136 The Early English Drama : [FEB. 



which it requires something more than the ordinary business of life to 

 remove. 



The scene of the Revenger's Tragedy is laid at the court of one of the 

 reigning dukes of Italy ; and the Dramatis Personal consist entirely of 

 the duke's family, with the exception of two brothers (the Revengers), 

 and their sister and mother, who are made at once incitements and 

 instruments of that revenge which forms the subject of the play. It may 

 be as well to premise that, with one exception, the whole of these persons 

 are represented in colours which, at the very commencement of the play, 

 cut them off from the reader's sympathy, and in some degree prepare 

 him for the havoc that is in the end to be made among them, in order to 

 satisfy the " great revenge" of Vindici, the principal and, indeed, it 

 may be said the only character in the drama ; for Castiza, the sister of 

 Vindici, and the redeeming spirit of the piece, is not so much a dramatic 

 character, as she is a kind of abstraction or personification of the virtue 

 whose name she bears Chastity. 



It would be difficult to name a drama, in any language, which opens 

 more poetically as well as dramatically, and the opening of which at the 

 same time so effectually answers its more immediate end, of preparing 

 the mind for what is to follow, by means of hints relating to what has 

 passed. As it is a very principal object of these papers to present our 

 readers with beautiful and characteristic specimens of a department of 

 our literature with which, notwithstanding all that has been of late years 

 written about it, we must venture to consider them as for the most part 

 practically unacquainted, we shall, instead of describing the com- 

 mencement of the Revenger's Tragedy, let it speak for itself. 



The reader will observe that the language of this opening scene is in 

 no degree inferior generally to that of its period the only period of our 

 literature in which dramatic language has been in the least degree under- 

 stood among us. It also contains two or three passages in every respect 

 worthy of Shakspeare himself. 



SCENE I. 



Enter VINDICI. The Duke, Duchess, LUSURIOSO the Duke's Son, SPVRIO 

 the Bastard, with a train, pass over the stage with torch-light.* 



Tin. Duke ! royal letcher ! go, grey-haired adultery ! 

 And thou his son, as impious steeped as he ! 

 And thou his bastard, true begot in evil ! 

 And thou his duchess, that would do with devil ! 

 Four excellent characters ! O, that marrowless age 

 Should stuff the hollow bones with damned desires, 

 And, 'stead of heat, kindle infernal fires 

 Within the spendthrift veins of a dry duke 

 A parched and juiceless luxur ! O God ! one 

 That has scarce blood enough to live upon, 

 And he to riot it like a son and heir ! 

 O, the thought 

 Turns my abused heart-strings into fret. 



Thou sallow picture of my poisoned love,t 

 My study's ornament thou shell of death ! 



* As it should seem, from what follows, that Vindici is supposed, during this scene, to 

 be in his own study, we must bear in mind the practice of the old stage, of exhibiting two 

 scenes at the same time, one above the other. 



f Here he addresses the skull of his dead mistress, murdered by the duke. 



