Ernani; o, l'onore castigliano

Speranza

In an inductive study of a dramatic character of a Verdi opera there are certain
canons of interpretation to be observed, of which the following
are the most obvious and obligatory.

First, there must be organic unity.

From all the acts and words of a given personage,
from all the concrete details of his conduct and influence, and from
the attitude of the other characters towards him, there is evolved
a definite, single character, motived by at least one simple idea
or passion, as that of ambition in Macbeth, or patriotism in
Horace, or chivdrous honor in Ernani.

In the second place,
the interpretation must be exhaustive, introducing all the details
of the evidence, whether direct or indirect. The character of
Hamlet, for example, is revealed to us not only by what he does
or even fails to do, but also by the attitude of the other dramatic
characters towards the melancholy Dane. In L'Avare certain
aspects of the miser's character are made known to us by the in-
direct evidence of his children and his servants ; as, for example,
when one of the latter informs the avaricious Harpagon as to
how he is regarded by his neighbors. Furthermore, indirect ev-
idence is sometimes emphasized by means of character-foils or
character:CQatrasts, as may be seen in the case of such charac-
ters as Portia and Nerissa, Antigone and Ismene, or Hernani and
Don Carlos. Again, the field may be further extended so as to
take in groups of characters, as a gang of outlaws, a band of con-
spirators, or a company of patriots. All these various methods
of obtaining evidence may be employed in order to arrive at a
just appreciation and an adequate interpretation of an individual
character.

The first character in Verdi's "Eernani" to be studied
and interpreted is the hero himself.

Ernani is not an abstraction, a mere type.

He is a concrete indiv idual, possessed of various conflicting passions and emotions, and actuated by a complexity of motives.

We have definite information about his past life and his present occupations and surroundings.

When a child he went barefooted in the woods, and while still a child took an oath
to avenge his father, who had been put to death on the scaffold
by the father of Don Carlo, Filippo il Bello.

The young bandit is beardless, haughty in his looks, wears a large cloak, hat, and leather cuirass, carries a sword, dagger, and horn, and changes his costume to
suit the occasion.

Ernani is poor, but has air, daylight, water, and
rights.

Ernani ives among rough outlaws in the high mountains, sleeps
in the grass, drinks from the mountain torrent, suspects every-
thing — eyes, voices, steps, sounds, and at night hears balls whis-
tling in his ears.

"Heaven made him a duke and exile a mountaineer."

He is called a rebel subject and is put under the ban
by the king, with whom he is at war.

The young exile feels that
it is his imperative duty to avenge his father, and that, by pursuing the king, he is engaged in a righteous cause.

To accomplish his purpose Hernani assumes the disguise of a bandit just
as Hamlet assumes the disguise of madness and Fiesco that of
the fool's cap.

In spite of this disguise, however, he does not
become vulgarized but remains still a great lord, and therefore
capable of hatred, jealousy, and revenge.

Possessed, then, of various passions and partly a victim of circumstances over which he has no control, Ernani naturally
comes into conflict with necessity or fate, his own will, and the
will of others.

As a result of this dramatic conflict, we see him
prompted by motives necessarily contradictory, and exhibiting
"many apparently inconsistent phases of his real and assumed
character.

In his double role of bandit and lord he undergoes a
conflict between love and duty, is pursued by a profound sorrow,
is melancholy, pessimistic, purposeless, vacillating, sarcastic,
distrustful, jealous, hateful, revengeful, impulsive, magnanimous,
chivalrous,

possessed of a high sense of honour,

heroic, lover-like,
sentimental, poetic, fatal, a man of night, a wanderer on the face
of the earth, une force qui va.

In a word, Ernani is a romantic
hero, incarnating by his double character of lord and bandit, the
emotions, the passions, the aspirations, the contradictions, the
doubts, and the revolts of the modern complex man.

One of Ernani 's most striking characteristics is his melancholy.

