reprobation by modern critics, that Beaumont and Fletcher 'understood
and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better' (than
Shakespeare); 'whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartees
no poet can ever paint as they did.' It is, of course, easy enough to
reply that in the true sense of the word 'gentleman' Shakespeare's
heroes are incomparably superior to those of his successors; but then
this is just the sense in which Dryden did not use the word. His real
meaning indicates a very sound piece of historical criticism. Fletcher
describes a new social type; the 'King's Young Courtier' who is
deserting the good old ways of his father, the 'old courtier of the
Queen.' The change is but one step in that continuous process which has
substituted the modern gentleman for the old feudal noble; but the step
taken at that period was great and significant. The chivalrous type,
represented in Sidney's life and Spenser's poetry, is beginning to be
old-fashioned and out of place as the industrial elements of society
become more prominent. The aristocrat in the rising generation finds
that his occupation is going. He takes to those 'wild debaucheries'
which Dryden oddly reckons among the attributes of a true gentleman; and
learns the art of 'quick repartee' in the courtly society which has time
enough on its hands to make a business of amusement. The euphuism and
allied affectations of the earlier generation had a certain grace, as
the external clothing of a serious chivalrous sentiment; but it is
rapidly passing into a silly coxcombry to be crushed by Puritanism or
snuffed out by the worldly cynicism of the new generation. Shakespeare's
Henry or Romeo may indulge in wild freaks or abandon themselves to the
intense passions of vigorous youth; but they will settle down into good
statesmen and warriors as they grow older. Their love-making is a phase
in their development, not the business of their lives. Fletcher's heroes
seem to be not only occupied for the moment, but to make a permanent
profession of what with their predecessors was a passing phase of
youthful ebullience. It is true that we have still a long step to make
before we sink to the mere _roué_, the shameless scapegrace and cynical
man about town of the Restoration. To make a Wycherley you must distil
all the poetry out of a Fletcher. Fletcher is a true poet; and the
graceful sentiment, though mixed with a coarse alloy, still repels that
unmitigated grossness which, according to Burke's famous aphorism, is
responsible for half the evil of vice. He is still alive to generous and
tender emotions, though it can scarcely be said that his morality has
much substance in it. It is a sentiment, not a conviction, and covers
without quenching many ugly and brutal emotions.
In Fletcher's wild gallants, still adorned by a touch of the chivalrous;
reckless, immoral, but scarcely cynical; not sceptical as to the
existence of virtue, but only admitting morality by way of parenthesis
to the habitual current of their thoughts, we recognise the kind of
stuff from which to frame the Cavaliers who will follow Rupert and be
crushed by Cromwell. A characteristic sentiment which occurs constantly
in the drama of the period represents the soldier out of work. We are
incessantly treated to lamentations upon the ingratitude of the
comfortable citizens who care nothing for the men to whom they owed
their security. The political history of the times explains the
popularity of such complaints. Englishmen were fretting under their
enforced abstinence from the exciting struggles on the Continent. There
was no want of Dugald Dalgettys returning from the wars to afford models
for the military braggart or the bluff honest soldier, both of whom go
swaggering through so many of the plays of the time. Clarendon in his
Life speaks of the temptations which beset him from mixing with the
military society of the time. There was a large and increasing class,
no longer finding occupation in fighting Spaniards and searching for
Eldorado, and consequently, in the Yankee phrase, 'spoiling for a
fight.' When the time comes, they will be ready enough to fight
gallantly, and to show an utter incapacity for serious discipline. They
will meet the citizens, whom they have mocked so merrily, and find that
reckless courage and spasmodic chivalry do not exhaust the
qualifications for military success.
Massinger represents a different turn of sentiment which would be
encouraged in some minds by the same social conditions. Instead of
abandoning himself frankly to the stream of youthful sentiment, he feels
that it has a dangerous aspect. The shadow of coming evils was already
dark enough to suggest various forebodings. But he is also a moraliser
by temperament. Mr. Ward says that his strength is owing in a great
degree to his appreciation of the great moral forces; and the remark is
only a confirmation of the judgment of most of his critics. It is, of
course, not merely that he is fond of adding little moral tags of
questionable applicability to the end of his plays. 'We are taught,' he
says in the 'Fatal Dowry,'
By this sad precedent, how just soever
Our reasons are to remedy our wrongs,
We are yet to leave them to their will and power
That to that purpose have authority.
