‘Upon her eyelids many graces sat,Under the shadow of her even brows.’
‘Upon her eyelids many graces sat,Under the shadow of her even brows.’
‘Upon her eyelids many graces sat,
Under the shadow of her even brows.’
The description of the soldiers going to battle in Shakespear, ‘all plumed like estriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls,’ is too bold, figurative, and profuse of dazzling images, for the mild, equable tone of classical poetry, which never loses sight of the object in the illustration. The ideas of the ancients were too exact and definite, too much attached to the material form or vehicle in which they were conveyed, to admit of those rapid combinations, those unrestrained flights of fancy, which, glancing from heaven to earth, unite the most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest illustrations from things the most remote. The two principles of imitation and imagination indeed, are not only distinct, but almost opposite. For the imagination is that power which represents objects, not as they are, but as they are moulded according to our fancies and feelings. Let an object be presented to the senses in a state of agitation and fear—and the imagination will magnify the object, and convert it into whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. It is the same in all other cases in which poetry speaks the language of the imagination. This language is not the less true to nature because it is false in point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind. We compare a man of gigantic stature to a tower; not that he is any thing like so large, but because the excess of his size, beyond what we are accustomed to expect, produces a greater feeling of magnitude and ponderous strength than an object of ten times the same dimensions. Things, in short, are equal in the imagination, which have the power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror, admiration, delight or love. When Lear calls upon the Heavens to avenge his cause, ‘for they are old like him,’ there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identification of his age with theirs; for there is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and his despair!
The great difference, then, which we find between the classical and the romantic style, between ancient and modern poetry, is, thatthe one more frequently describes things as they are interesting in themselves,—the other for the sake of the associations of ideas connected with them; that the one dwells more on the immediate impressions of objects on the senses—the other on the ideas which they suggest to the imagination. The one is the poetry of form, the other of effect. The one gives only what is necessarily implied in the subject; the other all that can possibly arise out of it. The one seeks to identify the imitation with an external object,—clings to it,—is inseparable from it,—is either that or nothing; the other seeks to identify the original impression with whatever else, within the range of thought or feeling, can strengthen, relieve, adorn or elevate it. Hence the severity and simplicity of the Greek tragedy, which excluded everything foreign or unnecessary to the subject. Hence the unities: for, in order to identify the imitation as much as possible with the reality, and leave nothing to mere imagination, it was necessary to give the same coherence and consistency to the different parts of a story, as to the different limbs of a statue. Hence the beauty and grandeur of their materials; for, deriving their power over the mind from the truth of the imitation, it was necessary that the subject which they made choice of, and from which they could not depart, should be in itself grand and beautiful. Hence the perfection of their execution; which consisted in giving the utmost harmony, delicacy, and refinement to the details of a given subject. Now, the characteristic excellence of the moderns is the reverse of all this. As, according to our author, the poetry of the Greeks is the same as their sculpture; so, he says, our own more nearly resembles painting,—where the artist can relieve and throw back his figures at pleasure,—use a greater variety of contrasts,—and where light and shade, like the colours of fancy, are reflected on the different objects. The Muse of classical poetry should be represented as a beautiful naked figure: the Muse of modern poetry should be represented clothed, and with wings. The first has the advantage in point of form; the last in colour and motion.
Perhaps we may trace this difference to something analogous in physical organization, situation, religion and manners. First, the natural organization of the Greeks seems to have been more perfect, more susceptible of external impressions, and more in harmony with external nature than ours, who have not the same advantages of climate and constitution. Born of a beautiful and vigorous race, with quick senses and a clear understanding, and placed under a mild heaven, they gave the fullest development to their external faculties: and where all is perceived easily, every thing is perceived in harmony and proportion. It is the stern genius of the North which drivesmen back upon their own resources, which makes them slow to perceive, and averse to feel, and which, by rendering them insensible to the single, successive impressions of things, requires their collective and combined force to rouse the imagination violently and unequally. It should be remarked, however, that the early poetry of some of the Eastern nations has even more of that irregularity, wild enthusiasm, and disproportioned grandeur, which has been considered as the distinguishing character of the Northern nations.
Again, a good deal may be attributed to the state of manners and political institutions. The ancient Greeks were warlike tribes encamped in cities. They had no other country than that which was enclosed within the walls of the town in which they lived. Each individual belonged, in the first instance, to the State; and his relations to it were so close, as to take away, in a great measure, all personal independence and free-will. Every one was mortised to his place in society, and had his station assigned him as part of the political machine, which could only subsist by strict subordination and regularity. Every man was as it were perpetually on duty, and his faculties kept constant watch and ward. Energy of purpose, and intensity of observation, became the necessary characteristics of such a state of society; and the general principle communicated itself from this ruling concern for the public, to morals, to art, to language, to every thing.—The tragic poets of Greece were among her best soldiers; and it is no wonder that they were as severe in their poetry as in their discipline. Their swords and their styles carved out their way with equal sharpness. This state of things was afterwards continued under the Roman empire. In the ages of chivalry and romance, which, after a considerable interval, succeeded its dissolution, and which have stamped their character on modern genius and literature, all was reversed. Society was again resolved into its component parts; and the world was, in a manner, to begin anew. The ties which bound the citizen and the soldier to the State being loosened, each person was thrown back, as it were, into the circle of the domestic affections, or left to pursue his doubtful way to fame and fortune alone. This interval of time might be accordingly supposed to give birth to all that was constant in attachment, adventurous in action, strange, wild and extravagant in invention. Human life took the shape of a busy, voluptuous dream, where the imagination was now lost amidst ‘antres vast and deserts idle;’ or, suddenly transported to stately palaces, echoing with dance and song. In this uncertainty of events, this fluctuation of hopes and fears, all objects became dim, confused and vague. Magicians, dwarfs, giants, followed in the train of romance; and Orlando’s enchanted sword, the hornwhich he carried with him, and which he blew thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero’s winged horse, were not sufficient to protect them in their unheard-of encounters, or deliver them from their inextricable difficulties. It was a return to the period of the early heroic ages; but tempered by the difference of domestic manners, and the spirit of religion. The marked difference in the relation of the sexes, arose from the freedom of choice in women, which, from being the slaves of the will and passions of men, converted them into the arbiters of their fate, which introduced the modern system of gallantry, and first made love a feeling of the heart, founded on mutual affection and esteem. The leading virtues of the Christian religion, self-denial and generosity, assisted in producing the same effect.—Hence the spirit of chivalry, of romantic love, and honour!
The mythology of the romantic poetry differed from the received religion: both differed essentially from the classical. The religion, or mythology of the Greeks, was nearly allied to their poetry: it was material and definite. The Pagan system reduced the Gods to the human form, and elevated the powers of inanimate nature to the same standard. Statues carved out of the finest marble, represented the objects of their religious worship in airy porticos, in solemn temples and consecrated groves. Mercury was seen ‘new-lighted on some heaven-kissing hill;’ and the Naiad or Dryad came gracefully forth as the personified genius of the stream or wood. All was subjected to the senses. The Christian religion, on the contrary, is essentially spiritual and abstract; it is ‘the evidence of things unseen.’ In the Heathen mythology, form is everywhere predominant; in the Christian, we find only unlimited, undefined power. The imagination alone ‘broods over the immense abyss, and makes it pregnant.’ There is, in the habitual belief of an universal, invisible Principle of all things, a vastness and obscurity which confounds our perceptions, while it exalts our piety. A mysterious awe surrounds the doctrines of the Christian faith: the Infinite is everywhere before us, whether we turn to reflect on what is revealed to us of the Divine nature or our own.
