CHAPTER VII

THE LATER ELIZABETHANS[22]

Shakespeare's great tragedies did not create a new epoch in the development of the drama. In themes and general treatment they made no marked departure from the past. Their translation of story and circumstance into the conflicts and processes of character was beyond the reach of imitation, and, indeed, not likely to gain full recognition from contemporaries. They were rather the consummation of the old than the heralds of a new era, though their influence on succeeding dramatists was wide and permeating, especially as time and publication brought a growing appreciation of their greatness as literature. Meanwhile, the old types of tragedy continued their sway, sometimes little touched by Shakespeare's influence. English history plays were rare; Roman history plays frequent; Senecan closet dramas continued; the Marlowean and Kydian traditions received further development. The revenge play, in particular, continued to be one of the most conspicuous types. Further, a most important innovating force appeared just at the close of Shakespeare's tragic period in the heroic romances of Beaumont and Fletcher, which gained an immediate popularity and created new practices in both tragedy and tragicomedy.

The times were changing. The improved social status of the theatre, the support of the court, the vogue of private theatres like Blackfriars, the increasing interest in the stage on the part of the lettered and fashionable classes, supplied more intelligent and critical audiences; but the increasing Puritanism separated the drama more and more from sympathy with the main public. The drama became less national, more critical, and less moral. The corrupt society of the reign of James I supplied little of that imaginative idealism which had found expression at the time of the Armada. It offered the serious drama either objects for satire and cynicism or sophisticated and courtly ideals of conduct. In consequence, a more conscious art found itself less competent than in the early drama to depict greatness of mind, and resorted to the tracing of abnormal passion, the casuistical inquiry into moral problems, the exposure of evil, or to romance without moral intention.

Yet dramatic enterprise continued unabated. The theatre continued to attract poetic ambition. Scholars, men of letters, gentlemen of rank turned to the popular stage. There was as yet no suspicion of decadence. Rather the past seemed to offer, through a recognition of its merits and a pruning of its faults, encouragement for a greater achievement in the future. In spite of critical realization of the absurdities of the early drama, and of the necessity for a better regulated art, the integrity of the national tradition was recognized and maintained. In 1612, in a preface to his "White Devil," Webster, after explaining that he had departed from the classical standards "willingly, and not ignorantly," proceeds to extol his contemporaries and masters:--

"Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: for mine owne part I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion of other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and haightened stile of Maister Chapman, the labor'd and understanding workes of Maister Johnson, the no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister Beamont & Maister Fletcher, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood; wishing that what I write may be read by their light; protesting that, in the strength of mine owne judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martiall:

--non morunt haec monumenta mori."

After a time the greatness of the past masters proved rather an impediment than a stimulus. But in 1612 their work seemed to offer encouragement for even greater achievement in the immediate future.

For the historian this period offers less difficulties than the preceding ones. After 1610 comparatively few plays of importance are non-extant, and few of the extant plays are anonymous. The bulk of the important plays was produced by a few dramatists, who dominated the theatres and whose careers determined the drama's development. After examining the revenge plays which about 1612 gave a further extension to that species, and the heroic romances of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration, which were produced within a few years before that date, we may trace the succeeding developments of tragedy mainly in the work of Fletcher, Massinger, Middleton, Ford, and Shirley.

The main line of the development of the revenge tragedy is represented by Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," the anonymous "Second Maiden's Tragedy," and Webster's "White Devil" and "Duchess of Malfi." The four plays may be said to constitute a new species whose differences from the old type seem clearly unconnected with Shakespeare's "Hamlet" but directly traceable to Marston's plays, especially his "Malcontent."

