Philip Massinger Part 6

It is true that there are ladies in Ma.s.singers plays who offer their hands in marriage to the men they love, and very charmingly the thing is done, though there is nothing equal to the scene between the d.u.c.h.ess and Antonio in Websters masterpiece; as, for example, Artemia in _The Virgin Martyr_, the d.u.c.h.ess of Urbin in _The Great Duke_, Calista in _The Guardian_.(181) This feature is not confined to Ma.s.singer among the writers of his age; to mention no other instances, what about Arethusa in _Philaster_, Bianca in _The Fair Maid of the Inn_, Beliza and the Queen in _The Queen of Corinth_,(182) Frank in _The Captain_, Clara in _Loves Cure_ (IV., 2), Martia in _The Double Marriage_ (II., 3), Lamira in _The Honest Mans Fortune_ (V., 3), Erota in _The Laws of Candy_? Or, what about Desdemona in _Oth.e.l.lo_,(183) or Olivia in _Twelfth Night_?(184) What about the plot of _Alls Well that Ends Well_? To the vulgar mind all things are vulgar. _Honi soit qui mal y pense._(185) It may certainly be conceded that in some of Ma.s.singers plays, as, for instance, _The Unnatural Combat_ and _Believe as You List_, the feminine interest is comparatively slight. Brander Matthews tells us that Ma.s.singers women are all painted from the outside only;(186) they are not convincing; they lack essential womanliness. This may be due to the fault which the same critic points out in our author, that he is heavy-handed and coa.r.s.e-fibred ethically as well as sthetically. One may reply that if the theatre be the mirror of life Ma.s.singer had an undoubted right to bring bad women on the stage; there are good and n.o.ble women also among his characters, and if they are not convincing, perhaps we may quote Coleridges remark about Shakspere, that he saw it was the perfection of women to be characterless. However far our author may fall short of his great model in grace, charm, and delicacy, he at any rate deserves credit for having imagined female characters who are full of pa.s.sions and made of flesh and blood.(187)

Ma.s.singer resembles other dramatists of his age; at times we feel that they talk like the little boys on the links in Stevensons _Lantern-Bearers_. But Ma.s.singer is a robuster mind than Fletcher, for example; if he brings vice upon the stage, and if he speaks too freely about things which we prefer not to have mentioned, if like Hogarth, he enjoys his own portrayal of degrading vice and its appalling consequences,(188) we must, to do him justice, take his work as a whole.

Indeed, most of the critics have singled out as one of his special claims to praise his st.u.r.dy morality,(189) and the general effect on any fair mind of a perusal of his plays is a conviction that he loved virtue.

Vitelli(190) may make the best of both worlds, but he converts Donusa, and faces death and torture with fort.i.tude. Goodness emerges from Ma.s.singers plays, sometimes compromised for the moment, but always triumphant in the end. There is considerable outspokenness, but not much lubricity, and no perverted morality. Pa.s.sages which offend can nearly always, as in Shakspere, be omitted without damaging the course of the plot. Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the works of Ma.s.singer are almost wholly free from blasphemy and profanity, and attacks on the clergy, such as moved the wrath of Jeremy Collier in later times.

It may be a fanciful suggestion, but it is possible that the drama of that day suffered from the fact that boys took the female parts.(191) No one would deny the artistic loss thereby involved, but there was a moral loss as well. It made it possible for things to be said that would not have been said by men to women, still less by women to men. It unconsciously invested the love-scenes with an air of unreality and grossness. It prevented the relation of the s.e.xes from being depicted with that union of pa.s.sion and purity which, though difficult, is possible.

