Isabella, princess of Sicily, in love with Roberto il Diavolo, but promised in marriage to the prince of Grana´da, who challenges Roberto to mortal combat, from which he is allured by Bertram, his fiend-father. Alice tells him that Isabella is waiting for him at the altar, when a struggle ensues between Bertram and Alice, one trying to drag him into hell, and the other trying to reclaim him to the ways of virtue. Alice at length prevails, but we are not told whether or not Roberto marries the princess.—Meyerbeer, Roberto il Diavolo (1831).
Isabella (Donna), daughter of Don Pedro, a Portuguese nobleman, who designs to marry her to Don Guzman, a gentleman of large fortune. To avoid this hateful marriage, she jumps from a window, with a view of escaping from the house, and is caught by a Colonel Briton, an English officer, who conducts her to the house of her friend, Donna Violantê. Here the colonel calls upon her, and Don Felix, supposing Violantê to be the object of his visits, becomes furiously jealous. After a considerable embroglio, the mystery is cleared up, and a double wedding takes place.—Mrs. Centlivre, The Wonder (1714).
Isabella (The countess), wife of Roberto. After a long series of crimes of infidelity to her husband, and of murder, she is brought to execution.—John Marston, The Wonder of Women, or Sophonisba (1605).
Isabella (The lady), a beautiful young girl, who accompanied her father on a chase. Her step-mother requested her to return and tell the cook to prepare the milk-white doe for dinner. Lady Isabella did as she was told, and the cook replied, “Thou art the doe that I must dress.” The scullion-boy exclaimed, “Oh, save the lady’s life, and make thy pies of me!” But the cook heeded him not. When the lord returned and asked for his daughter, the scullion-boy made answer, “If my lord would see his daughter, let him cut the pasty before him.” The father, horrified at the whole affair, adjudged the step-mother to be burnt alive, and the cook to stand in boiling lead, but the scullion-boy he made his heir.—Percy, Reliques iii. 2.
Isabelle, sister of Léonor, an orphan; brought up by Sganarelle according to his own notions of training a girl to make him a good wife. She was to dress in serge, and keep to the house, to occupy herself in domestic affairs, to sew, knit, and look after the linen, to hear no flattery, attend no places of public amusement, never to be left to her own devices, but to run in harness like a mill-horse. The result was that she duped Sganarelle and married Valère. (See Léonor).—Molière, L’école des Maris (1661).
Isabinda, daughter of Sir Jealous Traffick, a merchant. Her father is resolved she shall marry Don Diego Barbinetto, but she is in love with Charles Gripe; and Charles, in the dress of a Spaniard, passing himself off as the Spanish don, and marries her.—Mrs. Centlivre, The Busy Body (1709).
Isadore, wife, fondly lamented in Albert Pike’s lines beginning:
“Thou art lost to me forever! I have lost thee, Isadore!”[Isadore!”]
Albert Pike, Poems (183-).
Isenbras (Sir), a hero of mediæval romance. Sir Isenbras was at first proud and presumptous, but adversity made him humble and pentitent. In this stage he carried two children of a poor wood-cutter across a ford on his horse.