1 as mirrors of the time, one would suppose that the chief recreation of the young courtiers of Elizabeth and James was to find butts for their wit and subjects for practical jokes. Chapman was probably put on this track by Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," and he hammered at the idea with characteristic pertinacity. There is much clever deception-clever, indeed, to extreme improbability—in the "Blind Beggar," which was produced before Ben Jonson's first play; but Chapman's first effort in the representation of deliberate gulling appears in his "Humorous Day's Mirth," where the old husband Labernel, the old father Foyes, and the young pretentious simpleton Bestia (the same character as Jonson's 'Stephen '), are notoriously deceived by a pack of waggish gallants. The gulling in "All Fools," as the title indicates, is universal: every one of the dramatis persona is more or less victimised. Again, Monsieur D'Olive is gulled by two young courtiers; and the Gentleman Usher, Bassiolo, by the two lovers Vincentio and Margaret, who make him their medium of communication, and flatter him into the belief that they are a pair of foolish bashful lovers, very much indebted to his kindly offices for helping them to declare their mutual passion. The "Gentleman Üsher" is, taken all in all, the best of Chapman's comedies; it contains a certain admixture of serious plot (which Iwould have been better if he could have refrained from introducing the supernatural), and the gulling of Bassiolo is his masterpiece in that way. The most riotous and laughable gulling, however, occurs in the coarsest of his comedies, "May - Day," which contains more spirited dialogue, more piquant characters, and more ludicrous incidents, than any of its predecessors. Another of his comic aims, persisted in with no less resolution, is to exhibit the hypocrisy, inconsistency, and general frailty of women. This, indeed, may be said to be one of his aims in all his plays: he has not drawn a single fine female character of any mark in any play from the "Blind Beggar" to the "Revenge for Honour": all from Ægiale to Caropia have some taint upon them. Chapman would almost seem to have been like his own Rinaldo in "All Fools," who had vowed eternal war against the whole sex. And in displaying their frailties, as in other aims that he took in hand, he improved very much with practice. The behaviour of Samathis and Elimine in the "Blind Beggar," though a sufficiently malicious conception, is too violently improbable to have much point as a satire: Irus, who figures as four different personages in the play, marries Samathis as Leon, and Elimine as Hermes, and afterwards as Hermes, seduces Samathis, and as Leon, Elimine. Florila, the fair Puritan, in the "Humorous 1 It is difficult to see why Mr Hallam speaks of this play as a tragi-comedy. But Day's Mirth," is more of a satire on female weakness. Chapman's greatest achievement in this vein is the "Widow's Tears," in which he makes young Tharsalio conquer a youthful widow, who had sworn eternal constancy, within a few months of her husband's death, and that, too, by representations of the least reputable sort; and, as a secondary plot, elaborates Petronius Arbiter's story of the widow of Ephesus, who went to starve herself to death in her husband's tomb, and was there wooed and won by a soldier stationed near on guard of some crucified bodies. 1 In his first tragedies, Chapman's main endeavour was to build up a majestic dialogue with weighty moral sentences. In the dedication of his "Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois " he falls out upon certain critics who seem to have found fault with the want of probability both in the characters and in the action of his plays. "And for the authentical truth," says he in defence, "of either person or action, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth? Poor envious fools they are that cavil at truth's want in these natural fictions: material instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her contrary being the soul, limbs, and limits of an authentical tragedy." His sententious excitations to virtue are powerfully expressed. He would seem to have studied to fulfil his early prayer to Night, concentrating explosive forces, and firing off each word of his maxims like a cannon-ball. But the thunder of this moral artillery is too continuous and deafening; the interchange of elaborate sentences between his personages, especially in the two Byron plays, becomes intolerably tedious. In his latest tragedies, however, Chapman observes a much better proportion of weighty saws. In the "Revenge for Honour the dialogue is much more full of life than in any of his previous tragedies. Chapman's designs were always ambitious; but he was guided more like a pedant by authoritative models than like a genuine artist by a clear judgment and sure instinct of his own. He had, undoubtedly, immense power; but his sail was a great deal prouder and fuller than his ship. Both in his comedies and in his tragedies he burdened himself with an unavailing effort to imitate the Latin and Greek classics: he probably flattered himself in so doing with a feeling of superiority to less learned playwrights; but he might have been more successful if he had imitated the published works of Shakespeare. But ambitious and resolute George would have scorned to imitate consciously any of his contemporaries: he aspired to stand out among them as a heaven-sent genius, in rapt communion with the great empress 1 Repeated in Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Dying.' of all secrets. He might, indeed, hold intercourse with the mighty minds of old, and submit to their teaching; he might also take up the conceptions of contemporary writers, and show the proper way to carry them out; but imitate-never. How, then, is this reconciled with what I have just said, that Chapman imitated like a pedant? The explanation is, that Chapman, like many other men, was self-deluded in his conviction of originality and inspiration. His originality was of the nature of oddity, eccentricity, quaintness a forcible wrench given to commonplace or