seduced by her master, and afterwards by her fellowservant. She conceals from Frank her former connection with Sir Arthur, and induces him to marry her. Clarington. who sees his own advantage in this match, promises to supply the young couple with money. They are married; and Winnifrede begins at once to retrieve the errors of her past by honest conduct. Her subsequent action engages the sympathy which at the first we are unwilling to accord her. Levity and deceit have placed her in a false position; but she gradually wins her way by simple faithfulness and suffering into respect. It is necessary that the marriage should be concealed; for old Thorney is of gentle birth, and would ill brook his son's unthrifty act of justice to a girl of doubtful character. Indeed, he is already in treaty with a wealthy yeoman, Carter, for the union of his son to the farmer's well-dowered daughter, Susan. Accordingly Frank places his wife with her uncle, near Waltham Abbey, and returning to his father's home, finds himself involved in a tangle of falsehood and prevarication. He denies his marriage with Winnifrede, of which a rumour has reached old Thorney's ears, and produces a letter from his evil genius Sir Arthur Clarington, attesting that he is still a bachelor. Then the Squire unfolds his plan for freeing the estate from debt by means of Susan's dowry, and offers to resettle it upon his son. Frank has not force of character to resist the pressure of cir cumstance. To give himself the lie and make a clean breast to his father is now the only way of extricating himself. But he chooses what seems, at the moment, the easier course of drifting down the current : FRANK THORNEY. On every side I am distracted; Am waded deeper into mischief Than virtue can avoid ; but on I must: 473 Susan takes kindly to the young man as her lover; Carter presses on the match with rustic joviality; the dowry is paid down; and Frank sees himself engaged beyond recovery: In vain he flees whom destiny pursues. Ford, to whom we certainly owe the draught of this character, has made young Thorney one of those weak men who lay their crimes to the account of fate, forgetting that Man is his own star;' nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam. Married to Susan, who is a loving loyal wife, one of the purest women in the long gallery of female characters painted by our dramatists, Frank finds his life intolerable. He really loves Winnifrede, whom he knows to be waiting for him at her uncle's home. She has to learn the truth of his disloyal conduct from his lips; a disclosure which she accepts with humility, remembering her own fault. Frank's second adul terous marriage' is in truth only a little more criminal in the sight of Heaven than that lie with which Winnifrede first wedded him : You had The conquest of my maiden-love. Only she is now reluctant to accept Frank's proposal that they should escape together with the dowry of his sin,' and live their lives out in a foreign country. Winnifrede assumes the habit of a page, in order to attend her husband on a journey. Whither he is bound, we are not told; and, indeed, the whole of this part of the drama is so ill-explained as to raise a suspicion whether two plays have not been curtailed and fused into one piece. Susan walks with them, meaning to bid Frank farewell a little further on his way; and now follows a very touching scene between the two women, the real wife disguised in man's dress, and the deceived Susan, who loves with all her heart and strives to engage the interest of the supposed lad: I know you were commended to my husband By a noble knight. This simple opening has such a painful irony, considering how Clarington had actually commended Winnifrede to Frank, that it stings her like a snake's fang: Susan. How now? What ail'st thou, lad? Win. Something hit mine eye (it makes it water still), Commended to him by Sir Arthur Clarington. While they thus converse together, Susan in every artless word revealing more and more of her sweet woman's nature, Thorney joins them. The scene is continued in a dialogue between him and Susan. She is loth to part, and makes excuses always for following a little further. He grows ever more and more impatient, feeling the situation intolerable. At last she points to a certain clump of trees upon the hill's brow, where she will say farewell : That I may bring you through one pasture more SUSAN AND WINNIFREDE. 475 Winnifrede has passed ahead with the horses; and having reached that knot of trees, Frank's rising irritation suddenly turns to a murderous impulse. He will cut the bond which unites him to Susan; she is too clinging, too loving; her kindness cloys and maddens him. So he draws his knife; but before he plunges it into her breast, he tells her the whole story of his former marriage, brutally. brutally. Then he stabs her the first time. What follows is far from simple. I will transcribe the dialogue, since it raises the question so often forced upon us by the later work of the dramatists, whether such rhetorical embroidery of a poignant situation is pathetic or involves a bathos : Frank. I was before wedded to another; have her still. I do not lay the sin unto your charge; 'Tis all my own: your marriage was my theft; For I espoused your dowry, and I have it : I did not purpose to have added murder. The devil did not prompt me-till this minute 1- Sus. And I deserve it; I am glad my fate was so intelligent : [Stabs her. 'T was some good spirit's motion. Die? Oh, 't was time! How many years might I have slept in sin, The sin of my most hatred, too, adultery! Fr. Nay, sure 't was likely that the most was past; For I meant never to return to you After this parting. 1 The old copy, says Gifford, punctuates this line thus: The devil did not prompt me: till this minute You might have safe returned. In fact, the devil, in the shape of Mother Sawyer's black dog, had just rubbed up against him, enticing him by contagion to the crime. I see here a point of doubt in the construction of the drama, which confirms the view I have already expressed that The Witch of Edmonton is really two separate plays, pieced together by an afterthought. Sus. Why, then I thank you more : That you would thus bestow me on another. Thou art my husband, Death, and I embrace thee Shall, with bold wings, ascend the doors of Mercy; Fr. Not yet mortal? I would not linger you, Or leave you a tongue to blab. [Stabs her again. Sus. Now, Heaven reward you ne'er the worse for me! I did not think that Death had been so sweet, Nor I so apt to love him. I could ne'er die better, For I'm in charity with all the world. Let me for once be thine example, Heaven; [Dies. Having completed this dastardly murder, Frank wounds his own body and contrives to tie himself to a tree, where he calls aloud for help. His father and old Carter enter to his cry; he charges the crime on two former suitors of Carter's daughter, Somerton and Warbeck, and is taken back to Carter's house to have his wounds cured. Winnifrede, who knows nothing of his guilt in this last fact, follows him still dressed like a page, and in his sick-bed he is waited on by her and Susan's sister, Katharine, another fair type of womanhood. The prolonged dialogue, which constitutes the beauty of this play, rises nowhere to a higher point of Euripidean realism than in a scene where Frank is discovered conscience-smitten, feverish. and haunted by delirious fancies, between Katharine and Winnifrede. The ghost of Susan stands at his bedside. He cannot distinguish phantoms from reali |
