Part 5
And this is apt to be the only view we take of that Golden Age, as we call it fairly enough in one, and that, perhaps, the most superficial, sense. But it was in many ways rude and savage, an age of great crimes and of the ever-brooding suspicion of great crimes. Queen Elizabeth herself was the daughter of a king as savagely cruel and irresponsible as the Grand Turk. It was an age that in Italy could breed a Cenci, and in France could tolerate the massacre of St. Bartholomew as a legitimate stroke of statecraft. But when we consider whether crime be a fit subject for tragedy, we must distinguish. Merely as crime, it is vulgar, as are the waxen images of murderers with the very rope round their necks with which they were hanged. Crime becomes then really tragic when it merely furnishes the theme for a profound psychological study of motive and character. The weakness of Webster’s two greatest plays lies in this--that crime is presented as a spectacle, and not as a means of looking into our own hearts and fathoming our own consciousness.
The scene of “The Devil’s Law Case” is Naples, then a viceroyalty of Spain, and our ancestors thought anything possible in Italy. Leonora, a widow, has a son and daughter, Romelio and Jolenta. Romelio is a rich and prosperous merchant. Jolenta is secretly betrothed to Contarino, an apparently rather spendthrift young nobleman, who has already borrowed large sums of money of Romelio on the security of his estates. Romelio is bitterly opposed to his marrying Jolenta, for reasons known only to himself; at least, no reason appears for it, except that the play could not have gone on without it. The reason he assigns is that he has a grudge against the nobility, though it appears afterwards that he himself is of noble birth, and asserts his equality with them. When Contarino, at the opening of the play, comes to urge his suit, and asks him how he looks upon it, Romelio answers:--
“Believe me, sir, as on the principal column To advance our house; why, you bring honor with you, Which is the soul of wealth. I shall be proud To live to see my little nephews ride O’ the upper hand of their uncles, and the daughters Be ranked by heralds at solemnities Before the mother; and all this derived From your nobility. Do not blame me, sir, If I be taken with ’t exceedingly; For this same honor with us citizens Is a thing we are mainly fond of, especially When it comes without money, which is very seldom. But as you do perceive my present temper, Be sure I’m yours.”
And of this Contarino was sure, the irony of Romelio’s speech having been so delicately conveyed that he was unable to perceive it.
A little earlier in this scene a speech is put into the mouth of Romelio so characteristic of Webster’s more sententious style that I will repeat it:--
“O, my lord, lie not idle: The chiefest action for a man of great spirit Is never to be out of action. We should think The soul was never put into the body, Which has so many rare and curious pieces Of mathematical motion, to stand still. Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds; I’ th’ trenches for the soldiers, i’ th’ wakeful study For the scholar, in the furrows of the sea For men of our profession, of all which Arise and spring up honour.”
This recalls to mind the speech of Ulysses to Achilles in “Troilus and Cressida,” a piece of eloquence which, for the impetuous charge of serried argument and poetic beauty of illustration, grows more marvellous with every reading. But it is hardly fair to any other poet to let him remind us of Shakespeare.
Contarino, on leaving Romelio, goes to Leonora, the mother, who immediately conceives a violent passion for him. He, by way of a pretty compliment, tells her that he has a suit to her, and that it is for her picture. By this he meant her daughter, but with the flattering implication that you would not know the parent from the child. Leonora, of course, takes him literally, is gracious accordingly, and Contarino is satisfied that he has won her consent also. This scene gives occasion for a good example of Webster’s more playful style, which is perhaps worth quoting. Still apropos of her portrait, Leonora says:--
“You will enjoin me to a strange punishment. With what a compelled face a woman sits While she is drawing! I have noted divers Either to feign smiles, or suck in the lips To have a little mouth; ruffle the cheeks To have the dimple seen; and so disorder The face with affectation, at next sitting It has not been the same: I have known others Have lost the entire fashion of their face In half an hour’s sitting.... But indeed If ever I would have mine drawn to th’ life, I’d have a painter steal it at such a time I were devoutly kneeling at my prayers; There’s then a heavenly beauty in ’t; the soul Moves in the superficies.”
The poet shows one of his habitual weaknesses here in being so far tempted by the chance of saying a pretty thing as to make somebody say it who naturally would not. There is really a worse waste than had it been thrown away. I am inclined to think men as vain about their portraits as Leonora makes women to be, or else the story of Cromwell’s wart would not be so famous. However, Contarino goes away satisfied with the result of his embassy, saying to himself:--
“She has got some intelligence how I intend to marry Her daughter, and ingenuously perceived That by her picture, which I begged of her, I meant the fair Jolenta.”
