To these magnificent qualities of poetry and passion no critic of the
slightest note or the smallest pretention to poetic instinct has ever
failed to do ample and cordial justice: but to the truthfulness and the
power of Cyril Tourneur as a dramatic student and painter of human
character not only has such justice not generally been done, but grave
injustice has been too generally shown. It is true that not all the
agents in the evolution of his greater tragedy are equally or
sufficiently realized and vivified as active and distinct figures: true,
for instance, that the two elder sons of the duchess are little more
than conventional outlines of such empty violence and futile ambition
as might be inferred from the crude and puerile symbolism of their
respective designations: but the third brother is a type no less living
than revolting and no less dramatic than detestable: his ruffian
cynicism and defiant brutality are in life and death alike original and
consistent, whether they express themselves in curses or in jeers. The
brother and accomplice of the hero in the accomplishment of his manifold
revenge is seldom much more than a serviceable shadow: but there is a
definite difference between their sister and the common type of virginal
heroine who figures on the stage of almost every dramatist then writing;
the author's profound and noble reverence for goodness gives at once
precision and distinction to the outline and a glow of active life to
the color of this pure and straightforward study.
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