Cannot a poor old woman have your leave Is every devil mine ? Would I had one now whom I might command Have I scarce breath enough to say my prayers, The part, from beginning to ending, is terribly sustained. Not one single ray of human sympathy or kindness falls upon the abject creature. She is alone in her misery and sin, abandoned to the black delirium of God-forsaken anguish. To paint a witch as she is here painted-midway between an oppressed old woman and a redoubtable agent of hell-and to incorporate this double personality in the character of a common village harridan, required firm belief in sorcery, that curse-begotten curse of social life, which flung back on human nature its own malice in the form of diabolical malignity. The attention I have paid to these five domestic tragedies may seem to be out of due proportion to the scheme of my work. I think, however, that I am justified by their exceptional importance. Works of finer fibre and more imaginative quality illustrate in a less striking degree the command of dramatic effect which marked our theatre in its earliest as in its latest development. CHAPTER XII TRAGEDY OF BLOOD I. The Tough Fibres of a London Audience-Craving for Strong Sensation-Specific Note of English Melodrama-Its Lyrical and Pathetic Relief. II. Thomas Kyd- Hieronymo ' and 'The Spanish Tragedy' -Analysis of the Story-Stock Ingredients of a Tragedy of Blood The Ghost-The Villain-The Romantic Lovers-Suicide, Murder, Insanity.-III. 'Soliman and Perseda '-The Induction to this Play -The Tragedy of Hoffmann.'-IV. Marlowe's use of this Form-6 The Jew of Malta'-'Titus Andronicus '-' Lust's Dominion -Points of Resemblance between 'Hamlet' and 'The Spanish Tragedy '-Use made by Marston, Webster, and Tourneur of the Species.-V. The Additions to 'The Spanish Tragedy '-Did Jonson make them ?-Quotation from the Scene of Hieronymo in the Garden. N.B. All the Tragedies discussed in this chapter will be found in Hazlitt's Dodsley. I THE sympathies of the London audience on which our playwrights worked might be compared to the chords of a warrior's harp, strung with twisted iron and bulls' sinews, vibrating mightily, but needing a stout stroke to make them thrill. This serves to explain that conception of Tragedy which no poet of the epoch expressed more passionately than Marston in his prologue to 'Antonio's Revenge,' and which early took possession of the stage. The reserve of the Greek Drama, the postponement of physical to spiritual anguish, the tuning of moral discord to dignified and solemn moods of sustained suffering, was unknown in England. Playwrights used every conceivable means to stir the passion and excite the feeling of their audience. They glutted them with horrors; cudgelled their horny fibres into sensitiveness Hence arose a special kind of play, which may be styled the Tragedy of Blood, existing, as it seems to do, solely in and for bloodshed. The action of these tragedies was a prolonged tempest. Blows fell like hail-stones; swords flashed like lightning; threats roared like thunder; poison was poured out like rain. As a relief to such crude elements of terror, the poet strove to play on finer sympathies by means of pathetic interludes and lyrical interbreathings'-by the exhibition of a mother's agony or a child's trust in his murderer, by dialogues in which friend pleads with friend for priority in death or danger, by images leading the mind away from actual horrors to ideal sources of despair, by the soliloquies of a crazed spirit, by dirges and songs of 'old, unhappy, far-off things,' by crescendos of accumulated passion, by the solemn beauty of religious resignation. This variety of effect characterises the Tragedies of Blood. These lyrical and imaginative elements idealise their sanguinary melodrama. II Thomas Kyd-if' Hieronymo' and' The Spanish Tragedy' are correctly ascribed to him-may be called the founder of this species. About his life we know absolutely nothing, although it may be plausibly conjectured that he received a fair academical education. He makes free use of classical mythology in the style of Greene, and interrupts his English declamation with Latin verses. For many years Kyd occupied a prominent place among the London dramatists. His two epoch-making plays were ridiculed by Shakspere and Jonson, proving their popularity with the common folk long after the date (earlier than 1588) of their original production. Jonson in his lines on Shakspere gave to Kyd the epithet of sporting,' apparently with the view of scoring a bad pun, rather than with any reference to the playwright's specific style. 