It will be seen that I have reserved Old Fortunatus and The Honest Whore for separate notice. They illustrate, respectively, the power which Dekker has in romantic poetry, and his command of vivid, tender, and subtle portraiture in the characters, especially, of women. Both, and especially the earlier play, exhibit also his rapid careless writing, and his ignorance of, or indifference to, the construction of a clear and distinctly outlined plot. Old Fortunatus tells the well-known story of the wishing cap and purse, with a kind of addition showing how these fare in the hands of Fortunatus's sons, and with a wild intermixture (according to the luckless habit above noted) of kings and lords, and pseudo-historical incidents. No example of the kind is more chaotic in movement and action. But the interlude of Fortune with which it is ushered in is conceived in the highest romantic spirit, and told in verse of wonderful effectiveness, not to mention two beautiful songs; and throughout the play the allegorical or supernatural passages show the same character. Nor are the more prosaic parts inferior, as, for instance, the pretty dialogue of Orleans and Galloway, cited by Lamb, and the fine passage where Andelocia says what he will do "to-morrow."
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Fort. "No more: curse on: your cries to me are music, And fill the sacred roundure of mine ears With tunes more sweet than moving of the spheres. Curse on: on our celestial brows do sit Unnumbered smiles, which then leap from their throne When they see peasants dance and monarchs groan. Behold you not this Globe, this golden bowl, This toy call'd world at our Imperial feet? This world is Fortune's ball wherewith she sports. Sometimes I strike it up into the air, And then create I Emperors and Kings. Sometimes I spurn it: at which spurn crawls out That wild beast multitude: curse on, you fools. 'Tis I that tumble Princes from their thrones, And gild false brows with glittering diadems. 'Tis I that tread on necks of conquerors, And when like semi-gods they have been drawn, In ivory chariots to the capitol, Circled about with wonder of all eyes The shouts of every tongue, love of all hearts Being swoll'n with their own greatness, I have prick'd The bladder of their pride, and made them die, As water bubbles, without memory. I thrust base cowards into honour's chair, Whilst the true spirited soldier stands by Bare headed, and all bare, whilst at his scars They scoff, that ne'er durst view the face of wars. I set an Idiot's cap on virtue's head, Turn learning out of doors, clothe wit in rags And paint ten thousand images of loam In gaudy silken colours: on the backs Of mules and asses I make asses ride Only for sport, to see the apish world Worship such beasts with sound idolatry. This Fortune does, and when this is done, She sits and smiles to hear some curse her name, And some with adoration crown her fame. |
The whole is, as a whole, to the last degree crude and undigested, but the ill-matured power of the writer is almost the more apparent.
The Honest Whore, in two parts, is, as far as general character goes, a mixed comedy of intrigue and manners combining, or rather uniting (for there is little combination of them), four themes—first, the love of Hippolito for the Princess Infelice, and his virtuous motions followed by relapse; secondly, the conversion by him of the courtesan Bellafront, a damsel of good family, from her evil ways, and her marriage to her first gallant, a hairbrained courtier named Matheo; thirdly, Matheo's ill-treatment of Bellafront, her constancy and her rejection of the temptations of Hippolito, who from apostle has turned seducer, with the humours of Orlando Friscobaldo, Bellafront's father, who, feigning never to forgive her, watches over her in disguise, and acts as guardian angel to her reckless and sometimes brutal husband; and lastly, the other humours of a certain marvellously patient citizen who allows his wife to hector him, his customers to bully and cheat him, and who pushes his eccentric and unmanly patience to the point of enduring both madhouse and jail. Lamb, while ranking a single speech of Bellafront's very high, speaks with rather oblique approval of the play, and Hazlitt, though enthusiastic for it, admires chiefly old Friscobaldo and the ne'er-do-well Matheo. My own reason for preferring it to almost all the non-tragical work of the time out of Shakespere, is the wonderful character of Bellafront, both in her unreclaimed and her reclaimed condition. In both she is a very woman—not as conventional satirists and conventional encomiasts praise or rail at women, but as women are. If her language in her unregenerate days is sometimes coarser than is altogether pleasant, it does not disguise her nature,—the very nature of such a woman misled by giddiness, by curiosity, by love of pleasure, by love of admiration, but in no thorough sense depraved. Her selection of Matheo not as the instrument of her being "made an honest woman," not apparently because she had any love for him left, or had ever had much, but because he was her first seducer, is exactly what, after a sudden convincing of sin, such a woman would have done; and if her patience under the long trial of her husband's thoughtlessness and occasional brutality seem excessive, it will only seem so to one who has been unlucky in his experience. Matheo indeed is a thorough good-for-nothing, and the natural man longs that Bellafront might have been better parted; but Dekker was a very moral person in his own way, and apparently he would not entirely let her—Imogen gone astray as she is—off her penance.
CHAPTER VI
LATER ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN PROSE
One name so far dominates the prose literature of the last years of Elizabeth, and that of the whole reign of James, that it has probably alone secured attention in the general memory, except such as may be given to the purple patches (of the true Tyrian dye, but not extremely numerous) which decorate here and there the somewhat featureless expanse of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World. That name, it is scarcely necessary to say, is the name of Francis Bacon. Bacon's eventful life, his much debated character, his philosophical and scientific position, are all matters beyond our subject. But as it is of the first importance in studying that subject to keep dates and circumstances generally, if not minutely, in view, it may be well to give a brief summary of his career. He was born in 1561, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper; he went very young to Cambridge, and though early put to the study of the law, discovered an equally early bent in another direction. He was unfortunate in not obtaining the patronage then necessary to all men not of independent fortune. Though Elizabeth was personally familiar with him, she gave him nothing of importance—whether owing to the jealousy of his uncle and cousin, Burleigh and Robert Cecil, is a point not quite certain. The patronage of Essex did him very little good, and drew him into the worst action of his life. But after Elizabeth's death, and when a man of middle age, he at last began to mount the ladder, and came with some rapidity to the summit of his profession, being made Lord Chancellor, and created Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Alban. The title Lord Bacon he never bore in strictness, but it has been consecrated by the use of many generations, and it is perhaps pedantry to object to it. Entangled as a courtier in the rising hatred of the Court felt by the popular party, exposed by his own carelessness, if not by actual venality in office, to the attacks of his enemies, and weakly supported, if supported at all, by the favourite Buckingham (who seems to have thought that Bacon took too much upon himself in state affairs), he lost, in 1621, all his places and emoluments, and was heavily fined. The retirement of his last few years produced much literary fruit, and he died (his death being caused or hastened by an injudicious experiment) in 1626.