The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1051]
He put it in the bond,
That if, by any humor of my own,
Or accident that came not from himself,
Or from his daughter’s will, the match were marred,
His tenure stood intact.
Now Falcone is still resolute for the match; but this new generous “humor” of Tortesa induces him (Tortesa) to decline it. Falcone’s tenure is then intact; he retains the deed, the usurer is giving away property not his own.
As a drama of character, “Tortesa” is by no means open to so many objections as when we view it in the light of its plot; but it is still faulty. The merits are so exceedingly negative, that it is difficult to say anything about them. The Duke is nobody, Falcone, nothing; Zippa, less than nothing. Angelo may be regarded simply as the medium through which Mr. Willis conveys to the reader his own glowing feelings — his own refined and delicate fancy — (delicate, yet bold) — his own rich voluptuousness of sentiment — a voluptuousness which would offend in almost any other language than that in which it is so skilfully apparelled. Isabella is — the heroine of the Hunchback. The revolution in the character of Tortesa — or rather the final triumph of his innate virtue — is a dramatic point far older than the hills. It may be observed, too, that although the representation of no human character should be quarrelled with for its inconsistency, we yet require that the inconsistencies be not absolute antagonisms to the extent of neutralization: they may be permitted to be oils and waters, but they must not be alkalis and acids. When, in the course of the denouement, the usurer bursts forth into an eloquence virtue — inspired, we cannot sympathize very heartily in his fine speeches, since they proceed from the mouth of the self-same egotist who, urged by a disgusting vanity, uttered so many sotticisms (about his fine legs, etc.) in the earlier passages of the play. Tomaso is, upon the whole, the best personage. We recognize some originality in his conception, and conception was seldom more admirably carried out.
One or two observations at random. In the third Scene of the fifth Act, Tomaso, the buffoon, is made to assume paternal authority over Isabella (as usual, without sufficient purpose), by virtue of a law which Tortesa thus expounds:
My gracious liege, there is a law in Florence
That if a father, for no guilt or shame,
Disown and shut his door upon his daughter,
She is the child of him who succours her,
Who by the shelter of a single night,
Becomes endowed with the authority
Lost by the other.
No one, of course, can be made to believe that any such stupid law as this ever existed either in Florence or Timbuctoo; but, on the ground que le vrai n’est pas toujours le vraisemblable, we say that even its real existence would be no justification of Mr. Willis. 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