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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature
+by August Wilhelm Schlegel, trans: John Black
+
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+Title: Lectures on Dramatic Art
+and Literature
+
+Author: August Wilhelm Schlegel, trans John Black
+
+Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7148]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 17, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES DRAMATIC ART ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+"Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every
+variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to
+me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go
+amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading....
+Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly
+fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a
+most perverse selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best
+society in every period of history,--with the wisest, the wittiest, the
+tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned
+humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all
+ages. The world has been created for him."--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. _Address
+on the opening of the Eton Library_, 1833.
+
+
+LECTURES ON DRAMATIC ART AND LITERATURE
+
+BY
+AUGUST WILHELM SCHLEGEL.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+Preface of the Translator.
+
+Author's Preface.
+
+Memoir of the Life of Augustus William Schlegel.
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+Introduction--Spirit of True Criticism--Difference of Taste between the
+Ancients and Moderns--Classical and Romantic Poetry and Art--Division of
+Dramatic Literature; the Ancients, their Imitators, and the Romantic Poets.
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+Definition of the Drama--View of the Theatres of all Nations--Theatrical
+Effect--Importance of the Stage--Principal Species of the Drama.
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+Essence of Tragedy and Comedy--Earnestness and Sport--How far it is
+possible to become acquainted with the Ancients without knowing Original
+Languages--Winkelmann.
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+Structure of the Stage among the Greeks--Their Acting--Use of Masks--False
+comparison of Ancient Tragedy to the Opera--Tragical Lyric Poetry.
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+Essence of the Greek Tragedies--Ideality of the Representation--Idea of
+Fate--Source of the Pleasure derived from Tragical Representations--Import
+of the Chorus--The materials of Greek Tragedy derived from Mythology--
+Comparison with the Plastic Arts.
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+Progress of the Tragic Art among the Greeks--Various styles of Tragic Art
+--Aeschylus--Connexion in a Trilogy of Aeschylus--His remaining Works.
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+Life and Political Character of Sophocles--Character of his different
+Tragedies.
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+Euripides--His Merits and Defects--Decline of Tragic Poetry through him.
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+Comparison between the _Choephorae_ of Aeschylus, the _Electra_ of
+Sophocles, and that of Euripides.
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+Character of the remaining Works of Euripides--The Satirical Drama--
+Alexandrian Tragic Poets.
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+The Old Comedy proved to be completely a contrast to Tragedy--Parody--
+Ideality of Comedy the reverse of that of Tragedy--Mirthful Caprice--
+Allegoric and Political Signification--The Chorus and its Parabases.
+
+LECTURE XII.
+
+Aristophanes--His Character as an Artist--Description and Character of his
+remaining Works--A Scene, translated from the _Acharnae_, by way of
+Appendix.
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+Whether the Middle Comedy was a distinct species--Origin of the New
+Comedy--A mixed species--Its prosaic character--Whether versification is
+essential to Comedy--Subordinate kinds--Pieces of Character, and of
+Intrigue--The Comic of observation, of self-consciousness, and arbitrary
+Comic--Morality of Comedy.
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+Plautus and Terence as Imitators of the Greeks, here examined and
+characterized in the absence of the Originals they copied--Motives of the
+Athenian Comedy from Manners and Society--Portrait-Statues of two
+Comedians.
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+Roman Theatre--Native kinds: Atellane Fables, Mimes, Comoedia Togata--
+Greek Tragedy transplanted to Rome--Tragic Authors of a former Epoch, and
+of the Augustan Age--Idea of a National Roman Tragedy--Causes of the want
+of success of the Romans in Tragedy--Seneca.
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+The Italians--Pastoral Dramas of Tasso and Guarini--Small progress in
+Tragedy--Metastasio and Alfieri--Character of both--Comedies of Ariosto,
+Aretin, Porta--Improvisatore Masks--Goldoni--Gozzi--Latest state.
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+Antiquities of the French Stage--Influence of Aristotle and the Imitation
+of the Ancients--Investigation of the Three Unities--What is Unity of
+Action?--Unity of Time--Was it observed by the Greeks?--Unity of Place as
+connected with it.
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+Mischief resulting to the French Stage from too narrow Interpretation of
+the Rules of Unity--Influence of these rules on French Tragedy--Manner of
+treating Mythological and Historical Materials--Idea of Tragical Dignity--
+Observation of Conventional Rules--False System of Expositions.
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+Use at first made of the Spanish Theatre by the French--General Character
+of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire--Review of the principal Works of
+Corneille and of Racine--Thomas Corneille and Crebillon.
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+Voltaire--Tragedies on Greek Subjects: _Oedipe_, _Merope_, _Oreste_--
+Tragedies on Roman Subjects: _Brute_, _Mort de César_, _Catiline_, _Le
+Triumvirat_--Earlier Pieces: _Zaire_, _Alzire_, _Mahomet_, _Semiramis_,
+And _Tancred_.
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+French Comedy--Molière--Criticism of his Works--Scarron, Boursault,
+Regnard; Comedies in the Time of the Regency; Marivaux and Destouches;
+Piron and Gresset--Later Attempts--The Heroic Opera: Quinault--Operettes
+and Vaudevilles--Diderot's attempted Change of the Theatre--The Weeping
+Drama--Beaumarchais--Melo-Dramas--Merits and Defects of the Histrionic Art.
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+Comparison of the English and Spanish Theatres--Spirit of the Romantic
+Drama--Shakspeare--His Age and the Circumstances of his Life.
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+Ignorance or Learning of Shakspeare--Costume as observed by Shakspeare,
+and how far necessary, or may be dispensed with, in the Drama--Shakspeare
+the greatest drawer of Character--Vindication of the genuineness of his
+pathos--Play on Words--Moral Delicacy--Irony-Mixture of the Tragic and
+Comic--The part of the Fool or Clown--Shakspeare's Language and
+Versification.
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+Criticisms on Shakspeare's Comedies.
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+Criticisms on Shakspeare's Tragedies.
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+Criticisms on Shakspeare's Historical Dramas.
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+Two Periods of the English Theatre: the first the most important--The
+first Conformation of the Stage, and its Advantages--State of the
+Histrionic Art in Shakspeare's Time--Antiquities of Dramatic Literature--
+Lilly, Marlow, Heywood--Ben Jonson; Criticism of his Works--Masques--
+Beaumont and Fletcher--General Characterization of these Poets, and
+Remarks on some of their Pieces--Massinger and other Contemporaries of
+Charles I.
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+Closing of the Stage by the Puritans--Revival of the Stage under Charles
+II.--Depravity of Taste and Morals--Dryden, Otway, and others--
+Characterization of the Comic Poets from Wycherley and Congreve to the
+Middle of the Eighteenth Century--Tragedies of the same Period--Rowe--
+Addison's _Cato_--Later Pieces--Familiar Tragedy: Lillo--Garrick--
+Latest State.
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+Spanish Theatre--Its three Periods: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon--
+Spirit of the Spanish Poetry in general--Influence of the National History
+on it--Form, and various Species of the Spanish Drama--Decline since the
+beginning of the Eighteenth Century.
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+Origin of the German Theatre--Hans Sachs--Gryphius--The Age of Gottsched--
+Wretched Imitation of the French--Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller--Review of
+their Works--Their Influence on Chivalrous Dramas, Affecting Dramas, and
+Family Pictures--Prospect for Futurity.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+
+The Lectures of A. W. SCHLEGEL on Dramatic Poetry have obtained high
+celebrity on the Continent, and been much alluded to of late in several
+publications in this country. The boldness of his attacks on rules which
+are considered as sacred by the French critics, and on works of which the
+French nation in general have long been proud, called forth a more than
+ordinary degree of indignation against his work in France. It was amusing
+enough to observe the hostility carried on against him in the Parisian
+Journals. The writers in these Journals found it much easier to condemn M.
+SCHLEGEL than to refute him: they allowed that what he said was very
+ingenious, and had a great appearance of truth; but still they said it was
+not truth. They never, however, as far as I could observe, thought proper
+to grapple with him, to point out anything unfounded in his premises, or
+illogical in the conclusions which he drew from them; they generally
+confined themselves to mere assertions, or to minute and unimportant
+observations by which the real question was in no manner affected.
+
+In this country the work will no doubt meet with a very different
+reception. Here we have no want of scholars to appreciate the value of his
+views of the ancient drama; and it will be no disadvantage to him, in our
+eyes, that he has been unsparing in his attack on the literature of our
+enemies. It will hardly fail to astonish us, however, to find a stranger
+better acquainted with the brightest poetical ornament of this country
+than any of ourselves; and that the admiration of the English nation for
+Shakspeare should first obtain a truly enlightened interpreter in a critic
+of Germany.
+
+It is not for me, however, to enlarge on the merits of a work which has
+already obtained so high a reputation. I shall better consult my own
+advantage in giving a short extract from the animated account of M.
+SCHLEGEL'S Lectures in the late work on Germany by Madame de Staël:--
+
+"W. SCHLEGEL has given a course of Dramatic Literature at Vienna, which
+comprises every thing remarkable that has been composed for the theatre,
+from the time of the Grecians to our own days. It is not a barren
+nomenclature of the works of the various authors: he seizes the spirit of
+their different sorts of literature with all the imagination of a poet. We
+are sensible that to produce such consequences extraordinary studies are
+required: but learning is not perceived in this work, except by his
+perfect knowledge of the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of composition. In a few
+pages we reap the fruit of the labour of a whole life; every opinion
+formed by the author, every epithet given to the writers of whom he
+speaks, is beautiful and just, concise and animated. He has found the art
+of treating the finest pieces of poetry as so many wonders of nature, and
+of painting them in lively colours, which do not injure the justness of
+the outline; for we cannot repeat too often, that imagination, far from
+being an enemy to truth, brings it forward more than any other faculty of
+the mind; and all those who depend upon it as an excuse for indefinite
+terms or exaggerated expressions, are at least as destitute of poetry as
+of good sense.
+
+"An analysis of the principles on which both Tragedy and Comedy are
+founded, is treated in this course with much depth of philosophy. This
+kind of merit is often found among the German writers; but SCHLEGEL has no
+equal in the art of inspiring his own admiration; in general, be shows
+himself attached to a simple taste, sometimes bordering on rusticity; but
+he deviates from his usual opinions in favour of the inhabitants of the
+South. Their play on words is not the object of his censure; he detests
+the affectation which owes its existence to the spirit of society: but
+that which is excited by the luxury of imagination pleases him, in poetry,
+as the profusion of colours and perfumes would do in nature. SCHLEGEL,
+after having acquired a great reputation by his translation of Shakspeare,
+became also enamoured of Calderon, but with a very different sort of
+attachment from that with which Shakspeare had inspired him; for while the
+English author is deep and gloomy in his knowledge of the human heart, the
+Spanish poet gives himself up with pleasure and delight to the beauty of
+life, to the sincerity of faith, and to all the brilliancy of those
+virtues which derive their colouring from the sunshine of the soul.
+
+"I was at Vienna when W. SCHLEGEL gave his public course of Lectures. I
+expected only good sense and instruction, where the object was merely to
+convey information: I was astonished to hear a critic as eloquent as an
+orator, and who, far from falling upon defects, which are the eternal food
+of mean and little jealousy, sought only the means of reviving a creative
+genius."
+
+Thus far Madame de Staël. In taking upon me to become the interpreter of a
+work of this description to my countrymen, I am aware that I have incurred
+no slight degree of responsibility. How I have executed my task it is not
+for me to speak, but for the reader to judge. This much, however, I will
+say,--that I have always endeavoured to discover the true meaning of the
+author, and that I believe I have seldom mistaken it. Those who are best
+acquainted with the psychological riches of the German language, will be
+the most disposed to look on my labour with an eye of indulgence.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+From the size of the present work, it will not be expected that it should
+contain either a course of Dramatic Literature bibliographically complete,
+or a history of the theatre compiled with antiquarian accuracy. Of books
+containing dry accounts and lists of names there are already enough. My
+purpose was to give a general view, and to develope those ideas which
+ought to guide us in our estimate of the value of the dramatic productions
+of various ages and nations.
+
+The greatest part of the following Lectures, with the exception of a few
+observations of a secondary nature, the suggestion of the moment, were
+delivered orally as they now appear in print. The only alteration consists
+in a more commodious distribution, and here and there in additions, where
+the limits of the time prevented me from handling many matters with
+uniform minuteness. This may afford a compensation for the animation of
+oral delivery which sometimes throws a veil over deficiencies of
+expression, and always excites a certain degree of expectation.
+
+I delivered these Lectures, in the spring of 1808, at Vienna, to a
+brilliant audience of nearly three hundred individuals of both sexes. The
+inhabitants of Vienna have long been in the habit of refuting the
+injurious descriptions which many writers of the North of Germany have
+given of that capital, by the kindest reception of all learned men and
+artists belonging to these regions, and by the most disinterested zeal for
+the credit of our national literature, a zeal which a just sensibility has
+not been able to cool. I found here the cordiality of better times united
+with that amiable animation of the South, which is often denied to our
+German seriousness, and the universal diffusion of a keen taste for
+intellectual amusement. To this circumstance alone I must attribute it
+that not a few of the men who hold the most important places at court, in
+the state, and in the army, artists and literary men of merit, women of
+the choicest social cultivation, paid me not merely an occasional visit,
+but devoted to me an uninterrupted attention.
+
+With joy I seize this fresh opportunity of laying my gratitude at the feet
+of the benignant monarch who, in the permission to deliver these Lectures
+communicated to me by way of distinction immediately from his own hand,
+gave me an honourable testimony of his gracious confidence, which I as a
+foreigner who had not the happiness to be born under his sceptre, and
+merely felt myself bound as a German and a citizen of the world to wish
+him every blessing and prosperity, could not possibly have merited.
+
+Many enlightened patrons and zealous promoters of everything good and
+becoming have merited my gratitude for the assistance which they gave to
+my undertaking, and the encouragement which they afforded me during its
+execution.
+
+The whole of my auditors rendered my labour extremely agreeable by their
+indulgence, their attentive participation, and their readiness to
+distinguish, in a feeling manner, every passage which seemed worthy of
+their applause.
+
+It was a flattering moment, which I shall never forget, when, in the last
+hour, after I had called up recollections of the old German renown sacred
+to every one possessed of true patriotic sentiment, and when the minds of
+my auditors were thus more solemnly attuned, I was at last obliged to take
+my leave powerfully agitated by the reflection that our recent relation,
+founded on a common love for a nobler mental cultivation, would be so soon
+dissolved, and that I should never again see those together who were then
+assembled around me. A general emotion was perceptible, excited by so much
+that I could not say, but respecting which our hearts understood each
+other. In the mental dominion of thought and poetry, inaccessible to
+worldly power, the Germans, who are separated in so many ways from each
+other, still feel their unity: and in this feeling, whose interpreter the
+writer and orator must be, amidst our clouded prospects we may still
+cherish the elevating presage of the great and immortal calling of our
+people, who from time immemorial have remained unmixed in their present
+habitations.
+
+GENEVA, _February_, 1809.
+
+
+OBSERVATION PREFIXED TO PART OF THE WORK PRINTED IN 1811.
+
+The declaration in the Preface that these Lectures were, with some
+additions, printed as they were delivered, is in so far to be corrected,
+that the additions in the second part are much more considerable than in
+the first. The restriction, in point of time in the oral delivery,
+compelled me to leave more gaps in the last half than in the first. The
+part respecting Shakspeare and the English theatre, in particular, has
+been, almost altogether re-written. I have been prevented, partly by the
+want of leisure and partly by the limits of the work, from treating of the
+Spanish theatre with that fulness which its importance deserves.
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIR OF THE LITERARY LIFE OF AUGUSTUS WILLIAM VON SCHLEGEL
+
+
+AUGUSTUS WILLIAM VON SCHLEGEL, the author of the following Lectures, was,
+with his no-less distinguished brother, Frederick, the son of John Adolph
+Schlegel, a native of Saxony, and descended from a noble family. Holding a
+high appointment in the Lutheran church, Adolph Schlegel distinguished
+himself as a religious poet, and was the friend and associate of Rabener,
+Gellert, and Klopstock. Celebrated for his eloquence in the pulpit, and
+strictly diligent in the performance of his religious duties, he died in
+1792, leaving an example to his children which no doubt had a happy
+influence on them.
+
+Of these, the seventh, Augustus William, was born in Hanover, September
+5th, 1767. In his early childhood, he evinced a genuine susceptibility for
+all that was good and noble; and this early promise of a generous and
+virtuous disposition was carefully nurtured by the religious instruction
+of his mother, an amiable and highly-gifted woman. Of this parent's pious
+and judicious teaching, Augustus William had to the end of his days a
+grateful remembrance, and he cherished for her throughout life a sincere
+and affectionate esteem, whose ardour neither time nor distance could
+diminish. The filial affection of her favourite son soothed the declining
+years of his mother, and lightened the anxieties with which the critical
+and troubled state of the times alarmed her old age. His further education
+was carried on by a private tutor, who prepared him for the grammar-school
+at Hanover, where he was distinguished both for his unremitting
+application, to which he often sacrificed the hours of leisure and
+recreation, and for the early display of a natural gift for language,
+which enabled him immediately on the close of his academic career to
+accept a tutorial appointment, which demanded of its holder a knowledge
+not only of the classics but also of English and French. He also displayed
+at a very early age a talent for poetry, and some of his juvenile
+extempore effusions were remarkable for their easy versification and
+rhythmical flow. In his eighteenth year he was called upon to deliver in
+the Lyceum of his native city, the anniversary oration in honour of a
+royal birthday. His address on this occasion excited an extraordinary
+sensation both by the graceful elegance of the style and the interest of
+the matter, written in hexameters. It embraced a short history of poetry
+in Germany, and was relieved and animated with many judicious and striking
+illustrations from the earliest Teutonic poets.
+
+He now proceeded to the University of Göttingen as a student of theology,
+which science, however, he shortly abandoned for the more congenial one of
+philology. The propriety of this charge he amply attested by his Essay on
+the Geography of Homer, which displayed both an intelligent and
+comprehensive study of this difficult branch of classical archaeology.
+
+At Göttingen he lived in the closest intimacy with Heyne, for whose
+_Virgil_, in 1788 he completed an index; he also became acquainted
+with the celebrated Michaelis. It was here too that he formed the
+friendship of Bürger, to whose _Academie der Schönen Redekünste_, he
+contributed his _Ariadne_, and an essay on _Dante_. The kindred genius of
+Bürger favourably influenced his own mind and tastes, and moved him to
+make the first known attempt to naturalize the Italian sonnet in Germany.
+
+Towards the end of his university career he combined his own studies with
+the private instruction of a rich young Englishman, born in the East
+Indies, and at the close of it accepted the post of tutor to the only son
+of Herr Muilmann, the celebrated Banker of Amsterdam. In this situation he
+gained universal respect and esteem, but after three years he quitted it
+to enter upon a wider sphere of literary activity. On his return to his
+native country he was elected Professor in the University of Jena.
+Schlegel's residence in this place, which may truly be called the classic
+soil of German literature, as it gained him the acquaintance of his
+eminent contemporaries Schiller and Goethe, marks a decisive epoch in the
+formation of his intellectual character. At this date he contributed
+largely to the _Horen_, and also to Schiller's _Musen-Almanach_, and
+down to 1799 was one of the most fertile writers in the _Allgemeinen
+Literatur-Zeitung_ of Jena. It was here, also, that he commenced his
+translations of Shakspeare, (9 vols., Berlin, 1797-1810,) which produced a
+salutary effect on the taste and judgment of his countrymen, and also on
+Dramatic Art and theatrical representation in Germany. Notwithstanding the
+favourable reception of this work he subsequently abandoned it, and on the
+publication of a new edition, in 1825, he cheerfully consigned to Tieck
+the revision of his own labours, and the completion of the yet
+untranslated pieces.
+
+Continuing attached to the University of Jena, where the dignity of
+Professorship was associated with that of Member of the Council, he now
+commenced a course of lectures on Aesthetics, and joined his brother
+Frederick in the editorship of the _Athenaeum_, (3 vols., Berlin,
+1796-1800,) an Aesthetico-critical journal, intended, while observing a
+rigorous but an impartial spirit of criticism, to discover and foster
+every grain of a truly vital development of mind. It was also during his
+residence at Jena that he published the first edition of his Poems, among
+which the religious pieces and the Sonnets on Art were greatly admired and
+had many imitators. To the latter years of his residence at Jena, which
+may be called the political portion of Schlegel's literary career, belongs
+the _Gate of Honour for the Stage-President Von-Kotzebue_, (_Ehrenpforte
+fur den Theater Präsidenten von Kotzebue_, 1800,) an ill-natured and much-
+censured satire in reply to Kotzebue's attack, entitled the _Hyperborean
+Ass_ (_Hyperboreischen Esee_). At this time he also collected several of
+his own and brother Frederick's earlier and occasional contributions to
+various periodicals, and these, together with the hitherto unpublished
+dissertations on Bürger's works, make up the _Characteristiken u Kritiken_
+(2 vols., Koenigsberg, 1801). Shortly afterwards he undertook with Tieck
+the editorship of _Musen-Almanack_ for 1802. The two brothers were now
+leading a truly scientific and poetic life, associating and co-operating
+with many minds of a kindred spirit, who gathered round Tieck and Novalis
+as their centre.
+
+His marriage with the daughter of Michaelis was not a happy one, and was
+quickly followed by a separation, upon which Schlegel proceeded to Berlin.
+In this city, towards the end of 1802, he delivered his _Lectures on the
+Present State of Literature and the Fine Arts_, which were afterwards
+printed in the _Europa_, under his brother's editorship. The publication
+in 1803 of his _Ion_, a drama in imitation of the ancients, but as a
+composition unmarked by any peculiar display of vigour, led to an
+interesting argument between himself, Bernhardi, and Schilling. This
+discussion, which extended from its original subject to Euripides and
+Dramatic Representation in general, was carried on in the _Journal for
+the Polite World_ (_Zeitung fur die elegante Welt_,) which Schlegel
+supported by his advice and contributions. In this periodical he also
+entered the lists in opposition to Kotzebue and Merkel in the
+_Freimüthige_ (_The Liberal_), and the merits of the so-called modern
+school and its leaders, was the subject of a paper war, waged with the
+bitterest acrimony of controversy, which did not scruple to employ the
+sharpest weapons of personal abuse and ridicule.
+
+At this date Schlegel was engaged upon his _Spanish Theatre_, (2
+vols., Berlin, 1803-1809). In the execution of this work, much was
+naturally demanded of the translator of Shakspeare, nor did he disappoint
+the general expectator, although he had here far greater difficulties to
+contend with. Not content with merely giving a faithful interpretation of
+his author's meaning, he laid down and strictly observed the law of
+adhering rigorously to all the measures, rhythms, and assonances of the
+original. These two excellent translations, in each of which he has
+brought to bear both the great command of his own, and a wonderful
+quickness in catching the spirit of a foreign language, have earned for
+Schlegel the foremost place among successful and able translators, while
+his _Flowers of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese Poetry_ (_Blumensträusse
+d. Ital. Span. u. Portug. Poesie_, Berlin, 1804), furnish another proof
+both of his skill in this pursuit and of the extent of his acquaintance
+with European literature. Moreover, the merit of having by these
+translations made Shakspeare and Calderon more widely known and better
+appreciated in Germany would, in default of any other claim, alone entitle
+him to take high rank in the annals of modern literature.
+
+But a new and more important career was now open to him by his
+introduction to Madame de Staël. Making a tour in Germany, this
+distinguished woman arrived at Berlin in 1805, and desirous of acquainting
+herself more thoroughly with German literature she selected Schlegel to
+direct her studies of it, and at the same time confided to his charge the
+completion of her children's education. Quitting Berlin he accompanied
+this lady on her travels through Italy and France, and afterwards repaired
+with her to her paternal seat at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva, which now
+became for some time his fixed abode. It was here that in 1807 he wrote in
+French his _Parallel between the Phaedra of Euripides and the Phèdre of
+Racine_, which produced a lively sensation in the literary circles of
+Paris. This city had peculiar attractions for Schlegel, both in its
+invaluable literary stores and its re-union of men of letters, among whom
+his own views and opinions found many enthusiastic admirers and partisans,
+notwithstanding that in his critical analysis of Racine's _Phèdre_ he
+had presumed to attack what Frenchmen deemed the chiefest glory of their
+literature, and had mortified their national vanity in its most sensitive
+point.
+
+In the spring of 1808 he visited Vienna, and there read to a brilliant
+audience his _Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature_, which, on their
+publication, were hailed throughout Europe with marked approbation, and
+which will, unquestionably, transmit his name to the latest posterity.
+His object in these Lectures is both to take a rapid survey of dramatic
+productions of different ages and nations, and to develope and determine
+the general ideas by which their true artistic value must be judged. In
+his travels with Madame de Staël he was introduced to the present King,
+then the Crown Prince, of Bavaria, who bestowed on him many marks of his
+respect and esteem, and about this time he took a part in the _German
+Museum_ (_Deutsche Museum_), of his brother Frederick, contributing some
+learned and profound dissertations on the _Lay of the Nibelungen_. In
+1812, when the subjugated South no longer afforded an asylum to the
+liberal-minded De Staël, with whose personal fortunes he felt himself
+inseparably linked by that deep feeling of esteem and friendship which
+speaks so touchingly and pathetically in some of his later poems, he
+accompanied that lady on a visit to Stockholm, where he formed the
+acquaintance of the Crown Prince.
+
+The great political events of this period were not without their effect on
+Schlegel's mind, and in 1813 he came forward as a political writer, when
+his powerful pen was not without its effect in rousing the German mind
+from the torpor into which it had sunk beneath the victorious military
+despotism of France. But he was called upon to take a more active part in
+the measures of these stirring times, and in this year entered the service
+of the Crown Prince of Sweden, as secretary and counsellor at head
+quarters. For this Prince he had a great personal regard, and estimated
+highly both his virtues as a man and his talents as a general. The
+services he rendered the Swedish Prince were duly appreciated and
+rewarded, among other marks of distinction by a patent of nobility, in
+virtue of which he prefixed the "Von" to his paternal name of Schlegel.
+The Emperor Alexander, of whose religious elevation of character he always
+spoke with admiration, also honoured him with his intimacy and many tokens
+of esteem.
+
+Upon the fall of Napoleon he returned to Coppet with Madame de Staël, and
+in 1815 published a second volume of his _Poetical Works_, (Heildelberg,
+1811-1815, 2nd edit., 2 vols., 1820). These are characterized not merely
+by the brilliancy and purity of the language, but also by the variety and
+richness of the imagery. Among these the _Arion_, _Pygmalion_, and _Der
+Heilige Lucas_ (St. Luke,) the Sonnets, and the sublime elegy, _Rhine_,
+dedicated to Madame de Staël, deserve especial mention, and give him a
+just claim to a poet's crown.
+
+On the death of his friend and patroness in 1819, he accepted the offer of
+a professor's chair in Bonn, where he married a daughter of Professor
+Paulus. This union, as short-lived as the first, was followed by a
+separation in 1820. In his new position of academic tutor, while he
+diligently promoted the study of the fine arts and sciences, both of the
+Ancient and the Moderns, he applied himself with peculiar ardour to
+Oriental literature, and particularly to the Sanscrit. As a fruit of these
+studies, he published his _Indian Library_, (2 vols., Bonn, 1820-26);
+he also set up a press for printing the great Sanscrit work, the
+_Râmâjana_ (Bonn, 1825). He also edited the Sanscrit text, with a
+Latin translation, of the Bhagavad-Gita, an episode of the great Indian
+Epos, the _Mahâbhârata_ (Bonn, 1829). About this period his Oriental
+studies took, him to France, and afterwards to England, where, in London
+and in the college libraries of Oxford and Cambridge, and the East India
+College at Hailesbury, he carefully examined the various collections of
+Oriental MSS. On his return he was appointed Superintendent of the Museum
+of Antiquities, and in 1827 delivered at Berlin a course of Lectures on
+the _Theory and History of the Fine Arts_, (Berlin, 1827). These were
+followed by his _Criticisms_, (Berlin, 1828), and his _Réflexion sur
+l'Etude des Langues Asiatiques_, addressed to Sir James Mackintosh. Being
+accused of a secret leaning to Roman Catholicism, (Kryptocatholicisme,) he
+ably defended himself in a reply entitled _Explication de quelques
+Malentendus_, (Berlin, 1828.)
+
+A. W. Von Schlegel, besides being a Member of the Legion of Honour, was
+invested with the decorations of several other Orders. He wrote French
+with as much facility as his native language, and many French journals
+were proud to number him among their contributors. He also assisted Madame
+de Staël in her celebrated work _De l'Allemagne_, and superintended
+the publication of her posthumous _Considérations sur la Révolution
+Française_.
+
+After this long career of successful literary activity, A. W. Von Schlegel
+died at Bonn, 12 May, 1845. His death was thus noticed in the
+_Athenaeum_:--
+
+"This illustrious writer was, in conjunction with his brother Frederick,
+as most European readers well know, the founder of the modern romantic
+school of German literature, and as a critic fought many a hard battle for
+his faith. The clearness of his insight into poetical and dramatic truth,
+Englishmen will always be apt to estimate by the fact that it procured for
+himself and for his countrymen the freedom of Shakspeare's enchanted
+world, and the taste of all the marvellous things that, like the treasures
+of Aladdin's garden, are fruit and gem at once upon its immortal boughs:--
+Frenchmen will not readily forget that he disparaged Molière. The merit of
+Schlegel's dramatic criticism ought not, however, to be thus limited.
+Englishmen themselves are deeply indebted to him. His Lectures, translated
+by Black, excited great interest here when first published, some thirty
+years since, and have worthily taken a permanent place in our libraries."
+
+His collection of books, which was rather extensive, and rich in Oriental,
+especially Sanscrit literature, was sold by auction in Bonn, December,
+1845. It appears by a chronological list prefixed to the catalogue, that
+reckoning both his separate publications and those contributed to
+periodicals, his printed works number no fewer than 126. Besides these he
+left many unpublished manuscripts, which, says the _Athenaeum_, "he
+bequeathed to the celebrated archaeologist, Welcker, professor at the
+Royal University of Bonn, with a request that he would cause them to be
+published."
+
+
+
+
+DRAMATIC LITERATURE.
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+Introduction--Spirit of True Criticism--Difference of Taste between the
+Ancients and Moderns--Classical and Romantic Poetry and Art--Division of
+Dramatic Literature; the Ancients, their Imitators, and the Romantic
+Poets.
+
+
+The object of the present series of Lectures will be to combine the theory
+of Dramatic Art with its history, and to bring before my auditors at once
+its principles and its models.
+
+It belongs to the general philosophical theory of poetry, and the other
+fine arts, to establish the fundamental laws of the beautiful. Every art,
+on the other hand, has its own special theory, designed to teach the
+limits, the difficulties, and the means by which it must be regulated in
+its attempt to realize those laws. For this purpose, certain scientific
+investigations are indispensable to the artist, although they have but
+little attraction for those whose admiration of art is confined to the
+enjoyment of the actual productions of distinguished minds. The general
+theory, on the other hand, seeks to analyze that essential faculty of
+human nature--the sense of the beautiful, which at once calls the fine
+arts into existence, and accounts for the satisfaction which arises from
+the contemplation of them; and also points out the relation which subsists
+between this and all other sentient and cognizant faculties of man. To the
+man of thought and speculation, therefore, it is of the highest
+importance, but by itself alone it is quite inadequate to guide and direct
+the essays and practice of art.
+
+Now, the history of the fine arts informs us what has been, and the theory
+teaches what ought to be accomplished by them. But without some
+intermediate and connecting link, both would remain independent and
+separate from one and other, and each by itself, inadequate and defective.
+This connecting link is furnished by criticism, which both elucidates the
+history of the arts, and makes the theory fruitful. The comparing
+together, and judging of the existing productions of the human mind,
+necessarily throws light upon the conditions which are indispensable to
+the creation of original and masterly works of art.
+
+Ordinarily, indeed, men entertain a very erroneous notion of criticism,
+and understand by it nothing more than a certain shrewdness in detecting
+and exposing the faults of a work of art. As I have devoted the greater
+part of my life to this pursuit, I may be excused if, by way of preface, I
+seek to lay before my auditors my own ideas of the true genius of
+criticism.
+
+We see numbers of men, and even whole nations, so fettered by the
+conventions of education and habits of life, that, even in the
+appreciation of the fine arts, they cannot shake them off. Nothing to them
+appears natural, appropriate, or beautiful, which is alien to their own
+language, manners, and social relations. With this exclusive mode of
+seeing and feeling, it is no doubt possible to attain, by means of
+cultivation, to great nicety of discrimination within the narrow circle to
+which it limits and circumscribes them. But no man can be a true critic or
+connoisseur without universality of mind, without that flexibility which
+enables him, by renouncing all personal predilections and blind habits, to
+adapt himself to the peculiarities of other ages and nations--to feel
+them, as it were, from their proper central point, and, what ennobles
+human nature, to recognise and duly appreciate whatever is beautiful and
+grand under the external accessories which were necessary to its
+embodying, even though occasionally they may seem to disguise and distort
+it. There is no monopoly of poetry for particular ages and nations; and
+consequently that despotism in taste, which would seek to invest with
+universal authority the rules which at first, perhaps, were but
+arbitrarily advanced, is but a vain and empty pretension. Poetry, taken in
+its widest acceptation, as the power of creating what is beautiful, and
+representing it to the eye or the ear, is a universal gift of Heaven,
+being shared to a certain extent even by those whom we call barbarians and
+savages. Internal excellence is alone decisive, and where this exists, we
+must not allow ourselves to be repelled by the external appearance.
+Everything must be traced up to the root of human nature: if it has sprung
+from thence, it has an undoubted worth of its own; but if, without
+possessing a living germ, it is merely externally attached thereto, it
+will never thrive nor acquire a proper growth. Many productions which
+appear at first sight dazzling phenomena in the province of the fine arts,
+and which as a whole have been honoured with the appellation of works of a
+golden age, resemble the mimic gardens of children: impatient to witness
+the work of their hands, they break off here and there branches and
+flowers, and plant them in the earth; everything at first assumes a noble
+appearance: the childish gardener struts proudly up and down among his
+showy beds, till the rootless plants begin to droop, and hang their
+withered leaves and blossoms, and nothing soon remains but the bare twigs,
+while the dark forest, on which no art or care was ever bestowed, and
+which towered up towards heaven long before human remembrance, bears every
+blast unshaken, and fills the solitary beholder with religious awe.
+
+Let us now apply the idea which we have been developing, of the
+universality of true criticism, to the history of poetry and the fine
+arts. This, like the so-called universal history, we generally limit (even
+though beyond this range there may be much that is both remarkable and
+worth knowing) to whatever has had a nearer or more remote influence on
+the present civilisation of Europe: consequently, to the works of the
+Greeks and Romans, and of those of the modern European nations, who first
+and chiefly distinguished themselves in art and literature. It is well
+known that, three centuries and a-half ago, the study of ancient
+literature received a new life, by the diffusion of the Grecian language
+(for the Latin never became extinct); the classical authors were brought
+to light, and rendered universally accessible by means of the press; and
+the monuments of ancient art were diligently disinterred and preserved.
+All this powerfully excited the human mind, and formed a decided epoch in
+the history of human civilisation; its manifold effects have extended to
+our times, and will yet extend to an incalculable series of ages. But the
+study of the ancients was forthwith most fatally perverted. The learned,
+who were chiefly in the possession of this knowledge, and who were
+incapable of distinguishing themselves by works of their own, claimed for
+the ancients an unlimited authority, and with great appearance of reason,
+since they are models in their kind. Maintaining that nothing could be
+hoped for the human mind but from an imitation of antiquity, in the works
+of the moderns they only valued what resembled, or seemed to bear a
+resemblance to, those of the ancients. Everything else they rejected as
+barbarous and unnatural. With the great poets and artists it was quite
+otherwise. However strong their enthusiasm for the ancients, and however
+determined their purpose of entering into competition with them, they were
+compelled by their independence and originality of mind, to strike out a
+path of their own, and to impress upon their productions the stamp of
+their own genius. Such was the case with Dante among the Italians, the
+father of modern poetry; acknowledging Virgil for his master, he has
+produced a work which, of all others, most differs from the Aeneid, and in
+our opinion far excels its pretended model in power, truth, compass, and
+profundity. It was the same afterwards with Ariosto, who has most
+unaccountably been compared to Homer, for nothing can be more unlike. So
+in art with Michael Angelo and Raphael, who had no doubt deeply studied
+the antique. When we ground our judgment of modern painters merely on
+their greater or less resemblance to the ancients, we must necessarily be
+unjust towards them, as Winkelmann undoubtedly has in the case of Raphael.
+As the poets for the most part had their share of scholarship, it gave
+rise to a curious struggle between their natural inclination and their
+imaginary duty. When they sacrificed to the latter, they were praised by
+the learned; but by yielding to the former, they became the favourites of
+the people. What preserves the heroic poems of a Tasso and a Camoëns to
+this day alive in the hearts and on the lips of their countrymen, is by no
+means their imperfect resemblance to Virgil, or even to Homer, but in
+Tasso the tender feeling of chivalrous love and honour, and in Camoëns the
+glowing inspiration of heroic patriotism.
+
+Those very ages, nations, and ranks, who felt least the want of a poetry
+of their own, were the most assiduous in their imitation of the ancients;
+accordingly, its results are but dull school exercises, which at best
+excite a frigid admiration. But in the fine arts, mere imitation is always
+fruitless; even what we borrow from others, to assume a true poetical
+shape, must, as it were, be born again within us. Of what avail is all
+foreign imitation? Art cannot exist without nature, and man can give
+nothing to his fellow-men but himself.
+
+Genuine successors and true rivals of the ancients, who, by virtue of
+congenial talents and cultivation have walked in their path and worked in
+their spirit, have ever been as rare as their mechanical spiritless
+copyists are common. Seduced by the form, the great body of critics have
+been but too indulgent to these servile imitators. These were held up as
+correct modern classics, while the great truly living and popular poets,
+whose reputation was a part of their nations' glory, and to whose
+sublimity it was impossible to be altogether blind, were at best but
+tolerated as rude and wild natural geniuses. But the unqualified
+separation of genius and taste on which such a judgment proceeds, is
+altogether untenable. Genius is the almost unconscious choice of the
+highest degree of excellence, and, consequently, it is taste in its
+highest activity.
+
+In this state, nearly, matters continued till a period not far back, when
+several inquiring minds, chiefly Germans, endeavoured to clear up the
+misconception, and to give the ancients their due, without being
+insensible to the merits of the moderns, although of a totally different
+kind. The apparent contradiction did not intimidate them. The groundwork
+of human nature is no doubt everywhere the same; but in all our
+investigations, we may observe that, throughout the whole range of nature,
+there is no elementary power so simple, but that it is capable of dividing
+and diverging into opposite directions. The whole play of vital motion
+hinges on harmony and contrast. Why, then, should not this phenomenon
+recur on a grander scale in the history of man? In this idea we have
+perhaps discovered the true key to the ancient and modern history of
+poetry and the fine arts. Those who adopted it, gave to the peculiar
+spirit of _modern_ art, as contrasted with the _antique_ or _classical_,
+the name of _romantic_. The term is certainly not inappropriate; the word
+is derived from _romance_--the name originally given to the languages
+which were formed from the mixture of the Latin and the old Teutonic
+dialects, in the same manner as modern civilisation is the fruit of the
+heterogeneous union of the peculiarities of the northern nations and the
+fragments of antiquity; whereas the civilisation of the ancients was much
+more of a piece.
+
+The distinction which we have just stated can hardly fail to appear well
+founded, if it can be shown, so far as our knowledge of antiquity extends,
+that the same contrast in the labours of the ancients and moderns runs
+symmetrically, I might almost say systematically, throughout every branch
+of art--that it is as evident in music and the plastic arts as in poetry.
+This is a problem which, in its full extent, still remains to be
+demonstrated, though, on particular portions of it, many excellent
+observations have been advanced already.
+
+Among the foreign authors who wrote before this school can be said to have
+been formed in Germany, we may mention Rousseau, who acknowledged the
+contrast in music, and showed that rhythm and melody were the prevailing
+principles of ancient, as harmony is that of modern music. In his
+prejudices against harmony, however, we cannot at all concur. On the
+subject of the arts of design an ingenious observation was made by
+Hemsterhuys, that the ancient painters were perhaps too much of sculptors,
+and the modern sculptors too much of painters. This is the exact point of
+difference; for, as I shall distinctly show in the sequel, the spirit of
+ancient art and poetry is _plastic_, but that of the moderns
+_pìcturesque_.
+
+By an example taken from another art, that of architecture, I shall
+endeavour to illustrate what I mean by this contrast. Throughout the
+Middle Ages there prevailed, and in the latter centuries of that aera was
+carried to perfection, a style of architecture, which has been called
+Gothic, but ought really to have been termed old German. When, on the
+general revival of classical antiquity, the imitation of Grecian
+architecture became prevalent, and but too frequently without a due regard
+to the difference of climate and manners or to the purpose of the
+building, the zealots of this new taste, passing a sweeping sentence of
+condemnation on the Gothic, reprobated it as tasteless, gloomy, and
+barbarous. This was in some degree pardonable in the Italians, among whom
+a love for ancient architecture, cherished by hereditary remains of
+classical edifices, and the similarity of their climate to that of the
+Greeks and Romans, might, in some sort, be said to be innate. But we
+Northerns are not so easily to be talked out of the powerful, solemn
+impressions which seize upon the mind at entering a Gothic cathedral. We
+feel, on the contrary, a strong desire to investigate and to justify the
+source of this impression. A very slight attention will convince us, that
+the Gothic architecture displays not only an extraordinary degree of
+mechanical skill, but also a marvellous power of invention; and, on a
+closer examination, we recognize its profound significance, and perceive
+that as well as the Grecian it constitutes in itself a complete and
+finished system.
+
+To the application!--The Pantheon is not more different from Westminster
+Abbey or the church of St. Stephen at Vienna, than the structure of a
+tragedy of Sophocles from a drama of Shakspeare. The comparison between
+these wonderful productions of poetry and architecture might be carried
+still farther. But does our admiration of the one compel us to depreciate
+the other? May we not admit that each is great and admirable in its kind,
+although the one is, and is meant to be, different from the other? The
+experiment is worth attempting. We will quarrel with no man for his
+predilection either for the Grecian or the Gothic. The world is wide, and
+affords room for a great diversity of objects. Narrow and blindly adopted
+prepossessions will never constitute a genuine critic or connoisseur, who
+ought, on the contrary, to possess the power of dwelling with liberal
+impartiality on the most discrepant views, renouncing the while all
+personal inclinations.
+
+For our present object, the justification, namely, of the grand division
+which we lay down in the history of art, and according to which we
+conceive ourselves equally warranted in establishing the same division in
+dramatic literature, it might be sufficient merely to have stated this
+contrast between the ancient, or classical, and the romantic. But as there
+are exclusive admirers of the ancients, who never cease asserting that all
+deviation from them is merely the whim of a new school of critics, who,
+expressing themselves in language full of mystery, cautiously avoid
+conveying their sentiments in a tangible shape, I shall endeavour to
+explain the origin and spirit of the _romantic_, and then leave the
+world to judge if the use of the word, and of the idea which it is
+intended to convey, be thereby justified.
