a higher social position, talk of their north-star and of the impossibility of the wren's building near the eagle. Too often the tinsel of these colourless phrases reminds us of the haste of the dramatist, sacrificing one of the greatest charms of any poem, its freshness of expression, to the wish to have done with his work.

Massinger's fatal fondness for conventional repetitions, which has been pointed out in the situations, characters, thoughts and words of his plays, apprises us of the limits of his merits as a dramatic artist. Notwithstanding our readiness to admire the firmness of his construction and the splendour of his diction, we are too often offended by the monotony of his characters and by the narrow range of their ideas; and his treatment of them exhibits hardly any process of development. As a playwright, it is true, he seeks to perfect himself in the technical part of his art; as a psychologist, he is too much inclined to remain on the surface, from beginning to end. We feel that the dramatist does not sufficiently identify himself with his creations, that he does not live in them, that they are formed more from the outside than from the inside. In consequence of this coldness of their maker, we do not recognise in his figures living beings of our own flesh and blood; too many of them remain cleverly formed and ably managed theatrical puppets. It is a great pity that the straitened circumstances of his life, which obliged him to work rapidly, prevented him from devoting a greater measure of love and care to the delineation of his characters. That he would have been able to rouse them to an intenser, fuller life, is impressed upon us as we look on the thoroughly lovable Lidia, on the pure presence of Camiola and at some of his secondary characters, as, for instance, the faithful Adorni, whose love for Camiola is deeper than the selfish desire to win her for himself.

As to the reception of Massinger's plays by the public of his own days, we know very little. In his dedications, he repeatedly laments the neglect shown by his contemporaries to poetry in general, mentioning, with bitterness in one instance, his own 'despised studies'; and the cutting remark that he presumes his Roman Actor will, in consequence of 'the severity and height of the subject distaste such as are only affected with jigs and ribaldry,' indicates, perhaps, that this tragedy had not been successful on the stage. On the other hand, he alludes to the friendly reception of The Bond-Man; and, in the dedication of The Picture, one of his most entertaining dramas, he is able to mention the general

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Contemporary and Posthumous Reputation 165

approbation the play had found at its presentment. Of prologues expressive of his sentiments, we have but few, because, with characteristic, and, in this case, very justifiable, conservatism, he strongly objected to this innovation, not falling in with it before the performance of his tragicomedy The Emperour of the East, printed in 1631, the first prologue to which begins with a few angry words about the imperiousness of custom. Nevertheless, we are indebted to his poems of this kind for a few noteworthy biographical details. In the two prologues composed for The Emperour of the East, he complains of the censures of those who delight

and of

To misapply whatever he shall write,

the rage

And envy of some Catos of the stage

by whom this poor work' had suffered; while, in the prologue of The Guardian, he informs us of the failure of two of his dramatic ventures, which was followed by a silence of two years. We are ignorant of the nature of those two unfortunate plays, because many of Massinger's dramas were never printed and the manuscripts were inadvertently destroyed by Warburton's cook.

The posthumous popular fame of Massinger is chiefly based on his comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which has kept the stage till recently, the brilliant part of the bold usurer captivating many famous actors. In a more indirect way, the appreciation of the dramatic power of the tragedy The Fatall Dowry, printed as a joint production of Massinger and Field, but, undoubtedly, chiefly Massinger's work, has been proved by the adaptations of later poets: by Nicholas Rowe's tragedy The Fair Penitent, composed in 1703, which did more for the preservation of Rowe's name as a dramatist than all his independent plays; and by the recent successful version of Beer-Hofmann, entitled Der Graf von Charolais, which revived the memory of Massinger all over Germany. The first traces of his influence on the German stage date back to his lifetime: in 1626, an imitation of his and Dekker's dramatisation of the legend of Dorothea was performed at Dresden, where his attractive Great Duke of Florence also appeared on the boards in 1661. Later, Massinger attracted the attention of the poets of the romantic school of Germany as one of the most fascinating of Shakespeare's successors: count Baudissin translated several of his plays, and, within the last decades, German translators have repeatedly had recourse to him.

CHAPTER VII

TOURNEUR AND WEBSTER

THE two dramatists who are to be considered in the present chapter have certain points in common. Both, at their best, display a peculiarly sombre genius. The tragedies of both belong to the same school; and both are utterly unknown to us, except by their writings. In point of date, Tourneur would seem slightly to precede Webster. And, for this reason, as well as for others which are more material, it will be convenient to take him first.

Of Cyril Tourneur's life, we know nothing beyond the dates at which his various plays and poems were published. They are as follows: The Transformed Metamorphosis, 1600; A Funeral Poem on Sir Francis Vere, 1609; A Griefe on the Death of Prince Henry, 1613; and his two dramas, The Revengers Tragoedie, 1607 and The Atheist's Tragedie, 16111. It should be noted that two of these, the poem on Vere and The Revengers Tragoedie, have no name on the title-page, and that nothing more than tradition connects them with the name of Tourneur. There is a tepid reference to the author, as not to be despised nor too much praised,' by an anonymous contemporary; and that is all.