Revenge is no longer the main motive but is a subsidiary element in complicated stories of revolting lust and depravity. Tragedy has become the representation of vice and sin, with a proneness for their foulest entanglements. In one play a brother plays the part of pandar to his sister; in another a father to his daughter; and in a third a mother to her daughter. Nor is revenge, even in its subordinate position, the simple blood-for-blood requital that it is in Kyd. It may be for various causes beside murder; it is born of malice rather than duty; it may share in the moral turpitude of the rest of the action. The ghost no longer directs the course of revenge, and may disappear entirely. In "The Revenger's Tragedy" the skull of the betrothed, as the skeleton in "Hoffman," takes the place of the apparition; and in other plays the duties of the ghost are minimized or farmed out among various supernatural agents, two female ghosts appearing. Hesitation on the part of the avenger does not appear. Indeed, his entire character has changed. He may be a villain, as in "Hoffman," or the villain's accomplice, or one of Marston's "malcontents," or a combination of these parts. The other leading elements in the Kydian type are preserved. Insanity of various forms, real and pretended, is prominent. Intrigue of a complicated kind abounds, but is often dependent, after the fashion of current comedy, largely on improbable disguises. Deaths are as frequent as ever and more horrible. Much of the old stage effect reappears, as in the masques, funerals, ghosts, and exhibition of dead bodies, but there is a great increase in the number and ingenuity of melodramatic sensations. Each play is a chamber of horrors. In one, a wife dies from kissing the poisoned portrait of her husband; in another, the lustful king sucks poison from the jaw of a skull; and in a third, from the painted lips of a corpse. Comets blaze, there are many portents, the time is ever midnight, the scene the graveyard, the air smells of corruption, skulls and corpses are the _dramatis personae_. Every means seems to be employed to make theatrically effective the horrors of death and decay. And once, at least, these means are used with tremendous power in the riot of madness, torture, and corruption that preludes the death of the Duchess of Malfi.

All or nearly all of the active characters are black with sin. The extraordinary exploitation of villany in Elizabethan tragedy here reaches its culmination. The arch-villain as ruthlessly devoted to crime as Hoffman, the accomplice assiduous in revolting baseness, the villain touched by remorse, the malcontent reviling human life,--all these appear--sometimes all combined in one person--and play their parts along with unshrinking prostitutes and lustful monarchs. The study of villany, however, has gained intensity and plausibility over the earlier plays. If none of the villains take to themselves much individuality, most of them have moments of dramatic impressiveness, and they are intended to be realistic. They are drawn with an accumulation of detail, a fondness for probing into depravity, with a sense of the dramatic value of devilry, and with a bitterness and cynicism that often seem sincere and searching. It is this cynicism which gives character to the reflective elements of these plays. The Kydian soliloquy on fate has given way to the prevailing satirical and bitter tone that finds its favorite themes in the sensuality of women and the hypocrisy and greed of courts, and its favorite means of expression in the connotation of the obscene and bestial.

The qualities attributed to these four plays recall "Hoffman" and "The Atheist's Tragedy," and still more Marston's plays, and the satirical comedy of the preceding decade as well as the tragedy. Though the four plays are thus classed together, their differences are marked. "The Second Maiden's Tragedy" manifests more than the others the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher. Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," far superior to his earlier "Atheist's Tragedy," surpasses Marston and reveals brilliant dramatic talent. Full of thrills and unspeakable juxtapositions, it is governed by a sheer delight in horror and unrelieved by any moral standard. Webster, on the contrary, made his horrors impressive in both poetry and moral. Dependent at every step on the work of predecessors, he succeeded as did no other poet except Shakespeare in transforming the revenge play into a work of art and truth. Chapman was, perhaps, his chief model, but the processes of his transforming art, though not its results, bear resemblances to Shakespeare's. He was possessed by an interest in the effects of crime upon character, and had the power to realize these momentarily with amazing truth. Hence his great portraits of Vittoria, the Cardinal, and the Duchess, and the ingeniously and vividly though not very consistently drawn figure of Bosola. As Shakespeare in "Macbeth" and "Lear," fascinated by the wickedness of the world, reveled in images of blackness, corruption, and despair, so Webster, more laboriously and inquisitively, was ever seeking fantastic expression for the old truth that all is vanity. In his masterpiece, "The Duchess of Malfi," and in a lesser degree in "The White Devil," his recognition of moral values again recalls Shakespeare. We are moved by the pitifulness of the suffering as well as by the horror of the evil. There is no confusion of good and bad; and if the prevailing view of life is cynical, it is not unrelieved by respect for fortitude and conscience. The tragedy of revenge reached a new altitude in this play, which, though poorly constructed, tells a story of criminal and horrible revenge with a vivid delineation of character, a pervading moral sense, and with flashes of speech that attain both poetic and dramatic sublimity.[23]

