Other instances of the same thing are to be found in Donusa’s conversion to Christianity in _The Renegado_,(217) in the change of faith effected in Calista and Christeta by Dorothea’s story of the King of Egypt and Osiris’ image,(218) and in the indecision of Lorenzo about matrimony in _The Bashful Lover_.(219) Change of mind is an ungrateful and inartistic experience. It has landed many honest politicians in bitter and undeserved reproaches. From Aristotle’s time onwards Euripides has been blamed for his Iphigenia at Aulis, who first feared to die, and then offered herself for her country.(220) We certainly feel that in Massinger there are occasionally instances of cheap repentance which do not seem real. Take the case of Corisca in _The Bondman_; a bad woman repents, but though convinced we are not pleased at the spectacle.(221) If Massinger had ever read the _Poetics_ of Aristotle, he forgot or ignored the precept that a character should be ὁμαλόν, or “consistent.”(222) If this is not the case there is a danger that the effect will be μιαρόν, or “odious,” to use a word of which Aristotle is fond. I think, then, that this charge is proven. Massinger saw how effective on the stage a sudden change of character might be, but lacked the necessary art to make it convincing. Hence some of his characters are not even ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλοι.(223) Perhaps the explanation is this, that, being a master of language, he overvalued the persuasiveness of rhetoric.(224) It is not enough to portray the varying emotions which sway the mind at a particular moment; to produce a satisfactory whole they have to be fused together. The reader should not feel that the characters are at the mercy of the situations in which they are placed, or they will appear to be lay-figures or puppets, rather than live flesh and blood. Yet even here a defence of some sort can be set up for our poet. I will endeavour to make my meaning clear by an analogy from music. It may have occurred to someone to ask what the music of Mozart would have been like if he had lived after Beethoven. Would it have been more serious and sublime than it is? The question is worth asking, even if the only answer to it be this, that without Mozart Beethoven would never have existed. I think it is fair to argue that Massinger, in his constant effort after the representation of change of character, was before his time; he was seeking after a complex but possible effect, which the novelist can undertake but which the limitations of the stage render almost impossible.(225)