The empty walls worse than I left 'em, smok'd, A few crack'd pots, and glasses, and a furnace; The ceiling fill'd with poesies of the candle, And "Madam with a dildo" 75 writ o' the walls. Only one gentlewoman I met here That is within, that said she was a widow Kas. Aye, that's my suster; I'll go thump her. Where is she? (Goes in.) Love. And should ha' married a Spanish count, but he, When he came to 't, neglected her so grossly, That I, a widower, am gone through with her. How! have I lost her then? Sur. You swore, and told her you had ta'en the pains To dye your beard, and umber o'er your face, Borrowed a suit, and ruff, all for her love: And then did nothing. What an oversight And want of putting forward, sir, was this! Well fare an old harquebusier 76 yet, Could prime his powder, and give fire, and hit, All in a twinkling! (Mammon comes forth.) Mam. Or thievish daws, sir, that have pick'd (They come forth.) Re-enter Ananias and Tribulation. Tri. 'Tis well, the saints shall not lose all yet. Go And get some carts Think you so, sir? Aye. Love. Love. By order of law, sir, but not other For what, my zealous friends? Ana. To bear away the portion of the righteous Out of this den of thieves. 76 musketeer. 77 strumpets. JOHN WEBSTER THE DUCHESS OF MALFI Of the life of John Webster (1580?-1625?), probably the son of a London tailor, almost nothing is known. He began writing for the stage as early as 1602, at first as a collaborator, more especially with Dekker, who strongly influenced his dramatic beginnings. Plays known to be by him alone number only four, all dating between 1607 and 1619. Writing slowly and carefully, compared with his contemporaries he apparently lacked productiveness and therefore prominence, but was thought highly of by good judges. Webster's reputation depends mainly on The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona (1607-12) and The Duchess of Malfi (1609– 14), both romantic tragedies, the kind of play which most people are apt to think of, perhaps, as most typical of the Elizabethan drama, because the most intense of its plays are of this class. In the last hundred years and more they have been the chief models for writers of poetic drama (as in Shelley's Cenci). Both of Webster's plays mentioned belong to a subdivision of the type, the tragedy of blood. The most celebrated and influential early example is Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (1585-7) and the greatest is Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600-1604?), though its original elements are so refined and ennobled as to gain a new character. The tragedy of blood abounds in crime, violence, madness, and bloodshed; ghosts glide through its scenes, much is made of physical horror, revenge is a frequent motive of its personages. Its obvious appeal was what crude and popular; but the great strength of the Elizabethan drama was that while its roots ran deep into popular belief, taste and life, it was formed by the great geniuses of the age. A particular development of the tragedy of blood is seen in these two plays of Webster and some others. some Here the horror is both intensified and refined; mere bloodshed is not enough, other and more elaborate physical horrors are added, and especially mental and moral horrors, inhuman wickedness, long-drawn and ingenious agonies, the subleties of the sinner's inmost thought. The intensity is heightened by a more realistic setting; the ghosts are sometimes absent, as in The Duchess of Malfi, and we find ourselves in an almost contemporary age, often in Italy - which was regarded by the English, who had heard lurid tales of its corruption and had misunderstood Machi avelli, as the home of dire and subtle evil. In The Duchess of Malfi there is no lack of murder and sudden death. All the chief characters die violently, four men, three women, two children. As often in Elizabethan tragedy, the play is closed by a group of lofty personages, unimportant for the play, with solemn and regretful comments on the general ruin. Strange and elaborate are the vehicles of dread and torment - the dancing and singing of lunatics, the feigned corpses of her husband and children which wring the Duchess' soul, the cold dead hand grasped in the dark, the coffin and bell, the dolorous echo, the poisoned book which slays by a kiss. The struggling and screaming of Cariola at her death not only serve as a foil to the Duchess' composure, but bring a new shock. The moral horror is not in the mere wickedness, common enough in all tragedy. Bosola is not a highly impressive villain, but an indifferent counterpart to Iago, with his pretense of frank honesty and success at dissimulation; with also, it is true, some individual traits, melancholy, railing and a meditative and scholarly turn. He has a conscience and a heart at bottom; he serves as a contrast to the more depraved brothers, and rebels against them; the gods are just, and of their own creature make an instrument to destroy them. Their motives are revenge and covetousness; both brothers resent the supposed dishonor brought by the Duchess on their royal blood, and Ferdinand hoped Had she continued widow, to have gained But their wickedness is so out of proportion mits himself to peer into the gulf of eternity which lies before him. One of the most abhorrent passages in Elizabethan tragedy is at the beginning of the final scene, where the Cardinal shudders over one of his theological books