■ CORNELL. r , UNIVERSITY LIBJlftlLX . FROM J;4$|es Morgan. Hart 'X Professor of .. English 18/Vll/ll Date Due im ffi nm aAjLj 1 4 1958 m f ^Efi-^.J§£gJJ) Mttjgjwa^-m 3 , OCT 27 19SBflft # Cornell University Library PR2711.B93 V ' 1 The works of Thomas Middleton The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013133396 Zhc English ^Dramatists THOMAS MIDDLETON VOLUME THE FIRST 1 4 \,'h . -_i«BS Ojjfrub (S ie^ toraxj&yit. PJhtMtffi, \ THE WORKS THOMAS MIDDLETON EDITED BY *<1> A^ H? BULLEN, B.A. IN EIGHT VOLUMES VOLUME THE FIRST LONDON JOHN C. NIMMO 14. KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. MDCCCLXXXV ^ r* • 3?// Bf3 >- I One hundred and twenty copies of this Edition on Laid paper, medium 8vo, have been printed, and are numbered consecutively as issued. No...3M TO ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, GREAT AS SCHOLAR AND CRITIC, GREATER AS POET, THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED BY THE EDITOR. PREFACE. The works of Thomas Midddleton were collected in 1840 by Alexander Dyce. This edition has long been out of print, and the need of a new edition has been keenly felt. Of Dyce's editorial work it would be diffi- cult to speak too highly ; he was a man of wide and accurate reading, and his critical acumen was consi- derable. I have, of course, made a very free use of his notes. In the present edition are included some pieces that were unknown to Dyce. These are : (1) a prose tract entitled The Peace-Maker, or Great Britain's Blessing, 1618, which has been erroneously ascribed to James I. ; (2) A Musical Allegory, 1622 (printed for the first time), from a MS. preserved among the Conway Papers ; (3) The Triumphs of Honour and Virtue, 1622, reprinted from the Shakespeare Society's Papers. I have also included a slight tract relating to Sir Robert Sherley, which Dyce rejected on insufficient information. The two parts of The Honest Whore will be printed hereafter among Dekker's works. vol. 1. b viii Preface. The etched portrait of Middleton is from a rough woodcut prefixed to Two New Plays, 1657. I have to return my warmest thanks to my friend Mr. C. H. Firth for his great kindness in reading the proof-sheets of the present volumes and aiding me with valuable suggestions throughout. My friends Mr. S. L. Lee and Mr. W. J. Craig have also given me occasional help. 13M May 1885. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. PAGE DEDICATION v PREFACE . . . vii INTRODUCTION . xi BLURT , MASTER-CONSTABLE ... . i the\ phcen |[x . ^o.\«r>. 99 MICHAELMAS TERM .... . .211 INTRODUCTION. It should be an editor's aim to cultivate a nice sense of proportion and eschew exaggeration. Uncritical eulogy has the effect of irritating or repelling the reader ; and when a poet has stood the test of time for nearly three centuries, his position needs no strengthening by violent displays of editorial zeal. Middleton's most recent critic 1 has not hesitated to affirm that "in daring and happy concentration of imagery, and a certain imperial confidence in the use of words, he of all the dramatists of that time is the disciple that comes nearest to the master." The reader who gives to these volumes the study they deserve will discover that this statement is not made at random, but is the mature judgment of a balanced mind. The comedies of intrigue show ready invention and craftsmanlike skill, though the plots are sometimes thin and the humour often gross ; for dignity of moral senti- 1 The writer of the anonymous article on Middleton in the ninth edition of the Rncyclopcsdia Britannica. VOL. I, C xiv Introduction. to write for the stage. The earliest reference to him in Henslowe's Diary (ed. Collier, p. 221) is an entry dated 22nd May 1602, from which it appears that he was then engaged with Munday, Drayton, Webster, and some others not named, in writing a play called Cessans Fall, for which Henslowe advanced five pounds on ac- count. Under date 29th May (ibid. p. 222) is an entry recording the payment of three pounds to Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Webster, and Munday for a play called too harpes, i.e. Two Harpies. On 21st October (ibid. p. 227) Middleton received four pounds in part payment for The Chester Tragedy, and on 9th Novem- ber two pounds " in fulle paymente of his playe called Randowlle earlle of Chester" (ibid. p. 228), which was doubtless the same piece as The Chester Tragedy. From an entry dated 14th December 1602 (ibid. p. 228) we learn that Middleton was paid five shillings for writing a prologue and epilogue to Greene's Friar Bacon, when that play was revived at court. There is another entry (ibid. p. 24.T), dated 2d October 1602, recording the pay- ment of twenty shillings to Middleton on account of an unnamed play written for Lord Worcester's company. Time, which " hath an art to make dust of all things," has spared neither Casals Fall, nor the Two Harpies, nor The Chester Tragedy (which Malone in a moment of forgetfulness identified with the Mayor of Queenborough), nor the prologue and epilogue to Friar Bacon. In 1602, then, Middleton was closely employed in dramatic writing ; but it is fairly certain that he had begun work a few years earlier. The date 1599 has Introduction. xv been assigned to the excellent comedy The Old Law, which was first published in 1656 as the work of Massin- ger, Middleton, and Rowley. If the play was written in I S99 1 ( a point on which we cannot speak with certainty), Massinger could have had no hand in the original com- position, for in 1599 he was a youth of fifteen. Probably Massinger did no more than revise the play on the occasion of its revival at the Salisbury Court Theatre ; I doubt whether he added a single scene. Rowley's share was certainly considerable. When he is writing at his best, Rowley is one of the drollest of writers. He was a poor hand at constructing plots ; he was often guilty of the most atrocious absurdities ; his verse hobbled badly when it came from his pen, and in its passage through the press was reduced by the old printers to a rudis indigestaque moles ; he roared like a bull of Bashan when he ought to have been dignified. But he had a genuine gift of humour ; and at times (as in A Woman never Vext and passages of All's Lost by Lust) he could wring our heart-strings- with pity. I would unhesitat- ingly assign to him the scene (iii. 1) where Gnotho, anxious to put away his old wife Agatha and take a younger, bribes the parish-clerk to alter the date in the register. The conclusion of The Old Law is the drollest 1 In iii. 1, the Clerk, after reading from the parish-register, " Agatha, the daughter of Pollux, born in an. 1540," observes, "and now 'tis 99." At first sight we should feel inclined to pronounce that 1599 must be the date of the production of the play. But it is well to tread cautiously, remembering that the play was not printed until 1656, that it has de- scended in a very corrupt state, and that both copyists and printers constantly blunder over dates. xvi Introduction. of all drolleries. To the relief of the old courtiers and the dismay of their gaping heirs, Evander, the Duke, has just pronounced void the law which condemned to death all men of fourscore years and all women- of threescore. At this moment Gnotho and his friends are seen ap- proaching in riotous mirth, preceded by a band of fiddlers and followed by the sorrowing wives, who are being con- ducted to execution. Gnotho, more forward than the rest, has a double business in hand ; he is provided with his new bride, and when he has seen Agatha despatched by the hangman, he will proceed to church to solemnise the second marriage. " Crowd on afore ! " he shouts impatiently to the fiddlers. The Duke calls a halt and inquires the meaning of the procession. Gnotho, anxious to make an end of the business, very briefly explains, and then shouts again to the fiddlers " Crowd on ! : ' Evander demands more light on the matter, but Gnotho is in no mood for parleying. " A lusty woman, able-bodied, and well-blooded cheeks,'' says Evander, eyeing Agatha ; " sure I cannot think that she be so old," — to which Gnotho replies that he will bet Evander two to one she is of the, full age. Evander commits the case to the consideration of the old courtiers. Gnotho listens with amused pity while they sternly denounce his conduct, and when they have ended exclaims, "A mess of wise old men ! ye are good old men, and talk as age will give you leave." But at length, by slow degrees, he is brought to realise the true state of affairs. There is nothing in Massinger's or Middleton's plays to match the drollery of this scene ; but whoever has read Introduction. xvii Rowley knows what a rich vein of whimsical humour he could sometimes discover. Yet in this very scene Mid- dleton's presence is plainly visible ; the humour is Rowley's, but without Middleton's help the Duke and old courtiers would not have preserved so dignified a de- meanour. To Middleton probably belong all the serious parts of the play. The scenes in which the wantonness of the young court-gallants and Eugenia is so spiritedly represented are unquestionably by Middlejon, and the talk of the lawyers in the opening scene is quite in his manner. The Old Law was a favourite with Charles Lamb, who wrote of it — "There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in all the improbable circum- stances of this wild play, which are unlike anything in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in this play, had both of them finer geniuses than their associate." Whether the plot was original or borrowed I cannot say. A few years ago Anthony Trollope constructed a slight novel, The Fixed. Period, with a plot of somewhat similar character. There is only one quarto of The Old Law, published in 1656, and the text is deplorably corrupt. Numerous emendations, sometimes excellent and sometimes needless, were made by Monk Mason and Gifford. Perhaps I ought to have allowed myself more freedom in the matter of emenda- tion. Among my corrections there are two I . regard as tolerably certain. Hippolita pleading before the xviii Introduction. young courtiers for the life of her old father-in-law, says (v. i):- " For yet, methinks, you bear the shapes of men, (Though nothing more than merely beautifeatts To make you appear angels)," &c. Gifford converted the italicised words into "merely beauty serves," and this emendation was adopted by Dyce ; but Gifford's reading is quite unintelligible. My own correction, " mercy beautifies" is, I venture to think, unassailable. Again : Leonides, admiring his daughter- in-law's devotion, exclaims — " That the stronger tie of wedlock should do more Than nature in her nearest ligaments Of blood and propagation ! I should ne'er Have begot such a daughter of my own." Gifford and Dyce read "strong" for "stronger" The true reading is certainly " stranger" which gives us the desired antithesis. Dyce considered the tragi-comedy of The Mayor of Queenborougk (first printed in 1661) to be one of Mid- dleton's earliest plays. I do not follow him in laying stress on dumb-shows as evidence towards fixing the date. We have a dumb-show in The Changeling, which is certainly one of Middleton's maturest works. Web- ster gives us dumb-shows in The White Devil. My own view is that The Mayor of Queenborough was originally an early play, but that it underwent considerable revi- sion at a later date, and has descended in its revised form. In iv. 3 (see vol. ii. p. 86) there are some lines Introduction. xix which contain a resemblance, too close to be accidental, to a passage in The Tempest. Middleton frequently imitates Shakespeare, but it is hardly likely that Shake- speare (as Reed supposed) was on this occasion return- ing the compliment. Many passages are so strikingly fine that I cannot but believe them to have been written when Middleton' s genius was in its full maturity. What a grip there is in such lines as these ! — "We are all, my lord, The sons of fortune ; she has sent us forth To thrive by the red sweat of our own merits." Or take these lines on woman's lust : — "'Tis her cunning, The love of her own lust, which makes a woman Gallop down hill as fearless as a drunkard." Or these on Thong Castle : — " Why, here's a fabric that implies eternity ; The building plain but most substantial ; Methinks it looks as if it mock'd all ruin, Saving that master-piece of consummation, The end of time, which must consume even ruin, > And eat that into cinders." Again and again we are arrested by the bold utter- ance, the fine dramatic ring of the verse. Yet the play as a whole leaves little impression on the mind, and has the appearance of being an immature production. The odd confusion of chronology is a mark of youthful treatment. Only at an early stage of his career would Middleton have ventured to introduce a Puritan into a chronicle play which deals with Hengist and Horsus. Rowley, who wrote The Birth of Merlin, would have had xx Introduction. not the slightest hesitation in the matter, and Heywood was equally indifferent; but Middleton in his mature work shows due respect for chronology. The plot is repulsive. Vortiger is a monster of iniquity, and his brutality towards his gentle wife, Castiza, is peculiarly disgusting. Roxana is a creature of lust, effrontery, and guile. Middleton's later studies of depraved femi- nine character are among his highest achievements; but Roxana cannot for a moment compare with Bianca in Women beware Women or Beatrice in The Changeling. The comic scenes were doubtless effective on the stage ; they are somewhat tiresome by the fireside. In Row- ley's hands the Mayor would have been a more amusing figure. It is for the detached passages of noble poetry that students will value this tragi-comedy, which is admirably adapted for purposes of quotation. Lamb has introduced one short extract from it into his essay The Superannuated Man: — "I no longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it come to me. I am like the man ' that's born and has his years come to him In some green desert."' 1 The extract is from i. i, where Constantius seeks to be relieved from assuming the cares of royalty : — " I know no more the way to temporal rule Than he that's born and has his years come to him In a rough desert." i It is also given in the Fragments appended to Extracts from the Garrick Plays in Hone's Taile Book. These Fragments are unpardon- ably omitted from collected editions of the Specimens and Extracts. Introduction. xxi It will be perceived that by the change of rough into green, Lamb has given a novel significance to the pas- sage. First on the list of Middleton's printed plays is Blurt, Master Constable, 1602, a sprightly, well-written play, containing some charming poetry. The scene is laid in Venice. Hippolito and Camillo, returning from the wars, are received by Hippolito's sister, Violetta. Camillo, a suitor to Violetta, has brought with him as prisoner a French gentleman, Fontinelle, whom he delivers into his mistress's hands as a trophy of war. Charmed with his grace of manner, Violetta falls in love with her prisoner at first sight; and her passion is reciprocated. The lovers contrive to baffle the machinations of Hippolito and Camillo, and at length are secretly married. Severe censure has been passed, quite undeservedly, on the con- clusion of the play. Professor A. W. Ward, who usually takes pains to be scrupulously accurate, observes in his account of Middleton (Engl. Dram. Lit, ii. 74) : — " The lightness and gaiety of writing in Blurt, Master Constable (printed 1602), cannot render tolerable a play with so vile a plot. Beginning pleasantly, and indeed prettily enough, with the sudden passion of a lady for the prisoner brought home from the wars by her lover, it ends offensively with the unfaithfulness of the prisoner, who has escaped and married the lady, and is finally brought back to her by a device which resembles a parody on the plot of Alts Well that Ends Well" But, if I have read the plijjj rightly, Mr. Ward has misstated the matter. Hippolito and Camillo, in their anxiety to effectually sunder the xxii Introduction. young lovers, endeavour to clap up a match between Fontinelle and the courtesan Imperia. Hippolito broaches the matter to Imperia, and — that she may not buy a pig in a poke — sends her Fontinelle's portrait; she is delighted with the portrait and welcomes the proposal. In iii. i, Hippolito and Camillo offer Fon- tinelle his liberty if he will marry Imperia, but he indig- nantly rejects the proposal and is sent back to prison. Frisco, the courtesan's page,, is then employed to visit the prisoner and use his powers of persuasion. At this point the plot is not so plain as we could have wished, and it is probable that a scene between Frisco and Fontinelle has been lost. A plan of escape is devised during the prison conference : Fontinelle is to change clothes with Frisco and repair to the courtesan's house. Meanwhile Fontinelle sends by Frisco a letter to Violetta, bidding her come at midnight to Saint Lorenzo's monastery, and bring a friar to conduct the marriage. The poet leaves us to fill in details. When the marriage had been solemnised, it remained for the bride and bridegroom to seek a place of shelter. What was to be done, for the hour was late ? The course they took is as plain as day. It was agreed that Fontinelle should go to the courtesan's house, pretending that he had come to carry out his engagement, and that Violetta should presently follow to claim her husband. It is a violent absurdity to suppose that Fontinelle's speech to Imperia in v. 2 is the language of genuine passion : — " Now, by the heart of love, my Violet Is a foul weed [0 pure Italian flower !) Introduction. xxiii She a black negro, to the white compare Of this unequalled beauty. O most accurst, That I have given her leave to challenge me ! But, lady, poison speaks Italian well, And in her loath'd kiss I'll include her hell." The parenthesised words ought to be enough for any reader ; but we have, besides, the explicit statement of Violetta at the close of the play : — " My Fontinelle ne'er dallied in her arms ; She never bound his heart with amorous charms : My Fontinelle ne'er loathed my sweet embrace : She never drew love's picture by his face : With prayers and tribes we hired her both to lie Under that roof" ' Of course I do not deny that it would have been more decorous for the marriage-night to have been spent under some other roof than the courtesan's ; but it must be remembered that the young lovers were not in a position to pick and choose their lodging. Helena's device in All's Well seems to me far less defensible than Violetta's. Fontinelle's conduct throughout is the con- duct of an honourable gentleman. I am sorry that Mr. Ward should have misrepresented the plot; but I allow that Middleton ought to have rendered such misrepre- sentation impossible by supplying more details and leaving less to the reader's imagination. It is not easy to carry in one's head the plots of several hundreds of plays ; and so careful a stage-historian as Mr. Ward may well claim indulgence for occasional lapses. We may assume that Middleton's marriage with Mary, xxiv Introduction. daughter of Edward Morbeck, 1 one of the six clerks in Chancery, took place in 1602 or 1603 ; for his son Edward was born in 1604. There were no other chil- dren of the marriage. In 1604 were published two interesting tracts, Father Hubbard's Tale, or the Ant and the Nightingale, and The Black Book; the former was entered in the Stationers' Books on 3rd January 1603-4, and the latter on 22nd of the following March. The address To the Reader pre- fixed to Father Hubbard's Tale is signed T. M., and the Epistle to the Reader prefixed to The Black Book bears the same initials. There cannot be the slightest doubt 2 that these initials belong to the dramatist. With a light hand the writer exposes the foibles and vices of the time. He was evidently a great admirer of Nashe — to whom he makes many allusions — and reflects in his own 1 See pedigree on p. xii. In Harl. MS. 1046, fol. 209, the name is written Marbecke. 