The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-25 00:00:00

LIT ERA Ttl R.E.

Passing Clouds : A Tale of Florence. A. Play.
LAagnian, Brown, Green, and Longmaus.
An exquisite dramatic love story, this " Tale of
Florence"—the production of a refined taste and
of achastened and fruitful ii..aginatiou. We have
perused it more than once already, and have done
so, moreover, at intervals sufficiently lengthened
to enable the judgment to revert with freshened
zest to the task of analytic examination.
It is, therefore, we may remark, with the
emphasis of deliberation that we commend thus
warmly the anonymous play of " Passing Clouds
a Tale of Florence." Whether the composition be-
fore us be a maiden performance or not, is a ques-
tion left altogether to our unguided conjectures.
From the exhilarating freshness apparent through-
out, we should be tempted to surmise that the
work under notice is the achievement of one entirely
unhackneyed to the dusty pursuits of the real or
ideal, the scholastic or histrionic coulisses. But
that with this bloom of novelty and of youthful
day-dreamiugs, it would be difficult not to recog-
nise the skilled ability visible in every scene of the
five acts, from the earliest "entrance" to the latest

exeunt ; or rather from the first suggestive page,
giving us the list of the dramatis personce down to
the final grouping of the principal characters, prior
to the fall of the curtain upon that mystic line (the
last line of every acted or 'muted drama), along
which the heroes and heroines assemble side by side
under the shadow either of an actual, or, it may
be, of a purely imaginary proscenium. Never-
theless, after all, it matters little, if anything,
whether the play, read or witnessed, examined
by the homely flame of the argand burner, or by
the gassy glare of the footlights, be the product of
some timorous tyro or of some practised playwright.
What we have really to do with is the drama and
not the dramatist. Watching the progress of the
piece as a reader placidly turning over the leavesiu
au armchair, instead of excitedly following its inci-
dents through the palpable medium of a living and
breathing representation—we are deprived of the
time-honoured privilege of the playgoer, the right
to summon any successful author to the front of
his box, there to receive the spontaneous tribute
of our cheers of felicitation. Reading a play in
privacy it is always so, and that, of course, inevit-
ably: we close the drama, as the supposititious green
baize descends upon the hypothetical stage, think-
ing more of it than of the dramatist. Whereas, upon
the witnessing of any first night's performance it is,
as we have indicated above, directly otherwise—
the play itself, if triumphant, is no sooner com-
pleted than the spectator almost inStamtaueously
loses all recollection of it in a not irrational and
easily comprehensible curiosity to behold, with all
his blushing honours thick upon him, altctor operis
prcecipui, bowing in confused exultation to the
plaudits of the gods and the groundlings. In lieu
of those resoundingacclamations, the published dra-
matist, as contradistinguished from the acted drama-
tist, must solace himself perforce with the sedative
tokens of victory percolating to him from the press
in the honey-drops of praise vouchsafed at rarest
intervals by the public reviews. Such words we
are now happily enabled to pronounce conscien-
tiously upon the unknown writer of this charming
" Tale of Florence," be the author he or she,
young or old, veteran or stripling aspirant. The
play is to our thinking, from first to last, emi-
nently beautiful. It appears without the affecta-
tion of either explanatory note or apologetic pre-
face—simply and modestly relying upon its own
merits in the way of lucidity. The principal per-
sonages introduced scarcely number a dozen in all.
The scene is restricted to Florence and its imme-
diate neighbourhood. The incidents are supposed
to transpire somewhere between 1295 and 1300.
Everything essential in reference to the accessaries
of the story might be told in a few minutes, so
clearly defined is the drift of it, so natural and se-
quential are the stages of its development. Sant
Angelo, a Florentine patrician, and De Beaufort, a
French nobleman, are the old men of the piece—
the fathers of the two heroines—obdurate, of course,
at the outset, but, as it chances, from the force ofper-
verse circumstances, rather than from any inherent
cross-grainedness ! So that all turns out happily
before the conclusion of the drama--though pre-
viously the entire plot has appeared to be entangled in
the inextricable confusion of cross-purposes. Ra-
phael Sant Angelo, kinsman of the first-mentioned
of that name, and in reality, though younger, head
of their ancient house and heir to its princely pos-
sessions, shines upon the scene from first to last,
the good hero of the piece, selected by both sires
as the chosen spouse for the one cherished daughter
of each—Constance and Ilerminia. Gaston de

