As soon, however, as Mariamne has secured the promise of her husband’s safety, she retires with him to the most private part of her palace, and there, in her grieved and outraged love, upbraids him with his design upon her life; announcing, at the same time, her resolution to shut herself up from that moment, with her women, in widowed solitude and perpetual mourning. But the same night Octavius gains access to her retirement, in order to protect her from the violence of her husband, which he, too, had discovered. She refuses, however, to admit to him that her husband can have any design against her life; and defends both her lord and herself with heroic love. She then escapes, pursued by Octavius, and, at the same instant, her husband enters. He follows them, and a conflict ensues instantly. The lights are extinguished, and in the confusion Mariamne falls under a blow from her husband’s hand, intended for his rival; thus fulfilling the prophecy at the opening of the play, that she should perish by his dagger and by the most formidable of monsters, which is now interpreted to be Jealousy.
The result, though foreseen, is artfully brought about at last, and produces a great shock on the spectator, and even on the reader. Indeed, it does not seem as if this fierce and relentless passion could be carried, on the stage, to a more terrible extremity. Othello’s jealousy—with which it is most readily compared—is of a lower kind, and appeals to grosser fears. But that of Herod is admitted, from the beginning, to be without any foundation, except the dread that his wife, after his death, should be possessed by a rival, whom, before his death, she could never have seen;—a transcendental jealousy to which he is yet willing to sacrifice her innocent life.
Still, different as are the two dramas, there are several points of accidental coincidence between them. Thus, we have, in the Spanish play, a night scene, in which her women undress Mariamne, and, while her thoughts are full of forebodings of her fate, sing to her those lines of Escriva which are among the choice snatches of old poetry found in the earliest of the General Cancioneros:—
Come, Death, but gently come and still;—
All sound of thine approach restrain,
Lest joy of thee my heart should fill,
And turn it back to life again;[642]—
beautiful words, which remind us of the scene immediately preceding the death of Desdemona, when she is undressing and talks with Emilia, singing, at the same time, the old song of “Willow, Willow.”
Again, we are reminded of the defence of Othello by Desdemona down to the instant of her death, in the answer of Mariamne to Octavius, when he urges her to escape with him from the violence of her husband:—
My lips were dumb, when I beheld thy form;