'Hieronymo' and 'The Spanish Tragedy' are practically I have adhered throughout to the spelling Hieronymo, though the first part of the play in the 4to of 1605 is called Ieronimo. "THE SPANISH TRAGEDY' 389 speaking one play in two parts. Andrea, a nobleman of Spain, is sent to claim tribute from the King of Portugal. During this embassy a Portuguese, Balthazar, defies him to single combat. When the duel takes place, Andrea falls; but he is avenged by his friend Horatio, son of Hieronymo, Marshal of Spain. During life Andrea had enjoyed the love of a lady, Bellimperia, whose brother, Lorenzo, is a Court villain of the darkest dye. After Andrea's death, Horatio makes Balthazar his captive, and brings him back to Spain, where he, Horatio, pledges his troth to Bellimperia, and is beloved by her instead of the slain Andrea. Lorenzo, however, chooses that she shall be married to Balthazar. He there fore murders Horatio, and hangs him to a tree in his father's garden. Old Hieronymo discovers the corpse, is half crazed by grief, and devotes the rest of his life to vengeance on the assassins. With this object in view, he presents a play at Court, in which he and Bellimperia, Lorenzo and Balthazar, act several parts. The kings of Spain and Portugal assist at the performance. At the close of the tragic piece, Hieronymo and Bellimperia stab the two traitors in good earnest, and afterwards put an end to their own lives upon the stage. 6 This outline of The Spanish Tragedy' will give a fair notion of the stock ingredients of a Tragedy of Blood. There is a ghost in it-the ghost of Andrea-crying out, ' Revenge! Vindicta!' as it stalks about the stage. There is a noble and courageous lover, young Horatio, traitorously murdered. There is a generous open-hearted gentleman, old Hieronymo, forced to work out his plot of vengeance by craft, and crazy with intolerable wrongs. There is a consummate villain, Lorenzo, who uses paid assassins, broken courtiers, needy men-at-arms, as instruments in schemes of secret malice. There is a beautiful and injured lady, Bellimperia, whose part is one romantic tissue of love, passion, pathos, and unmerited suffering. There is a play within the play, used to facilitate the bloody climax. There are scenes of extravagant insanity, relieved by scenes of euphuistic love-making in sequestered gardens; scenes of martial conflict, followed by pompous shows at Court; kings, generals, clowns, cutthroats, chamberlains, jostling together in a masquerade medley, a carnival of swiftly moving puppets. There are, at least, five murders, two suicides, two judicial executions, and one death in duel. The principal personage, Hieronymo, bites out his tongue and flings it on the stage; stabs his enemy with a stiletto, and pierces his own heart. Few of the characters survive to bury the dead, and these few are of secondary importance in the action. III A contemporary and anonymous tragedy, 'Soliman and Perseda,' illustrates the same melodramatic qualities of unfortunate love and wholesale bloodshed. It hardly deserves notice, except as showing how the Tragedy of Blood took form. I may also mention that it was selected by Kyd for the play within the play presented by his hero Hieronymo. The Induction to this piece is curious. Love, Death, and Fortune dispute among themselves which takes the leading part in tragedies of human life. They agree to watch the action of the drama; and at the end, Death sums his triumphs up, proving himself indisputably victor: Alack! Love and Fortune play in Comedies! Love retires, beaten, but unsubdued: I go, yet Love shall never yield to Death! One more of the earlier melodramas, written to glut the audience with bloodshed, deserves mention. This was the work of Henry Chettle, produced before the year 1598, and styled The Tragedy of Hoffmann; or, a Revenge for a Father.' The scene is laid on the shores of the Baltic. The hero is son to Admiral Hoffmann, who had been executed unjustly for piracy, by having a crown of red-hot iron forced upon his head. The son hangs up his father's corpse as a memento of revenge, and by various devices murders in succession six or |