And, for right honourable son-in-law, you may I can do twenty neater, if you please

quickly,

Or thou art dead.

Willdo. They are married.

Over. Thou hadst better

Have made a contract with the king of fiends,
Than these:-my brain turns!

Willdo. Why this rage to me?

To purchase and grow rich; for I will be
Such a solicitor and steward for you,
As never worshipful had.

Well. I do believe thee;

But first discover the quaint means you used

To raze out the conveyance?

Mar. They are mysteries

Not to be spoke in public: certain minerals
Incorporated in the ink and wax.-

Besides, he gave me nothing, but still fed me
With hopes and blows; and that was the induce-

ment

To this conundrum. If it please your worship

Is not this your letter, sir, and these the words? To call to memory, this mad beast once caused me

Marry her to this gentleman.

Over. It cannot

Nor will I e'er believe it, 'sdeath! I will not;
That I, that, in all passages I touch'd

At worldly profit, have not left a print

Where I have trod, for the most curious search

To trace my footsteps, should be gull'd by chil

dren,

Baffled and fool'd, and all my hopes and labours

Defeated, and made void.

Well. As it appears,

You are so, my grave uncle.

Over. Village nurses

To urge you, or to drown or hang yourself;
I'll do the like to him if you command me.
Well. You are a rascal! he that dares be false

To a master, though unjust, will ne'er be true
To any other. Look not for reward

Or favour from me; I will shun thy sight
As I would do a basilisk's; thank my pity,
If thou keep thy ears; howe'er, I will take order
Your practice will be silenced.

Greedy. I'll commit him,

If you will have me, sir.

Well. That were to little purpose;

His conscience be his prison.-Not a word,

Revenge their wrongs with curses; I'll not waste But instantly be gone.

A syllable, but thus I take the life

Which, wretched, I gave to thee.

[Attempts to kill MARGARET.

Lov. [coming forward.] Hold, for your own sake!

Though charity to your daughter hath quite left you,

Will you do an act, though in your hopes lost
here,

Can leave no hope for peace or rest hereafter?
Consider; at the best you are but a man,
And cannot so create your aims, but that
They may be cross'd.

Over. Lord! thus I spit at thee,

And at thy counsel; and again desire thee,
And as thou art a soldier, if thy valour

Dares show itself, where multitude and example
Lead not the way, let's quit the house, and change

Six words in private.

Lov. I am ready.

L. All. Stay, sir,

Contest with one distracted!

Well. You'll grow like him,

Should you answer his vain challenge.

Over. Are you pale?

Borrow his help, though Hercules call it odds,
I'll stand against both as I am, hemm'd in thus.
Since, like a Libyan lion in the toil,

My fury cannot reach the coward hunters,
And only spends itself, I'll quit the place:
Alone I can do nothing; but I have servants,
And friends to second me; and if I make not
This house a heap of ashes (by my wrongs,
What I have spoke I will make good!) or leave
One throat uncut, if it be possible,
Hell, add to my afflictions!
Mar. Is't not brave sport?
Greedy. Brave sport! t! I
away my stomach;
I do not like the sauce.

[Exit.

am sure it has ta'en

All. Nay, weep not, dearest,

Though it express your pity; what's decreed
Above, we cannot alter.

L. All. His threats move me

No scruple, madam.

Mar. Was it not a rare trick,'

An it please your worship, to make the deed nothing?

Ord. Take this kick with you.

Amb. And this.

shapes,

And do appear like Furies, with steel whips
To scourge my ulcerous soul. Shall I then fall
Ingloriously, and yield? no; spite of Fate,
I will be forced to hell like to myself.
Though you were legions of accursed spirits,
Thus would I fly among you.

[Rushes forward, and flings himself on the
ground.

Well. There's no help;

Disarm him first, then bind him.

Greedy. Take a mittimus,

And carry him to Bedlam.
Lov. How he foams!

Well. And bites the earth!

JOHN FORD.

