The startling and magical power
of single verses, ineffaceable and ineradicable from the memory on which
they have once impressed themselves, the consciousness in which they
have once struck root, which distinguishes and denotes the peculiar
style of Cyril Tourneur's tragic poetry, rises to its highest tidemark
in this part of the play. Every other line, one might almost say, is an
instance of it; and yet not a single lineis undramatic, or deficient in
the strictest and plainest dramatic propriety. It may be objected that
men and women possessed by the excitement of emotions so desparate and
so dreadful do not express them with such passionate precision of
utterance: but, to borrow the saying of a later and bearer of the name
which Cyril sometimes spelled as Turner, "don't they wish they could?"
or rather, ought they not to wish it? What is said by the speakers
is exactly what they might be expected to think, to feel, and to express
with less incisive power and less impressive accuracy of ardent epigram
or of strenuous appeal.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is, to say the least, singular to find in the most
famous scene of a play, so often reprinted and re-edited a word which
certainly requires explanation passed over without remark from any one
of the successive editors.
Pages:
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291