It has been said that Ma.s.singer is hard and metallic, and devoid of pathos. This charge, again, is largely true. You will not find in him scenes which clutch the heart like those of _Dr. Faustus_, or _The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_, or _The Broken Heart_, or _The Maids Tragedy_, or _The Wife for a Month_; you will not find the sublimity of Ordellas self-sacrifice in _Thierry and Theodoret_, or the chivalry of _A Fair Quarrel_; still less will you find anything so appalling as the end of _King Lear_, or _Oth.e.l.lo_, or _Romeo and Juliet_. There is plenty of pa.s.sion in Ma.s.singer; like the legendary lion, he lashes with his tail, and you can almost see him in the act; but his rhetoric does not entirely carry you away. Let me recall the fine pa.s.sage which was quoted just now from _The Roman Actor_.(192) I hope everyone will allow its eloquence; but the repet.i.tion of the commonplace phrase, we cannot help it,(193) natural and forcible as it is, falls short of the ideal grandeur at which the pa.s.sage aims. We feel that Fletcher could have made a finer thing of the prison-scene in The _Emperor of the East_.

It is significant that the most tender pa.s.sage in Ma.s.singer,(194) where Leonora bids Almira take consolation, has been a.s.signed by some to Fletcher. In other words, Ma.s.singer is not in the front rank of genius, but no one would claim for him such a place.

Again, one might urge that his plays are not stores of worldly wisdom, like Shaksperes; his aphorisms are not deep; they do not bite.(195) Consequently he does not lend himself to quotation. Yet this does not of necessity detract from his greatness. No one would question the excellence of the _Waverley Novels_, but Leslie Stephen has pointed out that we only make one quotation from Scotts novels.(196) Aristotle has told us that excessive brilliance of diction obscures characters and sentiments.(197) There are few pa.s.sages of high poetical emotion in Ma.s.singer; there is little magic in the rhythm of individual lines. Like most of his contemporaries he shows at times a strange insensibility to smooth rhythm in the heroic couplet. He has an anapstic lilt in various parts of the line, inherited from Shakspere, and found in Miltons early poems, which is not ineffective in its way, and which seems to have aimed at varying the monotony of the ten-syllable line.(198) He has not much power of rhyme,(199) nor are his plays studded with such lyrics as Shakspere and Fletcher could write upon occasion.(200)

Again, the comic element in Ma.s.singer is at times dull, forced, and ordinary; it does not take us very far to label a foolish Florentine gentleman with the name of Sylli;(201) the hungry soldier is rather a time-worn type,(202) nor can Greedy compare with Lazarillo. Though the situations are humorous, we do not split with laughter over Ma.s.singer, as we do in reading Aristophanes, or Shakspere, or Molire.(203) We do not find in him the mercurial lightness of _A Trick to Catch the Old One_, or the invincible absurdity of The Roarers in _The Fair Quarrel_. But it is necessary to remember that the comic business is of the kind which gains by acting, or indeed requires it, and to allow that towards the end of his life Ma.s.singer came forward as a grave and powerful satirist of contemporary men, reminding us of Ben Jonson, but, to my mind, excelling him; for he shows less asperity with greater lucidity and ease.(204) He is not unduly morose or bitter, yet he wins conviction with an admirable sanity and sobriety. The plays will repay good acting, and, after all, plays are meant to be acted; it is significant that the last of Ma.s.singers plays to hold the stage was his comedy, _The New Way to pay Old Debts_, and it is very much to be wished that it should be revived in England.(205)

Some critics have accused Ma.s.singer of redundancy in style, a characteristic which clearly will strike different people in different ways. Thus, Hallam regards this feature as on the whole meritorious, giving fulness, or what the painters would call impasto, to his style, and if it might not always conduce to effect on the stage, suitable on the whole to the character of his composition. Mr. Bullen,(206) after an eloquent tribute to Ma.s.singers admirable ease and dignity, and to his rare command of an excellent work-a-day dramatic style, clear, vigorous, and free from conceit and affectation, proceeds to allow that he is apt to grow didactic and tax the readers patience; and there is often a want of coherence in his sentences, which amble down the page in a series of loosely linked clauses. I do not myself feel that this charge comes to very much.

