The Witch, an ill-constructed play which raises the problems above referred to, has also an Italian plot, apparently from Machiavelli's 'Florentine Histories' through the French. Middleton is more at home in describing criminals and ruffians than supernatural beings; and his witches are rather the vulgar hags of popular superstition than the unearthly beings that accost Macbeth on the blasted heath, as Lamb pointed out in an admirable paragraph. Shakespeare in Macbeth gives the stage direction, 'Music and a song: "Black spirits," &c.' The 'Charm-song' of the witches going about the cauldron is thus given by Middleton: Hecate. Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray, Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may ! Titty, Tiffin, Make it lucky; You must bob in ; Round, around, around, about, about! All ill come running in, all good keep out ! First Witch. Here's the blood of a bat. Hec. Put in that, O, put in that! Second Witch. Here's libbard's-bane. Hec. Put in again! First Witch. The juice of toad, the oil of adder. Sec. Witch. Those will make the younker madder. Hec. Put in-there's all-and rid the stench. Firestone. Nay, here's three ounces of the red-hair'd wench. All the Witches. Round, around, around, &c. The flight of the witches by moonlight is described with vigour and gusto; if the scene was written before Macbeth, Middleton deserves the credit of true poetical imagination : Hecate. The moon's a gallant; see how brisk she rides! To take a journey of five thousand mile? Heard you the owl yet? Stad. As we came through now. Hec. O'twill be precious! Briefly in the copse, 'Tis high time for us then. Stad. There was a bat hung at my lips three times As we came through the woods, and drank her fill: Old Puckle saw her. Spirit. All goes still to our delight: Either come or else Hec. Now, I'm furnish'd for the flight. Fire. Hark, hark, the cat sings a brave treble in her own language! Hec. [going up.] Now I go, now I fly, Malkin my sweet spirit and I. O what dainty pleasure 'tis To ride in the air When the moon shines fair, And sing and dance, and toy and kiss! Over woods, high rocks, and mountains, Over seas, our mistress' fountains, Over steep towers and turrets. We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits: Or cannon's throat our height can reach. [Voices above.] No ring of bells, &c. Leopard's-bane, mandragora or mandrake, panax (ginseng), selago (lycopodium), and other herbs named have magical or medicinal properties; and serpents' eggs or snake-stones (often ammonites, supposed to be petrified snakes or in some mysterious way derived from serpents) were sovereign charms from the days of the Druids on. Shakespeare in Macbeth gives merely the direction, 'Song within: “Come away, come away," &c.' Middleton's works were edited by Dyce (5 vols. 1840) and by Bullen (8 vols. 1885-86). John Marston (1575?-1634), a rough and vigorous satirist and dramatic writer, seems to have been born at Coventry, and studied at Brasenose College, Oxford. He must have written all his plays between 1602 and 1607, when he gave up playwriting, took orders, and in 1616 accepted the living of Christchurch in Hampshire. The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image (1598), a somewhat licentious poem, was condemned to the flames by Archbishop Whitgift. The Scourge of Villany is mainly uncouth and obscure satire. The gloomy and ill-constructed tragedies, Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge (1602), contain passages of striking power with much fustian. The Malcontent (1604), more skilfully constructed, was dedicated to Ben Jonson, between whom and Marston there were many quarrels and reconciliations. The Dutch Courtezan (1605) is full of life; Eastward Hoe (1605; written with Chapman and Jonson) is far more genial than any of Marston's own comedies. For uncomplimentary allusions to the Scots the authors were imprisoned (see page 402). Parasitaster, or the Fawn (1606), spite of occasional tediousness, is an attractive comedy; Sophonisba (1606) appals with its horrors. What You Will (1607) has many flings at Ben Jonson. The rich and graceful poetry scattered through The Insatiate Countesse (1613) is unlike anything in Marston's undoubted works, and was probably added by another hand. Even in the least admirable passages one stumbles on pregnant thoughts pithily worded ; thus in the Dutch Courtezan, on the difference between the lovely courtesan and a wife, an old knight says: Hell and the prodegies of angrie Jove Love is the center in which all lines close Some of the phrasing is wonderfully modern, in spite of antique environment: thus 'the fatt's in the fire' alongside of pre-Elizabethan archaism; 'Mr Mulligrub' does not sound Elizabethan; and the courtesan's broken English is not unlike Pennsyl vania Dutch. In the Insatiate Countesse, a good wish at a wedding is thus worded: O may this knot you knit, This individual Gordian grasp of hands, In sight of God soe fairly intermixt, Never be severed, as Heaven smiles at it, By all the darts shot by infernall Jove! Coarseness was rather characteristic of Marston: his comedies contain strong, biting satire; Hazlitt thought his forte was impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, vented either in comic irony or in lofty invective. In What You Will Quadratus introduces a lyrical exposition of his hyper-epicurean philosophy of life: My fashions knowne: out rime: take't as you list: A fico for the sower brow'd Zoilist: Musicke, tobacco, sack, and sleepe Clip time aboute, hug pleasure fast. checkmate He that knows little's most devine. Rivo, a drinking challenge of doubtful origin, is also used by Shakespeare's Prince Hal. The following humorous autobiographical sketch of a scholar and his dog, also from What You Will, in points suggests Goethe's Faust and Browning as well as Shakespeare: I was a scholler: seaven usefull springs Of cross'd oppinions boute the soule of man; Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt; 1 Bause is a rare and doubtful word, probably meaning to kiss (from Low Latin basiare). 