Philip Massinger Part 3

The third is from _A Very Woman_; the disguised John Antonio is telling his story at Almiras request:

Not far from where my father lives, a lady, A neighbour by, blest with as great a beauty As nature durst bestow without undoing, Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then, And blessd the house a thousand times she dwelt in.

This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, When my first fire felt no adulterate incense, Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness; In all the bravery my friends could show me, In all the faith my innocence could give me, In the best language my true tongue could tell me, And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued and servd; long did I love this lady, Long was my travail, long my trade to win her; With all the duty of my soul I servd her.(131)

At times the poet rises to what is not far removed from inspiration; and such lines as the following from _The Parliament of Love_ make good the claim of English to be the imperial language of the world. King Charles seeks to justify the honours which he, the most Christian king, gives to the statue of Cupid; he then continues thus:

CHARLES. Tis rather to instruct deceived mankind, How much pure love that has his birth in heaven, And scorns to be received a guest, but in A n.o.ble heart prepared to entertain him, Is by the gross misprision of weak men, Abused and injured. That celestial fire, Which hieroglyphically is described In this his bow, his quiver, and his torch, First warmd their bloods, and after gave a name To the old heroic spirits; such as Orpheus, That drew men, differing little then from beasts, To civil government; or famed Alcides The tyrant-queller, that refused the plain And easy path leading to vicious pleasures, And ending in a precipice deep as h.e.l.l, To scale the rugged cliffs on whose firm top Virtue and Honour, crownd with wreaths of stars, Did sit triumphant.(132)

But there is another characteristic of Ma.s.singers style and that perhaps more obvious still; it is full of courtliness and grace. A perusal of _The City Madam_, where the subject is the absurdity of the ladies of the Mansion House who ape the manners of the West End, suggests the question whether Ma.s.singer was ever attached to the Court. We do not know. He must, at any rate, have moved amongst refined and educated people. Napolon said that Corneilles plays ought to be performed to an audience of amba.s.sadors and ministers of state;(133) in the same way, in reading Ma.s.singer, we feel that we are moving freely in the palaces of the great. There is comparatively little here of dialect(134) or low life; we are at once taken up into high life with all its virtues and its faults. The kings and courtiers behave and express themselves as we should expect them to do; the politeness and the compliments which we hear on every side have the merit of being entirely natural. And if there is little to remind us of d.i.c.kens, there is still less to recall Thackeray. There is no air of sn.o.bbishness; such is the dexterity of our author that we do not feel like Jeames Yellowplush, that we are awkward menials watching the doings of the t.i.tled and the great. Not only do the characters move with an inborn grace which is free from self-a.n.a.lysis and self-contempt, but they take the audience up into their company; and as the gallants of that era used sometimes to sit upon the stage, close among the actors,(135) so in reading Ma.s.singer we feel that we are unconsciously present at the scenes he portrays.

This is as much as to say that the stage of those days responded to a real and living need in the minds of the audience; there was nothing exotic or artificial about it, as there seems to have been about our plays ever since the Puritans turned things upside down. It will be said that this enchanted atmosphere belongs to all the greater playwrights of the age alike. And this is true; it is one of the secrets of their abiding charm.

Brander Matthews, in dealing with the unreality of Ma.s.singers atmosphere, says that some of Shaksperes most delightful plays, _The Merchant of Venice_ for one, and _Much Ado_ for another, are charming to us now only because we are quite willing to make believe with the poet (_op. cit._, p. 311). And so, when Leslie Stephen asks if we are invigorated by the perusal of Ma.s.singers plays,(136) I reply to that apostle of common sense that I am not only charmed and delighted, but invigorated. And why?

Because I am admitted to a world of heroism and romance.

But may we not put the matter more broadly still? When we read the Cavalier lyrics of Suckling, Herrick, and Lovelace, when we think of Falkland, when we stand before the portraits of Vandyck, do we not feel that modern England was in danger until lately of losing something? There is an aroma there of chivalry which had almost faded from our ken. And yet there is an element in our shy and dumb English nature to which this atmosphere is congenial, however overgrown with money-making our minds had seemed to be. Nor, as the student of history knows well, had the Puritans in the Civil War the monopoly of religion and duty. Indeed, the Civil War was a true tragedy, because both sides had right, both fought and bled for what they believed to be the truth. To-day, in spite of our many domestic discords, no party spirit discounts the gallant deeds of which we have read daily, and of which of necessity only a fraction has been publicly rewarded. Perhaps the flame of romance will breathe once more in our midst, now the War is over, purified by suffering, and quickened by the memory of those serene yet manly spirits whom we have lost on the battlefield, whose departure in the dayspring of life seems, as it were, to have extinguished so many stars in the vault of heaven. They put aside the calls of culture and pleasure, and the natural ambition to do something in the world before they were abolished by death. They have willingly given for their country all that they had; they have given themselves. If we remember their devotion with grat.i.tude it may purify us from the commonplace, the vulgar, and the selfish. They, at any rate, can address the power of evil, which for the moment seemed to triumph, in the words of Dorothea:

