im 
 
 
THE GIFT OF 
 
 T. F. CRANE. 
 
 Professor of the Romance Languages and Iviteratures. 
 
 .A.,.cL4r\.^..£>.5 i-^iciifi- 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PQ 2285.HSB89 
 
 Characters in Victor Hugo's Hernani. 
 
 3 1924 027 291 040 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027291040 
 
THE CHARACTERS IN 
 
 VICTOR HUGO'S 
 
 "HERNANI" 
 
 By 
 
 JAMES D. BRUNER, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor of Romance Languages in the University 
 of North Carolina. 
 
 Reprinted from The Sewanee Review, 
 April and October, 1905 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 of SEWANEE TENNESSEE 
 
THE CHARACTERS IN VICTOR HUGO'S 
 "HERNANI" 
 
 I. 
 
 In an inductive study of a dramatic character there are certain 
 canons of interpretation to be observed, of which the following 
 are the most obvious and obligatory. Fij:st, there must be or- 
 ganic unity. From all the acts and words of a given personage, 
 from all the concrete details of his conduct and influence, and from 
 the attitude of the other characters towards him, there is evolved 
 a definite, single character, motived by at least one simple idea 
 or passion, as that of ambition in Macbeth, or patriotism in 
 Horace, or chivdrou.sJ5.onor inHernani. In the second place, 
 the interpretation must be exhaustive, introducing all the details 
 of the evidence, whether direct or indirect. The character of 
 Hamlet, for example, is revealed to us not only by what he does 
 or even fails to do, but also by the attitude of the other dramatic 
 characters towards the melancholy Dane. In L'Avare certain 
 aspects of the miser's character are made known to us by the in- 
 direct evidence of his children and his servants ; as, for example, 
 when one of the latter informs the avaricious Harpagon as to 
 how he is regarded by his neighbors. Furthermore, indirect ev- 
 idence is sometimes emphasized by means of character-foils or 
 character:CQatrasts, as may be seen in the case of such charac- 
 ters as Portia and Nerissa, Antigone and Ismene, or Hernani and 
 Don Carlos. Again, the field may be further extended so as to 
 take in groups of characters, as a gang of outlaws, a band of con- 
 spirators, or a company of patriots. All these various methods 
 of obtaining evidence may be employed in order to arrive at a 
 just appreciation and an adequate interpretation of an individual 
 character. 
 
 The first character in Victor Hugo's Hernani ^mi, to be studied 
 and interpreted is the hero himself. Hernani is not an abstrac- 
 tion, a mere type; he is a concrete indiv idual, possessed of vari- 
 ous conflicting passions and emotions, and actuated by a complex- 
 ity of motives. We have definite information about his past life 
 and his present occupations and surroundings. When a child he 
 went barefooted in the woods, and while still a child took an oath 
 
4 The Characters in Victor Hugo' s " Hemani" 
 
 to avenge his father, who had been put to death on the scaffold 
 by the father of Don Carlos. The young bandit is beardless, 
 haughty in his looks, wears a large cloak, hat, and leather cuirass, 
 carries a sword, dagger, and horn, and changes his costume to 
 suit the occasion. He is poor, but has air, daylight, water, and 
 rights ; lives among rough outlaws in the high mountains, sleeps 
 in the grass, drinks from the mountain torrent, suspects every- 
 thing — eyes, voices, steps, sounds, and at night hears balls whis- 
 tling in his ears. "Heaven made him a duke and exile a moun- 
 taineer." He is called a rebel subject and is put under the ban 
 by the king, with whom he is at war. The young exile feels that 
 it is his imperative duty to avenge his father, and that, by pur- 
 suing the king, he is engaged in a righteous cause. To accom- 
 plish his purpose Hernani assumes the disguise of a bandit just 
 as Hamlet assumes the disguise of madness and Fiesco that of 
 the fool's cap. In spite of this disguise, however, he does not 
 become vulga,r2zed but remains still a great lord, and therefore 
 capable of hatred, jealousy, and revenge. 
 
 Possessed, then, of various passions and partly a victim of cir- 
 cumstances over which he has no control, Hernani naturally 
 comes into conflict with necessity or fate, his own will, and the 
 will of others. As a result of this dramatic conflict, we see him 
 prompted by motives necessarily contradictory, and exhibiting 
 "many apparently inconsistent phases of his real and assumed 
 character. In his double r6le of bandit and lord he undergoes a 
 conflict between love and duty, is pursued by a profound sorrow, 
 is melancholy, pessimistic, purposeless, vacillating, sarcastic, 
 distrustful, jealous, hateful, revengeful, impulsive, magnanimous, 
 chivalrous, possessed of a high sense of honor, heroic, lover-like, 
 sentimental, poetic, fatal, a man of night, a wanderer on the face 
 of the earth, une force qui va. In a word, Hernani is a romantic 
 hero, incarnating by his double character of lord and bandit, the 
 emotions, the passions, the aspirations, the contradictions, the 
 doubts, and the revolts of the modern complex man. 
 
