Massinger, in his grasp of stagecraft, his flexible metre, his desire in the sphere of ethics to exploit both vice and virtue, is typical of an age which had much culture, but which, without being exactly corrupt, lacked moral fibre.
Here, in fact, is our text: to elucidate this sentence would be to account for Massinger. We begin vaguely with good taste, by a recognition that Massinger is inferior: can we trace this inferiority, dissolve it, and have left any element of merit?
We turn first to the parallel quotations from Massinger and Shakespeare collocated by Mr. Cruickshank to make manifest Massinger’s indebtedness. One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. Chapman borrowed from Seneca; Shakespeare and Webster from Montaigne. The two great followers of Shakespeare, Webster and Tourneur, in their mature work do not borrow from him; he is too close to them to be of use to them in this way. Massinger, as Mr. Cruickshank shows, borrows from Shakespeare a good deal. Let us profit by some of the quotations with which he has provided us—
_Massinger_: Can I call back yesterday, with all their aids That bow unto my sceptre? or restore My mind to that tranquillity and peace It then enjoyed?
_Shakespeare_: Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrops of the world Shall ever medecine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday.
Massinger’s is a general rhetorical question, the language just and pure, but colourless. Shakespeare’s has particular significance; and the adjective “drowsy” and the verb “medecine” infuse a precise vigour. This is, on Massinger’s part, an echo rather than an imitation or a plagiarism—the basest, because least conscious form of borrowing. “Drowsy syrop” is a condensation of meaning frequent in Shakespeare, but rare in Massinger.