The Sun.
London, England, 1849-06-23 00:00:00

[PRICE 50.

MARSTON'S NEW TRAGEDY.

STRATHMORE. A Tragic Play in Five Acts.
By J. Westland Marston.
Already—in our notice of the theatrical represen-
tation of Strathmore, on the occasion of its first per-
formance on Wednesday evening, at the Theatre Royal
Haymarket—we gave a rapid but detailed synopsis
of the plot, from the opening scene to the catastrophe.
Our present purpose, therefore, is restricted entirely,
within the limits of literary criticism. For the bril-
liant success which has already marked the appear-
ance of the new tragedy has even in this brief in-
terval rendered the story which it evolves, in a great
measure, familiar to the popular imagination. Ac-
cording to an acknowledgment contained .in the
" Preface" to the first edition, just published, that
story was suggested to the dramatist by the fortunes,
or rather,we should say, byj the misfortunes,(of Henry
Morton, recounted by Sir Walter Scott in one of
his most renowned fictions, the incomparable
romance of " Old Mortality." Every one who bears
interest
which recollection of the sombre and pathetic
which pervades the narrative of Morton's advance at
the head of the Covenanters against the home of Edith
Bellinden, appreciate at-once the thrilling solem-
nity that might be thrown around a dramatic version
of the incident by the hand of one not only intimate
with the ingenuities of stage effect, kit possessed of
that golden key of genius which admits the aspirant
into the garden of poetry, the garden hung with the
jewel.fruits of imagery, and blooming with the
amaranths of inspiration. Such an one is Westland
Marston. He basso far habituated himself to the at-
mosphere of the theatres as to have fa-
miliarized himself with the mechanism essen.

tial to the artificial compositions of the
dramatist, without, however, losing an appetite
for the freshness of reality in his artistic passion for
the fictitious, without forsaking the blush of Nature
for the hectic rouge of Art. Since the production
of his noble tragedy of the Patrician's Daughter—a
.tragedy which forthwith proved him to be a worthy
contemporary of Bulwer Lytton, of Sheridan
Knowles, of Talfourd, of Taylor, of White, of the
authors of Richelieu-and the Athenian Captive, of
the panegyrists of Virginius, and of Van Artsveldt, and
of that sacerdotal illustrator of the history of Scot-
land who bade fair at the very outset of his career
to emulate the celebrity of Home—since the first
appearance of the Patrician's Daughter on the
boards of Drury-lane, Mr. Marston has sedulously
cultivated the gifts which at that period were suffi-
ciently apparent, he has developed his mastery over
the language, and has imperceptibly (and almost
unconsciously, perhaps, to himself) ripened his delicate
yet vigorous imagination. The truth of this is manifest
in the more dramatic character of Strathmore. In
the Patrician's Daughter Mr. Marston rendered his
effusion somewhat less suitable for representation on
the stage from the very circumstance of his having
dared, with the boldness of true genius, to introduce
tragedy into the drawing-room without lowering the
histrionic art to the coarseness of Lillo, or elevating
it to the nearly melodramatic exaggerations of Moore.
In Strathmore, however, he has at length ventured
to put forth his powers in earnest, although
even now we cannot but conjecture that,
with a generalship not less suitable to the
Poet than to the Warrior, he has retained under the
cover of his futurity an effective and remarkable
Reserve. Nevertheless we are not here endeavouring
to guess at the excellence of his subsequent achieve-
ment, we have to do with what is actually under our
consideration. Strathmore we have said evidences
a very striking and perceptible improvement. Yet
we are by no means disposed (as we have already
indicated) to regard it as the completed masterpiece
of Mr. Marston 's intellect. As far as the capacities
of his intellect are concerned it is, to our mind, any-
thing but climactic. It reveals anything rather than
that its author has in it reached the limits of
his capabilities. For, beautiful as is the
diction ; clever as is the dialogue ; touching
as are the " situations ;" grand and even sublime as
is the final incident, where Katharine, starting to her
feet, adjures her betrothed rather than purchase
life by dishonour to die les sad and solemn as is the
catastrophe where the Loyalist-Covenanter, with "a
night"—the night of death—" sleeping upon his
face," expires in the rapture of a tardy reconciliation ;
Strathmore is still far from being without either
blemishes or deficiencies. Yet those blemishes are
seldom beyond the subordinate blemishes of inad •
vertence ; and only once arise from a violation of the
exquisite code of taste. This occurs where Isabel,
striving to console Katharine during the absence of
Strathmore, says of despair, that it is a dissyllable
only signifying the heart-ache and weak nerves,
continuing—
" All women have it ere they wed; it means
The rash of love when oft too full a habit,
And only needs Time's lancet for its cure !"
The metaphor is mean, if not of a gross eccentricity,
rather to be expected in the lyrics of Herrick, than in
the dramas of Marston. In this one instance alone,
however, is the language of the play beneath its pur-
pose ; and if we are not singularly mistaken, the
lines were omitted on the first night of representa-
tion—being allowed to remain in the printed tragedy,
possibly, through an oversight. In the second edition
it will assuredly be expunged, or, at the least, be mo-
dified. As to the " deficiencies which we have
spoken of, they are conspicuously these—a deficiency
of attraction in the working of the underplot, and a
deficiency of ,that moving and irresistible pathos which
opens the flood gates of affection to the tears of sym-
pathy. In this respect the one over-powering scene
between Macdonald and his mother, alone to our
thinking, saved Glencoe from, "damnation." But
for that exquisitely touching interview, the refined
and classic poetry of Talfourd would have failed to
secure the success of his production. If, how-
ever, Strathmore is in a great measure devoid
of this talisman of dramatic triumph, it never-
theless possesses another scarcely if at all inferior
in its influence. If it fails in one direction,
it is eminently victorious in another ; it pos-
sesses a potency of its own over the emotions of
its auditors—it thrills, here and there, to their
very hearts with the abruptness of its melancholy
casualties. As where, at the moment when Strathmore
is rending asunder all the bonds of love and tender-
ness, in obedience to the inexorable dictates of prin-
ciple, he exclaims in a broken but exulting voice to
his betrothed--
" Life rarely knows its heroes. Obloquy,
Like dust, defiles the champion: still he strives,
And at the grave, the sullied vesture falls
From his worn limbs, his memory takes its stand
Upon the tomb, and the world shouts—A Hero !"
As where he cries out, later on, in a kind of deli.
rious day-dream (having seised by force of arms the
house of his betrothed, and committed her father, Sir
Rupert Lorn, to a dungeon)—
" Where am I?—Is this earth, or has the world
Swerved from its path in terror, and recoiled
To the first chaos? Is yon light the sun?
Are these green hills? And has this roof been reared
By human hands?—The ground is firm; I stand
Alone; yet dare not turn lest fearful shapes
Should give the lie to sense.—Alone ! ah, see.
That old man stalks before me 1 Speak answer.—
He's dumb.—And now from the quick breeding air
There looms another form—dark, stern—my Father's!--
He points to him and asks me for his friend !
And 'twixt the two, there glides a cold face, blanched,
With a child's agony I—Katharine, away !
I cannot bear those eyes !—Exact your vengeance !
My life T—No ; that were mercy !—Ah, ye smile—
Ye fade and leave me.—'Tis my doom to live ! "
As, again, where Katharine conjures up before the
mem oryof Strathmore the recollections that reproach
him for his:present actions, at the close of which impas-
sioned adjuration her lover falls senseless at her
feet :
" See, nature in thee
Revolts against the deed ! Thy feet are fixed
To the detaining earth ! thy face is stone I
A cry peals from these shuddering walls to pierce
The vault of Time ; and, 10, the shrouded years
Leap from their graves I—Here, by the old man's side,
The boyish steps have patter'd ; by yon hearth
He held thee at his knee—his playful hand
Entangled in thy hair—and stooped bis ear
knelt
To catch their prattle! By that chlteirbvit
To plight our troth before him, win. h *sevoice—
A soldier's voice, weak with the weight of love—
Faltered his blessing!—Come,
be bold!
end" fil
there—
Tby work ! Stand on my father.'s hearth,
There, where he blessed us—speak his doom !
As, in tine, where the tragic drama terminates with the
thrilling catastrophe of the narrative. Many jewels of
thought and imagery, many flowers of truth and sen-
timent, are lavishly scattered through the five acts of
Strathmore. Several of these lines are singularly
epigrammatic, and are worthy of being invested with
the immortality of proverbs. For example, it is
nobly said by Hamilton, act 1, sc. 1 :
" The road to freemen's rights is o'er their gravel'
Strathmore himself is not less sententious, when
he exclaims, act v., ac. 2 :
" He has no future who betrays his past."
Our dramatist has occasionally in his present work
been particularly felicitous in his descriptive
" touches." In this manner Keith describes the
battle with the men of Claverhouse—
" Some sank in flight;
Others with upraised hands, whose happy sou.'s
O'ertoek their mounting prayers."
With the same vivid forcefulness of diction, Katha-
rine calls aloud in her agony—
!' My s@lu9 dri,fts helpless en this tide 9f h9n9r

