nally
dealt with no less than three times by Dryden: comically, in _The
Spanish Friar_ (1681), when Lorenzo-- after all the love-brokerage of
pursy Father Dominic-- discovers Elvira to be his sister: tragically, in
_Don Sebastian_ (1690), when Sebastian and Almeyda are separated by the
disclosures of old Alvarez: sentimentally and romantically, in _Love
Triumphant_ (1693-4), when Alphonso wins Victoria whom he has long
loved, even whilst she was supposed to be his sister. Otway it will be
remembered turns the pathetic catastrophe of _The Orphan_ (1680), upon a
deceit which produces similar though unhappy circumstances. In 1679,
_Oedipus_, a joint production of Dryden and Lee, was brought out with
great success at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Gardens.

Unhallowed and incestuous passions again form the plot of _The Fatal
Discovery; or, Love in Ruins_ (4to, 1698), produced at Drury Lane,
a play seemingly derived from _Bandello, Part II_, Novel 35, which
coincides with the thirtieth tale of the _Heptameron_. In various forms,
however, this legend is to be found in the literature of all countries,
and a cognate tradition is even attached to certain districts.
_Innocence Distress'd; or, The Royal Penitents_, a tragedy by Robert
Gould (ob. 1709), never performed but published by subscription (8vo,
1737), for the benefit of his daughter Hannah, is based on the same
story. Gould's work is weak and insipid.

Later in the eighteenth century we have Horace Walpole's _The Mysterious
Mother_ (8vo, 1768), an unacted drama of extraordinary power and
undissipated gloom on the same terrible theme; whilst Shelley's _The
Centi_, published in 1819, which the poet most emphatically intended for
the boards, remains a masterpiece of supreme genius.

Wagner in _Die Walkuere_ shows the irresistible passion of Siegmund and
Sieglinde, brother and sister, from whose union sprang the mighty hero
Siegfried; and in _Gengangere_ (Ghosts), 1881, Ibsen threw, by the
sickly craving of the fibreless Oswald Alving for Regina, a lurid light
across that awesome tragedy of shadows, Nemesis, and blank despair.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

_The Dutch Lover_ was produced at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in
February, 1673, but owing to the manifold disadvantages under which it
was put on the stage it did not meet with that success it certainly
deserved. It was indeed, to quote the preface, 'hugely injured in the
acting.' The performers were anything but w