BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



ZENOBIA; 



OR, 



THE FALL OF PALMYRA, 



A Tragedy in Thret^ Acts. 



"Some weeks ago, Mr. J. M. Bellew introduced to tlie public a new tragedy, by 

 Mr. V/. I^LvRSUAM Adams, late Fellow of New College, Oxford, entitled, ' Zenobia ; 

 or. The Fall of Palmyra,' We have had the pleasure of reading this tragedy, and can 

 speak favourably of it. It is a schclar-like work, full of passages of great vigour and 

 beauty, and sparkling throughout with perfect gems of poesy. A singular unity 

 pervades it. The plot of Paul, detailed in the second act, is carefully prepared in the 

 first, and recoils with tremendous force upon his own head in the last. Each character 

 is distinct, though eacli displays a wide range of passions. The dignified Longinus, 

 the petulant Mceonius, the passionate Zenobia, the despairing Paul, ' an outcast from 

 both worlds,' the generous but fanatical Heliodorus, preserve their identity through 

 every phase of varying emotion. The incidents are entirely the product of the passions 

 of the characters ; and the result is, that the interest continues unflagging down to the 

 very fall of the curtain. ' Zenobia ' is a specimen of the legitimate drama, admirably 

 conceived and skilfully executed. " — 0?ice a Week. 



"For many centuries the famous treatise 'On the Sublime' was attributed to 

 Longinus, the rhetorician. His authorship has since been called into question, like 

 many others, by the school of high criticism ; but it will in all probability still remain 

 connected with his name. The biographical dictionaries state that his great reputation 

 caused him to be summoned from Athens to Palmyra by Queen Zenobia, that he 

 became her chief counsellor, and that he was put to death in A. D. 273 by order of the 

 Emperor Aurelian, as having instigated her futile war against the Romans. With 

 regard to Zenobia herself, we are told by the same convenient authorities that she was 

 Queen of Palmyra, and had the credit of having brought about the death of her second 

 husband, Odenathus ; that she proclaimed herself Monarch of the East, and declared 

 war against the Romans ; but that she was conquered and taken prisoner, and carried 

 off to grace the triumph of Aurelian in the Eternal City, where she afterwards lived 

 and died in obscurity. 



" Such are the chief fragments of history on which Mr. Marsiiam Adams appears to 

 have built up his new tragedy. In a prefatory note he warns the reader, that 'although 

 some of the principal personages of the play are historical, the incidents are to a great 

 extent fictitious. ' The creatures of the poet's imagination are the following persons : — 

 A foundling whom King Denathus (or Odenathus) has adopted under the name of 

 Masonius ;* a priest of the Sun, one Heliodorus, compelled by Longinus to conform 

 outwardly to Christianity ; and Viola, a daughter of Longinus. In the opening scene 

 Heliodorus is discovered in grief near the 'ruins of the temple of Apollo, or the Sun, at 

 Palmyra. To him, after a brief and striking soliloquy, enters Paulus, an apostate 

 bishop, who had once been ambassador at the court of King Denathus, but who had 

 been absent from Palmyra for seventeen years at the opening of the drama. The two 

 old friends renew their acquaintance, and unite in expressions of hatred towards 

 Longinus and his Cliristianity. Heliodorus introduces Paulus to the young foundling 

 Masonius, whose gratitude for his princely rank as the king's adopted son is not strong 

 enough to conceal his dislike of the old monarch's frequent reprimands, and his 

 rancorous impatience at the prosy tutorship of Longinus. These hot feelings are 

 easily ripened into absolute detestation of the two oppressors, as he thinks them, of his 

 youth, and he readily accepts a small packet of poisons which Paulus offers him as 

 a convenient cure for the tiresomeness of an enemy. After Mreonius has refused to 

 attend the summons of a messenger to the king's presence, Longinus comes on the 

 same errand, and is accused by the young prince of being the lover of Zenobia. The 

 despised messenger returns with an order from Denathus to depose Mseonius forthwith 

 from his exalted station, and to cast him out as a mere foundling, without a father, or 

 family, or position. Stray expressions which fall in an aside from the lips of Paulus- 

 allow the reader to divine that this apostate bishop has once been a lover of Zenobia. 

 Altogether, this first scene brings the characters, and their mutual position, well before 

 the mind, and, independently of its great poetic merit, inspires that interest in future 

 events which is one great element of dramatic success. It leaves also a due amount of 

 mystery and unexplained embarrassment around the chief personages, which is not 



* Mseonius is a historical character. He was the nephew and assassin of the King Odenathus 



