The fertility of Decker was great; for independent of numerous pieces of a miscellaneous kind, he wrote or contributed to write, not fewer than thirty-two plays. Several of these, however, were never printed, and are not now, probably, in existence; and two which were once in Mr. Warburton's possession, perished with his ill-fated collection. There is reason to suppose that twelve, if not fifteen, originated solely with himself, and for the remainder, his associates were Middleton, Massinger, and Ford, Webster, Day, and Rowley. With the latter and Ford, he wrote The Witch of Edmonton, the execution of which shows, that, though he has availed himself, with much effect, of the common superstitions connected with his subject, he was, in point of fancy, inferior to Middleton, the Witch of this triumvirate being little more than the ignorant and self-deluded victim of the folly of the times, then, under the shape of decrepid and female old age, to be found in almost every hamlet in the kingdom.
Decker has been more known to posterity by his connection and quarrel with Ben Jonson, than by his own works, a fate which has also obscured the writings and reputation of John Marston, who, in his life-time, was not undeservedly celebrated both as a dramatic and a satiric poet. In the former capacity he produced eight plays, of which the two parts of Antonio and Mellida, The Insatiate Countess, and The Malcontent, published as early as 1602, 1603, and 1604, reflect great credit on his abilities. These, and indeed all his dramas, give evidence of great wealth and vigour of description, of much
felicity in expression, and of much passionate eloquence; nor are his characters raw or indistinct sketches, but highly coloured and well supported. The compliment, however, which some modern writers have paid him, on the score of chastity of thought and style, is, we are sorry to say, most unmerited; for neither is it supported by the opinion of his contemporaries, nor by the testimony of his own writings. So greatly was he a sinner in this respect, that an old satirist says of him,—
"Tut, what cares he for modest, close couched terms,
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?
Give him plain-naked words, stripped from their shirts,
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine."[568:A]
If fecundity were a test of genius, no writer, with the exception of Lopez de Vega, would stand upon such elevated ground as Thomas Heywood, who tells us, in the Preface to his English Traveller, a tragi-comedy, that it was "one reserved amongst 220 in which he had either an entire hand or at the least a main finger;" a degree of industry and fertility which may justly excite our astonishment.
It is perhaps equally extraordinary, that, in periods so late as the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, and when the art of printing was in full activity, only twenty-six of this prodigious number should have issued from the press, a paucity for which their author accounts, in the preface just quoted, in the following manner: "One reason," he avers, "is that many of them, by shifting and change of companies, have been negligently lost; others of them are still retained in the hands of some actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print; and a third, that it never was any great ambition in me, to bee, in this kind, voluminously read."
This apathy or modesty has, no doubt, deprived us of some interesting plays; for though Heywood had little of the enthusiasm or