 O ne of Hernani 's most striking characteristics is his melan- 
 choly. It is not the humorous melancholy of Jaques, nor the 
 misanthropic melancholy of Alceste or Timon of Athens, but it 
 is rather the pessimistic melancholy of Hamlet, who, though he 
 feels that the world is^not right, is yet, like Charles von Moor, 
 unwilling to surrender to the wrong. It is of the Byronic type, 
 and recalls the Corsair, the Giaour, and "the pilgrim of nature." 
 
The Characters in Victor Hugo's "Hernani" 5 
 
 He is a direct descendant also of Werther and Rene, and is 
 cousin to the sentimental and melancholy heroes of Bulwer. He 
 is at times gloomy and moody, and his misfortune becomes to 
 him night, into which he plunges. He has a "sea of troubles" 
 against which he is compelled to "take arms," 
 
 There's something in liis soul 
 O'er which his melancholy sits on brood, 
 And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose 
 Will be some danger. , 
 
 His pensive melancholy is brought about both by his own mis- 
 haps and those of others. His will is thwarted by forces outside 
 himself, and he cannot shake off this fatality which pursues him 
 day and night. His sorrow becomes profound, and a black grief 
 is spread over his life, so that he recognizes himself as an uncon- 
 scious energy — une force qui va. His brid e death^waits him 
 and he forebodes a "sombre end to a sombre life." Hernani 
 recognizes the "fatal finger on the wall" and has an intuition of 
 his fatal destiny which "rails at him." Out of this fatalism 
 grows his morbid melancholy, which leads to doubt, distrust, ir- 
 resolution, weakness. As soon, however, as he is pardoned and 
 his ducal name, his ancestral castle, and his sweetheart are re- 
 stored to him, his gloomy melancholy disappears, and he is cor- 
 respondingly happy and hopeful; but when later he hears the 
 fatal blast of his horn in the hands of the inexorable old duke he 
 realizes that he is not yet done with the fatal name of Hernani, 
 and plunges again into darkness, melancholy, and despair. "The 
 ancient wound, which seemed closed, opens again," and he dies. 
 His rash act, though simply an error of judgment, made under 
 the impulse of the moment, is followed by fatal consequences. 
 His own self recoils upon himself, and, after all, his character 
 assists in determining his destiny; and yet, at the same time, 
 the' element of fatality lends much to the pathos of the catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 Hernani is not only melancholy, but, like all sombre charac- 
 ters, he is distjrustful and jealous. He is jealous of the kisses 
 of the old Duke, to whom Dona Sol is betrothed. An instance 
 of his distrust is exhibited in the pilgrim scene when Doiia Sol 
 appears as a bride. The distinguished Hernani sarcastically con- 
 gratulates her and ironically admires the different articles con- 
 tained in the casket, declaring for example, that "the bracelet 
 
6 The Characters in Victor Hugo's " Hemani" 
 
 is rare, but it is one hundred times less rare than the woman 
 who, under a brow so pure, conceals an infamous and false 
 heart." When at length she tells him that there is at the bot- 
 tom of the casket the very dagger she wrested from Don Carlos, 
 who was trying to carry her off, Hernani falls penitent at her 
 feet, is abundantly pardoned, and begs her to reassure his doubt- 
 ihg heart. On another occasion when she appears unexpectedly 
 at the tomb, he looks upon her with ill-concealed mistrust. It 
 may be remarked, nevertheless, that Hernani's jealousy is of 
 the Romantic type. It is not founded on any real proof or even 
 on any serious suspicion of treachery, but is caused by his sick 
 and troiibled soul. It is not pernicious like Othello's or Gomez's ; 
 to the contrary, the fatal bandit fears lest he might do his lover 
 harm. Finally, in the pardon scene, when he surrenders /the 
 name of Hernani and assumes his former ducal name of John of 
 Aragon, his jealousy disappears together with his other evil pas- 
 sions. 
 
