name, may here be left untouched.1 But Eleazar, and the play of 'Lust's Dominion,' in which he takes the leading part, demand some words of passing comment. This is strictly a Tragedy of Blood; yet the motive, as its title implies, is lawless appetite leading to death in various forms. The Queen Mother of Spain loves Eleazar, the Moor, with savage passion. King Fernando loves Maria, the Moor's wife. Cardinal Mendoza loves the Queen. Each of these personages sacrifices duty, natural affection, humanity itself, to ungovernable desire. Eleazar alone remains cold and calculating, using their weakness to attain his own ambitious ends. Pretending love to the Queen, he forces her to kill her son Philip, and then schemes her murder. In order to checkmate the Cardinal, he betrays his young wife to Fernando, albeit she is chaste as the white moon.' His designs, at the last, prove unavailing, and he dies in stubborn contumacy. Ambition was his devil; the strength of intellect, the physical courage, possessed by him in no common measure, he concentrated on the end of climbing to a throne through blood. The 1 Aaron seems to me as inferior to Barabas in poetic and dramatic pith, as he exceeds him in brutality. But the play of Titus Andronicus is interesting, independently of this villain's character, for its systematic blending, and in some sense heightening, of all the elements which constitute a Tragedy of Blood. We have a human sacrifice and the murder of a son by his father in the first act; in the second, a murder and the rape and mutilation of a woman; in the third, two executions and the mutilation of the hero ; in the fourth, a murder; in the fifth, six murders, a judicial death by torture, and a banquet set before a queen of her two dead sons' flesh. The hyperbolical pathos of Lavinia's part, the magnificent lunacy of Titus (so like to that of Hieronymo in quality), and the romantic lyrism which relieves and stimulates imagination, belong to the very essence of the species. So also does the lust of Tamora and the frantic devilishness of her paramour. イ direct imitation of Marlowe is obvious in the large conception, broad handling, and exaggerated execution of this character, no less than in the florid imagery and sounding versification which distinguish the style adopted by the authors of the play. It is, in fact, a creditable, though extremely disagreeable, piece of imitative craftsmanship. The Tragedy of Blood, passing successively through the stages marked by Kyd and Marlowe, became a stock species. It would not be correct to assign any of Shakspere's undoubted dramas to this class. Yet Shakspere did not disdain to spiritualise what his predecessors had so grossly and materialistically rough-hewn. 'Hamlet,' as it has been often pointed out, is built upon the lines suggested by 'The Spanish Tragedy,' and uses for its poetry, philosophy, and passion, motives pre-existing in the English melodrama. Three considerable playwrights of the later age devoted their talents to the Tragedy of Blood. These were Marston, Webster, and Tourneur. Ghosts, Court villains, paid assassins, lustful princes, romantic lovers, injured and revengeful victims, make up the personages of their drama; and the stage is drenched with blood. There is one standing personage in these later melodramas, which had from the earliest been sketched firmly enough by Kyd in 'Hieronymo.' That is the desperate instrument of perfidy and murder. When Lorenzo, the arch-villain of The Spanish Tragedy,' needs an agent, he bethinks him of a certain Lazarotto: I have a lad in pickle of this stamp, COURT VILLAINS. Whose famished jaws look like the chap of death; Whose hands are washed in rape and murders bold; For courtiers will do anything for gold. 493 In the hands of Webster the rough sketch of Lazarotto became the finished pictures of Flamineo and Bosola. Tourneur transformed the melancholy discontented courtier' into Vendice. Marston played various tunes on the same jangled lute. All three of them had recourse to Kyd's fantastic incident of Masques, disguising murder. But it was reserved alone for Webster to stamp the Tragedy of Blood with a high spiritual and artistic genius. The thing, when he touched it, unlocked springs of sombre dramatic terror and wayward picturesque effect beyond the reach of vulgar workmen. V. I shall close this brief study with a return to 'The Spanish Tragedy.' From Henslowe's Diary we learn that Ben Jonson received divers sums in 1601 and 1602 for additions to this play. These additions, 'the very salt of the old play,' in Lamb's often quoted words, are so unlike Jonson's style that few students. of our Drama would disagree with Lamb in wishing he could ascribe them to 'some more potent spirit,' perhaps to Webster. Still there is no external reason for assigning them to any known writer of the time, or for rejecting the plain evidence of Henslowe's Diary.1 1 Henslowe, under the dates Sept. 25, 1601, and June 24, 1602, lent Jonson sums of money for additions and new additions to Hieronymo. Jonson certainly produced nothing so poignant and far-searching in his acknowledged tragedies. Yet we may perhaps refer this circumstance to self-restraint and resolute adherence to dramatic theory. Jonson was a doctrinaire, we know, and his mature canons of art were opposed to the Romantic method. But we need not, therefore, determine that so powerful a writer could not have worked upon occasion in a style which he deliberately afterwards rejected in obedience to formed opinions. One dialogue between Hieronymo, crazed by finding the dead body of his son suspended to the tree in his own garden, and a painter introduced for the sole purpose of discoursing with him, might be selected to illustrate the mingled extravagance and truth to nature which is characteristic of English melodrama. There is here a leonine hunger, blent with pathetic tenderheartedness, a brooding upon things done long ago and ill done,' an alternation between lunacy and the dull moodiness of reasonable woe, which brings the maddened old man vividly before us. The picture is only less terrible than that of Lear-less terrible because more artificially fantastic. The doubt regarding its composition renders it furthermore so curious that I do not hesitate to quote the passage at full length. HIERONYMO is discovered in his garden. First enters to him his wife ISABELLA. Then a servant, PEDRO, who introduces the PAINTER. Isa. Dear Hieronymo, come in a doors, O seek not means so to increase thy sorrow. In the year 1602 the play was printed in 4to as being 'enlarged with new additions of the Painter's part and others.' The agreement of dates between Henslowe's memoranda and the publication of the enlarged play is too important to escape notice. ADDITIONS TO HIERONYMÒ. Hier. Indeed, Isabella, we do nothing here; Isa. How? Be merry here, be merry here? And when our hot Spain could not let it grow, Till at length it grew a gallows, and did bear our son. Ped. It is a painter, sir. 495 [One knocks within at the door. Hier. Bid him come in, and paint some comfort, And then they hate them that did bring them up. The PAINTER enters. Pain. God bless you, sir. Hier. Wherefore, why, thou scornful villain? How, where, or by what means should I be blessed? Pain. Justice, madam. Hier. O ambitious beggar, wouldst thou have that That lives not in the world? Why, all the undelved mines cannot buy An ounce of justice, 't is a jewel so inestimable. I tell thee, God hath engrossed all justice in His hands, And there is none but what comes from Him. Pain. O, then I see that God must right me for my murdered son! Hier. How? Was thy son murdered? Pain. Ay, sir, no man did hold a son so dear. Hier. What! not as thine? That's a lie As massy as the earth: I had a son, Whose least unvalued hair did weigh A thousand of thy sons; and he was murdered. |