2 Mr. Carew Hazlitt has the hardihood to assert "there is no pre- tence whatever for assigning this volume [Father Hubbard's Tale] to Middleton," whose claim to The Black Book he denies with equal emphasis. Middleton, according to Mr. Hazlitt, "usually put his name to anything that came from his pen ; " but A Mad World, my Masters and A Trick to Catch the Old Oneheax merely the initials "T. M." Mr. Hazlitt assigns these tracts to Thomas Moffat (or Moufet or Muffet), a medical writer and author of a curious poem on the manage- ment of silkworms. There is a good life of Muffet in Cooper's A then. Cantab. , ii. 400-402. He spent his closing days in retirement at Bul- bridge, near Wilton, in the capacity of retainer to the Earl of Pembroke. That this man at the end of his career (he died in 1605) should have abandoned scientific studies to attack the vices of the town is prima facie unlikely ; and Mr. Hazlitt adduces not a grain of evidence in sup- port of his extraordinary theory. Introduction. xxv pages something of Nashe's marvellous brilliancy. To students of the social life of the early seventeenth cen- tury these tracts — and similar writings of Dekker and Rowlands — are invaluable. In Father Hubbard's Tale we are shown how a rich young spendthrift squanders in dicing and debauchery the hard-earned fruits of his father's parsimony, until at length he is driven to join the ranks of the sharpers who have fleeced him, and assists in ruining other young heirs. The elaborate description of the young prodigal's apparel is quite in Nashe's vein of whimsical extravagance. We are con- ducted in The Black Book through the rowdiest parts of the metropolis, Turnbull Street and Birchin Lane, the haunts of drabs and thieves. Middleton's knowledge of London, like Sam Weller's, was extensive and peculiar. In the same year (1604) Middleton assisted Dekker in the composition of The Honest Whore. We find in Henslow's Diary (ed. Collier, p. 232) the following entry : — "Lent unto the company, to geve unto Thomas Deckers and Middelton, in earnest of ther Playe called the pasyent man and the onest hore, the some of v 1 ' 1604." The First Part of The Honest Whore was issued in 1604, and the Second Part in 1630 : on the title-pages of both parts only Dekker's name is found. I agree with Dyce that Middleton's share in this play was inconsiderable. Dekker had, as Lamb says, "poetry enough for anything." His sympathy with sinful and sorrowing humanity was genuine and deep; but his -xxvi Introduction. poignant feelings sometimes found expression in lan- guage which seems to have the air of insincerity. In the fine scenes where Hippolito implores Bellafront to abandon her vicious course of life, and again where he strives to undo the effect of his former teaching, one feels that the arguments and illustrations are enforced with over-heated vehemence. This note of exaggeration is never absent from Dekker's work ; he let his fancy- have full swing and did not write "with slower pen." But he was the most natural of writers, lovable at all points, full of simplicity and tenderness. The character of Orlando Friscobaldo is drawn in Dekker's cheeriest, sunniest manner. I would ascribe to Middleton the scenes (i. 5 and iii. 1) where the gallants endeavour to irritate the patient Candido. Bellafront's preparations for receiving visitors, and the conduct of the gallants on their arrival (ii. 1), closely recall a scene in Michaelmas Term (iii. 1). In these scenes, and in a few comic scenes of the Second Part, we recognise Middleton's hand, but hardly elsewhere. About the time when the First Part of The Honest Whore was composed, Dekker went out of his way to acknowledge a slight obligation under which he lay towards Middleton. On the 15th March 1603-4, King James, with the Queen and Prince Henry, paid a state visit to the City, and Dekker was employed to write a pageant for the occasion. When the pageant was printed (1604), he appended to the speech of Zeal the following note : — " If there be any glory to be won by writing these lines, I do freely bestow it, as his due, on Introduction. xxvii Tho. Middleton, in whose brain they were begotten, though they were delivered here : qua nos non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra voco." As the speech is only sixty lines long, it is curious — considering how indifferent the dramatists were to literary etiquette — that he should have made this acknowledgment. Had Middleton's share in The Honest Whore been at all considerable, we may be tolerably sure that his name would not have been omitted from the title-page. After 1604 Middleton published nothing until 1607, in which year appeared The Phxnix 1 and Michaelmas Term. Both these comedies are full of life and move- ment. Phoenix, son of the Duke of Ferrara, is solicited by his father, at the instance of some disaffected courtiers, to travel in foreign parts that he may gain observation and experience. He agrees to the pro- posal, but requests that he may be accompanied only by a single attendant, Fidelio ; for he suspects treachery, and is determined to outwit the courtiers. Instead of travelling abroad, he disguises himself and travels in his own kingdom, with the intent not only to keep a sharp eye on the courtiers, but to detect what abuses are rife throughout the land. In the course of his per- ambulations he discovers notable roguery. There is Tangle, an "old busy turbulent fellow, a villainous maltworm, that eats holes into poor men's causes," 1 In vol. i. p. ioi, I say that The Phcenix "was licensed by Sir George Buc, 9th May 1607." I ought to have said "licensed for printing. " So on p. 213 in regard to Michaelmas Term, VOL. I, 4 xxviii Introduction. who talks in a legal jargon that becomes somewhat tedious. Then there is Falsa, a justice of the peace, who takes bribes on all sides, and keeps a set of rascally serving-men, who employ their leisure in committing highway robberies. We are also introduced to a jEorlh- less, sea-captain, who has grown tired of his wife, and signs a bond for the sale of her ; and to a wanton city madam, who by robbing her husband supports a needy knight for her pleasure. In this nest of villainy there is found one honest man, Quieto, who (like Candido in The Honest Whore) is at peace with everybody and allows nothing to ruffle his equanimity. There is an abundance of amusing intrigue and lively situations. The poetry put into the mouth of Phoenix is of a high order. Genuine eloquence is shown in the apos- trophes to " sober Law, made with meek eyes, persuad- ing action" (i. 4), and to "reverend and honourable Matrimony" (ii. 2). The latter passage, as Dyce re- marked, bears some resemblance to the lines beginning " Hail, wedded Love ! " in the fourth book of Paradise Lost. In Michaelmas Term we see a young gentleman, Master Easy, caught in the snares of a griping usurer, Quomodo. Tighter and tighter in each successive scene the meshes close round the victim. In the end all comes right ; villainy overreaches itself, and Master Easy not only gets back his lands, but is left in lawful possession of the bloodsucker's wife, a spirited woman. Michaelmas Term is full of excellent fun, and the reader has only himself to blame if he fails to find amusement, Introduction. xxix Quomodo's one ambition was to be a landed proprietor. When he sees that his dream is about to be realised, his exultation is delightfully comic. He dwells with gusto on the prospect of the Whitsun holidays, when he will ride down to his estate in Essex " with a number of citizens and their wives, some upon pillions, some upon side-saddles," his son, Sim, riding ahead in a peach-coloured taffeta jacket. There will be good store of logs for Christmas ; and he intends to astonish the citizens' wives by the quality of the fruit from his orchard. His parting words to the victim whom he has fleeced of everything are drolly cordial : — " If it please you, sir, you know the house ; you may visit us often, and dine with us once a quarter." A Trick to Catch the Old One 1 and The Family of Love were published in 1608 : the former had been entered in the Stationers' Registers on 7th October 1607, and the latter on the 12th of the same month. I do not hesitate to endorse Langbaine's brief but emphatic judgment on A Trick to Catch the Old One: — "This is an excellent old play." The plot is as follows. An improvident young gallant, Witgood, who has mortgaged all his property to his usurious uncle, Lucre, repents of his evil courses and is anxious to make a new start. He pretends that he is the accepted suitor to a rich widow from the country. The so-called widow is a courtesan, 1 A kind of proverbial saying. Cf. Day's Isle of Gulls, ii. 5 : — " We are in the way to catch the old one," xxx Introduction. who throws herself into the scheme with uncommon zest. A shrewd innkeeper is engaged as her serving- man and despatched to Lucre's house to make inquiries on his mistress's behalf about Witgood's fortunes. He feigns to be unaware that he is addressing Witgood's uncle ; he wants to hear from some sober citizen whether ■the match contemplated by his mistress is desirable, and whether Witgood is a man of substance. Lucre pricks up his ears at once. Poor relatives are a nuisance, but when a timely stroke of luck promotes them to afflu- ence, then the case is altered, and those who formerly neglected them are ready with suit and service, even where little or no personal advantage is to be derived. Lucre is the more pleased to hear of his nephew's good fortune because he anticipates that the widow's lands may eventually pass from Witgood's possession to his own. For some months he had refused to see Witgood, but he now sends a messenger to say that his nephew would be a welcome visitor. Witgood replies that he is very much occupied, and he begs to be excused. Lucre's eagerness is doubled ; he renews the invitation in a more cordial manner. Presently Witgood arrives and is congratulated by his uncle, who cheerfully under- takes to supply his present necessities and stop the mouths of importunate creditors. Then Witgood in- troduces the widow, with whose appearance Lucre is charmed. Meanwhile the news of the engagement has been noised abroad, and the prodigal's creditors assemble to congratulate him, vying with each other in pressing their services upon him. The rumour reaches the ears Introduction. xxxi of Onesiphorous Hoard, Lucre's mortal enemy; and Hoard determines to endeavour to supplant Witgood in the widow's affections. Taking with him some trusty companions to substantiate his statements, he goes to the widow, exposes Witgood's former extravagances and present poverty, and proposes himself as a more eligible suitor. The widow professes herself vastly indignant against Witgood and accepts Hoard in his stead. On that very day she was to meet Lucre and Witgood in order to make final arrangements for the marriage. There is no time to be lost ; so it is agreed that under some pretext she shall slip from Witgood's company, where- upon Hoard and his friends will surprise her and carry her by boat to the sanctuary of Cole Harbour, where a parson shall be in attendance. Lucre is furious when he discovers that the prize has been carried off by his hated antagonist. Away he hies with his nephew and friends to Cole Harbour. Hoard has no objec- tion to discuss the situation, for the marriage has just been secretly performed. The courtesan and Lucre converse apart ; she pays him home soundly : did he expect that she would marry a beggar? let him restore the lands and then she will marry his nephew. To thwart his adversary he gladly catches at the pro- posal, and volunteers besides to make his nephew his heir. When the mortgage has been given up, Lucre learns that he has made the sacrifice too late. Mean- while Witgood is still exercising his brain, anxious to reap the full benefit of the situation. He asserts that there was a pre-contract between himself and the widow, xxxlv Introduction. A Mad World, my Masters?- licensed on 12 th October 1608 and printed in the same year, is a pleasanter play than the preceding. The characters of Sir Bounteous Progress, the liberal knight who keeps open house for all comers, and Harebrain, the jealous husband, yoked to a demure light-o'-love, are very ably drawn ; and the situations are worked out with the adroit briskness that we admired in A Trick to Catch the Old One. The deception practised by the counterfeit players recalls the similar incident in the Mayor of Queenborough. Middleton seems to have been tickled with the notion of converting wanton wagtails into wives. In A Trick to Catch the Old One, Witgood succeeded in marrying his mistress to his wife's uncle ; in A Mad World the tables are turned, and Follywit finds himself united to his uncle's mistress. The victims in both cases submit with a good grace. A large part of Mrs. Behn's City Heiress, 1681, was conveyed from A Mad World. In 1609 Middleton published a slight tract com- memorating the exploits of the adventurous Sir Robert Sherley, the youngest and most remarkable of the Three English Brothers. 2 As the dedication to Sir Thomas 1 A pamphlet by Nicholas Breton, printed in 1603, bears the same title. I suppose that "A mad world, my masters," was a sort of proverbial expression. 2 An excellent account of these remarkable men is given in The Sherley Brothers, an historical memoir of the lives of Sir Thomas Sherley, Sir Anthony Sherley, and Sir Robert Sherley, Knights. By one of the same house [the late Evelyn Philip Shirley, Esq.] Roxburghe Club, 1848. The play of The Three English Brothers by Day, Wilkins, and William Rowley, is reprinted in my edition of Day's Works, 1881. Introduction. xxxv Sherley is subscribed " Thomas Middleton," I have felt bound, against my inclination, to include this uninterest- ing tract among our author's works. The Roaring Girl, written in conjunction with Dekker, was published in 1611. 