Heywood, Rotrou, Moliere, and Dryden have
sat at his feet and copied from his dictation like school-boys. The
French pupils, it must be admitted, have profited better and shown
themselves apter and happier disciples than the English. I cannot think
that even Moliere has improved on the text of Rotrou as much, or nearly
as much, as he has placed himself under unacknowledged obligation to his
elder countryman: but in Dryden's version there is a taint of greasy
vulgarity, a reek of obtrusive ruffianism, from which Heywood's version
is as clean as Shakespeare's could have been, had he bestowed on the
"Amphitruo" the honor he conferred on the "Menaechmi." The power of
condensation into a few compact scenes of material sufficient for five
full acts is a remarkable and admirable gift of Heywood's.
After the really dramatic episode in which he had the advantage of
guidance by the laughing light of a greater comic genius than his own,
Heywood contentedly resumes the simple task of arranging for the stage a
mythological chronicle of miscellaneous adventure. The jealousy of Juno
is naturally the mainspring of the action and the motive which affords
some show of connection or coherence to the three remaining acts of "The
Silver Age": the rape of Proserpine, the mourning and wandering and
wrath of Ceres, are treated with so sweet and beautiful a simplicity of
touch that Milton may not impossibly have embalmed and transfigured some
reminiscence of these scenes in a passage of such heavenly beauty as
custom cannot stale.
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