Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/181

176 originality, and Harṣa is a clever borrower. The similarity of development of both plays perhaps more to be condemned; they are too obviously variations of one theme.

The dominant emotion in either is love of the type which appertains to a noble and gay (dhīralalita) hero, who is always courteous, whose loves, that is to say, mean very little to him, and who does not forget to assure the old love of his devotion while playing with the new. This is a different aspect of Vatsa's character from that displayed by Bhāsa, and admittedly a much inferior one. Vāsavadattā suffers equal deterioration, for she is no longer the wife who sacrifices herself for her husband's good; she is rather a jealous, though noble and kind-hearted woman, whose love for her husband makes her resent too deeply his inconstancy. The heroines are ingénues with nothing but good looks and willingness to be loved by the king, whom they know, though he does not, to be destined by their fathers as their husband. In neither case is any adequate reason suggested for the failure to declare themselves in their true character, unless we are to assume that they would not, in the absence of sponsors, have been believed. Susaṁgatā, the friend of the heroine in the Ratnāvalī, is a pleasant, merry girl who makes excellent fun of her mistress. The Vidūṣaka in both plays is typical in his greediness, but his figure lacks comic force; he is, however, a pleasant enough character, for his love for his master is genuine; he is prepared to die with him in the Ratnāvalī, though he thinks his action in rushing into the fire quixotic. The magician is an amusing and clever sketch of great pretensions allied to some juggling skill.

The Nāgānanda reveals Harṣa in a new light in the last two Acts. His liking for the marvellous is exhibited indeed in the last Acts of both the Nāṭikās in accord with the theory, but it has a far wider scope in the Nāgānanda, where the supernatural freely appears, and, though the drama be Buddhist in inspiration, Gaurī is introduced to solve the difficulty of restoring