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).