A thousand torches must their light attend, To lead you to a temple and a crown. Why does my fairest Almahida frown? Am I less pleasing than I was before, Or is the insolent Almanzor more? Almah. I justly own that I some pity have, Not for the insolent, but for the brave. Aben. Though to your king your duty you neglect, Know, Almahide, I look for more respect: And, if a parent's charge your mind can move, Receive the blessing of a monarch's love. Almah. Did he my freedom to his life prefer, And shall I wed Almanzor's murderer? No, sir; I cannot to your will submit ; Your way's too rugged for my tender feet. Aben. You must be driven where you refuse to go; And taught, by force, your happiness to know. Almah. (Smiling scornfully.) To force me, sir, is much unworthy you, And, when you would, impossible to do. If force could bend me, you might think, with shame, That I debased the blood from whence I swear, And in his death ingrateful may appear, He ought, in justice, first to spare his life, And then to claim your promise as his wife. Almah. Whate'er my secret inclinations be, To this, since honor ties me, I agree: And with Almanzor lead a humble life: There is a private greatness in his wife. Boab. That little love I have, I hardly buy; You give my rival all, while you deny: You are obeyed; but 't is so great a grace, That I could wish me in my rival's place. (Exeunt King and Abenamar.) Almah. How blest was I before this fatal day, When all I knew of love, was to obey! 'T was life becalmed, without a gentle breath; Though not so cold, yet motionless as A heavy, quiet state; but love, all strife, seen An excellence beyond Boabdelin. I had not, aiming higher, lost my rest; But with a vulgar good been dully blest: But, in Almanzor, having seen what's rare, Now I have learnt too sharply to compare; And, like a favorite quickly in disgrace, Just know the value ere I lose the place. (To her Almanzor, bound and guarded.) Almanz. I see the end for which I'm hither sent, (Looking down.) To double, by your sight, my punishment. There is a shame in bonds I cannot bear; Far more than death, to meet your eyes I fear. Almah. (Unbinding him.) That shame of How did he dare my freedom to restore? Almah. If any subject for your thanks there be, The king expects 'em not; you owe 'em me. Our freedoms through each other's hands have passed; You give me my revenge in winning last. Almanz. Then fate commodiously for me has done; To lose mine there where I would have it won. Almah. Almanzor, you too soon will understand, That what I win is on another's hand. The king (who doomed you to a cruel fate) Gave to my prayers both his revenge and hate; But at no other price would rate your life, Than my consent and oath to be his wife. Almanz. Would you, to save my life, my love betray? Here; take me; bind me; carry me away; Kill me! I'll kill you if you disobey. (To the Guards.) Almah. That absolute command your love does give, I take, and charge you by that power to live. Almanz. When death, the last of comforts, you refuse, Your power, like heaven upon the damned, you use; You force me in my being to remain, To make me last, and keep me fresh for pain. When all my joys are gone, What cause can I for living longer give, But a dull, lazy habitude to live? Almah. Rash men, like you, and impotent of will, Give Chance no time to turn, but urge her still; She would repent; you push the quarrel on, And once because she went, she must be gone. Almanz. She shall not turn; what is it she can do, To recompense me for the loss of you? Almah. Heaven will reward your worth some better way: At least, for me, you have but lost one day. Nor is 't a real loss which you deplore; You sought a heart that was engaged before. 'T was a swift love which took you in his way; Flew only through your heart, but made no stay: 'T was but a dream, where truth had not a place; A scene of fancy, moved so swift a pace, And shifted, that you can but think it was; Let, then, the short vexatious vision pass. Almanz. My joys, indeed, are dreams; but not my pain: 'T was a swift ruin, but the marks remain. When some fierce fire lays goodly buildings waste, Would you conclude There had been none, because the burning's past? Almah. It was your fault that fire seized all your breast; You should have blown up some to save the rest: But 't is, at worst, but so consumed by fire, As cities are, that by their falls rise higher. Build love a nobler temple in my place; You'll find the fire has but enlarged What hopes, what fears, what transports can it move? 'Tis but the ghost of a departed love. Almah. You, like some greedy cormorant, devour All my whole life can give you, in an hour. What more I can do for you is to die, And that must follow, if you this deny. Since I gave up my love, that you might live, You, in refusing life, my sentence give. Almanz. Far from my breast be such an impious thought! Your death would lose the quiet mine had sought. I'll live for you, in spite of misery; But you shall grant that I had rather die. I'll be so wretched, filled with such despair, That you shall see to live was more to dare. Almah. Adieu, then, O my soul's far better part! Your image sticks so close, That the blood follows from my rending heart. But still, the more I cast you from my mind, You dash, like water, back, when thrown against the wind. (Exit.) (As he goes off, the King meets him with Abenamar; they stare at each other without saluting.) Boab. With him go all my fears. A guard there wait, And see him safe without the city gate. (To them Abdelmelech.) Now, Abdelmelech, is my brother dead? Abdelm. The usurper to the Christian camp is fled; Whom as Granada's lawful king they EPILOGUE