Vincy (vin´si), Rosamond.—One of the principal female characters in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch.
Viola. (vi´ō-lä)—Twelfth Night, Shakespeare. A sister of Sebastian. They were twins, and so much alike that they could be distinguished only by their dress. When they were shipwrecked Viola was brought to shore by the captain, but her brother was left to shift for himself. Being in a strange land, Viola dressed as a page, and, under the name of Cesario, entered the service of Orsino, duke of Illyria. The duke greatly liked his beautiful page, and, when he discovered her true sex, married her.
Violenta.—All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare. A character in the play who enters upon the scene only once, and then she neither speaks nor is spoken to. The name has been used to designate any young lady nonentity; one who contributes nothing to the amusement or conversation of a party.
Virgilia (ver-jil´i-ä).—In Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, was the wife of Coriolanus, and Volumnia his mother; but historically Volumnia was his wife and Veturia his mother.
Virginia (ver-jin´i-ä).—A young Roman plebeian of great beauty, decoyed by Appius Claudius, one of the decemvirs, and claimed as his slave. Her father, Virginius, being told of it, hastened to the forum, and arrived at the moment when Virginia was about to be delivered up to Appius. He seized a butcher’s knife, stabbed his daughter to the heart, rushed from the forum, and raised a revolt. This has been the subject of a host of tragedies. It is one of Lord Macauley’s lays (1842), supposed to be sung in the forum on the day when Sextus and Licinius were elected tribunes for the fifth time.
Vivian (viv´i-an), or Viviane, or Vivien.—In the Arthurian cycle of romance, an enchantress, the mistress of Merlin. She brought up Lancelot in her palace, which was situated in the midst of a magical lake; hence her name “the Lady of the Lake.”
Volpone (vol-pō´ne), or the Fox.—A comedy by Ben Jonson, written in 1605. Hazlitt calls it his best play; prolix and improbable, but intense and powerful. It seems formed on the model of Plautus in unity of plot and interest. The principal character is represented as a wealthy sensualist, who tests the character of his friends and kinsmen by a variety of strategems, obtains from them a large addition to his riches by the success of his impostures, and finally falls under the vengeance of the law. “Volpone,” says Campbell, “is not, like the common misers of comedy, a mere money-loving dotard, a hard, shriveled old mummy, with no other spice than his avarice to preserve him—he is a happy villain, a jolly misanthrope, a little god in his own selfishness; and Mosca is his priest and prophet. Vigorous and healthy, though past the prime of life, he hugs himself in his harsh humor, his successful knavery and imposture, his sensuality and his wealth, with an unhallowed relish of selfish existence.”
W
Wallenstein (väl´len-stīn).—A trilogy by Schiller, comprising Wallenstein’s Lager, Die Piccolomini, and Wallenstein’s Tod. Schiller conceives his hero in these dramas as the type of the practical realist, serious, solitary, and reserved.
Wandering Jew, The—(F. Le Juif Errant).—A novel by Eugene Sue. The chief character is an imaginary person in a legend connected with the history of Christ’s passion. As the Savior was on the way to the place of execution, overcome with the weight of the cross, he wished to rest on a stone before the house of a Jew, who drove him away with curses. Driven by fear and remorse, he has since wandered, according to the command of the Lord, from place to place, and has never yet been able to find a grave.