Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/681
depths of human nature, and were, moreover, in the highest sense of the word, Poets. Above them all, indubitably, stands that Marlow, of whose three best tragedies we have given a full account and copious specimens. But from them, it will be obvious to such of our readers as had not previously studied our earliest dramatic literature, that the qualities now mentioned are almost all that those men of genius possessed. Of that higher power of creation with which Shakspeare was endowed, and by which he was enabled to call up, into vivid existence, all the various characters of men, and all the events of human life, Marlow and his contemporaries had no great share, so that their best dramas may be said to represent to us only gleams and shadowings of mind, confused and hurried actions, from which we are rather led to guess at the nature of the persons acting before us, than instantaneously struck with a perfect knowledge of it; and even mid their highest efforts, with them the fictions of the drama are felt to be but faint semblances of reality. If we seek for a poetical image,—a burst of passion, a beautiful sentiment, a trait of nature, we seek not in vain in the works of our very oldest dramatists. But none of the predecessors of Shakspeare must be thought along with him, when he appears before us like Prometheus moulding the figures of men, and breathing into them the animation and all the passions of life.
The same may be said of almost all his illustrious contemporaries. Few of them ever have conceived a consistent character, and given a perfect drawing and colouring of it; they have rarely indeed inspired us with such belief in the existence of their personages, as we often feel towards those of Shakspeare, and which makes us actually unhappy unless we can fully understand every thing about them, so like are they to living men. And if we wonder at his mighty genius, when we compare his best plays with all that went before him, we shall perhaps wonder still more when we compare them with the finest works of those whose genius he himself inspired, and who flourished during the same splendid era of dramatic poetry.
This will hold true with the works of all the great dramatists of that time, to which the public mind has of late years been directed—the Fletchers, the Jonsons, the Massingers, and the Fords. Still more so is it the case with those many other men of power which that which that age, fruitful in great souls, produced. The plans of their dramas are irregular and confused,—their characters often wildly distorted,—and an air of imperfection and incompleteness hangs in general over the whole composition; so that the attention is wearied out—the interest flags—and we rather hurry on, than are hurried, to the horrors of the final catastrophe.
To none of our early dramatists do these observations more forcibly apply than to Webster. Some single scenes are to be found in his works, inferior in power of passion to nothing in the
which he is accused of being a very ill-natured and captious critic; but the verses are miserable; and if Webster was severe on such scribblers, we cannot at least accuse him of injustice. Theobald, who altered the "Duchess of Malfy" into the "Fatal Secret," talks (the usual cant of his age) about Webster's want of skill, and so forth. But Theobald unfortunately was a dunce. Webster had a high opinion of himself, and in his "Address to the Reader," prefixed to his "White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona," assumes very lofty language in talking of his own merits. He compares himself by implication with Euripides, to whom he is an antipode, and tells the reader that he writes very slowly, which, from the extreme inaccuracy and poverty of a vast number of his lines, might not have been suspected. But of all the great men of that illustrious age, Shakspeare alone seems to have been unconscious of his greatness, or, at least, he certainly bore his faculties more meekly than any other of his contemporaries. It is somewhat curious to remark the manner in which Webster classes the dramatic writers of his age. It seems never to have occurred to him, that Shakspeare was quite of a different order of beings from them all. Indeed, not one of his contemporaries suspected this to be the case. "Inclination is the sworn friend of ignorance. For mine own part, I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman, the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson, and the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher; and lastly (without wrong, to be last named), the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakspeare, Master Decker, and Master Heywood; wishing what I write may be read by their light," &c.