DEKKER AND HIS COLLEAGUES.* [SECOND NOTICE] WE have reserved for

consideration in the present notice of Dekker's complete works those six plays in whose composition he was avowedly associated, whether as a principal or a subordinate, with other noted dramatists, namely, with Webster in "Westward Hoe," "Northward Hoe," and "Sir Thomas Wyatt" (1607) ; with Middleton in the "Roaring Girl" (1611); with Messinger

• The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, sow first collected, with Illustrative Notes and a Memoir of the daihor. 4 vols. London: John Pearson. 1873.

in the "Virgin Martyr" (1622) ; with Ford in the "Sun's. Darling," and with others besides the latter author, in the "Witch of Edmonton" (these last two not having been published till after Dekker's death). All these have been heretofore well. edited, and especially the four bearing Webster's and Middleton's. names, by Alexander Dyce, whose notes have been borrowed by the present editor without any conspicuous alterations. It has been disputed, with regard to the "Virgin Martyr," whether Dekker's contributions extended only to the low and indecent comic scenes which have been said to disgrace the drama, or included also some of the most refined and elevated character. We should not, in any case, be ready to think more meanly of the man's nature for his having interwoven passages of the first-mentioned class with a higher element, in so far as they tend to produce an impressive and instructive contrast, such as. Shakespeare has conspicuously employed to throw light upon the virtues and vices portrayed in his Pericles and Measure for Measure. But we have little doubt of Dekker's capacity for scenes of both classes; we should question, however, whether the whole arrange- ment and conduct of the "Virgin Martyr" did not prove the general subordination of our poet's work to a mind of more architectonic faculty. But let us briefly survey the other plays in.

thordeerE1 Earl, time, in ininoardersprintilfionrem a more probable conjecture on. these points. "Westward Hoe" has a general resemblance in the plot to the Merry Wives of Windsor, only the wives not only justify their- behaviour (which is outrageously free), but are able to throw back the charge of intrigue upon their several husbands. The play is- mostly made up of very vulgar and vicious scenes, in which Dekker's slang and love of mimicry are conspicuous ; while Webster's hand appears in the florid and rhythmical courtship of

of wit and subtle fancy which enlivens the whole composition. So far, then, he appears to have added a little finish to Dekker's outlines ; but if we go on to the closing scenes, we find the final discomfiture of the Earl's amour- by the disguised husband, Justiniano, to be an abrupt and ill- managed scene (like that of the pretended death which we have noticed in Dekker's " Histriomastix "), whereas the winding-up of the other intrigues is more skilful, and contains a notable trace of Webster's manner in the mode of introducing the anecdote of the horn-blowing citizen. We may conjecture, then, that in this. instance, among others, Webster has, to use Langbaine's phrase- ology, made a platted whipcord out of the loose threads of Dekker's design.

In "Northward Hoe" the story turns on a conspiracy of two. rakes to belie a citizen's wife to him ; the husband is undeceived, by a sagacious friend (whom we find to be a poet) ; he affects to, be reconciled to his rivals, plays the part of a benefactor towards. them, and revenges himself by setting them at odds through another intrigue in which they are engaged. In fact, one raker is made to marry the other's mistress ; and other tricks are played among the four men and a scapegrace nephew of the poet, so. that the latter seems narrowly to escape a lunatic asylum. The action opens with an appearance of determined villany, that might have suited Webster's tragic vein ; and we may probably trace him in much of the subsequent manceuvre, as also in the general conduct and finish of the p14.7. The outrageous characters. and forced situations are as much suited to Dekker's taste as. Webster's, but the former is most easily recognised in a madhouse

scene—which reminds us of the "Honest Whore "—as also in the broken English of a Welshman and a German, in whom him readers will find old acquaintances. Altogether, this production. of the two dramatists is a very amusing one, though scarcely commendable on moral grounds.

The "History of Sir Thomas Wyatt" is a very slight an& inartificial chronicle-play, which could do no credit to either Dekker or Webster, if they had done more than (as it appears) to patch the work of some inferior playwright. We find here- and there some of the blank verse good, but it has suffered irre- parable injury from its transcribers. There is also some amusing comic dialogue where the Kentish troop under Brett is induced to desert to Wyatt's side, but we cannot undertake to distinguish either of our authors here.

Middleton is not famous for thoroughly good plots, but is clever in manceuvre ; he has a very lively style, and is at times prettily- sentimental. He is fond of reclaiming penitent villains, and apt to appear weak and superstitious where he is most anxious to dis- play a moral sense, as in the Succubus scene, and the whole part of Penitent Brothel in "A Mad World, my Masters." By such criteria, the "Roaring Girl" might be almost entirely his work ; and Moll Cutpurse makes a fine figure, "passing through this play in her doublet and breeches," shaming mostly the men by her courage, and the women by her virtue, and scorning love for herself, while she readily takes the part of "turtle-doves" and other distressed persons. But Dekker's hand has been traced in this play by means of a poetic metaphor in an under-p]ot of base intrigue, or perhaps in several sister under-plots ; for the lines,—

