6 Of these my secret and suspicious ills? Why bend'st thou thus thy mind to martyr me? Or, why art thou so slack in thy revenge? 'Well, force perforce, I must constrain myself To patience, and apply me to the time, "Till heaven, as I have hop'd, shall set me free.' Kyd's Cornelia merely requires notice as a very successful translation for the time at which it appeared: it was printed in 1594, but it was not intended for the stage; and it was so much liked, that in the following year it arrived at a second impression. I will insert a short specimen from the chorus to Act iv., in order to show the facility with which Kyd wrote in lyrical measure. He only lives most happily 'That, free and far from majesty, * She had secretly sent a letter to Hieronimo, informing him who were the murderers of Horatio. ON THOMAS LODGE AND HIS WORKS. As a poet, Lodge is to be placed in a rank superior to Greene, and in some respects inferior to Kyd. Greene's love of natural beauty was overlaid by a mass of affectation and conceit, which rarely allowed it to appear, and to a certain degree he was imitated by Lodge, with whom he was intimate, and with whom he wrote one dramatic performance. The love of natural beauty in Lodge, however, breaks through the fanciful allusions and artificial ornaments with which he endeavoured to adapt himself to the taste of the time. It is not my business to investigate the character of Lodge's poetry beyond its connection with the stage, but a collection of his pastoral and lyrical pieces, published in 1819, contains many specimens of beautiful versification, elegant thoughts, and natural imagery. It is well known that Shakespeare took the story of his As you like it from a novel by Lodge, first published in 1590 under the title of Rosalynde, and subsequently often reprinted. Of this production it may be said (and no higher praise can well be given to it), that our admiration of many portions of it will not be diminished by a comparison with the work of our great dramatist *. * It is supposed that Lodge was born about 1556, and that after Lodge is second to Kyd in vigour and boldness of conception, but as a drawer of character (so essential a part of dramatic poetry) he unquestionably has the advantage, a point that is fully exemplified by his historical play, called The Wounds of Civil War, lively set forth in the true tragedies of Marius and Sylla. We can hardly call it a work of genius, but unquestionably it required no common talent to produce it. The only edition of it was published in 1594, but it had then been some years upon the stage: Lodge commenced author about 1580, when he wrote a defence of theatrical performances, and had perhaps, at that early date, produced, or been concerned in some plays; but The Wounds of Civil War was not written until after 1586, as the greater part of it is in blank having been a player, in 1584 he became a student of Lincoln's Inn, and subsequently (at what date is uncertain) a Doctor of Medicine: probably when he went on a voyage with Cavendish in 1592, it was in the capacity of surgeon to the expedition. In 1596, he published his Fig for Momus, consisting of Satires, Eclogues, and Epistles, all of which have various degrees of merit, and in some pieces it is of a high order, especially his Satires. Heywood, in his Troja Britannica, 1609, mentions Lodge as one of the famous physicians of the day; and he was living in 1616, as is proved by the following extract from the Register of the Privy Council of that year. 'Jany. 10, 1616. A passe for Tho. Lodge, Doctor of Physic, and Henry Savell, gent., to travell into the Arch-duke's Country, to recover such debts as are 'due unto them there, taking with them two servants, and to returne " agayne within five moneths.' It seems likely, therefore, that Lodge acquired considerable property by his practice. verse. One circumstance, which may lead to the opinion that The Wounds of Civil War was not performed long after the appearance of Marlow's Tamburlaine the Great, is that it contains a scene imitated from, and intended to rival one in that most applauded production. It is in Act iii., where Sylla returns victor over Mithridates, and, seated in a triumphant car, is drawn upon the stage by Moors and captive Princes. The characters of old Marius and of his younger rival are drawn in The Wounds of Civil War with great force, spirit, and distinctness, a task the more difficult, because they so strongly resembled each other in the great leading features of ambition and cruelty. Marius possesses, however, far more generosity and sterner courage than Sylla, who is impetuously tyrannical and wantonly severe; and the old Roman until his death, after his seventh consulship, absorbs the interest of the reader. Young Marius is also introduced, and is distinguished by his fortitude, his constancy, and his affection for his father. Antony is another prominent personage, and is represented gifted with irresistible eloquence, of which many not unfavourable specimens are inserted. There are two females, Cornelia and Fulvia, the wife and daughter of Sylla, the one remarkable for her matronly firmness, and the other for her youthful delicacy and tenderness, which however do not prevent her conducting herself with the resolution becoming a Roman maid. A Clown and various coarsely comic characters are employed in two scenes, in order to enliven and vary the performance. The plot of the piece (which may be seen reprinted in Vol. viii. of the last edition of Dodsley's Old Plays) is founded chiefly upon the lives of Marius and Sylla, in Plutarch, and the scene is changed, just as the necessities of the poet required, from Rome to Pontus, Minturnum and Numidia *. The blank-verse of Lodge runs with even more monotony than is found in the dramatic pieces of his contemporaries Peele and Greene: he now and then inserts an additional syllable, for convenience rather than by design; but he seems studiously to avoid the use of trochees at the ends of his lines, as if he considered them a defect, and that the verse ought to close with an emphatic and accented syllable. Of this opinion there are several striking proofs in the play: in one scene, Sylla says to his flying army, Are you the wonder'd legions of the world, 'And will you fly these shadows of resist ?' If Lodge had not thought that a trochee at the end of a line ought to be avoided, he would, of course, have written resistance' instead of resist,' which is an awkward conversion of a verb into a substantive. Another instance of the use of the same word, for the Dramatic proprieties are little observed: Plutarch represents that the assassin employed to kill Marius on this occasion was a Gaul, and accordingly Lodge makes him a Frenchman, speaking broken English and scraps of his own language. This person swears Par le sang de Dieu, Jesu, &c.; and Marius himself, By our Lady.' Towards the close, a clown talks in Rome of the Paul's steeple of honour as the highest point that can be attained. |