It is not the humorous melancholy of Jaques, nor the
misanthropic melancholy of Alceste or Timon of Athens, but it
is rather the pessimistic melancholy of Hamlet, who, though he
feels that the world is^not right, is yet, like Charles von Moor,
unwilling to surrender to the wrong.

It is of the Byronic type,
and recalls the Corsair, the Giaour, and "the pilgrim of nature."

He is a direct descendant also of Werther and Rene, and is
cousin to the sentimental and melancholy heroes of Bulwer.

He
is at times gloomy and moody, and his misfortune becomes to
him night, into which he plunges. He has a "sea of troubles"
against which he is compelled to "take arms,"

There's something in liis soul
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood,
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger. ,

His pensive melancholy is brought about both by his own mishaps and those of others.

His will is thwarted by forces outside
himself, and he cannot shake off this fatality which pursues him
day and night.

His sorrow becomes profound, and a black grief
is spread over his life, so that he recognizes himself as an unconscious energy — une force qui va.

His brid e death^waits him
and he forebodes a "sombre end to a sombre life."

Ernani
recognizes the "fatal finger on the wall" and has an intuition of
his fatal destiny which "rails at him."

Out of this fatalism
grows his morbid melancholy, which leads to doubt, distrust, irresolution, weakness.

As soon, however, as he is pardoned and
his ducal name, his ancestral castle, and his sweetheart are restored to him, his gloomy melancholy disappears, and he is correspondingly happy and hopeful.

But when later he hears the
fatal blast of his horn in the hands of the inexorable old duke he
realizes that he is not yet done with the fatal name of Ernani,
and plunges again into darkness, melancholy, and despair.

"The
ancient wound, which seemed closed, opens again," and he dies.

His rash act, though simply an error of judgment, made under
the impulse of the moment, is followed by fatal consequences.

His own self recoils upon himself, and, after all, his character
assists in determining his destiny.

And yet, at the same time,
the' element of fatality lends much to the pathos of the catastrophe.

Eernani is not only melancholy, but, like all sombre characters, he is distjrustful and jealous.

He is jealous of the kisses
of the old Duke, to whom Dona Elvira is betrothed.

An instance
of his distrust is exhibited in the pilgrim scene when Donna Elvira de Silva
appears as a bride.

The distinguished Ernani sarcastically con-
gratulates her and ironically admires the different articles con-
tained in the casket, declaring for example, that "the bracelet
is rare, but it is one hundred times less rare than the woman
who, under a brow so pure, conceals an infamous and false
heart."

When at length she tells him that there is at the bottom of the casket the very dagger she wrested from Don Carlos,
who was trying to carry her off, Hernani falls penitent at her
feet, is abundantly pardoned, and begs her to reassure his doubtihg heart.

On another occasion when she appears unexpectedly
at the tomb, he looks upon her with ill-concealed mistrust.

It
may be remarked, nevertheless, that Hernani's jealousy is of
the Romantic type.

It is not founded on any real proof or even
on any serious suspicion of treachery, but is caused by his sick
and troiibled soul.

It is not pernicious like Othello's or Gomez's ;
to the contrary, the fatal bandit fears lest he might do his lover
harm.

Finally, in the pardon scene, when he surrenders /the name of Ernani and assumes his former ducal name of Duca Don Giovanni d'Aragona, his jealousy disappears together with his other evil passions.

Stronger than Eernani's jealousy are his hatred and desire for
revenge.

For years he has nursed his hatred, caused first by the
murder of his father by the father of Carlos, and again by the
fact that the king is his rival for the hand of Donna Elvira.

To keep
his childhood's oath Ernani has followed Don Carlos day and
night for the purpose of wreaking his revenge.

He expresses'-
his hatred fiercely when he encounters the king in the very act
of carrying off by force Dona Sol in order to make her his queen.

Earlier in the action he hesitated between love and hate, but
finally decided in favor of hate and therefore vengeance.

Later,
when Carlos succeeds in getting possession of Donna Elvira, Ernani's desire for revenge returns and causes him to take the fatal
oath.

