Whatever might be Massinger's tenets, his works are strongly tinctured with religious feeling. He had manifestly read and thought much on religious subjects, and sometimes ventures upon topics, which might be deemed fitter for the pulpit than the stage. And when she was brought to the place of suffering, Antoninus would go with her, that he might see her for the last time, and die. But when he heard her discourse of Heaven, and the divine joys whereunto she was hastening, then did he desire to go with her. And, behold, Angelo, in his true shape of an angel, appeared above to Dorothea alone, and told her that he had been her page, the beggar boy, whom she had cherished. Then she made request, that Antoninus, for the true love he had borne her, might be converted, and his love changed to the love of Heaven.' And forthwith he felt a holy fire within, and was changed, and became a Christian. And because Theophilus, mocking, had desired to taste the fruit of Paradise, of which she had spoken, she prayed that some of that fruit might be given to him after she was dead. And then she bowed her neck to the axe, and Antoninus fell dead at her feet. And they were both carried by Angelo to Heaven. Now, it came to pass, that Theophilus was sitting alone, devising new tortures for the Christians; and suddenly there was a great light, and a sound of heavenly music, and a fair-faced boy, which was Angelo, entered with a basket of fruit and flowers, the like whereof never grew on earth. And when he tasted the fruit, and found how good it was, and he thought how that it was deep winter, and found that the doors were closed, so that no mortal thing could come in, he remembered the words of Dorothea, and believed. And when Harpar, the fiend, in his own likeness, mocked and tempted him, he held up a cross made of the flowers of Paradise, and the fiend fled howling; and the angel came and strengthened him. So he gave his signet that all the Christians should be set at liberty, and conveyed away out of the hand of the persecutor. But when the Emperor found that Theophilus had become a Christian, he was hardened more and more, and put him to strange torments; Harpaæ also assaulting him. Then did Dorothea appear on high, in exceeding glory, with Antoninus, Calista, and Christeta, in white garments, and Angelo, after all, holding forth the crown of martyrdom. So Theophilus, the persecutor, died a martyr; but the Emperor was hardened still." I cannot pretend, in this succinct narration, to have rivalled Charles Lamb and his excellent sister in the art of turning drama into narrative. The "Shakspeare Tales" is an unique book, the beauty of which all can perceive who are worth pleasing; but few, who have not tried the like, can appreciate the difficulty, the matchless skill of its execution. Neither am I fully satisfied with my imitation of the antique legendary style. But something like this, I opine, might have been the story on which Massinger and Decker founded the "Virgin Martyr." It is monastic enough in taste and feeling, but has nothing peculiarly popish, or even Romish; nothing that might not have been believed, in what are accounted the orthodox authoritative ages; little that contravenes the positive creed of the strictest Church-of-England man. The possible appearance of good and of evil spirits, guardian angels, and devils in masquerade, is no distinguishing tenet of the church of Rome. The extraordinary worship of virginity, the amorous piety, the yearning, the passionate seeking after martyrdom, not as a duty, but as a merit and an especial mark of favour, originated long before "the supremacy of crafty Rome," and survived, in a considerable portion of the church, long after the separation. They are (to use a word of my revered father's coining,) rather patristic than popish: those who objected to the compulsory celibacy of the clergy, and disapproved of the monastic constitution, yet held celibacy "a more excellent way." Queen Elizabeth disapproved of married bishops. Jeremy Taylor, himself twice married, is large in praise of single life, as a state vowed and devoted to God. And Donne, so passionate a lover of his wife, in speaking of the Saviour's immaculate conception, calls it “a singular testimony how acceptable to God that state of virginity is;" adding, "He does not dishonour physic that praises health; nor does he dishonour marriage that praises virginity." It should be remembered, however, that Donne had been a Roman Catholic, and change of communion by no means necessarily works a change in taste, sentiment, or feeling. But, on this head, it is impossible to go farther than Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome, (who asserts that the pagan sibyls received the gift of divination in præmium virginitatis). Now it would be as absurd to call them papists as protestants. As for the miraculous events of the "Virgin Martyr," some of our soundest Divines allude to legends quite as marvellous, and no better authenticated, with apparent faith. Jeremy Taylor talks of the eleven thousand virgins as if he believed every word about them. The marvellous efficacy ascribed to the cruciform figure is the nearest approach to popery in the "Virgin Martyr." Persons who read the play through for the first time, will be amazed and horrified at the unutterable beastliness which Decker has daubed upon this picture of virgin sanctity. The exhibition of racks, scourging, and beheading, with the poor Gifford has highly and justly commended his reverence for holy things, and his abstinence from jocular allusions to Scripture. But