+
+The mental culture of the Greeks was a finished education in the school of
+Nature. Of a beautiful and noble race, endowed with susceptible senses and
+a cheerful spirit under a mild sky, they lived and bloomed in the full
+health of existence; and, favoured by a rare combination of circumstances,
+accomplished all that the finite nature of man is capable of. The whole of
+their art and poetry is the expression of a consciousness of this harmony
+of all their faculties. They invented the poetry of joy.
+
+Their religion was the deification of the powers of nature and of the
+earthly life: but this worship, which, among other nations, clouded the
+imagination with hideous shapes, and hardened the heart to cruelty,
+assumed, among the Greeks, a mild, a grand, and a dignified form.
+Superstition, too often the tyrant of the human faculties, seemed to have
+here contributed to their freest development. It cherished the arts by
+which it was adorned, and its idols became the models of ideal beauty.
+
+But however highly the Greeks may have succeeded in the Beautiful, and
+even in the Moral, we cannot concede any higher character to their
+civilisation than that of a refined and ennobled sensuality. Of course
+this must be understood generally. The conjectures of a few philosophers,
+and the irradiations of poetical inspiration, constitute an occasional
+exception. Man can never altogether turn aside his thoughts from infinity,
+and some obscure recollections will always remind him of the home he has
+lost; but we are now speaking of the predominant tendency of his
+endeavours.
+
+Religion is the root of human existence. Were it possible for man to
+renounce all religion, including that which is unconscious, independent of
+the will, he would become a mere surface without any internal substance.
+When this centre is disturbed, the whole system of the mental faculties
+and feelings takes a new shape.
+
+And this is what has actually taken place in modern Europe through the
+introduction of Christianity. This sublime and beneficent religion has
+regenerated the ancient world from its state of exhaustion and debasement;
+it is the guiding principle in the history of modern nations, and even at
+this day, when many suppose they have shaken off its authority, they still
+find themselves much more influenced by it in their views of human affairs
+than they themselves are aware.
+
+After Christianity, the character of Europe has, since the commencement of
+the Middle Ages, been chiefly influenced by the Germanic race of northern
+conquerors, who infused new life and vigour into a degenerated people. The
+stern nature of the North drives man back within himself; and what is lost
+in the free sportive development of the senses, must, in noble
+dispositions, be compensated by earnestness of mind. Hence the honest
+cordiality with which Christianity was welcomed by all the Teutonic
+tribes, so that among no other race of men has it penetrated more deeply
+into the inner man, displayed more powerful effects, or become more
+interwoven with all human feelings and sensibilities.
+
+The rough, but honest heroism of the northern conquerors, by its admixture
+with the sentiments of Christianity, gave rise to chivalry, of which the
+object was, by vows which should be looked upon as sacred, to guard the
+practice of arms from every rude and ungenerous abuse of force into which
+it was so likely to sink.
+
+With the virtues of chivalry was associated a new and purer spirit of
+love, an inspired homage for genuine female worth, which was now revered
+as the acmè of human excellence, and, maintained by religion itself under
+the image of a virgin mother, infused into all hearts a mysterious sense
+of the purity of love.
+
+As Christianity did not, like the heathen worship, rest satisfied with
+certain external acts, but claimed an authority over the whole inward man
+and the most hidden movement of the heart; the feeling of moral
+independence took refuge in the domain of honour, a worldly morality, as
+it were, which subsisting alongside of, was often at variance with that of
+religion, but yet in so far resembling it that it never calculated
+consequences, but consecrated unconditionally certain principles of
+action, which like the articles of faith, were elevated far beyond the
+investigation of a casuistical reasoning.
+
+Chivalry, love, and honour, together with religion itself, are the
+subjects of that poetry of nature which poured itself out in the Middle
+Ages with incredible fulness, and preceded the more artistic cultivation
+of the romantic spirit. This age had also its mythology, consisting of
+chivalrous tales and legends; but its wonders and its heroism were the
+very reverse of those of the ancient mythology.
+
+Several inquirers who, in other respects, entertain the same conception of
+the peculiarities of the moderns, and trace them to the same source that
+we do, have placed the essence of the northern poetry in melancholy; and
+to this, when properly understood, we have nothing to object.
+
+Among the Greeks human nature was in itself all-sufficient; it was
+conscious of no defects, and aspired to no higher perfection than that
+which it could actually attain by the exercise of its own energies. We,
+however, are taught by superior wisdom that man, through a grievous
+transgression, forfeited the place for which he was originally destined;
+and that the sole destination of his earthly existence is to struggle to
+regain his lost position, which, if left to his own strength, he can never
+accomplish. The old religion of the senses sought no higher possession
+than outward and perishable blessings; and immortality, so far as it was
+believed, stood shadow-like in the obscure distance, a faint dream of this
+sunny waking life. The very reverse of all this is the case with the
+Christian view: every thing finite and mortal is lost in the contemplation
+of infinity; life has become shadow and darkness, and the first day of our
+real existence dawns in the world beyond the grave. Such a religion must
+waken the vague foreboding, which slumbers in every feeling heart, into a
+distinct consciousness that the happiness after which we are here striving
+is unattainable; that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls;
+and that all earthly enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary illusion.
+When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, [Footnote:
+_Trauerweiden der verbannung_, literally _the weeping willows of
+banishment_, an allusion, as every reader must know, to the 137th
+Psalm. Linnaeus, from this Psalm, calls the weeping willow _Salix
+Babylonica_.--TRANS.] breathes out its longing for its distant home,
+what else but melancholy can be the key-note of its songs? Hence the
+poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours is that of
+desire: the former has its foundation in the scene which is present, while
+the latter hovers betwixt recollection and hope. Let me not be understood
+as affirming that everything flows in one unvarying strain of wailing and
+complaint, and that the voice of melancholy is always loudly heard. As the
+austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the
+Greeks, so that romantic poetry whose origin I have been describing, can
+assume every tone, even that of the liveliest joy; but still it will
+always, in some indescribable way, bear traces of the source from which it
+originated. The feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more inward,
+their fancy more incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative. In
+nature, it is true, the boundaries of objects run more into one another,
+and things are not so distinctly separated as we must exhibit them in
+order to convey distinct notions of them.
+
+The Grecian ideal of human nature was perfect unison and proportion
+between all the powers,--a natural harmony. The moderns, on the contrary,
+have arrived at the consciousness of an internal discord which renders
+such an ideal impossible; and hence the endeavour of their poetry is to
+reconcile these two worlds between which we find ourselves divided, and to
+blend them indissolubly together. The impressions of the senses are to be
+hallowed, as it were, by a mysterious connexion with higher feelings; and
+the soul, on the other hand, embodies its forebodings, or indescribable
+intuitions of infinity, in types and symbols borrowed from the visible
+world.
+
+In Grecian art and poetry we find an original and unconscious unity of
+form and matter; in the modern, so far as it has remained true to its own
+spirit, we observe a keen struggle to unite the two, as being naturally in
+opposition to each other. The Grecian executed what it proposed in the
+utmost perfection; but the modern can only do justice to its endeavours
+after what is infinite by approximation; and, from a certain appearance of
+imperfection, is in greater danger of not being duly appreciated.
+
+It would lead us too far, if in the separate arts of architecture, music,
+and painting (for the moderns have never had a sculpture of their own), we
+should endeavour to point out the distinctions which we have here
+announced, to show the contrast observable in the character of the same
+arts among the ancients and moderns, and at the same time to demonstrate
+the kindred aim of both.
+
+Neither can we here enter into a more particular consideration of the
+different kinds and forms of romantic poetry in general, but must return
+to our more immediate subject, which is dramatic art and literature. The
+division of this, as of the other departments of art, into the antique and
+the romantic, at once points out to us the course which we have to pursue.
+
+We shall begin with the ancients; then proceed to their imitators, their
+genuine or supposed successors among the moderns; and lastly, we shall
+consider those poets of later times, who, either disregarding the
+classical models, or purposely deviating from them, have struck out a path
+for themselves.
+
+Of the ancient dramatists, the Greeks alone are of any importance. In this
+branch of art the Romans were at first mere translators of the Greeks, and
+afterwards imitators, and not always very successful ones. Besides, of
+their dramatic labours very little has been preserved. Among modern
+nations an endeavour to restore the ancient stage, and, where possible, to
+improve it, has been shown in a very lively manner by the Italians and the
+French. In other nations, also, attempts of the same kind, more or less
+earnest, have at times, especially of late, been made in tragedy; for in
+comedy, the form under which it appears in Plautus and Terence has
+certainly been more generally prevalent. Of all studied imitations of the
+ancient tragedy the French is the most brilliant essay, has acquired the
+greatest renown, and consequently deserves the most attentive
+consideration. After the French come the modern Italians; viz., Metastasio
+and Alfieri. The romantic drama, which, strictly speaking, can neither be
+called tragedy nor comedy in the sense of the ancients, is indigenous only
+to England and Spain. In both it began to flourish at the same time,
+somewhat more than two hundred years ago, being brought to perfection by
+Shakspeare in the former country, and in the latter by Lope de Vega.
+
+The German stage is the last of all, and has been influenced in the
+greatest variety of ways by all those which preceded it. It will be most
+appropriate, therefore, to enter upon its consideration last of all. By
+this course we shall be better enabled to judge of the directions which it
+has hitherto taken, and to point out the prospects which are still open to
+it.
+
+When I promise to go through the history of the Greek and Roman, of the
+Italian and French, and of the English and Spanish theatres, in the few
+hours which are dedicated to these Lectures, I wish it to be understood
+that I can only enter into such an account of them as will comprehend
+their most essential peculiarities under general points of view. Although
+I confine myself to a single domain of poetry, still the mass of materials
+comprehended within it is too extensive to be taken in by the eye at once,
+and this would be the case were I even to limit myself to one of its
+subordinate departments. We might read ourselves to death with farces. In
+the ordinary histories of literature the poets of one language, and one
+description, are enumerated in succession, without any further
+discrimination, like the Assyrian and Egyptian kings in the old universal
+histories. There are persons who have an unconquerable passion for the
+titles of books, and we willingly concede to them the privilege of
+increasing their number by books on the titles of books. It is much the
+same thing, however, as in the history of a war to give the name of every
+soldier who fought in the ranks of the hostile armies. It is usual,
+however, to speak only of the generals, and those who may have performed
+actions of distinction. In like manner the battles of the human mind, if I
+may use the expression, have been won by a few intellectual heroes. The
+history of the development of art and its various forms may be therefore
+exhibited in the characters of a number, by no means considerable, of
+elevated and creative minds.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+Definition of the Drama--View of the Theatres of all Nations--Theatrical
+Effect--Importance of the Stage--Principal Species of the Drama.
+
+
+Before, however, entering upon such a history as we have now described, it
+will be necessary to examine what is meant by _dramatic_, _theatrical_,
+_tragic_, and _comic_.
+
+What is dramatic? To many the answer will seem very easy: where various
+persons are introduced conversing together, and the poet does not speak in
+his own person. This is, however, merely the first external foundation of
+the form; and that is dialogue. But the characters may express thoughts
+and sentiments without operating any change on each other, and so leave
+the minds of both in exactly the same state in which they were at the
+commencement; in such a case, however interesting the conversation may be,
+it cannot be said to possess a dramatic interest. I shall make this clear
+by alluding to a more tranquil species of dialogue, not adapted for the
+stage, the philosophic. When, in Plato, Socrates asks the conceited
+sophist Hippias, what is the meaning of the beautiful, the latter is at
+once ready with a superficial answer, but is afterwards compelled by the
+ironical objections of Socrates to give up his former definition, and to
+grope about him for other ideas, till, ashamed at last and irritated at
+the superiority of the sage who has convicted him of his ignorance, he is
+forced to quit the field: this dialogue is not merely philosophically
+instructive, but arrests the attention like a drama in miniature. And
+justly, therefore, has this lively movement in the thoughts, this stretch
+of expectation for the issue, in a word, the dramatic cast of the
+dialogues of Plato, been always celebrated.
+
+From this we may conceive wherein consists the great charm of dramatic
+poetry. Action is the true enjoyment of life, nay, life itself. Mere
+passive enjoyments may lull us into a state of listless complacency, but
+even then, if possessed of the least internal activity, we cannot avoid
+being soon wearied. The great bulk of mankind merely from their situation
+in life, or from their incapacity for extraordinary exertions, are
+confined within a narrow circle of insignificant operations. Their days
+flow on in succession under the sleepy rule of custom, their life advances
+by an insensible progress, and the bursting torrent of the first passions
+of youth soon settles into a stagnant marsh. From the discontent which
+this occasions they are compelled to have recourse to all sorts of
+diversions, which uniformly consist in a species of occupation that may be
+renounced at pleasure, and though a struggle with difficulties, yet with
+difficulties that are easily surmounted. But of all diversions the theatre
+is undoubtedly the most entertaining. Here we may see others act even when
+we cannot act to any great purpose ourselves. The highest object of human
+activity is man, and in the drama we see men, measuring their powers with
+each other, as intellectual and moral beings, either as friends or foes,
+influencing each other by their opinions, sentiments, and passions, and
+decisively determining their reciprocal relations and circumstances. The
+art of the poet accordingly consists in separating from the fable whatever
+does not essentially belong to it, whatever, in the daily necessities of
+real life, and the petty occupations to which they give rise, interrupts
+the progress of important actions, and concentrating within a narrow space
+a number of events calculated to attract the minds of the hearers and to
+fill them with attention and expectation. In this manner he gives us a
+renovated picture of life; a compendium of whatever is moving and
+progressive in human existence.
+
+But this is not all. Even in a lively oral narration, it is not unusual to
+introduce persons in conversation with each other, and to give a
+corresponding variety to the tone and the expression. But the gaps, which
+these conversations leave in the story, the narrator fills up in his own
+name with a description of the accompanying circumstances, and other
+particulars. The dramatic poet must renounce all such expedients; but for
+this he is richly recompensed in the following invention. He requires each
+of the characters in his story to be personated by a living individual;
+that this individual should, in sex, age, and figure, meet as near as may
+be the prevalent conceptions of his fictitious original, nay, assume his
+entire personality; that every speech should be delivered in a suitable
+tone of voice, and accompanied by appropriate action and gesture; and that
+those external circumstances should be added which are necessary to give
+the hearers a clear idea of what is going forward. Moreover, these
+representatives of the creatures of his imagination must appear in the
+costume belonging to their assumed rank, and to their age and country;
+partly for the sake of greater resemblance, and partly because, even in
+dress, there is something characteristic. Lastly, he must see them placed
+in a locality, which, in some degree, resembles that where, according to
+his fable, the action took place, because this also contributes to the
+resemblance: he places them, _i.e._, on a scene. All this brings us to the
+idea of the _theatre_. It is evident that the very form of dramatic
+poetry, that is, the exhibition of an action by dialogue without the aid
+of narrative, implies the theatre as its necessary complement. We allow
+that there are dramatic works which were not originally designed for
+the stage, and not calculated to produce any great effect there, which
+nevertheless afford great pleasure in the perusal. I am, however, very
+much inclined to doubt whether they would produce the same strong
+impression, with which they affect us, upon a person who had never seen or
+heard a description of a theatre. In reading dramatic works, we are
+accustomed ourselves to supply the representation.
+
+The invention of dramatic art, and of the theatre, seems a very obvious
+and natural one. Man has a great disposition to mimicry; when he enters
+vividly into the situation, sentiments, and passions of others, he
+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 strikes their fancy; and with the happy pliancy of
+their imagination, they can exhibit all the characteristics of any dignity
+they may choose to assume, be it that of a father, a schoolmaster, or a
+king. But one step more was requisite for the invention of the drama,
+namely, to separate and extract the mimetic elements from the separate
+parts of social life, and to present them to itself again collectively in
+one mass; yet in many nations it has not been taken. In the very minute
+description of ancient Egypt given by Herodotus and other writers, I do
+not recollect observing the smallest trace of it. The Etruscans, on the
+contrary, who in many respects resembled the Egyptians, had theatrical
+representations; and what is singular enough, the Etruscan name for an
+actor _histrio_, is preserved in living languages even to the present
+day. The Arabians and Persians, though possessed of a rich poetical
+literature, are unacquainted with the drama. It was the same with Europe
+in the Middle Ages. On the introduction of Christianity, the plays handed
+down from the Greeks and Romans were set aside, partly because they had
+reference to heathen ideas, and partly because they had degenerated into
+the most shameless immorality; nor were they again revived till after the
+lapse of nearly a thousand years. Even in the fourteenth century, in that
+complete picture which Boccacio gives us of the existing frame of society,
+we do not find the smallest trace of plays. In place of them they had
+simply their _conteurs_, _menestriers_, _jongleurs_. On the other hand we
+are by no means entitled to assume that the invention of the drama was
+made once for all in the world, to be afterwards borrowed by one people
+from another. The English circumnavigators tell us, that among the
+islanders of the South Seas, who in every mental qualification and
+acquirement are at the lowest grade of civilization, they yet observed a
+rude drama in which a common incident in life was imitated for the sake of
+diversion. And to pass to the other extremity of the world, among the
+Indians, whose social institutions and mental cultivation descend
+unquestionably from a remote antiquity, plays were known long before they
+could have experienced any foreign influence. It has lately been made
+known to Europe that they possess a rich dramatic literature, which goes
+backward through nearly two thousand years. The only specimen of their
+plays (nataks) hitherto known to us in the delightful Sakontala, which,
+notwithstanding the foreign colouring of its native climate, bears in its
+general structure such a striking resemblance to our own romantic drama,
+that we might be inclined to suspect we owe this resemblance to the
+predilection for Shakspeare entertained by the English translator (Sir
+William Jones), if his fidelity were not attested by other learned
+orientalists. The drama, indeed, seems to have been a favourite amusement
+of the Native Princes; and to owe to this circumstance that tone of
+refined society which prevails in it. Uggargini (Oude?) is specially named
+as a seat of this art. Under the Mahommedan rulers it naturally fell into
+decay: the national tongue was strange to them, Persian being the language
+of the court; and moreover, the mythology which was so intimately
+interwoven with poetry was irreconcilable with their religious notions.
+Generally, indeed, we know of no Mahommedan nation that has accomplished
+any thing in dramatic poetry, or even had any notion of it. The Chinese
+again have their standing national theatre, standing 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
+conventionalities, they leave the most correct Europeans very far behind
+them. When the new European stage sprung up in the fifteenth century, with
+its allegorical and religious pieces called Moralities and Mysteries, its
+rise was uninfluenced by 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.
+
+In this wide diffusion of theatrical entertainments, the great difference
+in dramatic talent which subsists between nations equally distinguished
+for intellect, is something remarkable; so that theatrical talent would
+seem to be a peculiar quality, essentially distinct from the poetical gift
+in general. We do not wonder at the contrast in this respect between the
+Greeks and the Romans, for the Greeks were altogether a nation of artists,
+and the Romans a practical people. Among the latter the fine arts were
+introduced as a corrupting article of luxury, both betokening and
+accelerating the degeneracy of the times. They carried this luxury so far
+with respect to the theatre itself, that the perfection in essentials was
+sacrificed to the accessories of embellishment. Even among the Greeks
+dramatic talent was far from universal. The theatre was invented in
+Athens, and in Athens alone was it brought to perfection. The Doric dramas
+of Epicharmus form only a slight exception to the truth of this remark.
+All the great creative dramatists of the Greeks were born in Attica, and
+formed their style in Athens. Widely as the Grecian race was spread,
+successfully as everywhere almost it cultivated the fine arts, yet beyond
+the bounds of Attica it was content to admire, without venturing to rival,
+the productions of the Athenian stage.
+
+Equally remarkable is the difference in this respect between the Spaniards
+and their neighbours the Portuguese, though related to them both by
+descent and by language. The Spaniards possess a dramatic literature of
+inexhaustible wealth; in fertility their dramatists resemble the Greeks,
+among whom more than a hundred pieces can frequently be assigned by name
+to a single author. Whatever judgment may be pronounced on them in other
+respects, the praise of invention has never yet been denied to them; their
+claim to this has in fact been but too well established, since Italian,
+French, and English writers have all availed themselves of the ingenious
+inventions of the Spaniards, and often without acknowledging the source
+from which they derived them. The Portuguese, on the other hand, while in
+the other branches of poetry they rival the Spaniards, have in this
+department accomplished hardly anything, and have never even possessed a
+national theatre; visited from time to time by strolling players from
+Spain, they chose rather to listen to a foreign dialect, which, without
+previous study, they could not perfectly understand, than to invent, or
+even to translate and imitate, for themselves.
+
+Of the many talents for art and literature displayed by the Italians, the
+dramatic is by no means pre-eminent, and this defect they seem to have
+inherited from the Romans, in the same manner as their great talent for
+mimicry and buffoonery goes back to the most ancient times. The
+extemporary compositions called _Fabulae Atellanae_, the only original and
+national form of the Roman drama, in respect of plan, were not perhaps
+more perfect than the so-called _Commedia dell' Arte_, in which, the parts
+being fixed and invariable, the dialogue is extemporised by masked actors.
+In the ancient Saturnalia we have probably the germ of the present
+carnival, which is entirely an Italian invention. The Opera and the Ballet
+were also the invention of the Italians: two species of theatrical
+amusement, in which the dramatic interest is entirely subordinate to music
+and dancing.
+
+If the German mind has not developed itself in the drama with the same
+fulness and ease as in other departments of literature, this defect is
+perhaps to be accounted for by the peculiar character of the nation. The
+Germans are a speculative people; in other words, they wish to discover by
+reflection and meditation, the principle of whatever they engage in. On
+that very account they are not sufficiently practical; for if we wish to
+act with skill and determination, we must make up our minds that we have
+somehow or other become masters of our subject, and not be perpetually
+recurring to an examination of the theory on which it rests; we must, as
+it were, have settled down and contented ourselves with a certain partial
+apprehension of the idea. But now in the invention and conduct of a drama
+the practical spirit must prevail: the dramatic poet is not allowed to
+dream away under his inspiration, he must take the straightest road to his
+end; but the Germans are only too apt to lose sight of the object in the
+course of their way to it. Besides, in the drama the nationality does
+usually, nay, must show itself in the most marked manner, and the national
+character of the Germans is modest and retiring: it loves not to make a
+noisy display of itself; and the noble endeavour to become acquainted
+with, and to appropriate to itself whatever is excellent in others, is not
+seldom accompanied with an undervaluing of its own worth. For these
+reasons the German stage has often, in form and matter, been more than
+duly affected by foreign influence. Not indeed that the Germans propose to
+themselves no higher object than the mere passive repetition of the
+Grecian, the French, the Spanish, or the English theatre; but, as it
+appears to me, they are in search of a more perfect form, which, excluding
+all that is merely local or temporary, may combine whatever is truly
+poetical in all these theatres. In the matter, however, the German
+national features ought certainly to predominate.
+
+After this rapid sketch of what may be called the map of dramatic
+literature, we return to the examination of its fundamental ideas. Since,
+as we have already shown, visible representation is essential to the very
+form of the drama; a dramatic work may always be regarded from a double
+point of view,--how far it is _poetical_, and how far it is _theatrical_.
+The two are by no means inseparable. Let not, however, the expression
+_poetical_ be misunderstood: I am not now speaking of the versification
+and the ornaments of language; these, when not animated by some higher
+excellence, are the least effective on the stage; but I speak of the
+poetry in the spirit and design of a piece; and this may exist in as high
+a degree when the drama is written in prose as in verse. What is it, then,
+that makes a drama poetical? The very same, assuredly, that makes other
+works so. It must in the first place be a connected whole, complete and
+satisfactory within itself. But this is merely the negative definition of
+a work of art, by which it is distinguished from the phenomena of nature,
+which run into each other, and do not possess in themselves a complete and
+independent existence. To be poetical it is necessary that a composition
+should be a mirror of ideas, that is, thoughts and feelings which in their
+character are necessary and eternally true, and soar above this earthly
+life, and also that it should exhibit them embodied before us. What the
+ideas are, which in this view are essential to the different departments
+of the drama, will hereafter be the subject of our investigation. We shall
+also, on the other hand, show that without them a drama becomes altogether
+prosaic and empirical, that is to say, patched together by the
+understanding out of the observations it has gathered from literal
+reality.
+
+But how does a dramatic work become theatrical, or fitted to appear with
+advantage on the stage? In single instances it is often difficult to
+determine whether a work possesses such a property or not. It is indeed
+frequently the subject of great controversy, especially when the self-love
+of authors and actors comes into collision; each shifts the blame of
+failure on the other, and those who advocate the cause of the author
+appeal to an imaginary perfection of the histrionic art, and complain of
+the insufficiency of the existing means for its realization. But in
+general the answer to this question is by no means so difficult. The
+object proposed is to produce an impression on an assembled multitude, to
+rivet their attention, and to excite their interest and sympathy. In this
+respect the poet's occupation coincides with that of the orator. How then
+does the latter attain his end? By perspicuity, rapidity, and energy.
+Whatever exceeds the ordinary measure of patience or comprehension he must
+diligently avoid. Moreover, when a number of men are assembled together,
+they mutually distract each other's attention whenever their eyes and ears
+are not drawn to a common object without and beyond themselves.
+
+Hence the dramatic poet, as well as the orator, must from the very
+commencement, by strong impressions, transport his hearers out of
+themselves, and, as it were, take bodily possession of their attention.
+There is a species of poetry which gently stirs a mind attuned to solitary
+contemplation, as soft breezes elicit melody from the Aeolian harp.
+However excellent this poetry may be in itself, without some other
+accompaniments its tones would be lost on the stage. The melting
+_harmonica_ is not calculated to regulate the march of an army, and
+kindle its military enthusiasm. For this we must have piercing
+instruments, but above all a strongly-marked rhythm, to quicken the
+pulsation and give a more rapid movement to the animal spirits. The grand
+requisite in a drama is to make this rhythm perceptible in the onward
+progress of the action. When this has once been effected, the poet may all
+the sooner halt in his rapid career, and indulge the bent of his own
+genius. There are points, when the most elaborate and polished style, the
+most enthusiastic lyrics, the most profound thoughts and remote allusions,
+the smartest coruscations of wit, and the most dazzling flights of a
+sportive or ethereal fancy, are all in their place, and when the willing
+audience, even those who cannot entirely comprehend them, follow the whole
+with a greedy ear, like music in unison with their feelings. Here the
+poet's great art lies in availing himself of the effect of contrasts,
+which enable him at one time to produce calm repose, profound
+contemplation, and even the self-abandoned indifference of exhaustion, or
+at another, the most tumultuous emotions, the most violent storm of the
+passions. With respect to theatrical fitness, however, it must not be
+forgotten that much must always depend on the capacities and humours of
+the audience, and, consequently, on the national character in general, and
+the particular degree of mental culture. Of all kinds of poetry the
+dramatic is, in a certain sense, the most secular; for, issuing from the
+stillness of an inspired mind, it yet fears not to exhibit itself in the
+midst of the noise and tumult of social life. The dramatic poet is, more
+than any other, obliged to court external favour and loud applause. But of
+course it is only in appearance that he thus lowers himself to his
+hearers; while, in reality, he is elevating them to himself.
+
+In thus producing an impression on an assembled multitude the following
+circumstance deserves to be weighed, in order to ascertain the whole
+amount of its importance. In ordinary intercourse men exhibit only the
+outward man to each other. They are withheld by mistrust or indifference
+from allowing others to look into what passes within them; and to speak
+with any thing like emotion or agitation of that which is nearest our
+heart is considered unsuitable to the tone of polished society. The orator
+and the dramatist find means to break through these barriers of
+conventional reserve. While they transport their hearers into such lively
+emotions that the outward signs thereof break forth involuntarily, every
+man perceives those around him to be affected in the same manner and
+degree, and those who before were strangers to one another, become in a
+moment intimately acquainted. The tears which the dramatist or the orator
+compels them to shed for calumniated innocence or dying heroism, make
+friends and brothers of them all. Almost inconceivable is the power of a
+visible communion of numbers to give intensity to those feelings of the
+heart which usually retire into privacy, or only open themselves to the
+confidence of friendship. The faith in the validity of such emotions
+becomes irrefragable from its diffusion; we feel ourselves strong among so
+many associates, and all hearts and minds flow together in one great and
+irresistible stream. On this very account the privilege of influencing an
+assembled crowd is exposed to most dangerous abuses. As one may
+disinterestedly animate them, for the noblest and best of purposes, so
+another may entangle them in the deceitful meshes of sophistry, and dazzle
+them by the glare of a false magnanimity, whose vainglorious crimes may be
+painted as virtues and even as sacrifices. Beneath the delightful charms
+of oratory and poetry, the poison steals imperceptibly into ear and heart.
+Above all others must the comic poet (seeing that his very occupation
+keeps him always on the slippery brink of this precipice,) take heed, lest
+he afford an opportunity for the lower and baser parts of human nature to
+display themselves without restraint. When the sense of shame which
+ordinarily keeps these baser propensities within the bounds of decency, is
+once weakened by the sight of others' participation in them, our inherent
+sympathy with what is vile will soon break out into the most unbridled
+licentiousness.
+
+The powerful nature of such an engine for either good or bad purposes has
+in all times justly drawn the attention of the legislature to the drama.
+Many regulations have been devised by different governments, to render it
+subservient to their views and to guard against its abuse. The great
+difficulty is to combine such a degree of freedom as is necessary for the
+production of works of excellence, with the precautions demanded by the
+customs and institutions of the different states. In Athens the theatre
+enjoyed up to its maturity, under the patronage of religion, almost
+unlimited freedom, and the public morality preserved it for a time from
+degeneracy. The comedies of Aristophanes, which with our views and habits
+appear to us so intolerably licentious, and in which the senate and the
+people itself are unmercifully turned to ridicule, were the seal of
+Athenian freedom. To meet this abuse, Plato, who lived in the very same
+Athens, and either witnessed or foresaw the decline of art, proposed the
+entire banishment of dramatic poets from his ideal republic. Few states,
+however, have conceived it necessary to subscribe to this severe sentence
+of condemnation; but few also have thought proper to leave the theatre to
+itself without any superintendence. In many Christian countries the
+dramatic art has been honoured by being made subservient to religion, in
+the popular treatment and exhibition of religious subjects; and in Spain
+more especially competition in this department has given birth to many
+works which, neither devotion nor poetry will disown. In other states and
+under other circumstances this has been thought both objectionable and
+inexpedient. Wherever, however, the subsequent responsibility of the poet
+and actor has been thought insufficient, and it has been deemed advisable
+to submit every piece before its appearance on the stage to a previous
+censorship, it has been generally found to fail in the very point which is
+of the greatest importance: namely, the spirit and general impression of a
+play. From the nature of the dramatic art, the poet must put into the
+mouths of his characters much of which he does not himself approve, while
+with respect to his own sentiments he claims to be judged by the spirit
+and connexion of the whole. It may again happen that a piece is perfectly
+inoffensive in its single speeches, and defies all censorship, while as a
+whole it is calculated to produce the most pernicious effect. We have in
+our own times seen but too many plays favourably received throughout
+Europe, over-flowing with ebullitions of good-heartedness and traits of
+magnanimity, and in which, notwithstanding, a keener eye cannot fail to
+detect the hidden purpose of the writer to sap the foundations of moral
+principle, and the veneration for whatever ought to be held sacred by man;
+while all this sentimentality is only to bribe to his purpose the
+effeminate soft-heartedness of his contemporaries [Footnote: The author it
+is supposed alludes to Kotzebue.--TRANS.]. On the other hand, if any
+person were to undertake the moral vindication of poor Aristophanes, who
+has such a bad name, and whose licentiousness in particular passages, is
+to our ideas quite intolerable, he will find good grounds for his defence
+in the general object of his pieces, in which he at least displays the
+sentiments of a patriotic citizen.
+
+The purport of these observations is to evince the importance of the
+subject we are considering. The theatre, where many arts are combined to
+produce a magical effect; where the most lofty and profound poetry has for
+its interpreter the most finished action, which is at once eloquence and
+an animated picture; while architecture contributes her splendid
+decorations, and painting her perspective illusions, and the aid of music
+is called in to attune the mind, or to heighten by its strains the
+emotions which already agitate it; the theatre, in short, where the whole
+of the social and artistic enlightenment, which a nation possesses, the
+fruit of many centuries of continued exertion, are brought into play
+within the representation of a few short hours, has an extraordinary charm
+for every age, sex, and rank, and has ever been the favourite amusement of
+every cultivated people. Here, princes, statesmen, and generals, behold
+the great events of past times, similar to those in which they themselves
+are called upon to act, laid open in their inmost springs and motives;
+here, too, the philosopher finds subject for profoundest reflection on the
+nature and constitution of man; with curious eye the artist follows the
+groups which pass rapidly before him, and from them impresses on his fancy
+the germ of many a future picture; the susceptible youth opens his heart
+to every elevating feeling; age becomes young again in recollection; even
+childhood sits with anxious expectation before the gaudy curtain, which is
+soon to be drawn up with its rustling sound, and to display to it so many
+unknown wonders: all alike are diverted, all exhilarated, and all feel
+themselves for a time raised above the daily cares, the troubles, and the
+sorrows of life. As the drama, with the arts which are subservient to it,
+may, from neglect and the mutual contempt of artists and the public, so
+far degenerate, as to become nothing better than a trivial and stupid
+amusement, and even a downright waste of time, we conceive that we are
+attempting something more than a passing entertainment, if we propose to
+enter on a consideration of the works produced by the most distinguished
+nations in their most brilliant periods, and to institute an inquiry into
+the means of ennobling and perfecting so important an art.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+Essence of Tragedy and Comedy--Earnestness and Sport--How far it is
+possible to become acquainted with the Ancients without knowing Original
+Languages--Winkelmann.
+
+
+The importance of our subject is, I think, fully proved. Let us now enter
+upon a brief consideration of the two kinds into which all dramatic poetry
+is divided, the _tragic_ and _comic_, and examine the meaning and import
+of each.
+
+The three principal kinds of poetry in general are the epic, the lyric,
+and the dramatic. All the other subordinate species are either derived
+from these, or formed by combination from them. If we would consider these
+three leading kinds in their purity, we must go back to the forms in which
+they appeared among the Greeks. For the theory of poetical art is most
+conveniently illustrated by the history of Grecian poetry; for the latter
+is well entitled to the appellation of systematical, since it furnishes
+for every independent idea derived from experience the most distinct and
+precise manifestation.
+
+It is singular that epic and lyric poetry admit not of any such precise
+division into two opposite species, as the dramatic does. The ludicrous
+epopee has, it is true, been styled a peculiar species, but it is only an
+accidental variety, a mere parody of the epos, and consists in applying
+its solemn staidness of development, which seems only suitable to great
+objects, to trifling and insignificant events. In lyric poetry there are
+only intervals and gradations between the song, the ode, and the elegy,
+but no proper contrast.
+
+The spirit of epic poetry, as we recognise it in its father, Homer, is
+clear self-possession. The epos is the calm quiet representation of an
+action in progress. The poet relates joyful as well as mournful events,
+but he relates them with equanimity, and considers them as already past,
+and at a certain remoteness from our minds.
+
+The lyric poem is the musical expression of mental emotions by language.
+The essence of musical feeling consists in this, that we endeavour with
+complacency to dwell on, and even to perpetuate in our souls, a joyful or
+painful emotion. The feeling must consequently be already so far mitigated
+as not to impel us by the desire of its pleasure or the dread of its pain,
+to tear ourselves from it, but such as to allow us, unconcerned at the
+fluctuations of feeling which time produces, to dwell upon and be absorbed
+in a single moment of existence.
+
+The dramatic poet, as well as the epic, represents external events, but he
+represents them as real and present. In common with the lyric poet he also
+claims our mental participation, but not in the same calm composedness;
+the feeling of joy and sorrow which the dramatist excites is more
+immediate and vehement. He calls forth all the emotions which the sight of
+similar deeds and fortunes of living men would elicit, and it is only by
+the total sum of the impression which he produces that he ultimately
+resolves these conflicting emotions into a harmonious tone of feeling. As
+he stands in such close proximity to real life, and endeavours to endue
+his own imaginary creations with vitality, the equanimity of the epic poet
+would in him be indifference; he must decidedly take part with one or
+other of the leading views of human life, and constrain his audience also
+to participate in the same feeling.
+
+To employ simpler and more intelligible language: the _tragic_ and
+_comic_ bear the same relation to one another as _earnest_ and _sport_.
+Every man, from his own experience, is acquainted with both these states
+of mind; but to determine their essence and their source would demand deep
+philosophical investigation. Both, indeed, bear the stamp of our common
+nature; but earnestness belongs more to its moral, and mirth to its animal
+part. The creatures destitute of reason are incapable either of earnest or
+of sport. Animals seem indeed at times to labour as if they were earnestly
+intent upon some aim, and as if they made the present moment subordinate
+to the future; at other times they seem to sport, that is, they give
+themselves up without object or purpose to the pleasure of existence: but
+they do not possess consciousness, which alone can entitle these two
+conditions to the names of earnest and sport. Man alone, of all the
+animals with which we are acquainted, is capable of looking back towards
+the past, and forward into futurity; and he has to purchase the enjoyment
+of this noble privilege at a dear rate. Earnestness, in the most extensive
+signification, is the direction of our mental powers to some aim. But as
+soon as we begin to call ourselves to account for our actions, reason
+compels us to fix this aim higher and higher, till we come at last to the
+highest end of our existence: and here that longing for the infinite which
+is inherent in our being, is baffled by the limits of our finite
+existence. All that we do, all that we effect, is vain and perishable;
+death stands everywhere in the back ground, and to it every well or ill-
+spent moment brings us nearer and closer; and even when a man has been so
+singularly fortunate as to reach the utmost term of life without any
+grievous calamity, the inevitable doom still awaits him to leave or to be
+left by all that is most dear to him on earth. There is no bond of love
+without a separation, no enjoyment without the grief of losing it. When,
+however, we contemplate the relations of our existence to the extreme
+limit of possibilities: when we reflect on its entire dependence on a
+chain of causes and effects, stretching beyond our ken: when we consider
+how weak and helpless, and doomed to struggle against the enormous powers
+of nature, and conflicting appetites, we are cast on the shores of an
+unknown world, as it were, shipwrecked at our very birth; how we are
+subject to all kinds of errors and deceptions, any one of which may
+be our ruin; that in our passions we cherish an enemy in our bosoms; how
+every moment demands from us, in the name of the most sacred duties, the
+sacrifice of our dearest inclinations, and how at one blow we may be
+robbed of all that we have acquired with much toil and difficulty; that
+with every accession to our stores, the risk of loss is proportionately
+increased, and we are only the more exposed to the malice of hostile
+fortune: when we think upon all this, every heart which is not dead to
+feeling must be overpowered by an inexpressible melancholy, for which
+there is no other counter-poise than the consciousness of a vocation
+transcending the limits of this earthly life. This is the tragic tone of
+mind; and when the thought of the possible issues out of the mind as a
+living reality, when this tone pervades and animates a visible
+representation of the most striking instances of violent revolutions in a
+man's fortunes, either prostrating his mental energies or calling forth
+the most heroic endurance--then the result is _Tragic Poetry_. We thus see
+how this kind of poetry has its foundation in our nature, while to a
+certain extent we have also answered the question, why we are fond of
+such mournful representations, and even find something consoling and
+elevating in them? This tone of mind we have described is inseparable from
+strong feeling; and although poetry cannot remove these internal
+dissonances, she must at least endeavour to effect an ideal reconciliation
+of them.
+
+As earnestness, in the highest degree, is the essence of tragic
+representation; so is sport of the comic. The disposition to mirth is a
+forgetfulness of all gloomy considerations in the pleasant feeling of
+present happiness. We are then inclined to view every thing in a sportive
+light, and to allow nothing to disturb or ruffle our minds. The
+imperfections and the irregularities of men are no longer an object of
+dislike and compassion, but serve, by their strange inconsistencies, to
+entertain the understanding and to amuse the fancy. The comic poet must
+therefore carefully abstain from whatever is calculated to excite moral
+indignation at the conduct, or sympathy with the situations of his
+personages, because this would inevitably bring us back again into
+earnestness. He must paint their irregularities as springing out of the
+predominance of the animal part of their nature, and the incidents which
+befal them as merely ludicrous distresses, which will be attended with no
+fatal consequences. This is uniformly what takes place in what we call
+Comedy, in which, however, there is still a mixture of seriousness, as I
+shall show in the sequel. The oldest comedy of the Greeks was, however,
+entirely sportive, and in that respect formed the most complete contrast
+to their tragedy. Not only were the characters and situations of
+individuals worked up into a comic picture of real life, but the whole
+frame of society, the constitution, nature, and the gods, were all
+fantastically painted in the most ridiculous and laughable colours.
+
+When we have formed in this manner a pure idea of the tragic and comic, as
+exhibited to us in Grecian examples, we shall then be enabled to analyze
+the various corruptions of both, which the moderns have invented, to
+discriminate their incongruous additions, and to separate their several
+ingredients.
+
+In the history of poetry and the fine arts among the Greeks, their
+development was subject to an invariable law. Everything heterogeneous was
+first excluded, and then all homogeneous elements were combined, and each
+being perfected in itself, at last elevated into an independent and
+harmonious unity. Hence with them each species is confined within its
+natural boundaries, and the different styles distinctly marked. In
+beginning, therefore, with the history of the Grecian art and poetry, we
+are not merely observing the order of time, but also the order of ideas.
+
+In the case of the majority of my hearers, I can hardly presume upon a
+direct acquaintance with the Greeks, derived from the study of their
+poetical works in the original language. Translations in prose, or even in
+verse, in which they are but dressed up again in the modern taste, can
+afford no true idea of the Grecian drama. True and faithful translations,
+which endeavour in expression and versification to rise to the height of
+the original, have as yet been attempted only in Germany. But although our
+language is extremely flexible, and in many respects resembling the Greek,
+it is after all a battle with unequal weapons; and stiffness and harshness
+not unfrequently take the place of the easy sweetness of the Greek. But we
+are even far from having yet done all that can perhaps be accomplished: I
+know of no translation of a Greek tragedian deserving of unqualified
+praise. But even supposing the translation as perfect as possible, and
+deviating very slightly from the original, the reader who is unacquainted
+with the other works of the Greeks, will be perpetually disturbed by the
+foreign nature of the subject, by national peculiarities and numerous
+allusions (which cannot be understood without some scholarship), and thus
+unable to comprehend particular parts, he will be prevented from forming a
+clear idea of the whole. So long as we have to struggle with difficulties
+it is impossible to have any true enjoyment of a work of art. To feel the
+ancients as we ought, we must have become in some degree one of
+themselves, and breathed as it were the Grecian air.
+
+What is the best means of becoming imbued with the spirit of the Greeks,
+without a knowledge of their language? I answer without hesitation,--the
+study of the antique; and if this is not always possible through the
+originals, yet, by means of casts, it is to a certain extent within the
+power of every man. These models of the human form require no
+interpretation; their elevated character is imperishable, and will always
+be recognized through all vicissitudes of time, and in every region under
+heaven, wherever there exists a noble race of men akin to the Grecian (as
+the European undoubtedly is), and wherever the unkindness of nature has
+not degraded the human features too much below the pure standard, and, by
+habituating them to their own deformity, rendered them insensible to
+genuine corporeal beauty. Respecting the inimitable perfection of the
+antique in its few remains of a first-rate character, there is but one
+voice throughout the whole of civilized Europe; and if ever their merit
+was called in question, it was in times when the modern arts of design had
+sunk to the lowest depths of mannerism. Not only all intelligent artists,
+but all men of any degree of taste, bow with enthusiastic adoration before
+the masterly productions of ancient sculpture.
