Nothing material is changed by his change of heart. He could
not in any case have restrained Ellida by force; or, if the law gave him
the abstract right to do so, he certainly never had the slightest
intention of exercising it. Psychologically, indeed, the incident is
acceptable enough. The saner part of Ellida's will was always on
Wangel's side; and a merely verbal undoing of the "bargain" with which
she reproached herself might quite naturally suffice to turn the scale
decisively in his favour. But what may suffice for Ellida is not enough
for the audience. Too much is made to hang upon a verbally announced
conversion. The poet ought to have invented some material--or, at the
very least, some impressively symbolic--proof of Wangel's change of
heart. Had he done so, _The Lady from the Sea_ would assuredly have
taken a higher rank among his works.
Let me further illustrate my point by comparing a very small thing with
a very great. The late Captain Marshall wrote a "farcical romance" named
_The Duke of Killiecrankie_, in which that nobleman, having been again
and again rejected by the Lady Henrietta Addison, kidnapped the obdurate
fair one, and imprisoned her in a crag-castle in the Highlands.
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