I doubt whether the simple perversion of words found in the Bible to a ludicrous sense, however offensive to taste appliances of Massinger's stage, must have been more ridiculous than terrible; but the superhuman atrocity, obduracy, and blasphemy of the persecutors, of the Princess Artemia herself, one might think would make an atheist shudder. Yet, I doubt not, they drew down thunders of applause, and contributed mainly to the great and continued popularity of the piece; while the lovely strains of piety, the sweet imaginations realising wildest fancy, which the better genius, the still revisiting Angelo of the authors, charmed from their hours of quiet, passed off as heavily as pure poetry generally does in our overgrown theatres. I have dwelt the longer on the "Virgin Martyr," not because it is a fair sample of Massinger; for though the opening speeches of Dioclesian and the captive kings (borrowed freely from Tacitus and Caractacus,) have much dignity, his part of the play is not in general above good middling, (to use the language of the trade quotations); but because it is the most remarkable exemplification of the taste of our play-going ancestors with which I am acquainted, and should be carefully perused by all people who exclaim against the degenerate taste of the moderns. The "Renegado" must be despatched more briefly. Perhaps, the success of the conversion scene, in the “Virgin," induced Massinger, who, unlike Shakspeare, was apt to repeat himself, to try the effect of another. I shall not forestall the reader's curiosity by an abstract of the plot, which is amazingly complicated, nobly careless of the possible, but yet so vivid, so full of action, and so strongly drawn, that, with all its absurdities, it never perplexes, or leaves you in doubt where the actors are or what they are about. But this lucidness of business, this clearly defined procession of incidents, is a common merit of all our elder dramatists, strongly contrasted with the confusion, perplexity, and inconsequence, occasionally to be found in the narrative poems and tales of the latter days. To our present purpose: it is decidedly Italian, and decidedly popish. There is a noble maiden abducted by a renegado pirate from Venice to Tunis, and sold to Asambeg, the viceroy, whose attempts upon her chastity are frustrated by the virtue of a relic which she always carries about her. Her brother, Vitelli, who comes to seek her in the disguise of a merchant, sets up a shop in the bazaar, and puffs off his wares in a very English fashion.-His servant, Gazet, the clown, (rather more entertaining than the generality of Massinger's low characters).-The renegado, Grimaldi, a Venetian profligate, who has snatched the host out of the priest's hand at the moment of consecration; turned corsair in the Viceroy's service; bullies and blasphemes in the first act, falls into disgrace with the Viceroy, is stripped of all his plunder, sinks into despair, consigns himself to eternal perdition rather too learnedly, is converted by a Jesuit, (the same from whom he tore the consecrated element) by a pious fraud: becomes, after his melancholy, "a good and honest man," and finally aids the escape of the Christian captives; an instance of reformation unparalleled till the days of Count Fathom. Hardy Vaux turning preacher in Australia is nothing to it.-Father Francisco, the Jesuit, whose power of conversion is nothing short of miraculous. Massinger must have been a bold man, or confident of protection in some quarter, to represent in such fair colours, (for the character is beautiful in the detail) an order abhorred and dreaded like witchcraft.-Asambeg, the tyrant lover of Paulina, (not quite so bad as zeal could wish a Turk to be). The Princess Donusa-niece to Sultan Amurath, who falls in love with Vitelli at the Bazaar-has him smuggled into her palace, where, at first, he is desperately afraid, then desperately virtuous, rather too innocent indeed for a full-grown Venetian-but, in the course of some twenty lines, all that a woman of Donusa's stamp could wish. A short conversation with Francisco convinces him of the enormity of the sin in which he was glorying; and when he is introduced a second time to his expectant mistress, he sets forth the horrors of her crime, and the depth of her degradation, with a fervour of indignant eloquence in which Massinger, always greatest when most moral, almost exceeds himself. Still it is not language that a youth could or should use to a woman in whose fall he had been participant. Like a hundred similar passages in the old plays, and old sermons too, it proves the co-existence of the austerest theoretical chastity, with a total absence of that sensitive modesty, that instinctive shrinking from "every appearance of evil," which we suppose at once the sign and amulet of purity. This is very popish, and very patristic, and very puritanical; an inevitable consequence of auricular confession, that worst of popish abuses, and hardly less incident to the self-examination and comparing of experiences recommended by certain sectaries. гvi σeavтov does not always descend from Heaven. We may be too well acquainted with ourselves. But to return. Vitelli's lecture is cut short by the entrance of the Capiaya, Aga, and Janizaries, shortly followed by Asambeg and Mustapha, Basha of Aleppo, and decorum, would so much shock a modern hearer, as solemn appeals to Heaven, and discourses on the most awful mysteries, uttered by a painted player, or a boy in petticoats, upon a stage but just vacated by a buffoon or ribald rake. This inconthe