APPIUS AND VIRGINIA: BY WEBSTER AND HEYWOOD BY HENRY DAVID GRAY When Rupert Brooke published his dissertation on Webster 1 he presented in an appendix some interesting evidence to show "that Appius and Virginia is largely, or entirely, the work of Thomas Heywood." Carried away by his discovery that Heywood's hand is to be found in the play, Brooke was naturally led into minimizing the evidences of Webster; he contended that the play was wholly in Heywood's manner, that its being attributed to Webster when it was published in quarto in 1654 was simply a false attribution like so many others, that only three of the nine parallels cited are significant and that these imply at most a casual revision of two scenes. He based Heywood's claim primarily upon some twenty distinctive words, some striking characteristics of Heywood, and upon the fact that the play as a whole is not like Webster. Additional Heywood words were noted by Mr. Arthur M. Clark, who supported Brooke's thesis.2 When, some time ago, I had occasion to read through the plays of Heywood without interruption, I turned to Appius and Virginia with the presupposition that Brooke was probably right; but the opening scene threw me completely off the scent. There was not a trace of Heywood in it that I could find. There was not to me the faintest suggestion of his style or his vocabulary. On the other hand, the imaginative conception of character so distinctive of Webster in his two great plays was not strongly in evidence; the characterization was overt, almost explicit. There was something of his figurative language, condensed thought, and spurty rather than even-flowing meter: 'twas my sleep's disturber, My diet's ill digestion, my melancholy Past physic's cure. But the absence of Webster's mannerisms and the relative regu 1 John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, 1916. "Modern Language Review, XVI, 1. larity of the verse seemed to preclude its being a play of either his middle or late period; and an early date is generally regarded as impossible. Unless this scene were, however, the early work of Webster, I should have to confess myself fairly beaten, for I could make no other assignment with the least conviction. The next scene, a brief one, might be anybody's; but with scene 3 one realizes at once why Brooke was led to his discovery. The wonder is only that others before him had not noticed the abundant evidences of Heywood; but the history of criticism is full of discoveries which were apparent only after they had been pointed out. Not one of the Brooke-Clark indications of Heywood is derived from scene 1, while scene 3 is full of them. Indeed, seven of the fifteen scenes of Appius and Virginia are wholly devoid of these Heywood signs; almost all of them are concentrated in three scenes, I, 3, IV, 2, and V, 3; and in each of these scenes I noticed some additional, though minor, characteristics of Heywood but never a trace of Webster. It is particularly to be noted that there are none whatever in the Trial scene, IV, 1; for this scene is as crammed with tokens of Webster as the three scenes mentioned above are replete with suggestions of Heywood. After reaching the conclusions which I shall present in this paper, I came upon the essay on Appius and Virginia by Mr. H. Dugdale Sykes, in which a valiant attempt is made to answer Rupert Brooke and to restore Appius and Virginia intact to Webster. Mr. Sykes takes note of the fact that the Heywood words come "in patches," but he attributes them to Webster's borrowing. He discredits the Heywood words as a test because he finds them also in A Cure for a Cuckold; but this very interesting fact is rather an argument for believing that Heywood had a share in that play also than against his presence in Appius and Virginia. A large majority of Mr. Sykes' Webster parallels are in the opening scene and the Trial scene; while only two, and these inconsequential ones, are taken from the scenes which are so full of Heywood characteristics. Adding my own findings to those of Brooke and In his Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama, 1924. * My allotment of scenes in C for C is contained in a note in The Modern Language Review, forthcoming. Sykes, let me give in tabular form the total number of indications of each author in the scenes thus far mentioned: It would seem a logical conclusion that the scenes were divided as the table indicates, and that we have in Appius and Virginia a play of composite authorship. Dr. Stoll has observed that Corbulo, the clown in Appius and Virginia, is akin to Heywood's clowns, and particularly to the one in The Rape of Lucrece. Brooke bases his argument for Heywood partly upon the Clown, and Sykes admits the resemblance though denying the implication. If Heywood is admitted as part-author of Appius and Virginia, no one would deny that the Clown was his; and on this count, together with the general