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be better illustrated than by his treatment of the great myths as compared with the method of Sophocles. Both these poets, for example, represent the story of Edipus, but whereas in the Edipus Rex, after the terrible catastrophe, we see no more of Jocasta, Seneca, wishing in his play to exhaust all the possibilities of horror, positively brings her face to face with her husband-son. In the same way, in his Hercules Furens, after the hero has put on the poisoned garment, Seneca makes the climax of the tragedy a display of his physical sufferings, piling up images in his mouth to help the reader to conceive the horrible pain he is enduring; in the Trachinia, on the contrary, all the furious actions and speeches of Hercules precede the discovery that his death is the effect of destiny and mischance, not of deliberate crime; the close of the play is devoted to exhibiting the manly resolution and unselfish thought for others with which he faces his doom.

Seneca was the parent of the romantic melodrama of the Elizabethan theatre. Following the example of Marlowe, all the English poets who wrote in this manner imitated the extravagances of the Roman dramatist, but they replaced his stoical philosophy with the moral system popularised by The Prince of Machiavelli. Three distinct types of melodrama are found among their plays: (1) the Domestic Tragedy, represented by such plays as Arden of Feversham and The Yorkshire Tragedy; (2) Foreign, Domestic, and Political Tragedies, of which the chief examples are Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois, Conspiracy, and Tragedy of Byron, and Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany; (3) Tragedies of Crime and Revenge, founded on tales and legends, such as Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, Marston's Antonio and Mellida, and Antonio's Revenge, Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Webster's Duchess of Malfy, and Tourneur's Atheist's and Revenger's Tragedy. these, as a rule, bear on their face the signs that they were intended to gratify certain well-ascertained expectations in the audience: they resemble each other in the selection of subject, stories of murder, revenge, conspiracy; in their exhibition of mean and villainous characters; in their use

All

of the machinery of stage horror,-skulls, spectres, skeletons, strangulations, poisoned bowls, midnight bells, churchyards, and the like; and also in the strength of the imagery by means of which they elevate the minds of the spectators into sympathy with scenes of gloom and bloodshed. At the same time, as several of these poets were men of real imagination and learning, they showed much versatility in the treatment of their subjects, and their respective styles are stamped with a character which makes each of them deserving of separate consideration.

In 1592 was published :—

The lamentable and true Tragedie of M. Arden of Feversham in Kent, who was most wickedlye murdered by the meanes of his disloyall and wanton wife, who, for the love she bore to one Mosbie, hyred two desperat ruffins, Blackwill and Shakbag, to kill him. Wherein is showed the great malice and dissimulation of a wicked woman, the unsatiable desire of filthier lust, and the shamefull end of all murderers. Imprinted at London for Edward White, dwelling at the little North door of Paul's Church, at the Signe of the Gun.

The play so described, is, in my opinion, the finest poetical melodrama in the English language, and often approaches the heights of genuine tragedy. It is founded on the murder of Thomas Arden or Ardern, Mayor of Feversham, which was perpetrated on Sunday the 15th February 1550-51, and which made so deep an impression on the public imagination that Holinshed gives up several pages to recording it in his Chronicle, apologising to the reader as follows for his exceptional treatment of the event:

The which murder for the horribleness thereof, though otherwise it may seem but a private matter, and therefore as it were impertinent to this history, I have thought good to set it forth somewhat at large, having the instructions delivered to me by them that have used some diligence to gather the true understanding of the circumstances.1

In the historian's narrative there is much epic vivacity, and the dramatist, whoever he was, in converting it into a

1 Holinshed's Chronicle (1st edition), 1577, p. 1703.

form fit for the stage, has shown so powerful an imagination, that the question has been raised whether the play can have proceeded from any mind but one. Contrary answers have been given by competent critics. An acute and well-informed writer in The Edinburgh Review says:

The third play, Arden of Feversham, a domestic tragedy, would, in point of absolute merit, have done no discredit to the early manhood of Shakspeare himself; but both in conception and execution it is quite unlike even his earliest manner, while, on the other hand, its date cannot possibly be removed so far back as the time before which his own style had demonstrably been found.1

Mr. Swinburne is of a different opinion:

I cannot but finally take heart to say, even in the absence of all external or traditional testimony, that it seems to me not pardonable merely or permissible, but simply logical and reasonable, to set down this poem, a young man's work on the face of it, as the possible work of no man's youthful hand but Shakespeare's.2

With this conclusion I unreservedly agree. And since I dissent as decidedly from every word of the passage I have cited from The Edinburgh Review, I give here my reasons for believing the play to be Shakespeare's, especially as the extracts I shall make from the play will enable the reader to form his own opinion of the merits of Arden of Feversham.