princess' suitor, (who has discovered her incontinence from one of her waiting-women,) and, in company with the Viceroy, has been lying perdu, to obtain evidence of the fact. Vitelli, of course, is carried off to prison, and Donusa committed to custody, to await the sultan's sentence. That sentence is death, reprievable on condition that she convert her paramour to Islaim, and marry him. This she joyfully consents to, notwithstanding the contemptuous rebukes of Mustapha and Ascmbeg, whom she has been lecturing very unanswerably on their enormous indulgence of the vice, one single case of which condemns a woman beyond earthly redemption. She is introduced into the prison. A scene of controversy follows. Donusa sets forth, in admirable language, the hard yoke of Christianity, and the boundless licence of Mahometism; and concludes with an argument taken in part from Minucius Felix, (as Gifford informs me) which Pagans have used against Christians, Romanists against Protestants, which Mussulmen might have used as plausibly against both, however its force be abated in the present condition of the Turkish and most other Mahometan empires. Be wise, and weigh The prosperous success of things; if blessings Are donatives from Heaven, (which, you must grant, Were blasphemy to question,) and that They are call'd down and pour'd on such as be Most gracious with the great disposer of them, Look on our flourishing empire, if the splendour The majesty and glory of it dim not Your feeble sight, and then turn back and see The narrow bounds of yours, yet that poor remnant Rent in as many factions and opinions As you have petty kingdoms. But let that pass. I have heard Protestants reason in the same way, not distinguishing between what makes a nation great, and what makes a people happy. Vitelli replies in a fashion I should hardly recommend a missionary to follow. Without answering any of Donusa's arguments, or advancing one in favour of Christianity, without even explaining what Christianity is, he falls to abusing, first the lady, and then Mahomet, of whose doctrines it would seem that Massinger knew nothing, but the veracious story of the pigeon. He makes Vitelli accuse Donusa of bringing her "juggling prophet" in comparison with That most unaccountable and infinite Essence That made us all and comprehends his work. Now Donusa had done no such thing, and if she had, she would have been a heretic to her own creed, which is most strictly unitarian, or rather monotheistic, and lays to the charge of Christianity the giving to the AllOne a son and an equal. However, Vitelli prevails by a question, which, well pronounced, might have its weight on the stage. Can there be strength in that Religion that suffers us to tremble At that which every day, nay hour, we haste to? Donusa replies, "This is unanswerable," and so it would be, if none but Christians dared to die, or if no Christian feared death. But is not this a singular conversion, sudden as ever took place at a revival or camp meeting, and effected without allusion to any single doctrine, name, or duty, but what Christians and Moslem hold in common reverence? I cannot but suspect that the Master of the Revels, who always seems to have done his work by halves, as piddlingly as the Editor of the "Family Dramatists," has been meddling here. Perhaps what he expunged would have placed the question of Massinger's religion out of all doubt. be remarked that Dorothea advances nothing in proof of her own faith, except obloquy against Jupiter, Venus, &c. But now we come upon ticklish ground indeed. Donusa, professing herself Christian, and therefore ready to die with Vitelli, must be baptized. Francisco, for some unexplained reason, cannot have access. Vitelli asks him, whether, as a layman, he may lawfully perform that office. It may gruous mixture, derived from the old miracle-plays and moralities, is far more frequent in Massinger than could be wished. Even were his scenes entirely purged of their licence and scurrility, there would still remain an insuperable objection to prayers not Francisco. A question in itself with much ease answered. And knights that in the Holy Land fought for The freedom of Jerusalem, when full Of sweat and enemies' blood, have made their helmets The fount out of which with their holy hands They drew that heavenly liquor; 'twas approved then By the holy Church, nor must I think it now In you a work less pious. A few scenes further, the baptism is actually performed on the stage; at least, if simple aspersion suffice for that sacrament, for no form of words is employed. Perhaps the actor was directed to supply the omission by some indistinct muttering. Massinger plainly asserts baptismal regeneration The clearness of this is a perfect sign Of innocence: and as this washes off Stains and pollutions from the things we wear, To purge those spots that cleave upon the mind, * Donusa. I am another woman;-till this minute I never lived, nor durst think how to die. How long have I been blind! yet on the sudden, By this blest means, I feel the films of error I do not think this can be orthodox Catholicism, either at Rome or anywhere else; but that it should have been presented on an English stage, when the stage itself was so sore a stumbling-block to the most popular party, and when the touching matter of religion or state was so strictly and repeatedly forbidden, is one of the strangest facts in dramatic history. Surely Sir Henry Herbert must have been weary with his expurgations, and fallen asleep over the MS. The validity of lay-baptism—a disputed point among Protestants-is