But later still, when he is magnanimously pardoned by the
emperor, his hatred vanishes away, and his actions are consequently no longer influenced by his craving for vengeance.

Lastly, in the catastrophe, the quondam bandit redizes too late that
his ruin is brought about by his failure to avenge his father,
who, however, does not forget to avenge himself on the son that
has forgotten his duty to his father.

Ernani is possessed no t only of evil passions but also of positive virtues.

In the

pardon scene, where he has dropped the
fatal name of Ernani and has assumed his real name of Duca Don Giovanni d'Aragona, his evil passions of melancholy, distrust, jealousy, hatred and revenge, are, as has been observed, all given up, and his noble virtues of love, magnanimity, and honour, glimpses of which
had been caught before, appear in all their strength and beauty.

Here is seen the antithesis existing between his real and assumed
character, and a little later will be emphasized the union of des-
tiny and character in determining his fate.

Among these positive virtues, which help to form the artistic
complexity of Ernani's character, are his chivalry, considera-
tion, and magnanimity.

Though kings are not sacred to him,
"though his rage swells when a king insults him, yet hewjll not
assassinate Carlos whom he has in his power, but breaks his own
'sword and with the chivalry of a Spanish lord bids Carlos fiy and
take with him the bandit's cloak, lest one of the outlaws, recog-
nizing the king, might stab him.

When in the pardon scene
Ernani is placed among those whose lives are spared, he protests and^claims that he, too, is a noble and should therefore be
included among the unpardoned nobles.

Time and again our
hero shows himself magnanimous towards Doiia Sol, whom he
does not wish to expose to the rude life of the outlaws or to the
scaffold by which he is threatened.

He considers it a crime to
snatch the flower from the precipice as he falls into the abyss.

In the pilgrim scene, when he thinks he has placed his sweetheart in a compromising position, he pleads guilty of trying to
carry her off from the old duke, but declares emphatically that
Dona Sol is pure.

In the last balcony scene, when Ernani
hears the fatal blast of the horn, he endeavors to keep the truth
from Dona Sol and seeks to spare her the agony of seeing him
meet his fate.

He considerately sends her away after a flask,
and is startled at her unexpected return.

After she has drunk
the fatal potion, from which she suffers intensely, he tells Gomez
that a less cruel poison should have been chosen for the unhappy
woman.

Ernani is Cornelian in his heroic love and high sense of honour.

In the wooing scenes he is ardent, tender, sentimental, religious.

For him love is something sacred, ideal, transcendental, a foretaste and foreshadowing of a spiritual union in another world beyond the skies.

In his melancholy moods his love is the concrete real love of the Romantics, and not the abstract love or the effect of love represented by the classical writers.

At one time
the outlaw becomes so despondent that he declares to Dona Sol
that Heaven has evidently not consented to their loves, and
therefore he will surrender to her the heart he has stolen.

Still more sacred and heroic than his love is Ernani's delicate
sense of honor.

Like Hotspur he would "pluck down honour
from the moon or drag it up from the depths of the sea."

Ernani's chivalrous fidelity to the oath calls up the past, and is in
that respect genuinely Romantic.

*************** LOVE vs. HONOUR.

In spite of Dona Elvira's entreaties that he break his oath,
which she does not consider so binding
as his pledge of love, Ernani is inexorable, for
he feels compelled to keep his oath in
order to preserve his honour.

He declares that he will not go with treason on his brow.

Like Antigone of old he obeys what he deems a higher law and succumbs
to a lower.

While his body yields to death, his soul is victorious and

"rises with his lover in an even flight towards a better world."

Our hero's most striking characteristic, however, and the one
most frequently misunderstood by the classical critics, is his poetical temperament, due partly to his life in the mountains in
direct contact with Nature.

While the representation of such
a temperament may be called lyricism and not drama, it is at the
same time genuinely Romantic.

The tourist in Scotland, the
traveler on the continent, and the exiled noble in the mountains
of Europe, all have a feeling for Nature hitherto unknown to poetry.

