SOURCE: Hogan, A. P. “Massinger as Tragedian: Believe as You List.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language XIII, No. 3 (Fall 1971): 407-19.

[In the following essay, Hogan argues that Believe as You List is a subtle experiment in the integration of theme and structure that shows Massinger to be a tragedian of “considerable power.”]

Critics seldom praise Massinger's tragedies. The Roman Actor has begun to come into its own,¹ but most commentators still agree with Robert Ornstein that “Massinger had to be content in tragedy with unsubstantial regal gestures” as a substitute for “imagination.”² The most recent verdict is that the young dramatist sought to follow Shakespeare, and failed.³ As is often the case, this kind of neo-Eliot negativism leads to distortion. Massinger's tragedies are important both for an evaluation of the playwright himself and for an adequate understanding of Caroline drama in general. And, of the tragedies, Believe as You List is the most ambitious and original.

Massinger's last extant tragedy⁴ describes how a virtuous Asian king returns from exile and attempts to lead his quarter of the world in rebellion against the power of Rome. In terms of theme, an objectively real but politically impotent moral order, symbolized by Antiochus' personal virtue and legitimacy, clashes with the mighty, godless world of an immoral, impersonal, totalitarian state. In his earlier tragedies, Massinger always permits good to conquer evil by proving itself more real (in the philosophical sense) and therefore more powerful. In Believe as You List, the representatives of moral order and moral anarchy are astonishingly well matched, and the play climaxes in a state of total impasse.

Antiochus is first encountered on a mountaintop, accompanied by a Stoic sage. The philosopher believes that legitimate monarchy is a “title / soe stronge, and cleare, that there's noe colour left / to varnishe Romes pretences” (I.i.100-102).⁵ The “iust gods” (I.i.81) defend a prince who embraces his vocation; and, through Antiochus' leadership, human dignity and freedom will be restored to Asia. The king, on the other hand, agrees that authority is a noble and dutiful union with the order of the “iust gods,” but his experience of defeat and exile makes him doubt that the mere fact of his legitimacy will frighten the Roman “Tigresse” (I.i.94) from her prey. Ideals possess real, intangible existence, but their political power is limited.

Antiochus also smarts from a consciousness of personal failure. “Dreadfull formes” of “all those innocent spirits” slain for love of their prince haunt the monarch in his exile. These ghosts “appeare to mee exactinge / a stricte accompte of my ambitious follye”; and “Philosophie” is “wantinge / power to remoue 'em” (I.i.40-41, 44-45). Kings are agents of providence, but they are also weak and sinful men. Their responsibility can lead to terrible guilt.

Antiochus, in other words, has a mature sense of his own complex position. He stands between the naive Stoic, who idealistically equates spiritual authority with political strength, and the disillusioned servants who sneer that a prince without an army is “noe kinge” and tell Antiochus to “forget thow wert ever / calld kinge” (I.i.276, 280-281). The servants are disciples of Machiavelli and believe that rulers are merely the sum total of the force which maintains them, while virtue is irrelevant—and possibly deleterious—to a monarch's identity.⁶ Antiochus rejects this idea: providential design, not Fortune, defines his royal selfhood, and no accident of chance can “make me liue, or dye, lesse then a kinge” (I.i.300).

Act II moves down from the wilderness into the political arena. The mountaintop was a state of potentiality, in which Antiochus encountered various possible self-definitions and achieved a normative balance between the cynical and the idealistic. Now he takes on the “real” world of action and necessity. His mission assumes the form of a pilgrimage through Asia, asking various people to believe in his identity and give him the power to renew the world. In a loose but important analogy, Antiochus resembles Christ: he has survived his exile in the desert and his mountaintop temptation to presumption and despair, and he has descended to take up his messianic role as the harbinger of truth and freedom.

