It is the greatest enemy to law That can be; for it doth embrace all wrongs, And so chains up lawyer's and women's tongues. 'Tis the perpetual prisoner's liberty, His walks and orchards; 'tis the bond slave's freedom, And makes him seem proud of each iron chain, As though he wore it more for state than pain: It is the beggar's music and thus sings, Although their bodies beg, their souls are kings. (From Part I. Act v. sc. ii.) female The Magdalene pathetically contrasts Nothing did make me, when I loved them best, That followed her went with a bashful glance : (From Part II. Act Iv. sc. i.) Thus Hippolito laments, gazing on the portrait of his love, believed to be dead : My Infelice's face, her brow, her eye, The dimple on her cheek: and such sweet skill No lip worth tasting. Here the worms will feed, (From Part I. Act iv. sc. i.) In Old Fortunatus the old hero describes court life, from painful experience, to his (oddly-named) sons Ampedo and Andelocia : For still in all the regions I have seen, I scorned to crowd among the muddy throng No; I still boldly stept into their courts: For there to live 'tis rare, O 'tis divine! There shall you see troops of chaste goddesses, And. Oh, how my soul is rapt to a third heaven! In all perfection, no way blemished? Fort. In some courts shall you see Ambition And down they tumble to destruction. For since the Heaven's strong arms teach kings to stand, To guard it from the strokes of traitorous hands. (From Act II. sc. ii.) Orleans, distracted by his love, defends himself: Galloway. O call this madness in; see from the windows Of every eye derision thrusts out her cheeks Orl. Ha, ha, I laugh at them, are they not mad That in that anger he might smite life down I laugh because sweet Agripyne's not there, (From Act III. sc. i.) There is something like Marlowe in much of Dekker's blank verse, something Shakespearean in some turns of his thought; and single phrases linger in the memory-'O what a heaven is love! O what a hell!' 'Honest labour bears a lovely face.' Of Dekker's prose tracts and works, as various in subject as descriptions of the plague in London or of the rogueries of horse-dealers, and highly devotional exercises, the best known is The Gull's Hornbook (1609), containing descriptions of the manners and customs of the times. This work is largely indebted to Dedekind's Grobianus (Frankfort, 1549), a Latin satire on drunkenness and the debaucheries of the time, translated into German rhyming couplets and expanded by Scheidt in 1557. Dekker had translated part of the Latin version into English verse, but, on reflection, not liking the subject, he says, he 'altered the shape, and of a Dutchman fashioned a mere Englishman,' assuming the character of a guide to the fashionable follies of the town, but only on purpose to ridicule them: The The Old World and the New weighed together. Good clothes are the embroidered trappings of pride, and good cheer the very eryngo-root1 of gluttony, so that fine backe and ful bellies are coach horses to two of the seven deadly sins; in the boots of which coach Lechery and Sloth sit like the waiting-maid. In a most desperate state therefore do tailors and cooks stand by means of their offices; for both these trades are apple-squires 2 to that couple of sins. The one invents more fantastic fashions than France hath worn since her first stone was laid; the other more lickerish epicurean dishes than were ever served up to Gallonius's table. Did man, think you, come wrangling into the world about no better matters, than all his lifetime to make privy searches in Birchin Lane for whalebone doublets, or for pies of nightingales' tongues in Heliogabalus's kitchen? No, no; the first suit of apparel that ever mortal man put on came neither from the mercer's shop nor the merchant's warehouse: Adam's bill would have been taken then, sooner than a knight's bond now; yet was he great in nobody's books for satin and velvets. silkworms had something else to do in those days than to set up looms, and be free of the weavers; his breeches were not so much worth as King Stephen's, that cost but a poor noble; for Adam's holyday hose and doublet were of no better stuff than plain fig-leaves, and Eve's best gown of the same piece: there went but a pair of shears between them. An antiquary in this town has yet some of the powder of those leaves dried to shew. Tailors then were none of the twelve companies: their hall, that now is larger than some dorpes among the Netherlands, was then no bigger than a Dutch butcher's shop: they durst not strike down their customers with large bills: Adam cared not an apple-paring for all their lousy hems. There was then neither the Spanish slop, nor the skipper's galligaskin, the Danish sleeve sagging down like a Welsh wallet, the Italian's close strosser, nor the French standing collar: your treblequadruple dædalian ruffs, nor your stiff-necked rabatos, 6 that have more arches for pride to row under than can stand under five London bridges, durst not then set themselves out in print; for the patent for starch could by no means be signed. Fashions then was counted a disease, and horses died of it: but now, thanks to folly, it is held the only rare physic; and the purest golden asses live upon it. As for the diet of that Saturnian age, it was like their attire, homely. A salad and a mess of leek-porridge 8 was a dinner for a far greater man than ever the Turk was. Potato-pies and custards stood like the sinful suburbs of cookery, and had not a wall so much as a handful high built round about them. There were no daggers then, nor no chairs. Crookes's ordinary, in those parsimonious days, had not a capon's leg to throw at a dog. O golden world! The suspicious Venetian carved not his meat with a silver pitchfork, neither did the sweet-toothed Englishman shift a dozen of trenchers at one meal; Piers Ploughman laid the cloth, and Simplicity brought in the voider. 