2 Zabarella was a (now forgotten) sixteenth-century Italian philosopher; Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus were the heads of the two great schools of Catholic theology; Donatus was a fourth-century grammarian. 3 Whether there is a soul. Creationism' taught that the soul was created for each human body, 'Traducianism' that it was derived ex tras duce from the parents. 1 2 From 'Antonio and Mellida.' [Of the prologue to Antonio's Revenge, the second of the two plays forming The Historie of Antonio and Mellida, Charles Lamb says: This prologue, for its passionate earnestness, and for the tragic note of preparation which it sounds, might have preceded one of those old tales of Thebes or Pelops' line which Milton has so highly commended, as free from the common error of the poets in his days, "of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, brought in without discretion corruptly to gratify the people "it is as solemn a preparative as the " warning voice which he who saw th' Apocalypse heard cry."'] The rawish danke of clumzie winter ramps From the nak't shuddring branch; and pils the skinne O now, me thinks, a sullen tragick sceane And all parte pleased in most wisht content; (As from his birth, being hugged in the armes, If ought of these straines fill this consort up- Yet heere's the prop that doth support our hopes, [Antonio, son to Andrugio, Duke of Genoa, whom Piero, Venetian prince and father-in-law of Antonio, has murdered, slays Piero's little son, Julio, as a sacrifice to the spirit of Andrugio.The scene is in a Churchyard and the time is Midnight.] Julio. Brother Antonio, are you here, i' faith? Why doe you frowne? Indeed my sister said That I should call you brother; that she did, When you were married to her. Busse me good truth, I love you better then my father, 'deede. Antonio. Thy father? Gratious, O bounteous Heaven! Jul. Truth, since my mother dyed, I lov'd you best. O that I knewe which joynt, which side, which lim, Ant. O, for thy sisters sake, I flagge revenge. Andrugio's Ghost. Revenge! Ant. Stay, stay, deare father, fright mine eyes no more. Revenge as swift as lightning bursteth forth, And cleares his heart. Come, prettie tender childe, It is not thee I hate, not thee I kill. Thy fathers blood that flowes within thy veines Is it I loath; is that revenge must sucke. I love thy soule and were thy heart lapt up In any flesh but in Piero's bloode, I would thus kisse it; but being his, thus, thus, Whil'st thy wounds bleede, my browes shall gush out teares. Jul. So you will love me, doe even what you will. Ant. Now barkes the wolfe against the fulle cheekt moon; Now lyons half-clamd entrals roare for food; Now croakes the toad, and night crowes screech aloud, And now swarte night, to swell thy hower out, [Stabs Julio. From under the stage a groane. I thus make incense of, to vengeance. (From Part II. Act II.) Antonio's Latin quotation is an adaptation of two lines from Seneca's Thyestes; flagge is 'let drop;' half-clam'd is 'halfclemmed,' 'half-starved;' for 'cleares his heart' Mr Bullen reads 'cleaves;' putry (in the old editions, pury) is 'putrid.' Night is thus prayed for: And now, yee sootie coursers of the night, Nightfall is described: The gloomie wing of Night begins to stretch And daybreak: For see, the dapple gray coursers of the morne In the Insatiate Countesse Night is personified: Feare is my vassal; when I frowne he flyes; A storm at sea is recorded with superfluous conceits and overstrained imagery, carrying lack of dignity over the verge of the ridiculous: We gan discourse; when loe! the sea grewe mad, Nowe gustie flawes shook up the very heeles Of our maine mast, whilst the keene lightning shot There are editions of Marston by Halliwell-Phillipps (1856), from which the above extracts are, with a few minor alterations, transcribed, and by Mr A. H. Bullen (1887). Philip Massinger (1583–1640), one of the most accomplished and eloquent dramatists of his time, lived the precarious life of a writer for the stage, died in poverty, and was buried at St Saviour's, Southwark, in the grave of his colleague, Fletcher, with no other memorial than the note in the parish register, Philip Massinger, a stranger'-meaning he did not belong to the parish. His father, as appears from the dedication of one of his plays, was in the service of the Earl of Pembroke, was entrusted with letters to Queen Elizabeth, and was otherwise employed in confidential negotiations. Whether Philip, who was born at Salisbury, as a page ever wandered in the marble halls and pictured galleries of Wilton, that princely seat of old magnificence, where Sir Philip Sidney composed his Arcadia, is not certainly known; in 1602 he was entered of St Alban Hall, Oxford. He seems to have quitted the university abruptly in 1606, and to have commenced writing for the stage. The first notice of him is in Henslowe's diary, about 1613, where he makes a joint application, with N. Field and R. Daborne, two other