 Stronger than Hernani's jealousy are his hatred and desire for 
 revenge. For years he has nursed his hatred, caused first by the 
 murder of his father by the father of Carlos, and again by the 
 fact that the king is his rival for the hand of Dona Sol. To keep 
 his childhood's oath Hernani has followed Don Carlos day and 
 night for the purpose of wreaking his revenge. He expresses'- 
 his hatred fiercely when he encounters the king in the very act 
 of carrying off by force Dona Sol in order to make her his queen. 
 Earlier in the action he hesitated between love and hate, but 
 finally decided in favor of hate and therefore vengeance. Later, 
 when Carlos succeeds in getting possession of Dona Sol, Her- 
 nani's desire for revenge returns and causes him to take the fatal 
 oath; but later still, when he is magnanimously pardoned by the 
 emperor, his hatred vanishes away, and his actions are conse- 
 quently no longer influenced by his craving for vengeance. Last- 
 ly, in the catastrophe, the quondam bandit redizes too late that 
 his ruin is brought about by his failure to avenge his father, 
 who, however, does not forget to avenge himself on the son that 
 has forgotten his duty to his father. 
 
 Hernani is possessed no t only of evil passions but also of pos- 
 itive virtues. In the pardon scene, where he has dropped the 
 fatal name of Hernani and has assumed his real name of John of 
 Aragon, his evil passions of melancholy, distrust, jealousy, hat- 
 red and revenge, are, as has been observed, all given up, and his 
 
The Characters in Victor Hugo's '^Hernani" 7 
 
 noble virtues of love, magnanimity, and honor, glimpses of which 
 had been caught before, appear in all their strength and beauty. 
 Here is seen the antithesis existing between his real and assumed 
 character, and a little later will be emphasized the union of des- 
 tiny and character in determining his fate. 
 
 Among these positive virtues, which help to form the artistic 
 complexity of Hemani's character, are his chivalry, considera- 
 tion, and jnagnanimity. Though kings are not sacred toTiim, 
 "though his rage swells when a king insults him, yet hewjll not 
 assassinate Carlos whom he has in his power, but breaks his own 
 'sword and with the chivalry of a Spanish lord bids Carlos fiy and 
 take with him the bandit's cloak, lest one of the outlaws, recog- 
 nizing the king, might stab him. When in the pardon scene 
 Hernani is placed among those whose lives are spared, he pro- 
 tests and^claims that he, too, is a noble and should therefore be 
 included among the unpardoned nobles. Time and again our 
 hero shows himself magnanimous towards Doiia Sol, whom he 
 does not wish to expose to the rude life of the outlaws or to the 
 scaffold by which he is threatened. He considers it a crime to 
 snatch the flower from the precipice as he falls into the abyss. 
 In the pilgrim scene, when he thinks he has placed his sweet- 
 heart in a compromising position, he pleads guilty of trying to 
 carry her off from the old duke, but declares emphatically that 
 Dona Sol is pure. In the last balcony scene, when Hernani 
 hears the fatal blast of the horn, he endeavors to keep the truth 
 from Dona Sol and seeks to spare her the agony of seeing him 
 meet his fate. He considerately sends her away after a flask, 
 and is startled at her unexpected return. After she has drunk 
 the fatal potion, from which she suffers intensely, he tells Gomez 
 that a less cruel poison should have been chosen for the unhappy 
 woman. 
 
 Hernani is Cornelian in his heroic love and high sense of honor. 
 In the wooing scenes he is ardent, tender, sentimental, religious. 
 For him love is something sacred, ideal, transcendental, a fore- 
 taste and foreshadowing of a spiritual union in another world be- 
 yond the skies. In his melancholy moods his love is the con- 
 crete real love of the Romantics, and not the abstract love or the 
 effect of love represented by the classical writers. At one time 
 the outlaw becomes so despondent that he declares to Dona Sol 
 that Heaven has evidently not consented to their loves, and 
 therefore he will surrender to her the heart he has stolen. 
 
8 The Characters in Victor Hugo' s " Hernani" 
 
 Still more sacred and heroic than his love is Hernani's delicate 
 sense of honor. Like Hotspur he would "pluck down honor 
 from the moon or drag it up from the depths of the sea." Her- 
 nani's chivalrous fidelity to the oath calls up the past, and is in 
 that respect genuinely Romantic. In spite of Dona Sol's en- 
 treaties that he break his oath, which she does not consider so 
 binding as his pledge of love, he is inexorable, for he feels com- 
 pelled to keep his oath in order to preserve his honor. He de- 
 clares that he will not go with treason on his brow. Like Antig- 
 one of old he obeys what he deems a higher law and succumbs 
 to a lower. While his body yields to death, his soul is victori- 
 ous and "rises with his lover in an even flight towards a better 
 world." 
 
