Maltese Jew. Of Shakspere's
plays five are incontestably Italian: several of the rest are
furnished with Italian names to suit the popular taste. Ben Jonson
laid the scene of his most subtle comedy of manners, 'Volpone,' in
Venice, and sketched the first cast of 'Every Man in his Humour' for
Italian characters. Tourneur, Ford, and Webster were so dazzled by the
tragic lustre of the wickedness of Italy that their finest dramas,
without exception, are minute and carefully studied psychological
analyses of great Italian tales of crime. The same, in a less degree,
is true of Middleton and Dekker. Massinger makes a story of the Sforza
family the subject of one of his best plays. Beaumont and Fletcher
draw the subjects of comedies and tragedies alike from the Italian
novelists. Fletcher in his 'Faithful Shepherdess' transfers the
pastoral style of Tasso and Guarini to the North. So close is the
connection between our tragedy and Italian novels that Marston and
Ford think fit to introduce passages of Italian dialogue into the
plays of 'Giovanni and Annabella' and 'Antonio and Mellida.' But the
best proof of the extent to which Italian life and literature had
influenced our dramatists, may be easily obtained by taking down
Halliwell's 'Dictionary of Old Plays,' and noticing that about every
third drama has an Italian title. Meanwhile the poems composed by the
chief dramatists--Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis,' Marlowe's 'Hero and
Leander,' Marston's 'Pygmalion,' and Beaumont's 'Hermaphrodite'--are
all of them conceived in the Italian style, by men who had either
studied Southern literature, or had submitted to its powerful aesthetic
influences. The Masques, moreover, of Jonson, of Lyly, of Fletcher,
and of Chapman are exact reproductions upon the English court theatres
of such festival pageants as were presented to the Medici at Florence
or to the Este family at Ferrara.[20] Throughout our drama the
influence of Italy, direct or indirect, either as supplying our
playwrights with subjects or as stimulating their imagination, may
thus be traced. Yet the Elizabethan drama is in the highest sense
original. As a work of art pregnant with deepest wisdom, and
splendidly illustrative of the age which gave it birth, it far
transcends anything that Italy produced in the same department. Our
poets have a more masculine judgment, more fiery fancy, nobler
sentiment, than the Italians of any age but that of Dante. What Italy
gave, was the impu