The collaboration of Beaumont and Fletcher was finished by the time that Webster published his acknowledgment of their mastership. Gentlemen by birth and breeding, they began writing for the stage apparently as pupils of Jonson, entered into collaboration by 1607, and in the next five years, by the time that Beaumont was twenty-seven and Fletcher thirty-three, produced some ten plays that gained them a popularity surpassing that of Shakespeare's later years, and extending well through the Restoration. So far as tragedy is concerned, the main result of their collaboration was the formation of a new species of heroic romances, some tragedies and some tragicomedies. Six plays serve to define the type, though other plays of the collaboration have resemblances to it and, after Beaumont's retirement, the type was continued in the work of Fletcher and others. These six plays, "Four Plays in One," "Thierry and Theodoret," "Cupid's Revenge," "Philaster," "A King and No King," and "The Maid's Tragedy," probably owe more to Beaumont than to Fletcher. "The Maid's Tragedy" and the two tragicomedies, "Philaster" and "A King and No King," are the masterpieces, but the six plays resemble one another so closely that one analysis will answer for all.

Beaumont and Fletcher did not, like most of their predecessors, turn to English or Roman history for their plots, and they preserved but few traces of the Marlowean tragedy with its central protagonist and dominating passion, or of the revenge type in any of its amplifications. Their plots, largely of their own invention, are highly ingenious and complicated. They deal with heroic actions in imaginary foreign realms. The conquests, usurpations, and passions that ruin kingdoms are their themes, but there are no battles or armies, and the action is usually confined to the rooms of the palace or a neighboring forest. Usually contrasting a story of gross sensual passion with one of idyllic love, they introduce a great variety of incidents, and aim at a constant but varied excitement. Love of one sort or another, honor also of many kinds, and friendship, which is somewhat more steadfast, are ever in conflict. We are given seats in an anteroom of the palace, and at once the flow of events engrosses us,--conspiracies, imprisonments, insurrections, wars, adultery, seduction, murder, the talk of courtiers, gossip of women, banquets of the monarch, and the laments of the love-lorn. Or, after a tumultuous hour, we may retire to the adjoining forest, where the lovers wander to forget their misfortunes, and by its fountains weave their laments into lyrical garlands. A few hours, and kingdoms have trembled in the balance; the heroine has been proved guilty and innocent again; and the lover has been ecstatic, frantic, jealous, cowardly, implacable, and forgiving, and finally wins or dies with his honor secure.

The tragedies differ from those preceding in structure as well as in material. Their main purpose is theatrical effectiveness; their means of securing it the constant use of surprise. Beaumont and Fletcher did not follow their narrative sources closely; they invented their own stories or used old ones as the frame for their favorite situations and characters. The tragic, idyllic, and sensational matter is skillfully constructed into a number of theatrically telling situations which lead by a series of suspenses and surprises to very effective climaxes or catastrophes. All signs of the epic methods of construction found in the early drama have disappeared, and the interest in the action is maintained at fever heat. In "The Maid's Tragedy," the climax of the play comes at the end of the fourth act with the murder of the king by his mistress, Evadne, the wife of Amintor. But in the fifth act the main action absorbs the sub-plot and continues its course of thrills and surprises until the very end. In "A King and No King," the love of Arbaces for his supposed sister furnishes many entanglements, and it is not until the end of Act V that we know that the princess is not his sister, and the tragedy of incest is resolved into romance. There is no inevitableness in the action of these plays. Usually, until the last moment there is a chance for either a happy or an unhappy ending, and in every case the _dénouement_ or catastrophe is elaborately planned and complicated.

