The scaffold, a frequent sight, is erected for her on the stage; she wants to speak: "Off with her head!" cries Medina; "off with her head," will a laughing echo repeat, in the subterranean world where Alice is to meet the wicked queen of "Wonderland."

By his fondness for poetical images, often out of place, and for ornamentation, often in very bad taste, Marston belongs to his time, writing as average poets did in his day. He cannot name morning or evening without speaking of the "bright silver curtains" drawn by "infant morn," and of the "imprison'd spirits" who "revisit earth" at nightfall while, he assures us, "lions' half-clampd entrails roar for food." Tears and sighs inspire him with | effusions almost always ridiculous. Standing beneath an air-hole in her prison, Mellida exclaims:

O here, here is a vent to pass my sighs.

I have surcharged the dungeon with my plaints.
Prison and heart will burst, if void of vent.

Lust and murders: these words sum up also the whole series of the tragical dramas of Webster, Ford, and Tourneur, but, cleverer artists and playwrights of more power, they know far better how to seize the spectator, how to bind him and prevent his going away with a sneer. For there is no half way; if the writer of such plays does not succeed in tying his spectator hand and foot to the rack, instead of exciting his anguish, he will excite his laughter. Webster barely avoids this in his "Vittoria) Corombona," but his "Duchess of Malfy" is perhaps the best drama of its kind. His personages are not

I

"The White Divel, Or, The Tragedy of . . . Vittoria Corombona, the famous Venetian Curtizan," London, 1612, 4to, acted ab. 1609, or a little later (debauch, murders, and poisonings; the duke kills his wife by coating with poison the lips of a portrait of himself which she kissed every evening). – "The Tragedy of the Dutchesse Of Malfy. As it was Presented privately, at

puppets; real blood runs through their veins, and their hearts are seared by real passions. They can say, as the duchess to her steward, honest Antonio, with whom she has fallen in love, to the man's great dismay :

Sir, be confident :

What is't distracts you? This is flesh and blood, sir;

'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster

Kneels at my husband's tomb.

As violent in their hatred as she is impetuous in her love, her brothers, who were looking forward to the inheritance of a childless widow, prepare at once the infernal torment that will rid them of her and be their vengeance. The unfortunate woman, surrounded by madmen who dance and howl, will see herself dying by degrees, will hear the prayers for the dead said before the coffin prepared for her, beside a wax image figuring the corpse of the man she adored. The innocent and the guilty all perish at the end in a wholesale massacre.

Very far from the lyricism and the exquisite tenderness of a Shakespeare, Webster is, however, an artist; controlling better a far less irrepressible genius, he knows how to place at the most appropriate spot his flowers of poetry. These are sometimes very beautiful; the part of the pensive Antonio is strewn with them. Discarded, the Black-Friers, and publiquely at the Globe," acted 1613-14 (Chambers), pr. 1623; the plot is derived from Paynter, who had it from Belleforest ("Histoires tragiques '—" L'infortuné mariage du Seigneur Antonio Bologne avec la Duchesse de Malfi, et la mort piteuse de tous les deux," story xix), who had it from Bandello. John Webster, born ab. 1580, was apprenticed to a tailor, then busied himself with the stage, and first belonged to the band of hack-writers in Henslowe's pay; but he wrote his best works alone; the date of his death is unknown (1625 ?). "Dramatic Works," ed. Hazlitt, 1857, 4 vols. 8vo. ; "The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfy," ed. M. W. Sampson, "Belles Lettres Series," 1904.

"Here, by a Mad-man, this song is sung to a dismale kind of musique: O, let us howle . . ."-"Here the daunce consisting of 8 Mad-men, with musicke answerable thereunto" (iv. 2).

as he believes, by the duchess, he meditates on the uncertain fate of those who serve:

'Tis even like him, that in a winter night,
Takes a long slumber o'er a dying fire,

A-loath to part from't; yet parts thence as cold,
As when he first sat down.

Antonio walks, musing, in the ruins of a cloister, and with a melancholy worthy of the romantics of a later date

murmurs:

I do love these ancient ruins.

We never tread upon them, but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history:
And questionless, here in this open court,
Which now lies naked to the injuries
Of stormy weather, some men lie interr'd
Lov'd the church so well, and gave so largely to't,
They thought it should have canopied their bones
Till doom's-day; but all things have their end:
Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men,
Must have like death that we have.

