His lack of self-depen

dence.

His chief merits and defects.

comedy, of which The Dutch Courtesan is in many respects a most praiseworthy example; while with regard to Eastward Hoe it is impossible to say in what degree the credit of this admirable play is attributable to him, and in what to Chapman. The literary satire of What You Will and of the plays in which Marston's co-operation seems traceable is necessarily in part obscure, but it cannot be held to rise above the level-no high one in itself-of his Satyres proper.

Either Marston was painfully aware of the limits of his powers, or the warning example in a contrary direction furnished by his adversary Jonson determined him to adopt a deprecatory attitude towards the public. But the iteration with which he assures the spectators of his 'constant modesty,' of his 'modest diffidence and selfe-mistrust,' and of his freedom from self-admiration, and confesses the slightness' of his productions, will affect some minds more disagreeably than the self-assertion of Ben Jonson. There is something of the molluscous Crispinus of the Poetaster in these appeals to a magnanimous public; and it is difficult not to interpret them as signs that Marston felt himself unable to command success without these conciliatory flourishes. A further symptom of the same self-distrust is his unmistakeable addiction to the practice of borrowinga habit which in literature as well as in other spheres is more easily acquired than shaken off. Shakspere in particular shines through the seams of most of Marston's plays. His literary ambition was manifestly very great; and opposition vexed him to the quick. But though his ambition was sustained by many acquirements, and by the powers of occasional pathos and fluent humour, while at times he could rise to poetic beauty of expression, yet there is a false ring about most of his efforts, and a want of sustained force in nearly all. He sought to excel in various dramatic species, but can hardly be said to have reached excellence unless in the depiction of the abnormal excesses of contemporary manners; and even here he fails in concentration of effect. Thus I remain in doubt whether on the whole he deserves to be ranked among the great

dramatists, with whose names his own is habitually associated, as having like them adorned our dramatic literature with creations of original genius.

Middleton

THOMAS MIDDLETON 1 was born about 1570, and was Thomas the son of a gentleman settled in London, whose wife (1570 c.likewise sprang from a London family 2. It is highly 1627). probable that he was at one time a member of one of the Universities, Cambridge as it would seem, to whose life and ways he frequently refers in his plays with the easy but not unconscious familiarity of the old University man 3. He may safely be identified with one of the two Thomas Middletons who were admitted to Gray's Inn in 1593 and 1596 respectively, with the former of these for choice. Thus he passed through the social experiences habitual to young gentlemen of his day before settling down to the labours of his life; and, apart from the evidence of his portrait, it will, I think, be allowed that his dramatic works are, notwithstanding their frequent coarseness, distinguished by a general flavour of good-breeding from those of such authors as Jonson, Dekker, or Marston. Of the Nonnon-dramatic works which have been ascribed to Middleton and are extant, none can be said to be demonstrably his; cribed to nor is there anything very noteworthy about any one of them. Indeed, his authorship of either of the two works in verse has been distinctly denied by Mr. Swinburne, who is not apt to deceive himself in such matters. The interminable poem in six-line stanzas, entitled The Wisdom of

1 The Works of Thomas Middleton, with some Account of the Author, and Notes. By the Rev. A. Dyce. 5 vols., 1840.-The Works of Thomas Middleton (with Introduction and Notes). Edited by A. H. Bullen. 8 vols., 1885. This has now become the standard edition of the poet.-The Best Plays of Thomas Middleton. Edited by Havelock Ellis, with an Introduction by A. C. Swinburne, 1887.-Art. Middleton, Thomas, by Dr. C. H. Herford, in vol. xxxvii of The Dictionary of National Biography, 1894. Fleay, English Drama, vol. ii. pp. 85-107, treats of Middleton in conjunction with William Rowley.

2 See the pedigree ap. Dyce and Bullen.

See e. g. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.

See the attractive etching reproduced in Mr. Bullen's edition from the woodcut prefixed to Two New Plays (1657): Vera effigies Tho. Middletoni, Gent.'

works as

him in

verse;

and in

prose.

Solomon Paraphrased, was, however, published with his name in 1597; and unless the other Thomas Middleton is to be saddled with the responsibility for it, we must suppose the future dramatist to have brought it up with him from Cambridge to Gray's Inn1. Micro-cynicon, Six Snarling Satyres, was printed in 1599, the initials T. M. Gent.' being attached to the lines called, in imitation of Hall, His Defiance to Envy, by which this very commonplace effort in satirical vituperation is prefaced.

