On the other hand, he is not a clear thinker, nor are his plays skilfully planned. I should imagine that they read better than they act. For instance, the scene in _The Duchess of Malfi_, where Ferdinand gives the heroine the dead hand, fills us with horror. I doubt if it would be effective on the stage. Webster’s rhymes are poor, and his prose worse than Massinger’s. Sir Sidney Lee(414) says his blank verse is “vigorous and musical”; to me it seems too often ragged and halting. But the chief objection to Webster is that he lives in “a world of repulsive themes and fantastic crimes.” He revels in the sinister suggestions aroused by skulls, dead hands, ghosts, echoes, and madmen. His mind was morbid, and his successes are like lightning flashes of splendid power piercing a gloomy and sullen background. The fact that he was not a productive writer may weigh less with some critics than with others; more important is it to remember that Massinger’s plays held the stage much longer than Webster’s. This fact may fairly be taken to prove the appeal which the former has successfully made to the human heart. Webster, in short, compared with Shakspere, reminds us somewhat of the contrast between Mantegna and Raphael. In one or two respects Webster has affinities with Massinger. Both frequently imitate Shakspere; and both repeat themselves continually, though in different ways. Whereas Massinger used the same vocabulary and terms of thought again and again, Webster quotes whole sentences from one of his plays in another, as if he felt, like some of the Greek writers of antiquity, that when he had said a thing as it should be said, he had the right to use it again.(415) It is difficult to compare Massinger with Ben Jonson: both wrote Roman plays and domestic comedies; but Ben Jonson has at once a greater mind and a wider range of experiment. He was a learned man, a great figure in society, the dictator of a circle of wits, the centre of many friendships and enmities. He would probably regard Massinger as a pale-featured, gentle hack. We know more about his full-blooded personality than about any other writer of the period, and while there is much in him to offend, there is more to inspire our respect.