The real fault of Ma.s.singer lies in an imperfect presentation of character. This point has been felt by many writers, and put in various ways. Coleridge bluntly says: Ma.s.singers characters have no character.(207) Brander Matthews puts it in another way when he observes that the plots are not the result of the characters, but the work of the playwright,(208) a criticism we may remark in pa.s.sing eminently applicable to Fletcher. It has been said that the characters are conventional, like those in the Italian or Spanish sources from which they are derived; the violent tyrant and the arrogant queen are the most familiar of these types. I do not think this statement arrives at the root of the matter. Characters may be conventional and yet interesting and lifelike. A great many of the personages in Ma.s.singers plays, important and unimportant alike, act reasonably; he takes great pains to discriminate them, and the effect is successful and consistent. Let us recall the great characters in Ma.s.singer; they are Paris, Luke, Sir Giles Overreach, Durazzo, Marullo, Malefort, Charalois, Antiochus, Camiola, Dorothea, Donusa, Almira. In the second rank we may put Timoleon, Romont, Bertoldo, John Antonio, Mathias, Wellborn, Athenais, Marcelia, Sophia, Cleora. Of these persons, the two that I think most men would like to have known best are Paris and Camiola. Notice, by the way, that there is seldom more than one great character in a play. Now, in _Henry VIII_ there are three, the King, Catherine, and Wolsey. The question arises whether Ma.s.singer, even with Fletchers help, could have worked on this scale. If Ma.s.singer wrote _Henry VIII_ it is certainly, with all its faults, his most remarkable achievement.

The point which I wish to emphasize is that there are many characters in Ma.s.singer drawn with care and ability. Think, for example, of the skilful contrast between Pulcheria and Athenais in _The Emperor of the East_, showing how easy it is for two good women to quarrel. Further, it is clear that the attempt to produce composite and developing characters is praiseworthy, even if it be not always successful, because it is more true to life than Ben Jonsons brilliant but illusory delineation of humours.

Human beings are too complex to be labelled in this slapdash way, however amusing it may be on the stage.

And yet we must allow that a certain number of the more important characters act outrageously; the explanation being that the faults which Ma.s.singer loves to portray and censure are such as show themselves in outrageous wayssuch as anger, pride, impotence in the Latin sense, uxoriousness, and above all jealousy.(209) Take the case of Theophilus in _The Virgin Martyr_, who kills his daughters because they have been reconverted to Christianity; or of Domitian in _The Roman Actor_, who goes through life killing people as he would kill flies. It is not enough to say that there are such people in the world; the point is, that in Ma.s.singer they shock us without appalling us. Sforza behaves to Marcelia much as Oth.e.l.lo behaves to Desdemona; we feel at once a difference of power in the two plays.(210) Ma.s.singer has many villains, but Shakspere manages better with Richard III and Iago. Think again of the uxoriousness of Ladislas, Theodosius, Domitian, which some have held to be a covert satire on Charles I. We despise these weak and servile husbands.

Now, is there anything we can urge in Ma.s.singers justification? I think there is. We read his plays nowadays, we do not see them acted. We are therefore apt to forget how impressive and vigorous good acting is. The display of pa.s.sion on the stage with gesture, att.i.tude, frown, and scorn, would render more tolerable some of these scenes which offend us in the study by their crudeness. Such a part, for instance, as Leosthenes in _The Bondman_, the jealous and yet guilty lover, has great opportunities for the actor. It might even be urged that Ma.s.singer wrote thus because he knew the capabilities of the actors who were going to perform his plays.

