Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/316

 interest of the scene; but between curtailed plot and truncated underplot all such possible interest has long since been stifled.

The same waste or misuse of good material has marred the promise of a better play in "The Lady's Trial." This should have been an excellent example of romantic or serious comedy; had Ford been content thoroughly to work out the characters of Auria, his wife, and her kinsman, he must have given us again a study of high and delicate moral beauty, a group worthy to stand beside the noble triad of Warbeck, Katherine, and Dalyell; but as it is, shackled perhaps by a fear of repeating himself, he has missed or thrown away this chance also. The one scene in which the spotless and hopeless chivalry of Malfato's love for his kinswoman is brought into action comes too late in the play and too suddenly to make its effect. There are two or three passages of admirable energy and pathos in the part of Auria; but the upshot of all is again ineffective; the evolution of the main story is clogged and trammelled by the utterly useless and pointless episode of Adurni's cast mistress, her senseless schemes of love and revenge, her equivocal reformation and preposterous remarriage. All this encumbrance of rubbish has absolutely no excuse, no aim or reason of any kind; it serves merely to hamper the development and distort the progress of the play, leaving no room or time for the action to expand naturally and move smoothly forward to a consistent end. The underplot of Hippolita's attempted revenge on the lover who has discarded her is neither beautiful nor necessary to the main action of "'Tis Pity She's a Whore;" but it is