History, as well as religion, has contributed to enlarge the bounds of imagination; and both together, by showing past and future objects at an interminable distance, have accustomed the mind to contemplate and take an interest in the obscure and shadowy. The ancients were more circumscribed within ‘the ignorant present time,’—spoke only their own language,—were conversant only with their own customs,—were acquainted only with the events of their own history. The mere lapse of time then, aided by the art of printing, has served to accumulate for us an endless mass of mixed and contradictorymaterials; and, by extending our knowledge to a greater number of things, has made our particular ideas less perfect and distinct. The constant reference to a former state of manners and literature, is a marked feature in modern poetry. We are always talking of the Greeks and Romans;—theynever said any thing of us. This circumstance has tended to give a certain abstract elevation, and etherial refinement to the mind, without strengthening it. We are lost in wonder at what has been done, and dare not think of emulating it. The earliest modern poets, accordingly, may be conceived to hail the glories of the antique world, dawning through the dark abyss of time; while revelation, on the other hand, opened its path to the skies: As Dante represents himself as conducted by Virgil to the shades below; while Beatrice welcomes him to the abodes of the blest.
We must now return, however, to our author, whose sketch of the rise and progress of the Drama, will be interesting to our readers.
‘The invention of the dramatic art, and of a theatre, seem to lie very near one another. Man has a great disposition to mimicry. When he enters vividly into the situation, sentiments and passions of others, he even involuntarily puts on a resemblance to them in his gestures. Children are perpetually going out of themselves: it is one of their chief amusements to represent those grown people whom they have had an opportunity of observing, or whatever comes in their way: And with the happy flexibility of their imagination, they can exhibit all the characteristics of assumed dignity in a father, a schoolmaster, or a king. The sole step which is requisite for the invention of a drama, namely, the separating and extracting the mimetic elements and fragments from social life, and representing them collected together into one mass, has not, however, been taken in many nations. In the very minute description of ancient Egypt in Herodotus and other writers, I do not recollect observing the smallest trace of it. The Etrurians, again, who in many respects resembled the Egyptians, had their theatrical representations; and, what is singular enough, the Etruscan name for an actor,histrio, is preserved in living languages down to the present day. The Arabians and Persians, though possessed of a rich poetical literature, are unacquainted with any sort of drama. It was the same with Europe in the middle ages. On the introduction of Christianity, the plays handed down among the Greeks and Romans were abolished, partly from their reference to Heathen ideas, and partly because they had degenerated into the most impudent and indecent immorality; and they were not again revived till after the lapse of nearly a thousandyears. Even in the fourteenth century, we do not find in Boccacio, who, however, gives us a most accurate picture of the whole constitution of social life, the smallest trace of plays. In place of them, they had then only story-tellers, minstrels, and jugglers. On the other hand, we are by no means entitled to assume, that the invention of the drama has only once taken place in the world, or that it has always been borrowed by one people from another. The English navigators mention, that among the islanders of the South Seas, who, in every mental acquirement, are in such a low scale of civilization, they yet observed a rude drama, in which a common event in life was imitated for the sake of diversion. And to go to the other extreme:—Among the Indians, the people from whom, perhaps, all the cultivation of the human race has been derived, plays were known long before they could have experienced any foreign influence. It has lately been made known to Europe, that they have a rich dramatic literature, which ascends back for more than two thousand years. The only specimen of their plays (nataks) hitherto known to us, is the delightful sakontala, which, notwithstanding the colouring of a foreign climate, bears, in its general structure, such a striking resemblance to our romantic drama, that we might be inclined to suspect we owe this resemblance to the predilection for Shakespear entertained by Jones the English translator, if his fidelity were not confirmed by other learned Orientalists. In the golden times of India, the representation of thisnatakserved to delight the splendid imperial court of Delhi; but it would appear that, from the misery of numberless oppressions, the dramatic art in that country is now entirely at an end. The Chinese, again, have their standing national theatre, stationary perhaps in every sense of the word; and I do not doubt that, in the establishment of arbitrary rules, and the delicate observance of insignificant points of decorum, they leave the most correct Europeans very far behind them. When the new European stage, in the fifteenth century, had its origin in the allegorical and spiritual pieces called Moralities and Mysteries, this origin was not owing to the influence of the ancient dramatists, who did not come into circulation till some time afterwards. In those rude beginnings lay the germ of the romantic drama as a peculiar invention.’ p. 28.
The fault of this book is to have too much of every thing, but especially of Greece; and we cannot help feeling, that the bold and independent judgment which the author has applied to all other nations, is somewhat suborned or overawed by his excessive veneration for those ancient classics. There is a glow and a force, however, in all that he says upon the subject, that almost persuades us that he is in the right,—and that there was something incomparably more loftyin the conceptions of those early times, than the present undignified and degenerate age can imagine. This imposing and enthusiastic tone discloses itself in his introductory remarks on the Grecian theatre.
‘When we hear the word theatre,’ he says, ‘we naturally think of what with us bears the same name; and yet nothing can be more different from our theatre than the Grecian, in every part of its construction. If, in reading the Greek pieces, we associate our own stage with them, the light in which we shall view them must be false in every respect.—The theatres of the Greeks were quite open above, and their dramas were always acted in open day, and beneath the canopy of heaven. The Romans, at an after period, endeavoured by a covering to shelter the audience from the rays of the sun; but this degree of luxury was hardly ever enjoyed by the Greeks. Such a state of things appears very inconvenient to us: But the Greeks had nothing of effeminacy about them; and we must not forget, too, the beauty of their climate. When they were overtaken by a storm or a shower, the play was of course interrupted; and they would much rather expose themselves to an accidental inconvenience, than, by shutting themselves up in a close and crowded house, entirely destroy the serenity of a religious solemnity, which their plays certainly were. To have covered in the scene itself, and imprisoned gods and heroes in dark and gloomy apartments, imperfectly lighted up, would have appeared still more ridiculous to them. An action which so nobly served to establish the belief of the relation with heaven, could only be exhibited under an unobstructed sky, and under the very eyes of the gods, as it were, for whom, according to Seneca, the sight of a brave man struggling with adversity is an attractive spectacle. The theatres of the ancients were, in comparison with the small scale of ours, of a colossal magnitude, partly for the sake of containing the whole of the people, with the concourse of strangers who flocked to the festivals, and partly to correspond with the majesty of the dramas represented in them, which required to be seen at a respectful distance.’
One of the most elaborate and interesting parts of this work, is the account of the Greek tragedians, which is given in the fourth Lecture. Our extracts from it will be copious, both on account of the importance of the subject, and the ability with which it is treated.
‘Of the inexhaustible stores possessed by the Greeks in the department of tragedy, which the public competition at the Athenian festivals called into being, as the rival poets always contended for a prize, very little indeed has come down to us. We only possessworks of three of their numerous tragedians, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and these in no proportion to the number of their compositions. The three authors in question were selected by the Alexandrian critics as the foundation for the study of ancient Greek literature, not because they alone were deserving of estimation, but because they afforded the best illustration of the various styles of tragedy. Of each of the two oldest poets, we have seven remaining pieces; in these, however, we have, according to the testimony of the ancients, several of their most distinguished productions. Of Euripides, we have a much greater number, and we might well exchange many of them for other works which are now lost; for example, the Satirical Dramas of Actæus, Æschylus and Sophocles; several pieces of Phrynichus, for the sake of comparison with Æschylus; or of Agathon, whom Plato describes as effeminate, but sweet and affecting, and who was a contemporary of Euripides, though somewhat younger.