At this point, the play begins to take the form of a series of rhetorical encounters between the king and the political world. First, however, Massinger inserts an analogous debate between spiritual authority and Roman rule. Berecinthius, a fat, plucky priest of Cybele, volunteers to brave the imperial ambassador, Flaminius, on behalf of a group of ill-used Asian merchants, because religion is duty-bound to “vse her strength … when morall honestie, and ius gentium faile / to lende reliefe to such as are oppresd” (I.ii.340-342). Moreover, Berecinthius considers himself “priveledgde” (I.ii.329) as a priest and equal to Flaminius as a man. “Place … / and the power it carries” (I.ii.336-337) do not frighten him.

However, religion devoid of political pull can do nothing in the “real” world, and Flaminius quickly reduces Berecinthius to silence. The priest refuses to accept the implications of his defeat and assures his suppliants that “yf relligion / bee not a meere worde only, and the gods / are iust wee shall finde a deliverie / when least expected” (I.ii.512-515). The test of divine order is its performance. Immediately upon his words, with unmistakable symbolic precision, ragged Antiochus presents himself as their king. Received with great enthusiasm, he begins to be of Berecinthius' mind: perhaps the “gods” really are “pleasd oppressed Asia” will “shake of / … Roman bondage, and in mee / gayne … her pristine libertie” (I.ii.571-574).

Antiochus may be forgiven his optimism. We, too, are expected to see the Christ-like prince as a possible messiah. But the king should take note of the fact that his first followers are helpless men, men with nothing to lose but their chains and nothing to contribute but their faith. Moreover, their emphasis on an almost magical worldly success indicates that, like the Jews, they look forward to a sudden, miraculous reversal of their earthly fortunes. Antiochus should not be so quick to presume, in the support of people like these, a concrete proof of providential guidance and divine benediction.

The king's second encounter, on the other hand, is much more crucial. The Stoic assured his pupil that Carthage would be the key to success; and the senate does receive the prince with gracious impartiality. Indeed, they already know he is the rightful monarch and that “not to showe hym our compassion were / a kinde of barbarous crueltie” (II.ii.741-742). But their decision to hear him state his case against Flaminius really masks fear and confusion: “wee haue fear'd and felt the Roman power …” (II.ii.753). They are stalling for time.

The ensuing debate is a high point of the drama. Structurally, Believe as You List rests upon a series of formal, rhetorical encounters, which dramatize the clash between spiritual and political powers in a stately, somewhat abstract manner. For this reason, Flaminius' scene with Berecinthius established him as a symbolically charged antagonist worthy of the king. First, he described Rome as an omnipotent power shaping Asia's destiny: “in the brasse leau'd booke of fate it was set downe / the earth showlde know noe soveraigne but Rome” (I.ii.467-468), an invincible engine with “iron hammers / to pulverize rebellion” (I.ii.481-482). Some of this invulnerability extends to Flaminius himself, who becomes a symbolic personification of the power he serves. The merchants say of him that his speech can “fall in measure / like plummets of a clocke, observing time / and iust proportion” (I.ii.313-315): like Rome, he is a kind of engine, a dehumanized controlling force. This same speech, on other occasions, can howl “like a gushinge torrent / not to bee stopp'd in it's full course” and destroying “w(hats)oever is oppos'd against” it (I.ii.436-437), and, when he “speakes / in his owne Dialecte,” his threats are “terrible” (I.ii.448-449, 458). Flaminius himself enhances this description of almost abstract power with an echo of Jupiter:

dost thou not tremble
when an incensed Roman frownes
          …
must I speake in thunder
before thou wilt be awde?

(I.ii.363-364, 367-368)

Antiochus is not the only rhetorician who represents a god.

Because the state permits Flaminius to accrue such power, it becomes, in his eyes, the venerable source of his being and the creator of his selfhood. Because of his dependency, “I am bounde to serue thee Rome, and what I doe / necessitie of state compells me to” (II.i.730-731). Completely the creature of his imperial mistress, he represses “an inclination to beleeue / what I must haue no faith in” (II.i.728-729) when he learns that the supposed pretender really is Antiochus, the true king. His will is not his own; he has surrendered that moral responsibility which distinguishes men from beasts. He will believe only what Rome lists.

