I will conclude this account with Mr. Lamb’s observations on the distinctive characters of these extraordinary and formidable personages, as they are described by Middleton or Shakespear.
‘Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in Macbeth and the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality of Shakespear. His witches are distinguished from the witches of Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet Macbeth’s, he is spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body; those have power over the soul.—Hecate, in Middleton, has a son, a low buffoon: the Hags of Shakespear have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them.—Except Hecate, they have no names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties which Middleton has given to his Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot consist with mirth. But in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They “raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o’er life.“’
The writers of whom I have already treated, may be said to have been ‘no mean men’; those of whom I have yet to speak, are certainly no whit inferior. Would that I could do them any thing like justice! It is not difficult to give at least their seeming due to great and well-known names; for the sentiments of the reader meet the descriptions of the critic more than half way, and clothe what is perhaps vague and extravagant praise with a substantial form and distinct meaning. But in attempting to extol the merits of an obscure work of genius, our words are either lost in empty air, or are ‘blown stifling back’ upon the mouth that utters them. The greater those merits are, and the truer the praise, the more suspicious and disproportionate does it almost necessarily appear; for it has no relation to any image previously existing in the public mind, and therefore looks like an imposition fabricated out of nothing. In this case, the only way that I know of is, to make these old writers (as much as can be) vouchers for their own pretensions, which they are well able to make good. I shall in the present Lecture give some account of Marston and Chapman, and afterwards of Deckar and Webster.
Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him. He was first on terms of great intimacy, and afterwards at open war, with Ben Jonson; and he is most unfairly criticised in The Return from Parnassus, under the name of Monsieur Kinsayder, as a mere libeller and buffoon. Writers in their life-time do all they can to degrade and vilify one another, and expect posterity to have a very tender care of their reputations! The writers of this age, in general, cannot however be reproached with this infirmity. The number of plays that they wrote in conjunction, is a proof of the contrary; and a circumstance no less curious, as to the division of intellectual labour, than the cordial union of sentiment it implied. Unlike most poets, the love of their art surmounted their hatred of one another. Genius was not become a vile and vulgar pretence, and they respected in others what they knew to be true inspiration in themselves. They courted the applause of the multitude, but came to one another for judgment and assistance. When we see these writers working together on the same admirable productions, year after year, as was the case with Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, with Chapman, Deckar, and Jonson, it reminds one of Ariosto’s eloquent apostrophe to the Spirit of Ancient Chivalry, when he has seated his rival knights, Renaldo and Ferraw, on the same horse.
Marston’s Antonio and Mellida is a tragedy of considerable force and pathos; but in the most critical parts, the author frequently breaks off or flags without any apparent reason but want of interest in his subject; and farther, the best and most affecting situations and bursts of feeling are too evidently imitations of Shakespear. Thus the unexpected meeting between Andrugio and Lucio, in the beginning of the third act, is a direct counterpart of that between Lear and Kent, only much weakened: and the interview between Antonio and Mellida has a strong resemblance to the still more affecting one between Lear and Cordelia, and is most wantonly disfigured by the sudden introduction of half a page of Italian rhymes, which gives the whole an air of burlesque. The conversation of Lucio and Andrugio, again, after his defeat seems to invite, but will not bear a comparison with Richard the Second’s remonstrance with his courtiers, who offered him consolation in his misfortunes; and no one can be at a loss to trace the allusion to Romeo’s conduct on being apprized of his banishment, in the termination of the following speech.
