titude is
slight, and due to individual characters; but the gloom is the same in
each of them. In Webster--no mere grisly inventor of Radcliffian
horrors, as we are apt to think of the greatest of our dramatists--after
Shakespeare--in the noble and tender nature of Webster the sense is one
of ineffable sadness, unmarred by cynicism, but unbrightened by hope.
The villains, even if successful till death overtake them, are mere
hideous phantoms--

these wretched eminent things
Leave no more fame behind 'em, than should one
Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow--

the victims of tortured conscience, or, worse still, the owners of
petrified hearts; there is nothing to envy in them. But none the better
is it for the good: if Ferdinands, Bosolas, Brachianos, and Flaminios
perish miserably, it is only after having done to death the tender and
brave Duchess, the gentle Antonio, the chivalric Marcello; there is
virtue on earth, but there is no justice in heaven. The half-pagan,
half-puritanic feeling of Webster bursts out in the dying speech of the
villain Bosola--

O, this gloomy world!
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!
Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust
To suffer death or shame for what is just.

Of real justice in this life or compensation in another, there is no
thought: Webster, though a Puritan in spirit, is no Christian in faith.
On Ford the influence is different; although equal, perhaps, in genius
to Webster, surpassing him even in intense tragic passion, he was far
below Webster, and, indeed, far below all his generation, in moral
fibre. The sight of evil fascinates him; his conscience staggers, his
sympathies are bedraggled in foulness; in the chaos of good and evil he
loses his reckoning, and recognizes the superiority only of strength of
passion, of passion for good or evil: the incestuous Giovanni, daring
his enemies like a wild beast at bay and cheating them of their revenge
by himself murdering the object of his horrible passion, is as heroic in
the eyes of Ford as the magnanimous Princess of Sparta, bearing with
unflinching spirit the succession of misfortunes poured down upon her,
and leading off the dance while messenger succeeds messenger of evil;
till, free from her duties as a queen, she sinks down dead. Cyril
Tourneur and John Marston are far more incomplete