other poetico-melo-dramatists:--

"Merciful Heavens! do my ears deceive me?"

The festivities conclude with an altercation between _Martinuzzi_ and
_Isabella_, carried on with much vigour on both sides. The lady accuses
the gentleman of inebriation, and he owns the soft impeachment, fully
bearing it out by several incoherent speeches.

This was one of the most successful scenes in the comedy. The death of
_Rupert_, Mr. Morley's song about "The sea," the quarrel (which was about
the great pivot of the plot, "the papers," inscribed, says _Martinuzzi_,

"With ink that's _brew'd_ in the infernal Styx,")

were all received with uproarious bursts of laughter.

In the fifth act, we behold _Martinuzzi_ and the usurping young Queen
making matters up at a railway pace. She has it all her own way. If she
choose, she may marry _Castaldo_, retire into private life, be a
"farm-house thrall," and keep a "dairy;" for which estate she has
previously expressed a decided predilection[4].

[4] Acting play, published in the theatre, p. 32.

But it is the next scene that the author seems to have reserved for
putting forth his strongest powers of burlesque and broad humour.
_Isabella_ and _Castaldo_ are together; the latter feels a little afraid
to murder _Martinuzzi_, but is impelled to the deed by a thousand
imaginary torches, which he fears will hurry his "_moth_-like soul" into
their "blinding sun-beams," till it (the soul) is scorched "_into_
cinders."

_Castaldo_ appears, in truth, a very bad barber of murders; for, as he is
rushing out to

"Strike the tyrant down--in crimson streams
Rend every nerve,"

_Isabella_ has the shrewdness to discover that he is without a weapon.
Important omission! The incipient assassin exclaims--

"Oh! that I had my sword!"

but at that moment (clever, dramatic contrivance!)

[_Enter_ CZERINA, _with a drawn sword_.]
"CZERINA. There's one! Thine own!"

Far from being grateful for this opportune supply of ways and means for
murder. _Castaldo_ calls the bilbo a "fated aspic," upon the edge of which
his "eye-balls crack to look," and makes a raving exit from the stage, to
a roaring laugh from the audience.

It is quite clear to _Isabella_, from his extreme carelessness about his
tools, that _Castaldo_ is not safely to be trusted with a job which
requires so much tact and business-like exactitude as the capital offence.
She therefore "_shows a phial_," which she intends, "