The voice of "the pilgrim of nature" is heard in the land.

Ernani's love for Nature is therefore natural and truly representative~of the contemporary man of culture.

Like other Romantic heroes, then, Hernani^x press es Jiimse]i_uiJyTicalJang-
_uage.

Not only does he reveal his natural life and passions,
but he also depicts nature and external objects.

His lyrical pas-
sages are filled with real beauties and lofty sentiments, possessing a certain charm of freshness and immortal youth, and impregnated with the local color of the times.

In one of their love
scenes Hernani asks Dona Sol to sing to him, to enchant and
delight him, for it is sweet to love and to be loved.

In figura-
tive and poetical language he says to Dona Sol that if she will
command the volcano to stifle its flames, it will at once close up
its half -open craters and will have upon its sides only flowers and
green grasses.

He loves the meadows, flowers, woods, and the
song of the nightingale.

In answer to one of his sweetheart's
rapturous outbursts of poetry, Hernani exclaims:

"Ah, who
would not forget everything while listening to that celestial
voice "Thy word is a song in which nothing human remains.
And, like a traveler, who, carried away upon a stream, glides

over the waters on a beautiful summer's evening, and sees flee-
ing before his eyes a thousand flowery plains, my soial entranced
roams in thy reveries. ' '

----

Il Duca Don Ruy Gomez de Silva, the principal antagonist or opposing force
in Victor Hugo's "Ernani," is, like the hero, a complex indi-
vidual man, having contradictory qualities.

He is represented
in The drama as a man of varied experience and of numerous char-
acteristics. He is proud, bombastic, loqua,cious, inquisitive,
impulsive, melancholy, jealous, revengeful, inexorable, avid of
honor, lover-like, sympathetic, courteous, loyal, given to hospi-
tality, and possessed of a high sense of honor. We are also in-
fornied as to his age, physical qualities, political position, and
social standing. He is more than sixty years old, and has not
enough hair on his head to fill the hand of the executioner.
Though old and rich, he would give all he has for youth, if only
to be a shepherd of the fields. Though his body is withered
and head bowed, his soul is young, for there are never, he de-
clares, any wrinkles in the heart, which is always young and can
always bleed.

He is count and grandee of the Castle of Figuere,
high counsellor of Aragon, and Duke of Pastrana.

The old duke
is proud of his old ancestral name of Silva, on which there is no
stain.

He is the uncle and betrothed of Dona Sol, who lives
with him in his castle.

This feeble and venerable old man is
rich and lives in a patriarchal state far from the court. Princes
and pilgrims visit his castle, seek his counsel, obtain his sympa-
thy, and enjoy bis splendid hospitality.

The character of the old duke is striking and subtle.

At times
it appears more lyric or epic than dramatic.

It represents an
older heroism, when men were possessed of HONOUR and loyalty.

It evokes the good old times of the great old men before the decadence of youth.

It recalls the heroic manners and virtues of
the Cornelian heroes. The old knight is proud of his ancestors
who honored old men, protected girls, and were never guilty of
treachery. His artificial pride, as seen in the famous portrait
scene^ recalls the lofty Spanish family pride exhibited by the
Prince of Aragon, in "The Merchant of Venice," who, in choos-
ing his casket, said :

I will not jump with common spirits,
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.

As long, however, as Gomez makes love or any other passion
yield to his feudal pride, we feel that he is great and deserving
of our sympathy.

The old duke is in love with Dofia Sol, his niece, who does
not return his love.

The melancholy love of the rejected old lord
is touching. His loye is not ludicrous, it is a weakness.

While
the love of the old man is lyrical and rhetorical, at the same time
it is natural and appropriate, for Gomez loves not like a young
man but as an, old man. He says that one is not master of one's
self when one ife old and in love. While he would give all he
possesses for youth, yet he maintains that his love is not change-
able like th^t of frivolous young men. His love is not like some
fragile toy ; it is severe, deep, sure, paternal, friendly, solid as
the oak of his ducal chair. Characteristically and pathetically
he tells Dona Sol that.it would be a sacred work for her, a young
girl, to care for him, an old man, that she would be to him an an-
gel with a woman's heart. With lyric fervor he declares that he
loves her as one loves the aurora, or the flowers, or the skies,
and that to see her every day would be to him a perpetual feast.
Such love ,as this, then, does not provoke our laughter, but rath-
er excites our pity, and in that it is truly tragic.