The same consideration applies to a feature in Ma.s.singer which will strike every reader. He sets himself at times to represent growth, or, at any rate, change, of character. Even Shakspere seldom tries to do this,(211) and it was too hard a task for his pupil. His most ambitious venture in this direction is in _The Picture_. In that play Mathias has a magic portrait, which shows him whether his wife is faithful to him or not in his absence; and the alternations of the mind in husband and wife alike are drawn with considerable power. Luke in _The City Madam_ is perhaps the most skilfully drawn example of a development of character. The hypocrite is quite carried away by the riches to which he unexpectedly succeeds.(212) Another successful conversion is that of Theophilus at the end of _The Virgin Martyr_. It is due partly to his eating the heavenly fruit, for which he had asked Dorothea at her death, partly to the effect which the grace and beauty of Angelo produce on his mind. The gradual growth of his new belief, in spite of all that Harpax can do, is managed with much skill, and it is in itself true to nature that the man who had been violent in one direction should ultimately be violent in another.

Moreover, we are bound to remember that when people are soon persuaded, the play gets on. Indeed, I think we have in this consideration the clue to the whole matter; the Stage Poet had a practical mind.

Change of mood and vacillation of purpose, under the stress of temptation, or due to the conflict of contrary impulses, are features of some of Ma.s.singers best scenes. The wavering of the love-sick Caldoro while Durazzo is abusing him is very true to life.(213) The skill with which the melancholy Vitellis changes of mood are depicted in _The Renegado_(214) suggests the theory that Ma.s.singer is drawing his own portrait. The alternation of pride and humility in Honoria in _The Picture_(215) is forcibly shown. The just anger of Sophia at the end of the same play yields skilfully to a combined intercession.

As a rule, however, the changes are too rapid. Thus, in _The Maid of Honour_, Aurelia, when she hears that Camiola has ransomed Bertoldo and bound him with a promise to marry her, suddenly changes her mind; she has been on the point of marrying the faithless soldier, but, as she says:

On the sudden I feel all fires of love quenchd in the water Of my compa.s.sion.(216)

Though the change is natural, it is inartistically effected; it comes too suddenly. Think, however, what an opportunity this would be for a great actress. If we were in the audience, we should see the gradual development reflected in her expression and bearing long before she utters the words which embody her thought.

Other instances of the same thing are to be found in Donusas conversion to Christianity in _The Renegado_,(217) in the change of faith effected in Calista and Christeta by Dorotheas story of the King of Egypt and Osiris image,(218) and in the indecision of Lorenzo about matrimony in _The Bashful Lover_.(219)

Change of mind is an ungrateful and inartistic experience. It has landed many honest politicians in bitter and undeserved reproaches. From Aristotles time onwards Euripides has been blamed for his Iphigenia at Aulis, who first feared to die, and then offered herself for her country.(220) We certainly feel that in Ma.s.singer there are occasionally instances of cheap repentance which do not seem real. Take the case of Corisca in _The Bondman_; a bad woman repents, but though convinced we are not pleased at the spectacle.(221) If Ma.s.singer had ever read the _Poetics_ of Aristotle, he forgot or ignored the precept that a character should be ?a???, or consistent.(222) If this is not the case there is a danger that the effect will be ?a???, or odious, to use a word of which Aristotle is fond. I think, then, that this charge is proven. Ma.s.singer saw how effective on the stage a sudden change of character might be, but lacked the necessary art to make it convincing. Hence some of his characters are not even ?a??? ???a???.(223) Perhaps the explanation is this, that, being a master of language, he overvalued the persuasiveness of rhetoric.(224) It is not enough to portray the varying emotions which sway the mind at a particular moment; to produce a satisfactory whole they have to be fused together. The reader should not feel that the characters are at the mercy of the situations in which they are placed, or they will appear to be lay-figures or puppets, rather than live flesh and blood.