playwrights, for a loan of £5, without which, they say, they could not be bailed. The sequel of Massinger's history is but an enumeration of his plays. He was found dead in his bed in his house on the Bankside one March morning in 1639-40. He wrote a great number of pieces, of which fifteen written by him unaided have been preserved. The manuscripts of eight others of his plays were in existence in the middle of the eighteenth century, but they fell into the hands of John Warburton, Somerset herald, who had collected no less than fifty-five English dramas of the golden period, many of them rare, some of them unique, but all of them. through his carelessness, burnt for kitchen uses by his ignorant domestic. Much of Massinger's best work is inextricably mixed up with that of Fletcher and others. It is difficult to say how far he was concerned in the authorship of plays that pass under the name of 'Beaumont and Fletcher.' Probably the earliest of his extant plays is the unpleasant Unnatural Combat, printed in 1639. The first pub lished is The Virgin Martyr (1622), partly by Dekker. In 1623 was published The Duke of Milan, a fine but rhetorical tragedy. The Bondman, The Renegado, and The Parliament of Love were licensed in 1623-24. The Roman Actor (1626) abounds in eloquent declamation. TH Great Duke of Florence, produced in 1627, has a delightful love-story, whereas Massinger's female characters are usually unattractive and sometimes odious. The Maid of Honour (1628) is, like the Bondman, full of political allusions. The Picture, licensed in 1629, has an improbable plot. The Emperor of the East (1631) has the same merits and faults as the Duke of Milan. Field joined Massinger in writing The Fatal Dowry (1632). The City Madam (licensed in 1632) and A New Win to Pay Old Debts (which, printed in 1633, kept the stage till well into the nineteenth century, are Massinger's most masterly comedies-brilliant satirical studies, though without warmth geniality. A Very Woman (1634) is Fletcher's Woman's Plot revised by Massinger. The Guar dian dates from 1633, The Bashful Lover from 1636. Believe as you List (1631) was first printed from MS. in 1844. The powerful and state. Tragedy of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt (1619. by Massinger and Fletcher, was first printed in vol. ii. of Bullen's Old Plays (First Series). Some of Massinger's plays are (as Coleridge said as interesting as a novel; others are as solid as a treatise on political philosophy. His verse, though fluent and flexible, lacks the music and magic of Shakespeare's. No writer repeats himself more frequently. His comedy resembles Ben Jonson's in its eccentric strength, in its exhibitions of wayward human nature, and in its use of rather typical and conventional characters. The greediness of avarice, the tyranny of unjust laws, and the miseries of poverty are drawn with a powerful hand. The luxuries and vices of a city life afford scope for indignant and forcible invective. Genuine humour or sprightliness Massinger had none. His dialogue is often coarse and indecorous, and his low characters are too depraved. His genius was rather descriptive and rhetorical than impassioned or dramatic; yet there is a certain serious dignity that impresses. The versification is smooth and mellifluous; in his early plays rhyme and prose are freely used; in the later, mainly blank verse. Charles Lamb said that his English style is purer and freer from violent metaphors and harsh constructions than that of any contemporary dramatist. The influence of Spanish and Italian models is conspicuous; he was skilled in his management of the plot, and showed mastery of stage mechanism. Pregnant lines or short passages in the plays are: Better the devil's than a woman's slave;' 'Death hath a thousand doors to let out life;' 'Gold can do much, but beauty more;' 'Ambition, in a private man a vice, is in a prince the virtue ;' 'Virtue not in action is a vice;' and 'When we go not forward, we go backward.' Massinger's best woman character is Camiola in the Maid of Honour. It is in her mouth (speaking to the King of Sicily) that Massinger puts a very frank impeachment, controversial rather than poetic, of the sacrosanct doctrine of the divine right of kings: With your leave I must not kneel, sir, (Since, when you are unjust, the deity Which you may challenge as a king, parts from you,) 'Twas never read in holy writ or moral, That subjects on their loyalty were obliged To love their sovereign's vices. Camiola, too, it is who, when she hears that her lover is imprisoned by his enemy and abandoned by his king, says-her loyalty all but forgotten Pray you stand off! If I do not mutter treason to myself My heart will break; and yet I will not curse him; He is my king. From 'A New Way to pay Old Debts.' Sir Giles Overreach. To my wish we are private. I come not to make offer with my daughter A certain portion; that were poor and trivial : In one word, I pronounce all that is mine, In lands or leases, ready coin or goods, With her, my lord, comes to you; nor shall you have I live too long, since every year I'll add To think me such. How do you like this seat? Lov. 'Tis a wholesome air, And well built pile; and she that's mistress of it, Worthy the large revenue. Over. She the mistress! Over. You do conclude too fast; not knowing me, Nor the engines that I work by. 'Tis not alone The Lady Allworth's lands, for those once Wellborn's Shall e'er be sullied with one taint or spot I write nil ultra to my proudest hopes. By your sinister practices? |