History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to SwinburneLang, Andrew
History
History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne
Lang, Andrew
English literature -- History and criticism
The bride receives him coldly. A man has wronged her, will he slay that
man? She names the king: "To cover shame I took _thee_" she says.
The situation,--with the horror-stricken loyalty of Amintor; his
heart already a chaos of remorse, regret, and desire; the implacable
resolution of Evadne; "the murderess-Magdalen, whose penitence is of
one crimson colour with her sin--" is undeniably tragically great.
Ribaldries as of Pandarus in "Troilus and Cressida" greet the happy
pair in the morning. The secret reaches Melanthius, brother of Evadne
and the king's bravest captain. Evadne binds the sleeping king in
his bed, wakens him, taunts him, and stabs him for her husband, her
brother, and herself. Aspatia disguises herself as her own avenging
brother, challenges Amintor who has deserted her, strikes him, kicks
him; at last he draws, and she falls by the hand of the man she loves.
Evadne enters, red-handed from regicide,
Am I not fair?
Looks not Evadne beauteous with these rites?
The seeming dead speaks,--
I am Aspatia yet--
and takes farewell. Amintor stabs himself, but not before Evadne has
set him the example. Had Ophelia fallen by the sword of Hamlet the
tragedy would not have been "deeper".
"Philaster," again, is a romantic comedy, that deserves its second
title "Love lies a'bleeding". Philaster is kept out of his royalty by
the king, who is wedding his daughter, Arethusa, beloved by Philaster,
to Pharamond, prince of Spain, a random debauchee. His intrigue with
the audacious wanton Megra, a Court lady, and the besetting of him
by the armed burgesses, devoted to Philaster, yield the grim comic
material. Philaster gives his page, Bellario (really the disguised
Euphrasia, who loves him), to Arethusa. She is accused of an intrigue
with the page, who is the soul of loyalty to her and to Philaster. He,
in jealousy, rejects both his lady and his page: they meet in a forest:
he dismisses Bellario, and bids Arethusa stab him, or he will stab her.
We are two
Earth cannot bear at once.
He does stab her, and is attacked by a country fellow, who wounds him;
he then flies from some of the Court who are approaching. Finding
Bellario asleep in a glade, Philaster wounds her; so that the pursuers,
who
Have no mark to know me but my blood,
may suppose Bellario to be the assailant of Arethusa! "Oh, my heart,
what a varlet's this, to offer manslaughter upon the harmless
gentlewoman," we may cry, with the grocers wife in "The Knight of the
Burning Pestle". We "could hurl things at him," at Philaster: whose
jealousy does not palliate his cruelty and treachery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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