the previous case of his other and wellnigh coequally consummate poem.
The narrative degrades and brutalizes the widowed heroine's affection
for her second husband to the actual level of the vile conception which
the poet attributes and confines to the foul imagination of her envious
and murderous brothers. Here again, and finally and supremely here, the
purifying and exalting power of Webster's noble and magnanimous
imagination is gloriously unmistakable by all and any who have eyes to
read and hearts to recognize.

For it is only with Shakespeare that Webster can ever be compared in any
way to his disadvantage as a tragic poet: above all others of his
country he stands indisputably supreme. The place of Marlowe indeed is
higher among our poets by right of his primacy as a founder and a
pioneer: but of course his work has not--as of course it could not
have--that plenitude and perfection of dramatic power in construction
and dramatic subtlety in detail which the tragedies of Webster share in
so large a measure with the tragedies of Shakespeare. Marston, the poet
with whom he has most in common, might almost be said to stand in the
same relation to Webster as Webster to Shakespeare. In single lines and:
phrases, in a few detached passages and a very few distinguishable
scenes, he is worthy to be compared with the greater poet; he suddenly
rises and dilates to the stature and the strength of a model whom
usually he can but follow afar off. Marston, as a tragic poet, is not
quite what Webster would be if his fame depended simply on such scenes
as those in which the noble mother of Vittoria breaks off her daughter's
first interview with Brachiano--spares, and commends to God's
forgiveness, the son who has murdered his brother before her eyes--and
lastly appears "in several forms of distraction," "grown a very old
woman in two hours," and singing that most pathetic and imaginative of
all funereal invocations which the finest critic of all time so justly