Antiochus, on the other hand, owes his sense of self to his providentially defined vocation, his role as God's representative on earth; and, when he appears at Carthage, “Habited like a kinge” (II.ii.881) for the first time, he is a visible symbol both of his own identity and of the form which society, according to orthodox Renaissance thought, is supposed to take.

The king's claim to power, for this reason, is a moral one; and his rhetoric, unlike that of Flaminius, is an appeal to the senators' consciences. Compassion for his sufferings and memory of his past goodness should awaken their gratitude, and gratitude should issue forth in duty. The French Academie explains this argument: “memorie” is an aid “vnto saluation, as that whereby we keepe in remembrance the gifts & graces which we daily receiue from … God; … Plutarke calleth it the hearing of deafe things, and the sight of the blind.”⁷ In effect, Antiochus agrees with Flaminius that the senate is not free to believe as it lists. But his demand is based, not on intimidation and necessity, but on the humanity and honor of the senators. He is calling for the kind of moral independence which the ambassador has explicitly rejected.

And the Carthaginians capitulate to Rome, explaining to Antiochus that “fittinge caution” ties their hands until some “other potent nations” declare for him (II.ii.1164-1165). The past, in other words, has no real ethical bearing on the present; and providential order is less meaningful than “necessitie of state.” Carthage is too rich, and therefore too pragmatic, to risk herself in a campaign for truth and freedom. Only the dispossessed can believe as their consciences list.

Antiochus has been repeatedly associated with Christ, both in the imagery of Act I and in his function as God's legitimate representative on earth. Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that providence is not going to use him to save Asia from bondage. He lacks power; and to him who has nothing, nothing will be given. As we become aware of the inoperability of divine order in the political world, the king's third encounter assumes ominous significance: Prusias' fate indicates that all princes, and not merely those exiled from power, are helpless in the hands of a godless, totalitarian force.

On the basis of report alone, without requiring any proof of his identity, King Prusias of Bithynia offers compassion, allegiance, and an army to the Asian monarch, who is now in flight from Roman soldiers. Clearly a good man, potentially even a great one, Prusias fulfills the ideal definition of a prince—generous, open, high-minded, compassionate, and humane, a man undeterred by “threates, or prayers … from / doeinge a good deed in it selfe rewarded” (III.ii.1371-1372). However, Flaminius soon arrives to confront Bithynia's king with the hard political facts:

your inclination
is honorable but your power deficient
to put your purposes into act.

(III.iii.1621-1623)

If Prusias goes to war for his guest, he will be guilty of the same slaughter and destruction that Antiochus brought down upon his people.

The king bitterly resents this rape of his better self: he does not want to ignore the “arguments / vnanswerable & meere miraculous proofes” of his suitor's identity and “haue my innocence soylde with that pollution, / you are willingelye smeard ore with” (III.iii.1588-1589, 1595-1596). But he cannot be responsible for the annihilation of his country, so he reluctantly abandons his nobler impulses for Machiavellian “necessitie of state” (III.iii.1704). Roman power divorces kingship and honor, flesh and spirit—the very elements Antiochus wishes to fuse. To be a good king as the world goes, a prince must cease to be a true king. He must even cease to be a man.

Antiochus expresses great indignation at this betrayal. But he seems to have forgotten the “Dreadfull formes” which haunted him for having committed the very sin which Prusias sells his soul to avoid. When a prince possesses no political power and no responsibilities, he is free to champion the ideal in all its abstract purity; intolerance is the exile's luxury. As Antiochus becomes increasingly isolated from “necessitie of state” and concentrates upon his purely spiritual function, it is well to remember that his own chief lieutenant, Berecinthius, dreamed of filling “prowd Tiber with the carkases / of men, woemen, & children” (III.ii.1435-1436). If the Asian king had won his campaign, he too might have had his hands soiled with pollution.

