or,
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 King's belief in Cranmer is early indicated;308 Cromwell's future success is foreshadowed by Wolsey;309 Gardiner's dislike of Cranmer is brought before us.310 This is a method of which I can recall no instance in Massinger's undoubted plays.
In spite of his roughness and ferocity, Henry is more of a man than any of Massinger's tyrants; there is no parallel in Massinger 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 Massinger's 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 Queen311 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 [pg 087] 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 Elizabeth's proposed marriage, put off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice, “God 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 passages, and it uses the eleven-syllable line with skill and tenderness. If some of its defects remind us faintly of Massinger, 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 [pg 088] of Mozart's last works, Titus, 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.
Boyle's attribution of Henry VIII to Fletcher and Massinger316 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 Massinger wrote together, notably in the character of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt. Therefore Massinger 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 Massinger's co-operation.
3. If it be urged that the reputed authors of the play were alive in 1623, when it was published as Shakspere's 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 another's name.” This is a bold statement. Can an instance of such indifference be quoted? Or are we merely bidden to remember that Massinger was poor?
4. Boyle then works through the scenes which he ascribes to Massinger.
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, [pg 089] that the writer says the same thing twice (lines 4 and 13), while lines 9-12 are not like Massinger.
I., 4.—Lines 1-18, and 60 to the end. I find no trace of Massinger's style in these passages. He never wrote lines 75-6:
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 Massinger's style in these passages. 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 Massinger's. “Soft cheveril conscience” in line 31, and “you'd 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 Massinger's style.
Nor did Massinger ever sink so low as line 64:
II., 4.—No doubt Massinger loves a forensic scene, but this one leads to nothing and leaves the mind in confusion. Now, Massinger was too good an artist to do that. The things the people say in this scene must have passed 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 Massinger 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 Massinger [pg 090] always has at his command. It may be noted that the bluff, coarse 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 Massinger.322
V., 1.—The point of this scene is to concentrate our attention on Elizabeth's birth. The scene “sprawls” sadly, to use Boyle's description of Fletcher's method. First we have Gardiner and Lovell, then Henry and Suffolk, then Henry and Cranmer, then Henry and the old lady. Massinger constructed better than this.
V., 3, 1-113.—Such a speech as Cranmer makes (lines 58-69) is too short for Massinger's 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 Massinger, 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 lèse-majesté.
It is true that Anne Boleyn is not a creation of the same order as Shakspere's later heroines—Imogen, 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 Winter's 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.
Wolsey is meant to be great but is really vulgar, while [pg 091] “his utter collapse after disgrace is unnatural.” The reply is that Wolsey is a mixed character, and none the worse dramatically for that; very able, very unscrupulous in his use of the courtier's tricks, very fond of power; but not wholly bad. His repentance is true at once to human nature and to history.
“The king is unintelligible.” The fact is, it was impossible to make a hero of Henry VIII; it does not, therefore, follow that Massinger helped to write the play! Boyle is correct when he says that it is with Henry as it is with Wolsey: “we receive our impressions of the characters from the opinions formed of them by others.” In other words, the characterization of the play is faulty. Some critics have supposed that this fact is due to loss of mental power by Shakspere; it is simpler to hold the collaboration with Fletcher as responsible for the jolts and jars which the play gives the reader. If anyone still holds that Shakspere wrote the whole play, he might plausibly take the line that Shakspere was experimenting in the new style and metre of his popular young rival Fletcher. If, however, Shakspere in his retreat at Stratford, in days when posts were infrequent and locomotion slow, forwarded scenes and suggestions for Fletcher to work up at his own sweet will, something like what we have would be the result. Fletcher was evidently on his mettle on this occasion. I cannot prove that Fletcher did not invite Massinger to help him in such an enterprise, and I know how fond Massinger was of studying Shakspere. The latter argument, however, cuts both ways. Again, Massinger may have had an earlier Shaksperian style, very unlike his mature style; but this is pure hypothesis. The evidence which we have does not justify us in saying more than this, that he knew the play of Henry VIII well.323
[pg 092]It would take me too far from my purpose to discuss the authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen in detail, interesting as the problem is, but as many critics have assigned the “un-Fletcherian” parts of the play to Massinger, I have, as in duty bound, read the play carefully several times. There is very little trace of his style, or method, or metre. The only passage which reads to me like Massinger is assigned by Boyle to Fletcher.324 Mr. Dugdale Sykes, in an acute article,325 has produced some parallels between Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen; but though one or two of them are striking, they do not prove his case when they are looked at in connexion with the context.
