esign, which results from the agglomeration
of secondary figures and the alternations of perpetual by-play. Three or
four better plays might have been made out of the materials here hurled
and huddled together into one. The Isabelle of Moliere is not more
amusing or more delightful in her audacity of resource, in her
combination of loyalty with duplicity, innocence with intrigue, than the
daring and single-hearted young heroine of this play; but the "Ecole des
Maris" is not encumbered with such a crowd of minor interests and
characters, of subordinate humors and complications, as the reader of
Marston's comedy finds interposed and intruded between his attention and
the main point of interest. He would fain see more of Dulcimel and
Tiberio, the ingenious and enterprising princess, the ingenuous and
responsive prince; he is willing to see as much as is shown him of their
fathers, the masquerading philosopher and the self-complacent dupe;
Granuffo, the patrician prototype of Captain John Bunsby, may take a
seat in the chambers of his memory beside the commander of the Cautious
Clara; the humors of a jealous foul-minded fool and a somewhat
audaciously virtuous wife may divert him by the inventive and vigorous
exposure of their various revolutions and results; but the final
impression is one of admiring disappointment and possibly ungrateful
regret that so much energetic satire and so much valuable time should
have been spent on the somewhat nauseous follies of "sickly knights" and
"vicious braggarts" that the really admirable and attractive parts of
the design are cramped and crowded out of room for the due development
of their just and requisite proportions.

A more eccentric, uneven, and incomposite piece of work than "The
Insatiate Countess" it would be difficult to find in English or in other
literature. The opening scene is picturesque and impressive; the closing
scene of the serious part is noble and pathetic; but the intervening
action is of a kind which too often aims at the tragic and hits the
burlesque. The incessant inconstancy of passion which hurries the
fantastic heroine through such a miscellaneous multitude of improvised
intrigues is rather a comic than a tragic motive for the conduct of a
play; and the farcical rapidity with which the puppets revolve makes it
impossible for the most susceptible credulity to take any real interest
or feel any real belief in the perpetual rotation of their feverish
moods and