The rivalry of Omphale
and Deianeira for their hero's erratic affection affords a lively and
happy mainspring--not suggested by Caxton--for the tragic action and
passion of the closing scenes.
At the opening of "The Iron Age," nineteen years later in date of
publication, we find ourselves at last arrived in a province of dramatic
poetry where something of consecutive and coherent action is apparently
the aim if not always the achievement of the writer. These ten acts do
really constitute something like a play, and a play of serious, various,
progressive, and sustained interest, beginning with the elopement and
closing with the suicide of Helen. There is little in it to suggest the
influence of either Homer or Shakespeare: whose "Troilus and Cressida"
had appeared in print, for the helplessly bewildered admiration of an
eternally mystified world, just twenty-three years before. The only
figure equally prominent in either play is that of Thersites: but
Heywood, happily and wisely, has made no manner of attempt to rival or
to reproduce the frightful figure of the intelligent Yahoo in which the
sane and benignant genius of Shakespeare has for once anticipated and
eclipsed the mad and malignant genius of Swift.
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