[258]"Love in a Nunnery," II. 3.
[259]Ibid. III. 3.
[260]"Spanish Friar," III. 3. And jumbled with the plot we keep meeting with political allusions. This is a mark of the time. Torrismond, to excuse himself from marrying the queen, says, "Power which in one age is tyranny is ripen'd in the next to true succession. She's in possession."—"Spanish Friar," IV. 2.
[261]Plautus's "Amphitryon" has been imitated by Dryden and Molière. Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to Dryden's play, says: "He is, in general, coarse and vulgar, where Molière is witty; and where the Frenchman ventures upon a double meaning, the Englishman always contrives to make it a single one."—Tr.
[262]"Amphitryon," I. 1.
[263]"Amphitryon," I. 1.
[264]As Jupiter is departing, on the plea of daylight, Alemena says to him:
"But you and I will draw our curtains
close.
Extinguish daylight, and put out the
sun.
Come back, my lord....
You have not yet laid long enough in
bed
To warm your widowed side."
—Act II. 2.
Compare Plautus's Roman matron and Molière's honest Frenchwoman with this expansive female (Louis XIV and Mme. de Montespan were not very decent either. See "Mémoires de Saint-Simon.")—Tr.
[265]Himself a Huguenot, who had become a Roman Catholic, and the husband of Julie d'Angennes, for whom the French poets composed the celebrated "Guirlande."—Tr.