This, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies. He evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;—but, as in all his other imitations of Shakespeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his original. Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophically intelligible. Hence the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he meant for the terrible, is either hateful, t? ?s?t??, or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin's sentence in the third act is probably the grandest working of passion in all B. and F.'s dramas;—but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, in this noble scene, renders the after scene (in imitation of one of the least Shakespearian of all Shakespeare's works, if it be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne) in which Edith is yielding to a few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakespeare, Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout.

Act i. sc. 1.—

This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other plays of the same authors, [pg 311] are interesting as traits of the morals which it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,—all conspired to enslave the realm. Massinger's plays breathe the opposite spirit; Shakespeare's the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the Spanish dramatists—Calderon, in particular,—had some influence in this respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays.