You speak as if a man
Should know what fowl is coffined in a baked meat,
Afore you cut it open.
When knaves come to preferment, they rise as gallowses
are raised in the Low Countries, one upon another's
shoulders.
Pleasure of life! what is't? only the good hours of an
ague.
I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of
the feet of one sick of the plague than kiss one of you
fasting.
In his dialogue, people bandy phrases like—"O you screech-owl!" and "Thou foul black cloud!" A sister warns her brother to think twice before committing suicide, with this weird admonition:—
I prithee, yet remember
Millions are now in graves, which at last day
Like mandrakes shall rise shrieking.
But enough has now been said about these peculiarities of Webster's dramatic style. It is needful to become acclimatised to his specific mannerism, both in the way of working and the tone of thinking, before we can appreciate his real greatness as a dramatic poet and moralist. Then we recognise the truth of what has recently been written of him by an acute and sympathetic critic: "There is no poet morally nobler than Webster."[4]
John Addington Symonds.
[THE WHITE DEVIL;
OR,
VITTORIA COROMBONA.]
The White Divel; or, the Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, With the Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona, the famous Venetian Curtizan, was printed in 1612, as acted by the Queen's servants, and again in 1631, 1665, and 1672. In 1707 Nahum Tate published an alteration called Injured Love; or, the Cruel Husband.