The following short passage might be quoted as one of exquisite beauty and originality—
The character of Felice in this play is an admirable satirical accompaniment, and is the favourite character of this author (in all probability his own), that of a shrewd, contemplative cynic, and sarcastic spectator in the drama of human life. It runs through all his plays, is shared by Quadratus and Lampatho in What you Will (it is into the mouth of the last of these that he has put that fine invective against the uses of philosophy, in the account of himself and his spaniel, ‘who still slept while he baus’d leaves, tossed o’er the dunces, por’d on the old print’), and is at its height in the Fawn and Malevole, in his Parasitaster and Malcontent. These two comedies are his chef d’œuvres. The character of the Duke Hercules of Ferrara, disguised as the Parasite, in the first of these, is well sustained throughout, with great sense, dignity, and spirit. He is a wise censurer of men and things, and rails at the world with charitable bitterness. He may put in a claim to a sort of family likeness to the Duke, in Measure for Measure: only the latter descends from his elevation to watch in secret over serious crimes; the other is only a spy on private follies. There is something in this cast of character (at least in comedy—perhaps it neutralizes the tone and interest in tragedy), that finds a wonderful reciprocity in the breast of the reader or audience. It forms a kind of middle term or point of union between the busy actors in the scene and the indifferent byestander, insinuates the plot, and suggests a number of good wholesome reflections, for the sagacity and honesty of which we do not fail to take credit to ourselves. We are let into its confidence, and have a perfect reliance on its sincerity. Our sympathy with it is without any drawback; for it has no part to perform itself, and ‘is nothing, if not critical,’ It is a sure card to play. We may doubt the motives of heroic actions, or differ about the just limits and extreme workings of the passions; but the professed misanthrope is a character that no one need feel any scruples in trusting, since the dislike of folly and knavery in the abstract is common to knaves and fools with the wise and honest! Besides the instructive moral vein of Hercules as the Fawn or Parasitaster, which contains a world of excellent matter, most aptly and wittily delivered; there are two other characters perfectly hit off, Gonzago the old prince of Urbino, and Granuffo, one of his lords in waiting. The loquacious, good-humoured, undisguised vanity of the one is excellently relieved by the silent gravity of the other. The wit of this last character (Granuffo) consists in his not speaking a word through the whole play; he never contradicts what is said, and only assents by implication. He is a most infallible courtier, and follows the prince like his shadow, who thus graces his pretensions.
‘We would be private, only Faunus stay; he is a wise fellow, daughter, a very wise fellow, for he is still just of my opinion; my Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know you’ll say nothing.’
And again, a little farther on, he says—
‘Faunus, this Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent discourse, and never speaks; his signs to me and men of profound reach instruct abundantly; he begs suits with signs, gives thanks with signs, puts off his hat leisurely, maintains his beard learnedly, keeps his lust privately, makes a nodding leg courtly, and lives happily.’—‘Silence,’ replies Hercules, ‘is an excellent modest grace; but especially before so instructing a wisdom as that of your Excellency.’
The garrulous self-complacency of this old lord is kept up in a vein of pleasant humour; an instance of which might be given in his owning of some learned man, that ‘though he was no duke, yet he was wise;’ and the manner in which the others play upon this foible, and make him contribute to his own discomfiture, without his having the least suspicion of the plot against him, is full of ingenuity and counterpoint. In the last scene he says, very characteristically,
‘Of all creatures breathing, I do hate those things that struggle to seem wise, and yet are indeed very fools. I remember when I was a young man, in my father’s days, there were four gallant spirits for resolution, as proper for body, as witty in discourse, as any were in Europe; nay, Europe had not such. I was one of them. We four did all love one lady; a most chaste virgin she was: we all enjoyed her, and so enjoyed her, that, despite the strictest guard was set upon her, we had her at our pleasure. I speak it for her honour, and my credit. Where shall you find such witty fellows now a-days? Alas! how easy is it in these weaker times to cross love-tricks! Ha! ha! ha! Alas, alas! I smile to think (I must confess with some glory to mine own wisdom), to think how I found out, and crossed, and curbed, and in the end made desperate Tiberio’s love. Alas! good silly youth, that dared to cope with age and such a beard!
To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of exulting dotage:
‘May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing? Doth there breathe such an egregious ass? Is there such a foolish animal in rerum natura? How is it possible such a simplicity can exist? Let us not lose our laughing at him, for God’s sake; let folly’s sceptre light upon him, and to the ship of fools with him instantly.
Dondolo. Of all these follies I arrest your grace.’
