The whole story of the development of her madness is told in those portions of the play which form the underplot, and, in its first stages, it is told with considerable skill. A “Wooer” is asking the Gaoler for his daughter’s hand, and during the conversation the daughter herself comes in and the talk runs on the noble prisoners.[82:2] The daughter is full of their praises. “By my troth, I think fame but stammers ’em; they stand a grise above the reach of report.” “The prison itself is proud of ’em; and they have all the world in their chamber.” Then the two prisoners appear “above” and the girl at once shews the nature of her interest—much as Portia, in “The Merchant of Venice” is made to display her preference for Bassanio:
Gaoler: “Look yonder they are! that’s Arcite looks out.”
Daughter: “No, sir, no; that’s Palamon; Arcite is the lower of the twain; you may perceive a part of him.”
The love which one has probably suspected here is openly revealed in the fourth scene of the second act, which consists solely of a soliloquy by the Gaoler’s Daughter. The course of her love is made plain to us: first she admired him; finally, pity having sprung from admiration and helpless love from pity, she
“Extremely lov’d him, infinitely lov’d him.”
Her love has been fed by the plaintive songs he sings and impassioned by his kindness, his courtesy and a chance caress. On the next occasion[83:1] we see her more sympathetically yet—her love has achieved something, Palamon is free, and before long his deliverer is to meet him with food. But though she wanders by night through the forest, she is unable to find him. For two days nothing has passed her lips save a little water, she has not slept, and her whole being is alive with terror at the “strange howls” which seem to tell of her hero’s untimely fate. “Dissolve my life!” she cries, with the dire foreboding of the incipient lunatic,
“Let not my sense unsettle,
Lest I should drown, or stab, or hang myself . . .
So, which way now?
The best way is the next way to a grave: