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CHAPTER XI

DOMESTIC TRAGEDY

I. Induction to 'A Warning for Fair Women '--Peculiar Qualities of the Domestic Tragedy-Its Realism-Its Early Popularity-List of Plays of this Description-Their Sources.-II. Five Plays selected for Examination-Questions of disputed Authorship-Shakspere's suggested part in Three of these-The different Aspects of Realism in them.-III. 'A Warning for Fair Women '-The Story-Use of Dumb Show-Bye-Scenes-Handling of the Prose-Tale-Critique of the Style and Character-drawing of this Play-Its deliberate Moral Intention. IV. A Yorkshire Tragedy-The Crime of Walter Calverley-His Character in the Drama-Demoniacal Possession.V. 'Arden of Feversham'-Difficulty of dealing with it-Its Unmitigated Horror-Fidelity to Holinshed's Chronicle--Intense Nature of its Imaginative Realism-Character of Arden-Character of Mosbie A Gallery of Scoundrels-Two Types of MurderersMichael's Terror-Alice Arden-Her Relation to some Women of Shakspere-Development of her Murderous Intention-Quarrel with Mosbie The Crescendo of her Passion-Redeeming Points in her Character-Incidents and Episodes.-VI. A Woman Killed with Kindness'-The Gentleness of this Tragedy-The Plot -Italian Underplot adapted to English Life-Character of Mr. Frankford-The Scene in the Bedchamber-Character of Mrs. Frankford-Wendoll-Question regarding the Moral Tone of the Last Act Religious Sentiment.- VII. 'Witch of Edmonton'. Its Joint-Authorship-The Story-Female Parts-Two Plays patched together-Mother Sawyer-The Realistic Picture of an English Witch-Humane Treatment of Witchcraft in this Play.

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N.B. Of the Tragedies discussed in this chapter, the text of 'A Warning to Fair Women' will be found in Simpson's School of Shakspere,' vol. ii.; that of A Yorkshire Tragedy,' in Tauchnitz's edition of Six Doubtful Plays of William Shakespeare;' that of 'Arden of Feversham' in Delius' 'Pseudo-Shakspere'sche Dramen;' that of 'A Woman Killed with Kindness,' in Collier's Dodsley,' vol. vii.; that of 'The Witch of Edmonton' in Gifford's Ford,' vol. ii.

I

THE Induction to a play, first published, without name of author, in 1599, is a dialogue between History, Tragedy, and

Comedy, the three species at that epoch recognised in English Drama. History enters at one door of the stage, bearing a banner and beating on a drum. Tragedy issues from the opposite door, carrying a whip in one hand, and in the other a knife. While these august rivals dispute the theatre, Comedy advances from the back, rasping a fiddle's strings. Tragedy calls on both her sisters to have done :

This brawling sheepskin is intolerable!
I'll cut your fiddle strings,

If you stand scraping thus to anger me

The place is hers:

I must have passions that must move the soul;

Make the heart heavy and throb within the bosom ;
Extorting tears out of the strictest eyes:

To rack a thought, and strain it to its form,

Until I rap the senses from their course,

This is my office!

History, feeling perchance her own affinity to Tragedy, is not unwilling to retire. But Comedy replies with taunts:

How some damned tyrant to obtain a crown
Stabs, hangs, imprisons, smothers, cutteth throats?
And then a Chorus, too, comes howling in,
And tells us of the worrying of a cat:
Then, too, a filthy whining ghost,

Lapt in some foul sheet or a leather pilch,
Comes screaming like a pig half sticked,
And cries Vindicta !--Revenge, Revenge !-
With that a little rosin flasheth forth,

Like smoke out of a tobacco pipe, or a boy's squib.
Then comes in two or three more like to drovers,
With tailors' bodkins, stabbing one another!
Is not this trim ? Is not here goodly things,
That you should be so much accounted of?

Tragedy is not to be daunted with sneers or criticisms.

She

lays about her roundly with her whip, while History, who plays the part of mediator, calls attention to the hangings of the theatre:

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329

Look, Comedy! I marked it not till now!

The stage is hung with black, and I perceive
The auditors prepared for Tragedy.

This is the Induction to 'A Warning for Fair Women,' the second extant example of a peculiar species, which may best be described as Domestic Tragedies. The plays of this class were all founded upon recent tragical events in real life. Tales of thrilling horror, like those which De Quincey narrated in his appendix to the essay on 'Murder considered as a Fine Art,' supplied the dramatists with themes for sombre realistic treatment. As in the History Play they followed English Chronicles with patient fidelity; so in the Domestic Tragedy they adhered to the minutest details of some well-known crime. Fancy found but little scope, and poetical ornament was rigidly excluded. The imagination exercised itself in giving life to character, in analysing passion, laying bare the springs of hateful impulses, and yielding the most faithful picture of bare fact upon the stage. The result is that these grim and naked tragedies are doubly valuable, first for their portraiture of manners, and secondly as powerful life-studies in dramatic art. The auxiliary fascination of romance, the charm of myth, the pathos of virtue in distress, the glamour of distant lands and old heroic histories, are lacking here. The playwright stands face to face with sordid appetites and prosaic brutalities, the common stuff of violence and bloodshed, lust and covetousness. Yet such is his method of treatment in the best works of this species which have been preserved to us, that we learn from these domestic tragedies better perhaps than from any other essays of the earlier period what great dramatic gifts were common in that age.