There is no possible reason why he should not have conveyed this intelligence to her himself, and Leonora must have been ingenious indeed to divine it, except that the plot would not allow it. Presently another match is found for Jolenta in Ercole, which Romelio favors for reasons again known only to himself, though he is a noble quite as much as Contarino. Ercole is the pattern of a chivalrous gentleman. Though he at once falls in love with Jolenta, according to Marlowe’s rule that “he never loved that loved not at first sight,” and though Romelio and the mother both urge the immediate signing of the contract, he refuses.
“Lady, I will do A manly office for you; I will leave you To th’ freedom of your own soul; may it move Whither Heaven and you please!
* * * * *
I’ll leave you, excellent lady, and withal Leave a heart with you so entirely yours That I protest, had I the least of hope To enjoy you, though I were to wait the time That scholars do in taking their degree In the noble arts, ’t were nothing: howsoe’er, He parts from you, that will depart from life To do you any service; and so humbly I take my leave.”
Never, I think, was more delicate compliment paid to a woman than in that fine touch which puts the service of her on a level with the “noble arts.” On this ground of sentiment idealized by devotion, Webster always moves with the assured ease and dignified familiarity of a thorough gentleman.
Ercole’s pretension to the hand of Jolenta leads, of course, to a duel with Contarino. They had been fellow-students together at Padua, and the scene in which the preliminaries of the duel are arranged is pitched on as nobly grave a key as can be conceived. Lamb very justly calls it “the model of a well-arranged and gentlemanlike difference.” There is no swagger and no bravado in it, as is too commonly apt to be the case in the plays of that age. There is something Spanish in its dignity. To show what its tone is, I quote the opening. It is Contarino who first speaks.
“Sir, my love to you has proclaimed you one Whose word was still led by a noble thought, And that thought followed by as fair a deed. Deceive not that opinion. We were students At Padua together, and have long To th’ world’s eye shown like friends; was it hearty On your part to me?
_Erc._ Unfeigned.
_Con._ You are false To the good thought I held of you, and now Join the worst part of man to you, your malice, To uphold that falsehood: sacred innocence Is fled your bosom. Signior, I must tell you, To draw the picture of unkindness truly Is to express two that have dearly loved And fall’n at variance; ’t is a wonder to me, Knowing my interest in the fair Jolenta, That you should love her.
_Erc._ Compare her beauty and my youth together And you will find the fair effects of love No miracle at all.”
They fight, and both fall mortally wounded, as it is supposed. Ercole is reported dead, and Contarino dying, having first made a will in favor of Jolenta. Romelio, disguised as a Jew, to avenge the injury to himself in the death of Ercole, and to make sure that Contarino shall not survive to alter his will, gets admission to him by bribing his surgeons, and stabs him. This saves his life by reopening the old wound and letting forth its virus. Of course both he and Ercole recover, and both conceal themselves, though why, it is hard to say, except that they are not wanted again till towards the end of the play. Romelio, unaware of his mother’s passion for Contarino, tells her, as a piece of good news she will be glad to hear, of what he has done. She at once resolves on a most horrible and unnatural revenge. Her speech has a kind of savage grandeur in it which Webster was fond of showing, for he rightly felt that it was his strongest quality, though it often tempted him too far, till it became bestial in its ferocity. It is to be observed that he was on his guard here, and gives us a hint, as you will see, in a highly imaginative passage, that Leonora’s brain was turning:--
“I will make you chief mourner, believe it. Never was woe like mine. O, that my care And absolute study to preserve his life Should be his absolute ruin! Is he gone, then? There is no plague i’ th’ world can be compar’d To impossible desire; for they are plagu’d In the desire itself. Never, O, never Shall I behold him living, in whose life I liv’d far sweetlier than in mine own! A precise curiosity has undone me: why did I not Make my love known directly? ’T had not been Beyond example for a matron To affect i’ th’ honourable way of marriage So youthful a person. O, I shall run mad! For as we love our youngest children best, So the last fruit of our affection, Wherever we bestow it, is most strong, Most violent, most unresistible, Since ’t is indeed our latest harvest-home, Last merriment ’fore winter; and we widows, As men report of our best picture-makers, We love the piece we are in hand with better Than all the excellent work we have done before. And my son has depriv’d me of all this! Ha, my son! I’ll be a Fury to him; like an Amazon lady, I’d cut off this right pap that gave him suck, To shoot him dead. I’ll no more tender him, Than had a wolf stol’n to my teat i’ the night And robb’d me of my milk; nay, such a creature I should love better far. Ha, ha! what say you? I do talk to somewhat, methinks; it may be My evil Genius. Do not the bells ring? I have a strange noise in my head: O, fly in pieces! Come, age, and wither me into the malice Of those that have been happy! Let me have One property more than the devil of hell; Let me envy the pleasure of youth heartily; Let me in this life fear no kind of ill, That have no good to hope for; let me die In the distraction of that worthy princess Who loathed food, and sleep, and ceremony, For thought of losing that brave gentleman She would fain have sav’d, had not a false conveyance Express’d him stubborn-hearted. Let me sink Where neither man nor memory may ever find me.”
