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Untitled Article
think we take any advantage of the modest preface in which he mentions himself as a young author , and acknowledges hid obligations to Mr . Macready , for the " filling up * ' of tha Proyost , when we express our opinion that the success of the tragedy would have been more than doubtful in any other hands . One of the passages in his acting with which we were most struck , was the scene with his daughter after she has fallen into a state partaking by turns both of lunacy and idiotcy . His effort to make himself visible through the dark haze of her disordered senses ; to compel her to know
her fond and agonized father ; to re-create the fair fabric of her mind by the power of parental passion , were harrowing in the extreme ; and his failure in the attempt seemed , for an instant , to make his own intellect rush in desperation beyond her degree of madness , so that he might again meet and confront her on her frightful journey , while the almost immediate cry of hopeless agony showed that even in this effort of despair he was utterly foiled by the mightier powers of madness . The manner in which he received the news of her
death , laughing , and saying he was " glad on ' t" and then laughing sardonically at his own substitution of levity for horror , was one of the most daring and masterly representations of
impassioned nature we ever witnessed on the stage . He had evidently stepped aside from his identity , to mock at fate and the " grey hairs of madness ; " the noble structure of his mind being within an hair ' s breadth of toppling over the precipice , and mingling with the ruins of that of nis child . The many merits of this tragedy are the occasion of our having thought that some good might result from showing its main deficiencies . There is so much that is noble and commanding
in Bertulphe , that his being ** a point short " excites the deeper regret ; but a degree of compromise , or deficiency of great and fixed principles , runs through all the characters of the play , as we have shown in the most prominent instances . Even in Constance there is a manifestation of this ; for after declaring to Bouchard that she loves himy not his " station , " she expressesa wish at the conclusion of the same speech , to
read—Each noble feeling of my heart reflected In a more noble character from thine . Perhaps this cavil may be deemed hyper-critical , and that her love for Bouchard might have sufficed to induce the expression without any further reference ; but then the discovery of her father ' s origin had transpired , and a strong re-action iu her mind against the idea of being a Serf might have been expected , provided that mind had been one of inherent and uncompromising greatness , reducing all things to their just value in nature . Such a mind ie not manifested in this tragedy ; the
Untitled Article
The Praoost cf Bruges . 1 $ 9
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1836, page 139, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2655/page/11/
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