The tragedies in which Fletcher collaborated with Massinger or others offer few amendments of his usual dramatic habits. "The Queen of Corinth," "The False One," "The Double Marriage," and the spectacular "Prophetess" are all melodramas in which Massinger's moral earnestness and rhetorical seriousness contrast with Fletcher's vivacity, and in which clever stage-craft, noble poetry, and slipshod and hasty workmanship are indiscriminately manifest. "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt" carries on the practice of treating contemporary foreign history, already exemplified by Marlowe and Chapman. Hurriedly written within a few months of Barnavelt's death, it can lay no claim to be a thorough or impartial study of historical events, but it affords a remarkable illustration of the readiness with which both authors could summon their talents to an occasion. Given a theme that had a current theatrical interest, and Massinger's declamation and Fletcher's pathos came nimbly to the task, and almost at their very best. The most striking illustration, however, both of Fletcher's genius and its prostitution to theatrical effectiveness is to be found in "The Bloody Brother; or Rollo, Duke of Normandy." Here in collaboration with Massinger and possibly Jonson and Middleton, he returned to one of the stock themes of tragedy, the story of family feud and a bloody tyrant. In comparison, however, with any preceding dramas of this class, whether in early imitations of Seneca or later treatments of lust and revenge, the play shows the alteration that had come over dramatic ideals and methods. Its purpose is neither to follow literary tradition nor to expose the evil of tyranny, but to make some startling theatrical effects out of the familiar material. Fletcher accomplishes this purpose with his usual recklessness of talent. When the height of tragic passion is required he rises to it, or very nearly, in the scene where Edith pleads with the tyrant to spare her father's life, a scene which Dyce pronounced the most real in its passionate earnestness of anything in Beaumont and Fletcher's writings. But the most astounding display of his power comes where there is no genuine passion but only make-believe. It is the final scene of the play. Edith, whose father has been killed by the bloody and lustful Rollo, is planning to murder him. She has pretended to yield to his solicitations, and has arranged a secret meeting with him at her house. Enter Edith, splendidly dressed--a banquet prepared. She kneels and prays to her father's soul that she may forget all pity and kill the tyrant-- "His heaven forgot, and all his lusts upon him." Then, as her boy sings the lovely song, perhaps Shakespeare's, "Take, oh take those lips away That so sweetly were forsworn--"