The difference between Michael Angelo and Goya, Tintoretto and
Gustave Dore, does not quite efface the right of the minor artists to
existence and remembrance.
The strange and strangely beautiful tragic poem, which could not have
come down to us under a stupider or a less appropriate name than that
apparently conferred on it by the licenser of "The Second Maiden's
Tragedy," must by all evidence of internal and external probability be
almost unquestionably assigned to the hand of Middleton. The masterly
daring of the stage effect, which cannot or should not be mistaken for
the merely theatrical audacity of a headlong impressionist at any price,
is not more characteristic of the author than the tender and passionate
fluency of the flawless verse. The rather eccentric intermittency of the
supernatural action is a no less obviously plausible reason for
assigning it to the creator of so realistic a witch and so singular a
succubus. But such a dramatic poem as this would be a conspicuous jewel
in the crown of any but a supremely great dramatist and poet. And the
musical or metrical harmony of the verse, imperceptible as it may be or
rather must always be to the long-eared dunces who can only think to
hear through their clumsy fingers, is so like Fletcher's as to suggest
that if any part of Shakespeare's "King Henry VIII.
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