CHAPTER VI.THE BIRDS.

If any of this good company should note our strange array—The wasp-like waists and cross-barred suits that we have donned to-day—And if he asks what means this sting we brandish, as you see,Him will we undertake to teach, dull scholar though he beAll we who wear this tail-piece claim true Athenian birthThe rightful Aborigines, sole sons of Mother earth;[41]A lusty race, who struck good blows for Athens in the fight,What time as the Barbarian came on us like the night.With torch and brand the Persian horde swept on from east to west,To storm the hives that we had stored, and smoke us from our nest:Then we laid our hand to spear and targe, and met him on his path;Shoulder to shoulder, close we stood, and bit our lips for wrath.So fast and thick the arrows flew, that none might see the heaven,But the gods were on our side that day, and we bore them back at even.High o’er our heads, an omen good, we saw the owlet wheel,And the Persian trousers in their backs felt the good Attic steel.Still as they fled we followed close, a swarm of vengeful foes,And stung them where we chanced to light, on cheek, and lip, and nose.So to this day, barbarians say, when whispered far or near,More than all else the AtticWaspis still a name of fear.

The party are come, as usual, to summon their trusty comrade Philocleon to go with them to the courts. What makes him so late this morning? He was never wont to be the last on these occasions. They knock at the door, and call him loudly by name. He puts his head out of the window, and begging them not to make such a noise for fear they should awake his guard, explains to them his unfortunate case. He will try to let himself down to the street by a rope, if they will catch him,—and if he should fall and break his neck, they must promise to bury him with all professional honours “within the bar.” But he is discovered in the attempt by one of the watchful slaves, and thrust back again.

Then the leader of the Chorus, a veteran Wasp who has seen service, cheers on his troops to the attack of the fortress in which their comrade is so unjustifiably confined. He reminds them of the exploits of their youth:—

Forward, good friends—advance! Quick march!—Now, Comias, why so slow, man?There was a day when I may say you and I gave way to no man;Then you were as tough as dog’s hide—now Charinades moves faster!Ha! Strymodorus! in the Courts ’twere hard to find your master!Where’s Chabes? and Euérgides?—do any of ye know?—Alack! alack! for the young blood that warmed us long ago!Dost mind when at Byzantium we two kept watch together,And walked our rounds at night, old boy, in that tremendous weather?And how we stole the kneading-trough from that old baker’s wife,Split it, and fried our rations with it?—Ha, ha!—Ay,thatwas life!

Shakspeare had assuredly never read ‘The Wasps;’ but the mixture of the farcical with the pathetic which always accompanies the garrulous reminiscences of old age, and which Aristophanes introduces frequently in his comedies, is common to both these keen observers. In the comrades of the old Athenian’s youth we seem to recognise Master Shallow’squondamcontemporaries: “There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barr, and Francis Pickbone, and “Will Squele, a Cotswold man,—you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns of Court again.... O the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!”[42]

A battle-royal takes place on the stage; the Wasps, with their formidable stings, trying to storm the house, while the son and his retainers defend their position with clubs and other weapons, and especially by raising a dense smoke, which is known to be very effective against such an enemy.

The Wasps are driven back, and the old gentleman and his son agree upon a compromise. Bdelycleon promises, on condition that his father will no longer attend the public trials, to establish a little private tribunal for him at home. He shall there take cognisance of all domestic offences; with this great advantage, that if it rains or snows he can hold his courts without being obliged to turn out of doors. And—a point on which the old gentleman makes very particular inquiries—his fee shall be paid him every day as usual. On these terms, with the approval of the Chorus, the domestic truce is concluded.

