uction;
his besetting vice of reckless and sluttish incoherence has here done
less than usual to deform the proportions and deface the impression of
his design. Indeed, the connection of the two serious plots in the first
part is a rare example of dexterous and happy simplicity in composition:
the comic underplot of the patient man and shrewish wife is more loosely
attached by a slighter thread of relation to these two main stories, but
is so amusing in its light and facile play of inventive merriment and
harmless mischief as to need no further excuse. Such an excuse, however,
might otherwise be found in the plea that it gives occasion for the most
beautiful, the most serious, and the most famous passage in all the
writings of its author. The first scene of this first part has always
appeared to me one of the most effective and impressive on our stage:
the interruption of the mock funeral by the one true mourner whose
passion it was intended to deceive into despair is so striking as a mere
incident or theatrical device that the noble and simple style in which
the graver part of the dialogue is written can be no more than worthy of
the subject: whereas in other plays of Dekker's the style is too often
beneath the merit of the subject, and the subject as often below the
value of the style. The subsequent revival of Infelice from her trance
is represented with such vivid and delicate power that the scene, short
and simple as it is, is one of the most fascinating in any play of the
period. In none of these higher and finer parts of the poem can I trace
the touch of any other hand than the principal author's: but the
shopkeeping scenes of the underplot have at least as much of Middleton's
usual quality as of Dekker's; homely and rough-cast as they are, there
is a certain finish or thoroughness about them which is more like the
careful realism of the former than the slovenly naturalism of the
latter. The coarse commonplaces of the sermon on prostitution by which
Bellafront is so readily and surprisingly reclaimed into respectability
give sufficient and superfluous proof that Dekker had nothing of the
severe and fiery inspiration which makes a great satirist or a great
preacher; but when we pass again into a sweeter air than that of the
boudoir or the pulpit, it is the unmistakable note of Dekker's most
fervent and tender mood of melody which enchants us in such verses as
these, spoken by a lover musing on the portrait of a mist