The piece now reprinted will need some indulgence at the reader’s hands.  Its blemishes are not a few; and no great exercise of critical ability is required to discover that the language is often strained and the drawing extravagant.  The atmosphere in which the action of the piece moves is hot and heavy.  Sebastian’s presence in the third act brings with it a ray of sunlight; but he is quickly gone, and the gloom settles down more hopelessly than before.  Onaelia, the forsaken lady, is so vixenish that she moves our sympathies only in a moderate degree.  In both choices the King seems to have been equally unfortunate; and it may be doubted whether he could be ’happy with either were t’other fair charmer away.’  Baltazar, the Noble Soldier, is something of a bore.  At first we are a little suspicious of him, for he seems to ’protest too much’; and even when these suspicions are set at rest his strut and swagger continue to be offensive.

But though the Noble Souldier is not a play over which one would linger long or to which one would care often to return, yet it is impossible not to be struck by the power that marks so much of the writing.  Here is an example of our author at his best:—­

    ’You should, my Lord, be like these robes you weare,
    Pure as the Dye and like that reverend shape;
    Nurse thoughts as full of honour, zeale and purity. 
    You should be the Court-Diall and direct
    The king with constant motion; be ever beating
    (Like to Clocke-Hammers) on his Iron heart
    To make it sound cleere and to feel remorse: 
    You should unlocke his soule, wake his dead conscience
    Which, like a drowsie Centinell, gives leave
    For sinnes vast army to beleaguer him: 
    His ruines will be ask’d for at your hands.’—­(i. 2.)

There is the true dramatic ring in those lines; the words come straight from the heart and strike home.  The swift sudden menace in the last line is more effective than pages of rhetoric.

The Noble Souldier affords a good illustration of the sanctity attached by our ancestors to marriage-contracts.  On this subject the reader will find some interesting remarks in Mr. Spalding’s Elizabethan Demonology (pp. 3-7).

THE NOBLE SOVLDIER,

        OR,

A CONTRACT BROKEN, JUSTLY REVENG’D.

A TRAGEDY.

Written by_ S.R.

Non est, Lex Iustior Ulla,
Quam Nescis Artifices, Arte perire Sua.

                 LONDON_: 
Printed for Nicholas Vavasour, and are to be
   sold at his shop in the Temple, neere the
                Church. 1634.

The Printer to the Reader.