The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1057]
The authors deficiency of skill is especially evinced in the scene of the eclaircissement between Victorian and Preciosa. The former having been enlightened respecting the true character of the latter by means of a letter received at Guadarrama, from a friend at Madrid (how wofully inartistical is this!), resolves to go in search of her forthwith, and forthwith, also, discovers her in a wood close at hand. 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?
Victorian. 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. But the advice — “Make her your wife, etc.,” takes an interested and selfish turn when we remember that she knows to whom she speaks.
That is a pretty ring upon your finger,
Pray give it me!
And when she replies:
No, never from my hand
Shall that be taken,
we are inclined to think her only an artful coquette, knowing, as we do, the extent of her knowledge, on the hand we should have applauded her constancy (as the author intended) had she been represented ignorant of Victorian’s presence. The effect upon the audience, in a word, would be pleasant in place of disagreeable were the case altered as we suggest, while the effect upon Victorian would remain altogether untouched.
A still more remarkable instance of deficiency in the dramatic tact is to be found in the mode of bringing about the discovery of Preciosa’s parentage. In the very moment of the eclaircissement between the lovers, Chispa arrives almost as a matter of course, and settles the point in a sentence:
Good news from the Court; Good news! Beltran Cruzado,
The Count of the Cales, is not your father,
But your true father has returned to Spain
Laden with wealth. You are no more a Gipsy.
Now here are three points: — first, the extreme baldness, platitude, and independence of the incident narrated by Chispa. The opportune return of the father (we are tempted to say the excessively opportune) stands by itself — has no relation to any other event in the play — does not appear to arise, in the way of result, from any incident or incidents that have arisen before. It has the air of a happy chance, of a God-send, of an ultra-accident, invented by the play-wright by way of compromise for his lack of invention. Nec Deus intersit, etc. — but here the God has interposed, and the knot is laughably unworthy of the God.
The second point concerns the return of the father “laden with wealth.” The lover has abandoned his mistress in her poverty, and,