ENGI.IHI I. 



AmoiiK' all tin* Elizabethan dramatist* thoro in no other who 



of Shakespeare as Webster, and none, 



. iiu in a curtain department utand* K> nan: 



lakexpooro. Not that any ono would bo justinod in 



compur "<:t of the general acopo of their 



ilcespoaro's goniun in, above all thing*, many sided ; 



mally at home in gloom and in Hunuhine, in portraying 



,'uish of Lear or -the bright fairyland of the 



: Night's Dr. inn." Tim imuio of Webster wall in 



. a key of j. :-.>!'.. und melancholy. Ilia lightoat mood is 



that expressed in bin own worda : 



" I do lovo those ancient ruin*. 

 Wo never tread upon them but wo tot 

 Our foot upon iomo reverend hUtory j 

 Airl questionless, hen in this open < 

 \Vhii-h now lloa open to tho injuries 

 Of atormy vv.-uther, some muu Ho interred 



'i BO wull. and gave so largely to it, 

 . thought it bhould have canopied thoir bonea 



:i things have tin K 



Church, s :iml citi.-i, whi.'h IMVO diseases liko to men, 

 Must liuvo liko death that we have." 



But in usummato mast 



can rans;i'-k imtu: 1 world, giving f rco play 



.nation ami rndli'.-s ingenuity, to accu- 

 mulate images df IIDJ-I- ng tho 

 . iding that which fascinates by its IUTP r mnl sadness 

 from that whi<'h disgusts, for with Webster tho physical is 

 always subordinate to tho moral, tho physical Huffi.'ring a mcro 

 Mfiital anguish. Ho has a marvellous power of 

 iracter from tho true tragic point of vi' 



:. minds not only noble in 



ini,', luit ennobled by Mitl'ering. And his stylo is in harmony 

 with 1 which he chooses, always 



a, full of variety in its imagery, yet always in tho same 

 key <>!' 



The grcati->t of W.-l.-t.T's works are "Tho Whito Devil, 

 or Vittoria Corombona," and " The Duchess of Malli." Tho 

 former of thi - is a very remarkable play, especially in the 

 modo in which tho character of Vittoria is conceived and worked 

 out. "Tho Duchess of Main" is one of tho most powerful 

 plays in our language. The outlines of its story are simple. Tho 

 widowed Duchess of Malfi is secretly married to her M 

 Antonio, a husband, but for his birth, in every way worthy of 

 her. This marriage comes to tho knowledge of her two 

 brothers, Duke. Ferdinand and tho Cardinal, two men whoso 

 characters tho coarse pride and passionate cruelty of tho one, 

 and tho cold, selfish cunning of the other are admirably con- 

 trasted. T: lino to be avenged ; they succeed in 

 separating tho husband and wife, banishing the husband, and 

 seizing and imprisoning tho wife. To her they apply every kind 

 of mental torture which ingenuity could devise, and ultimately 

 strangle her and her younger children in prison. Of this part of 

 tho play Charles Lamb well wrote : " All tho several parts of 

 the dreadful apparatus with which the duchess's death is ushered 

 in are not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary 

 vengeance than tho strange character of suffering- wiiiou. they 

 bo bring upon fciieir victim is beyond the imagination of 

 ordinary poets. As they are not the inflictions of this life, so 

 her language seems not of this world. She has lived among 

 horrors till she has become ' native and endowed unto that 

 element.' She speaks tho dialect of despair ; her tongue has a 

 smatch of Tartarus and of tho souls in balo. What are Luke's 

 iron crown, tho brazen bull of Perillus, Procrustes' bed, to the 

 waxen images which counterfeit death, to tho wild masqno of 

 madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the living person's dirge, 

 the mortification by degrees ! To move a horror skilfully, to 

 touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can 

 bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then 

 step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit this 

 only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may 

 'upon horror's head horrors accumulate," but they cannot do 

 this. They mistake quantity for quality, they ' terrify babes 

 with painted devils,' but they know not how a soul is capable of 

 being moved ; their terrors want dignity ; their affrightments 

 are without decorum." And the Nemesis which overtakes the 

 guilty brothers is hardly loss powerfully drawn than the suf- 

 ferings of their victim. One brother, under the terrors of 



a guilty conscience, ia mitten with that form of madness onoe 

 ao universally believed in lycautbropy ; 



hoao that are poaaeaeed with 't. there overflows 



Kuch melancholy humour, they imagine 



Themselves to be truaformM Into wolvw i 



Steal forth to churchyards ia the dead at nifbt, 



And di dead bodies up." 



