There if in any pause of love I restBreathless with bliss upon her panting breast,In broken, melting accents I will swear,Henceforth to trust my heart with none save her;a Sciolto who has given his daughter a dagger with which to end her shame, and then has arrested her willing arm with the prayer that she will not dispatch herself until he is gone from the sight of her, can thereupon take leave of her with the statement:There is I know not what of sad presageThat tells me I shall never see thee more.The play, which enjoyed an immense fame, high contemporary appreciation, and a long career on the stage, remains a curious memorial of the taste of a bygone day.It is noteworthy that inThe Fair PenitentHoratio, as Romont in all modern reproductions ofThe Fatal Dowry, is the great acting part—not the husband.In 1758 was produced at the Hay market a drama entitledThe Insolvent or Filial Piety, from the pen of Aaron Hill. In the preface it is said—according to Genest (IV, 538)—“Wilks about 30 years before gave an old manuscript play, called theGuiltless Adulteress, to Theo. Cibber who was manager of what then was the Summer Company—after an interval of several years this play was judged to want a revisal to fit it for representation—Aaron Hill at the request of Theo. Cibber almost new wrote the whole, and the last act was entirely his in conduct, sentiment and diction.” In reality,The InsolventisThe Fatal Dowryover again, altered to tragicomedy, and with the names of the characters changed. The first two Acts of Hill’s play proceed much after the manner of its prototype, with close parallels in language. From thenceforward, however, the action diverges. The bride, Amelia, resists the further attentions of her former sweetheart. They are none the less observed and suspected by her husband’s friend, who speaks of the matter to both her father and her lord. The former promises to observe her with watchful eye; Chalons, the husband, is at first resentful of the imputation, but presently yields to his friend’s advice, that he pretend a two-days’ journey, from which he will return unexpectedly. During his absence, his wife’s maid introduces the lover into her mistress’ chamber while Amelia sleeps. There Chalons surprises him kneeling beside the bed, and kills him. Amelia stabs herself, but the confession of her maid reveals her innocence, and her wound is pronounced not mortal.It has been suggested (Biographia Dramatica, II, 228—quoted by Phelan, p. 59, and Schwarz, p. 74) that in Hill’sZara(adaptation of theZaireof Voltaire), also, Nerestan’s voluntary return to captivity in order to end that of his friends, whom he lacked the means to ransom with gold, was suggested by the behavior of Charalois; but this can be no more than a coincidence, as it here but reproduces what is in the French original.A long interval, and finally, in the dawn of the twentieth century, there appeared the next and latest recrudescence ofThe Fatal Dowry. This wasDer Graf von Charolais, ein Trauerspiel, by Richard Beer-Hofmann, disciple of the Neo-Romantic School orVienna Decadents, a coterie built about the leadership of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Beer-Hofmann’s play—a five-Act tragedy in blank verse—was produced for the first time at the Neue Theatre, Berlin, on December 24, 1904, and was received with considerable acclaim. Unlike Rowe, he gives full credit to his source, from which he has drawn no less extensively than the author ofThe Fair Penitent. Unlike Rowe, he goes back to the old dramatists in the matter of construction, placing upon the stage once more the episode of the unburied corpse and the noble son; he even outdoesThe Fatal Dowryin this respect, by allowing the first half of his plot three Acts instead of two, with only two Acts for the amour and its tragic consequences. In his hands the hero again becomes the central figure; in fact, the three principal versions of thisdonneesuggest by their titles their respective viewpoints:The Fatal Dowry;The Fair Penitent;Der Graf von Charolais. DER GRAF VON CHAROLAIS, be it observed;—this new redaction is no longer the tale of a “fatal dowry;” no longer is the first part of the dual theme merely introductory and accessory—it is coördinate with the second. Beer-Hofmann has sought to achieve a kind of unity from his double plot by making his fundamental theme not the adulterous intrigue, butthe destiny of Charolais, thus converting the play into a Tragedy of Fate, which pursues the hero inexorably through all his life. This strictly classicalmotifanimating thedonneeof a Jacobean play reproduced in the twentieth century presents, as might be expected, the aspect of an exotic growth, which is not lessened by the extreme sensuousness of treatment throughout, such as has always been one of the cardinal and distinctive qualities of the Decadent School the world over. But as a contrast in the dramatic technique and verse of Jacobean and modern times,Der Graf von