Philip Massinger Part 7

Good master doctor, when your leisure serves, Visit my house; when we least need their art, Physicians look most lovely.

And close intercourse with doctors may have suggested the lines immediately below:

NOVALL. The knave is jealous.

PERIGOT. Tis a disease few doctors cure themselves of.

At the same time, let us not forget the pa.s.sages where he shows a knowledge of the law;(292) nor the fact that books have been written to prove that Shakspere must have had a training in this or that profession.(293) The really interesting point about the doctors in Ma.s.singer is that they are so often praised as the healers of the mind; the dramatist who delights in drawing gloomy, pa.s.sionate characters seems to have a high opinion for the profession which undertook to cure melancholy.(294) In _A Very Woman_ he takes care to praise and reward the doctor more highly than the surgeons. On the other hand, like most of his contemporaries, he naturally makes the physician a part of the machinery rather than an individual character. Even the doctor in _A Fair Quarrel_, who takes an unusually large part in the plot, can hardly be said to be more than a carefully drawn lay figure. The same remark applies to the friars of Shakspere.

The chief question about Ma.s.singer which interests the student of English is the authorship of _Henry VIII_. Did he take part in writing that play with Fletcher? There is a great ma.s.s of literature on this subject. As one who has read the undoubted plays of Ma.s.singer many times, I am bound to say that while there is much in the play which reminds one of Shakspere and Fletcher, I find little trace of Ma.s.singers style. I do not deny that there are one or two slight reminiscences; thus the word file(295) is a favourite one with Ma.s.singer. We find blushing in the play once or twice,(296) but then we find it elsewhere in Shakspere. Annes remark to the old lady, Come, you are pleasant,(297) is in Ma.s.singers manner, but he may have taken the turn from Shakspere. The strict metre of such a line as this is like Ma.s.singer;(298) the same remark applies again:

SURREY. Has the King this?

SUFFOLK. Believe it.

SURREY. Will this work?

The fourth scene of the second act is a great law-court Scene, and Ma.s.singer has several such, in which he may be copying Shakspere. The combination of courtiers in dialogue which we get in various parts of _Henry VIII_ is like Ma.s.singer;(299) but, to my mind, the scenes are more clumsy than their parallels in Ma.s.singer. Sudden changes of mind are found in _Henry VIII_;(300) and this is probably the strongest bit of evidence in favour of Ma.s.singers authorship. The characters are not harmoniously rounded off: Buckinghams prayers for the King(301) do not please us; the Kings scruples of conscience are not convincing;(302) Wolseys meekness(303) and piety(304) do not ring true, though they antic.i.p.ate the picture of his last year which we get in Cavendishs Lifebut all these blemishes may be due to hasty work or dual authorship. Failure in representing vacillation and complexity of character is, as we have seen above, a note of Ma.s.singer, but the failures of this kind in _Henry VIII_ are marked by a sentimentality which reminds us of Fletcher.

Let us see now what there is in the play unlike Ma.s.singer. To begin with, there are many pa.s.sages in Shaksperes difficult later style,(305) and there is a complete absence of Ma.s.singers sinuous sentences and frequent parentheses, as also of his peculiar vocabulary; there are many flights of high and tender poetry which are beyond his compa.s.s; there are brilliant ???a?, such as

GRIFFITH. n.o.ble madam, Mens evil manners live in bra.s.s, their virtues We write in water,(306)

or,

CHANCELLOR. But we are all men, In our own natures frail, and capable Of our flesh; few are angels,(307)

which are quite out of his range of power.

Again, there is a curious series of links in the play, by which characters who are to come on later are introduced; it seems to be an attempt to give unity to a disconnected work. Thus, the Kings belief in Cranmer is early indicated;(308) Cromwells future success is foreshadowed by Wolsey;(309) Gardiners dislike of Cranmer is brought before us.(310) This is a method of which I can recall no instance in Ma.s.singers undoubted plays.

In spite of his roughness and ferocity, Henry is more of a man than any of Ma.s.singers tyrants; there is no parallel in Ma.s.singer to Anne Boleyn, slight as her portrait is; while Katherine and Wolsey are alike far superior to anything of his. Lastly, the pageantry and processions of the play do not appear in Ma.s.singers simple designs.

The authors of _Henry VIII_ were essaying an impossible task. They were trying to construct an historical play out of materials which were too various to make artistic unity feasible, and they had to make an unattractive character the centre of the piece. Consequently, they decided to end the play at the christening of Elizabeth, and to cover their retreat with gorgeous rhetoric about the Virgin Queen(311) and her Stuart successor. It would have been quite impossible to introduce the death of Anne Boleyn, or any further incident of the reign, without harrowing the feelings of the spectator and losing all sense of proportion. But they do make a desperate effort to centre our attention on the King as a commanding figure; he comes before us as the first gentleman in Europe, and as the anxious lover of his people; he is represented as torn by conflicting emotions about the divorce, and as badly treated by Rome; all we can say is, these facts are true, however unskilfully the play brings them before us. Whatever the King does, we are meant to like him. His victims all conspire to invoke the blessings of Heaven on his head; Buckingham,(312) Wolsey,(313) Katherine,(314) all agree in this, reminding us of John Stubbs the Puritan, who, when his right hand was cut off for writing a book against Elizabeths proposed marriage, put off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice, G.o.d save the Queen. The christening scene in Act V. is skilfully constructed so as to concentrate our interest on Henry; we feel that he is a royal and heroic figure, whose faults may in the last resort be palliated by the consideration that he is the father of Elizabeth.

