Nathaniel Field

In the Stationer’s Register the following entry is recorded under the date of “30º Martij 1632:”

CONSTABLE Entred for his copy vnder the hands of Sir HENRY HERBERT and master SMITHWICKE warden a Tragedy called the ffatall Dowry. Vjd.

In the year 1632 was published a quarto volume whose title-page was inscribed: The Fatall Dowry: a Tragedy: As it hath been often Acted at the Private House in Blackfriars, by his Majesties Servants. Written by P.M. and N.F. London, Printed by John Norton, for Francis Constable, and are to be sold at his shop at the Crane, in Pauls Churchyard. 1632.

That the initials by which the authors are designated stand for Philip Massinger and Nathaniel Field is undoubted.

Later Texts

There is no other seventeenth century edition of The Fatal Dowry. It was included in various subsequent collections, as follows:

• I. The Works of Philip Massinger—edited by Thomas Coxeter, 1759—re-issued in 1761, with an introduction by T. Davies.
• II. The Dramatic Works of Philip Massinger—edited by John Monck Mason, 1779.
• III. The Plays of Philip Massinger—edited by William Gifford, 1805. There was a revised second edition in 1813, which is still regarded as the Standard Massinger Text, and was followed in subsequent editions of Gifford.
• IV. Modern British Drama—edited by Sir Walter Scott, 1811. The text of this reprint of The Fatal Dowry is Gifford’s.
• V. Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford—edited by Hartley Coleridge, 1840 (et seq.). This follows the text of Gifford.
• VI. The Plays of Philip Massinger. From the Text of William Gifford. With the Addition of the Tragedy Believe as You List. Edited by Francis Cunningham, 1867 (et seq.). The Fatal Dowry in this edition, as in the preceding, is a mere reprint of the Second Edition of Gifford.
• VII. Philip Massinger. Selected Plays. (Mermaid Series.) Edited by Arthur Symons, 1887–9 (et seq.).

In addition to the above, The Fatal Dowry appeared in The Plays of Philip Massinger, adapted for family reading and the use of young persons, by the omission of objectionable passages,—edited by Harness, 1830–1; and another expurgated version was printed in the Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor, 1810. Both of these are based on the text of Gifford.

The edition of Coxeter is closest of all to the Quarto, following even many of its most palpable mistakes, and adding some blunders on its own account. Mason accepts practically all of Coxeter’s corrections, and supplies a great many more variants himself, not all of which are very happy. Both these eighteenth century editors continually contract for the sake of securing a perfectly regular metre (e.g.: You’re for You are, I, i, 139; th’ honours for the honours, I, ii, 35; etc.), while Gifford’s tendency is to give the full form for even the contractions of the Quarto, changing its ’em’s to them’s, etc. Gifford can scarce find words sharp enough to express his scorn for his predecessors in their lack of observance of the text of the Quarto, yet he himself frequently repeats their gratuitous emendations when the original was a perfectly sure guide, and he has almost a mania for tampering with the Quarto on his own account. Symons’ Mermaid text, while based essentially on that of Gifford, in a number of instances departs from it, sometimes to make further emendations, but more often to go back from those of Gifford to the version of the original, so that on the whole this is the best text yet published.

There has been a German translation by the Graf von Baudisson, under the title of Die Unselige Mitgift, in his Ben Jonson und seine Schule, Leipsig, 1836; and a French translation, in prose, under the title of La dot fatale by E. Lafond in Contemporains de Shakespeare, Paris, 1864.

Date

The date of the composition or original production of The Fatal Dowry is not known. The Quarto speaks of it as having been “often acted,” so there is nothing to prevent our supposing that it came into existence many years before its publication. It does not seem to have been entered in Sir Henry Herbert’s Office Book.1 This would indicate its appearance to have been prior to Herbert’s assumption of the duties of his office in August, 1623. In seeking a more precise date we can deal only in probabilities.2 The play having been produced by the King’s Men, a company in which Field acted, it was most probably written during his association therewith. This was formed in 1616; the precise date of his retirement from the stage is not known. His name appears in the patent of March 27, 1619, just after the death of Burbage, and again and for the last time in a livery list for his Majesty’s Servants, dated May 19, 1619. It is absent from the next grant for livery (1621) and from the actors’ lists for various plays which are assigned to 1619 or 1620. We may therefore assume safely that his connection with the stage ended before the close of 1619. On the basis of probability, then, the field is narrowed to 1616–19.3

More or less presumptive evidence may be adduced for a yet more specific dating. During these years that Field acted with the King’s Men, two plays appeared which bear strong internal evidence of being products of his collaboration with Massinger and Fletcher: The Knight of Malta and The Queen of Corinth. While several parallels of phraseology are afforded for The Fatal Dowry by these (as, indeed, by every one of the works of Massinger) they are not nearly so numerous or so striking as similarities discoverable between it and certain other dramas of the Massinger corpus. With none does the connection seem so intimate as with The Unnatural Combat. Both plays open with a scene in which a young suppliant for a father’s cause is counseled, in passages irresistibly reminiscent of each other, to lay aside pride and modesty for the parent’s sake, because not otherwise can justice be gained, and it is the custom of the age to sue for it shamelessly. Moreover, the offer by Beaufort and his associates to Malefort of any boon he may desire as a recompense for his service, and his acceptance of it, correspond strikingly in both conduct and language with the conferring of a like favor upon Rochfort by the Court (I, ii, 258 ff.); while the request which Malefort prefers, that his daughter be married to Beaufort Junior, and the language with which that young man acknowledges this meets his own dearest wish, bear a no less patent resemblance to the bestowal of Beaumelle upon Charalois (II, ii, 284–297). Now this last parallel is significant, because The Unnatural Combat is an unaided production of Massinger, while the analogue in The Fatal Dowry occurs in a scene that is by the hand of Field. The similarity may, of course, be only an accident, but presumably it is not. Then did Field borrow from Massinger, or did Massinger from Field? The most plausible theory is that The Unnatural Combat was written immediately after The Fatal Dowry, when Massinger’s mind was so saturated with the contents of the tragedy just laid aside that he was liable to echo in the new drama the expressions and import of lines in the old, whether by himself or his collaborator. That at any rate the chronological relationship of the two plays is one of juxtaposition is further attested by the fact that in minor parallelisms,4 too, to The Fatal Dowry, The Unnatural Combat is richer than any other work of Massinger.

Unfortunately The Unnatural Combat is itself another play of whose date no more can be said with assurance than that it preceeds the entry of Sir Henry Herbert into office in 1623, though its crude horrors, its ghost, etc., suggest moreover that it is its author’s initial independent venture in the field of tragedy, his Titus Andronicus, an ill-advised attempt to produce something after the “grand manner” of half a generation back. Next in closeness to The Fatal Dowry among the works of Massinger as regards the number of its reminiscences of phraseology stands his share of The Virgin Martyr; next in closeness as regards the strikingness of these parallels stands his share of The Little French Lawyer. These two plays can be dated circa 1620.

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To sum up:

The Fatal Dowry appears to antedate the installation of Sir Henry Herbert in 1623.

It was probably written while Field was with the King’s Men; with whom he became associated in 1616, and whom he probably quitted in 1619.

The indications point to its composition during the latter part of this three-year period (1616–19), for it yields more and closer parallels to The Virgin Martyr and The Little French Lawyer, dated about 1620, than to The Knight of Malta and The Queen of Corinth, dated 1617–8,—closer, indeed, than to any work of Massinger save one, The Unnatural Combat, itself an undated but evidently early play, with which its relationship is clearly of the most intimate variety.

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The following (at best hazardously conjectural) scheme of sequence may be advanced:

Fletcher and Massinger and Field together wrote The Knight of Malta and The Queen of Corinth—according to received theory, in 1617 or 1618. Thereafter, the last two collaborators (desirous, perhaps, of trying what they could do unaided and unshackled by the dominating association of the chief dramatist of the day) joined hands in the production of the tragedy which is the subject of our study. Then, upon Field’s retirement, Massinger struck off, with The Unnatural Combat, into unassisted composition; but we next find him, whether because he recognized the short-comings of this turgid play or for other reasons, again in double harness, at work upon The Virgin Martyr and The Little French Lawyer. On this hypothesis, The Fatal Dowry would be dated 1618–9.

Sources

No source is known for the main plot of The Fatal Dowry. A Spanish original has been suspected, but it has never come to light. The stress laid throughout the action on that peculiarly Spanish conception of “the point of honor” (see under Critical Estimate, in consideration of the character of Charalois) is unquestionably suggestive of the land south of the Pyrenees, and we have an echo of Don Quixote in the exclamation of Charalois (III, i, 441): “Away, thou curious impertinent.” The identification, however, of the situation at Aymer’s house in IV, ii with a scene in Cervantes’ El viejo celoso (Obras Completas De Cervantes, Tomo XII, p.277) is extremely fanciful. The only similarity consists in the circumstance that in both, while the husband is on the stage, the wife, who, unknown to him, entertains a lover in the next room, is heard speaking within. But this is a spontaneous outcry on the part of Beaumelle, who does not suspect the proximity of her husband, and her discovery follows, and from this the denouement of the play; whereas in Cervantes’ entremes the wife deliberately calls in bravado to her niece, who is also on-stage, and boasts of her lover,—and the husband thinks this is in jest, and nothing comes of it but comedy.

