in "The Virgin
Martyr." Assuredly there is here nothing like the one incomparably
lovely dialogue of Dorothea with her attendant angel. But there is the
charm of a curious simplicity and sincerity in Rowley's straightforward
and homely dramatic handling of the supernatural element: in the miracle
of St. Winifred's well, and the conversion of Albon into St. Alban by
"that seminary knight," as the tyrant Maximinus rather comically calls
him, Amphiabel Prince of Wales. The courtship of the princely Offa,
while disguised as the shoemaker's apprentice Crispinus, by the Roman
Princess Laodice, daughter of Maximinus, is very lively and dramatic:
the sprightliest scene, I should say, ever played out on the stage of
Rowley's fancy. On the other hand, the martyrdom of St. Winifred and St.
Hugh is an abject tragic failure; an abortive attempt at cheap terror
and jingling pity, followed up by doggrel farce of intolerable
grossness.

This play is a perfect repertory of slang and quaint phrases: as when
the master shoemaker, who has for apprentices two persecuted princes in
disguise, and is a very inferior imitation of Dekker's admirable Simon
Eyre, calls his wife Lady d'Oliva--whatever that may mean, and when she
inquires of one of the youngsters, "What's the matter, boy? Why are so
many chancery bills drawn in thy face?" _Habent sua fala libelli_: it is
inexplicable that this most curious play should never have been
republished, when the volumes of Dodsley's _Old Plays_, in their very
latest reissue, are encumbered with heaps of such leaden dulness and
such bestial filth as no decent scavenger and no rational nightman would
have dreamed of sweeping back into sight and smell of any possible
reader.

But it is or it should be inconceivable and incredible that the
masterpiece of Rowley's strong and singular genius, a play remarkable
for its peculiar power or fusion of strange powers even in the sovereign
age of Shakespeare, should have waited upward of three hundred years and
should still be waiting for the appearance of a second edition. The
tragedy of "All's Lost by Lust," published in the same year with
Shakespeare's great posthumous torso of romantic tragedy, was evidently
a favorite child of its author's: the terse and elaborate argument
subjoined to the careful and exhaustive list of characters may suffice
to prove it. Among these characters we may note that one, "a simple
clownish Gentleman," was "personated by the poet": and