Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/258

 There is perhaps more of the roughness and crudity of style and treatment which might be expected from Rowley than of the humaner and easier touch of Heywood in the conduct of the action: the curious vehemence and primitive brutality of social or domestic tyranny may recall the use of the same dramatic motives by George Wilkins in 'The Miseries of Enforced Marriage': but the mixture or fusion of tender and sustained emotion with the national passion for enterprise and adventure is pleasantly and peculiarly characteristic of Heywood.

In 'The Wise Woman of Hogsdon' the dramatic ability of Heywood, as distinct from his more poetic and pathetic faculty, shows itself at its best and brightest. There are not many much better examples of the sort of play usually defined as a comedy of intrigue, but more properly definable as a comedy of action. The special risk to which a purveyor of this kind of ware must naturally be exposed is the tempting danger of sacrificing propriety and consistency of character to effective and impressive suggestions or developments of situation or event; the inclination to think more of what is to happen than of the persons it must happen to—the characters to be actively or passively affected by the concurrence or the evolution of circumstances. Only to the