"O I smell soot, Most stinking soot! The chimney is a-fire! It is not for nothing that you dare not call a hero Lord John or a villain George. And Webster, who had above all things a nose for irrelevant details that inexplicably trick you, unconscious, into the tone he desires, may have had a purpose in writing also Paulus for Sixtus, Monticelso for Montalto. Still, it is hard to think memory or report or notes did not play him false. On the other hand such minute details from the actual story have been preserved by Webster-names, the summer-house by the Tiber, and so on-that it is difficult to imagine that he got it from any scanty or oral report. And there are certain considerations which seem to favour his having worked from some extensive version, whether dramatic or in pamphlet form. Why should Brachiano and the Conjuror conduct their interview in Vittoria's house (p. 18)? No reason is given for the absurdity. There is an equally unexplained and apparently pointless incident in the trialscene; where Brachiano refuses a chair, and sits on his cloak (pp. 19 and 22), to show, one gathers, his contempt for the Court. The labour and time Webster spent on the play, and his care in publishing this edition to wipe out the failure of the performance, forbid our explaining these things by hurry in composition, or by the text being printed from an acting version. They might well be the result of Webster's obvious lack of ordinary skill in dramatising a story of which he had a lengthy version before him. Such incidents as Francisco's sight of Isabella's ghost, and the spectacular and fairly accurate ceremony of choosing a Pope, as well as the divergencies in the characters of Francisco and Flamineo, as the play proceeds, also fit in well with this theory. If Webster was working from some detailed account, it might either be a play or a narrative. In favour of the play are some of the extraordinary old-fashioned tags in The White Devil, and particularly the amazing mixture of extremely fine and true lines and distressingly ludicrous couplets or phrases in the final scene (though such incongruities are far more possible for Webster than for any other great writer of the period). In this case, the characteristics of the dramatisation are due to the earlier play-wright. On the other hand, the general line of the play gives the impression that Webster himself dramatised it directly. In any case, from the details of names mentioned above, it looks as if someone, either Webster or an intermediate, had read some accurate account with care, making a few notes perhaps, had let it simmer into shape in his mind, the characters taking life and individuality, and then, later, written it out. Only so can the mistakes of memory be explained. Whether it was Webster who did this, or whether, as Professor Vaughan implies, he had someone else's account before him as he worked, it is impossible to say. The State of the Play. The White Devil is certainly entirely Webster's. It is also almost certain we have the whole play. There are no sure traces of revision for acting, or of abbreviation. Webster obviously, from his Preface, brought the play out with great self-consciousness and care, and a desire to see its merits recognised. So he would naturally print it complete. And both the Preface and general probabilities point to it having only been played once, not very successfully, before publication. So we need not suspect our copy of having been revised for a revival. APPENDIX G.-"THE DUCHESS OF MALFI" Date. The history of the various opinions about the date of The Duchess of Malfi is both entertaining and instructive. Dyce used to guess at 1616. Fleay put it back to 1612, a date which many slight indications favoured. These were mainly on stylistic and general grounds. Professor Vaughan, however, in 1900, made a suggestion which Dr. Stoll, in 1905, worked out and regarded as providing conclusive evidence. So, according to the ordinary methods of dating plays, it did. It is not necessary to detail Dr. Stoll's arguments. They refer to the oddly introduced passage in I, i. (p. 59) on the French King and his court. Dr. Stoll rightly says it is very probable a passage like this in an Elizabethan play would refer to current events. He exhaustively proves that it does exactly fit what happened in France in the early part of 1617, when Louis XIII. had the evil counsellor Concini killed, "quitted" his palace of "infamous persons," and established a "most provident council"; events which made some stir in England at the time. As all this would have appeared in a different light in 1618 or after, and as there is other evidence that The Duchess of Malfi was being played in England at the end of 1617, we seem to have the date, the latter part of 1617, fixed with unusual certainty.1 It is rare to be able to be so certain and so precise about an Elizabethan play. And having the date of composition of some thirty lines fixed, people would no doubt have gone on for ever believing they had the date of the whole fixed; had not Dr. Wallace, delving in the Record Office, discovered that William Ostler, who played Antonio, died on December 16th, 1614!2 The explanation, of course, is that The Duchess of Malfi was written and performed before December, 1614, and revived with additions in 1617. All the evidence we have shows that this habit of altering a play and putting in topical references whenever it was revived, was universal. Our modern reverence for the exact written word is the result of regarding plays as literary objects, and of our too careful antiquarian view of art. The Elizabethans would have thought it as absurd not to alter a play on revival as we think it to do so. They healthily knew that the life of a play was in its performance, and that the more you interested people by the performance, the better it was. The written words are one kind of raw material for a performance; not the very voice of God. So, naturally, they changed the play each time; and when we have the text of a play, all we can feel in the least certain about, is that we have it something as it was for the latest 1 1 See, for instance, Professor Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, vol. i, p. 590. "This fixes the date of The Duchess of Malfi at a time later than April, 1617, and puts to rest once and for all former surmises on the subject." This eternal rest lasted nearly five years. 'See The Times, Oct. 2 and 4, 1909. |