scene of his surprisal and death. Indeed, both the young gallant himself and all his satellites can safely be put down as creations of the actor-dramatist. They have their parallels in his comedy of Woman is a Weathercock, down to the page whose pert asides of satiric comment are anticipated in the earlier work by those of a youngster of identical kidney. The long scene in which we are introduced to Beaumelle and given insight into her character and mental attitude is Field’s throughout; thereafter she has only to act out her already-revealed nature—first as the impudent adulteress and later as the repentant sinner, in both of which roles she affords Massinger excellent opportunities to display his favorite powers of speech-making. Charalois, Romont, and Rochfort are treated at length by both dramatists.

But in a harmonious collaboration, such as The Fatal Dowry plainly was, the contributions of the two authors cannot be identified with the passages from their respective pens. Each must inevitably have planned, suggested, criticised. The question remains whether we can in any measure determine what part of the conception was due to each. Beyond the Novall Junior group we cannot establish distinct lines of cleavage. What we can do is to suggest the features of the finished product which Field and Massinger brought severally to its making—to point out the qualities of the two men which were joined to produce the play they have given us.

The outstanding excellences of Massinger were a thorough grasp of the architectonics of play-making in the building both of separate Act and entire drama; an adherence to an essential unity of design and treatment; a conscientious regard to the details of stage-craft; a vehicle of dignified and at times noble verse, without violent conceits or lapses into triviality, sustained, lucid, regular; and a genuine eloquence in forensic passages. His chief weaknesses were a certain stiffness of execution which made his plays appear always as structures rather than organisms, a ponderous monotony of fancy, and an inability to create or reproduce or understand human nature. His characters are normally types, their qualities—honor, virtue, bravery, etc.—mere properties which they can assume or lay aside at pleasure like garments, their conduct governed more by the exigencies of plot than by any conceivable psychology.

The weaknesses of Field—as revealed in his two independent comedies—were of a nature more evasive, less capable of definition. A tendency to weave too many threads into the action, an occasional hasty and skimping treatment of his scenes which leaves them unconvincing for 

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