Adriana

“ People generally forget to be envious and ill-natured at a wedding, for the very presence of visible love seems to hold in abeyance evil thoughts and feelings. So, when Adriana, in a brave white satin dress, slashed with sunshine, walked up the aisle on her father’s arm, and Harry followed with Miss Alida on his arm, there was a murmur of admiration and good will. ”

“ Fortunately Rose entered at the proper moment, and put every one conventionally at ease. And if people eating a good dinner together cannot get agreeably familiar, then there is something radically wrong with one-half the company, and perhaps also with the other.
Now, women are undoubtedly different beings in the presence of men. Adriana was a new Adriana to Rose. She was more mentally alert, more assured and dignified in manner, and she even contradicted Harry in many things. ”

“ It has been supposed that Antipholus the Native married at the Duke's bidding for money and not for love. What reason does the Play give for this supposition? Is Adriana's jealousy a reason, or is he fonder of her than she realizes? Which of the Sisters do you like best, and why?
Why would Antipholus the Native be better mated with one than the other? In what respects of character would Luciana be apt to attract Antipholus the Stranger more than Adriana would? Are there signs to show that Adriana and her husband are the more stalwart pair? ”

“ There had been a possibility of a break in this union of souls, just when Peter accepted the contract to build the Filmer mansion. Adriana thought it best to speak of her father’s work on the new house; and she did this with the simplicity of one who states a fact that may or may not have been understood. Rose was at first a little indignant. She went to her mother with Adriana’s letter in her hand.
“She is the daughter of a builder, of a common stone-mason,” she cried, “and she never told me until she was obliged to. Mamma, I am disillusioned. ”

“ Adriana, the wife of the Ephesian, mistakes the Syracusan for her husband; but he behaves so strangely that her jealousy is aroused, and when her true husband arrives he is arrested as a mad man. Soon after, the Syracusan brother being seen, the wife, supposing it to be her mad husband broken loose, sends to capture him; but he flees into a convent. Adriana now lays her complaint before the duke, and the lady abbess comes into court. So both brothers face each other, the mistakes are explained, and the abbess turns out to be Aemilia, the mother of the twin brothers. ”

“ Is it by chance or is there some reason for it? Why did not Antipholus explain that he had the chain through no option of his own? By means of the Merchant drawing his sword and detaining him, the scene with Adriana at the close of the preceding Act when his flight prevented her from having him bound as a mad man is carried on again, and refuge in the Priory forced upon him.
Why does the Abbess blame Adriana first because she did not find fault with her husband and then because she did? ”

“ Why does the mention of Dromio's name (II, ii, 156) cause both master and man to exclaim? Why should it not have led them to guess the truth?
Would this scene with Adriana and Luciana have been equally mystifying and skilful if the right master and man had not been together?
QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION In the debate between the sisters upon patience in marriage is Adriana or Luciana the more justifiable? Has their argument anything to do with the plot? Is character interest or plot interest of the first importance, and how are they apportioned in this play? ”

“ From this interview he goes to Adriana; and then follows a dialogue, every sentence of which, if we were looking out for admirable passages for quotation, would offer itself as a candidate. We quote only, from a drama so well known, for the purpose of illustrating the analytic view we would present of its chief hero; but the passages selected for this purpose can hardly fail of being also amongst the most beautiful in themselves. Artevelde is alone, waiting for the appearance of Adriana—
"There is but one thing that still harks me back. ”

“ The lady liked so well the thoughts of having a fine gold chain, that she gave the married Antipholus a ring; which when, as she [pg 441] supposed (taking his brother for him) , he denied, and said he did not know her, and left her in such a wild passion, she began to think he was certainly out of his senses; and presently she resolved to go and tell Adriana that her husband was mad. ”

“ The canvass is well filled, though the chief figure stands forward with due prominence. Adriana is all that an amiable and loving woman should be. The lighter-hearted Clara is intended as a sort of contrast and relief. Her levity and wit are not always graceful; they are not so in the early scene where she jests with the page: afterwards, when in presence of her lover, she has a fitter and more genial subject 511 for her playful wit, and succeeds much better. In the course of the drama, when the famine is raging in Ghent, she appears as the true sister of Philip Van Artevelde. ”

