erts herself to have been preferred by the betrothed lover of the
expectant bride is as pathetic and impressive as it is lifelike and
original; and even in the excess of gentleness and modesty which prompts
the words, "I will love you the better; I cannot hate what he affected,"
there is nothing less noble or less womanly than in the subsequent reply
to the harlot's repeated taunts and inventions of insult: "He did not
ill not to love me, but sure he did not well to mock me: gentle minds
will pity, though they cannot love; yet peace and my love sleep with
him." The powerful soliloquy which closes the scene expresses no more
than the natural emotion of the man who has received so lovely a
revelation of his future bride's invincible and single-hearted love:

Cannot that woman's evil, jealousy,
Despite disgrace, nay, which is worse, contempt,
Once stir thy faith?

Coarse as is often the language of Marston's plays and satires, the man
was not coarse-minded--not gross of spirit nor base of nature--who could
paint so delicately and simply a figure so beautiful in the tenderness
of its purity.

The farcical underplot of this play is worthy of Moliere in his broader
mood of farce. Hardly any Jourdain or Pourceaugnac, any George Dandin
or Comtesse d'Escarbagnas of them all, undergoes a more grotesque
experience or plays a more ludicrous part than is devised for Mr. and
Mrs. Mulligrub by the ingenuity of the indefatigable Cocledemoy--a
figure worthy to stand beside any of the tribe of Mascarille as _fourbum
imperator_. The animation and variety of inventive humor which keep
the reader's laughing attention awake and amused throughout these
adventurous scenes of incident and intrigue are not more admirable than
the simplicity and clearness of evolution or composition which recall
and rival the classic masterpieces of Latin and French comedy. There
is perhaps equal fertility of humor, but there certainly is not equal
harmony of structure in the play which Marston published next
year--"Parasitaster; or, the Fawn"; a name probably suggested by that of
Ben Jonson's "Poetaster," in which the author had himself been the
subject of a greater man's rage and ridicule. The wealth and the waste
of power displayed and paraded in this comedy are equally admirable and
lamentable; for the brilliant effect of its various episodes and
interludes is not more obvious than the eclipse of the central interest,
the collapse of the serious d