"GHOST. -Repent, repent of all thy villanies. (Ghost sinks.) "D. JOHN.-Farewell, thou art a foolish ghost. Repent, quoth he! what could this mean? our senses are all in a mist sure." “D. ANTONIO.-(one of D. Juan's reprobate companions.) They are not! 'Twas a ghost." "D. LOPEZ.-(another reprobate.) I ne'er believed those foolish tales before." "D. JOHN.-Come! 'Tis no matter. Let it be what it will, it must be natural." "D. ANT.-And nature is unalterable in us too." "D. JOHN.-"Tis true! The nature of a ghost can not change our's." Who also can deny a portion of sublimity to the tremendous consistency with which he stands out the last fearful trial, like a second Prometheus? "Chorus of Devils." "STATUE-GHOST.-Will you not relent and feel remorse?" "D. JOHN.-Could'st thou bestow another heart on me I might. But with this heart I have, I can not." "D. LOPEZ. These things are prodigious." "D. ANTON.-I have a sort of grudging to relent, but something holds me back." "D. Lop. If we could, 'tis now too late. I will not." "D. ANT.-We defy thee!" GHOST.-Perish ye impious wretches, go and find the punishments laid up in store for you!" (Thunder and lightning. D. Lop. and D. Ant. are swallowed up.) "GHOST to D. JOHN.-Behold their dreadful fates, and know that thy last moment's come!" "D. JOHN.—Think not to fright me, foolish ghost; I'll break your marble body in pieces and pull down your horse." (Thunder and lightning-chorus of devils, &c.) "D. JOHN.-These things I see with wonder, but no fear. Were all the elements to be confounded, And shuffled all into their former chaos; Were seas of sulphur flaming round about me, To the last instant I would dare thy power. Here I stand firm, and all thy threats condemn. Thy murderer (to the ghost of one whom he had murdered) (He is swallowed up in a cloud of fire.) In fine the character of Don John consists in the union of every thing desirable to human nature, as means, and which therefore by the well known law of association become at length desirable on their own account. On their own account, and in their own dignity they are here displayed, as being employed to ends so unhuman, that in the effect, they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other-more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagina expect them; and by rewarding with all the sympathies which are the due of virtue, those criminals whom law, reason, and religion have excommunicated from our esteem. This of itself would lead me back to Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand; but, in my own mind, this tragedy was brought into connection with the Libertine, (Shadwell's adaptation of the Atheista Fulminato to the English stage in the reign of Charles the Second,) by the fact, that our modern drama is taken, in the substance of it, from the first scene of the third act of the Libertine. But with what palpable superiority of judgment in the original! Earth and hell, men and spirits, are up in arms against Don John: the two former acts of the play have not only prepared us for the supernatural, but accustomed us to the prodigious. It is, therefore, neither more nor less than we anticipate when the Captain exclaims: "In all the dangers I have been, such horrors I never knew. I am quite unmanned;" and when the Hermit says, "that he had beheld the ocean in wildest rage, yet ne'er before saw a storm so dreadful, such horrid flashes of lightning, and such claps of thunder, were never in my remembrance." And Don John's bursts of startling impiety is equally intelligible in its motive, as dramatic in its effect. But what is there to account for the prodigy of the tempest at Bertram's shipwreck? It is a mere supernatural effect without even a hint of any supernatural agency; a prodigy without any circumstance mentioned that is prodigious; and a miracle introduced without a ground, and ending without a result. Every event and every scene of the play might have taken place as well if Bertram and his vessel had been driven in by a common hard gale, or from want of provisions. The first act would have indeed lost its greatest and most sonorous picture; a scene for the sake of a scene, without a word spoken; as such, therefore, (a rarity without a precedent) we must take it, and be thankful! In the opinion of not a few, it was, in every sense of the word, the best scene in the play. I am quite certain it was the most innocent: and the steady, quiet uprightness of the flame of the waxcandles which the monks held over the roaring billows amid the storm of wind and rain, was really miraculous. The Sicilian sea coast: a convent of monks: night: a most portentous, unearthly storm: a vessel is wrecked: contrary to all human expecțation, one man saves himself by his prodigious powers as a swimmer, aided by the peculiarity of his destination Prior All, all did perish 1st Monk-Change, change those drenched weeds S s Prior-I wist not of them-every soul did perish- 3d Monk-No, there was one did battle with the storm His life was won and lost, as tho' he recked not- Well! This man is led in by the monks, supposed dripping wet, and to very natural enquiries he either remains silent, or gives most brief and surly answers, and after three or four of these half-line courtesies, " dashing off the monks" who had saved him, he exclaims in the true sublimity of our modern misanthropic heroism "Off! ye are men-there's poison in your touch. But I must yield, for this (What?) hath left me strengthless." So end the three first scenes. In the next (the Castle of St. Aldobrand,) we find the servants there equally frightened with this unearthly storm, though wherein it differed from other violent storms we are not told, except that Hugo informs us, page 9 Piet." Hugo, well met. Does e'en thy age bear Memory of so terrible a storm? Hugo-They have been frequent lately. |