After this the scenes of horror accumulate;—children crying to their mothers for bread; brothers lamenting over each other's suffering; and some repining at, and others nobly anticipating the hour when death and flames are to envelope all. Such scenes, denuded of their poetry, are mere horrors; but clothed, as Cervantes has clothed them, in the language of the affections, and of the loftier passions of the soul, the reader, even while trembling with the excitement, reads on and exults at last, when not a Numantine survives to grace Scipio's triumph. Nothing can be more truly national than the drama; and, as if fearful that a Spanish audience would feel too deeply the catastrophe, he introduces Spain, the river Duero, War, Sickness, and Famine, as allegorical personages, who, while they mourn over the present, prophesy the future triumphs of their country. Another merit of this play is one not usual in Spanish authors: it is of no more than the necessary length to develope its interest; there is no long spinning out, and except quite at the outset, before the poet had warmed to his subject, it has not a cold or superfluous line. It is indeed a monument worthy of Cervantes's genius, and proves the height to which he could soar, and brings him yet in closer resemblance to Shakspeare; showing that he could depict the grand and terrible, the pathetic and the deeply tragic, with the same master hand. It is said that this tragedy was acted during the frightful siege of Saragossa by the French in the last war; and the Spaniards found in the example of their forefathers, and in the spirit and genius of their greatest man, fresh inducements to resist: this is a triumph for Cervantes, worthy of him, and shows how truly and how well he could speak to the hearts of his countrymen.
In the comedy "Life in Algiers" there cannot be said to be any plot at all. Cervantes brought back from his captivity an intense horror of Christian suffering in Africa; and he had it much at heart to awaken in the minds of his countrymen, not only sympathy, but a spirit of charity, that would lead them to assist in the redemption of captives. He thus brings forward various pictures of suffering, such as would best move the hearts of the audience, and such as he himself had witnessed. Aurelio and Silvia, affianced lovers, are captives, and are respectively loved by Yusuf and Zara, the Moors who own them. In the old Spanish style, feelings are personified and brought on the stage. Fatima, Zara's confidant, seeks by incantations to bend Aurelio to her mistress's will. She is told by a Fury, that such power cannot be exercised over a Christian, but Necessity and Occasion are sent to move him by the suggestions they instil by whispers, and which he echoes as his own thoughts. He almost falls into the snare they present by filling his mind with prospects of ease and pleasure, in exchange for the hardships he undergoes; but he resists the temptation, and is finally set free with Silvia. Besides, these, we have the picture of two captives, who escape and cross the desert to Oran, as Cervantes had once schemed to do himself. One of them appears worn and famished—willing to return to captivity so to avoid death: he prays to the Virgin, and a lion is sent, who guards and guides him on his darksome solitary way. To rouse still more the compassion of the audience, there is one scene where the public crier comes on to sell a mother and father, and two children: the elder one has a sense of his situation and of the trials he is to expect with firmness; the younger knows nothing beyond his fear at being tern from his mother's side. A merchant buys the younger, and bids him come with him.
"Juan.I cannot leave my mother, sir, to go
With others.
Mother.Go, my child—ah! mine no more,
But his who buys thee.
Juan.Mother dear, dost thou
Desert me?
Mother.Heaven! How pitiless thou art!
Merchant.Come, child, come!
Juan.Brother, let's go together.
Francisco.It is not in my choice—may heaven go with
thee!
Mother.Remember, oh, my treasure and my joy,
Thy God!