separate actions into a single whole, he is of course unable to give to the persons engaged in these actions any ideal consistency. Considered separately his ideas are often excellent, as when (in The Fair Maid of the West) he represents the change in the character of a bully who develops into a brave man through the shame he feels at having his cowardice exposed by the heroine of the play; or as when he exhibits in The Royal King and the Loyal Subject the changing demeanour of courtiers according as persons are in poverty or prosperity. But, viewed in relation to the action as a whole, the behaviour of Heywood's dramatis persona is often improbable, and even unintelligible. In The Royal King and the Loyal Subject a nameless sovereign exposes a worthy servant to the most abominable indignities merely for the purpose of displaying the virtuous character of his subject (with which the king himself is perfectly acquainted) to a pair of scoundrelly courtiers.1 Sir Charles Mountford, in The Woman Killed with Kindness, to cancel what he considers a debt of honour to Sir Francis Acton, his enemy, places the honour of his sister at the mercy of the latter.2 In order to lead up to the climax of the same play Mrs. Frankford, a woman, as it appears, of sense and virtue, is made to yield in a moment to the solicitations of her husband's treacherous friend; while the naive unreality of the entire situation is sufficiently indicated by the moral with which the husband concludes the play :

3

SIR FRANCIS. Brother, had you with threats and usage bad
Punished her sin, the grief of her offence

Had not with such true sorrow touched her heart.

FRANKFORD. I sce it had not: therefore on her grave

Will I bestow this funeral epitaph,

Which on her marble tomb shall be engraved.

In golden letters shall these words be filled :
Here lies she whom her husband's kindness killed.4

As the lack of unity of action in Heywood's plays deprives the characters in them of verisimilitude, so does

1 Heywood's Dramatic Works, vol. vi. pp. 1-83.

2 Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 143-145.

3 Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 110-112. 4 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 157.

the want of consistency in the characters diminish the effect of their virtuous sentiments. This is a pity, for the sentiment itself is often beautiful and pathetic; witness the scene in which Captain Goodlacke, in pretended execution of his friend's dying instructions, demands back Spencer's portrait from Bess Bridges, the Fair Maid of the West:

BESS.

Are you a Christian? Have you any name
That ever good man gave you?

'Twas no saint you were called after.

name?

GOODLACKE. My name is Captain Thomas Good

BESS.

GOOD.

BESS.

GOOD.

BESS.

Good.
BESS.

GOOD.

BESS.

What's thy

I can see no good in thee; rase that syllable out of thy name.

Goodlacke's my name.

I cry your mercy, sir: I now remember you;
You were my Spencer's friend; and I am sorry,
Because he loved you, I have been so harsh :
For whose sake I entreat, ere you take't hence,
I may but take my leave on't.

You'll return it?

As I am chaste I will.

For once I'll trust you.

O thou the perfect semblance of my love,
And all that's left of him, take one sweet kiss,

As my last farewell. Thou resemblest him

For whose sweet safety I was every morning
Down on my knees, and with the lark's sweet tunes

I did begin my prayers; and when sad sleep
Had charmed all eyes, when none save the bright stars
Were up
and waking, I remembered thee;
But ah, all to no purpose.

Sure, most sure, this cannot be dissembled.
To thee I have been constant in thy absence,
And when I looked upon this painted piece
Remembered thy last rules and principles;
For thee I have given alms, visited prisons,
To gentlemen and passengers lent coin,
That, if they ever had ability,

They might repay't to Spencer: yet for this,
All this and more, I cannot have so much
As this poor table, etc.1

The elemental pathos of Heywood's style is also well

1 Heywood's Dramatic Works, vol. ii. pp. 303-304.

illustrated in the scene where Frankford sends out of his house everything reminding him of his wife :

CRANWELL.

:

Why do you search each room about your house Now that you have despatched your wife away? FRANKFORD. Oh, sir! to see that nothing may be left

NICHOLAS.
FRANK.

That ever was my wife's. I loved her dearly;
And when I do but think of her unkindness,
My thoughts are all in hell: to avoid which torment,

I would not have a bodkin or a cuff,

A bracelet, necklace, or rebato wire,

Nor anything that ever was called hers,
Left me, by which I might remember her.
Seek round about.

'Sblood, master, here's her lute flung in a corner.
Her lute! Oh God! Upon this instrument
Her fingers have run quick division,

Sweeter than that which now divides our hearts:
These frets have made me pleasant, that have now
Frets of my heart-strings made. O, Master Cranwell,
Oft hath she made this melancholy wood
(Now mute and dumb for her disastrous chance)
Speak sweetly many a note, sound many a strain

To her own ravishing voice, which, being well-strung,
What pleasant strange airs have they not jointly
sung!

