She is compelled by the silent entreaties of a father, perishing with “bitter shameful want on the cold earth,” to give her hand, with a heart thus irrecoverably pre-engaged, to Lord Aldobrand, the enemy of her lover, even to the very man who had baffled his ambitious schemes, and was, at the present time, entrusted with the execution of the sentence of death which had been passed on Bertram. Now, the proof of “woman’s love,” so industriously held forth for the sympathy, if not for the esteem of the audience, consists in this, that, though Bertram had become a robber and a murderer by trade, a ruffian in manners, yea, with form and features at which his own mother could not but “recoil,” yet she (Lady Imogine) “the wife of a most noble, honoured Lord,” estimable as a man, exemplary and affectionate as a husband, and the fond father of her only child--that she, notwithstanding all this, striking her heart, dares to say to it-- “But thou art Bertram’s still, and Bertram’s ever.” A Monk now enters, and entreats in his Prior’s name for the wonted hospitality, and “free noble usage” of the Castle of St. Aldobrand for some wretched shipwrecked souls, and from this we learn, for the first time, to our infinite surprise, that notwithstanding the supernaturalness of the storm aforesaid, not only Bertram, but the whole of his gang, had been saved, by what means we are left to conjecture, and can only conclude that they had all the same desperate swimming powers, and the same saving destiny as the hero, Bertram himself. So ends the first act, and with it the tale of the events, both those with which the tragedy begins, and those which had occurred previous to the date of its commencement. The second displays Bertram in disturbed sleep, which the Prior, who hangs over him, prefers calling a “starting trance,” and with a strained voice, that would have awakened one of the seven sleepers, observes to the audience-- “How the lip works! How the bare teeth do grind! And beaded drops course [81] down his writhen brow!” The dramatic effect of which passage we not only concede to the admirers of this tragedy, but acknowledge the further advantages of preparing the audience for the most surprising series of wry faces, proflated mouths, and lunatic gestures that were ever “launched” on an audience to “sear the sense.” [82] “PRIOR.--I will awake him from this horrid trance. This is no natural sleep! Ho, wake thee, stranger!”