Author and adapter alike had trusted entirely to the tragic force of the situation and the universality of the motives appealed to.
The diction of the piece was the diction of Alfred de Vigny or of the school of Victor Hugo.

It was, indeed, rather a dramatic love-poem than a play, in the modern sense, and it depended altogether for its success upon the two characters of Macias and Elvira.
In devising the character of Macias the Italian author had made use of a traditional Spanish type, which has its historical sources, and has inspired many a Spanish poet from the fifteenth century downwards.

Macias is knight, poet, and lover; his love is a kind of southern madness which withers every other feeling in its neighbourhood, and his tragic death is the only natural ending to a career so fierce and uncontrolled.

Elvira, with whom Macias is in love, the daughter of Nuno Fernandez, is embodied gentleness and virtue, until the fierce progress of her fate has taught her that men are treacherous and the world cruel.

For her love had been prosperous and smooth until, by a series of events, it had been brought into antagonism with two opposing interests--those of her father and of a certain Fernan Perez, the tool and favourite of the powerful Duke of Villena.