Page:The thirty-six dramatic situations (1921).djvu/67

NINETEENTH SITUATION 65 The Same Case Reduced From Murder to Simple Insult: — "Le Pain d'Autrui" (after Turgenieff, by Ephraim and Schutz, 1890). Being Upon the Point of Slaying a Father Unknowingly: — "Israel" (Bernstein, 1908).

F (1) — A Grandfather Slain Unknowingly, in Vengeance and Through Instigation:- "Les Burgraves" (Hugo).

(2) — Slain Involuntarily: — Aeschylus' "Polydectes."

(3) — A Father-in-Law Killed Involuntarily: — Sophocles' "Amphitryon."

G (1) — Involuntary Killing of a Loved Woman: — Sophocles' "Procris." Epic example: Tancred and Clorinda, in "Jerusalem Delivered." legendary example (with change of the sex of the person loved): Hyacinthus.

(2) — Being Upon the Point of Killing a Lover Unrecognized: — "The Blue Monster" by Gozzi.

(3) — Failure to Rescue an Unrecognized Son: — "Saint Alexis" (a XIV Century Miracle of Notre-Dame;) "La Voix du Sang" (Rachilde).

Remarkable is the liking of Hugo (and consequently of his imitators) for this somewhat rare situation. Each of the ten dramas of the old Romanticist contains it; in two of them, "Hernani" and "Torquemada," it is in a manner accessory to the Seventeenth (Imprudence) fatal to the hero also: in four ("Marion Delorme," "Angelo." "La Esmeralda," "Ruy Blas") this case of involuntary injury to a loved one supplies all the action and furnishes the best episodes; in four others ("Le Roi s'amuse," "Marie Tudor," "Lucrece Borgia," "Les Burgraves") it serves furthermore as denouement. It would seem, indeed, that indirectly, of the death of a loved one; and, in the work wherein he has accumulated the greatest number of theatrical effects — in "Lucrece Borgia" — we see the same situation returning no less than five times. Near the first part of Act I, Gennaro permits his unrecognized mother to be insulted; in the second part, he himself insults her,