Charolaisis extremely interesting. The difference is striking between the severe simplicity of three centuries ago, and the elaborate stagecraft of to-day, its insistence on detail, and studied care in the portraiture of minor characters. Yet minutia do not make tragedy, and while their superficial realism and thecongeniality of the contemporary point of view undeniably lend to Beer-Hofmann’s redaction a palatability and a power to interest and appeal which its original does not possess to the modern reader, yet a discriminating critic will turn back to the old play with a feeling that, for all its stiffness and conventions, he breathes there a more vital air. To the enrichment of his theme Beer-Hofmann contributes every ingenious effect possible to symbolism, delicate suggestion, and scenic device; this exterior decoration is gorgeous in its color and seductive warmth, but no amount of such stuff can compensate for the fundamental flaw in the crucial episode of his tragedy. In spite of the care which he has lavished on the scene between his heroine and her seducer, the surrender of the wife—three years married, a mother, and loving both husband and child—remains insufficiently motivated and sheerly inexplicable, and by this vital, inherent defect the play must fall. Moreover, it lacks a hero. Romont can no longer play the main part he did in former versions; he is reduced to a mere shadow. In a tragedy of Fate, which blights a man’s career, phase by phase, with persistent, relentless hand, that man must necessarily be the central figure, and, of right,shouldbe an imposing figure—a protagonist at once gigantic and appealing, who will draw all hearts to him in pity and terror at the helpless, hopeless struggle of over-matched greatness and worth; whereas Charolais—The case of Charolais is peculiar.A prioriwe should expect him to be just such a personage, yet his conduct throughout is best explainable as that of a man dominated, not by noble impulses, but by an extreme egoism—a man acutely responsive alike to his sense-impressions and his feverish imagination, and possessed of an exaggerated squeamishness towards the ugly and the unpleasant. When, in the First Act, he bursts into tears, he confesses it is not for his father that he weeps, but for his own hard lot; he suffers from his repugnance to the idea of his father’s corpse rotting above ground—a repugnance so intolerable to him that he will yield his liberty to escape it. He purposes to cashier the innkeeper because the sight of the lecherous patrons of his hostelry has disgusted him, and he alters his resolve and forgives the fellow, not from any considerations of mercy, but because the mental picture of the man’s distress tortureshim. And by similar personal repugnances reacting on egoism is his behavior in the denouement to be accounted for, and in this light becomes logically credible and clearly understood. Few practices are more hazardous or unjust than judging an artist by his objective creations; but an ignoble protagonist, as Charolais is represented, is in such ill accord with any conceivable purpose on the part of Beer-Hofmann, and so unlikely to have been intended by him, that one cannot help strongly suspecting that the author unconsciously projected himself into the character and thus revealed his own nature and point of view. In any case he has presented for his hero a whimperer who can command neither our sympathy nor our respect when he cries above the bodies of his benefactor and her who is that benefactor’s daughter, his own wife, and the mother of his child:Ist dies Stück denn aus,Weil jene starb? Und ich? An mich denkt keiner?We have come a long way from Massinger and Field and the early seventeenth century. The shadow of the old dramatists reaches far, even to our own time; we have seen their play redeveloped, but never improved upon, by pseudo-classicist, and popularizer, and Decadent hyper-aesthete. That which was the vulnerable point in the original production—its two-fold plot—has been still for every imitator a stone of stumbling. Rowe tried to escape it by the suppression of the antecedent half, and the fraction which remained in his hand was an artificial thing without the breath of life, that had to be attenuated and padded out with speechifying to fill the compass of its five Acts. Beer-Hofmann tried to escape it by superimposing an idea not proper to the story, and beneath the weight of this his tragedy collapsed in the middle, for its addition over-packed the drama, and left him not room enough to make convincing the conduct of his characters. The first essayers, who attacked in straightforward fashion their unwieldy theme, succeeded best; all attempts to obviate its essential defect have marred rather than mended. Perhaps the theme is by its nature unsuited to dramatic treatment, and yet there is much that is dramatic about that theme, as is evinced by the fact that playwrights have been unable to let it lie.
