“There are four words in Alfieri that speak volumes. They are in ‘Don Carlos.’ The King and his Minister are secreted during an interview of the Infant with the Queen Consort: the following dialogue passes, which ends the scene. ‘Vedesti? Vedi. Udisti? Udi.’ All the dramatic beauty would be lost in translation—the nominative cases would kill it. Nothing provokes me so much as the squeamishness that excludes the exhibition of many such subjects from the stage;—a squeamishness, the produce, as I firmly believe, of a lower tone of the moral sense, and foreign to the majestic and confident virtue of the golden age of our country. All is now cant—methodistical cant. Shame flies from the heart, and takes refuge in the lips; or, our senses and nerves are much more refined than those of our neighbours.
“We should not endure the Œdipus story, nor ‘Phèdre.’ ‘Myrrha,’ the best worked-up, perhaps, of all Alfieri’s tragedies, and a favourite in Italy, would not be tolerated. ‘The Mysterious Mother’ has never been acted, nor Massinger’s ‘Brother and Sister.’ Webster’s ‘Duchess of Malfy’ would be too harrowing: her madness, the dungeon-scene, and her grim talk with her keepers and coffin-bearers, could not be borne: nor Lillo’s ‘Fatal
