Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/237

 ode by Keats, and a very pretty example of metrical romance by Morris.

'Inexplicable and eccentric as were the moods and fashions of dramatic poetry in an age when Shakespeare could think fit to produce anything so singular in its composition and so mysterious in its motive as "Troilus and Cressida," the most eccentric and inexplicable play of its time, or perhaps of any time, is probably "The Rape of Lucrece. This may naturally be the verdict of a hasty reader at a first glance over the party-coloured scenes of a really noble tragedy, crossed and chequered with the broadest and quaintest interludes of lyric and erotic farce. But, setting these eccentricities duly or indulgently aside, we must recognise a fine specimen of chivalrous and romantic rather than classical or mythological drama; one, if not belonging properly or essentially to the third rather than to the second of the four sections into which Heywood's existing plays may be exhaustively divided, which stands on the verge between them with something of the quaintest and most graceful attributes of either. The fine instinct and the simple skill with which the poet has tempered the villainy of his villains without toning down their atrocities by the alloy of any incongruous quality must be acknowledged as worthily characteristic of a writer who at his