The incessant inconstancy of passion which hurries the
fantastic heroine through such a miscellaneous multitude of improvised
intrigues is rather a comic than a tragic motive for the conduct of a
play; and the farcical rapidity with which the puppets revolve makes it
impossible for the most susceptible credulity to take any real interest
or feel any real belief in the perpetual rotation of their feverish
moods and motives, their irrational doings and sufferings. The humor of
the underplot constantly verges on horse-play, and is certainly neither
delicate nor profound; but there is matter enough for mirth in it to
make the reader duly grateful for the patient care and admirable insight
which Mr. Bullen has brought to bear upon the really formidable if
apparently trivial task of reducing the chaotic corruption and confusion
of the text to reasonable form and comprehensible order. William
Barkstead, a narrative poet of real merit, and an early minister at the
shrine of Shakespeare, has been credited with the authorship of this
play: I am inclined to agree with the suggestion of its latest
editor--its first editor in any serious sense of the word--that both he
and Marston may have had a hand in it.
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