ISABELLA. "Ha! ha! These forms are air--mere counterfeits
Of my _imaginous_ heart, _as are the whirling
Wainscot and trembling floor_!"
The idea of transferring the seat of imagination from the head to the
heart, and causing it to exhibit the wainscot in a pirouette, and the
floor in an ague, is highly _Shakesperesque_, and, as the _Courier_ is
made to say at page 3 of the _Opinions_, "is worthy of the best days of
that noble school of dramatic literature in which Mr. Stephens has so
successfully studied."
This well-deserved praise--the success with which the author has studied,
in a school, the models of which were human feelings and nature,--we have
yet to illustrate from other passages. Mr. Stephens evinces his full
acquaintance with Nature by a familiarity with her convulsions:
whirlwinds, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and volcanoes--are this
gentleman's playthings. When, for instance, _Rupert_ is going to be
gallant to Queen Isabella, she exclaims:--
"Dire lightnings! Scoundrel! Help!"
_Martinuzzi_ conveys a wish for his nobles to laugh--an order for a sort
of court cachinnation--in these pretty terms:--
"_Blow it about_, ye opposite winds of heaven,
Till the loud chorus of derision shake
The world with laughter!"
When he feels uncomfortable at something he is told in the first act, the
Cardinal complains thus:--
"Ha! earthquakes quiver in my flesh!"
which the _Britannia_ is so good as to tell us is superior to Byron; while
the _Morning Herald_ kindly remarks, that "a more vigorous and expressive
line was _never_ penned. In five words it illustrates the fiercest
passions of humanity by the direst convulsion of nature:" (_Opinions_, p.
7) a criticism which illustrates the fiercest throes of nonsense, by the
direst convulsions of ignorance.
_Castaldo_, being anxious to murder the Cardinal with, we suppose, all
"means and appliances to boot," asks of heaven a trifling favour:--
"Heaven, that look'st on,
Rain thy broad deluge first! All-teeming earth
Disgorge thy poisons, till the attainted air
Offend the sense! Thou, miscreative hell,
Let loose calamity!"
But it is not only in the "sublime and beautiful that Mr. Stephens's
genius delights" (_vide Opinions_, p. 4); his play exhibits sentiments of
high morality, quite worthy of the "Editor of the Church of England
Quarterly Review," the author of "Lay Sermons," and other religious works.
For example: the lady-killer, _Castaldo_, is "hotly" loved by the
queen-mother, while he prefers the queen-daughter. The last and _Castaldo_
are together. The dowager overhears their billing and cooing, and thus,
with great moderation, sends her supposed daughter to ----. But the author
shall speak for himself:--
"Ye viprous twain!
Swift whirlwinds snatch ye both to fire as endless
And infinite as hell! May it embrace ye!
And burn--burn limbs and sinews, souls, until
It wither ye both up--both--in its arms!"
Elegant denunciation!--"viprous," "hell," "sinews and souls." Has Goethe
ever written anything like this? Certainly not. Therefore the "Monthly"
_is_ right at p. 11 of the _Opinions_. Stephens must be equal, if not
superior, to the author of "Faust."
One more specimen of delicate sentiment from the lips of a virgin
concerning the lips of her lover, will fully establish the Syncretic code
of moral taste:--
CZERINA (_faintly_). "Do breathe heat into me:
Lay thy warm breath unto my bloodless lips:
I stagger; I--I must--"