Alleyn's known liberality, and fent him fome laudatory verses, he was in confinement in the King's Bench, and we fee that he was again a prisoner when he introduced a young man to 'Alleyn's notice as a fervant. The expreffion, "I give you thanks for the last remembrance of your love," warrants the conclusion that Alleyn had fent pecuniary assistance to Dekker on more than one previous occaffion. Respecting the date of the letter, we can give no information, and the back of the sheet having been torn off, the address has been loft; but, confidering its contents and the place where it was found, there can be no doubt at all on the latter point. (22). After his release from prifon, Dekker appears to have been occupied with fome of his innumerable profe pamphlets. His name is not connected with any new play until 1622, when The Virgin-Martyr, written conjointly with Maffinger, appeared. Gifford has endeavoured to claim for Maffinger nearly all the serious paffages of this play, and to faften on Dekker the ftigma of having contributed all the coarser fcenes. Other critics have judged very differently. The reader shall hear both fides of the queftion, and form his own opinion. (22) Memoirs of Alleyn, pp. 185, 186. "It should be observed," says Gifford, "in justice to our old plays, that few or rather none of them, are contaminated with fuch detestable ribaldry as the present one. To "low wit," or indeed to wit of any kind, it has not the slightest pretenfion; being, in fact, nothing more than a loathsome footerkin engendered of filth and dulness. It was evidently the author's defign to personify Lust and Drunkenness in the characters of Hircius and Spungius, and this may account for the ribaldry in which they indulge. That Maffinger is not free from dialogues of low wit and buffoonery (though certainly he is much more so than his contemporaries) may readily be granted; but the person who, after perusing this execrable trash, can imagine it to bear any resemblance to his style and manner, must have read him to very little purpose. It was affuredly written by Dekker, as was the rest of this act, in which there is much to approve. On the passage beginning— DOR. My booke and taper (vol. iv. p. 26), he obferves:— "What follows, to the end of the scene, is exquifitely beautiful. What pity that a man so capable of interesting our best paffions (for I am perfuaded that this also was written by Dekker) should prostitute his genius and his judgment to the production of what could only disgrace himself, and disgust his reader. And he concludes: "With a neglect of precifion which pervades all the arguments of Mr. Monck Mason, he declares it is easy to distinguish the hand of Dekker from that of Maffinger, yet finds a difficulty in appropriating their most characteristic language. With respect to the scenes between the two buffoons, it would be an injury to the name of Maffinger to waste a single argument in proving them not to be his. In faying this I am actuated by no hoftility to Dekker, who in this Play has many passages which evince that he wanted not talents to rival, if he had pleased, his friend and associate." "Every pains has been taken to prove that the indecent scenes in the play were not written by Massinger, but by Dekker on what grounds we know not. We are aware of no canons of internal criticism which will enable us to decide, as boldly as Mr. Gifford does, that all the indecency is Dekker's, and all the poetry Maffinger's."(23) A recent writer on the "Minor Elizabethan Dramatifts," observes : "To prove how much finer, in its effence, his genius was than the genius of fo eminent a dramatist as Maffinger, we only need to compare Maffinger's portions of the play of The Virgin Martyr with Dekker's. The scene between Dorothea and Angelo, in which she recounts her first meeting with him as a fweet-faced beggar-boy," and the scene in which Angelo brings to Theophilus the basket of fruit and flowers which Dorothea has plucked in Paradise, are inexpreffibly beautiful in their exquifite 23 CHARLES KINGSLEY: Plays and Puritans. (Mifcellanies, 1859, vol. ii. p. 114.) fubtlety of imagination and artless elevation of fentiment." (24) But a still better and earlier authority has fettled the question. In his Specimens of the Elizabethan Dramatifts, Charles Lamb extracts the fcene between Angelo and Dorothea, and says: "This scene has beauties of fo very high an order that, with all my respect for Maffinger, I do not think he had poetical enthusiasm capable of furnishing them. His affociate Dekker, who wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough for anything. The very impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this play have a ftrength of contrast, a raciness, and a glow in them, which are above Maffinger. They set off the religion of the reft." In 1628 and 1629 Dekker was, for two fucceffive years employed to write the Mayoralty Pageants. Britannia's Honor and London's Tempe are the rareft, though certainly far from the best of his pieces. In 1631 appeared the Tragi-Comedy called, Match mee in London, the plot of which is thus sketched in Genefte's Hiftory of the Stage: "Tormiella is the daughter of Malevento-her father had promised her to Gazetto-she elopes from Cordova with Cordolente—they are married-he is a citizen and 24 Atlantic Monthly, December, 1867, p. 697. fhopkeeper of Seville-Malevento and Gazetto follow them to Seville-the King's Procuress tells him of Tormiella-he visits her in disguise, and falls in love with her -he fends for her to court, and makes, her one of the Queen's attendants—the Queen is offended and jealous of Tormiella-the King endeavours to debauch Tormiellafhe continues firm in her attachment to her husband-at the conclufion, the King restores her to Cordolente, and is reconciled to the Queen. There is an underplot-Don John, the King's brother, wants to obtain the crown-in the last scene he renounces his ambitious views, and gains the King's pardon. The title feems to be a challenge to match Tormiella in London, if one can-the King concludes the play with faying that Tormiella has no parallel." In 1632 Dekker prefixed fome commendatory verses to Richard Brome's comedy of The Northern Laffe. TO MY SONNE BROME AND HIS LASSE. Or Thee (that art my Sonne and Friend) |