the pretence of gratifying his amorous desires, and there he is surprised by a body of armed men placed in ambush. He in turn dies by the iron crown.

The quantity of blood shed in the tragedy seems long to have rendered it popular; and on the title-page it is stated that it had been divers times acted with great applause at the Phoenix in Drury Lane.' If the design of Chettle were to excite terror and pity, he has defeated his own end by his extravagance. As to the language of the piece, it has been handed down to us in a state of deplorable mutilation, and the printer has murdered the author with as little remorse as the author murdered his characters. It is impossible to say how much of the piece, in 1631, was composed of the interpolations of subsequent writers or performers, and the glimpses here and there of something good are often disfigured by rant and absurdity*. Unques

*To quote literally the first eight lines of the tragedy will enable the reader to judge of the injustice that has probably been done to Chettle by the printer. Hoffman speaks, looking at the skeleton of his father, which is disclosed by his striking open a curtain

'Hence, clouds of melancholy!

'Ile be no longer subject to your sismes.

'But thou, deare soule, whose nerves and artires

'In dead resoundings summon up revenge

' And thou shalt hate, be but appeas'd, sweet hearse,

'The dead remembrance of my living father,
'And with a hart as air, swift as thought,

'I'le excuse justly in such a cause.'

Here it is very obvious that a line or more has been lost after the word 'revenge,' which it is impossible to supply: the rest may be thus restored

'Hence, clouds of melancholy!

'I'll

tionably the best scene in the tragedy, as it stands, is that in which Hoffman, aided by his accomplice Lorrique, is about to murder the Duchess Martha, with whom, absurdly enough, he afterwards falls in love: she is asleep on the stage

'Hoffman. She stirs not: she is fast.

Sleep, sweet fair Duchess, for thou sleep'st thy last.
Endymion's love, muffle in clouds thy face,

'And all ye yellow tapers of the heavens,

Veil your clear brightness in Cimmerian mists: 'Let not one light my black deed beautify, 'For with one stroke virtue and honour die.

'And yet we must not kill her in this kind;
'Weapons draw blood, blood shed will plainly prove
'The worthy Duchess, worthless of her death,
'Was murder'd; and the guard are witnesses

'None enter'd but ourselves.

Lorrique. Then strangle her: here is a towel, sir... Nay, good my lord, dispatch.

6

Hoff. What, ruthless hind!

'Shall I wrong nature, that did ne'er compose

• One of her sex so perfect? Prithee, stay.

'Suppose we kill her thus: about her neck

Circles of purple blood will change the hue

Of this white porphyry, and the red lines,

'I'll be no longer subject to your films.
'But thou, dear soul, whose nerves and arteries,

'In dread resoundings summon up revenge

' And thou shalt ha' it. Be but appeas'd, sweet hearse,

'The dead remembrance of my living father,

And with a heart as air, as swift as thought,

'I'll justly execute in such a cause.'

We may also conclude that the manuscript used by the printer was very illegible, for in several places he has, with unwonted scrupulousness, left blanks for words he was not able to decypher.

'Mix'd with a deadly black, will tell the world 'She died by violence: then 'twill be enquir'd,

And we held ever hateful for the act.

'Lor. Then place beneath her nostrils this small box, Containing such a powder that hath power,

'Being set on fire, to suffocate each sense

'Without the sight of wound, or shew of wrong.

'Hoff. That's excellent. Fetch fire-or do not-stay.
The candle shall suffice, yet that burns dim,
And drops his waxen tears, as if it mourn'd
To be an agent in a deed so dark.'

The following extract, where Lodowick, disguised as a Greek, conducts Lucibel to the dwelling of Roderick the hermit, shows that the author was not devoid of sensibility to natural beauty—

'Lod. Are you not faint, divinest Lucibel?

'Luci. No: the clear moon strews silver in our path,

And with her moist eyes weeps a gentle dew

Upon the spotted pavement of the earth,
'Which softens every flower whereon I tread.
'Besides,all travel in your company

'Seems but a walk made in some goodly bower
'Where Love's fair mother clips * her paramour.

Lod. This is the chapel, and behold a bank 'Cover'd with sleeping flowers, that miss the sun. 'Shall we repose us till Mathias come?

'Luci. The hermit will soon bring him: let's sit down. Nature or art hath taught these boughs to spread 'In manner of an arbour o'er the bank.

'Lod. No; they bow down as veils to shadow you;

I have here ventured to substitute clips, or embraces, for strips, which, I take it, was the misreading of the printer. In the last line but one I have put As instead of And, which no doubt is what the poet wrote.

And the fresh flowers, beguiled by the light

" Of

your celestial
eyes, open their leaves
'As when they entertain the lord of day:

'You bring them comfort, like the sun in May.'

I am inclined, for various reasons, to assign to Chettle the principal part of the authorship of The Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissell, in which, however, there is no doubt, from Henslowe's MS., that Dekker and Haughton had some share. I apprehend that in this case, as in many others, joint authorship has been attributed to different poets who were not concerned in the production of a play at the same time. Thus, in the present instance, the first drama upon the well known story of Griselda may have been written by Chettle; and Dekker and Haughton, at a subsequent period, may have made additions to it, for the sake of giving it variety and novelty, and rendering it more popular when it was revived. It was printed anonymously in 1603, and on the titlepage of one copy, sold not long since, was written, in a contemporary hand,By H. Chetill,' as if he alone were the writer of it.

Chettle and his coadjutors (if the term can be properly applied to them) managed their materials with no inconsiderable skill. The chief plot, of course, relates to the Marquis of Saluzzo and Griselda, but two underplots are interwoven with so much ingenuity, that while they serve to diversify the entertainment they aid the effect of the main story. There is one material difference between the characters of the

Marquis, as drawn by them, and as drawn by Petrarch, Boccacio, and Chaucer, viz., that in the play he is not induced to put Griselda to the test merely from a wanton curiosity on his part to learn the extent of her endurance and fidelity, but also by the complaints and remonstrances of his nobility against his choice and against the basely descended progeny to whom, after the death of the Marquis, they would be subjected. This mixed motive at least gives a greater degree of plausibility to his conduct. The most prominent of the underplots is that of a Welsh Knight and a Welsh Widow, whom he marries, and who is the counterpart of Griselda, being most perverse, arbitrary, and contradictory.

The principal characters are distinctly drawn and well contrasted, and the names of such as belong to the main story are nearly similar to those in Boccacio. Laureo, a poor scholar, brother to Grisell, is not wanted; but Babulo, the clown, is an amusing personage, though he in no way contributes to the advancement of the catastrophe.

I shall subjoin a few short extracts*. The play opens thus spiritedly, the Marquis and his followers entering as hunters, to the sound of horns

'Marq. Look you so strange, my hearts, to see our limbs

*For the use of a copy of this very rare play, which is not in the Garrick Collection in the British Museum, I am indebted to the Duke of Devonshire.