Molière has built a play on nearly the same foundation, which is not much superior to the present. Marston, among other topics of satire, has a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time, who were ‘full of wise saws and modern instances.’ Thus he freights his Ship of Fools:
‘Dondolo. Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them proved themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were let go: there’s none left now in our ship but a few citizens that let their wives keep their shop-books, some philosophers, and a few critics; one of which critics has lost his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus’ verses; another has vowed to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing.
Hercules. But what philosophers ha’ ye?
Dondolo. Oh very strange fellows; one knows nothing, dares not aver he lives, goes, sees, feels.
Nymphadoro. A most insensible philosopher.
Dondolo. Another, that there is no present time; and that one man to-day and to-morrow, is not the same man; so that he that yesterday owed money, to-day owes none; because he is not the same man.
Herod. Would that philosophy hold good in law?
Hercules. But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all the fools shipped out of his dominions?
Dondolo. Marry, because he would play the fool alone without any rival.’
Molière has enlarged upon the same topic in his Mariage Forcé, but not with more point or effect. Nymphadoro’s reasons for devoting himself to the sex generally, and Hercules’s description of the different qualifications of different men, will also be found to contain excellent specimens, both of style and matter.—The disguise of Hercules as the Fawn, is assumed voluntarily, and he is comparatively a calm and dispassionate observer of the times. Malevole’s disguise in the Malcontent has been forced upon him by usurpation and injustice, and his invectives are accordingly more impassioned and virulent. His satire does not ‘like a wild goose fly, unclaimed of any man,’ but has a bitter and personal application. Take him in the words of the usurping Duke’s account of him.
‘This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever conversed with Nature; a man, or rather a monster, more discontent than Lucifer when he was thrust out of the presence. His appetite is unsatiable as the grave, as far from any content as from heaven. His highest delight is to procure others vexation, and therein he thinks he truly serves Heaven; for ’tis his position, whosoever in this earth can be contented, is a slave, and damned; therefore does he afflict all, in that to which they are most affected. The elements struggle with him; his own soul is at variance with herself; his speech is halter-worthy at all hours. I like him, faith; he gives good intelligence to my spirit, makes me understand those weaknesses which others’ flattery palliates.
Hark! they sing.
Pietro Jacomo. See he comes! Now shall you hear the extremity of a Malcontent; he is as free as air; he blows over every man. And—Sir, whence come you now?
Malevole. From the public place of much dissimulation, the church.
Pietro Jacomo. What didst there?
Malevole. Talk with a usurer; take up at interest.
Pietro Jacomo. I wonder what religion thou art of?
Malevole. Of a soldier’s religion.
Pietro Jacomo. And what dost think makes most infidels now?
Malevole. Sects, sects. I am weary: would I were one of the Duke’s hounds.
Pietro Jacomo. But what’s the common news abroad? Thou dogg’st rumour still.
Malevole. Common news? Why, common words are, God save ye, fare ye well: common actions, flattery and cozenage: common things, women and cuckolds.’
In reading all this, one is somehow reminded perpetually of Mr. Kean’s acting: in Shakespear we do not often think of him, except in those parts which he constantly acts, and in those one cannot forget him. I might observe on the above passage, in excuse for some bluntnesses of style, that the ideal barrier between names and things seems to have been greater then than now. Words have become instruments of more importance than formerly. To mention certain actions, is almost to participate in them, as if consciousness were the same as guilt. The standard of delicacy varies at different periods, as it does in different countries, and is not a general test of superiority. The French, who pique themselves (and justly, in some particulars) on their quickness of tact and refinement of breeding, say and do things which we, a plainer and coarser people, could not think of without a blush. What would seem gross allusions to us at present, were without offence to our ancestors, and many things passed for jests with them, or matters of indifference, which would not now be endured. Refinement of language, however, does not keep pace with simplicity of manners. The severity of criticism exercised in our theatres towards some unfortunate straggling phrases in the old comedies, is but an ambiguous compliment to the immaculate purity of modern times. Marston’s style was by no means more guarded than that of his contemporaries. He was also much more of a free-thinker than Marlowe, and there is a frequent, and not unfavourable allusion in his works, to later sceptical opinions.