A History of Elizabethan Literature Part 17

Middleton's acknowledged, or at least accepted, habit of collaboration in most of the work usually attributed to him, and the strong suspicion, if not more than suspicion, that he collaborated in other plays, afford endless opportunity for the exercise of a certain kind of criticism. By employing another kind we can discern quite sufficiently a strong individuality in the work that is certainly, in part or in whole, his; and we need not go farther. He seems to have had three different kinds of dramatic apt.i.tude, in all of which he excelled. The larger number of his plays consist of examples of the rattling comedy of intrigue and manners, often openly representing London life as it was, sometimes transplanting what is an evident picture of home manners to some foreign scene apparently for no other object than to make it more attractive to the spectators. To any one at all acquainted with the Elizabethan drama their very t.i.tles speak them. These t.i.tles are _Blurt Master Constable_, _Michaelmas Term_, _A Trick to Catch the Old One_, _The Family of Love_ [a sharp satire on the Puritans], _A Mad World, my Masters_, _No Wit no Help Like a Woman's_, _A Chaste Maid in Cheapside_, _Anything for a Quiet Life_, _More Dissemblers besides Women_. As with all the humour-comedies of the time, the incidents are not unfrequently very improbable, and the action is conducted with such intricacy and want of clearly indicated lines, that it is sometimes very difficult to follow. At the same time, Middleton has a faculty almost peculiar to himself of carrying, it might almost be said of hustling, the reader or spectator along, so that he has no time to stop and consider defects. His characters are extremely human and lively, his dialogue seldom lags, his catastrophes, if not his plots, are often ingenious, and he is never heavy. The moral atmosphere of his plays is not very refined,--by which I do not at all mean merely that he indulges in loose situations and loose language. All the dramatists from Shakespere downwards do that; and Middleton is neither better nor worse than the average. But in striking contrast to Shakespere and to others, Middleton has no kind of poetical morality in the sense in which the term poetical justice is better known.

He is not too careful that the rogues shall not have the best of it; he makes his most virtuous and his vilest characters hobn.o.b together very contentedly; and he is, in short, though never brutal, like the post-Restoration school, never very delicate. The style, however, of these works of his did not easily admit of such delicacy, except in the infusion of a strong romantic element such as that which Shakespere almost always infuses. Middleton has hardly done it more than once--in the charming comedy of _The Spanish Gipsy_,--and the result there is so agreeable that the reader only wishes he had done it oftener.

Usually, however, when his thoughts took a turn of less levity than in these careless humorous studies of contemporary life, he devoted himself not to the higher comedy, but to tragedy of a very serious cla.s.s, and when he did this an odd phenomenon generally manifested itself. In Middleton's idea of tragedy, as in that of most of the playwrights, and probably all the playgoers of his day, a comic underplot was a necessity; and, as we have seen, he was himself undoubtedly able enough to furnish such a plot.

But either because he disliked mixing his tragic and comic veins, or for some unknown reason, he seems usually to have called in on such occasions the aid of Rowley, a vigorous writer of farce, who had sometimes been joined with him even in his comic work. Now, not only was Rowley little more than a farce writer, but he seems to have been either unable to make, or quite careless of making, his farce connect itself in any tolerable fashion with the tragedy of which it formed a nominal part. The result is seen in its most perfect imperfection in the two plays of _The Mayor of Queenborough_ and _The Changeling_, both named from their comic features, and yet containing tragic scenes, the first of a very high order, the second of an order only overtopped by Shakespere at his best. The humours of the cobbler Mayor of Queenborough in the one case, of the lunatic asylum and the courting of its keeper's wife in the other, are such very mean things that they can scarcely be criticised. But the desperate love of Vortiger for Rowena in _The Mayor_, and the villainous plots against his chaste wife, Castiza, are real tragedy. Even these, however, fall far below the terrible loves, if loves they are to be called, of Beatrice-Joanna, the heroine of _The Changeling_, and her servant, instrument, and murderer, De Flores. The plot of the tragic part of this play is intricate and not wholly savoury. It is sufficient to say that Beatrice having enticed De Flores to murder a lover whom she does not love, that so she may marry a lover whom she does love, is suddenly met by the murderer's demand of her honour as the price of his services. She submits, and afterwards has to purchase fresh aid of murder from him by a continuance of her favours that she may escape detection by her husband. Thus, roughly described, the theme may look like the undigested horrors of _l.u.s.t's Dominion_, of _The Insatiate Countess_, and of _The Revenger's Tragedy_. It is, however, poles asunder from them. The girl, with her southern recklessness of anything but her immediate desires, and her southern indifference to deceiving the very man she loves, is sufficiently remarkable, as she stands out of the canvas.

