Answer'd as I could wish, how the fops gape now!
Ricardo. This was harsh and scurvy.
Ubaldo. We will be revenged,
When he comes to court the ladies, and laugh at him.
Another of Massinger's effective devices is to sustain the interest of the spectators by concealing characters [pg 031] and facts; thus, in The Duke of Milan we do not fathom for some time the villainy of Francisco; in The City Madam we ponder from the beginning over the obscure character of Luke. The best instances of this expedient are to be found in The Unnatural Combat and The Bondman. The air of gloom which overhangs the former tragedy is as great in its way as anything which our author has attained; and though the play is what we may call Elizabethan rather than for all time, yet it is in some sense the best specimen of his serious work. The desire of Malefort is that of the father in Shelley's Cenci; and perhaps the only way to prevent the theme from being intolerable was to veil it as long as possible, and to raise the spectators' sympathy at first for a man who had fought well for the State, and who to all appearance was badly treated by his pirate son.[114] In The Bondman, Marullo and Timandra, the brother and sister, are concealed till the very end, when they reveal themselves to be Pisander and Statilia—thereby bringing to an unexpected conclusion a plot which seemed to offer no solution.[115]
In The City Madam the method is varied a little: here we have one of Massinger's greatest creations, the fawning hypocrite, Luke. Indications of his future development are skilfully given from time to time, so that when this alarming person at length shows himself in his true colours we shiver without being surprised. The same idea shows itself in The Renegado,[116] in the skill with which Donusa leads up to her proposal that Vitelli should turn Mahometan; and in The Virgin Martyr,[117] where Artemia prepares the way for the offer of her hand to Antoninus.
Massinger is never so happy as when he has an opportunity in his well-proportioned scenes for displays of rhetoric, such as we find in Euripides, where character argues against character.[118] These scenes are often thrown into the form of a trial at law or a debate in the Senate.[119]
The plays end well and effectively; our author excels in the tragi-comedy, a type much affected by Fletcher. Like all his contemporaries, he felt that the intermixture of a lighter element in a play which ended happily was justifiable.[120] The haste which Shakspere sometimes shows in his fifth act is, as a rule, not apparent in Massinger. For example, in The Virgin Martyr, the death of the heroine occurs at the end of the fourth act. To all appearance there is bound to be an anticlimax in the fifth act. But there is not; on the contrary, the appearance of the heavenly messenger, bearing the fruits of Paradise to the cruel persecutor Theophilus, elevates the mind into a state of surprise and admiration. It has often been pointed out that the appearance of a deity to [pg 033] cut the knot at the end of a play of Euripides, which sometimes irritates the thinker in his study, and provokes him to write essays on the bad art and theology of the poet, is dazzlingly beautiful on the stage, and raises associations of sublimity and awe; it may in the same way be imagined how effective must have been the procession at the end of The Virgin Martyr. The stage directions run as follows: “Enter Dorothea in a white robe, crownes upon her head, led in by Angels, Antoninus, Caliste, and Christeta following, all in white, but lesse glorious, the Angell with a Crowne for him” (i.e., Theophilus). At the sight of the glorious vision the persecutor dies, converted to the Christian faith, and the evil spirit, which has prompted his cruel acts, sinks to his own place with thunder and lightning, while Diocletian and his court look on in amazement. Similarly, in The Roman Actor there is no anticlimax; though Paris dies in the fourth act,[121] we feel that the tragedy is incomplete until it is rounded off by the punishment of the Emperor Domitian, which we breathlessly await.
Secondly, Massinger has a beautiful style. This point again is conceded by all the critics. The elegance of his dedications shows that had he wished he could have written excellent prose.[122] One who depreciates him allows that his style is “pure and free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions.”[123] It has the grace and balance which one would expect from a well-bred and educated man, owing little to ornament or epithets or images. It serves its purpose, which is to tell a story [pg 034] rapidly, and to unfold character rather than to display the author's command of language or subtlety of thought and expression. Seldom trivial, it is never prosaic, and yet it is constantly on the border-line of prose. Massinger thought in blank verse because he was a dramatist rather than because he was a poet. Hence his enemies might say that his lines are prose in lengths; yet that would be an unjust accusation. The poetical “colour” is here, the ideal dignity, the atmosphere, although they obtrude themselves less on the reader than in most poets. Like Ovid, Massinger is one whose amazing facility carries us along like a flood—a writer who should be read in large quantities at a time,
“Whose easy Pegasus will amble o'er