His Style.
Tourneur was a fierce and bitter spirit. The words in which he unpacked
his heart are vitalised with passion. He felt so keenly that oftentimes
his phrase is the offspring of the emotion, so terse and vigorous and
apt, so vivid and so potent and eager, it appears. As an instance of
this avidity of wrath and scorn finding expression in words the fittest
and most forcible, leaving the well-known scenes embalmed in Elia's
praise, one might take the three or four single words in which Vindici
(_The Revenger's Tragedy_), on as many several occasions, refers to the
caresses of Spurio and the wanton Duchess. Each is of such amazing
propriety, is so keenly discriminated, is so obviously the product of an
imagination burning with rage and hate, that it strikes you like an
affront: each is an incest taken in the fact and branded there and then.
And this quality of verbal fitness, this power of so charging a phrase
with energy and colour as to make it convey the emotion of the writer at
the instant of inspiration, is perhaps the master quality of Tourneur's
work.
His Matter.
They that would have it are many; they that achieve their desire are few.
For in the minor artist the passionate--the elemental quality--is not
often found: he being of his essence the ape or zany of his betters.
Tourneur is not a great tragic. _The Atheist's Tragedy_ is but
grotesquely and extravagantly horrible; its personages are caricatures of
passion; its comedy is inexpressibly sordid; its incidents are absurd
when they are not simply abominable. But it is written in excellent
dramatic verse and in a rich and brilliant diction, and it contains a
number of pregnant epithets and ringing lines and violent phrases. And
if you halve the blame and double the praise you will do something less
than justice to that _Revenger's Tragedy_ which is Tourneur's
immortality. After all its companion is but a bastard of the loud,
malignant, antic muse of Marston; the elegies are cold, elaborate, and
very tedious; the _Transformed Metamorphosis_ is better verse but harder
reading than _Sordello_ itself. But the _Revenger's Tragedy_ has merit
as a piece of art and therewith a rare interest as a window on the
artist's mind. The effect is as of a volcanic landscape. An earthquake
has passed, and among grisly shapes and blasted aspects here lurks and
wanders the genius of ruin.