But it is, to say the least, doubtful whether anybody would have that
judicious doctrine much impressed upon him by seeing the play itself.
Nor can one rely much upon the elaborate and very eloquent defence of
his art in the 'Roman Actor.' Paris, the actor, sets forth very
vigorously that the stage tends to lay bare the snares to which youth is
exposed and to inflame a noble ambition by example. If the discharge of
such a function deserves reward from the Commonwealth--
Actors may put in for as large a share
As all the sects of the philosophers;--
They with cold precepts--perhaps seldom read--
Deliver what an honourable thing
The active virtue is; but does that fire
The blood, or swell the veins with emulation
To be both good and great, equal to that
Which is presented in our theatres?
Massinger goes on to show, after the fashion of Jaques in 'As You Like
It,' that the man who chooses to put on the cap is responsible for the
application of the satire. He had good reasons, as we have seen, for
feeling sensitive as to misunderstandings--or, rather, too thorough
understandings--of this kind.
To some dramatists of the time, who should put forward such a plea, one
would be inclined to answer in the sensible words of old Fuller. 'Two
things,' he says, 'are set forth to us in stage plays; some grave
sentences, prudent counsels, and punishment of vicious examples: and
with these desperate oaths, lustful talk, and riotous acts, are so
personated to the life, that wantons are tickled with delight, and feed
their palates upon them. It seems the goodness is not portrayed with
equal accents of liveliness as the wicked things are; otherwise men
would be deterred from vicious courses, with seeing the woful success
which follows them'--a result scarcely to be claimed by the actors of
the day. Massinger, however, shows more moral feeling than is expended
in providing sentiments to be tacked on as an external appendage, or
satisfied by an obedience to the demands of poetic justice. He is not
content with knocking his villains on the head--a practice in which he,
like his contemporaries, indulges with only too much complacency. The
idea which underlies most of his plays is a struggle of virtue assailed
by external or inward temptations. He is interested by the ethical
problems introduced in the play of conflicting passions, and never more
eloquent than in uttering the emotions of militant or triumphant virtue.
His view of life, indeed, is not only grave, but has a distinct
religious colouring. From various indications, it is probable that he
was a Roman Catholic. Some of these are grotesque enough. The
'Renegado,' for example, not only shows that Massinger was, for dramatic
purposes at least, an ardent believer in baptismal regeneration, but
includes--what one would scarcely have sought in such a place--a
discussion as to the validity of lay-baptism. The first of his surviving
plays, the 'Virgin Martyr' (in which he was assisted by Dekker), is
simply a dramatic version of an ecclesiastical legend. Though it seems
to have been popular at the time, the modern reader will probably think
that, in this case at least, the religious element is a little out of
place. An angel and a devil take an active part in the performance;
miracles are worked on the stage; the unbelievers are so shockingly
wicked, and the Christians so obtrusively good, that we--the
worldly-minded--are sensible of a little recalcitration, unless we are
disarmed by the simplicity of the whole performance. Religious tracts of
all ages and in all forms are apt to produce this ambiguous effect.
Unless we are quite in harmony with their assumptions, we feel that they
deal too much in conventional rose-colour. The angelic and diabolic
elements are not so clearly discriminated in this world, and should show
themselves less unequivocally on the stage, which ought to be its
mirror. Such art was not congenial to the English atmosphere; it might
be suitable in Madrid; but when forcibly transplanted to the London
stage, we feel that the performance has not the simple earnestness by
which alone it can be justified. The sentiment has a certain unreality,
and the _naïveté_ suggests affectation. The implied belief is got up for
the moment and has a hollow ring. And therefore, the whole work, in
spite of some eloquence, is nothing better than a curiosity, as an
attempt at the assimilation of a heterogeneous form of art.
A similar vein of sentiment, though not showing itself in so undiluted a
form, runs through most of Massinger's plays. He is throughout a
sentimentalist and a rhetorician. He is not, like the greatest men,
dominated by thoughts and emotions which force him to give them external
embodiment in life-like symbols. He is rather a man of much real feeling
and extraordinary facility of utterance, who finds in his stories
convenient occasions for indulging in elaborate didactic utterances upon
moral topics. It is probably this comparative weakness of the higher
imaginative faculty which makes Lamb speak of him rather disparagingly.
