On these terms alone.[635]
Undoubtedly such a scene could be acted only on the Spanish stage; but undoubtedly, too, notwithstanding its violation of every principle of Christian morality, it is entirely in the national temper, and has been received with applause down to our own times.[636]
“The Painter of his own Dishonor” is another of the dramas founded on love, jealousy, and the point of honor, in which a husband sacrifices his faithless wife and her lover, and yet receives the thanks of each of their fathers, who, in the spirit of Spanish chivalry, not only approve the sacrifice of their own children, but offer their persons to the injured husband to defend him against any dangers to which he may be exposed in consequence of the murder he has committed.[637] “For a Secret Wrong, Secret Revenge,” is yet a third piece, belonging to the same class, and ending tragically like the two others.[638]
But as a specimen of the effects of mere jealousy, and of the power with which Calderon could bring on the stage its terrible workings, the drama he has called “No Monster like Jealousy” is to be preferred to any thing else he has left us.[639] It is founded on the well-known story, in Josephus, of the cruel jealousy of Herod, tetrarch of Judea, who twice gave orders to have his wife, Mariamne, destroyed, in case he himself should not escape alive from the perils to which he was exposed in his successive contests with Antony and Octavius;—all out of dread lest, after his death, she should be possessed by another.[640]
In the early scenes of Calderon’s drama, we find Herod, with this passionately cherished wife, alarmed by a prediction that he should destroy, with his own dagger, what he most loved in the world, and that Mariamne should be sacrificed to the most formidable of monsters. At the same time we are informed, that the tetrarch, in the excess of his passion for his fair and lovely wife, aspires to nothing less than the mastery of the world,—then in dispute between Antony and Octavius Cæsar,—an empire which he covets only to be able to lay it at her feet. To obtain this end, he partly joins his fortunes to those of Antony, and fails. Octavius, discovering his purpose, summons him to Egypt to render an account of his government. But among the plunder which, after the defeat of Antony, fell into the hands of his rival, is a portrait of Mariamne, with which the Roman becomes so enamoured, though falsely advised that the original is dead, that, when Herod arrives in Egypt, he finds the picture of his wife multiplied on all sides, and Octavius full of love and despair.
Herod’s jealousy is now equal to his unmeasured affection; and, finding that Octavius is about to move towards Jerusalem, he gives himself up to its terrible power. In his blind fear and grief, he sends an old and trusty friend, with written orders to destroy Mariamne in case of his own death, but adds passionately,—
Let her not know the mandate comes from me
That bids her die. Let her not—while she cries
To heaven for vengeance—name me as she falls.
His faithful follower would remonstrate, but Herod interrupts him:—