[This dramatist belonged to a good Devonshire family, being the second son of Thomas Ford of Ilsington, where he was born in April 1586. It is not known how he passed his early years till his appearance as a student of the Middle Temple, which he entered in November 1602. Here he seems diligently to have prosecuted his professional studies, and apparently was so successful in his career as a lawyer, as to be quite independent of literature as a source of income. Both in his student days and afterwards he appears to have led a sober, respectable, and somewhat retired life, exhibiting a marked contrast in this respect to most of his brother dramatists. He made his first appearance as an author in 1606, in the eighteenth year of his age, when he published an occasional poem, entitled Fame's Memorial, a tribute to the memory of Charles Blunt, Earl of Devonshire. His first essays in connection with the drama were made in conjunction with Webster, Dekker, and others. As Ford was quite independent of the stage for a livelihood, he wrote at his leisure, and more for love than reward. His first independent dramatic composition was The Lover's Melancholy, acted in 1628 and published in 1629, although possibly 'Tis Pity She's a Whore had possession of the stage previous to the former. This latter, along with The Broken Heart and Love's Sacrifice, made its appearance in print in 1633. Next year appeared 'a compact consecutive representation of a portion of English history,' under the title of Perkin Warbeck. This was followed in 1638 by a comedy, The Fancies Chaste and Noble, and in 1639 by his tragicomedy, The Lady's Trial. Besides these, Ford wrote a number of other dramas, now irrecoverably lost. It has been supposed that this dramatist died shortly after the publication of his last play (1639); although 'inquiries, too late to arrive at certainty, have scented a faint tradition that he withdrew to his native place, married, became a father, lived respected, and died at a good old age.' From the tenor of his works it has been inferred that Ford was of a somewhat irritable and melancholy temperament; and this opinion gets some countenance from a contemporary distich which photographs him thus:

Deep in a dump John Ford was alone got,
With folded arms and melancholy hat.'

Various estimates have been formed of Ford as a dramatist, although nearly all critics agree that he is inferior to Massinger, Jonson, and Fletcher; Weber, however, thinking that he excels them all in point of pathetic effect. Hazlitt does not admire him, and says truly, that the general characteristic of his style is an artificial elaborateness, and, of course, along with all others, reprobates his morbid love of repulsive plots, low characters, and filthy language. Mr. Hartley Coleridge speaks of him thus:-' He disowned all courtship of the vulgar taste; we might therefore suppose that the horrible stories which he has embraced in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Broken Heart, and Love's Sacrifice, were his own choice, and his own taste. But it would be unfair from hence to conclude that he delighted in the contemplation of vice and misery, as vice and misery. He delighted in the sensation of intellectual power, he found himself strong in the imagination of crime and of agony; his moral sense was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities of sin, by compassion for rare extremes of suffering. He abhorred vice-he admired virtue; but

460

ordinary vice or modern virtue were, to him, as light wine to a dram-drinker. His genius was a telescope, ill-adapted for neighbouring objects, but powerful to bring within the sphere of vision, what nature has wisely placed at an unsociable distance. Passion must be incestuous or adulterous, grief must be something more than martyrdom, before he could make them big enough to be seen. Unquestionably he displayed great power in these horrors, which was all he desired; but had he been "of the first order of poets," he would have found and displayed superior power in "familiar matter of to-day," in failings to which all are liable, virtues which all may practise, and sorrows for which all may be the better.' After much consideration we have deemed The Lady's Trial most suitable for insertion in these pages.]

THE LADY'S TRIAL:

ACTED BY BOTH THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS AT THE PRIVATE HOUSE IN DRURY LANE.

FIDE HONOR.1

London. 1639.

TO MY DESERVINGLY HONOURED

JOHN WYRLEY, ESQUIRE,

AND TO THE VIRTUOUS AND RIGHT WORTHY GENTLEWOMAN

MRS. MARY WYRLEY, HIS WIFE,

THIS SERVICE.

THE inequality of retribution turns to a pity, when there is not ability sufficient for acknowledgment. Your equal respects may yet admit the readiness of endeavour, though the very hazard in it betray my defect. I have enjoyed freely acquaintance with the sweetness of your dispositions, and can justly account, from the nobleness of them, an evident distinction betwixt friendship and friends. The latter (according to the practice of compliment) are usually met with, and often without search; the other, many have searched for, I have found. For which, though I partake a benefit of the fortune,

yet to you, most equal pair, must remain the honour of that bounty. In presenting this issue of some less serious hours to your tuition, I appeal from the severity of censure to the mercy of your judgments; and shall rate it at a higher value than when it was mine own, if you only allow it the favour of adoption. Thus, as your happiness in the fruition of each other's love proceeds to a constancy; so the truth of mine shall appear less unshaken, as you shall please to continue in your good opinions.

JOHN FORD.