And again, when talking of the lingering anguish at
her sorrows, she_says, with such striking energy—
"'Tis said that dreams
Curdle an age in moments."
Here, moreover, is an expression which shows that
Mr. Marston is no inattentive observer of human
nature. Brycefield says of Isabel Lorn—
_ " She has given her band,
And then unclosed it with such lingering touch
As made its farewell hinder than its clasp."
Bitter retorts are not wanting to impart emphasis to
the dialogue. In answer to a remark of Brycefield,
Hamilton exclaims—
" Betray! You think of Brycefield
And speak of Strathmore."
Also, where Isabel replies to an assurance from
Brycefield, that she need " dread no violence"---
" We do not dread, sir,
The thing we scorn."
Of conceits, there are no lack in the more lively por-
tions of the drama. Here is a very dainty one, grace-
fully expressed :
" I wore my lovers
Even as my robes—a change for every mood.
To-day I put on scarlet—in a soldier;
A courtier—for my purple velvet, next;
The third, a skirt of spangles—in a wit ;
You frown again! nay, love for common wear
There's none like tbat drab constancy of thine !"
How impassioned can be the love passages in these
compositions of Mr. Marston' may be conjectured
from that one remark of Strathmore's to Katharine,
where he is lamenting that he may never more
." Gaze on that unit which could fill for me"
A vacant world—yourselj
Of the interpolated drolleries which are employed as
a foil to the tragic incidents, those can speak who
have heard Buckstone, in the character of Roland,
drawl forth—
" Avoid thee ! seest thou not I am a vessel !"
The antagonists of capital punishment might cavil at
the phrase,
" Murder's doom is death."
but the millions of Hungary, and all the most heroic
races in the world, would testify with one voice to
the truth of that beautiful saying—
" Though freedom's hosts
Bleach the green earth with death, that cause is safe
That hath its chief above!"
Equally beautiful too is that sentence—
" Sure, the courts of heaven
Are peopled with the outcasts of this world!"
Other fragmentary indications of the intellectual
beauty squandered over the five acts of Strathmore
cling to our recollection, What we have already ex-
tracted will, nevertheless, amply attest the imaginative
richness of the production. We congratulate Mr.
, Marston with all cordiality on the signal success of
his last dramatic creation.