1 Of Mary Frith, the Roaring Girl, whose adventures are so graphically described by the dramatists, I have given some account in a pre- fatory note to the play (iv. 3-6). In the Address to the Reader Middleton says : — "Worse things, I must needs confess, the world has taxed her for than has been written of her ; " and he concludes with the very proper observation — " We rather wish in such discoveries, where reputation lies bleeding, a slackness of truth than fulness of slander." Under this judicious treatment the Amazon of the Bankside becomes an attractive figure. She moves among rowdies and profligates without suffer- ing any contamination; she has the thews of a giant and the gentleness of a child. Secure in her " armed and iron maidenhood," and defying the breath of scandal, she daffs the world aside and chooses a life of frolic freedom. She can converse with rogues and 1 Mr. Fleay confidently fixes the date of composition before Novem- ber 1604. "The date is proved by the allusion in it to Westward Ho. This play was revised by Dekker about 1610-n." I need hardly say that the allusion to Westward Ho proves nothing, for it would have been quite as intelligible to the audience in 1611 as in 1604. Besides, I strongly doubt whether Mary Frith had come into notoriety so early as 1604. At the earliest computation she was not born before 1584-85. When Mr. Fleay says "this play was revised by Dekker," he is of course merely expressing his own belief, — not an ascertained fact. My view is that the two authors worked on the play together, and this view is clearly supported by internal evidence. -xxvi Introduction. poignant feelings sometimes found expression in lan- guage which seems to have the air of insincerity. In the fine scenes where Hippolito implores Bellafront to abandon her vicious course of life, and again where he strives to undo the effect of his former teaching, one feels that the arguments and illustrations are enforced with over-heated vehemence. This note of exaggeration is never absent from Dekker's work ; he let his fancy have full swing and did not write "with slower pen." But he was the most natural of writers, lovable at all points, full of simplicity and tenderness. The character of Orlando Friscobaldo is drawn in Dekker's cheeriest, sunniest manner. I would ascribe to Middleton the scenes (i. 5 and iii. 1) where the gallants endeavour to irritate the patient Candido. Bellafront's preparations for receiving visitors, and the conduct of the gallants on their arrival (ii. 1), closely recall a scene in Michaelmas Term (iii. 1). In these scenes', and in a few comic scenes of the Second Part, we recognise Middleton's hand, but hardly elsewhere. About the time when the First Part of The Honest Whore was composed, Dekker went out of his way to acknowledge a slight obligation under which he lay towards Middleton. On the 15th March 1603-4, King James, with the Queen and Prince Henry, paid a state visit to the City, and Dekker was employed to write a pageant for the occasion. When the pageant was printed (1604), he appended to the speech of Zeal the following note : — " If there be any glory to be won by writing these lines, I do freely bestow it, as his due, on Introduction. xxvii Tho. Middleton, in whose brain they were begotten, though they were delivered here : qua nos non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra voco." As the speech is only sixty lines long, it is curious— considering how indifferent the dramatists were to literary etiquette — that he should have made this acknowledgment. Had Middleton's share in The Honest Whore been at all considerable, we may be tolerably sure that his name would not have been omitted from the title-page. After 1604 Middleton published nothing until 1607, in which year appeared The Phcenix 1 and Michaelmas Term. Both these comedies are full of life and move- ment. Phoenix, son of the Duke of Ferrara, is solicited by his father, at the instance of some disaffected courtiers, to travel in foreign parts that he may gain observation and experience. He agrees to the pro- posal, but requests that he may be accompanied only by a single attendant, Fidelio ; for he suspects treachery, and is determined to outwit the courtiers. Instead of travelling abroad, he disguises himself and travels in his own kingdom, with the intent not only to keep a sharp eye on the courtiers, but to detect what abuses are rife throughout the land. In the course of his per- ambulations he discovers notable roguery. There is Tangle, an "old busy turbulent fellow, a villainous maltworm, that eats holes into poor men's causes,'' 1 In vol. i. p. 101, I say that The Phcenix " was licensed by Sir George Buc, 9th May 1607." I ought to have said " licensed for •printing." So on p. 213 in regard to Michaelmas Term. YOL. I, d xxviii Introduction. who talks in a legal jargon that becomes somewhat tedious. Then there is . Falso, a justice of the peace, who takes bribes on all sides, and keeps a set of rascally serving-men, who employ their leisure in committing highway robberies. We are also introduced to a jKorlh.- less_ sea-captain, who has grown tired of his wife, and signs a bond for the sale of her ; and to a wanton city madam, who by robbing her husband supports a needy knight for her pleasure. In this nest of villainy there is found one honest man, Quieto, who (like Candido in The Honest Whore) is at peace with everybody and allows nothing to ruffle his equanimity. There is an abundance of amusing intrigue and lively situations. The poetry put into the mouth of Phcenix is of a high order. Genuine eloquence is shown in the apos- trophes to " sober Law, made with meek eyes, persuad- ing action" (i. 4), and to "reverend and honourable Matrimony" (ii. 2). The latter passage, as Dyce re- marked, bears some resemblance to the lines beginning " Hail, wedded Love ! " in the fourth book of Paradise Lost. In Michaelmas Term we see a young gentleman, Master Easy, caught in the snares of a griping usurer, Quomodo. Tighter and tighter in each successive scene the meshes close round the victim. In the end all comes right ; villainy overreaches itself, and Master Easy not only gets back his lands, but is left in lawful possession of the bloodsucker's wife, a spirited woman. Michaelmas Term is full of excellent fun, and the reader has only himself to blame if he fails to find amusement, Introduction. xxix Quomodo's one ambition was to be a landed proprietor. When he sees that his dream is about to be realised, his exultation is delightfully comic. He dwells with gusto on the prospect of the Whitsun holidays, when he will ride down to his estate in Essex " with a number of citizens and their wives, some upon pillions, some upon side-saddles," his son, Sim, riding ahead in a peach-coloured taffeta jacket. There will be good store of logs for Christmas ; and he intends to astonish the citizens' wives by the quality of the fruit from his orchard. His parting words to the victim whom he has fleeced of everything are drolly cordial : — " If it please you, sir, you know the house ; you may visit us often, and dine with us once a quarter." A ' Trick to Catch the Old One x and The Family of Love were published in 1608 : the former had been entered in the Stationers' Registers on 7th October 1607, and the latter on the 12th of the same month. I do not hesitate to endorse Langbaine's brief but emphatic judgment on A Trick to Catch the Old One: — "This is an excellent old play." The plot is as follows. An improvident young gallant, Witgood, who has mortgaged all his property to his usurious uncle, Lucre, repents of his evil courses and is anxious to make a new start. He pretends that he is the accepted suitor to a rich widow from the country. The so-called widow is a courtesan, 1 A kind of proverbial saying. Cf. Day's Isle of Gulls, ii. 5 :- " We are in the way to catch the old one? xxx Introduction. who throws herself into the scheme with uncommon zest. A shrewd innkeeper is engaged as her serving- man and despatched to Lucre's house to make inquiries on his mistress's behalf about Witgood's fortunes. He feigns to be unaware that he is addressing Witgood's uncle ; he wants to hear from some sober citizen whether ■ the match contemplated by his mistress is d esirable, and whether Witgood is a man of substance. Lucre pricks up his ears at once. Poor relatives are a nuisance, but when a timely stroke of luck promotes them to afflu- ence, then the case is altered, and those who formerly neglected them are ready with suit and service, even where little or no personal advantage is to be derived. Lucre is the more pleased to hear of his nephew's good fortune because he anticipates that the widow's lands may eventually pass from Witgood's possession to his own. For some months he had refused to see Witgood, but he now sends a messenger to say that his nephew would be a welcome visitor. Witgood replies that he is very much occupied, and he begs to be excused. Lucre's eagerness is doubled ; he renews the invitation in a more cordial manner. Presently Witgood arrives and is congratulated by his uncle, who cheerfully under- takes to supply his present necessities and stop the mouths of importunate creditors. Then Witgood in- troduces the widow, with whose appearance Lucre is charmed. Meanwhile the news of the engagement has been noised abroad, and the prodigal's creditors assemble to congratulate him, vying with each other in pressing their services upon him. The rumour reaches the ears Introduction. xxxi of Onesiphorous Hoard, Lucre's mortal enemy; and Hoard determines to endeavour to supplant Witgood in the widow's affections. Taking with him some trusty companions to substantiate his statements, he goes to the widow, exposes Witgood's former extravagances and present poverty, and proposes himself as a more eligible suitor. The widow professes herself vastly indignant against Witgood and accepts Hoard in his stead. On that very day she was to meet Lucre and Witgood in order to make final arrangements for the marriage. There is no time to be lost ; so it is agreed that under some pretext she shall slip from Witgood's company, where- upon Hoard and his friends will surprise her and carry her by boat to the sanctuary of Cole Harbour, where a parson shall be in attendance. Lucre is furious when he discovers that the prize has been carried off by his hated antagonist. Away he hies with his nephew and friends to Cole Harbour. Hoard has no objec- tion to discuss the situation, for the marriage has just been secretly performed. The courtesan and Lucre converse apart ; she pays him home soundly : did he expect that she would marry a beggar? let him restore the lands and then she will marry his nephew. To thwart his adversary he gladly catches at the pro- posal, and volunteers besides to make his nephew his heir. When the mortgage has been given up, Lucre learns that he has made the sacrifice too late. Mean- while Witgood is still exercising his brain, anxious to reap the full benefit of the situation. He asserts that there was a pre-contract between himself and the widow, xxxii Introduction. and threatens to bring the matter into a court of law. Hoard is violently alarmed, and eagerly adopts his wife's proposal that Witgood should be bought off. At first Witgood is inexorable — he will have law ; but finally he consents to abandon his claim on condition that his creditors' demands are satisfied. When this difficulty is settled, Hoard prepares a marriage feast and invites his friends, including Lucre andWitgood(who has meanwhile secretly married Hoard's niece) among the guests. The denouement is exceedingly amusing. Hoard's brother, on being introduced to the bride, recognises Witgood's mis- tress, and a scene of some confusion follows ; but finally Hoard puts a good face on the matter and reminds the guests that " the wedding dinner cools." It will be seen that in writing this comedy Middleton was more anxious to amuse than to teach a moral lesson. Grave moralists may argue that it is reprehensible for a man to fasten his cast-off mistress on his bride's uncle ; nor am I inclined to dispute the reasonableness of the contention. But we must not bring the squint looks of " budge doctors of the stoic fur" to bear on these airy comedies of intrigue. Middleton could moralise severely enough when the occasion required ; but in the present instance his aim was to provide entertainment, and he succeeds admirably. It is impossible not to admire the happy dexterity with which the mirthful situations are multiplied. The interest never flags for a moment, but is heightened at every turn. The Family of Love is written with Middleton's usual freedom and facility. As he had been before the public Introduction. xxxiii for some years, it is curious to note the modesty with which he refers to himself in the prologue : — " If, for opinion hath not blaz'd his fame, Nor expectation filled the general round, You deem his labours slight," &c. In the Address to the Reader he mentions that the play was in the press before he had notice of it, " by which means some faults may escape in the printing ; " and he adds that " it passed the censure of the stage with a general applause." Your Five Gallants was entered in the Stationers' Registers on 22d March 1607-8, under the title of Fyve Wittie Gallants. The quarto, which is very care- lessly printed, bears no date, but was probably published in 1608. The five gallants are "the broker gallant," "the bawd gallant," "the cheating gallant," " the pocket gallant," "the whore gallant," — a choice fraternity of vagabonds, whose manner of life is described with much gusto. There is an allusion in iv. 2 to the closing of playhouses in time of plague. The year 1607 was a plague-year. On 1 2th April the Lord Mayor in a letter to the Lord Chamberlain announced that the plague was increasing in the skirts and confines of the city ; and suggested that orders should be given to the justices of Middlesex to interdict the performance of stage-plays at Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, and other out- lying districts. 1 1 See Analytical Index of the] Series of Records known as the Rememirancia, p. 337. xxxiv Introduction. A Mad World, my Masters?- licensed on 12 th October 1608 and printed in the same year, is a pleasanter play than the preceding. The characters of Sir Bounteous Progress, the liberal knight who keeps open house for all comers, and Harebrain, the jealous husband, yoked to a demure light-o'-love, are very ably drawn ; and the situations are worked out with the adroit briskness that we admired in A Trick to Catch the Old One. The deception practised by the counterfeit players recalls the similar incident in the Mayor of Queenborough. Middleton seems to have been tickled with the notion of converting wanton wagtails into wives. In A Trick to Catch the Old One, Witgood succeeded in marrying his mistress to his wife's uncle ; in A Mad World the tables are turned, and Follywit finds himself united to his uncle's mistress. The victims in both cases submit with a good grace. A large part of Mrs. Behn's City Heiress, 1681, was conveyed from A Mad World. In 1609 Middleton published a slight tract com- memorating the exploits of the adventurous Sir Robert Sherley, the youngest and most remarkable of the Three English Brothers. 2 As the dedication to Sir Thomas 1 A pamphlet by Nicholas Breton, printed in 1603, bears the same title. I suppose that "A mad world, my masters," was a sort of proverbial expression. 2 An excellent account of these remarkable men is given in The Sherley Brothers, an historical memoir of the lives of Sir Thomas Sherley, Sir Anthony Sherley, and Sir Robert Sherley, Knights. By one of the same house [the late Evelyn Philip Shirley, Esq.] Roxburghe Club, 1848. The play of The Three English Brothers by Day, Wilkins, and William Rowley, is reprinted in my edition of Day's Works, 1881. Introduction. xxxv Sherley is subscribed " Thomas Middleton," I have felt bound, against my inclination, to include this uninterest- ing tract among our author's works. The Roaring Girl, written in conjunction with Dekker, was published in 1611. 1 Of Mary Frith, the Roaring Girl, whose adventures are so graphically described by the dramatists, I have given some account in a pre- fatory note to the play (iv. 3-6). In the Address to the Reader Middleton says: — "Worse things, I must needs confess, the world has taxed her for than has been written of her ; " and he concludes with the very proper observation — " We rather wish in such discoveries, where reputation lies bleeding, a slackness of truth than fulness of slander." Under this judicious treatment the Amazon of the Bankside becomes an attractive figure. She moves among rowdies and profligates without suffer- ing any contamination; she has the thews of a giant and the gentleness of a child. Secure in her " armed and iron maidenhood," and defying the breath of scandal, she daffs the world aside and chooses a life of frolic freedom. She can converse with rogues and 1 Mr. Fleay confidently fixes the date of composition before Novem- ber 1604. "The date is proved by the allusion in it to Westward Ho. This play was revised by Dekker about 1610-n." I need hardly say that the allusion to Westward Ho proves nothing, for it would have been quite as intelligible to the audience in 1611 as in 1604. Besides, I strongly doubt whether Mary Frith had come into notoriety so early as 1604. At the earliest computation she was not born before 1584-85. When Mr. Fleay says "this play was revised by Dekker," he is of course merely expressing his own belief, — not an ascertained fact. My view is that the two authors worked on the play together, and this view is clearly supported by internal evidence. xxxvi Introduction. cheats in their cant language, and knows all their tricks and subterfuges. Her hand is heavy on swaggerers, but she has a woman's ear for a tale of lovers' distress, and is quick to render efficient aid. The conception is strikingly fresh and original. We can distinguish, I think, with some approach to exactness, Middleton's share from Dekker's. Throughout the first act Dekker's hand is clearly traceable. The description of the fur- niture in Sir Alexander Wengrave's house is quite in Dekker's vein of fantastic extravagance, and is closely paralleled by similar descriptions in the Wonder of a Kingdom. When Sir Alexander says — " Then, sir, below The very floor, as 'twere, waves to and fro, And like a floating island seems to move Upon a sea bound in with shores above," we are at once reminded of Torrenti's boast in a Wonder of a Kingdom — " I'll pave my great hall with a floor of clouds, Wherein shall move an artificial sun, Reflecting round about me golden beams, Whose flames shall make the room seem all on fire.'' The dullest reader must perceive that the same fancy was at work in both instances. Middleton never in- dulged in these airy extravagances. Sir Bounteous in A Mad World has far homelier notions of magnificence. The second act opens precisely in Middleton's manner. The very names of the characters — Laxton, Goshawk, Greenwit, Gallipot, &c. — are evidence in his favour. Introduction. xxxvii This style of nomenclature, which Middleton commonly adopted in his comedies, was not affected by Dekker. Then the characters are just such as we find in other plays of Middleton. Mistress Gallipot may be compared with Mistress Purge in The Family of Love or with Falso's Daughter in The Phoenix ; and Mistress Openwork, the jealous scold, is a repetition of Mistress Glister in The Family of Love. The dialogue is conducted with Mid- dleton's usual smartness and rapidity. The second scene of act ii., where Sir Alexander, having overheard his son courting Moll, implores him to abandon the suit, has Dekker's naturalness of sentiment and fluency -of metre, a not unpleasing mixture of blank verse and rhyme. Act iii. is mainly by Middleton : the feigning of the precontract in the second scene is a repetition of the device in A Trick to Catch the Old One; the con- duct of Laxton and Gallipot is precisely the same as that of Witgood and Hoard. As to iv. i, where young Wen- grave brings the Roaring Girl to his father's house, I am not at all sure about the authorship, but I incline to Middleton ; the next scene, before Gallipot's house, is evidently Middleton's for the most part, but the rhymed speeches at the end seem to belong to Dekker. The whole of the fifth act I would ascribe to Dekker. Those who have read Dekker's Bellman of London and Lan- thorn and Candlelight are aware that he made a special study of the cant language of thieves. He has turned this knowledge to account very largely in the last act of the present play. We next hear of Middleton in 1613, when he was xxxvili Introduction. employed to write a pageant, The Triumphs of Truth, to celebrate the Mayoralty of Sir Thomas Middleton. 