Comedies.

drawn in particular from the observation of nature1. Thus versification and diction together give a luxurious tone to this play not ill-adapted to its subject, which is that of an Oriental palace-plot. Almanzor Caliph of Arabia has two sons by different wives. The younger son (Abrahen), in order to effect the ruin of the elder (Abilqualit), avails himself of his brother's guilty passion for Caropia (the wife of a rough lord named Mura) whom he himself unsuccessfully loves. The elder brother is condemned to have his eyes put out for a pretended act of violence, with which the intriguing Abrahen has persuaded Caropia to charge her too eager lover, so as to save herself from her husband's wrath. Abilqualit is the favourite of the soldiers, who attempt a rescue, in wrath at which the Sultan bids the Mutes (who characteristically enough play a considerable part in the action) strangle their prisoner. Overcome with grief for the loss of his noble son, the Sultan is murdered by a further device of Abrahen (a poisoned handkerchief), and the ambitious schemer now sees himself at the summit of success. Caropia herself-whose motive throughout is ambition rather than affection-now accepts his love; so that when Abilqualit reappears (for he has merely feigned death), there is obviously no way out of the situation except to make Abrahen kill Caropia and himself, and Caropia, foiled once more in her ambition, in the moment of her own death kill Abilqualit.

This unpleasant plot and the extremely unlovely character of the heroine might seem together likely to produce a play the reverse of acceptable; but apart from the excellence of the writing, the author has invested the character of Abilqualit with true nobility, while some of the other characters are likewise well drawn. Altogether the tragedy is very much superior to Alphonsus, with which it has been, I think injudiciously, coupled by critics.

In speaking of Chapman's comedies, it is necessary in the first instance to go back to the beginning of his 1 See especially iv. 1, 2, and v. 2. The floral similes are particularly pleasing.

dramatic productivity, so far as its results are preserved

to us.

The earliest two extant comedies of Chapman both belong to the reign of Elisabeth, and are removed a few years in date of composition from his later dramatic productions. Of these, The Blinde Beggar of Alexandria (printed 1598, acted about two years previously) is much inferior to its successor. Its plot is that of an outrageously improbable romance; and its hero, the Protean beggar Irus (whose assumed Homeric name will be observed; his real name is Cleanthes, and he adopts a variety of aliases in order to conquer the hearts of several ladies), is hardly to be regarded as an effort at character. But already in this, the earliest of Chapman's extant plays, an occasional vein of poetic imaginativeness, finding expression in similes at once original and beautiful, will strike the reader. The influence of Marlowe may perhaps be thought traceable in the daring conception of the hero's ambition; and there is an indication in the play that Chapman, who in the year 1598 published his continuation of Hero and Leander, was under the influence of its author's muse1. The beauty of much of the versification is already considerable.

ous Day's

Mirth (pr.

The 'pleasant comedy entituled An Humerous Dayes An HumorMyrth' (printed 1599) is well named. Its plot is exceedingly slight, consisting of little more than a series of tricks 1599). played by a mischievous courtier called Lemot upon a doting old husband and a doting old wife, and played for mischief's sake only. But the characters are drawn with remarkable vivacity, and the dialogue is full of wit. The influence of Lyly is perceptible in this play by the side of that of Ben Jonson, with whose Every Man out of his Humour it was about contemporaneous 2. The foolish old

'The line in the last scene of the play

'None ever loved but at first sight they loved'—

is of course a plagiarism from Hero and Leander. The 'thumb-biting' in an earlier scene recalls a well-known passage in Romeo and Juliet.

* The repeated marked use of the word 'humour' is worth notice in this connexion. The two courtiers who are in possession of the 'complements of a

All Fools

husband and his Puritan wife, whose fidelity to her principles he allows to undergo a series of trials before his eyes, are in the true vein of genuine comedy: and the manners of a Puritan lady of the higher class are here evidently drawn to the life. The most celebrated personage in the play however is young Dowsecer, whose eloquent misanthropy has a touch in it of Hamlet, though the triviality of the plot admits of no full developement of the character 2.

All Fooles (printed in 1605), though considerably inferior (pr. 1605). in humour of characterisation to Eastward Hoe (printed in the same year), likewise deserves to be ranked as a very admirable comedy. Its intricate plot, the nature of which is suggested by its title, and which in conception has some resemblance to that of Every Man out of his Humour, is well invented and very symmetrically executed. The pair of fathers, one of whom is deceived by means of a trick which he helps to play on the other, and again the jealous husband and the frivolous gallant 3, are effectively played off against one another: and with a poetic justice not always observable in the comic drama, the disreputable Rinaldo who sets them all by the ears is himself 'gulled' by his own cupidity. The writing of this play is excellent, both in matter and form. The descriptive humour of the passage in which old Gestango contrasts the courtly. manners of his own days with the stolidity of the 'tobacco

gentleman' are quite in Jonson's manner; much of the dialogue is in Lyly's,

but freer in form.