+
+The best guide to conduct us to this sanctuary of the beautiful, with deep
+and thoughtful contemplation, is the History of Art by our immortal
+Winkelmann. In the description of particular works it no doubt leaves much
+to be desired; nay, it even abounds in grave errors, but no man has so
+deeply penetrated into the innermost spirit of Grecian art. Winkelmann
+transformed himself completely into an ancient, and seemingly lived in his
+own century, unmoved by its spirit and influences.
+
+The immediate subject of his work is the plastic arts, but it contains
+also many important hints concerning other branches of Grecian
+civilisation, and is very useful as a preparation for the understanding of
+their poetry, and especially their dramatic poetry. As the latter was
+designed for visible representation before spectators, whose eye must have
+been as difficult to please on the stage as elsewhere, we have no better
+means of feeling the whole dignity of their tragic exhibitions, and of
+giving it a sort of theatrical animation, than to keep these forms of gods
+and heroes ever present to our fancy. The assertion may appear somewhat
+strange at present, but I hope in the sequel to demonstrate its justice:
+it is only before the groups of Niobe or Laocoön that we first enter into
+the spirit of the tragedies of Sophocles.
+
+We are yet in want of a work in which the entire poetic, artistic,
+scientific, and social culture of the Greeks should be painted as one
+grand and harmonious whole, as a true work of nature, prevaded by the most
+wondrous symmetry and proportion of the parts, and traced through its
+connected development in the same spirit which Winkelmann has executed in
+the part which he attempted. An attempt has indeed been made in a popular
+work, which is in everybody's hands, I mean the _Travels of the Younger
+Anacharsis_. This book is valuable for its learning, and may be very
+useful in diffusing a knowledge of antiquities; but, without censuring the
+error of the dress in which it is exhibited, it betrays more good-will to
+do justice to the Greeks, than ability to enter deeply into their spirit.
+In this respect the work is in many points superficial, and even
+disfigured with modern views. It is not the travels of a young Scythian,
+but of an old Parisian.
+
+The superior excellence of the Greeks in the fine arts, as I have already
+said, is the most universally acknowledged. An enthusiasm for their
+literature is in a great measure confined to the English and Germans,
+among whom also the study of the Grecian language is the most zealously
+prosecuted. It is singular that the French critics of all others, they who
+so zealously acknowledge the remains of the theoretical writings of the
+ancients on literature, Aristotle, Horace, Quinctilian, &c., as infallible
+standards of taste, should yet distinguish themselves by the contemptuous
+and irreverent manner in which they speak of their poetical compositions,
+and especially of their dramatic literature. Look, for instance, into a
+book very much read,--La Harpe's _Cours de Littérature_. It contains
+many acute remarks on the French Theatre; but whoever should think to
+learn the Greeks from it must be very ill advised: the author was as
+deficient in a solid knowledge of their literature as in a sense for
+appreciating it. Voltaire, also, often speaks most unwarrantably on this
+subject: he elevates or lowers them at the suggestions of his caprice, or
+according to the purpose of the moment to produce such or such an effect
+on the mind of the public. I remember too to have read a cursory critique
+of Metastasio's on the Greek tragedians, in which he treats them like so
+many school-boys. Racine is much more modest, and cannot be in any manner
+charged with this sort of presumption: even because he was the best
+acquainted of all of them with the Greeks. It is easy to see into the
+motives of these hostile critics. Their national and personal vanity has
+much to do with the matter; conceiting themselves that they have far
+surpassed the ancients, they venture to commit such observations to the
+public, knowing that the works of the ancient poets have come down to us
+in a dead language, accessible only to the learned, without the animating
+accompaniment of recitation, music, ideal and truly plastic impersonation,
+and scenic pomp; all which, in every respect worthy of the poetry, was on
+the Athenian stage combined in such wonderful harmony, that if only it
+could be represented to our eye and ear, it would at once strike dumb the
+whole herd of these noisy and interested critics. The ancient statues
+require no commentary; they speak for themselves, and everything like
+competition on the part of a modern artist would be regarded as ridiculous
+pretension. In respect of the theatre, they lay great stress on the
+infancy of the art; and because these poets lived two thousand years
+before us, they conclude that we must have made great progress since. In
+this way poor Aeschylus especially is got rid of. But in sober truth, if
+this was the infancy of dramatic art, it was the infancy of a Hercules,
+who strangled serpents in his cradle.
+
+I have already expressed my opinion on that blind partiality for the
+ancients, which regards their excellence as a frigid faultlessness, and
+which exhibits them as models, in such a way as to put a stop to
+everything like improvement, and reduce us to abandon the exercise of art
+as altogether fruitless. I, for my part, am disposed to believe that
+poetry, as the fervid expression of our whole being, must assume new and
+peculiar forms in different ages. Nevertheless, I cherish an enthusiastic
+veneration for the Greeks, as a people endowed, by the peculiar favour of
+Nature, with the most perfect genius for art; in the consciousness of
+which, they gave to all the nations with which they were acquainted,
+compared with themselves, the appellation of barbarians,--an appellation
+in the use of which they were in some degree justified. I would not wish
+to imitate certain travellers, who, on returning from a country which
+their readers cannot easily visit, give such exaggerated accounts of it,
+and relate so many marvels, as to hazard their own character for veracity.
+I shall rather endeavour to characterize them as they appear to me after
+sedulous and repeated study, without concealing their defects, and to
+bring a living picture of the Grecian stage before the eyes of my hearers.
+
+We shall treat first of the Tragedy of the Greeks, then of their
+_Old_ Comedy, and lastly of the _New_ Comedy which arose out of it.
+
+The same theatrical accompaniments were common to all the three kinds. We
+must, therefore, give a short preliminary view of the theatre, its
+architecture and decorations, that we may have a distinct idea of their
+representation.
+
+The histrionic art of the ancients had also many peculiarities: the use of
+masks, for example, although these were quite different in tragedy and
+comedy; in the former, _ideal_, and in the latter, at least in the Old
+Comedy, somewhat caricatured.
+
+In tragedy, we shall first consider what constituted its most distinctive
+peculiarity among the ancients: the ideality of the representation, the
+prevailing idea of destiny, and the chorus; and we shall lastly treat of
+their mythology, as the materials of tragic poetry. We shall then proceed
+to characterize, in the three tragedians of whom alone entire works still
+remain, the different styles--that is, the necessary epochs in the history
+of the tragic art.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+Structure of the Stage among the Greeks--Their Acting--Use of Masks--False
+comparison of Ancient Tragedy to the Opera--Tragical Lyric Poetry.
+
+
+When we hear the word "theatre," we naturally think of what with us bears
+the same name; and yet nothing can be more different from our theatre, in
+its entire structure, than that of the Greeks. If in reading the Grecian
+pieces we associate our own stage with them, the light in which we shall
+view them must be false in every respect.
+
+The leading authority on this subject, and one, too, whose statements are
+mathematically accurate, is Vitruvius, who also distinctly points out the
+great difference between the Greek and Roman theatres. But these and
+similar passages of the ancient writers have been most incorrectly
+interpreted by architects unacquainted with the ancient dramatists
+[Footnote: We have a remarkable instance of this in the pretended ancient
+theatre of Palladio, at Vicenza. Herculaneum, it is true, had not then
+been discovered; and it is difficult to understand the ruins of the
+ancient theatre without having seen a complete one.]; and philologists, in
+their turn, from ignorance of architecture, have also egregiously erred.
+The ancient dramatists are still, therefore, greatly in want of that
+illustration which a right understanding of their scenic arrangements is
+calculated to throw upon them. In many tragedies I think that I have a
+tolerably clear notion of the matter; but others, again, present
+difficulties which are not easily solved. But it is in figuring the
+representation of Aristophanes' comedies that I find myself most at a
+loss: the ingenious poet must have brought his wonderful inventions before
+the eyes of his audience in a manner equally bold and astonishing. Even
+Barthélemy's description of the Grecian stage is not a little confused,
+and his subjoined plan extremely incorrect; where he attempts to describe
+the acting of a play, the _Antigone_ or the _Ajax_, for instance, he goes
+altogether wrong. For this reason the following explanation will appear
+the less superfluous [Footnote: I am partly indebted for them to the
+elucidations of a learned architect, M. Genelli, of Berlin, author of the
+ingenious _Letters on Vitruvius_. We have compared several Greek tragedies
+with our interpretation of Vitruvius's description, and endeavoured to
+figure to ourselves the manner in which they were represented; and I
+afterwards found our ideas confirmed by an examination of the theatre of
+Herculaneum, and the two very small ones at Pompeii.].
+
+The theatres of the Greeks were quite open above, and their dramas were
+always acted in day, and beneath the canopy of heaven. The Romans, indeed,
+at an after period, may have screened the audience, by an awning, from the
+sun; but luxury was scarcely ever carried so far by the Greeks. Such a
+state of things appears very uncomfortable to us; but the Greeks had
+nothing of effeminacy about them; and we must not forget, too, the
+mildness of their climate. When a storm or a shower came on, the play was
+of course interrupted, and the spectators sought shelter in the lofty
+colonnade which ran behind their seats; but they were willing rather to
+put up with such occasional inconveniences, than, by shutting themselves
+up in a close and crowded house, entirely to forfeit the sunny brightness
+of a religious solemnity--for such, in fact, their plays were [Footnote:
+They carefully made choice of a beautiful situation. The theatre at
+Tauromenium, at present Taormino, in Sicily, of which the ruins are still
+visible, was, according to Hunter's description, situated in such a manner
+that the audience had a view of Etna over the back-ground of the
+theatre.]. To have covered in the scene itself, and imprisoned gods and
+heroes in a dark and gloomy apartment, artificially lighted up, would have
+appeared still more ridiculous to them. An action which so gloriously
+attested their affinity with heaven, could fitly be exhibited only beneath
+the free heaven, and, as it were, under the very eyes of the gods, for
+whom, according to Seneca, the sight of a brave man struggling with
+adversity is a suitable spectacle. With respect to the supposed
+inconvenience, which, according to the assertion of many modern critics,
+hence accrued, compelling the poets always to lay the scene of their
+pieces out of doors, and consequently often forcing them to violate
+probability, it was very little felt by Tragedy and the Older Comedy. The
+Greeks, like many southern nations of the present day, lived much more in
+the open air than we do, and transacted many things in public places which
+with us usually take place within doors. Besides, the theatre did not
+represent the street, but a front area belonging to the house, where the
+altar stood on which sacrifices were offered to the household gods. Here,
+therefore, the women, notwithstanding the retired life they led among the
+Greeks, even those who were unmarried, might appear without any
+impropriety. Neither was it impossible for them, if necessary, to give a
+view of the interior of the house; and this was effected, as we shall
+presently see; by means of the _Encyclema_.
+
+But the principal ground of this practice was that publicity which,
+according to the republican notion of the Greeks, was essential to all
+grave and important transactions. This was signified by the presence of
+the chorus, whose presence during many secret transactions has been judged
+of according to rules of propriety inapplicable to the country, and so
+most undeservedly censured.
+
+The theatres of the ancients were, in comparison with the small scale of
+ours, of 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.
+The seats of the spectators were formed by ascending steps which rose
+round the semicircle of the orchestra, (called by us the pit,) so that all
+could see with equal convenience. The diminution of effect by distance was
+counteracted to the eye and ear by artificial contrivances consisting in
+the employment of masks, and of an apparatus for increasing the loudness
+of the voice, and of the cothurnus to give additional stature. Vitruvius
+speaks also of vehicles of sound, distributed throughout the building; but
+commentators are much at variance with respect to their nature. In general
+it may be assumed, that the theatres of the ancients were constructed on
+excellent acoustic principles.
+
+Even the lowest tier of the amphitheatre was raised considerably above the
+orchestra, and opposite to it was the stage, at an equal degree of
+elevation. The hollow semicircle of the orchestra was unoccupied by
+spectators, and was designed for another purpose. However, it was
+otherwise with the Romans, though indeed the arrangement of their theatres
+does not at present concern us.
+
+The stage consisted of a strip which stretched from one end of the
+building to the other, and of which the depth bore little proportion to
+this breadth. This was called the _logeum_, in Latin _pulpitum_, and the
+middle of it was the usual place for the persons who spoke. Behind
+this middle part, the scene went inwards in a quadrangular form, with less
+depth, however, than breadth. The space thus enclosed was called the
+_proscenium_. The front of the logeum towards the orchestra was ornamented
+with pilasters and small statues between them. The stage, erected on a
+foundation of stonework, was a wooden platform resting on rafters. The
+surrounding appurtenances of the stage, together with the rooms required
+for the machinery, were also of wood. The wall of the building, directly
+opposite to the seats of the spectators, was raised to a level with the
+uppermost tier.
+
+The scenic decoration was contrived in such a manner, that the principal
+and nearest object covered the background, and the prospects of distance
+were given at the two sides; the very reverse of the mode adopted by us.
+The latter arrangement had also its rules: on the left, was the town to
+which the palace, temple, or whatever occupied the middle, belonged; on
+the right, the open country, landscape, mountains, sea-coast, &c. The
+side-scenes were composed of triangles which turned on a pivot beneath;
+and in this manner the change of scene was effected. According to an
+observation on Virgil, by Servius, the change of scene was partly produced
+by revolving, and partly by withdrawing. The former applies to the lateral
+decorations, and the latter to the middle of the background. The partition
+in the middle opened, disappeared at both sides, and exhibited to view a
+new picture. But all the parts of the scene were not always changed at the
+same time. In the back or central scene, it is probable, that much which
+with us is only painted was given bodily. If this represented a palace or
+temple, there was usually in the proscenium an altar, which in the
+performance answered a number of purposes.
+
+The decoration was for the most part architectural, but occasionally also
+a painted landscape, as of Caucasus in the _Prometheus_, or in the
+_Philoctetes_, of the desert island of Lemnos, and the rocks with its
+cavern. From a passage of Plato it is clear, that the Greeks carried the
+illusions of theatrical perspective much farther than, judging from some
+wretched landscapes discovered in Herculaneum, we should be disposed to
+allow.
+
+In the back wall of the stage there was one main entrance, and two side
+doors. It has been maintained, that from them it might be discovered
+whether an actor played a principal or under part, as in the first case he
+came in by the main entrance, but in the second, entered from either of
+the sides. But this should be understood with the proviso, that this must
+have varied according to the nature of the piece. As the middle scene was
+generally a palace, in which the principal characters generally of royal
+descent resided, they naturally came on the stage through the great door,
+while the servants dwelt in the wings. But besides these three entrances,
+which were directly opposite to the spectators, and were real doors, with
+appropriate architectural decorations, there were also four side
+entrances, to which the name of doors cannot properly apply: two, namely,
+on the stage on the right and the left, towards the inner angles of the
+proscenium, and two farther off, in the orchestra, also right and left.
+The latter were intended properly for the chorus, but were likewise not
+unfrequently used by the actors, who in such cases ascended to the stage
+by one or other of the double flight of steps which ran from the orchestra
+to the middle of the logeum. The entering from the right or the left of
+itself indicated the place from which the dramatic personages must be
+supposed to come. The situation of these entrances serves to explain many
+passages in the ancient dramas, where the persons standing in the middle
+see some one advancing, long before he approaches them.
+
+Somewhere beneath the seats of the spectators, a flight of stairs was
+constructed, which was called the Charonic, and by which, unseen by the
+audience, the shadows of the departed, ascended into the orchestra, and
+thence to the stage. The furthermost brink of the logeum must sometimes
+have represented the sea shore. Moreover the Greeks in general skilfully
+availed themselves even of extra-scenic matters, and made them subservient
+to the stage effect. Thus, I doubt not, but that in the _Eumenides_
+the spectators were twice addressed as an assembled people; first, as the
+Greeks invited by the Pythoness to consult the oracle; and a second time
+as the Athenian multitude, when Pallas, by the herald, commands silence
+during the trial about to commence. So too the frequent appeals to heaven
+were undoubtedly addressed to the real heaven; and when Electra on her
+first appearance exclaims: "O holy light, and thou air co-expansive with
+earth!" she probably turned towards the actual sun ascending in the
+heavens. The whole of this procedure is highly deserving of praise; and
+though modern critics have censured the mixture of reality and imitation,
+as destructive of theatrical illusion, this only proves that they have
+misunderstood the essence of the illusion which a work of art aims at
+producing. If we are to be truly deceived by a picture, that is, if we are
+to believe in the reality of the object which we see, we must not perceive
+its limits, but look at it through an opening; the frame at once declares
+it for a picture. Now in stage-scenery we cannot avoid the use of
+architectural contrivances, productive of the same effect on dramatic
+representation as frames on pictures. It is consequently much better not
+to attempt to disguise this fact, but leaving this kind of illusion for
+those cases where it can be advantageously employed, to take it as a
+permitted licence occasionally to step out of the limits of mere scenic
+decoration. It was, generally speaking, a principle of the Greeks, with
+respect to stage imitation, either to require a perfect representation,
+and where this could not be accomplished, to be satisfied with merely
+symbolical allusions.
+
+The machinery for the descent of gods through the air, or the withdrawing
+of men from the earth, was placed aloft behind the walls of the two sides
+of the scene, and consequently removed from the sight of the spectators.
+Even in the time of Aeschylus, great use was already made of it, as in the
+_Prometheus_ he not only brings Oceanus through the air on a griffin,
+but also in a winged chariot introduces the whole choir of ocean nymphs,
+at least fifteen in number. There were also hollow places beneath the
+stage into which, when necessary, the personages could disappear, and
+contrivances for thunder and lightning, for the apparent fall or burning
+of a house, &c.
+
+To the hindmost wall of the scene an upper story could be added; whenever,
+for instance, it was wished to represent a tower with a wide prospect, or
+the like. Behind the great middle entrance there was a space for the
+Exostra, a machine of a semicircular form, and covered above, which
+represented the objects contained in it as in a house. This was used for
+grand strokes of theatrical effect, as we may see from many pieces. On
+such occasions the folding-doors of the entrance would naturally be open,
+or the curtain which covered it withdrawn.
+
+A stage curtain, which, we clearly see from a description of Ovid, was not
+dropped, but drawn upwards, is mentioned both by Greek and Roman writers,
+and the Latin appellation, _aulaeum_, is even borrowed from the Greeks. I
+suspect, however, that the curtain was not much used at first on the Attic
+stage. In the pieces of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the scene is evidently
+empty at the opening as well as the conclusion, and seems therefore to
+have required no preparation which needed to be shut out from the view of
+the spectators. However, in many of the pieces of Euripides, and perhaps
+also in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, the stage is filled from the very first,
+and presents a standing group which could not well have been assembled
+under the very eyes of the spectators. It must, besides, be remembered,
+that it was only the comparatively small proscenium, and not the logeum,
+which was covered by the curtain which disappeared through a narrow
+opening between two of the boards of the flooring, being wound up on a
+roller beneath the stage.
+
+The entrances of the chorus were beneath in the orchestra, in which it
+generally remained, and in which also it performed its solemn dance,
+moving backwards and forwards during the choral songs. In the front of the
+orchestra, opposite to the middle of the scene, there was an elevation
+with steps, resembling an altar, as high as the stage, which was called
+the _Thymele_. This was the station of the chorus when it did not
+sing, but merely looked on as an interested spectator of the action. At
+such times the choragus, or leader of the chorus, took his station on the
+top of the thymele, to see what was passing on the stage, and to converse
+with the characters there present. For though the choral song was common
+to the whole, yet when it took part in the dialogue, one usually spoke for
+all the rest; and hence we may account for the shifting from _thou_
+to _ye_ in addressing them. The thymele was situated in the very centre of
+the building; all the measurements were made from it, and the semicircle
+of the amphitheatre was described round it as the centre. It was,
+therefore, an excellent contrivance to place the chorus, who were the
+ideal representatives of the spectators, in the very spot where all the
+radii converged.
+
+The tragical imitation of the ancients was altogether ideal and
+rhythmical; and in forming a judgment of it, we must always keep this in
+view. It was ideal, in so far as it aimed at the highest grace and
+dignity; and rhythmical, insomuch as the gestures and inflections of voice
+were more solemnly measured than in real life. As the statuary of the
+Greeks, setting out, with almost scientific strictness, with the most
+general conception, sought to embody it again in various general
+characters which were gradually invested with the charms of life, so that
+the individual was the last thing to which they descended; in like manner
+in the mimetic art, they began with the idea (the delineation of persons
+with heroical grandeur, more than human dignity, and ideal beauty), then
+passed to character, and made passion the last of all; which, in the
+collision with the requisitions of either of the others, was forced to
+give way. Fidelity of representation was less their object than beauty;
+with us it is exactly the reverse. On this principle, the use of masks,
+which appears astonishing to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely
+essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would
+certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be
+obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked
+features, to represent an Apollo or a Hercules; nay, rather they would
+have deemed it downright profanation. How little is it in the power of the
+most finished actor to change the character of his features! How
+prejudicial must this be to the expression of passion, as all passion is
+tinged more or less strongly by the character. Nor is there any need to
+have recourse to the conjecture that they changed the masks in the
+different scenes, for the purpose of exhibiting a greater degree of joy or
+sorrow. I call it conjecture, though Barthélemy, in his _Anacharsis_,
+considers it a settled point. He cites no authorities, and I do not
+recollect any. For the expedient would by no means have been sufficient,
+as the passions often change in the same scene, and this has reduced
+modern critics to suppose, that the masks exhibited different appearances
+on the two sides; and that now this, now that side was turned towards the
+spectators, according to circumstances. Voltaire, in his Essay on the
+Tragedy of the Ancients and Moderns, prefixed to _Semiramis_, has
+actually gone this length. Amidst a multitude of supposed improprieties
+which he heaps together to confound the admirers of ancient tragedy, he
+urges the following: _Aucune nation_ (that is to say, excepting the
+Greeks) _ne fait paraître ses acteurs sur des espèces d'échasses, le
+visage couvert d'un masque, qui exprime la douleur d'un côté et la joie de
+l'autre._ After a conscientious inquiry into the authorities for an
+assertion so very improbable, and yet so boldly made, I can only find one
+passage in Quinctilian, lib. xi. cap. 3, and an allusion of Platonius
+still more vague. (Vide _Aristoph. ed. Küster, prolegom._ p. x.) Both
+passages refer only to the new comedy, and only amount to this, that in
+some characters the eyebrows were dissimilar. As to the intention of this,
+I shall say a word or two hereafter, when I come to consider the new Greek
+comedy. Voltaire, however, is without excuse, as the mention of the
+cothurnus leaves no doubt that he alluded to tragic masks. But his error
+had probably no such learned origin. In most cases, it would be a
+fruitless task to trace the source of his mistakes. The whole description
+of the Greek tragedy, as well as that of the cothurnus in particular, is
+worthy of the man whose knowledge of antiquity was such, that in his Essay
+on Tragedy, prefixed to _Brutus_, he boasts of having introduced the
+Roman Senate on the stage in _red mantles_. No; the countenance remained
+from beginning to end the very same, as we may see from the ancient masks
+cut out in stone. For the expression of passion, the glances of the eye,
+the motion of the arms and hands, the attitudes, and, lastly, the tones of
+the voice, remained there. We complain of the loss of the play of the
+features, without reflecting, that at such a great distance, its effect
+would have been altogether lost.
+
+We are not now inquiring whether, without the use of masks, it may not be
+possible to attain a higher degree of separate excellence in the mimetic
+art. This we would very willingly allow. Cicero, it is true, speaks of the
+expression, the softness, and delicacy of the acting of Roscius, in the
+same terms that a modern critic would apply to Garrick or Schröder. But I
+will not lay any stress on the acting of this celebrated player, the
+excellence of which has become proverbial, because it appears from a
+passage in Cicero that he frequently played without a mask, and that this
+was preferred: by his contemporaries. I doubt, however, whether this was
+ever the case among the Greeks. But the same writer relates, that actors
+in general, for the sake of acquiring the most perfect purity and
+flexibility of voice (and not merely the musical voice, otherwise the
+example would not have been applicable to the orator), submitted to such a
+course of uninterrupted exercises, as our modern players, even the French,
+who of all follow the strictest training, would consider a most
+intolerable oppression. For the display of dexterity in the mimetic art,
+without the accompaniment of words, was carried by the ancients in their
+pantomimes, to a degree of perfection quite unknown to the moderns. In
+tragedy, however, the great object in the art was the due subordination of
+every element; the whole was to appear animated by one and the same
+spirit, and hence, not merely the poetry, but the musical accompaniment,
+the scenical decoration, and training of the actors, all issued from the
+poet. The player was a mere instrument in his hands, and his merit
+consisted in the accuracy with which he filled his part, and by no means
+in arbitrary bravura, or ostentatious display of his own skill.
+
+As from the nature of their writing materials, they had not a facility of
+making many copies, the parts were learnt from the repeated recitation of
+the poet, and the chorus was exercised in the same manner. This was called
+_teaching a play_. As the poet was also a musician, and for the most
+part a player likewise, this must have greatly contributed to the
+perfection of the performance.
+
+We may safely allow that the task of the modern player, who must change
+his person without concealing it, is much more difficult; but this
+difficulty affords no just criterion for deciding which of the two the
+preference must be awarded, as a skilful representation of the noble and
+the beautiful.
+
+As the features of the player acquired a more decided expression from the
+mask, as his voice was strengthened by a contrivance attached to the mask,
+so the cothurnus, consisting of several soles of considerable thickness,
+as may be seen in the ancient statues of Melpomene, raised his figure
+considerably above the usual standard. The female parts were also played
+by men, as the voice and general carriage of women would have been
+inadequate to the energy of tragic heroines.
+
+The forms of the masks, [Footnote: We have obtained a knowledge of them
+from the imitations in stone which have come down to us. They display both
+beauty and variety. That great variety must have taken place in the
+tragical department (in the comic we can have no doubt about the matter)
+is evident from the rich store of technical expressions in the Greek
+language, for every gradation of the age, and character of masks. See the
+_Onomasticon_ of Jul. Pollux. In the marble masks, however, we can
+neither see the thinness of the mass from which the real masks were
+executed, the more delicate colouring, nor the exquisite mechanism of the
+fittings. The abundance of excellent workmen possessed by Athens, in
+everything which had a reference to the plastic arts, will warrant the
+conjecture that they were in this respect inimitable. Those who have seen
+the masks of wax in the grand style, which in some degree contain the
+whole head, lately contrived at the Roman carnival, may form to themselves
+a pretty good idea of the theatrical masks of the ancients. They imitate
+life, even to its movements, in a most masterly manner, and at such a
+distance as that from which the ancient players were seen, the deception
+is most perfect. They always contain the white of the eye, as we see it in
+the ancient masks, and the person covered sees merely through the aperture
+left for the iris. The ancients must sometimes have gone still farther,
+and contrived also an iris for the masks, according to the anecdote of the
+singer Thamyris, who, in a piece which was probably of Sophocles, made his
+appearance with a black eye. Even accidental circumstances were imitated;
+for instance, the cheeks of Tyro, streaming blood from the cruel conduct
+of his stepmother. The head from the mask must no doubt have appeared
+somewhat large for the rest of the figure; but this disproportion, in
+tragedy at least, would not be perceived from the elevation of the
+cothurnus.] and the whole appearance of the tragic figures, we may easily
+suppose, were sufficiently beautiful and dignified. We should do well to
+have the ancient sculpture always present to our minds; and the most
+accurate conception, perhaps, that we can possibly have, is to imagine
+them so many statues in the grand style endowed with life and motion. But,
+as in sculpture, they were fond of dispensing as much as possible with
+dress, for the sake of exhibiting the more essential beauty of the figure;
+on the stage they would endeavour, from an opposite principle, to clothe
+as much as they could well do, both from a regard to decency, and because
+the actual forms of the body would not correspond sufficiently with the
+beauty of the countenance. They would also exhibit their divinities, which
+in sculpture we always observe either entirely naked, or only half
+covered, in a complete dress. They had recourse to a number of means for
+giving a suitable strength to the forms of the limbs, and thus restoring
+proportion to the increased height of the player.
+
+The great breadth of the theatre in proportion to its depth must have
+given to the grouping of the figures the simple and distinct order of the
+bas-relief. We moderns prefer on the stage, as elsewhere, groups of a
+picturesque description, with figures more closely crowded together, and
+partly concealing one another, and partly retiring into the distance; but
+the ancients were so little fond of foreshortening, that even in their
+painting they generally avoided it. Their movement kept time with the
+rhythmus of the declamation, and in this accompaniment the utmost grace
+and beauty were aimed at. The poetical conception required a certain
+degree of repose in the action, and the keeping together certain masses,
+so as to exhibit a succession of _statuesque_ situations, and it is
+not improbable that the player remained for some time motionless in one
+attitude. But we are not to suppose from this, that the Greeks were
+contented with a cold and feeble representation of the passions. How could
+we reconcile such a supposition with the fact, that whole lines of their
+tragedies are frequently dedicated to inarticulate exclamations of pain,
+with which we have nothing to correspond in any of our modern languages?
+
+It has been often conjectured that the delivery of their dialogue
+resembled the modern recitative. For such a conjecture there is no other
+foundation than the fact that the Greek, like almost all southern
+languages, was pronounced with a greater musical inflexion than ours of
+the North. In other respects their tragic declamation must, I conceive,
+have been altogether unlike recitative, being both much more measured, and
+also far removed from its studied and artificial modulation.
+
+So, again, the ancient tragedy, because it was accompanied with music and
+dancing, [Footnote: Even Barthélemy falls into this error in a note to the
+70th Chapter of _Anacharsis_.] has also been frequently compared with
+the opera. But this comparison betrays an utter ignorance of the spirit of
+classical antiquity. Their dancing and music had nothing but the name in
+common with ours. In tragedy the primary object was the poetry, and
+everything else was strictly and truly subordinate to it. But in the opera
+the poetry is merely an accessory, the means of connecting the different
+parts together; and it is almost lost amidst its many and more favoured
+accompaniments. The best prescription for the composition of an opera is,
+take a rapid poetical sketch and then fill up and colour the outlines by
+the other arts. This anarchy of the arts, where music, dancing, and
+decoration are seeking to outvie each other by the profuse display of
+their most dazzling charms, constitutes the very essence of the opera.
+What sort of opera-music would it be, which should set the words to a mere
+rhythmical accompaniment of the simplest modulations? The fantastic magic
+of the opera consists altogether in the revelry of emulation between the
+different means, and in the medley of their profusion. This charm would at
+once be destroyed by any approximation to the severity of the ancient
+taste in any one point, even in that of the costume; for the contrast
+would render the variety in all the other departments even the more
+insupportable. Gay, tinselled, spangled draperies suit best to the opera;
+and hence many things which have been censured as unnatural, such as
+exhibiting heroes warbling and trilling in the excess of despondency, are
+perfectly justifiable. This fairy world is not peopled by real men, but by
+a singular kind of singing creatures. Neither is it any disadvantage that
+the opera is brought before us in a language which we do not generally
+understand; the words are altogether lost in the music, and the language
+which is most harmonious and musical, and contains the greatest number of
+open vowels for the airs, and distinct accents for recitative, is
+therefore the best. It would be as incongruous to attempt to give to the
+opera the simplicity of the Grecian Tragedy, as it is absurd to think of
+comparing them together.
+
+In the syllabic composition, which then at least prevailed universally in
+Grecian music, the solemn choral song, of which we may form to ourselves
+some idea from our artless national airs, and more especially from our
+church-tunes, had no other instrumental accompaniment than a single flute,
+which was such as not in the slightest degree to impair the distinctness
+of the words. Otherwise it must hare increased the difficulty of the
+choruses and lyrical songs, which, in general, are the part which
+_we_ find it the hardest to understand of the ancient tragedy, and as
+it must also have been for contemporary auditors. They abound in the most
+involved constructions, the most unusual expressions, and the boldest
+images and recondite allusions. Why then should the poets have lavished
+such labour and art upon them, if it were all to be lost in the delivery?
+Such a display of ornament without an object would have been very unlike
+Grecian ways of thinking.
+
+In the syllabic measures of their tragedies, there generally prevails a
+highly finished regularity, but by no means a stiff symmetrical
+uniformity. Besides the infinite variety of the lyrical strophes, which
+the poet invented for each occasion, they have also a measure to suit the
+transition in the tone of mind from the dialogue to the lyric, the
+anapest; and two for the dialogue itself, one of which, by far the most
+usual, the iambic trimeter, denoted the regular progress of the action,
+and the other, the trochaic tetrameter, was expressive of the
+impetuousness of passion. It would lead us too far into the depths of
+metrical science, were we to venture at present on a more minute account
+of the structure and significance of these measures. I merely wished to
+make this remark, as so much has been said of the simplicity of the
+ancient tragedy, which, no doubt, exists in the general plan, at least in
+the two oldest poets; whereas in the execution and details the richest
+variety of poetical ornament is employed. Of course it must be evident
+that the utmost accuracy in the delivery of the different modes of
+versification was expected from the player, as the delicacy of the Grecian
+ear would not excuse, even in an orator, the false quantity of a single
+syllable.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+Essence of the Greek Tragedies--Ideality of the Representation--Idea of
+Fate--Source of the Pleasure derived from Tragical Representations--Import
+of the Chorus--The materials of Greek Tragedy derived from Mythology--
+Comparison with the Plastic Arts.
+
+
+We come now to the essence of Greek tragedy. That in conception it was
+ideal, is universally allowed; this, however, must not be understood as
+implying that all its characters were depicted as morally perfect. In such
+a case what room could there be for that contrast and collision which the
+very plot of a drama requires?--They have their weaknesses, errors, and
+even crimes, but the manners are always elevated above reality, and every
+person is invested with as high a portion of dignity as was compatible
+with his part in the action. But this is not all. The ideality of the
+representation chiefly consisted in the elevation of every thing in it to
+a higher sphere. Tragic poetry wished to separate the image of humanity
+which it presented to us, from the level of nature to which man is in
+reality chained down, like a slave of the soil. How was this to be
+accomplished? By exhibiting to us an image hovering in the air? But this
+would have been incompatible with the law of gravitation and with the
+earthly materials of which our bodies are framed. Frequently, what is
+praised in art as _ideal_ is really nothing more. But this would give
+us nothing more than airy evanescent shadows incapable of making any
+durable impression on the mind. The Greeks, however, in their artistic
+creations, succeeded most perfectly, in combining the ideal with the real,
+or, to drop school terms, an elevation more than human with all the truth
+of life, and in investing the manifestation of an idea with energetic
+corporeity. They did not allow their figures to flit about without
+consistency in empty space, but they fixed the statue of humanity on the
+eternal and immovable basis of moral liberty; and that it might stand
+there unshaken, formed it of stone or brass, or some more massive
+substance than the bodies of living men, making an impression by its very
+weight, and from its very elevation and magnificence only the more
+completely subject to the laws of gravity.
+
+Inward liberty and external necessity are the two poles of the tragic
+world. It is only by contrast with its opposite that each of these ideas
+is brought into full manifestation. As the feeling of an internal power of
+self-determination elevates the man above the unlimited dominion of
+impulse and the instincts of nature; in a word, absolves him from nature's
+guardianship, so the necessity, which alongside of her he must recognize,
+is no mere natural necessity, but one lying beyond the world of sense in
+the abyss of infinitude; consequently it exhibits itself as the
+unfathomable power of Destiny. Hence this power extends also to the world
+of gods: for the Grecian gods are mere powers of nature; and although
+immeasurably higher than mortal man, yet, compared with infinitude, they
+are on an equal footing with himself. In Homer and in the tragedians, the
+gods are introduced in a manner altogether different. In the former their
+appearance is arbitrary and accidental, and communicate to the epic poem
+no higher interest than the charm of the wonderful. But in Tragedy the
+gods either come forward as the servants of destiny, and mediate executors
+of its decrees; or else approve themselves godlike only by asserting their
+liberty of action, and entering upon the same struggles with fate which
+man himself has to encounter.
+
+This is the essence of the tragical in the sense of the ancients. We are
+accustomed to give to all terrible or sorrowful events the appellation of
+tragic, and it is certain that such events are selected in preference by
+Tragedy, though a melancholy conclusion is by no means indispensably
+necessary; and several ancient tragedies, viz., the _Eumenides_,
+_Philoctetes_, and in some degree also the _Oedipus Coloneus_, without
+mentioning many of the pieces of Euripides, have a happy and cheerful
+termination.
+
+But why does Tragedy select subjects so awfully repugnant to the wishes
+and the wants of our sensuous nature? This question has often been asked,
+and seldom satisfactorily answered. Some have said that the pleasure of
+such representations arises from the comparison we make between the
+calmness and tranquillity of our own situation, and the storms and
+perplexities to which the victims of passion are exposed. But when we take
+a warm interest in the persons of a tragedy, we cease to think of
+ourselves; and when this is not the case, it is the best of all proofs
+that we take but a feeble interest in the exhibited story, and that the
+tragedy has failed in its effect. Others again have had recourse to a
+supposed feeling for moral improvement, which is gratified by the view of
+poetical justice in the reward of the good and the punishment of the
+wicked. But he for whom the aspect of such dreadful examples could really
+be wholesome, must be conscious of a base feeling of depression, very far
+removed from genuine morality, and would experience humiliation rather
+than elevation of mind. Besides, poetical justice is by no means
+indispensable to a good tragedy; it may end with the suffering of the just
+and the triumph of the wicked, if only the balance be preserved in the
+spectator's own consciousness by the prospect of futurity. Little does it
+mend the matter to say with Aristotle, that the object of tragedy is to
+purify the passions by pity and terror. In the first place commentators
+have never been able to agree as to the meaning of this proposition, and
+have had recourse to the most forced explanations of it. Look, for
+instance, into the _Dramaturgie_ of Lessing. Lessing gives a new
+explanation of his own, and fancies he has found in Aristotle a poetical
+Euclid. But mathematical demonstrations are liable to no misconception,
+and geometrical evidence may well be supposed inapplicable to the theory
+of the fine arts. Supposing, however, that tragedy does operate this moral
+cure in us, still she does so by the painful feelings of terror and
+compassion: and it remains to be proved how it is that we take a pleasure
+in subjecting ourselves to such an operation.
+
+Others have been pleased to say that we are attracted to theatrical
+representations from the want of some violent agitation to rouse us out of
+the torpor of our every-day life. Such a craving does exist; I have
+already acknowledged the existence of this want, when speaking of the
+attractions of the drama; but to it we must equally attribute the fights
+of wild beasts among the Romans, nay, even the combats of the gladiators.
+But must we, less indurated, and more inclined to tender feelings, require
+demi-gods and heroes to descend, like so many desperate gladiators, into
+the bloody arena of the tragic stage, in order to agitate our nerves by
+the spectacle of their sufferings? No: it is not the sight of suffering
+which constitutes the charm of a tragedy, or even of the games of the
+circus, or of the fight of wild beasts. In the latter we see a display of
+activity, strength, and courage; splendid qualities these, and related to
+the mental and moral powers of man. The satisfaction, therefore, which we
+derive from the representation, in a good tragedy, of powerful situations
+and overwhelming sorrows, must be ascribed either to the feeling of the
+dignity of human nature, excited in us by such grand instances of it as
+are therein displayed, or to the trace of a higher order of things,
+impressed on the apparently irregular course of events, and mysteriously
+revealed in them; or perhaps to both these causes conjointly.
+
+The true reason, therefore, why tragedy need not shun even the harshest
+subject is, that a spiritual and invisible power can only be measured by
+the opposition which it encounters from some external force capable of
+being appreciated by the senses. The moral freedom of man, therefore, can
+only be displayed in a conflict with his sensuous impulses: so long as no
+higher call summons it to action, it is either actually dormant within
+him, or appears to slumber, since otherwise it does but mechanically
+fulfil its part as a mere power of nature. It is only amidst difficulties
+and struggles that the moral part of man's nature avouches itself. If,
+therefore, we must explain the distinctive aim of tragedy by way of
+theory, we would give it thus: that to establish the claims of the mind to
+a divine origin, its earthly existence must be disregarded as vain and
+insignificant, all sorrows endured and all difficulties overcome.  With
+respect to everything connected with this point, I refer my hearers to the
+Section on the Sublime in Kant's _Criticism of the Judgment_ (_Kritik der
+Urtheilskraft_), to the complete perfection of which nothing is wanting
+but a more definite idea of the tragedy of the ancients, with which he
+does not seem to have been very well acquainted.
+
+I come now to another peculiarity which distinguishes the tragedy of the
+ancients from ours, I mean the Chorus. We must consider it as a
+personified reflection on the action which is going on; the incorporation
+into the representation itself of the sentiments of the poet, as the
+spokesman of the whole human race. This is its general poetical character;
+and that is all that here concerns us, and that character is by no means
+affected by the circumstance that the Chorus had a local origin in the
+feasts of Bacchus, and that, moreover, it always retained among the Greeks
+a peculiar national signification; publicity being, as we have already
+said, according to their republican notions, essential to the completeness
+of every important transaction. If in their compositions they reverted to
+the heroic ages, in which monarchical polity was yet in force, they
+nevertheless gave a certain republican cast to the families of their
+heroes, by carrying on the action in presence either of the elders of the
+people, or of other persons who represented some correspondent rank or
+position in the social body. This publicity does not, it is true, quite
+correspond with Homer's picture of the manners of the heroic age; but both
+costume and mythology were handled by dramatic poetry with the same spirit
+of independence and conscious liberty.
+
+These thoughts, then, and these modes of feeling led to the introduction
+of the Chorus, which, in order not to interfere with the appearance of
+reality which the whole ought to possess, must adjust itself to the ever-
+varying requisitions of the exhibited stories. Whatever it might be and do
+in each particular piece, it represented in general, first the common mind
+of the nation, and then the general sympathy of all mankind. In a word,
+the Chorus is the ideal spectator. It mitigates the impression of a heart-
+rending or moving story, while it conveys to the actual spectator a
+lyrical and musical expression of his own emotions, and elevates him to
+the region of contemplation.
+
+Modern critics have never known what to make of the Chorus; and this is
+the less to be wondered at, as Aristotle affords no satisfactory solution
+of the matter. Its office is better painted by Horace, who ascribes to it
+a general expression of moral sympathy, exhortation, instruction, and
+warning. But the critics in question have either believed that its chief
+object was to prevent the stage from ever being altogether empty, whereas
+in truth the stage was not at all the proper place for the Chorus; or else
+they have censured it as a superfluous and cumbersome appendage,
+expressing their astonishment at the alleged absurdity of carrying on
+secret transactions in the presence of assembled multitudes. They have
+also considered it as the principal reason with the Greek tragedians for
+the strict observance of the unity of place, as it could not be changed
+without the removal of the Chorus; an act, which could not have been done
+without some available pretext. Or lastly, they have believed that the
+Chorus owed its continuance from the first origin of Tragedy merely to
+accident; and as it is plain that in Euripides, the last of the three
+great tragic poets, the choral songs have frequently little or no
+connexion with the fable, and are nothing better than a mere episodical
+ornament, they therefore conclude that the Greeks had only to take one
+more step in the progress of dramatic art, to explode the Chorus
+altogether. To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only necessary
+to observe that Sophocles wrote a Treatise on the Chorus, in prose, in
+opposition to the principles of some other poets; and that, far from
+following blindly the practice which he found established, like an
+intelligent artist he was able to assign reasons for his own doings.
+
+Modern poets of the first rank have often, since the revival of the study
+of the ancients, attempted to introduce the Chorus in their own pieces,
+for the most part without a correct, and always without a vivid idea of
+its real import. They seem to have forgotten that we have neither suitable
+singing or dancing, nor, as our theatres are constructed, any convenient
+place for it. On these accounts it is hardly likely to become naturalized
+with us.