The theme of the son’s redemption of his father’s corpse by his own captivity is from the classical story of Cimon and Miltiades, as narrated by Valerius Maximus, De dictis factisque memorabilibus, etc. Lib. V, cap. III. De ingratis externorum: Bene egissent Athenienses cum Miltiade, si eum post trecenta millia Persarum Marathone devicta, in exilium protinus misissent, ac non in carcere et vinculis mori coegissent; sed, ut puto, hactenus saevire adversus optime meritum abunde duxerunt: immo ne corpus quidem eius, sic expirare coacti sepulturae primus mandari passi sunt, quam filius eius Cimon eisdem vinculis se constrigendum traderet. Hanc hereditatem paternam maximi ducis filius, et futurus ipse aetatis suae dux maximus, solam se crevisse, catenas et carcerem, gloriari potuit.

In the version of Cornelius Nepos (Vitae, Cimon I) Cimon is incarcerated against his will.

The action of the play is given the historical setting of the later fifteenth century wars of Louis XI of France and Charles the Bold of Burgundy, although this background is extremely hazy. The hero’s name is the title which Charles bore while heir-apparent to the Duchy of Burgundy; mention is made of Charles himself (“The warlike Charloyes,” I, ii, 171), to Louis (“the subtill Fox of France, The politique Lewis,” I, ii, 123–4), and to “the more desperate Swisse” (I, ii, 124), against whom Charles lost his life and the power of Burgundy was broken; while the three great defeats he suffered at their hands, Granson, Morat, Nancy, are named in I, ii, 170. Shortly after these disasters the events which the play sets forth must be supposed to occur; the parliament by which in our drama Dijon is governed was established by Louis XI when he annexed Burgundy in 1477 and thereby abolished her ducal independence.

Collaboration

It is doubtful if Massinger ever collaborated with any author whose manner harmonized as well with his own as did Field’s. In his partnership with Decker in The Virgin Martyr, the alternate hands of the two dramatists afford a weird contrast.5 His union with Fletcher was less incongruous, but Fletcher was too much inclined to take the bit between his teeth to be a comfortable companion in double harness,6 and at all times his volatile, prodigal genius paired ill with the earnest, painstaking, not over-poetic moralist. But in Field Massinger found an associate whose connection with himself was not only congenial, but even beneficial, to the end that together they could achieve certain results of which either was individually incapable; just as it has been established was the case in the Middleton-Rowley collaboration. To a formal element of verse different, indeed, from Massinger’s, but not obtrusively so, a certain moral fibre of his own (perhaps derived from his clerical antecedents), and a like familiarity with stage technique, Field added qualities which Massinger notably lacked, and thereby complemented him: a light and vigorous (if sometimes coarse) comic touch as opposed to Massinger’s cumbrous humor; a freshness and first-hand acquaintance with life as opposed to Massinger’s bookishness; a capacity to visualize and individualize character as opposed to Massinger’s weakness for drawing types rather than people. The fruit of their joint endeavors testifies to a harmonious, conscientious, and mutually respecting partnership.

In consideration of the above, it is surprising how substantially in accord are most of the opinions that have been expressed concerning the share of the play written by each author.

“A critical reader,” says Monck Mason, “will perceive that Rochfort and Charalois speak a different language in the Second and Third Acts, from that which they speak in the first and last, which are undoubtedly Massinger’s; as is also Part of the Fourth Act, but not the whole of it.”

Dr. Ireland, in a postscript to the text of The Fatal Dowry in Gifford’s edition, agrees with Mason in assigning the Second Act to Field and also the First Scene of the Fourth Act; the Third Act, however, he claims for Massinger, as well as that share of the play with which Mason credits him. Fleay and Boyle, the chief modern commentators who have taken up the question of the division of authorship with the aid of metrical tests and other criteria, agree fairly well with the speculations of their less scientific predecessors, and adopt an intermediate, reconciling position on the disputed Third Act, dividing it between the two dramatists.7

Boyle (Englische Studien, V, 94) assigns to Massinger Act I; Act III as far as line 316; Act IV, Scenes ii, iii, and iv; and the whole of Act V, with the exception of Scene ii, lines 80–120, which he considers an interpolation of Field, whom he also believes to have revised the latter part of I, ii (from Exeunt Officers with Romont to end).

Fleay (Chron. Eng. Dra., I, 208) exactly agrees with this division save that the latter part of I, ii, which Boyle believes emended by Field, he assigns to that author outright; and that he places the division in Act III twenty-seven lines later (Field after Manent Char. Rom.). In my own investigation I have used for each Scene the following tests to distinguish the hands of the two authors:

(a) Broad aesthetic considerations: the comparison of style and method of treatment with the known work of either dramatist.

(b) The test of parallel phrases. Massinger’s habit of repeating himself is notorious. I have gone through the entire body of his work, both that which appears under his name, and that which has been assigned to him by modern research in the Beaumont & Fletcher plays, and noted all expressions I found analogous to any which occur in The Fatal Dowry. I have done the same for Field’s work, examining his two comedies, Woman is a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies, and Acts I and V of The Knight of Malta and III and IV of The Queen of Corinth, which the consensus of critical opinion recognizes (in my judgment, correctly) as his. He is generally believed to have collaborated also in The Honest Man’s Fortune, but the exact extent of his work therein is so uncertain that I have not deemed it a proper field from which to adduce evidence. His hand has been asserted by one authority or another to appear in various other plays of the period, he having served, as it were, the role of a literary scapegoat on whom it was convenient to father any Scene not identified as belonging to Beaumont, Fletcher, or Massinger; but there is no convincing evidence for his participation in the composition of any extant dramas save the above named.

(c) Metrical tests. I have computed the figures for The Fatal Dowry in regard to double or feminine endings and run-on lines. Massinger’s verse displays high percentages (normally 30 per cent, to 45 per cent.) in the case of either. Field’s verse varies considerably in the matter of run-on lines at various periods of his life, but the proportion of them is always smaller than Massinger’s. His double endings average about 18 per cent. I have also counted in each Scene the number of speeches that end within the line, and that end with the line, respectively. (Speeches ending with fragmentary lines are considered to have mid-line endings.) This is declared by Oliphant (Eng. Studien, XIV, 72) the surest test for the work of Massinger. “His percentage of speeches,” he says, “that end where the verses end is ordinarily as low as 15.” This is a tremendous exaggeration, but it is true that the ratio of mid-line endings is much higher in Massinger than in any of his contemporaries—commonly 2:1, or higher.

We find the First Scene of Act I one of those skillful introductions to the action which the “stage-poet” knew so well how to handle, for which reason, probably, he was generally intrusted with the initial Scene of the plays in which he collaborated. Thoroughly Massingerian are its satire upon the degenerate age and its grave, measured style, rhetorical where it strives to be passionate, and replete with characteristic expressions. Especially striking examples of the dramatist’s well-known and never-failing penchant for the recurrent use of certain ideas and phrases are: As I could run the hazard of a check for’t. (l.10)—cf. 8C-G. 87 b, 156 b, 327 b; D. V, 328; XI, 28;—You shall o’ercome. (l.101)—cf. C-G. 230 b, 248 b, 392 a;—and ll.183–7—cf. C-G. 206 a, 63 a, 91 a, 134 b. The correspondence between ll.81–99 and the opening of The Unnatural Combat has already been remarked on, while further reminiscences of the same passage are to be found elsewhere in Massinger (C-G. 104 a, 195 b). Metrical tests show for the Scene 33 per cent. double endings and 29 per cent. run-on lines, figures which substantiate the conclusions derivable from a scrutiny of its style and content.9

In I, ii Massinger appears in his element, an episode permitting opportunities for the forensic fervor which was his especial forte. Such Scenes occur again and again in his plays: the conversion of the daughters of Theophilus by the Virgin Martyr, the plea of the Duke of Milan to the Emperor, of old Malefort to his judges in The Unnatural Combat, of Antiochus to the Carthagenian senate in Believe as You List. From the speech with which Du Croy opens court (I, ii, 1–3)—cf. the inauguration of the senate-house scene in The Roman Actor, C-G. 197 b,

Fathers conscript, may this our meeting be

Happy to Caesar and the commonwealth!

—to the very end, it abounds with Massingerisms: Knowing judgment; Speak to the cause; I foresaw this (an especial favorite of the poet’s); Strange boldness!; the construction, If that curses, etc;—also cf. l.117 ff. with

To undervalue him whose least fam’d service

Scornes to be put in ballance with the best

Of all your Counsailes.

(Sir John van Olden B., Bullen’s Old Plays, II, 232.)

