That craves a present medicine, I should pluck
All ladies' scandal on me.[355]
Hippolyta agrees in these lines to postpone her wedding in order that the Queens should be avenged on Creon. No doubt the lines are crude, but Boyle goes too far with his “cloven hoof,” his “effluvia of social corruption,” his “thick miasma.”
“There is a close parallel between The Two Noble Kinsmen and A Very Woman in the treatment of madness.”[356] I do not see much similarity between the prose of the one play and the poetry of the other, but so far as any exists it is due to the common ideas of the age as to the way in which to treat the mad. “The reflections in the dialogue of Palamon and Arcite,[357] on the corruptions of Thebes, the neglect of soldiers, the extravagance of fashion, are allusions such as Massinger makes to contemporary English life.”[358] The allusions are such as any moralist might make, and if the rough and immature style in which they are expressed is not like Massinger's the argument falls to the ground.
“There are a good many expressions in common between The Two Noble Kinsmen and Massinger.”[359] This is the really serious argument; but let me repeat that similarity of thought and expression in isolated phrases does not prove unity of authorship. Let us, however, look at some of these parallels.
Reference is twice made in The Two Noble Kinsmen to “the wheaten garland” of brides.[360] Massinger refers to “the garland” of a bridegroom in three passages.[361] I fail to see the connexion. Notice also that Massinger does not use the epithet “wheaten” in these passages.
Theseus says, “Troubled I am,” and turns away.[362] It was quite natural that he should think twice before postponing his wedding. Boyle compares a passage where Ladislas is in uncertainty[363]:
I am much troubled,
And do begin to stagger.
People in Massinger's plays are often perplexed, and so they are in real life. Note that Theseus ends his remark with these words at the beginning of a line. When Massinger's characters are in perplexity their way of expressing themselves is quite different; it is more full and rounded off.