But even Webster's men seem but splendid sketches, as
Tourneur's seem but shadowy or fiery outlines, beside the perfect and
living figure of De Flores. The man is so horribly human, so fearfully
and wonderfully natural, in his single-hearted brutality of devotion,
his absolute absorption of soul and body by one consuming force of
passionately cynical desire, that we must go to Shakespeare for an
equally original and an equally unquestionable revelation of indubitable
truth. And in no play by Beaumont and Fletcher is the concord between
the two partners more singularly complete in unity of spirit and of
style than throughout the tragic part of this play. The underplot from
which it most unluckily and absurdly derives its title is very stupid,
rather coarse, and almost vulgar: but the two great parts of Beatrice
and De Flores are equally consistent, coherent, and sustained in the
scenes obviously written by Middleton and in the scenes obviously
written by Rowley. The subordinate part taken by Middleton in Dekker's
play of "The Honest Whore" is difficult to discern from the context or
to verify by inner evidence: though some likeness to his realistic or
photographic method may be admitted as perceptible in the admirable
picture of Bellafront's morning reception at the opening of the second
act of the first part.
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