BOOKS.

HEYWOOD'S DRAMATIC WORKS.* THESE volumes belong to the same series of reprints as the edi- tion of Dekker which we lately noticed, and comprise in like- manner the dramatist and his previous editors, the plays hitherto. neglected having been left without any corrections from internal

evidence, and without any explanatory notes, even where a mere extract from Nares's Glossary would have been useful to the un- provided reader. A complete republication of Thomas HeywOod's plays was, however, out of the question. He claimed in 1633 to,

have had "either an entire hand, or at the least a main finger," in the extraordinary number of 220; and his industrious career, which had commenced pretty nearly with the century, was not even then terminated. In 1638 he had written at least six more. plays, but only twenty of the whole series are now extant, if we- omit a few pageants and a set of translated dialogues of ambigu- ous character, and do not count separately the " parts " of plays. The fate of the majority has been partly explained in the preface to "The English Traveller," where Heywood says :—

"This tragi-comedy, being one reserved out of 220 came.

accidentally to the press, and I, having intelligence thereof, thought it. not fit that it should pass as flues populi, a bastard without a father to. acknowledge it. True it is that ray plays are not exposed to the worldi in volumes, to bear the title of works, as others ; one reason is, that, many of them, by shifting and change of companies, have been negli- gently lost ; others of them are still in the hand of some actors, who. think it against their peculiar profit to have them come into print ; and a third, that it was never a great ambition in me to be in this kind voluminously read."

One cannot help imagining that the difficulties here referred to' were encountered by various other dramatists, and that Hey– wood's neglect of so many plays was connected with a conscious- ness of having produced them, in a plodding way, for the sake of immediate earnings, and having often contented himself with a very low measure of inspiration. Even the present remnant of our author's works must always need a further sifting to make. it attractive to any large class of readers, though we note that Charles Lamb thought that his collected plays might be fitly used to begin a reprint of the old English dramatists. This critic's estimate of Heywood the present editor has given us pretty fully,. along with that of Hazlitt, and with two other general notices of considerable ability, but unluckily, with none more recent than, 1841, though some further remarks on single plays have since then been culled from the scholars who disinterred the originals.. Lamb, as many of our readers may remember, speaks of Heywood as "a sort of prose Shakespeare, whose scenes are to the full as natural and affecting though we miss the Poet and. his characters (country gentlemen, &c.) are exactly what we see, but of the best kind we see in life." In another place he says :—

" Ile possessed not the imagination of Shakespeare but in those qualities which gained for the latter the attribute of ' gentle ' he was not, inferior to him. Generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of • The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood. Now first collected, with Illustrative Notes, and a Memoir of the Author. In Six Volumes. London: Pearson. 1874.

passion, sweetness (in a word) and gentleness, Christianism, and true, hearty Anglicism of feeling, shine through his beautiful writings In Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to

poetry."

By liarlitt the same dramatist is described more freely and fully, though still in a tone which seems indulgent. Among his re- marks we find-

"Heywood's imagination is a gentle, lambent flame, which purifies without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There is nothing supernatural, nothing startling or terrific. He makes use of the commonest circumstances of every-day life and of the easiest tempers. His incidents strike from their very familiarity, the pathos might be deemed purer from its having no mixture of turbulence or vindictive- ness His style is equally natural, simple, and unconstrained. The dialogue (bating the verse) is such as might be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is not so much that he uses the common English idiom for everything . . . . but the simplicity of the characters and the equable flow of the sentiments, do not require them to be warped from the tone of level speaking by figurative expression or hyperbolical allusion. A few exceptions occur now and then, where the hectic flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they are not the worse for being rare. Thus in 'A Woman killed with Kindness,' Wendell, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his obligations to her husband, interrupts her, saying,

'Oh. speak no more: For more than this I know and have recorded Within the red-leaved tablet of my heart.'

And Frankford says,—

' Astonishment,

Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart, Even as a madman beats upon a drum.'

Heywood's plots have little of artifice, or regularity, or design to recommend them. He writes on carelessly as it happens, and trusts to Nature and a certain happy tranquillity of spirit for gaining the favour of his audience He is said, besides attending to his duties as an actor, to have composed regularly a sheet a day, which may account for the unembarrassed facility of his style."

An article in the Retrospective Review (1825), while generally recommending Heywood, states sharply the unequal and mis- cellaneous character of his plays, putting down "Edward IV." as a "long and tedious business," and even slighting the lively and trivial "Fair Maid of the Exchange," for which Lamb shows some partiality. It surprises us by complaining of an extravagant sense of honour in some of Heywood's characters, but this refers mostly to "The Fair Maid of the West," a play in which there is a fantastic vein of national bravado; or perhaps to "The Challenge for Beauty," which has a suspiciously Spanish aspect.

The Edinburgh Review, in 1841, touched more lightly on Heywood's less mature compositions, but distinguished him critically as heading a school which upheld the early realistic tendencies of the old drama (as they flourished when "Arden of Fevershain " was written in connection with a recent offender against the laws), and thus resisting the great influence which Shakespeare exercised, not only on his imitators, but on drama- tists who struggled to vindicate their originality by means of striking novelties.