It seems doubtful, however, whether the household will supply sufficient business for the court. They are thinking of beginning with an unlucky Thracian slave-girl who has burnt a sauce-pan, when most opportunely one of the other slaves rushes on the stage in hot pursuit of the house-dog Labes, who has run off with a piece of Sicilian cheese.[43]The son determines to bring this as the first case before his father, and a mock trial ensues, in which all the appliances and forms of a regular court of justice are absurdly travestied. Another dog appears in the character of prosecutor, and he is allowed to bring the accusation forward through Xanthias, one of the slaves. The indictment is drawn in due form, and the counsel for the prosecution urges in aggravation that the prisoner had refused to give the other dog, his client, a share of it. Philocleon, with a contempt for the ordinary formalities of law which would greatly shock the modern profession, is very much disposed to convict the delinquent Labes at once, on the evidence of his own senses: he stinks of cheese disgustingly, in the very nostrils of the court, at this present moment. But his son recalls him to a sense of the proprieties,and undertakes to be counsel for the defence. He calls as witnesses the cheesegrater, the brazier, and other utensils, to prove that a good deal of the said cheese had been used in the kitchen. He lays stress also on poor Labes’s previous good character as a house-dog; and pleads that, even if he has pilfered in this instance, it is entirely owing to “a defective education.” The whole scene reads very much like a chapter out of one of those modern volumes of clever nursery tales, which are almost too clever for the children for whom they are professedly intended. The Athenian audience did in fact resemble children in many points—only children of the cleverest kind. The advocate winds up with one of those visible appealsad misericordiamwhich were common at the Athenian as subsequently at the Roman bar, and which even Cicero did not disdain to make use of—the production of the unhappy family of the prisoner. The puppies are brought into court, and set up such a lamentable yelping that Philocleon desires they may be removed at once.[44]He shows, as his son thinks, some tokens of relenting towards the prisoner. He moves towards the ballot-boxes, and asks which is the one for the condemningvotes. The son shows him the wrong one, and into that he drops his vote. He has acquitted the dog by mistake, and faints away when he finds out what he has done—he has never given a vote for acquittal before in his life, and cannot forgive himself. And with this double stroke at the bitter spirit of an Athenian jury and at the ballot-box, the action of the comedy, according to our notions of dramatic fitness, might very properly end.

So strongly does one of the ablest English writers upon Aristophanes, Mr Mitchell, feel this, that in his translation he here divides the comedy, and places the remaining portion in a sequel, to which he gives the title of “The Dicast turned Gentleman.” Philocleon has been persuaded by his son to renounce his old habits of life, and to become more fashionable in his dress and conversation; but the new pursuits to which he betakes himself are scarcely so respectable as his old ones. His son, after a few lessons on modern conversation and deportment, takes him out to a dinner-party, where he insults the guests, beats the servants, and from which he returns in the last scene very far from sober, and not in the best possible company. He is followed by some half-dozen complainants, male and female, whom he has cudgelled in the streets on his way home; and when they threaten to “take the law” of him, he laughs uproariously at the old-fashioned notion. Law-courts, he assures them, are quite obsolete. In vain his son remonstrates with him upon his outrageous proceedings; he bids the “old lawyer,” as he calls him, get out of his way. So that we havehere the counterpart to the conclusion of ‘The Clouds:’ as, in the former play, young Pheidippides gives up the turf, at his father’s request, only to become a word-splitting philosopher and an undutiful son; so here the father is weaned from the law-courts, and persuaded to mix in more refined society, only to turn out a “grey iniquity” like Falstaff. The moral, if there be one, is somewhat hard to find. It may possibly be contained in a few words of the Chorus, which speak of the difficulty and the danger of a sudden change in all the habits of a man’s life. Or is it necessary always for the writer of burlesques, any more than for the poet, to supply his audience with any moral at all? Might it not be quite enough to have raised a laugh at the absurd termination of the son’s attempt to reform the father, and the tendency of all new converts to run into extremes?

‘TheBirds’ of Aristophanes, though one of the longest of his comedies, and one which evidently stood high in the estimation of the author himself, has comparatively little interest for a modern reader. Either the burlesque reads to us, as most modern burlesques assuredly would, comparatively poor and spiritless without the important adjuncts of music, scenery, dresses, and what we call the “spectacle” generally, which we know to have been in this instance on the most magnificent scale; or the points in the satire are so entirely Athenian, and directed to the passing topics of the day, that the wit of the allusions is now lost to us. Probably there is also a deeper political meaning under what appears otherwise a mere fantastical trifling; and this is the opinion of some of the best modern critics. It may be, as Süvern thinks, that the great Sicilian expedition, and the ambitious project of Alcibiades for extending the Athenian empire, form the real point of the play; easily enough apprehended by contemporaries, but become obscureto us. This is no place to discuss a question upon which even professed scholars are not agreed; but all these causes may contribute to make us incompetent judges of the effect of the play upon those who saw it acted. It failed, however, to secure the first prize that year: the author was again beaten by Ameipsias—a specimen of whose comedies one would much like to see.

