Though the change is natural, it is inartistically effected; it comes too suddenly. Think, however, what an opportunity this would be for a great actress. If we were in the audience, we should see the gradual development reflected in her expression and bearing long before she utters the words which embody her thought.

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Other instances of the same thing are to be found in Donusa's conversion to Christianity in The Renegado,217 in the change of faith effected in Calista and Christeta by Dorothea's story of the King of Egypt and Osiris' image,218 and in the indecision of Lorenzo about matrimony in The Bashful Lover.219

Change of mind is an ungrateful and inartistic experience. It has landed many honest politicians in bitter and undeserved reproaches. From Aristotle's time onwards Euripides has been blamed for his Iphigenia at Aulis, who first feared to die, and then offered herself for her country.220 We certainly feel that in Massinger there are occasionally instances of cheap repentance which do not seem real. Take the case of Corisca in The Bondman; a bad woman repents, but though convinced we are not pleased at the spectacle.221 If Massinger had ever read the Poetics of Aristotle, he forgot or ignored the precept that a character should be ὁμαλόν, or “consistent.”222 If this is not the case there is a danger that [pg 076] the effect will be μιαρόν, or “odious,” to use a word of which Aristotle is fond. I think, then, that this charge is proven. Massinger saw how effective on the stage a sudden change of character might be, but lacked the necessary art to make it convincing. Hence some of his characters are not even ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλοι.223 Perhaps the explanation is this, that, being a master of language, he overvalued the persuasiveness of rhetoric.224 It is not enough to portray the varying emotions which sway the mind at a particular moment; to produce a satisfactory whole they have to be fused together. The reader should not feel that the characters are at the mercy of the situations in which they are placed, or they will appear to be lay-figures or puppets, rather than live flesh and blood.

Yet even here a defence of some sort can be set up for our poet. I will endeavour to make my meaning clear by an analogy from music. It may have occurred to someone to ask what the music of Mozart would have been like if he had lived after Beethoven. Would it have been more serious and sublime than it is? The question is worth asking, even if the only answer to it be this, that without Mozart Beethoven would never have existed. I think it is fair to argue that Massinger, in his constant effort after the representation of change of character, was before his time; he was seeking after a complex but possible effect, which the novelist can undertake but which the limitations of the stage render almost impossible.225

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Is it fanciful to say that if he had lived in the eighteenth century, if he had had before his eyes the work of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, he would have been a good novelist, less cynical than Fielding, more concise than Richardson, more ideal than Smollett? There are authors like Euripides and Virgil whose very failures by a strange paradox seem part of their greatness; and we may perhaps say that Massinger, by pointing the way somewhat tentatively and blindly to subtle psychological studies, has helped to build up the noble fabric of the English novel.

Let us now turn to some miscellaneous points of interest in Massinger; and first, let us note his imitation of Shakspere. It is tempting to suppose that as he was at one time a dependent of a family which was intimate with Shakspere he may have come across the man himself;226 it is, at any rate, simpler to remember that as he was thirty-two years of age when Shakspere died, he can hardly have failed to meet him in his professional relations. But we have no evidence of the fact. All we can say is that his plays, like those of Fletcher, Webster, Tourneur, and others,227 show a constant study of Shakspere.228

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First let me give a few examples of the imitation of incidents. In The Roman Actor,229 Paris refers to a tragedy “in which a murder was acted to the life,” which forced a guilty hearer to make discovery of his secret; this recalls the play scene in Hamlet.230 In A Very Woman231 Almira makes Antonio tell her his history. The hint of this is taken from Othello.232 In The Fatal Dowry233 Beaumelle and her maid arrange to be overheard, like Hero and Ursula in Much Ado about Nothing.234 The device by which Beaupré recovers her husband in The Parliament of Love is imitated from All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure. The banditti in The Guardian235 respect the poor like the outlaws in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.236 The forest scenes in the same play recall As You Like It and Midsummer-Night's Dream.237 In The Bashful Lover238 the pretty tale of a sister which Ascanio tells is a reminiscence of Twelfth Night.239 The incident in the same play of Hortensio with Ascanio in his arms240 is modelled on As You Like It.241 Malefort's behaviour to the tailor242 is imitated from Petruchio's in The Taming of the Shrew.243 The gibberish of the pretended Indians in The City Madam244 reminds us of Parolles' adventure in All's Well.245 The scene in The Emperor of the East246 where Eudocia professes to have eaten the apple is modelled on Othello247, where Desdemona asserts that the handkerchief is not lost. In The Bondman248 Zanthia overhears Corisca's confession of love in her sleep, as Iago [pg 079] does Cassio's.249 In A New Way to pay Old Debts250 Sir Giles Overreach, is carried off for treatment to a dark room like Malvolio in Twelfth Night.251 Almira in A Very Woman252 reminds us of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. The ghosts in The Unnatural Combat253 and The Roman Actor254 are used like those in the finale of Richard III.

