II., 1.—Lines 1-54, and 136 to the end. I find no trace of Massinger's style in these passages. Boyle has to allow that Fletcher altered several lines in 1-54; this is precarious and subjective reasoning.
II., 3.—Lines 1-11 are in the parenthetic manner, but quite unlike Massinger's. “Soft cheveril conscience” in line 31, and “you'd venture an emballing” in line 47, are instances of the strong vocabulary which marks the play.[319] Picturesque phrases of this kind are not characteristic of Massinger's style.
Nor did Massinger ever sink so low as line 64:
A thousand pound a year, annual support.[320]
II., 4.—No doubt Massinger loves a forensic scene, but this one leads to nothing and leaves the mind in confusion. Now, Massinger was too good an artist to do that. The things the people say in this scene must have passed through their minds in real life, but they are combined in such a way as to be true to history rather than to dramatic propriety. The author aims at telling what happened, and what happened does not always make a good play. It might even be urged from what we know of Massinger that he was too good a “stage-poet” to undertake an English historical play with its necessary limitations.
III., 2, 1-203.—The scene, like so much else in the play, lacks the refinement and courtliness which Massinger [pg 090] always has at his command. It may be noted that the bluff, coarse atmosphere of the “Shaksperian” scenes is very suitable to the central figure of the play.[321] Henry VIII infects his surroundings with himself, and this might be quoted as an indication of Shaksperian skill.
IV., 1.—The prosaic details of this scene are unlike anything in Massinger.[322]
V., 1.—The point of this scene is to concentrate our attention on Elizabeth's birth. The scene “sprawls” sadly, to use Boyle's description of Fletcher's method. First we have Gardiner and Lovell, then Henry and Suffolk, then Henry and Cranmer, then Henry and the old lady. Massinger constructed better than this.
V., 3, 1-113.—Such a speech as Cranmer makes (lines 58-69) is too short for Massinger's ample method, and its terse, broken style is singularly unlike his.
5. The few parallels of diction which Boyle brings forward are either from plays which are not certainly by Massinger, or may be explained as due to reminiscence or common phraseology.