I would fain put off my last woman's fault; Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd Must go upon their knees. Come, violent death, Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet. [They strangle her kneeling. "FERDINAND enters. "Ferd. Is she dead? "Bos. She is what you would have her. Fix your eye here. "Ferd. Constantly. "Bos. Do you not weep? Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. The element of water moistens the earth, But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. "Ferd. Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young. "Bos. I think not so: her infelicity Seem'd to have years too many. And should I die this instant, I had lived Lamb, Vol. 1., pp. 198–203. Vittoria Corombona, the White Devil, is a great bad character, "fair as the leprosy, dazzling as the lightning." Her conduct at her arraignment is the perfection of guilt in all its defying impudence. We have no space for extracts. Webster seems to have imitated the spirit of Shakspeare more directly than any of his brother dramatists. In the prreface to this play he has a curious reference to his master, alluding to the "right happy and copious industry of Master Shakspeare, Master Decker, and Master Heywood." Marston, Heywood, Chapman, and Middleton are stirring names of this era. John Marston is a bitter satirist of crime and folly, and often probes the heart to its core in his dark thrusts at evil. He shows a large acquaintance with the baseness and depravity of men, and exposes them mercilessly. His mind was strong, keen, and daring, with hot and impatient impulses, controlled by a stern will, and condensed into scorn. He often "plays the weapon" of his satire “like a tongue of flame." He seems to have borne somewhat the same relation to his contemporaries, that Hazlitt did to the authors of our time. He quarrelled and fought with many of them, in metrical battles. In one of the satires of the time he is termed a "ruffian in his style," one who "Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe'er he meets"; one who in his satire is not content with "modest, closecouch'd terms," but uses "Plain, naked words, stript from their shirts, That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine." We have already referred to his quarrels with Ben Jonson. He was doubtless unpopular, as most satirists must be. Jonson accuses him of envy and other bad passions. His comedy, though often brilliant, has no hearty mirth in it. He seems to have been deficient in humor; but his stern, sharp, scornful mind repeatedly touched the sources of pathos and terror, though, in his tragedy, he was too apt to shed blood as fluently as ink. We extract some short passages from his plays, clipped from their connection with character and incident, to show the strength of his powers, and their poetical side. The first has great sweetness and beauty. "As having clasp'd a rose The eloquent ravings of Andrugio, in Antonio and Mellida, are replete with imagination, as when he asks,— "Is not yon gleam the shudd'ring Morn that flakes And again : "Would'st have me go unarm'd among my foes? My soul beleaguer'd with the crushing strength Whilst trumpets clamor with a sound of death." Lamb, Vol. 1., p. 69. The following is very powerful and impressive,misery dressed out in the very robes of despair, and darkening earth and heaven with its baleful gloom. "The rawish dank of clumsy winter ramps The fluent summer's vein; and drizzling sleet O now methinks a sullen tragic scene Would suit the time with pleasing congruence. But if a breast, Nail'd to the earth with grief; if any heart, Pierc'd through with anguish, pant within this ring; If aught of these strains fill this consort up, Lamb, Vol. 1., pp. 70–71. The following passages tell their own story, in strong and sometimes terrible language: 66 "Day breaking. See, the dapple grey coursers of the morn * Peels. "One who died, slandered. "Look on those lips, Those now lawn pillows, on whose tender softness Chaste modest Speech, stealing from out his breast, Had wont to rest itself, as loth to post From out so fair an Inn: look, look, they seem To stir, And breathe defiance to black obloquy." "Wherein fools are happy. "Even in that, note a fool's beatitude; He bears an unturn'd sail with every wind: "Description of the Witch Erictho. "Here in this desart the great Soul of charms Forsaken graves and tombs (the ghosts forc'd out) A loathsome yellow leanness spreads her face, From naked graves stalks out, heaves proud her head "Scholar and his Dog. "I was a scholar seven useful springs Did I deflower in quotations Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man ; Delight, my spaniel, slept, whilst I baus'd leaves, Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old print Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh, : Shrunk up my veins and still my spaniel slept. Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw Of Antick Donate: still my spaniel slept. Then, an it were mortal. O hold, hold; at that Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt, Lamb, Vol. 1., pp. 73-79. Lamb calls Thomas Heywood, very finely, "a sort of prose Shakspeare," and adds, "his scenes are to the full as natural and affecting. But we miss the poet, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above the surface of the nature. Heywood's characters, his country gentlemen, &c., are exactly what we see (but of the best kind of what we see) in life. Shakspeare makes us believe, while we are among his lovely creations, that they are nothing but what we are familiar with, as in dreams new things seem old but we awake, and sigh for the difference." Heywood was a rapid writer, claiming, in one of his prefaces, the authorship of some two hundred and twenty plays, in which he had "either an entire hand, or at least a main finger." Of these, but twenty-five have been preserved. He appears to have been a modest, amiable man, not especially stirred by the fiercer passions, and writing with singular facility a sweet and harmonious, though not poetical, style. Hazlitt calls it "beautiful prose, put into heroic metre." It is not dotted over with those sharp and fiery points of passion and fancy, nor brightened by those quick flashes of imagination which characterize the general style of the period. A Woman Kill'd with Kindness is his most affecting play. The character of |