Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

to her that he will not touch her but with a kist hand and a timorous heart, he that adores her like his goddess, let him be sure she will shun him like her slave.

Whereas nature made" women “but half fools, we make 'em all fool: and this is our palpable flattery of them, where they had rather have plain dealing." In all Chapman's comic writing there is something of Ben Jonson's mental self-assertion and disdainful glee in his own superiority to the weakness he satirizes.

In passing from a comedy like May-Day to a tragedy like Bussy D'Ambois, we find some difficulty in recognizing the features of the same nature. Bussy D'Ambois represents a mind not so much in creation as in eruption, belching forth smoke, ashes, and stones, no less than flame. Pope speaks of it as full of fustian; but fustian is rant in the words when there is no corresponding rant in the soul, whilst Chapman's tragedy, like Marlowe's Tamburlaine, indicates a greater swell in the thoughts and passions of his characters than in their expression. The poetry is to Shakespeare's what gold ore is to gold. Veins and lumps of the precious metal gleam on the eye from the duller substance in which it is imbedded.

Here are specimens:

"Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream

But of a shadow, summed with all his substance;
And as great seamen, using all their wealth

And skills in Neptune's deep invisible paths,
In tall ships richly built and ribbed with brass,
To put a girdle round about the world,

When they have done it (coming near their haven)
Are fain to give a warning piece, and call
A poor strayed fisherman, that never past
His country's sight, to waft and guide them in:
So when we wander furthest through the waves
Of glassy glory and the gulfs of state,

Topped with all titles, spreading all our reaches,
As if each private arm would sphere the earth,
We must to Virtue for her guide resort,
Or we shall shipwreck in our safest port."

"In a king

All places are contained. His words and looks
Are like the flashes and the bolts of Jove;

His deeds inimitable, like the sea

That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracks,

Nor prints of precedent for mean men's acts.”.

"His great heart will not down: 't is like the sea,
That partly by his own internal heat,
Partly the stars' daily and nightly motion,
Their heat and light, and partly of the place
The divers frames, but chiefly by the moon

Bristled with surges, never will be won,

(No, not when th' hearts of all those powers are burst,)

To make retreat into his settled home,

Till he be crowned with his own quiet foam."

"Now, all ye peaceful regents of the night,

Silently gliding exhalations,

Languishing winds, and murmuring falls of waters,
Sadness of heart, and ominous secureness,
Enchantments, dead sleeps, all the friends of rest

That ever wrought upon the life of man

Extend your utmost strengths; and this charmed hour
Fix like the centre."

"There is One

That wakes above, whose eye no sleep can bind:
He sees through doors and darkness and our thoughts."

แ "O, the dangerous siege

Sin lays about us! and the tyranny

He exercises when he hath expugned:
Like to the horror of a winter's thunder,

Mixed with a gushing storm, that suffer nothing
To stir abroad on earth but their own rages,
Is sin, when it hath gathered head above us."

"Terror of darkness! O thou king of flames!
That with thy music-footed horse doth strike
The clear light out of crystal, on dark earth,
And hurl'st instinctive fire about the world,
Wake, wake, the drowsy and enchanted night,
That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle:
O thou great prince of shades, where never sun
Sticks his far-darted beams, whose eyes are made
To shine in darkness, and see ever best
Where men are blindest! open now the heart

Of thy abashed oracle, that for fear

Of some ill it includes would feign lie hid,
And rise thou with it in thy greater light."

It is hardly possible to read Chapman's serious verse

without feeling that he had in him the elements of a great nature, and that he was a magnificent specimen of what is called "irregular genius." And one of his poems, the dedication of his translation of the Iliad to Prince Henry, is of so noble a strain, and from so high a mood, that, while borne along with its rapture, we are tempted to place him in the first rank of poets and of men. You can feel and hear the throbs of the grand old poet's heart in such lines as these:

"O, 't is wondrous much,

Though nothing prized, that the right virtuous touch

Of a well-written soul to virtue moves;

Nor have we souls to purpose, if their loves

Of fitting objects be not so inflamed.

How much were then this kingdom's main soul maimed,

To want this great inflamer of all powers

That move in human souls.

Through all the pomp of kingdoms still he shines,
And graceth all his gracers.

[ocr errors]

A prince's statue, or in marble carved,

Or steel, or gold, and shrined, to be preserved,

Aloft on pillars and pyramides,

Time into lowest ruins may depress;

But drawn with all his virtues in learned verse,

Fame shall resound them on oblivion's hearse,

Till graves gasp with their blasts, and dead men rise."

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, MASSIN

WE

GER, AND FORD.

E have seen, in what has been already said of the intellectual habits of the Elizabethan dramatists, that it was a common practice for two, three, four, and sometimes five writers to co-operate in the production of one play. Thus Dekkar and Webster were partners in writing Northward Hoe! and Westward Hoe! Ben Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in writing Eastward Hoe! Drayton, Middleton, Dekkar, Webster, and Munday, in writing The Two Harpies. In the case of Webster and Dekkar, this union was evidently formed from a mutual belief that the sombre mind of the one was unsuited to the treatment of certain scenes and characters which were exactly in harmony with the sunny genius of the other; but the alliance was often brought about by the demand of theatre-managers for a new play at a short notice, in which case the dramatist who had the job hurriedly sketched the plan, and then applied to his brother playwrights to take shares in the enterprise, payable in daily or weekly instalments of mirth or

« ZurückWeiter »