Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/255

 12 S. VIII. MARCH 12, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 205 Oriana says to Miranda : Miranda's deeds Have been as "white as Oriana's fame, From, the beginning to this point of time, And shall we now begin to stain both thus ? Dorigen continues : When men shall read the records of thy valour. Thy hitherto-brave virtue, and approach (Highly content yet) to this foul assault Included in this leaf, this ominous leaf They shall throw down the book, and read no rnoie and Oriana : Think on the legend which we two shall breed Continuing as we are, for chastest dames And boldest soldiers to peruse and read, Ay, and read thorough, free from any act To cause the modest cast the book away. And the most honour'd captain fold it up. Martins is so overcome by Dorigen 's elo- quence that he exclaims : Oh, thou confut'st divinely, and thy words Do fall like rods upon me ! but they have Such silken lines and silver hooks, that I Am faster snared. Her words produce upon him. the same effect as Oriana's on Miranda : Ob, what a tongue is here ! whilst she doth teach My heart to hate my fond unlawful love She talks me more in love, with love to her ; My fire she quencheth with her arguments, But as she breathes 'em they blow fresher fires. As it is not questioned that Acts I. and V. are by the same hand, I need add little by way of corroborative evidence of Field's authorship. In the first act we have "pish " and "hum " (each of them only once), also "continence," "importune," and "integrity " ; in the fifth, "continence " and "transgress." With the words ad- dressed by Mountferrat to his servant Rocca (almost at the beginning of the first scene of Act I) : . . . .thy pleas'd eyes send forth Beams brighter than the star that ushers day. we may compare the two last lines of the song in ' Amends for Ladies,' IV. i. : All want day, till thy beauty rise, For the grey morn breaks from thine eyes, and the first lines of that in 'The Fatal Dowry,' in which Phoabus is urged to set, because .... a fairer sun doth rise From the bright radiance of my mistress' eyes. The expression "to stupify sense " used by Mountferrat in the same scene : ... .to report her [Oriana'sl soft acceptance now Will stupify sense in me, if not kill occurs again in * The Triumph of Honour, ' sc. iii. (first speech of Sophocles) : These wonders Do stupify try senses. In Act V., in addition to the marks already noted, we have Oriana's reference to herself (sc. i.) as "a garment worn " : How much you undervalue your own price To give your unbought self for a poor woman That has been once sold, us'd, and lost her show ! I am a garment worn, &c. which recalls Lady Bright 's remark in< ' Amends fcr Ladies,' I. i. : A wife is like a garment us'd and torn : A maid like one made up, but never worn.- and Lady Honour's reply : A widow is a garment worn threadbare, Selling at second-hand, like broker's ware. At the beginning of the second scene, the- allusion to Time's running hand "beating back "the world to " undistinguished chaos " connects it with passages already noted in ' The Fatal Dowry ' and ' The Triumph of Honour.' We find also that Miranda, ia the same scene, uses the expression " to- indue ( put on) a robe," also used by Benvoglio in sc. iv. of 'The Triumph of Love.' Finally, there is a characteristically Fieldish speech from Miranda, as he restore* Oriana to her husband's arms : . . . .busy Nature, If thou wilt still make women, but remember To work 'em by this sampler. Of the other plays in the Beaumont and Fletcher folios containing work that is* clearly neither Beaumont's nor Fletcher's,, nor Massinger's, there are three in which Field's collaboretion has been suspected or asserted by. one or other of the critics 'The Honest Man's Fortune,' 'Thierry and* Theodoret,' and 'The Bloody Brother." I have closely examined all three plays and! am satisfied that Field had nothing to do with any of them, 'except possibly the first. 1 add a few words on each play : 'The Honest Man's Fortune.' Fleay and) Macaulay both assign parts of this to Field ; Fleay giving him Acts III. and IV., Macau- lay Act. IV. alone. I find nothing whatever to suggest Field in Act III. This (as well* as Act II.) I believe to be partly Webster's.. In Lamira's sixth speech : . . . .my sleeps are enquired after IVly risings up saluted with respect, is a borrowing from Sidney's 'Arcadia'* which also appears in ' Thierry and Theo- doret ' II. i., another play in which it is sleeps were enquired after, and my wakings up never unsaluted " (Cecropia to aer spn
 * Book III. Routledge's edition p. 307 : " my