+
+The Greek tragedy, in its pure and unaltered state, will always for our
+theatres remain an exotic plant, which we can hardly hope to cultivate
+with any success, even in the hot-house of learned art and criticism. The
+Grecian mythology, which furnishes the materials of ancient tragedy, is as
+foreign to the minds and imaginations of most of the spectators, as its
+form and manner of representation. But to endeavour to force into that
+form materials of a wholly different nature, an historical one, for
+example, to assume that form, must always be a most unprofitable and
+hopeless attempt.
+
+I have called mythology the chief materials of tragedy. We know, indeed,
+of two historical tragedies by Grecian authors: the _Capture of Miletus_,
+of Phrynichus, and the _Persians_, of Aeschylus, a piece which still
+exists; but these singular exceptions both belong to an epoch when the art
+had not attained its full maturity, and among so many hundred examples of
+a different description, only serve to establish more strongly the truth
+of the rule. The sentence passed by the Athenians on Phrynichus, in which
+they condemned him to a pecuniary fine because he had painfully agitated
+them by representing on the stage a contemporary calamity, which with due
+caution they might, perhaps, have avoided; however hard and arbitrary it
+may appear in a judicial point of view, displays, however, a correct
+feeling of the proprieties and limits of art. Oppressed by the
+consciousness of the proximity and reality of the represented story, the
+mind cannot retain that repose and self-possession which are necessary for
+the reception of pure tragical impressions. The heroic fables, on the
+other hand, came to view at a certain remoteness; and surrounded with a
+certain halo of the marvellous. The marvellous possesses the advantage
+that it can, in some measure, be at once believed and disbelieved:
+believed in so far as it is supported by its connexion with other
+opinions; disbelieved while we never take such an immediate interest in it
+as we do in what wears the hue of the every-day life of our own
+experience. The Grecian mythology was a web of national and local
+traditions, held in equal honour as a sequence of religion, and as an
+introduction to history; everywhere preserved in full vitality among the
+people by ceremonies and monuments, already elaborated for the
+requirements of art and the higher species of poetry by the diversified
+manner in which it has been handled, and by the numerous epic or merely
+mythical poets. The tragedians had only, therefore, to engraft one species
+of poetry on another. Certain postulates, and those invariably serviceable
+to the air of dignity and grandeur, and the removing of all meanness of
+idea, were conceded to them at the very outset. Everything, down to the
+very errors and weaknesses of that departed race of heroes who claimed
+their descent from the gods, was ennobled by the sanctity of legend. Those
+heroes were painted as beings endowed with more than human strength; but,
+so far from possessing unerring virtue and wisdom, they were even depicted
+as under the dominion of furious and unbridled passions. It was an age of
+wild effervescence; the hand of social order had not as yet brought the
+soil of morality into cultivation, and it yielded at the same time the
+most beneficent and poisonous productions, with the fresh luxuriant
+fulness of prolific nature. Here the occurrence of the monstrous and
+horrible did not necessarily indicate that degradation and corruption out
+of which alone, under the development of law and order, they could arise,
+and which, in such a state of things, make them fill us with sentiments of
+horror and aversion. The guilty beings of the fable are, if we may be
+allowed the expression, exempt from human jurisdiction, and amenable to a
+higher tribunal alone. Some, indeed, have advanced the opinion, that the
+Greeks, as zealous republicans, took a particular pleasure in witnessing
+the representation of the outrages and consequent calamities of the
+different royal families, and are almost disposed to consider the ancient
+tragedy in general as a satire on monarchical government. Such a party-
+view, however, would have deadened the sympathy of the audience, and
+consequently destroyed the effect which it was the aim of the tragedy to
+produce.
+
+Besides, it must be remarked that the royal families, whose crimes and
+consequent sufferings afforded the most abundant materials for affecting
+tragical pictures, were the Pelopidae of Mycenae, and the Labdacidae of
+Thebes, families who had nothing to do with the political history of the
+Athenians, for whom the pieces were composed. We do not see that the Attic
+poets ever endeavoured to exhibit the ancient kings of their country in an
+odious light; on the contrary, they always hold up their national hero,
+Theseus, for public admiration, as a model of justice and moderation, the
+champion of the oppressed, the first lawgiver, and even as the founder of
+liberty. It was also one of their favourite modes of flattering the
+people, to show to them Athens, even in the heroic ages, as distinguished
+above all the other states of Greece, for obedience to the laws, for
+humanity, and acknowledgment of the national rights of the Hellenes. That
+universal revolution, by which the independent kingdoms of ancient Greece
+were converted into a community of small free states, had separated the
+heroic age from the age of social cultivation, by a wide interval, beyond
+which a few families only attempted to trace their genealogy. This was
+extremely advantageous for the ideal elevation of the characters of Greek
+tragedy, as few human things will admit of a very close inspection without
+betraying some imperfections. To the very different relations of the age
+in which those heroes lived, the standard of mere civil and domestic
+morality is not applicable, and to judge of them the feeling must go back
+to the primary ingredients of human nature. Before the existence of
+constitutions,--when as yet the notions of law and right were
+undeveloped,--the sovereigns were their own lawgivers, in a world which as
+yet was dependent on them; and the fullest scope was thus given to the
+energetic will, either for good or for evil. Moreover, an age of
+hereditary kingdom naturally exhibited more striking instances of sudden
+changes of fortune than the later times of political equality. It was in
+this respect that the high rank of the principal characters was essential,
+or at least favourable to tragic impressiveness; and not, as some moderns
+have pretended, because the changing fortunes of such persons exercise a
+material influence on the happiness or misery of numbers, and therefore
+they alone are sufficiently important to interest us in their behalf; nor,
+again, because internal elevation of sentiment must be clothed with
+external dignity, to call forth our respect and admiration. The Greek
+tragedians paint the downfall of kingly houses without any reference to
+its effects on the condition of the people; they show us the man in the
+king, and, far from veiling their heroes from our sight by their purple
+mantles, they allow us to look, through their vain splendour, into a bosom
+torn and harrowed with grief and passion. That the main essential was not
+so much the regal dignity as the heroic costume, is evident from those
+tragedies of the moderns which have been written under different
+circumstances indeed, but still upon this supposed principle: such, I
+mean, as under the existence of monarchy have taken their subject from
+kings and courts. Prom the existing reality they dare not draw, for
+nothing is less suitable for tragedy than a court and a court life.
+Wherever, therefore, they do not paint an ideal kingdom, with the manners
+of some remote age, they invariably fall into stiffness and formality,
+which are much more fatal to boldness of character, and to depth of
+pathos, than the monotonous and equable relations of private life.
+
+A few mythological fables alone seem originally marked out for tragedy:
+such, for example, as the long-continued alternation of crime, revenge,
+and curses, which we witness in the house of Atreus. When we examine the
+names of the pieces which are lost, we have great difficulty in conceiving
+how the mythological fables (such, at least, as they are known to us,)
+could have furnished sufficient materials for the compass of an entire
+tragedy. It is true, the poets, in the various editions of the same story,
+had a great latitude of selection; and this very fluctuation of tradition
+justified them in going still farther, and making considerable alterations
+in the circumstances of an event, so that the inventions employed for this
+purpose in one piece sometimes contradict the story as given by the same
+poet in another. We must, however, principally explain the prolific
+capability of mythology, for the purposes of tragedy, by the principle
+which we observe in operation throughout the history of Grecian mind and
+art; that, namely, the tendency which predominated for the time,
+assimilated everything else to itself. As the heroic legend with all its
+manifold discrepancies was easily developed into the tranquil fulness and
+light variety of epic poetry, so afterwards it readily responded to the
+demands which the tragic writers made upon it for earnestness, energy, and
+compression; and whatever in this sifting process of transformation fell
+out as inapplicable to tragedy, afforded materials for a sort of half
+sportive, though still ideal representation, in the subordinate species
+called the _satirical drama_.
+
+I hope I shall be forgiven, if I attempt to illustrate the above
+reflections on the essence of Ancient Tragedy, by a comparison borrowed
+from the plastic arts, which will, I trust, be found somewhat more than a
+mere fanciful resemblance.
+
+The Homeric epic is, in poetry, what bas-relief is in sculpture, and
+tragedy the distinct isolated group.
+
+The poetry of Homer, sprung from the soil of legend, is not yet wholly
+detached from it, even as the figures of a bas-relief adhere to an
+extraneous backing of the original block. These figures are but slightly
+raised, and in the epic poem all is painted as past and remote. In bas-
+relief the figures are usually in profile, and in the epos all are
+characterized in the simplest manner in relief; they are not grouped
+together, but follow one another; so Homer's heroes advance, one by one,
+in succession before us. It has been remarked that the _Iliad_ is not
+definitively closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to
+precede and to follow it. The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may
+be continued _ad infinitum_, either from before or behind, on which
+account the ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an
+indefinite extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of
+combatants, &c. Hence they also exhibited bas-reliefs on curved surfaces,
+such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the
+two ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where, while we advance, one
+object appears as another disappears. Reading Homer is very much like such
+a circuit; the present object alone arresting our attention, we lose sight
+of that which precedes, and do not concern ourselves about what is to
+follow.
+
+But in the distinct outstanding group, and in Tragedy, sculpture and
+poetry alike bring before our eyes an independent and definite whole. To
+distinguish it from natural reality, the former places it on a base as on
+an ideal ground, detaching from it as much as possible all foreign and
+accidental accessories, that the eye may rest wholly on the essential
+objects, the figures themselves. These figures the sculptor works out with
+their whole body and contour, and as he rejects the illusion of colours,
+announces by the solidity and uniformity of the mass in which they are
+constructed, a creation of no perishable existence, but endowed, with a
+higher power of endurance.
+
+Beauty is the aim of sculpture, and repose is most advantageous for the
+display of beauty. Repose alone, therefore, is suitable to the single
+figure. But a number of figures can only be combined together into unity,
+_i.e., grouped_ by an action. The group represents beauty in motion,
+and its aim is to combine both in the highest degree of perfection. This
+can be effected even while portraying the most violent bodily or mental
+anguish, if only the artist finds means so to temper the expression by
+some trait of manly resistance, calm grandeur, or inherent sweetness,
+that, with all the most moving truth, the lineaments of beauty shall yet
+be undefaced. The observation of Winkelmann on this subject is inimitable.
+He says, that "beauty with the ancients was the tongue on the balance of
+expression," and in this sense the groups of Niobe and Laocoön are master-
+pieces; the one in the sublime and severe; the other in the studied and
+ornamental style.
+
+The comparison with ancient tragedy is the more apposite here, as we know
+that both Aeschylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and that Sophocles was
+also the author of a Laocoön. In the group of the Laocoön the efforts of
+the body in enduring, and of the mind in resisting, are balanced in
+admirable equipoise. The children calling for help, tender objects of
+compassion, not of admiration, recal our eyes to the father, who seems to
+be in vain uplifting his eyes to the gods. The wreathed serpents represent
+to us that inevitable destiny which often involves all the parties of an
+action in one common ruin. And yet the beauty of proportion, the agreeable
+flow of the outline, are not lost in this violent struggle; and a
+representation, the most appalling to the senses, is yet managed with
+forbearance, while a mild breath of gracefulness is diffused over the
+whole.
+
+In the group of Niobe there is the same perfect mixture of terror and
+pity. The upturned looks of the mother, and the mouth half open in
+supplication, seem yet to accuse the invisible wrath of heaven. The
+daughter, clinging in the agonies of death to the bosom of her mother, in
+her childish innocence has no fear but for herself: the innate impulse of
+self-preservation was never more tenderly and affectingly expressed. On
+the other hand, can there be a more beautiful image of self-devoting,
+heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends forward to receive, if
+possible, in her own body the deadly shaft? Pride and defiance dissolve in
+the depths of maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features
+are the less marred by the agony, as under the rapid accumulation of blow
+upon blow she seems, as in the deeply significant fable, already
+petrifying into the stony torpor. But before this figure, thus
+_twice_ struck into stone, and yet so full of life and soul,--before
+this stony terminus of the limits of human endurance, the spectator melts
+into tears.
+
+Amid all the agitating emotions which these groups give rise to, there is
+still a something in their aspect which attracts the mind and gives rise
+to manifold contemplation; so the ancient tragedy leads us forward to the
+highest reflections involved in the very sphere of things it sets before
+us--reflections on the nature and the inexplicable mystery of man's being.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+Progress of the Tragic Art among the Greeks--Various styles of Tragic Art
+--Aeschylus--Connexion in a Trilogy of Aeschylus--His remaining Works.
+
+
+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 possess works of three of their
+numerous tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and of these but
+a few in proportion to the whole number of their compositions. The extant
+dramas are such as were selected by the Alexandrian critics as the
+foundation for the study of the older Grecian literature, not because they
+alone were deserving of estimation, but because they afforded the best
+illustration of the various styles of tragic art. Of each of the two older
+poets, we have seven pieces remaining; 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, for the satirical dramas of Achaeus, Aeschylus, and
+Sophocles, or, for the sake of comparison with Aeschylus, for some of
+Phrynichus' pieces, or of Agathon's, whom Plato describes as effeminate,
+but sweet and affecting, and who was a contemporary of Euripides, though
+somewhat his junior.
+
+Leaving to antiquarians to sift the stories about the waggon of the
+strolling Thespis, the contests for the prize of a he-goat, from which the
+name of tragedy is said to be derived, and the lees of wine with which the
+first improvisatory actors smeared over their visages, from which rude
+beginnings, it is pretended, Aeschylus, by one gigantic stride, gave to
+tragedy that dignified form under which it appears in his works, we shall
+proceed immediately to the consideration of the poets themselves.
+
+The tragic style of Aeschylus (I use the word "style" in the sense it
+receives in sculpture, and not in the exclusive signification of the
+manner of writing,) is grand, severe, and not unfrequently hard: that of
+Sophocles is marked by the most finished symmetry and harmonious
+gracefulness: that of Euripides is soft and luxuriant; overflowing in his
+easy copiousness, he often sacrifices the general effect to brilliant
+passages. The analogies which the undisturbed development of the fine arts
+among the Greeks everywhere furnishes, will enable us, throughout to
+compare the epochs of tragic art with those of sculpture. Aeschylus is the
+Phidias of Tragedy, Sophocles her Polycletus, and Euripides her Lysippus.
+Phidias formed sublime images of the gods, but lent them an extrinsic
+magnificence of material, and surrounded their majestic repose with images
+of the most violent struggles in strong relief. Polycletus carried his art
+to perfection of proportion, and hence one of his statues was called the
+Standard of Beauty. Lysippus distinguished himself by the fire of his
+works; but in his time Sculpture had deviated from its original
+destination, and was much more desirous of expressing the charm of motion
+and life than of adhering to ideality of form.
+
+Aeschylus is to be considered as the creator of Tragedy: in full panoply
+she sprung from his head, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter. He clad
+her with dignity, and gave her an appropriate stage; he was the inventor
+of scenic pomp, and not only instructed the chorus in singing and dancing,
+but appeared himself as an actor. He was the first that expanded the
+dialogue, and set limits to the lyrical part of tragedy, which, however,
+still occupies too much space in his pieces. His characters are sketched
+with a few bold and strong touches. His plots are simple in the extreme:
+he did not understand the art of enriching and varying an action, and of
+giving a measured march and progress to the complication and denouement.
+Hence his action often stands still; a circumstance which becomes yet more
+apparent, from the undue extension of his choral songs. But all his poetry
+evinces a sublime and earnest mind. Terror is his element, and not the
+softer affections, he holds up a head of Medusa before the petrified
+spectators. In his handling Destiny appears austere in the extreme; she
+hovers over the heads of mortals in all her gloomy majesty. The cothurnus
+of Aeschylus has, as it were, the weight of iron: gigantic figures stalk
+in upon it. It seems as if it required an effort for him to condescend to
+paint mere men; he is ever bringing in gods, but especially the Titans,
+those elder divinities who typify the gloomy powers of primaeval nature,
+and who had been driven long ago into Tartarus before the presence of a
+new and better order of things. He endeavours to swell out his language to
+a gigantic sublimity, corresponding to the vast dimensions of his
+personages. Hence he abounds in harsh compounds and over-strained
+epithets, and the lyrical parts of his pieces are often, from their
+involved construction, extremely obscure. In the singular strangeness of
+his images and expressions he resembles Dante and Shakspeare. Yet in these
+images there is no want of that terrific grace which almost all the
+writers of antiquity commend in Aeschylus.
+
+Aeschylus flourished in the very freshness and vigour of Grecian freedom,
+and a proud sense of the glorious struggle by which it was won, seems to
+have animated him and his poetry. He had been an eye-witness of the
+greatest and most glorious event in the history of Greece, the overthrow
+and annihilation of the Persian hosts under Darius and Xerxes, and had
+fought with distinguished bravery in the memorable battles of Marathon and
+Salamis. In the _Persians_ he has, in an indirect manner, sung the
+triumph which he contributed to obtain, while he paints the downfall of
+the Persian ascendancy, and the ignominious return of the despot, with
+difficulty escaping with his life, to his royal residence. The battle of
+Salamis he describes in the most vivid and glowing colours. Through the
+whole of this piece, and the _Seven before Thebes_, there gushes forth a
+warlike vein; the personal inclination of the poet for a soldier's
+life, shines throughout with the most dazzling lustre. It was well
+remarked by Gorgias, the sophist, that Mars, instead of Bacchus, had
+inspired this last drama; for Bacchus, and not Apollo, was the tutelary
+deity of tragic poets, which, on a first view of the matter, appears
+somewhat singular, but then we must recollect that Bacchus was not merely
+the god of wine and joy, but also the god of all higher kinds of
+inspiration.
+
+Among the remaining pieces of Aeschylus, we have what is highly deserving
+of our attention--a complete _Trilogy_. The antiquarian account of
+the trilogies is this: that in the more early times the poet did not
+contend for the prize with a single piece, but with three, which, however,
+were not always connected together in their subjects, and that to these
+was added a fourth,--namely, a _satiric drama_. All were acted in one
+day, one after another. The idea which, in relation to the tragic art, we
+must form of the trilogy, is this: a tragedy cannot be indefinitely
+lengthened and continued, like the Homeric Epos for instance, to which
+whole rhapsodies have been appended; tragedy is too independent and
+complete within itself for this; nevertheless, several tragedies may be
+connected together in one great cycle by means of a common destiny running
+through the actions of all. Hence the restriction to the number three
+admits of a satisfactory explanation. It is the thesis, the antithesis,
+and the synthesis. The advantage of this conjunction was that, by the
+consideration of the connected fables, a more complete gratification was
+furnished than could possibly be obtained from a single action. The
+subjects of the three tragedies might be separated by a wide interval of
+time, or follow close upon one another.
+
+The three pieces which form the trilogy of Aeschylus, are the _Agamemnon_,
+the _Choephorae_ or, we should call it, _Electra_, and the _Eumenides_ or
+_Furies_. The subject of the first is the murder of Agamemnon by
+Clytemnestra, on his return from Troy. In the second, Orestes avenges his
+father by killing his mother: _facto pius et sceleratus eodem_. This deed,
+although enjoined by the most powerful motives, is, however, repugnant to
+the natural and moral order of things. Orestes, as a prince, was, it is
+true, called upon to exercise justice, even on the members of his own
+family; but we behold him here under the necessity of stealing in disguise
+into the dwelling of the tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to
+work like an assassin. The memory of his father pleads his excuse; but
+however much Clytemnestra may have deserved her death, the voice of blood
+cries from within. This conflict of natural duties is represented in the
+_Eumenides_ in the form of a contention among the gods, some of whom
+approve of the deed of Orestes, while others persecute him, till at last
+Divine Wisdom, in the persona of Minerva, balances the opposite claims,
+establishes peace, and puts an end to the long series of crime and
+punishment which have desolated the royal house of Atreus.
+
+A considerable interval takes place between the period of the first and
+second pieces, during which Orestes grows up to manhood. The second and
+third are connected together immediately in order of time. Upon the murder
+of his mother, Orestes flees forthwith to Delphi, where we find him at the
+commencement of the _Eumenides_.
+
+In each of the two first pieces, there is a visible reference to the one
+which follows. In _Agamemnon_, Cassandra and the chorus, at the close,
+predict to the haughty Clytemnestra and her paramour, Aegisthus, the
+punishment which awaits them at the hands of Orestes. In the _Choephorae_,
+Orestes, upon the execution of the deed of retribution, finds that all
+peace is gone: the furies of his mother begin to persecute him, and he
+announces his resolution of taking refuge in Delphi.
+
+The connexion is therefore evident throughout; and we may consider the
+three pieces, which were connected together even in the representation, as
+so many acts of one great and entire drama. I mention this as a
+preliminary justification of the practice of Shakspeare and other modern
+poets, to connect together in one representation a larger circle of human
+destinies, as we can produce to the critics who object to this the
+supposed example of the ancients.
+
+In _Agamemnon_, it was the intention of Aeschylus to exhibit to us a
+sudden fall from the highest pinnacle of prosperity and renown into the
+abyss of ruin. The prince, the hero, the general of the combined forces of
+the Greeks, in the very moment of success and the glorious achievement of
+the destruction of Troy, the fame of which is to be re-echoed from the
+mouths of the greatest poets of all ages, in the very act of crossing the
+threshold of his home, after which he had so long sighed, and amidst the
+fearless security of preparations for a festival, is butchered, according
+to the expression of Homer, "like an ox in the stall," slain by his
+faithless wife, his throne usurped by her worthless seducer, and his
+children consigned to banishment or to hopeless servitude.
+
+With the view of giving greater effect to this dreadful reverse of
+fortune, the poet endeavours to throw a greater splendour over the
+destruction of Troy. He has done this in the first half of the piece in a
+manner peculiar to himself, which, however singular, must be allowed to be
+impressive in the extreme, and well fitted to lay fast hold of the
+imagination. It is of importance to Clytemnestra that she should not be
+surprised by the sudden arrival of her husband; she has therefore arranged
+an uninterrupted series of signal fires from Troy to Mycenae, to announce
+to her that great event. The piece commences with the speech of a
+watchman, who supplicates the gods for a deliverance from his labours, as
+for ten long years he has been exposed to the cold dews of night, has
+witnessed the changeful course of the stars, while looking in vain for the
+expected signal; at the same time he sighs in secret over the corruption
+which reigns within the royal house. At this moment he sees the long-
+wished-for beacon blazing up, and hastens to announce it to his mistress.
+A chorus of aged persons appears, and in their songs they go through the
+whole history of the Trojan War, through all its eventful fluctuations of
+fortune, from its origin, and recount all the prophecies relating to it,
+and the sacrifice of Iphigenia, by which the sailing of the Greeks was
+purchased. Clytemnestra explains to the chorus the joyful cause of the
+sacrifice which she orders; and the herald Talthybius immediately makes
+his appearance, who, as an eye-witness, relates the drama of the conquered
+and plundered city, consigned as a prey to the flames, the joy of the
+victors, and the glory of their leader. With reluctance, as if unwilling
+to check their congratulatory prayers, he recounts to them the subsequent
+misfortunes of the Greeks, their dispersion, and the shipwreck suffered by
+many of them, an immediate symptom of the wrath of the gods. It is obvious
+how little the unity of time was observed by the poet,--how much, on the
+contrary, he avails himself of the prerogative of his mental dominion over
+the powers of nature, to give wings to the circling hours in their course
+towards the dreadful goal. Agamemnon now arrives, borne in a sort of
+triumphal car; and seated on another, laden with booty, follows Cassandra,
+his prisoner of war, and concubine also, according to the customary
+privilege of heroes. Clytemnestra greets him with hypocritical joy and
+veneration; she orders her slaves to cover the ground with the most costly
+embroideries of purple, that it might not be touched by the foot of the
+conqueror. Agamemnon, with wise moderation, refuses to accept an honour
+due only to the gods; at last he yields to her solicitations, and enters
+the palace. The chorus then begins to utter its dark forebodings.
+Clytemnestra returns to allure, by friendly speeches, Cassandra also to
+destruction. The latter is silent and unmoved, but the queen is hardly
+gone, when, seized with prophetic furor, she breaks out into the most
+confused and obscure lamentations, but presently unfolds her prophecies
+more distinctly to the chorus; in spirit she beholds all the enormities
+which have been perpetrated within that house--the repast of Thyestes,
+which the sun refused to look upon; the ghosts of the mangled children
+appear to her on the battlements of the palace. She also sees the death
+which is preparing for her lord; and, though shuddering at the reek of
+death, as if seized with madness, she rushes into the house to meet her
+own inevitable doom, while from behind the scene we hear the groans of the
+dying Agamemnon. The palace opens; Clytemnestra stands beside the body of
+her king and husband; like an insolent criminal, she not only confesses
+the deed, but boasts of and justifies it, as a righteous requital for
+Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia to his own ambition. Her jealousy of
+Cassandra, and criminal connexion with the worthless Aegisthus, who does
+not appear till after the completion of the murder and towards the
+conclusion of the piece, are motives which she hardly touches on, and
+throws entirely into the background. This was necessary to preserve the
+dignity of the subject; for, indeed, Clytemnestra could not with propriety
+have been portrayed as a frail seduced woman--she must appear with the
+features of that heroic age, so rich in bloody catastrophes, in which all
+passions were violent, and men, both in good and evil, surpassed the
+ordinary standard of later and more degenerated ages. What is more
+revolting--what proves a deeper degeneracy of human nature, than horrid
+crimes conceived in the bosom of cowardly effeminacy? If such crimes are
+to be portrayed by the poet, he must neither seek to palliate them, nor to
+mitigate our horror and aversion of them. Moreover, by bringing the
+sacrifice of Iphigenia thus immediately before us, the poet has succeeded
+in lessening the indignation which otherwise the foul and painful fate of
+Agamemnon is calculated to awaken. He cannot be pronounced wholly
+innocent; a former crime recoils on his own head: besides, according to
+the religious idea of the ancients, an old curse hung over his house.
+Aegisthus, the author of his destruction, is a son of that very Thyestes
+on whom his father Atreus took such an unnatural revenge; and this fateful
+connexion is vividly brought before our minds by the chorus, and more
+especially by the prophecies of Cassandra.
+
+I pass over the subsequent piece of the _Choephorae_ for the present;
+I shall speak of it when I come to institute a comparison between the
+manner in which the three poets have handled the same subject.
+
+The fable of the _Eumenides_ is, as I have already said, the justification
+of Orestes, and his absolution from blood-guiltiness: it is a trial, but a
+trial where the accusers and the defenders and the presiding judges are
+gods. 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 all the highest objects of veneration that they acknowledged.
+
+It opens in front of the celebrated temple at Delphi, which occupies the
+background; the aged Pythia enters in sacerdotal pomp, addresses her
+prayers to all the gods who at any time presided, or still preside, over
+the oracle, harangues the assembled people (represented by the actual
+audience), 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 snaky hair; she then makes her exit by the same
+entrance as she came in by. Apollo now appears with Orestes, who is in a
+traveller's garb, and carries a sword and olive-branch in his hands. He
+promises him his farther protection, enjoins him to flee to Athens, and
+commends him to the care of the present but invisible Mercury, to whose
+safeguard travellers, and especially those who were under the necessity of
+journeying by stealth, were usually consigned.
+
+Orestes goes off at the side which was supposed to lead to foreign lands;
+Apollo re-enters his temple, which remains open, and the Furies are seen
+in the interior, sleeping on the benches. Clytemnestra's ghost now ascends
+by the charonic stairs, and, passing through the orchestra, appears on the
+stage. We are not to imagine it a haggard skeleton, but a figure with the
+appearance of life, though paler, with the wound still open in her breast,
+and shrouded in ethereal-coloured vestments. She calls on the Furies, in
+the language of vehement reproach, and then disappears, probably through a
+trap-door. The Furies awake, and not finding Orestes, they dance in wild
+commotion round the stage, while they sing the choral song. Apollo again
+comes out of the temple, and drives them away, as profaning his sanctuary.
+We may imagine him appearing with the sublime displeasure of the Apollo of
+the Vatican, with bow and quiver, but also clad with tunic and chlamys.
+
+The scene now changes; but as the Greeks on such occasions were fond of
+going the shortest way to work, the background probably remained
+unchanged, and was now supposed to represent the temple of Minerva, on the
+Areopagus, while the lateral decorations were converted into Athens and
+its surrounding landscape. Orestes now enters, as from foreign land, and,
+as a suppliant, embraces the statue of Pallas standing before the temple.
+The chorus (who, according to the poet's own description, were clothed in
+black, with purple girdles, and serpents in their hair, in masks having
+perhaps something of the terrific beauty of Medusa-heads, and marking too
+their great age on the principles of sculpture) follows close on his
+steps, but for the rest of the piece remains below in the orchestra. The
+Furies had at first behaved themselves like beasts of prey, furious at the
+escape of their booty, but now, hymning with tranquil dignity the high and
+terrible office they had among mortals, they claim the head of Orestes, as
+forfeited to them, and devote it with mysterious charms to endless
+torment. At the intercession of the suppliant, Pallas, the warrior-virgin,
+appears in a chariot drawn by four horses. She inquires the cause of his
+invocation, and listens with calm dignity to the mutual complaints of
+Orestes and his adversaries, and, at the solicitation of the two parties,
+finally undertakes, after due reflection, the office of umpire. The
+assembled judges take their seats on the steps of the temple--the herald
+commands silence among the people by sound of trumpet, just as in a real
+trial. Apollo advances to advocate the cause of his suppliant, the Furies
+in vain protest against his interference, and the arguments for and
+against the deed are debated between them in short speeches. The judges
+cast their ballots into the urn, Pallas throws in a white one; all is
+wrought up to the highest pitch of expectation; Orestes, in agony of
+suspense, exclaims to his protector--
+
+  O Phoebus Apollo, how will the cause be decided?
+
+The Furies on the other hand:
+
+  O Night, black Mother, seest thou these doings?
+
+Upon counting the black and white pebbles, they are found equal in number,
+and the accused, therefore, by the decision of Pallas, is acquitted. He
+breaks out into joyful thanksgiving, while the Furies on the other hand
+declaim against the overbearing arrogance of these younger gods, who take
+such liberties with those of Titanic race. Pallas bears their rage with
+equanimity, addresses them in the language of kindness, and even of
+veneration; and these so indomitable beings are unable to withstand the
+charms of her mild eloquence. They promise to bless the land which is
+under her tutelary protection, while on her part Pallas assigns them a
+sanctuary in the Attic domain, where they are to be called the
+_Eumenides_, that is, "the Benevolent Goddesses." The whole ends with
+a solemn procession round the theatre, with hymns of blessing, while bands
+of children, women, and old men, in purple robes and with torches in their
+hands, accompany the Furies in their exit.
+
+Let us now take a retrospective view of the whole trilogy. In the
+_Agamemnon_ we have a predominance of free-will both in the plan and
+execution of the deed: the principal character is a great criminal, and
+the piece ends with the revolting impressions produced by the sight of
+triumphant tyranny and crime. I have already pointed out the allusions it
+contains to a preceding destiny.
+
+The deed committed in the _Choephorae_ is partly enjoined by Apollo
+as the appointment of fate, and partly originates in natural motives:
+Orestes' desire of avenging his father, and his brotherly love for the
+oppressed Electra. It is only after the execution of the deed that the
+struggle between the most sacred feelings becomes manifest, and here again
+the sympathies of the spectators are excited without being fully appeased.
+
+From its very commencement, the _Eumenides_ stands on the very summit
+of tragical elevation: all the past is here, as it were, concentrated into
+a focus. Orestes has become the mere passive instrument of fate; and free
+agency is transferred to the more elevated sphere of the gods. Pallas is
+properly the principal character. That opposition between the most sacred
+relations, which often occurs in life as a problem not to be solved by
+man, is here represented as a contention in the world of the gods.
+
+And this brings me to the pregnant meaning of the whole. The ancient
+mythology is in general _symbolical_, although not _allegorical_; for the
+two are _certainly_ distinct. Allegory is the personification of an idea,
+a poetic story invented solely with such a view; but that is symbolical
+which, created by the imagination for other purposes, or possessing an
+independent reality of its own, is at the same time easily susceptible of
+an emblematical explanation; and even of itself suggests it.
+
+The Titans in general symbolize the dark and mysterious powers of
+primaeval nature and mind; the younger gods, whatsoever enters more
+immediately within the circle of consciousness. The former are more nearly
+allied to original chaos, the latter belong to a world already reduced to
+order. The Furies denote the dreadful powers of conscience, in so far as
+it rests on obscure feelings and forebodings, and yields to no principles
+of reason. In vain Orestes dwells on the just motives which urged him to
+the deed, the cry of blood still sounds in his ear. Apollo is the god of
+youth, of the noble ebullition of passionate indignation, of bold and
+daring action. Accordingly this deed was commanded by him. Pallas is
+thoughtful wisdom, justice, and moderation, which alone can allay the
+conflict of reason and passion.
+
+Even the sleep of the Furies in the temple is symbolical; for only in the
+sanctuary, in the bosom of religion, can the fugitive find rest from the
+torments of conscience. Scarcely, however, has he ventured forth again
+into the world, when the image of his murdered mother appears, and again
+awakes them. The very speech of Clytemnestra betrays its symbolical
+import, as much as the attributes of the Furies, the serpents, and their
+sucking of blood. The same may be said of Apollo's aversion for them; in
+fact, this symbolical character runs through the whole. The equal cogency
+of the motives for and against the deed is denoted by the equally divided
+votes of the judges. And if at last a sanctuary within the Athenian
+territory is offered to the softened Furies, this is as much as to say
+that reason is not everywhere to enforce its principles against
+involuntary instinct, that there are in the human mind certain boundaries
+which are not to be passed, and all contact with which even every person
+possessed of a true sentiment of reverence will cautiously avoid, if he
+would preserve peace within.
+
+So much for the deep philosophical meaning which we need not wonder to
+find in this poet, who, according to the testimony of Cicero, was a
+Pythagorean. Aeschylus had also political views. Foremost of these was the
+design of rendering Athens illustrious. Delphi was the religious centre of
+Greece, and yet how far it is thrown into the shade by him! It can shelter
+Orestes, indeed, from the first onset of persecution, but not afford him a
+complete liberation; this is reserved for the land of law and humanity.
+But, a further, and in truth, his principal object was to recommend as
+essential to the welfare of Athens the Areopagus [Footnote: I do not find
+that this aim has ever been expressly ascribed to Aeschylus by any ancient
+writer. It is, however, too plain to be mistaken, and is revealed
+especially in the speech of Pallas, beginning with the 680th verse. It
+agrees, moreover, with the account, that in the very year when the piece
+was represented, (Olymp. lxxx. 1.) a certain Ephialtes excited the people
+against the Areopagus, which was the best guardian of the old and more
+austere constitution, and kept democratic extravagance in check. This
+Ephialtes was murdered one night by an unknown hand. Aeschylus received
+the first prize in the theatrical games, but we know that he left Athens
+immediately afterwards, and passed his remaining years in Sicily. It is
+possible that, although the theatrical judges did him justice, he might be
+held in aversion by the populace, and that this induced him, without any
+express sentence of banishment, to leave his native city. The story of the
+sight of the terrible chorus of Furies having thrown children into mortal
+convulsions, and caused women to miscarry, appears to be fabulous. A poet
+would hardly have been crowned, who had been the occasion of profaning the
+festival by such occurrences.], an uncorruptible yet mild tribunal, in
+which the white ballot of Pallas given in favour of the accused is an
+invention which does honour to the humanity of the Athenians. The poet
+shows how a portentous series of crimes led to an institution fraught with
+blessings to humanity.
+
+But it will be asked, are not extrinsic aims of this kind prejudicial to
+the pure poetical impressions which the composition ought to produce? Most
+undoubtedly, if pursued in the manner in which other poets, and especially
+Euripides, have followed them out. But in Aeschylus the aim is subservient
+to the poetry, rather than the poetry to the aim. He does not lower
+himself to a circumscribed reality, but, on the contrary, elevates it to a
+higher sphere, and connects it with the most sublime conceptions.
+
+In the _Oresteia_ (for so the trilogy or three connected pieces was
+called,) we certainly possess one of the sublimest poems that ever was
+conceived by the imagination of man, and, probably, the ripest and most
+perfect of all the productions of his genius. The date of the composition
+of them confirms this supposition: for Aeschylus was at least sixty years
+of age when he brought these dramas on the stage, the last with which he
+ever competed for the prize at Athens. But, indeed, every one of his
+pieces that has come down to us, is remarkable either for displaying some
+peculiar property of the poet, or, as indicative of the step in art at
+which he stood at the date of its composition.
+
+I am disposed to consider the _Suppliants_ one of his more early works. It
+probably belonged to a trilogy, and stood between two other tragedies on
+the same subject, the names of which are still preserved, namely the
+_Egyptians_ and the _Danaidae_. The first, we may suppose, described the
+flight of the _Danaidae_ from Egypt to avoid the detested marriage with
+their cousins; the second depicts the protection which they sought and
+obtained in Argos; while the third would contain the murder of the
+husbands who were forced upon them. We are disposed to view the two first
+pieces as single acts, introductory to the tragical action which properly
+commences in the last. But the tragedy of the _Suppliants_, while it is
+complete in itself, and forms a whole, is yet, when viewed in this
+position, defective, since it is altogether without reference to or
+connexion with what precedes and what follows. In the _Suppliants_ the
+chorus not only takes a part in the action, as in the _Eumenides_, but it
+is even the principal character that attracts and commands our interest.
+This cast of the tragedy is neither favourable for the display of
+peculiarity of character, nor the exciting emotion by the play of powerful
+passions; or, to speak in the language of Grecian art, it is unfavourable
+both to _ethos_ and to _pathos_. The chorus has but one voice and one
+soul: to have marked the disposition common to fifty young women (for the
+chorus of _Danaidae_ certainly amounted to this number,) by any exclusive
+peculiarities, would have been absurd in the very nature of things: over
+and above the common features of humanity such a multitude could only be
+painted with those common to their sex, their age, and, perhaps, those of
+their nation. In respect to the last, the intention of Aeschylus is more
+conspicuous than his success: he lays a great stress on the foreign
+descent of the _Danaidae_; but this he does but assert of them, without
+allowing the foreign character to be discovered in their words and
+discourse. The sentiments, resolutions, and actions of a multitude, and
+yet manifested with such uniformity, and conceived and executed like the
+movements of a regular army, have scarcely the appearance of proceeding
+freely and directly from the inmost being. And, on the other hand, we take
+a much stronger interest in the situations and fortunes of a single
+individual with whose whole character we have become intimately
+acquainted, than in a multitude of uniformly repeated impressions massed
+as it were together. We have more than reason to doubt whether Aeschylus
+treated the fable of the third piece in such a way that Hypermnestra, the
+only one of the _Danaidae_ who is allowed to form an exception from the
+rest, became, with her compassion or her love, the principal object of the
+dramatic interest: here, again, probably, his chief object was by
+expressing, in majestic choral songs, the complaints, the wishes, the
+cares, and supplications of the whole sisterhood, to exhibit a kind of
+social solemnity of action and suffering.
+
+In the same manner, in the _Seven before Thebes_, the king and the
+messenger, whose speeches occupy the greatest part of the piece, speak
+more in virtue of their office than as interpreters of their own personal
+feelings. The description of the assault with which the city is
+threatened, and of the seven leaders who, like heaven-storming giants,
+have sworn its destruction, and who, in the emblems borne on their
+shields, display their arrogance, is an epic subject clothed in the pomp
+of tragedy. This long and ascending series of preparation is every way
+worthy the one agitating moment at which Eteocles, who has hitherto
+displayed the utmost degree of prudence and firmness, and stationed, at
+each gate, a patriotic hero to confront each of the insolent foes; when
+the seventh is described to him as no other than Polynices, the author of
+the whole threatened calamity, hurried away by the Erinnys of a father's
+curse, insists on becoming himself his antagonist, and, notwithstanding
+all the entreaties of the chorus, with the clear consciousness of
+inevitable death, rushes headlong to the fratricidal strife. War, in
+itself, is no subject for tragedy, and the poet hurries us rapidly from
+the ominous preparation to the fatal moment of decision: the city is
+saved, the two competitors for the throne fall by each other's hands, and
+the whole is closed by their funeral dirge, sung conjointly by the sisters
+and a chorus of Theban virgins. It is worthy of remark that Antigone's
+determination to inter her brother, notwithstanding the prohibition with
+which Sophocles opens his own piece, which he names after her, is
+interwoven with the conclusion of this play, a circumstance which, as in
+the case of the _Choephorae_, immediately connects it with a new and
+further development of the tragic story.
+
+I wish I could persuade myself that Aeschylus composed the _Persians_
+to comply with the wish of Hiero, King of Syracuse, who was desirous
+vividly to realize the great events of the Persian war. Such is the
+substance of one tradition; but according to another, the piece had been
+previously exhibited in Athens. We have already alluded to this drama,
+which, both in point of choice of subject, and the manner of handling it,
+is undoubtedly the most imperfect of all the tragedies of this poet that
+we possess. Scarcely has the vision of Atossa raised our expectation in
+the commencement, when the whole catastrophe immediately opens on us with
+the arrival of the first messenger, and no further progress is even
+imaginable. But although not a legitimate drama, we may still consider it
+as a proud triumphal hymn of liberty, clothed in soft and unceasing
+lamentations of kindred and subjects over the fallen majesty of the
+ambitious despot. With great judgment, both here and in the _Seven before
+Thebes_, the poet describes the issue of the war, not as accidental, which
+is almost always the case in Homer, but (for in tragedy there is no place
+for accident,) as the result of overweening infatuation on the one hand,
+and wise moderation on the other.
+
+The _Prometheus Bound_, held also a middle place between two others--
+the _Fire-bringing Prometheus_ and the _Prometheus Unbound_, if we dare
+reckon the first, which, without question, was a satiric drama, a part of
+a trilogy. A considerable fragment of the _Prometheus Unbound_ has been
+preserved to us in a Latin translation by Attius.
+
+The _Prometheus Bound_ is the representation of constancy under suffering,
+and that the never-ending suffering of a god. Exiled in its scene to a
+naked rock on the shore of the earth-encircling ocean, this drama still
+embraces the world, the Olympus of the gods, and the earth, the abode of
+mortals; all as yet scarcely reposing in security above the dread abyss of
+the dark primaeval powers--the Titans. The idea of a self-devoting
+divinity has been mysteriously inculcated in many religions, in dim
+foreboding of the true; here, however, it appears in most fearful
+contrast to the consolations of Revelation. For Prometheus does not suffer
+from any understanding with the power which rules the world, but in
+atonement for his disobedience to that power, and his disobedience
+consists in nothing but the attempt to give perfection to the human race.
+He is thus an image of human nature itself; endowed with an unblessed
+foresight and riveted to a narrow existence, without a friend or ally, and
+with nothing to oppose to the combined and inexorable powers of nature,
+but an unshaken will and the consciousness of her own lofty aspirations.
+The other productions of the Greek Tragedians are so many tragedies; but
+this I might say is Tragedy herself: her purest spirit revealed with all
+the annihilating and overpowering force of its first, and as yet
+unmitigated, austerity.