1 There are two editions of the pageant, and to the second is appended the " manner of his lordship's entertain- ment " at the opening of the New River Head. Pageants are usually tedious, and The Triumphs of Truth is no ex- ception to the rule. The speeches are smoothly written, but the songs are poor. The pageant seems to have been mounted on a costly scale, and some of the em- blematic inventions are curious. Envy was represented "eating of a human heart, mounted on a rhinoceros, attired in red silk, suitable to the bloodiness of her manners." One of the chief features of the pageant was an emblematic representation of the Grocers' Company (to which Sir Thomas Middleton belonged) in a water- spectacle : — "Then ... his Lordship and the worthy company are led forward toward the water-side, where you shall find the river decked in the richest glory to re- ceive him ; upon whose crystal bosom stands five islands, artfully garnished with all manner of Indian fruit-trees, drugs, spiceries and the like ; the middle island with a fair castle especially beautified ; " the castle representing the newly-established forts of the East-India Company. It must have been peculiarly gratifying to the Lord Mayor to read the following exordium, in which modern readers will find a spice of satirical humour : — " Search all chronicles, histories, records, in what language or 1 Judging from the dedication, there appears to have been no rela- tionship between the dramatist and Sir Thomas Middleton. Introdtiction. xxxix letter soever; let the inquisitive man waste the dear treasures of his time and eyesight, he shall conclude his life only in this certainty, that there is no subject upon earth received into the place of his government with the like state and magnificence as is the Lord Mayor of the city of London." What eloquence ! what a climax ! That sentence ought to be written in letters of gold and set up in the Mansion House as a monument in perpetuum. Middleton then proceeds to impress on the civic autho- rities the necessity of employing a competent pageant- writer, one whose invention can match the brilliancy of the scenic shows. I am sorry to add that he takes the opportunity to deal a blow at Anthony Munday : — " It would heartily grieve any understanding spirit to behold, many times, so glorious a fire in bounty and goodness offering to match itself with freezing art, sitting in dark- ness with the candle out, looking like the picture of Black Monday." Munday came in for plenty of knocks, but his poetical credit stood high in the city ; and, in spite of Middleton's sneer, he was employed as pageant- maker during the next three years. On 4th January 1613-14, a masque by Middleton, The Mash of Cupid, which was never printed, and of which no MS. is known to exist, was performed at the Merchant Tailors' Hall, as we learn from the following entry in the City Records (under date 18th January 1613-14) : — "Item: it is ordered by the Court that Thomas Middleton Gent, shall be forthwith allowed upon his bill of particulars such recompense and charges, as the committees lately appointed for the ordering of xl Introduction. the late solemnities at Merchant Tailors' Hall shall think meet, for all his disbursements and pains taken by him and others in the last Mask of Cupid, and other shows lately made at the aforesaid Hall by the said Mr. Mid- dleton." 1 The solemnities were in honour of the recent marriage of Robert Kerr, Earl of Somerset, to Lady Frances Howard. In Howes' continuation of Stowe's Annates (ed. 1615, p. 928) there is an account of the magnificent reception of the infamous pair at Mer- chant Tailors' Hall. The comedy No Wit, No Help like a Woman's, pub- lished in 1657, bears some indications of having been written circ. 1613. Weatherwise, in iii. 1, says : — "If I, that have proceeded in five and twenty such books of astronomy [i.e. almanacs], should not be able to put down a scholar now in one thousand six hundred and thirty-eight, the dominical letter being G, I stood for a goose." Among Shirley's Poems, 1646, is a prologue to a play (acted in Dublin) called No Wit to a Woman's. This play was without doubt Middleton's, and the passage quoted above — which suggests the date 1613-14 — was introduced by Shirley on the occasion of the revival of the play at Dublin. Of course Shirley may have been reckoning in round numbers; and perhaps we ought not to put too literal a construction upon the words. From Weatherwise's references to his almanac, we gather that the play was produced in June. It is one of Middleton's ablest comedies, but it leaves a 1 Quoted by Dyce from Rep. No. 31 (Part II.) fol. 239 i. Introduction. xli somewhat unpleasant taste in the mouth. The charac- ters have more variety than in the earlier comedies. Sir Oliver Twilight is a very humorous and original creation. He will not part with a penny-piece to his son and daughter at their marriage ; but they are wel- come to live with their partners under his roof and have all their wants supplied : — " 'Tis his pride To have his children's children got successively On his forefathers' feather-beds." Equally original is Weatherwise, who regulates all his actions by the signs of the zodiac. Savourwit, Sir Oliver's servant, is a fellow of infinite resources and matchless impudence. The deception practised by Mrs. Low-water, in assuming man's apparel and going through a mock marriage with the wealthy Lady Goldenfieece, would be . a hazardous experiment on the modern stage ; but Eliza- bethan audiences were accustomed to such exhibitions. Philip Twilight is an unsatisfactory character. His mother and sister on their passage to Guernsey had fallen into the hands of privateers, had been separated and sold. After nine years comes a letter from the mother — " Which related all Their taking, selling, separation, And never meeting ; and withal requir'd Six hundred crowns for ransom." Philip Twilight is sent by his father with the ransom ; but instead of applying the money to its proper uses he spends it on his own pleasure, While thus employed xlii Introduction. he meets with "a sweet young gentlewoman, but one that would not sell her honour for the Indies." He secretly marries her, and brings her home to his father's house as his long-lost sister, pretending that he has re- ceived sure intelligence abroad of his mother's death. With the fortunes of a damnable young scoundrel who shows such heartless disregard for his mother's suffering it is difficulty to have any sympathy. Probably Mid- dleton was following some Italian novel, but it is a pity that he did not represent young Twilight under a plea- santer aspect. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, printed in 1630, is stated on the title-page to have been performed by the Lady Elizabeth's servants at the Swan on the Bankside. I take it on the authority of Mr. Fleay 1 (who has made a special study of the perplexing history of the theatrical companies between 1576 and 1642), that there was no Princess Elizabeth's company before 161 1, and that before 161 7 the company had removed to the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Mr. Fleay reminds me (in a private communication) of the statement made by John Taylor, that early in 1613 "all the players except the King's men had left their usual residency in the Bankside and played in Middlesex, far remote from the Thames." But as the Princess Elizabeth's company may have acted occasionally at the Swan after this date, I am not inclined to think that we are justified in saying that the Chaste Maid must have been produced in or before 1613. 1 See his privately printed tract On the History of the Theatres in London, 1882. Introduction. xliii The company appears to have left the Bankside be- cause it was unable to compete with the King's men. After the destruction of the Globe (June 1613), when their too powerful rivals repaired to Blackfriars, the Princess Elizabeth's company may have returned to their old quarters. The Chaste Maid is the only extant play that we know to have been acted at the Swan. The play is exceedingly diverting, but I cannot conscientiously commend it virginibus puerisque, for the language and situations occasionally show an audacious disregard for propriety. Lamb quoted the exquisitely droll soliloquy in which Master Allwitt, the contented cuckold, describes the blessedness of his lot. If the reader, disregarding the anathemas of virtuous critics, gives the Chaste Maid a hearing, I can promise him plenty of entertainment. Civitatis Amor was written to celebrate Charles's assumption of the title of Prince of Wales (4th No- vember 1616). As the signature "Thomas Middleton " is found in the middle of the pageant, after the song of Peace, it is not improbable that another hand wrote the later part. We may dismiss without comment The Triumphs of 'Honour and Industry, 1617; The Inner Temple Masque, 1619; and The Triumphs of Love and Antiquity, 16 19. In 1 61 7 appeared the admirable play A Fair Quarrel, in which Middleton was assisted by Rowley ; a second edition with additional comic matter followed in the same year. Lamb quoted in his Specimens the duel scene and the scene where Captain Ager before the vol. 1. e xliv Introduction. duel seeks to be resolved of his mother's honour from her own lips. The exquisite criticism which Lamb passed upon those scenes will be familiar to every reader. It may be said without hesitation that, outside Shake- speare's highest works, there is nothing in the English drama more affecting, nothing nobler, than the colloquy between Captain Ager and his mother. That scene and the duel scene I believe to belong to Middleton. To such a height of moral dignity and artistic excellence Rowley never attained. We may safely assign to Rowley the boisterous comic scenes. Middleton's humour is of a quieter character ; he had little liking for noisy horse-play. Apart from the scenes where Captain Ager and the Colonel are concerned, I cannot trace Middleton's hand with any clearness. At the end of the first act Rowley's metrical harshness strikes upon the ear, and through- out the scenes relating to Fitzallen and Jane we sel- dom escape from it. The incident of the Physician tempting Jane is very unpleasant, but powerfully treated. Rowley was a writer of high ability, but he was sadly wanting in artistic form and refinement. 1 He is too blunt and emphatic, — there is too much of the fortiter in modo. In Calendar of Domestic State Papers, under date 19th July 1618, I find — "Licence to Win. Alley, at nomina- 1 "The plot of Fitzallen, Russell, and Jane," says Langbaine, "is founded, as I believe, on some Italian novel, and may be read in English in the Complaisant Companion^ octavo, p. 280. That part of the Physician tempting Jane and then accusing her, is founded on a novel of Cynthio Giraldi. See Dec. 4, Nov. 5." Introduction. xlv tion of Thomas Middleton, of the sole printing and publishing of a book by Middleton called The Peace- maker, or Great Britain's Blessing." The pamphlet here mentioned was printed anonymously in the same year by Thomas Purfoot, and a second edition appeared in 1619. In the British Museum Catalogue it is ascribed to King James ; and the mistake is not surprising, for Middleton was hoaxing his readers — posing before the public as his royal master. The preliminary address "to all our true-loving and peace-embracing subjects" reads like James's ipsissima verba. There is an attempt throughout to keep up the deception; but occasional hints show clearly enough that James was not the writer. In sig. b. 1 we have " Let England then (the seat of our Salomon) rejoice in her happy government." It is too absurd to suppose that James would refer to him- self as " our Salomon." A great part of the pamphlet is taken up with a tirade against the practice of duelling, which had been denounced five years earlier in "A Publication of His Majesty's Edict and severe Censure against private Combats and Combatants." The circum- stances connected with the publication of The Peacemaker are most mysterious. Perhaps Middleton applied to James to allow the pamphlet to be issued with the royal imprimatur, and it is possible that James complied by writing the preliminary address - t but more probably the whole business was an elaborate joke on Middleton's part. The virtuous indignation expressed against tobacco must have pleased James: — " That witch Tobacco, which hath quite blown away the smoke of Hospitality and xlvi Introduction. turned the chimneys of their forefathers into the noses of their children." The vein of pedantry (assumed for the nonce) must have been equally gratifying to the wise fool. I am puzzled by the pamphlet. Much more trouble than usually went to the writing of masques appears to have been spent on The World Tost at Tennis, 1620. 1 Ben Jonson said that "next himself only Fletcher and Chapman could make a masque ; " but Mid- dleton and Rowley have amply proved their ability on the present occasion. The invention is ingenious, the speeches are finely written, and the songs are smooth. First comes an Induction, consisting of a lively colloquy between the "the three ancient and principal recep- tacles," Richmond, St. James's, and Denmark House. Richmond is jealous of the prestige acquired by Den- mark House, who in very graceful language quiets her fears by the assurance that all three sisters shall be held in equal honour : — " The round year In her circumferent arms will fold us all^ 1 " In all the copies, says Dyce, "of this masque that I have seen, a portion of the letterpress has been cut off from the bottom of the title-page by the binder. " The copy before me has the letterpress cut away at the top, but preserves the date 1620 at the bottom : on the title-page is an emblematic engraving. This copy, which is bound up with some quartos of Rowley's plays, belongs to the library of Worcester College, Oxford. I take this opportunity of thanking the Provost and Fellows of that society for their generosity in lending me at various times rare quartos from the fine dramatic collection in the College Library. There are three copies of The World Tost at Tennis in the British Museum. In one the title-page is plain and bears the date 1620 ; in the other two — which have the emblematic engraving — the date has been cut away. Introduction. xlvii And give us all employment seasonable. I am for colder hours, when the bleak air Bites with an icy tooth : when summer has sear'd, And autumn all discolour'd, laid all fallow, Pleasure taken house and dwells within doors, Then shall my towers smoke and comely show : But when again the fresher morn appears, And the soft spring renews her velvet head, St. James's take my blest inhabitants, For she can better entertain them then, In larger grounds, in park, sports and delights : Yet a third season, with the western oars, Calls up to Richmond, when the high-heated year Is in her solsticy ; then she affords More sweeter-breathing air, more bounds, more pleasures ; The hounds' loud music to the flying stag, The feathered talenter to the falling bird, The bowman's twelve-score prick even at the door, And to these I could add a hundred more." The masque opens with a dialogue, marked in the early- parts by Rowley's metrical irregularity, between a soldier and a scholar. While they are deploring the neglect shown to men of their profession, Pallas descends and chides them for their discontent. She begins by affirm- ing that there should be no divorce between arts and arms, — " For he's the complete man partakes of both, The soul of arts join'd with the flesh of valour, And he alone participates with me." She then proceeds to preach a homily in praise of poverty. The soldier ventures to respectfully reply, "there's yet a competence which we come short of." To this Pallas rejoins that the cause may be as much xlviii Introduction. "in your own negligence as our slow blessings;" but they shall prefer their complaints to Jupiter, who pre- sently descends to the sound of music. Jupiter delivers his views after a