THOMAS DEKKER
71
'Patient Grissel'; a romantic tragicomedy so attractive for its sweetness and lightness of tone and touch that no reader will question the judgment or condemn the daring of the poets who ventured upon ground where Chaucer had gone before them with such gentle stateliness of step and such winning tenderness of gesture. His deepest note of pathos they have not even attempted to reproduce: but in freshness and straightforwardness, in frankness and simplicity of treatment, the dramatic version is not generally unworthy to be compared with the narrative which it follows afar off.[1] Chettle and Haughton, the associates of Dekker in this enterprise, had each of them something of their colleague's finer qualities; but the best scenes in the play remind me rather of Dekker's best early work than of 'Robert, Earl of Huntington' or of 'Englishmen for My Money.' So much has been said of the evil influence of Italian example upon English character in the age of Elizabeth, and so much has been made of such confessions or im-
- ↑ I may here suggest a slight emendation in the text of the spirited and graceful scene with which this play opens. The original reads:
So fares it with coy dames, who, great with scorn,
Shew the care-pinèd hearts that sue to them.The word Shew is an obvious misprint—but more probably, I venture to think, for the word Shun than for the word Fly, which is substituted by Mr. Collier and accepted by Dr. Grosart.
