to ask, Cui bono? Was the art of which this was the highest
manifestation likely to be of much use to mankind, much less able to
excuse its palpably disgusting and injurious accompaniments?

The 'Duchess of Malfi' is certainly in a purer and loftier strain:
but in spite of the praise which has been lavished on her, we must
take the liberty to doubt whether the poor Duchess is a 'person' at
all. General goodness and beauty, intense though pure affection for
a man below her in rank, and a will to carry out her purpose at all
hazards, are not enough to distinguish her from thousands of other
women: but Webster has no such purpose. What he was thinking and
writing of was not truth, but effect; not the Duchess, but her story;
not her brothers, but their rage; not Antonio, her major-domo and
husband, but his good and bad fortunes; and thus he has made Antonio
merely insipid, the brothers merely unnatural, and the Duchess (in
the critical moment of the play) merely forward. That curious scene,
in which she acquaints Antonio with her love for him and makes him
marry her, is, on the whole, painful. Webster himself seems to have
felt that it was so; and, dreading lest he had gone too far, to have
tried to redeem the Duchess at the end by making her break down in
two exquisite lines of loving shame: but he has utterly forgotten to
explain or justify her love by giving to Antonio (as Shakspeare would
probably have done) such strong specialties of character as would
compel, and therefore excuse, his mistress's affection. He has
plenty of time to do this in the first scenes,--time which he wastes
on irrelevant matter; and all that we gather from them is that
Antonio is a worthy and thoughtful person. If he gives promise of
being more, he utterly disappoints that promise afterwards. In the
scene in which the Duchess tells her love, he is far smaller, rather
than greater, than the Antonio of the opening scene: though (as