“ You must cheat without all conscience, filch for thee and me.
Do but thou act what I shall well contrive,
We'll teach my lawyer a new way to thrive. [Exeunt.
Enter Mistress Taffata and Adriana her maid, above.
Taf. Come, lov'd Adriana, here let us sit,
And mark who passes. Now, for a wager,
What colour'd beard comes next by the window?
Adri. A black, madam, [332] I think.
Taf. I think not so:
I think a red, for that is most in fashion.
Lord! how scarce is the world of proper men
And gallants! ”

“ Still all my talk was how vile and bad it was in him to love any lady better than me.”
The lady abbess, having drawn this full confession from the jealous Adriana, now said: “And therefore comes it that your husband is mad. The venomous clamor of a jealous woman is a more deadly poison than a mad dog’s tooth. It seems his sleep was hindered by your railing; no wonder that his head is light; and his meat was sauced with your upbraidings; unquiet meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown him into this fever. You say his sports were disturbed by your brawls ”

“ Adrienne, I desire a few moments’ conversation. What I have to say is for your ears only!
Adri. Proceed, Reginald. I hear you!
Reg. Adrienne, the time has come when I must speak—I can no longer bear the cold, dignified reserve with which you treat me—your husband. There is a motive for all things—and there must be a motive that prompts your action. We are man and wife, and open candor and frankness should exist between us.
Adri. Have I not fulfilled my duty, sir? Have I not shown you the honor and respect that you have a right to demand from a wife? ”

“ Safe in his own well-appointed home, with all the glory of Bay and hills spread out before him, he was going to condemn these to the gray, thick dust of the Portrero, the bleak and windswept hills, the dull, depressing streets of the Mission outskirts. All her life Anne had lived on such a street and hated it with the whole force of her nature.
He had the power to do this thing and he was going to do it. Under the suave kindliness of his slim, perfectly groomed figure, he was like an animal snapping at every morsel that came his way. ”

“ I will give you of my strength and of my life. I will give you of my spirit and of my sense, till my soul itself shall live in you, and in loving you he shall love me whom he has scorned. This shall be my bridal gift to you, and with my kiss I seal it."
The red ripe lips of Countess Adrian bent down to Beatrice's lips and clung to them in a vampire kiss which seemed to drain the very life-breath from the girl's body. She uttered no sound, but as Countess Adrian moved from her she sank white and limp into Lendon's arms. Countess Adrian stood for a moment, rigid, and with staring glassy eyes. ”

“ She would grow old and rot; Rogie would grow old and rot; and his son's sons until Time itself dropped in death. Or, somewhere along the line, Time would snap suddenly, as purposeless in its ceasing as in its beginning. Her longings for a permanent Beauty, Hilda's unconscious clutching at happiness, Roger's childish faith in his power to create justice, Black Tom's ferocious idealism, all meaningless words scratched on the monument to Death. ”

“ Anne had never forgotten that feeling, as the earth began to rock, the feeling of being grasped and personally shaken by a malignant force beyond her power to propitiate, a force growing more and more furious, illimitable in its anger. ”

“ If Countess Adrian came to the theatre and looked at me like that when I was acting, I should break down—as I did to-night. And I think that would kill me. My art is all the world to me. I live for it; I live in it. Mr. Lendon—no, don't speak, listen—I have a feeling that you could stand between one and—and Countess Adrian. ”

“ Gregory declared, as he and Jean swung along, under arching maples that were just beginning to turn crimson, with here and there a brilliant scarlet leaf among the green. The fences were buried under honeysuckle and wild blackberries. The summer was passing in one last passionate abandonment of giving. The bare brown earth, freed from the burden of crops, like a woman released from family cares, went back to its youth. The air was pungent with the sting of sun-warmed loam. The old world frolicked in a second love. ”

