Look not with too much contemplation on me;
If you do, you are in the suds.

'Maid of Honour', act i. sc. 2.


The author mixes his own feelings and judgments concerning the presumed
fool; but the man himself, till mad, fights up against them, and
betrays, by his attempts to modify them, that he is no fool at all, but
one gifted with activity and copiousness of thought, image and
expression, which belong not to a fool, but to a man of wit making
himself merry with his own character.

5. There is an utter want of preparation in the decisive acts of
Massinger's characters, as in Camiola and Aurelia in the Maid of Honour.
Why? Because the 'dramatis personae' were all planned each by itself.
Whereas in Shakspeare, the play is 'syngenesia;' each character has,
indeed, a life of its own, and is an 'individuum' of itself, but yet an
organ of the whole, as the heart in the human body. Shakspeare was a
great comparative anatomist.

Hence Massinger and all, indeed, but Shakspeare, take a dislike to their
own characters, and spite themselves upon them by making them talk like
fools or monsters; as Fulgentio in his visit to Camiola, (Act ii. sc.
2.) Hence too, in Massinger, the continued flings at kings, courtiers,
and all the favourites of fortune, like one who had enough of intellect
to see injustice in his own inferiority in the share of the good things
of life, but not genius enough to rise above it, and forget himself.
Beaumont and Fletcher have the same vice in the opposite pole, a
servility of sentiment and a spirit of partizanship with the monarchical