—In the play of the Malcontent we meet with an occasional mixture of comic gaiety, to relieve the more serious and painful business of the scene, as in the easy loquacious effrontery of the old intriguante Maquerella, and in the ludicrous facility with which the idle courtiers avoid or seek the notice of Malevole, as he is in or out of favour; but the general tone and import of the piece is severe and moral. The plot is somewhat too intricate and too often changed (like the shifting of a scene), so as to break and fritter away the interest at the end; but the part of Aurelia, the Duchess of Pietro Jacomo, a dissolute and proud-spirited woman, is the highest strain of Marston’s pen. The scene in particular, in which she receives and exults in the supposed news of her husband’s death, is nearly unequalled in boldness of conception and in the unrestrained force of passion, taking away not only the consciousness of guilt, but overcoming the sense of shame.[21]
Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose name is better known as the translator of Homer than as a dramatic writer. He is, like Marston, a philosophic observer, a didactic reasoner: but he has both more gravity in his tragic style, and more levity in his comic vein. His Bussy d’Ambois, though not without interest or some fancy, is rather a collection of apophthegms or pointed sayings in the form of a dialogue, than a poem or a tragedy. In his verses the oracles have not ceased. Every other line is an axiom in morals—a libel on mankind, if truth is a libel. He is too stately for a wit, in his serious writings—too formal for a poet. Bussy d’Ambois is founded on a French plot and French manners. The character, from which it derives its name, is arrogant and ostentatious to an unheard-of degree, but full of nobleness and lofty spirit. His pride and unmeasured pretensions alone take away from his real merit; and by the quarrels and intrigues in which they involve him, bring about the catastrophe, which has considerable grandeur and imposing effect, in the manner of Seneca. Our author aims at the highest things in poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination and passion, to fill up the epic moulds of tragedy with sense and reason alone, so that he often runs into bombast and turgidity—is extravagant and pedantic at one and the same time. From the nature of the plot, which turns upon a love intrigue, much of the philosophy of this piece relates to the character of the sex. Milton says,
But old Chapman professes to have found the clue to it, and winds his uncouth way through all the labyrinth of love. Its deepest recesses ‘hide nothing from his view.’ The close intrigues of court policy, the subtle workings of the human soul, move before him like a sea dark, deep, and glittering with wrinkles for the smile of beauty. Fulke Greville alone could go beyond him in gravity and mystery. The plays of the latter (Mustapha and Alaham) are abstruse as the mysteries of old, and his style inexplicable as the riddles of the Sphinx. As an instance of his love for the obscure, the marvellous, and impossible, he calls up ‘the ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus,’ as prologue to one of his tragedies; a very reverend and inscrutable personage, who, we may be sure, blabs no living secrets. Chapman, in his other pieces, where he lays aside the gravity of the philosopher and poet, discovers an unexpected comic vein, distinguished by equal truth of nature and lively good humour. I cannot say that this character pervades any one of his entire comedies; but the introductory sketch of Monsieur D’Olive is the undoubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, and infinitely delightful class of character, of the professed men of wit and pleasure about town, which we have in such perfection in Wycherley and Congreve, such as Sparkish, Witwoud and Petulant, &c. both in the sentiments and in the style of writing. For example, take the last scene of the first act.
Rhoderique. What, Monsieur D’Olive, the only admirer of wit and good words.
D’Olive. Morrow, wits: morrow, good wits: my little parcels of wit, I have rods in pickle for you. How dost, Jack; may I call thee, sir, Jack yet?
Mugeron. You may, sir; sir’s as commendable an addition as Jack, for ought I know.
D’Ol. I know it, Jack, and as common too.
Rhod. Go to, you may cover; we have taken notice of your embroidered beaver.
D’Ol. Look you: by heaven thou ‘rt one of the maddest bitter slaves in Europe: I do but wonder how I made shift to love thee all this while.
Rhod. Go to, what might such a parcel-gilt cover be worth?
Mug. Perhaps more than the whole piece beside.
D’Ol. Good i’ faith, but bitter. Oh, you mad slaves, I think you had Satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you, I must take pleasure in you, and i’ faith tell me, how is’t? live I see you do, but how? but how, wits?
