Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/77

Rh the temporary Regent of Saragossa—is also vigorously depicted, with subtle traits which bespeak study and penetration. He is arrogant, overbearing to the weak, ungrateful, and treacherous.

Such is the ambition of Almagro, coupled with a vanity voracious as the hunger that's disease, which, though 'tis gorged full to the throat, cannot stop craving on. "For his own ends he heaps up discontents 'gainst all above him, to crush them with the weight—not for the hatred he bears oppression, but for envy of it—blaming the grievance he himself inflicts not." One or two of the dialogues between him and Alasco are excellent; that in the dungeon of torture, notwithstanding its "little more than kin" to German horrors and the trap-door accessories of our transpontine theatres, is conducted with the ease of a stage tactician. Villain as Almagro is, one hardly likes to see him sitting on the rack—that couch of groans, of sweat-drops, wrung by dint of agony, of death-pangs, thick and sharp, though lingering. "Decline you the fair seat?" asketh Alasco. Why, as Alasco had appropriated the only other "fair seat"—to wit, the block—there was almost too pungent an irony in this grim version of Hobson's choice. But Alasco makes more than amends when he begs off this rascal who can so cleverly smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain, from the plenipotentiary embrace of the rack, to which the restored king had given him letters of advice. We admire the warm-hearted burst:There are many such tid-bits in the "Rose of Arragon."

The Drury Lane management (1843) of Mr. Macready gave another opening for a play by Sheridan Knowles. Again a novel provided him with a plot. The prolific dramatist borrowed a story from the prolific romancist, Mr. G. P. R. James. "The Secretary" is an adaptation of "The King's Highway." It presents the author's favourite subject of a lady stooping to woo one whom conventional restraints forbid to take the initiative. Such a presentment requires great skill in o'erstepping not the modesty of nature, and in keeping up our respect for the lady while touched by her ardour. This skill Mr. Knowles eminently possesses; and though the situation has no "infinite variety" such as time cannot stale, he contrives to invest each successive enactment of it with an individual interest. Wilton Brown, the "Secretary," is the Sir Thomas Clifford, or the Huon, in this reverse system of popping the question; a man with a coat not respondent to his head and heart; low in circumstance and lofty by nature, for