Facies non omnibus una,
Nec diversa tamen:
and yet so close is the generic likeness between flower and flower of the same lyrical garden that the first half of the quotation seems but half applicable here. In Bird’s, Morley’s, Dowland’s collections of music with the words appended—in such jewelled volumes as England’s Helicon and Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody—their name is Legion, their numbers are numberless. You cannot call them imitators, this man of that, or all of any; they were all of one school, but it was a school without a master or a head. And even so it was with the earliest sect or gathering of dramatic writers in England. Marlowe alone stood apart and above them all—the young Shakespeare among the rest; but among these we cannot count, we cannot guess, how many were wellnigh as competent as he to continue the fluent rhyme, to prolong the facile echo, of Greene and Peele, their first and most famous leaders.
No more docile or capable pupil could have been desired by any master in any art than the author of David and Bethsabe has found in the writer of this second act. He has indeed surpassed his model, if not in grace and sweetness, yet in taste or tact of expression, in continuity and equality of style. Vigour is not the principal note of his manner, but compared with the soft effusive ebullience of his master’s we may fairly call it vigorous and condensed. But all this merit or demerit is matter of mere language only. The poet—a very pretty poet in his way, and doubtless capable of gracious work enough in the idyllic or elegiac line of business—shows about as much capacity to grasp and handle the fine intimacies of character and the large issues of circumstance to any tragic or dramatic purpose, as might be expected from an idyllic or elegiac poet who should suddenly assume the buskin of tragedy. Let us suppose that Moschus, for example, on the strength of having written a sweeter elegy than ever before was chanted over the untimely grave of a friend and fellow-singer, had said within himself, “Go to, I will be Sophocles”; can we imagine that the tragic result would have been other than tragical indeed for the credit of his gentle name, and comical indeed for all who might have envied the mild and modest excellence which fashion or hypocrisy might for years have induced them to besprinkle with the froth and slaver of their promiscuous and pointless adulation?
As the play is not more generally known than it deserves to be,—or perhaps we may say it is somewhat less known, though its claim to general notice is faint indeed compared with that of many a poem of its age familiar only to special students in our own—I will transcribe a few passages to show how far the writer could reach at his best; leaving for others to indicate how far short of that not inaccessible point he is too generally content to fall and to remain.
The opening speech is spoken by one Lodowick, a parasite of the King’s; who would appear, like François Villon under the roof of his Fat Madge, to have succeeded in reconciling the professional duties—may I not say, the generally discordant and discrepant offices?—of a poet and a pimp.
I might perceive his eye in her eye lost,
His ear to drink her sweet tongue’s utterance;
And changing passion, like inconstant clouds,
That, rackt upon the carriage of the winds,
Increase, and die, in his disturbèd cheeks.
Lo, when she blushed, even then did he look pale;
As if her cheeks by some enchanted power
Attracted had the cherry blood from his: [{245a}]
Anon, with reverent fear when she grew pale,
His cheeks put on their scarlet ornaments;
But no more like her oriental red
Than brick to coral, or live things to dead. [{245b}]
Why did he then thus counterfeit her looks?
If she did blush, ’twas tender modest shame,
Being in the sacred presence of a king;
If he did blush, ’twas red immodest shame
To vail his eyes amiss, being a king;
If she looked pale, ’twas silly woman’s fear
To bear herself in presence of a king;
If he looked pale, it was with guilty fear
To dote amiss, being a mighty king.
This is better than the insufferable style of Locrine, which is in great part made up of such rhymeless couplets, each tagged with an empty verbal antithesis; but taken as a sample of dramatic writing, it is but just better than what is utterly intolerable. Dogberry has defined it exactly; it is most tolerable—and not to be endured.
The following speech of King Edward is in that better style of which the author’s two chief models were not at their best incapable for awhile under the influence and guidance (we may suppose) of their friend Marlowe.
She is grown more fairer far since I came hither;
Her voice more silver every word than other,
Her wit more fluent. What a strange discourse
Unfolded she of David and his Scots!
Even thus, quoth she, he spake—and then spake broad,
With epithets and accents of the Scot;
But somewhat better than the Scot could speak:
And thus, quoth she—and answered then herself;
For who could speak like her? but she herself
Breathes from the wall an angel’s note from heaven
Of sweet defiance to her barbarous foes.
When she would talk of peace, methinks her tongue
Commanded war to prison; [{246}] when of war,
It wakened Cæsar from his Roman grave
To hear war beautified by her discourse.
Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue;
Beauty a slander, but in her fair face;
There is no summer but in her cheerful looks,
Nor frosty winter but in her disdain.
I cannot blame the Scots that did besiege her,
For she is all the treasure of our land;
But call them cowards that they ran away,
Having so rich and fair a cause to stay.
But if for a moment we may fancy that here and there we have caught such an echo of Marlowe as may have fallen from the lips of Shakespeare in his salad days, in his period of poetic pupilage, we have but a very little way to go forward before we come upon indisputable proof that the pupil was one of feebler hand and fainter voice than Shakespeare. Let us take the passage on poetry, beginning—