Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/205

 ii s. MI. SKI-T. 11, 19)5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

197

ACT V. sc. in.

Though this last scene (with the exception of the brief passage of prose with which it concludes) is undoubtedly, in the main, Massinger's, there are, I think,, occasional traces of Webster. The very first line of Mariana's opening speech,

This well may be a day of joy long wish'd for, recalls the opening of * A Cure for a Cuck- old ' : This is a place of feasting and of joy

A day of mirth and solemn jubilee.

Again, in one of Alberto's speeches the phrase " slave-born Muscovite,"

I tamely bear

Wrongs Avhich a slave-born Muscovite would check at,

is taken from a passage in Sidney's ' Astro- phel and Stella ' :

And now, like slave-born Muscovite, I call it praise to suffer tyranny,

already utilized by Webster in ' The Duchess

of Malfy,' III. v. (ii. 227) y

Must I, like to a slave-born Russian, Account it praise to suffer tyranny ? More significant than this is Clarissa's reference to the heavens as a " star-chamber,"

Mentivole,

My husband, registered in that bright star- chamber,

which occurs in Webster's ' Appius and Virginia,' I. iv. (iv. 139) :

This three months did we never house our heads But in yon great star-chamber; but elsewhere, so far as I am aware, only in Dekker's ' Whore of Babylon,'* from which source Webster probably derived it :

Shepherds (whose flocks are men, lambs, anerels),

you

That hold the roof of yon star-chamber up. Dekker's ' Dramatic Works,' ed. Pearson,

vol. ii. p. 199.

However this maybe, the prose at the end, like all the rest of the prose in the play, is Webster's. As a proof of this we may note what the Clown says of Forobosco.

" all the skill that ever he had in the

black art, was in making a sea-coal fire,"

which is borrowed from the Character of ' A Quacksalver ' (1615) :

"A quacksalver took his first being from

a cunning woman, and stole her black art from her, while he made her sea-coal fire."

the pseudo-Shakespearean ' Edward III.' At anv rate it is rare.
 * Since this was written I have found it again in

And, again, the final benedictory speech of the Duke :

" This day, that hath given birth to blessings beyond hope, admits no criminal sentence,"

closely resembles Ariosto's

.... it does remain

That these so comical events be blasted With no severity of sentence,

in the concluding scene of ' The Devil's Law Case ' (iii. 120).

The result, then, of my examination is to show that far the larger part of the play is Webster's, including the character of ''The Fair Maid " herself and the entire under-plot r . of which Forobosco and his attendant Clown are the central figures.

Finally, it is to be observed that the style- of the writer of the scenes here attributed to Webster is that of the Webster of ' The Devil's Law Case ' and ' A Cure for a Cuckold/ It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the resem- blance of the plot of the former play to that of ' The Fair Maid of the Inn,' as this has frequently been commented upon. The resemblance is so striking that it led Swin- burne to the conclusion that the plot of ' The Devil's Law Case ' must have been derived from ' The Fair Maid.' A word may be added in reference to the unusual names Forobosco and Prospero given to two of the characters appearing in this play. Both these names had previously been used by Webster. There is in ' The Duchess of Malfy ' a mysterious Forobosco who, though he figures in the list of dramatis personce, and is also once referred to in the text, has no speaking part assigned to him, and there is a Prospero in ' The Devil's Law Case.' For the name Forobosco Webster was probably indebted to Marston's ' Antonio's Revenge/ Prospero seems to be an equally rare name in Elizabethan drama, the only other known to me being the Prospero of ' The Tempest.'

The place of * The Fair Maid ' amongst Webster's works is between 'The Devil's Law Case ' and ' A Cure for a Cuckold.' It has more connexions with the latter play than any other of Webster's productions. That it is of an earlier date can safely be pro- nounced on internal evidence alone. Like ' The Duchess of Malfy ' and ' The Devil's Law Case,' as we have seen, it contains manjr passages derived from Sidney's 'Arcadia' and Overbury's ' Characters ' ; while in ' A Cure for a Cuckold ' the traces of indebted- ness to these works have almost di^ippeared. Again, the play shows no evidence of the influence of Heywood's vocabulary, for the