Two citizens of Athens, Peisthetærus and Euelpides—names which we may, perhaps, imperfectly translate into “Plausible” and “Hopeful”—disgusted at the state of things in Athens both politically and socially, have set out in search of some hitherto undiscovered country where there shall be no lawsuits and no informers. They have hired as guides a raven and a jackdaw—who give a good deal of trouble on the road by biting and scratching—and are at last led by them to the palace of the King of the Birds, formerly King Tereus of Thrace, but changed, according to the mythologists, into the Hoopoe, whose magnificent crest is a very fit emblem of his royalty. His wife is Procne—“the Nightingale”—daughter of a mythical king of Attica, so that, in fact, he may be considered as a national kinsman. The royal porter, the Trochilus, is not very willing to admit the visitors, looking upon them as no better than a couple of bird-catchers; but the Bird-king himself receives them, when informed of their errand, with great courtesy, though he does not see how he can help them. But can they possibly want a finer city than Athens? No—but some place more quiet and comfortable. But why, he asks, should they apply to him?

“Because you were a man, the same as us;And found yourself in debt, the same as us;And did not like to pay, the same as us;And after that you changed into a bird,And ever since have flown and wandered farOver the land and seas, and have acquiredAll knowledge that a bird or man can learn.”—(F.)

The adventurers do not learn much, however, from the Hoopoe. But an original idea strikes Peisthetærus—why not build a city up here, in the region of the Birds, the mid atmosphere between earth and heaven? If the Hoopoe and his subjects will but follow his advice, they will thus hold the balance of power in the universe.

“From that position you’ll command mankind,And keep them in utter thorough subjugation,—Just as you do the grasshoppers and locusts;And if the gods offend you, you’ll blockade them,And starve them to surrender.”—(F.)

The king summons a public meeting of his subjects to consider the proposal of their human visitors; and no doubt the appearance of the Chorus in their grotesque masks and elaborate costumes, representing twenty-four birds of various species, from the flamingo to the woodpecker, would be hailed with great delight by an Athenian audience, who in these matters were very much like grown-up children. The music appears to have been of a very original character, and more elaborate than usual; and the part of the Nightingale, with solos on the flute behind the scenes, is said to have been taken by a female performer of great ability, apublic favourite who had just returned to Athens after a long absence. But the mere words of a comic extravaganza, whether Greek or English, without the accompaniments, on which so much depends, are little better than the dry skeleton of the piece, and can convey but a very inadequate idea of its attractions when fittingly “mounted” on the stage. This is notably the case with this production of our author, which, from its whole character, must have depended very much upon the completeness of such accessories for its success.

The Birds are at first inclined to receive their human visitors as hereditary and notorious enemies. “Men were deceivers ever,” is their song, in so many words; and it requires all the king’s influence to keep them from attacking them and killing them at once. At length they agree to a parley, and Peisthetærus begins by paying some ingenious compliments to the high respectability and antiquity of the feathered race. Was not the cock once king of the Persians? is he not still called the “Persian bird”? and still even to this day, the moment he crows, do not all men everywhere jump out of bed and go to their work? And was not the cuckoo king of Egypt; and still when they hear him cry “cuckoo!” do not all the Egyptians go into the harvest-fields? Do not kings bear eagles and doves now on their sceptres, in token of the true sovereignty of the Birds? Is not Jupiter represented always with his eagle, Minerva with her owl, Apollo with his hawk? But now,—he goes on to say—“men hunt you, and trap you, and set you out for sale, and,not content with, simply roasting you, they actually pour scalding sauce over you,—oil, and vinegar, and grated cheese,—spoiling your naturally exquisite flavour.” But, if they will be advised by him, they will bear it no longer. If men will still prefer the gods to the birds, then let the rooks and sparrows flock down and eat up all the seed-wheat—and let foolish mortals see what Ceres can then do for them in the way of supplies. And let the crows peck out the eyes of the sheep and oxen; and let them see whether Apollo (who calls himself a physician, and takes care to get his fees as such) will be able to heal them. [Euelpides here puts in a word—he hopes they will allow him first to sell a pair of oxen he has at home.] And indeed the Birds will make much better gods, and more economical: there will be no need of costly marble temples, and expensive journeys to such places as Ammon and Delphi; an oak-tree or an olive-grove will answer all purposes of bird-worship.

