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Updated: May 9, 2025
Mallet, to write the masque of Alfred, which was acted before the Prince at Cliefden House. His next work was, Tancred and Sigismunda, the most successful of all his tragedies, for it still keeps its turn upon the stage. It may be doubted whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of study, much qualified for tragedy.
He was in the expeditions to the Azores in 1582 and the following year, and on the conclusion of the war returned to Spain in the autumn of 1583, bringing with him the manuscript of his pastoral romance, the "Galatea," and probably also, to judge by internal evidence, that of the first portion of "Persiles and Sigismunda."
If the pale widow, whom Captain Richard, in his poetic rapture compared to a Niobe in tears to a Sigismunda to a weeping Belvidera, was an object the most lovely and pathetic which his eyes had ever beheld, or for which his heart had melted, even her ripened perfections and beauty were as nothing compared to the promise of that extreme loveliness which the good Captain saw in her daughter.
His physicians ordered quiet; he was confined to his own apartment; and another Tancred was of course to be sought for: Vivian ventured to offer to assume the character; and his manner, when he made this proposal to his fair Sigismunda, though it was intended to be merely polite and gallant, was so much agitated, that she now, for the first time, seemed to perceive the state of his heart.
Horace Walpole sought to buy forgiveness for his attack on the 'Sigismunda, he had called it a 'maudlin fallen virago' by sending to the widow a copy of his 'Anecdotes; but she took no heed of him or his gift. Four years more, and then another interment in the Chiswick sepulchre.
The only thing which, at the moment, suggests itself for comparison with the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon is the letter and dedication which Fielding's predecessor, Cervantes, prefixes to his last romance of Persiles and Sigismunda. In each case the words are animated by the same uncomplaining kindliness the same gallant and indomitable spirit; in each case the writer is a dying man.
Rich, the comedian; of Sir James and Lady Thornhill; of the six servants; and his own likeness, with his bull-dog and palette; besides these there was the great effort, 'Bill Hogarth's "Sigismunda," not to be sold under £500; so he had enjoined. Alas! who would give it? And she did not.
When I had closed Chaucer I returned to Ovid, and translated some more of his fables; and by this time had so far forgotten the Wife of Bath's tale that, when I took up Boccace unawares, I fell on the same argument of preferring virtue to nobility of blood, and titles, in the story of Sigismunda, which I had certainly avoided for the resemblance of the two discourses, if my memory had not failed me.
Thus I gave him his leave and I beg mine from you, offering Your Excellency the "Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda," a book I shall finish within four months, Deo volente, and which will be either the worst or the best that has been composed in our language, I mean of those intended for entertainment; at which I repent of having called it the worst, for, in the opinion of friends, it is bound to attain the summit of possible quality.
She suffers without complaining, and mourns without ostentation; and hears her father spoken of with such solemn silent floods of tears, that she looks like the original of Dryden's beautiful portrait of the weeping Sigismunda.
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