He is too self-conscious and too anxious to enforce downright moral
sentiments to satisfy a critic by whom spontaneous force and direct
insight were rightly regarded as the highest poetic qualities. A single
touch in Shakespeare, or even in Webster or Ford, often reveals more
depth of feeling than a whole scene of Massinger's facile and often
deliberately forensic eloquence. His temperament is indicated by the
peculiarities of his style. It is, as Coleridge says, poetry
differentiated by the smallest possible degree from prose. The greatest
artists of blank verse have so complete a mastery of their language that
it is felt as a fibre which runs through and everywhere strengthens the
harmony, and is yet in complete subordination to the sentiment. With a
writer of the second order, such as Fletcher, the metre becomes more
prominent, and at times produces a kind of monotonous sing-song, which
begins to remind us unpleasantly of the still more artificial tone
characteristic of the rhymed tragedies of the next generation. Massinger
diverges in the opposite direction. The metre is felt enough and only
just enough to give a more stately step to rather florid prose. It is
one of his marks that a line frequently ends by some insignificant 'of'
or 'from,' so as to exclude the briefest possible pause in reading.
Thus, to take an example pretty much at random, the following instance
might be easily read without observing that it was blank verse at all:--
'Your brave achievements in the war, and what you did for me, unspoken,
because I would not force the sweetness of your modesty to a blush, are
written here; and that there might be nothing wanting to sum up my
numerous engagements (never in my hopes to be cancelled), the great
duke, our mortal enemy, when my father's country lay open to his fury
and the spoil of the victorious army, and I brought into his power, hath
shown himself so noble, so full of honour, temperance, and all virtues
that can set off a prince; that, though I cannot render him that respect
I would, I am bound in thankfulness to admire him.'
Such a style is suitable to a man whose moods do not often hurry him
into impetuous, or vivacious, or epigrammatic utterance. As the Persian
poet says of his country: his warmth is not heat, and his coolness is
not cold. He flows on in a quiet current, never breaking into foam or
fury, but vigorous, and invariably lucid. As a pleader before a
law-court--the character in which, as Mr. Ward observes, he has a
peculiar fondness for presenting himself--he would carry his audience
along with him, but scarcely hold them in spell-bound astonishment or
hurry them into fits of excitement. Melancholy resignation or dignified
dissatisfaction will find in him a powerful exponent, but scarcely
despair, or love, or hatred, or any social phase of pure unqualified
passion.
The natural field for the display of such qualities is the romantic
drama, which Massinger took from the hands of Beaumont and Fletcher, and
endowed with greater dignity and less poetic fervour. For the vigorous
comedy of real life, as Jonson understood it, he has simply no capacity;
and in his rare attempts at humour, succeeds only in being at once dull
and dirty. His stage is generally occupied with dignified lords and
ladies, professing the most chivalrous sentiments, which are
occasionally too high-flown and overstrained to be thoroughly effective,
but which are yet uttered with sufficient sincerity. They are not mere
hollow pretences, consciously adopted to conceal base motives; but one
feels the want of an occasional infusion of the bracing air of common
sense. It is the voice of a society still inspired with the traditional
sentiments of honour and self-respect, but a little afraid of contact
with the rough realities of life. Its chivalry is a survival from a past
epoch, not a spontaneous outgrowth of the most vital elements of
contemporary development. In another generation, such a tone will be
adopted by a conscious and deliberate artifice, and be reflected in mere
theatrical rant. In the past, it was the natural expression of a
high-spirited race, full of self-confidence and pride in its own
vigorous audacity. In this transitional period it has a certain hectic
flush, symptomatic of approaching decay; anxious to give a wide berth
to realities, and most at home in the border land where dreams are only
half dispelled by the light of common day. 'Don Quixote' had sounded the
knell of the old romance, but something of the old spirit still lingers,
and can tinge with an interest, not yet wholly artificial, the lives and
passions of beings who are thus hovering on the outskirts of the living
world. The situations most characteristic of Massinger's tendency are in
harmony with this tone of sentiment. They are romances taken from a
considerable variety of sources, developed in a clearly connected series
of scenes. They are wanting in the imaginative unity of the great plays,
which show that a true poet has been profoundly moved by some profound
thought embodied in a typical situation. He does not, like Shakespeare,
seize his subject by the heart, because it has first fascinated his
imagination; nor, on the other hand, have we that bewildering complexity
of motives and intricacy of plot which shows at best a lawless and
wandering fancy, and which often fairly puzzles us in many English
plays, and enforces frequent reference to the list of personages in
order to disentangle the crossing threads of the action. Massinger's
plays are a gradual unravelling of a series of incidents, each following
intelligibly from the preceding situation, and suggestive of many
eloquent observations, though not developments of one master-thought. We
often feel that, if external circumstances had been propitious, he would
have expressed himself more naturally in the form of a prose romance
than in a drama. Nor, again, does he often indulge in those exciting and
horrible situations which possess such charms for his contemporaries.
