The old English dramatists

by James Russell Lowell

And, in a thousand ills have happ’d i’ th’ world,

The intelligence of one another’s shame

Hath wrought far more effectually than the tie

Of conscience or religion.”

The plot has other involutions of so unpleasant a nature now through change of manners that I shall but allude to them. They are perhaps intended to darken Romelio’s character to the proper Websterian sable, but they certainly rather make an eddy in the current of the action than hasten it as they should.

I have briefly analyzed this play because its plot is not a bad sample of a good many others, and because the play itself is less generally known than Webster’s deservedly more famous “Vittoria Corombona” and the “Duchess of Malfi.” Before coming to these, I will mention his “Appius and Virginia,” a spirited, well-constructed play (for here the simplicity of the incidents kept him within bounds), and, I think, as good as any other founded on a Roman story except Shakespeare’s. It is of a truly Roman temper, and perhaps, therefore, incurs a suspicion of being cast iron. Webster, like Ben Jonson, knew, theoretically at least, how a good play should be put together. In his preface to “The Devil’s Law-Case” he says: “A great part of the grace of this lay in action; yet can no action ever be gracious, where the decency of the language and ingenious structure of the scene arrive not to make up a perfect harmony.”

“The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona,” produced in 1612, and the “Duchess of Malfi,” in 1616, are the two works by which Webster is remembered. In these plays there is almost something like a fascination of crime and horror. Our eyes dazzle with them. The imagination that conceived them is a ghastly imagination. Hell is naked before it. It is the imagination of nightmare, but of no vulgar nightmare. I would rather call it fantasy than imagination, for there is something fantastic in its creations, and the fantastic is dangerously near to the grotesque, while the imagination, where it is most authentic, is most serene. Even to elicit strong emotion, it is the still small voice that is most effective; nor is Webster unaware of this, as I shall show presently. Both these plays are full of horrors, yet they do move pity and terror strongly also. We feel that we are under the control of a usurped and illegitimate power, but it is power. I remember seeing a picture in some Belgian church where an angel makes a motion to arrest the hand of the Almighty just as it is stretched forth in the act of the creation. If the angel foresaw that the world to be created was to be such a one as Webster conceived, we can fully understand his impulse. Through both plays there is a vapor of fresh blood and a scent of church-yard mould in the air. They are what children call creepy. Ghosts are ready at any moment: they seem, indeed, to have formed a considerable part of the population in those days. As an instance of the almost ludicrous way in which they were employed, take this stage direction from Chapman’s “Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois.” “Music, and the ghost of Bussy enters leading the ghosts of the Guise, Monsieur, Cardinal Guise, and Chatillon; they dance about the body and exeunt.” It is fair to say that Webster’s ghosts are far from comic.

Let me briefly analyze “The White Devil.” Vittoria Corombona, a beautiful woman, is married to Camillo, whom she did not love. She becomes the paramour of the Duke of Brachiano, whose Duchess is the sister of Francesco de’ Medici and of Cardinal Monticelso. One of the brothers of Vittoria, Flamineo, is secretary to Brachiano, and contrives to murder Camillo for them. Vittoria, as there is no sufficient proof to fix the charge of murder upon her, is tried for incontinency, and sent to a house of Convertites, whence Brachiano spirits her away, meaning to marry her. In the mean while Brachiano’s Duchess is got out of the way by poison; the lips of his portrait, which she kisses every night before going to bed, having been smeared with a deadly drug to that end. There is a Count Ludovico, who had proffered an unholy love to the Duchess, but had been repulsed by her, and he gladly offers himself as the minister of vengeance. Just as Brachiano is arming for a tournament arranged for the purpose by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Florence, Ludovico poisons his helmet, so that he shortly dies in torture. Ludovico then murders Vittoria, Zanche, her Moorish maid, and Flamineo, and is himself shot by the guards of the young Duke Giovanni, son of Brachiano, who break in upon him just as he has completed his butchery. There are but four characters in the play unstained with crime—Cornelia, Vittoria’s mother; Marcello, her younger son; the Duchess of Brachiano; and her son, the young Duke. There are three scenes in the play remarkable for their effectiveness, or for their power in different ways—the trial scene of Vittoria, the death scene of Brachiano, and that of Vittoria. There is another—the burial of Marcello—which is pathetic as few men have known how to be so simply and with so little effort as Webster.

“Fran. de’ Med. Your reverend mother

Is grown a very old woman in two hours.