Dekker would have taken a high place among the finest if not
among the greatest of English poets if he had but had the sense of
form--the instinct of composition. Whether it was modesty, indolence,
indifference, or incompetence, some drawback or shortcoming there was
which so far impaired the quality of his strong and delicate genius that
it is impossible for his most ardent and cordial admirer to say or think
of his very best work that it really does him justice--that it
adequately represents the fulness of his unquestionable powers. And yet
it is certain that Lamb was not less right than usual when he said that
Dekker "had poetry enough for anything." But he had not constructive
power enough for the trade of a playwright--the trade in which he spent
so many weary years of ill-requited labor. This comedy in which we first
find him associated with Middleton is well written and well contrived,
and fairly diverting--especially to an idle or an uncritical reader:
though even such an one may suspect that the heroine here represented as
a virginal virago must have been in fact rather like Dr. Johnson's fair
friend Bet Flint; of whom the Great Lexicographer "used to say that she
was generally slut and drunkard; occasionally whore and thief" (Boswell,
May 8, 1781).
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