The actors, human and ethereal, thus adjusted to their several offices, the knight and his squire enter the haunted wood—the squire to struggle with the grosser forms of evil, some as ludicrous as sad, others as horrible as atrocious, and all odious, coarse and palpable; the knight to be tempted of the devil, and do battle with him for the redemption of the enchanted family from his dominion.
On the open front of the stage, darkened with smoke and foul with offensive odors of noxious gases, the squire is hotly engaged with the great dragon, in close rencontre, and at the same time assailed above, around, in flank and rear, by harpies, fiery serpents, and other forms of terror—the battle of life translated into coarse diablerie. The sentiment and significance of the play in this take great liberties with the regular charities and practical reforms of our social system. The sorts of evil which these monsters so uncouthly represent are such as physical suffering, drunkenness, violence, fraud, and the thousand shapes of slavery, personal and political, and of all castes and colors. They are represented as greedy and ugly, and full of mocking and malignity, but with little intrinsic capability of mischief, for they are really unattractive in temptation and extremely awkward in battle, and much more remarkable for thick-skinned insensibility to assault than for any adroitness in the combat. The squire bravely deals his blows upon the great dragon. Horror, fear and hatred of the monster, earnest devotion to the “great cause,” with the courage of full commitment, and, perhaps, some regard for his reputation as a hard-hitter, put life and metal in his veins, and right lustily he mauls away. The earliest effects of his prowess are remarkable. The dragon, defending his own ground as confidently and angrily as if the empire of evil were really a rightful one wherever sanctioned by antiquity of possession, dashes his ponderous jaws at the reckless agitator, opened wide enough to swallow him, with all his weapons and armor at a gulp; but he manages to elude the clumsy wrath, and, nothing daunted and nothing doubting, deals his blows with energy in the ratio of the rage they rouse. Curiously, but conformably enough, at every stroke another ring of the monster’s tail unrolls. At first he was an unwieldy, but not an utterly misshapen brute; now he has become a serpent and a scarecrow; the head and tail are as incongruous as the pretended righteousness of his cause and his villainous method of defending it. The strife goes on, and grows only the worse and wickeder for its continuance, till it is plain that the beast is not to be mastered with hard blows, and if he yields it is because his huge, unwieldy bulk is exhausted with the protracted effort of defense, and he subsides at last rather than submits. So ends the battle, and then comes the triumph. The valorous victor, claiming all the honors he has won, mounts his sometime foe in the new character of hobby, and rides him grandly off the stage in a blaze of gaseous glory, cheered most vociferously by the boys and affording not a little merriment, mixed with admiration, to the old folks. What a figure that procession made! and how exact a figure, too, of many another that the world witnesses admiringly. The squire is, however, none the less a hero that his principles are rugged, his method rude, his ideas a little vulgar, and his aims tinged but not tainted with his egotism. The dragons, serpents and hobgoblins must be routed, and he is the man for the emergency.
All the while this palpable warfare is proceeding in open view, the knight is engaged with the subtler fiends in the dim and doubtful darkness of the background. Quite behind the scenes the severest strife is maintained, but enough is seen and intimated upon the stage to reveal the real character of the conflict. The fidelity of illustration in the conduct of the allegory here was really admirable. At one time we descried him through the gloom by the flashing of his sword, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a host of fiends, rushing upon the foe with true chivalric enthusiasm; at another, hard pressed and well-nigh exhausted, sternly enduring the blows he could not parry or repay—exhibiting, in turn, every mood of courage to do and fortitude to endure the varied fortunes of the field. But anon, with equal truthfulness of portraiture, he is discovered trembling in sudden and strange panics, which show the temporary failure of his faith, and seem to threaten his utter desertion of the field. In the open presence of the foe his courage never fails, but the stratagem of darkness and desertion successfully evades the sword-thrust and the shield’s defense, and gives him up to doubt and desperation. The powers of darkness take hold upon him, and in his agonies of fear and suffering he would, if it were possible, that the cup might pass from him. In these moments of anguish and depression the Fairy of the Oak instantly appeared to strengthen him. With a touch and a word she reassures him, and the divine virtue again shines out, exposing visibly the demon of the doubt, and the good sword again flashes in the gloom, and the fiends, forced into open fight, are finally overthrown.
Bulwer strikes the same profound fact of experience in heroic enterprise, in his “Terror of the Threshold.” The reformer, however, confident in virtue and assured of the goodness of his undertaking, naturally trembles at critical stages of revolution in opinions and institutions long established and interwoven with the existing order of society, for the risk of introducing new truths may well check the current of a wise man’s zeal. If I pull down, he will say, this temple whose ceremonial, though barbarous and blinding, yet supports the morals of the worshiper and the present order of the social system, will the liberty and light bestowed avail for the designed improvement, or will they only unsettle the securities of law and prove occasions of disorder and licentiousness? The brave bigot and fiery enthusiast know nothing of this indecision. The cautious hesitation which springs from solicitude for the best ends and most expedient means, never troubles their stubborn bluntness of purpose nor abates their boasted consistency of action. But the regular procedure of Providence is marked by regard for the influence of conditions and the established law of progress. In these things the highest benevolence meets impediments and suffers modifications and even submits to postponement to avoid defeat; and the agents and instruments of the world’s regeneration have their Gethsemanes as well as their triumphs and transfigurations.