Rhod. Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers.
D’Ol. By your wits?
Mug. Nay, not turned poets neither.
D’Ol. Good in sooth! but indeed to say truth, time was when the sons of the Muses had the privilege to live only by their wits, but times are altered, Monopolies are now called in, and wit’s become a free trade for all sorts to live by: lawyers live by wit, and they live worshipfully: soldiers live by wit, and they live honourably: panders live by wit, and they live honestly: in a word, there are but few trades but live by wit, only bawds and midwives live by women’s labours, as fools and fiddlers do by making mirth, pages and parasites by making legs, painters and players by making mouths and faces: ha, does’t well, wits?
Rhod. Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as country gentlemen follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare.
D’Ol. Well, well, let’s leave these wit skirmishes, and say when shall we meet?
Mug. How think you, are we not met now?
D’Ol. Tush, man! I mean at my chamber, where we may take free use of ourselves; that is, drink sack, and talk satire, and let our wits run the wild-goose chase over court and country. I will have my chamber the rendezvous of all good wits, the shop of good words, the mint of good jests, an ordinary of fine discourse; critics, essayists, linguists, poets, and other professors of that faculty of wit, shall, at certain hours i’ th’ day, resort thither; it shall be a second Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences of learning, honour, duellism, criticism, and poetry, shall be disputed: and how, wits, do ye follow the court still?
Rhod. Close at heels, sir; and I can tell you, you have much to answer to your stars, that you do not so too.
D’Ol. As why, wits? as why?
Rhod. Why, sir, the court’s as ’twere the stage: and they that have a good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press thither to grace them, and receive their due merit.
D’Ol. Tush, let the court follow me: he that soars too near the sun, melts his wings many times; as I am, I possess myself, I enjoy my liberty, my learning, my wit: as for wealth and honour, let ’em go; I’ll not lose my learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an alderman.
Mug. Admirable D’Olive!
D’Ol. And what! you stand gazing at this comet here, and admire it, I dare say.
Rhod. And do not you?
D’Ol. Not I, I admire nothing but wit.
Rhod. But I wonder how she entertains time in that solitary cell: does she not take tobacco, think you?
D’Ol. She does, she does: others make it their physic, she makes it her food: her sister and she take it by turn, first one, then the other, and Vandome ministers to them both.
Mug. How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece the Countess’s sister? there were a paragon, Monsieur D’Olive, to admire and marry too.
D’Ol. Not for me.
Rhod. No? what exceptions lie against the choice?
D’Ol. Tush, tell me not of choice; if I stood affected that way, I would choose my wife as men do Valentines, blindfold, or draw cuts for them, for so I shall be sure not to be deceived in choosing; for take this of me, there’s ten times more deceit in women than in horse-flesh; and I say still, that a pretty well-pac’d chamber-maid is the only fashion; if she grows full or fulsome, give her but sixpence to buy her a hand-basket, and send her the way of all flesh, there’s no more but so.
Mug. Indeed that’s the savingest way.
D’Ol. O me! what a hell ’tis for a man to be tied to the continual charge of a coach, with the appurtenances, horses, men, and so forth: and then to have a man’s house pestered with a whole country of guests, grooms, panders, waiting-maids, &c. I careful to please my wife, she careless to displease me; shrewish if she be honest; intolerable if she be wise; imperious as an empress; all she does must be law, all she says gospel: oh, what a penance ’tis to endure her! I glad to forbear still, all to keep her loyal, and yet perhaps when all’s done, my heir shall be like my horse-keeper: fie on’t! the very thought of marriage were able to cool the hottest liver in France.
Rhod. Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt coney’s wool, we shall have you change your copy ere a twelvemonth’s day.
Mug. We must have you dubb’d o’ th’ order; there’s no remedy: you that have, unmarried, done such honourable service in the commonwealth, must needs receive the honour due to ‘t in marriage.
Rhod. That he may do, and never marry.
D’Ol. As how, wits? i’ faith as how?
Rhod. For if he can prove his father was free o’ th’ order, and that he was his father’s son, then, by the laudable custom of the city, he may be a cuckold by his father’s copy, and never serve for ‘t.
