 |
Faulk. In tears! Stay, Julia: stay but for a moment.—The door is fastened!—Julia!—my soul—but for one moment!—I hear her sobbing!—’Sdeath! what a brute am I to use her thus! Yet stay! Ay—she is coming now:—how little resolution there is in a woman!—how a few soft words can turn them!—No, faith!—she is not coming either.—Why, Julia—my love—say but that you forgive me—come but to tell me that—now this is being too resentful. Stay! she is coming too—I thought she would—no steadiness in anything: her going away must have been a mere trick then—she sha’n’t see that I was hurt by it.—I’ll affect indifference—[Hums a tune; then listens.] No—zounds! she’s not coming!—nor don’t intend it, I suppose.—This is not steadiness, but obstinacy! Yet I deserve it.—What, after so long an absence to quarrel with her tenderness!—’twas barbarous and unmanly!—I should be ashamed to see her now.—I’ll wait till her just resentment is abated—and when I distress her so again, may I lose her for ever! and be linked instead to some antique virago, whose gnawing passions, and long hoarded spleen, shall make me curse my folly half the day and all the night. (Act III, Scene II)
I am with you; poor Julia cannot appease Faulkland no matter what angle she takes. I thought at first he was just insecure or untrusting but I think it is something more; he is wrapped up in some Romantic philosophy maybe—all unguided passion, emotion? I did think his last teary speech was funny because it is like his mind is ping-ponging from one attitude to the other at an ever increasing rate. I would not have been surprised if he had seized up and froze in place. He needs a SUTH and I hope Julia ignores his pleas for reinstatement. I have no pity for him at all. ;D