very trenchant fashion : — '"Tis more than Jupiter Can do to please 'em : unsatisfied man Has in his ends no end ; not hell's abyss Is deeper gulf d than greedy avarice ; Ambition finds no mountain high enough For his aspiring foot to stand upon : One drinks out all his blessings into surfeits, Another throws 'em out as all were his, And the gods bound for prodigal supply : What is he lives content in any kind ? That long-incensed Nature is now ready To turn all back into the fruitless chaos. " Then to show the malcontents what in old time " arts and arms commixt . . . did in the world's broad face," Pallas calls on the Muses to lead in the Nine Worthies. When this show is ended and Jupiter is again beginning to chide his petitioners, Time enters weeping and ex- plains the causes of his sorrow, — how landlords and usurers greedily long for his coming, but when he arrives they bend their plodding heads over their money-bags, let him pass unnoticed and then instantly sigh for his return ; the lawyer drives him off from term to term ; the prodigal sickens him with surfeits; the drunkard sets him on his head topsy-turvy ; all the women hate him, and with " gloss and pencilry " wipe off the impression that he sets upon their cheeks. Time having retired, Jupiter denounces vain-glorious pride, and to rebuke Introduction. xlix modern extravagance in the matter of apparel, summons the Five Starches (daughters of Deceit), who perform a grotesque dance, and after a short dispute for precedency retire. Jupiter now descends from his aerial machine, and " to show the strange removes of the world, places the orb, whose figure it bears, in the midst of the stage ; " whereupon Simplicity enters, takes up the orb and moralises on the changes that have been effected in the world. While he is thus engaged Deceit enters ; a dialogue follows, in which Deceit strives to gain the good graces of Simplicity, but is obliged to retire dis- comfited. Then is heard within a reaper's song in praise of Simplicity. Presently Deceit re-enters in com- pany with a King. Simplicity resigns the orb to the king ; Deceit offers to relieve the king of the burthen, but his offer is rejected with scorn and he slinks away, returning successively with a Land-captain, a Sea-captain, a Flamen, and a Lawyer, who each in turn receive the orb, and who are all equally resolute in refusing to resign it to Deceit. Finally the orb is given back to the king ; Deceit, in company with the Devil (who arrived at a late stage of the proceedings), finding himself baffled at all points, withdraws not to return ; and the others, after an exhortation from the king, presently follow, leav- ing the original characters in possession of the stage. Jupiter then delivers a valedictory address to the soldier and scholar, impressing upon them that it will be their own fault if they fail to prosper, for never was a brighter career open for soldiers and scholars. He alludes specially to James' patronage of learning, and to the 1 Introduction. opportunities offered by the war in the Palatinate. The malcontents recant and the masque closes. There is one great merit in The World Tost at Tennis ; it is not tedious, as masques so frequently are. The verse was something more than a peg on which to hang the costumes. By the fireside it can be read with pleasure, and, handsomely mounted, it must have been received on the stage with applause. On 6th September 1620 Middleton was appointed to the office of City Chronologer. His appointment is thus recorded 1 in the City Records : — " 1620, 6th September, 18th James I. — Thomas Mid- dleton, admitted City Chronologer. Item, this day was read in Court (of Aldermen) a petition of Thomas Middleton, Gent,, and upon consideration thereof taken, and upon the sufficient testimony this Court hath received of his services performed to this City, this Court is well pleased to entertain and admit the said Thomas Middleton to collect and set down all memorable acts of this City and occurrences thereof, and for such other employ- ments as this Court shall have occasion to use him in ; but the said Thomas Middleton is not to put any of the same acts so by him to be collected into print without the allowance and approbation of this Court; and for the readiness of his service to the City in the same employ- ments this Court does order that he shall receive from henceforth, out of the Chamber of London, a yearly fee 1 Analytical Index to the Series of Records known as the Remem- brancia (printed for the Corporation in 1878), p. 305, n. The exact date of Middleton's appointment was unknown to Dyce. Introduction. li of 61. 135. 4J." On 20th November l of the same year his salary was raised to ten pounds. On 17th April 1621a Freedom was granted to him towards his expenses, and on 7th May 1622 another Freedom was granted for his better encouragement in his labours. On 17th September 1622, for his further encouragement, he received a gift of fifteen pounds, and on 6th February 1622-23 another gift of twenty pounds. On 24th April 1623 another Freedom was granted to him, and on 2d September 1623, for his services at the shooting on Bunhill and at the Conduit Head before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, he was rewarded with twenty marks. We learn from Oldys' annotated copy of Lang- baine (preserved in the British Museum) that Middleton's MS. City Chronicle was extant in the last century. " There are two MSS. of this Author's [Middleton's] in being which have never been taken notice of in any Acco' of him. They were sold in an Auction of Books at the Apollo Coffee House in Fleet Street ab' the year 1735 by Edw Lewis, but pufFd up to a great price, bought back, & coud not afterw' 13 be recovered. They are entitled I. Annates : or a Continuation of Chronologie ; conteyninge Passages and Occurrences proper to the Honno ble Citty of London : Beginninge in the Yeare of our Lorde 1620. By Thomas Midleton then received by their Honno ble Senate as Chronologer for the Cittye. 1 This is the date given in Remembrancia, p. 305, n. According to the extract which had been famished to Dyce, the increase of salary was granted on 23d January 1620-21. Hi Introduction. There are in it these Articles under the year 1621. — On Good Fryday in the Morn died John (King) Lord Bp. of London. — 28 May Fra. L d Verulam committed to the Tower. (Seal taken from him the last day of April). — 27 Dec r . S r Edw d Coke Committed to the Tower.— Dec r . The Fortune Play House, situate between White Cross Street and Golding Lane, burnt, &c. II. Middletoris Farrago: In which there is — The Earl of Essex his Charge agt' Vise' Wimbleton, & the Vise" Answ'.— The Treaty and Articles of Marriage between Pr. Cha : & Hen : Maria. — Parliamentary Matters, 1625-26. — Habeas Corpus 1627, &c." Before we come to the consideration of the final group of tragedies and romantic comedies in which Middleton's genius was shown at its highest, it will be convenient to discuss The Witch. This tragi-comedy (first printed by Isaac Reed in 1770, from a MS. then in the possession of Major Pearson, and now preserved in the Malone Collection at Oxford) has received, owing to its Shake- spearean interest, more attention than it deserves on its own merits. It is strangely ill-constructed and is not by any means one of Middleton's finest works, though uncritical writers have absurdly advanced it to the first place. In the MS. the play is stated to have been "long since acted by his Majesty's servants.at the Black- friars." We must not lay too much stress on the words " long since," as though they carried us back for many years. The King's men were not acting regularly at the Blackfriars before June 16 13, when, at the destruction of the Globe, they had to seek fresh quarters. After the Introduction. liii rebuilding of the Globe, they kept both houses for their own use. 1 This external evidence does not amount to much; for the King's men, though not regularly em- ployed at the Blackfriars before 1613, may have acted there occasionally in earlier years. But looking at The Witch in connection with Middleton's other plays (and this is what previous critics have neglected to do), I should certainly refer it to the later part of his career, — to the period when he was no longer content with composing lively comedies of intrigue, but was turning his attention towards subjects of deeper moment. We have seen that (with the doubtful exception of The Mayor of Queenborough, which I consider to be a revised version of an early play) A Fair Quarrel, 1616-17, is the first of Middleton's plays in which the serious interest predominates. Without attempting to fix the exact date of Macbeth, we can with confidence refer it to 1606-10. In April 16 10 Dr. Simon Forman witnessed a perform- ance of Macbeth at the Globe. Now between the years 1606 and 161 o Middleton wrote The Phmnix, Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Family of Love, Your Five Gallants, A Mad World my Masters, and a portion of The Roaring Girl (published in 161 1). He had established his position as a writer of comedies of intrigue, and there is not a shred of evidence to show that he made during those years any essay in the direc- tion of tragedy or tragi-comedy. Let us next consider the relation between Macbeth and The Witch. It is only in 1 I am again relying on Mr. Fleay's History of Theatres, p. 4. liv Introduction. the incantation scenes that the resemblance 1 appears. As to the essential difference between the witches of Shakespeare and Middleton, it would be presumption in an editor to attempt to add anything to Lamb's ex- quisite criticism. The hags in Ben Jonson's Masque of Queens (1609) conduct their rites after much the same fashion as Shakespeare's weird sisters. But to guide him in selecting the ingredients for Hecate's hell-broth, Shakespeare needed not the wealth of learning which Ben Jonson displayed in the footnotes of his masque. The reports of the trials of the Scotch witches and Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft would have furnished him with all the details that he required. It is not at all surprising that the incantation scenes in Macbeth should bear a general resemblance to the similar scenes in The Witch ; indeed, it would be more extraordinary not to find such resemblance. But the difficulty lies in this fact, that the stage-directions in Macbeth contain allusions to two songs which are found in Middleton's Witch. At the close of Hecate's speech in iii. 5, after the words " And you all know Security Is mortals' chiefest enemy," the folio gives the stage-direction "Music and a Song." Hecate them exclaims — " Hark, I am called, my little spirit, see Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me ; " 1 Middleton frequently imitates in other plays Shakespearean expres- sions ; so we need not be surprised to find echoes from Macbeth in occasional passages of The Witch. These petty larcenies prove nothing. Introdttction. lv and another stage-direction follows, " Sing within. ' Come away, come away,' &c." I quote in full the passage of The Witch (iii. 3.) where this song occurs : — " Song above. Come away, come away, Hecate, Hecate, come away ! Hec. I come, I come, I come, I come, With all the speed I may, With all the speed I may. Where's Stadlin ? [Voice above.~\ Here, Hec. Where's Puckle? [ Voice above.] Here ; And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too ; We lack but you, we lack but you ; Come away, make up the count. Hec. I will but 'noint, and then I mount. [A Spirit like a cat descends. [ Voice above.] There's one comes down to fetch his dues, A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood ; And why thou stay'st so long I muse, I muse, Since the air's so sweet and good. Hec. O, art thou come ? What news, what news ? Spirit. All goes still to our delight : Either come, or else Refuse, refuse. Hec. Now I'm furnish'd for the flight. Fire. Hark, hark, the cat sings a brave treble in her own language. Hec. [Going' up.] Now I go, now I fly, Malkin my sweet spirit and I. O what a dainty pleasure 'tis To ride in the air When the moon shines fair, lvi Introduction. And sing and dance and toy and kiss ! Over woods, high rocks, and mountains, Over seas, our mistress' fountains, Over steep[y] towers and turrets, We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits : No ring of bells to our ears sounds, No howls of wolves, no yelps of hounds ; No, not the noise of cannons' breach, Or cannons' throat our height can reach. [Voices above.] No ring of bells," &c. Again, in Macbeth, iv. i, after Hecate's words — " And now about the cauldron sing, Like elves and fairies in a ring, Enchanting all that you put in," occurs the stage-direction " Music and a Song. 'Black Spirits,' " &c. In The Witch, v. 2, we find— " Hec. Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm. A charm-song about a vessel. Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray, Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may ! Titty, Tiffin, Keep it stiff in ; Fire-drake, Puckey, Make it lucky ; Liard Robin, You must bob in. Round, around, around, about, about ! All ill come running in, all good keep out." It is to be noticed that the songs found in the MS. of The Witch occur (with slight variations) in Daveuant's alteration of Macbeth, 1674. Now, looking at the first passage (" Come away, come away," &c), it is plain to Introduction. lvii the dullest reader that, though the first five lines are in every way appropriate, what follows before we reach Hecate's airy song is grotesquely out of keeping with the solemnity of Shakespeare's Hecate. The fantastic lines " Now I go, now I fly," &c, are undoubtedly fine as we read them in The Witch, but, transferred to Macbeth, they wantonly disturb our conception of the awful personage who has just announced — ' ' This night I'll spend Unto a dismal and a fatal end." In regard to the second passage, it is equally clear that only the two first lines and the two last could be attri- buted to Shakespeare, — and the two last lines may be dismissed without difficulty. It would be reasonable to assume that five lines of the first passage and two (or four) of the second belong to Macbeth, and were omitted from the copy used by the editors of the First Folio. It was not unusual to omit songs from the printed copies of plays : none of Lyly's charming songs, for example, are included in the first editions of his plays. But the editors of the First Folio were more careful in this re- spect, and I can only suppose that the copy from which they printed was slightly imperfect. Macbeth bears other traces of having been printed from a faulty transcript. Certainly no competent critic would deny that the second scene of the first act has descended in an im- perfect state. If my view is correct that The Witch was written after Macbeth, Middleton would of course have studied Shakespeare's play; and it is not at all lviii Introduction. surprising that he should have taken these songs and expanded them. Nor, again, need we be amazed at the fact that Davenant was in possession of a playhouse copy of Macbeth containing additions from Middleton's play. The players dealt with Shakespeare's text as with any ordinary playwright's ; they saw an opportunity of giving more " business " to Hecate and the witches by conveying passages from Middleton, and they were indifferent to the fact that they were degrading Shake- speare's creations. It is only, I repeat, in the incanta- tion scenes that there is any resemblance between Middleton's poor play and Shakespeare's masterpiece. Yet, strange to relate, there have been found in our own day scholars 1 who have proposed to hand over to Middleton some of the finest passages in Macbeth. It will be enough for me to say that there is not a shadow or tittle of evidence, whether internal or external, to sup- port these assertions. Among the Conway papers in the Record Office is a MS. " Invention by Thomas Middleton, being a musical allegory performed for the service of Edward Bark- ham, Lord Mayor of London, when he entertained his brother aldermen at a feast in the Easter holidays, Ap. 22, 1622." I have printed it for the first time; it has little merit. In the same year Middleton produced the "Triumphs of Honour and Virtue" for the mayoralty of Peter Probyn. It was reprinted in 1845 among the ' Mr. Fleay in a private communication tells me that he has largely modified the views put forward in his Shakespeare Manual. I trust that Mr. Aldis Wright has also repented of his temerity. Introduction. lix Shakespeare Society's Papers from an unique exem- plar. This and the preceding piece were unknown to Dyce. Middleton, like many of his contemporaries, appears to have had no desire for posthumous fame. His finest works — The Changeling, Women beware Women, and The Spanish Gipsy — were not published in his lifetime. The Changeling was issued by Humphrey Mosely in 1653 ; and to the same publisher, whom all students of the English drama should respect, we owe Women be- ware Women, published (with No Wit, no Help like a Woman's) in 1657. The Spanish Gipsy was printed for Richard Marriot in 1653. Had these plays been de- stroyed, the loss to our dramatic literature would have been serious, for only here is Middleton's genius seen in ) its full maturity. Rowley assisted in the composition of The Changeling and The Spanish Gipsy ; Women \ beware Women was written wholly by Middleton. The Changeling is partly founded on Book I. Hist. 4 ' of Reynolds' God's Revenge against Murder, of which the earliest edition is dated 1621. A "Note of such j plays as were acted at court in 1623 and 1624," in Sir Henry Herbert's office-book (Malone's Shakespeare, 1821, iii. 227) contains the entry — "Upon