In the Appendix to Vol. II. I have given some account of this anonymous
play, which is here printed for the first time from Egerton MS. 1994.
As the play bears no title in the MS., I have named it at a venture
"The Distracted Emperor."
An ill-shaped and repulsive piece of work it certainly is; crude and
cheerless, but marked with signs of unmistakable power. At the time when
I made the extracts for the Appendix, I thought that Cyril Tourneur
might possibly be the author. On further reflection, it seemed to me
that the stronger passages are much in Marston's manner. The horrid
scene where Charlimayne is represented hugging the dead queen recalls
the anonymous "Second Maiden's Tragedy." Marston, who shrank from
nothing, would not have hesitated to show us the Archbishop, in his
search for the magic ring, parting the dead queen's lips, with the
ironical observation, "You cannot byte me, Madam." The trenchant satire
that abounds throughout the play reminds us frequently of Marston,
though there is an absence of that monstrous phraseology which
distinguished his "Scourge of Villanie" and early plays. But, looking at
the play as a whole, I should have very great hesitation in allowing it
to be Marston's. My impression is that Chapman had the chief hand in it.
The author's trick of moralising at every possible opportunity, his
abundant use of similes more proper to epic than dramatic language, the
absence of all womanly grace in the female characters,--these are points
in which the present play may be compared with Chapman's published
tragedies. Orlando's speech at the beginning of Act ii., "O that my
curse had power to wound the starres," &c., in which he compares
himself, with epic elaboration, to "an argosie sent rychlye fourthe" and
now "meanelye retourninge without mast or helm," to my thinking closely
suggests Chapman. It is not quite impossible that the present play may
be Chapman's lost "French tragedy" (entered on the Stationers'
Registers, June 29, 1660), a copy of which was among the plays destroyed
by Warburton's cook.
It is due to Mr. Fleay that I should mention his solution of the
difficulty. Taking the mysterious letters on the last page, "Nella
[Greek: ph d ph n r] la B," he says: "La B. is the contraction for La
Buffa,[80] one of the characters in the play; and the enigmatic letters,
simply substituting the names for the letters themselves, read thus,'
Nella fi-deltà fi-ni-ro la buffa,' which is good enough Italian for an
anagram, meaning 'I will end trifling in fidelity.' But 'Nella fedelità
(or fidelità) finiro la B.' transposed, gives us 'Il Fabro Natanielli
(or Natanielle) Field,' i.e., 'Nathaniel Field the author'" (_Athenaeum_,
March 3, 1883). Far be it from me to deny the ingenuity of this
explanation, but when Mr. Fleay, not having seen the complete play,
proceeds to say that the extracts I gave "are quite consistent with the
supposition that it is one of Field's lost works," I must take leave to
dissent. Field is the author of two comedies, "A Woman is a Weathercock"
and "Amends for Ladies," and he assisted Massinger in the "Fatal Dowry."
His comedies are well-constructed, bright, and airy. There is no
slovenliness in the workmanship, and success is attained by honest,
straightforward endeavour. It seems to me quite incredible that the
author of those two admirable comedies should be responsible for the
gloomy, ponderous tragi-comedy here presented to the reader. What share
Field had in the "Fatal Dowry" I do not intend to discuss minutely. The
chief figure in that play, Charolois, I take to be a study in
Massinger's gravest manner; but if we allow that Field should be
credited with more than the comic scenes in the "Fatal Dowry," his claim
to the present play is not at all strengthened. Perhaps, after all, no
author's name is concealed under the enigmatic letters.[81] In any case,
Field's is the last name that could be put forward with any show of
likelihood.