10 How wonderfully is the world altered! And no marvel, for it has lain sick almost five thousand years; so that it is no more like the old theatre du monde than old Paris Garden is like the king's garden at Paris. 11 1 As a provocative medicine. 2 Pimps. 3 Gallonius, town-crier at Rome about 150 B.C., was proverbial for wealth and gluttony. 4 Thorpes, villages. 5 Trosser, trouser. 6 Ruffs. 7 The fluting or puckering. 8 Instruments to fix the meat while cutting. 9 Forks were introduced from Italy about 1600. 10 The basket in which broken meat was carried from the table. 11 The Bear Garden at Bankside. How a Gallant should behave himself in Paul's Walks.1 Being weary with sailing up and down alongst these shores of Barbaria, here let us cast our anchor; and nimbly leap to land in our coasts, whose fresh air shall be so much the more pleasing to us, if the ninnyhammer, whose perfection we labour to set forth, have so much foolish wit left him as to choose the place where to suck in; for that true humorous gallant that desires to pour himself into all fashions, if his ambition be such to excel even compliment itself, must as well practise to diminish his walks as to be various in his salads, curious in his tobacco, or ingenious in the trussing up of a new Scotch hose; all which virtues are excellent, and able to maintain him; especially if the old worm-eaten farmer, his father, be dead, and left him five hundred a year: only to keep an Irish hobby,2 an Irish horseboy, and himself like a gentleman. He therefore that would strive to fashion his legs to his silk stockings, and his proud gait to his broad garters, let him whiff down these observations. ... Your mediterranean isle is then the only gallery wherein the pictures of all your true fashionate and complemental gulls are and ought to be hung up. Into that gallery carry your neat body; but take heed you pick out such an hour when the main shoal of islanders are swimming up and down. And first observe your doors of entrance, and your exit; not much unlike the players at the theatres: keeping your decorums, even in phantasticality. As for example: if you prove to be a northern gentleman, I would wish you to pass through the north door, more often especially than any of the other; and so, according to your countries, take note of your entrances. Now for your venturing into the walk. Be circumspect and wary what pillar you come in at; and take heed in any case, as you love the reputation of your honour, that you avoid the serving-man's log, and approach not within five fathom of that pillar; but bend your course directly in the middle line, that the whole body of the church may appear to be yours; where, in view of all, you may publish your suit in what manner you affect most, either with the slide of your cloak from the one shoulder; and then you must, as 'twere in anger, suddenly snatch at the middle of the inside, if it be taffeta at the least; and so by that means your costly lining is bewrayed, or else by the pretty advantage of compliment. But one note by the way do I especially woo you to, the neglect of which makes many of our gallants cheap and ordinary, that by no means you be seen above four turns; but in the fifth make yourself away, either in some of the seamsters' shops, the new tobacco-office, or amongst the booksellers, where, if you cannot read, exercise your smoke, and inquire who has writ against this divine weed, &c. For this withdrawing yourself a little will much benefit your suit, which else, by too long walking, would be stale to the whole spectators; but howsoever, if Paul's jacks be once up with their elbows, and quarrelling to strike eleven, as soon as ever the clock has parted them, and ended the fray with his hammer, let not the Duke's gallery contain you any longer, but pass away apace in open view; in which departure, if by chance you either encounter, or aloof off throw your inquisitive eye upon any knight or squire, being your familiar, salute him not by his name of Sir such a one, or so; but call him Ned, or Jack, &c. This will set off your estimation with great men; and if, though there be a dozen companies between you, 'tis the better he call aloud to you, for that is most genteel, to know where he shall find you at two o'clock; tell him at such an ordinary, or such; and be sure to name those that are dearest, and whither none but your gallants resort. After dinner you may appear again, having translated yourself out of your English cloth cloak into a light Turkey grogram, if you have that happiness of shifting; and then be seen, for a turn or two, to correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gums with a wrought handkerchief; it skills not whether you dined or no that is best known to your stomach; or in what place you dined; though it were with cheese, of your own mother's making, in your chamber, or study. Now if you chance to be a gallant not much crossed among citizens; that is, a gallant in the mercer's books, exalted for satins and velvets; if you be not so much blessed to be crossed (as I hold it the greatest blessing in the world to be great in no man's books), your Paul's walk is your only refuge: the Duke's tomb is a sanctuary, and will keep you alive from worms and landrats that long to be feeding on your carcass: there you may spend your legs in winter a whole afternoon; converse, plot, laugh, and talk anything; jest at your creditor, even to his face; and in the evening, even by lamp-light, steal out; and so cozen a whole covey of abominable catchpoles. 