I. No other dramatist but Shakespeare in 1592-not Marlowe or Kyd, Greene or Peele-could have produced a play so admirable in structure, distinguished by such variety of character, such a profound knowledge of human motives, and expressed in language at once so rich, so lofty, and so simple.

2. On the other hand, in respect both of action, character, sentiment and diction, the style of the tragedy is precisely what I have already shown to have been the style of Shakespeare in 1592.

The author follows Holinshed with the same minute attention to detail as Shakespeare shows in King Henry VI. In the treatment of his subject he has always an

1 Edinburgh Review, No. lxxi., p. 471.

2 Study of Shakespeare, p. 141. By A. C. Swinburne.

eye to Marlowe, as may be seen from the direct imitation of that poet in the following melodramatic description of a robber:

WILL.

What manner of man was he? BRADSHAW. A lean-faced writhen knave,

Hawk-nosed, and very hollow eyed,

With mighty furrows in his stormy brows,
Long hair down his shoulders curled ;
His chin was bare, but on his upper lip

A mutchado which he wound about his ear.1

Marlowe is also imitated in the Machiavellian figure of Mosbie, characteristically modified as this is by the uneasy conscience which (with the exception of Aaron, Iago, and possibly Edmund) accompanies all the villains of Shakespeare:

Disturbed thoughts drives me from company,
And dries my marrow with their watchfulness;
Continual trouble of my moody brain
Feebles my body by excess of drink,

And nips me, as the bitter north east wind
Doth check the tender blossoms in the spring.
Well fares the man, howe'er his cates do taste,
That tables not with foul suspicion ;
And he but pines among his delicates,
Whose troubled mind is stuffed with discontent.
My golden time was when I had no gold;
Though then I wanted yet I slept secure ;
My daily toil begat me night's repose,
My night's repose made daylight fresh to me.
But since I climbed the top-bough of the tree,
And sought to build my nest among the clouds,
Each gentle stirring gale doth shake my bed,
And make me dread my downfall to the earth.
But whither doth contemplation carry me?
The way I seek to find where pleasure dwells
Is hedged beneath me that I cannot back
But needs must on, although to danger's gate.
Then, Arden, perish thou by that decree:

For Greene doth ear the land and weed thee up
To make my harvest nothing but pure corn.2

1 Arden of Feversham, Act ii. Sc. 1. Compare Marlowe's Jew of Malta,

Act. iv. :

That when he speaks draws out his grisly beard,
And draws it twice or thrice across his ear.

2 Arden of Feversham, Act iii. Sc. 5.

Mosbie goes on to say, in true Machiavellian style, that he must remove out of his way all his confederates in the contemplated murder. I do not think that any one who compares the diction of the above passage with the speeches of the Bastard in the first draft of King John will be of the Edinburgh reviewer's opinion that it is "quite unlike Shakespeare's earliest manner."1 Again, if the agony of powerful imagination in the conscience-haunted servant, Michael, be compared with the deathbed scene of Cardinal Beaufort in the Second Part of King Henry VI., we see that it is just the kind of work which Shakespeare would have been likely to produce at this period of his dramatic development :

MICHAEL. Conflicting thoughts, encampèd in my breast,
Awake me with the echo of their strokes,

And I, a judge to censure either side,
Can give to neither wishèd victory.
My master's kindness pleads to me for life
With just demand, and I must grant it him :
My mistress, she hath forced me with an oath,
For Susan's sake, the which I may not break,
For that is nearer than a master's love.
That grim-faced fellow, pitiless Black Will,
And Shakebag stern in bloody stratagem,
(Two rougher ruffians never lived in Kent,)
Have sworn my death if I infringe my vow :-
A dreadful thing to be considered of.
Methinks I see them with their bolstered hair,
Staring and grinning in thy gentle face,
And in their ruthless hands their daggers drawn
Insulting o'er thee with a peck of oaths,
Whilst thou, submissive, pleading for relief,
Art mangled by their ireful instruments.—
Methinks I hear them ask where Michael is,
And pitiless Black Will cries: "Stab the slave;
The peasant will detect the tragedy."

The wrinkles in his foul death-threatening face
Gape open wide, like graves to swallow men.

My death to him is but a merriment,

And he will murder me to make him sport.

He comes, he comes. Ah, Master Francklin, help,
Call up the neighbours, or we are but dead.2

1 See the passage cited on p. 60, and Appendix, pp. 464-465.
2 Arden of Feversham, Act iii. Sc. 1.

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