‘The tragic style of Æschylus is grand, severe, and not unfrequently hard. In the style of Sophocles, we observe the most complete proportion and harmonious sweetness. The style of Euripides is soft and luxuriant: Extravagant in his easy fulness, he sacrifices the general effect to brilliant passages.
‘Æschylus is to be considered as the creator of Tragedy, which sprung from him completely armed, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter. He clothed it in a state of suitable dignity, and gave it an appropriate place of exhibition. He was the inventor of scenic pomp; and not only instructed the chorus in singing and dancing, but appeared himself in the character of a player. He was the first who gave development to the dialogue, and limits to the lyrical part of the tragedy, which still however occupies too much space in his pieces. He draws his characters with a few bold and strongly marked features. The plans are simple in the extreme. He did not understand the art of enriching and varying an action, and dividing its development and catastrophe into parts, bearing a due proportion to each other. Hence his action often stands still; and this circumstance becomes still more apparent, from the undue extension of his choral songs. But all his poetry betrays a sublime and serious mind. Terror is his element, and not the softer affections: he holds up the head of Medusa to his astonished spectators. His manner of treating Fate is austere in the extreme; he suspends it over the heads of mortals in all its gloomy majesty. The Cothurnus of Æschylus has, as it were, an iron weight; gigantic figures alone stalk before our eyes. It seems as if it required an effort in him to condescend to paint mere men to us: he abounds most in the representationof gods, and seems to dwell with particular delight in exhibiting the Titans, those ancient gods who typify the dark powers of primitive nature, and who had long been driven into Tartarus, beneath a better regulated world. He endeavours to swell out his language to a gigantic sublimity, corresponding with the standard of his characters. Hence he abounds in harsh combinations and overstrained epithets; and the lyrical parts of his pieces are often obscure in the extreme, from the involved nature of the construction. He resembles Dante and Shakespeare in the very singular cast of his images and expressions. These images are nowise deficient in the terrible graces, which almost all the writers of antiquity celebrate in Æschylus. He flourished in the very first vigour of the Grecian freedom; was an eyewitness of the overthrow and annihilation of the Persian hosts under Darius and Xerxes; and, in one of his pieces—the Persians—describes in the most vivid and glowing colours the battle of Salamis.’ p. 94.
Such is the general account of Æschylus given by our author. He then proceeds to give a distinct sketch of each of his tragedies. This, we will acknowledge, appears to us considerably too rapturous and too long;—but we must give our readers a specimen of what is perhaps the most elaborate, if not the most impressive part of the whole publication. We shall select his account of the Eumenides or Furies, the most terrible of all this poet’s compositions.
‘The fable of the Eumenides is the justification and absolution of Orestes from his bloody crime, the murder of Clytemnestra his mother. It is a trial, but a trial where the gods are accusers and defenders and judges; and the manner in which the subject is treated, corresponds with its majesty and importance. The scene itself brought before the eyes of the Greeks the highest objects of veneration which were known to them. It opens before the celebrated temple at Delphi, which occupies the back-ground. The aged Pythia enters in sacerdotal pomp, addresses her prayers to the gods who preside over the oracle, harangues the assembled people, and goes into the temple to seat herself on the tripod. She returns full of consternation, and describes what she has seen in the temple; a man stained with blood, supplicating protection, surrounded by sleeping women with serpent hair. She then makes her exit by the same entrance. Apollo now appears with Orestes in his traveller’s garb, and a sword and olive branch in his hands. He promises him his farther protection, commands him to fly to Athens, and recommends him to the care of the present but invisible Mercury, to whom travellers, and especially those who were under the necessity of concealing their journey, were usually consigned. Orestes goes offat the side allotted to strangers; Apollo re-enters the temple, which remains open, and the Furies are seen in the interior sleeping on their seats. Clytemnestra now ascends through the orchestra, and appears on the stage. We are not to suppose her a haggard skeleton, but a figure with the appearance of life, though paler, still bearing her wounds in her breast, and shrouded in ethereal-coloured vestments. She calls repeatedly to the Furies in the language of vehement reproach; and then disappears. The Furies awake; and when they no longer find Orestes, they dance in wild commotion round the stage during the choral song. Apollo returns from the temple, and expels them from his sanctuary as profanatory beings.We may here suppose him appearing with the sublime displeasure of the Apollo of the Vatican, with bow and quiver, or clothed in his sacred tunic and chlamys.The scene now changes; but the back-ground probably remained unchanged, and had now to represent the temple of Minerva on the hill of Mars; and the lateral decorations would be converted into Athens and the surrounding landscape. Orestes comes as from another land, and embraces as a suppliant the statue of Pallas placed before the temple. The chorus (who were clothed in black, with purple girdles, and serpents in their hair), follow him on foot to this place, but remain throughout the rest of the piece beneath in the orchestra. The Furies had at first exhibited the rage of beasts of prey at the escape of their victim; but they now sing with tranquil dignity their high and terrible office among mortals, claim the head of Orestes as forfeited to them, and consecrate it with mysterious charms of endless pain. Pallas, the warlike virgin, appears in a chariot and four at the intercession of the suppliant. She listens with calm dignity to the mutual complaints of Orestes and his adversaries, and finally undertakes the office of umpire at the solicitation of the two parties. The assembled judges take their seats on the steps of the temple; the herald commands silence among the people by sound of trumpet, as at an actual tribunal. Apollo advances to advocate the cause of the youth; the Furies in vain oppose his interference; and the arguments for and against the deed are gone through in short speeches. The judges throw their calculi into the urn; Pallas throws in a white one; all are wrought up to the highest pitch of expectation; Orestes calls out, full of anguish, to his protector: “O Phœbus Apollo, how is the cause decided?”—The Furies on the other hand, exclaim—“O Black Night, mother of all things, dost thou behold this?” In the enumeration of the black and white pebbles, they are found equal in number, and the accused is therefore declared by Pallas acquitted of the charge. He breaks out into joyful expressions of thanks, while the Furies declaim against the arrogance ofthe younger gods, who take such liberties with the race of Titan. Pallas bears their rage with equanimity; addresses them in the language of kindness, and even of veneration; and these beings, so untractable in their general disposition, are unable to withstand the power of her mild and convincing eloquence. They promise to bless the land over which she has dominion; while Pallas assigns them a sanctuary in the Attic territory, where they are to be called the Eumenides, that is, the Benevolent. The whole ends with a solemn procession round the theatre, with songs of invocation; while bands of children, women, and old men, in purple robes and with torches in their hands, accompany the Furies in their exit.’ p. 104.
The situation of Orestes at the opening of this tragedy, with the Furies lying asleep on the floor, like aged women, with serpent hair, is perhaps the most terrible that can be conceived. But yet, in this situation, dreadful as it is—the sense of power; the representation of preternatural forms; the sacredness of the place; the momentary suspense of the action; the death like stillness; the expectation of what is to come, subdue the spirit to a tone of awful tranquillity, and, from the depth of despair, produce a lofty grandeur and collectedness of mind.
If this extraordinary play be the most terrible of Æschylus’s works, the Chained Prometheus is the grandest. It is less a tragedy than an ode. It does not describe a series of actions, but a succession of visions. Prometheus, chained to a rock on the verge of the world, holds parley with the original powers and oldest forms of Nature, with Strength and Violence, and Oceanus and the race of the Titans. Compared with the personages introduced in this poem, Jupiter and Mercury, and the rest of that class, appear mere modern deities; we are thrown back into the first rude chaos of Nature, where the universe itself seems to rock like the sea, and the empire of heaven was not yet fixed.
