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Untitled Article
Hesperus . Sirs , I thank you heartily . { Aside . ) A curse upon the gaping saucy rabble , They must stare too . " - —p . 96 . Mr Betfdpes could not write without eliciting fine things ; but his hero has no power to keep up our sympathies . His love for Floribel returns , but he seems to love Olivia too ,
and at the end it appears very doubtful , and we feel very indifferent , which would possess the treasure , could either have it . Olivia , who might better have been a Btrong character , is made sweet and devoted , like Floribel , only much inferior . The mother ' s grief and madness are not successfully done .
In few words , the grand defect in this tragedy is , that the character of the hero is not made sufficientl y powerful in evil , either to account for the murder of so exquisite a creature as Floribel , upon any natural principles , without much stronger motives than those furnished for him ; or to excite for himself that interest , intense , painful , and rising into grandeur , which
strength in wickedness often creates . In the real tragedy from which Mr Beddoes borrowed the idea of his plot , the criminal was an Oxford student , and his victim the daughter of the Bianciple of one of the colleges , whom he had married secretl y * He murdered her in the Divinity Walk , where they
met at night , and buried the body on the spot ; married again , and escaped detection of his crime , which he confessed on his death-bed . We do not know enough of the characters involved in this dreadful story , nor of the circumstances in which they were placed , to hazard any conjectures about them . The radical error which mars the effect of the ' Bride ' s
Tragedy' in reading , would have injured it even more m acting , and might have caused its failure notwithstanding its many beauties . The ' J £ w of Arragon / by Mr Wade , failed on representation , but probably from a cause perfectly opposite . The brgh aim of a true poet pervades the tragedy , but that
aim is not rendered sufficiently palpable to ensure its appreciation by any audience such as can be brought together at present TDhe character of Xavier the Jew is strong' arid elevateds- ^ He ? ia ^ actuated throu ghout by one master feeling—for which the Jives arid dies- ^ -the devoted love fot his people .
Therefife ^ sferiptur ^ l grandeur in the expression of his grief over their degradation . The passage we are about to quote was nearly all cancelled by the licenser : we insert it entire : — " O Judah I thott ' art # 6 n 6 < from thyself ; My country 1 ' ^ dtfrl tfctf ' dhadow of a n ^ tme ; My countrymen ! yt fiwtfciittetfed ' o ' erthe earth , And feed on those that hate ye ; yet ye prosper ,
Untitled Article
Dramatic Recollections . 153
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 1, 1837, page 153, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1829/page/27/
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