It is the purpose of this paper to study the unassisted work of Middleton, of Rowley, and of Massinger for the individual characteristics of these men. From the characteristics thus arrived at, the part each man probably took in the composition of The Old Law will be determined. This assignment of parts will be used as the basis for determining the probable method of composition, and the approximate date of the play.

The appropriate and frequently quoted words of Orazio

Bacci, “E speriamo che anche del Catone non si ritorni a parlare troppo presto,”1 have taken their place among those maxims

Le qua' fuggendo tutto 'l mondo onora.

The copious stream of Cato literature has flowed on undiminished, and the end is apparently no nearer than before. If, then, a new recruit is to join the procession of those who seem to honor Bacci's precept more in the breach than in the observance, it behooves him to declare at the outset that he does so only because he has material to offer which he believes to be new and of a nature to expedite the ultimate solution of the problem.

The people of this country are commonly supposed to be in a high degree practical, and the word is often used in praise of Americans as possessing a clear vision of the hard facts of life and as governing their conduct accordingly, so as to get the best results possible. The typical American is supposed to be a practical man, not an idealist or a misty theorizer absorbed in meditations that lead to nothing. But the same word may also be used to imply a reproach, not the less real for being covert; it may suggest that ours is a civilization which looks upon material prosperity as the highest good and cares but little if at all for whatever is intangible. That our colleges and universities attract a large number of students of capacity and industry is good evidence that the young men of this country do not all understand success in life to be synonymous with the acquisition of wealth. But it cannot be said that we have in our universities all the students we want. There is still room for a great increase in their numbers before we need feel that there is any risk for us of an intellectual proletariat.

The “dramatic guilt” or the “tragic fate” differs, it is well known, from fate and guilt in the common sense of the terms. Fate is the equivalent of blind destiny, or of the whimsical decree or the general envy or malice of the gods towards men. This Fate foredooms the victim to some crime which brings a punishment in its train, or to a wholly undeserved calamity, which the Greeks were fond of representing as foretold but unavoidable. The ill-will of the gods had perhaps been incurred by an ancestor of the victim, but was wreaked upon the remote descendant to the third and fourth generation. In this curse of the gods we may see a poetical conception of an hereditary evil. Or on the other hand, in heredity we may see a modern and very real equivalent of the Greek decree of the gods, the “moira.”