Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/134

114 characters and sentiments. The chief agents in the history of unnatural crime and bloody vengeance unrolled are politicians of the kind Machiavelli was believed to have idealised. In The Spanish Tragedy, the first crude model of this type of tragedy, Jeronimo feigns madness as a disguise in his pursuit of vengeance. A regular part of the machinery became in consequence a real or feigned mad railer at life, and especially court life, and women's vices. Shakespeare's Richard III. shows the influence of Kyd's play in an even crude and melodramatic fashion. Richard is the full-blown Machiavellian politician. Margaret of Anjou plays the part of the ghost denouncing vengeance. Clarence's dream, in feeling and versification, recalls Andrea's descent to the lower world, and the balanced stichomuthia of several dialogues is classical. In Hamlet the type revived, but, for a modern reader at any rate, the melodramatic interest pales before the psychological and reflective. Hamlet has become a problem in character, and the mouthpiece for profound comment, ironic and straightforward, on art and life. Marston's earlier plays are melodramas of this kind. The Malcontent, like many other plays of the day, is full of echoes of Hamlet. Webster made additions to The Malcontent, and was apparently attracted by Marston's combination of tragic gloom and sardonic wit. At the same time, although he alludes to Shakespeare in a rather condescending manner, it is clear from his plays that he was deeply impressed by the pregnant and thrilling phraseology of the great tragedies.