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That the drama had these three stages seems reasonably certain; but it is impossible to fix the limits of any one of them, and all three are sometimes seen together in one of the later Miracles of the Wakefield cycle. Dekker's Gull's Hornbook has an interesting chapter on "How a Gallant should behave Himself in a Playhouse."
He confesses as indeed he is forced to do that 'Massinger himself is not free from dialogues of low wit and buffoonery'; and then, after calling the scenes in question 'detestable ribaldry, 'a loathsome sooterkin, engendered of filth and dulness, recommends them to the reader's supreme scorn and contempt, with which feelings the reader will doubtless regard them: but he will also, if he be a thinking man, draw from them the following conclusions: that even if they be Dekker's of which there is no proof Massinger was forced, in order to the success of his play, to pander to the public taste by allowing Dekker to interpolate these villanies; that the play which, above all others of the seventeenth century, contains the most supralunar rosepink of piety, devotion, and purity, also contains the stupidest abominations of any extant play; and lastly, that those who reprinted it as a sample of the Christianity of that past golden age of High-churchmanship, had to leave out one-third of the play, for fear of becoming amenable to the laws against abominable publications.
Satyrs and nymphs, clowns and maids, join in a song in Nashe's curious allegorical show entitled Summer's Last Will and Testament; nymphs and satyrs appear in the interludes of Dekker's Old Fortunatus; Silvanus, with nymphs and satyrs, perform a sort of interlude with song in the anonymous Wily Beguiled; and, lastly, we have the morris danced by the countrymen and wenches who accompany the jailor's daughter in the Two Noble Kinsmen.
He also declares that he is studying architecture, and that, if he builds a house, it must be similar to one before which they are standing. In Dekker's 'Satiromastix, Crispinus is described as being of a most gentle nature. This is in harmony with the well-known quality generally attributed to Shakspere.
All we know of him must be inferred from his works, which show a happy and sunny nature, pleasant and good to meet. The reader will find the best expression of Dekker's personality and erratic genius in The Shoemakers' Holiday, a humorous study of plain working people, and Old Fortunatus, a fairy drama of the wishing hat and no end of money.
"Where have you been this while?" he bawled, and although a minatory note was normal to the Colonel's voice, yet Blood felt his heart tightening apprehensively. "I've been at my work in the town," he answered. "Mrs. Patch has a fever and Mr. Dekker has sprained his ankle." "I sent for you to Dekker's, and you were not there. You are given to idling, my fine fellow.
Every pains has been taken to prove that the indecent scenes in the play were not written by Massinger, but by Dekker; on what grounds we know not. If Dekker assisted Massinger in the play, as he is said to have done, we are aware of no canons of internal criticism which will enable us to decide, as boldly as Mr. Gifford does, that all the indecency is Dekker's, and all the poetry Massinger's.
One other will suffice here, taken from Dekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday ": "Yet I'll shave it off," says the shoemaker, of his beard, "and stuff a tennis-ball with it, to please my bully king." Words have their fates. By a caprice of fortune one is taken, another is left. This is restricted to a narrow use; that wanders free over the plain of meaning.
Cf. a very similar passage in The Lady of Pleasure, v. 1. The cant language of thieves. In Harman's Caveat for Cursitors, or some of Dekker's tracts, "Pedlars' French" may be found in abundance. I print this passage exactly as I find it in the MS. With a little trouble it might be turned into good law. Aut Shirley aut Diabolus. Cf.
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