 Our hero's most striking characteristic, however, and the one 
 most frequently misunderstood by the classical critics, is his po- 
 _etical temperament^due partly to his life in the mountains in 
 direct contact with Nature. While the representation of such 
 a temperament may be called lyricism and not drama, it is at the 
 same time genuinely Romantic. The tourist in Scotland, the 
 traveler on the continent, and the exiled noble in the mountains 
 of Europe, all have a feeling for Nature hitherto unknown to po- 
 etry. The voice of "the pilgrim of nature" is heard in the land. 
 Hernani's love for Nature is therefore natural and truly repre- 
 sentative~of the contemporary man of culture. Like other Ro- 
 mantic heroes, then, Hernani^x press es Jiimse]i_uiJyTicalJang- 
 _uage. Not only does he reveal his natural life and passions, 
 but he also depicts nature and external objects. His lyrical pas- 
 sages are filled with real beauties and lofty sentiments, possess- 
 ing a certain charm of freshness and immortal youth, and im- 
 pregnated with the local color of the times. In one of their love 
 scenes Hernani asks Dona Sol to sing to him, to enchant and 
 delight him, for it is sweet to love and to be loved. In figura- 
 tive and poetical language he says to Dona Sol that if she will 
 command the volcano to stifle its flames, it will at once close up 
 its half -open craters and will have upon its sides only flowers and 
 green grasses. He loves the meadows, flowers, woods, and the 
 song of the nightingale. In answer to one of his sweetheart's 
 rapturous outbursts of poetry, Hernani exclaims: "Ah, who 
 would not forget everything while listening to that celestial 
 voice ">. Thy word is a song in which nothing human remains. 
 And, like a traveler, who, carried away upon a stream, glides 
 
The Characters in Victor Hugo' s " Hemani" g 
 
 over the waters on a beautiful summer's evening, and sees flee- 
 ing before his eyes a thousand flowery plains, my soial entranced 
 roams in thy reveries. ' ' 
 
 II. 
 
 Don Ruy Gomez, the principal antagonist or opposing force 
 in Victor Hugo's "Hernani," is, like the hero, a complex indi- 
 vidual man, having contradictory qualities. He is represented 
 in The drama as a man of varied experience and of numerous char- 
 acteristics. He is proud, bombastic, loqua,cious, inquisitive, 
 impulsive, melancholy, jealous, revengeful, inexorable, avid of 
 honor, lover-like, sympathetic, courteous, loyal, given to hospi- 
 tality, and possessed of a high sense of honor. We are also in- 
 fornied as to his age, physical qualities, political position, and 
 social standing. He is more than sixty years old, and has not 
 enough hair on his head to fill the hand of the executioner. 
 Though old and rich, he would give all he has for youth, if only 
 to be a shepherd of the fields. Though his body is withered 
 and head bowed, his soul is young, for there are never, he de- 
 clares, any wrinkles in the heart, which is always young and can 
 always bleed. He is count and grandee of the Castle of Figuere, 
 high counsellor of Aragon, and Duke of Pastrana. The old duke 
 is proud of his old ancestral name of Silva, on which there is no 
 stain. He is the uncle and betrothed of Dona Sol, who lives 
 with him in his castle. This feeble and venerable old man is 
 rich and lives in a patriarchal state far from the court. Princes 
 and pilgrims visit his castle, seek his counsel, obtain his sympa- 
 thy, and enjoy bis splendid hospitality. 
 
 The character of the old duke is striking and subtle. At times 
 it appears more lyric or epic than dramatic. It represents an 
 older heroism, when men were possessed of honor and loyalty. 
 It evokes the good old times of the great old men before the de- 
 cadence Of youth. It recalls the heroic manners and virtues of 
 the Cornelian heroes. The old knight is proud of his ancestors 
 who honored old men, protected girls, and were never guilty of 
 treachery. His artificial pride, as seen in the famous portrait 
 scene^ recalls the lofty Spanish family pride exhibited by the 
 Prince of Aragon, in "The Merchant of Venice," who, in choos- 
 ing his casket, said : 
 
lo The Characters in Victor Hugo' s ." Hemani" 
 
 I will not jump with common spirits, 
 And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. 
 
 As long, however, as Gomez makes love or any other passion 
 yield to his feudal pride, we feel that he is great and deserving 
 of our sympathy. 
 