D’Ol. Ever good i’ faith!
Mug. Nay how can he plead that, when ’tis as well known his father died a bachelor?
D’Ol. Bitter, in verity, bitter! But good still in its kind.
Rhod. Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your forefathers.
Mug. His forefathers? S’body, had he more fathers than one?
D’Ol. Why, this is right: here’s wit canvast out on ‘s coat, into ‘s jacket: the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too much o’ th’ frets: I must love your wits, I must take pleasure in you. Farewell, good wits: you know my lodging, make an errand thither now and then, and save your ordinary; do, wits, do.
Mug. We shall be troublesome t’ ye.
D’Ol. O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with wit: I love a good wit as I love myself: if you need a brace or two of crowns at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond at all times: I carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your call. Farewell, wits; farewell, good wits.
Rhod. Farewell the true map of a gull: by heaven he shall to th’ court! ’tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart; the compound of a poet and a lawyer; he shall sure to th’ court.
Mug. Nay, for God’s sake, let’s have no fools at court.
Rhod. He shall to ‘t, that’s certain. The Duke had a purpose to dispatch some one or other to the French king, to entreat him to send for the body of his niece, which the melancholy Earl of St. Anne, her husband, hath kept so long unburied, as meaning one grave should entomb himself and her together.
Mug. A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D’Olive is for an embassador agent; and ’tis as suitable to his brain, as his parcel-gilt beaver to his fool’s head.
Rhod. Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. Oh, ’tis a most accomplished ass; the mongrel of a gull, and a villain: the very essence of his soul is pure villainy; the substance of his brain, foolery: one that believes nothing from the stars upward; a pagan in belief, an epicure beyond belief; prodigious in lust; prodigal in wasteful expense; in necessary, most penurious. His wit is to admire and imitate; his grace is to censure and detract; he shall to th’ court, i’ faith he shall thither: I will shape such employment for him, as that he himself shall have no less contentment, in making mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and the whole court shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave, if he be rich, is fit to make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, is fit to make an intelligencer.
His May-Day is not so good. All Fools, The Widow’s Tears, and Eastward Hoe, are comedies of great merit, (particularly the last). The first is borrowed a good deal from Terence, and the character of Valerio, an accomplished rake, who passes with his father for a person of the greatest economy and rusticity of manners, is an excellent idea, executed with spirit. Eastward Hoe was written in conjunction with Ben Jonson and Marston; and for his share in it, on account of some allusions to the Scotch, just after the accession of James I. our author, with his friends, had nearly lost his ears. Such were the notions of poetical justice in those days! The behaviour of Ben Jonson’s mother on this occasion is remarkable. ‘On his release from prison, he gave an entertainment to his friends, among whom were Camden and Selden. In the midst of the entertainment, his mother, more an antique Roman than a Briton, drank to him, and shewed him a paper of poison, which she intended to have given him in his liquor, having first taken a portion of it herself, if the sentence for his punishment had been executed.’ This play contains the first idea of Hogarth’s Idle and Industrious Apprentices.
It remains for me to say something of Webster and Deckar. For these two writers I do not know how to shew my regard and admiration sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Deckar, how may I hope to ‘express ye unblam’d,’ and repay to your neglected manes some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for proud and soothing recollections? I pass by the Appius and Virginia of the former, which is however a good, sensible, solid tragedy, cast in a frame-work of the most approved models, with little to blame or praise in it, except the affecting speech of Appius to Virginia just before he kills her; as well as Deckar’s Wonder of a Kingdom, his Jacomo Gentili, that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron, and Old Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap, which last has the idle garrulity of age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon its cheek and in its heart. These go into the common catalogue, and are lost in the crowd; but Webster’s Vittoria Corombona I cannot so soon part with; and old honest Deckar’s Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I shall never forget! I became only of late acquainted with this last-mentioned worthy character; but the bargain between us is, I trust, for life. We sometimes regret that we had not sooner met with characters like these, that seem to raise, revive, and give a new zest to our being. Vain the complaint! We should never have known their value, if we had not known them always: they are old, very old acquaintance, or we should not recognise them at first sight. We only find in books what is already written within ‘the red-leaved tables of our hearts.’ The pregnant materials are there; ‘the pangs, the internal pangs are ready; and poor humanity’s afflicted will struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ But the reading of fine poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or pour balm and consolation into them, or sometimes even close them up for ever! Let any one who has never known cruel disappointment, nor comfortable hopes, read the first scene between Orlando and Hippolito, in Deckar’s play of the Honest Whore, and he will see nothing in it. But I think few persons will be entirely proof against such passages as some of the following.