But De Flores,--the broken gentleman, reduced to the position of a mere dependant, the libertine whose want of personal comeliness increases his mistress's contempt for him, the murderer double and treble dyed, as audacious as he is treacherous, and as cool and ready as he is fiery in pa.s.sion,--is a study worthy to be cla.s.sed at once with Iago, and inferior only to Iago in their cla.s.s. The several touches with which these two characters and their situations are brought out are as Shakesperian as their conception, and the whole of that part of the play in which they figure is one of the most wonderful triumphs of English or of any drama.

Even the change of manners and a bold word or two here and there, may not prevent me from giving the latter part of the central scene:--

_Beat._ "Why 'tis impossible thou canst be so wicked, Or shelter such a cunning cruelty, To make his death the murderer of my honour!

Thy language is so bold and vicious, I cannot see which way I can forgive it With any modesty.

_De F._ Pish![50] you forget yourself: A woman dipped in blood, and talk of modesty!

_Beat._ O misery of sin! would I'd been bound Perpetually unto my living hate In that Pisacquo, than to hear[51] these words.

Think but upon the distance that creation Set 'twixt thy blood and mine, and keep thee there.

_De F._ Look but unto your conscience, read me _there_; 'Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal: Pish! fly not to your birth, but settle you In what the act has made you; you're no more now.

You must forget your parentage to me; You are the deed's creature;[52] by that name You lost your first condition, and I shall urge[53] you As peace and innocency has turn'd you out, And made you one with me.

_Beat._ With thee, foul villain!

_De F._ Yes, my fair murderess: do _you_ urge _me_?

Though thou writ'st maid, thou wh.o.r.e in thine affection!

'Twas changed from thy first love, and that's a kind Of wh.o.r.edom in thy heart: and he's changed now To bring thy second on, thy Alsemero, Whom by all sweets that ever darkness tasted If I enjoy thee not, thou ne'er enjoyest!

I'll blast the hopes and joys of marriage, I'll confess all; my life I rate at nothing.

_Beat._ De Flores!

_De F._ I shall rest from all (lover's)[54] plagues then, I live in pain now; that [love] shooting eye Will burn my heart to cinders.

_Beat._ O sir, hear me!

_De F._ She that in life and love refuses me, In death and shame my partner she shall be.

_Beat._ (_kneeling_). Stay, hear me once for all: I make thee master Of all the wealth I have in gold and jewels; Let me go poor unto my bed with honour And I am rich in all things.

_De F._ Let this silence thee; The wealth of all Valencia shall not buy My pleasure from me.

Can you weep Fate from its determined purpose?

So soon may you weep me.

_Beat._ Vengeance begins; Murder, I see, is followed by more sins: Was my creation in the womb so curst It must engender with a viper first?

_De F._ (_raising her_). Come, rise and shroud your blushes in my bosom, Silence is one of pleasure's best receipts.

Thy peace is wrought for ever in this yielding.

'Las, how the turtle pants! thou'lt love anon What thou so fear'st and faint'st to venture on."

[50] In orig. "Push," cf. "Tush."

[51] Rather than hear.

[52] A trisyllable, as in strictness it ought to be.

[53] = "claim."

[54] This omission and the subst.i.tution in the next line are due to Dyce, and may be called _certissima emendatio_.

