It
has an air of the far-fetched- of the desperate- which a fine taste
will avoid as a pestilence. Very much of the same nature is the
attempt of Tortesa to extort a second bond from Falcone. The
evidence which convicts Angelo of murder is ridiculously frail. The
idea of Isabella's assuming the place of the portrait, and so
deceiving the usurer, is not only glaringly improbable, but seems
adopted from the "Winter's Tale." But in this latter-play, the
deception is at least possible, for the human figure but imitates a
statue. What, however, are we to make of Mr. W.'s stage direction
about the back wall's being "so arranged as to form a natural ground
for the picture"? Of course, the very slightest movement of Tortesa
(and he makes many) would have annihilated the illusion by
disarranging the perspective, and in no manner could this latter
have been arranged at all for more than one particular point of
view- in other words, for more than one particular person in the whole
audience. The "asides," moreover, are unjustifiably frequent. The
prevalence of this folly (of speaking aside) detracts as much from the
acting merit of our drama generally as any other inartisticality. It
utterly destroys verisimilitude. People are not in the habit of
soliloquising aloud- at least, not to any positive extent; and why
should an author have to be told, what the slightest reflection
would teach him, that an audience, by dint of no imagination, can or
will conceive that what is sonorous in their own ears at the
distance of fifty feet cannot be heard by an actor at the distance
of one or two?
Having spoken thus of "Tortesa" in terms of nearly unmitigated
censure- our readers may be surprised to hear us say that we think
highly of the drama as a whole- and have little hesitation in
ranking it before most of the dramas of Sheridan Knowles.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213