and the king is too violent an outrage on decency, too base and animal, to permit any dignity to envelop its tragic consequences; and the easy credence given to the filthy accusations of Megra, so base, unsupported, and obviously malicious, makes us look upon the hero as a fool, and seriously affects his claims to our interest and admiration. care. VII. JOHN WEBSTER (?) Dekker's partner in "Westward Ho!" "Northward Ho!" and "Sir Thomas Wyatt," was to all appearance as different from himself as one man of genius could be from another —a man who sank deep shafts into the mines of tragedy, and built up his plays with profound design and deliberate Dekker is not more remarkable for his genial reproduction of city life in loosely contrived scenes, and for his easy unstudied sympathy with deep heart's-sorrowing and keen heart's-bitterness, than Webster is for his penetrating grasp of character, meditated construction of intricate scenes, and elaborate, just, and powerful treatment of terrible situations. One would expect from the joint work of two such men results of the most supreme kind-plays that might compete with the unrivalled Shakespeare. But the excellent qualities of two men cannot be fused into one work of art two minds cannot work as one with the united strength of the strong faculties of both. Of the three joint plays of Dekker and Webster, two of them, "Westward Ho!" and "Northward Ho!" are not distinguishable from the unaided productions of Dekker; while the third, "Sir Thomas Wyatt," in the mutilated and imperfect shape that has been handed down to us, contains strong marks of Webster, and may be regarded as being, in great part, the first effort of his powerful genius. Concerning Webster's life one can only repeat the same tale of ignorance that must be told concerning so many of our dramatists. He was born free of the Merchant Tailors' Company; began to write for the stage as early as 1601; and we may conjecture, from his predilection for scenes in courts of law and his elaborate treatment of them, that he had been bred to the profession. His quotations show that he had at least been taught Latin, and so far had received a learned education. His fame rests on three tragedies and a tragic comedy,-" Vittoria Corombona, the White Devil," published in 1612; "The Duchess of Malfi," 1623; "The Devil's Law-Case," a tragi-comedy, 1623; and "Appius and Virginia," not published till 1654.1 In the preface to "Vittoria Corombona," Webster defends himself against the charge of being a slow composer. We find this charge also in a contemporary satirist ('Notes from Blackfriars,' 1620), who draws a very lively picture of "crabbed Websterio: " See how he draws his mouth awry of late, How he scrubs, wrings his wrists, scratches his pate; Here's not a word cursively I have writ But he'll industriously examine it; And in some twelve months thence, or thereabout, Webster does not deny the charge; but he answers his critics with a bold tradition: "Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only in three days composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred; 'Thou tellest truth,' quoth he, but here's the difference: thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages.' Webster's characters could not have been drawn nor his scenes constructed in a hurry. Appius and Romelio are unsurpassed as broad and elaborate studies, filled in with indefatigable detail and accommodated with subtle art to a profound conception. In following these masterpieces the student of character is kept in an ecstasy of delight by stroke after stroke of the most unerring art. In every other scene their replies and ways of taking things 1 In an able essay on Webster, in 'Fraser's Magazine,' May 1874, Mr Edmund Gosse pointed out,' for the first time, Webster's share in "A Cure for a Cuckold." Mr Gosse's paper is otherwise of special interest. surprise us, yet every such paradox on reflection is seen to accord with the central conception of their character, and increases our admiration of the dramatist's deep insight and steady grasp. And these plays are not merely closet-plays, whose excellences can be picked out and admired only at leisure. The characters have not the simplicity and popular intelligibility of Shakespeare's Richard or Iago. The plots, too, except in "Appius and Virginia," where all the incidents lie in the direct line of the catastrophe, are involved with obscure windings and turnings. Yet all the scenes are carefully constructed for dramatic effect. Mark how studious Webster has been that his actors shall never go lamely off the stage they make their exit at happily chosen moments, and with some remark calculated to leave a buzz of interest behind them. When we look closely into Webster's plays we become aware that no dramatist loses more in closet perusal all his dialogues were written with a careful eye to the stage. Everywhere throughout his plays we meet with marks of deep meditation and just design. It is not with his plays as with Fletcher's: the more we study Webster, the more we find to admire. His characters approach nearer to the many-sidedness of real men and women than those of any dramatist except Shakespeare; and his exhibition of the changes of feeling wrought in them by the changing progress of events, though characterised by less of revealing instinct and more o' penetrating effort than appear in Shakespeare, is hardly less powerful and true. 66 Webster did not attempt comedy, unless in conjunction with Dekker, and before he had felt where his strength lay. The moral saws wrought into his dialogues show that his meditations held chiefly to the dark side of the world. In forming our impression of the man, we are perhaps unduly dominated by the concluding scenes of Vittoria Corombona" and "The Duchess of Malfi:" it is from these scenes that he has received the name of "the terrible Webster." It showed a strange ignorance of his own power that in the preface to "Vittoria " he regretted that the nature of the English stage would not permit him to write sententious tragedy after the model of the ancients, "observing all the critical laws, as height of style and gravity of person, enriching it with the sententious chorus, and, as it were, enlivening death in the passionate and weighty NUNTIUS." He does undoubtedly observe height of style, and his persons are exempt from meanness and ignobility. Uncontrollable passionate love, and a temporary insanity of avarice pursued with subtle policy and bitterly repented of, are the chief impelling forces of his four great plays; and even inferior instruments of villany, such as Ludowick, Flamineo, and Bosola, are invested with a certain dignity. But that Webster should have desired to relate those terrific death-scenes instead of exhibiting them as he has done, showed a strange obliviousness of the basis of his own fame and the excellence of modern tragedy. Not to mention his grander scenes, how tame and unimpressive would have been the fate of the poisoned Brachiano in the narrative of a messenger to his beloved mistress Vittoria, compared with what it is when we are brought face to face with the fearfully punished sinner and the passionately interested witnesses of his agony. "Brach. Oh! I am gone already. The infection Giovanni. O my most loved father! Brach. Remove the boy away: Where's this good woman? had I infinite worlds, Brach. Most corrupted, politic hangman! Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee; This unction is sent from the Great Duke of Florence. Fran. de Medici [his enemy the Great Duke in disguise]. Sir, be of comfort. Brach. O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf Vittoria Corombona. I am lost for ever! Brach. How miserable a thing it is to die 'Mongst women howling! what are those? Flamineo. Franciscans. They have brought the extreme unction. Brach. On pain of death let no man name death to me: It is a word most infinitely terrible. Withdraw into our cabinet." Brachiano's bidding Vittoria not kiss him or she will be poisoned, is characteristic of Webster's subtle art. The wretched man had been moved by his passion for Vittoria, the "white devil," to poison his wife, and the deed had been heartlessly done by anointing with a deadly unction the lips of a picture of her husband which the poor lady was in the habit of kissing every night before she went to bed; and this line at once shows the direction of Brachiano's franticly shifting thoughts, and brings the crime by a sudden flash side by side with the punishment and the impassioned motive. VIII.-CYRIL TOURNEUR (?) Tourneur's name will always be associated with Webster's, because his nature led him within the same circle of terrible subjects. Only two of his plays survive, the "Revenger's Tragedy" and the "Atheist's Tragedy"-the one first published in 1607, the other in 1611. Nothing more is known about him, except that he wrote also a play called the "Nobleman," which was utilised by Warburton's cook. Tourneur was far from having the breadth and the weight of Webster's genius: he does not take so deep a |