But such possibilities are gone forever: with Prusias' defection, Antiochus becomes the prisoner of Rome. The pilgrimage which was to free his people and effect a providential reintegration of spiritual power with political authority is ended in defeat. The king's name, however, retains sufficient emotive potency to create rumors of “revolt in Asia” (IV.i.1791); and Flaminius, in consequence, feels compelled to do something about his captive. Execution will not suffice, because ideals survive the men who preach them. The only way to efface the king's spiritual prestige is by forcing him to deny his own identity and renounce “the name / Hee still maintaines” (IV.i.1882-1883). The conflict between Machiavellian Realpolitik and Renaissance idealism now shifts from the political arena to the battlefield of Antiochus' own soul. The totalitarian state has successfully neutralized the true prince and preserved its own godless order. Now it tests its ability to destroy a virtuous monarch's interior integrity—not, as in Prusias' case, with political weapons, but with the traditional tools of the Tempter.

This shift in focus makes Act IV unique. Previously, the formula debates have provided a screen of seemingly equal contest, behind which the ruthless Machiavellianism of Rome reduced all sense of choice and argument to an illusion. Now, however, the play shifts to a world resonant with morality play elements, a spiritual, nonpolitical milieu which defeats Flaminius' attempt at control because it is a world beyond his comprehension.

In order to destroy Antiochus' identity, the legate subjects his prisoner to two temptations which have analogues in medieval and Tudor moralities and were not unknown even in Stuart drama. First, the tortured monarch is hauled up from his dungeon and offered “poniard & halter” (IV.ii.1915) wherewith to free himself from further humiliation. In Doctor Faustus (V.i.59) and The Faerie Queene (I.ix.29), this trick aims to catch despairing sinners.⁸ Flaminius, however, hopes to snare the king's sense of outraged innocence and make his very conviction of superiority destroy him. Antiochus does believe that “a kinge” by “the will of fate severd from common men / shoulde haue the privilege, and prerogatiue / when hee is willinge to disrobe hym selfe / of this cobweb garment life” to have death “readie / to doe thy fatall office” (IV.ii.1954-1959). Existence, like all outward appearances, is merely an accidental covering for the soul: a king should be able to strip it away at will. Nevertheless, Antiochus will not purchase freedom with “my soules perdition” (IV.ii.1978). The everlasting hath set his canon against self-slaughter, and, although princes are lords of the earth, they are still subject to the higher law of heaven. The king knows that he will be truer to his identity if his soul remains “free still” (IV.ii.1980) from treason to its God.

The second temptation is less subtle than the first; Flaminius' cunning has reached its limits. On an underling's advice, the legate sends a “prettie temptinge fiende” (IV.ii.1988), a whore, to try her “subtlest magic” (IV.ii.2022) in seducing the king. The courtesan promises Antiochus “compassion” (IV.ii.2035), faith in his identity, and a secure future if he will just disclaim “the continuall cares that waite vpon … / the title[s] of a kinge” (IV.ii.2119-2120). Then “liberty, & a calme / after soe many stormes” (IV.ii.2126-2127) will be his, together with “a paradise of delight” better than “Thessalian Tempe, or that garden where / Venus, with her reviud Adonis spende / their pleasant howers” in “perpetuitie of happines” (IV.ii.2133-2137). Several Tudor moralities invite the hero to a Spenserian Bower of Bliss which answers this description.⁹ As late as 1634, postdating Believe as You List, Thomas Nabbes has Sensuality seduce Physander in a similar Eden in Microcosmus: A Morall Maske.

