Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/101

of treacherous numbers; though Dumas, in accordance I believe with all tradition, assigns to the duke of Guise the brutal act of force by which his wife was compelled to allure her lover into the snare set by her husband; whereas the English poet has not only altered the persons of the agent and patient, but has increased the means of compulsion from a pinch on the arm to the application of the rack to a body already mangled by such various wounds that the all but unparalleled tenacity of life in the victim, who reappears in the last scene not perceptibly the worse for these connubial endearments, is not the least notable in a series of wonders among which we scarcely make account of the singular part assigned to 'that affable familiar ghost' which moves so freely among the less incorporeal actors. To the tough nerves and vigorous appetite of the original audience this scene was no doubt one of the most acceptable in a closing act as remarkable for the stately passion of the style as for the high poetic interest of thought and action. Of these two qualities we find but one, and that the less dramatic, in the next work of the poet. No