Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/72

62 Joseph. Thou lookest faint. Some wine will hearten thee.

Meeta. I'll have no wine but such as I draw hence,

From my heart! There's not such wine in all thy house

To strengthen me! There's plenty, and to spare.

What time is he to die?

Joseph. Tell her. No use

Withhold it from her. Her spirit is the arch

Which gaineth strength by that which burdens it.

On the whole, however, there is but a stinted outlay of pathos in this drama, notwithstanding the opening it affords for the pathetic; vigorous passages and ebullitions of fancy are few and far between; and as for the comic business, it is entrusted to a "fat, fair, and forty" housekeeper and an uncouth man-of-all-work, in whose hands its breadth is gained at the price of depth; unction there is none in so diluted a preparation; the wit is out at elbows, add how can humour be sprightly in such company? When Esther and Hans giggle, we hear no chest-notes in their laughter, nor in that (if any) which they provoke in others.

In 1839, Mr. Knowles produced a play that gave the town some talk, and did the theatrical state some service; its title that multum in parvo monosyllable "Love." Although seldom repeated since that period, it had a marked success, and with the aids and appliances of clever acting and an elaborate mise en scène, it made what is technically called a sensation. It was written under pleasant and, to one of the author's temperament, highly favourable conditions—on the borders of Loch Ard, under the roof of Mr. Robert Dick, who, with his family, seems to have taken a kindly interest in the progress of the piece. "Never shall I forget," says Mr. Knowles, "the anxious, warm-hearted host, who one day laughingly snatched my fishing-rod from my hand when I was going to play truant; and, admonishing me that school-hours were not over yet—for it was noon, and I had limited myself to the evening for indulgence in the angle—set me to my book and pencil; on which occasion the fruit of my compelled industry was one of the best scenes in the play." Obligations of a literary and critical nature are also expressed towards Mr. John Forster and Mr. Planché; and altogether the play was evidently a source of more than wonted satisfaction to its enterprising author. The plot is neither very novel nor very ingenious; the action is sparsely doled out; the poetry is rather fluent and graceful than affecting or grand. But there is at least an absence of those stage solecisms which have swamped dramas of loftier pretensions; and we find throughout traces of no 'prentice hand in the creation of tableaux vivans, and the weaving of agreeable verse. A countess loves her secretary, a serf, but has never told her love. Her anxiety for his safety during a thunderstorm is her involuntary witness. The duke, her father, commands Huon—who returns in secret the unrevealed passion of his mistress—to wed another, one Catherine, a wealthy enfranchised serf. Huon refuses, but at the countess's behest, and deceived by her mode of putting it, obeys the summons. A hasty private marriage is got up, at which Huon believes himself "sold" to the Catherine of low degree; whereas, by a ruse of the noble lady, whose name also is Catherine, he is booked for a coupé with herself in a first-class train. But alas and well-a-day! the poor dog knows not that; and incontinently he gives