Françoise retires from the scorn of the Queen; but Triboulet, the fool, soon comes to her in a gallery in the palace, and gives her another fatal letter from the destroyer, who promises, if she will give him an interview, to save her brother's life. The fool is as much ashamed of his errand, as soon as he clearly understands the import of the letter, as the poet was; but Françoise, who had fainted, on recovering from her swoon, is delirious with fear for her brother's life, and commands and implores Triboulet to lead her to the King. sival midwosblad W "Franç. The night grows pale, and the 1 The Queen Mother from the hour in which she had detected her son wooing Françoise, felt that her own power over him was endangered, and the more for reason of the rage with which he had visited her intrusion. To avert that evil-the loss of her imperial state-she had called Gonzales to her -and asked him "didst ever look upon the dead?" Having received a satisfactory answer, she commissions him to murder the girl she now hates and fears, and he, on being told that Françoise is betrothed to Laval, with grim joy swears to do the deed. " Gonz. Rejoice, my soul! thy far-off goal is won! His bride, all that he most doth love and live for, ८ His heart's best hope, she shall be foul corruption When next his eager arms are spread to clasp her! I'll do this deed, ere I go mad for joy: And when her husband shall mourn over her In blight and bitterness, I'll drink his tears; And when his voice shall call upon his bride, I'll answer him with taunts and scorning gibes, And torture him to madness: and, at length, When he shall deem some persecuting fiend Hath 'scaped from hell to curse and ruin him, 1 FRANÇOISE is discovered sitting, pale and motionless, by a table-FLORISE is kneeling by her. Fran. How heavily the sun hangs in the clouds, The day will ne'er be done. Flor. Oh, lady, thou hast sat And watch'd the western clouds, day after day, Grow crimson with the sun's farewell, and said,. Each day, the night will never come: yet night Hath come at last, and so it will again. Fran. Will it, indeed! will the night come at last, And hide that burning sun, and shade my eyes, Which ache with this red light-will dark ness come At last? Flor. Sweet madam, yes; and sleep will come: Nay, shake not mournfully your head at me,Your eyes are heavy; sleep is brooding in them. Fran. Hot tears have lain in them, and made them heavy; But sleep-oh, no! no, no! they will not close: I have a gnawing pain, here, at my heart: Guilt, thou liest heavy, and art hard to bear. Flor. What say you, madam, guilt! ! Fran, Who dare say so! (Starting up) 'Twas pity, mercy,-'twas not guilt! and though The world's fierce scorn shall call it infamy, I say 'twas not! Speak, - speak, dost thou? Oh! answer me! Say, was it infamy? Flor. Dear lady, you are ill! Some strange distemper fevers thus your brain. 7 Come, madam, suffer me at least to bind These tresses that have fallen o'er your brow, Making your temples throb with added weight: Let me bind up these golden locks that hang Dishevell'd thus upon your neck. Fran. Out, viper! Nor twine, nor braid, again shall ever bind These locks! Oh! rather tear them off, and cast them Upon the common earth, and trample them, thrus, With their excess, and well it is they do so Fran. Of soul-of soul-ay, so they'd Dost thou believe that the hard coin we pour For all, or any sin we may commit? Asas Hath bound? whom holy wedlock shall, ere long? Gonz. The stern decree of the most holy Whose garb wear; and whose authority www.Interpret to your ears the fearful shriek Flor. As what? I know no sin whatever Fran. Come hither; Why dost thou stare thus strangely at my words, And answerest not? Flor. I do believe indeed, ance Austere and lengthened penance-frequent tears. Fran. 'Tis false! I know it these do nought avail : To move relentless heaven it must be bribed. I will cast off the burthen of my shame, Gonzales is introduced to the penitent She confesses her sin-and now he knows how to wring and stab the heart of the man on whom he has so long burned to wreak his revenge. Laval, who has retrieved the loss sustained by Lautrec's discomfiture, and been victorious in Italy against Lannoy, returns to France, and flies on the wings of love to the Chateau de Foix. The King, too, had a little VOL. XXXI. NO. CXCIII. Lav. Oh, how unutterably fair! Gonz. Seems not that shrinking flower the soul of all That is most pure, as well as beautiful? That thou art prating? unto me, who have The king! a merry tale, forsooth! Will laugh at it, ha! ha !