token; a man (Bod) follows a vile occupation, and is saved and ennobled by love; a husband concealed within a suit of armour in the old hall of his castle witnesses his wife's treachery, spreads the report of his own death in order to confound the guilty woman by rising from his coffin, and, finally, in a frenzy of revenge, throws his once beloved wife into the arms of his most hated foe, the Turk; these are all over-strained motives and reveal the influence of Victor Hugo and Dumas père.
The Vérnász (Bloody Nuptials) is still more terrible. Œdipus is surpassed. A father, believing his wife to be unfaithful, conveys his two children, a boy and a girl, to a forest and leaves them to perish. The children do not die, however, and many years afterwards the father meets the maiden and marries her, not knowing her to be his daughter. The boy has become an outlaw, and breaks into the cast'e of his father, who orders him to be executed. Soon after, the truth comes out, and the girl retires to a nunnery, while the father in a frenzy casts himself over a precipice.
The charm and melody of language, the lyrical beauty which we find in all Vörösmarty's dramas, reach their perfection in a fairy play called Csongor and Tünde. Vörösmarty here dramatised an old fairy tale written by a sixteenth century poet. Csongor, a young hero, and the fairy Tünde love one another, but an old witch opposes their happiness. The hero has to pass through many marvellous adventures before he recovers his loved one, who has meanwhile been banished from fairyland for allowing earthly love to enter her heart. Fairies and other fabulous characters influence the course of events, either favourably or unfavourably to the wishes of the lovers, as in the
