ll. 386-8:

_Thou dost strike A deathful coldness to my heart’s high heat, And shrink’st my liver like the calenture._

The _Something I must do_, which concludes the Act, is repeatedly paralleled in Massinger’s plays, but a similar indefinite resolve is expressed in _Woman is a Weathercock_ (M. 363), and it consequently cannot be adduced as evidence of his hand. Immediately above, however (ll. 494-6), we encounter, in the allusion to the Italian and Dutch temperaments, a thought twice echoed by the “stage-poet” in plays of not greatly later date, _The Duke of Milan_ and _The Little French Lawyer_ (C-G. 90 a; D. III, 505). It may represent an interpolation by Massinger; it may be merely that this rather striking conclusion to the climatic speech of his collaborator’s scene so fixed itself on his mind as to crop out afterwards in his own productions.

In the short disputed passage (ll. 317-343) which separates what is undoubtedly Massinger’s from what is undoubtedly Field’s, it would appear that both playwrights had a hand. The _’Sdeath and Gads me!_, the play upon the word _currier_, and the phrase, _I shall be with you suddenly_ (cf. _Q. of Cor._ D. V, 467) speak for Field; while Massinger, on the other hand, parallels

_His back Appears to me as it would tire a beadle;_

with

_A man of resolution, whose shoulders Are of themselves armour of proof, against A bastinado, and will tire ten beadles._--C-G. 186 b;

and the phrase “to sit down with a disgrace” occurs something like a dozen times on his pages, especially frequently in the collaborated plays--that is to say, in the earlier period of his work, to which _The Fatal Dowry_ belongs. It is probable, and not unnatural, that the labors of the partners in composition overlapped on this bit of the Scene, but metrical analysis claims with as much certainty as can attach to this test in the case of so short a passage that it is substantially Massinger’s, and should go rather with what preceeds than with what comes after it, the verse being all one piece with that of the former section. It has 37 per cent. double endings and 41 per cent. run-on lines.

IV, i, opens with a prose passage for all the world like that of _Woman is a Weathercock_, I, ii, with its picture of the dandy, his parasites, and the pert page who forms a sort of chorus with his caustic _asides_; and writes itself down indisputably as by the same author. Novall Junior and his coterie appear here as in their former presentation in II, ii. We have again the same racy comedy, the same faltering of the vehicle between verse and prose (see ll. 61-8; 137-153). After the clearing of the stage of all save Romont and young Novall, uninterrupted verse ensues, which, despite a rather notable parallel in _The Beggars’ Bush_, D. IX, 9 to l. 174, is evidently Field’s also. An analogue of ll. 180-1 is discoverable in _Amends for Ladies_ (M. 421), as is of the reference (l. 197) to “fairies’ treasure” in _Woman is a Weathercock_ (M. 344). Novall’s exclamation (l. 182), _Pox of this gun!_ and his retort (l. 201), _Good devil to your rogueship!_ are Fieldian, and the entire passage possesses a vigor and an easy naturalness which declare his authorship. It is not improbable, however, that his contribution ends with the fragmentary