For there is certainly this disadvantage in bringing before us a well-known and celebrated poet—we expect that he should speak in poetry of the first order—in such as he might have written himself. It is long before we can admit him to be neither more nor less poetical than the other speakers; it is long before we can believe him to talk for any other purpose than to say beautiful and tender things. Knowing, as we do, the trick of poets, and what is indeed their office as spokesmen of humanity, we suspect even when he is relating his own sufferings, and complaining of his own wrongs, that he is still only making a poem; that he is still busied first of all with the sweet expression of a feeling which he is bent on infusing, like an electric fluid, through the hearts of others. Altogether, he is manifestly a very inconvenient personage for the dramatist to have to deal with.
These impressions wear off, however, as the poem proceeds—just as, in real life, familiar intercourse with the greatest of bards teaches us to forget the author in the companion, and the man of genius in the agreeable or disagreeable neighbour. In the drama of Goethe, we become quite reconciled to the new position in which the poet of the Holy Sepulchre is placed. Torquato Tasso is what in this country would be called a dramatic poem, in opposition to the tragedy composed for the stage, or quasi for the stage. The dramatis personæ are few, the conduct of the piece is on the classic model—the model, we mean, of Racine; the plot is scanty, and keeps very close to history; there is little action, and much reflection.
The dramatis personæ are—
Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara.
Leonora d'Este, sister of the Duke.
Leonora Sanvitale, Countess of Scandiano.
Torquato Tasso.
Antonio Montecatino, Secretary of State.
In Tasso we have portrayed to us the poetic temperament, with some overcharge in the tendency to distrust and suspicion, which belongs, as we learn from his biography, to the character of Tasso, and which again was but the symptom and precursor of that insanity to which he fell a prey. Both to relieve and develope this poetic character, we have its opposite (the representative of the practical understanding) in Antonio Montecatino, the secretary of state, the accomplished man of the world, the successful diplomatist. It may be well to mention that the speeches in the play given to Leonora d'Este, with whom Tasso is in love, are headed The Princess; and it is her friend Leonora Sanvitale, Countess of Scandiano, who speaks under the name of Leonora.
"Act. I.—Scene I.
A garden in the country palace of Belriguardo, adorned with busts of the epic poets.
To the right, that of Virgil—to the left, that of Ariosto.
Princess, Leonora.
"Princess.—My Leonora, first you look at me
And smile, then at yourself, and smile again.
What is it? Let your friend partake. You seem
Very considerate, and much amused.