In none of these higher and finer parts of the poem can I trace
the touch of any other hand than the principal author's: but the
shopkeeping scenes of the underplot have at least as much of Middleton's
usual quality as of Dekker's; homely and rough-cast as they are, there
is a certain finish or thoroughness about them which is more like the
careful realism of the former than the slovenly naturalism of the
latter. The coarse commonplaces of the sermon on prostitution by which
Bellafront is so readily and surprisingly reclaimed into respectability
give sufficient and superfluous proof that Dekker had nothing of the
severe and fiery inspiration which makes a great satirist or a great
preacher; but when we pass again into a sweeter air than that of the
boudoir or the pulpit, it is the unmistakable note of Dekker's most
fervent and tender mood of melody which enchants us in such verses as
these, spoken by a lover musing on the portrait of a mistress whose
coffin has been borne before him to the semblance of a grave:
Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks,
Of all the graces dancing in her eyes,
Of all the music set upon her tongue,
Of all that was past woman's excellence
In her white bosom, look, a painted board
Circumscribes all!
Is there any other literature, we are tempted to ask ourselves, in which
the writer of these lines, and of many as sweet and perfect in their
inspired simplicity as these, would be rated no higher among his
countrymen than Thomas Dekker?
From the indisputable fact of Middleton's partnership in this play Mr.
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