On his poems, it is not necessary to dwell. None of them has any merit; and the most elaborate of them, The Metamorphosis, is written in that uncouth jargon which had been brought into fashion by Marston in his satires (1598), and which is assailed by Jonson in Poetaster. It is, moreover, an involved allegory, the key to which is lost, but which Churton Collins ingeniously interpreted as a cryptic reference to the fortunes of Essex.

We pass at once to the two dramas, for it is by these alone that Tourneur survives. A question has been raised as to the relative priority of their composition. The order of publication makes a presumption in favour of The Revengers Tragoedie; but it is a presumption which might easily yield to substantial arguments on the other side. The only argument, however, which has been brought forward is the inferiority, or, as it has been called, the 1 A tragicomedy, The Nobleman, acted at court in 1613, is now lost.

Tourneur's Two Tragedies

167

'immaturity,' of The Atheist's Tragedie. Such an argument is manifestly perilous and, if applied to the works of other writers, would lead to curious results. On the other side must be set the fact that The Revengers Tragoedie, though it abounds in striking passages and scenes, is singularly lacking in originality of conception; that it belongs to a type of tragedy which had been in vogue for many years before its appearance; that, in fact, it is a rearrangement of the material already treated by Marston in Antonios Revenge (1602)1. The Atheist's Tragedie, on the other hand, though, doubtless, inferior in some respects, is strikingly original in its central conception. And it would seem improbable that, after following his own path with much boldness, the dramatist should, in a later play, have fallen back obediently into the well worn rut. The same conclusion is suggested by the metre, which, in The Revengers Tragoedie, is exceptionally regular, while, in The Atheist's Tragedie, it is inarked by what can only be called an abuse of the light endings which abound in the later plays of Shakespeare. We have other grounds for saying that Tourneur was a zealous student of Shakespeare; and it is surely more natural to suppose that, after the example of his master, he passed from the stricter to the looser system, than from the looser to the stricter. The point is by no means certain. On the whole, however, it would appear likely that the order of publication is, also, the order of composition; in other words, that The Revengers Tragoedie was written in or before 1607, and that The Atheist's Tragedie falls some time between it and 1611.

Neither play can be said to show much trace of dramatic power. The plots are poor in themselves, and one of them is largely borrowed. The characters are, at best, little more than types; and, in one instance, at any rate, the revenger's mother, the type is hardly improved by an incredible conversion. The most original character in the whole gallery is that of D'Amville, the atheist. But even he has a fatal resemblance to the Machiavellian monster who, from the time of Kyd and Marlowe, had been a familiar figure to the Elizabethan playgoer. The other characters are either puppets or incarnate abstractions of the various virtues and vices. The wanton personages of The Atheist's Tragedie are frankly caricatures. It is as poet that Tourneur claims our attention: a poet whose imagination is poisoned by the sense of universal vanity and corruption, but who lights up this festering material with flashes of high genius, and who is capable, at rare moments, of rising to visions of true beauty, and even grace: 'To have her train borne up, and her soul Trail 1 See ante, chap. 11.

in the dirt' is an instance of the one; the alleged discovery of Charlemont's body by Borachio, of the other. And, to the former, at any rate, many parallels could be brought. His imagination needed a dramatic matter to kindle it; but, when kindled, it followed its own path and paid little heed to any but the purely formal requirements of the drama. To him, a tragedy was an outlet for the expression of his bitter judgment on man and his essentially gloomy view of human life. To this, all personages, all incidents, are subordinated. Of this, all that is memorable in his dramas is the imaginative symbol. In these points, he presents a certain analogy to Webster, but an analogy which, at the same time, is a faint reflection and a caricature.

The outward life of John Webster is as much a blank to us as that of Tourneur. The years of his birth and death are, alike, unknown to us. It may be conjectured, from the known dates, that he was born in the decade 1570-80; and he must have survived at least until 1624, the year of the production of the Monuments of Honor. Further than that we cannot go. It would be unsafe to accept the statement-not made until 1698, and not confirmed by the parish registers-that he was clerk of St Andrew's, Holborn. And the one outward fact with which we are left—a fact recorded on the title-page of the Monuments of Honor is that he was a member of the Merchant Taylors' company. With this, we must rest content.

His literary activity falls, naturally, into three periods: the first, that of collaboration and apprenticeship (1602-7); the second, that of the two great tragedies (1610 to 1614); the third, that of the tragicomedies and, probably, of Appius and Virginia, beginning about 1620, the probable date of The Devils Lawcase, and ending at a time unknown. It will be well to take each of these periods singly, and then to consider the characteristics of his genius as a whole.

During the first period, Webster produced no independent work. He was engaged in collaboration with other dramatists, particularly Dekker; and, owing to a peculiarity of his genius, his individuality was entirely merged in that of his fellow workers. After joining with Middleton and others in two plays, Caesar's Fall and The Two Harpies', which have perished, he is found in partnership with Dekker, Heywood and Wentworth Smith over a play entered as Lady Jane', and immediately followed by a Second Part (27 October), apparently from the 1 See Henslowe's diary, 22, 29 May 1602.

2 Ibid. 15 October 1602.