of my poor sister that remains!--
Take him away, for God's sake!

I must admit that I do not see how Shakespeare could have improved upon
that. It seems to me that in any one of even his greatest tragedies this
scene would have been remarkable among its most beautiful and perfect
passages; nor, upon the whole, do I remember a third English poet who
could be imagined capable of having written it. And it affords, I think,
very clear and sufficient evidence that Webster could not have handled
so pathetic and suggestive a subject as the execution of Lady Jane Grey
and her young husband in a style so thin and feeble, so shallow in
expression of pathos and so empty of suggestion or of passion, as that
in which it is presented at the close of "Sir Thomas Wyatt."

There is a perfect harmony of contrast between this and the death scene
of the boy's father: the agony of the murdered murderer is as superb in
effect of terror as the sorrow of his son is exquisite in effect of
pathos. Again we are reminded of Shakespeare, by no touch of imitation
but simply by a note of kinship in genius and in style, at the cry of
Brachiano under the first sharp workings of the poison:

O thou strong heart!
There's such a covenant 'tween the world and it,
They're loath to break.

Another stroke well worthy of Shakespeare is the redeeming touch of
grace in this brutal and cold-blooded ruffian which gives him in his
agony a thought of tender care for the accomplice of his atrocities:

Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.

Few instances of Webster's genius are so well known as the brief but
magnificent passage which follows; yet it may not be impertinent to cite
it once again:

_Brachiano_. O thou soft natural death, that art joint twin
To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion; pity winds thy corpse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.

_Vittoria_. I am lost forever.

_Brachiano_. How miserable a thing it is to die
'Mongst women howling!--What are those?

_Flamineo_. Franciscans:
They have brought the extreme unction.

_Brachiano_. On pain of death, let no man name death to me;
It is a word [? most] infinitely terrible.

The very tremor of moral and physical abjection from nervous defiance
into prostrate fear which seems to pant and bluster and quail and
subside in