Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/74

impressive introduction to a play could have been devised than the arrival of the chief person, newly landed in high hopes and spirits from a long voyage, before the closed gates and curtained casements of an old friend's house, within which tapers are burning at noon, and before which the master walks sadly up and down, and repels his proffered embrace; and the whole scene following which explains the trouble of one household and the mourning of another is a model of clear, natural, dignified dialogue, in which every word is harmonious, appropriate, and noble. The grace and interest of this exposition are more or less well sustained during the earlier part of the play; but as the underplot opens out at greater length, the main interest is more and more thrust aside, cramped as it were for space and squeezed out of shape, till at last it is fairly hustled into a corner of the action to make way for the overwrought fooleries of the gull d'Olive and the courtiers who play upon his vanity; and this underplot, diverting enough in a slight way for one or two scenes, is stretched out on the tenterhooks of farcical rhetoric and verbose dia-