Omnes. Signior Friscobaldo.
Hipolito. Friscobaldo, oh! pray call him, and leave me; we two have business.
Carolo. Ho, Signior! Signior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hipolito.
Orlando. My noble Lord! the Lord Hipolito! The Duke’s son! his brave daughter’s brave husband! How does your honour’d Lordship? Does your nobility remember so poor a gentleman as Signior Orlando Friscobaldo? old mad Orlando?
Hip. Oh, Sir, our friends! they ought to be unto us as our jewels; as dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as when we wear them in our hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of your blood; for all time’s sickle hath gone over you, you are Orlando still.
Orl. Why, my Lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, and stript bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again? Though my head be like a leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade, green?
Hip. Scarce can I read the stories on your brow, Which age hath writ there: you look youthful still.
Orl. I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have a wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem! with a clear voice. * *
Hip. You are the happier man, Sir.
Orl. May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha? I have a little, have all things, have nothing: I have no wife, I have no child, have no chick, and why should I not be in my jocundare?
Hip. Is your wife then departed?
Orl. She’s an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from me: here, she’s here; a good couple are seldom parted.
Hip. You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not?
Orl. Oh, my Lord! this old tree had one branch, and but one branch, growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was strait: I pruned it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, help’d it to the sun; yet for all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore crabs: I hew’d it down. What’s become of it, I neither know nor care.
Hip. Then can I tell you what’s become of it: that branch is wither’d.
Orl. So ’twas long ago.
Hip. Her name, I think, was Bellafront; she’s dead.
Orl. Ha! dead?
Hip. Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping, Even in my sight, was thrown into a grave.
Orl. Dead! my last and best peace go with her! I see death’s a good trencherman; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the daintiest——Is she dead?
Hip. She’s turn’d to earth.
Orl. Would she were turned to Heaven. Umph! Is she dead? I am glad the world has lost one of his idols: no whoremonger will at midnight beat at the doors: in her grave sleep all my shame and her own; and all my sorrows, and all her sins.
Orl. In my daughter you will say! Does she live then? I am sorry I wasted tears upon a harlot! but the best is, I have a handkerchief to drink them up, soap can wash them all out again. Is she poor?
Hip. Trust me, I think she is.
Orl. Then she’s a right strumpet. I never knew one of their trade rich two years together; sieves can hold no water, nor harlots hoard up money: taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, fiddlers, swaggerers, fools, and knaves, do all wait upon a common harlot’s trencher; she is the gallypot to which these drones fly: not for love to the pot, but for the sweet sucket in it, her money, her money.
Hip. I almost dare pawn my word, her bosom gives warmth to no such snakes; when did you see her?
Orl. Not seventeen summers.
Hip. Is your hate so old?
Orl. Older; it has a white head, and shall never die ‘till she be buried: her wrongs shall be my bed-fellow.
Hip. Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame.
Orl. No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out of the world; I hate him for her: he taught her first to taste poison; I hate her for herself, because she refused my physic.
Hip. Nay, but Friscobaldo.
Orl. I detest her, I defy both, she’s not mine, she’s—
Hip. Hear her but speak.
Orl. I love no mermaids, I’ll not be caught with a quail-pipe.
Hip. You’re now beyond all reason. Is’t dotage to relieve your child, being poor?
Orl. ’Tis foolery; relieve her? Were her cold limbs stretcht out upon a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my nails, to buy her an hour’s breath, nor give this hair, unless it were to choak her.
Hip. Fare you well, for I’ll trouble you no more.