From the nature of their material and treatment there is little difference between the tragedies and tragicomedies. Tragicomedy as a species had up to this time hardly been recognized in the English drama, although there are sporadic instances of the use of the term and although romantic comedy usually offered tragic elements. Fletcher's definition (borrowed from Guarini) in the preface to "The Faithful Shepherdess," may be taken as sufficiently distinguishing the form from other species,--"A tragicomedy is not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy." The example of Beaumont and Fletcher, moreover, gave popularity and importance to this class of plays. Borrowing motives familiar in romantic narrative and the preceding drama, they yet created a departure from preceding romantic comedy, both in the constant emphasis which they place upon the contrast between the tragic and idyllic elements of their plots and in the especial attention they pay to surprising and complicated _dénouements_. They aim not merely at a mixture of the sentimental and tragic but at involving every one in a tangle of disastrous complications, resolved only by a series of final surprises. Although only two of the six romances are tragicomedies, the imitators of Beaumont and Fletcher most frequently adopted the form, realizing apparently the theatrical value of keeping the spectators thrilled and excited until the end and then relieving their sympathetic suspense by a happy solution.

The _dramatis personae_ of the six plays belong to the impossible and romantic situations rather than to life, and are usually of certain types,--the sentimental or violent hero; his faithful friend, a blunt outspoken soldier; the sentimental heroine, often a love-lorn maiden disguised as a page in order that she may serve the hero; an evil woman defiant in her crimes; and the poltroon, usually a comic personage. With the addition of a king, some gentlemen and ladies of the court, and a few persons from the lower ranks, the cast is complete. The various persons introduce one another in long descriptions; and, after the introductory speech, the character remains fixed, except as the shifting situations demand some unexpected revolution. There is no shading or subtlety in the characterization, little discrimination or individuality in the different representatives of the favorite types, who, however, are by no means wanting in originality. They do not reveal the depths or complexities of human nature, but they exhibit fresh and ingenious variations of the old types, audacious humor and abundant spirit, and the power of their creators to rise to a situation and to express dramatic emotion. Thus, their type of evil woman acquires tremendous force in the scenes where Evadne plays her part; and their heroines suffer, serve, weep, love, forgive, and die, in lines that somehow preserve the grace of simplicity, though they wear all the jewels of allusion and imagery that the authors possess. Moreover, their men and women talk like real persons. Dryden declared that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better than Shakespeare, a distinction that in some respects is clear to-day. The men of preceding tragedies had spoken a language elevated and removed from ordinary discourse, but in Beaumont and Fletcher the romantic scenes and impossible changes of character are made plausible by an absence of archaism and a directness and lucidity of speech.

In the main, what reality the characters retain in our memories is due to the power of the verse to reflect clearly the emotions of the moment. There is a notable absence of the merely sonorous, the turgid declamation, the mouthing of strange words, and an absence of over-crowding thought or fancy. Beaumont and Fletcher had no desire to make their style sententious, weighty, and philosophical. They knew what they wanted to say, and they said it clearly and rapidly. They had room for ornament and rhetorical device, but none for eccentricity or obscurity. Another remark of Dryden's, that they perfected the English language, deserves consideration as the view of a century later, and can be appreciated even now. The characteristics of their style, so far as it can be considered as a common property, seem due to an effort to make dialogue correspond as nearly as possible to natural speech. This is particularly true of Fletcher, who is the more revolutionary of the two and the more persistent in his mannerisms. His structure is loose and conversational, and his blank verse overruns the borders of the rigid pentameter and approaches the irregularity of prose. Numerous added syllables and a large percentage of feminine endings further mark his departures from past models, and, combined with his end-stopped lines, give his verse a peculiar monotony. Both writers rise now and then to an intensely imaginative phrase or a beautifully wrought description. The verse of neither is suggestive of the intricacies of human feeling or the splendor of human intellect, but the verse of both, of Fletcher preëminently, reveals a fertility of imagination and an extraordinary mobility of words.