 The old duke is in love with Dofia Sol, his niece, who does 
 not return his love. The melancholy love of the rejected old lord 
 is touching. His loye is not ludicrous, it is a weakness. While 
 the love of the old man is lyrical and rhetorical, at the same time 
 it is natural and appropriate, for Gomez loves not like a young 
 man but as an, old man. He says that one is not master of one's 
 self when one ife old and in love. While he would give all he 
 possesses for youth, yet he maintains that his love is not change- 
 able like th^t of frivolous young men. His love is not like some 
 fragile toy ; it is severe, deep, sure, paternal, friendly, solid as 
 the oak of his ducal chair. Characteristically and pathetically 
 he tells Dona Sol that.it would be a sacred work for her, a young 
 girl, to care for him, an old man, that she would be to him an an- 
 gel with a woman's heart. With lyric fervor he declares that he 
 loves her as one loves the aurora, or the flowers, or the skies, 
 and that to see her every day would be to him a perpetual feast. 
 Such love ,as this, then, does not provoke our laughter, but rath- 
 er excites our pity, and in that it is truly tragic. 
 
 Don Ruy Gomez has also said that when one is old and in love, 
 one is jealous. At first his jealousy is the touching jealousy of 
 the discarded old lover, but when he learns that the king is his 
 rival in love, his jealousy turns to hajeand a desire for revenge. 
 His passion then becomes epic, for there is no longer any strug- 
 gle represented. He js first all love, then all hate. As soon as 
 Gomez learns that Dona Sol has been carried off by his royal ri- 
 val, his hatred becomes furious, and from that tinxe on he thinks 
 only of hate and revenge. He_pjjrsues the king until Carlos sur- 
 renders Dona Sol to Hernani, and then he relentlessly pursues 
 the bandit until Hernani is dead. ( As with Shylock money was 
 Tiothing in comparison with revenge, so with the old duke_.tbe 
 desire fgr vengeance is stronger than his sense of honor. As 
 the infamous Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, declared to Re- 
 becca that he had broken many a law and many a commandment, 
 but his word never, so Gomez lays fantastic stress upon one vir- 
 tue at the expense of another, as when honor in the climax is 
 
The Characters in Victor Hugo' s " Hernani" ii 
 
 made to yield to vengeance in the catastrophe. The old feudal 
 lord wants the privilege of striking the fatal blow at the king, 
 for nothing is sweeter to his eyes than to see one's enemies 
 brought low. Like one of the characters of Euripides, he regards 
 revenge as the fairest prize the gods can bestow upon mankind. 
 As soon as Gomez determines on revenge, he becomes terrible 
 and inflexible, and. his doings become mysterious. He adopts 
 the mask of a black domino, in which he presents a spectre-like 
 figure, whose step is like the step of the dead, whose eyes flash 
 forth flames, whose journey is, as he himself confesses, not from 
 hell but to hell, and whose voice is sepulchral. He becomes a 
 sort of dark figure of destiny hovering in the background. In 
 the final scene he becomes inexorable, exulting like a fiend over 
 his victim, no touching appeals for mercy being able to move him 
 in his determination not to yield. He forgets, until overtaken 
 by reinorse, that 
 
 Revenge, at first though sweet, 
 Bitter ere long back on itself recoils. 
 
 Were the old duke not hedged about by certain redeeming qual- 
 ities, his intense, passionate hatred and his Promethean inexor- 
 ableness would make him a monster, a caricature. Gomez is not 
 only jealous and revengeful,, he is also courteous, loyal, given to 
 hospitality, and possessed of a high sense of honor. The cour- 
 tesy of the proud and dignified duke is seen when he recognizes 
 that the king is one of the two young men he finds in the room 
 of Dona Sol. Though appearances are against Carlos, Gomez, 
 like a courtly gentleman of the old school, accepts the king's 
 doubtful explanation of his unexpected visit and promptly begs 
 his pardon. In the portrait-scene he declares that the family of 
 Silva has always been loyal. To him the rites of hospitality are sa- 
 cred and inviolable, and he declares he would protect his guest 
 even against the king. He entertains the king and welcomes 
 the pilgrim as his guest. Though the pilgrim-bandit has be- 
 trayed -his host by making love to Uofia Sol, who is supposed to 
 be making preparation for her immediate marriage to her uncle, 
 yet Gomez proves the sincerity of his former declaration in re- 
 gard to the protection of his guest, by heroically offering to sur- 
 render his own head rather than that of his ungrateful guest. 
 A little later his sense of honor is severely tested by the king's 
 threat to carry off Dona Sol as a hostage. In melodramatic 
 
12 The Characters in Victor Hugo's "Hemani" 
 
 fashion his Castilian honor wins when he declares to the king, 
 "Take her and leave me honor." Finally, however, in the catas- 
 trophe, as has been indicated above, honor yields to revenge. 
 Like Shylock, he holds his victim to his bond, and fails. 
 
