To his mistress : PAGAN TONE. Each best day of our life at first doth go, 53 She not unnaturally shrinks from suicide. Her lover urges: Yet know you not that any being dead Repented them, and would have lived again? Nero's meditations upon death, in the same tragedy, conjure up a companion picture of Tartarus : O must I die, must now my senses close? Never more see the sun, nor heaven, nor earth? Phlegethon and Styx toss their hoarse waves before him; the Furies shake their whips and twisted snakes : And my own furies far more mad than they, My mother and those troops of slaughtered friends. XI. The eternal nature of both happiness and misery, the presence of heaven or hell within the soul of man, irrespective of creeds and dogmas, were pictured with the force of men who felt the spiritual reality of life keenly. Marlowe makes Faustus ask the devil Mephistophilis where hell is : Why this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells Dreadful was the path to death for those who died in sin. Webster's Flamineo cries to his murderous enemies : Oh, the way 's dark and horrid ! I cannot see. They reply: Yes, thy sins Do run before thee, to fetch fire from hell To light thee thither. With the same ghastly energy his sister utters a like thought of terror: My soul, like to a ship in a black storm, Is driven, I know not whither. Yet the dauntless courage and strong nerves of these 'glorious villains' sustained them to the last : We cease to grieve, cease to be fortune's slaves, MEDITATIONS ON LIFE. 55 So they speak, when the game of life has been played out; and then, like travellers, Go to discover countries yet unknown. Ask of such men, what is life? It is a tale told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Ask, what are men? We are merely the stars' tennis balls, Is but to be the exercise of cares In several shapes; as miseries do grow They alter as men's forms; but none know how. 'The world's a tedious theatre,' says one. Another cries: Can man by no means creep out of himself, And leave the slough of viperous grief behind? It is a pleasure to collect these utterances on life and death, so pointed and so passionate, so pregnant with deep thought and poignant with heartfelt emotion. It must, however, be remembered, that they are dramatic sayings, put into the lips of scenic personages. To take them as the outcry from their authors' own experience would be uncritical, Yet the frequency of their Occurrence indicates one well-marked quality of our drama. That is the sombre cast of Melancholy, deep Teutonic meditative Melancholy, which drapes it with a tragic pall. When Marston invites his audience to a performance of Antonio's Revenge,' he not only relies upon this mood in the spectators, but he paints it with the exultation of one to whom it is familiar and dear. MELANCHOLY. Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours Tender in Palador's bewilderment: Parthenophil is lost, and I would see him! Exquisite in the Dirge for Chrysostom : Sleep, poor youth, sleep in peace, Relieved from love and mortal care; 57 Close to this melancholy, is religion. Though rarely touched on by our playwrights, the cardinal points of Christian doctrine were present to their minds; and when they struck that chord of piety, it was with a direct and manly hand: The best of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer; This is no conventional portrait of the Founder of our faith. Nor are these solemn words, in which an injured husband absolves his penitent and dying wife, spoken from the lips merely : As freely from the low depths of my soul Even as I hope for pardon at that day When the great Judge of heaven in scarlet sits, |