Play: Mirandola

Overview
"Mirandola" is a five-act romantic tragedy by Barry Cornwall (pseudonym of Bryan Waller Procter), first published in 1821. Set against a backdrop of princely courts and private passion, the drama follows Prince Mirandola as he navigates love, ambition, and the corrosive consequences of betrayal. The play blends heightened sentiment with moral conflict, reflecting Romantic-era preoccupations with individual feeling, honor, and fate.

Plot Summary
The central action revolves around Mirandola's intense love for a noblewoman whose loyalties and past complicate their union. Ambition and political rivalry at court foment schemes that test personal fidelity and public duty. As accusations and misunderstandings multiply, Mirandola finds his love entangled with questions of legitimacy, honor, and the temptations of power, leading to tragic decisions that culminate in ruin for several principal figures.

Principal Characters
Prince Mirandola stands at the heart of the drama: proud, passionate, and vulnerable to both romantic idealism and wounded pride. The heroine, whose affection Mirandola seeks, embodies the era's conflicted virtues, devotion tempered by secrecy and an anxious sense of propriety. Rival courtiers and confidants supply political pressure and manipulation, while secondary figures highlight themes of loyalty and conscience by their quieter, moral resistance or tragic complicity.

Themes and Motifs
Love and ambition intersect destructively throughout the play, with personal longing repeatedly colliding with the demands of status and reputation. Betrayal appears in both intimate and political forms, showing how deception corrodes trust and distorts honor. The tragedy repeatedly turns on miscommunication and the inability of characters to reconcile private truth with public expectation, a motif that intensifies the sense of inevitable catastrophe. Honor, pride, and the cost of idealism also recur, probing whether elevated feeling can survive in a world governed by intrigue.

Style and Dramatic Structure
Cornwall's verse and diction lean toward the Romantic, favoring elevated language and expressive monologues that reveal interior turmoil. The five-act structure allows for measured development: exposition and conflict rise in the early acts, complications and schemes deepen in the middle, and the final acts deliver moral reckonings and the tragic dénouement. Dialogue alternates between passionate outbursts and sober deliberation, giving actors opportunities for rhetorical grandeur as well as intimate pathos.

Reception and Significance
At the time of publication, "Mirandola" appealed to readers attuned to tragic romance and poetic drama, though its classical tragic arc is tempered by distinctly Romantic sensibilities. The play offers an exploration of how personal ideals withstand, or fail, under social pressures, contributing to early nineteenth-century debates about individual feeling and public responsibility. While not a mainstay of modern theatrical repertoires, "Mirandola" remains a revealing example of Barry Cornwall's dramatic ambition and of Romantic tragedy's concern with the tragic consequences of passion unchecked by prudence.