“The tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language.” This is based in the main on Hippolyta's language,[336] with which Mr. Sykes compares a passage in The Unnatural Combat.[337] I have discussed the supposed coarseness of Massinger's heroines elsewhere. In spite of everything that Boyle can say, with his catalogue of twenty-two passages, I wonder who is right about Massinger's women, Boyle or Courthope, who says that “his portraits of women show more delicacy of feeling and imagination than those of any English dramatist with the exception of Shakspere.”[338] I, at any rate, feel that Courthope is nearer the truth than Boyle and his followers.
“Feeble imitation of Shakspere.” That there is imitation of Shakspere in Massinger we all know; but I deny that it is feeble, and we know that others of the same age, [pg 097] like Fletcher, Webster, and Tourneur, have delighted to imitate him.
“The frequent similarity to Massinger's writings.” In the first place, I do not feel that the similarity is frequent; and secondly, as has already been pointed out, what similarity there is may be due to imitation of The Two Noble Kinsmen by Massinger. Are we to suppose that the only author he imitated or borrowed from was Shakspere?
The final reservation raises mixed feelings. I am tired of those writers who grudgingly attribute to Massinger the leavings of other playwrights, making him the whipping boy of his age, and who proceed to qualify their theories by doubts as to his ability to attain to the excellences which they perforce discover in them. I will be so far generous to Mr. Brooke as to allow that “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian parts” is unlike Massinger, because there is no reason for supposing that he wrote any of these parts. Massinger's fame can stand on its own merits without these churlishly conceded ascriptions of doubtful work.
And now let us pass to Boyle's notable article on this subject.[339] Much as I admire his learning and zeal, I am amazed at the perversity of his judgment and the thinness of his arguments. Let us take them in order. “There is a want of development in the dramatic character”[340] of The Two Noble Kinsmen. This Boyle ascribes to the fact that, as elsewhere, Massinger's conceptions were blurred by Fletcher's co-operation in other parts of the play. As this argument begs the question it has no weight. “Allusions to Shakspere are characteristic both of Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen.”[341] Are we to suppose that no one imitated Shakspere except Massinger? “The metrical structure of the play corresponds closely with Massinger's general style.”[342] Here, however, Boyle [pg 098] has to allow that the percentages for double endings are not what you would expect. And I look with suspicion on a writer who professes to be so certain of these tests that he can assign I., 1-40, and V., 1-19, to Fletcher. “Massinger is fond of classical allusions, as is the author of The Two Noble Kinsmen.”[343] This argument deserves no consideration when we remember that the fact is true of other Elizabethan writers. For example, we find “the helmeted Bellona,”[344] and Massinger is fond of the sonorous word.[345] Yes, but Bellona is not unknown in Shakspere. M. Arnold has pointed out that she occurs in a weak passage of Macbeth.[346] “Medical and surgical similes occur in both.”[347] When we come to investigate these we find that the remarks in question are of a commonplace kind. “The characters of The Two Noble Kinsmen resemble those of Massinger.”[348] Theseus, for example, resembles Lorenzo in The Bashful Lover. I see no resemblance. “Palamon and Arcite may be met with in many of Massinger's plays.”[349] I fail to find them anywhere. “The three ladies are grossly sensual in their remarks.”[350] I have dealt with this point before, and it really amounts to a mischievous obsession in Boyle's mind. Let us take the passages seriatim; Emilia is talking privately to Hippolyta[351] about a dead girl friend to whom she was devoted when young. In the course of this beautiful passage she says:
The flower that I would pluck
And put between my breasts, then but beginning
To swell about the blossom, oh! she would long
Till she had such another, and commit it
To the like innocent cradle, where phœnix-like