Post with it after her. Now nothing's left:

Of her and hers I am at once bereft.1

The bare and unadorned simplicity of these passages, which is characteristic of Heywood, shows the natural tendency of the romantic style, when once removed from its ideal sphere and applied to subjects of domestic life, to gravitate towards prose.

Some of the characteristics of Heywood's genius reappear in the work of a dramatist of greater power and imagination, Thomas Dekker, who was probably born between 1570 and 1580, and died some time after 1632. Dekker, whose name is spelt with many variations Decker, Deckers, Dickers, Deker, Dekkers, Dekkar, and whose probable father is entered in the Registers of St. Giles, Cripplegate, as "Gentleman,”Gentleman," was a Londoner by birth and residence, and possessed an unrivalled knowledge of the manners of the town. In the Induction to

1 Heywood's Dramatic Works, vol. ii. pp. 147-148.

his Seven Deadly Sins of London, he addresses his native city: "O thou beautifullest daughter of two united monarchies! from thy womb received I my being; from thy breasts my nourishment." 1 For nearly forty years he gained his bread by such employment as he could obtain from stage managers and booksellers, and, like the later inhabitants of Grub Street, he was well acquainted with the inside of London prisons. Oldys says that he was in King's Bench Prison from 1613 to 1616,2 and a letter of his own, written from that place in the latter year, shows that he was receiving charity from the generous actor, Edward Alleyn. Like many of his contemporaries he helped to produce the City Pageants. We find his name mentioned in connection with the stage in 1597, and the earliest of his surviving plays are The Shoemaker's Holiday (1600), The Comedie of Old Fortunatus (1600), Satiro-Mastix (1602), and The Honest Whore (1604). In later years Dekker co-operated with other dramatists, writing in company with Webster in 1607 Westward Hoe, Northward Hoe, and Sir Thomas Wyatt; with Middleton The Roaring Girl (1611), with Ford The Witch of Edmonton (circ. 1612), and with Massinger The Virgin Martyr (1622); but, for the purposes of our history, his first plays are much the most instructive; and of these Satiro-Mastix can be most conveniently considered in connection with the works of Ben Jonson.

Dekker is an admirable representative of the taste of the middle class London citizen, and in his work the spirit and many of the features of the old Morality are reproduced in a romantic form. As we have seen, the Morality was marked from the first by two characteristics, a very distinct and definite vein of ethical instruction, and a close imitation of the familiar objects of life. The latter tendency, so vividly illustrated in the ancient interlude of Hick Scorner,3 culminates in The Shoemaker's Holiday. In this comedy the humours and customs of the

1 Dekker's Non-Dramatic Works (Grosart), vol. ii. p. 13.

2 MS. note to Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691), p. 121.

3 Vol. i. pp. 423-424.

220

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY CHAP.

Cobblers' Guild are represented in one of those plots of domestic romance which originated with Munday and Heywood. The interest of the action is divided between the fortunes of the high-born Lacy, who for the love of Rose, daughter of the Lord Mayor Ottley, disguises himself as a shoemaker; and those of the cobbler Ralph, who is impressed for military service in France, and has to leave his virtuous wife Jane to defend herself, like Penelope, against the solicitations of a rich suitor in London. The Earl of Lincoln, uncle of Lacy, and the Lord Mayor, Rose's father. oppose themselves to the course of true love, but their devices are frustrated, mainly by the intervention of Simon Eyre, prince of the shoemakers, and his apprentices. The simple drama works itself out by much the same standard of probability as is found in The Vicar of Wakefi the sphere of action being a kind of civic Arcadia, which the dramatis persone appear to "fleet the ti carelessly as they did in the golden world." A certa consistency is given to the whole conception by the ch acter of Simon Eyre, whose romantic liberality and S humour express themselves in the “King Cambyses ve of theatrical rodomontade, with which he overwhe his stiff-necked apprentices and his thrifty wife. vanced first to the office of Sheriff, and thence to th Lord Mayor, Simon catches the fancy of the king his free and easy modes of speech, and secures the favour in behalf of the runaway lovers. The fol extract from a dialogue between Simon Eyre a sovereign will give an idea of the "romantic " sty vading this comedy:

KING. Nay, I pray then, good Lord Mayor, be even as me As if thou wert among thy shoemakers:

It does me good to see thee in this humour.

EYRE. Saist thou me so, my sweet Dioclesian? the prince am I none, yet am I princely born: by the lord of my liege, I'll be as merry as a pie,

KING. Tell me in faith, mad Eyre, how old thou art? EYRE. My liege, a very boy, a stripling, a younker; y a white hair on my head, nor a gray in this beard; ev assure thy Majesty that sticks in this beard, Sim Eyre val