Courcy, nephew of De Beaufort, is the other lover
in the romance—the brilliant, brave, and chival-

rous suitor for the hand of the fairest of all the
fair ladies of that time in Florence. Raphael,
regarded originally by his kinsman as his luture
sun-in-law, becomes in the end the betrothed of
Constance, the child of the Gaihc peer De Beaufort.
Gaston, after being apparently doomed to &ail
fur illegal entrance into Florence, is accepter -i ulti-
mately by Ilerminia's father as the husband elect
of his beloved daughter. It is between the loves
of Raphael and Constance, of Gaston and Ller-
rninia, that the interest of the drama may be said

to oscillate. It were difficult to decide to-which of

;ho two love-tales should by right be accorded the

preference. The walking gentleman of the piece
appears in the person of the Chevalier de Vauliel,

a -kinsman of -Do Boaufort. Tao dowager dame
becomes visible in tho Countess Matilda, god-

.uother of Constance. Tile villains of the dr:tuia
Are discernible for a moment in a nameless cur-

nudgeou of a Senator, in two or three vagabond

robh—ers, and in sonic score or so of the Insurgent
talkie of Florence. Otherwise the dramatis per-

souse are for the most part little less than paragons.
Yet, in spite of their so being, the sweetness of the
dramatic narrative as a charming lone story, never
once degenerates into the mawkish, it never pall,
upon the taste as a romance over-sugared with
moral excellences. Francis, Denis, and Sylvio are
the servants flitting to and fro across the scene with

messages for good or ill ; and beyond them, grouped
together in the background, are discernible Sant
Angelo's steward, the steward's wife, li.dies attend-
ant upon Herminia, men-at-arms, and citizens, who
happen now and then in their civic brAwls to b -

comb amateur men-at-arms themselves. Allotlier

personage not yet mentioned is among the first
and foremost throughout. This is Polydor, the
good, simple-hearted, kindly, genial, learned,
loveable Polydor, formerly tutor to Raphael—now
the sage adviser at once of Gaston and Herminia,

conveying love tokens hither and thither between
the enamoured pair, ignorant of his being all the
while a carrier dove in a scholar's garment, with a
book under his arm and his head in the clouds.

Many of the " Passing Clouds " of the story from
which the play derives its graceful designation may

be traced indeed, both in their origin and in
their • ultimate dissipation, to the unconscious
•

hand of this delightful Polydor —a sort of
Italian Dominic Sampson in his way, with all
the Dominie's goodness and none of his grotesque-
ness. If there is one flaw in the piece it is that the
intellectual verdure of Polydor is somewhat over-
coloured—reminding one of that classic version of
one of the quaint old London signs :

Viridis horns et tranquillus
How amusingly the old man, in reply to Hermi-

nia's inquiry as to whether Gaston finds anything
to praise in Italy and the Italians, exclaims—

" Ask what he praises not,
Tho' ignorant of many vital thine,
Most gross in grammar, destitute of verbs,
He hath learned every adjective of praise
To paint our names with."
The rogue ! So well, indeed, that—here is one of
the samples of his skill in translating into Hermi-
nia's northern tongue one of the barbarous Nor-
man lays, as honest Polydor calls them, of the
Trouveres or the Troubadours :

Whom cloth my lady love !
Is it he who evermore
Near her stands at hall and door,
Ready with unfaltering baud
To obey her least command !
By all the pretty oaths that be,
It is not by

Ir.
Whom doth my lady love ?
Is it he who, when a child,
Shared her sports and made them wild,
And, a man, wild sports forswore,
Tninking thus to please her more?
13y all the eager oaths that be,
It, is not he !

111.
Whom doth my lady love
IA it he who standeth mute
When she plays upon her lute,
And whose soul, though far remote,
Trembles in each melting note !
By all the whispered oaths that be,
It is not he !

