oscillation
from the impulse of unbridled passion, and carries both terror and pity to
a more painful and sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is content with
the historic picture of suffering; Webster goes on to suggest horrible
imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and for itself; the other
adorns his sentiments with some image of tender or awful beauty. In a
word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or Boccaccio; as Webster's mind appears
to have been cast more in the mould of Shakespeare's, as well naturally as
from studious emulation."

_Heywood_, Thomas (d. c. 1650), a prolific dramatist who excelled in the
homely vein. His best-known play is "The Woman Killed with Kindness."

_Beaumont_, Francis (1584-1616), and _Fletcher_, John (1579-1625),
composed their dramas in collaboration. In the "Age of Elizabeth" Hazlitt
calls them lyric and descriptive poets of the first order, but as regards
drama "the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine
tragic style of the age of Shakspeare. They thought less of their subject,
and more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and
unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and passion; but they
availed themselves too often of commonplace extravagances and theatrical
trick.... The example of preceding or contemporary writers had given them
facility; the frequency of dramatic exhibition had advanced the popular
taste; and this facility of production, and the necessity for appealing to
popular applause, tended to vitiate their own taste, and to make them
willing to pamper that of the public for novelty and extraordinary effect.
There wants something of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers.
They do not wait nature's time, or work out her materials patiently and
faithfully, but try to anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They
would have a catastrophe in every scene; so that you have none at last:
they would raise admiration to its height in every line; so that the
impression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. They pitch
the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust themselves by the
eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find all the prodigality of
youth, the confidence inspired by success, an enthusiasm bordering on
extravagance, richness running riot, beauty dissolving in its own
sweetness. They are like heirs just come to their estates, like lovers in
the honeymoon. In the economy of nature's g