The list has been carefully discussed by Mr. W. W. Greg in his article, “The Bakings of Betsy,” in The Library (July, 1911).
He puts the matter thus: Warburton enters Minerva's Sacrifice and The Forc'd Lady as above. In the Stationers' Register, Sept. 9, 1653, these titles are given as alternatives for the same play. This might mean that Moseley was trying to smuggle through two plays for a single fee. Mr. Greg is inclined to give Moseley the benefit of the doubt, and to suppose that there were plays existing in divergent versions, which would justify the double titles. If, however, Moseley was honest, Warburton cannot be correct. Mr. Greg suggests that Warburton, being interested in old plays, and having access to the Stationers' Register, drew up for his own use a list, mainly based on Moseley's entries, containing the titles of such pieces as he thought it might be possible to recover, and added the names of those in his possession. The cook destroyed some of the plays, and Warburton, discovering his loss, added the famous memorandum to the text without remembering that it contained the names of plays which he did not possess. In this case the damage done by “Betsy” would not be so extensive as has been believed.
Appendix VI. A Metrical Peculiarity In Massinger
Our dramatic writers must have often felt that their metre required variety to relieve it from the dangers of facility and monotony. No doubt the same problem suggested itself to Homer and the Greek dramatists. In the former, the frequent pauses after the first foot or in the middle of the second foot, in the latter, the much-discussed pauses after the first foot, are as likely to be due to a desire for variety as to any special emphasis on the particular words thus singled out.[542]
In what ways did the Elizabethans secure variety?[543]
1. By the use of rhyme. This was the early solution. Massinger does not often resort to rhyme, though in some of his plays, notably in The Roman Actor, he several times employs the well-known couplet at the end of a scene.
2. By the free use of the eleven-syllable line. This was Fletcher's solution. It is astonishing how the pleasure which the occasional use of this licence gives us turns to a feeling of satiety and weakness when it is too freely employed, so that many passages in Fletcher sound like a horse with a fit of roaring.
3. In the free use of trisyllabic feet. This fact has been recently brought before the public by Mr. Bayfield in connexion with Shakspere. There is no need to quote instances of this common and easy expedient.
4. By the occasional use of short lines. As has been pointed out above,[544] Massinger is a strict metrist, and does not often resort to this liberty, even in rapid conversation.