Hip. I'm glad you are wax, not marble; you are made Of man's best temper, there are now good hopes That all these heaps of ice about your heart, By which a father's love was frozen up, Are thaw'd in these sweet showers fetched from your eyes. She is not dead, but lives under worse fate; I think she 's poor, and more to clip her wings, For killing of a man. To save his blood Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown The getting of his life preserves your own. But the best is I have a hand Orl. In my daughter, you will say. Does she live, then? I am sorry I wasted tears upon a wanton. kerchief to drink them up; soap can wash them all out again. Is ... When did you see her? Orl. Older. It has a white head, and shall never die till she be buried; her wrongs shall be my bedfellow. . . Orl. I detest her; I defy both; she's not mine, she's Hip. Fare you well, for I 'll trouble you no more. [Exit Hippolito. Orl. [Looking after him] And fare you well, sir; go thy ways; we have few lords of thy making. 'Las, my girl, art thou poor? Poverty dwells next door to despair, there's but a wall between them. Despair is one of hell's catchpoles; and lest that devil arrest her, I'll to her. Yet she shall not know me: she shall drink of my wealth as beggars do of running water, freely, yet never know from what fountain's head it flows. Shall a silly bird pick her own breast to nourish her young ones, and can a father see his child starve? That were hard. The pelican does it, and shall not I? I think I have quoted enough to show you that Dekker's "heart had no wrinkles in it," if his poetry was prompted by his disposition. 1584-1640 MASSINGER and FORD are near the end of the list of the great poets of this era. They each wrote a number of dramas, and one of Massinger's, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, still is an acting play, 1586-1636 --partly because the principal character, Sir Giles Overreach, has so much power that the part is a favorite with actors. But I think we should be little interested to read the plays of these authors, or those of JAMES SHIRLEY, who ranks among the last of this line of dramatic writers. 1596-1666 He was born in Elizabeth's reign, and lived till that of Charles II. He wrote many plays, in one of which occurs a song which was a favorite with the Merry Monarch ; and with this song, by which we may remember Shirley, I will close this long Talk on our dramatists : XXVII. ON THE SINGERS OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF POETRY, DONNE, WOTTON, WITHER, HERBERT, AND HERRICK. IN N speaking of the dramatic poets, we have noted how many of the play-writers wrote beautiful little lyrics, which we find occurring in their plays, as the Spring song of Thomas Nash (page 135), or the Labor song of Thomas Dekker, which we have read (page 165). If you have ever opened a volume of Shakespeare's plays, I think you could not fail to be caught by the beauty of the lyrics scattered through the book, -as Ariel's melodious lay in the Tempest: "Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands, Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd The wild waves whist." Or the spirited serenade from Cymbeline, "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin Arise, arise!" Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Marston, and dramatists of lesser rank all studded their plays with songs, some of them so musical and so fanciful that they are often like jewels shining out in a heap of rubbish; for many of these plays are only the rubbish of literature, redeemed by an occasional fine line, or by one of these beautiful lyrics. There are also many poets not dramatic, but purely lyric, who sang like larks in this sky. I could count you a score or two through the period covered by the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. The mention of half a score must content us, and I propose to group together in this Talk the principal lyric poets from the time of Spenser to that of Milton. 1573-1631 JOHN DONNE comes first on my list. Early in lire he was secretary to an earl, and while in this position he fell in love with the earl's niece and married her clandestinely, which so offended the lady's family, and especially her father, that he had the poet turned out from office and actually imprisoned him in the Tower. He was released, however, and won enough renown later to make his stupid old father-in-law ashamed of himself; for Donne became one of the most distinguished preachers of his time, and was made finally the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. His marriage turned out very happily. His wife seems to have been romantically devoted to him, and once when he was to go on a journey, she formed the design of going with him in the disguise of his page, but was discovered before she could carry out her plan. She died before Donne reached the height of his success, and he grieved for her all his life after. Donne has been put at the head of the "metaphysical poets," who gained that title from Dr. Johnson, because, as he says, they "were men of learning, and to show their learning was their sole endeavor;" so that, instead of writing poetry, they wrote only verses, and often "such verses as stood the test of the finger better than the ear." Johnson's criticism is only occasionally true of the best of these poets, though these best sometimes deserve the worst that he says of them. For instance, in one poem Donne compares his heart to a mirror shattered into pieces by love, and goes on to prove that as the pieces of broken glass show a hundred lesser faces, 66 so his broken heart could feel lesser passions, but never one great love like that his lady inspired." In another poem, entitled an Ode to a Flea which has bitten both himself and his beloved, he talks about their blood being wedded in the black temple of the "insect's body"! If this is metaphysical poetry, the less we have of it the better. But Donne was not always so absurd. Here is something in a better vein, — a quaint good-by song on going away for a short absence. We will fancy he wrote it to console Mrs. Donne when he went on the journey from which she was prevented from accompanying him as a page: "Sweetest love, I do not go For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show But since that I Must die at last, 't is best By feigned death to die. "Yesternight the sun went hence, Then fear not me, But believe that I shall make "Let not thy divining heart Are but laid aside to sleep; They who one another keep Alive, ne'er parted be." Near Donne in point of time is WOTTON, a statesman of the time of James I. For the following familiar song, alone, he deserves to be remembered: "How happy is he born and taught "Whose passions not his masters are, Of public fame or private breath. 1568-1639 |