Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/148

128 to London about 1607, where he collaborated with Fletcher, Dekker, Field, and others. In 1622 the Virgin Martyr was published as by him and Dekker. From then onward we have a continuous list of plays ascribed to him in the office book of Sir Henry Herbert. At the same time, it is clear from the dedications prefixed to those which he published that his dramatic activity never freed him from poverty. Gifford has conjectured from the tone of some of his plays that he was a Roman Catholic, and others have discovered in his work reflections of the political sentiment of his day.

Dramatically Massinger belongs to the school of Fletcher. He too delineates sentiment rather than character. His heroes and heroines are high-flown sentimentalists. Like Fletcher he is fond of piquant and critical situations, and develops them with abundant rhetoric. In The Virgin Martyr and The Renegado he has depicted the exalted emotions of the martyr; in The Unnatural Combat, more unnatural and ugly passions than even Ford. In the Duke of Milan he has traced, following the story of Mariamne, the excesses of uxorious passion. In The Bondman he has delineated a lover's transcendent abnegation of self, and in The Fatal Dowry a point of honour as exalted as any in a play of Corneille. Massinger's characters are no more real and convincing than Fletcher's, and in wealth of poetic diction he falls far short of him. His style is pure, correct, and dignified, but rhetorical, and verging towards eloquent and rhythmic prose. What distinguishes Massinger, and