Before it thunders upon our blinded sight!
It is at least a new conception that gems should thunder upon one’s blinded sight! In another scene Mr. Torrence has the “devouring sun” deepen its “wormlike course” to the world’s edge. Again, his heroine’s mouth is a little
tremulous “from all the troubled violets in her veins.” We are a bit uncertain, too, as to the significance of a “throne-galled night;” but these are, after all, minor matters when weighed with the prevailing grace and beauty of Mr. Torrence’s lines.
The last act of El Dorado has to my mind less of strength and beauty than its predecessors, and dramatically one may question its conception and construction. In a general study of Mr. Torrence’s plot it seemed that the situations were all developed to the best advantage, but an exception must, I think, be made in regard to the last act. One of the vital requisites of drama is that the suspense of the action shall hold to the end; there may be minor dénouements, but the plot must not be so constructed that the element of mystery shall have been eliminated ere the close, and this is exactly what has been done in El Dorado. The two great scenes have already taken place: El Dorado has been proven a myth, and Beatrix has been united to her lover; there remains but one thread to unravel, the love of Perth for Beatrix; and of that the audience has already the full knowledge and clew, having seen her rejoined to her lover. The only motive of the last act is that the audience may see the
effect upon Perth when the revelation of his loss is made to him; and it is more than a question whether a scene depending so entirely upon the psychology of the situation could hold as a climax to the play.
There is a revelation, however, logically demanded by the premises of the plot, in expectation of which the interest is held, and in whose nonfulfilment I cannot but think that Mr. Torrence has lost the opportunity for the most humanly true and effective climax of his play,—the disclosure to Coronado of his parentage. Ubeda, earlier in the drama, has enjoined Perth not to reveal his identity to his son, lest it injure his public career; but in the hour when the supreme loss has come, when Beatrix, as the wife of Coronado, rejoins the homeward detachment of Perth and his friend, and the mortal stroke has fallen,—then Ubeda should have declared the relationship and placed to Perth’s lips ere he died the one draught that would not “shudder into mist” ere he had drained it,—the draught of love from the heart of his child. The bird of hope and light should hover just above the darkest tragedy,—should brood above it with healing in its wings. This is partially realized in the lines in which Mr. Torrence has chosen to veil,
and yet hint, the relationship which Coronado does not understand:
Perth. At last I see! always I seemed to know
That one day,—though I knew not when,—some hour,
I should behold and know it and possess it,—