‘Prometheus,’ says our author, ‘is an image of human nature itself; endowed with a miserable foresight, and bound down to a narrow existence, without an ally, and with nothing to oppose to the combined and inexorable powers of Nature, but an unshaken will, and the consciousness of elevated claims. The other poems of the Greek tragedians are single tragedies; but this may be called tragedy itself; its purest spirit is revealed with all the overpowering influence of its first unmitigated austerity.’
We agree with M. Schlegel, when he says, that ‘there is little external action in this piece: Prometheus merely suffers and resolves from the beginning to the end.’ But we cannot assent to his assertion, that ‘the poet has contrived, in a masterly manner, to introduce variety into that which was in itself determinate.’ All that is fine init, is the abstract conception of the characters: The story is as uninteresting, as it is inartificial and improbable.
The Seven before Thebes has also a very imperfect dramatic form. It is for the most part only a narrative or descriptive dialogue passing between two persons, the King and the Messenger. ‘The description of the attack with which the city is threatened,’ says our critic, ‘and of the seven leaders who have sworn its destruction, and who display their arrogance in the symbols borne on their shields, is an epic subject, clothed in the pomp of tragedy.’ The Agamemnon and Electra are the two tragedies of Æschylus, which approach the nearest to the perfection of the dramatic form, and which will bear an immediate comparison with those of Sophocles on the same subjects. M. Schlegel has drawn a detailed and very admirable parallel between the two poets. Sophocles, he observes, is the more elegant painter of outward forms and manners; but Æschylus catches most of the enthusiasm of the passion he describes, and communicates to the reader the lofty impulses of his own mind. In giving a poetical colouring to objects from the suggestions of his own genius—in describing not so much things themselves, as the impression which they make on the imagination in a state of strong excitement, he more nearly resembles some of the modern poets, than any of his countrymen. The magnificent opening of the Agamemnon, in which the watchman describes the appearance of the fires for which he had watched ten long years, as the signal of the destruction of Troy, might be cited as an instance of that rich and varied style, which gives something over the bare description of the subject, and luxuriates in the display of its own powers. The Ajax of Sophocles comes the nearest to the general style of Æschylus, both in the nakedness of the subject, and the poetical interest given to the character.
The account of Sophocles, which is next in order, is one of the most finished and interesting parts of this work: though it is disfigured by one extraordinary piece of rhodomontade, too characteristic to be omitted. After observing that Sophocles lived to be upwards of ninety years of age, our philosophical German breaks out into the following mystic strain.
‘It would seem as if the Gods, in return for his dedicating himself at an early age to Bacchus as the giver of all joy, and the author of the cultivation of the human race, by the representation of tragical dramas for his festivals, had wished to confer immortality on him, so long did they delay the hour of his death; but, as this was impossible, they extinguished his life at least as gently as possible, that he might imperceptibly change one immortality for another—the long duration of his earthly existence for an imperishable name.’ p. 117.
We cannot afford to enter into the detailed critique which M. Schlegel has here offered upon the several plays of this celebrated author. The following passage exhibits a more summary view of them. After mentioning the native sweetness for which he was so celebrated among his contemporaries, he observes—
‘Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this property, may flatter himself that a sense for ancient art has arisen within him: for the lovers of the affected sentimentality of the present day would, both in the representation of bodily sufferings, and in the language and economy of the tragedies of Sophocles, find much of an insupportable austerity. When we consider the great fertility of Sophocles, for, according to some, he wrote a hundred and thirty pieces, and eighty according to the most moderate account, we cannot help wondering that seven only should have come down to us. Chance, however, has so far favoured us, that, in these seven pieces, we find several which were held by the ancients as his greatest works, Antigone, for example, Electra, and the two Œdipuses; and these have also come down to us tolerably free from mutilation and corruption in the text. The first Œdipus and Philoctetes have been generally, without any good reason, preferred to all the others by the modern critics: the first, on account of the artifice of the plot, in which the dreadful catastrophe, powerfully calculated to excite our curiosity (a rare case in the Greek tragedies), is brought about inevitably, by a succession of causes, all dependent on one another: the latter, on account of the masterly display of character, the beautiful contrast observable in the three leading individuals, and the simple structure of the piece, in which, with so few persons, every thing proceeds from the truest motives. But the whole of the tragedies of Sophocles are conspicuous for their separate excellences. In Antigone we have the purest display of female heroism; in Ajax the manly feeling of honour in its whole force; in the Trachiniæ, the female levity of Dejanira is beautifully atoned for by her death; and the sufferings of Hercules are pourtrayed with suitable dignity. Electra is distinguished for energy and pathos; in Œdipus Coloneus there prevails the mildest emotion, and over the whole piece there is diffused the utmost sweetness. I will not undertake to weigh the respective merits of these pieces against each other; but I am free to confess that I entertain a singular predilection for the last of them, as it appears to me the most expressive of the personal feelings of the poet himself. As this piece was written for the very purpose of throwing a lustre upon Athens, and the spot of his birth more particularly, he appears to have laboured it with a remarkable degree of fondness.’ p. 123.
In describing the Œdipus Coloneus, M. Schlegel has strikingly, and, we think, beautifully, exemplified the distinct genius of Sophocles and Æschylus, in the use these two poets make of the Furies.
‘In Æschylus,’ he says, ‘before the victim of persecution can be saved, the hellish horror of the Furies must congeal the blood of the spectator, and make his hair stand on end; and the whole rancour of these goddesses of rage must be exhausted. The transition to their peaceful retreat is therefore the more astonishing: It seems as if the whole human race were redeemed from their power. In Sophocles, however, they do not even once make their appearance, but are altogether kept in the back-ground; and they are not called by their proper name, but made known to us by descriptions, in which they are a good deal spared. But even this obscurity and distance, so suitable to these daughters of Night, is calculated to excite in us a still dread, in which the bodily senses have no part. The clothing the grove of the Furies with all the charms of a southern spring, completes the sweetness of the poem: and were I to select an emblem of the poetry of Sophocles from his tragedies, I should describe it as a sacred grove of the dark goddesses of Fate, in which the laurel, the olive, and the vine, display their luxuriant vegetation, and the song of the nightingale is for ever heard.’ p. 128.
After all, however, the tragedies of Sophocles, which are the perfection of the classical style, are hardly tragedies in our sense of the word. They do not exhibit the extremity of human passion and suffering. The object of modern tragedy is to represent the soul utterly subdued as it were, or at least convulsed and overthrown by passion or misfortune. That of the ancients was to show how the greatest crimes could be perpetrated with the least remorse, and the greatest calamities borne with the least emotion. Firmness of purpose, and calmness of sentiment, are their leading characteristics. Their heroes and heroines act and suffer as if they were always in the presence of a higher power, or as if human life itself were a religious ceremony, performed in honour of the Gods and of the State. The mind is not shaken to its centre; the whole being is not crushed or broken down. Contradictory motives are not accumulated; the utmost force of imagination and passion is not exhausted to overcome the repugnance of the will to crime; the contrast and combination of outward accidents are not called in to overwhelm the mind with the whole weight of unexpected calamity. The dire conflict of the feelings, the desperate struggle with fortune, are seldom there. All is conducted with a fatal composure. All is prepared and submitted to with inflexible constancy, as if Nature were only an instrument in the hands of Fate.