Success, which can no more than beauty last, Makes our sad poet mourn your favors past: For, since without desert he got a name, soon: For, as those tawdry misses, soon or late, Jilt such as keep 'em at the highest rate; (And oft the lacquey, or the brawny clown, Gets what is hid in the loose-bodied gown), So, Fame is false to all that keep her long; And turns up to the fop that's brisk and young. Some wiser poet now would leave Fame first; But elder wits are, like old lovers, cursed: Who, when the vigor of their youth is spent, Still grow more fond, as they grow impotent. This, some years hence, our poet's case may prove: But yet, he hopes, he's young enough to love. When forty comes, if e'er he live to see 28 "This apparently alludes to the lapse of a year since the production of Dryden's last play." (Noyes.) Nell Gwyn, who played Almahide, had borne a son to Charles II in May, 1670. THOMAS OTWAY VENICE PRESERVED, OR, A PLOT DISCOVERED Thomas Otway (1652-1685) led a checquered and stormy life. Rejected by an actress whom he long loved, he fought in the Low Countries in 1678-9. After failing as an actor, he had taken to writing plays with remarkable fertility, at first in the manner of Dryden and the seventeenth-century French dramatists. His comedies are not highly thought of; but two of his tragedies, The Orphan (1680), and the present one (first acted in 1682), rise to the highest excellence. Venice Preserved is of a style less peculiar to the Restoration period than The Conquest of Granada, is a more normal and to us more interesting play, and nearer the regular line of dramatic development. It is at once more Elizabethan and more modern. The student can hardly overlook certain Shakespearean reminiscences, or the influence of Fletcher, especially on the characterization and the verse. The chief sign that it dates from the Restoration period is that the dramatist observes the three unities, of action, time, and place. Accordingly, the action is single, admitting no side-issue or sub-plot," and takes place within twentyfour hours, and within the limits of one city. These rules were partly drawn from Aristotle's Poetics and from the practice of the ancients, but were first laid down as a strict law (as stated earlier) by Castelvetro in 1570. Founded on an error as to the nature of dramatic illusion, they hampered the drama for centuries, and exacted heavy sacrifices from freedom and naturalness. In this play, however, as occasionally elsewhere, there is no conspicuous loss in their observance, and they may even be thought to have heightened the intensity. With this classical body, a body at least which a classicist could hardly censure, the spirit of the play is thoroughly romantic. We have not only such imposing circumstances as the tolling bell, the rising ghosts, the madness of Belvidera, the violent action and bloodshed on the stage; the emotional pitch of the play is soft, pathetic, and almost sentimental. Except in the figure of Pierre, there is nothing sturdy about it. It strives to melt us. The sentimental tragedy for which Otway is known has its analogues in the Elizabethan drama (as in that of Fletcher and Ford); it also looks forward to the sentimentalism of the eighteenth century, as in the comedies of Steele and Cumberland. We miss the strong, truer emotions of the greater Elizabethans. In this soft emotionality we may perhaps see something characteristic of the age. This play, like The Conquest of Granada, sets at nought the feeling of patriotism, and reminds us that it was written in an age when England was full of discord, and when the very sovereign had sold himself and was ready to sell his country to a foreign prince. The sentimentalism is not in what is said, its vehicle in the later comedy, but is perhaps only half conscious, springing from Otway's own gentle soul, and appearing in the sort of characters with whom he felt sympathy. The characterization is at once a source of strength and weakness in the play. Jaffeir, structurally the hero, excites pity abundantly, but little respect and no admiration. A private wrong, inflicted by an individual senator, makes him join a band of irresponsible traitors, largely foreigners at that (we are nowhere told that he was a foreigner). His own trustful carelessness for his wife puts him in a position where he betrays their secret to her. And he makes haste to justify the worst suspicions of the hateful Renault Another private wrong, threatened by an individual conspirator, and his first realization of the horrors which would follow the suc cess of the plot, lead him to betray them to the Council of Ten, with the childish expectation that their lives will be spared. He is a lifelike but unattractive figure of a weak emotional character at the mercy of circumstance, of his own feelings, and even of every last speaker, capable of instantaneous but not of sustained courage and resolution. He excites, not terror like a tragic hero, but only pity, like a sentimental one. We toler ate him for the sake of his friend and his wife. Pierre is admirably contrasted with Jaffeir, a fine example of cheerful devil-maycare generosity and loyalty. "Revenge! cries Jaffeir, when he has joined the conspirators. Pierre. And liberty! Jaff. Revenge! revenge! [Exeunt. Few heroines surpass Belvidera, unintellectual, but courageous, tender, with an infinite capacity for strong love, and a woman's conservatism and dread of sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion. Otway's women are always better done than his men; with good reason Collins in his Ode to Pity pays a tribute to " gentlest Otway," who sung the female heart." It is notable, however, that |