Yet even here a defence of some sort can be set up for our poet. I will endeavour to make my meaning clear by an analogy from music. It may have occurred to someone to ask what the music of Mozart would have been like if he had lived after Beethoven. Would it have been more serious and sublime than it is? The question is worth asking, even if the only answer to it be this, that without Mozart Beethoven would never have existed. I think it is fair to argue that Massinger, in his constant effort after the representation of change of character, was before his time; he was seeking after a complex but possible effect, which the novelist can undertake but which the limitations of the stage render almost impossible.[225]
Is it fanciful to say that if he had lived in the eighteenth century, if he had had before his eyes the work of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, he would have been a good novelist, less cynical than Fielding, more concise than Richardson, more ideal than Smollett? There are authors like Euripides and Virgil whose very failures by a strange paradox seem part of their greatness; and we may perhaps say that Massinger, by pointing the way somewhat tentatively and blindly to subtle psychological studies, has helped to build up the noble fabric of the English novel.
Let us now turn to some miscellaneous points of interest in Massinger; and first, let us note his imitation of Shakspere. It is tempting to suppose that as he was at one time a dependent of a family which was intimate with Shakspere he may have come across the man himself;[226] it is, at any rate, simpler to remember that as he was thirty-two years of age when Shakspere died, he can hardly have failed to meet him in his professional relations. But we have no evidence of the fact. All we can say is that his plays, like those of Fletcher, Webster, Tourneur, and others,[227] show a constant study of Shakspere.[228]
First let me give a few examples of the imitation of incidents. In The Roman Actor,[229] Paris refers to a tragedy “in which a murder was acted to the life,” which forced a guilty hearer to make discovery of his secret; this recalls the play scene in Hamlet.[230] In A Very Woman[231] Almira makes Antonio tell her his history. The hint of this is taken from Othello.[232] In The Fatal Dowry[233] Beaumelle and her maid arrange to be overheard, like Hero and Ursula in Much Ado about Nothing.[234] The device by which Beaupré recovers her husband in The Parliament of Love is imitated from All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure. The banditti in The Guardian[235] respect the poor like the outlaws in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.[236] The forest scenes in the same play recall As You Like It and Midsummer-Night's Dream.[237] In The Bashful Lover[238] the pretty tale of a sister which Ascanio tells is a reminiscence of Twelfth Night.[239] The incident in the same play of Hortensio with Ascanio in his arms[240] is modelled on As You Like It.[241] Malefort's behaviour to the tailor[242] is imitated from Petruchio's in The Taming of the Shrew.[243] The gibberish of the pretended Indians in The City Madam[244] reminds us of Parolles' adventure in All's Well.[245] The scene in The Emperor of the East[246] where Eudocia professes to have eaten the apple is modelled on Othello[247], where Desdemona asserts that the handkerchief is not lost. In The Bondman[248] Zanthia overhears Corisca's confession of love in her sleep, as Iago [pg 079] does Cassio's.[249] In A New Way to pay Old Debts[250] Sir Giles Overreach, is carried off for treatment to a dark room like Malvolio in Twelfth Night.[251] Almira in A Very Woman[252] reminds us of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. The ghosts in The Unnatural Combat[253] and The Roman Actor[254] are used like those in the finale of Richard III.
Parallels in thought and diction are also numerous. Take The Roman Actor[255]:
Aretinus. Are you on the stage,
You talk so boldly?
Paris. The whole world being one,
This place is not exempted.
This goes back to Jaques in As You Like It.[256] In The Maid of Honour[257] Jacomo talks of “trailing the puissant pike;” the phrase of Pistol in Henry V.[258] In The Emperor of the East[259] Athenais makes use of the phrase “prophetic [pg 080] soul,” which we remember in Hamlet.[260] Leosthenes uses the same phrase in The Bondman[261] when the mutinous slave Cimbrio boasts of the excesses of his friends. The pun which Hircius makes on the cobbler's awl[262] occurs in the first scene of Julius Cæsar. The madness of the English slave in A Very Woman[263] comes from the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet.[264] The “many-headed monster, multitude” of Theodosius in The Emperor of the East[265] takes us back to Coriolanus' “beast with many heads”;[266] while the reference in the same play[267] to the “stomach” reminds us of the fable of Menenius.[268] In The Bashful Lover[269] Uberti discourses thus: