Hioerdis herself is
superhuman; she has eaten the heart of a wolf, she claims direct descent
from a race of fighting giants. There is a grandeur about the conception
of her form and character, but it is a grandeur which might well daunt a
human actress. One can faintly imagine the part being played by Mrs.
Siddons, with such an extremity of fierceness and terror that ladies and
gentlemen would be carried out of the theatre in hysterics, as in the
days of Byron. Where Hioerdis insults her guests, and contrives the
horrid murder of the boy Thorolf before their eyes, we have a stage-
dilemma presented to us-either the actress must treat the scene
inadequately, or else intolerably. _Ne pueros coram populo Medea
trucidet_, and we shrink from Hioerdis with a physical disgust. Her great
hands and shrieking mouth are like Bellona's, and they smell of blood.
What is true of Hioerdis is true in less degree of all the characters in
_The Vikings_. They are "great beautiful half-witted men," as Mr.
Chesterton would say:
Our sea was dark with dreadful ships
Full of strange spoil and fire,
And hairy men, as strange as sin,
With horrid heads, came wading in
Through the long low sea-mire.
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