Whom doth my lady love ?
Is it he whose name is heard
Crowned with many a flattering word,
First in field and first at home,
Whither he cloth seldom come
By all the knightly vows that be
'Tis he 'Tis he !
Excellent Master Polydor not only carries hiero-
glyphics like these between the lovers, unconscious
himself of their hidden significance, but lo ! how
wisely he acts in the presence of one of them, ac-
cording to the account furnished by the tender so-
liloquy of Gaston
" Here are the lines traced by her very hand;
For while her simple tutor turned his bead
To fie° a rainbow, whose bright eroh I formed

By miracle upon a cloudless sky, __
Did I exchange our books, and this is her's
Ou ! sweet Herminia ! woribi thou had 4 been born
' In mine own France and of more liberal sire!
For thine cloth ban her as th' accursed land
! Whence no good thing can come, and by his will
his l‘fe were like the unsocial banyan tr‘e,
Which, self enamoured, casts its young shoots down
Year after year, close by the parent trunk,
In the same soil, ever and evermore."
In allusion to Sant Angelo's dream of the union
between Raphael and Herminia, the dream of a
union happily for four hearts never realised. The
metaphor must be allowed to be one eminently
graceful, novel, and felicitous. The dramatist, it
ishould be observed, moreover, has a lively sense of
the humorous, as we find pleasantly indicated by a
number of gay touches hero and there throughout.
Sometimes visible in surly comments, like that of
the artisan who observes :
" I am no brawler, though men call me so ;
But I do love to call things by their names ;
To call a knave a knave—a fool a fool,
And so my life grows storms, three crops in the year."
Sometimes in casual conceits such as that of
Raphael, who says :
~------Why looking carelessly abroad
Who would not swear this world of ours is flat ?
Many do think so still, and that the sun
Runs like a lacquey bowing round and round."
Kindred to another fantastic thought articulated
later on by Constance :
"Trees are but out-door servants, liveried
In varied green to bow as we do walk."

Reminding us of the phrase put in the mouth of
the young Prince in Planche's burlesque of the
" Sleeping Beauty," when the trees of the magic
grove separate to give ingress to the stranger-hunts-
man, his Highness advancing amongst them plumed
hat in hand, with a graceful " By your leaves !" In
regard to mere style there is one other charm in
this drama of "Passing Clouds" not yet mentioned
that it is in no way characterised by affec-
tation or grandiloquence. There are passion and
sensibility—no ranting or drivelling. A servant is
attacked by cut-throats in the fourth act, and thus
quoth he :
Murder me if thou wilt, yet thou shalt gain
Nought but damnation. Not a groat have I
In either pocket ; no, nor hidden coins
Within my shoes or vest. A rod of steel
Have I alone :—that I present to thee,
Thou bloody knave. Take all I have (they fight). All's
lost !
The blade bath snapped."
Again. Constance has gradually growinc, up in her
heart's core a mingled sense of love and respect for
Raphael, yet, speaking of him to the Countess, her
godmother, she simply remarks—
" Edieve me still, this is no common man."
While Herminia, in the anguish of her dread lest
Raphael Sant Angelo may really in earnest aspire
to be her husband, says—
" But gentle Raphael, if thou lov'st me well,
Tell me at once thou lov'st me not too much."
Towards the close of the fifth scene in the third
act, when Raphael comes magnanimously to the
aid of the imprisoned Gaston, the latter exclaims—
" Oh, Raphael ! not a word of thanks
Hast thou yet heard from me, who owe thee all ?
From vessels, full to the brim, no drop will'flow :
Empty they seem ; so much resembling show.
Too little and too much !"
With gratitude as with grief—a grief like that ex-
quisitely sung by Tennyson :
" There twice a-day the Severn fills ;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall

I brim with sorrow drowning song."
Gracefully floating over the landscape of the scene
—the beautiful groves and gardens of Tuscany—
" Passing Clouds" chequer with alternate light
and shade the courtly figure's of the drama—
"ladies fair and gallants gay "
until the last faint shadow is lost at the close in
the sunshine of prevailing happiness. " Passing
Clouds," howbeit, we accept rather as a love-story
than as a drama—less as a play than as a simple,
tender, charming Tale of Florence.