Antiochus, then, is being tempted with a purely natural happiness rich in moral overtones, if only he will relinquish that Nature which is one with God. However, the king easily sees the fallacy, dismisses the whore as a “Divell” (IV.ii.2122), and sneers at his captors for having “soe consumde” their “stocke of malice” that “out of penurie” they attack him with such a flimsy agent (IV.ii.2167-2168). Flaminius has made the mistake of assuming that his prisoner is an ordinary man.

Apart from the two temptations, Massinger also uses staging from the morality tradition to express his theme. Theatrical jargon had associated the upper level of the stage with the “heavens” and the subterranean area with “hell” for generations, and, in Elizabethan drama, it was quite common to place figures of divine or pseudo-divine authority in the gallery, while demons and furies made their entrances and exits from the trap.¹⁰ The powers of good naturally cluster around the upper regions; evil makes its home beneath the floor.

Massinger purposefully inverts this hallowed formula in several ways. Antiochus is brought up from “hell” to undergo his test, while Flaminius and the other Romans observe him from the “heavens” above. As the presiding deity in his imperial world, the legate assumes God's position vis-à-vis the damned and helpless king. Then the whole sequence parodies the traditional testing pattern of morality drama, in which humanum genus undergoes a trial in order to see if he can “bring himself to submit to God's will and thus gain His grace and receive the mercy which would enable him to achieve salvation.”¹¹Believe As You List submits a virtuous prince to hell, then tries him to see if he will embrace Rome's will and gain the grace of a salvation which, in spiritual terms, must deprive him of his soul and his identity. Massinger here gives visible representation to the whole issue of imperial power: the forces of evil (Flaminius is repeatedly called a “divell”¹²) rule the world, and virtue must abandon itself—betray itself—in order to survive. The Roman Actor projects the same situation in Domitian's court: “To be vertuous / Is to bee guilty” (IV.ii.78-79).¹³

Massinger probably bases his image of the devil figures usurping God's position in the gallery on Doctor Faustus, in which Lucifer and his cohorts twice ascend to observe “the subjects of our monarchy.”¹⁴ Marlowe's fiends can safely claim omnipotence because Faustus himself has given it to them. Flaminius, on the other hand, can achieve only physical control, for Antiochus has not consented to his own damnation. This lack of tangible power causes the legate to feel increasingly uneasy. The king's “constancie” makes him “pine with envie” (IV.ii.2019); and, after the courtesan's failure, he cries, “I will not heare hym speake” (IV.ii.2196). Flaminius has begun to feel the power of his adversary.

Although the morality scene is over, religious imagery continues to duster around Antiochus, while Flaminius' control steadily weakens. When the Roman tries to humiliate his prisoner before the crowds, a fellow officer is struck with the king's “constancie,” which Flaminius calls “foolishe obstinacie” (IV.ii.2274, 2276). He then tries to awaken public derision by exposing his prisoner “ridinge vpon an asse, his face turned to / the hinder part … a paper / vpon his head, in w^ch with capitall letters / his faults inscribde” (IV.iv.2284-2285, 2287-2289). If he cannot undermine the king's integrity, he will at least discredit him with the mob. But the people receive the display “as an acte of crueltie / and not of iustice” (IV.iv.2297-2298). Even Roman Sempronius declares: “I never saw / such magnanimitie …” (IV.iv.2309-2310). When Flaminius dismisses the prince's restraint as a show of “frontlesse impudence rather” (IV.iv.2311), Sempronius dryly replies, “or any thinge els you please” (IV.iv.2312). The imperial ambassador may believe as he lists; the truth is ineffaceable. Dress Antiochus “in the habit of a slaue,” and “still there does appeare / a kinde of maiestie in hym” (IV.iv.2314, 2316-2317).

On the symbolic level, of course, the image of a monarch riding on an ass conjures up Christ's entry into Jerusalem, while the indictment over his head recalls, with no great mental effort, the scroll Pilate suspended above Jesus on the cross. Flaminius' attack on the king's identity merely heightens Antiochus' significance in the eyes of a Christian audience, reminding them that their Lord was once hailed as a prince and then denied but later, in the depths of apparent defeat, grudgingly acknowledged by a Roman governor.