He then propounds his great scheme for building a bird-city in mid-air. The idea is favourably entertained, and the two featherless bipeds are equipped (by means of some potent herb known to the Bird-king) with a pair of wings apiece, to make them presentable in society, before they are introduced at the royal table. The metamorphosis causes some amusement, and the two human travellers are not complimentary as to each other’s appearance in these new appendages; Peisthetærus declaring that his friend reminds him of nothing so much as “a goose on acheap sign-board,” while the other retorts by comparing him to “a plucked blackbird.”[45]

The Choral song that follows is one of the gems of that elegance of fancy and diction which, here and there, in the plays of Aristophanes, almost startle us by contrast with the broad farce which forms their staple, and show that the author possessed the powers of a true poet as well as of a clever satirist.

“Ye children of man! whose life is a span,Protracted with sorrow from day to day,Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous,Sickly calamitous creatures of clay!Attend to the words of the sovereign birds,Immortal, illustrious lords of the air,Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye,Your struggles of misery, labour, and care.Whence you may learn and clearly discernSuch truths as attract your inquisitive turn;Which is busied of late with a mighty debate,A profound speculation about the creation,And organical life, and chaotical strife,With various notions of heavenly motions,And rivers and oceans, and valleys and mountains,And sources of fountains, and meteors on high,And stars in the sky.... We propose by-and-by(If you’ll listen and hear) to make it all clear.”—(F.)

There follows here some fantastical cosmogony, showing how all things had their origin from a mystic egg, laid by Night, from which sprang the golden-winged Eros—Love, the great principle of life, whose offspring were the Birds.

“Our antiquity proved, it remains to be shownThat Love is our author and master alone;Like him we can ramble and gambol and flyO’er ocean and earth, and aloft to the sky:And all the world over, we’re friends to the lover,And where other means fail, we are found to prevail,When a peacock or pheasant is sent as a present.All lessons of primary daily concernYou have learnt from the birds, and continue to learn,Your best benefactors and early instructors;We give you the warning of seasons returning;When the cranes are arranged, and muster afloatIn the middle air, with a creaking note,Steering away to the Lybian sands,Then careful farmers sow their lands;The crazy vessel is hauled ashore,The sail, the ropes, the rudder, and oarAre all unshipped, and housed in store.The shepherd is warned, by the kite reappearing,To muster his flock, and be ready for shearing.You quit your old cloak at the swallow’s behest,In assurance of summer, and purchase a vest.For Delphi, for Ammon, Dodona, in fineFor every oracular temple and shrine,The birds are a substitute equal and fair,For on us you depend, and to us you repairFor counsel and aid when a marriage is made,A purchase, a bargain, a venture in trade:Unlucky or lucky, whatever has struck ye—An ox or an ass that may happen to pass,A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet,A name or a word by chance overheard—If you deem it an omen, you call it abird;And if birds are your omens, it clearly will followThat birds are a proper prophetic Apollo.”—(F.)

The Birds proceed at once to build their new city. Peisthetærus prefers helping with his head rather than his hands, but he orders off his simple-minded companion to assist them in the work.

Peis.Come now, go aloft, my boy, and tend the masons;Find them good stones; strip to it, like a man,And mix the mortar; carry up the hod—And tumble down the ladder, for a change.Set guards over the wall; take care of fire;Go your rounds with the bell as city watchman—And go to sleep on your post—as I know you will.Euelp.(sulkily). And you stay here and be hanged, if you like—there, now!Peis.(winking at the King). Go! there’s a good fellow, go! upon my word,They couldn’t possibly get on without you.

The building is completed, by the joint exertions of the Birds, in a shorter time than even the enthusiastic speculations of Peisthetærus had calculated:—

“Messenger.There came a body of thirty thousand cranes(I won’t be positive, there might be more)With stones from Africa in their craws and gizzards,Which the stone-curlews and stone-chatterersWorked into shape and finished. The sand-martinsAnd mudlarks too were busy in their department,Mixing the mortar; while the water-birds,As fast as it was wanted, brought the water,To temper and work it.Peis.(in a fidget). But who served the masons?Who did you get to carry it?Mess.To carry it?Of course thecarrioncrows and carrier-pigeons.”[46]—(F.)