There if in any pause of love I restBreathless with bliss upon her panting breast,In broken, melting accents I will swear,Henceforth to trust my heart with none save her;
There if in any pause of love I rest
Breathless with bliss upon her panting breast,
In broken, melting accents I will swear,
Henceforth to trust my heart with none save her;
a Sciolto who has given his daughter a dagger with which to end her shame, and then has arrested her willing arm with the prayer that she will not dispatch herself until he is gone from the sight of her, can thereupon take leave of her with the statement:
There is I know not what of sad presageThat tells me I shall never see thee more.
There is I know not what of sad presage
That tells me I shall never see thee more.
The play, which enjoyed an immense fame, high contemporary appreciation, and a long career on the stage, remains a curious memorial of the taste of a bygone day.
It is noteworthy that inThe Fair PenitentHoratio, as Romont in all modern reproductions ofThe Fatal Dowry, is the great acting part—not the husband.
In 1758 was produced at the Hay market a drama entitledThe Insolvent or Filial Piety, from the pen of Aaron Hill. In the preface it is said—according to Genest (IV, 538)—“Wilks about 30 years before gave an old manuscript play, called theGuiltless Adulteress, to Theo. Cibber who was manager of what then was the Summer Company—after an interval of several years this play was judged to want a revisal to fit it for representation—Aaron Hill at the request of Theo. Cibber almost new wrote the whole, and the last act was entirely his in conduct, sentiment and diction.” In reality,The InsolventisThe Fatal Dowryover again, altered to tragicomedy, and with the names of the characters changed. The first two Acts of Hill’s play proceed much after the manner of its prototype, with close parallels in language. From thenceforward, however, the action diverges. The bride, Amelia, resists the further attentions of her former sweetheart. They are none the less observed and suspected by her husband’s friend, who speaks of the matter to both her father and her lord. The former promises to observe her with watchful eye; Chalons, the husband, is at first resentful of the imputation, but presently yields to his friend’s advice, that he pretend a two-days’ journey, from which he will return unexpectedly. During his absence, his wife’s maid introduces the lover into her mistress’ chamber while Amelia sleeps. There Chalons surprises him kneeling beside the bed, and kills him. Amelia stabs herself, but the confession of her maid reveals her innocence, and her wound is pronounced not mortal.
It has been suggested (Biographia Dramatica, II, 228—quoted by Phelan, p. 59, and Schwarz, p. 74) that in Hill’sZara(adaptation of theZaireof Voltaire), also, Nerestan’s voluntary return to captivity in order to end that of his friends, whom he lacked the means to ransom with gold, was suggested by the behavior of Charalois; but this can be no more than a coincidence, as it here but reproduces what is in the French original.
A long interval, and finally, in the dawn of the twentieth century, there appeared the next and latest recrudescence ofThe Fatal Dowry. This wasDer Graf von Charolais, ein Trauerspiel, by Richard Beer-Hofmann, disciple of the Neo-Romantic School orVienna Decadents, a coterie built about the leadership of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Beer-Hofmann’s play—a five-Act tragedy in blank verse—was produced for the first time at the Neue Theatre, Berlin, on December 24, 1904, and was received with considerable acclaim. Unlike Rowe, he gives full credit to his source, from which he has drawn no less extensively than the author ofThe Fair Penitent. Unlike Rowe, he goes back to the old dramatists in the matter of construction, placing upon the stage once more the episode of the unburied corpse and the noble son; he even outdoesThe Fatal Dowryin this respect, by allowing the first half of his plot three Acts instead of two, with only two Acts for the amour and its tragic consequences. In his hands the hero again becomes the central figure; in fact, the three principal versions of thisdonneesuggest by their titles their respective viewpoints:The Fatal Dowry;The Fair Penitent;Der Graf von Charolais. DER GRAF VON CHAROLAIS, be it observed;—this new redaction is no longer the tale of a “fatal dowry;” no longer is the first part of the dual theme merely introductory and accessory—it is coördinate with the second. Beer-Hofmann has sought to achieve a kind of unity from his double plot by making his fundamental theme not the adulterous intrigue, butthe destiny of Charolais, thus converting the play into a Tragedy of Fate, which pursues the hero inexorably through all his life. This strictly classicalmotifanimating thedonneeof a Jacobean play reproduced in the twentieth century presents, as might be expected, the aspect of an exotic growth, which is not lessened by the extreme sensuousness of treatment throughout, such as has always been one of the cardinal and distinctive qualities of the Decadent School the world over. But