---why, what care I? cious and insulting destroyer. The fine, free, generous, and brave spirit of the noble youth, a moment before in enjoyment, as he believed, of life's dearest happiness, love and glory, is humiliated by sudden access of most miserable calamity almost into a slave. He weeps before his deadliest foe, and is not ashamed; when Gonzales says-" Tears, my lord?" he answers, without seeking to smite Franç. (To GONZALES) Oh deadly him dead, "Aye, tears! thou busy Lav. Françoise-I-I pray thee What, tears! what, wring thine hands! And not one word-not one! fiend! Thou hast but hasten'd that which was foredoom'd. (TO LAVAL) My lord, ere I make answer to this charge, I have a boon to crave of you-my brother Lav. How wildly thine eye rolls! thy hand is cold As death, my fairest love. Franç. Beseech you, sir, In Italy; ere now is well and happy. In this most bitter hour. My Lord Laval, ther; That faith I ratified by mine own vow.- mischief!" And on learning from Gonzales, now Garcia, the history of his revenge, he has strength of soul but to say mournfully, not fiercely, "These were my father's injuries, not mine, Remorseless fiend ! Were all too little; - I've had thy tears! And drunk each bitter drop of agony, have been My tools and instruments: you, haughty madam, And your ambition, yonder headstrong boy, And his mad love, all, all beneath my feet, All slaves unto my will and deadly purpose." The Queen-Mother cries, "Ho! lead out that man to instant death;" but the undaunted Spaniard accuses and convicts her of her many crimes, and of her last and worst, her murderous design against Françoise; and the King, seeing his mother's guilt, commands her "Give me that ring, Strip me that diadem from off thy brows, And bid a long farewell to vanity! For in a holy nunnery immured, Thou shalt have leisure to make peace with heaven. (To the body.)-And for thee, Thou lovely dust, all pomp and circum- stance. grave: Thou shalt lie with the royal and the proud; Lav. And marble, by the dextrous chisel taught, Shall learn to mourn thy hapless fortunes. No! Ye shall not bear her to your receptacles; Nor raise a monument, for busy eyes To stare upon: no hand, in future days, Shall point to her last home; no voice shall cry There lies King Francis' paramour!' In life, Thou didst despoil me of her; but in death, She's mine! I that did love her so, Will give her that my love doth tell me best Fits with her fate-an honourable grave : She shall among my ancestral tombs repose, Without an epitaph, except my tears. Fran. Then now for war, oh! ill to end, I fear, Usher'd with such dark deeds and fell disasters! [Exeunt FRANCIS, followed by the QUEEN and Attendants on one side, and LAVAL, with the others, bearing the body. The Tragedy here ends. But there is a fifth act, full of fine description, in which is fought the famous battle of Pavia. We find that we have left ourselves too little room for any thing like a right critique on this admirable production; and, indeed, after so much heart-moving and spirit-stirring poetry, most probably our readers might turn away coldly from any lengthened remarks of ours on its beauties or defects. In the first place, it will be allowed by all, that there is great grasp of intellect, extraordinary, indeed, in so young a person, shewn in the handling of an historical subject of such magnitude and variety, and in moulding somewhat complicated materials, necessarily of difficult management, into cohesive and consistent form. The main plot, in which the Queen-Mother, Bourbon, and Gonzales figure, is, on the whole, planned and executed powerfully and skilfully; and the under plot, as we may perhaps rather inaccurately call it, in which the King and Françoise are the chief parties, hangs well together, and appertains closely to that to which it may be said to be subordinate. Great ingenuity, at least, is displayed in the union of the two; and more than ingenuity in the way in which they are made to move on together towards the final catas, trophe. Secondly, the characters are numerous, and all either well brought out, or distinguished and discriminated by a few happy touches, so as to move before us, creatures imbued with peculiar life. There is no dimness or faintness in the colouring; and whether interesting or otherwise, the actors stand well out from the canvass, and, coming or going, do their work directly, with energy, and without delay. The inferior personages in plays are often lame and halt-though walking gentlemen; but not so here, although some of them have but little to do certainly, or say either; nor would it have mattered much had they never been born-either by their mothers, or the muse of Miss Kemble. Thirdly, the sentiments and descriptions, though frequent, are almost always appropriate, both to the characters and the situations, and are rarely, if ever, too eloquently expressed or too