University of Virginia Library

Subject-matter and Style

Despite Shapiro's brusque dismissal of stylistic comparisons, we feel that this subject must be at least considered. The heady old days of "parallel passages" are, no doubt, safely in the past. Yet it would be idle to deny that authors do have a characteristic style and tone, however difficult these may be to define: they write like themselves. Pryor's catalogue was undoubtedly over-enthusiastic in its stylistic comparisons, but we feel that there is an important kernel of truth in his observations which

needs reiteration. The MS in many ways is strikingly reminiscent of some of Webster's most characteristic moments, in tone, in subject-matter, in imagery, and in language. By the same token, it does not strike us at all like Shirley, in any of his moods. Professor Richard Morton, also of McMaster University, whose reputation as a Shirley specialist is second to none, was kind enough to comment on this question for us.

By now it seems evident to us that Shapiro's claim for Shirley's authorship of the MS cannot be accepted. Nor, indeed, are any of the other well-known Jacobean dramatists, with the possible exceptions of Marston and Middleton, plausible nominees for authorship on stylistic grounds; and neither of these seems as likely a candidate as Webster. (Both are ruled out by their handwriting in any event). Marston can at least be seen as an influence on the author of the MS (Pryor remarks on it in support of his urging of Webster's authorship), and of course everybody knows that Webster wrote the Induction for The Malcontent when the King's Men performed it in 1604. That much of Marston's style rubbed off on Webster is also a truism; one of the most characteristic products of this influence being the malcontent figure himself: witty, learned, discontented, defensive, changeable in mood and manner.

Flamineo in The White Devil and Bosola in The Dutchesse of Malfy

are the two great malcontents of Webster's plays. It is clear that Lorenzo in the MS shares all these qualities with them, and that his verbal style is, as Pryor rightly remarked, similar to both these famous figures. Therein, of course, lies the rub: they were famous (Bosola, at least, was a figure in a successful play, and any budding author would have had access to the text of The White Devil, even if he had not seen it), and therefore meet subjects for imitation. But if the MS were written by an author in imitation of Webster's malcontent-style, the imitation is certainly extremely well done.[42] The Prince in the MS is certainly a much less vivid figure, obliged to play the straight man to the protean Lorenzo. Yet as a glance at I.ii of The White Devil (our sample comparison scene) will show, even the mercurial Brachiano was obliged to be rather stick-like when Flamineo was at his most inventive. Like Brachiano at a later point, the Prince boasts of his valor in ll. 8-16;[43] but as his role is essentially passive, it is difficult to find any particular precedent for him.

Other plays and playwrights are suggested by the scene to a greater or lesser degree. The scene in Beaumont's The Maid's Tragedy, in which Melantius denies his treason, as well as the plot of that play as a whole (the relation of brothers and sisters to the tyrannical king, for instance) has some resemblance to the MS, and The Revenger's Tragedy and Marston's Fawn have some obvious parallels. Most strikingly, there is an allusion in ll. 137-138 of the MS to Sejanus: this reference could, of course, perfectly well be to the historical figure. Nonetheless, the fact that Jonson's play was printed in 1605 makes it a likelier source for any allusion in another play, especially in view of the line from Sejanus, "By IOVE, I am not OEDIPVS inough, | To vnderstand this SPHYNX" (III, 64-65), which (though an entirely commonplace image) may have suggested the MS's "Not alle the witt I am Commander of | Can make me a wise Oedipus and unvolve | The mysterie of your Sphinx".[44] It is striking that all the works which seem to have influenced the MS date from earlier than 1610. This need mean nothing in particular, but such as it is, it suggests an earlier rather than a later date for the MS.