as a contrast in the dramatic technique and verse of Jacobean and modern times,Der Graf von Charolaisis extremely interesting. The difference is striking between the severe simplicity of three centuries ago, and the elaborate stagecraft of to-day, its insistence on detail, and studied care in the portraiture of minor characters. Yet minutia do not make tragedy, and while their superficial realism and thecongeniality of the contemporary point of view undeniably lend to Beer-Hofmann’s redaction a palatability and a power to interest and appeal which its original does not possess to the modern reader, yet a discriminating critic will turn back to the old play with a feeling that, for all its stiffness and conventions, he breathes there a more vital air. To the enrichment of his theme Beer-Hofmann contributes every ingenious effect possible to symbolism, delicate suggestion, and scenic device; this exterior decoration is gorgeous in its color and seductive warmth, but no amount of such stuff can compensate for the fundamental flaw in the crucial episode of his tragedy. In spite of the care which he has lavished on the scene between his heroine and her seducer, the surrender of the wife—three years married, a mother, and loving both husband and child—remains insufficiently motivated and sheerly inexplicable, and by this vital, inherent defect the play must fall. Moreover, it lacks a hero. Romont can no longer play the main part he did in former versions; he is reduced to a mere shadow. In a tragedy of Fate, which blights a man’s career, phase by phase, with persistent, relentless hand, that man must necessarily be the central figure, and, of right,shouldbe an imposing figure—a protagonist at once gigantic and appealing, who will draw all hearts to him in pity and terror at the helpless, hopeless struggle of over-matched greatness and worth; whereas Charolais—
The case of Charolais is peculiar.A prioriwe should expect him to be just such a personage, yet his conduct throughout is best explainable as that of a man dominated, not by noble impulses, but by an extreme egoism—a man acutely responsive alike to his sense-impressions and his feverish imagination, and possessed of an exaggerated squeamishness towards the ugly and the unpleasant. When, in the First Act, he bursts into tears, he confesses it is not for his father that he weeps, but for his own hard lot; he suffers from his repugnance to the idea of his father’s corpse rotting above ground—a repugnance so intolerable to him that he will yield his liberty to escape it. He purposes to cashier the innkeeper because the sight of the lecherous patrons of his hostelry has disgusted him, and he alters his resolve and forgives the fellow, not from any considerations of mercy, but because the mental picture of the man’s distress tortureshim. And by similar personal repugnances reacting on egoism is his behavior in the denouement to be accounted for, and in this light becomes logically credible and clearly understood. Few practices are more hazardous or unjust than judging an artist by his objective creations; but an ignoble protagonist, as Charolais is represented, is in such ill accord with any conceivable purpose on the part of Beer-Hofmann, and so unlikely to have been intended by him, that one cannot help strongly suspecting that the author unconsciously projected himself into the character and thus revealed his own nature and point of view. In any case he has presented for his hero a whimperer who can command neither our sympathy nor our respect when he cries above the bodies of his benefactor and her who is that benefactor’s daughter, his own wife, and the mother of his child:
Ist dies Stück denn aus,Weil jene starb? Und ich? An mich denkt keiner?
Ist dies Stück denn aus,
Weil jene starb? Und ich? An mich denkt keiner?
We have come a long way from Massinger and Field and the early seventeenth century. The shadow of the old dramatists reaches far, even to our own time; we have seen their play redeveloped, but never improved upon, by pseudo-classicist, and popularizer, and Decadent hyper-aesthete. That which was the vulnerable point in the original production—its two-fold plot—has been still for every imitator a stone of stumbling. Rowe tried to escape it by the suppression of the antecedent half, and the fraction which remained in his hand was an artificial thing without the breath of life, that had to be attenuated and padded out with speechifying to fill the compass of its five Acts. Beer-Hofmann tried to escape it by superimposing an idea not proper to the story, and beneath the weight of this his tragedy collapsed in the middle, for its addition over-packed the drama, and left him not room enough to make convincing the conduct of his characters. The first essayers, who attacked in straightforward fashion their unwieldy theme, succeeded best; all attempts to obviate its essential defect have marred rather than mended. Perhaps the theme is by its nature unsuited to dramatic treatment, and yet there is much that is dramatic about that theme, as is evinced by the fact that playwrights have been unable to let it lie.