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Updated: June 15, 2025
Moreover, in Amarilli, Guarini created one really dramatic character and devoted to it one really dramatic scene. His heroine is probably the best character to be found in the whole of the pastoral drama, and this simply because there is a reason for her coldness towards the lover, upon her love to whom the plot depends. Unless love is to be mutual the motive force of the drama fails, and consequently, when nymphs insist on parading their inhuman superiority to the dictates of natural affection, they are simply refusing to fulfil their dramatic raison d'être. With Amarilli it is otherwise. She has the right to say: Ama l' onest
Happening to see the nymph at the Olympian games, Mirtillo at once fell in love and contrived to introduce himself in female attire into the company of maidens to which she belonged. Here, the proposal being made to hold a kissing match among themselves, Amarilli was unanimously chosen judge, and, the contest over, she awarded the prize to the disguised youth.
She leads Amarilli to suppose that Silvio is faithless to his betrothal vow. If Amarilli can prove Silvio guilty she will herself be free, and she agrees to hide in a recess in a cave where Corisca alleges that Silvio has an assignation. Next Corisca makes an appointment to meet her lover Coridone in the same cave, intending that he and Amarilli shall be surprised together.
The only two in Arcadia who fulfil the conditions of the oracle are Silvio, the son of the high priest Montano, and Amarilli, daughter of Titiro, who have in their veins the blood of Hercules and Pan. These two have consequently been betrothed and, being now arrived at marriageable age, their final union is imminent. At this point the play opens.
The interview of course comes to nothing, but as soon as Mirtillo has left her Amarilli relieves her feelings in a monologue confessing her love, which is overheard by Corisca . Charged with her weakness, she confesses her dislike of the marriage with Silvio. Hereupon Corisca conceives a plan for ridding herself at once of her rival in Mirtillo's affections and of her own affianced lover.
Explanations ensue, and it gradually appears that Mirtillo is the eldest son of Montano, washed away in his cradle by the floods of the Alpheus twenty years before. Thus in the love between him and Amarilli, and in his voluntary sacrifice of himself in her place, the oracle is fulfilled, and Arcadia freed from its maiden tribute.
That the play should have needed a double solution, the events that bring two couples together having no connexion with one another, was a dramatic blunder but imperfectly concealed by the fact that Silvio and Dorinda are purely secondary, the whole interest being concentrated on the fortunes of Mirtillo and Amarilli.
No attempt is made to clear Amarilli of the compromising evidence on which she had been condemned, but the pair have the favour of the gods, and the chorus makes no difficulty of chanting the virtue of the bride. Such is Guarini's play; a plot constructed with consummate ingenuity, but presented with an almost entire lack of dramatic feeling.
The solitary scene revealing any real dramatic power is that between Amarilli and the priest Nicandro, in which the girl maintains her innocence. Her terror when confronted with death is drawn with some delicacy and pathos, though we sadly miss those poignant touches that the English playwrights seem always to have had at command on similar occasions.
Almost the whole of the action takes place off the stage. Silvio and Dorinda leave the scene apparently for a tragic catastrophe; their subsequent union is only reported; so is the surprisal of Mirtillo and Amarilli, the scene in which the former offers himself as a sacrifice in her place, and their meeting after the cloud of death has passed.
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