Don Ruy Gomez has also said that when one is old and in love,
one is jealous.

At first his jealousy is the touching jealousy of
the discarded old lover, but when he learns that the king is his
rival in love, his jealousy turns to hajeand a desire for revenge.
His passion then becomes epic, for there is no longer any strug-
gle represented. He js first all love, then all hate. As soon as
Gomez learns that Dona Sol has been carried off by his royal ri-
val, his hatred becomes furious, and from that tinxe on he thinks
only of hate and revenge. He_pjjrsues the king until Carlos sur-
renders Dona Sol to Hernani, and then he relentlessly pursues
the bandit until Hernani is dead. ( As with Shylock money was
Tiothing in comparison with revenge, so with the old duke_.tbe
desire fgr vengeance is stronger than his sense of honor. As
the infamous Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, declared to Re-
becca that he had broken many a law and many a commandment,
but his word never, so Gomez lays fantastic stress upon one vir-
tue at the expense of another, as when honor in the climax is
made to yield to vengeance in the catastrophe. The old feudal
lord wants the privilege of striking the fatal blow at the king,
for nothing is sweeter to his eyes than to see one's enemies
brought low. Like one of the characters of Euripides, he regards
revenge as the fairest prize the gods can bestow upon mankind.
As soon as Gomez determines on revenge, he becomes terrible
and inflexible, and. his doings become mysterious. He adopts
the mask of a black domino, in which he presents a spectre-like
figure, whose step is like the step of the dead, whose eyes flash
forth flames, whose journey is, as he himself confesses, not from
hell but to hell, and whose voice is sepulchral. He becomes a
sort of dark figure of destiny hovering in the background. In
the final scene he becomes inexorable, exulting like a fiend over
his victim, no touching appeals for mercy being able to move him
in his determination not to yield. He forgets, until overtaken
by reinorse, that

Revenge, at first though sweet,
Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.

Were the old duke not hedged about by certain redeeming qual-
ities, his intense, passionate hatred and his Promethean inexor-
ableness would make him a monster, a caricature.

Gomez is not
only jealous and revengeful,, he is also courteous, loyal, given to
hospitality, and possessed of a high sense of honor. The cour-
tesy of the proud and dignified duke is seen when he recognizes
that the king is one of the two young men he finds in the room
of Dona Sol. Though appearances are against Carlos, Gomez,
like a courtly gentleman of the old school, accepts the king's
doubtful explanation of his unexpected visit and promptly begs
his pardon. In the portrait-scene he declares that the family of
Silva has always been loyal. To him the rites of hospitality are sa-
cred and inviolable, and he declares he would protect his guest
even against the king. He entertains the king and welcomes
the pilgrim as his guest. Though the pilgrim-bandit has be-
trayed -his host by making love to Uofia Sol, who is supposed to
be making preparation for her immediate marriage to her uncle,
yet Gomez proves the sincerity of his former declaration in re-
gard to the protection of his guest, by heroically offering to sur-
render his own head rather than that of his ungrateful guest.
A little later his sense of honor is severely tested by the king's
threat to carry off Dona Sol as a hostage. In melodramatic fashion his Castilian honor wins when he declares to the king,

"Take her and leave me honor."

Finally, however, in the catas-
trophe, as has been indicated above, honor yields to revenge.

Like Shylock, he holds his victim to his bond, and fails.

While Ernani and Gomez are truly tragic characters, the for-
mer meeting his tragic fate on account of an^error of judgment,
and the latter through a crime, the king, Don Carlo, is
portrayed as a comic character, passing from good to better, and
as an jmperfect character, passing from vice to goodness.

