r has obtained preferment.
Claribella pouts because a man has shot himself for love of her rival.
Selinda mourns her lap-dog dead.
Just as Miramillia is ready to give over her search for a happy woman,
Adario, her son, returns in company with a former lover of hers whose
daughter he has saved from a villain at the expense of a wound from
which he has but then recovered. Naturally the girl rewards him with her
hand, and all ends well.[7]
Of the stories in this diversified collection that of Anziana approaches
in kind, though not in degree, the tragic pathos of Isabella and the Pot
of Basil ("Decameron," IV, 5). The second narrative has all the glamor
of adventure in the barbaric East, and the romantic interest that
attaches to lovers separated but eternally constant. The histories of
Stenoclea and of Tellisinda contain situations of dramatic intensity.
But perhaps the story of Violathia is the most worthy of attention on
account both of its defects and of its merits. The weakest part of the
plot is the husband, who is jealous without cause, and equally without
reason suddenly reforms. But the character of Violathia is admirably
drawn. Unlike the usual heroine of Haywoodian fiction she is superior to
circumstance and does not yield her love to the most complacent adjacent
male. As a dutiful wife she resists for a long time the insinuations of
Charmillo, but when she decides to fly to her lover, her husband's tardy
change of heart cannot alter her feelings. Her character is individual,
firm, and palpable. If the story was original with Mrs. Haywood, it
shows that her powers of characterization were not slight when she
wished to exert them. The influence of the _novella_ and of the Oriental
tale produced nothing better.
From other literary forms the makers of fiction freely derived
sensational materials and technical hints. Without insisting too closely
upon the connection between novel and play, we may well remember that
nearly all the early novelists, Defoe excepted, were intimately
associated with the theatre. Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Haywood, and
later Fielding and Mrs. Lennox were successful in both fields. The women
writers especially were familiar with dramatic technique both as actors
and playwrights, and turned their stage training to account when they
wrote prose fiction. Mrs. Haywood's first novel, "Love in Excess"
(1720), showed evidences of her apprenticeship to the theatre. Its three
parts may be com
|