and
simplicity of treatment, the dramatic version is not generally unworthy
to be compared with the narrative which it follows afar off.[1] Chettle
and Haughton, the associates of Dekker in this enterprise, had each of
them something of their colleague's finer qualities; but the best scenes
in the play remind me rather of Dekker's best early work than of
"Robert, Earl of Huntington" or of "Englishmen for My Money." So much
has been said of the evil influence of Italian example upon English
character in the age of Elizabeth, and so much has been made of such
confessions or imputations as distinguish the clamorous and malevolent
penitence of Robert Greene, that it is more than agreeable to find at
least one dramatic poet of the time who has the manliness to enter a
frank and contemptuous protest against this habit of malignant
self-excuse. "Italy," says an honest gentleman in this comedy to a lying
and impudent gull, "Italy infects you not, but your own diseased
spirits. Italy? Out, you froth, you scum! because your soul is mud, and
that you have breathed in Italy, you'll say Italy has denied you: away,
you boar: thou wilt wallow in mire in the sweetest country in the
world."

[Footnote 1: I may here suggest a slight emendation in the text of the
spirited and graceful scene with which this play opens. The original
reads:

So fares it with coy dames, who, great with scorn,
Shew the care-pined hearts that sue to them.

The word _Shew_ is an obvious misprint--but more probably, I venture to
think, for the word _Shun_ than for the word _Fly_, which is substituted
by Mr. Collier and accepted by Dr. Grosart.]

There are many traces of moral or spiritual weakness and infirmity in
the writings of Dekker and the scattered records or indications of his
unprosperous though not unlaborious career: but there are manifest and
manifold signs of an honest and earnest regard for justice and fair
dealing, as well as of an inexhaustible compassion for suffering, an
indestructible persistency of pity, which found characteristic
expression in the most celebrated of his plays. There is a great gulf
between it and the first of Victor Hugo's tragedies: yet the instinct of
either poet is the same, as surely as their common motive is the
redemption of a fallen woman by the influence of twin-born love and
shame. Of all Dekker's works, "The Honest Whore" comes nearest to some
reasonable degree of unity and harmony in conception and constr