allowed by the Church of Rome in extreme cases-a curious exception to her general system of hierarchy. But what a question to moot in a theatre! I conjecture that it was much agitated about the time when the "Renegado" was first produced (early in 1624): that some of Massinger's patrons were deeply interested in it; and that the theatres were chiefly patronised by Romanists and semi-Romanists. In fine, the "Renegado" is a monkish story, dramatised with the faith of the imagination; whether with the faith of the heart, I leave for the reader's decision. The "Maid of Honour," though the scene be partly laid in Sicily-which was, indeed, long a Spanish dependency-looks liker a Spanish than an Italian story. It were well worth the while of a gentleman littérateur, who had leisure to search out, and wealth to purchase, literary rarities, to examine the numerous collections of French, Spanish, and Italian fictions, and half-fictitious histories, for the sources of Massinger's plots. But Gifford supposes that many of the loose pamphlets, to which the dramatists were more immediately indebted, lying heaps upon heaps in the vaults below St. Paul's, perished in the fire of London-a manifest judgment, as some will say, for such abuse of consecrated excavations: not worse, however, than making a Bond-street of Paul's Walk, as was usual with our ancestors, and not much worse than making the holy edifice itself an expensive show. From whatever quarter derived, the "Maid of Honour" is, in its conception, chivalric, though injudiciously overlaid, in the first acts, with English politics. Its religion is the religion of knighthood and la belle science, not of the cloister nor the Vatican. Except that the heroine turns nun, it furnishes no proof of Massinger's recusancy. One fine passage, indeed, proves, if anything, that he was not a Papist : meant to be prayed, but acted; and preaching, which however serious or tragic, could hardly be in earnest. Some people complain of the want of religion in plays; I complain of its superabundance. In palliation, however, of what cannot be justified, let it be remembered, that our ancestors, both before, and for some time after our secession from the Roman church, were upon much more familiar terms with their religion than we are wont to be with ours. It was not "of their lives a thing apart," the employment of a sabbath, of a morning and evening hour, demanding a remotion from all but itself: it mingled with everything, their labours, their bargains, their courtship, their daily business, and evening leisure, and was not frowned away (like the Chaplain, of the Spectator's day, at the drawing of the cloth) from their mummings, and Whitsun ales. Every period of relaxation was a feast of the church, and those who abolished the religious ceremonies, were not always able to abolish the eating, drinking, and merry-making. Whether the change be for the better, this is no place to discuss; but I assure such pious persons as, unacquainted with our ancient manners, imagine a superior sanctity, a more awful regard of holy times, and things, and words, in the days that are gone, that it is even as I have stated it. I mention it merely to account for an apparent inconsistency in Massinger, to whom it is high time to return. Massinger must have quitted Oxford about 1606. Antony Wood says, that Camiola. Religion bars our entrance; you are, sir, A Knight of Malta, by your order bound To a single life; you cannot marry me : And I assure myself, you are too noble To seek me, though my frailty should consent, In a base path. Bertoldo. A dispensation, lady, Will easily absolve me. Camiola. O, take heed, sir When what is vow'd to Heaven is dispensed with, To serve our private ends, a curse must follow, Act I. Scene 2. Now here is a plain denial of the Pope's prerogative. Dispensations were among the most profitable ways and means of the Roman court. Queen Henrietta herself, not waiting for a dispensation for her marriage with a heretic prince, was doomed by the priests to rigorous penance, and was even compelled to walk barefoot to Tyburn; "where, under the gallows where so many Jesuits had been executed as traitors to Elizabeth and James, she knelt and prayed to them as martyrs and saints, who had shed their blood in defence of the Catholic cause." Mr. D'Israeli, to whom I owe my acquaintance with this and many other almost incredible anecdotes, says there is a very rare print which has commemorated the circumstance. Curiosities, 297. But is the rare print the sole authority for the fact? A most extraordinary secret history of the late English reigns might be compiled out of the rare prints of Gilray, Rowlandson, Cruikshank, &c. But it is high time to conclude this long inquiry, from which, after all, nothing can be concluded, but that Massinger had no abhorrence of the ceremonies, institutions, or devotional affections, of the unreformed church. He probably went as near Rome as his reason would permit him; but there is no proof that he ever renounced the English communion: and I am confident that he was no Papist, no priest-ridden slave-never believed that any priest or bishop could reverse the immutable laws of right or wrong-dispense with the duties of children and parents, husbands and wives, subjects and rulers-insert or blot a name in the book of life. Superstitious he might be; most men of genius are so in some way or other but the superstitions of genius are harmless to men of genius, however pernicious when congealed to dogmata by the sunless atmosphere of vulgar souls. Fanatic or bigot, Massinger was not. |