The geese with their flat feet trod the mortar, and the pelicans with their saw-bills were the carpenters. The name fixed upon for this new metropolis is “Cloud-Cuckoo-Town”—the first recorded “castle in the air.” It must be the place, Euelpides thinks, where some of those great estates lie which he has heard certain friends of his in Athens boast of. It appears to be indeed a very unsubstantial kind of settlement; for Iris, the messenger of the Immortals, who has been despatched from heaven to inquire after the arrears of sacrifice, quite unaware of its existence and its purpose, dashes through the airy blockade immediately after its building. She is pursued, however, by a detachment of light cavalry—hawks, falcons, and eagles—and brought upon the stage as prisoner, in a state of great wrath atthe indignity put upon her,—wrath which is by no means mollified by the sarcasms of Peisthetærus on the flaunting style and very pronounced colours of her costume as goddess of the Rainbow.

The men seem well inclined to the new ruling powers, and many apply at once to be furnished with wings. But the state of things in the celestial regions soon gets so intolerable, owing to the stoppage of all communication with earth and its good things, that certain barbarian deities, the gods of Thrace, who are—as an Athenian audience would readily understand—of a very carnal and ill-mannered type, break out into open rebellion, and threaten mutiny against the supremacy of Jupiter, unless he can come to some terms with this new intermediate power. Information of this movement is brought by Prometheus—here, as in the tragedians, the friend of man and the enemy of Jupiter—who comes secretly to Peisthetærus (getting under an umbrella, that Jupiter may not see him) and advises him on no account to come to any terms with that potentate which do not include the transfer into his possession of the fair Basileia (sovereignty), who rules the household of Olympus, and is the impersonation of all good things that can be desired. In due time an embassy from the gods in general arrives at the new city, sent to treat with the Birds. The Commissioners are three: Neptune, Hercules (whose appetite for good things was notorious, and who would be a principal sufferer by the cutting off the supplies), and a Thracian god—a Triballian—who talks very bad Greek indeed, and who has succeeded in some way in gettinghimself named on the embassy, to the considerable disgust of Neptune, who has much trouble in making him look at all respectable and presentable.

“Nep.There’s Nephelococcugia! that’s the town,The point we’re bound to with our embassy.(Turning to the Triballian.)But you! what a figure have ye made yourself!What a way to wear a mantle! slouching offFrom the left shoulder! Hitch it round, I tell ye,On the right side. For shame—come—so; that’s better;These folds, too, bundled up; there, throw them roundEven and easy,—so. Why, you’re a savage,A natural-born savage.—Oh, democracy!What will it bring us to, when such a ruffianIs voted into an embassy!Trib.(to Neptune, who is pulling his dress about). Come, hands off,Hands off!Nep.Keep quiet, I tell ye, and hold your tongue,For a very beast! in all my life in heaven,I never saw such another. Hercules,I say, what shall we do? What should you think?Her.What would I do? what do I think? I’ve told youAlready—I think to throttle him—the fellow,Whoever he is, that’s keeping us blockaded.Nep.Yes, my good friend; but we were sent, you know,To treat for a peace. Our embassy is for peace.Her.That makes no difference; or if it does,It makes me long to throttle him all the more.”—(F.)

Hercules, ravenous as he always is, and having been kept for some time on very short commons, is won over by the rich odour of some cookery in which hefinds Peisthetærus, now governor of the new state, employed on their arrival. He is surprised to discover that theroticonsists of birds, until it is explained to him that they are aristocrat birds, who have, in modern phrase, been guilty of conspiring against democracy. This brief but bitter satire upon this Bird-Utopia is thrown in as it were by the way, quite casually; but one wonders how the audience received it. Hercules determines to make peace on any terms; and when Neptune seems inclined to stand upon the dignity of his order, and taunts his brother god with being too ready to sacrifice his father’s rights, he draws the Triballian aside, and threatens him roundly with a good thrashing if he does not give his vote the right way. Having secured his majority of votes by this powerful argument—a kind of argument by no means peculiar to aerial controversies, but familiar alike to despots and demagogues in all times—Hercules concludes on behalf of the gods the truce with the Birds. Jupiter agrees to resign his sceptre to them, on condition that there is no further embargo on the sacrifices, and to give up to Peisthetærus the beautiful Basileia; and in the closing scene she appears in person, decked as a bride, riding in procession by the side of Peisthetærus, while the Chorus chant a half-burlesque epithalamium. “Plausible” has won the sovereignty, but of a very unsubstantial kingdom—if that be the moral of the play.