impression of Heywood that the scenes give and the almost total absence of Webster parallels as well as of any indication of his style, I should add at once to the Heywood column II, 1, and III, 1 and 4. Aside from the Clown, the actual evidence in these scenes for either These Webster parallels are: What we will, we will What I have done, I have done What I have said, I have said (A and V) (DM) (C for C) But Heywood has "What I have done I ha' done" in LLW, and the C for C passage I believe was Heywood's. Death is terrible Unto a conscience that's oppressed with guilt (A and V) (DM) By such parallels as these I am not in the least impressed. Surely one may speak of a guilty conscience without having spoken of it elsewhere; and the rest is anything but a parallel. In view of the many indications of Heywood in these scenes, I think these parallels (if they are so) may safely be set aside. John Webster: The Periods of his Work, 1905. author is slight. For Heywood we have the distinctive word "palped," the less determinate "mediate," "to scandal," and "statist," and one weak parallel : Amongst curs a trindle-tail Your dogs are trindle-tails and curs For Webster we have the one parallel: Lord Appius doth intend me wrong, (A and V, 168) (WKK, I, 99) And under his smooth calmness cloaks a tempest (A and V, 161) ... like to calm weather At sea before a tempest, false hearts speak fair To those they intend most mischief (DM, 82) -a sentiment which is fairly common in Heywood as in others. Mr. Sykes considers that the echoes of Julius Caesar, one of which occurs in III, 1 ("The high Colossus that bestrides us all "), are too close for Heywood, who imitated Shakespeare "more or less unconsciously." He writes, after citing the Julius Caesar echoes: "Heywood never imitated Stakespeare in this way. Who did? Who but Webster?" I should reverse this judgment and offer in support the following instances from Heywood: A horse, a horse, ten kingdoms for a horse You have now leave to leave us I cram the name of rebel down thy throat May it please your highness sit? (2 Iron Age, 369) (Pericles, II, 1) (2 FMW, 341) (1 E IV, 16) 62) (1 E IV, To all at once good night. . . What, not at rest, my lord? 7 (RK & LS, 109, 114) So help me, O God, as I dissemble not (2 If You, 260) This line occurs in 1 Henry VI, III, 1, 140. The passage I think Shakespeare's; but Heywood does not confine his borrowings to Shakespeare. In 2 Iron Age, V, Helen with her looking glass asks, [Was] this the beauty That launched a thousand ships?" For my reasons for including Pericles in the above list see PMLA., XL, 507-529. this ring, A toy not worth the giving; yet I sooner Would part with life than this (2 If You, 308) Out of compassionate charity purpose to marry you Note also the aside "There's wormwood" and the Clown's puns on the shoemaker's "all" in A Maidenhead Well Lost. And this by no means exhausts the list. To me, the Julius Caesar echoes in III, 1, IV, 2, and V, 3, are distinctly indications of Heywood. But I find a marked contrast between the Corbulo of the three scenes I have now included as Heywood's and the Corbulo of III, 2. The Clown here is so different, both in character and language, as to imply that a different author is at work. And there are other reasons against assigning III, 2 to Heywood. Brooke admits that the inconsistency between Virginia's "O my Icilius, your incredulity Hath quite undone me" and the attitude of Icilius in Heywood's scene III, 1, involves either a different author or the same author at a different period. The scene is a very long one, running to nine and a half columns in the Dyce edition, yet is without a single one of the Heywood words or parallels, while eight indications of Webster have been accredited to it. The use of contractions in III, 2 is in accord with Webster's practice but wholly out of accord with Heywood's. For Heywood is sparing in his use of contractions and particularly so, in comparison with many other dramatists of the time, in the i' th' and o' th' (or ' the and o' the) contractions. The Rape of Lucrece, for example, the play most akin to Appius and Virginia, he has fifteen, none of which are of this type. In the six scenes I have mentioned above he has twelve, only one of which is of this type. But in III, 2 alone there are eighteen contractions, and eight of them are of the ' th'-o' th' variety." In Thus far I have had no occasion to be disconcerted by the findings of either Brooke or Sykes. The evidences for Heywood and for Webster have been in just those scenes where the style of the For the use of contractions as a test of authorship I am indebted to Farnham, PMLA., XXXI, 326. I am trusting to the Pearson edition; but I corroborated by examining Miss Tibbals' reprint of the 1637 Quarto of Royal King and Loyal Subject. Here there are twenty-two of the common t-contractions, one s-contraction, and none of i' th' or o' th'. |