Whereupon he approaches, disguising his voice:- yes, we are required
to believe that a lover may so disguise his voice from his mistress as
even to render his person in full view irrecognizable! He
approaches, and each knowing the other, a conversation ensues under
the hypothesis that each to the other is unknown- a very unoriginal,
and, of course, a very silly source of equivoque, fit only for the
gum- elastic imagination of an infant. But what we especially complain
of here is that our poet should have taken so many and so obvious
pains to bring about this position of equivoque, when it was
impossible that it could have served any other purpose than that of
injuring his intended effect! Read, for example, this passage:-
VICTORIAN. I never loved a maid;
For she I loved was then a maid no more.
PRECIOSA. How know you that?
VICTORIA. A little bird in the air
Whispered the secret.
PRECIOSA. There, take back your gold!
Your hand is cold like a deceiver's hand!
There is no blessing in its charity!
Make her your wife, for you have been abused;
And you shall mend your fortunes mending hers.
VICTORIAN. How like an angel's speaks the tongue of woman,
When pleading in another's cause her own!
Now here it is clear that if we understood Preciosa to be really
ignorant of Victorian's identity, the "pleading in another's cause her
own" would create a favourable impression upon the reader or
spectator.
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