The vigorous melody of these “masculine numbers” is not more remarkable for its virile force and honied fluency than is the lighter dialogue of the play for such brilliant wit or lambent humor as flashes out in pleasantries like this: 

   King.  What are you, and whence come you?

   Rufman.  From Helvetia.

   Spendola.  What hell says he?

   Jovinelli.  Peace; you shall know hot hell [sic] time enough.

“I hope here be proofs” that my strictures on the worst work of a poet whose best work I treasure so heartily, and whose best qualities I rate so highly, are rather too sparing than too severe.]

This supernatural and “superlunatical” attempt at serious farce or farcical morality marks the nadir of Dekker’s ability as a dramatist.  The diabolic part of the tragicomic business is distinctly inferior to the parallel or similar scenes in the much older play of “Grim the Collier of Croydon,” which is perhaps more likely to have been the writer’s immediate model than the original story by Machiavelli.  The two remaining plays now extant which bear the single name of Dekker give no sign of his highest powers, but are tolerable examples of journeyman’s work in the field of romantic or fanciful comedy.  “Match Me in London” is the better play of the two, very fairly constructed after its simple fashion, and reasonably well written in a smooth and unambitious style:  “The Wonder of a Kingdom” is a light, slight, rough piece of work, in its contrasts of character as crude and boyish as any of the old moralities, and in its action as mere a dance of puppets:  but it shows at least that Dekker had regained the faculty of writing decent verse on occasion.  The fine passage quoted by Scott in The Antiquary and taken by his editors to be a forgery of his own, will be familiar to many myriads of readers who are never likely to look it up in the original context.  Of two masks called “Britannia’s Honor” and “London’s Tempe” it must suffice to say that the former contains a notable specimen of cockney or canine French which may serve to relieve the conscientious reader’s weariness, and the latter a comic song of blacksmiths at work which may pass muster at a pinch as a tolerably quaint and lively piece of rough and ready fancy.  But Jonson for the court and Middleton for the city were far better craftsmen in this line than ever was Dekker at his best.

Two plays remain for notice in which the part taken by Dekker would be, I venture to think, unmistakable, even if no external evidence were extant of his partnership in either.  As it is, we know that in the winter which saw the close of the sixteenth century he was engaged with the author of “The Parliament of Bees” and the author of “Englishmen for My Money” in the production of a play called “The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy.”  More than half a century afterward a tragedy in which a Spanish Moor is the principal and indeed the only