In counterpoint to this dominant movement in the fourth act, Berecinthius appears again as an analogue to his master, this time with the apparent intention on Massinger's part of undercutting the prince's spiritual triumph. Beaten and starved, confined in hell with “noe visitants but divells” (IV.iii.2206), and tempted to mutilate his own flesh for food, the flamen's experiences obviously echo his leader's. But Berecinthius rejects Antiochus' kind of heroism for an atheistic, pseudo-stoical self-control: “I came crijnge into the worlde, and am resolude / to goe out merrilie” (IV.iii.2272-2273). If the gods cannot protect their worshippers, then they “are thinges we make our selves” (IV.iii.2244). Conversely, if providence is an illusion, then physical life is all we have. Berecinthius' obesity has been used throughout the play to signify his inability to interpret events from a spiritual standpoint. Now he becomes obsessed with “my bodie” (IV.iii.2253) and cries out for “halfe a dozen of Hens, and a loyne of veale” (IV.iii.2231) before his execution.¹⁵

The priest's fusion of devil-may-care courage with rejection of an inoperative providence may seem a more valid answer to his experience than Antiochus' piety. But any seventeenth-century audience would argue that courage and comfort based on atheism must be illusory, while concern for one's perishable flesh in the hour of death is sheer madness. Believing as he lists merely causes Berecinthius to surrender his soul to his enemy's values. Rome does, after all, win one spiritual battle.

Act V, returning to the political arena, echoes Berecinthius' split between flesh and spirit by underlining the unbreachable gulf which separates providence from Realpolitik. Again Antiochus causes people to make a moral choice concerning him; but this time he confronts Roman patricians rather than Asians. Marcellus, the proconsul of Syracuse, and his wife, Cornelia, knew the king intimately when he kept his court at Sardis, and “Thanckefullnesse” (V.i.2489) for past favors makes them desire to see his double. When they discover that the “perfit coppie” (V.i.2513) of their erstwhile friend is really the man himself, then they realize that gratitude demands a present obligation rather than mere recollected piety.

Cornelia acknowledges Antiochus “though I loose my life for't (V.ii.2756), because only “traytors to innocence and oppresd iustice” (V.ii.2799) could deny the truth. But compassion and faith cannot rescue the king. Marcellus is reluctant to commit himself to action, and Antiochus wearily accedes to the wisdom of his caution:

let it suffice my lord you must not see
the sun yf in the policie of state
it is forbidden.

(V.ii.2812-2814)

Marcellus and his wife—virtuous and noble Romans—must believe as the Republic lists; spiritual values must be tacitly abandoned. Because of this common denominator, there is little real difference between a good man like the proconsul, who regrets it is not “in my power” (V.ii.2850) to aid the king, and an enthusiastic devotee of tyranny, like Flaminius.

Marcellus and Cornelia also invite comparison with Prusias and his articulate, idealistic queen. Both couples are forced to witness the prostitution of their consciences to “necessitie of state.” But the Bithynian king at least considered fighting for his guest; Flaminius had to use his subtlest wiles to undermine Prusias' honor. At Syracuse, on the other hand, only the proconsul's wife seriously suggests going to war for truth and justice. Even Antiochus sees himself as a “fallinge structure” (V.ii.2810) not worth the propping up.