+
+There is little of external action in this piece. Prometheus merely
+suffers and resolves from the beginning to the end; and his sufferings and
+resolutions are always the same. But the poet has, in a masterly manner,
+contrived to introduce variety and progress into that which in itself was
+determinately fixed, and has in the objects with which he has surrounded
+him, given us a scale for the measurement of the matchless power of his
+sublime Titan. First the silence of Prometheus, while he is chained down
+under the harsh inspection of _Strength_ and _Force_, whose threats serve
+only to excite a useless compassion in Vulcan, who is nevertheless forced
+to carry them into execution; then his solitary complainings, the arrival
+of the womanly tender ocean nymphs, whose kind but disheartening sympathy
+stimulates him to give freer vent to his feelings, to relate the causes of
+his fall, and to reveal the future, though with prudent reserve he reveals
+it only in part; the visit of the ancient Oceanus, a kindred god of the
+Titanian race, who, under the pretext of a zealous attachment to his
+cause, counsels submission to Jupiter, and is therefore dismissed with
+proud contempt; next comes Io, the frenzy-driven wanderer, a victim of the
+same tyranny as Prometheus himself suffers under: to her he predicts the
+wanderings to which she is still doomed, and the fate which at last awaits
+her, which, in some degree, is connected with his own, as from her blood,
+after the lapse of many ages, his deliverer is to spring; then the
+appearance of Mercury, as the messenger of the universal tyrant, who, with
+haughty menaces, commands him to disclose the secret which is to ensure
+the safety of Jupiter's throne against all the malice of fate and fortune;
+and, lastly, before Prometheus has well declared his refusal, the yawning
+of the earth, which, amidst thunder and lightning, storms and earthquake,
+engulfs both him and the rock to which he is chained in the abyss of the
+nether world. The triumph of subjection was never perhaps more gloriously
+celebrated, and we have difficulty in conceiving how the poet in the
+_Prometheus Unbound_ could have sustained himself on the same height of
+elevation.
+
+In the dramas of Aeschylus we have one of many examples that, in art as
+well as in nature, gigantic productions precede those that evince
+regularity of proportion, which again in their turn decline gradually into
+littleness and insignificance, and that poetry in her earliest appearance
+attaches itself closely to the sanctities of religion, whatever may be the
+form which the latter assumes among the various races of men.
+
+A saying of the poet, which has been recorded, proves that he endeavoured
+to maintain this elevation, and purposely avoided all artificial polish,
+which might lower him from this godlike sublimity. His brothers urged him
+to write a new Paean. He answered: "The old one of Tynnichus is the best,
+and his compared with this, fare as the new statues do beside the old; for
+the latter, with all their simplicity, are considered divine; while the
+new, with all the care bestowed on their execution, are indeed admired,
+but bear much less of the impression of divinity." In religion, as in
+everything else, he carried his boldness to the utmost limits; and thus he
+even came to be accused of having in one of his pieces disclosed the
+Eleusinean mysteries, and was only acquitted on the intercession of his
+brother Aminias, who bared in sight of the judges the wounds which he had
+received in the battle of Salamis. He perhaps believed that in the
+communication of the poetic feeling was contained the initiation into the
+mysteries, and that nothing was in this way revealed to any one who was
+not worthy of it.
+
+In Aeschylus the tragic style is as yet imperfect, and not unfrequently
+runs into either unmixed epic or lyric. It is often abrupt, irregular, and
+harsh. To compose more regular and skilful tragedies than those of
+Aeschylus was by no means difficult; but in the more than mortal grandeur
+which he displayed, it was impossible that he should ever be surpassed;
+and even Sophocles, his younger and more fortunate rival, did not in this
+respect equal him. The latter, in speaking of Aeschylus, gave a proof that
+he was himself a thoughtful artist: "Aeschylus does what is right without
+knowing it." These few simple words exhaust the whole of what we
+understand by the phrase, powerful genius working unconsciously.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+Life and Political Character of Sophocles--Character of his different
+Tragedies.
+
+
+The birth of Sophocles was nearly at an equal distance between that of his
+predecessor and that of Euripides, so that he was about half a life-time
+from each: but on this point all the authorities do not coincide. He was,
+however, during the greatest part of his life the contemporary of both. He
+frequently contended for the ivy-wreath of tragedy with Aeschylus, and he
+outlived Euripides, who, however, also attained to a good old age. To
+speak in the spirit of the ancient religion, it seems that a beneficent
+Providence wished in this individual to evince to the human race the
+dignity and blessedness of its lot, by endowing him with every divine
+gift, with all that can adorn and elevate the mind and the heart, and
+crowning him with every imaginable blessing of this life. Descended from
+rich and honourable parents, and born a free citizen of the most
+enlightened state of Greece;--there were birth, necessary condition, and
+foundation. Beauty of person and of mind, and the uninterruped enjoyment
+of both in the utmost perfection, to the extreme term of human existence;
+a most choice and finished education in gymnastics and the musical arts,
+the former so important in the development of the bodily powers, and the
+latter in the communication of harmony; the sweet bloom of youth, and the
+ripe fruit of age; the possession of and unbroken enjoyment of poetry and
+art, and the exercise of serene wisdom; love and respect among his fellow
+citizens, renown abroad, and the countenance and favour of the gods: these
+are the general features of the life of this pious and virtuous poet. It
+would seem as if the gods, to whom, and to Bacchus in particular, as the
+giver of all joy, and the civilizer of the human race, he devoted himself
+at an early age by the composition 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 could not be, they loosened him from life as
+gently as was possible, that he might imperceptibly change one immortality
+for another, the long duration of his earthly existence for the
+imperishable vitality of his name. When a youth of sixteen, he was
+selected, on account of his beauty, to dance (playing the while, after the
+Greek manner, on the lyre) at the head of the chorus of youths who, after
+the battle of Salamis (in which Aeschylus fought, and which he has so
+nobly described), executed the Paean round the trophy erected on that
+occasion. Thus then the beautiful season of his youthful bloom coincided
+with the most glorious epoch of the Athenian people. He held the rank of
+general as colleague with Pericles and Thucydides, and, when arrived at a
+more advanced age, was elected to the priesthood of a native hero. In his
+twenty-fifth year he began to exhibit tragedies; twenty times was he
+victorious; he often gained the second place, but never was he ranked so
+low as in the third. In this career he proceeded with increasing success
+till he had passed his ninetieth year; and some of his greatest works were
+even the fruit of a still later period. There is a story of an accusation
+being brought against him by one or more of his elder sons, of having
+become childish from age, and of being incapable of managing his own
+affairs. An alleged partiality for a grandson by a second wife is said to
+have been the motive of the charge. In his defence he contented himself
+with reading to his judges his _Oedipus at Colonos_, which he had
+then just composed (or, according to others, only the magnificent chorus
+in it, wherein he sings the praises of Colonos, his birth-place,) and the
+astonished judges, without farther consultation, conducted him in triumph
+to his house. If it be true that the second _Oedipus_ was written at
+so late an age, as from its mature serenity and total freedom from the
+impetuosity and violence of youth we have good reason to conclude that it
+actually was, it affords us a pleasing picture of an old age at once
+amiable and venerable. Although the varying accounts of his death have a
+fabulous look, they all coincide in this, and alike convey this same
+purport, that he departed life without a struggle, while employed in his
+art, or something connected with it, and that, like an old swan of Apollo,
+he breathed out his life in song. The story also of the Lacedaemonian
+general, who having entrenched the burying-ground of the poet's ancestors,
+and being twice warned by Bacchus in a vision to allow Sophocles to be
+there interred, dispatched a herald to the Athenians on the subject, I
+consider as true, as well as a number of other circumstances, which serve
+to set in a strong light the illustrious reverence in which his name was
+held. In calling him virtuous and pious, I used the words in his own
+sense; for although his works breathe the real character of ancient
+grandeur, gracefulness, and simplicity, he, of all the Grecian poets, is
+also the one whose feelings bear the strongest affinity to the spirit of
+our religion.
+
+One gift alone was denied to him by nature: a voice attuned to song. He
+could only call forth and direct the harmonious effusions of other voices;
+he was therefore compelled to depart from the hitherto established
+practice for the poet to act a part in his own pieces. Once only did he
+make his appearance on the stage in the character of the blind singer
+Thamyris (a very characteristic trait) playing on the cithara.
+
+As Aeschylus, who raised tragic poetry from its rude beginnings to the
+dignity of the Cothurnus, was his predecessor; the historical relation in
+which he stood to him enabled Sophocles to profit by the essays of that
+original master, so that Aeschylus appears as the rough designer, and
+Sophocles as the finisher and successor. The more artificial construction
+of Sophocles' dramas is easily perceived: the greater limitation of the
+chorus in proportion to the dialogue, the smoother polish of the rhythm,
+and the purer Attic diction, the introduction of a greater number of
+characters, the richer complication of the fable, the multiplication of
+incidents, a higher degree of development, the more tranquil dwelling upon
+all the momenta of the action, and the more striking theatrical effect
+allowed to decisive ones, the more perfect rounding off of the whole, even
+considered from a merely external point of view. But he excelled Aeschylus
+in something still more essential, and proved himself deserving of the
+good fortune of having such a preceptor, and of being allowed to enter
+into competition in the same field with him: I mean the harmonious
+perfection of his mind, which enabled him spontaneously to satisfy every
+requisition of the laws of beauty, a mind whose free impulse was
+accompanied by the most clear consciousness. To surpass Aeschylus in
+boldness of conception was perhaps impossible: I am inclined, however, to
+believe that is only because of his wisdom and moderation that Sophocles
+appears less bold, since he always goes to work with the greatest energy,
+and perhaps with even a more sustained earnestness, like a man who knows
+the extent of his powers, and is determined, when he does not exceed them,
+to stand up with the greater confidence for his rights [Footnote: This
+idea has been so happily expressed by the greatest genius perhaps of the
+last century, that the translator hopes he will be forgiven for here
+transcribing the passage: "I can truly say that, poor and unknown as I
+then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works,
+as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour. It
+ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders both in a rational and
+religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing
+to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself, had been all along my
+constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others; I
+watched every means of information to see how much ground I occupied as a
+man and as a poet; I studied assiduously nature's design in my formation--
+where the lights and shades in my character were intended."--_Letter
+from Burns to Dr. Moore, in Currie's Life._--TRANS.]. As Aeschylus
+delights in transporting us to the convulsions of the primary world of the
+Titans, Sophocles, on the other hand, never avails himself of divine
+interposition except where it is absolutely necessary; he formed men,
+according to the general confession of antiquity, better, that is, not
+more moral and exempt from error, but more beautiful and noble than they
+really are; and while he took every thing in the most human sense, he was
+at the same time open to its higher significance. According to all
+appearance he was also more temperate than Aeschylus in his use of scenic
+ornaments; displaying perhaps more of taste and chastened beauty, but not
+attempting the same colossal magnificence.
+
+To characterize the native sweetness and gracefulness so eminent in this
+poet, the ancients gave him the appellation of the Attic bee. Whoever is
+thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this peculiarity may flatter himself
+that a sense for ancient art has arisen within him; for the affected
+sentimentality of the present day, far from coinciding with the ancients
+in this opinion, would in the tragedies of Sophocles, both in respect of
+the representation of bodily sufferings, and in the sentiments and
+structure, find much that is insupportably austere.
+
+When we consider the great fertility of Sophocles, for according to some
+he wrote a hundred and thirty pieces (of which, however, seventeen were
+pronounced spurious by Aristophanes the grammarian), and eighty according
+to the most moderate account, little, it must be owned, has come down to
+us, for we have only seven of them. 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, the _Antigone_, for example, the
+_Electra_, and the two on the subject of _Oedipus_; and these have also
+come down to us tolerably free from mutilation and corruption in their
+text. The _Oedipus Tyrannus_, and the _Philoctetes_, have been generally,
+but without good reason, preferred by modern critics to all the others:
+the first on account of the artifice of the plot, in which the dreadful
+catastrophe, which so powerfully excites the curiosity (a rare case in the
+Greek tragedies), is inevitably brought about by a succession of connected
+causes; the latter on account of the masterly display of character, the
+beautiful contrast observable in those of the three leading personages,
+and the simple structure of the piece, in which, with so few persons,
+everything proceeds from the truest and most adequate motives. But the
+whole of the tragedies of Sophocles are separately resplendent with
+peculiar excellencies. In _Antigone_ we have the purest display of
+feminine heroism; in _Ajax_ the sense of manly honour in its full force;
+in the _Trachiniae_ (or, as we should rather name it, the _Dying
+Hercules_), the female levity of Dejanira is beautifully atoned for by her
+death, and the sufferings of Hercules are portrayed with suitable dignity;
+_Electra_ is distinguished by energy and pathos; in _Oedipus Coloneus_
+there prevails a mild and gentle emotion, and over the whole piece is
+diffused the sweetest gracefulness. I will not undertake to weigh the
+respective merits of these pieces against each other: but I own I
+entertain a singular predilection for the last of them, because 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 on
+Athens, and his own birth-place more particularly, he appears to have
+laboured on it with a special love and affection.
+
+_Ajax_ and _Antigone_ are usually the least understood. We cannot conceive
+how these pieces should run on so long after what we usually call the
+catastrophe. On this subject I shall hereafter offer a remark or two.
+
+Of all the fables of ancient mythology in which fate is made to play a
+conspicuous part, the story of Oedipus is perhaps the most ingenious; but
+still many others, as, for instance, that of Niobe, which, without any
+complication of incidents, simply exhibit on a scale of colossal
+dimensions both of human arrogance, and its impending punishment from the
+gods, appear to me to be conceived in a grander style. The very intrigue
+which is involved in that of Oedipus detracts from its loftiness of
+character. Intrigue in the dramatic sense is a complication arising from
+the crossing of purposes and events, and this is found in a high degree in
+the fate of Oedipus, as all that is done by his parents or himself in
+order to evade the predicted horrors, serves only to bring them on the
+more surely. But that which gives so grand and terrible a character to
+this drama, is the circumstance which, however, is for the most part
+overlooked; that to the very Oedipus who solved the riddle of the Sphinx
+relating to human life, his own life should remain so long an inextricable
+riddle, to be so awfully cleared up, when all was irretrievably lost. A
+striking picture of the arrogant pretension of human wisdom, which is ever
+right enough in its general principles, but does not enable the possessor
+to make the proper application to himself.
+
+Notwithstanding the severe conclusion of the first _Oedipus_ we are
+so far reconciled to it by the violence, suspicion, and haughtiness in the
+character of Oedipus, that our feelings do not absolutely revolt at so
+horrible a fate. For this end, it was necessary thus far to sacrifice the
+character of Oedipus, who, however, raises himself in our estimation by
+his fatherly care and heroic zeal for the welfare of his people, that
+occasion him, by his honest search for the author of the crime, to
+accelerate his own destruction. It was also necessary, for the sake of
+contrast with his future misery, to exhibit him in his treatment of
+Tiresias and Creon, in all the haughtiness of regal dignity. And, indeed,
+all his earlier proceedings evince, in some measure, the same
+suspiciousness and violence of character; the former, in his refusing to
+be quieted by the assurances of Polybos, when taunted with being a
+suppositious child, and the latter, in his bloody quarrel with Laius. The
+latter character he seems to have inherited from both his parents. The
+arrogant levity of Jocasta, which induces her to deride the oracle as not
+confirmed by the event, the penalty of which she is so soon afterwards to
+inflict upon herself, was not indeed inherited by her son; he is, on the
+contrary, conspicuous throughout for the purity of his intentions; and his
+care and anxiety to escape from the predicted crime, added naturally to
+the poignancy of his despair, when he found that he had nevertheless been
+overtaken by it. Awful indeed is his blindness in not perceiving the truth
+when it was, as it were, brought directly home to him; as, for instance,
+when he puts the question to Jocasta, How did Laius look? and she answers
+he had become gray-haired, otherwise in appearance he was not unlike
+Oedipus. This is also another feature of her levity, that she should not
+have been struck with the resemblance to her husband, a circumstance that
+might have led her to recognize him as her son. Thus a close analysis of
+the piece will evince the utmost propriety and significance of every
+portion of it. As, however, it is customary to extol the correctness of
+Sophocles, and to boast more especially of the strict observance of
+probability which, prevails throughout this _Oedipus_, I must here
+remark that this very piece is a proof how, on this subject, the ancient
+artists followed very different principles from those of modern critics.
+For, according to our way of thinking, nothing could be more improbable
+than that Oedipus should, so long, have forborne to inquire into the
+circumstances of the death of Laius, and that the scars on his feet, and
+even the name which he bore, should never have excited the curiosity of
+Jocasta, &c. But the ancients did not produce their works of art for
+calculating and prosaic understandings; and an improbability which, to be
+found out, required dissection, and did not exist within the matters of
+the representation itself, was to them none at all.
+
+The diversity of character of Aeschylus and Sophocles is nowhere more
+conspicuous than in the _Eumenides_ and the _Oedipus Coloneus_, as both
+these pieces were composed with the same aim. This aim was to glorify
+Athens as the sacred abode of law and humanity, on whose soil the
+crimes of the hero families of other countries might, by a higher
+mediation, be at last propitiated; while an ever-during prosperity was
+predicted to the Athenian people. The patriotic and liberty-breathing
+Aeschylus has recourse to a judicial, and the pious Sophocles to a
+religious, procedure; even the consecration of Oedipus in death. Bent down
+by the consciousness of inevitable crimes, and lengthened misery, his
+honour is, as it were, cleared up by the gods themselves, as if desirous
+of showing that, in the terrible example which they made of him, they had
+no intention of visiting him in particular, but merely wished to give a
+solemn lesson to the whole human race. Sophocles, to whom the whole of
+life was one continued worship of the gods, delighted to throw all
+possible honour on its last moments as if a more solemn festival; and
+associated it with emotions very different from what the thought of
+mortality is in general calculated to excite. That the tortured and
+exhausted Oedipus should at last find peace and repose in the grove of the
+Furies, in the very spot from which all other mortals fled with aversion
+and horror, he whose misfortune consisted in having done a deed at which
+all men shudder, unconsciously and without warning of any inward feeling;
+in this there is a profound and mysterious meaning.
+
+Aeschylus has given us in the person of Pallas a more majestic
+representation of the Attic cultivation, prudence, moderation, mildness,
+and magnanimity; but Sophocles, who delighted to draw all that is godlike
+within the sphere of humanity, has, in his Theseus, given a more delicate
+development of all these same things. Whoever is desirous of gaining an
+accurate idea of Grecian heroism, as contrasted with the Barbarian, would
+do well to consider this character with attention.
+
+In Aeschylus, before the victim of persecution can be delivered, and the
+land can participate in blessings, the infernal horror of the Furies
+congeals the spectators' blood, and makes his hair stand on end, and the
+whole rancour of these goddesses of rage is exhausted: after this the
+transition to their peaceful retreat is the more wonderful; the whole
+human race seems, as it were, delivered from their power. In Sophocles,
+however, they do not ever appear, but are kept altogether in the
+background; and they are never mentioned by their own name, but always
+alluded to by some softening euphemism. But this very obscurity, so
+exactly befitting these daughters of night, and the very distance at which
+they are kept, are calculated to excite a silent horror 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 from his own tragedies an emblem of the poetry of
+Sophocles, I should describe it as a sacred grove of the dark goddesses of
+fate, in which the laurel, the olive, and the vine, are always green, and
+the song of the nightingale is for ever heard.
+
+Two of the pieces of Sophocles refer, to what in the Greek way of
+thinking, are the sacred rights of the dead, and the solemn importance of
+burial; in _Antigone_ the whole of the action hinges on this, and in
+_Ajax_ it forms the only satisfactory conclusion of the piece.
+
+The ideal of the female character in _Antigone_ is characterized by
+great austerity, and it is sufficient of itself to put an end to all the
+seductive representations of Grecian softness, which of late have been so
+universally current. Her indignation at Ismene's refusal to take part in
+her daring resolution; the manner in which she afterwards repulses Ismene,
+when repenting of her former weakness, she begs to be allowed to share her
+heroic sister's death, borders on harshness; both her silence, and then
+her invectives against Creon, by which she provokes him to execute his
+tyrannical threats, display the immovable energy of manly courage. The
+poet has, however, discovered the secret of painting the loving heart of
+woman in a single line, when to the assertion of Creon, that Polynices was
+an enemy to his country, she replies:
+
+  My love shall go with thine, but not my hate.
+[Footnote: This is the version of Franklin, but it does not convey the
+meaning of the original, and I am not aware that the English language is
+sufficiently flexible to admit of an exact translation. The German, which,
+though far inferior to the Greek in harmony, is little behind in
+flexibility, has in this respect great advantage over the English; and
+Schlegel's "_nicht mitzuhassen, mitzulieben bin ich da_," represents
+exactly _Outoi synechthein alla symphilein ephyn_.--TRANS.]
+
+Moreover, she puts a constraint on her feelings only so long as by giving
+vent to them, she might make her firmness of purpose appear equivocal.
+When, however, she is being led forth to inevitable death, she pours forth
+her soul in the tenderest and most touching waitings over her hard and
+untimely fate, and does not hesitate, she, the modest virgin, to mourn the
+loss of nuptials, and the unenjoyed bliss of marriage. Yet she never in a
+single syllable betrays any inclination for Haemon, and does not even
+mention the name of that amiable youth [Footnote: Barthélemy asserts the
+contrary; but the line to which he refers, according to the more correct
+manuscripts, and even according to the context, belongs to Ismene.]. After
+such heroic determination, to have shown that any tie still bound her to
+existence, would have been a weakness; but to relinquish without one
+sorrowful regret those common enjoyments with which the gods have enriched
+this life, would have ill accorded with her devout sanctity of mind.
+
+On a first view the chorus in _Antigone_ may appear weak, acceding,
+as it does, at once, without opposition to the tyrannical commands of
+Creon, and without even attempting to make the slightest representation in
+behalf of the young heroine. But to exhibit the determination and the deed
+of Antigone in their full glory, it was necessary that they should stand
+out quite alone, and that she should have no stay or support. Moreover,
+the very submissiveness of the chorus increases our impression of the
+irresistible nature of the royal commands. So, too, was it necessary for
+it to mingle with its concluding addresses to Antigone the most painful
+recollections, that she might drain the full cup of earthly sorrows. The
+case is very different in _Electra_, where the chorus appropriately
+takes an interest in the fate of the two principal characters, and
+encourages them in the execution of their design, as the moral feelings
+are divided as to its legitimacy, whereas there is no such conflict in
+Antigone's case, who had nothing to deter her from her purpose but mere
+external fears.
+
+After the fulfilment of the deed, and the infliction of its penalties, the
+arrogance of Creon still remains to be corrected, and the death of
+Antigone to be avenged; nothing less than the destruction of his whole
+family, and his own despair, could be a sufficient atonement for the
+sacrifice of a life so costly. We have therefore the king's wife, who had
+not even been named before, brought at last on the stage, that she may
+hear the misfortunes of her family, and put an end to her own existence.
+To Grecian feelings it would have been impossible to consider the poem as
+properly concluding with the death of Antigone, without its penal
+retribution.
+
+The case is the same in Ajax. His arrogance, which was punished with a
+degrading madness, is atoned for by the deep shame which at length drives
+him even to self-murder. The persecution of the unfortunate man must not,
+however, be carried farther; when, therefore, it is in contemplation to
+dishonour his very corpse by the refusal of interment, even Ulysses
+interferes. He owes the honours of burial to that Ulysses whom in life he
+had looked upon as his mortal enemy, and to whom, in the dreadful
+introductory scene, Pallas shows, in the example of the delirious Ajax,
+the nothingness of man. Thus Ulysses appears as the personification of
+moderation, which, if it had been possessed by Ajax, would have prevented
+his fall.
+
+Self-murder is of frequent occurrence in ancient mythology, at least as
+adapted to tragedy; but it generally takes place, if not in a state of
+insanity, yet in a state of agitation, after some sudden calamity which
+leaves no room for consideration. Such self-murders as those of Jocasta,
+Haemon, Eurydice, and lastly of Dejanira, appear merely in the light of a
+subordinate appendage in the tragical pictures of Sophocles; but the
+suicide of Ajax is a cool determination, a free action, and of sufficient
+importance to become the principal subject of the piece. It is not the
+last fatal crisis of a slow mental malady, as is so often the case in
+these more effeminate modern times; still less is it that more theoretical
+disgust of life, founded on a conviction of its worthlessness, which
+induced so many of the later Romans, on Epicurean as well as Stoical
+principles, to put an end to their existence. It is not through any
+unmanly despondency that Ajax is unfaithful to his rude heroism. His
+delirium is over, as well as his first comfortless feelings upon awaking
+from it; and it is not till after the complete return of consciousness,
+and when he has had time to measure the depth of the abyss into which, by
+a divine destiny, his overweening haughtiness has plunged him, when he
+contemplates his situation, and feels it ruined beyond remedy:--his honour
+wounded by the refusal of the arms of Achilles; and the outburst of his
+vindictive rage wasted in his infatuation on defenceless flocks; himself,
+after a long and reproachless heroic career, a source of amusement to his
+enemies, an object of derision and abomination to the Greeks, and to his
+honoured father,--should he thus return to him--a disgrace: after
+reviewing all this, he decides agreeably to his own motto, "gloriously to
+live or gloriously to die," that the latter course alone remains open to
+him. Even the dissimulation,--the first, perhaps, that he ever practised,
+by which, to prevent the execution of his purpose from being disturbed, he
+pacifies his comrades, must be considered as the fruit of greatness of
+soul. He appoints Teucer guardian to his infant boy, the future
+consolation of his own bereaved parents; and, like Cato, dies not before
+he has arranged the concerns of all who belong to him. As Antigone in her
+womanly tenderness, so even he in his wild manner, seems in his last
+speech to feel the majesty of that light of the sun from which he is
+departing for ever. His rude courage disdains compassion, and therefore
+excites it the more powerfully. What a picture of awaking from the tumult
+of passion, when the tent opens and in the midst of the slaughtered herds
+he sits on the ground bewailing himself!
+
+As Ajax, in the feeling of inextinguishable shame, forms the violent
+resolution of throwing away life, Philoctetes, on the other hand, bears
+its wearisome load during long years of misery with the most enduring
+patience. If Ajax is honoured by his despair, Philoctetes is equally
+ennobled by his constancy. When the instinct of self-preservation comes
+into collision with no moral impulse, it naturally exhibits itself in all
+its strength. Nature has armed with this instinct whatever is possessed of
+the breath of life, and the vigour with which every hostile attack on
+existence is repelled is the strongest proof of its excellence. In the
+presence, it is true, of that band of men by which he had been abandoned,
+and if he must depend on their superior power, Philoctetes would no more
+have wished for life than did Ajax. But he is alone with nature; he quails
+not before the frightful aspect which she exhibits to him, and still
+clings even to the maternal bosom of the all-nourishing earth. Exiled on a
+desert island, tortured by an incurable wound, solitary and helpless as he
+is, his bow procures him food from the birds of the forest, the rock
+yields him soothing herbs, the fountain supplies a fresh beverage, his
+cave affords him a cool shelter in summer, in winter he is warmed by the
+mid-day sun, or a fire of kindled boughs; even the raging attacks of his
+pain at length exhaust themselves, and leave him in a refreshing sleep.
+Alas! it is the artificial refinements, the oppressive burden of a
+relaxing and deadening superfluity which render man indifferent to the
+value of life: when it is stripped of all foreign appendages, though borne
+down with sufferings so that the naked existence alone remains, still will
+its sweetness flow from the heart at every pulse through all the veins.
+Miserable man! ten long years has he struggled; and yet he still lives,
+and clings to life and hope. What force of truth is there in all this!
+What, however, most moves us in behalf of Philoctetes is, that he, who by
+an abuse of power had been cast out from society, when it again approaches
+him is exposed by it to a second and still more dangerous evil, that of
+falsehood. The anxiety excited in the mind of the spectator lest
+Philoctetes should be deprived of his last means of subsistence, his bow,
+would be too painful, did he not from the beginning entertain a suspicion
+that the open-hearted and straight-forward Neoptolemus will not be able to
+maintain to the end the character which, so much against his will, he has
+assumed. Not without reason after this deception does Philoctetes turn
+away from mankind to those inanimate companions to which the instinctive
+craving for society had attached him. He calls on the island and its
+volcanoes to witness this fresh wrong; he believes that his beloved bow
+feels pain in being taken from him; and at length he takes a melancholy
+leave of his hospitable cavern, the fountains and the wave-washed cliffs,
+from which he so often looked in vain upon the ocean: so inclined to love
+is the uncorrupted mind of man.
+
+Respecting the bodily sufferings of Philoctetes and the manner of
+representing them, Lessing has in his _Laocoön_ declared himself against
+Winkelmann, and Herder again has in the _Silvae Criticae_ (Kritische
+Wälder) contradicted Lessing. Both the two last writers have made many
+excellent observations on the piece, although we must allow with Herder,
+that Winkelmann was correct in affirming that the Philoctetes of
+Sophocles, like Laocoön in the celebrated group, suffers with the
+suppressed agony of an heroic soul never altogether overcome by his pain.
+
+The _Trachiniae_ appears to me so very inferior to the other pieces
+of Sophocles which have reached us, that I could wish there were some
+warrant for supposing that this tragedy was composed in the age, indeed,
+and in the school of Sophocles, perhaps by his son Iophon, and that it was
+by mistake attributed to the father. There is much both in the structure
+and plan, and in the style of the piece, calculated to excite suspicion;
+and many critics have remarked that the introductory soliloquy of
+Dejanira, which is wholly uncalled-for, is very unlike the general
+character of Sophocles' prologues: and although this poet's usual rules of
+art are observed on the whole, yet it is very superficially; no where can
+we discern in it the profound mind of Sophocles. But as no writer of
+antiquity appears to have doubted its authenticity, while Cicero even
+quotes from it the complaint of Hercules, as from an indisputable work of
+Sophocles, we are compelled to content ourselves with the remark, that in
+this one instance the tragedian has failed to reach his usual elevation.
+
+This brings us to the consideration of a general question, which, in the
+examination of the works of Euripides, will still more particularly engage
+the attention of the critic: how far, namely, the invention and execution
+of a drama must belong to one man to entitle him to pass for its author.
+Dramatic literature affords numerous examples of plays composed by several
+persons conjointly. It is well known that Euripides, in the details and
+execution of his pieces, availed himself of the assistance of a learned
+servant, Cephisophon; and he perhaps also consulted with him respecting
+his plots. It appears, moreover, certain that in Athens schools of
+dramatic art had at this date been formed; such, indeed, as usually arise
+when poetical talents are, by public competition, called abundantly and
+actively into exercise: schools of art which contain scholars of such
+excellence and of such kindred genius, that the master may confide to them
+a part of the execution, and even the plan, and yet allow the whole to
+pass under his name without any disparagement to his fame. Such were the
+schools of painting of the sixteenth century, and every one knows what a
+remarkable degree of critical acumen is necessary to discover in many of
+Raphael's pictures how much really belongs to his own pencil. Sophocles
+had educated his son Iophon to the tragic art, and might therefore easily
+receive assistance from him in the actual labour of composition,
+especially as it was necessary that the tragedies that were to compete for
+the prize should be ready and got by heart by a certain day. On the other
+hand, he might also execute occasional passages for works originally
+designed by the son; and the pieces of this description, in which the hand
+of the master was perceptible, would be naturally attributed to the more
+celebrated name.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+Euripides--His Merits and Defects--Decline of Tragic Poetry through him.
+
+
+When we consider Euripides by himself, without any comparison with his
+predecessors, when we single out some of his better pieces, and particular
+passages in others, we cannot refuse to him an extraordinary meed of
+praise. But on the other hand, when we take him in his connexion with the
+history of art, when we look at each of his pieces as a whole, and again
+at the general scope of his labours, as revealed to us in the works which
+have come down to us, we are forced to censure him severely on many
+accounts. Of few writers can so much good and evil be said with truth. He
+was a man of boundless ingenuity and most versatile talents; but he either
+wanted the lofty earnestness of purpose, or the severe artistic wisdom,
+which we reverence in Aeschylus and Sophocles, to regulate the luxuriance
+of his certainly splendid and amiable qualities. His constant aim is to
+please, he cares not by what means; hence is he so unequal: frequently he
+has passages of overpowering beauty, but at other times he sinks into
+downright mediocrity. With all his faults he possesses an admirable ease,
+and a certain insinuating charm.
+
+These preliminary observations I have judged necessary, since otherwise,
+on account of what follows, it might be objected to me that I am at
+variance with myself, having lately, in a short French essay, endeavoured
+to show the superiority of a piece of Euripides to Racine's imitation of
+it. There I fixed my attention on a single drama, and that one of the
+poet's best; but here I consider everything from the most general points
+of view, and relatively to the highest requisitions of art; and that my
+enthusiasm for ancient tragedy may not appear blind and extravagant, I
+must justify it by a keen examination into the traces of its degeneracy
+and decline.
+
+We may compare perfection in art and poetry to the summit of a steep
+mountain, on which an uprolled load cannot long maintain its position, but
+immediately rolls down again the other side irresistibly. It descends
+according to the laws of gravity with quickness and ease, and one can
+calmly look on while it is descending; for the mass follows its natural
+tendency, while the laborious ascent is, in some degree, a painful
+spectacle. Hence it is, for example, that the paintings which belong to
+the age of declining art are much more pleasing to the unlearned eye, than
+those which preceded the period of its perfection. The genuine
+connoisseur, on the contrary, will hold the pictures of a Zuccheri and
+others, who gave the tone when the great schools of the sixteenth century
+were degenerating into empty and superficial mannerism, to be in real and
+essential worth, far inferior to the works of a Mantegna, Perugino, and
+their contemporaries. Or let us suppose the perfection of art a focus: at
+equal distances on either side, the collected rays occupy equal spaces,
+but on this side they converge towards a common effect; whereas, on the
+other they diverge, till at last they are totally lost.
+
+We have, besides, a particular reason for censuring without reserve the
+errors of this poet; the fact, namely, that our own age is infected with
+the same faults with those which procured for Euripides so much favour, if
+not esteem, among his contemporaries. In our times we have been doomed to
+witness a number of plays which, though in matter and form they are far
+inferior to those of Euripides, bear yet in so far a resemblance to them,
+that while they seduce the feelings and corrupt the judgment, by means of
+weakly, and sometimes even tender, emotions, their general tendency is to
+produce a downright moral licentiousness.
+
+What I shall say on this subject will not, for the most part, possess even
+the attraction of novelty. Although the moderns, attracted either by the
+greater affinity of his views with their own sentiments, or led astray by
+an ill-understood opinion of Aristotle, have not unfrequently preferred
+Euripides to his two predecessors, and have unquestionably read, admired,
+and imitated him much more; it admits of being shown, however, that many
+of the ancients, and some even of the contemporaries of Euripides, held
+the same opinion of him as myself. In _Anacharsis_ we find this mixture of
+praise and censure at least alluded to, though the author softens
+everything for the sake of his object of showing the productions of the
+Greeks, in every department, under the most favourable light.
+
+We possess some cutting sayings of Sophocles respecting Euripides, though
+he was so far from being actuated by anything like the jealousy of
+authorship, that he mourned his death, and, in a piece which he exhibited
+shortly after, he did not allow his actors the usual ornament of the
+wreath. The charge which Plato brings against the tragic poets, as tending
+to give men entirely up to the dominion of the passions, and to render
+them effeminate, by putting extravagant lamentations in the mouths of
+their heroes, may, I think, be justly referred to Euripides alone; for,
+with respect to his predecessors, the injustice of it would have been
+universally apparent. The derisive attacks of Aristophanes are well known,
+though not sufficiently understood and appreciated. Aristotle bestows on
+him many a severe censure, and when he calls Euripides "the most tragic
+poet," he by no means ascribes to him the greatest perfection in the
+tragic art in general, but merely alludes to the moving effect which is
+produced by unfortunate catastrophes; for he immediately adds, "although
+he does not well arrange the rest." Lastly, the Scholiast on Euripides
+contains many concise and stringent criticisms on particular pieces, among
+which perhaps are preserved the opinions of Alexandrian critics--those
+critics who reckoned among them that Aristarchus, who, for the solidity
+and acuteness of his critical powers, has had his name transmitted to
+posterity as the proverbial designation of a judge of art.
+
+In Euripides we find the essence of the ancient tragedy no longer pure and
+unmixed; its characteristical features are already in part defaced. We
+have already placed this essence in the prevailing idea of Destiny, in the
+Ideality of the composition, and in the significance of the Chorus.
+
+Euripides inherited, it is true, the idea of Destiny from his
+predecessors, and the belief of it was inculcated in him by the tragic
+usage; but yet in him fate is seldom the invisible spirit of the whole
+composition, the fundamental thought of the tragic world. We have seen
+that this idea may be exhibited under severer or milder aspects; that the
+midnight terrors of destiny may, in the courses of a whole trilogy,
+brighten into indications of a wise and beneficent Providence. Euripides,
+however, has drawn it down from the region of the infinite; and with him
+inevitable necessity not unfrequently degenerates into the caprice of
+chance. Accordingly, he can no longer apply it to its proper purpose,
+namely, by contrast with it, to heighten the moral liberty of man. How few
+of his pieces turn upon a steadfast resistance to the decrees of fate, or
+an equally heroic submission to them! His characters generally suffer
+because they must, and not because they will.
+
+The mutual subordination, between character and passion and ideal
+elevation, which we find observed in the same order in Sophocles, and in
+the sculpture of Greece, Euripides has completely reversed. Passion with
+him is the first thing; his next care is for character, and when these
+endeavours leave him still further scope, he occasionally seeks to lay on
+a touch of grandeur and dignity, but more frequently a display of
+amiableness.
+
+It has been already admitted that the persons in tragedy ought not to be
+all alike faultless, as there would then be no opposition among them, and
+consequently no room for a complication of plot. But (as Aristotle
+observes) Euripides has, without any necessity, frequently painted his
+characters in the blackest colours, as, for example, his Menelaus in
+_Orestes_. The traditions indeed, sanctioned by popular belief, warranted
+him in attributing great crimes to many of the old heroes, but he has also
+palmed upon them many base and paltry traits of his own arbitrary
+invention. It was by no means the object of Euripides to represent the
+race of heroes as towering in their majestic stature above the men of his
+own age; he rather endeavours to fill up, or to build over the chasm that
+yawned between his contemporaries and that wondrous olden world, and to
+come upon the gods and heroes in their undress, a surprise of which no
+greatness, it is said, can stand the test. He introduces his spectators to
+a sort of familiar acquaintance with them; he does not draw the
+supernatural and fabulous into the circle of humanity (a proceeding
+which we praised in Sophocles), but within the limits of the imperfect
+individuality. This is the meaning of Sophocles, when he said that "he
+drew men such as they ought to be, Euripides such as they are." Not that
+his own personages are always represented as irreproachable models; his
+expression referred merely to ideal elevation and sweetness of character
+and manners. It seems as if Euripides took a pleasure in being able
+perpetually to remind his spectators--"See! those beings were men, subject
+to the very same weaknesses, acting from the same motives as yourselves,
+and even as the meanest among you." Accordingly, he takes delight in
+depicting the defects and moral failings of his characters; nay, he often
+makes them disclose them for themselves in the most _naïve_ confession.
+They are frequently not merely undignified, but they even boast of their
+imperfections as that which ought to be.
+
+The Chorus with him is for the most part an unessential ornament; its
+songs are frequently wholly episodical, without reference to the action,
+and more distinguished for brilliancy than for sublimity and true
+inspiration. "The Chorus," says Aristotle, "must be considered as one of
+the actors, and as a part of the whole; it must co-operate in the action--
+not as Euripides, but as Sophocles manages it." The older comedians
+enjoyed the privilege of allowing the Chorus occasionally to address the
+spectators in its own name; this was called a Parabasis, and, as I shall
+afterwards show, was in accordance with the spirit of comedy. Although the
+practice is by no means tragical, it was, however, according to Julius
+Pollux, frequently adopted by Euripides in his tragedies, who so far
+forgot himself on some of these occasions, that in the _Danaidae_, for
+instance, the chorus, which consisted of females, made use of grammatical
+inflections which belonged only to the male sex.
+
+This poet has thus at once destroyed the internal essence of tragedy, and
+sinned against the laws of beauty and proportion in its external
+structure. He generally sacrifices the whole to the parts, and in these
+again he is more ambitious of foreign attractions, than of genuine poetic
+beauty.
+
+In the accompanying music, he adopted all the innovations invented by
+Timotheus, and chose those melodies which were most in unison with the
+effeminacy of his own poetry. He proceeded in the same manner with his
+metres; his versification is luxuriant, and runs into anomaly. The same
+diluted and effeminate character would, on a more profound investigation,
+be unquestionably found in the rhythms of his choral songs likewise.
+
+On all occasions he lays on, even to overloading, those merely corporeal
+charms which Winkelmann calls a "flattery of the gross external senses;"
+whatever is exciting, striking--in a word, all that produces a vivid
+effect, though without true worth for the mind and the feelings. He
+labours for effect to a degree which cannot be allowed even to the
+dramatic poet. For example, he hardly ever omits an opportunity of
+throwing his characters into a sudden and useless terror; his old men are
+everlastingly bemoaning the infirmities of age, and, in particular, are
+made to crawl with trembling limbs, and sighing at the fatigue, up the
+ascent from the orchestra to the stage, which frequently represented the
+slope of a hill. He is always endeavouring to move, and for the sake of
+emotion, he not only violates probability, but even sacrifices the
+coherence of the piece. He is strong in his pictures of misfortune; but he
+often claims our compassion not for inward agony of the soul, nor for pain
+which the sufferer endures with manly fortitude, but for mere bodily
+wretchedness. He is fond of reducing his heroes to the condition of
+beggars, of making them suffer hunger and want, and bringing them on the
+stage with all the outward signs of it, and clad in rags and tatters, for
+which Aristophanes, in his _Acharnians_, has so humorously taken him
+to task.
+
+Euripides was a frequenter of the schools of the philosophers (he had been
+a scholar of Anaxagoras, and not, as many have erroneously stated, of
+Socrates, with whom he was only connected by social intercourse): and
+accordingly he indulges his vanity in introducing philosophical doctrines
+on all occasions; in my opinion, in a very imperfect manner, as we should
+not be able to understand these doctrines from his statements of them, if
+we were not previously acquainted with them. He thinks it too vulgar a
+thing to believe in the gods after the simple manner of the people, and he
+therefore seizes every opportunity of interspersing something of the
+allegorical interpretation of them, and carefully gives his spectators to
+understand that the sincerity of his own belief was very problematical. We
+may distinguish in him a twofold character: the _poet_, whose productions
+were consecrated to a religious solemnity, who stood under the protection
+of religion and who, therefore, on his part, was bound to honour it; and
+the _sophist_, with his philosophical _dicta_, who endeavoured to
+insinuate his sceptical opinions and doubts into the fabulous marvels of
+religion, from which he derived the subjects of his pieces. But while he
+is shaking the ground-works of religion, he at the same time acts the
+moralist; and, for the sake of popularity, he applies to the heroic life
+and the heroic ages maxims which could only apply to the social relations
+of his own times. He throws out a multitude of moral apophthegms, many of
+which he often repeats, and which are mostly trite, and not seldom
+fundamentally false. With all this parade of morality, the aim of his
+pieces, the general impression which they are calculated to produce is
+sometimes extremely immoral. A pleasant anecdote is told of his having put
+into the mouth of Bellerophon a silly eulogium on wealth, in which he
+declares it to be preferable to all domestic happiness, and ends with
+observing, "If Aphrodite (who bore the epithet _golden_) be indeed
+glittering as gold, she well deserves the love of Mortals:" which
+so offended the spectators, that they raised a great outcry, and would
+have stoned both actor and poet, out Euripides sprang forward, and called
+out, "Wait only till the end--he will be requited accordingly!" In like
+manner he defended himself against the objection that his Ixion expressed
+himself in too disgusting and abominable language, by observing that the
+piece concluded with his being broken on the wheel. But even this plea
+that the represented villany is requited by the final retribution of
+poetical justice, is not available in defence of all his tragedies. In
+some the wicked escape altogether untouched. Lying and other infamous
+practices are openly protected, especially when he can manage to palm them
+upon a supposed noble motive. He has also perfectly at command the
+seductive sophistry of the passions, which can lend a plausible appearance
+to everything. The following verse in justification of perjury, and in
+which the _reservatio mentalis_ of the casuists seems to be substantially
+expressed, is well known:
+
+  The tongue swore, but the mind was unsworn.