There are occasions, it is true, in which this element is not wanting.
In the 'Unnatural Combat,' for example, we have a father killing his son
in a duel, by the end of the second act; and when, after a succession
of horrors of the worst kind, we are treated to a ghost, 'full of
wounds, leading in the shadow of a lady, her face leprous,' and the
worst criminal is killed by a flash of lightning, we feel that we were
fully entitled to such a catastrophe. We can only say, in Massinger's
words,--
May we make use of
This great example, and learn from it that
There cannot be a want of power above
To punish murder and unlawful love!
The 'Duke of Milan' again culminates with a horrible scene, rivalling,
though with less power, the grotesque horrors of Webster's 'Duchess of
Malfi.' Other instances might be given of concessions to that
blood-and-thunder style of dramatic writing for which our ancestors had
a never-failing appetite. But, as a rule, Massinger inclines, as far as
contemporary writers will allow him, to the side of mercy. Instead of
using slaughter so freely that a new set of actors has to be introduced
to bury the old--a misfortune which sometimes occurs in the plays of the
time--he generally tends to a happy solution, and is disposed not only
to dismiss his virtuous characters to felicity, but even to make his
villains virtuous. We have not been excited to that pitch at which our
passions can only be harmonised by an effusion of blood, and a mild
solution is sufficient for the calmer feelings which have been aroused.
This tendency illustrates Massinger's conception of life in another
sense. Nothing is more striking in the early stage than the vigour of
character of most of these heroes. Individual character, as it is said,
takes the place in the modern of fate in the ancient drama. Every man is
run in a mould of iron, and may break, but cannot bend. The fitting
prologue to the whole literature is provided by Marlowe's Tamburlaine,
with his superhuman audacity and vast bombastic rants, the incarnation
of a towering ambition which scorns all laws but its own devouring
passion. Faustus, braving all penalties, human and divine, is another
variety of the same type: and when we have to do with a weak character
like Edward II., we feel that it is his natural destiny to be confined
in a loathsome dungeon, with mouldy bread to eat and ditch-water to
drink. The world is for the daring; and though daring may be pushed to
excess, weakness is the one unpardonable offence. A thoroughgoing
villain is better than a trembling saint. If Shakespeare's instinctive
taste revealed the absurdity of the bombastic exaggeration of such
tendencies, his characters are equally unbending. His villains die, like
Macbeth and Iago, with their teeth set, and scorn even a deathbed
repentance. Hamlet exhibits the unfitness for a world of action of the
man who is foolish enough to see two sides to every question. So again,
Chapman, the writer who in fulness and fire of thought approaches most
nearly to Shakespeare, is an ardent worshipper of pure energy of
character. His Bussy d'Ambois cannot be turned from his purpose even by
the warnings of the ghost of his accomplice, and a mysterious spirit
summoned expressly to give advice. An admirably vigorous phrase from one
of the many declamations of his hero Byron--another representative of
the same haughty strength of will--gives his theory of character:--
Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves t' have his sail filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sailyards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.
