an engine to entrapHis life out of a slavish fear to combatYouth, strength, or cunning; but for that I durst notEngage the goodness of a cause on fortuneBy which his name might have outfaced my vengeance.Oh, Tecnicus, inspired with Phœbus' fire!I call to mind thy augury, 'twas perfect;Revenge proves its own executioner.When feeble man is lending to his motherThe dust he was first framed in, thus he totters.Bass. Life's fountain is dried up.Org. So falls the standardOf my prerogative in being a creature,A mist hangs o'er mine eyes, the sun's bright splendourIs clouded in an everlasting shadow.Welcome, thou ice that sit'st about my heart,No heat can ever thaw thee.[Dies.

The perverse absurdity of a man like Orgilus letting Penthea die by the most horrible of deaths must be set aside: his vengeance (the primary absurdity granted), is exactly and wholly in character. But if anything could be decisive against Ford being "of the first order of poets," even of dramatic poets, it would be the total lack of interest in the characters of Calantha and Ithocles. Fate-disappointed love seems (no doubt from something in his own history) to have had a singular attraction for Lamb; and the glorification, or, as it were, apotheosis of it in Calantha must have appealed to him in one of those curious and illegitimate ways which every critic knows. But the mere introduction of Bassanes would show that Ford is not of the first order of poets. He is a purely contemptible character, neither sublimed by passion of jealousy, nor kept whole by salt of comic exposition; a mischievous poisonous idiot who ought to have had his brains knocked out, and whose brains would assuredly have been knocked out, by any Orgilus of real life. He is absolutely unequal to the place of central personage, and causer of the harms, of a romantic tragedy such as The Broken Heart.