Webster forestalled Balzac by two hundred years in what he says of a woman’s last passion. The revenge on which she fixes is, at the cost of her own honor, to declare Romelio illegitimate. She says that his true father was one Crispiano, a Spanish gentleman, the friend of her husband. Naturally, when the trial comes on, Crispiano, unrecognized, turns up in court as the very judge who is to preside over it. He first gets the year of the alleged adultery fixed by the oath of Leonora and her maid, and then professes to remember that Crispiano had told him of giving a portrait of himself to Leonora, has it sent for, and, revealing himself, identifies himself by it, saying, prettily enough (those old dramatists have a way of stating dry facts so fancifully as to make them blossom, as it were),
“Behold, I am the shadow of this shadow.”
He then proves an alibi at the date in question by his friend Ariosto, whom meanwhile he has just promoted to the bench in his own place, by virtue of a convenient commission from the king of Spain, which he has in his pocket. At the end of the trial, the counsel for Leonora exclaimed:--
“Ud’s foot, we’re spoiled; Why, our client is proved an honest woman!”
Which I cite only because it reminds me to say that Webster has a sense of humor more delicate, and a way of showing it less coarse, than most of his brother dramatists. Meanwhile Webster saves Romelio from being hateful beyond possibility of condonation by making him perfectly fearless. He says finely:--
“I cannot set myself so many fathom Beneath the height of my true heart as fear. Let me continue An honest man, which I am very certain A coward can never be.”
The last words convey an important and even profound truth. And let me say now, once for all, that Webster abounds, more than any of his contemporaries except Chapman, in these metaphysical apothegms, and that he introduces them naturally, while Chapman is too apt to drag them in by the ears. Here is another as good, I am tempted to say, as many of Shakespeare’s, save only in avarice of words. When Leonora is suborning Winifred, her maid, to aid her in the plot against her son, she says:--
“Come hither: I have a weighty secret to impart, But I would have thee first confirm to me How I may trust that thou canst keep my counsel Beyond death.
_Win._ Why, mistress, ’t is your only way To enjoin me first that I reveal to you The worst act I e’er did in all my life; One secret so shall bind another.
_Leon._ Thou instruct’st me Most ingeniously; for indeed it is not fit, Where any act is plotted that is naught, Any of counsel to it should be good; And, in a thousand ills have happ’d i’ th’ world, The intelligence of one another’s shame Hath wrought far more effectually than the tie Of conscience or religion.”
The plot has other involutions of so unpleasant a nature now through change of manners that I shall but allude to them. They are perhaps intended to darken Romelio’s character to the proper Websterian sable, but they certainly rather make an eddy in the current of the action than hasten it as they should.
I have briefly analyzed this play because its plot is not a bad sample of a good many others, and because the play itself is less generally known than Webster’s deservedly more famous “Vittoria Corombona” and the “Duchess of Malfi.” Before coming to these, I will mention his “Appius and Virginia,” a spirited, well-constructed play (for here the simplicity of the incidents kept him within bounds), and, I think, as good as any other founded on a Roman story except Shakespeare’s. It is of a truly Roman temper, and perhaps, therefore, incurs a suspicion of being cast iron. Webster, like Ben Jonson, knew, theoretically at least, how a good play should be put together. In his preface to “The Devil’s Law-Case” he says: “A great part of the grace of this lay in action; yet can no action ever be gracious, where the decency of the language and ingenious structure of the scene arrive not to make up a perfect harmony.”
“The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona,” produced in 1612, and the “Duchess of Malfi,” in 1616, are the two works by which Webster is remembered. In these plays there is almost something like a fascination of crime and horror. Our eyes dazzle with them. The imagination that conceived them is a ghastly imagination. Hell is naked before it. It is the imagination of nightmare, but of no vulgar nightmare. I would rather call it fantasy than imagination, for there is something fantastic in its creations, and the fantastic is dangerously near to the grotesque, while the imagination, where it is most authentic, is most serene. Even to elicit strong emotion, it is the still small voice that is most effective; nor is Webster unaware of this, as I shall show presently. Both these plays are full of horrors, yet they do move pity and terror strongly also. We feel that we are under the control of a usurped and illegitimate power, but it is power. I remember seeing a picture in some Belgian church where an angel makes a motion to arrest the hand of the Almighty just as it is stretched forth in the act of the creation. If the angel foresaw that the world to be created was to be such a one as Webster conceived, we can fully understand his impulse. Through both plays there is a vapor of fresh blood and a scent of church-yard mould in the air. They are what children call _creepy_. Ghosts are ready at any moment: they seem, indeed, to have formed a considerable part of the population in those days. As an instance of the almost ludicrous way in which they were employed, take this stage direction from Chapman’s “Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois.” “Music, and the ghost of Bussy enters leading the ghosts of the Guise, Monsieur, Cardinal Guise, and Chatillon; they dance about the body and _exeunt_.” It is fair to say that Webster’s ghosts are far from comic.
