But the
crowning scene of the play and the crowning grace of the poem is the
interview of father and daughter after the consummation of the crime
which gave Spain into the hand of the Moor. The vivid dramatic life in
every word is even more admirable than the great style, the high poetic
spirit of the scene. I have always ventured to wonder that Lamb, whose
admiration has made it twice immortal, did not select as a companion or
a counterpart to it that other great camp scene from Webster's "Appius
and Virginia" in which another outraged warrior and father stirs up his
friends and fellow-soldiers to vindication of his honor and revenge for
his wrong. It is surely even finer and more impressive than that
selected in preference to it, which closes with the immolation of
Virginia.
The scenes in which the tragic underplot of Rowley's tragedy is deftly
and effectively wound up are full of living action and passion; that
especially in which the revenge of a deserted wife is wreaked
mistakingly on the villanous minion to whose instigation she owes the
infidelity of the husband for whom she mistakes him. The gross physical
horrors which deform the close of a noble poem are relieved if not
beautified by the great style of its age--an age unparalleled in wealth
and variety of genius, a style unmatchable for its union of inspired and
imaginative dignity with actual and vivid reality of impassioned and
lofty life.
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