Charles Kingsley - The Saint's Tragedy стр 4.

are, on account of their very sweetness and simplicity, singularly unfitted to convey any true likeness of the coarse and stormy Middle Age.  I have been already accused, by others than Romanists, of profaning this whole subject—i.e. of telling the whole truth, pleasant or not, about it.  But really, time enough has been lost in ignorant abuse of that period, and time enough also, lately, in blind adoration of it.  When shall we learn to see it as it was?—the dawning manhood of Europe—rich with all the tenderness, the simplicity, the enthusiasm of youth—but also darkened, alas! with its full share of youth’s precipitance and extravagance, fierce passions and blind self-will—its virtues and its vices colossal, and, for that very reason, always haunted by the twin-imp of the colossal—the caricatured.

Lastly, the many miraculous stories which the biographer of Elizabeth relates of her, I had no right, for the sake of truth, to interweave in the plot, while it was necessary to indicate at least their existence.  I have, therefore, put such of them as seemed least absurd into the mouth of Conrad, to whom, in fact, they owe their original publication, and have done so, as I hope, not without a just ethical purpose.

Such was my idea: of the inconsistencies and short-comings of this its realisation, no one can ever be so painfully sensible as I am already myself.  If, however, this book shall cause one Englishman honestly to ask himself, ‘I, as a Protestant, have been accustomed to assert the purity and dignity of the offices of husband, wife, and parent.  Have I ever examined the grounds of my own assertion?  Do I believe them to be as callings from God, spiritual, sacramental, divine, eternal?  Or am I at heart regarding and using them, like the Papist, merely as heaven’s indulgences to the infirmities of fallen man?’—then will my book have done its work.

If, again, it shall deter one young man from the example of those miserable dilettanti, who in books and sermons are whimpering meagre second-hand praises of celibacy—depreciating as carnal and degrading those family ties to which they owe their own existence, and in the enjoyment of which they themselves all the while unblushingly indulge—insulting thus their own wives and mothers—nibbling ignorantly at the very root of that household purity which constitutes the distinctive superiority of Protestant over Popish nations—again my book will have done its work.

If, lastly, it shall awaken one pious Protestant to recognise, in some, at least, of the Saints of the Middle Age, beings not only of the same passions, but of the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, as themselves, Protestants, not the less deep and true, because utterly unconscious and practical—mighty witnesses against the two antichrists of their age—the tyranny of feudal caste, and the phantoms which Popery substitutes for the living Christ—then also will my little book indeed have done its work.  C. K.

1848.

CHARACTERS

The Scene lies principally in Eisenach, and the Wartburg; changing afterwards to Bamberg, and finally to Marpurg.

PROEM

(EPIMETHEUS)

I

II

III

IV

V

(PROMETHEUS)

I

II

III

IV

V

ACT I

SCENE I.  A.D. 1220

The Doorway of a closed Chapel in the Wartburg.  Elizabeth sitting on the Steps.

[Enter Isentrudis.]

[Count Walter enters.]

Wal.  What? shall two hundredweight of hypocrisy bow down to his four-inch wooden saint, and the same weight of honesty not worship his four-foot live one?  And I have a jest for you, shall make my small queen merry and wise.

Wal.  Ah! dowers and dowagers again!  The money—root of all evil.

What comes here?  [A Page enters.]

A long-winged grasshopper, all gold, green, and gauze?  How these young pea-chicks must needs ape the grown peacock’s frippery!  Prithee, now, how many such butterflies as you suck here together on the thistle-head of royalty?

Page.  Some twelve gentlemen of us, Sir—apostles of the blind archer, Love—owning no divinity but almighty beauty—no faith, no hope, no charity, but those which are kindled at her eyes.

Page.  Ah, Sir! none but countrymen swear by the saints nowadays: no oaths but allegorical ones, Sir, at the high table; as thus,—‘By the sleeve of beauty, Madam;’ or again, ‘By Love his martyrdoms, Sir Count;’ or to a potentate, ‘As Jove’s imperial mercy shall hear my vows, High Mightiness.’

Page.  Oh, we are all barristers of Love’s court, Sir; we have Ovid’s gay science conned, Sir, ad unguentum, as they say, out of the French book.

Wal.  So?  There are those come from Rome then will whip you and Ovid out with the same rod which the dandies of Provence felt lately to their sorrow.  Oh, what blinkards are we gentlemen, to train any dumb beasts more carefully than we do Christians! that a man shall keep his dog-breakers, and his horse-breakers, and his hawk-breakers, and never hire him a boy-breaker or two! that we should live without a qualm at dangling such a flock of mimicking parroquets at our heels a while, and then, when they are well infected, well perfumed with the wind of our vices, dropping them off, as tadpoles do their tails, joint by joint into the mud! to strain at such gnats as an ill-mouthed colt or a riotous puppy, and swallow that camel of camels, a page!

Page.  Yes; the Landgravine expects you at high mass; so go in, and mind you clean yourself; for every one is not as fond as you of beggars’ brats, and what their clothes leave behind them.

Page.  Then be quick, my music-master’s waiting.  Corpo di Bacco! as if our elders did not teach us to whom we ought to be rude!  [Ex. Eliz. and Page.]

[A young Knight enters.]

Knight.  Heigh!  Count!  What? learning to sing psalms?  They are waiting

For you in the manage-school, to give your judgment

On that new Norman mare.

Wal.  Some shaveling has been telling him that there are heretics on his land: Stadings, worshippers of black cats, baby-eaters, and such like.  He consulted me; I told him it would be time enough to see to the heretics when all the good Christians had been well looked after.  I suppose the novelty of the thing smit him, for now nothing will serve but I must ride with him round half a dozen hamlets, where, with God’s help, I will show him a mansty or two, that shall astonish his delicate chivalry.

SCENE II

A Landscape in Thuringia.  Lewis and Walter riding.

[Enter Conrad.]

Lewis.  Hush, hush, Count!  Speak, strange monk, strange words, and waken

Longings more strange than either.

Wal.  So—’tis well.

Hear me, my Lord.—You think this dainty princess

Too perfect for you, eh?  That’s well again;

For that whose price after fruition falls

May well too high be rated ere enjoyed—

In plain words,—if she looks an angel now, you will be better mated than you expected, when you find her—a woman.  For flesh and blood she is, and that young blood,—whom her childish misusage and your brotherly love; her loneliness and your protection; her springing fancy and (for I may speak to you as a son) your beauty and knightly grace, have so bewitched, and as some say, degraded, that briefly, she loves you, and briefly, better, her few friends fear, than you love her.