It is for deviating from this ideal standard, and for a nearer approximation to the frailty of human passion, that our author falls foul of Euripides without mercy. There is a great deal of affectation and mysticism in what he says on this subject. Allowing that the excellences of Euripides are not the same as those of Æschylus and Sophocles, or even that they are excellences of an inferior order, yet it does not follow that they are defects. The luxuriance and effeminacy with which he reproaches the style of Euripides might have been defects in those writers; but they are essential parts of his system. In fact, as Æschylus differs from Sophocles in giving greater scope to the impulses of the imagination, so Euripides differs from him in giving greater indulgence to the feelings of the heart. The heart is the seat of pure affection,—of involuntary emotion,—of feelings brooding over and nourished by themselves. In the dramas of Sophocles, there is no want of these feelings; but they are suppressed or suspended by the constant operation of the senses and the will. Beneath the rigid muscles by which the heart is there braced, there is no room left for those bursts of uncontrollable feeling, which dissolve it in tenderness, or plunge it into the deepest woe. In the heroic tragedy, no one dies of a broken heart,—scarcely a sigh is heaved, or a tear shed. Euripides has relaxed considerably from this extreme self-possession; and it is on that account that our critic cannot forgive him. The death of Alcestis alone might have disarmed his severity.
This play, which is the most beautiful of them all,—the Iphigenia, which is the next to it,—the Phædra and Medea, which are more objectionable, both from the nature of the subject, and the inferiority of the execution, are instances of the occasional use which Euripides made of the conflict of different passions. Though Antigone, in Sophocles, is in love with Hæmon, and though there was here an evident opportunity, and almost a necessity, for introducing a struggle between this passion, which was an additional motive to attach her to life, and her affection to the memory of her brother, which led her to sacrifice it, the poet has carefully avoided taking any advantage of the circumstance. Such is the spirit of the heroic tragedy, which suffers no other motives to interfere with the calm determination of the will, and which admits of nothing complicated in the development, either of the passions or the story! M. Schlegel decidedly prefers the Hippolytus of Euripides to the Phædra of Racine. His reasons he gives in another work, which we have not seen; but we are not at a loss to guess at them. His taste for poetry is just the reverse of the popular: He has a horror of whatever obtrudes itself violently on the notice, or tells at first sight; and is only disposed toadmire those retired and recondite beauties which hide themselves from all but the eye of deep discernment. He relishes most those qualities in an author which require the greatest sagacity in the critic to find them out,—as none but connoisseurs are fond of the taste of olives. We shall say nothing here of the choice of the subject; but such as it is, Racine has met it more fully and directly: Euripides exhibits it, for the most part, in the back-ground. The Hippolytus is a dramatic fragment in which the principal events are given in a narrative form. The additions which Racine has chiefly borrowed from Seneca to fill up the outline, are, we think, unquestionable improvements. The declaration of love, to which our author particularly objects, is, however, much more gross and unqualified in Racine than in Seneca. The modern additions to the Iphigenia in Aulis, by Racine, as the love between Achilles and Iphigenia, and the jealousy of Eriphile, certainly destroy the propriety of costume, as M. Schlegel has observed, without heightening the tragic interest. In other respects, the French play is little more than an elegant, flowing, and somewhat diffuse paraphrase of the Greek. The most striking example of pathos in it is the ‘Tu y seras, ma fille,’ addressed by Agamemnon to his daughter, in answer to her wish to be present at the sacrifice, of which she is herself the destined victim.
Euripides was the model of Racine among the French, as he was of Seneca among the Romans. The remarks which Schlegel makes on this last-mentioned author are exceedingly harsh, dogmatical, and intolerant. They are as bad, and worse, than the sentence pronounced by Cowley on
——‘The dry chips of short-lung’d Seneca.’
——‘The dry chips of short-lung’d Seneca.’
——‘The dry chips of short-lung’d Seneca.’
——‘The dry chips of short-lung’d Seneca.’
Hear what he says of him.
‘But whatever period may have given birth to the tragedies of Seneca, they are beyond description bombastical and frigid, unnatural in character and action—revolting, from their violation of every propriety—and so destitute of every thing like theatrical effect—that I am inclined to believe they were never destined to leave the rhetorical schools for the stage. Every tragical common-place is spun out to the very last; all is phrase; and even the most common remark is delivered in stilted language. The most complete poverty of sentiment is dressed out with wit and acuteness. There is even a display of fancy in them,or at least a phantom of it; for they contain an example of the misapplication of every mental faculty. The author or authors have found out the secret of being diffuse, even to wearisomeness; and at the same time so epigrammatically laconic, as to be often obscure and unintelligible. Their characters are neither ideal noractual beings, but gigantic puppets, who are at one time put in motion by the string of an unnatural heroism, and, at another, by that of passions equally unnatural, which no guilt nor enormity can appal.’—‘Yet not merely learned men, without a feeling for art, have judged favourably of them, nay preferred them to the Greek tragedies, but even poets have accounted them deserving of their study and imitation. The influence of Seneca on Corneille’s idea of tragedy cannot be mistaken: Racine, too, in his Phædra, has condescended to borrow a good deal from him; and, among other things, nearly the whole of the declaration of love, of all which we have an enumeration in Brumoy.’
The distaste of our learned critic to Euripides is sanctioned, no doubt, by the ridicule of Aristophanes, from whom he gives a whole scene, in which a buffoon comes to the tragic poet, to beg his rags, his alms-basket, and his water-pitcher, in allusion to the homeliness of costume, and the outward signs of distress which are sometimes exhibited in his tragedies. Aristophanes, of course, is an immense favourite with Schlegel—though it requires all his ingenuity to gloss over and allegorize his extravagance and indecency.
‘The plays of Peace, the Acharnæ and Lysistrata, will be found to recommend peace. In the Clouds, he laughs at the metaphysics of the sophists; in the Wasps, at the rage of the Athenians for hearing and determining lawsuits. The subject of the Frogs is the decline of the tragic art; and Plutus is an allegory on the unjust distribution of wealth. The Birds are, of all his pieces, the oneof which the aim is the least apparent; and it is on that very account one of the most diverting.’ p. 213.
The comedies of Aristophanes, we confess, put the archaism of our taste, and the soundness of our classic faith to a most severe test. The great difficulty is not so much to understand their meaning, as to comprehend their species—to know to what possible class to assign them—of what nondescript productions of nature or art they are to be considered as anomalies. According to Schlegel, who might be styled the Œdipus of criticism, they are the perfection ofthe old comedy. There is much virtue, we are aware, in that appellation: But to us, we confess, they appear to be neither comedies, nor farces, nor satires—but monstrous allegorical pantomimes—enormous practical jokes—far-fetched puns, represented by ponderous machinery, which staggers the imagination at its first appearance, and breaks down before it has answered its purpose. They show, in a more striking point of view than any thing else, the extreme subtlety of understanding of the ancients, and their appetite for the gross, the material, and the sensible. Compared with Aristophanes, Rabelais himself is plain and literal. For example—
‘Peace begins in the most spirited and lively manner. The tranquilly-disposed Trygæus rides on a dunghill beetle to heaven, in the manner of Bellerophon: War, a desolating giant, with Tumult his companion, in place of all the other gods, inhabits Olympus, and pounds the cities in a great mortar, making use of the celebrated generals as pestles; Peace lies bound in a deep well, and is dragged up by a rope, through the united efforts of all the Greek states,’ &c.
Again—
‘It is said of a man addicted to unintelligible reveries, that he is up in the clouds:—accordingly Socrates, in the play of theClouds, is actually let down in a basket at his first appearance.’
The comic machinery in Aristophanes, is, for the most part, a parody on the Greek mythology, and his wit a travestie on Euripides. Whatever we may think of his talent in this way, the art itself of making sense into nonsense, and of letting down the sublime into the ludicrous, in general is rather a cheap one, and implies much more a want of feeling than an excess of wit.