Both brother* ultimately fall by the hand of the man who had 

 been the instrument of their crime*; while be, in torn, after 

 aggravating the reraorw which tormented him by accidentally 

 killing Antonio, falla by the hand of the madman. 



Our apace does not allow na to illustrate tbi* play by many 



>na, and, of coorae, extract* would at beet oonrey but 



fleet Webster teem* to bare concentrated 



his power eapecially upon tho character of the dnchews, and bet 



language is naturally tho moat characteristic of the author. 



-n be more pathetic than her proteat against bar brothers' 

 tyrannical hoatility to her marriage ? 



" The birda that lire in the field, 

 On the wild benefit of nature, live 



m we : for they may chooae their mates, 

 iLieir aweot pleasure* to the sprint." 



In her height of misery she exclaims 



" Oh, that it were possibles we might 

 But hold Homo two day*' conference with the deed ! 

 From them I Bhould know somewhat, I am sure, 

 I never shall know here. I'll fell thee a tuirado ; 



not mad yet to ray cause of aorrow. 

 '1'h' heaven o'er toy head ceema made of molten brass, 

 Tli. HUD* sulphur ; yet I am not mad. 



I am acquainted with aad misery, 

 Ax tho tanned galley-slavo is with his oar : 

 Necessity makes me suffer constantly, 

 And custom makes it easy." 



THE MINOR DRAMATISTS. 



The drama of tho Elizabethan ages would be Tery insuffi- 

 itod if it were judged only by the greatness of its 

 greatest men ; it was no less conspicuous for the number of 

 names of striking, though inferior merit. It would be impos- 

 sible in such lessons as these to give any full account of the 

 dramatists of this class ; but there are some whoso names, at 



ught not to bo passed l>y. Middloton was a very prolific 

 writer, and his comedies especially are of great merit. The 

 serious dramas of Marston are manly and vigorous. Decker 

 must have been one of tho most active writers of his day ; but 

 he wrote chiefly in conjunction with others, and there is hardly 

 one of the better known Elizabethan dramatists with whom ho 

 was not at some time a coadjutor. Chapman, whom we havo 

 already mentioned as a poet and the translator of Homer, was 

 in his own day not less popular as a dramatist. Tournenr, tho 



:id Heywood, almost the most, voluminous writers of tho 

 day, would havo acquired higher fame in any ago but that ia 

 which they lived. 



The following is a brief specimen of Heywood's writing, 

 selected from a prologue to one of his numerous plays. What 

 he says of the sources from which ho derived the plots of hi* 

 plays, and the characters that figure in thorn, may be said of all 

 tho dramatists of the Elizabethan period : 



" To give content to this most curious age, 

 The gods themselves we've brought down to the stage, 

 And figured them iu planets ; made eveu hell 

 Deliver up the furies, by no spell 

 Saving the Muse's rapture further we 

 Have trafficked by their help ; no history 

 "We have left unrifled j our pens havo been dipped 

 As well in opening each hid manuscript 

 As tracks more vulgar, whether read or sung 

 In our domestic or more foreign tongue : 

 Of fairies, elves, nymphs of the sea and load. 

 The lawus, the groves, no number can be scanned 

 Which we have not given feet to." 



Tho last of tho great race of dramatists was Shirley, who 

 was born at tho close of tho reign of Elizabeth, lived through 

 the whole period of tho civil contests and the Commonwealth, 

 and survived by some years the Restoration. We possess no 

 less than forty of his plays ; they are in no respect entitled to 

 rank with the works of the great masters among whom Shirley's 

 youth was passed. 