Parallels in thought and diction are also numerous. Take The Roman Actor255:

This goes back to Jaques in As You Like It.256 In The Maid of Honour257 Jacomo talks of “trailing the puissant pike;” the phrase of Pistol in Henry V.258 In The Emperor of the East259 Athenais makes use of the phrase “prophetic [pg 080] soul,” which we remember in Hamlet.260 Leosthenes uses the same phrase in The Bondman261 when the mutinous slave Cimbrio boasts of the excesses of his friends. The pun which Hircius makes on the cobbler's awl262 occurs in the first scene of Julius Cæsar. The madness of the English slave in A Very Woman263 comes from the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet.264 The “many-headed monster, multitude” of Theodosius in The Emperor of the East265 takes us back to Coriolanus' “beast with many heads”;266 while the reference in the same play267 to the “stomach” reminds us of the fable of Menenius.268 In The Bashful Lover269 Uberti discourses thus:

This reminds us of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice270 and the King in Henry V.271 Clarindore's language in The Parliament of Love272 is modelled on Malvolio in Twelfth Night.273 The same is true of Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way.274 Shakspere's dislike of spaniels reappears in the same play.275

No doubt we must make deductions for the common [pg 081] idioms of the day,276 but the cumulative evidence of these parallels with the elder dramatist is overwhelming.277

Massinger is very fond of introducing doctors in his plays; so no doubt are the other dramatists of this period. It is interesting to compare Paulo in A Very Woman with Corax in The Lover's Melancholy of Ford, who deals successfully with two cases of mental derangement. Ford is more subtle, Massinger more dignified. Thus we find in The Virgin Martyr278 a consultation about Antoninus' health. Sapritius, the afflicted father, hails the doctors thus:

Compare with this another passage in The Duke of Milan:

In A Very Woman281 Paulo, on entering with two surgeons, is thus addressed:

The old saying, “Ubi tres medici ibi duo athei,” referred to by Sir T. Browne in Religio Medici is recalled to us by these lines:

We find them again in The Emperor of the East,283 where a surgeon is contrasted with an empiric who vends his wares and talks much Latin, like the quack in Ben Jonson's Alchemist, while Paulinus complains of the many medical impostors who prey upon the rich. The crisis of The Duke of Milan284 owes much to the action of doctors. The plot of A Very Woman hinges largely on the skill of the doctor Paulo, to whom we have referred above. In this play we have two victims of melancholy, Almira and Cardenes; the former is cured by falling in love with the disguised John Antonio; the latter is Paulo's patient. The recovery of the avaricious father in The Roman Actor285 is due to Paris acting in the part of a doctor. The physician Dinant in The Parliament of Love gives the gallants a good lesson (IV., 5). And in The Picture286 we find an elaborate simile, in which soldiers are said to be the surgeons of the State. In the same play Hilario,287 when on starvation [pg 083] fare, is accosted by a surgeon, who invites him to sell himself for “a living anatomy to be set up in the surgeons' hall.” Such passages,288 and the zest with which Massinger refers to potatoes, eringos, and the like,289 together with the rather wearisome allusions which he makes to “caudles” and “cullises,”290 lead us to wonder whether at one time of his life he may have seriously studied medicine. There is a significant passage in The Parliament of Love,291 where Chamont says to the doctor Dinant,

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

At the same time, let us not forget the passages 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 Massinger is that they are so often praised as the healers of the mind; the dramatist who delights in drawing gloomy, passionate characters seems to have a high opinion for the profession which [pg 084] 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 Massinger 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 mass of literature on this subject. As one who has read the undoubted plays of Massinger 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 Massinger's style. I do not deny that there are one or two slight reminiscences; thus the word “file”295 is a favourite one with Massinger. We find blushing in the play once or twice,296 but then we find it elsewhere in Shakspere. Anne's remark to the old lady, “Come, you are pleasant,”297 is in Massinger's manner, but he may have taken the turn from Shakspere. The strict metre of such a line as this is like Massinger;298 the same remark applies again:

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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 Massinger 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 Massinger;299 but, to my mind, the scenes are more clumsy than their parallels in Massinger. Sudden changes of mind are found in Henry VIII;300 and this is probably the strongest bit of evidence in favour of Massinger's authorship. The characters are not harmoniously rounded off: Buckingham's prayers for the King301 do not please us; the King's scruples of conscience are not convincing;302 Wolsey's meekness303 and piety304 do not ring true, though they anticipate the picture of his last year which we get in Cavendish's Life—but 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 Massinger, 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 Massinger. To begin with, there are many passages in Shakspere's difficult later style,305 and there is a complete absence of Massinger's sinuous sentences and frequent parentheses, as also of his peculiar vocabulary; there are many flights of high and tender poetry which are beyond his compass; there are brilliant γνῶμαι, such as—