We have seen that the hand of Field has been asserted to appear in the last half of this Scene. This is probably due to the presence here of several rhymed couplets, which are uncommon in Massinger save as tags at the end of Scenes or of impressive speeches, but not absolutely unknown in his work; whereas Field employs them frequently—in particular to set off a gnomic utterance. If Field’s indeed, they can scarcely represent more than his revising touch here and there; everything else in this part of the Scene bespeaks Massinger no less clearly than does the portion which preceeds it. There continues the same stately declamation, punctuated at intervals by brief comments or replies, the same periodic sentence-structure, the same or even greater frequency of characteristic diction. Massinger again and again refers in his plays to the successive hardships of the summer’s heat and winter’s frost (l.184—cf. C-G. 168 b, 205 a, 392 b, 488 b); stand bound occurs literally scores of times upon his pages (three times on C-G. 77 a alone);—typical also are in their dreadful ruins buried quick (l.178—cf. C-G. 603 a, 625 a, Sir John van Olden B., Bullin’s Old Plays, II, 209), Be constant in it (l.196—cf. C-G. 2 a, 137 a, 237 a, 329 a), Strange rashness!, It is my wonder (l.293—cf. C-G. 26 b, 195 b; D. VIII, 438; XI, 34). Cf. also l.156,

To quit the burthen of a hopeless life,

with C-G. 615 b,

To ease the burthen of a wretched life.

And ll.284–6,

But would you had

Made trial of my love in anything

But this,

with C-G. 286 a,

I could wish you had

Made trial of my love some other way.

And again, ll.301–3,

and his goodness

Rising above his fortune, seems to me,

Princelike, to will, not ask, a courtesy.

with D. XI. 37,

in his face appears

A kind of majesty which should command,

Not sue for favour.

and the general likeness of l.258 ff. with C-G. 44 b-45 a, as above noted. Nor do the verse tests reveal any break in the continuity of the Scene; the figures for the first part are: double endings, 45 per cent.; run-on lines, 33 per cent.—for the second part: double endings, 36 per cent.; run-on lines, 36 per cent.

Passing to the Second Act, we discover at once a new manner of expression, in which the sentence has a looser structure, the verse a quicker tempo, the poetry a striving now and again for a note of lyric beauty which, although satisfactorily achieved in but few lines, is by Massinger’s verse not even attempted. A liberal sprinkling of rhymes appears. The Scene is a trifle more vividly conceived; the emotions have a somewhat more genuine ring. Simultaneously, resemblances to the phraseology of Massinger’s other plays become infrequent; and, to increase the wonder, is almost the only reminder of him in the whole of Scene i. On the other hand we must not expect to find in the work of Field the same large number of recognizable expressions as mark that of Massinger; for he was not nearly so given to repeating himself, nor are there many of his plays extant from which to garner parallels. The figure of speech with which Charalois opens his funeral address [Field shows a great predilection for “aqueous” similes and metaphors], the liberal use of oaths (’Slid, ’Slight), a reference (l.137) to the Bermudas (also mentioned in Amends for Ladies: M. 427), and the comparison to the oak and pine (ll.119–121—cf. a Field Scene of The Queen of Corinth: D. V, 436–7) are the only specific minutia to which a finger can be pointed. The verse analysis testifies similarly to a different author from that of Act I, double endings being 20 per cent., run-on lines 15 per cent.—figures which are quite normal to Field.

To the actor-dramatist may be set down the prose of II, ii without question. Massinger practically never uses prose, which is liberally employed by Field, as is the almost indistinguishable prose-or-verse by which a transition is made from one medium to the other. The dialogue between Beaumelle and her maids is strikingly like that between two “gentlewomen” in The Knight of Malta, I, ii—a Scene generally recognized as by his hand; the visit of Novall Junior which follows is like a page out of his earlier comedies. Notable resemblances are ll.177–8, Uds-light! my lord, one of the purls of your band is, without all discipline, fallen out of his rank, with I have seen him sit discontented a whole play because one of the purls of his band was fallen out of his reach to order again. (Amends for Ladies, M. 455); and l.104, they skip into my lord’s cast skins some twice a year, with and then my lord (like a snake) casts a suite every quarter, which I slip into: (Woman is a Weathercock, M. 374). The song, after l.131, recalls that in Amends for Ladies, M. 465.

Of the verse which follows, most of the observations made in regard to the preceeding Scene are applicable. The comic touch in the midst of Romont’s tirade (ll.174–206) against old Novall, when the vehemence of his indignation leads him to seek at every breath the epithet of a different beast for his foe, is surely Field’s, not Massinger’s. A Field scene of The Queen of Corinth, D. V, 438, parallels with its Thou a gentleman! thou an ass, the construction of l.276, while there too is duplicated the true-love knots of l.314, though in a rather grotesque connection. The verse tests are confirmative of Field: 21 per cent. double endings; 19 per cent, run-on lines. While a few resemblances to phrases occurring somewhere in the works of Massinger can be marked here and there in the 355 lines of the Scene, they are not such as would demand consideration, nor are more numerous than sheer chance would yield in the case of a writer so prolific as the “stage-poet.” The parallel between ll.284–297 and a passage from The Unnatural Combat is pointed out under the head of Date, and one of several possible explanations for this coincidence is there offered. These lines in The Fatal Dowry are as unmistakably Field’s as any verse in the entire play; their short, abruptly broken periods and their rapid flow are as characteristic of him as the style of their analogue in The Unnatural Combat is patently Massingerian.

Act III presents a more difficult problem. It will be noted that Fleay and Boyle alike declare that its single long Scene is divided between the two authors, but are unable to agree as to the point of division. The first 316 lines are beyond question the work of Massinger. The tilt between Romont and Beaumelle is conducted with that flood of rhetorical vituperation by which he customarily attempts to delineate passion; in no portion of the play is his diction and sentence-structure more marked; and the parallels to passages elsewhere in his works reappear with redoubled profusion. Indeed, they become too numerous for complete citation; let it suffice to refer ll.43–4 to D. III, 477; ll.53–4 to C-G. 173 a; ll.80–3 to D. III, 481; l.104 to C-G. 532 a; l.116 to C-G. 146 b; ll.117–8 to D. VI, 294 and D. VI, 410; ll.232–5 to C-G. 307 a, also to 475 b, and to D. VIII, 406; while the phrase, Meet with an ill construction (l.238) is a common one with Massinger (cf. C-G. 76 a, 141 b, 193 b, 225 b, 339 b), as are such ironic observations as the Why, ’tis exceeding well of l. 293 (cf., e.g., 175 b). This part of the Scene contains 45 per cent. double endings and 36 per cent. run-on lines.

The last 161 lines of the Act with scarcely less certainty can be established as Field’s, though on a first reading one might imagine, from the wordiness of the vehement dialogue and the rather high ratio (19:11) of speeches ending in mid-line, that the hand of Massinger continues throughout. But the closest examination no longer will reveal traces of that playwright’s distinctive handiwork, while a ratio of 17 per cent. for double endings and 28 per cent. for run-on lines, the introduction of rhyme, the oaths, and the change from the previous full-flowing declamation to shorter, more abrupt periods are vouchers that this part of the Scene is from the pen of the actor-dramatist. We can scarcely imagine the ponderous-styled Massinger writing anything so easy and rapid as

I’ll die first.

Farewell; continue merry, and high heaven

Keep your wife chaste.

Such phrases as So I not heard them (l.352) and Like George a-horseback (l.433) in the loose structure of the one and the slangy scurrility of the other, exhibit no kinship to his manner; l.373, They are fools that judge me by my outward seeming recalls a Field passage in The Queen of Corinth (D. V, 444) They are fools that hold them dignified by blood. There is here and there, moreover, a certain violence of expression, a compressed over-trenchancy of phrase, that brings to mind the rant of the early Elizabethans, and is found among the Jacobeans only in the work of Rowley, Beaumont, and Field. For the last named, this is notably exemplified in the opening soliloquy of The Knight of Malta; we cannot but recognize the same touch here in ll.386–8:

Thou dost strike

A deathful coldness to my heart’s high heat,

And shrink’st my liver like the calenture.

The Something I must do, which concludes the Act, is repeatedly paralleled in Massinger’s plays, but a similar indefinite resolve is expressed in Woman is a Weathercock (M. 363), and it consequently cannot be adduced as evidence of his hand. Immediately above, however (ll.494–6), we encounter, in the allusion to the Italian and Dutch temperaments, a thought twice echoed by the “stage-poet” in plays of not greatly later date, The Duke of Milan and The Little French Lawyer (C-G. 90 a; D. III, 505). It may represent an interpolation by Massinger; it may be merely that this rather striking conclusion to the climatic speech of his collaborator’s scene so fixed itself on his mind as to crop out afterwards in his own productions.

In the short disputed passage (ll.317–343) which separates what is undoubtedly Massinger’s from what is undoubtedly Field’s, it would appear that both playwrights had a hand. The ’Sdeath and Gads me!, the play upon the word currier, and the phrase, I shall be with you suddenly (cf. Q. of Cor. D. V, 467) speak for Field; while Massinger, on the other hand, parallels

His back

Appears to me as it would tire a beadle;

with

A man of resolution, whose shoulders

Are of themselves armour of proof, against

A bastinado, and will tire ten beadles.—C-G. 186 b;

and the phrase “to sit down with a disgrace” occurs something like a dozen times on his pages, especially frequently in the collaborated plays—that is to say, in the earlier period of his work, to which The Fatal Dowry belongs. It is probable, and not unnatural, that the labors of the partners in composition overlapped on this bit of the Scene, but metrical analysis claims with as much certainty as can attach to this test in the case of so short a passage that it is substantially Massinger’s, and should go rather with what preceeds than with what comes after it, the verse being all one piece with that of the former section. It has 37 per cent. double endings and 41 per cent. run-on lines.

