FERDINAND. You have said, Gallants, so much and hitherto done so little, That till I learn to speak and you to do, I must take time to thank you. EUBULUS. As I live, Answer’d as I could wish, how the fops gape now! RICARDO. This was harsh and scurvy. UBALDO. We will be revenged, When he comes to court the ladies, and laugh at him. Another of Massinger’s effective devices is to sustain the interest of the spectators by concealing characters and facts; thus, in _The Duke of Milan_ we do not fathom for some time the villainy of Francisco; in _The City Madam_ we ponder from the beginning over the obscure character of Luke. The best instances of this expedient are to be found in _The Unnatural Combat_ and _The Bondman_. The air of gloom which overhangs the former tragedy is as great in its way as anything which our author has attained; and though the play is what we may call Elizabethan rather than for all time, yet it is in some sense the best specimen of his serious work. The desire of Malefort is that of the father in Shelley’s _Cenci_; and perhaps the only way to prevent the theme from being intolerable was to veil it as long as possible, and to raise the spectators’ sympathy at first for a man who had fought well for the State, and who to all appearance was badly treated by his pirate son.(114) In _The Bondman_, Marullo and Timandra, the brother and sister, are concealed till the very end, when they reveal themselves to be Pisander and Statilia—thereby bringing to an unexpected conclusion a plot which seemed to offer no solution.(115) In _The City Madam_ the method is varied a little: here we have one of Massinger’s greatest creations, the fawning hypocrite, Luke. Indications of his future development are skilfully given from time to time, so that when this alarming person at length shows himself in his true colours we shiver without being surprised. The same idea shows itself in _The Renegado_,(116) in the skill with which Donusa leads up to her proposal that Vitelli should turn Mahometan; and in _The Virgin Martyr_,(117) where Artemia prepares the way for the offer of her hand to Antoninus. Massinger is never so happy as when he has an opportunity in his well-proportioned scenes for displays of rhetoric, such as we find in Euripides, where character argues against character.(118) These scenes are often thrown into the form of a trial at law or a debate in the Senate.(119)