We would like to conclude this necessarily inconclusive section by noting a few of the ways the MS seems to us characteristic of Webster, not claiming that any of these "prove" anything about the attribution; merely that they struck us and that they are worthy of mention. The most obvious of these is, of course the unusual image of the Jacob's staff, which Flamineo alluded to in our sample scene from The White Devil, and which Webster used again in Monuments of Honor ("navigation with a Jacobs staffe and compasse", l. 325).[45] Lorenzo uses the image here in the context of a speech which the most sceptical must agree is in tone and manner very like Flamineo's.

Webster was very fond of personifying death, generally in a stoical context. Vittoria proudly claims "I shall wellcome death | As Princes doe some great Embassadors; | Ile meete thy weapon halfe way" (White Devil, V.vi.220-222); in the same scene Zanche has a similar response, and the stoical greeting of death by the Duchess of Malfy is very well-known. In the MS, the Prince proudly proclaims, "Why yf death weare here | And sett wide ope his jawes I would not shune | The chamber for the grizlie monsters Companie" (ll. 8-10). An image-association of death, soldiers and danger is also found often enough in Webster; it occurs in the MS in ll. 11-16. Treason and its unnatural character is a regular, if hardly exclusive, Websterian key, which in his imagery is often associated with physical disease or with poisonous creatures: "Keepe off idle questions; Treason's tongue hath a villainous palsy" (White Devil, III.ii.317); "You may be brothers, for treason, like the Plague, | Doth take much in a blood" (Dutchesse of Malfy, IV.ii.348-349); "Treason, like spiders weaving nets for flies | By her foule worke is found, and in it dies" (White Devil, IV.i.28-29). These may be compared with the MS: "Can horrid Treason, which for intrailes hath | The bowels of a serpent, and Converts | Into burnt choler what eare he eates" . . . (ll. 35-37). Role-playing is another Webster commonplace (again of course not exclusive to him). The MS's "sett such a face of harmlesse mirth on it" (l. 39) may be compared with "What appears in him mirth, is merely outside" (Dutchesse of Malfy, I.i.170) and "To put on this feigned garbe of mirth" (White Devil, III.i.30).

The stage-directions of the MS reflect two Websterian modes: the business with the letter, for instance, reminds us that Webster regularly used this stage-device; more significantly, the tone of the direction "Hee reades the Prince attentively marking him" reminds us of the descriptive character of a direction such as "Francisco speakes this as in scorne" (White Devil, III.ii.50), not to mention a number of instances in the

dumb-shows in both tragedies (e.g. "Enter suspiciously, Julio and Christophero", "Sorrow exprest in Giovanni and in Count Lodovico" (both White Devil), or "in Friers habits, as having bin at the Bathanites" (Devils Law-case, V.ii.12). Other practices worthy of brief note are such things as Webster's fondness for the use of "why" at the beginning of a phrase (there is a long list in the concordance); two such usages turn up in the MS: "why I hope ffavorites may runne in debt" (ll. 50-51), and "why yf these things should goe by compulsion" (l. 65). Other such usages are "I could wish", which occurs in the MS at l. 76, or the formation of a verb from "to grow" plus an adjective; here "growe wearie" (l. 111); or there is the rhetorical figure of parison: "there are not jewes enough, priests enough, nor gentlemen enough" (White Devil, III.iii.40); compare the MS's "it shalbe comfort enough, and honor enough" (ll. 66-67). At another level are what might be called "Websterian words", such as "intelligencers", already mentioned, "abhominable" (l. 80, also in White Devil, Devils Law-case, Characters), or Webster's favourite round number, a thousand (ll. 110, 127; there are 47 uses in the concordance), or the ubiquitous word "devil" (variously spelled) which turns up in the MS as "devill" in l. 113—as good a point as any to stop. Doubtless, many of these usages could be paralleled in other Jacobean dramatists. This is not the point, at this stage of the discussion. Rather, the point is that the MS shares with Webster's work elements of style, tone, manner, verbal usage and vocabulary. And by the same token there is very little in the MS which either of us feel is entirely uncharacteristic of Webster. Such an impressionistic judgement is not, of course, offered as any kind of evidence concerning the authorship of the MS.