महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

lxxxiii] Uttara-Rāma-Charita: Critical Estimate a tedious soliloquizer like Mālyavant (cp. interludes to M. V. C. ii and vi) who reveals to us the exact situation of things; neither do the characters begin, as is sometimes done, by expressly telling us who they are and what they are doing (cp. interludes to M. M. v and ix; also M. V. C. iv. 40⁴); but rather we find a group of persons with an individuality of their own who conduct the dialogue and give us the necessary information without seeming to do so. We have some approaches to this in the Mahāvīra- charita (cp. interludes to acts v and vii); but the best interludes are those to acts iv and ii of the Uttara-Rāma-charita. In these interludes there is hardly a word wasted, and they are entirely natural and adequate. The least successful is the one to U. R. C. act vi. Secondly, the poet has developed in this play some remarkable instances of dramatic irony. Thus in that picture-gallery scene of act i, while Rāma and Sītā are enjoying the ‘bliss of sorrows remembered’,¹ looking upon them more or less as things of the past the memory of which is to be revived only to season the cup of present joy, the audience has already heard (i. 6) of the rumour and partly divines the fate that is hanging over the two, so that it fully understands why it is that almost in spite of himself Rāma strikes a sorrowful note ² and seems to have a foreboding of he knows not what. And just at the moment when Rāma bursts into that sublime apostrophe to his sleeping wife (i. 38)—‘What of hers is not dear, save only that unendurable separation?’—the Female-warder's ‘Is come’ does indeed startle Rāma,³ but on the audience it is calculated to produce an impression not unlike that made by Iago’s aside after a similar outburst of Othello (ii. 1. 185).⁴ There is also some clever irony in acts iv and v, and throughout the recognition scene of act vi. Finally, consider how skilfully the author has tried to bridge over the twelve-year interval that separates the first act from the rest of the play.⁵ He brings the fact home to us in various ways. The nature-descriptions in act ii (especially stanza 27) and the account of the young peacock (iii. 19, 20, 21) and the elephant-cub now grown to full maturity (iii. 16, 17) make us realize that during this period growth and change were in constant

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¹ Cp. Raghuvaṁśa, xiv. 25. ² Cp. i. 27² to i. 33ᵈ. It is worthy of remark that stanza i. 23, where Rāma invokes the blessings of the Bhāgīrathī, is in the sad dirge-like hariṇī metre. See appendix 1. ³ Cp. note to the English Translation of the passage. ⁴ Othello. O my soul’s joy! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have waken’d death! • • • • • Iago (aside). O, you are well tun’d now! But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music. ⁵ Under similar conditions Shakespeare has introduced Time as the Chorus who turns his glass, and leaves ‘the growth untri’d’ (The Winter’s Tale, iv. 1).