The account which is given of theold, themiddle, and thenew comedy, is very learned and dogmatical. The different styles and authors rise in value with the critic, in proportion as he knows nothing of them. He likes that, which some old commentator has praised, better than what he has read himself; and that still better, which neither he himself, nor any one else, has read. Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus, Menander, Sophron, and the Sicilian Epicharmus, whose works are lost, are prodigiously great men; and the author, ‘tries conclusions infinite’ respecting their different possible merits. On the contrary, Terence is only half a Menander, and Plautus a coarse buffoon. In spite, however, of this fastidiousness, he cannot deny the elegant humanity of the one, nor the strong native humour of the other. The style of these writers, particularly that of Terence, is admirable for a certain conversational ease, and correct simplicity, exactly in the mid-way between carelessness and affectation. But M. Schlegel has a mode of doing away this merit, by observing, that
‘Plautus and Terence were among the most ancient Roman writers, and belonged to a time when the language of books was hardly yet in existence, and when every thing was drawn fresh from life. Thisnaïvesimplicity had its charms in the eyes of those Romans, who belonged to the period of learned cultivation; but it was much more a natural gift, than the fruit of poetical art.’
We shall conclude this part of the subject, with his observations on the nature and range of the characters introduced into the ancient Comedy.
‘Athens, where the fictitious, as well as the actual scenes, were generally placed, was the centre of a small territory; and in nowise to be compared with our great cities, either in extent or population. The republican equality admitted no marked distinction of ranks: There were no proper nobility; all were alike citizens, richer or poorer; and, for the most part, had no other occupation, than that of managing their properties. Hence the Attic comedy could not well admit of the contrasts arising from diversity of tone and conversation; it generally continues in a sort of middle state, and has something citizen-like; nay, if I may so say, something of the manners of a small town about it, which we do not see in those comedies, in which the manners of a court, and the refinement or corruption of monarchial capitals, are pourtrayed.
‘From what has been premised, we may at once see nearly the whole circle of characters; nay, those which perpetually occur, are so few, that they may almost all of them be here enumerated. The austere and frugal, or the mild and yielding father, the latter not unfrequently under the dominion of his wife, and making common cause with his son; the housewife, either loving and sensible, or obstinate and domineering, and proud of the accession brought by her to the family-property; the giddy and extravagant, but open and amiable, young man, who, even in a passion, sensual at its very commencement, is capable of true attachment; the vivacious girl, who is either thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning and selfish—or well-disposed, and susceptible of higher emotions; the simple and boorish, or the cunning slave, who assists his young master to deceive his old father, and obtain money for the gratification of his passions by all manner of tricks; the flatterer, or accommodating parasite, who, for the sake of a good meal, is ready to say or do any thing that may be required of him; the sycophant, a man whose business it was to set quietly-disposed people by the ears, and stir up lawsuits, for which he offered his services; the braggart soldier, who returns from foreign service, generally cowardly and simple, but who assumes airs from the fame of the deeds performed by him abroad; and, lastly, a servant, or pretended mother, who preaches up a bad system of morals to the young girl entrusted to her guidance; and the slave-dealer, who speculates on the extravagant passions of young people, and knows no other object than the furtherance of his own selfish views. The two last characters are to our feelings a blemish in the new Grecian comedy; but it was impossible, from the manner in which it was constituted, to dispense with them.’ p. 263.
We must now pass on to modern literature.—Of the Italian drama, which is the least prolific part of their literature, we shall shortlyhave to speak with reference to another work; and shall at present proceed to our author’s account of the French Theatre, which forms a class by itself, and which is here most ably analyzed.
‘With respect to the earlier tragical attempts of the French in the last half of the sixteenth, and the first part of the seventeenth century, we refer to Fontenelle, La Harpe, theMelanges Litterairesof Suard and Andre. Our chief object is an examination of the system of tragic art, practically followed by their later poets; and by them partly, but by the French critics universally, considered as alone entitled to any authority, and every deviation from it viewed as a sin against good taste. If the system is in itself the best, we shall be compelled to allow that its execution is masterly, perhaps not to be surpassed. But the great question here is, how far the French tragedy is, in spirit and inward essence, related to the Greek, and whether it deserves to be considered as an improvement upon it.
‘Of their first attempts, it is only necessary to observe, that the endeavour to imitate the ancients displayed itself at a very early period in France; and that they conceived that the surest method of succeeding in this endeavour, was to observe the strictest outward regularity of form, of which they derived their ideas more from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca, than from an intimate acquaintance with the Greek models themselves. In the first tragedies which were represented, the Cleopatra and Dido of Jodelle, a prologue and chorus were introduced; Jean de la Peruse translated the Medea of Seneca; Garnier’s pieces are all taken from the Greek tragedies, or from Seneca; but, in the execution, they bear a much closer examination to the latter. The writers of that day employed themselves also diligently on the Sophonisba of Trissino, from a regard for its classic appearance. Whoever is acquainted with the mode of proceeding of real genius, which is impelled by the almost unconscious and immediate contemplation of great and important truths, will be extremely suspicious of all activity in art, which originates in an abstract theory. But Corneille did not, like an antiquary, execute his dramas as so many learned school exercises, on the model of the ancients. Seneca, it is true, led him astray; but he knew and loved the Spanish theatre; and it had a great influence on his mind. The first of his pieces with which it is generally allowed that the classical epoch of French tragedy begins, and which is certainly one of his best, theCid, is well known to have been borrowed from the Spanish. It violates, considerably, the unity of place, if not also that of time, and it is animated throughout by the spirit of chivalrous love and honour. But the opinion of his contemporaries, that a tragedy must be framed accurately according tothe rules of Aristotle, was so universally prevalent, that it bore down all opposition. Corneille, almost at the close of his dramatic career, began to entertain scruples of conscience; and endeavoured, in a separate treatise, to prove, that his pieces, in the composition of which he had never even thought of Aristotle, were, however, all accurately written according to his rules.
‘It is quite otherwise with Racine: of all the French poets he was, without doubt, the best acquainted with the ancients, and he did not merely study them as a scholar; he felt them as a poet. He found, however, the practice of the theatre already firmly established, and he did not undertake to deviate from it for the sake of approaching these models. He only therefore appropriated the separate beauties of the Greek poets; but, whether from respect for the taste of his age, or from inclination, he remained faithful to the prevailing gallantry, so foreign to the Greek tragedy, and for the most part made it the foundation of the intrigues of his pieces.
‘Such was nearly the state of the French theatre till Voltaire made his appearance. He possessed but a moderate knowledge of the Greeks, of whom, however, he now and then spoke with enthusiasm, that on other occasions he might rank them below the more modern masters of his own nation, including himself; but yet he always considered himself bound to preach up the grand severity and simplicity of the Greeks as essential to tragedy. He censured the deviations of his predecessors as errors, and insisted on purifying and at the same time enlarging the stage, as, in his opinion, from the constraint of court manners, it had been almost straitened to the dimensions of an antichamber. He at first spoke of the bursts of genius in Shakespear, and borrowed many things from this poet, at that time altogether unknown to his countrymen; he insisted too on greater depth in the delineation of passion, on a more powerful theatrical effect; he demanded a scene ornamented in a more majestic manner; and lastly, he not unfrequently endeavoured to give to his pieces a political or philosophical interest altogether foreign to poetry. His labours have unquestionably been of utility to the French stage, although it is now the fashion to attack this idol of the last age, on every point, with the most unrelenting hostility’ p. 323.
M. Schlegel very ably exposes the incongruities which have arisen from engrafting modern style and sentiments on mythological and classical subjects in the French writers.