These merits of style gave Beaumont and Fletcher their seventeenth century reputation and have continued to attract readers in the generations since. Ethical objections to their plays drove them from the stage in spite of their theatrical effectiveness. They wrote with little ethical intention. Unlike some of their contemporaries, they did not seek to discover the abodes of sin and to chastise the monster, nor did they study human nature in the light of moral law. They dealt with themes that would please their audience and would offer a sufficient range of emotions for the exhibition of their poetic powers. Without imaginations that touched spiritual heights or penetrated to the real significance of moral conflict, they entered unhesitatingly upon the task of holding up a mirror to a society loose in manners and unprincipled in morals. They were not so much guilty of intentional immorality as impotent to produce moral effect. If their imaginations kept too frequent company with the gross and the unhealthy, they also sought at times the sweeter and nobler aspects of life. What won for their ethics high laudation from their contemporaries was their rhetorical and dramatic exaltation of ideals of magnanimity and dreams of idyllic love and devoted friendship.

Their masterpieces, despite their limitations, must be given high rank in the English drama. Outside of Shakespeare it would be difficult to find in our language another tragedy that as an artistic achievement can be counted the superior of "The Maid's Tragedy." But the main contribution of their collaboration took the form of a type, limited in themes and characterization, brilliant often both in dramatic discovery and in execution, but tending toward artificiality and convention. Their most important innovations, the products of serious artistic effort as well as of cleverness and ingenuity, mark the acquirement by the drama of new habits of doubtful value. Their sacrifice of character to situation, their devotion to theatrical effectiveness, their lack of moral purpose, their dalliance with the artificial and abnormal aspects of passion, and their disregard for the limits of blank verse, all these characteristics furnished examples eagerly followed by the dramatists of the next generation, examples that did not promote in tragedy a true or comprehensive or noble reflection of life.

Immediately after Beaumont's retirement Fletcher probably collaborated with Shakespeare on "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and possibly on a lost play, "Cardenio." The partnership resulted in no distinct departures from the methods of either dramatist, but it seems to have been full of incentive for the younger man, whose poetic gift nowhere displays itself more splendidly. From this time on he wrote constantly for the theatre, composing three or four plays a year, collaborating on many of these with Massinger, and maintaining his position as the most popular dramatist of the time until his death in 1625.

Perhaps if Beaumont had lived, the two might have advanced to maturer and worthier achievement, but Fletcher's work alone rather displays the superficialities and artificialities of the collaboration. His amazing cleverness appears in every scene, but he evidently wrote more and more for immediate success, and relied more and more on his readinesss of wit and invention to take the place of earnest and serious purpose. The long series of plays in which he had at least a considerable share, range in kind from comedies of manners to tragedies of blood and revenge, but practically all may be described as romantic drama, having, that is, strange improbable events, foreign and remote scenes, variety and surprise in action, and love as the central motive. His sense of dramatic value in theme or incident was constantly alert, and in Spanish stories, especially the "Novellas Exemplares" of Cervantes, he found mazes of complicated action which exactly suited his fancy, and which he managed with adroit dramaturgy. The Spanish influence is more noticeable in the comedies than in the more serious plays; but, whatever the theme or the source, Fletcher added bustle and excitement. The distinctions between tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and romantic comedy often become barely discernible. The material and treatment are similar. Tragic situations occur in comedies as well as tragedies, and in either case, though finely conceived and admirably expressed, are yet always directed by the desire for surprise and thrills. The tragicomedies conform most closely to the conventionalities and repetitions of the heroic romances, though they exhibit abundant originality of invention. Through their example, romantic and melodramatic tragicomedy became perhaps the most popular and characteristic dramatic species of the reign of Charles I, and a direct progenitor of the heroic plays of the Restoration.