What is this life to me? Not worth, a thought: Or, if it be esteemd, tis that I lose it To win a better; even thy malice serves To me but as a ladder to mount up To such a height of happiness, where I shall Look down with scorn on thee and on the world; Where, circled with true pleasures, placed above The reach of death or time, twill be my glory To think at what an easy price I bought it.

Theres a perpetual spring, perpetual youth; No joint-benumbing cold, or scorching heat, Famine, nor age, have any being there.

Forget for shame your Tempe; bury in Oblivion your feignd Hesperian orchards; The golden fruit, kept by the watchful dragon, Which did require a Hercules to get it, Compared with what grows in all plenty there, Deserves not to be named. The Power I serve Laughs at your happy Araby, or the Elysian shades; for He hath made His bowers Better in deed than you can fancy yours.(137)

As an instance of Ma.s.singers courtliness I will quote a short pa.s.sage from _The Great Duke of Florence_: Contarino has come from the court of the Duke to fetch his nephew Giovanni, who has been brought up by a tutor, Charomonte by name, in the country. As the prince comes in, Charomonte addresses Contarino:

CHAROMONTE. Make your approaches boldly; you will find A courteous entertainment. (CONTARINO _kneels_.)

GIOVANNI. Pray you, forbear My hand, good signior; tis a ceremony Not due to me. Tis fit we should embrace With mutual arms.

CONTARINO. It is a favour, sir, I grieve to be denied.

GIOVANNI. You shall oercome; But tis your pleasure, not my pride, that grants it.

Nay, pray you, guardian and good sir, put on; How ill it shews to have that reverend head Uncoverd to a boy!

CHAROMONTE. Your excellence Must give me liberty, to observe the distance And duty that I owe you.(138)

Take another instance, from _The Duke of Milan_:

SFORZA. Excuse me, good Pescara.

Ere long I will wait on you.

PESCARA. You speak, sir, The language I should use.(139)

And this, from The Bashful Lover:

FARNESE. Madam, I am bold To trench so far upon your privacy As to desire my friend (let not that wrong him, For hes a worthy one) may have the honour To kiss your hand.

MATILDA. His own worth challenges A greater favour.

FARN. Your acknowledgment Confirms it, madam.(140)

I have used the word lucid of Ma.s.singers style; perhaps a more appropriate word would be dexterous; not that he is obscure like Chapman, or like Shakspere in his later manner, far less turgid, but he is not afraid of somewhat long sentences. What he is really afraid of, unlike Fletcher, is a full-stop at the end of the verse. There are two devices which the reader will notice, often in combination; in the first place, Ma.s.singer is very fond of the absolute construction, and loves to multiply parentheses. The following pa.s.sages from _A New Way_ will serve as ill.u.s.trations:

FURNACE. She keeps her chamber, dines with a panada, Or water gruel, my sweat never thought on.(141)

WOMAN. And the first command she gave, after she rose, Was, her devotions done, to give her notice When you approachd here.(142)

Or again, from _The Emperor of the East_:

Astraea once more lives upon the earth, Pulcherias breast her temple.(143)

Or from _The Bondman_:

And, to those that stay, A competence of land freely allotted To each mans proper use, no lord acknowledged.(144)

We find the absolute construction occasionally in Shakspere, as in _The Merchant of Venice_:

So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.(145)

Or in _Hamlet_:

Folded the writ up in form of the other, Subscribed it, gavt th impression, placed it safely, The changeling never known.(146)

A pa.s.sage from _The Fatal Dowry_ will show an elaborate use of parenthesis:

What though my father Writ man before he was so, and confirmd it, By numbering that day no part of his life In which he did not service to his country; Was he to be free therefore from the laws And ceremonious form in your decrees?

Or else because he did as much as man, In those three memorable overthrows, At Granson, Morat, Nancy, where his master, The warlike Charalois, with whose misfortunes I bear his name, lost treasure, men, and life, To be excused from payment of those sums Which (his own patrimony spent) his zeal To serve his country forced him to take up!(147)