+
+Taken in its context, this verse, on account of which he was so often
+ridiculed by Aristophanes, may, indeed, be justified; but the formula is,
+nevertheless, bad, on account of the possible abuse of its application.
+Another verse of Euripides: "For a kingdom it is worth while to commit
+injustice, but in other cases it is well to be just," was frequently in
+the mouth of Caesar, with the like intention of making a bad use of it.
+
+Euripides was frequently condemned even by the ancients for his seductive
+invitations to the enjoyment of sensual love. Every one must be disgusted
+when Hecuba, in order to induce Agamemnon to punish Polymestor, reminds
+him of the pleasures which he has enjoyed in the arms of Cassandra, his
+captive, and, therefore, by the laws of the heroic ages his concubine: she
+would purchase revenge for a murdered son with the acknowledged and
+permitted degradation of a living daughter. He was the first to make the
+unbridled passion of a Medea, and the unnatural love of a Phaedra, the
+main subject of his dramas, whereas from the manners of the ancients, we
+may easily conceive why love, which among them was much less dignified by
+tender feelings than among ourselves, should hold only a subordinate place
+in the older tragedies. With all the importance which he has assigned to
+his female characters, he is notorious for his hatred of women; and it is
+impossible to deny that he abounds in passages descanting on the frailties
+of the female sex, and the superior excellence of the male; together with
+many maxims of household wisdom: with all which he was evidently
+endeavouring to pay court to the men, who formed, if not the whole,
+certainly the most considerable portion of his audience. A cutting saying
+and an epigram of Sophocles, on this subject, have been preserved, in
+which he accounts for the (pretended) misogyny of Euripides by his
+experience of their seductibility in the course of his own illicit amours.
+In the manner in which women are painted by Euripides, we may observe,
+upon the whole, much sensibility even for the more noble graces of female
+modesty, but no genuine esteem.
+
+The substantial freedom in treating the fables, which was one of the
+prerogatives of the tragic art, is frequently carried by Euripides to the
+extreme of licence. It is well known, that the fables of Hyginus, which
+differ so essentially from those generally received, were partly extracted
+from his pieces. As he frequently rejected all the incidents which were
+generally known, and to which the people were accustomed, Le was reduced
+to the necessity of explaining in a prologue the situation of things in
+his drama, and the course which they were to take. Lessing, in his
+_Dramaturgie_, has hazarded the singular opinion that it is a proof
+of an advance in the dramatic art, that Euripides should have trusted
+wholly to the effect of situations, without calculating on the excitement
+of curiosity. For my part I cannot see why, amidst the impressions which a
+dramatic poem produces, the uncertainty of expectation should not be
+allowed a legitimate place. The objection that a piece will only please in
+this respect for the first time, because on an acquaintance with it we
+know the result beforehand, may be easily answered: if the representation
+be truly energetic, it will always rivet the attention of the spectator in
+such a manner that he will forget what he already knew, and be again
+excited to the same stretch of expectation. Moreover, these prologues give
+to the openings of Euripides' plays a very uniform and monotonous
+appearance: nothing can have a more awkward effect than for a person to
+come forward and say, I am so and so; this and that has already happened,
+and what is next to come is as follows. It resembles the labels in the
+mouths of the figures in old paintings, which nothing but the great
+simplicity of style in ancient times can excuse. But then all the rest
+ought to correspond, which is by no means the case with Euripides, whose
+characters always speak in the newest mode of the day. Both in his
+prologues and denouements he is very lavish of unmeaning appearances of
+the gods, who are only elevated above men by the machine in which they are
+suspended, and who might certainly well be spared.
+
+The practice of the earlier tragedians, to combine all in large masses,
+and to exhibit repose and motion in distinctly-marked contrast, was
+carried by him to an unwarrantable extreme. If for the sake of giving
+animation to the dialogue his predecessors occasionally employed an
+alternation of single-line speeches, in which question and answer,
+objection and retort, fly about like arrows from side to side, Euripides
+makes so immoderate and arbitrary use of this poetical device that very
+frequently one-half of his lines might be left out without detriment to
+the sense. At another time he pours himself out in endless speeches, where
+he sets himself to shew off his rhetorical powers in ingenious arguments,
+or in pathetic appeals. Many of his scenes have altogether the appearance
+of a lawsuit, where two persons, as the parties in the litigation, (with
+sometimes a third for a judge,) do not confine themselves to the matter in
+hand, but expatiate in a wide field, accusing their adversaries or
+defending themselves with all the adroitness of practised advocates, and
+not unfrequently with all the windings and subterfuges of pettifogging
+sycophants. In this way the poet endeavoured to make his poetry
+entertaining to the Athenians, by its resemblance to their favourite daily
+occupation of conducting, deciding, or at least listening to lawsuits. On
+this account Quinctilian expressly recommends him to the young orator, and
+with great justice, as capable of furnishing him with more instruction
+than the older tragedians. But such a recommendation it is evident is
+little to his credit; for eloquence may, no doubt, have its place in the
+drama when it is consistent with the character and the object of the
+supposed speaker, yet to allow rhetoric to usurp the place of the simple
+and spontaneous expression of the feelings, is anything but poetical.
+
+The style of Euripides is upon the whole too loose, although he has many
+happy images and ingenious turns: he has neither the dignity and energy of
+Aeschylus, nor the chaste sweetness of Sophocles. In his expressions he
+frequently affects the singular and the uncommon, but presently relapses
+into the ordinary; the tone of the discourse often sounds very familiar,
+and descends from the elevation of the cothurnus to the level ground. In
+this respect, as well as in the attempt (which frequently borders only too
+closely on the ludicrous,) to paint certain characteristic peculiarities,
+(for instance, the awkward carriage of the Bacchus-stricken Pentheus in
+his female attire, the gluttony of Hercules, and his boisterous demands on
+the hospitality of Admetus,) Euripides was a precursor of the new comedy,
+to which he had an evident inclination, as he frequently paints, under the
+names of the heroic ages, the men and manners of his own times. Hence
+Menander expressed a most marked admiration for him, and proclaimed
+himself his scholar; and we have a fragment of Philemon, which displays
+such an extravagant admiration, that it hardly appears to have been
+seriously meant. "If the dead," he either himself says, or makes one of
+his characters to say, "had indeed any sensation, as some people think
+they have, I would hang myself for the sake of seeing Euripides."--With
+this adoration of the later comic authors, the opinion of Aristophanes,
+his contemporary, forms a striking contrast. Aristophanes persecutes him
+bitterly and unceasingly; he seems almost ordained to be his perpetual
+scourge, that none of his moral or poetical extravagances might go
+unpunished. Although as a comic poet Aristophanes is, generally speaking,
+in the relation of a parodist to the tragedians, yet he never attacks
+Sophocles, and even where he lays hold of Aeschylus, on that side of his
+character which certainly may excite a smile, his reverence for him is
+still visible, and he takes every opportunity of contrasting his gigantic
+grandeur with the petty refinements of Euripides. With infinite cleverness
+and inexhaustible flow of wit, he has exposed the sophistical subtilty,
+the rhetorical and philosophical pretensions, the immoral and seductive
+effeminacy, and the excitations to undisguised sensuality of Euripides.
+As, however, modern critics have generally looked upon Aristophanes as no
+better than a writer of extravagant and libellous farces, and had no
+notion of eliciting the serious truths which he veiled beneath his merry
+disguises, it is no wonder if they have paid but little attention to his
+opinion.
+
+But with all this we must never forget that Euripides was still a Greek,
+and the contemporary of many of the greatest names of Greece in politics,
+philosophy, history, and the fine arts. If, when compared with his
+predecessors, he must rank far below them, he appears in his turn great
+when placed by the side of many of the moderns. He has a particular
+strength in portraying the aberrations of a soul diseased, misguided, and
+franticly abandoned to its passions. He is admirable where the subject
+calls chiefly for emotion, and makes no higher requisitions; and he is
+still more so where pathos and moral beauty are united. Few of his pieces
+are without passages of the most ravishing beauty. It is by no means my
+intention to deny him the possession of the most astonishing talents; I
+have only stated that these talents were not united with a mind in which
+the austerity of moral principles, and the sanctity of religious feelings,
+were held in the highest honour.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+Comparison between the _Choephorae_ of Aeschylus, the _Electra_ of
+Sophocles and that of Euripides.
+
+
+The relation in which Euripides stood to his two great predecessors, may
+be set in the clearest light by a comparison between their three pieces
+which we fortunately still possess, on the same subject, namely, the
+avenging murder of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes.
+
+The scene of the _Choephorae of Aeschylus_ is laid in front of the
+royal palace; the tomb of Agamemnon appears on the stage. Orestes appears
+at the sepulchre, with his faithful Pylades, and opens the play (which is
+unfortunately somewhat mutilated at the commencement,) with a prayer to
+Mercury, and with an invocation to his father, in which he promises to
+avenge him, and to whom he consecrates a lock of his hair. He sees a
+female train in mourning weeds issuing from the palace, to bring a
+libation to the grave; and, as he thinks he recognises his sister among
+them, he steps aside with Pylades in order to observe them unperceived.
+The chorus, which consists of captive Trojan virgins, in a speech,
+accompanied with mournful gestures, reveals the occasion of their coming,
+namely, a fearful dream of Clytemnestra; it adds its own dark forebodings
+of an impending retribution of the bloody crime, and bewails its lot in
+being obliged to serve unrighteous masters. Electra demands of the chorus
+whether she shall fulfil the commission of her hostile mother, or pour out
+their offerings in silence; and then, in compliance with their advice, she
+also offers up a prayer to the subterranean Mercury and to the soul of her
+father, in her own name and that of the absent Orestes, that he may appear
+as the avenger. While pouring out the offering she joins the chorus in
+lamentations for the departed hero. Presently, finding a lock of hair
+resembling her own in colour, and seeing footsteps near the grave she
+conjectures that her brother has been there, and when she is almost
+frantic with joy at the thought, Orestes steps forward and discovers
+himself. He completely overcomes her doubts by exhibiting a garment woven
+by her own hand: they give themselves up to their joy; he addresses a
+prayer to Jupiter, and makes known how Apollo, under the most dreadful
+threats of persecution by his father's Furies, has called on him to
+destroy the authors of his death in the same manner as they had destroyed
+him, namely, by guile and cunning. Now follow odes of the chorus and
+Electra; partly consisting of prayers to her father's shade and the
+subterranean divinities, and partly recapitulating all the motives for the
+deed, especially those derived from the death of Agamemnon. Orestes
+inquires into the vision which induced Clytemnestra to offer the libation,
+and is informed that she dreamt that she had given her breast to a dragon
+in her son's cradle, and suckled it with her blood. He hereupon resolves
+to become this dragon, and announces his intention of stealing into the
+house, disguised as a stranger, and attacking both her and Aegisthus by
+surprise. With this view he withdraws along with Pylades. The subject of
+the next choral hymn is the boundless audacity of mankind in general, and
+especially of women in the gratification of their unlawful passions, which
+it confirms by terrible examples from mythic story, and descants upon the
+avenging justice which is sure to overtake them at last. Orestes, in the
+guise of a stranger, returns with Pylades, and desires admission into the
+palace. Clytemnestra comes out, and being informed by him of the death of
+Orestes, at which tidings Electra assumes a feigned grief, she invites him
+to enter and partake of their hospitality. After a short prayer of the
+chorus, the nurse comes and mourns for her foster-child; the chorus
+inspires her with a hope that he yet lives, and advises her to contrive to
+bring Aegisthus, for whom Clytemnestra has sent her, not with, but without
+his body guard. As the critical moment draws near, the chorus proffers
+prayers to Jupiter and Mercury for the success of the plot. Aegisthus
+enters into conversation with the messenger: he can hardly allow himself
+to believe the joyful news of the death of Orestes, and hastens into the
+house for the purpose of ascertaining the truth, from whence, after a
+short prayer of the chorus, we hear the cries of the murdered. A servant
+rushes out, and to warn Clytemnestra gives the alarm at the door of the
+women's apartment. She hears it, comes forward, and calls for an axe to
+defend herself; but as Orestes instantaneously rushes on her with the
+bloody sword, her courage fails her, and, most affectingly, she holds up
+to him the breast at which she had suckled him. Hesitating in his purpose,
+he asks the counsel of Pylades, who in a few lines exhorts him by the most
+cogent reasons to persist; after a brief dialogue of accusation and
+defence, he pursues her into the house to slay her beside the body of
+Aegisthus. In a solemn ode the chorus exults in the consummated
+retribution. The doors of the palace are thrown open, and disclose in the
+chamber the two dead bodies laid side by side on one bed. Orestes orders
+the servants to unfold the garment in whose capacious folds his father was
+muffled when he was slain, that it may be seen by all; the chorus
+recognise on it the stains of blood, and mourn afresh the murder of
+Agamemnon. Orestes, feeling his mind already becoming confused, seizes the
+first moment to justify his acts, and having declared his intention of
+repairing to Delphi to purify himself from his blood-guiltiness, flies in
+terror from the furies of his mother, whom the chorus does not perceive,
+but conceives to be a mere phantom of his imagination, but who,
+nevertheless, will no longer allow him any repose. The chorus concludes
+with a reflection on the scene of murder thrice-repeated in the royal
+palace since the repast of Thyestes.
+
+The scene of the _Electra of Sophocles_ is also laid before the palace,
+but does not contain the grave of Agamemnon. At break of day Pylades,
+Orestes, and the guardian slave who had been his preserver on that bloody
+day, enter the stage as just arriving from a foreign country. The keeper
+who acts as his guide commences with a description of his native city, and
+he is answered by Orestes, who recounts the commission given him by
+Apollo, and the manner in which he intends to carry it into execution,
+after which the young man puts up a prayer to his domestic gods and to the
+house of his fathers. Electra is heard complaining within; Orestes is
+desirous of greeting her without delay, but the old man leads him away to
+offer a sacrifice at the grave of his father. Electra then appears, and
+pours out her sorrow in a pathetic address to heaven, and in a prayer to
+the infernal deities her unconquerable desire of revenge. The chorus,
+which consists of native virgins, endeavours to console her; and,
+interchanging hymn and speech with the chorus, Electra discloses her
+unabatable sorrow, the contumely and oppression under which she suffers,
+and her hopelessness occasioned by the many delays of Orestes,
+notwithstanding her frequent exhortations; and she turns a deaf ear to all
+the grounds of consolation which the chorus can suggest. Chrysothemis,
+Clytemnestra's younger, more submissive, and favourite daughter,
+approaches with an offering which she is to carry to the grave of her
+father. Their difference of sentiment leads to an altercation between the
+two sisters, during which Chrysothemis informs Electra that Aegisthus, now
+absent in the country, has determined to adopt the most severe measures
+with her, whom, however, she sets at defiance. She then learns from her
+sister that Clytemnestra has had a dream that Agamemnon had come to life
+again, and had planted his sceptre in the floor of the house, and it had
+grown up into a tree that overshadowed the whole land; that, alarmed at
+this vision, she had commissioned Chrysothemis to carry an oblation to his
+grave. Electra counsels her not to execute the commands of her wicked
+mother, but to put up a prayer for herself and her sister, and for the
+return of Orestes as the avenger of his father; she then adds to the
+oblation her own girdle and a lock of her hair. Chrysothemis goes off,
+promising obedience to her wishes. The chorus augurs from the dream, that
+retribution is at hand, and traces back the crimes committed in this house
+to the primal sin of Pelops. Clytemnestra rebukes her daughter, with whom,
+however, probably under the influence of the dream, she is milder than
+usual; she defends her murder of Agamemnon, Electra condemns her for it,
+but without violent altercation. Upon this Clytemnestra, standing at the
+altar in front of the house, proffers a prayer to Apollo for health and
+long life, and a secret one for the death of her son. The guardian of
+Orestes arrives, and, in the character of a messenger from a Phocian
+friend, announces the death of Orestes, and minutely enumerates all the
+circumstances which attended his being killed in a chariot-race at the
+Pythian games. Clytemnestra, although visited for a moment with a mother's
+feelings, can scarce conceal her triumphant joy, and invites the messenger
+to partake of the hospitality of her house. Electra, in touching speeches
+and hymns, gives herself up to grief; the chorus in vain endeavours to
+console her. Chrysothemis returns from the grave, full of joy in the
+assurance that Orestes is near; for she has found his lock of hair, his
+drink-offering and wreaths of flowers. This serves but to renew the
+despair of Electra, who recounts to her sister the gloomy tidings which
+have just arrived, and exhorts her, now that all other hope is at an end,
+to join with her in the daring deed of putting Aegisthus to death: a
+proposal which Chrysothemis, not possessing the necessary courage, rejects
+as foolish, and after a violent altercation she re-enters the house. The
+chorus bewails Electra, now left utterly desolate. Orestes returns with
+Pylades and several servants bearing an urn with the pretended ashes of
+the deceased youth. Electra begs it of them, and laments over it in the
+most affecting language, which agitates Orestes to such a degree that he
+can no longer conceal himself; after some preparation he discloses himself
+to her, and confirms the announcement by producing the seal-ring of their
+father. She gives vent in speech and song to her unbounded joy, till the
+old attendant of Orestes comes out and reprimands them both for their want
+of consideration. Electra with some difficulty recognizes in him the
+faithful servant to whom she had entrusted the care of Orestes, and
+expresses her gratitude to him. At the suggestion of the old man, Orestes
+and Pylades accompany him with all speed into the house, in order to
+surprise Clytemnestra while she is still alone. Electra offers up a prayer
+to Apollo in their behalf; the choral ode announces the moment of
+retribution. From within the house is heard the shrieks of the affrighted
+Clytemnestra, her short prayer, her cry of agony under the death-blow.
+Electra from without stimulates Orestes to complete the deed, and he comes
+out with bloody hands. Warned however by the chorus of the approach of
+Aegisthus, he hastily re-enters the house in order to take him by
+surprise. Aegisthus inquires into the story of Orestes' death, and from
+the ambiguous language of Electra is led to believe that his corpse is in
+the palace. He commands all the gates to be thrown open, immediately, for
+the purpose of convincing those of the people who yielded reluctant
+obedience to his sovereignty, that they had no longer any hopes in
+Orestes. The middle entrance opens, and discloses in the interior of the
+palace a body lying on the bed, but closely covered over: Orestes stands
+beside the body, and invites Aegisthus to uncover it; he suddenly beholds
+the bloody corpse of Clytemnestra, and concludes himself lost and without
+hope. He requests to be allowed to speak, but this is prevented by
+Electra. Orestes constrains him to enter the house, that he may kill him
+on the very spot where his own father had been murdered.
+
+The scene of the _Electra of Euripides_ is not in Mycenae, in the
+open country, but on the borders of Argolis, and before a solitary and
+miserable cottage. The owner, an old peasant, comes out and in a prologue
+tells the audience how matters stand in the royal house, with this
+addition, however, to the incidents related in the two plays already
+considered, that not content to treat Electra with ignominy, and to leave
+her in a state of celibacy, they had forced her to marry beneath her rank,
+and to accept of himself for a husband: the motives he assigns for this
+proceeding are singular enough; he declares, however, that he has too much
+respect for her to reduce her to the humiliation of becoming in reality
+his wife.--They live therefore in virgin wedlock. Electra comes forth
+before it is yet daybreak bearing upon her head, which is close shorn in
+servile fashion, a pitcher to fetch water: her husband entreats her not to
+trouble herself with such unaccustomed labours, but she will not be
+withheld from the discharge of her household duties; and the two depart,
+he to his work in the field and she upon her errand. Orestes now enters
+with Pylades, and, in a speech to him, states that he has already
+sacrificed at his father's grave, but that not daring to enter the city,
+he wishes to find his sister, who, he is aware, is married and dwells
+somewhere near on the frontiers, that he may learn from her the posture of
+affairs. He sees Electra approach with the water-pitcher, and retires. She
+breaks out into an ode bewailing her own fate and that of her father.
+Hereupon the chorus, consisting of rustic virgins, makes its appearance,
+and exhorts her to take a part in a festival of Juno, which she, however,
+depressed in spirit, pointing to her tattered garments, declines. The
+chorus offer to supply her with festal ornaments, but she still refuses.
+She perceives Orestes and Pylades in their hiding-place, takes them for
+robbers, and hastens to escape into the house; when Orestes steps forward
+and prevents her, she imagines he intends to murder her; he removes her
+fears, and gives her assurances that her brother is still alive. On this
+he inquires into her situation, and the spectators are again treated with
+a repetition of all the circumstances. Orestes still forbears to disclose
+himself, and promising merely to carry any message from Electra to her
+brother, testifies, as a stranger, his sympathy in her situation. The
+chorus seizes this opportunity of gratifying its curiosity about the fatal
+events of the city; and Electra, after describing her own misery, depicts
+the wantonness and arrogance of her mother and Aegisthus, who, she says,
+leaps in contempt upon Agamemnon's grave, and throws stones at it. The
+peasant returns from his work, and thinks it rather indecorous in his wife
+to be gossiping with young men, but when he hears that they have brought
+news of Orestes, he invites them in a friendly manner into his house.
+Orestes, on witnessing the behaviour of the worthy man, makes the
+reflection that the most estimable people are frequently to be found in
+low stations, and in lowly garb. Electra upbraids her husband for inviting
+them, knowing as he must that they had nothing in the house to entertain
+them with; he is of opinion that the strangers will be satisfied with what
+he has, that a good housewife can always make the most of things, and that
+they have at least enough for one day. She dispatches him to Orestes' old
+keeper and preserver who lives hard by them, to bid him come and bring
+something with him to entertain the strangers, and the peasant departs
+muttering wise saws about riches and moderation. The chorus bursting out
+into an ode on the expedition of the Greeks against Troy, describes at
+great length the figures wrought on the shield which Achilles received
+from Thetis, and concludes with expressing a wish that Clytemnestra may be
+punished for her wickedness.
+
+The old guardian, who with no small difficulty ascends the hill towards
+the house, brings Electra a lamb, a cheese, and a skin of wine; he then
+begins to weep, not failing of course to wipe his eyes with his tattered
+garments. In reply to the questions of Electra he states, that at the
+grave of Agamemnon he found traces of an oblation and a lock of hair; from
+which circumstance he conjectured that Orestes had been there. We have
+then an allusion to the means which Aeschylus had employed to bring about
+the recognition, namely, the resemblance of the hair, the prints of feet,
+as well as the homespun-robe, with a condemnation of them as insufficient
+and absurd. The probability of this part of the drama of Aeschylus may,
+perhaps, admit of being cleared up, at all events one is ready to overlook
+it; but an express reference like this to another author's treatment of
+the same subject, is the most annoying interruption and the most fatal to
+genuine poetry that can possibly be conceived. The guests come out; the
+old man attentively considers Orestes, recognizes him, and convinces
+Electra that he is her brother by a scar on his eyebrow, which he received
+from a fall (this is the superb invention, which he substitutes for that
+of Aeschylus), Orestes and Electra embrace during a short choral ode, and
+abandon themselves to their joy. In a long dialogue, Orestes, the old
+slave, and Electra, form their plans. The old man informs them that
+Aegisthus is at present in the country sacrificing to the Nymphs, and
+Orestes resolves to steal there as a guest, and to fall on him by
+surprise. Clytemnestra, from a dread of unpleasant remarks, has not
+accompanied him; and Electra undertakes to entice her mother to them by a
+false message of her being in child-bed. The brother and sister now join
+in prayers to the gods and their father's shade, for a successful issue of
+their designs. Electra declares that she will put an end to her existence
+if they should miscarry, and, for that purpose, she will keep a sword in
+readiness. The old tutor departs with Orestes to conduct him to Aegisthus,
+and to repair afterwards to Clytemnestra. The chorus sings of the Golden
+Ram, which Thyestes, by the assistance of the faithless wife of Atreus,
+was enabled to carry off from him, and the repast furnished with the flesh
+of his own children, with which he was punished in return; at the sight of
+which the sun turned aside from his course; a circumstance, however, which
+the chorus very sapiently adds, that it was very much inclined to call in
+question. From a distance is heard a noise of tumult and groans; Electra
+fears that her brother has been overcome, and is on the point of killing
+herself. But at the moment a messenger arrives, who gives a long-winded
+account of the death of Aegisthus, and interlards it with many a joke.
+Amidst the rejoicings of the chorus, Electra fetches a wreath and crowns
+her brother, who holds in his hands the head of Aegisthus by the hair.
+This head she upbraids in a long speech with its follies and crimes, and
+among other things says to it, it is never well to marry a woman with whom
+one has previously lived in illicit intercourse; that it is an unseemly
+thing when a woman obtains the mastery in a family, &c. Clytemnestra is
+now seen approaching; Orestes begins to have scruples of conscience as to
+his purpose of murdering a mother, and the authority of the oracle, but
+yields to the persuasions of Electra, and agrees to do the deed within the
+house. The queen arrives, drawn in a chariot sumptuously hung with
+tapestry, and surrounded by Trojan slaves; Electra makes an offer to
+assist her in alighting, which, however, is declined. Clytemnestra then
+alleges the sacrifice of Iphigenia as a justification of her own conduct
+towards Agamemnon, and calls even upon her daughter to state her reasons
+in condemnation, that an opportunity may be given to the latter of
+delivering a subtle, captious harangue, in which, among other things, she
+reproaches her mother with having, during the absence of Agamemnon, sat
+before her mirror, and studied her toilette too much. With all this
+Clytemnestra is not provoked, even though her daughter does not hesitate
+to declare her intention of putting her to death if ever it should be in
+her power; she makes inquiries about her daughter's supposed confinement,
+and enters the hut to prepare the necessary sacrifice of purification.
+Electra accompanies her with a sarcastic speech. On this the chorus begins
+an ode on retribution: the shrieks of the murdered woman are heard within
+the house, and the brother and sister come out stained with her blood.
+They are full of repentance and despair at the deed which they have
+committed; increase their remorse by repeating the pitiable words and
+gestures of their dying parent. Orestes determines on flight into foreign
+lands, while Electra asks, "Who will now take me in marriage?" Castor and
+Pollux, their uncles, appear in the air, abuse Apollo on account of his
+oracle, command Orestes, in order to save himself from the Furies, to
+submit to the sentence of the Areopagus, and conclude with predicting a
+number of events which are yet to happen to him. They then enjoin a
+marriage between Electra and Pylades; who are to take her first husband
+with them to Phocis, and there richly to provide for him. After a further
+outburst of sorrow, the brother and sister take leave of one another for
+life, and the piece concludes.
+
+We easily perceive that Aeschylus has viewed the subject in its most
+terrible aspect, and drawn it within that domain of the gloomy divinities,
+whose recesses he so loves to haunt. The grave of Agamemnon is the murky
+gloom from which retributive vengeance issues; his discontented shade, the
+soul of the whole poem. The obvious external defect, that the action
+lingers too long at the same point, without any sensible progress,
+appears, on reflection, a true internal perfection: it is the stillness of
+expectation before a deep storm or an earthquake. It is true the prayers
+are repeated, but their very accumulation heightens the impression of a
+great unheard-of purpose, for which human powers and motives by themselves
+are insufficient. In the murder of Clytemnestra, and her heart-rending
+appeals, the poet, without disguising her guilt, has gone to the very
+verge of what was allowable in awakening our sympathy with her sufferings.
+The crime which is to be punished is kept in view from the very first by
+the grave, and, at the conclusion, it is brought still nearer to our minds
+by the unfolding the fatal garment: thus, Agamemnon non, after being fully
+avenged, is, as it were, murdered again before the mental eye. The flight
+of Orestes betrays no undignified weakness or repentance; it is merely the
+inevitable tribute which he must pay to offended nature.
+
+It is only necessary to notice in general terms the admirable management
+of the subject by Sophocles. What a beautiful introduction has he made to
+precede the queen's mission to the grave, with which Aeschylus begins at
+once! With what polished ornament has he embellished it throughout, for
+example, with the description of the games! With what nice judgment does
+he husband the pathos of Electra; first, general lamentations, then hopes
+derived from the dream, their annihilation by the news of Orestes' death,
+the new hopes suggested by Chrysothemis only to be rejected, and lastly
+her mourning over the urn. Electra's heroism is finely set off by the
+contrast with her more submissive sister. The poet has given quite a new
+turn to the subject by making Electra the chief object of interest. A
+noble pair has the poet here given us; the sister endued with unshaken
+constancy in true and noble sentiments, and the invincible heroism of
+endurance; the brother prompt and vigorous in all the energy of youth. To
+this he skilfully opposes circumspection and experience in the old man,
+while the fact that Sophocles as well as Aeschylus has left Pylades
+silent, is a proof how carefully ancient art disdained all unnecessary
+surplusage.
+
+But what more especially characterizes the tragedy of Sophocles, is the
+heavenly serenity beside a subject so terrific, the fresh air of life and
+youth which breathes through the whole. The bright divinity of Apollo, who
+enjoined the deed, seems to shed his influence over it; even the break of
+day, in the opening scene, is significant. The grave and the world of
+shadows, are kept in the background: what in Aeschylus is effected by the
+spirit of the murdered monarch, proceeds here from the heart of the still
+living Electra, which is endowed with an equal capacity for
+inextinguishable hatred or ardent love. The disposition to avoid
+everything dark and ominous, is remarkable even in the very first speech
+of Orestes, where he says he feels no concern at being thought dead, so
+long as he knows himself to be alive, and in the full enjoyment of health
+and strength. He is not beset with misgivings or stings of conscience
+either before or after the deed, so that the determination is more
+steadily maintained by Sophocles than in Aeschylus; and the appalling
+scene with Aegisthus, and the reserving him for an ignominious death to
+the very close of the piece, is more austere and solemn than anything in
+the older drama. Clytemnestra's dreams furnish the most striking token of
+the relation which the two poets bear to each other: both are equally
+appropriate, significant, and ominous; that of Aeschylus is grander, but
+appalling to the senses; that of Sophocles, in its very tearfulness,
+majestically beautiful.
+
+The piece of Euripides is a singular example of poetic, or rather unpoetic
+obliquity; we should never have done were we to attempt to point out all
+its absurdities and contradictions. Why, for instance, does Orestes
+fruitlessly torment his sister by maintaining his incognito so long? The
+poet too, makes it a light matter to throw aside whatever stands in his
+way, as in the case of the peasant, of whom, after his departure to summon
+the old keeper, we have no farther account. Partly for the sake of
+appearing original, and partly from an idea that to make Orestes kill the
+king and queen in the middle of their capital would be inconsistent with
+probability, Euripides has involved himself in still greater
+improbabilities. Whatever there is of the tragical in his drama is not his
+own, but belongs either to the fable, to his predecessors, or to
+tradition. In his hands, at least, it has ceased to be tragedy, but is
+lowered into "a family picture," in the modern signification of the word.
+The effect attempted to be produced by the poverty of Electra is pitiful
+in the extreme; the poet has betrayed his secret in the complacent display
+which she makes of her misery. All the preparations for the crowning act
+are marked by levity, and a want of internal conviction: it is a
+gratuitous torture of our feelings to make Aegisthus display a good-
+natured hospitality, and Clytemnestra a maternal sympathy with her
+daughter, merely to excite our compassion in their behalf; the deed is no
+sooner executed, but its effect is obliterated by the most despicable
+repentance, a repentance which arises from no moral feeling, but from a
+merely animal revulsion. I shall say nothing of his abuse of the oracle of
+Delphi. As it destroys the very basis of the whole drama, I cannot see why
+Euripides should have written it, except to provide a fortunate marriage
+for Electra, and to reward the peasant for his continency. I could wish
+that the wedding of Pylades had been celebrated on the stage, and that a
+good round sum of money had been paid to the peasant on the spot; then
+everything would have ended to the satisfaction of the spectators as in an
+ordinary comedy.
+
+Not, however, to be unjust, I must admit that the _Electra_ is perhaps the
+very worst of Euripides' pieces. Was it the rage for novelty which led him
+here into such faults? He was truly to be pitied for having been preceded
+in the treatment of this same subject by two such men as Sophocles and
+Aeschylus. But what compelled him to measure his powers with theirs, and
+to write an _Electra_ at all?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+Character of the remaining Works of Euripides--The Satirical Drama--
+Alexandrian Tragic Poets.
+
+
+Of the plays of Euripides, which have come down to us in great number, we
+can only give a very short and general account.
+
+On the score of beautiful morality, there is none of them, perhaps, so
+deserving of praise as the _Alcestis_. Her resolution to die, and the
+farewell which she takes of her husband and children, are depicted with
+the most overpowering pathos. The poet's forbearance, in not allowing the
+heroine to speak on her return from the infernal world, lest he might draw
+aside the mysterious veil which shrouds the condition of the dead, is
+deserving of high praise. Admetus, it is true, and more especially his
+father, sink too much in our esteem from their selfish love of life; and
+Hercules appears, at first, blunt even to rudeness, afterwards more noble
+and worthy of himself, and at last jovial, when, for the sake of the joke,
+he introduces to Admetus his veiled wife as a new bride.
+
+_Iphigenia in Aulis_ is a subject peculiarly suited to the tastes and
+powers of Euripides; the object here is to excite a tender emotion for the
+innocent and child-like simplicity of the heroine: but Iphigenia is still
+very far from being an Antigone. Aristotle has already remarked that the
+character is not well sustained throughout. "Iphigenia imploring," he
+says, "has no resemblance to Iphigenia afterwards yielding herself up a
+willing sacrifice."
+
+_Ion_ is also one of his most delightful pieces, on account of the picture
+of innocence and priestly sanctity in the boy whose name it bears. In the
+course of the plot, it is true, there are not a few improbabilities,
+makeshifts, and repetitions; and the catastrophe, produced by a falsehood,
+in which both gods and men unite against Xuthus, can hardly be
+satisfactory to our feelings.
+
+As delineations of female passion, and of the aberrations of a mind
+diseased, _Phaedra_ and _Medea_ have been justly praised. The play in
+which the former is introduced dazzles us by the sublime and beautiful
+heroism of _Hippolytus_; and it is also deserving of the highest
+commendation on account of the observance of propriety and moral
+strictness, in so critical a subject. This, however, is not so much the
+merit of the poet himself as of the delicacy of his contemporaries; for
+the _Hippolytus_ which we possess, according to the scholiast, is an
+improvement upon an earlier one, in which there was much that was
+offensive and reprehensible. [Footnote: The learned and acute Brunck,
+without citing any authority, or the coincidence of fragments in
+corroboration, says that Seneca in his _Hippolytus_, followed the plan of
+the earlier play of Euripides, called the _Veiled Hippolytus_. How far
+this is mere conjecture I cannot say, but at any rate I should be inclined
+to doubt whether Euripides, even in the censured drama, admitted the scene
+of the declaration of love, which Racine, however in his _Phaedra_. has
+not hesitated to adopt from Seneca.]
+
+The opening of the _Medea_ is admirable; her desperate situation is,
+by the conversation between her nurse and the keeper of her children, and
+her own wailings behind the scene, depicted with most touching effect. As
+soon, however, as she makes her appearance, the poet takes care to cool
+our emotion by the number of general and commonplace reflections which he
+puts into her mouth. Lower does she sink in the scene with Aegeus, where,
+meditating a terrible revenge on Jason, she first secures a place of
+refuge, and seems almost on the point of bespeaking a new connection. This
+is very unlike the daring criminal who has reduced the powers of nature to
+minister to her ungovernable passions, and speeds from land to land like a
+desolating meteor;--the Medea who, abandoned by all the world, was still
+sufficient for herself. Nothing but a wish to humour Athenian antiquities
+could have induced Euripides to adopt this cold interpolation of his
+story. With this exception he has, in the most vivid colours, painted, in
+one and the same person, the mighty enchantress, and the woman weak only
+from the social position of her sex. As it is, we are keenly affected by
+the struggles of maternal tenderness in the midst of her preparations for
+the cruel deed. Moreover, she announces her deadly purpose much too soon
+and too distinctly, instead of brooding awhile over the first confused,
+dark suggestion of it. When she does put it in execution, her thirst of
+revenge on Jason might, we should have thought, have been sufficiently
+slaked by the horrible death of his young wife and her father; and the new
+motive, namely, that Jason, as she pretends, would infallibly murder the
+children, and therefore she must anticipate him, will by no means bear
+examination. For she could as easily have saved the living children with
+herself, as have carried off their dead bodies in the dragon-chariot.
+Still this may, perhaps, be justified by the perturbation of mind into
+which she was plunged by the crime she had perpetrated.
+
+Perhaps it was such pictures of universal sorrow, of the fall of
+flourishing families and states from the greatest glory to the lowest
+misery, nay, to entire annihilation, as Euripides has sketched in the
+_Troades_, that gained for him, from Aristotle, the title of _the
+most tragic of poets_. The concluding scene, where the captive ladies,
+allotted as slaves to different masters, leave Troy in flames behind them,
+and proceed towards the ships, is truly grand. It is impossible, however,
+for a piece to have less action, in the energetical sense of the word: it
+is a series of situations and events, which have no other connexion than
+that of a common origin in the capture of Troy, but in no respect have
+they a common aim. The accumulation of helpless suffering, against which
+the will and sentiment even are not allowed to revolt, at last wearies us,
+and exhausts our compassion. The greater the struggle to avert a calamity,
+the deeper the impression it makes when it bursts forth after all. But
+when so little concern is shown, as is here the case with Astyanax, for
+the speech of Talthybius prevents even the slightest attempt to save him,
+the spectator soon acquiesces in the result. In this way Euripides
+frequently fails. In the ceaseless demands which this play makes on our
+compassion, the pathos is not duly economized and brought to a climax: for
+instance, Andromache's lament over her living son is much more heart-
+rending than that of Hecuba for her dead one. The effect of the latter is,
+however, aided by the sight of the little corpse lying on Hector's shield.
+Indeed, in the composition of this piece the poet has evidently reckoned
+much on ocular effect: thus, for the sake of contrast with the captive
+ladies, Helen appears splendidly dressed, Andromache is mounted on a car
+laden with spoils; and I doubt not but that at the conclusion the entire
+scene was in flames. The trial of Helen painfully interrupts the train of
+our sympathies, by an idle altercation which ends in nothing; for in spite
+of the accusations of Hecuba, Menelaus abides by the resolution which he
+had previously formed. The defence of Helen is about as entertaining as
+Isocrates' sophistical eulogium of her.
+
+Euripides was not content with making Hecuba roll in the dust with covered
+head, and whine a whole piece through; he has also introduced her in
+another tragedy which bears her name, as the standing representative of
+suffering and woe. The two actions of this piece, the sacrifice of
+Polyxena, and the revenge on Polymestor, on account of the murder of
+Polydorus, have nothing in common with each other but their connexion with
+Hecuba. The first half possesses great beauties of that particular kind in
+which Euripides is pre-eminently successful: pictures of tender youth,
+female innocence, and noble resignation to an early and violent death. A
+human sacrifice, that triumph of barbarian superstition, is represented as
+executed, suffered, and looked upon, with that Hellenism of feeling which
+so early effected the abolition of such sacrifices among the Greeks. But
+the second half most revoltingly effaces these soft impressions. It is
+made up of the revengeful artifices of Hecuba, the blind avarice of
+Polymestor, and the paltry policy of Agamemnon, who, not daring himself to
+call the Thracian king to account, nevertheless beguiles him into the
+hands of the captive women. Neither is it very consistent that Hecuba,
+advanced in years, bereft of strength, and overwhelmed with sorrow, should
+nevertheless display so much presence of mind in the execution of revenge,
+and such a command of tongue in her accusation and derision of Polymestor.
+
+We have another example of two distinct and separate actions in the same
+tragedy, the _Mad Hercules_. The first is the distress of his family
+during his absence, and their deliverance by his return; the second, his
+remorse at having in a sudden frenzy murdered his wife and children. The
+one action follows, but by no means arises out of the other.
+
+The _Phoenissae_ is rich in tragic incidents, in the common acceptation of
+the word: the son of Creon, to save his native city, precipitates himself
+from the walls; Eteocles and Polynices perish by each other's hands; over
+their dead bodies Jocasta falls by her own hand; the Argives who hare made
+war upon Thebes are destroyed in battle; Polynices remains uninterred; and
+lastly, Oedipus and Antigone are driven into exile. After this enumeration
+of the incidents, the Scholiast aptly notices the arbitrary manner in
+which the poet has proceeded, "This drama," says he, "is beautiful in
+theatrical effect, even because it is full of incidents totally foreign to
+the proper action. Antigone looking down from the walls has nothing to do
+with the action, and Polynices enters the town under the safe-conduct of a
+truce, without any effect being thereby produced. After all the rest the
+banished Oedipus and a wordy ode are tacked on, being equally to no
+purpose." This is a severe criticism, but it is just.
+
+Not more lenient is the Scholiast on _Orestes_: "This piece," he
+says, "is one of those which produce a great effect on the stage, but with
+respect to characters it is extremely bad; for, with the exception of
+Pylades, all the rest are good for nothing." Moreover, "Its catastrophe is
+more suitable to comedy than tragedy." This drama begins, indeed, in the
+most agitating manner. Orestes, after the murder of his mother, is
+represented lying on his bed, afflicted with anguish of soul and madness;
+Electra sits at his feet, and she and the chorus remain in trembling
+expectation of his awaking. Afterwards, however, everything takes a
+perverse turn, and ends with the most violent strokes of stage effect.
+
+The _Iphigenia in Tauris_, in which the fate of Orestes is still
+further followed out, is less wild and extravagant, but in the
+representation both of character or passion, it seldom rises above
+mediocrity. The mutual recognition between brother and sister, after such
+adventures and actions, as that Iphigenia, who had herself once trembled
+before the bloody altar, was on the point of devoting her brother to a
+similar fate, produces no more than a transient emotion. The flight of
+Orestes and his sister is not highly calculated to excite our interest:
+the artifice by which Iphigenia brings it about is readily credited by
+Thoas, who does not attempt to make any opposition till both are safe, and
+then he is appeased by one of the ordinary divine interpositions. This
+device has been so used and abused by Euripides, that in nine out of his
+eighteen tragedies, a divinity descends to unravel the complicated knot.
+
+In _Andromache_ Orestes makes his appearance for the fourth time. The
+Scholiast, in whose opinion we may, we think, generally recognize the
+sentiments of the most important of ancient critics, declares this to be a
+very second-rate play, in which single scenes alone are deserving of any
+praise. Of those on which Racine has based his free imitations, this is
+unquestionably the very worst, and therefore the French critics have an
+easy game to play in their endeavours to depreciate the Grecian
+predecessor, from whom Racine has in fact derived little more than the
+first suggestion of his tragedy.
+
+The _Bacchae_ represents the infectious and tumultuous enthusiasm of
+the worship of Bacchus, with great sensuous power and vividness of
+conception. The obstinate unbelief of Pentheus, his infatuation, and
+terrible punishment by the hands of his own mother, form a bold picture.