In his tragedies Fletcher's prostitution to theatrical effectiveness admits a recognition of the literary tradition. At least, the two which are the result of his unaided efforts are composed with more care and with more evidence of artistic responsibility than his other dramas. In "Valentinian"[24] he turned from his usual sources and themes to those long approved in pure tragedy, and found in Roman history a story of revenge and lust. Though treating the material with great freedom, he unfortunately followed his source in continuing the action beyond the murder of Valentinian through the counter revenge on Maximus. The first two acts, that tell of the attempted seduction of Lucina and her final ruin, are among the best sustained tragic developments in Fletcher, and, in comparison with many similar scenes in contemporary drama, testify to his remarkable poetic gifts. But the later scheming and the overthrow of her husband involve a conversion of character and a descent into absurd improbability. In "Bonduca," Fletcher's invention moved unhampered. Historical sources are used merely as hints and incentives. The stories of Bonduca and Caratach are combined; and the interest in their tragic fates diversified by the stories of Bonduca's daughters and their Roman lovers, by the episode of the noble Poenius, by the pathos of the child Hengo, and also by some gross and brutal comedy. All these interests are skillfully interwoven and focused upon the great central scene of the battle. There is stirring presentation of camp life, and throughout the action moves with abounding spirit. The play is not tragedy at all if one judges it strictly by Aristotle's precepts or by Shakespeare's example, or even in comparison with the emotional tension of "The Maid's Tragedy." But it is an admirable example of the blending of the romantic, historical, heroic, pathetic, comic, and tragic, full of human nature as well as incident, conspicuous for poetic expression as well as theatrical ingenuity, one of the masterpieces of the romantic drama.

The tragedies in which Fletcher collaborated with Massinger or others offer few amendments of his usual dramatic habits. "The Queen of Corinth," "The False One," "The Double Marriage," and the spectacular "Prophetess" are all melodramas in which Massinger's moral earnestness and rhetorical seriousness contrast with Fletcher's vivacity, and in which clever stage-craft, noble poetry, and slipshod and hasty workmanship are indiscriminately manifest. "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt" carries on the practice of treating contemporary foreign history, already exemplified by Marlowe and Chapman. Hurriedly written within a few months of Barnavelt's death, it can lay no claim to be a thorough or impartial study of historical events, but it affords a remarkable illustration of the readiness with which both authors could summon their talents to an occasion. Given a theme that had a current theatrical interest, and Massinger's declamation and Fletcher's pathos came nimbly to the task, and almost at their very best.

The most striking illustration, however, both of Fletcher's genius and its prostitution to theatrical effectiveness is to be found in "The Bloody Brother; or Rollo, Duke of Normandy." Here in collaboration with Massinger and possibly Jonson and Middleton, he returned to one of the stock themes of tragedy, the story of family feud and a bloody tyrant. In comparison, however, with any preceding dramas of this class, whether in early imitations of Seneca or later treatments of lust and revenge, the play shows the alteration that had come over dramatic ideals and methods. Its purpose is neither to follow literary tradition nor to expose the evil of tyranny, but to make some startling theatrical effects out of the familiar material. Fletcher accomplishes this purpose with his usual recklessness of talent. When the height of tragic passion is required he rises to it, or very nearly, in the scene where Edith pleads with the tyrant to spare her father's life, a scene which Dyce pronounced the most real in its passionate earnestness of anything in Beaumont and Fletcher's writings. But the most astounding display of his power comes where there is no genuine passion but only make-believe. It is the final scene of the play.

Edith, whose father has been killed by the bloody and lustful Rollo, is planning to murder him. She has pretended to yield to his solicitations, and has arranged a secret meeting with him at her house. Enter Edith, splendidly dressed--a banquet prepared. She kneels and prays to her father's soul that she may forget all pity and kill the tyrant--

"His heaven forgot, and all his lusts upon him."

Then, as her boy sings the lovely song, perhaps Shakespeare's,

"Take, oh take those lips away That so sweetly were forsworn--"

Enter Rollo. By one of Fletcher's sudden conversions, he has changed to a subtle hypocrite and appears humble, repentant, begging for pity and love,

"in whiteness of my wash'd repentance, In my heart's tears and love of truth to Edith, In my fair life hereafter."

Edith, surprised and unnerved, gradually forgets her purpose, and as she informs the audience in several asides, is yielding; when--Enter Hamond and the guard. Hamond, a brave blunt soldier, is seeking revenge on Rollo because the tyrant has killed his brother and outraged him by commanding him to murder the noble Audrey. Hamond announces that he has come to kill Rollo, who seizes Edith and interposes her as a defense. She, aroused now to Rollo's real nature, draws her dagger, but he snatches it from her. In the struggle that follows Rollo and Hamond are both killed.