Lust and murders. With a vigor in his style and a wealth of lugubrious inventions superior to any of his rivals, Cyril Tourneur offers us, more than any one else, dramas truly filled

D'os et de chair meurtris et trainés dans la fange.

The mud is nauseous and the shreds of flesh hideous to behold a chaos of blood and filth, monstrous crimes and atrocious revenges; lovers asleep in a churchyard, each with a skull as a pillow, a rape in the same place, under the eyes of the spectators, the criminal discovering

"Plays and Poems," ed. J. C. Collins, 1878, 2 vols. 8vo. "The Revengers Tragoedie" was printed in 1607; “The Atheist's Tragedie," though probably written first, was published in 1611. These two plays are in the "Mermaid Series," ed. J. A. Symonds.

at the last moment that he had to do with a corpse, and a man's corpse, himself being a priest, "a puritan!"

...

"The Revenger's Tragedy" is another maelstrom of unbridled passions; they figure in the play under their own proper name: Lussurioso, Ambitioso, Vindice, Castiza; the place, as abstract as the personages, being a nameless "city in Italy," a land of poisons and debauch according to the poetics of the day. The town is governed by a libidinous duke and an incestuous duchess, seconded by children worthy of such parents. The duchess seduces a bastard son of her husband's; the husband ravishes or kills all the pretty women in his states; an unusual type of man in real life, a very common one in the theatre of the period. Vindice, the Revenger, another variant of Hamlet, opens the play addressing the skull of his betrothed, who would remain chaste and whom the duke has poisoned. He has this relic always about him, and draws it at times from his pocket. Disguised so as to be taken for a procurer and thus prepare his revenge, he sends the duke to a secluded pavilion where he will meet the handsomest woman in the world. The woman turns out to be a dummy, its face covered with a mask; under the mask the skull of the betrothed, whose mouth has been smeared with poison; at his first kiss the duke falls dying. He has time, before closing his eyes, to witness in the same pavilion the incestuous meeting of his wife and his bastard. Two acts are left the author in which to kill the few survivors, to show comets and storms, introduce a masque, exhibit freshly cut heads, show forth the chastity of Castiza, the ambition of Ambitioso, and the lust of Lussurioso. He comes back also to the loves of the duchess, kills right and left, in other words, is at his wit's end.

His great merit is his style, of extraordinary energy and picturesqueness. What he sees he makes us see:

When he was afoot,

He made a goodly show under a pent-house,

And when he rid, his hat would check the signs
And clatter barbers' basons.

His words are full of strange life, his language is rich in images; he can open to view, in a few lines, those distant vistas that only a true poet is able to discover. Even after Hamlet's monologues, those of Vindice can be read: his gruesome ironies, the temptations by which he tests the heart of his own mother, his apostrophes to Night the abettor of great crimes, are worthy of a true dramatist, unfortunately gone astray in the circles of an unheard-of " Inferno."

Lust and murders. Such is again the subject of the "Broken Heart," "Love's Sacrifice," "'Tis Pity she's a Whore," by Ford, who has also, as principal literary' merit, his style, an easier one and less fever-burnt than Tourneur's. But as for the means of "pleasing," they are no less unpleasant; we are kept knee-deep in mud. "The gravity of the subject may easily excuse the lightness of the title," says Ford in the dedication of ""Tis Pity": the subject is an incest; this crime is the centre, the 'Addressing his betrothed's skull, he says:

Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours
For thee? For thee does she undo herself?

Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships,
For the poor benefit of a bewildering minute?
Why does yon fellow falsify highways,
And put his life between the judge's lips,
To refine such a thing?

See, ladies, with false forms

You deceive men, but cannot deceive worms. (iii. 4.)

Cf. "The Atheist's Tragedy," iv. 3.

All three printed 1633, apparently acted between 1626 and 1630. "Works," ed. Gifford and Dyce, reprinted, with additions, by Bullen, 1895, 3 vols.; "Dramatische Werke," ed. Bang, Louvain, begun 1908; selected plays in the "Mermaid Series." John Ford, of a good family of Devonshire, was born in 1586, belonged to the Middle Temple, d. later than 1639.