+The effect on the stage must have been extraordinary. Imagine, only, a
+chorus with flying and dishevelled hair and dress, tambourines, cymbals,
+&c., in their hands, like the Bacchants we see on bas-reliefs, bursting
+impetuously into the orchestra, and executing their inspired dances amidst
+tumultuous music,--a circumstance, altogether unusual, as the choral odes
+were generally sung and danced at a solemn step, and with no other
+accompaniment than a flute. Here the luxuriance of ornament, which
+Euripides everywhere affects, was for once appropriate. When, therefore,
+several of the modern critics assign to this piece a very low rank, they
+seem to me not to know what they themselves would wish. In the composition
+of this piece, I cannot help admiring a harmony and unity, which we seldom
+meet with in Euripides, as well as abstinence from every foreign matter,
+so that all the motives and effects flow from one source, and concur
+towards a common end. After the _Hippolytus_, I should be inclined to
+assign to this play the first place among all the extant works of
+Euripides.
+
+The _Heraclidae_ and the _Supplices_ are mere _occasional_ tragedies,
+_i.e._, owing their existence to some temporary incident or excitement,
+and they must have been indebted for their success to nothing else but
+their flattery of the Athenians. They celebrate two ancient heroic deeds
+of Athens, on which the panegyrists, amongst the rest Isocrates, who
+always mixed up the fabulous with the historical, lay astonishing stress:
+the protection they are said to have afforded to the children of Hercules,
+the ancestors of the Lacedaemonian kings, from the persecution of
+Eurystheus, and their going to war with Thebes on behalf of Adrastus, king
+of Argos, and forcing the Thebans to give the rites of burial to the Seven
+Chieftains and their host. The _Supplices_ was, as we know, represented
+during the Peloponnesian war, after the conclusion of a treaty between the
+Argives and the Lacedaemonians; and was intended to remind the Argives of
+their ancient obligation to Athens, and to show how little they could hope
+to prosper in the war against the Athenians. The _Heraclidae_ was
+undoubtedly written with a similar view in respect to Lacedaemon. Of the
+two pieces, however, which are both cast in the same mould, the Female
+Suppliants, so called from the mothers of the fallen heroes, is by far the
+richest in poetical merit; the _Heraclidae_ appears, as it were, but a
+faint impression of the other. In the former piece, it is true, Theseus
+appears at first in a somewhat unamiable light, upbraiding, as he does,
+the unfortunate Adrastus with his errors at such great length, and perhaps
+with so little justice, before he condescends to assist him; again the
+disputation between Theseus and the Argive herald, as to the superiority
+of a monarchical or a democratical constitution, ought in justice to be
+banished from the stage to the rhetorical schools; while the moral
+eulogium of Adrastus over the fallen heroes is, at least, very much out of
+place. I am convinced that Euripides was here drawing the characters of
+particular Athenian generals, who had fallen in some battle or other. But
+even in this case the passage cannot be justified in a dramatic point of
+view; however, without such an object, it would have been silly and
+ridiculous in describing those heroes of the age of Hercules, (a Capaneus,
+for instance, who set even heaven itself at defiance,) to have launched
+out into the praise of their civic virtues. How apt Euripides was to
+wander from his subject in allusions to perfectly extraneous matters, and
+sometimes even to himself, we may see from a speech of Adrastus, who most
+impertinently is made to say, "It is not fair that the poet, while he
+delights others with his works, should himself suffer inconvenience."
+However, the funeral lamentations and the swan-like song of Evadne are
+affectingly beautiful, although she is so unexpectedly introduced into the
+drama. Literally, indeed, may we say of her, that she jumps into the play,
+for without even being mentioned before she suddenly appears first of all
+on the rock, from which she throws herself on the burning pile of
+Capaneus.
+
+The _Heraclidae_ is a very poor piece; its conclusion is singularly
+bald. We hear nothing more of the self-sacrifice of Macaria, after it is
+over: as the determination seems to have cost herself no struggle, it
+makes as little impression upon others. The Athenian king, Demophon, does
+not return again; neither does Iolaus, the companion of Hercules and
+guardian of his children, whose youth is so wonderfully renewed. Hyllus,
+the noble-minded Heraclide, never even makes his appearance; and nobody at
+last remains but Alcmene, who keeps up a bitter altercation with
+Eurystheus. Euripides seems to have taken a particular pleasure in drawing
+such implacable and rancorous old women: twice has he exhibited Hecuba in
+this light, pitting her against Helen and Polymestor. In general, we may
+observe the constant recurrence of the same artifice and motives is a sure
+symptom of mannerism. We have in the works of this poet three instances of
+women offered in sacrifice, which are moving from their perfect
+resignation: Iphigenia, Polyxena, and Macaria; the voluntary deaths of
+Alceste and Evadne belong in some sort also to this class. Suppliants are
+in like manner a favourite subject with him, because they oppress the
+spectator with apprehension lest they should be torn by force from the
+sanctuary of the altar. I have already noticed his lavish introduction of
+deities towards the conclusion.
+
+The merriest of all tragedies is _Helen_, a marvellous drama, full of
+wonderful adventures and appearances, which are evidently better suited to
+comedy. The invention on which it is founded is, that Helen remained
+concealed in Egypt (so far went the assertion of the Aegyptian priests),
+while Paris carried off an airy phantom in her likeness, for which the
+Greeks and Trojans fought for ten long years. By this contrivance the
+virtue of the heroine is saved, and Menelaus, (to make good the ridicule
+of Aristophanes on the beggary of Euripides' heroes,) appears in rags as a
+beggar, and in nowise dissatisfied with his condition. But this manner of
+improving mythology bears a resemblance to the _Tales of the Thousand
+and One Nights_.
+
+Modern philologists have dedicated voluminous treatises, to prove the
+spuriousness of _Rhesus_, the subject of which is taken from the
+eleventh book of the Iliad. Their opinion is, that the piece contains such
+a number of improbabilities and contradictions, that it is altogether
+unworthy of Euripides. But this is by no means a legitimate conclusion. Do
+not the faults which they censure unavoidably follow from the selection of
+an intractable subject, so very inconvenient as a nightly enterprise? The
+question respecting the genuineness of any work, turns not so much on its
+merits or demerits, as rather on the resemblance of its style and
+peculiarities to those of the pretended author. The few words of the
+Scholiast amount to a very different opinion: "Some have considered this
+drama to be spurious, and not the work of Euripides, because it bears many
+traces of the style of Sophocles. But it is inscribed in the _Didascaliae_
+as his, and its accuracy with respect to the phenomena of the starry
+heaven betrays the hand of Euripides." I think I understand what is here
+meant by the style of Sophocles, but it is rather in detached scenes, than
+in the general plan, that I at all discern it. Hence, if the piece is to
+be taken from Euripides, I should be disposed to attribute it to some
+eclectic imitator, but one of the school of Sophocles rather than of that
+of Euripides, and who lived only a little later than both. This I infer
+from the familiarity of many of the scenes, for tragedy at this time
+was fast sinking into the domestic tragedy, whereas, at a still later
+period, the Alexandrian age, it fell into an opposite error of bombast.
+
+The _Cyclops_ is a satiric drama. This is a mixed and lower species
+of tragic poetry, as we have already in passing asserted. The want of some
+relaxation for the mind, after the engrossing severity of tragedy, appears
+to have given rise to the satiric drama, as indeed to the after-piece in
+general. The satiric drama never possessed an independent existence; it
+was thrown in by way of an appendage to several tragedies, and to judge
+from that we know of it, was always considerably shorter than the others.
+In external form it resembled Tragedy, and the materials were in like
+manner mythological. The distinctive mark was a chorus consisting of
+satyrs, who accompanied with lively songs, gestures, and movements, such
+heroic adventures as were of a more cheerful hue, (many in the _Odyssey_
+for instance; for here, also, as in many other respects, the germ is to be
+found in Homer,) or, at least, could be made to wear such an appearance.
+The proximate cause of this species of drama was derived from the
+festivals of Bacchus, where satyr-masks was a common disguise. In
+mythological stories with which Bacchus had no concern, these constant
+attendants of his were, no doubt, in some sort arbitrarily introduced, but
+still not without a degree of propriety. As nature, in her original
+freedom, appeared to the fancy of the Greeks to teem everywhere with
+wonderful productions, they could with propriety people with these
+sylvan beings the wild landscapes, remote from polished cities, where the
+scene was usually laid, and enliven them with their wild animal frolics.
+The composition of demi-god with demi-beast formed an amusing contrast. We
+have an example in the _Cyclops_ of the manner in which the poets
+proceeded in such subjects. It is not unentertaining, though the subject-
+matter is for the most part contained in the _Odyssey_; only the pranks of
+Silenus and his band are occasionally a little coarse. We must confess
+that, in our eyes, the great merit of this piece is its rarity, being the
+only extant specimen of its class which we possess. In the satiric dramas
+Aeschylus must, without doubt, have displayed more boldness and meaning in
+his mirth; as, for instance, when he introduced Prometheus bringing down
+fire from heaven to rude and stupid man; while Sophocles, to judge from
+the few fragments we have, must have been more elegant and moral, as when
+he introduced the goddesses contending for the prize of beauty, or
+Nausicaa offering protection to the shipwrecked Ulysses. It is a striking
+feature of the easy unconstrained character of life among the Greeks, of
+its gladsome joyousness of disposition, which knew nothing of a starched
+and stately dignity, but artist-like admired aptness and gracefulness,
+even in the most insignificant trifles, that in this drama called
+_Nausicaa_, or "_The Washerwomen_," in which, after Homer, the princess at
+the end of the washing, amuses herself at a game of ball with her maids,
+Sophocles himself played at ball, and by his grace in this exercise
+acquired much applause. The great poet, the respected Athenian citizen,
+the man who had already perhaps been a General, appeared publicly in
+woman's clothes, and as, on account of the feebleness of his voice, he
+could not play the leading part of Nausicaa, took perhaps the mute under
+part of a maid, for the sake of giving to the representation of his piece
+the slight ornament of bodily agility.
+
+The history of ancient tragedy ends with Euripides, although there were a
+number of still later tragedians; Agathon, for instance, whom Aristophanes
+describes as fragrant with ointment and crowned with flowers, and in whose
+mouth Plato, in his _Symposium_, puts a discourse in the taste of the
+sophist Gorgias, full of the most exquisite ornaments and empty
+tautological antitheses. He was the first to abandon mythology, as
+furnishing the natural materials of tragedy, and occasionally wrote pieces
+with purely fictitious names, (this is worthy of notice, as forming a
+transition towards the new comedy,) one of which was called the
+_Flower_, and was probably therefore neither seriously affecting nor
+terrible, but in the style of the idyl, and pleasing.
+
+The Alexandrian scholars, among their other lucubrations, attempted also
+the composition of tragedies; but if we are to judge of them from the only
+piece which has come down to us, the _Alexandra_ of Lycophron, which
+consists of an endless monologue, full of prophecy, and overladen with
+obscure mythology, these productions of a subtle dilettantism must have
+been extremely inanimate and untheatrical, and every way devoid of
+interest. The creative powers of the Greeks were, in this department, so
+completely exhausted, that they were forced to content themselves with the
+repetition of the works of their ancient masters.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+The Old Comedy proved to be completely a contrast to Tragedy--Parody--
+Ideality of Comedy the reverse of that of Tragedy--Mirthful Caprice--
+Allegoric and Political Signification--The Chorus and its Parabases.
+
+
+We now leave Tragic Poetry to occupy ourselves with an entirely opposite
+species, the _Old_ Comedy. Striking as this diversity is, we shall,
+however, commence with pointing out a certain symmetry in the contrast and
+certain relations between them, which have a tendency to exhibit the
+essential character of both in a clearer light.  In forming a judgment of
+the Old Comedy, we must banish every idea of what is called Comedy by the
+moderns, and what went by the same name among the Greeks themselves at a
+later period.  These two species of Comedy differ from each other, not
+only in accidental peculiarities, (such as the introduction in the old of
+real names and characters,) but essentially and diametrically. We must
+also guard against entertaining such a notion of the Old Comedy as would
+lead us to regard it as the rude beginnings of the more finished and
+cultivated comedy of a subsequent age [Footnote: This is the purport of
+the section of Barthélemy in the _Anacharsis_ on the Old Comedy: one
+of the poorest and most erroneous parts of his work. With the pitiful
+presumption of ignorance, Voltaire pronounced a sweeping condemnation of
+Aristophanes, (in other places, and in his _Philosophical Dictionary_
+under Art. _Athée_), and the modern French critics have for the most
+part followed his example. We may, however, find the foundation of all the
+erroneous opinions of the moderns on this subject, and the same prosaical
+mode of viewing it, in Plutarch's parallel between Aristophanes and
+Menander.], an idea which many, from the unbridled licentiousness of the
+old comic writers, have been led to entertain. On the contrary the former
+is the genuine _poetic_ species; but the New Comedy, as I shall show
+in due course, is its decline into prose and reality.
+
+We shall form the best idea of the Old Comedy, by considering it as the
+direct opposite of Tragedy. This was probably the meaning of the assertion
+of Socrates, which is given by Plato towards the end of his _Symposium_.
+He tells us that, after the other guests were dispersed or had fallen
+asleep, Socrates was left awake with Aristophanes and Agathon, and that
+while he drank with them out of a large cup, he forced them to confess,
+however unwillingly, that it is the business of one and the same man to be
+equally master of tragic and comic composition, and that the tragic poet
+is, in virtue of his art, comic poet also. This was not only repugnant to
+the general opinion, which wholly separated the two kinds of talent, but
+also to all experience, inasmuch as no tragic poet had ever attempted to
+shine in Comedy, nor conversely; his remark, therefore, can only have been
+meant to apply to the inmost essence of the things. Thus at another time,
+the Platonic Socrates says, on the subject of comic imitation: "All
+opposites can be fully understood only by and through each other;
+consequently we can only know what is serious by knowing also what is
+laughable and ludicrous." If the divine Plato by working out that dialogue
+had been pleased to communicate his own, or his master's thoughts,
+respecting these two kinds of poetry, we should have been spared the
+necessity of the following investigation.
+
+One aspect of the relation of comic to tragic poetry may be comprehended
+under the idea of _parody_. This parody, however, is one infinitely
+more powerful than that of the mock heroic poem, as the subject parodied,
+by means of scenic representation, acquired quite another kind of reality
+and presence in the mind, from what the épopée did, which relating the
+transactions of a distant age, retired, as it were, with them into the
+remote olden time. The comic parody was brought out when the thing
+parodied was fresh in recollection, and as the representation took place
+on the same stage where the spectators were accustomed to see its serious
+original, this circumstance must have greatly contributed to heighten the
+effect of it. Moreover, not merely single scenes, but the very form of
+tragic composition was parodied, and doubtless the parody extended not
+only to the poetry, but also to the music and dancing, to the acting
+itself, and the scenic decoration. Nay, even where the drama trod in the
+footsteps of the plastic arts, it was still the subject of comic parody,
+as the ideal figures of deities were evidently transformed into
+caricatures [Footnote: As an example of this, I may allude to the well-
+known vase-figures, where Mercury and Jupiter, about to ascend by a ladder
+into Alcmene's chamber, are represented as comic masks.]. Now the more
+immediately the productions of all these arts fall within the observance
+of the external senses, and, above, all the more the Greeks, in their
+popular festivals, religious ceremonies, and solemn processions, were
+accustomed to, and familiar with, the noble style which was the native
+element of tragic representation, so much the more irresistibly ludicrous
+must have been the effect of that general parody of the arts, which it was
+the object of Comedy to exhibit.
+
+But this idea does not exhaust the essential character of Comedy; for
+parody always supposes a reference to the subject which is parodied, and a
+necessary dependence on it. The Old Comedy, however, as a species of
+poetry, is as independent and original as Tragedy itself; it stands on the
+same elevation with it, that is, it extends just as far beyond the limits
+of reality into the domains of free creative fancy.
+
+Tragedy is the highest earnestness of poetry; Comedy altogether sportive.
+Now earnestness, as I observed in the Introduction, consists in the
+direction of the mental powers to an aim or purpose, and the limitation of
+their activity to that object. Its opposite, therefore, consists in the
+apparent want of aim, and freedom from all restraint in the exercise of
+the mental powers; and it is therefore the more perfect, the more
+unreservedly it goes to work, and the more lively the appearance there is
+of purposeless fun and unrestrained caprice. Wit and raillery may be
+employed in a sportive manner, but they are also both of them compatible
+with the severest earnestness, as is proved by the example of the later
+Roman satires and the ancient Iambic poetry of the Greeks, where these
+means were employed for the expression of indignation and hatred.
+
+The New Comedy, it is true, represents what is amusing in character, and
+in the contrast of situations and combinations; and it is the more comic
+the more it is distinguished by a want of aim: cross purposes, mistakes,
+the vain efforts of ridiculous passion, and especially if all this ends at
+last in nothing; but still, with all this mirth, the form of the
+representation itself is serious, and regularly tied down to a certain
+aim. In the Old Comedy the form was sportive, and a seeming aimlessness
+reigned throughout; the whole poem was one big jest, which again contained
+within itself a world of separate jests, of which each occupied its own
+place, without appearing to trouble itself about the rest. In tragedy, if
+I may be allowed to make my meaning plain by a comparison, the monarchical
+constitution prevails, but a monarchy without despotism, such as it was in
+the heroic times of the Greeks: everything yields a willing obedience to
+the dignity of the heroic sceptre. Comedy, on the other hand, is the
+democracy of poetry, and is more inclined even to the confusion of anarchy
+than to any circumscription of the general liberty of its mental powers
+and purposes, and even of its separate thoughts, sallies, and allusions.
+
+Whatever is dignified, noble, and grand in human nature, admits only of a
+serious and earnest representation; for whoever attempts to represent it,
+feels himself, as it were, in the presence of a superior being, and is
+consequently awed and restrained by it. The comic poet, therefore, must
+divest his characters of all such qualities; he must place himself without
+the sphere of them; nay, even deny altogether their existence, and form an
+ideal of human nature the direct opposite of that of the tragedians,
+namely, as the odious and base. But as the tragic ideal is not a
+collective model of all possible virtues, so neither does this converse
+ideality consist in an aggregation, nowhere to be found in real life, of
+all moral enormities and marks of degeneracy, but rather in a dependence
+on the animal part of human nature, in that want of freedom and
+independence, that want of coherence, those inconsistencies of the inward
+man, in which all folly and infatuation originate.
+
+The earnest ideal consists of the unity and harmonious blending of the
+sensual man with the mental, such as may be most clearly recognised in
+Sculpture, where the perfection of form is merely a symbol of mental
+perfection and the loftiest moral ideas, and where the body is wholly
+pervaded by soul, and spiritualized even to a glorious transfiguration.
+The merry or ludicrous ideal, on the other hand, consists in the perfect
+harmony and unison of the higher part of our nature with the animal as the
+ruling principle. Reason and understanding are represented as the
+voluntary slaves of the senses.  Hence we shall find that the very
+principle of Comedy necessarily occasioned that which in Aristophanes has
+given so much offence; namely, his frequent allusions to the base
+necessities of the body, the wanton pictures of animal desire, which, in
+spite of all the restraints imposed on it by morality and decency, is
+always breaking loose before one can be aware of it. If we reflect a
+moment, we shall find that even in the present day, on our own stage, the
+infallible and inexhaustible source of the ludicrous is the same
+ungovernable impulses of sensuality in collision with higher duties; or
+cowardice, childish vanity, loquacity, gulosity, laziness, &c. Hence, in
+the weakness of old age, amorousness is the more laughable, as it is plain
+that it is not mere animal instinct, but that reason has only served to
+extend the dominion of the senses beyond their proper limits. In
+drunkenness, too, the real man places himself, in some degree, in the
+condition of the comic ideal.
+
+The fact that the Old Comedy introduced living characters on the stage, by
+name and with all circumstantiality, must not mislead us to infer that
+they actually did represent certain definite individuals. For such
+historical characters in the Old Comedy have always an allegorical
+signification, and represent a class; and as their features were
+caricatures in the masks, so, in like manner, were their characters in the
+representation. But still this constant allusion to a proximate reality,
+which not only allowed the poet, in the character of the chorus, to
+converse with the public in a general way, but also to point the finger at
+certain individual spectators, was essential to this species of poetry. As
+Tragedy delights in harmonious unity, Comedy flourishes in a chaotic
+exuberance; it seeks out the most motley contrasts, and the unceasing play
+of cross purposes. It works up, therefore, the most singular, unheard-of,
+and even impossible incidents, with allusions to the well-known and
+special circumstances of the immediate locality and time.
+
+The comic poet, as well as the tragic, transports his characters into an
+ideal element: not, however, into a world subjected to necessity, but one
+where the caprice of inventive wit rules without check or restraint, and
+where all the laws of reality are suspended. He is at liberty, therefore,
+to invent an action as arbitrary and fantastic as possible; it may even be
+unconnected and unreal, if only it be calculated to place a circle of
+comic incidents and characters in the most glaring light. In this last
+respect, the work should, nay, must, have a leading aim, or it will
+otherwise be in want of _keeping_; and in this view also the comedies
+of Aristophanes may be considered as perfectly systematical. But then, to
+preserve the comic inspiration, this aim must be made a matter of
+diversion, and be concealed beneath a medley of all sorts of out-of-the-
+way matters. Comedy at its first commencement, namely, under the hands of
+its Doric founder, Epicharmus, borrowed its materials chiefly from the
+mythical world. Even in its maturity, to judge from the titles of many
+lost plays of Aristophanes and his contemporaries, it does not seem to
+have renounced this choice altogether, as at a later period, in the
+interval between the old and new comedy, it returned, for particular
+reasons, with a natural predilection to mythology. But as the contrast
+between the matter and form is here in its proper place, and nothing can
+be more thoroughly opposite to the ludicrous form of exhibition than the
+most important and serious concerns of men, public life and the state
+naturally became the peculiar subject-matter of the Old Comedy. It is,
+therefore, altogether political; and private and family life, beyond which
+the new never soars, was only introduced occasionally and indirectly, in
+so far as it might have a reference to public life. The Chorus is
+therefore essential to it, as being in some sort a representation of the
+public: it must by no means be considered as a mere accidental property,
+to be accounted for by the local origin of the Old Comedy; we may assign
+its existence to a more substantial reason--its necessity for a complete
+parody of the tragic form. It contributes also to the expression of that
+festal gladness of which Comedy was the most unrestrained effusion, for in
+all the national and religious festivals of the Greeks, choral songs,
+accompanied by dancing, were performed. The comic chorus transforms itself
+occasionally into such an expression of public joy, as, for instance, when
+the women who celebrate the Thesmophoriae in the piece that bears that
+name, in the midst of the most amusing drolleries, begin to chant their
+melodious hymn, just as in a real festival, in honour of the presiding
+gods. At these times we meet with such a display of sublime lyric poetry,
+that the passages may be transplanted into tragedy without any change or
+alteration whatever. There is, however, this deviation from the tragic
+model, that there are frequently, in the same comedy, several choruses
+which sometimes are present together, singing in response, or at other
+times come on alternately and drop off, without the least general
+reference to each other. The most remarkable peculiarity, however, of the
+comic chorus is the _Parabasis_, an address to the spectators by the
+chorus, in the name, and as the representative of the poet, but having no
+connexion with the subject of the piece. Sometimes he enlarges on his own
+merits, and ridicules the pretensions of his rivals; at other times,
+availing himself of his right as an Athenian citizen, to speak on public
+affairs in every assembly of the people, he brings forward serious or
+ludicrous motions for the common good. The Parabasis must, strictly
+speaking, be considered as incongruous with the essence of dramatic
+representation; for in the drama the poet should always be behind his
+dramatic personages, who again ought to speak and act as if they were
+alone, and to take no perceptible notice of the spectators. Such
+intermixtures, therefore, destroy all tragic impression, but to the comic
+tone these intentional interruptions or intermezzos are welcome, even
+though they be in themselves more serious than the subject of the
+representation, because we are at such times unwilling to submit to the
+constraint of a mental occupation which must perforce be kept up, for then
+it would assume the appearance of a task or obligation. The Parabasis may
+partly have owed its invention to the circumstance of the comic poets not
+having such ample materials as the tragic, for filling up the intervals of
+the action when the stage was empty, by sympathising and enthusiastic
+odes. But it is, moreover, consistent with the essence of the Old Comedy,
+where not merely the subject, but the whole manner of treating it was
+sportive and jocular. The unlimited dominion of mirth and fun manifests
+itself even in this, that the dramatic form itself is not seriously
+adhered to, and that its laws are often suspended; just as in a droll
+disguise the masquerader sometimes ventures to lay aside the mask. The
+practice of throwing out allusions and hints to the pit is retained even
+in the comedy of the present day, and is often found to be attended with
+great success; although unconditionally reprobated by many critics. I
+shall afterwards examine how far, and in what departments of comedy, these
+allusions are admissible.
+
+To sum up in a few words the aim and object of Tragedy and Comedy, we may
+observe, that as Tragedy, by painful emotions, elevates us to the most
+dignified views of humanity, being, in the words of Plato, "the imitation
+of the most beautiful and most excellent life;" Comedy, on the other hand,
+by its jocose and depreciatory view of all things, calls forth the most
+petulant hilarity.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XII.
+
+Aristophanes--His Character as an Artist--Description and Character of his
+remaining Works--A Scene, translated from the _Acharnae,_ by way of
+Appendix.
+
+
+Of the Old Comedy but one writer has come down to us, and we cannot,
+therefore, in forming an estimate of his merits, enforce it by a
+comparison with other masters. Aristophanes had many predecessors,
+_Magnes_, _Cratinus_, _Crates,_ and others; he was indeed one of the
+latest of this school, for he outlived the Old Comedy. We have no
+reason, however, to believe that we witness in him its decline, as we
+do that of Tragedy in the case of the last tragedian; in all probability
+the Old Comedy was still rising in perfection, and he himself one of its
+most finished authors. It was very different with the Old Comedy and with
+Tragedy; the latter died a natural, and the former a violent death.
+Tragedy ceased to exist, because that species of poetry seemed to be
+exhausted, because it was abandoned, and because no one was now able to
+rise to the pitch of its elevation. Comedy was deprived by the hand of
+power of that unrestrained freedom which was necessary to its existence.
+Horace, in a few words, informs us of this catastrophe: "After these
+(Thespis and Aeschylus) followed the Old Comedy, not without great merit;
+but its freedom degenerated into licentiousness, and into a violence which
+deserved to be checked by law. The law was enacted, and the Chorus sunk
+into disgraceful silence as soon as it was deprived of the right to
+injure." [Footnote:
+  Successit vetus his comedia, non sine multâ
+  Laude, sed in vitium libertas excidit, et vim
+  Dignam lege regi: lex est accepta: chorusque
+  Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi.] Towards the end of the
+Peloponnesian war, when a few individuals, in violation of the
+constitution, had assumed the supreme authority in Athens, a law was
+enacted, giving every person attacked by comic poets a remedy by law.
+Moreover, the introduction of real persons on the stage, or the use of
+such masks as bore a resemblance to their features, &c., was prohibited.
+This gave rise to what is called the _Middle Comedy_. The form still
+continued much the same; and the representation, if not perfectly
+allegorical, was nevertheless a parody. But the essence was taken away,
+and this species must have become insipid when it could no longer be
+seasoned by the salt of personal ridicule. Its whole attraction consisted
+in idealizing jocularly the reality that came nearest home to every one of
+the spectators, that is, in representing it under the light of the most
+preposterous perversity; and how was it possible now to lash even the
+general mismanagement of the state-affairs, if no offence was to be given
+to individuals? I cannot, therefore, agree with Horace in his opinion that
+the abuse gave rise to the restriction. The Old Comedy flourished together
+with Athenian liberty; and both were oppressed under the same
+circumstances, and by the same persons. So far were the calumnies of
+Aristophanes from having been the occasion of the death of Socrates, as,
+without a knowledge of history, many persons have thought proper to assert
+(for the _Clouds_ were composed a great number of years before), that
+it was the very same revolutionary despotism that reduced to silence alike
+the sportive censure of Aristophanes, and also punished with death the
+graver animadversions of the incorruptible Socrates. Neither do we see
+that the persecuting jokes of Aristophanes were in any way detrimental to
+Euripides: the free people of Athens beheld alike with admiration the
+tragedies of the one, and their parody by the other, represented on the
+same stage; they allowed every variety of talent to flourish undisturbed
+in the enjoyment of equal rights. Never did a sovereign, for such was the
+Athenian people, listen more good-humouredly to the most unwelcome truths,
+and even allow itself to be openly laughed at. And even if the abuses in
+the public administration were not by these means corrected, still it was
+a grand point that this unsparing exposure of them was tolerated. Besides,
+Aristophanes always shows himself a zealous patriot; the powerful
+demagogues whom he attacks are the same persons that the grave Thucydides
+describes as so pernicious. In the midst of civil war, which destroyed for
+ever the prosperity of Greece, he was ever counselling peace, and
+everywhere recommended the simplicity and austerity of the ancient
+manners. So much for the political import of the Old Comedy.
+
+But Aristophanes, I hear it said, was an immoral buffoon. Yes, among other
+things, he was that also; and we are by no means disposed to justify the
+man who, with such great talents, could yet sink so very low, whether it
+was to gratify his own coarse propensities, or from a supposed necessity
+of winning the favour of the populace, that he might be able to tell them
+bold and unpleasant truths. We know at least that he boasts of having been
+much more sparing than his rivals in the use of obscene jests, to gain the
+laughter of the mob, and of having, in this respect, carried his art to
+perfection. Not to be unjust towards him, we must judge of all that
+appears so repulsive to us, not by modern ideas, but by the opinions of
+his own age and nation. On certain subjects the morals of the ancients
+were very different from ours, and of a much freer character. This arose
+from the very nature of their religion, which was a real worship of
+Nature, and had sanctioned many public customs grossly injurious to
+decency. Besides, from the very retired manner in which the women lived,
+[Footnote: This brings us to the consideration of the question so much
+agitated by antiquaries, whether the Grecian women were present at the
+representation of plays in general, and more especially of comedies. With
+respect to tragedy, I think the question must be answered in the
+affirmative, since the story about the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus could
+not have been invented with any degree of propriety, had women never
+visited the theatre. Moreover, there is a passage in Plato (_De Leg._,
+lib. ii. p. 658, D.), in which he mentions the predilection educated women
+evince for tragical composition. Lastly, Julius Pollux, among the
+technical expressions belonging to the theatre, mentions the Greek word
+for a _spectatress_. But in the case of the old comedy, I should be
+inclined to think that they were not present. However, its indecency alone
+does not appear to be a decisive proof. Even in the religious festivals
+the eyes of the women must have been exposed to sights of gross indecency.
+But in the numerous addresses of Aristophanes to the spectators, even
+where he distinguishes them according to their respective ages and
+otherwise, we never observe any mention of spectatresses, and the
+poet would hardly have omitted the opportunity which this afforded him for
+some witticism or joke. The only passage with which I am acquainted,
+whence any conclusion may be drawn in favour of the presence of women, is
+_Pax_, v. 963-967. But still it remains doubtful, and I recommend it
+to the consideration of the critic.--AUTHOR.], while the men were almost
+constantly together, the language of conversation contracted a certain
+coarseness, as is always the case under similar circumstances. In modern
+Europe, since the origin of chivalry, women have given the tone to social
+life, and to the respectful homage which we yield to them, we owe the
+prevalence of a nobler morality in conversation, in the fine arts, and in
+poetry. Besides, the ancient comic writers, who took the world as they
+found it, had before their eyes a very great degree of corruption of
+morals.
+
+The most honourable testimony in favour of Aristophanes is that of the
+sage Plato, who in an epigram says, that the Graces chose his soul for
+their abode, who was constantly reading him, and transmitted the _Clouds_,
+(this very play, in which, with the meshes of the sophists, philosophy
+itself, and even his master Socrates, was attacked), to Dionysius the
+elder, with the remark, that from it he would be best able to understand
+the state of things at Athens. He could hardly mean merely that the play
+was a proof of the unbridled democratic freedom which prevailed in Athens;
+but must have intended it as an acknowledgment of the poet's profound
+knowledge of the world, and his insight into the whole machinery of the
+civil constitution. Plato has also admirably characterised him in his
+_Symposium_, where he puts into his mouth a speech on love, which
+Aristophanes, far from every thing like high enthusiasm, considers merely
+in a sensual view. His description of it is, however, equally bold and
+ingenious.
+
+We might apply to the pieces of Aristophanes the motto of a pleasant and
+acute adventurer in Goethe: "Mad, but clever." In them we are best enabled
+to conceive why the Dramatic Art in general was consecrated to Bacchus: it
+is the intoxication of poetry, the Bacchanalia of fun. This faculty will
+at times assert its rights as well as others; and hence several nations
+have set apart certain festivals, such as Saturnalia, Carnivals, &c., in
+which the people may give themselves altogether up to frolicsome follies,
+that when once the fit is over, they may for the rest of the year remain
+quiet, and apply themselves to serious business. The Old Comedy is a
+general masquerade of the world, during which much passes that is not
+authorised by the ordinary rules of propriety; but during which much also
+that is diverting, witty, and even instructive, is manifested, which would
+never be heard of without this momentary breaking up of the barricades of
+precision.
+
+However vulgar and even corrupt Aristophanes may have been in his own
+personal propensities, and however offensive his jokes are to good manners
+and good taste, we cannot deny to him, both in the general plan and
+execution of his poems, the praise of carefulness, and the masterly skill
+of a finished artist. His language is extremely polished, the purest
+Atticism reigns in it throughout, and with the greatest dexterity he
+adapts it to every tone, from the most familiar dialogue up to the high
+elevation of the Dithyrambic ode. We cannot doubt that he would have been
+eminently successful in grave poetry, when we see how at times with
+capricious wantonness he lavishes it only to destroy at the next moment
+the impression he has made. The elegant choice of the language becomes
+only the more attractive from the contrast in which it is occasionally
+displayed by him; for he not only indulges at times in the rudest
+expressions of the people, the different dialects, and even in the broken
+Greek of barbarians, but he extends the same arbitrary power which he
+exercised over nature and human affairs, to language itself, and by
+composition, allusion to names of persons, or imitation of particular
+sounds, coins the strangest words imaginable. The structure of his
+versification is not less artificial than that of the tragedians; he uses
+the same forms, but differently modified: his object is ease and variety,
+instead of gravity and dignity; but amidst all this apparent irregularity,
+he still adheres with great accuracy to the laws of metrical composition.
+As Aristophanes, in the exercise of his separate but infinitely varied and
+versatile art, appears to me to have displayed the richest development of
+almost every poetical talent, so also whenever I read his works I am no
+less astonished at the extraordinary capacity of his hearers, which the
+very nature of them presupposes. We might, indeed, expect from the
+citizens of a popular government an intimate acquaintance with the history
+and constitution of their country, with public events and transactions,
+with the personal circumstance of all their contemporaries of any note or
+consequence. But besides all this, Aristophanes required of his auditory a
+cultivated poetical taste; to understand his parodies, they must have
+almost every word of the tragical master-pieces by heart. And what
+quickness of perception was requisite to catch, in passing the lightest
+and most covert irony, the most unexpected sallies and strangest
+allusions, which are frequently denoted by the mere twisting of a
+syllable! We may boldly affirm, that notwithstanding all the explanations
+which have come down to us--notwithstanding the accumulation of learning
+which has been spent upon it, one-half of the wit of Aristophanes is
+altogether lost to the moderns. Nothing but the incredible acuteness and
+vivacity of the Athenian intellect could make it conceivable that these
+comedies which, with all their farcical drolleries, do, nevertheless, all
+the while bear upon the most grave interests of human life, could ever
+have formed a source of popular amusement. We may envy the poet who could
+reckon on so clever and accomplished a public; but this was in truth a
+very dangerous advantage. Spectators whose understandings were so quick,
+would not be easily pleased. Thus Aristophanes complains of the too
+fastidious taste of the Athenians, with whom the most admired of his
+predecessors were immediately out of favour as soon as the slightest trace
+of a falling off in their mental powers was perceivable. On the other
+hand, he allows that the other Greeks could not bear the slightest
+comparison with them in a knowledge of the Dramatic Art. Even genius in
+this department strove to excel at Athens, and here, too, the competition
+was confined within the narrow period of a few festivals, during which the
+people always expected to see something new, of which there was always a
+plentiful supply. The prizes (on which all depended, there being no other
+means of gaining publicity) were distributed after a single
+representation. We may easily imagine, therefore, the state of perfection
+to which this would be carried under the directing care of the poet. If we
+also take into consideration the high state of the co-operating arts, the
+utmost distinctness of delivery (both in speaking and singing,) of the
+most finished poetry, as well as the magnificence and vast size of the
+theatre, we shall then have some idea of a theatrical treat, the like of
+which has never since been offered to the world.
+
+Although, among the remaining works of Aristophanes, we have several of
+his earliest pieces, they all bear the stamp of equal maturity. He had, in
+fact, been long labouring in silence to perfect himself in the exercise of
+an art which he conceived to be of all others the most difficult; nay,
+from diffidence in his own power, (or, to use his own words, like a young
+girl who consigns to the care of others the child of her secret love,) he
+even brought out his earliest pieces under others' names. He appeared for
+the first time without this disguise with the _Knights_, and here he
+displayed the undaunted resolution of a comedian, by an open assault on
+popular opinion. His object was nothing less than the overthrow of Cleon,
+who, after the death of Pericles, was at the head of all state affairs, a
+promoter of war, and a worthless man of very ordinary abilities, but at
+the same time the idol of an infatuated people. The only opponents of
+Cleon were the rich proprietors, who constituted the class of horsemen or
+knights: these Aristophanes in the strongest manner made of his party, by
+forming the chorus of them. He had the prudence never to name Cleon,
+though he portrayed him in such a way that it was impossible to mistake
+him. Yet such was the dread entertained of Cleon and his faction, that no
+mask-maker would venture to execute his likeness: the poet, therefore,
+resolved to act the part himself, merely painting his face. We may easily
+imagine the storms and tumults which this representation must have excited
+among the assembled crowd; however, the bold and well-concerted efforts of
+the poet were crowned with success: his piece gained the prize. He was
+proud of this feat of theatrical heroism, and often alludes with a feeling
+of satisfaction to the Herculean valour with which he first combated the
+mighty monster. No one of his plays, perhaps, is more historical and
+political; and its rhetorical power in exciting our indignation is almost
+irresistible: it is a true dramatic Philippic. However, in point of
+amusement and invention, it does not appear to me the most fortunate. The
+thought of the serious danger which he was incurring may possibly have
+disposed him to a more serious tone than was suitable to comedy, or stung,
+perhaps, by the persecution he had already suffered from Cleon, he may,
+perhaps, have vented his rage in too Archilochean a style. When the storm
+of cutting invective has somewhat spent itself, we have then several droll
+scenes, such us that where the two demagogues, the leather-dealer (that
+is, Cleon) and the sausage-seller, vie with each other by adulation, by
+oracle-quoting, and by dainty tit-bits, to gain the favour of Demos, a
+personification of the people, who has become childish through age, a
+scene humorous in the highest degree; and the piece ends with a triumphal
+rejoicing, which may almost be said to be affecting, when the scene
+changes from the Pnyx, the place where the people assembled, to the
+majestic Propylaea, when Demos, who has been wonderfully restored to a
+second youth, comes forward in the garb of an ancient Athenian, and shows
+that with his youthful vigour, he has also recovered the olden sentiments
+of the days of Marathon.
+
+With the exception of this attack on Cleon, and with the exception also of
+the attacks on Euripides, whom he seems to have pursued with the most
+unrelenting perseverance, the other pieces of Aristophanes are not so
+exclusively pointed against individuals. They have always a general, and
+for the most part a very important aim, which the poet, with all his
+turnings, digressions, and odd medleys, never loses sight of. The
+_Peace_, the _Acharnae_, and the _Lysistrata_, with many turns, still all
+recommend peace; and one object of the _Ecclesiazusae_, or _Women in
+Parliament,_, of the _Thesmophoriazusae, or Women keeping the Festival of
+the Thesmophoriae_, and of _Lysistrata_, is to throw ridicule on the
+relations and the manners of the female sex. In the _Clouds_ he laughs at
+the metaphysics of the Sophists, in the _Wasps_ at the mania of the
+Athenians for hearing and determining law-suits; 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
+one of which the aim is the least apparent, and it is on that very account
+one of the most diverting.
+
+_Peace_ begins in the most spirited and lively manner; the peace-
+loving Trygaeus rides on a dung-beetle to heaven in the manner of
+Bellerophon; War, a desolating giant, with his comrade Riot, alone, in
+place of all the other gods, inhabits Olympus, and there pounds the cities
+of men in a great mortar, making use of the most celebrated generals for
+pestles. The Goddess Peace lies buried in a deep well, out of which she is
+hauled up by ropes, through the united exertions of all the states of
+Greece: all these ingenious and fanciful inventions are calculated to
+produce the most ludicrous effect. Afterwards, however, the play is not
+sustained at an equal elevation; nothing remains but to sacrifice, and to
+carouse in honour of the recovered Goddess of Peace, when the importunate
+visits of such persons as found their advantage in war form, indeed, an
+entertainment pleasant enough, but by no means correspondent to the
+expectations which the commencement gives rise to. We have, in this piece,
+an additional example to prove that the ancient comic writers not only
+changed the decoration during the intervals, when the stage was empty, but
+also while an actor was in sight. The scene changes from Attica to
+Olympus, while Trygaeus is suspended in the air on his beetle, and calls
+anxiously to the director of the machinery to take care that he does not
+break his neck. His descent into the orchestra afterwards denotes his
+return to the earth. It was possible to overlook the liberties taken by
+the tragedians, according as their subject might require it, with the
+Unities of Place and Time, on which such ridiculous stress has been laid
+by many of the moderns, but the bold manner in which the old comic writer
+subjects these mere externalities to his sportive caprice is so striking,
+that it must enforce itself on the most short-sighted observers: and yet
+in all the treatises on the constitution of the Greek stage, due respect
+has never yet been paid to it.
+
+The _Acharnians_, an earlier piece, [Footnote: The Didascaliae place
+it in the year before the _Knights_. It is therefore, the earliest of
+the extant pieces of Aristophanes, and the only one of those which he
+brought out under a borrowed name, that has come down to us.] appears to
+me to possess a much higher excellence than _Peace_, on account of
+the continual progress of the story, and the increasing drollery, which at
+last ends in a downright Bacchanalian uproar. Dikaiopolis, the honest
+citizen, enraged at the base artifices by which the people are deluded,
+and by which they are induced to reject all proposals for peace, sends an
+embassy to Lacedaemon, and concludes a separate treaty for himself and his
+family. He then retires to the country, and, in spite of all assaults,
+encloses a piece of ground before his house, within which there is a
+peaceful market for the people of the neighbouring states, while the rest
+of the country is suffering from the calamities of war. The blessings of
+peace are represented most temptingly to hungry stomachs: the fat Boeotian
+brings his delicious eels and poultry for sale, and nothing is thought of
+but feasting and carousing. Lamachus, the celebrated general, who lives on
+the other side, is, in consequence of a sudden inroad of the enemy, called
+away to defend the frontiers; Dikaiopolis, on the other hand, is invited
+by his neighbours to a feast, where every one brings his own scot.