The
story of his life may be represented as an inclined plane, ending
in complete obscurity. His life, too, presents an antithesis — the
profligate young king becoming the merciful mature emperor.
He is also an individual with a definite history, experience, and
character. His grandfather was a magnificent and powerful em-
peror.

His father was German and his mother Spanish.

He
is himself first king, then emperor. As king he is licentious, in-
volved in various intrigues, surrounded by courtiers who profit
by his distractions, and is engaged in a struggle with the band-
its.

He knows Latin imperfectly, possesses a vein of sardonic
humor, indulges in swifts repartees, carries on his intrigues in
disguise, refuses to fight a duel with an inferior, pursues Her-
nani himself, declares himself to be madly in love with the beau-
tiful black eyes of Dona Sol whom he tries to, carry off by force,
and is ambitious to become emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
After his election as emperor, he accepts his new responsibilities
seriously, changes his course of life, sacrifices love to duty and
magnanimously pardons Hernani, to whom he restores Dona Sol
together with his titles and property.

Nearlx.^l_jthe_comic_element^ of the drama is furnished by
Carlos and his courtiers.

The witty and sarcastic repartees of
Carlos, which recall those of Euripides and Shakespeare, are usu-
ally clever. Through nearly all of his short speeches, in which
he has the opportunity of displaying his skill in rapid repartee,
there runs a vein of sardonic humor. His jests with his crumb-
seeking courtiers and with the duenna Dofia Josefa, and his ten-
dency to become humorous in a striking situation, are, however,
often more grotesque than comic. For example, his first conver-
sation with the servant, whom he forbids to say two words and
who therefore says only one, is so grotesque that the duenna sig-
nificantly asks Carlos if he is not the devil himself. Again, he
calls the closet, in which he had sought a hiding-place, a stable
for broom-stick horses. On coming out from this closet, Her-
nani asks him what he was doing in there. To this the young
king jocosely replies that apparently he was not riding through
a forest. In the first balcony-scene when Dona Sol snatches his
dagger and threatens to stab him, the undaunted Carlos coolly re-
marks that it is no wonder she loves a rebel. Just after he hears
the signal announcing his election as emperor, he overhears the
conspirators planning to take his life; with apparent unconcern
he asks them to move on, for the emperor hears them. Imme-
diately the lights go out and the emperor, advancing towards the
conspirators, calls them dumb statues whose torches his breath
has extinguished.

The youthful king is further exhibited as a frivolous libertine,
whose love is not re ally serious but is a distraction. We are al-
lowed to catch glimpses of his storm-and-stress period, in which
the young sensualist sows his wild oats. He enters into the fun
and frolic of the time. Like the dissolute Francis I, who is rep-
resented in Hugo's Le Roi s' Amuse as meeting in disguise ple-
beian girls at night and on Sundays, the licentious Carlos carries
on his nefarious schemes in disguise. At one time he is pursued
by the enraged husband of Mme. Giron, and at another time by
Hernani, against whose sweetheart the crafty king is planning
an infamous seizure. Like Franz Moor, the youthful Carlos is
a materialist, a sensualist, the very antithesis of Hernani, who
dreams of a spiritual union with his lover. Yet the vicious char-
acter of Carlos is allowable in dramatic art, since what is repre-
hensible in the king is finally adjusted in the emperor.

