for magic, while Mephistophilis
enters in the third scene. By delaying the crisis, however, two great
advantages are secured: the necessity of the catastrophe is more fully
recognized by the spectators; and their capacity for emotion is not
strained to the point of weariness before the last great scene is
reached. Yet the sense of tragedy must not be entirely absent from the
first part; otherwise the gravity of the crisis will come with too great
a shock. Kyd's purpose in introducing the Villuppo incident is here
discovered. He uses it with much skill as a counterbalance to the aspect
of the main plot. Thus, immediately after the apparent satisfaction of
the rival claims of Horatio and Lorenzo, he places the unsuspected
treachery of Villuppo to Alexandro, as if to warn us not to judge
merely from the surface: but when the wickedness of Lorenzo attains its
blackest moment in the murder of Horatio, he supplies a ray of hope by
the presentment of Villuppo's punishment, to let us know that justice
still reigns in the world. Further, the intense (though needless) grief
of the Viceroy over the supposed death of his son prepares us for the
agony of Hieronimo, while the narrow escape of the innocent Alexandro
excites our repugnance for hasty revenge and makes us sympathetically
tolerant of Hieronimo's equally extreme caution in ascertaining that
Lorenzo really is the murderer. We could wish, perhaps, that Kyd had
found material for these two scenes in the Spanish Court: the transition
to the Portuguese palace is a far and sudden flight. But his recognition
of the artistic need of such scenes is notable and sound.

It is worth while to observe the close interweaving, the subtle irony
and contrasts, the perfect harmony of the details. We must review them
quite briefly. To illustrate the first, Pedringano's letter is not the
'wonderful discovery' that usually saves lost situations in weak novels:
it has been referred to by him as already written before the Page takes
Lorenzo's message, and its incriminating contents have been clearly
indicated; nothing, moreover, could be more in order than that it should
be found on him by the hangman and delivered to the judge who passed
sentence. Or again, the success of Hieronimo's masque in the first act
supplies the reason for Balthazar's request for a play at his wedding;
that last tragedy is not suggested fortuitously to accommodate some
previous scheme of Hieronimo's. The powerful nature