d humorists of
the Shakespearean age; it is not indeed unworthy of the comparison with
Chaucer's which it suggested to the all but impeccable judgment of
Charles Lamb.

The lack of moral interest and sympathetic attraction in the characters
and the story, which has been noted as the principal defect in the
otherwise effective composition of "Women Beware Women," is an objection
which cannot be brought against the graceful tragicomedy of "The Spanish
Gipsy." Whatever is best in the tragic or in the romantic part of this
play bears the stamp of Middleton's genius alike in the sentiment and
the style. "The code of modern morals," to borrow a convenient phrase
from Shelley, may hardly incline us to accept as plausible or as
possible the repentance and the redemption of so brutal a ruffian as
Roderigo: but the vivid beauty of the dialogue is equal to the vivid
interest of the situation which makes the first act one of the most
striking in any play of the time. The double action has some leading
points in common with two of Fletcher's, which have nothing in common
with each other: Merione in "The Queen of Corinth" is less interesting
than Clara, but the vagabonds of "Beggars' Bush" are more amusing than
Rowley's or Middleton's. The play is somewhat deficient in firmness or
solidity of construction: it is, if such a phrase be permissible, one of
those half-baked or underdone dishes of various and confused
ingredients, in which the cook's or the baker's hurry has impaired the
excellent materials of wholesome bread and savory meat. The splendid
slovens who served their audience with spiritual work in which the gods
had mixed "so much of earth, so much of heaven, and such impetuous
blood"--the generous and headlong purveyors who lavished on their daily
provision of dramatic fare such wealth of fine material and such
prodigality of superfluous grace--the foremost followers of Marlowe and
of Shakespeare were too prone to follow the impetuous example of the
first rather than the severe example of the second. There is perhaps not
one of them--and Middleton assuredly is not one--whom we can reasonably
imagine capable of the patience and self-respect which induced
Shakespeare to rewrite the triumphantly popular parts of Romeo, of
Falstaff, and of Hamlet with an eye to the literary perfection and
permanence of work which in its first light outline had won the crowning
suffrage of immediate or spectacular applause.

The rough-and-ready