IV, i, opens with a prose passage for all the world like that of Woman is a Weathercock, I, ii, with its picture of the dandy, his parasites, and the pert page who forms a sort of chorus with his caustic asides; and writes itself down indisputably as by the same author. Novall Junior and his coterie appear here as in their former presentation in II, ii. We have again the same racy comedy, the same faltering of the vehicle between verse and prose (see ll.61–8; 137–153). After the clearing of the stage of all save Romont and young Novall, uninterrupted verse ensues, which, despite a rather notable parallel in The Beggars’ Bush, D. IX, 9 to l.174, is evidently Field’s also. An analogue of ll. 180–1 is discoverable in Amends for Ladies (M. 421), as is of the reference ( l.197) to “fairies’ treasure” in Woman is a Weathercock (M. 344). Novall’s exclamation ( l.182), Pox of this gun! and his retort ( l.201), Good devil to your rogueship! are Fieldian, and the entire passage possesses a vigor and an easy naturalness which declare his authorship. It is not improbable, however, that his contribution ends with the fragmentary l.207, and that the remaining four lines of the Scene are a Massinger tag. The Maid of Honour (C-G. 28 a) furnishes a striking parallel for ll.208–9, while for 210–1 cf. C-G. 192 a. The metrical tests for IV, i, confirm Field: 22 per cent. double endings; 22 per cent. run-on lines.

With the next Scene the hand of Massinger is once more in evidence with all its accustomed manifestations. One interested in his duplication of characteristic phrasing may refer for comparison ll.13–4 to C-G. 299 b; l.17 to C-G. 241 a; ll.24–6 to C-G. 547 b; ll.29–30 to C-G. 425 b; l.57 to C-G. 41 b, 70 b; l.94 to C-G. 182 b. The Scene contains 32 per cent. double endings and 37 per cent. run-on lines. The authorship of its two songs is less certain. Field was more given to song-writing than was Massinger, and the second of this pair is reminiscent in its conception of the Grace Seldom episode in Amends for Ladies (II, i).

The short IV, iii is by Massinger. In evidence of him are its 36 per cent. of double endings and 55 per cent. of run-on lines, its involved sentence structure, and the familiar phrasing which makes itself manifest even in so brief a passage (e.g.: To play the parasite, l.7—cf. V, iii, 78 and C-G. 334 b. Cf. also ll.9–10 with D. III, 476; and l.22 with C-G. 40 b, 153 a, 262 b.).

The same dramatist’s work continues through the last Scene of the Act. This, the emotional climax of the play, representing a quasi-judicial procedure, affords him abundant opportunity for fervid moralizing and speech-making, of which he takes advantage most typically. Massinger commonplaces are l.29, Made shipwreck of your faith (cf. C-G. 55 b, 235 a, 414 b); l.56, In the forbidden labyrinth of lust (cf. C-G. 298 b); l.89, Angels guard me! (cf. C-G. 59 b, 475 b); l.118–9, and yield myself Most miserably guilty (cf. C-G. 61 b, 66 b, 130 a; D. VI, 354); etc.; while within a year or so of the time when he wrote referring to “those famed matrons” (l.70), he expatiated upon them in detail (see The Virgin Martyr, C-G. 33 a). Yet more specific parallels may be found: for l.63 cf. C-G. 179 a; ll.76–7, cf. C-G. 28 a; l.78, cf. C-G. 32 b; ll.162–3, cf. C-G. 3 b, in a passage wherein there is a certain similarity of situation; l.177, cf. D. IX, 7. Were any further confirmation needed for Massinger’s authorship, the metrical tests would supply it, with their 36 per cent. double endings and 34 per cent. run-on lines.

The most cursory reading of V, i is sufficient to establish the conviction that its author is not identical with that of the earlier comic passages—is not Field, but Massinger. The humor, such as it is, is of a graver, more restrained sort—satiric rather than burlesque; it has lost lightness and verve, and approaches to high-comedy and even to moralizing. One feels that the confession of the tailor-gallant is no mere fun-making devise, but a caustic attack upon social conditions against which the writer nurtured a grudge. Massingerian are such expressions as And now I think on’t better (l.77—cf. C-G. 57 b, 468 a, 615 a; D. XI, 28), and use a conscience (l.90—cf. C-G. 444 a, 453 a), while the metrical evidence of 36 per cent. double endings and 29 per cent. run-on lines fortifies a case concerning which all commentators are in agreement. But despite the unanimity of critical opinion hitherto, I am not sure that Field did not contribute a minor touch here and there to the Scene. Such contribution, if a fact, must have been small, for the Massinger flavor is unmistakable throughout; yet in the Plague on’t! and the ’Slid!, in the play upon words (ll.13–4, 20–1, 44), which is rare with Massinger and common with Field, in the line, I only know [thee] now to hate thee deadly: (cf. Amends for Ladies, M. 421: I never more Will hear or see thee, but will hate thee deadly.), we may, perhaps, detect a hint of his hand.

Scene ii (which in the Quarto ends with the reconciliation of Charalois and Romont, the entry of Du Croy, Charmi, etc. being marked as the beginning of a third Scene, though the place is unchanged and the action continuous, wherefore modern editors disregard the Quarto’s division and count Scene ii as including all the remainder of the Act) presents the usual distinctive earmarks of a Massinger passage. The last third of it, however (ll.80–121), has, on account of the presence of several rhymes, been commonly assigned to Field. No doubt his hand is here discernable; l.118, mark’d me out the way how to defend it, is scarcely a Massinger construction either; but I cannot think Field’s presence here more than that of a reviser, just as in the latter half of I, ii. The language remains more Massinger’s than Field’s; and while the passage is over-short for metrical tests to be decisive, the 39 per cent. of double endings and 35 per cent. of run-on lines which it yields (for the earlier part of the Scene the figures are respectively 28 per cent. and 35 per cent.) are corroborative of Massinger’s authorship. Cf. also ll.96–8 with this from The Renegado (C-G. 157 a):

Of the final Scene, V, iii, little need be said. It brings before us again a court-room, with another trial, and continues the manner of its predecessor, I, ii, as only Massinger can. His customary formulae, stand bound, play the parasite, etc., are here; characteristic too are his opposition of wanton heat and lawful fires (ll.141–2—cf. C-G. 37 b; D.V. 476), while further material for comparison may be found in ll.95–6 with Respect, wealth, favour, the whole world for a dower of The Virgin Martyr (C-G. 6 b), and in ll.165–7:

with C-G. 39 a and b:

The last passage cited for comparison also exhibits another feature normal to the work of this dramatist: the splitting of an observation, frequently a single sentence, between two speakers; so ll.38–9, and again, l.59. The Scene and play are rounded off with the pointing of a moral, so indispensable to Massinger’s satisfaction.

To sum up, therefore, disregarding for practical purposes the slight touches of Field in I, ii, ll.146–end; III, i, ll.317–343; V, ii, ll.80–end; and perhaps in V, i;—and the apparent Massinger touches in IV, i, and possibly at one or two other points in the Field Scenes, we may divide the play as follows:

• Massinger: I; III, ll.1–343; IV, ii, iii, iv; V.
• Field: II; III, ll.344–end; IV, i.

A metrical analysis of the play is appended in tabular form, in which I have computed separately the figures for each portion of any Scene on which there has been a question. It will be noted that the single simple test of the mid-line speech-ending would, with but two exceptions—one (III, i, c) doubtful, and the other (V, ii, b) too short a passage to afford a fair test—have made a clean-cut and correct determination of authorship in every case.

Critical Estimate

No less an authority than Swinburne has pronounced The Fatal Dowry the finest tragedy in the Massinger corpus. Certainly it would be the most formidable rival of The Duke of Milan for that distinction. It occupies an anomalous position among the works of the “stage poet.” His dramas are, as a rule, strongest in construction; he went at play-making like a skillful architect, and put together and moulded his material with steady hand. They are likely to be weakest in characterization. Massinger could not get inside his figures and endow them with the breath of life; they remain stony shapes chiseled in severely angular and conventional lines, like some old Egyptian bas-relief. But The Fatal Dowry is strong in characterization and defective in construction.

The structural fault is less surprising when it is ascertained to be fundamental—inevitable in the theme. The play breaks in the middle: it is really composed of two stories; the first two Acts present and resolve one action, while another, hitherto barely presaged, occupies the last three, and is the proper story of the Fatal Dowry. Charalois’ self-immolation for the corpse of his heroic father, and his rescue and reward by the great-hearted Rochfort, form a little play in themselves—a brief but stately tragi-comedy, which is followed by a tense drama of intrigue and retribution, of adultery and avenged honor—itself complete in itself, for which we are prepared in the first two Acts only by one figure, whose potentialities for disaster are ominous if not obvious:—Beaumelle, of whom more later. This plot-building by enjambment precludes the slow, steady mounting of suspense from the initial moment and inexorable gathering of doom which are manifested in a well-conceived tragedy; yet crude, amorphous, inorganic as it may seem—defying, as it does, unity of action—like as it is to the earliest Elizabethan plays, which were concerned with a single career rather than a single theme, it would appear inevitably necessary, if a maximum effect is to be gained from the given plot-material. Just as Wagner found it impossible to do justice to the story of Siegfried without first presenting that of Siegmund and Sieglinde, so the experiment of Rowe (who in re-working the story for The Fair Penitent relegated to expository dialogue the narration of what corresponds to the first two Acts of The Fatal Dowry) sadly demonstrated that unless the reader or audience actually sees, and not merely hears about, Charalois’ previous devotion, Rochfort’s generosity, and Romont’s loyalty, these characters do not attract to themselves a full measure of sympathy, and the story of their later vicissitudes is somehow unconvincing and falls flat.

