This scene is, perhaps, the most affecting and impressive in the whole
range of Beaumont and Fletcher's drama. Yet when Evadne names the king
as her paramour, Amintor exclaims:
O thou hast named a word that wipes away
All thoughts revengeful. In that sacred name
"The king" there lies a terror. What frail man
Dares lift his hand against it? Let the gods
Speak to him when they please; till when, let us
Suffer and wait.
And the play ends with the words
On lustful kings,
Unlooked-for sudden deaths from heaven are sent,
But cursed is he that is their instrument.
Aspatia, in this tragedy, is a good instance of Beaumont and Fletcher's
pathetic characters. She is troth-plight wife to Amintor, and after he,
by the king's command, has forsaken her for Evadne, she disguises
herself as a man, provokes her unfaithful lover to a duel, and dies
under his sword, blessing the hand that killed her. This is a common
type in Beaumont and Fletcher, and was drawn originally from Shakspere's
Ophelia. All their good women have the instinctive fidelity of a dog,
and a superhuman patience and devotion, a "gentle forlornness" under
wrongs, which is painted with an almost feminine tenderness. In
_Philaster, or Love Lies Bleeding_, Euphrasia, conceiving a hopeless
passion for Philaster--who is in love with Arethusa--puts on the dress
of a page and enters his service.
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