hope to find in the most famous of Shakespeare’s
successors. But if not his work, we may be sure
it was his model; a model which he often approached,
which he often studied, but which he never attained.
It is never for absolute truth and fitness of expression,
it is always for eloquence and sweetness, for fluency
and fancy, that we find the tragic scenes of Fletcher
most praiseworthy; and the motive or mainspring of
interest is usually anything but natural or simple.
Now the motive here is as simple, the emotion as
natural as possible; the author is content to dispense
with all the violent or far-fetched or fantastic excitement
from which Fletcher could hardly ever bring himself
completely to abstain. I am not speaking here
of those tragedies in which the hand of Beaumont is
traceable; to these, I need hardly say, the charge
is comparatively inapplicable which may fairly be
brought against the unassisted works of his elder
colleague; but in any of the typical tragedies of Fletcher,
in
Thierry and Theodoret, in
Valentinian,
in
The Double Marriage, the scenes which for
power and beauty of style may reasonably be compared
with this of the execution of Buckingham will be found
more forced in situation, more fanciful in language
than this. Many will be found more beautiful,
many more exciting; the famous interview of Thierry
with the veiled Ordella, and the scene answering to
this in the fifth act where Brunhalt is confronted
with her dying son, will be at once remembered by
all dramatic students; and the parts of Lucina and
Juliana may each be described as a continuous arrangement
of passionate and pathetic effects. But in which
of these parts and in which of these plays shall we
find a scene so simple, an effect so modest, a situation
so unforced as here? where may we look for the same
temperance of tone, the same control of excitement,
the same steadiness of purpose? If indeed Fletcher
could have written this scene, or the farewell of
Wolsey to his greatness, or his parting scene with
Cromwell, he was perhaps not a greater poet, but he
certainly was a tragic writer capable of loftier self-control
and severer self-command, than he has ever shown himself
elsewhere.
And yet, if this were all, we might be content to
believe that the dignity of the subject and the high
example of his present associate had for once lifted
the natural genius of Fletcher above itself.
But the fine and subtle criticism of Mr. Spedding
has in the main, I think, successfully and clearly
indicated the lines of demarcation undeniably discernible
in this play between the severer style of certain scenes
or speeches and the laxer and more fluid style of
others; between the graver, solider, more condensed
parts of the apparently composite work, and those
which are clearer, thinner, more diffused and diluted
in expression. If under the latter head we had
to class such passages only as the dying speech of
Buckingham and the christening speech of Cranmer,