Take, for example:
Mr. Sykes compares these lines in The Parliament of Love:
On this passage I make two remarks: first, such similarity of thought as is found here may be due to imitation or unconscious reminiscence of The Two Noble Kinsmen. A man who constantly repeats himself is surely the sort of person who would delight to borrow thoughts and phrases from other writers, and to imitate whole scenes and incidents. [pg 093] Are we to suppose that Massinger confined his studies to Shakspere?
Secondly, let us judge the passage as a whole; it runs thus:
Anything more unlike Massinger than this fishing for minnows cannot be imagined.
Take again the parallel,328 “which alone should be conclusive of Massinger's authorship”:
In Believe as You List we have:
Though the similarity of thought and expression in the first three lines is manifest, the archaic simplicity of the first passage differs greatly from the mature flow of the second.
What is Mr. Sykes' theory? “If we admit Massinger's collaboration in this play, at the very outset of his literary career, before his style was definitely formed, and when the influence of the foremost dramatist of the age was strongest upon him, the apparently ‘Shaksperian’ quality of its verse can readily be explained.” On this proposition I make two remarks; [pg 094] first, that as we have none of Massinger's early works, I cannot prove that he never wrote in the style of The Two Noble Kinsmen; I can only assert with absolute certainty that none of his extant works has the least resemblance to it. Secondly, as to the supposed “Shaksperian” colour of the play, this is a point on which one's judgment varies each time one reads it. There is a great deal in the “un-Fletcherian” parts which reminds one of Shakspere; some of it is so like his later style that it is not surprising to find that many great critics have assigned it to him; many other passages, however, seem just not to ring true; they are obscure because they have little meaning. For let not the fact be disguised, in spite of one great lyric, several splendid scenes, and some fine speeches, there is much poor stuff in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
The simplest explanation of the double ascription in the quarto of 1634 is to suppose that Shakspere helped Fletcher in some way. He may even have written the un-Fletcherian parts,331 though, personally, I find traces of Fletcher in them also; he may have left material which Fletcher worked up; he may have merely suggested the construction of the plot, a department in which Fletcher is weak.
If, however, the “Shaksperian” parts be deemed unworthy of Shakspere, why assign them to Massinger, whose work they do not resemble? Could no one else have imitated Shakspere except Massinger? Why should not Fletcher himself for once have caught the Shaksperian manner? Why should he not have confided the execution of a part to someone else who was soaked in Shakspere's style? Why should not Beaumont have helped him here as elsewhere,332 or possibly Heywood?
The archaic flavour of the play is to me the outstanding fact about it; we know that plays on this subject were acted [pg 095] in 1566 and 1594. The archaic flavour may be due to the influence of Chaucer on the writers; it is more likely to be due to an earlier play having been taken and altered. It might also be due to the collaboration of someone like Heywood, who, though late in time, is surprisingly simple and early in style. The rustic scenes are an instance of this very early manner.333 If Shakspere and Fletcher took an old play, and the former contributed a few turns to the revised edition, then everything would be accounted for.334 It will be said that there are scenes which remind us of Lady Macbeth and Ophelia; why should not an already existing play have suggested to Shakspere something which he worked up in those two characters into a far finer result? We know for a fact that much of his best work is based on older plays. This random hypothesis is quite as probable as the supposition that Massinger had anything to do with The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Let us next consider Mr. Tucker Brooke's position.335 After a searching and masterly analysis of the merits and defects of the play, he ends with a guarded tendency towards assigning the “un-Fletcherian” parts to Massinger on the following grounds: “The metrical tests give him an even better title than his master [i.e., Shakspere] to the doubtful parts of our play.” To this I reply that style is a more important test than metre. There are, secondly, “the structural and psychological imperfections of the work”; thirdly, “the tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language”; fourthly, “the feeble imitation of Shakspere”; fifthly, “the frequent similarity to Massinger's acknowledged writings.” The only serious argument against the assumption is that there is nothing in Massinger to compare with “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian part.”
Let us briefly look at these arguments. The work [pg 096] is “structurally and psychologically imperfect.” True, and this point might be quoted to support the theory that the play is based on an old and immature tragedy. As far as concerns structure, Massinger's plays are always strong; so that part of the argument falls to the ground. No doubt his psychology is his weak point, but its weakness is of a different kind from that which we find in The Two Noble Kinsmen. There are no violent emotions of the sort in which he rejoices in it. There are no characters in Massinger resembling Palamon and Arcite. Mr. Brooke refers to their “spinelessness,” and it is true that they are not much differentiated. I suppose, however, that he would allow that they start by being a romantic pair of friends, that their quarrel when they first see Emilia is lifelike, and that their subsequent behaviour is chivalrous. When he refers to “the really revolting wishy-washiness and ingrained sensuality of Emilia” he uses exaggerated language. The fact is, that Emilia is in a very difficult position, and if her character is ambiguous it is the fault of the story rather than of the author.
