Sunday, April 2, 2017

THE RIVALS:Main Lines

GET READY FOR AN EXCITING CAREER IN MODELLING AND ACTING

                                       EXPLANATION

I do not mean to distress you.—If I lov'd you less, I should never give you an uneasy mo∣ment.—But hear me.—All my fretful doubts arise from this—Women are not used to weigh, and separate the motives of their affections:—the cold dictates of prudence, gratitude, or filial duty, may sometimes be mistaken for the pleadings of the heart.—I would not boast—yet let me say, that I have neither age, person, or character, to found


This passage taken from 'The Rivals' written by R. B. Sheridon Faulkland is speaking to Julia.
When Faulkland arrives at Bath and calls on Captain Absolute at his residence in Bath,he learns from him that his (Faukland) beloved Julia is also at Bath. He goes to see her and Faulkland and Julia meet,they began to make an issue of the absence of one from the other. Faulkland complains to her that he has come to know about her taking part in a dance in his absence,he has began to have some doubts about her loyalty in love to him. His doubt is that if she has been learning him sincerely then she should not have offered to dance with some other one in his absence. This shows that her love for him is questionable. He thinks that her love for him is born not out of her heart but out of her mind and duty. He has a doubt if she loves him out of her sense of her duty and obligations because their marriage was settled by her dead father before they were grown up. So she may be loving him out of her sense of duty to the wishes of her great father. She perhaps love him not because she likes him but because of the fond of duty and the prudence of her mind which says that a dutiful daughter must obey her dead-father's will. This kind of time generally happens with women.
Speaking father's will Faulkland tells her that women are generally apt to make this kind of mistake. They are generally unable to distinguish between the heart's desire and mind's dictation. They go more usually by the dictates of mind,sense of duty and obligations which daughters do as their duty to their parents.They neglect their heart's desire for the sake of obedience to the will of their parents. In this kind of circumstances,women generally mistake the dictates of their mind and wisdom for their likes and desires of their heart. In a word they mistake prudence for their affection. So he must tell her if she loves him not because she likes him but because she has duty to him,then it is no sincere love. In that case he is prepared to release her from the fond of duty and makes her free to love any young man whom she likes.
Clearly,the passage brings out the character of Faulkland as a sentimental drama of Richard Steele,Hugh kelley,Richard Cumberland and Colley Cibber etc.The episode of Faulkland in Julia provides some ground for supposing this drama to be a sentimental drama. But Sheridan's purpose to not to write a sentimental drama this episode therefore is a kind of skit and a caricature of the treatment of love in the drama.

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