considerable agent was published, and attributed—­of all poets in the world—­to Christopher Marlowe, by a knavish and ignorant bookseller of the period.  That “Lust’s Dominion; or, the Lascivious Queen,” was partly founded on a pamphlet published after Marlowe’s death was not a consideration sufficient to offer any impediment to this imposture.  That the hand which in the year of this play’s appearance on the stage gave “Old Fortunatus” to the world of readers was the hand to which we owe the finer scenes or passages of “Lust’s Dominion,” the whole of the opening scene bears such apparent witness as requires no evidence to support and would require very conclusive evidence to confute it.  The sweet spontaneous luxury of the lines in which the queen strives to seduce her paramour out of sullenness has the very ring of Dekker’s melody:  the rough and reckless rattle of the abrupt rhymes intended to express a sudden vehemence of change and energy; the constant repetition or reiteration of interjections and ejaculations which are evidently supposed to give an air of passionate realism and tragic nature to the jingling and jerky dialogue; many little mannerisms too trivial to specify and too obvious to mistake; the occasional spirit and beauty, the frequent crudity and harshness, of the impetuous and uncertain style; the faults no less than the merits, the merits as plainly as the faults, attest the presence of his fitful and wilful genius with all the defects of its qualities and all the weakness of its strength.  The chaotic extravagance of collapse which serves by way of catastrophe to bring the action headlong to a close is not more puerile in the violence of its debility than the conclusions of other plays by Dekker; conclusions which might plausibly appear, to a malcontent or rather to a lenient reader, the improvisations of inebriety.  There is but one character which stands out in anything of life-like relief; for the queen and her paramour are but the usual diabolic puppets of the contemporary tragic stage:  but there is something of life-blood in the part of the honest and hot-headed young prince.  This too is very like Dekker, whose idle and impatient energy could seldom if ever sustain a diffused or divided interest, but except when working hopelessly and heartlessly against time was likely to fix on some special point, and give life at least to some single figure.

There is nothing incongruous in his appearance as a playwright in partnership with Middleton or with Chettle, with Haughton or with Day; but a stranger association than that of Massinger’s name with Dekker’s it would not be easy to conceive.  Could either poet have lent the other something of his own best quality, could Massinger have caught from Dekker the freshness and spontaneity of his poetic inspiration, and Dekker have learned of Massinger the conscientious excellence and studious self-respect of his dramatic workmanship, the result must have been one of the noblest and completest masterpieces