Yet even here a defence of some sort can be set up for our poet. I will endeavour to make my meaning clear by an a.n.a.logy from music. It may have occurred to someone to ask what the music of Mozart would have been like if he had lived after Beethoven. Would it have been more serious and sublime than it is? The question is worth asking, even if the only answer to it be this, that without Mozart Beethoven would never have existed. I think it is fair to argue that Ma.s.singer, in his constant effort after the representation of change of character, was before his time; he was seeking after a complex but possible effect, which the novelist can undertake but which the limitations of the stage render almost impossible.(225)

Is it fanciful to say that if he had lived in the eighteenth century, if he had had before his eyes the work of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, he would have been a good novelist, less cynical than Fielding, more concise than Richardson, more ideal than Smollett? There are authors like Euripides and Virgil whose very failures by a strange paradox seem part of their greatness; and we may perhaps say that Ma.s.singer, by pointing the way somewhat tentatively and blindly to subtle psychological studies, has helped to build up the n.o.ble fabric of the English novel.

Let us now turn to some miscellaneous points of interest in Ma.s.singer; and first, let us note his imitation of Shakspere. It is tempting to suppose that as he was at one time a dependent of a family which was intimate with Shakspere he may have come across the man himself;(226) it is, at any rate, simpler to remember that as he was thirty-two years of age when Shakspere died, he can hardly have failed to meet him in his professional relations. But we have no evidence of the fact. All we can say is that his plays, like those of Fletcher, Webster, Tourneur, and others,(227) show a constant study of Shakspere.(228)

First let me give a few examples of the imitation of incidents. In _The Roman Actor_,(229) Paris refers to a tragedy in which a murder was acted to the life, which forced a guilty hearer to make discovery of his secret; this recalls the play scene in Hamlet.(230) In _A Very Woman_(231) Almira makes Antonio tell her his history. The hint of this is taken from _Oth.e.l.lo_.(232) In _The Fatal Dowry_(233) Beaumelle and her maid arrange to be overheard, like Hero and Ursula in _Much Ado about Nothing_.(234) The device by which Beaupr recovers her husband in _The Parliament of Love_ is imitated from _Alls Well that Ends Well_ and _Measure for Measure_. The banditti in _The Guardian_(235) respect the poor like the outlaws in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_.(236) The forest scenes in the same play recall _As You Like It_ and _Midsummer-Nights Dream_.(237) In _The Bashful Lover_(238) the pretty tale of a sister which Ascanio tells is a reminiscence of _Twelfth Night_.(239) The incident in the same play of Hortensio with Ascanio in his arms(240) is modelled on _As You Like It_.(241) Maleforts behaviour to the tailor(242) is imitated from Petruchios in _The Taming of the Shrew_.(243) The gibberish of the pretended Indians in _The City Madam_(244) reminds us of Parolles adventure in _Alls Well_.(245) The scene in _The Emperor of the East_(246) where Eudocia professes to have eaten the apple is modelled on _Oth.e.l.lo_(247), where Desdemona a.s.serts that the handkerchief is not lost.

In _The Bondman_(248) Zanthia overhears Coriscas confession of love in her sleep, as Iago does Ca.s.sios.(249) In _A New Way to pay Old Debts_(250) Sir Giles Overreach, is carried off for treatment to a dark room like Malvolio in _Twelfth Night_.(251) Almira in _A Very Woman_(252) reminds us of the sleep-walking scene in _Macbeth_. The ghosts in _The Unnatural Combat_(253) and _The Roman Actor_(254) are used like those in the finale of _Richard III_.

Parallels in thought and diction are also numerous. Take _The Roman Actor_(255):

ARETINUS. Are you on the stage, You talk so boldly?

PARIS. The whole world being one, This place is not exempted.

This goes back to Jaques in _As You Like It_.(256) In _The Maid of Honour_(257) Jacomo talks of trailing the puissant pike; the phrase of Pistol in _Henry V_.(258) In _The Emperor of the East_(259) Athenais makes use of the phrase prophetic soul, which we remember in _Hamlet_.(260) Leosthenes uses the same phrase in _The Bondman_(261) when the mutinous slave Cimbrio boasts of the excesses of his friends. The pun which Hircius makes on the cobblers awl(262) occurs in the first scene of _Julius Csar_. The madness of the English slave in _A Very Woman_(263) comes from the grave-diggers scene in _Hamlet_.(264) The many-headed monster, mult.i.tude of Theodosius in _The Emperor of the East_(265) takes us back to Coriola.n.u.s beast with many heads;(266) while the reference in the same play(267) to the stomach reminds us of the fable of Menenius.(268) In _The Bashful Lover_(269) Uberti discourses thus:

I look on your dimensions, and find not Mine own of lesser size; the blood that fills My veins, as hot as yours, my sword as sharp, My nerves of equal strength, my heart as good.

