106 Gayley points out (_R. E. C._, p. xci.) that, “Shakspere and Fletcher excepted, Massinger has been adjudged by posterity the most successful of the practical dramatists of the early seventeenth century.” He suggests (_R. E. C._, p. xcv.) that with slight and judicious modification an enterprising actor-manager might successfully produce _A New Way_, _The Maid of Honour_, _The City Madam_, and perhaps _The Bondman_. 107 Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, III., p. 1404_b_. 108 IV., 2. On the other hand, we should remember that our author did not invent this incident, but took it from Byzantine history. _Cf._ Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall_, chapter xxxii. _ 109 Bondman_, II., 1, 187. _Cf._ ὁ ἄφωνος in Ar. _Poetics_, 1460 a. 32. _ 110 Cf._ _The Sea Voyage_ and _The Double Marriage_. _ 111 Roman Actor_, III., 2, 71; _Virgin Martyr_, V., 2, 206. _Cf._ Dr. Bradley’s remarks (_Oxford Lectures_, p. 366, note) on the blinding of Gloucester in _King Lear_. When the Duke in Ford’s _Love’s Sacrifice_ (V., 3) stabs himself and cries aloud: Sprightful flood, Run out in rivers! O, that these thick streams Could gather head, and make a standing pool, That jealous husbands here might bathe in blood; the words can only produce an anticlimax in the spectator’s mind, however effective they may be to the reader. Massinger is more dexterous in _The Fatal Dowry_, IV., 4, 154: “Yes, sir; this is her heart’s blood, is it not? I think it be.” There is a similar difficulty about D’Amville in _The Atheist’s Tragedy_ (V., 2) knocking out his brains with the executioner’s axe; and about Scaevola in _The Rape of Lucrece_ (V. 4) burning off his hand. _Cf._ also Bajazet and Zabina in _Tamburlaine_, Pt. I., V., 1, and Tamburlaine himself in Pt. II., III., 2. 112 Needless to say, the idea is not original; it is already a marked feature of Marlowe’s _Tamburlaine_ and _Faustus_; but the device does not often work so smoothly as in Massinger.