_King Lear_, in the scene between the king and Edgar on the heath, echoes the scene between Hieronimo and Bazulto. Humour is absent from the play, unless we extend the courtesy of that name to the grim hoax (explained to us by a chuckling page, who thoroughly enjoys his part in it) practised by Lorenzo upon Pedringano, and the consequently mocking spirit of jest which pervades the hall of judgment during the misguided wretch's trial. The pert confidence of the prisoner, at the foot of the gallows, in the saving contents of a certain box, which the audience knows to be empty, is dramatic irony in its bitterest form. Hard words have been written about the horrible scenes in the play, as though it were a huddled-up bundle of bloodshed and ghosts. Such a conception is far from the truth. Horror is an element in almost all powerful tragedies; it is hardly to be separated from any unexpected or violent death. We reject it as monstrous only when its cause is the product of a vile and unnatural motive, or of a motive criminally insufficient to explain the impulse. What is repulsive in _Arden of Feversham_, and in such recognized 'Tragedies of Blood' as have Tourneur, Marston and Webster for their authors, is the utter callousness of the murderers, and their base aims, or disgusting lack of any reasonable excuse for their crimes. When D'Amville pushes his brother over the edge of the quarry, or Antonio stabs the child Julio, or Bosola heaps torments upon the Duchess of Malfi, we turn away with loathing because the deed is either cruelly undeserved or utterly unwarranted by the gain expected from it. Alice Arden's murder of her husband is mainly detestable because her ulterior motive is detestable. Again, the ghosts which Marston and Chapman give us are absurd creatures of 'too, too solid flesh', who will sit on the bed to talk comfortably to one, draw the curtains when one wishes to sleep, or play the scout and call out in warning whenever danger threatens. Kyd does not serve up crime and the supernatural world thus. He shows us terrible things, it is true. But the causes are to be found deep down in the primary impulses of man, in jealousy, in fear, in despair, in blood-revenge. These impulses are not vile; our moral code does not cry out against them as it does against lust, greed, and motiveless cruelty. When we rise from the play it is not with a sense that we have moved amongst base creatures. Lorenzo repels us; but it is Hieronimo who dominates the stage, filling us with pity for his wrongs and weakness. The supernatural remains outside nature, crude, as all stage representations of it must be, but unobtrusive (and, in the prologue, at least, thoroughly dignified), serving a useful purpose in keeping before us the imminence of Nemesis biding its appointed hour. It is not easy to suggest how better an insistence upon this lofty _motif_ could have been maintained.