 While Hernani and Gomez are truly tragic characters, the for- 
 mer meeting his tragic fate on account of an^error of judgment, 
 and the latter through a crime, the young king, Don Carlos, is 
 portrayed as a comic character, passing from good to better, and 
 as an jmperfect character, passing from vice to goodness. The 
 story of his life may be represented as an inclined plane, ending 
 in complete obscurity. His life, too, presents an antithesis — the 
 profligate young king becoming the merciful mature emperor. 
 He is also an individual with a definite history, experience, and 
 character. His grandfather was a magnificent and powerful em- 
 peror. , His father was German and his mother Spanish. He 
 is himself first king, then emperor. As king he is licentious, in- 
 volved in various intrigues, surrounded by courtiers who profit 
 by his distractions, and is engaged in a struggle with the band- 
 its. He knows Latin imperfectly, possesses a vein of sardonic 
 humor, indulges in swifts repartees, carries on his intrigues in 
 disguise, refuses to fight a duel with an inferior, pursues Her- 
 nani himself, declares himself to be madly in love with the beau- 
 tiful black eyes of Dona Sol whom he tries to, carry off by force, 
 and is ambitious to become emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 
 After his election as emperor, he accepts his new responsibilities 
 seriously, changes his course of life, sacrifices love to duty and 
 magnanimously pardons Hernani, to whom he restores Dona Sol 
 together with his titles and property. 
 
 Nearlx.^l_jthe_comic_element^ of the drama is furnished by 
 Carlos and his courtiers. The witty and sarcastic repartees of 
 Carlos, which recall those of Euripides and Shakespeare, are usu- 
 ally clever. Through nearly all of his short speeches, in which 
 he has the opportunity of displaying his skill in rapid repartee, 
 there runs a vein of sardonic humor. His jests with his crumb- 
 seeking courtiers and with the duenna Dofia Josefa, and his ten- 
 dency to become humorous in a striking situation, are, however, 
 often more grotesque than comic. For example, his first conver- 
 sation with the servant, whom he forbids to say two words and 
 who therefore says only one, is so grotesque that the duenna sig- 
 nificantly asks Carlos if he is not the devil himself. Again, he 
 calls the closet, in which he had sought a hiding-place, a stable 
 
The Characters in Victor Hugo's "Hernani" 13 
 
 for broom-stick horses. On coming out from this closet, Her- 
 nani asks him what he was doing in there. To this the young 
 king jocosely replies that apparently he was not riding through 
 a forest. In the first balcony-scene when Dona Sol snatches his 
 dagger and threatens to stab him, the undaunted Carlos coolly re- 
 marks that it is no wonder she loves a rebel. Just after he hears 
 the signal announcing his election as emperor, he overhears the 
 conspirators planning to take his life; with apparent unconcern 
 he asks them to move on, for the emperor hears them. Imme- 
 diately the lights go out and the emperor, advancing towards the 
 conspirators, calls them dumb statues whose torches his breath 
 has extinguished. 
 
 The youthful king is further exhibited as a frivolous libertine, 
 whose love is not re ally serious but is a distraction. We are al- 
 lowed to catch glimpses of his storm-and-stress period, in which 
 the young sensualist sows his wild oats. He enters into the fun 
 and frolic of the time. Like the dissolute Francis I, who is rep- 
 resented in Hugo's Le Roi s' Amuse as meeting in disguise ple- 
 beian girls at night and on Sundays, the licentious Carlos carries 
 on his nefarious schemes in disguise. At one time he is pursued 
 by the enraged husband of Mme. Giron, and at another time by 
 Hernani, against whose sweetheart the crafty king is planning 
 an infamous seizure. Like Franz Moor, the youthful Carlos is 
 a materialist, a sensualist, the very antithesis of Hernani, who 
 dreams of a spiritual union with his lover. Yet the vicious char- 
 acter of Carlos is allowable in dramatic art, since what is repre- 
 hensible in the king is finally adjusted in the emperor. 
 