2 Pacing 1 Old St Paul's Church was a common promenade. horse. 3 The middle aisle of St Paul's. 4 A portion set apart for gentlemen's servants. 5 Tobacco is satirised not merely here and in King James's Counterblast (1604), but in Ben Jonson's plays and innumerable pamphlets and satires. 6 Automaton striking apparatus of the clock. The tomb of Sir John Beauchamp, son of Guy, Earl of Warwick, was unaccountably called 'Duke Humphrey's Tomb,' and the dinnerless persons who lounged here were said to have 'dined with Duke Humphrey.' Sleep. For do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is: it is so inestimable a jewel, that, if a tyrant would give his crown for an hour's slumber, it cannot be bought: of so beautiful a shape is it, that, though a man live with an empress, his heart cannot be at quiet till he leaves her embracements to be at rest with the other: yea, so greatly are we indebted to this kinsman of death, that we owe the better tributary half of our life to him; and there is good cause why we should do so; for sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want, of wounds, of cares, of great men's oppressions, of captivity, whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure as kings. Can we therefore surfeit on this delicate ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that, whereof to taste too little, tumbles us into a churchyard ; and to use it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam? No, no. Look upon Endymion, the moon's minion, who slept threescore and fifteen years, and was not a hair the worse for it! Dekker's plays were collected by R. H. Shepherd in 4 vols. (1873), and his pamphlets in 5 vols. of Dr Grosart's 'Huth Library (1884-86). Mr Rhys edited five plays for the Mermaid Series' (1887). See Mr Swinburne's Essay (1887). John Webster.-The name of John Webster is the type of the obscurity which broods over so many of the poets of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. There is no one, of equal eminence, in the range of English literature of whom so little is known. Not a positive fact, not a reminiscence, not an anecdote, brings this shadowy figure before us for a moment, and we have to construct our impression of him entirely from his works. He was one born free of the Merchant-Tailors' Company ;' according to Gildon, who wrote nearly a century later, he was clerk of St Andrew's parish in Holborn. It is thought that he began to write for the stage in 1602; the first examples of his work which we know that we possess are the 'additions' he made to Marston's Malcontent in 1604; of these the fine 'induction' is the most notable. It has been supposed that he joined Dekker in writing Westward Ho in 1603 and Northward Ho in 1605, but these comedies were not printed until 1607. In the first of these Dekker's genius is predominant; the second, which is written in harsh prose, offers nothing characteristic of either poet. Webster was associated with Dekker in 1607 in the tragical history of Sir Thomas Wyat. Cæsar's Fall and The Two Harpies, still earlier collaborations, have disappeared altogether. It is conjectured that The White Devil, or the Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona, was acted in 1608, but it was not printed until 1612. It was followed on the boards by Appius and Virginia (published in 1654), by The Devil's Law-case (published in 1623), and The Duchess of Malfi (probably acted in 1612, although not printed until 1623). These four are the plays upon which Webster's reputation is supported, and they belong to the period immediately succeeding upon the retirement of Shakespeare to the country. By the time of Shakespeare's death Webster had in all probability ceased to produce dramatic work of importance. The City pageant of 1624 was 'invented and written by John Webster, merchanttailor,' and he is supposed to be the cloth-worker of that name who died in 1625. It will be seen that this brief account is full of contestable matter, yet it contains all that can even be guessed with any safety regarding the life and actions of the author of the White Devil. Webster achieved little success in his own age, and was the object of no curiosity to the next. He was unknown until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Lamb and Hazlitt called attention to his merit. Since that time the fame of Webster has been more and more assured, and he holds a place below none of Shakespeare's satellites except Ben Jonson and Marlowe. Indeed, in the elements of pure tragedy he comes nearest to the master himself, and the Duchess of Malfi is unquestionably the most elevated tragic poem in the language not written by the pen of Shakespeare. 'No poet,' says Mr Swinburne, ascending to a still higher flight of praise, 'has ever so long and so successfully sustained at their utmost height and intensity the expressed emotions and the united effects of terror and pity.' This is, indeed, the main quality of Webster, its subtlety of pathetic horror. It is hardly critical, however, in any comparative consideration of this poet, to omit to acknowledge his dramatic shortcomings. His plays are exceedingly ill-constructed; most of them are mere clusters of scenes, violently put together, and eked out with dumb-show, in a manner so primitive that we seem to have gone back a generation, and to be listening to a poet ignorant of what Shakespeare, and even Jonson and Fletcher, had added to the capacities of stage-effect. A bewildering inequality of execution is characteristic of every play of Webster's; this is less marked in Appius and Virginia, and perhaps in the Duchess of Malfi, than