R430219A. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.
The Era, 19 February 1843, pp. 5–6.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 6.
Drury Lane.—A new tragic play, called “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” was produced here on Saturday. It may be well to premise, before entering into a critical analysis of its form, that we enter our protest against the incident from which its power and its interest are educed. An illicit passion, although clothed in the finest poetry, and sustained by the highest dramatic power, is objectionable when placed upon the stage. Having fairly stated this objection, we may now detail the plot, Henry, Earl of Mertoun (Mr. Anderson), has, previously to the commencement of the drama, induced Mildred Tresham (Miss Helen Faucit) to forget her virtue in her love, but still wishes to marry her, and, acting upon this wish, makes proposals to her brother, Thorold, Lord Tresham (Mr. Phelps), of her hand. Meanwhile he is informed by an aged retainer, Gerard (Mr. G. Bennett), that his sister is in the habit of admitting a lover nightly to her chamber. Agonised by the blot which is thus cast upon the honor of his house, Thorold lies in wait for the young lover, and slays him. As Mertoun expires, he bids him deliver his last words to Mildred, who breaks her heart on hearing them from her brother’s lips. The scene between Mildred and her brother was exquisitely conceived. Nothing could be grander than the pause, in which the girl, after gazing on her brother, arrives at the terrible truth, by the impulse of instinct. The manner in which the play was acted reflects the highest credit upon the Drury-lane company, and the absence of Mr. Macready from the cast was as little regretted as it possibly could be. Phelps, who performed the brother, was fearfully effective in his impersonation of the angry and agonised patrician, who shrinks from the fear of the Blot upon his ’Scutcheon. In the great scene in which he detects the lurking lover, and, dragging him out into the light, taunts him till he draws his sword—although he will not name himself, or uncover his face—the actor was powerful, and almost terrific. The passion of his rage reminded us vividly of Edmund Kean, and such praise is no common compliment. Helen Faucit acted Mildred with power and beauty, and threw into the guilty girl all the delicacy of which the character is susceptible. The singular loveliness which attended her forgiveness of her brother we lack words to describe. It was as if for the time the angel had swept away the woman, and she had forgot the passion of resentment in the divine exertion of pardoning. Mr. Anderson acted with [p. 6→] great tenderness, and in his interview with Mildred imparted a fervency which gave it absolute reality. His dying scene was not outraged by the usual stage contortions, but was physically, as well as morally, marked by great truthfulness. Mr. Bennett’s Gerard was excellent. Though “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon” may not rank as a work of the highest art, it possesses the elements of a fine dramatic feeling; the construction is natural, and the characters stand broadly out from the canvas. There is a fine gush of feeling poured forth, untainted by far-fetched epithets and words of “olden-date.” The author feels strongly, and the poetry has a fervor and grace, and an honesty of application that comes home at once to the heart. We discover no borrowings or adaptations from the elder dramatists, the sentiments are not arrayed in tricksy phraseology, and were the inversions (the author’s besetting sin) less frequent, his blank verse would be unexceptionable. There are at moments a fresh sylvan feeling breathed forth that imparts an excelling beauty to much of the dialogue. Mertoun’s answer to Lord Tresham’s inquiry—
Have you seen, Lady Mildred by the way?
Mertoun. I—I—our two demesnes, remember, touch—
I have been used to wander carelessly
After my stricken game—the heron roused.
Deep in my woods has trailed its broken wing
Through thicks and glades a mile in yours,—or else
Some eyas ill reclaimed has taken flight,
And lured me after her from tree to tree
I marked not whither—I have come upon
The lady’s wondrous beauty unaware,
And then—I have seen her.
There is infinite tenderness in the following:—
______ She has never known
A mother’s care; I stand her father too—
Her beauty is not strange to you it seems—
You cannot know the good and tender heart,
Its girls’ trust, and its woman’s constancy,
How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
As light where friends are—how embued with love
The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet
He—one might know how I talked of Mildred—thus
We brothers talk.
The interview of Mertoun with Mildred is full of beautiful thoughts,—
Mertoun . The meeting that appalled us both so much
Is ended.
Mildred. What begins now?
Mer. Happiness
Such as the world contains not.
Mil. That is it.
Our happiness would, as you say, exceed
The whole world’s best of blisses: we—do we
Deserve that? Utter to your soul, what mine
Long since, beloved, has grown used to hear,
Like a death-knell so much regarded once,
And so familiar now; this will not be!
Mer. Oh, Mildred, have I met your brother’s face
Compelled myself—if not to speak untruth
Yet to disguise, to shun, to put aside
The truth, as what had e’er prevailed on me
Save you, to venture? Have I gained at last
Your brother, the one scarer of your dreams,
And waking thoughts’ sole apprehension too?
Does a new life, like a young sunrise, break
On the strange unrest of the night, confused
With rain and stormy flaw—and will you see
No dripping blossoms, no fire-tinted drops
On each live spray, no vapor steaming up,
And no expressless glory in the east?
When I am by you, to be ever by you,
When I have won you and may worship you,
Oh, Mildred, can you say “this will not be?”
* * * *
Mertoun. I was scarce a boy—e’en now
What am I more? And you were infantine
When first I met you—why, your hair fell loose
On either side!—my fool’s cheek reddens now
Only in the recalling how it burned
That morn to see the shape of many a dream!
—You know we boys are prodigal of charms
To her we dream of—I had heard of one.
Had dreamed of her, and I was close to her,
Might speak to her, might live and die her own,
Who knew?—I spoke—Oh, Mildred, feel you not
That now, while I remember every glance
Of yours, each word of yours
—That now I think upon your purity,
And utter ignorance of guilt—your own
Or other’s guilt—the girlish undisguised
Delight at a strange novel prize—(I talk
A silly language, but interpret, you!)
If I, with fancy at its full, and reason
Scarce in its germ, enjoined you secrecy,
If you had pity on my passion, pity
On my protested sickness of the soul
To sit beside you, hear you breathe, and watch
Your eyelids and the eyes beneath—if you
Accorded gifts and knew not they were gifts—
If I grew mad at last with enterprise,
And must behold my beauty in her bower
Or perish—must I now renounce
My reason, blind myself to light, say truth
Is false and lie to God and my own soul?
Contempt were all of this!
The “Blot in the ’Scutcheon” is one of a series of poems, dramatic and otherwise, which Mr. Browning has published under the singularly selected title of “Bells and Pomegranates,” Robert Browning is a poet of undoubted genius, but we have doubts whether he possesses the power to become a great poetic artist. He is in style essentially a mannerist, and allows the mode of his writing too often to occupy the place of originality of thought. While he should be pouring forth idea, he is too often shaping inverted sentences and framing wordy phrases. Such was the fault of his “Paracelsus,” which, in spite of its oddities of manner and style we cannot but regard as his greatest work. Hence, while at intervals we recognised the true poet bursting out in a brilliance and beauty which it would have been impossible to parallel in any poet of the day, save the writer of “Ernest,” it was but too often that we yawned over the indistinct and verbal heaps of poetic image which were thrust before the reader in an indiscriminate mass of mud and pearl, art and diamond. To a very large extent this has been the character of his dramatic writings, with the exception of his “Strafford,” which he treated with greater executional simplicity. He has high characteristics for the exercise of his art. His thought is pregnant with passion—good, wholesome, strong passion—conceived with an earnest sense of its reality. Character he draws clearly, and with strength; plot he manages with fullness, but not so clearly as might be desirable; and we again recur to his manner as his greatest blemish. Were Robert Browning less of a mannerist, he must be one of the leading poets of the day. The play was entirely successful.
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. V. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1843.
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