 In the progress of the drama Don Carlos is presented to us not 
 only as a humorous king jesting with his courtiers, not only as a 
 frivolous young monarch engaged in schemes of base intrigues, 
 but also as a magnanimous emperor transformed by a worthy am- 
 bition and by the contemplation of new and weighty responsibil- 
 ities. This violent contrast, characteristic of Hugo, is so skill- 
 fully managed that we are not shocked by its representation. It 
 is an admirable picture of the rise of an individual, of the devel- 
 opment and revolution of a character. As Hernani is one man 
 as long as he is a bandit, and becomes another as soon as he is 
 pardoned and restored to his former estate, and as Gomez is one 
 man until the desire for revenge takes possession of him, so Don 
 Carlos is one man until he is elected emperor, when his trans- 
 formation becomes complete. In the famous monologue of the 
 
14 The Characters in Victor Hugo' s " Hernani" 
 
 fourth act Carlos is seen experiencing a great Cornelian struggle 
 between love and duty, in which the latter triumphantly wins.^ 
 The transformation is not so much in the nature of a miraculous 
 conversion as it is a natural transition, like that of Shakespeare's 
 Henry V, from youth to manhood, from a period of thoughtless 
 and frivolous life to a riper, richer, fuller work of maturity. 
 Urged by the weight of a great duty, impressed by the higher • 
 responsibilities suddenly thrust upon him, and influenced by the 
 presence of the very spirit of his great predecessor, his soul is 
 stirred to its profoundest depths, his better nature triumphs, he 
 puts away childish things, and becomes a new man. While un- 
 der the inspiration of this change, he decides to give the world a 
 lesson in clemency, just taught him by the spirit of Charlemagne. 
 He therefore pardons the bandits, generously restoting to the 
 leader his sweetheart and his castle. By pardoning Hernani we 
 see his clemency, and by his failure to pardon Gomez we see his 
 impartial justice. Thus his magnanimity^ generosity, clemency, 
 and justice are beautiful promises of a happy and successful reign 
 as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Like the great charac- 
 ters portrayed in fiction, in whose real existence the great crea- 
 tive romancers make us believe, the mighty emperor is not 
 shelved but begins to carve his splendid career by an act of 
 mercy and justice which appeals to our imagination. 
 
 Unlike the male characters of the drama. Dona Sol, in whom 
 we have the dramatic study of an almost perfect woman, does not 
 suggest a striking antithesis in her characteristics. On the con- 
 trary her character is consistent, she being possessed of but one 
 strong passion — love. Her individuality is carefully portrayed, 
 though we are not given a detailed description of her features 
 from the standpoint of material beauty. Judging from the few 
 natural touches that are given and from the effects of her beauty 
 upon her three suitors, we do not feel that she lacks any of those 
 physical qualities or personal charms that belong to a woman of 
 unusual grace and beauty. The young and handsome Dona Sol, 
 whose father was a count and shed his blood in torrents for the 
 king, is affianced to the old duke Ruy Gomez, her uncle, but she 
 herself is in love with the youiig bandit Hernani, who visits her 
 every evening in disguise. She is of noble birth, and is proud 
 and jealous of her blood. In spite of her noble descent, however, 
 she would rather live hungry, poor, and in exile with her Her- 
 
The Characters in Victor Hugo's "Hernani" 15 
 
 nani, whom she calls her lion and her king, than be an empress 
 with an emperor. 
 
 Several references are made to the magnetic effect of Dona 
 Sol's soft, piercing black eyes, which are'two mirrors, two rays, 
 two torches, and which remind us of the exquisite raven black 
 eyes of the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Hernani enjoys- 
 her songs and glances, and his soul wants to see itself in her eyes 
 which shine like stars in the darkness. Flames from her eyes, 
 whose flash is his joy, and whose smile is light, inundate his eye- 
 lids. Like Juliet, "she doth teach the torches to burn bright, 
 and her eye discourses. " Hernani might have said of her as 
 Romeo said of Juliet, 
 
 Two of the fairest stars in all tlie heavens, 
 Having some business, do entreat her eyes 
 To twinkle in their spheres till they return. 
 
 Our heroine is kind arid gentle; her soul is calm, pure, lofty, 
 and beautiful ; her brow is peaceful and pure ; her step is grace- 
 ful ; she grows like a flower in the shadow ; she weeps, blushes, 
 and is ingenuous ; she sings with tears in her black eyes, which 
 become wet with the tears of rage; and she is an angel, a flower, 
 a Venus, and a treasure of beauty which makes a king jealous. 
 Hernani wishes to hear her celestial voice, for her word is a song 
 in which there is nothing human. Dona Sol's costume is white, 
 the emblem of innocence and immaculate purity. She is inspired 
 with lofty aspirations and has a longing desire for immortality. 
 