the Sunday after, being the 4 of January 1623, by the Queene of Bohemia's Company, The Changeling, the Prince only being there. At Whitehall." The play must have been written circ. 1621-23. I agree with Dyce in thinking that Middleton had the chief share in The Changeling. Rowley was probably responsible for the conduct of the vol. 1. / lx Introduction. underplot. The wild extravagance of the madhouse scenes is quite in his manner. I have little doubt that the last scene of the play is by Rowley. The violence of the language and the introduction of ill-timed comic touches remind us of All's Lost by Lust ; and the metrical roughness is painfully prominent. There are also occasional traces of Rowley in the opening scenes. Regarded as an artistic whole, The Changeling cannot challenge comparison with The Maid's Tragedy, The Broken Heart, or The Duchess of Malfi. It has not the sustained tragic interest of these masterpieces ; but there is one scene in The Changeling which, for appalling depth of passion, is not merely unsurpassed, but, I believe, unequalled outside Shakespeare's greatest trage- dies. Dismissing the underplot, let us follow the summa fastigia rerum. Alsemero, seeking employment in the wars, has arrived at Alicant on his way to Malta. In a church at Alicant he sees Beatrice-Joanna, daughter to Vermandero, governor of the castle, and is so smitten with her beauty that he forgets the wars and thinks only of making her his bride. A few days before Alsemero's arrival Beatrice had been contracted to Alonzo de Pivacquo, and the marriage was to be solemnised with- out delay ; but at first sight of Alsemero she falls pas- sionately in love with him and loathes her contracted husband. Alonzo's brother, Tomaso, notices the strange- ness of her demeanour and endeavours to dissuade Alonzo from the marriage ; but his counsel is ill-received. In the service of Vermandero is a hard-favoured atten- dant, De Flores, a man of gentle birth but broken for- Introduction. lxi tunes. He is possessed by an over-mastering passion for Beatrice, who is disgusted with his attentions and shrinks from him as from a poisonous creature, openly scoffing at him, but in her inmost heart stirred with a vague dread of him. As the marriage-day draws near and she ponders over the situation,' she can see help only from one quarter — from the man whom she detests, De Flores. She knows his devotion, and she knows also his poverty. She changes her treatment towards him, and greets him with smiles instead of frowns. De Flores is ravished with delight : — " Her fingers touch'd me ! She smells all amber." Gradually she proceeds to discover to him her hatred of Alonzo. He kneels to her and implores to be em- ployed in her service. She imagines that his eagerness is prompted by greed, and to spur his resolution gives him gold, promising more when Alonzo is despatched : — "When the deed's done I'll furnish thee with all things for thy flight ; Thou may'st live bravely in another country." When she retires he exclaims — "O my blood! Methinks I feel her in mine arms already ; Her wanton fingers combing out this beard, And, being pleased, praising this bad face. Hunger and pleasure, they'll commend sometimes Slovenly dishes, and feed heartily on 'em. Nay, which is stranger, refuse daintier for 'em. Some women are odd feeders, " Ixii Introduction. At this moment he sees Alonzo approaching : — " Here comes the man goes supperless to bed, Yet shall not rise to-morrow to his dinner." Alonzo, who is the guest of Vermandero, has come to ask De Flores to conduct him over the castle and show him the strength of the fortifications. It is agreed that they shall make their tour of inspection immediately after dinner. To secure himself from interruption, Alonzo, before joining his guide, announces that he is going to' take a gondola. The doomed man and De Flores, after passing through labyrinthine passages, reach a vault, the entrance to which is so narrow that they disencumber themselves of their rapiers in order to make freer progress. De Flores hangs up the weapons on hooks fitted in the wall for that purpose ; but he has previously concealed a naked rapier behind the door. While Alonzo is looking through a casement which affords a full view of the castle's strength, De Flores snatches the hidden weapon and stabs him several times in the back. On Alonzo's finger is a diamond ring which sparkles in the dimn'ess of the vault. De Flores tries to draw the ring from the finger, that he may show it to Beatrice as evidence that the deed has been accomplished : but it clings obstinately, and to obtain it he has to cut off the finger. The meeting that presently follows between De Flores and Beatrice is the most powerful scene in the play. Hearing that Alonzo is despatched, she exclaims — Introduction. lxiii " My joys start at mine eyes ; our sweet'st delights j Are evermore born weeping." 1 But at the sight of the dead man's ringed finger she/ retreats with a cry of horror, " Bless me, what hast thou done ? " De Flores observes grimly — "Why, is that more Than killing the whole man ? I cut his heart-strings. \ A greedy hand thrust in a dish at court Hath had as much as this." Looking at the ring, she muses, "Tis the first token my father made me send him ; " but there is no touch of pity in her heart.for the dead man. She bids De Flores bury the finger and keep the ring for himself; "at the stag's fall the keeper has his fees," and that ring is worth three hundred ducats. De Flores re- . marks — " Twill hardly buy a capcase for one's conscience though, To keep it from the worm, as fine as 'tis." Beatrice hastens to add that she did not intend the ring to be his sole recompense ; then noticing his clouded countenance, she protests that it would be misery in 1 Cf. The Phmnix, vol. i. p. 198 :— " Our joy breaks at our eyes ; the prince is come." Again, in The Old Law, vol. ii. p. 204 : — ' ' I've a joy weeps to see you, 'tis so full, So fairly fruitful. " In The Changeling we have the image presented in its final and faultless form. lxiv Introduction. her to give him cause for offence. Sharp and significant is the reply — "I know so much, it were so ; misery In her most sharp condition." But Beatrice has not the least suspicion of the meaning conveyed by the words. She sees before her only a man of broken fortunes, who for gold has stained his hand with blood. She offers him three thousand golden florins. He puts them by scornfully, with the remark that he could have hired a journeyman in murder at that rate. Thinking that he is dissatisfied with the amount, she offers to double it, but is met by the retort that she is taking a course to double his vexation. Still not a hint of De Flores' purpose crosses her mind. She is anxious to bring the interview to an end ; the man's obstinacy — his inordinate greed — is embarrassing; she must act with decision. Alarmed but resolute, she fronts him : — " For my fear's sake, I prithee, make away with all speed possible ; And if thou be'st so modest not to name The sum that will content thee, paper blushes not : Send thy demand in writing, it shall follow thee ; But, prithee, take thy flight." He answers quietly, "You must fly too then." With astonishment she inquires his meaning. He coolly re- minds her that she is his partner in guilt, and points out that his flight would at once draw suspicion on her. i Watching the effect of his words, he proceeds — Introduction. Ixv " Nor is it fit we two, engag'd so jointly, Should part and live asunder ; " Then with a gesture of impatience as she shrinks from him — _ " What makes your lip so strange ? I This must not be betwixt us." At length she grasps the reality of the situation. But the man is her father's servant; her dignity shall awe him into shame. As he presses forward for her em- brace, she draws herself to her full height — " Speak it yet farther off, that I may lose What has been spoken, and no sound remain on't ; I would not hear so much offence again For such another deed." But she utterly miscalculates her power. Calm, through very intensity of passion, and keen as a knife's edge, is De 'Flores' answer — "Soft, lady, soft! The last is not yet paid for : O, this act Has put me into spirit ; I was as greedy on't As the parch'd earth of moisture when the clouds weep : Did you not mark, I wrought myself into't, Nay, sued and kneeled for't ? Why was all that pains took ? You see I've thrown contempt upon your gold ; Not that I want it [not], for I do piteously ; In order I'll come to't, and make use on't, But 'twas not held so precious to begin with, For I place wealth after the heels of pleasure ; 1 So in Middleton's Women beware Women, iii. i : — " Speak, what's the humour sweet, You make your Up so strange I" lxvi Introduction. And were I not resolv'd in my belief That thy virginity were perfect in thee, I should but take my recompense with grudging, As if I had but half my hopes I agreed for." Still she will not abandon all hope, but tries desperately to retain her self-possession : — " Thy language is so bold and vicious, I cannot see which way I can forgive it With any modesty." Here De Flores loses patience : — "Push ! you forget yourself; A woman dipp'd in blood and talk of modesty ! " She bids him remember the barrier that her birth had set between them. " Push ! fly not to your birth ! " he retorts : — "You must forget your parentage to me ; You are the deed's creature ; by that name You lost your first condition, and I challenge you, As peace and innocency has turn'd you out . And made you one with me." She prostituted her affections when she abandoned her affianced husband for Alsemero, and she shall never enjoy Alsemero unless she first yields her body to the murderer's embraces. De Flores has no care for his own life ; he will confess all if she refuses. Her pride is crushed, and she kneels at the feet of the man whom she was wont to spurn : — " Stay, hear me once for all ; I make thee master Of all the wealth I have in gold and jewels ; Let me go poor unto my bed with honour And I am rich in all things." Introduction. lxvii The last spark of hope is quenched by the relentless answer : — "Let this silence thee ; The wealth of all Valencia shall not buy My pleasure from me ; Can you weep Fate from its determin'd purpose ? So soon may [you] weep me." Neither Webster nor Cyril Tourneur nor Ford has given us any single scene so profoundly impressive, so absolutely ineffaceable, so Shakespearean as this collo- quy between Beatrice and De Flor,es. In A Fair Quarrel Middleton showed how nobly he could depict moral dig- nity ; but this scene of The Changeling testifies beyond dispute that, in dealing with a situation of sheer passion, none of Shakespeare's followers trod so closely in the master's steps. The latter part of the play contains some powerful writing, but there is no scene that can be compared for a moment with the terrible colloquy. Vermandero construes Alonzo's disappearance as a dishonourable flight. Resenting the supposed insult, he lends a will- ing ear to Alsemero's suit, and is anxious to have the match concluded without delay. Beatrice is in per- plexity as the marriage day draws near; but I must be excused for passing over the device by which she conceals the loss of her virginity from Alse- mero. Meanwhile Tomaso has a shrewd suspicion of foul play, but knows not on whom to fasten the guilt. By a sort of instinct he suspects De Flores — " honest Ixviii Introduction. De Flores," as men call him. Honest De Flores ! a queen would as soon fix her palace in a pest-house as Honesty would seek a lodging in this ill-favoured fellow. De Flores is uncomfortable in Tomaso's presence, and seeks to avoid him. On one occasion Tomaso strikes him, but he has no power to draw : — " I cannot strike ; I see his brother's wounds Fresh bleeding in his eye as in a chrystal." But the catastrophe is at hand. Alsemero's friend, Jasperino, has observed passages of familiarity between De Flores and Beatrice. He reports what he has seen to Alsemero. A powerful scene follows, in which Bea- trice confesses to Alsemero that she procured the mur- der of Alonzo, but denies the charge of unchastity. Alsemero will not act rashly ; he locks her in a closet while he ponders his plan of conduct. At "this moment De Flores enters. Confronted with Beatrice's confession, he proceeds to disclose what she had suppressed. " He lies ! the villain does belie me ! " cries Beatrice from within. Alsemero unlocks the closet and sends in De Flores. At this point Vermandero and Tomaso enter with two prisoners who have been seized on suspicion of having murdered Alonzo. As Vermandero is pro- ceeding to explain the circumstances of their arrest, cries are heard issuing from the closet, and presently De Flores re-enters dragging in Beatrice.^ Wounded to the death, she has just strength enough to confess her guilt and declare her penitence. But there is no touch of Introduction. Ixix shame in De Flores. He has had his enjoyment of Beatrice and is content to die : — " I thank life for nothing But that pleasure : it was so sweet to me That I have drunk up all, left none behind." An attempt is made to lay hands on him that he may be reserved for torture, but he frustrates the intention by dealing himself a mortal stab — " it is but one thread more, and now 'tis cut." The Changeling was, revived at the Restoration. Under date 23d February 1660-61, Pepys entered in his Diary — "To the Playhouse and there saw The Changeling, the first time it hath been acted these twenty years, and it takes exceedingly." From Dowries' Roscius Anglicanus we learn that Betterton, about the age of twenty-two, sustained the character of De Flores. 1 A " Note of such playes as were acted at court in 1623 and 1624," in Sir Henry Herbert's office-book, contains the entry: "Upon the fifth of November at Whitehall, the Prince being there only, The Gipsye, bye the Cockpitt company" (Malone's Shakespeare, 1821, iii. 227). From a passage in ii. 1 we may conjecture that The Spanish Gipsy was a later play than The Change- ling, and that the part of Constanza was taken by an actor who had given satisfaction as Antonio. 1 The part of the pretended madman, Antonio (in the underplot), from which the play takes its name (Changeling = idiot), was sustained with success before the Revolution by Robbins, and at the Restoration by Sheppy (see Collier's Hist, of Engl. Dram. Lit., ii. 107, ed. 1). lxx Introduction. The Spanish Gipsy is an admirable example of a well- contrived and well-written romantic comedy. It is at once fantastic and pathetic, rippling with laughter and dashed with tears ; a generous, full-blooded play. The introductory scenes are peculiarly impressive, filling the reader with wonder as to how a tragic issue is to be averted. Roderigo, son of the corregidor of Madrid, has fallen in love with a girl whom he has casually seen, and with whose name he is unacquainted. He has noticed her walking a few paces behind an old gen- tleman and his wife, but he knows not whether she is their daughter or servant. Whoever she may be, he has determined to possess her. He communicates to his friends Louis and Diego his intention of forcibly carrying her off, and requests their assistance, which (with some reluctance on Louis' part) they agree to render. An opportunity is presently offered : the old couple is seen approaching in the dusk of evening, followed by the maiden. Roderigo secures his prize and hurries away, while the elders are firmly held by Louis and Diego. But when the old man exclaims, " Do you not know me ? I am De Cortes, Pedro de Cortes,'' Louis quickly looses his hold, and bidding Diego follow, takes to flight. Louis is the accepted of De Cortes's daughter, whom he has unwittingly betrayed to dishonour. Meanwhile Roderigo by a private garden-way has conveyed his victim to his father's house. A noble scene ensues, in which the dis- honoured lady confronts her unknown ravisher : — " Though the black veil of night hath overclouded The world in darkness, yet ere many hours Introduction. lxxi The sun will rise again, and then this act Of my dishonour will appear before you More black than is the canopy that shrouds it : What are you, pray ? what are you ? " The ravisher's spirit is quelled; he can but answer in monosyllables. " Not speak to me ? are wanton devils dumb?" she cries; women's honour would be safe if men could plead no better than " this untongued piece of violence." Then she flings herself upon him and clutches him fast : " You shall not from me. " He offers her gold, but she replies — " I need no wages for a ruin'd name More than a broken heart." Impatiently shaking her off, he retires and locks the door. Left alone in the darkness, she gropes her way towards the window, invoking the "lady-regent of the air, the moon," to light her to some brave vengeance. As she draws aside the window-curtains, she sees by the starlight a fair garden, in the centre of which is an alabaster fountain. Then her glance wanders round the richly furnished chamber and lights upon a crucifix, which she conceals in her bosom. Just when she has concluded these rapid observations, by which she will be able to identify that room hereafter, Roderigo returns. He professes penitence for his sin and offers all repara- tion in his power. She will not disclose her name ; she will take her shame with her to the grave ; but she has two requests to make of him : first, that neither in riot of mirth nor in privacy of friendship nor in idle talk he Ixxii Introduction. shall mention the wrong that he has done; and, secondly, that he shall lead her back, before the morning rise, to the place where he met her. He solemnly promises to fulfil the conditions, and she passes veiled from the