The best of Heywood's plays seem by general agreement to be "The English Traveller" and "The Woman killed with Kind- ness," notwithstanding that the former is quite interlarded with scenes from Plautus, in lieu of an underplot. Both alike may serve to illustrate what is meant by the " Anglicism " of his genius, in Lamb's phraseology, if we call to mind the Italian and Machiavellian elements which enter so largely into the tragic characters of most of our other dramatists. Heywood is not familiar with the vices of the subtle brain and nervous tem- perament, such as reserve, jealousy, perfidy, and implacable vengeance. His sinners are but wanting in self-control, .and his virtuous personages have the fullest measure of frankness and fine temper that can be sought for in a model Englishman. Hence his most perplexed situations do not lead to those sudden and irremediable catastrophes which theatrical experience might lead us to expect, but rather to scenes of confession and forgiveness, which are planned with a certain naiveté, though from some ordinary points of view they may present a deep and moral pathos. In "The English Traveller," young Geraldine meets, after returning to his country, a lady formerly affected by him, but now married to an elderly gentleman, who scarcely doats more on her than on Geraldine himself. He is received like an inmate of the house, and has the most unrestricted access to the wife ; but the two, after indulging in some regrets, resolve on maintaining an honourable friendship, and giving no cause to old Wincott to repent of his confidence. They are not too bash- ful, however, to observe that he is not likely to live long, and to exchange the most solemn promises that they will marry whenever the opportunity presents itself. The scene occupied by this transaction is, on the whole, a fine one. But the behaviour of the lady proves, unfortunately, more yielding towards a less patient suitor, whom Geralclinehimself has brought

into the domestic circle. The modesty of Geraldine and the occasional weakness of his innocent character are employed with more than usual address by our dramatist, to make him give an opportunity for the intrigue, and himself to overhear some evi- dence of it. Then follow scenes of expostulation and penitence, which are in some respects worthy of the author of " Guinevere."

After these the wife dies, rather too melodramatically, but the consequences we are left to anticipate are somewhat common-place.

Geraldine becomes free to marry Anne's sister, who had formerly taken a fancy to him, but afterwards lent her ear to the pretended courtship of the adulterer, Delaval. Old Wincott only learns at the very last who is the man he should have mistrusted, and we feel that in his interest in his wife's honour he has been dis- gracefully eclipsed by Geraldine.

There is less of skilful manamvre in "A Woman killed with Kindness," but more of Heywood's finest feeling. The husband, who has convicted his wife of infidelity, addresses her with deep, but not impotent emotion ; he retires to deliberate how he shall treat her, and then banishes her to a manor, where she is to have a liberal maintenance, but must never more see or communicate with him. In this way he "heaps coals of fire on her head," so that she resolves to starve herself ; she is consoled, however, on her deatlibed by an interview, in which he forgives and blesses her. These scenes have been often quoted, and we must there- fore limit our extracts to the passage in which the husband clears his house of all the objects which can painfully remind him of his lost happiness :—

" Why do you search each room about your house,

Now that you have despatcht your wife away ?"

"0 Sir ! to see that nothing may be left That ever was my wife's. I loved her dearly, And when I do but think of her unkindness, My thoughts are all in Hell ; to avoid which torment I would not have a bodkin or a cuff, A bracelet, necklace, or rebate-wire, Nor anything that ever was call'd hers Left me, by which I might remember her.

Seek round about."

"'Sblcod ! master, here's her lute flung in a corner."

"Her lute ? 0 God ! upon this instrument Her fingers have run quick division Sweeter than that which now divides our hearts.

These frets have mado me pleasant, that have now

Frets of my heartstrings made. Oh! master Cromwell?

Oft bath she made this molahcholy wood (Now mute and dumb for her disastrous chance) Speak sweetly many a note, sound many a strain To her own ravishing voice, which being well strung,

What pleasant, strange airs have they jointly sung !

Post with it after her; now nothing's loft,—

Of her and hors I am at once bereft."

The underplot of this play is of a savage and romantic character, but would be interesting if it were not too abruptly handled.

The realism ascribed to Heywood is less apparent in the denouement of the above dramas than in the minute and familiar circuMstances habitually introduced into them, and more generally in the historical plays relating to Edward IV. and the accession of Elizabeth, which contain a good deal of accurate record, as far as Protestant and party representations can be trusted, and abound in touches of material and Euripidean pathos. But this matter-of-fact tendency was one against which the dramatist's mood sometimes revolted, and he indulges in much crude, capri- cious, and licentious writing, almost as often as he takes up a remote and legendary theme,—as in some of the plays founded on Ovid (" The Golden Age," 8cc.), and in "The Four 'Prentices of London," Scc. There is also an unconscionable amount of silly stuff in "Love's Mistress" (a play about Psyche), and in 'all the songs of "The Rape of Lucrece," one of these being suffi- ciently coarse to spoil our relish at an important moment for the higher bearings of the action. Some of the serious scenes in this play are well written, though we think not first-rate ; but Lucrece certainly commits tbat "treason against virtue, to be good and disagreeable." We must briefly recommend to more favourable notice "Fortune by Land and Sea," which bears the names of Heywood and Rowley ; and "The Challenge for Beauty," though we suspect in it, as we have intiniated, some plagiarism from a Spanish source,—as also in "A Royal King and Loyal Subject." In conclusion, we think that while much of Heywood's best writing has received merited encomiums, the most thorough reader of his collected works will find them to have been built on a low, wide basis of crude com- position and trivial taste, above the level of which his style is often raised by the effect of assiduous, though not careful prac- tice; and his matter by a genuine reverence for the highest precepts of Christian morality, which he can carefully keep in sight amid transactions recommended only by their naturalness. But we must allow for him as a writer to whom nil invita Minerva would have been an Utopian maxim, and as an example of the remark that "no man in England lives by verse that lives."