All this occupies only one hundred and fifty lines of verse and must be accounted a most skillful bit of playmaking, a scene such as only Fletcher among the Elizabethans could contrive. But there is neither truth to life nor dramatic logic; on the contrary, there are two improbable conversions of character. It is not tragedy, it is hardly serious drama, it is theatrical claptrap; yet Fletcher's poetry is as fine, and, for all that one can see, as sincere as in the scene of genuine passion. Such dramatic impossibilities as this Fletcher faced with eager recklessness, and gayly spurred his Pegasus for the leap.

"The Bloody Brother" further illustrates the union of the material and methods of the Beaumont-Fletcher romances with the conventions of the tragedy of revenge and lust. That union, manifest also in Fletcher's "Valentinian," is henceforth characteristic of the tragedy of the age. The dramatists belonged to a late period of an artistic development and had many examples both native and foreign to draw upon. They were men of talent or even genius whose creations were independent and original but rarely without large indebtedness to their predecessors. While Shakespeare and Jonson were often borrowed from, the majority of the tragedies clung to the examples of Webster and Tourneur or mingled revenge and horrors with the romantic plots and novel technic of Beaumont and Fletcher. A marked similarity consequently exists in the plays of men of different temperaments and purposes. Lustful tyrants and their intriguing favorites, love crossed by honor and often allied with revenge, illicit and abnormal passion, romantic princes and princesses, an action confined to the rooms of a palace, situations involving seduction or temptation, stage-effects whether by horrors or by masques and pageants, and a style more equable, less fantastic than in the early drama,--these are the ingredients which characterize tragedy for the quarter century after Shakespeare's death.

Middleton's tragedies and tragicomedies came late in his career, following a period of realistic comedies, in which his observant and satirical imagination found free play. Though affected by Beaumont and Fletcher's romanticism, he preserved most of the traits of the tragedy of revenge in its late development, including such penetrating analysis of character swayed by evil as we have found in Marston and Webster. In some of his romantic dramas, as the tragicomedy "The Witch," there is little of this serious purpose. The various revenge motives--of the duchess on the duke who has compelled her to drink from the skull of her murdered father, of the lover upon the husband who has married his betrothed, and of the jealous husband upon his wife--are all treated with melodramatic insincerity though with an ingenious accompaniment of spectacular and supernatural interference on the part of the witches. Attempted murder results in wounds that easily heal; the deadly potion proves harmless; the duke discovered dead comes to life. In the single tragedy written by Middleton alone, "Women Beware Women," the revenge species appears unadulterated. Isabella's illicit relation with her uncle, the use of a masque to bring about the final slaughter, the scenes of seduction, and the abominable wickedness of all the persons, are elements that recall the Tourneurian group. The fluency and eloquence of Middleton's style and his admirable delineation of character by rapid dialogue are best shown in the early scenes; after the old mother, so beautifully and truly drawn, has disappeared from the action, the rest is unrelieved murder and lust.

The two famous plays that were the results of Middleton's collaboration with Rowley have somewhat different characteristics. Rowley, a playwright used to rude and fantastic comedy, and the author of "All's Lost by Lust," a clumsy tragedy of revenge, wrote most of the comic scenes and had some share in the serious plots. In "The Fair Quarrel," the hesitation of Captain Ager to defend the honor of his mother unless convinced of her purity; and in "The Changeling," the entanglement of Beatrice with the loathed follower whom she has persuaded to murder her accepted suitor, offer situations novel and ingenious. In both plays, the opportunity for mere melodrama with sudden conversions of character is refused, and the series of startling situations made the basis for a study of human motive. It is this which gives "The Fair Quarrel," in spite of its absurdities, superiority over most of the tragicomedies of the time. In "The Changeling," one may easily imagine what havoc Fletcher would have made of the characterization in order to over-emphasize situations, sensational enough in themselves; but Middleton and Rowley followed the best tradition of Webster. The rash and pampered Beatrice retains our sympathies even in her degradation, and remains convincingly alive, whether in her incipient love for De Flores or her final cry for forgiveness. De Flores, clear-headed and well-motived, is the most powerful and individual of the post-Shakespearean villains. The comic relief supplied by the mad scenes spoils the tragic unity of the play. But, except in Shakespeare and Webster, the old combination of murder, revenge, sinful love, villany, madness, and ghosts had never been made so consistently the result of human motive and so effective in its appeal to our sympathies.

