"The Trial of Chivalry" is a less extravagant example of homely romantic
drama than "The Four Prentices of London." We owe to Mr. Bullen the
rediscovery of this play, and to Mr. Fleay the determination and
verification of its authorship. In style and in spirit it is perfect
Heywood: simple and noble in emotion and conception, primitive and
straightforward in construction and expression; inartistic but not
ineffectual; humble and facile, but not futile or prosaic. It is a
rather more rational and natural piece of work than might have been
expected from its author when equipped after the heroic fashion of
Mallory or Froissart: its date is more or less indistinctly indicated by
occasional rhymes and peculiar conventionalities of diction: and if
Heywood in the panoply of a knight-errant may now and then suggest to
his reader the figure of Sancho Panza in his master's armor, his
pedestrian romance is so genuine, his modest ambition so high-spirited
and high-minded, that it would be juster and more critical to compare
him with Don Quixote masquerading in the accoutrements of his esquire.
Dick Bowyer, whose life and death are mendaciously announced on the
catch-penny title-page, and who (like Tiny Tim in "A Christmas Carol")
"does _not_ die," is a rather rough, thin, and faint sketch of the bluff
British soldier of fortune who appears and reappears to better advantage
in other plays of Heywood and his fellows.
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