diction, if sometimes obscure, is solemn and lofty. When the play came into the hands of Rowe the whole theatrical atmosphere was changed. There would, indeed, in any case have been small likelihood of that dramatist's theft from Massinger being detected, for the plays of the latter had little to recommend them to the playgoers of the Restoration period, and The Fatal Dowry had long disappeared from the stage. But Rowe's handling of the subject is so different from that of his predecessor as to be almost original. The entire interest of The Fair Penitent is thrown into the person of Calista-the counterpart of Massinger's Beaumelle-in behalf of whom a sentimental interest is excited. She is represented as having been seduced in an unguarded moment by Lothario (the Novali of Massinger), to whom she is still fondly attached, and as having been forced by her father to marry Altamont (Charalois) against her will. The latter discovers her during an interview (not a guilty one) with Lothario, and kills the lover after the manner of the original play. For the rest the opening of the fifth act will furnish a good example of Rowe's intention and of his style. SCENE. A room hung with black; on one side LOTHARIO'S body on a bier; on the other a table, with a skull and other bones, a book and a lamp on it. CALISTA is discovered on a couch in black, her hair hanging loose and disordered; after music and a song she rises and comes forward. [Song.] CALISTA. 'Tis well! these solemn sounds, this pomp of horror, Here's room for meditation ev'n to madness, Can teach us to do over? I'll no more on't. 1 This favourite idea of the tragic skull may be traced back as far as Dekker's Honest Whore. See vol. iv. pp. 225, 252. [Throwing away the book.] I have more real anguish in my heart Is this that haughty, gallant, gay Lothario, That dear perfidious-Ah! how pale he looks! Sciolto (Rochfort), her father, enters and (forgetting apparently that he has had a main share in the situation by forcing Calista into a marriage against her will) presents her with a dagger, suggesting that she must use it against herself, in order to expiate her loss of honour before her marriage. He then leaves her, and is killed by the partisans of Lothario; Calista, hearing the tidings, despatches herself as a parricide, having first told Altamont : Such is thy truth, thy tenderness, and love, Altamont has, in fact, none of the qualities of his loftyminded prototype, Charalois. Rowe has suppressed the dramatic scene of the original play, in which Charalois gains the affections of Rochfort (and so the hand of Beaumelle) by the generous sacrifice of his own liberty to his father's creditors. In The Fair Penitent Altamont appears simply as the injured, but still tender and lachrymose husband, and the blunt fidelity of his friend Horatio, the Romont of Massinger, is equally emasculated as compared with his original. From this it will be rightly divined that Rowe constructed his play solely for the sake of its theatrical situations, and the opportunities it offered to an accomplished actress. In point of sentiment, it is better adapted than The Fatal Dowry to move female emotion, and women were now the most important part of the audience. Massinger's diction is sometimes gross in the extreme; such a character, for example, as the waiting-woman, Bellapert, who is dramatically necessary for the moral evolution of the old drama, would not have been tolerated in the reign of Queen Anne. Nor indeed would the part of Beaumelle herself (quite a subordinate one in The Fatal Dowry) have pleased her own sex. But sentimentalised in the person of Calista, and graced with the smoothly eloquent blank verse of which Rowe was a master, the character became a favourite one with the actresses of the eighteenth century, proving especially effective in the hands of Mrs. Siddons. All these concurrent circumstances help to account for the injustice of time, and to explain why The Fair Penitent should so long have held possession of the stage, while the far greater performance of Massinger was neglected. The insincerity of Rowe's dramatic revival is differently illustrated in his Tamerlane. Remembering the violent hero of Marlowe, it is indeed strange, at first sight, to meet with the Scythian shepherd transformed into a mild constitutional monarch, and favourably contrasted with his despotic rival Bajazet; but we understand the change when we find that the latter is intended to be the representative of Louis XIV., while Tamerlane reminds the poet of-among all people in the world!-William III. Some people [says Rowe] (who do me a very great honour in it) have fancied that in the person of Tamerlane I have alluded to the greatest character of the present age. I don't know whether I ought not to apprehend a great deal of danger from avowing a design like that. It may be a task indeed worthy of the greatest genius which this or any other time has produced. But therefore I ought not to stand the shock of a parallel, lest it should seem to my disadvantage, how far the hero has transcended the poet's thought. There are many features 'tis true in that great man's life, not unlike his Majesty's: his courage, his piety, his moderation, his fatherly love of his people, but above all his hatred of tyranny and oppression, and his zealous care for the common good of mankind, carry a large resemblance of him. In my opinion by much the best of Rowe's poetic dramas is Jane Shore. Here he has relied throughout on his own invention; and the complication of passions involved in the relations between Hastings, Jane Shore, and her jealous rival, Alicia, is made really interesting. The parting interview between Hastings and Alicia shows this poet's style at his best : HASTINGS. ALICIA. One thing I had forgot. I charge thee, by our present common miseries, By all the hopes of peace, here and hereafter, Let not the rancour of thy hate pursue The innocence of thy unhappy friend: Thou know'st who 'tis I mean; oh! shouldst thou wrong her, Just Heaven shall double all thy woes upon thee, And make 'em know no end-Remember this, As the last warning of a dying man : Farewell for ever! [The guards carry Hastings off.] Oh, who can bear to be a wretch for ever! My rival, too! His last thoughts hung on her : Devote the hour when such a wretch was born; In the mouth of a beautiful actress this declamation (in days when the meaning of rhythm was understood) must have been very effective. But comparing it with Shakespeare's Richard III., for example, the reader will again observe the tendency in the eighteenth-century play 1 Jane Shore, Act iv. Sc. 1. to throw the greater part of the emotional interest into the female parts, and also to make that emotion rhetorical. The latter result is doubtless due to the powerful influence exercised over the dramatist by the actors. It is noticeable that, in Cato, the scenes generally close with rhyme; and, in the passage just quoted, the rhyming rants of the Caroline heroic play are mixed with the older blank verse. When Phedra and Hippolytus was being rehearsed, Mrs. Oldfield complained to Smith of the flat style of her " going off" speech in one of the acts, and "Rag" is said to have at once struck off an impromptu in rhyme to the actress's satisfaction.1 Edward Young and Elijah Fenton continued the revival begun by Rowe, and both approached nearer than he to the spirit of the ancient stage. In The Revenge and Mariamne, as I have already said, the moral influence of Massinger is visible. Though the plot of the former was perhaps immediately suggested by Othello, Young takes care, after the example of Massinger, in The Duke of Milan, to give his villain a more adequate motive of revenge than the one which actuated Iago; while Fenton has transferred the doting passion of Sforza for his wife, bodily, from Massinger's play into the Herod of his own Mariamne. (4) A more genuine and successful effort of dramatic invention is seen in Gay's attempt to combine comedy and opera on the English stage. Opera had advanced on an irresistible tide of conquest from Italy to the Northern countries of Europe; but it had not altogether suppressed the liberties of the native composer. France, for instance, had developed a form of opera suited to her national genius. Signor Baptist Lully [says Addison] acted like a man of sense in this particular. He found the French music ex 1 How wider still my growing horrors spread! |