“The tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language.” This is based in the main on Hippolyta's language,336 with which Mr. Sykes compares a passage in The Unnatural Combat.337 I have discussed the supposed coarseness of Massinger's heroines elsewhere. In spite of everything that Boyle can say, with his catalogue of twenty-two passages, I wonder who is right about Massinger's women, Boyle or Courthope, who says that “his portraits of women show more delicacy of feeling and imagination than those of any English dramatist with the exception of Shakspere.”338 I, at any rate, feel that Courthope is nearer the truth than Boyle and his followers.
“Feeble imitation of Shakspere.” That there is imitation of Shakspere in Massinger we all know; but I deny that it is feeble, and we know that others of the same age, [pg 097] like Fletcher, Webster, and Tourneur, have delighted to imitate him.
“The frequent similarity to Massinger's writings.” In the first place, I do not feel that the similarity is frequent; and secondly, as has already been pointed out, what similarity there is may be due to imitation of The Two Noble Kinsmen by Massinger. Are we to suppose that the only author he imitated or borrowed from was Shakspere?
The final reservation raises mixed feelings. I am tired of those writers who grudgingly attribute to Massinger the leavings of other playwrights, making him the whipping boy of his age, and who proceed to qualify their theories by doubts as to his ability to attain to the excellences which they perforce discover in them. I will be so far generous to Mr. Brooke as to allow that “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian parts” is unlike Massinger, because there is no reason for supposing that he wrote any of these parts. Massinger's fame can stand on its own merits without these churlishly conceded ascriptions of doubtful work.
And now let us pass to Boyle's notable article on this subject.339 Much as I admire his learning and zeal, I am amazed at the perversity of his judgment and the thinness of his arguments. Let us take them in order. “There is a want of development in the dramatic character”340 of The Two Noble Kinsmen. This Boyle ascribes to the fact that, as elsewhere, Massinger's conceptions were blurred by Fletcher's co-operation in other parts of the play. As this argument begs the question it has no weight. “Allusions to Shakspere are characteristic both of Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen.”341 Are we to suppose that no one imitated Shakspere except Massinger? “The metrical structure of the play corresponds closely with Massinger's general style.”342 Here, however, Boyle [pg 098] has to allow that the percentages for double endings are not what you would expect. And I look with suspicion on a writer who professes to be so certain of these tests that he can assign I., 1-40, and V., 1-19, to Fletcher. “Massinger is fond of classical allusions, as is the author of The Two Noble Kinsmen.”343 This argument deserves no consideration when we remember that the fact is true of other Elizabethan writers. For example, we find “the helmeted Bellona,”344 and Massinger is fond of the sonorous word.345 Yes, but Bellona is not unknown in Shakspere. M. Arnold has pointed out that she occurs in a weak passage of Macbeth.346 “Medical and surgical similes occur in both.”347 When we come to investigate these we find that the remarks in question are of a commonplace kind. “The characters of The Two Noble Kinsmen resemble those of Massinger.”348 Theseus, for example, resembles Lorenzo in The Bashful Lover. I see no resemblance. “Palamon and Arcite may be met with in many of Massinger's plays.”349 I fail to find them anywhere. “The three ladies are grossly sensual in their remarks.”350 I have dealt with this point before, and it really amounts to a mischievous obsession in Boyle's mind. Let us take the passages seriatim; Emilia is talking privately to Hippolyta351 about a dead girl friend to whom she was devoted when young. In the course of this beautiful passage she says:
I am ashamed to waste words in vindicating this passage, which Boyle sets by the language of Iachimo in Cymbeline in describing the mole on Imogen's breast352 to a company of gentlemen.
The next one is “decisive of the question of the authorship of our play.”
Though there are passages in Massinger of which the thought is similar to that presented here, I do not judge it or them as severely as Boyle. The point, however, which I wish to make is this: these lines are typical of what I have called the archaic flavour of the play. Where in Massinger's works will you find “warranting moonlight,” “tasteful lips,” “twinning cherries,” “rotten kings and blubbered queens,” or “Mars' drum”? The idea that Massinger wrote this passage is quite preposterous; the only thing in it which reminds one of him is the “and” at the end of line 204.
Lastly, we have Hippolyta's words in the same scene: