plentiful examples of this irrelevancy of intrigue — of this misconception of the nature and of the capacities of plot. We have said that our digest of the story is more easy of comprehension than the detail of Mr. Willis. If so, it is because we have forborne to give such portions as had no influence upon the whole. These served but to embarrass the narrative and fatigue the attention. How much was irrelevant is shown by the brevity of the space in which we have recorded, somewhat at length, all the influential incidents of a drama of five acts. There is scarcely a scene in which is not to be found the germ of an underplot — a germ, however, which seldom proceeds beyond the condition of a bud, or, if so fortunate as to swell into a flower, arrives, in no single instance, at the dignity of fruit. Zippa, a lady altogether without character (dramatic) is the most pertinacious of all conceivable concoctors of plans never to be matured — of vast designs that terminate in nothing — of cul-de-sac machinations. She plots in one page and counterplots in the next. She schemes her way from P. S. to O. P., and intrigues perseveringly from the footlights to the slips. A very singular instance of the inconsequence of her manœuvres is found towards the conclusion of the play. The whole of the second scene, (occupying five pages,) in the fifth act, is obviously introduced for the purpose of giving her information, through Tomaso’s means, of Angelo’s arrest for the murder of Isabella. Upon learning his danger she rushes from the stage, to be present at the trial, exclaiming that her evidence can save his life. We, the audience, of course applaud, and now look with interest to her movements in the scene of the judgment hall. She, Zippa, we think, is somebody after all; she will be the means of Angelo’s salvation; she will thus be the chief unraveller of the plot. All eyes are bent, therefore, upon Zippa — but alas, upon the point at issue, Zippa does not so much as open her mouth. It is scarcely too much to say that not a single action of this impertinent little busybody has any real influence upon the play; — yet she appears upon every occasion — appearing only to perplex.
Similar things abound; we should not have space even to allude to them all. The whole conclusion of the play is supererogatory. The immensity of pure fuss with which it is overloaded, forces us to the reflection that all of it might have been avoided by one word of explanation to the duke [[Duke]] — an amiable man who admires the talents of Angelo, and who, to prevent Isabella’s marrying against her will, had previously offered to free Falcone of his bonds to the usurer. That he would free him now, and thus set all matters straight, the spectator cannot doubt for an instant, and he can conceive no better reason why explanations are not made, than that Mr. Willis does not think proper they should be. In fact, the whole drama is exceedingly ill motivirt.
We have already mentioned an inadvertence, in the fourth act [[Act]], where Isabella is made to escape from the sanctuary through the midst of guards who prevented the ingress of Angelo. Another occurs where Falcone’s conscience is made to reprove him, upon the appearance of his daughter’s supposed ghost, for having occasioned her death by forcing her to marry against her will. The author had forgotten that Falcone submitted to the wedding, after the duke’s [[Duke’s]] interposition, only upon Isabella’s assurance that she really loved the usurer. In the third scene [[Scene]], too, of the first act [[Act]], the imagination of the spectator is no doubt a little taxed, when he finds Angelo, in the first moment of his introduction to the palace of Isabella, commencing her portrait by laying on color after color, before he has made any attempt at an outline. In the last act [[Act]], moreover, Tortesa gives to Isabella a deed
Of the Falcone palaces and lands,
And all the money forfeit by Falcone.
This is a terrible blunder, and the more important as upon this act of the usurer depends the development of his new-born sentiments