Flaminius' arrest for graft may appear to indicate that providence does function in the political world—that Antiochus is right to see himself as the agent of an efficacious divine order. But, on close analysis, the legate's downfall betrays very little evidence of God's intervention. Some of the king's merchant-disciples defect to Rome and report Flaminius' illegal confiscation of their goods. In return for evidence against Antiochus, the merchants receive compensation. They have finally obtained what neither Berecinthius nor the exiled prince could gain for them. And Flaminius falls prey to his own greed and to administrative house-cleaning. As Marcellus remarks, “wee / that governe provines” are “preyes expo'sd / to everie subtle spie” (V.i.2434-2436): it is this network of Machiavellian discipline which produces justice as a by-product.¹⁶

Antiochus himself sees Rome as a scourge of God, punishing men's sins. He also views his own fate as a lesson for “prowde monarchs,” teaching them that “though they governe humane thinges / a greater power does rayse, and pull downe kinges” (V.i.2892-2893). One may believe as Antiochus lists by an act of faith, but anyone who judges according to the facts of the play must conclude that Rome is the only “greater power” operative in this world. Faceless, impersonal, safely dissociated from the ambassador who participated in her omnipotence before he overreached himself, the great engine is not humiliated by Antiochus' spiritual triumph in Act IV. She dominated his destiny before the morality episode, and she dominates it afterwards. As long as he walks on this earth, “Romes pleasure” (V.ii.2881) circumscribes him.

Of course, the freedom of the king's soul is more important than that of his body: in ultimate terms, Antiochus' victory is greater than his defeat. But, as Prusias said, a true prince does not hold it “sufficient to liue / as one borne only for my selfe” (III.iii.1606-1607). And this is precisely what Antiochus is compelled to do. He cannot free Asia from bondage by perfecting his legitimacy with real power, and he cannot infuse others with his spiritual heroism. He is enshrined in a symbolic association with Christ, but his effect on the world of men remains a blank.

Because Massinger does not dramatize Antiochus' death, Marvin Herrick has called Believe as You List a failed tragicomedy rather than a tragedy at all.¹⁷ But to do this is to misunderstand completely the nature of the impasse toward which the whole play is moving. The king's moral victory is a very real achievement, but the final impression is one of stalemate: Antiochus' spiritual fortitude is isolated in the world of Act IV and cannot ruffle Rome's omnipotence. In the political sphere of the concluding scenes, where the personal and loving rule of God's virtuous anointed should make society mirror heaven, there is only the cunning anonymity of an empire without a Caesar. Power has become, not a worldly means to a spiritual end, but a purpose and a being in itself. And the result is wasted humanity, suppressed compassion, bitter compromise; such a period is always tragic.

But Herrick's difficulty with the form is suggestive. Roma Gill, also dissatisfied with the play's generic definition, feels that “the darkness of its atmosphere and its unsatisfactory conclusion … qualify it to be called a problem play” rather than “a tragedy.”¹⁸ But the distinction is a somewhat artificial one. Madeleine Doran comes closer to the truth when she remarks that modern dramatists permit their theme to shape its own structure, while Renaissance playwrights would warp their material to meet the demands of a predetermined formula or decorum.¹⁹ Massinger—like Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida—is being very modern in Believe as You List. He is allowing his tragic subject to create its own tragic form. This perhaps explains a brittle, theoretical quality which discourages emotional response and makes critics hesitate about the nature of the play. But, as an experiment in the subtle integration of content and structure, Believe as You List proves Massinger to have been an artist of considerable power.

Notes

1. C. A. Gibson, “Massinger's Use of His Sources for The Roman Actor,” Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (AUMLA), No. 15 (May, 1961), pp. 60-73; Peter H. Davison, “The Theme and Structure of The Roman Actor,” AUMLA, No. 19 (May, 1963), pp. 39-56.

2. Robert Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (Madison, Wisc., 1960), p. 200. This prevailing, negative viewpoint may also be found in Sir Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library (New York, 1904), II, 334-381; T. S. Eliot, “Philip Massinger,” Selected Essays (3rd. ed. rev., London, 1958), pp. 205-220; and T. A. Dunn, Philip Massinger: The Man and the Playwright (London, 1957), passim. See Roma Gill, “‘Necessitie of State’; Massinger's Believe as You List,” ES, 46 (1965), 406-416, for a more positive discussion of Believe as You List itself.

