Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/86

64 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12S. X. JAN. 28, 1922. find it again in ' The Emperor of the East,' II. i. : The pale-faced moon, that should Govern the night, usurps the rule of day, &c. The very words of greeting ("The sun, god of the day, guide thee, Macrinus ! ") with which the scene opens, to me suggest the hand of Massinger, as does the speech of Theophilus towards its close, " Have I invented tortures to tear Christians," &c. . One often notices in Massinger's plays a ' tendency to dwell upon, almost to gloat over, i the idea of torture. Scene iii. About two -thirds verse and one -third I prose. Although this scene, like the pre- i ceding, has hitherto been attributed entirely | to Dekker, it is also clearly of joint author- : ship. There are, indeed (except in the i prose at the end), more definite traces of Massinger than of Dekker. MASSINGER. Macrinus : ... from his store He can enough lend to others ; yet, much taken from him, The want shall be as little as when seas Lend from their bounty, to fill up the poorness Of needy rivers. Though this sentiment cannot be exactly paralleled from Massinger's plays, he harps upon images in which the size of a river is compared with that of the ocean. The nearest parallel is in ' Believe as You List,' V. i. : Though I know The ocean of your apprehensions needs not The rivulet of my poor cautions. Still more conclusive of Massinger's collaboration is this passage, from the first speech addressed by Antoninus to Dorothea, after the entry " above " of Artemia : . . . glaze not thus your eyes With self-love of a vow'd virginity ; Make every man your glass, &c. This is one of the many changes rung by Massinger on one of the commonest of his I tags. See, for instance, ' The Maid of Honour,' V. ii. : You look upon your form in the false glass Of flattery and self-love. ' New Way to pay Old Debts,' V. i. : . . . looking on my lowness Not in a glass of self-love, but of truth. ' Bondman,' III. iv. : Though in the glass of self-love she behold Her best deserts. There are similar lines also in ' The Emperor of the East,' V. iii., ' The Bond- man,', III. iii., 'The Parliament of Love,' I. i., and in several of the Massinger- Fletcher plays. Equally unmistakable to the reader familiar with Massinger's habit of echoing passages from Shakespeare is the evidence of this speech of Dorothea's : That fear is base, Of death, when that death doth but life displace Out of her house of earth ; you only dread The stroke, and not what follows when you're dead ; There's the great fear, indeed. The indebtedness to Hamlet's famous soliloquy ("But that the fear of some- thing after death," &c.) is obvious. Massinger has another reminiscence of this soliloquy Tremble to think how terrible the dream is After this sleep of death. in the ' Roman Actor,' III. ii., and again in ' The Maid of Honour,' II. iv. : How willingly, like Cato, Could I tear out my bowels . . . But that religion, and the horrid dream To be suffer'd in the other world denies it ! Dekker does not imitate Shakespeare in this way. Another slight, but definite, indication of Massinger is to be found in one of An- toninus's speeches addressed to Dorothea : Your mocks are great ones. With this compare Aretmia's . . . they are fair ones, Exceeding fair ones, . in Act I., sc. i. " Ones " is frequently thus used by Massinger, never (I believe) by Dekker. DEKKER. Dekker was responsible for the prose (Hircius and Spungius). There is in Spun- gius's very first speech one of his favourite angling metaphors, of which almost am- work of his will afford examples : The fish you angle for is nibbling at the hook j and, in the next line, the playful association of the abstract and the concrete . . . untruss the codpiece-point of our re- vard, no matter if the breeches of our conscience fall, is characteristic of him. The same type of jest is also met with in the plays of Ford, who perhaps borrowed it from Dekker. So far as I have noticed, it is affected by no other Elizabethan dramatist. We find it again in the prose at the end of the scene : Spungius : The petticoat of her estate is unlac'd. Hircius : Yes, and the smock of her charity is all to piecos. If positive proof is needed of Dekker s