SOURCE.


_Abdelazer; or, the Moor's Revenge_ is an alteration of the robustious
_Lust's Dominion; or, the _Lascivious Queen_, printed 12mo, 1657, and then
attributed to Marlowe, who was certainly not the author. It is now
generally identified with _The Spanish Moor's Tragedy_ by Dekker
(Haughton and Day, 1600), although, as Fleay justly says, there is 'an
under-current of pre-Shakespearean work' unlike either Dekker or Day.
There are marked crudities of form and a rough conduct of plot which
stamp it as of very early origin. Probably it was emended and pruned by
the three collaborators.

Although often keeping close to her original, Mrs. Behn has dealt with
the somewhat rude material in a very apt and masterly way: she has, to
advantage, omitted the old King, Emanuel, King of Portugal, Alvero,
father to Maria (Florella), and the two farcical friars, Crab and Cole;
she adds Elvira, and whereas in _Lust's Dominion_ the Queen at the
conclusion is left alive, declaiming:--

'I'll fly unto some solitary residence
When I'll spin out the remnant of my life
In true contrition for my past offences.'--

Mrs. Behn far more dramatically kills her Isabella. Perhaps the famous
assassination of Henri III of France by the Dominican, Jacques Clement,
gave a hint for Roderigo masqued as a monk.

The sexual passion, the predominance of which in this tragedy a recent
critic has not a little carpingly condemned, is entirely natural in such