3. David L. Frost, The School of Shakespeare: The Influence of Shakespeare on English Drama, 1600-1642 (Cambridge, 1968), p. 110.

4. Believe as You List exists only in a rare, seventeenth-century holograph (B.M. MS. Egerton 2828), a revised (1631) prompt copy of an earlier, politically unacceptable play. For a discussion of the bibliographical peculiarities of Believe as You List, see Dunn, pp. 56-57, and Charles J. Sisson, ed., Believe as You List (The Malone Society Reprints, Oxford, 1927), pp. v-xvi.

5. Believe as You List, Sisson, ed., p. 6. All subsequent quotations are from this edition.

6. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, tr. Edward Dacres (London, 1640), Chs. 14-15. The same sentiment appears in Fletcher's The False One (V.iv.82), in which Photinus bluntly declares that “Those that have power are royal” (The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher [London, 1840], II).

7. Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French Academie, tr. T. Bowes (5th ed., London, 1618), Bk. 1, Ch. 8, pp. 36-37.

8. In the ancient block-book Ars Moriendi the first woodcut shows the Devil offering instruments of suicide to a despairing sinner. Mankind, the fifteenth-century morality drama, has Mischief offer a rope and pole to Mankind for the same purpose; John Skelton, Magnificence (c. 1523), uses much the same image, and the device appears again in George Wapull's Tide Tarrieth No Man (publ. 1576). See L. W. Cushman, The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare (Halle, 1900), pp. 95-96.

9. Henry Medwall, Nature (c. 1486-1500), has Sensuality introduce Man to Margery that Harlot; and similar episodes occur in The Interlude of Youth (1520), David Lindsay, Satire of the Three Estates (c. 1540), and William Wagner, Trial of Treasure (publ. 1567). See H. K. Russell, “Tudor and Stuart Dramatizations of the Doctrines of Natural and Moral Philosophy,” SP, 31 (1934), 22-24.

10. See M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches (Cambridge, 1963), p. 116, and E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), III, 90-92, for a discussion of the thematic use of various stage levels in medieval and Elizabethan drama.

11. Thomas B. Stroup, “The Testing Pattern in Elizabethan Tragedy,” SEL, 12 (1963), 178. Stroup applies his “basic pattern” to so many plays that the distinction becomes lost, but the idea really is fundamental to morality drama insofar as it tests humanum genus.

12. See, for example, I.ii.311, II.ii.954, II.ii.1061, III.ii.1410, III.ii.1453. Mario Praz, “Machiavelli and the Elizabethans,” Proceedings of the British Academy (London, 1928), p. 83, observes that Satan and Machiavelli were often identified, producing the nickname “Old Nick.”

13. Philip Massinger, The Roman Actor, ed. William Lee Sandidge (Princeton, N.J. 1929), p. 53.

14. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, V.ii.2, Complete Works, ed. Irving Ribner (New York, 1963), p. 406.

15. Seneca, “Epistle XV,” The Workes of Lvcivs Seneca …, tr. Thomas Lodge (enlarged ed., London, 1620), p. 192, says that the man obsessed with food, “drink and sweat,” cannot attain “wisdome … the mind being choaked vp with the great charge of” the “body.”

16. The Prince, Ch. 19, p. 82, argues against any “extortion” which may cause the people to revolt against their ruler. See also Machiavelli's Discourses, tr. Edward Dacres (London, 1636), Bk. 1, Chs. 41 and 45.

17. Marvin T. Herrick, Tragicomedy: Its Origins and Development in Italy, France, and England, Illinois Studies in Lang. and Lit., 39 (Urbana, 1955), 298. Massinger's source for Believe as You List is the historical mistreatment of Sebastian of Portugal by the king of Spain, a cause célèbre in which the principal's fate remained obscure. For a discussion of Massinger's sources, see Sisson, ed., pp. xvii-xix.

18. Gill, p. 416.

19. Endeavors of Art (Madison, Wisc., 1954), p. 367.