borrowed ideas, characters, images, and turns of expression. He was really very much influenced by contemporaries, and commonly for good. The influence of Shakespeare, to all appearance, operated strongly on the composition of his "Revenge for Honour"; and it is, as I have already said, by far the best of his tragedies. His earliest tragedies contain splendid passages of description, and a plethora of pithy and noble sentences; but his "Revenge for Honour" is, in respect of lively dialogue, powerfully drawn character, clearly conceived interaction, absorbing plot, and terrible catastrophe, entitled to a high place among the works of the best tragedians. The chief drawback to Chapman's comedies is the universal ignobility of the characters—the title "All Fools" might almost be extended to his comedies generally. And one fatal drawback to all his plays is his low conception of female character. No plays can have a durable popularity that have none of the softer gifts and graces to mingle with their comic humours or tragic horrors. II-JOHN MARSTON (157 ?-1634). John Marston is the Skelton or Swift of the Elizabethan period. Like them, he wrote in denunciation and derision of what seemed to him vicious or weakly sentimental; and like them, he impatiently carried a passion for directness of speech to the extremes of coarseness. He was for no half - veiled exposure of vices. "Know," he cried, in the preface to 'The Scourge of Villany,' his first furious lash at the age, "I hate to affect too much obscurity and harshness, because they profit no sense. To note vices so that no man can understand them is as fond as the French execution in picture.' ." And a contemporary (in the anonymous "Return from Parnassus") confirmed this self-estimate of his purposes : "Tut, what cares he for modest close-couched terms Give him plain naked words, stript from their shirts, Marston's satires are not elegant, self-complacent exercitations in imitation of Horace, such as Hall was so vain of writing; he wrote in a more savage and less affected vein : "Unless the Destin's adamantine band Should tie my teeth, I cannot choose but bite." One of his mottoes is taken from Juvenal, with whom he had more in common than with Horace-Difficile est satiram non scribere "It is difficult not to write satire.' There would be an almost Timonic grandeur in the swelling energy of his defiance of public opinion were it not for the satirist's half-humorous enjoyment of his own position. "I dare defend my plainness against the verjuice face of the crabbedest Satirist that ever stuttered. He that thinks worse of my rhymes than myself, I scorn him, for he cannot; he that thinks better is a fool. . . . If thou perusest me with an impartial eye, read on; if otherwise, know I neither value thee nor thy censure. Whatever other people are afraid to do has a great charm for Marston. He dedicates his "Scourge of Villany" to Detraction, and bids her snarl, bark, and bite,— for his spirit scorns her spite :— 66 My spirit is not puft up with fat fume -in opposi With somewhat less coarse bravery he consigns himself to everlasting oblivion-"mighty gulf, insatiate cormorant "tion to the usual aspirations for eternal memory :— He beseeches the wits to malign him; nothing could give him greater pleasure :— "Proface, read on; for your extremest dislikes Oh how I bristle up my plumes of pride! When I once hear some quaint Castilio, Some supple-mouthed slave, some lewd Tubrio, My dark reproofs ! Then do but rail at me- Almost nothing is known concerning Marston's private life. He is believed to be the John Marston who was admitted B. A. at Oxford in 1593, as being the eldest son of an Esquire, his father belonging to the city of Coventry. He began his literary career in 1598, publishing in that year "Pygmalion's Image, and certain Satires," and "The Scourge of Villany, Three Books of Satires." He is supposed to be the Maxton or Mastone, "the new poet," mentioned in Henslowe's Diary in 1599; and the play there referred to is supposed to be his "Malcontent," published in 1604 in two editions-one with, and the other without, an Induction by Webster. His other plays published were" Antonio and Mellida," 1602; "Antonio's Revenge," 1602; "The Dutch Courtesan, 1605; "Parasitaster," 1606; "Sophonisba," 1606; “What you Will," 1607; "The Insatiate Countess," 1613. He was also conjoined with Chapman and Jonson in the composition of "Eastward Ho!" certain passages of which, written by Chapman and Marston between them, gave such offence to the Scotch predilections of the king that it brought the trio to prison, and very nearly to the pillory. Marston and Jonson were less friendly in after life, as they had been at enmity before.1 Jonson told Drummond that he once "beat Marston and took his pistol from him.” Marston's total abstinence from literature during the last twenty years of his life is not explained. One of Marston's favourite butts, both in his Satires and in his plays, was the puling sentimentality of enamoured sonneteers. He goes beyond himself in the invention of mad indignities, coarse and subtle, overt and sly, for these forlorn creatures; parodies them and scoffs at them; buffets them, as it were, tweaks their noses, stealthily pulls out hairs and puts in pins, kicks them out of his presence. "Sweet-faced Corinna, deign the riband tie Of thy cork-shoe, or else thy slave will die: And to some mermaid sacrifice his breath." I have endeavoured to show that Shakespeare co-operated with this derision of forced love-sighs, writing certain of his sonnets in ridicule of their windy suspiration. But Shakespeare himself was not always above the contempt of the predestined cynic. Venus and Adonis' was singled out by Marston as the type of dangerously voluptuous poetry, and unmercifully parodied in his "Pygmalion's Image," the arts of the goddess to win over the cold 1 Jonson made Marston the subject of a play in 1601-"The Poetaster." He, and not (as D'Israeli states) Dekker, is Crispinus: the parody of Marston's style in the Fifth Act is unmistakable. The reconciliation must have been only temporary. Marston dedicated his "Malcontent" to Jonson in 1604. 66 |