“ Anne thrust her book aside. If she went out to walk, the Sunday streets would echo the tread of others trying to kill the day in the same way. At the flat James would be asleep in his chair, Hilda napping in the dining-room. Anne leaned forward, her elbows on the sill, her chin in her palms. The Bay, flat and gray as if it, too, were exhausted from the week's work, stretched to the fog-crowned hills. Under the pall, the Sleeping Beauty on Tamalpais had passed to eternal rest. The commanded peace of the Seventh Day shut like a cover of lead upon the world. ”

“ Anne's thoughts, too vivid to be held within her brain, slipped into the darkness and she saw them, pictures in the thick silence; the terrible black vacuum of life in which moved the old gray men, her father, Hilda, herself, Roger, Tom, the dancing marionettes about him; Hilary Wainwright, his keen-eyed partners in great enterprises; Merle snatching at beauty, the grimed workers; all groups of whirling dervishes, spinning round in useless effort, until they dropped into decay and death. ”

“ They must always have been together since the beginning of time, stout and quiet, with their understanding smile, their white hair, the little wrinkles of happiness about their kindly eyes.
As a separate human unit, apart from the spirit of the universe, she no longer existed. She was alone with old Timothy and Mary, his wife, at the very center of the all-living; so deep within the heart of Life that words were not needed. ”

“ Katya made a strange noise deep in her throat, as if the words were cracking their way through some obstruction.
"Love does bear any weight—love, but nothing else. Only there is so little love and so few find it. What the world calls love is a flash of desire—a Catherine wheel of emotion, Life's urge to continue tricked out in finery, like an old woman dressed in silk. ”

“ But the moment after she had left, Anne went softly into the bedroom. Kneeling by the baby's crib, she looked so long that he seemed to feel it and frowned and moved in his sleep. He was there, safe, alive and hers. But Anne felt all the babies in the world, the babies thwarted of life, staring at her in the warm blackness of the night. ”

“ No one in the whole writhing mass of humanity belonged to her nor she to any one.
The desperate emptiness of Gregory's going rose in a gaunt specter from the grave where she had tried to heap it to stillness by the small duties of loving and caring for Martha; trying to make up, out of her own realization of loneliness and pain, some of the empty years of her mother's life. ”

“ Again Gregory felt the silence of the street about them, then the clatter of the taxi as it stopped at his signal; and the dizzy moment when Jean had said quietly: "Gramercy Park." It was Jean who had said it. Again Gregory felt the reverence and gratitude that had stilled his passion through that dark, silent ride.
Love had meant to her what it had meant to him and he had gloried in her honesty. She had brought back the courage that the weary round of years with Margaret had almost killed, and kept it alive. She had been glad of his success. ”

“ She often wondered how Jerome would stand the loneliness of Alice's marriage and sometimes, for a moment, Alice's going so eagerly out to the happiness Jerome's loving care had made possible, seemed cruelly selfish, until Jean thought of Martha and smiled. How imperceptibly one's viewpoint glided from youth to age, and how alike was all youth and how alike all age. In middle life the wandering paths of youth met, and when one reached that spot, one picked up the waiting burden of loneliness and understanding and staggered away with it, groaning or smiling according to one's pride. ”

“ But what matter of that, when they were so full of power and passion? And who cared that the rich red lips, parted so as to show a double row of small glistening teeth, were so red and so ripe as to suggest sense rather than soul? Soul somehow was the last attribute one would associate with Countess Adrian. A glorious creature certainly—an intellectual creature—a creature with will, emotion, force of diameter, noble instinct it might be; but always of the flesh, and not of the spirit. Countess Adrian a disembodied thing! ”

“ The Countess took her hand and stood tall and erect before the shrinking girl. Her bosom dilated as if she were drawing in strength. For a moment she did not speak. It was a strange scene. Lendon felt his heart throb with fear and suspense. He looked from Beatrice to Countess Adrian. Never had he seen so sudden and curious a change in the face of any human being. It was like the contrast between dead grey ashes and living fire. The impression she gave him was one of demoniac power. Her eyes glowed with an unearthly lustre from her white face. ”