in the others. We are told that he was an extremely slow and painstaking writer, so that this apparent want of skill is not the result of heedlessness. But it invades even his versification, which is by turns among the best and among the worst which has come down to us from the early seventeenth century. The subjects which attracted Webster were all of an Italian source and character; he was attracted by the vehement types and issues provoked by a condition of society at once highly civilised and insolently lawless. He found exactly what he wanted in several contemporary stories of intrigue and murder in the courts of Italy. He was perhaps a poet who by force of circumstances was forced on to the stage, rather than a born dramatist; for he seems to crowd too many incidents into each scene, too much variety of psychological passion into each character, for the simplicity of dramatic action. It will be felt by most unprejudiced readers that the scenes of horror which close his two great tragedies have been too readily applauded by Lamb and those who have succeeded him. It is, surely, not in the somersaults of these scuffling and yelling marionettes that Webster does real justice to his noble genius as a tragic poet. He is often a sort of exalted Mrs Radcliffe in his unrestrained affection for all the nightmares of romance, but it is not for his poisoned daggers and clanking chains that we follow him spell-bound. Webster owes the exalted station which has at length been successfully claimed for him by his admirers to his penetration into the troubled sources of human emotion. In the White Devil and the Duchess of Malfi, his two great tragical poems, this quality is seen displayed with least reserve. It saves Webster from the mere bloodand-thunder rhetoric of some of his contemporaries, because it displays to him those tender and pitiful incidents which spring up like flowers along the road of crime, and not merely lighten its horror, but add to it an exquisite pathos. The fourth act of the Duchess of Malfi, where the fortitude of the Duchess is put to so many awful and unprecedented tests, and the terror and pity of the audience is augmented at every change of scene, is one of the most amazing passages of fantastic tragedy ever composed in any language. It reaches its climax in the dark colloquy between Bosola, disguised as an old man, and the hunted woman who is 'Duchess of Malfi still.' The same effects, in cruder form, are to be met with in the White Devil, where the demons drag Vittoria downward, with her last cry, 'I am lost forever!' ringing in our ears. This penetration and inventive power concentrated on violent emotion give Webster a unique place among poets. He would be still more amazing than he is were it possible for us to believe that he was not influenced by the tragedies of Shakespeare. But although he owes much to this overwhelming predecessor, Webster has a character among English poets entirely his own; he is the highest expression that we possess of the sinister pursuit of moral beauty in the literature of crime and horror. From The White Devil.' 'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies; [hand: Cor. You are, I take it, the grave-maker. Flam. So. Zanche. 'Tis Flamineo. Cor. Will you make me such a fool? here's a white Can blood so soon be wash'd out? let me see ; When screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops, And the strange cricket i' th' oven sings and hops, When yellow spots do on your hands appear, Be certain then you of a corse shall hear. Out upon 't, how 'tis speckled! h'as handled a toad sure. Cowslip water is good for the memory: Pray, buy me three ounces of 't. Flam. I would I were from hence. Cor. Do you hear, sir? I'll give you a saying which my grandmother Was wont, when she heard the bell toll, to sing o'er Flam. Do, an you will, do. Cornelia sings. [Here is discovered, behind a traverse, the artificial figures of Antonio and his children, appearing as if they were dead.] Bosola. Look you, here's the piece from which 'twas ta'en. He doth present you this sad spectacle, That, now you know directly they are dead, For that which cannot be recovered. Duch. There is not between heaven and earth one wish I stay for after this. (From Act IV. sc. i.) Afterwards, in aggravation of his cruelty, the brother sends a troop of madmen from the hospital to make a concert round the duchess in prison. After they have danced and sung Bosola enters, disguised as an old man : Duch. Is he mad too?. Bos. I am come to make thy tomb. Duch. Ha! my tomb? Thou speak'st as if I lay upon my death-bed, Gasping for breath: Dost thou perceive me sick? Bos. Yes, and the more dangerously, since thy sickness is insensible. Duch. Thou art not mad sure: dost know me? Bos. Yes. Duch. Who am I? Bos. Thou art a box of worm-seed; at best but a salvatory of green mummy. What's this flesh? a little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earthworms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass; and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. Duch. Am not I thy duchess? Bos. Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot begins to sit on thy forehead, clad in gray hairs, twenty years sooner than on a merry milkmaid's. Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth should it lie with thee, would cry out as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow. Duch. I am Duchess of Malfi still. Bos. That makes thy sleeps so broken. Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright; Duch. Thou art very plain. Bos. My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living. I am a tomb-maker. Duch. And thou comest to make my tomb? Bos. Yes. |