 Like Juliet, with whom she has much in common. Dona Sol is 
 an eminently practical woman. She asks Hernani not to blame 
 her strange audacity in proposing to follow him to the mountains, 
 for where he goes she will go. She plans the clandestine meet- 
 ing and the flight. Frustrated in her first plan, she again pro- 
 poses flight. She insists on following him even to the scaffold. 
 When confronted by Carlos, who is trying to drag her off, she 
 snatches his dagger and threatens to kill him if he advances one 
 step towards her. Although this is excellent storm-and-stress 
 or melodramatic realism, yet we feel that she is made of heroic 
 stuff. In the climax where she surrenders herself to Carlos rath- 
 er than allow him to take the head of either Gomez or Hernani, 
 she compels the wonder-struck king to exclaim that a man, in 
 touching Dona Sol, becomes either an angel or a monster. While 
 it is true she goes away with the young king as his hostage, at 
 
i6 The Characters in Victor Hugo's "Hernani" 
 
 the same time she does not forget to carry her dagger concealed 
 in her bosom. Finally, in the last balcony-scene she rises to the 
 occasion, pleads earnestly for the life of her lover, yields to the 
 inevitable, and dies bravely by the side of her lion of the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 At the same time Dona Sol's practical turn of mind does not 
 prevent her from being spiritual and poetical. She has longings 
 of the "blue-flower" type. After the fashion of the Romantic 
 characters of the time, she possesses a feeling for nature. This 
 characteristic betrays the artifice of the author who is nothing if 
 not lyrical, and yet there is evident in all his splendid lyrical 
 passages a touch of the nature and realism of contemporary life. 
 The best illustration of Dona Sol's a ppreciation of nature is found 
 in the last balcony-scene where she and Hernani are alone after 
 the noise of the wedding festivities has subsided. She is su- 
 premely happy and is weeping for joy. She asks Hernani to 
 come and see the beautiful night. "While we sleep," says the 
 enraptured woman, "nature half -waking lovingly watches over us. 
 There is not a cloud in the sky. All like ourselves is at rest. 
 Come, breath with me the air perfumed by the rose. No more 
 lights, no more noise. Silence reigns everywhere. Even while 
 ■you were speaking just now the moon rose upon the horizon, its 
 glimmering light and your voice both went to my heart," Pres- 
 ently, when the silence becomes too ominous and profound, she 
 asks her lover if he would not like to see some star in the dis- 
 tance or hear some tender and sweet voice sing. She herself 
 would hear the song of some bird in the fields or of a nightingale 
 lost in the darkness, or the sound of some flute in the distance. 
 "For music is sweet, it fills the soul with harmony, and like a 
 divine chorus, it awakens a thousand voices which make melody 
 in the heart. ' ' When suddenly she hears the fatal blast of Her- 
 nani 's horn, she exclaims that her prayer is heard, and tells him 
 how she likes to hear the sound of the horn in the depth of the 
 woods. Another example of this enchanting poetry, whose me- 
 lodious notes we can never, forget, is found in the catastrophe, 
 where Dofla Sol, dying of poison, tenderly pleads with Hernani 
 to be calm, for "We are going presently to expand our wings to- 
 gether towards new and brighter lights. With an even flight 
 we are setting sail towards a better world." 
 
 While the other important characters of the drama are pos- 
 sessed of several passions, the sole passion of Dona Sol is love, 
 
The Characters in Victor Hugo' s " Hernani" 17 
 
 her most striking and beautiful characteristic. It is genuine 
 Romantic love, based on instinct. It is love that hopeth all 
 things and endureth all things. Though Hernani is distrustful, 
 jealous, and scornful, yet her love is strong enough to endure it 
 all. It disdains all social barriers and makes her prefer the dis- 
 inherited exile and wandering bandit to the powerful lord or em- 
 peror. Love is her sole existence. Aimer, c'est vivre, c'est agir. 
 She loved Hernani out of pity, out of admiration, "for the dan- 
 gers he had passed, ' ' for the mystery of his destiny, because she 
 cannot help loving him, and yet, unlike Chimene, she does not 
 know why she loves ; she does not know 
 
 Where is fancy bred, 
 Or in the heart or in the head. 
 
 Nor does she know why she must follow her lover: "Are you my 
 demon or my angel ? I do not know, but I am your slave, listen. 
 Go where you will, I will go. Remain or depart, I am yours. 
 Why do I thus 1 I do not know. ' ' Dona Sol believes that her 
 soul is bound to Hernani forever, and she looks upon him as a 
 sort of god. Her love, exalted by spiritualism, and devoid of 
 anything sensual, purifies her soul and brings happiness. With- 
 out Hernani, life would mean nothing to her, would be empty, 
 hopeless. With him, she entertains lofty aspirations and sweet 
 longings for immortality. For them, as for Romeo and Juliet, 
 love is the arbiter of life and death. Together, full of love and 
 hope and sensible of a moral victory, they spread their wings to 
 a new and brighter world. Thus our heroine dies, a martyr to 
 love.