Let me briefly analyze “The White Devil.” Vittoria Corombona, a beautiful woman, is married to Camillo, whom she did not love. She becomes the paramour of the Duke of Brachiano, whose Duchess is the sister of Francesco de’ Medici and of Cardinal Monticelso. One of the brothers of Vittoria, Flamineo, is secretary to Brachiano, and contrives to murder Camillo for them. Vittoria, as there is no sufficient proof to fix the charge of murder upon her, is tried for incontinency, and sent to a house of Convertites, whence Brachiano spirits her away, meaning to marry her. In the mean while Brachiano’s Duchess is got out of the way by poison; the lips of his portrait, which she kisses every night before going to bed, having been smeared with a deadly drug to that end. There is a Count Ludovico, who had proffered an unholy love to the Duchess, but had been repulsed by her, and he gladly offers himself as the minister of vengeance. Just as Brachiano is arming for a tournament arranged for the purpose by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Florence, Ludovico poisons his helmet, so that he shortly dies in torture. Ludovico then murders Vittoria, Zanche, her Moorish maid, and Flamineo, and is himself shot by the guards of the young Duke Giovanni, son of Brachiano, who break in upon him just as he has completed his butchery. There are but four characters in the play unstained with crime--Cornelia, Vittoria’s mother; Marcello, her younger son; the Duchess of Brachiano; and her son, the young Duke. There are three scenes in the play remarkable for their effectiveness, or for their power in different ways--the trial scene of Vittoria, the death scene of Brachiano, and that of Vittoria. There is another--the burial of Marcello--which is pathetic as few men have known how to be so simply and with so little effort as Webster.
“_Fran. de’ Med._ Your reverend mother Is grown a very old woman in two hours. I found them winding of Marcello’s corse; And there is such a solemn melody, ’Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies-- Such as old grandams watching by the dead Were wont to outwear the nights with--that, believe me, I had no eyes to guide me forth the room, They were so o’ercharg’d with water.
_Flam._ I will see them.
_Fran. de’ Med._ ’T were much uncharity in you, for your sight Will add unto their tears.
_Flam._ I will see them: They are behind the traverse; I’ll discover Their superstitious howling.
[_Draws the curtain._ Cornelia, Zanche, _and three other_ Ladies _discovered winding_ Marcello’s _corse_. _A song._
_Cor._ This rosemary is wither’d; pray, get fresh; I would have these herbs grow up in his grave When I am dead and rotten. Reach the bays; I’ll tie a garland here about his head; ’T will keep my boy from lightning. This sheet I have kept this twenty year, and every day Hallow’d it with my prayers. I did not think He should have wore it.
_Zanche._ Look you who are yonder.
_Cor._ O, reach me the flowers.
_Zanche._ Her ladyship’s foolish.
_Lady._ Alas, her grief Hath turn’d her child again!
_Cor._ You ’re very welcome: There’s rosemary for you; and rue for you;
[_To_ Flamineo.
Heart’s-ease for you; I pray make much of it: I have left more for myself.
_Fran. de’ Med._ Lady, who’s this?
_Cor._ You are, I take it, the grave-maker.
_Flam._ So.
_Zanche._ ’T is Flamineo.
_Cor._ Will you make me such a fool? Here’s a white hand: Can blood so soon be wash’d out? Let me see: When screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops, And the strange cricket i’ the oven sings and hops, When yellow spots do on your hands appear, Be certain then you of a corse shall hear. Out upon ’t, how ’t is speckled! h’as handled a toad, sure. Cowslip-water is good for the memory: Pray, buy me three ounces of ’t.
_Flam._ I would I were from hence.
_Cor._ Do you hear, sir? I’ll give you a saying which my grandmother Was wont, when she heard the bell toll, to sing o’er Unto her lute.
_Flam._ Do, an you will, do.
_Cor._ ‘Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
[Cornelia _doth this in several forms of distraction_.
Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm, And (when gay tombs are robb’d) sustain no harm, But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men, For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.’ They would not bury him ’cause he died in a quarrel; But I have an answer for them: ‘Let holy church receive him duly, Since he paid the church-tithes truly.’ His wealth is summ’d, and this is all his store; This poor men get, and great men get no more. Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop. Bless you all, good people!
[_Exeunt_ Cornelia, Zanche, _and_ Ladies.
_Flam._ I have a strange thing in me, to the which I cannot give a name, without it be Compassion. I pray, leave me.”