I look on your dimensions, and find not
Mine own of lesser size; the blood that fills
My veins, as hot as yours, my sword as sharp,
My nerves of equal strength, my heart as good.
This reminds us of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice[270] and the King in Henry V.[271] Clarindore's language in The Parliament of Love[272] is modelled on Malvolio in Twelfth Night.[273] The same is true of Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way.[274] Shakspere's dislike of spaniels reappears in the same play.[275]
No doubt we must make deductions for the common [pg 081] idioms of the day,[276] but the cumulative evidence of these parallels with the elder dramatist is overwhelming.[277]
Massinger is very fond of introducing doctors in his plays; so no doubt are the other dramatists of this period. It is interesting to compare Paulo in A Very Woman with Corax in The Lover's Melancholy of Ford, who deals successfully with two cases of mental derangement. Ford is more subtle, Massinger more dignified. Thus we find in The Virgin Martyr[278] a consultation about Antoninus' health. Sapritius, the afflicted father, hails the doctors thus:
O you that are half gods, lengthen that life
Their deities lend us; turn o'er all the volumes
Of your mysterious Æsculapian science