This reminds us of Shylock in _The Merchant of Venice_(270) and the King in _Henry V_.(271) Clarindores language in _The Parliament of Love_(272) is modelled on Malvolio in _Twelfth Night_.(273) The same is true of Sir Giles Overreach in _A New Way_.(274) Shaksperes dislike of spaniels reappears in the same play.(275)

No doubt we must make deductions for the common idioms of the day,(276) but the c.u.mulative evidence of these parallels with the elder dramatist is overwhelming.(277)

Ma.s.singer is very fond of introducing doctors in his plays; so no doubt are the other dramatists of this period. It is interesting to compare Paulo in _A Very Woman_ with Corax in _The Lovers Melancholy_ of Ford, who deals successfully with two cases of mental derangement. Ford is more subtle, Ma.s.singer more dignified. Thus we find in _The Virgin Martyr_(278) a consultation about Antoninus health. Sapritius, the afflicted father, hails the doctors thus:

O you that are half G.o.ds, lengthen that life Their deities lend us; turn oer all the volumes Of your mysterious sculapian science T increase the number of this young mans days.(279)

Compare with this another pa.s.sage in _The Duke of Milan_:

SFORZA. O you earthly G.o.ds, You second natures, that from your great master, Who joind the limbs of torn Hippolytus, And drew upon himself the Thunderers envy, Are taught those hidden secrets that restore To life death-wounded men!(280)

In _A Very Woman_(281) Paulo, on entering with two surgeons, is thus addressed:

DUKE. My hand! You rather Deserve my knee, and it shall bend as to A second father, if your saving aids Restore my son.

VICEROY. Rise, thou bright star of knowledge, Thou honour of thy art, thou help of nature.

Thou glory of our academies!

The old saying, Ubi tres medici ibi duo athei, referred to by Sir T.

Browne in _Religio Medici_ is recalled to us by these lines:

VICEROY. Observe his piety; I have heard, how true I know not, most physicians, as they grow Greater in skill, grow less in their religion; Attributing so much to natural causes, That they have little faith in that they cannot Deliver reason for; this doctor steers Another course.(282)

We find them again in _The Emperor of the East_,(283) where a surgeon is contrasted with an empiric who vends his wares and talks much Latin, like the quack in Ben Jonsons _Alchemist_, while Paulinus complains of the many medical impostors who prey upon the rich. The crisis of _The Duke of Milan_(284) owes much to the action of doctors. The plot of _A Very Woman_ hinges largely on the skill of the doctor Paulo, to whom we have referred above. In this play we have two victims of melancholy, Almira and Cardenes; the former is cured by falling in love with the disguised John Antonio; the latter is Paulos patient. The recovery of the avaricious father in _The Roman Actor_(285) is due to Paris acting in the part of a doctor. The physician Dinant in _The Parliament of Love_ gives the gallants a good lesson (IV., 5). And in _The Picture_(286) we find an elaborate simile, in which soldiers are said to be the surgeons of the State. In the same play Hilario,(287) when on starvation fare, is accosted by a surgeon, who invites him to sell himself for a living anatomy to be set up in the surgeons hall. Such pa.s.sages,(288) and the zest with which Ma.s.singer refers to potatoes, eringos, and the like,(289) together with the rather wearisome allusions which he makes to caudles and cullises,(290) lead us to wonder whether at one time of his life he may have seriously studied medicine. There is a significant pa.s.sage in _The Parliament of Love_,(291) where Chamont says to the doctor Dinant,