That plays founded on these subjects of contemporary crime were popular throughout the flourishing age of the Drama, is abundantly proved by their dates and titles, preserved in several records. All classes of society seem to have enjoyed them; for among the earliest of which we have any mention are Murderous Michael' and 'The Cruelty of a

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Stepmother,' performed at Court in 1578. In 1592, the first domestic tragedy, which exists in print, was published. This was called The lamentable and true tragedy of Master Arden of Feversham in Kent, who was most wickedly murdered by the means of his disloyal and wanton wife, who for the love she bare to one Mosbie, hired two desperate ruffians, Black Will and Shagbag, to kill him.' In 1598, appeared Black Bateman of the North,' a narrative in two parts, enacted by Chettle, Wilson, Drayton, and Dekker. The next year, 1599, was fertile in plays of this description. Dekker and Chettle worked together upon a Stepmother's Tragedy;' Day and Haughton on The Tragedy of Merry' and 'Cox of Collumpton;' Jonson and Dekker on the murder of Page of Plymouth; while Beech's Tragedy' was acted by one of Henslowe's companies. At the same time, the second extant tragedy, A Warning for Fair Women,' containing the most tragical and lamentable murther of Master George Sanders of London, Merchant, nigh Shooter's Hill, consented unto by his own wife, acted by M. Brown, Mistress Drury, and Trusty Roger, agents therein,' was printed for William Apsley. 'Two Tragedies in One,' by Robert Yarrington, issued from the press in 1601. This curious piece, which we fortunately still possess, interweaves two separate tales of horror, the one being the murder of Master Beech by Thomas Merry, the other an Italian version of the 'Babes in the Wood.' Baxter's Tragedy' and Cartwright' followed in 1602; The Fair Maid of Bristol' in 1605; and the Yorkshire Tragedy' in 1608. The last two are extant; the former in a black letter quarto, the other among Shakspere's Doubtful Plays, In 1624 appeared two tragedies, the loss of which is deeply to be regretted. One of these was called 'The Bristol Merchant,' and was written by Ford and Dekker. The other bears this dreadful title: 'A Late Murther of the Son upon the Mother.' It was composed by Ford in collaboration with Webster, the two most sinister and sombre spirits of our drama, Saturn in conjunction with Mars. After this date, the pure domestic tragedy seems to have gone out of fashion. A lost play by George Chapman, entitled 'The Yorkshire

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Gentlewoman and her Son,' was, however, entered on the Stationers' Books in 1660; and we still possess a piece by Rowley, Ford, and Dekker, entitled The Witch of Edmonton,' which combines the tragedy of Mother Sawyer, burned in 1621, with a wife-murder by one Francis Thorney. It was acted in 1623, but not printed until 1658. To this list I will add Heywood's Woman Killed with Kindness,' a masterpiece in its way, first acted so early as 1603 and printed in 1607, but whether founded on an actual history or not, remains uncertain.

The sources chiefly drawn on by our playwrights in the composition of these tragedies, were Stow's and Holinshed's Chronicles, supplemented by special tracts and pamphlets devoted to a fuller exposition of the crimes in question. The author of Arden of Feversham' followed Holinshed; the author of The Yorkshire Tragedy' worked on Stow; the author of 'A Warning for Fair Women' took for his text a detailed narrative of Sanders' murder, which appeared in 1573. It will be noticed that the most prolific writer in this kind was Dekker, and that Ford on three occasions devoted his great talents to the task. Shakspere, if we could trust the title-page of the first quarto of the Yorkshire Tragedy,' may have made at least one experiment in domestic drama. Neither Jonson nor Chapman nor yet Webster disdained the species; and it is probable that if the works of these men had come down to us, our dramatic literature would have been enriched with highly instructive objects of study. For a note of the domestic drama is that here even great artists laid aside their pall of tragic state, descending to a simple style, befitting the grim realism of their subject. This consideration should make us cautious in rejecting a tradition which ascribes to Shakspere one of these homely plays. The same consideration will perhaps enable us to understand how Jonson may have made those powerful additions to Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy' which puzzled Lamb.

A Brief Discourse of the late Murther of Master George Sanders, &c.

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