Massinger and Field accepted frankly the structural awkwardness of their plot as they had fashioned or found it. Making, apparently, no attempt to obviate its essential duality, they went to work in the most straightforward manner, and achieved, thanks in no small measure to that same resolute directness of approach, a drama of so naturalistic a tone as half to redeem its want of unity. The Fatal Dowry is not an Aristotelian tragedy with a definite beginning, middle, and end—it is rather a cross-section of life. The unconventionality and vitality of such a production are startling, and obtain a high degree of verisimilitude.

Both authors seem to have been themselves inspired by their virile theme to give to it their best work. The stately, somewhat monotonous verse of Massinger, which never loses dignity and is so incapable of expressing climaxes of passion, is once or twice almost forgotten, or else rises to a majesty which transfigures it. Though forensic declamation was always the especial forte of this dramatist, he literally out-did himself in his management of the suit for the dead Marshal’s body. The elaborate rhetoric of Charmi, checked by the stern harshness of Novall Senior, the indignant outburst of Romont, and the sad, yet noble calmness of Charalois’ speech in which he presses the forlorn alternative, succeed one another with striking contrast; the very flow of the verse changes with the speaker in a manner which recalls the wonderful employment of this device by Shakespeare, as, for example, in the First Act of Othello. In the final Scene of Act IV, Massinger achieves a climax worthy of Fletcher himself;—save, perhaps, the denouement of A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and the great scene in The Duke of Milan in which Sforza’s faith in his Duchess is broken down by aspersion after aspersion, until he slays her, only to learn the terrible truth one instant later, it is the most dramatic situation he ever worked up. Field, too, seems to have been on his mettle: his verse is more trenchant, his care greater than in his two earlier comedies; the lines (II, i, 126–7)

touch the high-water mark of his poetic endeavor.

Blemishes, indeed, are not unapparent. The episodic first Scene of Act V is a rather stupid piece of pseudo-comedy by Massinger, which serves no function adequate to justify its existence, while it interrupts the thread of the main story at a point where its culminating intensity does not, of right, permit such a diversion. Gifford in commenting upon this Scene makes the amazing pronouncement that it serves “to prove how differently the comic part of this drama would have appeared, if the whole had fortunately fallen into the hands of Massinger.” Surely never was criticism more fatuous.

But the most serious—indeed, the outstanding—defect of the play is the easy readiness of Charalois to break with Romont. The calm, unregretful placidity with which he untwists the long web of friendship with a man who has stood by him through weal and woe, who has courted a prison’s chains for his sake, shocks us, and repels us with its flinty self-sufficiency. It is not that we know him to be wrong and Romont to be right; suppose the high faith of Charalois in Beaumelle to be entirely justified and the charge of Romont to be as groundless as it is wildly delivered and unconvincing, yet there is no excuse for the immediacy with which, on the first revelation of what he himself has demanded to know, the hero rejects, along with the report of his friend, the friend himself, whose aim could have been only his best interest. For the fault lies not in the situation, which is sound, but in its over-hasty development. A little more length to the scene, a few more speeches to either participant in the dialogue, a little longer and more vituperative insistence on the part of Romont in the face of Charalois’ warnings that he has gone far enough, and the quarrel would have been thoroughly realized and developed. As it is, it comes on insufficient provocation; the hero, at the moment when he should excite regret and sympathy because of his blind, mistaken trust in his unworthy wife, excites rather indignation; the later words of Romont with which he justifies his unshaken loyalty to his comrade turn back the mind perforce to that comrade’s lack of loyalty to him, and unwittingly ring out as a judgment upon Charalois:

The faulty passage, it will be noted upon reference to the analysis of shares in collaboration, is by the hand of Field. Unconvincing precipitancy in the conduct of situations marks his work elsewhere, notably in the Amends for Ladies. As it has already been said, the strongest feature of the play is its characterization. Almost every figure is, if not an individual, at least a type so vitalized as to appear to take on life. One or two touches, to be sure, of conventional Massingerian habits of thought still cling about them; even the noblest cannot entirely forget to consider how their conduct will pose them before the eyes of the world and posterity. But apart from such slight occasional lapses, they may truthfully be said to speak and move quite in the manner of real men and women.

The hero, Charalois, is drawn as of a gentle, meditative, temperate, and self-possessed disposition, in strong and effective contrast to his friend. Though his military exploits are spoken of with admiration, and Romont testifies that he can “pursue a foe like lightning,” he betrays a certain readiness to yield to discouragement scarce to be expected in the son of the great general. In consequence of these facts, he has been described by some (notably Cunningham, in his Edition of Gifford, Introduction, p. xiii;—cf. also Phelan, p.61; and Beck, pp.22–3) as “a Hamlet whose mind has not yet been sicklied o’er by the pale cast of thought,” and his long silence at the opening of Act I is compared to that of the Danish Prince on his first appearance. But, in reality, excess of pride is the chief reason of Charalois’ backwardness on this occasion, and thereafter he acts promptly and efficiently always. The same over-sensitive pride continues to manifest itself throughout the play—when he is confronted with Rochfort’s generosity; when he finds (III, i, 365 ff.) that it is he who is the object of the jests of Novall Junior and his satellites (though scarce a breath earlier he has chided Romont for noticing the yapping of such petty curs); and in the viscissitudes of the catastrophe and its consequences. A harmonious twin-birth with his pride, at once proceeding from it, bound up with it, and on occasion over-weighing its scruples, is an extreme punctiliousness at every turn to the dictates of that peculiarly Spanish imperative, “the point of honor,”—a consideration so prominent throughout the play as to have convinced many critics that the source of the story, although still undiscovered, must have been Spanish. These two traits—pride and an adherence to “the point of honor,” are almost invariably the mainsprings of Charalois’ conduct. His pride holds him back from supplicating in behalf of his father the clemency of the unworthy ministers of the law, till he is persuaded by Romont that honor not only permits but requires that he do so; he feels that honor demands that he sacrifice himself to secure his father’s burial, and he does it; that honor demands that he put away his friend in loyalty to his wife, and he does it; that honor demands that he slay the adulteress—and he does it; he even consents to lay bare the details of his ignominious wrong before the eyes of men, because he is brought to believe that “the point of honor” calls for a justification of his course and the holding of it up as an example to the world. It is a striking and consistent portrait—how unlike the usual conventionally noble hero of romantic drama!

Romont, however, is the finest figure of the play. He draws to himself rather more than his share of interest and sympathy, to the detriment of the protagonist. Of a type common enough on the stage of that day—the bluff, loyal soldier-friend of the hero—he is yet so thoroughly individualized that we can discuss him and calculate what he will do in given situations, even as with a character of Shakespeare’s. The portrait suffers from no jarring inconsistencies; almost his every utterance is absolutely in part, and adds its touch to round out our conception of him. His negligence of his personal appearance, his quick temper, his impulsiveness, his violence, his lack of restraint, his fierce, uncompromising honesty, his devotion to the “grave General dead” and his unshaken fidelity to the living son, his flashes of unexpected tenderness, his homage for the reverend virtue of Rochfort—a sort of child-like awe for what he knows is finer if not of truer metal than his own rough spirit, his ill-disguised scorn for Novall Junior and his creatures, “those dogs in doublets,” his lack of tact which unfits him for effective service in the delicate task of preserving Beaumelle’s honor, and dooms his story to Charalois to disbelief and resentment, his prompt, fearless decisiveness of action, the tumultuous flood of nervous and at times eloquent speech which pours from his lips when he is aroused, yet dies in his throat when he is lashed by a woman’s tongue—a flood of speech which is most torrential when the situation is most doubtful or hopeless of good issue, but which gives place to a self-possessed terseness when he is quite sure of his ground:—all go to give detail and reality to a character at once amazingly alive and irresistibly attractive. “Romont is one of the noblest of all Massinger’s men,” says Swinburne, “and Shakespeare has hardly drawn noble men more nobly than Massinger.” To find a parallel creation who can over-match him in vigor of presentation and theatrical efficiency, we must go back to the Melantius of Beaumont and Fletcher. These two characters represent the ultimate elaborations of the stock figure of the faithful friend and blunt soldier; Melantius is the supreme romantic, Romont the supreme realistic, development of the type.

Yet though Romont is the most compelling of the dramatis personae, into none does Massinger enter more thoroughly than the noble figure of Rochfort. Utter devotion to virtue, to which he had paid a life-long fidelity, is the key-note of the nature of the aged Premier President, and accordingly in him the deep-seated ethical seriousness of the “stage-poet” found a congenial expression. A statelier dignity is wont to echo in his lines than in the utterance of any other character; they breathe an exalted calm, a graciousness, a grave courtesy, as though the very spirit of their speaker had entered them.

