There
can be no doubt that whoever transcribed _Calisto_ transcribed also _The
Captives_. But from internal evidence alone--putting aside the testimony
afforded by the handwriting, and ignoring the entry in Sir Henry
Herbert's Office-Book--any competent reader could plainly perceive that
the play is Heywood's. In the very first scene--in the conversation
between Treadway and Raphael--we feel at once the charm of that hearty
"Christianism" which is never absent from Heywood's work. There is no
affectation in Heywood; he is always natural and simple, though
occasionally the writing sprawls.
Everybody knows the droll description in Heywood's _English Traveller_
of the "Shipwreck by Drink,"[45]--how some unthrift youths, carousing
deeply, chanced to turn their talk on ships and storms at sea; whereupon
one giddy member of the company suddenly conceived that the room was a
pinnace, that the sounds of revelry were the bawlings of sailors, and
that his unsteady footing was due to the wildness of the tempest; the
illusion spread among his companions, and a scene of whimsical confusion
followed.
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