Evad’ne or The Statue, a drama by Sheil (1820).  Ludov’ico, the chief minister of Naples, heads a conspiracy to murder the king and seize the crown; his great stumbling-block is the marquis of Colonna, a high-minded nobleman, who cannot be corrupted.  The sister of the marquis is Evadne (3 syl.), plighted to Vicentio.  Ludovico’s scheme is to get Colonna to murder Vicentio and the king, and then to debauch Evadne.  With this in view, he persuades Vicentio that Evadne is the king’s fille d’amour, and that she marries him merely as a flimsy cloak, but he adds “Never mind, it will make your fortune.”  The proud Neapolitan is disgusted, and flings off Evadne as a viper.  Her brother is indignant, challenges the troth-plight lover to a duel, and Vicentio falls.  Ludovico now irritates Colonna by talking of the king’s amour, and induces him to invite the king to a banquet and then murder him.  The king goes to the banquet, and Evadne shows him the statues of the Colonna family, and amongst them one of her own father, who at the battle of Milan had saved the king’s life by his own.  The king is struck with remorse, but at this moment Ludovico enters and the king conceals himself behind the statue.  Colonna tells the traitor minister the deed is done, and Ludovico orders his instant arrest, gibes him as his dupe, and exclaims, “Now I am king indeed!” At this moment the king comes forward, releases Colonna, and orders Ludovico to be arrested.  The traitor draws his sword, and Colonna kills him.  Vicentio now enters, tells how his ear has been abused, and marries Evadne.

EVAN DHU OF LOCHIEL, a Highland chief in the army of Montrose.—­Sir W. Scott, Legend of Montrose (time, Charles I.).

EVAN DHU M’COMBICH, the foster-brother of M’Ivor.—­Sir W. Scott, Waverley (time, George II.).

EVANDALE (The Right Hon. W. Maxwell, lord), in the royal army under the duke of Monmouth.  He is a suitor of Edith Bellenden, the granddaughter of Lady Margaret Bellenden, of the Tower of Tillietudlem.—­Sir W. Scott, Old Mortality (time, Charles II.).

EVAN’DER, the “good old king of Syracuse,” dethroned by Dionysius the Younger.  Evander had dethroned the elder Dionysius “and sent him for vile subsistence, a wandering sophist through the realms of Greece.”  He was the father of Euphrasia, and was kept in a dungeon on the top of a rock, where he would have been starved to death, if Euphrasia had not nourished him with “the milk designed for her own babe.”  When Syracuse was taken by Timoleon, Dionysius by accident came upon Evander, and would have killed him, but Euphrasia rushed forward and stabbed the tryant to the heart.—­A.  Murphy, The Grecian Daughter (1772).  See ERRORS OF AUTHORS, “Dionysius.”

Mr. Bently, May 6, 1796, took leave of the stage in the character of “Evander.”—­W.C.  Russell, Representative Actors, 426.

EVANGELIC DOCTOR (The), John Wycliffe, “the Morning Star of the Reformation” (1324-1384).