A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. | Page 2

allusion to him. The Two Tragedies is of the highest rarity and has
never been reprinted before.
There are two distinct plots in the present play. The one relates to the
murder of Robert Beech, a chandler of Thames Street, and his boy, by a
tavern-keeper named Thomas Merry; and the other is founded on a
story which bears some resemblance to the well-known ballad of The
Babes in the Wood. I have not been able to discover the source from
which the playwright drew his account of the Thames Street murder.

Holinshed and Stow are silent; and I have consulted without avail
Antony Munday's "View of Sundry Examples," 1580, and "Sundry
strange and inhumaine Murthers lately committed," 1591 (an
excessively rare, if not unique, tract preserved at Lambeth). Yet the
murder must have created some stir and was not lightly forgotten. From
Henslowe's Diary[3] (ed. Collier, pp. 92-3) we learn that in 1599
Haughton and Day wrote a tragedy on the subject,--"the Tragedy of
Thomas Merrye." The second plot was derived, I suppose, from some
Italian story; and it is not improbable that the ballad of the Babes in the
Wood (which was entered in the Stationers' Books in 1595, tho' the
earliest printed copy extant is the black-letter broadside--circ. 1640?--in
the Roxburghe Collection) was adapted from Yarington's play.
Although not published until 1601, the Two Tragedies would seem
from internal evidence to have been written some years earlier. The
language has a bald, antiquated look, and the stage-directions are
amusingly simple. I once entertained a theory (which I cannot bring
myself to wholly discard) that Arden of Feversham, 1592, Warning for
Fair Women, 1599, and Two Tragedies in One, 1601, are all by the
same hand; that the Warning and Two Tragedies, though published
later, were early essays by the author whose genius displayed its full
power in Arden of Feversham. A reader who will take the trouble to
read the three plays together will discover many points of similarity
between them. Arden is far more powerful than the two other plays; but
I venture to think that the superiority lies rather in single scenes and
detached passages than in general dramatic treatment. The noble scene
of the quarrel and reconciliation between Alice Arden and Mosbie is
incomparably finer than any scene in the Warning or _Two Tragedies_;
but I am not sure that Arden contains another scene which can be
definitely pronounced to be beyond Yarington's ability, though there
are many scattered passages displaying such poetry as we find nowhere
in the Two Tragedies. That Yarington could write vigorously is shown
in the scene where Fallerio hires the two murderers (who remind us of
Shagbag and Black Will in _Arden_) to murder his nephew; and again
in the quarrel between these two ruffians. Allenso's affection for his
little cousin and solicitude at their parting are tenderly portrayed with
homely touches of quiet pathos. The diction of the Two Tragedies is
plain and unadorned. In reading Arden we sometimes feel that the

simplicity of language has been deliberately adopted for artistic
purposes; that the author held plenty of strength in reserve, and would
not have been wanting if the argument had demanded a loftier style. In
Yarington's case we have no such feeling. He seems to be giving us the
best that he had to give; and it must be confessed that he is intolerably
flat at times. It is difficult to resist a smile when the compassionate
Neighbour (in his shirt), discovering poor Thomas Winchester with the
hammer sticking in his head, delivers himself after this fashion:--
"What cruell hand hath done so foule a deede, Thus to bemangle a
distressed youth Without all pittie or a due remorse! See how the
hammer sticketh in his head Wherewith this honest youth is done to
death! Speak, honest Thomas, if any speach remaine: What cruell hand
hath done this villanie?"
Merry's "last dying speech and confession" is as nasty as such things
usually are.
In the introduction to Arden of Feversham I intend to return to the
consideration of Yarington's Two Tragedies.

Two Lamentable Tragedies.
The one, of the Murther of Maister Beech A Chaundler in
Thames-streete, and his boye, done by Thomas Merry.
The other of a Young childe murthered in a Wood by two Ruffins, with
the consent of his Vnckle.
By ROB. YARINGTON.
LONDON.
Printed for _Mathew Lawe, and are to be solde at _his Shop in Paules
Church-yarde neere vnto S. Austines Gate, at the signe of the Foxe_.
1601.

Two Tragedies in One.
_Enter Homicide, solus_.
I have in vaine past through each stately streete, And blinde-fold
turning of this happie towne, For wealth, for peace, and goodlie

government, Yet can I not finde out a minde, a heart For blood and
causelesse death