An inability to judge the character of others was his great weakness—a weakness which he himself realized, for he called upon Beaumont to confirm the one strikingly sure, true appraisement which he exhibited, his admiration for Charalois. Characteristically, this weakness seems to have taken the form of a too-generous estimate of his fellows. This caused him to bestow his vacated office upon the harsh and unjust Novall, and to be blind to the disposition of his daughter, and the danger that lay in her intimacy with Novall Junior. But if his kindly nature saw the better side of even that contemptible young man, he at least understood him well enough not to take him at all seriously as a suitor for Beaumelle’s hand.

Of the Novalls, father and son, there is a much briefer presentation. Yet even so, in the case of old Novall we have as masterly a sketch as in Romont a detailed study. His every word is eloquent of his stern, not to say mean, nature—curt and severe towards others, all prejudice where he himself is concerned, inexorably malevolent against those who incur his animosity. Yet it never enters his head to seek the satisfaction of his hate in any way save through the law; for example, he does not seize upon, or even think seriously of, Pontalier’s proffer of private vengeance; the law is his sphere—he will abuse it to his advantage, if he can, but he will not go outside of it. He is, in other words, the Official Bureaucrat par excellence, and his enmity against the martial house of the Charaloises and the rigor with which he is said to “cross every deserved soldier and scholar,” and, on the other hand, the detestation in which Romont holds him, are manifestations of the feud of type against type. It has been suggested that the especial fervor with which he is devoted to execration argues a prototype in actual life, and that in him is to be recognized Sir Edward Coke, notorious for the savage vindictiveness of his conduct towards Sir Walter Raleigh.

Novall Junior, the cowardly, foppish, and unscrupulous gallant, though a flimsy personality, affords once or twice, in the Fieldian prose, rather good humor: e.g.—

Nay, o’ my soul, ’tis so; what fouler object in the world, than to see a young, fair, handsome beauty unhandsomely dighted, and incongruently accoutred? or a hopeful chevalier unmethodically appointed in the external ornaments of nature? For, even as the index tells us the contents of stories, and directs to the particular chapters, even so does the outward habit and superficial order of garments (in man or woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality and habiliment of the soul; and there cannot be a more evident, palpable, gross manifestation of poor, degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding, than a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly outside. (IV, i, 48–60.)

Of the remaining characters, only two call for especial notice. The three Creditors are a blemish upon the otherwise striking verisimilitude of the play; they are impossible, inhuman monsters of greed and relentlessness, who serve as vehicles for a kind of grotesque comedy. A personal rancour on the part of the authors may have been responsible for this presentation, as it is probable that they themselves had had none-too-pleasant experiences with money-lenders. Pontalier, however, is very well conceived and skillfully executed. Occupying a relation to Novall Junior quite similar to that of Romont to Charalois, he is yet differentiated from his parallel, while at the same time he is kept free from any taint of the despicableness and fawning servility which are chiefly prominent in the parasites of the vicious and feather-brained young lord. There is something really pathetic about this brave, honorable soldier, committed to the defense of an unworthy benefactor, ranged on the side of wrong against right, by his very best qualities: his noble sense of gratitude, his loyalty, his devotion to what he conceives to be his duty. It will be observed that he never joins with the rest of the group about Novall Junior in their jibes against Charalois and Romont.

The last figure for consideration, and not the least important, is Beaumelle. So general has been the misconception of her character that it calls for a more detailed analysis than has been accorded to the other personages of the drama, or than the place she occupies might appear to warrant. That place, indeed, is not a striking one; she is scarce more than a character of second rank, appearing in but few scenes and speaking not many lines. Yet her part in the story is one of such potentialities that in Rowe’s version of the same theme her analogue becomes the central figure, and even in The Fatal Dowry a failure to understand her has probably been at the bottom of most of the less favorable judgments that have been passed upon the play, while those critics who appraise it higher yet acknowledge her to be its one outstanding defect. “The Fatal Dowry,” says Saintsbury (Hist. Eng. Lit., vol. ii, p.400) “... is ... injured by the unattractive character of the light-of-love Beaumelle before her repentance (Massinger never could draw a woman).” She is declared by Swinburne to be “too thinly and feebly drawn to attract even the conventional and theatrical sympathy which Fletcher might have excited for a frail and penitent heroine: and the almost farcical insignificance and baseness of her paramour would suffice to degrade his not involuntary victim beneath the level of any serious interest or pity.” If these and similar pronouncements were well founded, the play as a cross-section of life would have the great weakness of being unconvincing at a very vital point. A study of the text, however, will discover Beaumelle to be portrayed, in the brief compass of her appearance, in no wise inadequately, but rather, if anything, somewhat beyond the requirements of her dramatic function—will reveal her, not, indeed, a personage of heroic proportions and qualities, but a young woman of considerable naturalness, plausibility, and realistic convincingness.

The trouble has probably been that the critics of Beaumelle have passed hastily over the very scurrilous prose scene in which she first appears. They have looked on this passage as merely a piece of Fieldian low-comedy, a coarse bit of buffoonery which pretends to no function save that of humor, and can sustain not even this pretense. Nothing can be further from the truth. The passage is a piece of coarse comedy such as Field had an over-fondness for writing; but it is something more; in reality, a proper understanding of the heroine is conditioned upon it.

Beaumelle is a young girl whose mother, we may infer, has long been dead. The cares of the bench have been too great to allow her father time for much personal supervision of her; she has had for associates her two maids, and of these she not unnaturally finds the gay and witty, but thoroughly depraved, Bellapert the more congenial, and adopts her as her mentor and confidant. She is in love, after a fashion—caught, like the impressionable, uncritical girl she is, by the fair exterior of a young magnificent, whose elegant dress and courtly show of devotion quite blind her to his real worthlessness—and there is scant likelihood of her getting the man who has charmed her fancy. Her disposition is high-spirited and wayward, but not deliberately vicious; she has certain hazily defined ideals, mingled with the same romantic mist through which the superfine dandy, Novall, appears in her eyes a very Prince Charming: she “would meet love and marriage both at once”; she desires to preserve her honor. She has ideals, but she doubts their tangibility; she is in an unsettled state of mind, questioning the fundamentals of conduct and social relationships, in much need of good counsel. In that perilous mood she talks with Bellapert—Bellapert, the dearest cabinet of her secrets—Bellapert, the bribed instrument of Novall—and is told by that worldly-wise wench that marriage almost never unites with love, but must be used as a cloak for it; that honor is a foolish fancy; that a husband is a master to be outwitted and despised. The shaft sinks home all too surely; a visit at that very moment by Beaumelle’s lover completes the conquest, when her father interrupts their tete-a-tete—her father, who comes with the anouncement that she must marry a man whom she does not even know! In the scene where the destined bride and groom are brought face to face, she stands throughout in stony silence quite as eloquent as the more famous speechlessness of Charalois at the beginning of the play. She has ever been “handmaid” to her father’s will; she realizes all her hopes and fortunes “have reference to his liking;” and now she obeys, with the bitter thought in her heart that Fate, in denying her her will, has wronged Love itself (II, ii, 154); only when Charalois turns to her with a direct question, “Fair Beaumelle, can you love me?” does she utter a word—then from her lips a brief, desperate, “Yes, my lord”—and a moment later (II, ii, 315) she is weeping silently. (Her answer was honest in as far as she really did mean to give to the man chosen for her husband her duty with her hand.) Then the voice of the tempter whispers in her ear, she feels its tug at her heart, and with a cry, “Oh, servant!—Virtue strengthen me!” she hurries from the room. That is the situation at the end of the Second Act and first part of the play; an appreciation of its significance makes the connection with what follows less arbitrary and inorganic.

When Beaumelle next appears, in the Third Act, there has been a change. We may imagine that she has had time to ponder those cynical maxims of Bellapert on the natural course of romance. Her union has been unwilling; she does not care for her husband; Novall appeals to her as much as ever: with her eyes open, she deliberately chooses the path of sin—because the enforced marriage which shattered her hopes must needs appear to her the final demonstration of the correctness of her maid’s contention (towards which she was already inclining) that she has been foolishly impractical to dream of the satisfaction of her heart’s wish through wedlock, but that it is by secret amour that love must be, and is wont to be, enjoyed.

It may not be unreasonable to regard the resourcefulness and effrontery which characterize her throughout the Third Act as the result of a sort of mental intoxication, into which she has been lifted by her reckless resolve and the consciousness of danger; at any rate she now shows herself altogether too much for Romont; she finds a shrewdness and an eloquence that carry her triumphant to the consummation of her desire. When discovery ensues, her paramour is slain, and she herself is haled to die, she is overcome—abruptly and, one might say, strangely—with remorse and penitence. But it is not at all by one of those theatrically convenient but psychologically absurd changes of heart so frequent in the drama of that period; nothing, indeed, could be more true to life. Novall Junior, coward and fop that he was, has hitherto always borne himself in lordly fashion before her, even when they were surprised by Romont; but now at last she beholds him stripped to the shivering abjectness of his contemptible soul, that she may observe his baseness. She sees him cowed and beaten and slain, while Charalois (whom she never knew before their marriage nor has tried to understand in the brief period of their wedlock) with his outraged honor and irresistible prowess assumes to her eyes the proportions of a hero; and with her girl’s romanticism10 of nature, she bows down and worships him. It is somewhat the same note that is struck by Thackeray in the similar situation where Rawdon Crawley, returning home unexpectedly, finds his wife with Lord Steyne and knocks the man down.

