ent, and sustained in the
scenes obviously written by Middleton and in the scenes obviously
written by Rowley. The subordinate part taken by Middleton in Dekker's
play of "The Honest Whore" is difficult to discern from the context or
to verify by inner evidence: though some likeness to his realistic or
photographic method may be admitted as perceptible in the admirable
picture of Bellafront's morning reception at the opening of the second
act of the first part. But here we may assert with fair confidence that
the first and the last scenes of the play bear the indisputable
sign-manual of William Rowley. His vigorous and vivid genius, his
somewhat hard and curt directness of style and manner, his clear and
trenchant power of straightforward presentation or exposition, may be
traced in every line as plainly as the hand of Middleton must be
recognized in the main part of the tragic action intervening. To Rowley,
therefore, must be assigned the very high credit of introducing and of
dismissing with adequate and even triumphant effect the strangely
original tragic figure which owes its fullest and finest development to
the genius of Middleton. To both poets alike must unqualified and equal
praise be given for the subtle simplicity of skill with which they make
us appreciate the fatal and foreordained affinity between the
ill-favored, rough-mannered, broken-down gentleman and the headstrong,
unscrupulous, unobservant girl whose very abhorrence of him serves only
to fling her down from her high station of haughty beauty into the very
clutch of his ravenous and pitiless passion. Her cry of horror and
astonishment at first perception of the price to be paid for a service
she had thought to purchase with mere money is so wonderfully real in
its artless and ingenuous sincerity that Shakespeare himself could
hardly have bettered it:

Why, 'tis impossible thou canst be so wicked,
And shelter such a cunning cruelty,
To make his death the murderer of my honor!

That note of incredulous amazement that the man whom she has just
instigated to the commission of murder "can be so wicked" as to have
served her ends for any end of his own beyond the pay of a professional
assassin is a touch worthy of the greatest dramatist that ever lived.
The perfect simplicity of expression is as notable as the perfect
innocence of her surprise; the candid astonishment of a nature
absolutely incapable of seeing more than one thing or holding more