1 'For it is written,' she says, 'we must pass to perfection through all temptation, Abacucke the fourth.'

2 Dowsecer's speech to Cicero, and the following speeches, which are mostly in admirable blank verse, are printed as prose in the old edition, which the reprint (following the doubtful principle adopted in this series) literally reproduces.

3 Valerio's description of him is excellent. He is

A thing whose soul is specially employ'd

In knowing where best Gloves, best Stockings, Waistcoats
Curiously wrought are sold;'-

milliners' shops are his favourite haunt, and the art of shopping is his chief
accomplishment,

and for these womanly parts

He is esteem'd a witty gentleman.' (Act v.)

drinking' youth of the new generation1; the waggish dialectics-something in Lyly's style of the Page2; and the impudent rhetoric of Valerio's concluding harangue on a painfully humorous subject of which the Elisabethan comic writers seem never to have tired 3, as well as the burlesque declaration of divorce read out by the Notary*, furnish instances of comic writing of the most entertaining variety. And in such a passage as this

'How blind is Pride! what Eagles we are still

In matters that belong to other men

What Beetles in our own 5'

1606).

we have that touch which we are accustomed to call Shaksperean, but which occurs frequently enough in Chapman to render too absolute a use of the epithet hazardous. Chapman's next play, the comedy of Monsieur d'Olive, Monsieur printed 1606, is one of our most diverting Elisabethan d'Olive (pr. comedies. Its main plot is perspicuous and interesting. The gallant Vendome, returning from a long voyage, finds two difficult tasks awaiting him. The lady to whom he has devoted his chivalrous service-bound to her by one of those artificial ties of courtesy with which in the Middle Ages the Provence, where the comedy may be supposed to play, was familiar-has in revenge for her husband's unjust jealousy secluded herself, as she vows for ever, from the world. His sister, whom he dearly loved, has died; and her widower, the Count St. Anne, inconsolable in his grief, has caused her body to be embalmed instead of giving it Christian burial, and lives only for his grief. To bring these two back to reason is the object of Vendome's labours;

1 Act ii.

3 Act v.

2 Act iii.

4 Act iv.

of expres

power

Act iv. The metaphor seems imitated, but with far less sion, by Randolph in his The Muse's Looking-Glass (i. 4). How sweet is the pathos, and how beautiful the verse, of the passage in which this is narrated:

'Your worthy sister, worthier far of heaven

Than this unworthy hell of passionate Earth,
Is taken up amongst her fellow Stars.'

For a longer passage of singular power of expression see St. Anne's speech at
the beginning of act iii.

and he effects his end very skilfully. Feigning to be in love with his mistress' sister1, who is herself at heart enamoured of the faithful Count St. Anne, he prevails on the latter to plead his cause, and thus brings the inconsolable widower within the reach of his own cure. This situation is very charmingly worked out; not quite so good is the cure of Martia, brought about by producing in her a fear of unfaithfulness on the part of her repentant husband, to save whom from shame she at last abandons her retirement.

This double plot itself would have sufficed for a pleasing and graceful comedy; but the author has provided materials of broader mirth in one of the most original characters of our comic drama. Indeed this character is so original that it has been utterly misinterpreted 2, and would probably require to be performed by an actor of genuine humour as well as intelligence to be thoroughly realised. Monsieur d'Olive is a gentleman about town without any merits or any conscience of his own to speak of; but mighty well pleased with himself, and as ready to dispense his own wit as to be the cause of wit in others. He is thus a compound of fool and wag-and in the way in which these extremes are made to meet in him lies the originality of the character3. From the 'liberty' of his 'chamber,' where it is his joy to drink Sack and talk Satire,' he is called by the malicious device of two roguish courtiers to assume the

1 The use of the terms 'brother' and 'sister' in this play requires considerable vigilance in the reader, who moreover (if he uses the 3 vol. edition) should be on his guard against the mis-assignments of many speeches to the wrong persons, in which the reprint follows the old edition.

2

By Hazlitt (with all his shrewdness frequently an unsafe guide), who considers the introductory sketch of Monsieur d'Olive' 'the undoubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, and infinitely delightful class of character of the professed men about town, which we have in such perfection in Wycherley and Congreve, both in the sentiments and in the style of writing.' Bodenstedt (u. s., p. 333) makes a similar comparison.

It therefore in some respects resembles one of the most humorous comic conceptions of the stage of the present generation, Mr. Sothern's Lord Dundreary. There are points in which the resemblance is ludicrously close. Thus above all Monsieur d'Olive's invariable approval of any facetious remark offered by an interlocutor: Ever good i' faith.' Bitter, in verity, bitter. But good still in its kind.' 'Good again.' 'Bitter still.'