In the progress of the drama Don Carlos is presented to us not
only as a humorous king jesting with his courtiers, not only as a
frivolous young monarch engaged in schemes of base intrigues,
but also as a magnanimous emperor transformed by a worthy am-
bition and by the contemplation of new and weighty responsibil-
ities. This violent contrast, characteristic of Hugo, is so skill-
fully managed that we are not shocked by its representation. It
is an admirable picture of the rise of an individual, of the devel-
opment and revolution of a character. As Hernani is one man
as long as he is a bandit, and becomes another as soon as he is
pardoned and restored to his former estate, and as Gomez is one
man until the desire for revenge takes possession of him, so Don
Carlos is one man until he is elected emperor, when his trans-
formation becomes complete. In the famous monologue of the
fourth act Carlos is seen experiencing a great Cornelian struggle
between love and duty, in which the latter triumphantly wins.^
The transformation is not so much in the nature of a miraculous
conversion as it is a natural transition, like that of Shakespeare's
Henry V, from youth to manhood, from a period of thoughtless
and frivolous life to a riper, richer, fuller work of maturity.
Urged by the weight of a great duty, impressed by the higher •
responsibilities suddenly thrust upon him, and influenced by the
presence of the very spirit of his great predecessor, his soul is
stirred to its profoundest depths, his better nature triumphs, he
puts away childish things, and becomes a new man. While un-
der the inspiration of this change, he decides to give the world a
lesson in clemency, just taught him by the spirit of Charlemagne.
He therefore pardons the bandits, generously restoting to the
leader his sweetheart and his castle. By pardoning Hernani we
see his clemency, and by his failure to pardon Gomez we see his
impartial justice. Thus his magnanimity^ generosity, clemency,
and justice are beautiful promises of a happy and successful reign
as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Like the great charac-
ters portrayed in fiction, in whose real existence the great crea-
tive romancers make us believe, the mighty emperor is not
shelved but begins to carve his splendid career by an act of
mercy and justice which appeals to our imagination.

Unlike the male characters of the drama. Donna Elvira, in whom
we have the dramatic study of an almost perfect woman, does not
suggest a striking antithesis in her characteristics.

On the con-
trary her character is consistent, she being possessed of but one
strong passion — love.

Her individuality is carefully portrayed,
though we are not given a detailed description of her features
from the standpoint of material beauty. Judging from the few
natural touches that are given and from the effects of her beauty
upon her three suitors, we do not feel that she lacks any of those
physical qualities or personal charms that belong to a woman of
unusual grace and beauty.

The young and handsome Dona Sol,
whose father was a count and shed his blood in torrents for the
king, is affianced to the old duke Ruy Gomez, her uncle, but she
herself is in love with the young bandit Ernani, who visits her
every evening in disguise.

She is of noble birth, and is proud
and jealous of her blood.

In spite of her noble descent, however,
she would rather live hungry, poor, and in exile with her Ernani, whom she calls her lion and her king, than be an empress
with an emperor.

Several references are made to the magnetic effect of Dona
Sol's soft, piercing black eyes, which are'two mirrors, two rays,
two torches, and which remind us of the exquisite raven black
eyes of the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Hernani enjoys-
her songs and glances, and his soul wants to see itself in her eyes
which shine like stars in the darkness. Flames from her eyes,
whose flash is his joy, and whose smile is light, inundate his eye-
lids. Like Juliet, "she doth teach the torches to burn bright,
and her eye discourses. " Hernani might have said of her as
Romeo said of Juliet,

Two of the fairest stars in all tlie heavens,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

Our heroine is kind arid gentle; her soul is calm, pure, lofty,
and beautiful ; her brow is peaceful and pure ; her step is grace-
ful ; she grows like a flower in the shadow ; she weeps, blushes,
and is ingenuous ; she sings with tears in her black eyes, which
become wet with the tears of rage; and she is an angel, a flower,
a Venus, and a treasure of beauty which makes a king jealous.
Hernani wishes to hear her celestial voice, for her word is a song
in which there is nothing human. Dona Sol's costume is white,
the emblem of innocence and immaculate purity. She is inspired
with lofty aspirations and has a longing desire for immortality.

Like Juliet, with whom she has much in common. Dona Sol is
an eminently practical woman.