It was all done before Rebecca could interpose. She stood there trembling before him. She admired her husband, strong, brave, victorious.

So it was with Beaumelle. Except for one brief cry of “Undone for ever!” she utters no word from the moment of the surprise to the end of the Scene. She hangs back, shrinking, for a moment, when ordered into the coach with the dead body of her partner in guilt. “Come,” says Charalois, in terrible jest, “you have taught me to say, you must and shall.... You are but to keep him company you love—” and she obeys mutely.

Thus, all contriteness, Beaumelle goes to her fate. It should be observed how, even at the last, her tendency to romantic idealization vehemently asserts itself; she looks fondly back (IV, iv, 53) to an imagined time, which never really existed, when she was “good” and “a part of” Charalois, made one with him through the virtuous harmony of their minds!—no voice is more unfaltering than her own to pronounce her doom as both righteous and necessary, and she conceives herself to climb, by her ecstatic welcoming of death, into the company of the ancient heroines and martyrs. In its realism of the commonplace and its slightly ironic conception, it is the outline drawing of a character that might have received elaborate portraiture at the hands of Flaubert.

Whether we are to regard this consistent “study in little” as a deliberate piece of work on the part of the authors, must remain a matter of opinion. There is no similar figure elsewhere in the dramatic output of Massinger, nor any quite so minutely conceived within the same number of speech-lines in that of Field, and one could scarce be blamed for believing that a number of hap-hazard, sketchy strokes with which the collaborators dashed off a character whom they deemed of no great importance, all so fell upon the canvas that, by a miracle of chance, they went to form the lineaments of a real woman. The discussion of the probability or possibility of such a hypothesis would carry us very far afield, and would involve the question of the extent to which all genius is unconscious and intuitive. But however that may be, the result of their labors remains the same, there to behold in black and white, and Beaumelle, so far from being a poorly conceived and unsatisfactory wanton who is the chief defect of the play, is a figure of no mean verisimilitude who succeeds after a fashion in linking together the loose-knit dual structure of the drama; to whose main catastrophe she adds her own tragedy, a tragedy neither impressive nor deeply stirring, it is true, for she is a petty spirit from whom great tragedy does not proceed—but tragedy still—the eternal, inevitable tragedy of false romanticism, that has found its culmination in the person of Emma Bovary.

In this study of Beaumelle, The Fatal Dowry has been subjected to a much more intensive examination than it is the custom to bestow upon the dramas of the successors of Shakespeare. The truth is that the plays of the Jacobean period do not, as a rule, admit of such analysis. In most of them, and especially in the plays of Massinger, he who searches and probes them comes presently to a point beyond which critical inquiry is stopped short with a desperate finality; be they ever so strikingly splendid and glittering fair in their poetry and their characterization, these dazzling qualities lie upon the surface, and a few careful perusals exhaust their possibilities and tell us all there is to know of them. But The Fatal Dowry, though less imposing than a number of others, stands almost alone among its contemporaries in sharing with the great creations of Shakespeare the power to open new vistas, to present new aspects, to offer new suggestions, the longer it is studied. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, as has already been said, it is not so much a tragedy of the accepted type as a cross-section of life.

How does it come about, we may well ask, that this play possesses qualities so rare and so strangely at variance with those which are normal to the work of Massinger—its masterly portrait-gallery of dramatis personae and its inexhaustible field for interpretation. We can suspect an answer only in the complementary nature of the two minds that went to fashion it—in the union in this one production of the talents of Massinger and of Field.

A reference to the analysis of collaboration discloses that, so far as the actual writing of the play goes, the figure of Novall Senior is altogether the work of Massinger. His son, on the other hand, is almost entirely the work of Field; in Massinger’s share he appears only in the first part of III, i, and in the scene of his surprisal and death. Indeed, both the young gallant himself and all his satellites can safely be put down as creations of the actor-dramatist. They have their parallels in his comedy of Woman is a Weathercock, down to the page whose pert asides of satiric comment are anticipated in the earlier work by those of a youngster of identical kidney. The long scene in which we are introduced to Beaumelle and given insight into her character and mental attitude is Field’s throughout; thereafter she has only to act out her already-revealed nature—first as the impudent adulteress and later as the repentant sinner, in both of which roles she affords Massinger excellent opportunities to display his favorite powers of speech-making. Charalois, Romont, and Rochfort are treated at length by both dramatists.

But in a harmonious collaboration, such as The Fatal Dowry plainly was, the contributions of the two authors cannot be identified with the passages from their respective pens. Each must inevitably have planned, suggested, criticised. The question remains whether we can in any measure determine what part of the conception was due to each. Beyond the Novall Junior group we cannot establish distinct lines of cleavage. What we can do is to suggest the features of the finished product which Field and Massinger brought severally to its making—to point out the qualities of the two men which were joined to produce the play they have given us.

The outstanding excellences of Massinger were a thorough grasp of the architectonics of play-making in the building both of separate Act and entire drama; an adherence to an essential unity of design and treatment; a conscientious regard to the details of stage-craft; a vehicle of dignified and at times noble verse, without violent conceits or lapses into triviality, sustained, lucid, regular; and a genuine eloquence in forensic passages. His chief weaknesses were a certain stiffness of execution which made his plays appear always as structures rather than organisms, a ponderous monotony of fancy, and an inability to create or reproduce or understand human nature. His characters are normally types, their qualities—honor, virtue, bravery, etc.—mere properties which they can assume or lay aside at pleasure like garments, their conduct governed more by the exigencies of plot than by any conceivable psychology.

The weaknesses of Field—as revealed in his two independent comedies—were of a nature more evasive, less capable of definition. A tendency to weave too many threads into the action, an occasional hasty and skimping treatment of his scenes which leaves them unconvincing for lack of sufficient elaboration, and a general thinness of design and workmanship are discoverable. Defects such as these could be readily corrected by association with the single-minded, painstaking, thorough Massinger. On the other hand he possessed a lightness of touch, a blithe vigor, and a racy, though often obscene, humor foreign to his colleague. What is more important, he possessed a considerable first-hand knowledge of men and women, and an ability to put them in his plays and endow them with something of life—not to conceive great figures, such as dominate the imagination, but to reproduce with vitality and freshness the sort of people he saw about him—in other words, not to create but to depict; and furthermore Field seems to have had a special gift for sketching them rather clearly in a very brief compass.11 Mr. Saintsbury was right in declaring that Massinger never could draw a woman. But Field could, and the critic was rather unfortunate in applying his broadly correct observation to the one woman of Massinger’s in the delineation of whom he had Field to help him!

With these facts in mind, the distinctive virtues of The Fatal Dowry can be accounted for. Massinger here possessed a colleague who had just those talents of insight and verve and grasp of life that were denied his own plodding, bookishly learned mind. Not only young Novall and his satellites, but Beaumelle certainly, and probably Pontalier (whom Massinger would have been more likely to degrade to the baseness of Novall’s other dependents) may be put down as essentially Field’s creations, while in the case of the others he was ever at Massinger’s elbow to guard him against blunders, if, indeed, their preliminary mapping out of the rather obvious lines along which the action and characters must develop were not of itself a sufficiently sure guide. To Massinger, on the other hand, may safely be ascribed the basic conception of such stately figures as Charalois and Rochfort, however much Field may have been responsible for preserving them as fresh and living portraits.

As to share in plot structure, in the absence of any known source, we may conjecture that the germ from which the play evolved was the conception of that situation by which Charalois, burdened as he is with an immense debt of thankfulness to Rochfort, finds himself suddenly called by the imperative demands of honor to do that which will strike his benefactor to the heart. The grounding of the hero’s debt of gratitude in the story of Miltiades and Cimon was probably the work of Massinger, of whose veneration for things classic we have abundant evidence, while to him also, we may believe, was due the shaping of the story in such fashion that he had opportunity to exploit his greatest gift in no less than two formal trials, one informal trial, and a long Act besides given over almost exclusively to verbose disputes and exhortations. The circumstances of the discovery of the amour of Beaumelle and Novall, while penned by Massinger, are more likely an invention of Field’s, not only as faintly reminiscent of his Amends for Ladies, but as according better with the general spirit of his work.

Several plays of the Massinger corpus are more striking on first acquaintance than The Fatal Dowry, and yet others surpass it in regard to this feature or that. It has not the gigantic protagonist of A New Way to Pay Old Debts, or the admirable structure of that fine play, which works with ever-cumulating intensity to one final, tremendous climax. It has not the impressiveness of The Duke of Milan, or its sheer sweep of tragic passion and breathless intensity, or anything so compelling as its great scene of gathering jealousy that breaks forth at last in murder. Its verse is less poetic than that of The Maid of Honor; it lacks the charm of The Great Duke of Florence, and the ethical fervor of The Roman Actor. But in utter reality, in convincing simulation of life, which holds good under the most exhaustive study and makes that study forever continue to yield new suggestions and new appreciations, and in abundance and inherent truthfulness of detailed characterization, it stands alone, and these sterling qualities must so outweigh its defects as to insure for it a high place, not only among the productions of its authors, but among the plays of the Jacobean Period as a whole.