Süvern contends, in his very ingenious Essay on this comedy, that the fantastic project in which the Birds are persuaded by Peisthetærus to engage is intended to represent the ultimate designs of Alcibiades in urging the expedition of the Athenians to Sicily,—no less than the subjugation of Italy, Carthage, and Libya, and obtaining the sovereignty of the Mediterranean: by which the Spartans (the gods of the comedy) would be cut off from intercourse with the smaller states, here represented by the men. He considers that in Peisthetærus we have Alcibiades, compounded with some traits of the sophist Gorgias, whose pupil he is said to have been. Iris’s threat of the wrath of her father Jupiter—which certainly is more seriously worded than the general tone of the play—he takes to be a prognostication of the unhappy termination of the expedition, a feeling shared by many at Athens; while in the transfer of Basileia—all the real power—to Peisthetærus, and not to the Birds, he foreshadows the probable results of the personal ambition of Alcibiades. Such an explanation receives support from many other passages in the comedy, and is worked out by the writer with great pains and ability.

Thepoint of the satire in this comedy is chiefly critical, and directed against the tragedian Euripides, upon whom Aristophanes is never weary of showering his ridicule. There must have been something more in this than the mere desire to raise a laugh by a burlesque of a popular tragedian, or the satisfaction of a purely literary dislike. It is probable, as has been suggested, that our conservative and aristocratic author looked upon Euripides as a dangerous innovator in philosophy as well as in literature; one of the “new school” at Athens, whom he was so fond of contrasting with the “men of Marathon.”

Bacchus, the patron of the drama, has become disgusted with its present state. He finds worse writers now in possession of the stage than Euripides; and he has resolved upon undertaking a journey to Tartarus, to bring him back to earth again. He would prefer Sophocles; but to get away from the dominions of Pluto requires a good deal of scheming and stratagem: and Sophocles is such a good easy man that he is probably contented where he is, while the other is such a clever, contriving fellow, that he will be sure to find some plan for his own escape. Remembering the success of Hercules on a similar expedition to the lower regions, Bacchus has determined to adopt the club and the lion’s skin, in order to be taken for that hero. Followed by his slave Xanthias—who comes in riding upon an ass (a kind of classical Sancho Panza), and carrying his master’s luggage—he calls upon Hercules on his way, in order to gather from him some information as to his route,—which is the best road to take, what there is worth seeing there, and especially what inns he can recommend, where the beds are reasonably clean, and free from those disagreeable bedfellows with which the Athenians of old seem to have been quite as well acquainted as any modern Londoner.

Hercules laughs to himself at the figure which his brother deity cuts in a costume so unsuited to his habits and character, and answers him in a tone of banter. Bacchus wants to know the shortest and most convenient road to the regions of the dead.

“Her.“Well,—which shall I tell ye first, now? Let me see—There’s a good convenient road by the Rope and Noose—The Hanging Road.Bac.No, that’s too close and stifling.Her.Then there’s an easy, fair, well-beaten track,As you go by the Pestle and Mortar.Bac.What, the Hemlock?Her.To be sure.Bac.That’s much too cold,—it will never do.They tell me it strikes a chill to the legs and feet.Her.Should you like a speedy, rapid, downhill road?Bac.Indeed I should, for I’m a sorry traveller.Her.Go to the Keramicus, then.Bac.What then?Her.Get up to the very top of the tower—Bac.What then?Her.Stand there and watch when the Race of the Torch begins;And mind, when you hear the people cry ‘Start, start!’Then start at once with ’em.Bac.Me? Start? Where from?Her.From the top of the tower to the bottom.Bac.No, not I.It’s enough to dash my brains out! I’ll not goSuch a road upon any account.”—(F.)

Bacchus gets the needful information at last, and sets out on his journey—not without some remonstrance from his slave as to the weight of the luggage he has to carry. Surely, Xanthias says, there must be some dead people going that way on their own account, in a conveyance, who would carry it for a trifle? His master gives him leave to make such an arrangement if he can—and as a bier is borne across the stage, Xanthias stops it, and tries to make a bargain with the occupant. The dead man asks eighteenpence; Xanthias offers him a shilling; the other replies that he “would rather come to life again,” and bids his bearers “move on.”