Massinger's dramatic career, ranking in productiveness with Shakespeare's or Fletcher's, extended from the time of Shakespeare's withdrawal from the theatre to within a few years of the Civil War. For ten years he was mainly occupied in collaborating with Fletcher for the king's men; and of the nineteen plays usually classed as his own, none were acted before 1622. His work, therefore, falls roughly into two periods, the first when he was the assistant of Fletcher, the second when he had succeeded Fletcher as the main reliance of the leading London company.

Of his work with Fletcher the tragedies have already been considered. In most of the plays of the collaboration, Fletcher's share is the more important, especially in the treatment of the dramatic crises. In plays, as "The Queen of Corinth" and "The Laws of Candy," where Fletcher's hand is least apparent, there is an excess of melodramatic ingenuity without the Fletcherian vivacity, Massinger's temperament reveals itself, however, from the first in the gravity of his style and the seriousness of his morality. From Fletcher he acquired his stage-craft and his attachment to the romantic drama of thrills and surprises, but his art was meanwhile developing a responsibility and purposes all its own.

Of the plays written without the aid of Fletcher, two, "A New Way to Pay Old Debts" and "The City Madam," are domestic comedies of manners. The others are romantic dramas which can be classified only with some difficulty as comedies, tragicomedies, and tragedies. A number of the tragicomedies are to be distinguished from the tragedies only by the happy endings and the absence of bloodshed. Nor are these always decisive. Of the tragedies, "Believe as You List" and "The Virgin Martyr" result in victory as well as death, and in the tragicomedy, "The Maid of Honor," suitors worthy and unworthy are rejected and the vindicated heroine enters a nunnery. The tragedies in the main deal with more serious and important actions and rely less on intrigue than the tragicomedies; but it may be said of Massinger, with even more truth than of Fletcher, that he dealt with romantic stories abounding in tragic possibilities, usually resulting in happy endings, but occasionally taking a loftier tone and a fatal conclusion.

The plays as a whole reveal a remarkable variety of stories and a treatment of sources fully as free and ingenious as Fletcher's and often contriving a political as well as a moral lesson. Honor and religion play conspicuous parts as in contemporary Spanish drama, to which Massinger apparently owed a considerable debt; although in only one instance, "The Renegade," has direct indebtedness to a Spanish play been traced. The earlier drama is also freely drawn upon. At this date it was in fact almost impossible to compose a play without traversing motives and incidents that were familiar on the stage; and Massinger borrowed from many, from Shakespeare as freely as from Fletcher, and from minor dramatists as well. The story of the usurper Sebastian, told in "The Battle of Alcazar," is retold in "Believe as You List"; and the poisoning by kissing the painted corpse, related in "The Second Maiden's Tragedy," reappears in his "Duke of Milan." In spite of their variety and ingenuity, his plays are very like others of the period. There are the same court and courtiers, general, favorite, rival lovers, rival mistresses, and the same trials of chastity or intrigues of lust and malice.

Yet the independence of Massinger's invention and the truth of his conceptions of human motive are by no means small. In "The Bashful Lover" there is a presentation of idealizing and self-sacrificing love, far surpassing the courtly compliments of Fletcher and rivaling the magnanimity of Browning's conceptions. In such themes, just removed from the exaltation and the horror thought necessary for tragedy, yet serious and exalted above the average of comedy, Massinger is at his best. An outline of his "Maid of Honor" may serve to illustrate both the independence of his imaginative conceptions and the careful integration of his structure.