Representative American Plays/Tortesa the Usurer

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

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TORTESA THE USURER
BY
Nathaniel Parker Willis

 

TORTESA THE USURER

Tortesa the Usurer is a representative of the romantic comedy in verse. While not nearly so frequently written as the verse tragedy, this form of play had some notable examples, such as Boker's Betrothal. The author of Tortesa, Nathaniel Parker Willis, was born in Portland, Maine, January 20, 1806, of Puritan ancestry. He was educated at the Boston Latin School and graduated from Yale College in 1827. While in college he wrote verse, much of it of a religious character, which represented a phase of his development out of which he later passed entirely. In 1831 he went to New York City and with George R. Morris and Theodore S. Fay published the New York Mirror. The next five years he spent in Europe and the East, meeting everywhere interesting people and reflecting his experiences in letters to the Mirror which were published in his Pencillings by the Way (1835). After his return to this country in 1836 he spent some time in Washington and lived for five years at Glenmary, a spot near the head-waters of the Susquehanna River, where he wrote his Letters from Under a Bridge (1839), probably the best of his prose work, and it was during this most significant period of Willis's life that his plays were written. Financial necessity compelled him to return to New York, however. In 1843 he became editor of the New Mirror and in 1846 of the Home Journal. The last years of his life were spent in a heroic effort to keep the Journal going, despite the drawback of ill health. One of the most appealing phases of our literary history reflects his generosity toward the other writers of the time, especially toward Poe. His defense of Poe which he published in the Home Journal as an answer to Griswold's attack, is a fine example of true sympathy and understanding combined with rare delicacy of expression. Willis died January 20, 1867.

His first play, Bianca Visconti, was written in competition for a prize offered by Josephine Clifton for the best play suited to her talents. It was first played at the Park Theatre, New York, August 25, 1837, and was performed afterward in Boston and Philadelphia. It was played as late as May, 1852, by Miss M. Davenport in Philadelphia. It is a verse tragedy, laid in Milan in the fourteenth century, and is based on the history of the real Francesco Sforza who married the natural daughter of Philip Visconti and later became Duke of Milan. In the same year, November 29, 1837, Miss Clifton produced a comedy by Willis, called The Kentucky Heiress, which was not successful.

Tortesa the Usurer was written for James W. Wallack, who produced it at the National Theatre in New York, April 8, 1839, playing "Tortesa." It was very successful and was considered by Wallack to contain one of his best parts. When after the burning of the National Theatre in 1839 the elder Wallack returned for a time to England, he produced Tortesa at the Surrey Theatre, London, in August, 1839. He afterward played "Tortesa" frequently, and the first professional appearance of Lester Wallack, his son, was in the character of "Angelo" when he supported his father in this English tour. In this country the play was acted as far south as Mobile, Alabama, where E. S. Connor played "Angelo" in 1845, the part he had acted with Wallack in 1839.

In character delineation, in the use of practical stage devices, and in the manner in which the playwright has, without making the language stilted, placed such excellent poetry in the mouths of the characters, Tortesa the Usurer is noteworthy. The influence of Romeo and Juliet and of The Winter's Tale is probably sufficiently evident. The direct source of the play goes back to the Florentine story of Genevra degli Amieri, who was married to Francesco Agolanti while in love with Antonio Rondinelli, and who apparently died and was buried. Coming to life during the night she escaped from the vault and was refused admittance by her husband, her father and her uncle, all of whom thought she was a spirit. She then went to Antonio's house and was tenderly and considerately treated by him. They were afterwards married, the former marriage being annulled. The story, which suggested merely the main outlines of one incident in the play, is to be found in the story of La Sepolta Viva, by Domenico Maria Manni, translated by Thomas Roscoe in his Italian Novelists, London, 1825, vol. 4. Eugene Scribe wrote an opera on the theme with the title of Guido et Genevra ou La Peste de Florence, played and published in 1838. This is so different from Willis's play that it is unlikely that he used it as a source, unless he took the idea of Genevra rising from the tomb from it instead of from the Italian. Scribe made Guido a sculptor, but his art plays no part in the play as in Angelo's case. Shelley also used the theme in his fragment, Genevra.

Tortesa the Usurer and Bianca Visconti were published in 1839 in New York and also in London. They are now hard to obtain. For references to the plays, see Ireland, Records of the New York Stage, Vol. 2, p. 283; Lester Wallack, Memories of Fifty Years, New York, 1889, p. 35. For the Life of Willis, see Henry H. Beers, Nathaniel Parker Willis, American Men of Letters Series, Boston, 1893, and for an interesting criticism of Tortesa, see Poe's articles in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, August, 1839, later expanded and incorporated in a discussion of The American Drama, in the American Whig Review, August, 1845. They are to be found in vol. 10, p. 27, and vol. 13, p. 33, of the Virginia edition of Poe's works.