There must have been some kind of change of scene, to enable the travellers to arrive at the passage of the Styx, where Charon’s ferry-boat is in waiting. He plies his trade exactly after the fashion of a modern omnibus-conductor. “Any one for Lethe, Tænarus,the Dogs, or No-man’s-Land?” “You’re sure you’re going straight to Hell?” asks the cautious traveller. “Certainly—to oblige you.” So Bacchus steps into the boat, begging Charon to be very careful, for it seems very small and crank, as Hercules had warned him. But Charon carries no slaves—Xanthias must run round and meet them on the other side. The god takes his place at the oar, at the ferryman’s bidding (but in very awkward “form,” as a modern oarsman would term it), to work his passage across: and an invisible Chorus of Frogs, who give their name to the piece—the “Swans of the Marsh,” as Charon calls them—chant their discordant music, in which, nevertheless, occur some very graceful lines, to the time of the stroke. It must be remembered that the oldest temple of Bacchus—the Lenæan—was known as that “In the Marsh,” and it was there that the festival, was held at which this piece was brought forward.

The chant of the Frogs dies away in the distance, and the scene changes to the other side of the infernal lake, where Xanthias was to await the arrival of his master. It does not seem likely that any means could have been adopted for darkening a stage which was nearly five hundred feet broad, and open to the sky: but it is plain that much of the humour of the following scene depends upon its being supposed to take place more or less in the dark. Probably the darkness was conventional, and only by grace of the audience—as indeed must be the case to some extent even in a modern theatre.

[Enter Bacchus, on one side of the stage.]B.Hoy! Xanthias!—Where’s Xanthias?—I say, Xanthias![Enter Xanthias, on the other side.]X.Hallo!B.Come here, sir,—quick!X.Here I am, master!B.What kind of a place is it, out yonder?X.Dirt and darkness.B.Did you see any of those perjurers and assassinsHe told us of?X.Aye,—lots.(Looking round at the audience.)I see ’em now—don’t you?B.(looking round). To be sure I do, by Neptune! now I see ’em!—What shall we do?X.Go forward, I should say;This is the place where lie those evil beasts—The monsters that he talked of.B.Oh! confound him!He was romancing—trying to frighten me,Knowing how bold I was—jealous, that’s the fact:Never was such a braggart as that Hercules!I only wish Icouldfall in with something—Some brave adventure, worthy of my visit.X.Stop!—there!—by Jove, I heard a roar out yonder!B.(nervously). Where, where?X.Behind us.B.(pushing himself in front of Xanthias). Go behind, sir, will you?X.No—it’s in front.B.(getting behind Xanthias again). Why don’t you go in front, then?X.Great Jupiter! I see an awful beast!B.What like?X.Oh—horrible! like everything!Now it’s a bull—and now a stag—and nowA beautiful woman!B.(jumping from behind X., and pushing him back). Where?—Let me go first!X.It’s not a woman now—it’s a great dog!B.(in great terror, getting behind X. again). Oh!—it’s the Empusa![47]X.(getting frightened). It’s got eyes like fire,And its face all of a blaze!B.And one brass leg?X.Lawk-a-mercy, yes!—and a cloven foot on the other—It has indeed!B.(looking round in terror). “Where can I get to—tell me?X.“Where can I go? (runs into a corner.)B.(makes as if he would run into the arms of the Priest of Bacchus, who had a seat of honour in the front row.)Good priest, protect me!—take me home to supper![48]X.(from his corner). We’re lost—we’re lost! O Hercules, dear master!B.(in a frightened whisper). Don’t call me by that name, you fool—don’t, don’t!X.Well,—Bacchus, must I say?B.No-o!—that’s worse still!X.(to something in the distance). Avaunt, there! go thy ways! (Joyfully.) Here, master! here!B.What is it?X.Hurrah! take heart! we’ve had the greatest luck—We can say now, in our great poet’s words,—“After a storm there comes a calm.”—It’s gone!B.Upon your oath?X.Upon my oath.B.You swear it?X.I swear it.B.Swear again.X.I swear—by Jupiter.

But now the sound of flutes is heard in the distance, and with music and torches, a festive procession enters the orchestra. A parody of the great Eleusinian mysteries (for even these were lawful game to the comedy-writer) introduces the true Chorus of this play, consisting of the ‘Initiated,’ who chant an ode, half serious half burlesque, in honour of Bacchus and Ceres. They direct the travellers to the gates of Pluto’s palace, which are close at hand. Bacchus eyes the awful portal for some time before he ventures to lift the knocker, and is very anxious to announce himself in the most polite fashion. “How do people knock at doors in these parts, I wonder?”

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