Among the prose-writings ascribed to Middleton, Father Hubburd's Tales and The Blacke Booke both appeared in 1604, with prefatory addresses bearing his initials. The former, which bears the sub-title of The Ant and the Nightingale, and in which verse is intermixed with the prose, displays some fancy in its conception and much vivacity in its execution, taking us, not very differently from Spenser's satire, out of the realm of allegory into the midst of contemporary life. The Blacke Booke, suggested by Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse, is supposed to be written by Pierce's infernal correspondent, and contains 'Lawrence Lucifer's' last will and testament. Both pieces are full of allusions to the London of the day, whose theatrical amusements are not forgotten, and in neither case is there any apparent reason for contesting the supposition of the authorship of Middleton2, with whose comedies they come into contact in several particulars. The same cannot be averred of a pamphlet rhetorically describing Sir Robert Sherley's embassy to Poland (1600), or of the solemn admonition ad populum entitled The Peace-maker, or Great Britain's Blessing (1618), which has been very rashly attributed to the pen of King James I himself. Both publications were plainly catchpennies for the times; the latter being designed to enforce the futile royal policy of mediation just

1 It is printed in his concluding volume by Mr. Bullen, whom its " acres,' I regret to say, incite to violent language, which might have been excused on the part of Essex, to whom it was dedicated, if he took it with him to the Azores.

Mr. Fleay, however, pronounces that they were written by Thomas Moffat or Moffett, a Cambridge-bred physician of remarkable scientific and literary activity.

before the outbreak of the most general of European wars, the former, more vaguely, to stimulate the feeble growth of English interest in a still more remote region of affairs. Middleton, however, may very well have lent his hand to such endeavours; his lost Annales and Farrago seem to have been collections of the journalistic sort in which he was led to engage by the general bent of his mind, as well as by the nature of the official employment of his later years.

as a writer of plays, masques, and pa

geants.

His career as a dramatist had, however, begun not much His activity later than his attempt to gain a reputation for literary labours of a more select sort. He is not mentioned by Henslowe before 16021; but it has been thought indisputable that The Old Law was acted as early as 15992, although he could not then have been assisted in it by either of the writers whose names were associated with his in the first printed edition of the play (1656). Within the first decade of the new century he had become a popular writer for the stage, collaborating at times with Dekker and others. From 1613 onwards he was employed in the composition of city pageants and cognate entertainments, the first two of these being, by coincidence or otherwise, composed in the honour of namesakes of his own 3. In 1614 he wrote a masque, called The Mask of Cupid, of which significantly enough no traces remain, in honour of the Earl of Somerset's ill-omened marriage to Lady Frances Howard. In 1616 he wrote part at least of a city pageant on the occasion of Prince Charles' assumption of the title of Prince of Wales; and he continued to be occasionally

1 Diary, pp. 227 and 228, in connexion with his play of Randall Earl of Chester. In the same year he appears again as having composed a Prologue and Epilogue to Greene's Friar Bacon.

In act iii. sc. I one of the personages in the play, on the authority of a 'parish-chronicle,' states another personage to have been born in an. 1540, and now 'tis 99.'

3 Viz. The Triumphe of Truth, on the entrance upon the Lord-Mayoralty of Sir Thomas, and The Entertainment at the Opening of the New River, the achievement of Sir Hugh, Middleton (both 1613). Mr. Fleay' guesses that the new Mayor was the dramatist's godfather.'-It has already (ante, p. 466) been noted that in 1604 Middleton had made a contribution to Dekker's Entertainment to the King in his passage through the City in 1604.

Middleton as a dramatic

politician.

employed in the same direction by the Court, which conceivably made use of his services for a different kind of purpose1. In any case, he had by 1620 made himself so useful and acceptable to the authorities of the City of London as to be appointed in that year its Chronologer, and at the same time Inventor of its 'honourable entertainments'; for the former office-like certain other royal and academical offices of this and subsequent periods-united functions calling for the inspiration of more than one of the muses 2. Thus he continued to compose pageants for Lord Mayor's Day, while at the same time employing his versatile pen, as already mentioned, upon the Annals of the City. The last City entertainment prepared by him bears the date of 1626; he died in the following year, and was succeeded in his office by Ben Jonson. Middleton's widow (he had been married twice) seems to have sought and obtained some pecuniary aid from the City authorities.

Three years before Middleton's death occurred the most remarkable incident in his career as a dramatist,—an incident which also possesses considerable significance for the history of the English stage in general. In 1624 he produced at the Globe Theatre his comedy of A Game at Chess, which after being performed nine days in succession was prohibited by royal mandate, both the author and the actors being summoned before the Privy Council. In this 'very scandalous comedy,' as Secretary Conway had informed the Privy Council in a letter dated August 12, 1624, the players had been guilty of the boldness and presumption, in a rude and dishonourable fashion, to represent on the stage the persons of his Majesty' (King James I), ‘the King of Spain, the Conde de Gondomar, the Bishop of Spalato,' &c. The Spanish ambassador had complained of this public insult; and appealing to the 'commandment and restraint given against the representing of any modern Christian King in those stage-plays,' the Secretary

1 See above as to The Peace-maker.

2 The offices of historiographer-royal and poet-laureate to the Sovereign were formerly associated; and there used to be an unwritten understanding that the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge should on occasion act as the ex officio poet of the University.