faction.

6. From the want of a guiding point in Massinger's characters, you never
know what they are about. In fact they have no character.

7. Note the faultiness of his soliloquies, with connectives and
arrangements, that have no other motive but the fear lest the audience
should not understand him.

8. A play of Massinger's produces no one single effect, whether arising
from the spirit of the whole, as in the As You Like It; or from any one
indisputably prominent character as Hamlet. It is just "which you like
best, gentlemen!"

9. The unnaturally irrational passions and strange whims of feeling
which Massinger delights to draw, deprive the reader of all sound
interest in the characters;--as in Mathias in the Picture, and in other
instances.

10. The comic scenes in Massinger not only do not harmonize with the
tragic, not only interrupt the feeling, but degrade the characters that
are to form any part in the action of the piece, so as to render them
unfit for any tragic interest. At least, they do not concern, or act
upon, or modify, the principal characters. As when a gentleman is
insulted by a mere blackguard,--it is the same as if any other accident
of nature had occurred, a pig run under his legs, or his horse thrown
him. There is no dramatic interest in it.

I like Massinger's comedies better than his tragedies, although where
the situation requires it, he often rises into the truly tragic and