house. It is indeed a sombre introduction, preparing us to expect some tale of blood and vengeance. I leave the reader to discover by what smooth channels the argu- ment is conducted to a peaceful issue. The Spanish Gipsy 1 has all the interest of a novel ; stripped of its poetry and reduced to a mere prose narrative, it would hold the reader's attention. In the gipsy scenes (which were, doubtless, largely the work of Rowley) we breathe the fresh air of the woodlands, and the songs have the genuine ring of rollicking freedom. There are few more charming figures than that of the young maiden, Constanza, who in gipsy guise follows her exiled father in his wanderings, singing and dancing in the booths of fairs, sportive as a squirrel and maidenly as Rosalind. The Spanish Gipsy opened gloomily and ended cheer- fully, but in Women, beware Women, the reverse process is adopted. The introduction to this powerful tragedy is singularly sweet. Leantio, a young factor, has married without her parents' consent a Venetian beauty, Bianca, and brings her to his mother's house at Florence. Bianca 1 "Two stories," says Professor Ward, "taken from Cervantes are here— not very closely — interwoven, that of Roderigo and Clara being drawn from La Fuerze de la Sangre (The Force of Blood), that of the Qipsies from La Gitanilla" Introduction. lxxiii has cheerfully abandoned her rich home to share her lover's slender fortunes. She is devoted to him, and he to her. The widowed mother is fearful that the house will afford poor entertainment for so high-born a lady, but Bianca with winning grace professes herself perfectly happy. In a few days Leantio's affairs oblige him to leave his wife. He gives his mother directions that Bianca should not be seen abroad, for he is jealous of her beauty, and dreads lest his treasure should be snatched from him. The leave-taking is most charmingly de- scribed. "But this one night, I prithee," whispers Bianca imploringly, and it must have been difficult indeed to resist such an appeal ; but his affairs will brook no delay, and he knows that one night will mean twenty, and then forty more, if he stays ; besides, he is to return in five days. Bianca acquiesces, but cannot control her tears when she perceives that he is really gone. While the widow is cheering and consoling her as they sit by the window, a crowd of sightseers gathers in the streets. The widow remembers that it is the day on which the Duke and nobles hold their solemn annual procession. Presently the procession draws near with music and song : in front are six knights bare-headed, then two cardinals, followed by the Lord Cardinal and his brother the Duke, in whose train come the nobles two by two. Bianca is enchanted with the magnificence of the spectacle ; her vanity also is flattered, for she assures the widow that the Duke cast a glance at the window as he passed ; whereupon the old lady sensibly remarks-^ lxxiv Introduction. " That's every one's conceit that sees a duke ; If he look steadfastly, he looks straight at them, When he, perhaps, good, careful gentleman, Never minds any, but the look he casts Is at his own intentions, and his object Only the public good. " But Bianca is right ; the Duke did notice her, and he determines to make prize of her beauty. To effect his purpose he employs the services of a clever and aban- doned court lady, Livia, who sets to work with devilish cunning. She invites the widow to her house, pleasantly chides her for living so much in seclusion, and hopes she will be a frequent guest. The poor widow, anxious about her daughter-in-law, who is sitting lonely at home, endeavours to bring the visit quickly to a close; but Livia insists that she shall stay, and they sit down to play chess. Attracted by Livia's sympathetic manner, the widow discloses the secret of her son's marriage, and without much persuasion is induced to send for Bianca, who presently arrives and is cordially welcomed. While ■ Livia and the widow continue their game, Guardiano (a creature of the Duke's) shows Bianca round the picture- gallery. As she is expressing her delight at the wonders of the gallery, Guardiano tells her that the fairest piece yet remains ; he draws aside a curtain and the Duke steps from his concealment. At first she makes a bold stand against the Duke's solicitations ; but when to adroit flattery he adds dazzling promises of the greatness that he will confer upon her (not without hints of violence in case of her refusal), soon her resistance is weakened, and after no severe struggle she capitulates. As she Introduction. Ixxv returns, outwardly cairn, from the Duke's embraces to her protectress's side, she is filled with loathing for the infamous creatures who have betrayed her. But she is not of the stuff of which heroines are made, and when the first feeling of shame is past, she treads the path of sin unblushingly. Her change of manner perplexes and distresses the unsuspecting widow : — " She was but one day abroad, but ever since She's grown so cutted there's no speaking to her : Whether the sight of great cheer at my lady's, And such mean fare at home, work discontent in her, I know not ; but I'm sure she's strangely alter'd. I'll ne'er keep daughter-in-law i' th' house with me Again, if I had an hundred." On the fifth day Leantio returns. His heart is brimming with love for his young bride ; as he draws near his home and deliciously muses on the contentment that his marriage has brought him, the very air around the house seems laden with blessings. But at the first sight of Bianca his joy is dashed to the ground. No loving arms are stretched out to welcome him ; a few cold words of greeting, and then Bianca proceeds to complain of the meanness of her lodging and protest that she will not be mewed up from society. While Leantio is endeavouring to pacify his wife, a knocking is heard at the door. Bianca is hurried into another room and a messenger enters ; he has come from the Duke with a message to Bianca. Leantio protests that there is no such person in the house, that he has never heard the name before ; and with this answer the messenger retires. VOL. i f g Ixxvi Introduction. When Bianca hears from her distracted husband that she has been summoned to the palace, she hastens, to his amazement, to obey the summons. Left alone, he muses bitterly, converting into curses the blessings that he had lately pronounced on marriage. Presently the messenger returns, summoning him to the Duke's pre- sence. Arrived at the palace, he sees the Duke whis- pering in Bianca's ear, and knows that his last hope is gone. To be rid of Leantio's presence, the Duke appoints him to the captaincy of some distant castle. Leantio retains his composure and expresses his grati- tude, but his heart is being riven in twain. He is no tame cuckold ; he has loved deeply and he can hate deeply : — " She's gone for ever, utterly ; there is As much redemption of a soul from hell As a fair woman's body from his palace. Why should my love last longer than her truth ? What is there good in woman to be lov'd, When only that which makes her so has left her ? I cannot love her now, but I must like Her sin and my own shame too, and be guilty Of law's breach with her, and mine own abusing ; All which were monstrous : then my safest course, For health of mind and body, is to turn My heart and hate her, most extremely hate her." It is a pitiful, thrice-pitiful story, worked out with relent- less skill to a ghastly catastrophe. The passionate energy and concentrated bitterness of the language is as remarkable as in The Changeling. The comedy More Dissemblers besides Women was Introduction. lxxvii licensed by Sir Henry Herbert to the King's Company on 17th October 1623, without fee, as being an "old play," which had been previously licensed by Sir George Buc (Chalmers' Supflem. Apol., p. 215). Dyce thought that the word " old " proves the play to have been " pro- duced a considerable time previous to the year 1623 ;" but it is, I think, merely a term applied to such plays as had been previously licensed. Sir George Buc ("by reason of sickness and indisposition of body wherewith it had pleased God to visit him ") resigned the post of Master of the Revels in May 1622. Before that date the comedy must have been .written ; but it is evidently a late work, more elaborate and substantial than the early comedies. The guileless Cardinal, with an inexhaustible stock of moral reflections and an implicit belief in the purity of his scapegrace nephew, Lactantio, is drawn with tenderness and care. Equally successful is the character of the Duchess, who, having vowed " ne'er to know love's heat in a second husband," after seven years of widowhood suddenly has her resolution shaken, but quickly checks the course of her affections when she finds that the man whom she admires is devoted to another mistress, and, after composing differences all round, returns to the strictness of her former life. A witty serving-man, Dondolo, contributes not a little to the entertainment. The girl-page who accompanies the profligate Lactantio is a pathetic little figure ; but it is a pity that Middleton adopted so intolerably gross a device for discovering her condition to the Duchess. In 1623 Middleton composed the pageant The Tri- lxxviii Introduction. umphs of Integrity for Sir Martin Lumley's mayoralty. It was mounted on an elaborate scale, the chief feature in the spectacle being the Chrystal Sanctuary, styled the Temple of Integrity, "where her immaculate self, with all her glorious and sanctimonious concomitants, sit, transparently seen through the chrystal." The columns were of gold and the battlements of silver, and " the whole fabric for the night-triumph [was] adorned and beautified with many lights, dispersing their glorious radiance on all sides through the chrystal." We have now to consider the most curious incident ' in Middleton's career — the circumstances attending the production of A Game at Chess. When the proposed Spanish marriage, which had been very unpopular with the English people, was broken off in the autumn of 1623, Middleton in A Game of Chess gave voice to the satisfaction of his countrymen at the failure of negotia- tions and their detestation of Spanish intrigues. The play was acted with great applause in August 1624 for nine days continuously ; then a strong protest from Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, caused its with- drawal, and both author and actors were summoned to appear before the Privy Council. The official corre- spondence in regard to the matter has been preserved. On 12th August 1624 Mr. Secretary Conway addressed the following letter to the Privy Council : — "May it please your Lordships, — His Majesty hath received information from the Spanish Ambassador of a very scandalous comedy acted publickly by the King's players, wherein they take the boldness and presumption, in a rude and dishonourable fashion, Introduction. lxxix to represent on the stage the persons of his Majesty, the King of Spain, the Conde de Gondomar, the Bishop of Spalato, &c. His ( Majesty remembers well there was a commandment and restraint given against the representing of any modern Christian kings in those stage-plays ; and wonders much both at the boldness now taken by that company, and also that it hath been permitted to be so acted, and that the, first notice thereof should be brought to him by a foreign ambassador, while so many ministers of his own are thereabouts, and cannot but have heard of it. His Majesty's pleasure is, that your Lordships presently call before you as well the poet that made the comedy as the comedians that acted it : And upon examination of them to commit them, or such of them as you shall find most faulty, unto prison, if you find cause, or other- wise take security for their forthcoming ; and then certify his Majesty what you find that comedy to be, in what points it is most offensive, by whom it was made, by whom licensed, and what course you think fittest to be held for the exemplary and severe punishment of the present offenders, and to restrain such insolent and licentious presumption for the future. This is the charge I have received from his Majesty, and with it I make bold to offer to your Lord- ships the humble service of, &c. From Rufford, August 12th, 1624." Their Lordships on 21st August sent the following answer : — " After our hearty commendations, &c. — According to his Majesty's pleasure signified to this Board by your letter of the 12th of Aug., touching the suppressing of a scandalous comedy acted by the King's players, we have called before us some of the principal actors, and demanded of them by what license and authority they have presumed to act the same ; in answer whereto they produced a book being an original and perfect copy thereof (as they affirmed) seen and allowed by Sir Henry Herbert, Knt, Master of the Revels, under his own hand, and subscribed in the last page of the said book : We demanding further, whether there were not other parts or passages represented on the stage than those expressly contained in the book, they confidently protested they added or varied from lxxx Introduction. the same nothing at all. The poet, they tell us, is one Middleton, who shifting out of the way, and not attending the Board with the rest, as was expected, we have given warrant to a messenger for the apprehending of him. To those that were before us we gave a round 1 and sharp reproof, making them sensible of his Majesty's high displeasure herein, giving them strait charge and commands that they presumed not to act the said comedy any more, nor that they suffered any play or interlude whatsoever to be acted by them or any of their company until his Majesty's pleasure be further known. We have caused them likewise to enter into bond for their attendance upon the Board whensoever they shall be called. As for our certifying to his Majesty (as was intimated by your letter) what passages in the said comedy we should find to be offensive and scandalous ; we have thought it our duties for his Majesty's clearer information to send herewithal the book itself subscribed as afore- said by the Master of the Revels, that so either yourself or some other whom his Majesty shall appoint to peruse the same, may see the passages themselves out of the original, and call Sir Henry Herbert before you to know a reason of his licensing thereof, who (as we are given to understand) is now attending at court. So having done as much as we conceived agreeable with our duties in conformity to his Majesty's royal commandments, and that which we hope shall give him full satisfaction, we shall continue our humble prayers to Almighty God for his health and safety ; and bid you very heartily farewell." On the 27 th Conway wrote again : — " Right Honourable, — His Majesty having received satisfaction in your Lordships' endeavours, and in the signification thereof to him by yours of the 21st of this present, hath commanded me to signify the same to you. And to add further, that his pleasure is, that your Lordships examine by whose direction and application the personating of Gondomar and others was done ; and that being found out, the party or parties to be severely punished, his Majesty 1 Dyce (following Chalmers) printed "sound," but "round" is the reading in the register. Introduction. lxxxi being unwilling for one's sake and only fault to punish the innocent or utterly to ruin the company. The discovery on what party his Majesty's justice is properly and duly to fall, and your execution of it and the account to be returned thereof, his Majesty leaves to your Lordships' wisdoms and care. And this being that I have in charge, continuing the humble offer of my service and duty to the attendance of your commandments, &c. From Woodstock, the 27th August 1624." 