describing the fire of hell. He is a devil who half-believes and trembles. He recalls the political cardinal of two or three centuries earlier who is reported to have said that if he had a soul he had lost it for the Ghibellines. Like Shakespeare, Webster is not borne down by the distressing, the negative, the destructive; he is strong enough to battle his way above them. We do not almost forget them, as in Hamlet - he has taken good care that we should not. But we concern ourselves more with the normal and benign personages who are finally engulfed in the murky, tempestuous ending. As usual with Webster, the most interesting person is a woman; indeed, for Julia too, as for Vittoria Corombona,, he shows sympathy for a bad woman who has heroic traits, a type always popular on the stage. The Duchess we fancy in the full ripeness of womanhood (though possibly meant to be younger), between youth and middle age, woman rather than sovereign, but both. Nothing could be more perfect than the scene where she reveals to Antonio her resolve to marry him; here is all the charm we feel when circumstances make it proper and necessary for a woman to do the wooing; the Duchess is mature enough to do it without embarrassment, but with the beaming eyes and roguish humor she always shows in talking with Antonio, as in the wonderfully human and dramatic scene (III. ii) where Ferdinand surprises them together. Yet she is almost more mother than wife, the sort of woman, the hope of the human race, who takes a husband to be the father of her children. Almost her last words are a domestic order (for a syrup for her boy's cold), which the situation raises to the highest poetry, but which turns to painful irony when we see the children strangled instantly after her. Antonio, though less fascinating and lifelike, is more elaborately studied than she, doubtless in order to reconcile an aristocratic age to seeing a sovereign marry beneath her; a soldier, diplomat, statesman, penetrating and with a remarkable knowledge of human nature, yet modest, honest, charitable, praised even by Bosola, and with a touch of modern-seeming cultivation in his love of ruins and history. He lacks interest a little through being passive and acted on throughout, for his status, in the drama as in his life, is that of a prince consort. Another curious modern trait is in both, a certain emancipation and liberalism as to religion, partly a reflection of the usual English prejudice against popery. The Duchess rebukes her woman as superstitious fool" because she objects to feigning a pilgrimage, and it is doubtless a not only the unconsciously ironical Cardinal who would say that Antonio did "account religion but a school-name" (V. ii, and cf. III. iii). Both seem satisfied, as in the original source of the play, with a marriage certainly informal and barely legal. Julia too in her noble dying words goes she knows not whither." A certain skepticism seems to have excited Webster's sympathy. 66 In truly Elizabethan manner, the construction and style of the play are ample and broad, not compact and minutely careful, like the work of such a man as Jonson. The verse is lax and irregular, sometimes unpardonably so, approaching mere rhythmical prose, as in some of the latest of the dramatists. Slurred and tumbling syllables often give a dramatic, easy, natural effect; but Webster's lines are sometimes difficult to read in any way which leaves the metrical norm still recognizable. In structure and incident he is at times a trifle careless. Antonio draws up an unnatural and dangerous memorandum for his son's horoscope, and drops it indifferently just when he should have been most careful; and at the end of the play this child who had been condemned by the stars to an early death is the only one of his family who survives! The play takes a sudden emotional turn toward the middle. The cloud in the sunny sky which beams over the first part is no bigger than a man's hand. The storm rolls up with speed, and nothing breaks the gloom of the last part. Webster daringly allows the interest to drop after the death of the Duchess, but towards the middle of the last act it revives, with new uncertainties and with the ingenious and appalling disasters which crush the sinners. The source of the play is the story of the Duchess of Amalfi, perhaps partly historical, which forms the twenty-third novel in the second volume of Painter's Palace of Pleasure (1567), and which came through the French of Belle-Forest from the Novelle of Bandello. Painter's interest, like that of all contemporary novelists, is in sensational events, in rhetorical talk, and in drawing forced moral lessons; he censures the Duchess for her uncontrolled desire for marriage, and Antonio for his ambitious folly in marrying above him. The characterization is extremely simple and obvious; Bosola is inconspicuous, and Julia not present at all, nor most of the matter of Webster's fifth act. A near kinship between Webster and Shakespeare has long been felt by both readers and spectators (the play was acted long and successfully, even as lately as 1851, with overwhelming effect, it is said). There are signs of Shakespeare's influence on it, as of the death of Desdemona in that of the Duchess; if a strangled person revived, as they both do, well enough to be able to speak, there is no reason why she should not recover. But it is doubtful whether Webster should be called a pupil of Shakespeare; if so |