oeticules: but the
construction or composition of the play, the arrangement and evolution
of event, the distinction or development of character, would do less
than little credit to a boy of twelve; who at any rate would hardly have
thought of patching up so ridiculous a reconciliation between intending
murderers and intended victims as here exceeds in absurdity the chaotic
combination of accident and error which disposes of inconvenient or
superfluous underlings. But though neither Mr. Dyce nor Mr. Bullen has
been at all excessive or unjust in his animadversions on these flagrant
faults and follies, neither editor has given his author due credit for
the excellence of style, of language and versification, which makes this
play readable throughout with pleasure, if not always without
impatience. Fletcher himself, the acknowledged master of the style here
adopted by Middleton, has left no finer example of metrical fluency and
melodious ease. The fashion of dialogue and composition is no doubt
rather feminine than masculine: Marlowe and Jonson, Webster and
Beaumont, Tourneur and Ford--to cite none but the greatest of
authorities in this kind--wrote a firmer if not a freer hand, struck a
graver if not a sweeter note of verse: this rapid effluence of easy
expression is liable to lapse into conventional efflux of facile
improvisation: but such command of it as Middleton's is impossible to
any but a genuine and a memorable poet.

As for the supposed obligations of Shakespeare to Middleton or Middleton
to Shakespeare, the imaginary relations of "The Witch" to "Macbeth" or
"Macbeth" to "The Witch," I can only say that the investigation of this
subject seems to me as profitable as a research into the natural
history of snakes in Iceland. That the editors to whom we owe the
miserably defaced and villanously garbled text which is all that has
reached us of "Macbeth," not content with the mutilation of the greater
poet, had recourse to the interpolation of a few superfluous and
incongruous lines or fragments from the lyric portions of the lesser
poet's work--that the players who mangled Shakespeare were the pilferers
who plundered Middleton--must be obvious to all but those (if any such
yet exist anywhere) who are capable of believing the unspeakably
impudent assertion of those mendacious malefactors that they have left
us a pure and perfect edition of Shakespeare. These passages are all
thoroughly in keeping with the general tone of