In a strong cabinet, of which you yourself
Shall keep the key.
Shakespeare: ’Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
In the preceding passage Massinger had squeezed his simile to death, here he drags it round the city at his heels; and how swift Shakespeare’s figure is! We may add two more passages, not given by our commentator; here the model is Webster. They occur on the same page, an artless confession.
Here he comes,
His nose held up; he hath something in the wind,
is hardly comparable to “the Cardinal lifts up his nose like a foul porpoise before a storm,” and when we come upon
as tann’d galley-slaves
Pay such as do redeem them from the oar