She asks Hernani not to blame
her strange audacity in proposing to follow him to the mountains,
for where he goes she will go. She plans the clandestine meet-
ing and the flight. Frustrated in her first plan, she again pro-
poses flight. She insists on following him even to the scaffold.
When confronted by Carlos, who is trying to drag her off, she
snatches his dagger and threatens to kill him if he advances one
step towards her. Although this is excellent storm-and-stress
or melodramatic realism, yet we feel that she is made of heroic
stuff. In the climax where she surrenders herself to Carlos rath-
er than allow him to take the head of either Gomez or Hernani,
she compels the wonder-struck king to exclaim that a man, in
touching Dona Sol, becomes either an angel or a monster. While
it is true she goes away with the young king as his hostage, at
the same time she does not forget to carry her dagger concealed
in her bosom. Finally, in the last balcony-scene she rises to the
occasion, pleads earnestly for the life of her lover, yields to the
inevitable, and dies bravely by the side of her lion of the moun-
tains.

At the same time Dona Sol's practical turn of mind does not
prevent her from being spiritual and poetical. She has longings
of the "blue-flower" type. After the fashion of the Romantic
characters of the time, she possesses a feeling for nature. This
characteristic betrays the artifice of the author who is nothing if
not lyrical, and yet there is evident in all his splendid lyrical
passages a touch of the nature and realism of contemporary life.
The best illustration of Dona Sol's a ppreciation of nature is found
in the last balcony-scene where she and Hernani are alone after
the noise of the wedding festivities has subsided. She is su-
premely happy and is weeping for joy. She asks Hernani to
come and see the beautiful night. "While we sleep," says the
enraptured woman, "nature half -waking lovingly watches over us.
There is not a cloud in the sky. All like ourselves is at rest.
Come, breath with me the air perfumed by the rose. No more
lights, no more noise. Silence reigns everywhere. Even while
■you were speaking just now the moon rose upon the horizon, its
glimmering light and your voice both went to my heart," Pres-
ently, when the silence becomes too ominous and profound, she
asks her lover if he would not like to see some star in the dis-
tance or hear some tender and sweet voice sing. She herself
would hear the song of some bird in the fields or of a nightingale
lost in the darkness, or the sound of some flute in the distance.
"For music is sweet, it fills the soul with harmony, and like a
divine chorus, it awakens a thousand voices which make melody
in the heart. ' ' When suddenly she hears the fatal blast of Her-
nani 's horn, she exclaims that her prayer is heard, and tells him
how she likes to hear the sound of the horn in the depth of the
woods. Another example of this enchanting poetry, whose me-
lodious notes we can never, forget, is found in the catastrophe,
where Dofla Sol, dying of poison, tenderly pleads with Hernani
to be calm, for "We are going presently to expand our wings to-
gether towards new and brighter lights. With an even flight
we are setting sail towards a better world."

While the other important characters of the drama are pos-
sessed of several passions, the sole passion of Dona Sol is love,
her most striking and beautiful characteristic.

It is genuine
Romantic love, based on instinct. It is love that hopeth all
things and endureth all things.

Though Hernani is distrustful,
jealous, and scornful, yet her love is strong enough to endure it
all.

It disdains all social barriers and makes her prefer the disinherited exile and wandering bandit to the powerful lord or emperor.

Love is her sole existence. Aimer, c'est vivre, c'est agir.

She loved Hernani out of pity, out of admiration, "for the dangers he had passed, ' ' for the mystery of his destiny, because she
cannot help loving him, and yet, unlike Chimene, she does not
know why she loves ; she does not know

Where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head.

Nor does she know why she must follow her lover:

"Are you my
demon or my angel ? I do not know, but I am your slave, listen.
Go where you will, I will go. Remain or depart, I am yours.
Why do I thus 1 I do not know. ' '

Dona Sol believes that her soul is bound to Ernani forever, and she looks upon him as a sort of god.

Her love, exalted by spiritualism, and

DEVOID OF ANYTHING SENSUAL,

purifies her soul and brings happiness.

Without Ernani, life would mean nothing to her, would be empty,
hopeless.

With him, she entertains lofty aspirations and sweet
longings for immortality.

For them, as for Romeo and Juliet,
love is the arbiter of life and death. Together, full of love and
hope and sensible of a moral victory, they spread their wings to
a new and brighter world. Thus our heroine dies, a martyr to
love.