" Since last I saw him twelve months three times told

The moon has drawn through her light silver bow,"

are nearly a repetition of some in the "Whore of Babylon." Nor do we doubt that the same writer's help was needed in the last scenes of the play, to stuff them with a peculiar species of slang, in which his miscellaneous works, as here cited by the com- mentators, show him to have been a great proficient. The "Sun's Darling" is a lyrical and "moral masque," in the Spanish style, showing 1113 how man wastes the successive seasons of his life, and neglects their best endowments, as he is taught to do by 44Humour " or by "Folly." Langbaine attributes the greater part of this piece, and Gifford the last two acts, to Ford, the latter critic tracing Dekker perpetually in the other three acts and throughout the comic part, but specially in the rural touches. Mr. Swinbnrne agrees with Gifford that the "Sun's Darling" is a piece of patchwork, hastily stitched up for some momentary purpose," and adds :— " I suspect that the two poets did not work together on it, but that our present text is merely a recast by Ford of an earlier masque by Dekker, probably, as Mr. Collier has suggested, his lost play of 'Phaeton, for which we might be glad to exchange the loop'd and window'd nakedness' of this ragged version. In those parts which are plainly remnants of Dekker's handiwork, there are some scattered lines of great sweetness, such as those of lament for the dead spring. For the latter scenes, as Gifford observes, it is clear that Ford is, in the main, responsible ; the intrusion in the fifth act of political satire and adulation is singularly perverse and infelicitous. In the opening scene, also, between Raybright and the Priest of the Sun, I recognise the moral tone and metrical regulation of Ford's verse. Whatever the original may have been—and it was probably but a thin and hasty piece of work—it has, doubtless, suffered from the incongruous matter loosely sewn on to it ; and the masque, as it stands, is too lax and inco- herent in structure to be worth mulch as a sample of its slight kind, or to show if there was anything of more significance or value in its first ,conception."—Fortnightly Review, July, 1871.

These strictures tempt us to reflect that we are accustomed to loose and incoherent work in Dekker, and that whatever were Ford's defects or fine qualities, we have no particular reason to think he would have made a hash of any play he had at first found decently put together. The intrusion of political satire is not here so flagrant as in "If this be not a good play, &c." (see our first notice), and we incline, therefore, to believe that the entire, faulty plan of the poem was first devised or adopted by Dekker, and then Ford called in to give some finishing-touches to the style, without attempting further alterations.

The "Witch of Edmonton" has more than three nominal fathers, but we may again consult Gifford and Mr. Swinburne respecting the particulars of its derivation. The latter writes :—

"it is a play of rare beauty and importance, both on poetical and social grounds ; perhaps the first protest of the stage against the horrors and brutalities of vulgar superstition. Victor Hugo could scarcely show a more tender and more bitter pity for the sordid and grovelling agonies of outcast old age and reprobate misery than that which fills and fires the speech of the old hag, where she first appears gathering sticks to warm herself, starved, beaten, lame, and bent doubls with blows. . . . to the last moment, when she is led to execution through the roar of the rabble. In all this part of the play I trace the hand of Dekker ; his intimate and familiar science of wretchedness, his great and gentle spirit of compassion for the poor and suffering, with whom

his own lot in life was so often cast in prison and out. The part of Susan is one of Dekker's most beautiful and delicate studies ; in three short scenes he has given an image so perfect in its simple sweetness, as hardly to be overmatched outside the gallery of Shakespeare's women. The tender freshness of his pathos, its plain, frank qualities of grace and strength, never showed themselves with purer or more powerful effect than here. The after-scene where Frank's guilt is discovered has the same force and vivid beauty. The interview of Frank with the dis- guised Winifred in this scene may be compared by the student of dramatic style with the parting of the same characters at the close ; the one has all the poignant simplicity of Dekker, the other all the majestic energy of Ford. The rough buffoonery and horse-play of the clown and the familiar we may probably set down to Dekker's account ; there is not much humour or meaning in it, but it is livelier and less offensive than most of Ford's attempts in that line."

This is a cordial and appreciative critique, and we need not here inquire into the authorship of some subordinate scenes which are comparatively tame or trivial.

We return now to the well-known "Virgin Martyr," and we must observe that the structure of this drama, when we allow for the simplicity of its theme, has a solidity and finish which may be claimed for Messinger, but hardly, we believe, for Dekker. Accordingly, the tragic and the comic elements and characters are sharply and discreetly divided, nor can we doubt that the former are mostly Massinger's work, and that the latter have been I built by Dekker on a base assigned to him or agreed upon. The admirers of Dekker think that he must have overstepped these limits ; and Charles Lamb, after extracting a scene between Angelo and Dorothea which is renowned for its simple pathos, observes :—

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"This scene has beauties of so very high an order, that with all my respect for Messinger, I do not think he had poetical enthusiasm capable of furnishing them. His associate, Dekker, who wrote Old Fortanatus,' had poetry enough for anything. The very impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this play have a strength of contrast, a raciness and a glow in them, which are above

Messinger. They set off the religion of the rest."

In what is here said of poetical enthusiasm, it is possible that Lamb has not sufficiently considered the unique character of a drama, where the view of that almost supernatural moral power which has to be exerted by the Christian martyrs may have elevated Messinger, as it must otherwise elevated Dekker, beyond his usual precedents. The scene in question has, in spite of its tenderness, a composed dignity and fullness which Dekker hardly reaches elsewhere. The versification, however, as Mr. Fleay has shrewdly pointed out, in an article which lately appeared in Mac- millan's Magazine, has apparently some Dekkerian characteristics. But we must hasten to close an examination for which we can only claim a tentative or suggestive character, where a long and intimate familiarity with the Elizabethan dramatists would be requisite to form a confident judgment on the points discussed.