Two other remarkable plays of Middleton's fall with some differences under the same second division of his works. These are _The Witch_ and _Women Beware Women_. Except for the inevitable and rather attractive comparison with _Macbeth_, _The Witch_ is hardly interesting. It consists of three different sets of scenes most inartistically blended,--an awkward and ineffective variation on the story of Alboin, Rosmunda and the skull for a serious main plot, some clumsy and rather unsavoury comic or tragi-comic interludes, and the witch scenes. The two first are very nearly worthless; the third is intrinsically, though far below _Macbeth_, interesting enough and indirectly more interesting because of the questions which have been started, as to the indebtedness of the two poets to each other. The best opinion seems to be that Shakespere most certainly did not copy Middleton, nor (a strange fancy of some) did he collaborate with Middleton, and that the most probable thing is that both borrowed their names, and some details from Reginald Scot's _Discovery of Witchcraft_. _Women Beware Women_ on the other hand is one of Middleton's finest works, inferior only to _The Changeling_ in parts, and far superior to it as a whole. The temptation of Bianca, the newly-married wife, by the duke's instrument, a cunning and shameless woman, is the t.i.tle-theme, and in this part again Middleton's Shakesperian verisimilitude and certainty of touch appear. The end of the play is something marred by a slaughter more wholesale even than that of _Hamlet_, and by no means so well justified. Lastly, _A Fair Quarrel_ must be mentioned, because of the very high praise which it has received from Lamb and others. This praise has been directed chiefly to the situation of the quarrel between Captain Ager and his friend, turning on a question (the point of family honour), finely but perhaps a little tediously argued. The comic scenes, however, which are probably Rowley's, are in his best vein of bustling swagger.

I have said that Middleton, as it seems to me, has not been fully estimated. It is fortunately impossible to say the same of Webster, and the reasons of the difference are instructive. Middleton's great fault is that he never took trouble enough about his work. A little trouble would have made _The Changeling_ or _Women Beware Women_, or even _The Spanish Gipsy_, worthy to rank with all but Shakespere's very masterpieces. Webster also was a collaborator, apparently an industrious one; but he never seems to have taken his work lightly. He had, moreover, that incommunicable gift of the highest poetry in scattered phrases which, as far as we can see, Middleton had not. Next to nothing is known of him. He may have been parish clerk of St. Andrew's, Holborn; but the authority is very late, and the commentators seemed to have jumped at it to explain Webster's fancy for details of death and burial--a cause and effect not sufficiently proportioned. Mr. Dyce has spent much trouble in proving that he could not have been the author of some Puritan tracts published a full generation after the date of his masterpieces. Heywood tells us that he was generally called "Jack," a not uncommon thing when men are christened John. He himself has left us a few very sententiously worded prefaces which do not argue great critical taste. We know from the usual sources (Henslowe's Diaries) that he was a working furnisher of plays, and from many rather dubious t.i.tle-pages we suppose or know some of the plays he worked at.

_Northward Ho! Westward Ho!_ and _Sir John Wyatt_ are pieces of dramatic journalism in which he seems to have helped Dekker. He adapted, with additions, Marston's _Malcontent_, which is, in a crude way, very much in his own vein: he contributed (according to rather late authority) some charming scenes (elegantly extracted, on a hint of Mr. Gosse's, by a recent editor) to _A Cure for a Cuckold_, one of Rowley's characteristic and not ungenial botches of humour-comedy; he wrote a bad pageant or two, and some miscellaneous verses. But we know nothing of his life or death, and his fame rests on four plays, in which no other writer is either known or even hinted to have had a hand, and which are in different ways of the first order of interest, if not invariably of the first order of merit. These are _The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_, _The White Devil_, _The Devil's Law Case_, and _Appius and Virginia_.

Of _Appius and Virginia_ the best thing to be said is to borrow Sainte-Beuve's happy description of Moliere's _Don Garcie de Navarre_, and to call it an _essai pale et n.o.ble_. Webster is sometimes very close to Shakespere; but to read _Appius and Virginia_, and then to read _Julius Caesar_ or _Coriola.n.u.s_, is to appreciate, in perhaps the most striking way possible, the universality which all good judges from Dryden downwards have recognised in the prince of literature. Webster, though he was evidently a good scholar, and even makes some parade of scholarship, was a Romantic to the core, and was all abroad in these cla.s.sical measures. _The Devil's Law Case_ sins in the opposite way, being hopelessly undigested, dest.i.tute of any central interest, and, despite fine pa.s.sages, a mere "salmagundi."