I agree with the critics who regard the play as a failure from the artistic point of view; it lacks unity, and it moves awkwardly. It might even be called a spectacular experiment. But I rate it higher than they seem to do; its faults are largely due to the subject; it has much of Shakspere in it, as for example, the conscientious way in which the historical details are introduced.(315) It is full of superb and moving pa.s.sages, and it uses the eleven-syllable line with skill and tenderness.

If some of its defects remind us faintly of Ma.s.singer, its excellences are altogether beyond his abilities. Doubtless, it is natural to wish that each play of Shakspere should excel its predecessor, and to be unwilling to confess that he ended his career with something that was not supremely excellent. In the same way we may be sorry that one of Mozarts last works, _t.i.tus_, was a failure. But it is better to take things as we find them than to seek to twist them into something else on inadequate grounds.

Boyles attribution of _Henry VIII_ to Fletcher and Ma.s.singer(316) was coldly received by the New Shakspere Society.(317) Let us look at his arguments. I trust that condensation will do them no injustice.

1. There is a change in the conception of the character of Buckingham.

Such changes constantly occur in the plays which Fletcher and Ma.s.singer wrote together, notably in the character of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt.

Therefore Ma.s.singer wrote part of _Henry VIII_. This line of argument, even if valid, would only prove collaboration by Fletcher with someone else.

2. The Shakspere play _All is True_ may have perished in the Globe fire of 1613. _Henry VIII_ was written to take its place, but not produced before 1616. The evidence quoted for the date 1616-17 is very weak, and does nothing to prove Ma.s.singers co-operation.

3. If it be urged that the reputed authors of the play were alive in 1623, when it was published as Shaksperes work in the Folio, Boyle replies,(318) that, with the exception perhaps of Ben Jonson, it would never have occurred to a dramatist of that age to claim as his property what was published under anothers name. This is a bold statement. Can an instance of such indifference be quoted? Or are we merely bidden to remember that Ma.s.singer was poor?

4. Boyle then works through the scenes which he ascribes to Ma.s.singer.

I., 1.The opening is like _The Emperor of the East_, III., 1. An untimely ague corresponds to a sudden fever. The resemblance of the scenes is undoubted, and the parallel phrases are remarkable. Note, however, that the writer says the same thing twice (lines 4 and 13), while lines 9-12 are not like Ma.s.singer.

I., 4.Lines 1-18, and 60 to the end. I find no trace of Ma.s.singers style in these pa.s.sages. He never wrote lines 75-6:

The fairest hand I ever touchd! O beauty, Till now I never knew thee!

or such a phrase as let the music knock it _ad finem_.

II., 1.Lines 1-54, and 136 to the end. I find no trace of Ma.s.singers style in these pa.s.sages. Boyle has to allow that Fletcher altered several lines in 1-54; this is precarious and subjective reasoning.

II., 3.Lines 1-11 are in the parenthetic manner, but quite unlike Ma.s.singers. Soft cheveril conscience in line 31, and youd venture an emballing in line 47, are instances of the strong vocabulary which marks the play.(319) Picturesque phrases of this kind are not characteristic of Ma.s.singers style.

Nor did Ma.s.singer ever sink so low as line 64:

A thousand pound a year, annual support.(320)

II., 4.No doubt Ma.s.singer loves a forensic scene, but this one leads to nothing and leaves the mind in confusion. Now, Ma.s.singer was too good an artist to do that. The things the people say in this scene must have pa.s.sed through their minds in real life, but they are combined in such a way as to be true to history rather than to dramatic propriety. The author aims at telling what happened, and what happened does not always make a good play. It might even be urged from what we know of Ma.s.singer that he was too good a stage-poet to undertake an English historical play with its necessary limitations.

III., 2, 1-203.The scene, like so much else in the play, lacks the refinement and courtliness which Ma.s.singer always has at his command. It may be noted that the bluff, coa.r.s.e atmosphere of the Shaksperian scenes is very suitable to the central figure of the play.(321) Henry VIII infects his surroundings with himself, and this might be quoted as an indication of Shaksperian skill.

IV., 1.The prosaic details of this scene are unlike anything in Ma.s.singer.(322)

V., 1.The point of this scene is to concentrate our attention on Elizabeths birth. The scene sprawls sadly, to use Boyles description of Fletchers method. First we have Gardiner and Lovell, then Henry and Suffolk, then Henry and Cranmer, then Henry and the old lady. Ma.s.singer constructed better than this.

V., 3, 1-113.Such a speech as Cranmer makes (lines 58-69) is too short for Ma.s.singers ample method, and its terse, broken style is singularly unlike his.

5. The few parallels of diction which Boyle brings forward are either from plays which are not certainly by Ma.s.singer, or may be explained as due to reminiscence or common phraseology.

6. Boyle has much of value to say in his criticisms of the characters. But again and again he seems to forget that the author is hampered by the story. He could not treat Henry VIII as Schiller treated Mary Stuart; to idealize the events would have been an act of _lse-majest_.

It is true that Anne Boleyn is not a creation of the same order as Shaksperes later heroinesImogen, Miranda, Marina, Perdita. Though beautiful and charming, she is shallow and commonplace. Is not this, however, the Anne Boleyn of real life?

Katherine is inferior to Hermione in _The Winters Tale_. But why should not her portrait be drawn on different lines? Is she not a proud Spanish princess? She is certainly one of the great figures of English Tragedy.