‘In Phædra,’ he says, ‘this princess is to be declared regent for her son till he comes of age, after the supposed death of Theseus. How could this be compatible with the relations of the Grecianwomen of that day?—It brings us down to the times of a Cleopatra.—When the way of thinking of two nations is so totally opposite, why will they torment themselves with attempts to fashion a subject, formed on the manners of the one to suit the manners of the other?—How unlike the Achilles in Racine’s Iphigenia to the Achilles of Homer! The gallantry ascribed to him is not merely a sin against Homer, but it renders the whole story improbable. Are human sacrifices conceivable among a people, whose chiefs and heroes are so susceptible of the most tender feelings?’
‘Corneille was in the best way in the world when he brought his Cid on the stage; a story of the middle ages, which belonged to a kindred people; a story characterized by chivalrous love and honour, and in which the principal characters are not even of princely rank. Had this example been followed, a number of prejudices respecting tragical ceremony would of themselves have disappeared; tragedy, from its greater truth, from deriving its motives from a way of thinking still current and intelligible, would have been less foreign to the heart; the quality of the objects would of themselves have turned them from the stiff observation of the rules of the ancients, which they did not understand; in one word, the French tragedy would have become national and truly romantic. But I know not what unfortunate star had the ascendant. Notwithstanding the extraordinary success of his Cid, Corneille did not go one step farther; and the attempt which he made had no imitators. In the time of Louis XIV. it was considered as beyond dispute, that the French, and in general the modern European history was not adapted for tragedy. They had recourse therefore to the ancient universal history. Besides the Greeks and Romans, they frequently hunted about among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians, for events, which, however obscure they might often be, they could dress out for the tragic stage. Racine made, according to his own confession, a hazardous attempt with the Turks: It was successful; and since that time, the necessary tragical dignity has been allowed to this barbarous people. But it was merely the modern, and more particularly the French names, which could not be tolerated as untragical and unpoetical; for the heroes of antiquity are, with them, Frenchmen in every thing but the name; and antiquity was merely used as a thin veil under which the modern French character could be distinctly recognized. Racine’s Alexander is certainly not the Alexander of history: but if, under this name, we imagine to ourselves the great Condé, the whole will appear tolerably natural.—And who does not suppose LouisXIV.and the Dutchess de la Valiere represented under Titus and Berenice? Voltaire expresses himself somewhat strongly,when he says, that, in the tragedies which succeeded those of Racine, we imagine we are reading the romances of Mademoiselle Scuderi, which paint citizens of Paris under the names of heroes of antiquity. He alluded here more particularly to Crebillon. However much Corneille and Racine were tainted with the way of thinking of their own nation, they were still at times penetrated with the spirit of trueobjectiveexhibition. Corneille gives us a masterly picture of the Spaniards in the Cid; and this is conceivable—for he drew his materials from them. With the exception of the original sin of gallantry, he succeeded also pretty well with the Romans: Of one part of their character at least, he had a tolerable conception, their predominating patriotism, and unyielding pride of liberty, and the magnanimity of their political sentiments. All this, it is true, is nearly the same as we find it in Lucan, varnished over with a certain inflation and self-conscious pomp. The simple republican austerity, the humility of religion, he could not attain. Racine (in Britannicus) has admirably painted the corrupt manners of the Romans under the Emperors, and the timid and dastardly manner in which the tyranny of Nero first began to display itself. He had Tacitus indeed for a model, as he himself gratefully acknowledges; but still it is a great merit to translate history in such an able manner into poetry. He has also shown a just conception of the general spirit of Hebrew history. He was less successful with the Turks: Bajazet makes love wholly in the European manner: The blood-thirsty policy of Eastern despotism is very well pourtrayed in the Vizier; but the whole resembles Turkey turned upside down, where the women, instead of being slaves, have contrived to get possession of the government; and the result is so very revolting, that we might be inclined to infer, from it, the Turks are really not so much to blame in keeping their women under lock and key. Neither has Voltaire, in my opinion, succeeded much better in his Mahomet and Zaire: the glowing colours of an Oriental fancy are no where to be found. Voltaire has, however, this great merit, that he insisted on treating subjects with more historical truth; and further, that he again elevated to the dignity of the tragical stage the chivalrous and Christian characters of modern Europe, which, since the time of the Cid, had been altogether excluded from it. His Lusignan and Nerestan are among his most true, affecting, and noble creations; his Tancred, although the invention as a whole is defective in strength, will always gain upon every heart, like his namesake in Tasso.’ p. 369.
Our author prefers Racine to Corneille, and even seems to think Voltaire more natural: but he has exhausted all that can be said of French tragedy in his account of Corneille; and all that he addsupon Racine and Voltaire, is only a modification of the same general principles. He has been able to give no general character of either, as distinct from the original founder of the French dramatic school; Corneille had more pomp, Racine more tenderness; Voltaire aimed at a stronger effect: But the essential qualities are the same in all of them; the style is always French, as much as the language in which they write.
‘It has been often remarked, that, in French tragedy, the poet is always too easily seen through the discourses of the different personages; that he communicates to them his own presence of mind; his cool reflection on their situation; and his desire to shine upon all occasions. When we accurately examine the most of their tragical speeches, we shall find that they are seldom such as would be delivered by persons, speaking or acting by themselves without any restraint; we shall generally discover in them something which betrays a reference, more or less perceptible, to the spectator. Rhetoric, and rhetoric in a court dress, prevails but too much in many French tragedies, especially in those of Corneille, instead of the suggestions of a noble, but simple and artless nature: Racine and Voltaire have approximated much nearer to the true conception of a mind carried away by its sufferings. Whenever the tragic hero is able to express his pain in antitheses and ingenious allusions, we may safely dispense with our pity. This sort of conventional dignity is, as it were, a coat of mail, to prevent the blow from reaching the inward parts. On account of their retaining this festal pomp, in situations where the most complete self-forgetfulness would be natural, Schiller has wittily enough compared the heroes in French tragedy to the kings in old copperplates, who are seen lying in bed with their mantle, crown, and sceptre.’ p. 373, &c.
Racine is deservedly the favourite of the French nation; for, besides the perfection of his style, and a complete mastery over his art, according to the rules prescribed by the national taste, there is a certain tenderness of sentiment, a movement of the heart, under all the artificial pomp by which it is disguised, which cannot fail to interest the reader. HisAthalieis perhaps the most perfect of all his pieces. Some of the lyrical descriptions are equally delightful, from the beauty of the rhythm and the imagery. We might mention the chorus in which the infant Joaz is compared to a young lily on the side of a stream. Poetry is the union of imagery with sentiment; and yet nothing can be more rare than this union in French tragedy. Another passage in Racine, which might be quoted as an exception to their general style, is the speech of Phædra describing her descent into the other world, which is, however, a good deal made up fromSeneca; and indeed it is the fault of this author, that he leans too constantly for support on others, and is rather the accomplished imitator than the original inventor. There is but one thing wanting to his plays—that they should have been his own. He can no more be considered as the author of the Iphigenia, for instance, than La Fontaine can be considered as the inventor of Æsop’s fables. Voltaire is more original in the choice of his subjects. But the means by which he seeks to give an interest to them, are of the most harsh and violent kind; and, even in the variety of his materials, he shows the monotony of his invention. Four of his principal tragedies turn entirely on the question of religious apostasy, or on the conflict between the attachment of supposed orphans to their newly discovered parents, and their obligations to their old benefactors. As a relief, however, the scene of these four tragedies is laid in the four opposite quarters of the globe.