Nothing in language, scenery or costume irreverently asserted the allusions which I am exposing. I do not know that either playwright, performer or spectator was concerned about or even conscious of the significant symbolism of the fable and its circumstantial exposition in the play. It was produced as a beautiful dramatic spectacle. Apart from any mystical meanings, it was a perfect luxury of scenic entertainment. It was so regarded by the visiters, and probably was designed for nothing more; but to me the analogy was a surprise and a delight, growing at every step of the development. It struck me first when I saw the knight and his brave squire standing on the threshold of the enchanted hall, after their victory in the wilderness. With equal zeal, truthfulness and devotion they had battled with the formidable foe, but with very different aims and apprehensions. The difference was most manifest when they stood in the presence of the enchanted family. The knight, breathless with awe and melting with compassion, showed how tenderly and reverently he felt the moral and mental bondage which struck his opened vision; but the squire, though so faithful and loyal as a follower, and efficient as a servant, had yet not the penetration of a seer; and the preposterous spectacle of princes, counselors, knights, esquires, priests, soldiers, pages, artisans, musicians, dancers, slaves, retainers—every class and calling among men—all arrested in mid-action, and slumbering for a century amid the luxury and pageantry of a gorgeous festival, with the viands untasted and the cup undrained before them, struck him with a comic wonder and pleasant sportiveness which he cared not to suppress. Approaching the venerable prime minister of the realm, who sat with the goblet near his lip, immovable as death, the thirsty soldier familiarly proposed to drink his health, and only made mouths at the cup when he found it “as dry as dust.” The cheek of the dancing girl, who stood pivoted for her century upon one toe, he found “as cold as a stone;” and the apples offered by an African slave to a guest, whose hand hung arrested midway in the reach, proved to his disappointed taste a petrified humbug. The whole scene of deprivation and incapacity before him he pronounced an epidemic sleeping fever, and he wondered if it was catching, and where and how he should get his dinner!
All this has its parallel and exposition in the boys that mock a drunkard reeling through the street, and the contrasted sadness which a soul alive to the moral ruin feels at the same sight; or it may be witnessed again in the conduct of an insensible boor and that of a person of refinement in the presence of the insane; and in general, in the sentiments of those who have, and those who have not, learned that “the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.”
These reflections present themselves in the pause while the champion stands, riveted with emotions of wonder and pity at the mingled gloom and glory of the scene.
But the action proceeds again. A strain of melody spontaneously waking from the silence of an age, fitly preludes and prophesies the harmonies of the new era, and there wants only the taliha-cumi of the Deliverer to awaken the princess and her household into the activities of full life. At the bidding of the minstrel he advances to her pavilion. Answering to his word and touch, she rises. One by one the women first resume their proper consciousness, and the revival of the men follows in proper order, till the spell is broken and the last shadow of the long night gives place to the perfect day. The renovated realm every where receives its primal beauty, the flowers of Eden bloom again, and the fruits regain their flavor, the wine is new in the new kingdom, and all the material ministries of life without, respond to the renewed faculties within.
The fable has not yet exhausted the facts. Obeying the poetical necessities of the epic story, and conforming also to the apocalyptic vision of the world’s fortunes, which are to follow the first victory over the dragon and the binding of the adversary for a thousand years, we have the peace and happiness of the disenchanted household once more disturbed. The prince of the powers of darkness, that great magician who is the author of all the mischief from the beginning, is “loosed out of his prison,” and gathering all his forces for a final battle, he surrounds the castle. The queen’s army, led by the knight, go out to meet the grand enemy in battle, and he is utterly overthrown and his power broken for ever. The conquerors return in triumph to the castle, and in the midst of their rejoicings a herald from the outer wall, who has witnessed the scene, announces the total annihilation of the enemy. The elements, marshaled by their ruling spirits, have overwhelmed him; a tempest of hail and fire bursts upon his castle, and the earth opening has swallowed up the last vestige of his kingdom and power.
The battle of Gog and Magog (20th Rev.) in which the deceived of the four quarters of the earth are gathered together, and compass the camp of the saints about, is the very prototype of this incident in our story, and “the fire which came down from heaven,” and the “casting of the devil which deceived them into the lake of fire and brimstone,” is only a different expression of the same final deliverance of the human family from the last enemy.