1 On the same day the following letter 2 was addressed by the Lord Chamberlain to the Lord President of the Council : — "To the right hon ble my very good Lord, the Lord Viscount Maundeville, Lord President of his Majesty's most hon bIe Privy Counsell, theis. My very good Lord Complaynt being made unto his Majesty against the Company of his Comedians, for acting publiquely a Play knowne by the name of a Game at Chesse, contayning some passages in it reflecting in matter of scorne and ignominy upon the King of Spaine, some of his Ministers and others of good note and quality, his Majesty out of the tender regard hee had of that King's honor and those of his Ministers who were conceived to bee wounded thereby, caused his letters to bee addressed to my Lords and the rest of his most hon ble Privy Council, thereby requiring them to convent those his Comedians before them, and to take such course with them for this offence as might give best satisfaction to the Spanish Ambassador and to their owne Honnors. After examination that hon ble Board thought fitt not onely to interdict them playing of that play, but of any other 1 This correspondence was first printed in Chalmers' Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers, p. 497, sqq. a "The original is in the State Paper Office : for the transcript I am indebted to Mr. J. P. Collier." — Dyce. But in the second edition of his Hist, of Eng. Dram. Lit. Collier says that the original was in possession of the late Mr. F. Ouvry. lxxxii Introduction. also, untill his Majesty should give way unto them. And for their obedience hereunto they weare bound in 300" bondes. Which punishment when they had suffered (as his Majesty conceives) a, competent tyme, upon their petition delivered heere unto him, it pleased his Majesty to comaund mee to Iett your Lordship under- stand (which I pray your Lordship to impart to the rest of that hon ble Board) that his Majesty now conceives the punishment, if not satisfactory for that their insolency, yet such as since it stopps the current of their poore livelyhood and mainteanance, without much prejudice they cannot longer undergoe. In consideration therefore of those his poore servants, his Majesty would have their Lordships connive at any common play lycensed by authority, that they shall act as before. As for this of the Game at Chesse, that it bee not onely antiquated and sylenced, but the Players bound as formerly they weare, and in that point onely never to act it agayne. Yet notwithstanding that my Lords proceed in their disquisition to fynd out the originall roote of this offence, whether it sprang from the Poet, Players, or both, and to certefy his Majesty accordingly. And so desireing your Lordship to take this into consideration, and them into your care, I rest Yo r Lo ds most affectionate Cousin to serve you, Pembroke." Under date 30th August 1624 the Council register contains the entry : — "This day Edward Middleton of London, gent, being formerly sent for by warrant from this Board, tendred his appearance, wherefor his indemnitie is here entered into the register of counceil causes ; nevertheless he is enjoyned to attend the Board till he be discharged by order from their Lordships." Dyce inserts "Thomas" in brackets after "Edward," supposing that the clerk of the Privy Council made an error in the name. But Dyce had not personally in- Introduction. lxxxiii spected the register; he relied entirely on Chalmers. It was pointed out by a writer in the Shakespeare Society's Papers that the person who tendered his appearance was the poet's son. Under date 27th August 1624 is the following entry in the register: 1 — "A warrant directed to Robert Goffe, one of the Mes- sengers of His Ma ts Chamber to bring one Middleton sonne to Midleton the Poet before their Llo ps to an- swer," &c. A copy of A Game at Chess, formerly in the possession of Major Pearson, and now preserved in the Dyce Lib- rary at South Kensington, has the following MS. note in an old hand : — "After nyne dayse wherein I have heard some of the acters say they tooke fiveteene hundred Pounde the Spanish faction being pre- valent gott it supprest the chiefe actors and the Poett Mr. Thomas Middleton that writt it committed to prisson where hee lay some Tyme and at last gott oute upon this petition presented to King James. * A harrales game : coynd only for delight was playd betwixt the black house and the white the white house wan : yet still the black doth bragg they had the power to put mee in the bagge ' use but your royall hand. Twill set mee free Tis but removing of a man thats mee.' " Dyce, following Malone, gave his opinion that the statement in regard to the receipts was a gross exagge- ration; but he did not sufficiently realise the intense 1 My thanks are due to the Clerk "of the Council, C. Lennox Peel, Esq., C.B., for his courtesy in allowing me to consult the register. Ixxxiv Introduction. excitement caused by the performances. If Dyce had seen the following letter of Chamberlain to Carleton, dated 21st August 1624, he would probably have modi- fied his opinion : — " I doubt not but you have heard of our famous play of Gondomar, which hath been followed with extraordinary curiosity, and frequented by all sorts of people, old and young, rich and poor, masters and servants, papists, wise men, &c, church- men and Scotsmen, as Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Albert Morton, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, Sir Thomas Lake, and a world besides. The Lady Smith would have gone if she could have persuaded me to go thither. I am not so sour nor so severe but that I would willingly have attended her, but I could not sit so long, for we must have been there before one o'clock at farthest to find any room. They counterfeited his person to the life, with all his graces and faces, and had gotten, they say, a cast suit of his apparel for the purpose, and his letter, wherein the world says there lacked nothing but a couple of asses to carry it, and Sir George Petre or Sir Tobie Matthew to bear him company. But the worst is, playing him, they played somebody else, for which they are forbidden to play that or any other play till the King's further pleasure be known ; and they may be glad if they can so escape Scot-free. The wonder lasted but nine days, for so long they played it " {Court and Times of James I., ii. 472-473). A Game at Chess contains some very caustic satire against Gondomar (the Black Knight), whose fair-seem- ing hypocrisy is exposed with masterly power, while his Introduction. lxxxv bodily infirmities are ridiculed with provoking persistence. The satirist's lash falls heavily on the apostate Bishop of Spalato 1 (the Fat Bishop), who is represented as a swag- bellied monster of gluttony — and lecherous withal. There is abundant evidence to show that the satire was keenly appreciated. Three editions — without date, but probably printed in 1624 — have come down, and Collier possessed a title-page of an edition dated 1625. A MS. copy is preserved in the British Museum, another at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a third (imperfect) at Bridgewater House. It is curious to note that Sir Thomas Browne possessed a MS. of the play (Browne's Works, ed. Wilkin, 1835, iv. 470). Howel, in a letter 2 to Sir John North from Madrid, writes : — " I am sorry to hear how other nations so much tax the English of their incivility to public Ministers of State ; and what ballads and pasquils and fopperies and plays were made against Gondomar for doing his master's business" {Letters, ed. 1678, p. 123). Ben Jonson in iii. 1 of The Staple of News (acted in 1625) has a passage — too indelicate to quote — about Gondomar and "the poor English play was writ of him." Fletcher in the prologue to Rule a Wife and Have a Wife makes an allusion to A Game at Chess : — 1 In a note prefixed to the play I shall endeavour to identify some of the other characters. 2 The letter is dated ' ' August 15, 1623 ; " but Oldys in his annotated copy of Langbaine remarks : — "The first edition [of Howel's Letters] in 4to, 1645, is in six parts or sections ; but no dates to any of the letters ; hence so many errors when he did date them." Ixxxvi Introduction. " Do not your looks let fall, Nor to remembrance our late errors call, Because this day we're Spaniards all again, The story of our play and our scene Spain : The errors, too, do not for this cause hate ; Now we present their wit, and not their state." The extraordinary applause that the play won was remembered as a stage-tradition for many years. In Davenant's Playhouse to be Let (first acted in 1663) an actor brings word to his fellows — "There's such a crowd at doors as if we had a new play of Gondomar." Two comedies, The Widow and Anything for a Quiet Life, remain for consideration. The Widow was pub- lished in 1652 by Humphrey Moseley as the work of Jonson, Fletcher, and Middleton. I must confess, with Gifford, that I cannot discover any traces of Jonson's hand. Collier was surprised that Gifford " did not trace his pen through the whole of the fourth act ; " but to me the scene where Latrocinio disguises himself as an empiric and dispenses his nostrums in a hired room of an inn, seems rather to be imitated from Ben Jonson than written by him. Nor can I discover Fletcher's hand, unless the songs be his. Dyce pointed out that a conceit in iv. 2 is found in The Honest Lawyer, a play by " S. S.," printed in 1616. "S. S." is a very poor writer, and it is hardly probable that Middleton would have taken the trouble to borrow from such a source. 1 1 I follow Dyce in spite of Mr. Fleay's assertion that " the argument from the ' imitation ' in The Honest Lawyer is imbecile. It is not possible to say which author was the imitator." Mr. Fleay's own views about The Widow may be seen in his article on Middleton in Shakespeariana, No. xii. Introduction. lxxxvii In v. i we have a mention of " yellow bands " as " hate- ful," — an evident allusion to the execution (Nov. 1615) of the infamous Mrs. Turner, the poisoner, who invented yellow bands and wore a yellow ruff at the gallows. In i. 2 ("You play a scornful woman ") there appears to be an allusion to Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady, which was written some time between 1609 and 1615. From internal evidence I should be inclined to group The Widow with a Mad World, my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One, assigning 1608-9 as the date of original production. It was revised at a later date — not improbably by Fletcher. Anything for a Quiet Life was printed in 1662. Ac- cording to Malone, " it appears from internal evidence to have been written about the year 1 6 1 9 " {Shakespeare, ed. 1 82 1, xv. 425). Mr. Fleay, without giving any rea- son for his judgment, assigns circ. 1623 as the date of production. In i. 1 we have mention of " the late ill- starred voyage to Guiana." Dyce supposed that a re- ference was intended to the first voyage under Raleigh in 1595, but Middleton must certainly have been alluding to something more recent — probably to the voyage of 16 1 7. In ii. 1 there may perhaps be a reference to The Changeling (" You shall see me play the Changeling " ). The project, ridiculed in i. 1, of "devising new water mill[s]for the recovery of drowned lands " is mentioned in Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass, ii. 1, acted in 1616. I suspect that the play in its present shape has been revised by another hand. The character of Lady Cressingham is drawn very much in the manner of lxxxviii Introduction. Shirley, who delighted to ridicule the whims and extra- vagances of high-bred ladies. Perhaps Middleton left the play unfinished and Shirley completed it. In 1626 Middleton composed the pageant The Tri- umphes of Health and Prosperity for the mayoralty of Sir Cuthbert Hacket. The first speech makes allusion to the devastations (so graphically described in Thomas Brewer's Weeping Lady) caused by the plague in the previous year. We have seen that in 1623 ( v ^ e note I > P- x 'i-) Mid- dleton was living in Newington Butts. He was buried there on 4th July 1627, as Dyce discovered from an entry in the register of the parish church. 1 On 7th February 1627-28 his widow, Magdalen Middleton, applied to the civic authorities for pecuniary assistance, and received twenty nobles. The entry (Rep. No. 42, f. 89) runs : — 1 Chetwood in his account of Middleton, prefixed to a reprint of Blurt, Master Constable, in ^Select Collection of OldPlays, Dublin, 1750, tells us that Middleton "lived to a very great age. . . . Wemayjudge of his longasvity by his works ; since his first play was acted in 1601 and his last in 1665. . . . That he was much esteem'd by his brother poets we may judge by four lines of Sir William Lower upon his comedy call'd A Michaelmas Term, 1663." The four lines given by Chetwood are: — ' ' Tom Middleton his numerous issue brings, And his last Muse delights us when she sings ; His halting age a pleasure doth impart, And his white locks show Master of his Art." Chetwood took a pride and pleasure in gulling his readers : Michaelmas Termwas printed in 1607, and there is no edition of 1663. The ingenious lines ascribed to Sir William Lower (who died in 1662) are of course a forgery. Introduction. Ixxix " Item : this day, upon the humble petition of Magdalen Middleton, late wife of Thomas Middleton, deceased, late Chronologer of this City, it is ordered by this Court that Mr. Chamberlain shall pay unto her as the gift of this Court the sum of twenty nobles." A " Mrs. Midelton " was buried at Newington Butts on 18th July 1628 (as appears from an entry in the parish register) : she was doubtless the dramatist's widow. Ben Jonson succeeded Middleton in the post of City Chronologer. There can be little doubt that Middleton was con- cerned in the authorship of more than one of the plays included among the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. I reserve that point for consideration hereafter in my Introduction to Beaumont and Fletcher. Mr. Fleay attributes to Middleton A Match at Midnight and The Puritan. The first of these comedies was printed in 1633, and is ascribed on the title-page to " W. R." i.e. William Rowley. I strongly favour Mr. Fleay's view that Rowley merely altered it (arc. 1622) for a revival, and that the real author was Middleton. It is written very much in the style of Middleton's early comedies of intrigue. The Puritan was published in 1607, and the title-page states that it was "written by W. S.," — a fraudulent attempt to induce the public to believe that Shakespeare was the author, though Dyce and others suppose the initials to belong to Wentworth Smith. Middleton wrote a play called The Puritan Maid, Modest Wife and Wanton Widow (entered in the Stationers' Registry, 9th September 1653) ; but this title will hardly suit The Puritan, which, nevertheless, I believe to be by Mid' xc Introduction. dleton. One curious expression in The Puritan (C 3), " by yon Bear at Bridge-foot in heaven," re-occurs in Middleton's No Wit, No Help like a Woman's (vol. iv. p. 415). Steevens, not understanding the joke, altered the word " heaven " to " even " in The Puritan. Through- out the play we are reminded of Middleton. The satire on the Puritans is what we find in The Family of Love; and the picture of town-life that the play gives is quite in the manner of Middleton's early comedies. George Pyeboard is an inferior Witgood. It is the poorest of Middleton's plays, unless we except Your Five Gallants, but it is not unamusing. George Pyeboard is evidently George Peele, the hero of the Merry Conceited Jests, which were published in the same year (1607) as the play, and furnished the playwright with hints. 1 Pyeboard's refer- ences to his almanac (sig. F 4) recall several passages in other plays of Middleton. There are not many allusions to Middleton in the writings of his contemporaries. 2 Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden in 16 19 " that Markham (who added his English Arcadia) was not of the number of the Faithful, i.e., Poets, and but a base fellow. That such were Day and Middleton." I should like to think that this was but 1 Mr. Fleay discovers in The Puritan some satirical references to Shakespeare, but my eyes cannot see through a millstone. It is a pity that Mr. Fleay injures his own credit by his habit of jumbling fact and fiction together. 2 A poet of our own time has paid to Middleton's genius the highest tribute that it has yet received. See Mr. Swinburne's Sonnets on the JJnglish Dramatists, No. IX, Introduction. xci the expression of a passing gust of discontent ; but we have seen that six years afterwards Jonson went out of his way to sneer at A Game at Chess. To the Duchess of Malfi Middleton contributed commendatory verses (in 1623), but Webster in the Address to the Reader prefixed to The White Devil {1612), while complimenting Chapman, Dekker, Heywood, &c, made no mention of Middleton. In Taylor's Praise of Hempseed, 1620, are the lines : — " And many there are living at this day Which do in paper their true worth display, As Davis, Drayton, and the learned Dun, 1 Johnson, and Chapman, Marston, Middleton, With Rowley, Fletcher, Withers, Massinger, Heywood, and all the rest where'er they are, Must say their lines but for the paper sheet Had scarcely ground whereon to set their feet." In a well-known passage of Heywood's Hierarchy of Blessed Angels, 1635, Middleton is mentioned: — " Fletcher and Webster, of that learned pack None of the mean'st, yet neither was but Jack. Decker's but Tom ; nor May nor Middleton, And he's now but Jack Ford that once were John." His name is also found on the list of poets in Howes' continuation of Stow, 1615, p. 811. In Wit s Recreations is the following epigram : — "To Mr. Thomas Middleton. Facetious Middleton, thy witty Muse Hath pleased all that books or men peruse. 1 So Donne's name is frequently spelled. VOL. I. h xcii Introduction. If any thee despise, he doth but show Antipathy to wit in daring so : Thy fame's above his malice, and 'twill be Dispraise enough for him to censure thee." The anonymous author of On the Time-Poets in the Choice Drollery, 1656, is not complimentary : — ',' The squibbling Middleton 1 and Haywood sage, Th' apologetick Atlas of the stage." There are critics who station poets in order of merit as a schoolmaster ranges his pupils in the classroom. This process I do not intend to adopt with Middleton. The test of a poet's real power ultimately resolves itself into the question whether he leaves a permanent im- pression on the mind of a capable reader, A poet may carve cherry-stones with exquisite skill ; but mere artistry, though a man might have the very touch of Meleager, soon palls. It becomes more and more a relief to turn from the yiKibimv iiouaua of this refined age to the Elizabethans. Middleton may be charged with extravagance and coarse- ness. True : but he could make the blood tingle ; he 1 In the ballad on the pulling down of the Cockpit by the prentices (Shrove Tuesday 1616-17) we find : — " Books old and young on heap they flung And burnt them in the blazes, Tom Dekker, Haywood, Middleton, And other wandering crazes." But I am not at all sure that the ballad is genuine. It is given in Collier's Hist, of Eng. Dram. Lit., ed. *, pp. 386-388, "from a con- temporary print." Introduction. xciii could barb his words so that they pierce the heart through and through. If The Changeling, Women be- ware Women, The Spanish Gipsy, and A Fair Quarrel do not justify Middleton's claims to be considered a great dramatist, I know not which of Shakespeare's followers is worthy of the title. ADDENDA. /^ ^ aJc^L