R430218C. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.
The Examiner, 18 February 1843, p. 101.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 400–401.
Drury Lane.—Mr Browning—a writer whose career we watch with great interest, because we believe him to be a man of genius and a true poet—is the author of a tragedy in three acts, produced at this theatre, on Saturday last, and entitled A Blot on [sic] the ’Scutcheon. In performance it was successful: a result which it had been hardly safe to predict of a work of so much rare beauty, and of such decisive originality.
These are qualities that seldom, at first starting, make their way in the world, more especially the world theatrical. And we are not sanguine of the chances of continued patronage to the Blot in the ’Scutcheon. People are already finding out, we see, that there is a great deal that is equivocal in its sentiment, a vast quantity of mere artifice in its situations, and in its general composition not much to “touch humanity.” We do not pretend to know what should touch humanity, beyond that which touches our own hearts, but we would give little for the feelings of the man who could read this tragedy without a deep emotion. It is very sad; painfully and perhaps needlessly so; but it is unutterably tender, passionate, and true. It is not copied from this or that existing notion; it is not moulded on this or the other of the old authors; it is the growth of the writer’s heart, and has the distinct truth, the animated pathos, the freshness and unexaggerated strength, which spring in that soil alone.
We seldom describe the plots of plays. The interest here turns on the shame which is brought upon an old English family, and the vengeance it provokes; upon the suffering which sin engenders, and which death only ends. There is a deeper moral for those who can see deeper truths than the conventional ones. At the opening of the first act, the hand of Mildred Tresham is sought by Henry Earl of Mertoun, but before the act closes, the honour of Mildred has been brought into question in the presence of her proud and sensitive brother, the Lord of Tresham, the passionate, impetuous, high-hearted, self-willed Thorold. In the second act Mildred’s shame is disclosed, but she dares not couple with it her lover’s name. At the opening of the third act, Thorold learns it, but nothing gives pause to his savage instinct of revenge, till he sees bleeding beneath his sword the author of his sister’s shame, and the only creature who could have saved, and who had already earnestly striven to save, the house’s honour. It is the young Earl of Mertoun. The sister dies of a broken heart, and Thorold takes poison.
To all this it is objected, that, as a matter of course, the lover’s name should have been surrendered, and all further evil put an end to on the instant. We know of few tragedies that would stand this sort of criticism. As if it were not at the very root of the feeling on which the whole is based, that the poor shame-crushed girl should be silent with a thousand fears, where the ruder nature would at once have spoken. “Courtly Mildred dies when country Madge survives.” And did not the issue justify her fears? It is objected, too, that if Thorold repents his rage when his victim has fallen under it, there is no reason that he should not have repented before, and time enough to end matters amicably. A wise and satisfactory suggestion, that proves the needlessness of how much sorrow, real and theatrical. Oh! that both worlds would but take it to heart, and always repent before it is too late!
There are defects in the tragedy, though these are not of them. But we shall not stop to dwell upon them, till we have also space for one or two short extracts from the work itself, which will do better justice to its writer than all that we have said. There is no defect that calls for instant exposure. There is no equivocal morality in it, no false sympathies to set the judgment halting between right and wrong; no good that deters, no bad that encourages. It is full of manly tenderness—of tenderness which remains in the heart when the guilt and sadness are forgotten. And though there are causes in the subject itself—and most of all, “the pity of it”—which may for the present give it short existence on the stage, it is a work, we are very sure, that will not be willingly let die. Of the performance we have little to say, but that we think it on the whole under-acted. The character best sustained was that of Miss Helen Faucit.
[John Forster]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. V. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1843.
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