Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/143

Rh plays, such as The Maid's Tragedy (1619), Philaster (1620), A King and No King (1619), Thierry and Theodoret (1621), The False One (1647), Bonduca (1647), and The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), in which Shakespeare may have collaborated, are rich in effective, dramatic, and especially pathetic scenes. The death of Aspatia and Evadne; Arethusa, Philaster, and Bellario in the forest; the discovery of their mutual passion by Arbaces and Panthea; the great interview between Thierry and Ordella before the temple of Diana; the death of Penius; the opening scene of The Two Noble Kinsmen, are a few that rise readily to the memory—scenes of heightened pathos, dramatic power, and poetic eloquence.

But the very ease and pleasure with which we recall individual scenes betray the limits of the authors' dramatic range. They stand out like purple patches from the play. It is the scenes we remember, not the characters which they reveal. With Beaumont and Fletcher the last phase of the Elizabethan drama began as unmistakably as its first phase was inaugurated by Marlowe. Sentiment began to take the place of character. The final impression we carry away from a play of Marlowe or Shakespeare or Jonson is of one or two great characters of boundless passion or all-absorbing "humour." The sentiment and poetry are subservient to the presentation of character in action. The most eloquent and moving speeches are not written for the sake of their own beauty, but are the flaming sparks which fly from the contact between the will of steel and the grindstone of