Stage History—Adaptations—Derivatives

Beyond the statement on the title-page of the 1632 Quarto, that The Fatal Dowry had been “often acted at the Private House in Blackfriars by his Majesties Servants,” nothing is known of its early stage history. It was not revived after the Restoration, and until the publication of the Coxeter edition of Massinger seems to have been almost unknown. At last, in 1825, an emended version was placed upon the boards by no less an actor than the great Macready. January 5 of that year was the date, and Drury Lane the place, of its initial performance, Macready himself taking the part of Romont, Wallack—Charalois, Terry—Rochfort, and Mrs. W. West—Beaumelle. “The play was well acted and enthusiastically applauded,” says Macready in his Reminiscences (p.228); “its repetition for the following Tuesday was hailed most rapturously; but Friday12 came, and with it a crowded house, to find me laboring under such indisposition that it was with difficulty I could keep erect without support.” Macready’s serious illness cut short the run of the play, and when he was at length (April 11) able to take it up again, the interest of the public had abated, and it in consequence was repeated only a few times—seven being the total number of its performances.

The variant of The Fatal Dowry in which Macready acted was the work of Sheil, and involved substantial divergences. Romont’s release from prison follows immediately upon Novall Senior’s consent to his pardon, and in consequence, together with his conversation with Rochfort, is transferred from Act II to the close of Act I, while the redemption of Charalois takes place at the funeral of his father, which concludes Act II. For the scene between Beaumelle and her maids is substituted another coloquy of similar import but chastened tone. A brief scene of no especial significance is inserted at the beginning of Act III, in the interval between which and the preceding Act three weeks are supposed to have elapsed; the rest of Act III follows much the same course as the original, save that the application of Romont to Rochfort and his foiling by the stratagem of Beaumelle and Bellapert are omitted. A really notable departure is found in the discovery of the amour by Charalois. According to Sheil, Novall Junior and his mistress attempt to elope, but the note which appoints their rendezvous falls into Charalois’ hands, and he waits for the lovers and surprises them, killing Novall off-stage. The Fifth Act opens with a scene of a few lines only, in which Beaumont bears to Rochfort a request from Charalois to meet him in the church yard. Then follows a lugubrious scene in the dead of night beside the tomb of the hero’s father, to which place are transferred the reconciliation between Charalois and Romont, and the judgment of Rochfort! Beaumelle, however, does not appear during the trial, and upon the paternal sentence of doom, Charalois reveals her body, slain already by his hand. To the father he vindicates his action in much the same words as in Massinger’s last court-room scene, and then, on the appearance of Novall Senior clamoring for vengeance and accompanied by the minions of the law, stabs himself.

The version of Sheil follows with but occasional exceptions the language of the original wherever possible. It makes some slight changes in the minor characters.

Sheil’s redaction was also presented at Bath on February 18 and 21, Romont being acted by Hamblin, Charalois by Warde, Beaumelle by Miss E. Tree. “Hamblin never appeared to so much advantage—in the scene with Novall he reminded one strongly of John Kemble,” says Genest (Hist. Dra. and Stage in Eng., IX, 322).

At Sadler’s Wells, Samuel Phelps, who at that time was reviving a number of the old dramas, took the stage in The Fatal Dowry on August 27, 1845. This, however, was Sheil’s version, and not the original play of Massinger and Field, as has been sometimes supposed. It ranked as one of his four chief productions of that year. He, too, chose for himself the part of Romont, which was considered by many his greatest quasi-tragic role. Marston appeared as Charalois, G. Bennett as Rochfort, and Miss Cooper as Beaumelle.

The Fatal Dowry in substantially its own proper form does not appear ever to have been acted after Jacobean times.

If the stage career of The Fatal Dowry has been meagre, not so the extent of its influence. Its literary parenthood begins before “the closing of the theatres” and continues even to our own day. As early as 1638 it was echoed in The Lady’s Trial of Ford. Here the figures of Auria, Adurni, Aurelio, and Spinella correspond roughly with Charalois, young Novall, Romont, and Beaumelle respectively. Auria has gone to the wars, and in his absence his wife is pursued by Adurni, who sits at table with her in private, when Aurelio breaks in upon them, bursting open the doors. Spinella bitterly resents the intrusion and the aspersions of the intruder, and when, on the return home of Auria, Aurelio accuses her to him, it is without shaking his faith in her loyalty. Here the analogy ends: spite of Auria’s incredulousness there is no rupture between the friends; Spinella establishes her innocence; and Adurni, while guilty enough in his intent against her, shows himself thereafter to be an essentially noble youth, who will defend to any length the lady’s honor which has become subject to question through fault of his, and for this gallant reparation, is not only forgiven, but even cherished ever after by the husband he had sought to wrong.

The more steadily one regards the man John Ford and his work, the more probable does it appear that the relationship between The Fatal Dowry and The Lady’s Trial is not one of mere reminiscence or influence, but of direct parentage. That strange and baleful figure, who seems almost a modern Decadent born out of his time, had a profound interest in moral problems, to the study of which he brought morbid ethical sensibilities scarce matched before the latter nineteenth century. (Witness his conception, in The Broken Heart, of a loveless marriage as tantamount to adultery.) Ford’s talent for invention was deficient to the extent that he was hard put to it for plots. It is not at all unlikely that he surveyed the Massingerian tragedy, and, repelled by the conduct of its figures, exclaimed to himself: “I will write a play to centre around a situation as incriminating as that of Act III of The Fatal Dowry; but my personages will be worthier characters; I will show a lady who, spite of appearances, is of stainless innocence and vindicates her husband’s trust in the face of evidence; I will show a friendship strong enough to endure an honestly mistaken aspersion put upon the chastity of a wife, though the charge is not for one moment credited; I will show that even the would-be seducer may be a fine fellow at bottom, and set forth a generous emulation in magnanimity between him and the husband. See how finely everything would work out with the right sort of people!” It is at least a plausible hypothesis.

Nicholas Rowe, who was the first modern editor of Shakespeare, contemplated also an edition of Massinger, but gave up the project that he might more safely plunder one of his plays. Rowe’s famous tragedy, The Fair Penitent, was deliberately stolen from The Fatal Dowry. It appeared in 1703, and spite of a ludicrous accident13 which cut short its first run, took rank as one of the most celebrated dramas of the English stage. Rowe lived during the vogue of the “She-tragedy,” while the canons of literary criticism of his day demanded a “regular,” pseudo-classical form and a sententious tone. Accordingly, in his hands the chief figure in the play, as is evidenced by the change in title, becomes the guilty wife, here called Calista, who is “now the evil queen of the heroic plays; now the lachrymose moralizer;” the theme is indeed her story, not Altamont’s (Charalois)—her seduction (prior to the nuptuals and before the opening of the play), her grief, her plight, her exposure, her death;—she holds the centre of the stage to the very end. The number of the dramatis personae is cut down to eight; all touches of comedy are excised; and the double plot of the original is unified by the bold stroke of throwing back to a time before the opening of the play the entire episode of the unburied corpse and the origin of the hero’s friendship with the father of the heroine.

Discussions of the relative merits of The Fair Penitent and its source have been almost invariably acrimonious. Nor is this to be wondered at, for after reading the old tragedy with its severe dignity and noble restraint, one can scarce peruse without irritation the cloyingly melifluous, emasculated verse of Rowe—by turns grandiloquent and sentimental. The characterization of The Fair Penitent is, in the main, insipid, and while Rowe’s heroine holds a commanding place in her drama to which Beaumelle does not pretend, the latter is a great deal more natural, and indeed, for that matter, far more truly a “penitent.” An exception to the general insipidity is Lothario, who is the analogue of the insignificant Novall Junior—“the gay Lothario”—whose very name has been ever since a synonym for the graceful, graceless, devil-may-care libertine—whose figure has been the prototype of a long line of similar characters in English literature, beginning with Richardson’s Lovelace and not yet closed with Anthony Hope’s Rupert of Hentzau. Beside this striking creation, the seducer of Beaumelle shows poorly indeed; but it is doubtful if the old dramatists would have consented to paint such an attractive rogue, had they been able; they wanted their Novall to be just the cowardly, dandyfied thing they made him. Beyond the portrait of Lothario, small ground for praise can be found in The Fair Penitent. That part of the action of The Fatal Dowry which under Rowe’s treatment antedates the rise of the curtain is narrated in the most stiffly mechanical sort of exposition; the action is developed by such threadbare theatrical devices as a lost letter and an overheard conversation; the voluble speeches of the several characters are, throughout, declamatory effusions almost unbelievably divorced from the apposite utterance of any rational human being under the circumstances. An Altamont who has been assured and reassured from his bride’s own lips of her aversion for him can fling himself from a quarrel with his life-long friend in hysterical defence of her, to seek solace in her arms—