There remain the two famous plays of _The White Devil_ or _Vittoria Corombona_ and _The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_--plays which were rarely, if ever, acted after their author's days, and of which the earlier and, to my judgment, better was not a success even then, but which the judgment of three generations has placed at the very head of all their cla.s.s, and which contain magnificent poetry.

I have said that in my judgment _The White Devil_ is the better of the two; I shall add that it seems to me very far the better. Webster's plays are comparatively well known, and there is no s.p.a.ce here to tell their rather intricate arguments. It need only be said that the contrast of the two is striking and unmistakable; and that Webster evidently meant in the one to indicate the punishment of female vice, in the other to draw pity and terror by the exhibition of the unprevented but not unavenged sufferings of female virtue. Certainly both are excellent subjects, and if the latter seem the harder, we have Imogen and Bellafront to show, in the most diverse material, and with the most diverse setting possible, how genius can manage it. With regard to _The White Devil_, it has been suggested with some plausibility that it wants expansion. Certainly the action is rather crowded, and the recourse to dumb show (which, however, Webster again permitted himself in _The d.u.c.h.ess_) looks like a kind of shorthand indication of scenes that might have been worked out. Even as it is, however, the sequence of events is intelligible, and the presentation of character is complete. Indeed, if there is any fault to find with it, it seems to me that Webster has sinned rather by too much detail than by too little. We could spare several of the minor characters, though none are perhaps quite so otiose as Delio, Julio, and others in _The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_. We feel (or at least I feel) that Vittoria's villainous brother Flamineo is not as Iago and Aaron and De Flores are each in his way, a thoroughly live creature. We ask ourselves (or I ask myself) what is the good of the repulsive and not in the least effective presentment of the Moor Zanche. Cardinal Monticelso is incontinent of tongue and singularly feeble in deed,--for no rational man would, after describing Vittoria as a kind of pest to mankind, have condemned her to a punishment which was apparently little more than residence in a rather disreputable but by no means constrained boarding-house, and no omnipotent pope would have let Ludivico loose with a clear inkling of his murderous designs. But when these criticisms and others are made, _The White Devil_ remains one of the most glorious works of the period. Vittoria is perfect throughout; and in the justly-lauded trial scene she has no superior on any stage. Brachiano is a thoroughly lifelike portrait of the man who is completely besotted with an evil woman. Flamineo I have spoken of, and not favourably; yet in literature, if not in life, he is a triumph; and above all the absorbing tragic interest of the play, which it is impossible to take up without finishing, has to be counted in. But the real charm of _The White Devil_ is the wholly miraculous poetry in phrases and short pa.s.sages which it contains. Vittoria's dream of the yew-tree, almost all the speeches of the unfortunate Isabella, and most of her rival's, have this merit. But the most wonderful flashes of poetry are put in the mouth of the scoundrel Flamineo, where they have a singular effect. The famous dirge which Cornelia sings can hardly be spoken of now, except in Lamb's artfully simple phrase "I never saw anything like it," and the final speeches of Flamineo and his sister deserve the same endors.e.m.e.nt. Nor is even the proud farewell of the Moor Zanche unworthy. It is impossible to describe the "whirl of spirits" (as the good old-fashioned phrase has it) into which the reading of this play sets the reader, except by saying that the cause of that whirl is the secret of the best Elizabethan writers, and that it is nowhere, out of Shakespere, better exemplified than in the scene partly extracted from Middleton, and in such pa.s.sages of _Vittoria Corombona_ as the following:--

_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 'tis 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 grand-mother 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-red-breast 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-t.i.thes 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 Compa.s.sion. I pray, leave me.

[_Exit_ FRANCISCO DE MEDICIS.

This night I'll know the utmost of my fate; I'll be resolved what my rich sister means To a.s.sign me for my service. I have liv'd Riotously ill, like some that live in court, And sometimes when my face was full of smiles Have felt the maze of conscience in my breast.

Oft gay and honoured robes those tortures try: We think cag'd birds sing when indeed they cry.

[_Enter Brachiano's ghost, in his leather ca.s.sock and_ _breeches, and boots; with a cowl; in his hand a pot_ _of lily flowers, with a skull in't._