Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/88

 'Patient Grissel'; a romantic tragicomedy so attractive for its sweetness and lightness of tone and touch that no reader will question the judgment or condemn the daring of the poets who ventured upon ground where Chaucer had gone before them with such gentle stateliness of step and such winning tenderness of gesture. His deepest note of pathos they have not even attempted to reproduce: but in freshness and straightforwardness, in frankness and simplicity of treatment, the dramatic version is not generally unworthy to be compared with the narrative which it follows afar off. Chettle and Haughton, the associates of Dekker in this enterprise, had each of them something of their colleague's finer qualities; but the best scenes in the play remind me rather of Dekker's best early work than of 'Robert, Earl of Huntington' or of 'Englishmen for My Money.' So much has been said of the evil influence of Italian example upon English character in the age of Elizabeth, and so much has been made of such confessions or