Pure, undiluted energy, stern force of will, delight in danger for its
own sake, contempt for all laws but the self-imposed, those are the
cardinal virtues, and challenge our sympathy even when they lead their
possessor to destruction. The psychology implied in Jonson's treating of
'humour' is another phase of the same sentiment. The side by which
energetic characters lend themselves to comedy is the exaggeration of
some special trait which determines their course as tyrannically as
ambition governs the character suited for tragedy.
When we turn to Massinger, this boundless vigour has disappeared. The
blood has grown cool. The tyrant no longer forces us to admiration by
the fulness of his vitality, and the magnificence of his contempt for
law. Whether for good or bad, he is comparatively a poor creature. He
has developed an uneasy conscience, and even whilst affecting to defy
the law, trembles at the thought of an approaching retribution. His
boasts have a shrill, querulous note in them. His creator does not fully
sympathise with his passion. Massinger cannot throw himself into the
situation; and is anxious to dwell upon the obvious moral considerations
which prove such characters to be decidedly inconvenient members of
society for their tamer neighbours. He is of course the more in
accordance with a correct code of morality, but fails correspondingly in
dramatic force and brilliance of colour. To exhibit a villain truly,
even to enable us to realise the true depth of his villainy, one must be
able for a moment to share his point of view, and therefore to
understand the true law of his being. It is a very sound rule in the
conduct of life, that we should not sympathise with scoundrels. But the
morality of the poet, as of the scientific psychologist, is founded upon
the unflinching veracity which sets forth all motives with absolute
impartiality. Some sort of provisional sympathy with the wicked there
must be, or they become mere impossible monsters or the conventional
scarecrows of improving tracts.
This is Massinger's weakest side. His villains want backbone, and his
heroes are deficient in simple overmastering passion, or supplement
their motives by some overstrained and unnatural crotchet. Impulsiveness
takes the place of vigour, and indicates the want of a vigorous grasp of
the situation. Thus, for example, the 'Duke of Milan,' which is
certainly amongst the more impressive of Massinger's plays, may be
described as a variation upon the theme of 'Othello.' To measure the
work of any other writer by its relation to that masterpiece is, of
course, to apply a test of undue severity. Of comparison, properly
speaking, there can be no question. The similarity of the situation,
however, may bring out Massinger's characteristics. The Duke, who takes
the place of Othello, is, like his prototype, a brave soldier. The most
spirited and effective passage in the play is the scene in which he is
brought as a prisoner before Charles V., and not only extorts the
admiration of his conqueror, but wins his liberty by a dignified avowal
of his previous hostility, and avoidance of any base compliance. The
Duke shows himself to be a high-minded gentleman, and we are so far
prepared to sympathise with him when exposed to the wiles of
Francisco--the Iago of the piece. But, unfortunately, the scene is not
merely a digression in a constructive sense, but involves a
psychological inconsistency. The gallant soldier contrives to make
himself thoroughly contemptible. He is represented as excessively
uxorious, and his passion takes the very disagreeable turn of posthumous
jealousy. He has instructed Francisco to murder the wife whom he adores,
in case of his own death during the war, and thus to make sure that she
could not marry anybody else. On his return, the wife, who has been
informed by the treachery of Francisco of this pleasant arrangement, is
naturally rather cool to him; whereupon he flies into a rage and swears
that he will
Never think of curs'd Marcelia more.
His affection returns in another scene, but only in order to increase
his jealousy, and on hearing Francisco's slander he proceeds to stab his
wife out of hand. It is the action of a weak man in a passion, not of a
noble nature tortured to madness. Finding out his mistake, he of course
repents again, and expresses himself with a good deal of eloquence which
would be more effective if we could forget the overpowering pathos of
the parallel scene in 'Othello.' Much sympathy, however, is impossible
for a man whose whole conduct is so flighty, and so obviously determined
by the immediate demands of successive situations of the play, and not
the varying manifestation of a powerfully conceived character. Francisco
is a more coherent villain, and an objection made by Hazlitt to his
apparent want of motive is at least equally valid against Iago; but he
is of course but a diluted version of that superlative villain, as
Marcelia is a rather priggish and infinitely less tender Desdemona. The
failure, however, of the central figure to exhibit any fixity of
character is the real weakness of the play; and the horrors of the last
scene fail to atone for the want of the vivid style which reveals an
'intense and gloomy mind.'