Studies in English Drama; First Series (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...During his pleading, a message is brought to him from his son, challenging him to decide in single combat a private quarrel between them. These unnatural combatants meet; the son is slain. This victory reestablishes the doubted loyalty of the Admiral, but a change in his nature is perceived. The beginnings of an incestuous love for his daughter Theocrine become apparent; at her wedding banquet he madly toasts her, breaks off the betrothal to Beaufort, and retires with Theocrine to his own house. At last he imparts his mad passion to his feigned friend Montreville, a rejected suitor of Theocrine, who advises him to overcome his unruly desires by putting temptation away from him. The father, battling with himself, seizing any help, entrusts his daughter to Montreville, by whom she is carried off to his fortress. Here he holds her despite the efforts of both her lover and her father. For Malefort has over-estimated his own power of self control;--tormented, racked, allowing himself to be convinced by false analogies and sophistry, he comes to Montreville to beseech him to restore his daughter. If the effect on the reader, who has time to revolve and to foresee, is one of surprise, the effect on an audience must have been tremendous, when Malefort sees Theocrine thrust out, "her garments loose, her hair dishevelled," hears her tale of her keeper's perfidy and of her shame, and then sees her die. As the father rages over his loss, his mind lives again in his past crimes; he sees before him the spirits of his poisoned wife and his bloody murdered son, who tried to avenge his mother. Whether these spirits were bodily outside appearances or not, the stage of Massinger's time had but one way of representing them--by depicting them as ghosts....