The Changeling: Notes of Mannerism in Dramatic Form

Authors

Raymond J. Pentzell, University of Toledo

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

In the first act of The Changeling Beatrice-Joanna enters the stage a light-comic ingenue, as transparent and inconsequential as a spoiled Molière fille, and just as self-centered. Near the end of the fifth act she dies, guilty of murder and betrayal, her amourpropre having grown to fruition as a selfishness which grotesquely perverts her zeal for her own honor. She lies next to the catalyst of her ripening, the hideous De Flores, her lover and her murderer, now a suicide. Her death brings her as close as she ever comes to an anagnorisis; self-satisfaction ebbs from her enough that, finally, she can beg pathetically of her surviving victims, "Forgive me ... all forgive."

Recommended Citation

Pentzell, Raymond J. (1975) "The Changeling: Notes of Mannerism in Dramatic Form," Comparative Drama: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol9/iss1/1