elaborately painted, the besetting sin of all our modern dramatic poems, which therefore are, for the most part, poems and not plays. Many of the sentiments, too, are in themselves fine and noble; and many of the descriptions extremely beautiful-proving that in Miss Kemble's genius there is a rich vein of poetry-besides great dramatic power. But the prime merit of the play is the composition. We mean thereby the language and the versification. The structure of both is admirablequite after the immortal fashion of the great old masters. Yet it is no mimicry of theirs no patch-work imitation. Miss Kemble's ear-and it is a fine one-is tuned to the music of their harmonious numbers; and she uses it as if it had long been her familiar speech. It flows along easily and naturally, as well in the humbler as in the higher moods; and sometimes, when the passion is violent, it proceeds with a powerful and headlong energy not far short of the sublime. It is on her command of an instrument so powerful, but so difficult to wield as dramatic blank verse of the true and high temper, 1 that we rely, when we predict that she is destined for much greater achievements. On these her merits it would be pleasant to us to expatiate, and to illustrate them; but we desire to say some words, not on her defects, but on those of her drama-and care not if they should assume the shape of advice, which will at least be taken kindly, even if not followed, from an old man. we ring any part of the play without contempt and abhorrence. Such a crime as his may be forgotten as we read the history of a man's whole life. There may have been penitence, remorse, expiation; but we see him here before us only as a selfish, cruel, and unprincipled seducer; and what punishment was it for such a sin, that he was taken prisoner at Pavia? But there is no connexion shewn or hinted at between the violation and the overthrow; and, indeed, such an idea is preposterous, and was not, we think, in the mind of the fair author. Great power is displayed in the character of Gonzales-but we fear it is not a character fit to figure in the legitimate drama. We presume not to say what is natural or not natural in such a passion as revenge. Yet there is to us something perplexing in the union of zeal in the cause of his master, Charles, and his hellish hatred of Laval. Yet that may be a mistake of ours or a misconception; but we almost believe it is no mistake of ours to say that Garcia could not have experienced the same immitigable pangs of murderous revenge, from looking on the son of the man who had stained the honour of his house by the seduction of his sister, as if he had beheld the face of the man himself black with the guilt and the insult. Yet incomprehensible creatures are we all, men and women; and, on looking down at his feet, we see neither hoofs nor claws belonging to lago. Would then that in her future plays-and we trust they will not be few nor very far between-though like angel-visits-Miss Kemble may choose or create heroes and heroines of a nobler nature. The character of the Queen-Mother is strongly, and dare say truly drawn; but it is odious and repulsive. Strong intellect she has, and strong passions; so while we hate we cannot perhaps absolutely despise her; but, what is as bad or worse, the hag, in her lust of man, might, and murder, inspires us with disgust. There is no grandeur in her guilt, as in that of Clytemnestra, or Medea, edea, or Lady Macbeth, yet her disposition is as cruel; and had Bour bon been bribed by a crown to wed her, the life of her son would have been in jeopardy. The cold-blooded murder of Françoise, commanded to the monk, is revolting; from first to last never do we for a moment sympathize fully with one emotion by which she is actuated; and when she is doomed to be immured for life in a convent, we hear the sentence with the same indifference as if Lady Barrymore were about to be sent once more to Bridewell. meme to Francis the First is not, in this drama, a king to our mind. He is too much under the dominion of his mother. 'Tis amiable to be a dutiful son, but a full-grown king should not be in leading-strings. We can- We earnestly hope, then, that the Even Bourbon's self might, we think, have been made a nobler rebel, and certainly, before he joined the enemy, a higher hero, without violence to the truth of history or nature. 101 heroes and heroines of her future plays will be such, with all their human frailties, as we may follow with our sympathies; nor, if so, can there be a doubt that from Miss Kemble's genius will arise far nobler creations, and worthy of immortal not ennoble him to our imagination, tremblind ads 2973 199up hero send biror ча кордон Το ποίειίπος odt to zob かは |