M. Schlegel speaks highly of Racine’s comedy, ‘Les Plaideurs‘; and thinks that if he had cultivated his talents for comedy, he would have proved a formidable rival of Moliere. He might very probably have succeeded in imitating the long speeches which Moliere too often imitated from Racine; but nothing can (we think) be more unlike, than the real genius of the two writers. In fact, Moliere is almost as much an English as a French author,—quite abarbare, in all in which he particularly excels. He was unquestionably one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived; a man of infinite wit, gaiety, and invention,—full of life, laughter, and observation. But it cannot be denied that his plays are in general mere farces, without nature, refinement of character, or common probability. Several of them could not be carried on for a moment without a perfect collusion between the parties to wink at impossibilities, and act in defiance of all common sense. For instance, take theMedecin malgre lui, in which a common wood-cutter takes upon himself, and is made to support, through a whole play, the character of a learned physician, without exciting the least suspicion; and yet, notwithstanding the absurdity of the plot, it is one of the most laughable, and truly comic productions, that can well be imagined. The rest of his lighter pieces, theBourgeois Gentilhomme,Monsieur Pourceaugnac, &c. are of the same description,—gratuitous fictions, and fanciful caricatures of nature. He indulges in the utmost license of burlesque exaggeration; and gives a loose to the intoxication of his animal spirits. With respect to his two most laboured comedies, the Tartuffe and Misanthrope, we confess that we find them rather hard to get through. They have the improbability and extravagance of the rest, united with the endless common-place prosing of French declamation.What can exceed the absurdity of the Misanthrope, who leaves his mistress, after every proof of her attachment and constancy, for no other reason than that she will not submit to thetechnical formalityof going to live with him in a desert? The characters which Celimene gives of her friends, near the opening of the play, are admirable satires, (as good as Pope’s characters of women), but not comedy. The same remarks apply in a greater degree to the Tartuffe. The long speeches and reasonings in this play may be very good logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or any thing but comedy. If each of the parties had retained a special pleader to speak his sentiments, they could not have appeared more tiresome or intricate. The improbability of the character of Orgon is wonderful. TheEcole des Femmes, from which Wycherley has borrowed the Country Wife, with the true spirit of original genius, is, in our judgment, the masterpiece of Moliere. The set speeches in the original play would not be borne on the English stage, nor indeed on the French, but that they are carried off by the verse. TheCritique de L’Ecole des Femmes, the dialogue of which is prose, is written in a very different style.
Our author attributes the ambitious loquacity of the French drama to their characteristic vanity, and the general desire of this nation to shine on all occasions. But this principle seems itself to require a prior cause, namely, a facility of shining on all occasions, and a disposition to admire every thing. It has been remarked, as a general rule, that the theatrical amusements of a people, which are intended as a relaxation from their ordinary pursuits and habits, are by no means a test of the national character; and it is a confirmation of this opinion, that the French, who are naturally a lively and impatient people, should be able to sit and hear with such delight their own dramatic pieces, which abound, for the most part, in sententious maxims and solemn declamation, and would appear quite insupportable to an English audience, though the latter are considered as a dull, phlegmatic people, much more likely to be tolerant of formal descriptions and grave reflections.
Extremes meet.This is the only way of accounting for that enigma, the French character. It has often been remarked, indeed, that this ingenious nation exhibits more striking contradictions in its general deportment than any other that ever existed. They are the gayest of the gay, and the gravest of the grave. Their very faces pass at once from an expression of the most lively animation, when they are in conversation or action, to a melancholy blank. They are one moment the slaves of the most contemptible prejudices, and the next launch out into all the extravagance of the mostdangerous speculations. In matters of taste they are as inexorable as they are lax in questions of morality: they judge of the one by rules, of the other by their inclinations. It seems at times as if nothing could shock them, and yet they are offended at the merest trifles. The smallest things make the greatest impression on them. From the facility with which they can accommodate themselves to circumstances, they have no fixed principles or real character. They are always that which gives them least pain, or costs them least trouble. They can easily disentangle their thoughts from whatever gives them the slightest uneasiness, and direct their sensibility to flow in any channels they think proper. Their whole existence is more theatrical than real—their sentiments put on or off like the dress of an actor. Words are with them equivalent to things. They say what is agreeable, and believe what they say. Virtue and vice, good and evil, liberty or slavery, are matters almost of indifference. They are the only people who were ever vain of being cuckolded, or being conquered. Their natural self-complacency stands them instead of all other advantages!
The same almost inexplicable contradictions appear in their writings as in their characters. They excel in all that depends on lightness and grace of style, on familiar gaiety, on delicate irony, on quickness of observation, on nicety of tact—in all those things which are done best with the least effort. Their sallies, their points, their traits, turns of expression, their tales, their letters, are unrivalled. Witness the writings of Voltaire, Fontaine, Le Sage. Whence then the long speeches, the pompous verbosity, the systematic arrangement of their dramatic productions? It would seem as if they took refuge in this excessive formality, as a defence against their natural lightness and frivolity: and that they admitted of no mixed style in poetry, because the least interruption of their assumed gravity would destroy the whole effect. The impression has no natural hold of their minds. It is only by repeated efforts that they work themselves up to the tragic tone, and their feelings let go their hold with the first opportunity. They conform, in the most rigid manner, to established rules, because they have no steadiness to go alone, nor confidence to trust to the strength of their immediate impulses. The French have no style of their own in serious art, because they have no real force of character. Their tragedies are imitations of the Greek dramas, and their historical pictures a still more servile and misapplied imitation of the Greek statues. For the same reason, the expression which their artists give to their faces is affected and mechanical; and the description which their poets give of the passions, the most laboured, overt and explicit possible.Nothing is left to beunderstood. Nothing obscure, distant, imperfect—nothing that is not distinctly made out—nothing that does not stand, as it were, in the foreground, is admitted in their works of art.
The dark and doubtful views of things, the irregular flights of fancy, the silent workings of the heart—all these require some effort to enter into them: They are therefore excluded from French poetry, the language of which must, above all things, be clear and defined, and not only intelligible, but intelligible by its previous application. It is therefore essentially conventional and common-place. It rejects every thing that is not cast in a given mould—that is not stamped by custom—that is not sanctioned by authority;—every thing that is not French. The French, indeed, can conceive of nothing that is not French. There is something that prevents them from entering into any views which do not perfectly fall in with their habitual prejudices. In a word, they are not a people of imagination. They receive their impressions without trouble or effort, and retain no more of them than they can help. They are the creatures either of sensation or abstraction. The images of things, when the objects are no longer present, throw off all their complexity and distinctions, and are lost in the general class, or name; so that the wordscharming,delicious,superb, &c. convey just the same meaning, and excite just the same emotion in the mind of a Frenchman, as the most vivid description of real objects and feelings could do. Hence their poetry is the poetry of abstraction. Yet poetry is properly the embodying general ideas in individual forms and circumstances. But the French style excludes all individuality. The true poet identifies the reader with the characters he represents; the French poet only identifies him with himself. There is scarcely a single page of their tragedy which fairly throws nature open to you. It is tragedy in masquerade. We never get beyond conjecture and reasoning—beyond the general impression of the situation of the persons—beyond general reflections on their passions—beyond general descriptions of objects. We never get at that something more, which is what we are in search of, namely, what we ourselves should feel in the same situations. The true poet transports you to the scene—you see and hear what is passing—you catch, from the lips of the persons concerned, what lies nearest to their hearts;—the French poet takes you into his closet, and reads you a lecture upon it. Thechef-d’œuvresof their stage, then, are, after all, only ingenious paraphrases of nature. The dialogue is a tissue of common-places, of laboured declamations on human life, of learned casuistry on the passions, on virtue and vice, which any one else might make just as well as the person speaking; and yet, what the persons themselves would say, is allwe want to know, and all for which the poet puts them into those situations. It is what constitutes the difference between the dramatic and the didactic.