+Preparations military and preparations culinary are now carried on with
+equal industry and alacrity; here they seize the lance, there the spit;
+here the armour rings, there the wine-flagon; there they are feathering
+helmets, here they are plucking thrushes. Shortly afterwards Lamachus
+returns, supported by two of his comrades, with a broken head and a lame
+foot, and from the other side Dikaiopolis is brought in drunk, and led by
+two good-natured damsels. The lamentations of the one are perpetually
+mimicked and ridiculed in the rejoicings of the other; and with this
+contrast, which is carried to the very utmost limit, the play ends.
+
+_Lysistrata_ is in such bad repute, that we must mention it lightly
+and rapidly, just as we would tread over hot embers. According to the
+story of the poet, the women have taken it into their heads to compel
+their husbands, by a severe resolution, to make peace. Under the direction
+of a clever leader they organize a conspiracy for this purpose throughout
+all Greece, and at the same time gain possession in Athens of the
+fortified Acropolis. The terrible plight the men are reduced to by this
+separation gives rise to the most laughable scenes; plenipotentiaries
+appear from the two hostile powers, and peace is speedily concluded under
+the management of the sage Lysistrata. Notwithstanding the mad indecencies
+which are contained in the piece, its purpose, when stript of these, is
+upon the whole very innocent: the longing for the enjoyment of domestic
+joys, so often interrupted by the absence of the husbands, is to be the
+means of putting an end to the calamitous war by which Greece had so long
+been torn in pieces. In particular, the honest bluntness of the
+Lacedaemonians is inimitably portrayed.
+
+The _Ecclesiazusae_ is in like manner a picture of woman's ascendency, but
+one much more depraved than the former. In the dress of men the women
+steal into the public assembly, and by means of the majority of voices
+which they have thus surreptitiously obtained, they decree a new
+constitution, in which there is to be a community of goods and of women.
+This is a satire on the ideal republics of the philosophers, with similar
+laws; Protagoras had projected such before Plato. The comedy appears to me
+to labour under the very same fault as the _Peace_: the introduction,
+the secret assembly of the women, their rehearsal of their parts as men,
+the description of the popular assembly, are all handled in the most
+masterly manner; but towards the middle the action stands still. Nothing
+remains but the representation of the perplexities and confusion which
+arise from the different communities, especially the community of women,
+and from the prescribed equality of rights in love both for the old and
+ugly, and for the young and beautiful. These perplexities are pleasant
+enough, but they turn too much on a repetition of the same joke. Generally
+speaking, the old allegorical comedy is in its progress exposed to the
+danger of sinking. When we begin with turning the world upside down, the
+most wonderful incidents follow one another as a matter of course, but
+they are apt to appear petty and insignificant when compared with the
+decisive strokes of fun in the commencement.
+
+The _Thesmophoriazusae_ has a proper intrigue, a knot which is not
+loosed till the conclusion, and in this possesses therefore a great
+advantage. Euripides, on account of the well-known hatred of women
+displayed in his tragedies, is accused and condemned at the festival of
+the Thesmophoriae, at which women only were admitted. After a fruitless
+attempt to induce the effeminate poet Agathon to undertake the hazardous
+experiment, Euripides prevails on his brother-in-law, Mnesilochus, who was
+somewhat advanced in years, to disguise himself as a woman, that under
+this assumed appearance he may plead his cause. The manner in which he
+does this gives rise to suspicions, and he is discovered to be a man; he
+flies to the altar for refuge, and to secure himself still more from the
+impending danger, he snatches a child from the arms of one of the women,
+and threatens to kill it if they do not let him alone. As he attempts to
+strangle it, it turns out to be a leather wine-flask wrapped up like a
+child. Euripides now appears in a number of different shapes to save his
+friend: at one time he is Menelaus, who finds Helen again in Egypt; at
+another time he is Echo, helping the chained Andromeda to pour out her
+lamentations, and immediately after he appears as Perseus, about to
+release her from the rock. At length he succeeds in rescuing Mnesilochus,
+who is fastened to a sort of pillory, by assuming the character of a
+procuress, and enticing away the officer of justice who has charge of him,
+a simple barbarian, by the charms of a female flute-player. These parodied
+scenes, composed almost entirely in the very words of the tragedies, are
+inimitable. Whenever Euripides is introduced, we may always, generally
+speaking, lay our account with having the most ingenious and apposite
+ridicule; it seems as if the mind of Aristophanes possessed a peculiar and
+specific power of giving a comic turn to the poetry of this tragedian.
+
+The _Clouds_ is well known, but yet, for the most part, has not been
+duly understood or appreciated. Its object is to show that the fondness
+for philosophical subtleties had led to a neglect of warlike exercises,
+that speculation only served to shake the foundations of religion and
+morals, and that by the arts of sophistry, every duty was rendered
+doubtful, and the worse cause frequently came off victorious. The Clouds
+themselves, as the chorus of the piece (for the poet converts these
+substances into persons, and dresses them out strangely enough), are an
+allegory on the metaphysical speculations which do not rest on the ground
+of experience, but float about without any definite shape or body, in the
+region of possibilities. We may observe in general that it is one of the
+peculiarities of the wit of Aristophanes to take a metaphor literally, and
+to exhibit it in this light before the eyes of the spectators. Of a man
+addicted to unintelligible reveries, it is a common way of speaking to say
+that he is up in the clouds, and accordingly Socrates makes his first
+appearance actually descending from the air in a basket. Whether this
+applies exactly to him is another question; but we have reason to believe
+that the philosophy of Socrates was very ideal, and that it was by no
+means so limited to popular and practical matters as Xenophon would have
+us believe. But why has Aristophanes personified the sophistical
+metaphysics by the venerable Socrates, who was himself a determined
+opponent of the Sophists? There was probably some personal grudge at the
+bottom of this, and we do not attempt to justify it; but the choice of the
+name by no means diminishes the merit of the picture itself. Aristophanes
+declares this play to be the most elaborate of all his works: but in such
+expressions we are not always to take him exactly at his word. On all
+occasions, and without the least hesitation, he lavishes upon himself the
+most extravagant praises; and this must be considered a feature of the
+licence of comedy. However, the _Clouds_ was unfavourably received,
+and twice unsuccessfully competed for the prize.
+
+The _Frogs_, as we have already said, has for its subject the decline
+of Tragic Art. Euripides was dead, as well as Sophocles and Agathon, and
+none but poets of the second rank were now remaining. Bacchus misses
+Euripides, and determines to bring him back from the infernal world. In
+this he imitates Hercules, but although furnished with that hero's lion-
+skin and club, in sentiments he is very unlike him, and as a dastardly
+voluptuary affords us much matter for laughter. Here we have a
+characteristic specimen of the audacity of Aristophanes: he does not even
+spare the patron of his own art, in whose honour this very play was
+exhibited. It was thought that the gods understood a joke as well, if not
+better, than men. Bacchus rows himself over the Acherusian lake, where the
+frogs merrily greet him with their melodious croakings. The proper chorus,
+however, consists of the shades of those initiated in the Eleusinian
+mysteries, and odes of surpassing beauty are put in their mouths.
+Aeschylus had hitherto occupied the tragic throne in the world below, but
+Euripides wants to eject him. Pluto presides, but appoints Bacchus to
+determine this great controversy; the two poets, the sublimely wrathful
+Aeschylus, and the subtle and conceited Euripides, stand opposite each
+other and deliver specimens of their poetical powers; they sing, they
+declaim against each other, and in all their peculiar traits are
+characterised in masterly style. At last a balance is brought, on which
+each lays a verse; but notwithstanding all the efforts of Euripides to
+produce ponderous lines, those of Aeschylus always make the scale of his
+rival to kick the beam. At last the latter becomes impatient of the
+contest, and proposes that Euripides himself, with all his works, his
+wife, children, Cephisophon and all, shall get into one scale, and he will
+only lay against them in the other two verses. Bacchus in the mean time
+has become a convert to the merits of Aeschylus, and although he had sworn
+to Euripides that he would take him back with him from the lower world, he
+dismisses him with a parody of one of his own verses in _Hippolytus_:
+
+  My tongue hath sworn, I however make choice of Aeschylus.
+
+Aeschylus consequently returns to the living world, and resigns the tragic
+throne in his absence to Sophocles.
+
+The observation on the changes of place, which I made when mentioning
+_Peace_, may be here repeated. The scene is first at Thebes, of which
+both Bacchus and Hercules were natives; afterwards the stage is changed,
+without its ever being left by Bacchus, to the nether shore of the
+Acherusian lake, which must have been represented by the sunken space of
+the orchestra, and it was not till Bacchus landed at the other end of the
+logeum that the scenery represented the infernal world, with the palace of
+Pluto in the back-ground. This is not a mere conjecture, it is expressly
+stated by the old scholiast.
+
+The _Wasps_ is, in my opinion, the feeblest of Aristophanes' plays.
+The subject is too limited, the folly it ridicules appears a disease of
+too singular a description, without a sufficient universality of
+application, and the action is too much drawn out. The poet himself speaks
+this time in very modest language of his means of entertainment, and does
+not even promise us immoderate laughter.
+
+On the other hand, the _Birds_ transports us by one of the boldest
+and richest inventions into the kingdom of the fantastically wonderful,
+and delights us with a display of the gayest hilarity: it is a joyous-
+winged and gay-plumed creation. I cannot concur with the old critic in
+thinking that we have in this work a universal and undisguised satire on
+the corruptions of the Athenian state, and of all human society. It seems
+rather a harmless display of merry pranks, which hit alike at gods and men
+without any particular object in view. Whatever was remarkable about birds
+in natural history, in mythology, in the doctrine of divination, in the
+fables of Aesop, or even in proverbial expressions, has been ingeniously
+drawn to his purpose by the poet; who even goes back to cosmogony, and
+shows that at first the raven-winged Night laid a wind-egg, out of which
+the lovely Eros, with golden pinions (without doubt a bird), soared aloft,
+and thereupon gave birth to all things. Two fugitives of the human race
+fall into the domain of the birds, who resolve to revenge themselves on
+them for the numerous cruelties which they have suffered: the two men
+contrive to save themselves by proving the pre-eminency of the birds over
+all other creatures, and they advise them to collect all their scattered
+powers into one immense state; the wondrous city, Cloud-cuckootown, is
+then built above the earth; all sorts of unbidden guests, priests, poets,
+soothsayers, geometers, lawyers, sycophants, wish to nestle in the new
+state, but are driven out; new gods are appointed, naturally enough, after
+the image of the birds, as those of men bore a resemblance to man. Olympus
+is walled up against the old gods, so that no odour of sacrifices can
+reach them; in their emergency, they send an embassy, consisting of the
+voracious Hercules, Neptune, who swears according to the common formula,
+by Neptune, and a Thracian god, who is not very familiar with Greek, but
+speaks a sort of mixed jargon; they are, however, under the necessity of
+submitting to any conditions they can get, and the sovereignty of the
+world is left to the birds. However much all this resembles a mere
+farcical fairy tale, it may be said, however, to have a philosophical
+signification, in thus taking a sort of bird's-eye view of all things,
+seeing that most of our ideas are only true in a human point of view.
+
+The old critics were of opinion that Cratinus was powerful in that biting
+satire which makes its attack without disguise, but that he was deficient
+in a pleasant humour, also that he wanted the skill to develope a striking
+subject to the best advantage, and to fill up his pieces with the
+necessary details. Eupolis they tell us was agreeable in his jokes, and
+ingenious in covert allusions, so that he never needed the assistance of
+parabases to say whatever he wished, but that he was deficient in satiric
+power. But Aristophanes, they add, by a happy medium, united the
+excellencies of both, and that in him we have satire and pleasantry
+combined in due proportion and attractive manner. From these statements I
+conceive myself justified in assuming that among the pieces of
+Aristophanes, the _Knights_ is the most in the style of Cratinus, and
+the _Birds_ in that of Eupolis; and that he had their respective
+manners in view when he composed these pieces. For although he boasts of
+his independent originality, and of his never borrowing anything from
+others, it was hardly possible that among such distinguished contemporary
+artists, all reciprocal influence should be excluded. If this opinion be
+well founded, we have to lament the loss of the works of Cratinus, perhaps
+principally on account of the light they would have thrown on the manners
+of the times, and the knowledge they might have afforded of the Athenian
+constitution, while the loss of the works of Eupolis is to be regretted,
+chiefly for the comic form in which they were delivered.
+
+_Plutus_ was one of the earlier pieces of the poet, but as we have
+it, it is one of his last works; for the first piece was afterwards recast
+by him. In its essence it belongs to the Old Comedy, but in the
+sparingness of personal satire, and in the mild tone which prevails
+throughout, we may trace an approximation to the Middle Comedy. The Old
+Comedy indeed had not yet received its death-blow from a formal enactment,
+but even at this date Aristophanes may have deemed it prudent to avoid a
+full exercise of the democratic privilege of comedy. It has even been said
+(perhaps without any foundation, as the circumstance has been denied by
+others) that Alcibiades ordered Eupolis to be drowned on account of a
+piece which he had aimed at him. Dangers of this description would repress
+the most ardent zeal of authorship: it is but fair that those who seek to
+afford pleasure to their fellow-citizens should at least be secure of
+their life.
+
+
+APPENDIX TO THE TWELFTH LECTURE.
+
+As we do not, so far as I know, possess as yet a satisfactory poetical
+translation of Aristophanes, and as the whole works of this author must,
+for many reasons, ever remain untranslatable, I have been induced to lay
+before my readers the scene in the _Acharnians_ where Euripides makes
+his appearance; not that this play does not contain many other scenes of
+equal, if not superior merit, but because it relates to the character of
+this tragedian as an artist, and is both free from indecency, and,
+moreover, easily understood.
+
+The Acharnians, country-people of Attica, who have greatly suffered from
+the enemy, are highly enraged at Dikaiopolis for concluding a peace with
+the Lacedaemonians, and determine to stone him. He undertakes to speak in
+defence of the Lacedaemonians, standing the while behind a block, as he is
+to lose his head if he does not succeed in convincing them. In this
+ticklish predicament, he calls on Euripides, to lend him the tattered
+garments in which that poet's heroes were in the habit of exciting
+commiseration. We must suppose the house of the tragic poet to occupy the
+middle of the back scene.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+'Tis time I pluck up all my courage then,
+And pay a visit to Euripides.
+Boy, boy!
+
+CEPHISOPHON.
+           Who's there?
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+                         Is Euripides within?
+
+CEPHISOPHON.
+Within, and not within: Can'st fathom that?
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+How within, yet not within?
+
+CEPHISOPHON.
+                             'Tis true, old fellow.
+His mind is out collecting dainty verses, [1]
+And not within. But he's himself aloft
+Writing a tragedy.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+                  Happy Euripides,
+Whose servant here can give such witty answers.
+Call him.
+
+CEPHISOPHON.
+                  It may not be.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+                                I say, you must though--
+For hence I will not budge, but knock the door down.
+Euripides, Euripides, my darling! [2]
+Hear me, at least, if deaf to all besides.
+'Tis Dikaiopolis of Chollis calls you.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+                                 I have not time.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+At least roll round. [3]
+
+EURIPIDES.
+                        I can't. [4]
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+                                    You must.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+Well, I'll roll round. Come down I can't; I'm busy.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+Euripides!
+
+EURIPIDES.
+             What would'st thou with thy bawling.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS
+What! you compose aloft and not below.
+No wonder if your muse's bantlings halt.
+Again, those rags and cloak right tragical,
+The very garb for sketching beggars in!
+But sweet Euripides, a boon, I pray thee.
+Give me the moving rags of some old play;
+I've a long speech to make before the Chorus,
+And if I falter, why the forfeit's death.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+What rags will suit you? Those in which old Oeneus,
+That hapless wight, went through his bitter conflict?
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+Not Oeneus, no,--but one still sorrier.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+Those of blind Phoenix?
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+                            No, not Phoenix either;
+But another, more wretched still than Phoenix
+
+EURIPIDES.
+Whose sorry tatters can the fellow want?
+'Tis Philoctetes' sure! You mean that beggar.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+No; but a person still more beggarly.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+I have it. You want the sorry garments
+Bellerophon, the lame man, used to wear.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+No,--not Bellerophon. Though the man I mean
+Was lame, importunate, and bold of speech.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+I know, 'Tis Telephus the Mysian.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+                                      Right.
+Yes, Telephus: lend me his rags I pray you.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+Ho, boy! Give him the rags of Telephus.
+There lie they; just upon Thyestes' rags,
+And under those of Ino.
+
+CEPHISOPHON.
+                           Here! take them.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS (_putting them on_).
+Now Jove! who lookest on, and see'st through all, [5]
+Your blessing, while thus wretchedly I garb me.
+Pr'ythee, Euripides, a further boon,
+It goes, I think, together with these rags:
+The little Mysian bonnet for my head;
+"For sooth to-day I must put on the beggar,
+And be still what I am, and yet not seem so." [6]
+The audience here may know me who I am,
+But like poor fools the chorus stand unwitting,
+While I trick them with my flowers of rhetoric.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+A rare device, i'faith! Take it and welcome.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+"For thee. my blessing; for Telephus, my thoughts." [7]
+'Tis well; already, words flow thick and fast.
+Oh! I had near forgot--A beggar's staff, I pray.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+Here, take one, and thyself too from these doors.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+(_Aside_.) See'st thou, my soul,--he'd drive thee from his door
+Still lacking many things. Become at once
+A supple, oily beggar. (_Aloud_.) Good Euripides,
+Lend me a basket, pray;--though the bottom's
+Scorch'd, 'twill do.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+                      Poor wretch! A basket? What's thy need on't?
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+No need beyond the simple wish to have it.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+You're getting troublesome. Come pack--be off.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+(_Aside_.) Faugh! Faugh!
+(_Aloud_.) May heaven prosper thee as--thy good mother. [8]
+
+EURIPIDES.
+Be off, I say!
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+                  Not till thou grant'st my prayer.
+Only a little cup with broken rim.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+Take it and go; for know you're quite a plague.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+(_Aside_.) Knows he how great a pest he is himself?
+(_Aloud_.) But, my Euripides! my sweet! one thing more:
+Give me a cracked pipkin stopped with sponge.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+The man would rob me of a tragedy complete.
+There--take it, and begone.
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+Well! I am going.
+Yet what to do? One thing I lack, whose want
+Undoes me. Good, sweet Euripides!
+Grant me but this, I'll ask no more, but go--
+Some cabbage-leaves--a few just in my basket!
+
+EURIPIDES.
+You'll ruin me. See there! A whole play's gone!
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS (_seemingly going off_).
+Nothing more now. I'm really off. I am, I own,
+A bore, wanting in tact to please the great.
+Woe's me! Was ever such a wretch? Alas!
+I have forgot the very chiefest thing of all.
+Hear me, Euripides, my dear! my darling.
+Choicest ills betide me! if e'er I ask
+Aught more than this; but one--this one alone:
+Throw me a pot-herb from thy mother's stock.
+
+EURIPIDES.
+The fellow would insult me--shut the door.
+(_The Encyclema revolves, and Euripides and Cephisophon retire_.)
+
+DIKAIOPOLIS.
+Soul of me, thou must go without a pot-herb!
+Wist thou what conflict thou must soon contend in
+To proffer speech and full defence for Sparta?
+Forward, my soul! the barriers are before thee.
+What, dost loiter? hast not imbibed Euripides?
+And yet I blame thee not. Courage, sad heart!
+And forward, though it be to lay thy head
+Upon the block. Rouse thee, and speak thy mind.
+Forward there! forward again! bravely heart, bravely.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] The Greek diminutive _epullia_ is here correctly expressed by the
+German _verschen_, but versicle would not be tolerated in English.--TRANS.
+
+[2] Euripidion--in the German Euripidelein.--TRANS.
+
+[3] A technical expression from the Encyclema, which was thrust out.
+
+[4] Euripides appears in the upper story; but as in an altana, or sitting
+to an open gallery.
+
+[5] Alluding to the holes in the mantle which he holds up to the light.
+
+[6] These lines are from Euripides' tragedy of _Telephus_.
+
+[7] An allusion (which a few lines lower is again repeated) to his mother
+as a poor retailer of vegetables.
+
+[8] See previous footnote.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+Whether the Middle Comedy was a distinct species--Origin of the New
+Comedy--A mixed species--Its prosaic character--Whether versification is
+essential to Comedy--Subordinate kinds--Pieces of Character, and of
+Intrigue--The Comic of observation, of self-consciousness, and arbitrary
+Comic--Morality of Comedy--Plautus and Terence as imitators of the Greeks
+here cited and characterised for want of the Originals--Moral and social
+aim of the Attic Comedy--Statues of two Comic Authors.
+
+
+Ancient critics assume the existence of a _Middle Comedy_, between
+the _Old_ and the _New_. Its distinguishing characteristics are variously
+described: by some its peculiarity is made to consist in the abstinence
+from personal satire and introduction of real characters, and by others in
+the abolition of the chorus. But the introduction of real persons under
+their true names was never an indispensable requisite. Indeed, in several,
+even of Aristophanes' plays, we find characters in no respect historical,
+but altogether fictitious, but bearing significant names, after the manner
+of the New Comedy; while personal satire is only occasionally employed.
+This right of personal satire was no doubt, as I have already shown,
+essential to the Old Comedy, and the loss of it incapacitated the poets
+from throwing ridicule on public actions and affairs of state. When
+accordingly they confined themselves to private life, the chorus ceased at
+once to have any significance. However, accidental circumstances
+accelerated its abolition. To dress and train the choristers was an
+expensive undertaking; now, as Comedy with the forfeiture of its political
+privileges lost also its festal dignity, and was degraded into a mere
+amusement, the poet no longer found any rich patrons willing to take upon
+themselves the expense of furnishing the chorus.
+
+Platonius mentions a further characteristic of the Middle Comedy. On
+account, he says, of the danger of alluding to public affairs, the comic
+writers had turned all their satire against serious poetry, whether epic
+or tragic, and sought to expose its absurdities and contradictions. As a
+specimen of this kind he gives the _Aeolosikon_, one of Aristophanes'
+latest works. This description coincides with the idea of parody, which we
+placed foremost in our account of the Old Comedy. Platonius adduces also
+another instance in the _Ulysses_ of Cratinus, a burlesque of the
+_Odyssey_. But, in order of time, no play of Cratinus could belong to
+the Middle Comedy; for his death is mentioned by Aristophanes in his
+_Peace_. And as to the drama of Eupolis, in which he described what
+we call an Utopia, or Lubberly Land, what else was it but a parody of the
+poetical legends of the golden age? But in Aristophanes, not to mention
+his parodies of so many tragic scenes, are not the Heaven-journey of
+Trygaeus, and the Hell-journey of Bacchus, ludicrous imitations of the
+deeds of Bellerophon and Hercules, sung in epic and tragic poetry? In vain
+therefore should we seek in this restriction to parody any distinctive
+peculiarity of the so-called Middle Comedy. Frolicsome caprice, and
+allegorical significance of composition are, poetically considered, the
+only essential criteria of the Old Comedy. In this class, therefore, we
+shall rank every work where we find these qualities, in whatever times,
+and under whatever circumstances, it may have been composed.
+
+As the New Comedy arose out of a mere negation, the abolition, viz., of
+the old political freedom, we may easily conceive that there would be an
+interval of fluctuating, and tentative efforts to supply its place, before
+a new comic form could be developed and fully established. Hence there may
+have been many kinds of the Middle Comedy, many intermediate gradations,
+between the Old and the New; and this is the opinion of some men of
+learning. And, indeed, historically considered, there appears good grounds
+for such a view; but in an artistic point of view, a transition does not
+itself constitute a species.
+
+We proceed therefore at once to the New Comedy, or that species of poetry
+which with us receives the appellation of Comedy. We shall, I think, form
+a more correct notion of it, if we consider it in its historical
+connexion, and from a regard to its various ingredients explain it to be a
+mixed and modified species, than we should were we to term it an original
+and pure species, as those do who either do not concern themselves at all
+with the Old Comedy, or else regard it as nothing better than a mere rude
+commencement. Hence, the infinite importance of Aristophanes, as we have
+in him a kind of poetry of which there is no other example to be found in
+the world.
+
+The New Comedy may, in certain respects, be described as the Old, tamed
+down; but in productions of genius, tameness is not generally considered a
+merit. The loss incurred by the prohibition of an unrestricted freedom of
+satire the new comic writers endeavoured to compensate by a mixture of
+earnestness borrowed from tragedy, both in the form of representation and
+the general structure, and also in the impressions which they laboured to
+produce. We have seen how, in its last epoch, tragic poetry descended from
+its ideal elevation, and came nearer to common reality, both in the
+characters and in the tone of the dialogue, but more especially in its
+endeavour to convey practical instruction respecting the conduct of civil
+and domestic life in all their several requirements. This utilitarian turn
+in Euripides was the subject of Aristophanes' ironical commendation
+[Footnote: The _Frogs_, v. 971-991.]. Euripides was the precursor of
+the New Comedy; and all the poets of this species particularly admired
+him, and acknowledged him as their master.--The similarity of tone and
+spirit is even so great between them, that moral maxims of Euripides have
+been ascribed to Menander, and others of Menander to Euripides. On the
+other hand, among the fragments of Menander, we find topics of consolation
+which frequently rise to the height of the true tragic tone.
+
+New Comedy, therefore, is a mixture of earnestness and mirth. [Footnote:
+The original here is not susceptible of an exact translation into English.
+Though the German language has this great advantage, that there are few
+ideas which may not be expressed in it in words of Teutonic origin, yet
+words derived from Greek and Latin are also occasionally used
+indiscriminately with the Teutonic synonymes, for the sake of variety or
+otherwise. Thus the generic word _spiel_ (play), is formed into
+_lustspiel_ (comedy), _trauerspiel_ (tragedy), _sing-spiel_ (opera),
+_schauspiel_ (drama); but the Germans also use _tragoedie_, _komoedie_,
+opera and drama. In the text, the author proposes, for the sake of
+distinction, to give the name of _lustspiel_ to the New Comedy, to
+distinguish it from the old; but having only the single term comedy in
+English, I must, in translating _lustspiel_, make use of the two words,
+_New Comedy_.--TRANS.] The poet no longer turns poetry and the world into
+ridicule, he no longer abandons himself to an enthusiasm of fun, but seeks
+the sportive element in the objects themselves; he depicts in human
+characters and situations whatever occasions mirth, in a word, what is
+pleasant and laughable. But the ridiculous must no longer come forward as
+the pure creation of his own fancy, but must be verisimilar, that is, seem
+to be real. Hence we must consider anew the above described _comic ideal_
+of human nature under the restrictions which this law of composition
+imposes, and determine accordingly the different kinds and gradations of
+the Comic.
+
+The highest tragic earnestness, as I have already shown, runs ever into
+the infinite; and the subject of Tragedy (properly speaking) is the
+struggle between the outward finite existence, and the inward infinite
+aspirations. The subdued earnestness of the New Comedy, on the other hand,
+remains always within the sphere of experience. The place of Destiny is
+supplied by Chance, for the latter is the empirical conception of the
+former, as being that which lies beyond our power or control. And
+accordingly we actually find among the fragments of the Comic writers as
+many expressions about Chance, as we do in the tragedians about Destiny.
+To unconditional necessity, moral liberty could alone be opposed; as for
+Chance, every one must use his wits, and turn it to his own profit as he
+best can. On this account, the whole moral of the New Comedy, just like
+that of the Fable, is nothing more than a theory of prudence. In this
+sense, an ancient critic has, with inimitable brevity, given us the whole
+sum of the matter: that Tragedy is a running away from, or making an end
+of, life; Comedy its regulation.
+
+The idea of the Old Comedy is a fantastic illusion, a pleasant dream,
+which at last, with the exception of the general effect, all ends in
+nothing. The New Comedy, on the other hand, is earnest in its form. It
+rejects every thing of a contradictory nature, which might have the effect
+of destroying the impressions of reality. It endeavours after strict
+coherence, and has, in common with Tragedy, a formal complication and
+dénouement of plot. Like Tragedy, too, it connects together its incidents,
+as cause and effect, only that it adopts the law of existence as it
+manifests itself in experience, without any such reference as Tragedy
+assumes to an idea. As the latter endeavours to satisfy our feelings at
+the close, in like manner the New Comedy endeavours to provide, at least,
+an apparent point of rest for the understanding. This, I may remark in
+passing, is by no means an easy task for the comic writer: he must
+contrive at last skilfully and naturally to get rid of the contradictions
+which with their complication and intricacy have diverted us during the
+course of the action; if he really smooths them all off by making his
+fools become rational, or by reforming or punishing his villains, then
+there is an end at once of everything like a pleasant and comical
+impression.
+
+Such were the comic and tragic ingredients of the New Comedy, or Comedy in
+general. There is yet a third, however, which in itself is neither comic
+nor tragic, in short, not even poetic. I allude to its portrait-like
+truthfulness. The ideal and caricature, both in the plastic arts and in
+dramatic poetry, lay claim to no other truth than that which lies in their
+significance: their individual beings even are not intended to appear
+real. Tragedy moves in an ideal, and the Old Comedy in a fanciful or
+fantastical world. As the creative power of the fancy was circumscribed in
+the New Comedy, it became necessary to afford some equivalent to the
+understanding, and this was furnished by the probability of the subjects
+represented, of which it was to be the judge. I do not mean the
+calculation of the rarity or frequency of the represented incidents (for
+without the liberty of depicting singularities, even while keeping within
+the limits of every-day life, comic amusement would be impossible), but
+all that is here meant is the individual truth of the picture. The New
+Comedy must be a true picture of the manners of the day, and its tone must
+be local and national; and even if we should see comedies of other times,
+and other nations, brought upon the stage, we shall still be able to trace
+and be pleased with this resemblance. By portrait-like truthfulness I do
+not mean that the comic characters must be altogether individual. The most
+striking features of different individuals of a class may be combined
+together in a certain completeness, provided they are clothed with a
+sufficient degree of peculiarity to have an individual life, and are not
+represented as examples of any partial and incomplete conception. But in
+so far as Comedy depicts the constitution of social and domestic life in
+general, it is a portrait; from this prosaic side it must be variously
+modified, according to time and place, while the comic motives, in respect
+of their poetical principle, are always the same.
+
+The ancients themselves acknowledged the New Comedy to be a faithful
+picture of life. Full of this idea, the grammarian Aristophanes exclaimed
+in a somewhat affected, though highly ingenious turn of expression: "O
+life and Menander! which of you copied the other?" Horace informs us that
+"some doubted whether Comedy be a poem; because neither in its subject nor
+in its language is there the same impressive elevation which distinguished
+from ordinary discourse by the versification." But it was urged by others,
+that Comedy occasionally elevates her tone; for instance, when an angry
+father reproaches a son for his extravagance. This answer, however, is
+rejected by Horace as insufficient. "Would Pomponius," says he, with a
+sarcastic application, "hear milder reproaches if his father were living?"
+To answer the doubt, we must examine wherein Comedy goes beyond individual
+reality. In the first place it is a simulated whole, composed of congruous
+parts, agreeably to the scale of art. Moreover, the subject represented is
+handled according to the laws of theatrical exhibition; everything foreign
+and incongruous is kept out, while all that is essential to the matter in
+hand is hurried on with swifter progress than in real life; over the
+whole, viz., the situations and characters, a certain clearness and
+distinctness of appearance is thrown, which the vague and indeterminate
+outlines of reality seldom possess. Thus the form constitutes the poetic
+element of Comedy, while its prosaic principle lies in the matter, in the
+required assimilation to something individual and external.
+
+We may now fitly proceed to the consideration of the much mooted question,
+whether versification be essential to Comedy, and whether a comedy written
+in prose is an imperfect production. This question has been frequently
+answered in the affirmative on the authority of the ancients, who, it is
+true, had no theatrical works in prose; this, however, may have arisen
+from accidental circumstances, for example, the great extent of their
+stage, in which verse, from its more emphatic delivery, must have been
+better heard than prose. Moreover, these critics forget that the Mimes of
+Sophron, so much admired by Plato, were written in prose. And what were
+these Mimes? If we may judge of them from the statement that some of the
+Idylls of Theocritus were imitations of them in hexameters, they were
+pictures of real life, in which every appearance of poetry was studiously
+avoided. This consists in the coherence and connexion of a drama, which
+certainly is not found in these pieces; they are merely so many detached
+scenes, in which one thing succeeds another by chance, and without
+preparation, as the particular hour of any working-day or holiday brought
+it about. The want of dramatic interest was supplied by the mimic element,
+that is, by the most accurate representation of individual peculiarities
+in action and language, which arose from nationality as modified by local
+circumstances, and from sex, age, rank, occupations, and so forth.
+
+Even in versified Comedy, the language must, in the choice of words and
+phrases, differ in no respect, or at least in no perceptible degree, from
+that of ordinary life; the licences of poetical expression, which are
+indispensable in other departments of poetry, are here inadmissible. Not
+only must the versification not interfere with the common, unconstrained,
+and even careless tone of conversation, but it must also seem to be itself
+unpremeditated. It must not by its lofty tone elevate the characters as in
+Tragedy, where, along with the unusual sublimity of the language, it
+becomes as it were a mental Cothurnus. In Comedy the verse must serve
+merely to give greater lightness, spirit, and elegance to the dialogue.
+Whether, therefore, a particular comedy ought to be versified or not, must
+depend on the consideration whether it would be more suitable to the
+subject in hand to give to the dialogue this perfection of form, or to
+adopt into the comic imitation all rhetorical and grammatical errors, and
+even physical imperfections of speech. The frequent production, however,
+of prose comedies in modern times has not been owing so much to this cause
+as to the ease and convenience of the author, and in some degree also of
+the player. I would, however, recommend to my countrymen, the Germans, the
+diligent use of verse, and even of rhyme, in Comedy; for as our national
+Comedy is yet to be formed, the whole composition, by the greater
+strictness of the form, would gain in keeping and appearance, and we
+should be enabled at the very outset to guard against many important
+errors. We have not yet attained such a mastery in this matter as will
+allow us to abandon ourselves to an agreeable negligence.
+
+As we have pronounced the New Comedy to be a mixed species, formed out of
+comic and tragic, poetic and prosaic elements, it is evident that this
+species may comprise several subordinate kinds, according to the
+preponderance of one or other of the ingredients. If the poet plays in a
+sportive humour with his own inventions, the result is a farce; if he
+confines himself to the ludicrous in situations and characters, carefully
+avoiding all admixture of serious matter, we have a pure comedy
+(_lustspiel_); in proportion as earnestness prevails in the scope of
+the whole composition, and in the sympathy and moral judgment it gives
+rise to, the piece becomes what is called Instructive or Sentimental
+Comedy; and there is only another step to the familiar or domestic
+tragedy. Great stress has often been laid on the two last mentioned
+species as inventions entirely new, and of great importance, and peculiar
+theories have been devised for them, &c. In the lacrymose drama of
+Diderot, which was afterwards so much decried, the failure consisted
+altogether in that which was new; the affectation of nature, the pedantry
+of the domestic relations, and the lavish use of pathos. Did we still
+possess the whole of the comic literature of the Greeks, we should,
+without doubt, find in it the models of all these species, with this
+difference, however, that the clear head of the Greeks assuredly never
+allowed them to fall into a chilling monotony, but that they arrayed and
+tempered all in due proportion. Have not we, even among the few pieces
+that remain to us, the _Captives_ of Plautus, which may be called a
+pathetic drama, the _Step-Mother_ of Terence, a true family picture; while
+the _Amphitryo_ borders on the fantastic boldness of the Old Comedy, and
+the _Twin-Brothers_ (_Menaechmi_) is a wild piece of intrigue? Do we not
+find in all Terence's plays serious, impassioned, and touching passages?
+We have only to call to mind the first scene of the _Heautontimorumenos_.
+From our point of view we hope in short to find a due place for all
+things. We see here no distinct species, but merely gradations in the tone
+of the composition, which are marked by transitions more or less
+perceptible.
+
+Neither can we allow the common division into _Plays of Character_ and
+_Plays of Intrigue_, to pass without limitation. A good comedy ought
+always to be both, otherwise it will be deficient either in body or
+animation. Sometimes, however, the one and sometimes the other will, no
+doubt, preponderate. The development of the comic characters requires
+situations to place them in strong contrast, and these again can result
+from nothing but that crossing of purposes and events, which, as I have
+already shown, constitutes intrigue in the dramatic sense. Every one knows
+the meaning of intriguing in common life; namely, the leading others by
+cunning and dissimulation, to further, without their knowledge and against
+their will, our own hidden designs. In the drama both these significations
+coincide, for the cunning of the one becomes a cross-purpose for the
+other.
+
+When the characters are only slightly sketched, so far merely as is
+necessary to account for the actions of the characters in this or that
+case; when also the incidents are so accumulated, that little room is left
+for display of character; when the plot is so wrought up, that the motley
+tangle of misunderstandings and embarrassments seems every moment on the
+point of being loosened, and yet the knot is only drawn tighter and
+tighter: such a composition may well be called a Play of Intrigue. The
+French critics have made it fashionable to consider this kind of play much
+below the so-called Play of Character, perhaps because they look too
+exclusively to how much of a play may be retained by us and carried home.
+It is true, the Piece of Intrigue, in some degree, ends at last in
+nothing: but why should it not be occasionally allowable to divert oneself
+ingeniously, without any ulterior object? Certainly, a good comedy of this
+description requires much inventive wit: besides the entertainment which
+we derive from the display of such acuteness and ingenuity, the wonderful
+tricks and contrivances which are practised possess a great charm for the
+fancy, as the success of many a Spanish piece proves.
+
+To the Play of Intrigue it is objected, that it deviates from the natural
+course of things, that it is improbable. We may admit the former without
+however admitting the latter. The poet, no doubt, exhibits before us what
+is unexpected, extraordinary, and singular, even to incredibility; and
+often he even sets out with a great improbability, as, for example, the
+resemblance between two persons, or a disguise which is not seen through;
+afterwards, however, all the incidents must have the appearance of truth,
+and all the circumstances by means of which the affair takes so marvellous
+a turn, must be satisfactorily explained. As in respect to the events
+which take place, the poet gives us but a light play of wit, we are the
+more strict with him respecting the _how_ by which they are brought about.
+
+In the comedies which aim more at delineation of character, the dramatic
+personages must be skilfully grouped so as to throw light on each other's
+character. This, however, is very apt to degenerate into too systematic a
+method, each character being regularly matched with its symmetrical
+opposite, and thereby an unnatural appearance is given to the whole. Nor
+are those comedies deserving of much praise, in which the rest of the
+characters are introduced only, as it were, to allow the principal one to
+go through all his different probations; especially when that character
+consists of nothing but an opinion, or a habit (for instance,
+_L'Optimiste_, _Le Distrait_), as if an individual could thus be made up
+entirely of one single peculiarity, and must not rather be on all sides
+variously modified and affected.
+
+What was the sportive ideal of human nature in the Old Comedy I have
+already shown. Now as the New Comedy had to give to its representation a
+resemblance to a definite reality, it could not indulge in such studied
+and arbitrary exaggeration as the old did. It was, therefore, obliged to
+seek for other sources of comic amusement, which lie nearer the province
+of earnestness, and these it found in a more accurate and thorough
+delineation of character.
+
+In the characters of the New Comedy, either the _Comic of Observation_ or
+the _Self-Conscious_ and _Confessed Comic_, will be found to prevail. The
+former constitutes the more refined, or what is called High Comedy, and
+the latter Low Comedy or Farce.
+
+But to explain myself more distinctly: there are laughable peculiarities,
+follies, and obliquities, of which the possessor himself is unconscious,
+or which, if he does at all perceive them, he studiously endeavours to
+conceal, as being calculated to injure him in the opinion of others. Such
+persons consequently do not give themselves out for what they actually
+are; their secret escapes from them unwittingly, or against their will.
+Rightly, therefore, to portray such characters, the poet must lend us his
+own peculiar talent for observation, that we may fully understand them.
+His art consists in making the character appear through slight hints and
+stolen glimpses, and in so placing the spectator, that whatever delicacy
+of observation it may require, he can hardly fail to see through them.
+
+There are other moral defects, which are beheld by their possessor with a
+certain degree of satisfaction, and which he even makes it a principle not
+to get rid of, but to cherish and preserve. Of this kind is all that,
+without selfish pretensions, or hostile inclinations, merely originates in
+the preponderance of the animal being. This may, without doubt, be united
+to a high degree of intellect, and when such a person applies his mental
+powers to the consideration of his own character, laughs at himself,
+confesses his failings or endeavours to reconcile others to them, by
+setting them in a droll light, we have then an instance of the _Self-
+Conscious_ Comic This species always supposes a certain inward duality
+of character, and the superior half, which rallies and laughs at the
+other, has in its tone and occupation a near affinity to the comic poet
+himself. He occasionally delivers over his functions entirely to this
+representative, allowing him studiously to overcharge the picture which he
+draws of himself, and to enter into a tacit understanding with the
+spectators, that he and they are to turn the other characters into
+ridicule. We have in this way the _Comedy of Caprice_, which generally
+produces a powerful effect, however much critics may depreciate it. In it
+the spirit of the Old Comedy is still at work. The privileged merry-maker,
+who, under different names, has appeared on almost all stages, whose part
+is at one time a display of shrewd wit, and at another of coarse
+clownishness, has inherited something of the licentious enthusiasm, but
+without the rights and privileges of the free and unrestrained writers of
+the Old Comedy. Could there be a stronger proof that the Old Comedy, which
+we have described as the original species, was not a mere Grecian
+peculiarity, but had its root and principle in the very nature of things?
+
+To keep the spectators in a mirthful tone of mind Comedy must hold them as
+much as possible aloof from all moral appreciation of its personages, and
+from all deep interest in their fortunes, for in both these cases an
+entrance will infallibly be given to seriousness. How then does the poet
+avoid agitating the moral feeling, when the actions he represents are of
+such a nature as must give rise sometimes to disgust and contempt, and
+sometimes to esteem and love? By always keeping within the province of the
+understanding, he contrasts men with men as mere physical beings, just to
+measure on each other their powers, of course their mental powers as well
+as others, nay, even more especially. In this respect Comedy bears a very
+near affinity to Fable: in the Fable we have animals endowed with reason,
+and in Comedy we have men serving their animal propensities with their
+understanding. By animal propensities I mean sensuality, or, in a still
+more general sense, self-love. As heroism and self-sacrifice raise the
+character to a tragic elevation, so the true comic personages are complete
+egotists. This must, however, be understood with due limitation: we do not
+mean that Comedy never portrays the social instincts, only that it
+invariably represents them as originating in the natural endeavour after
+our own happiness. Whenever the poet goes beyond this, he leaves the comic
+tone. It is not his purpose to direct our feelings to a sense of the
+dignity or meanness, the innocence or corruption, the goodness or baseness
+of the acting personages; but to show us whether they act stupidly or
+wisely, adroitly or clumsily, with silliness or ability.
+
+Examples will place the matter in the clearest light. We possess an
+involuntary and immediate veneration for truth, and this belongs to the
+innermost emotions of the moral sense. A malignant lie, which threatens
+mischievous consequences, fills us with the highest indignation, and
+belongs to Tragedy. Why then are cunning and deceit admitted to be
+excellent as comic motives, so long as they are used with no malicious
+purpose, but merely to promote our self-love, to extricate one's-self from
+a dilemma, or to gain some particular object, and from which no dangerous
+consequences are to be dreaded? It is because the deceiver having already
+withdrawn from the sphere of morality, truth and untruth are in themselves
+indifferent to him, and are only considered in the light of means; and so
+we entertain ourselves merely with observing how great an expenditure of
+sharpness and ready-wittedness is necessary to serve the turn of a
+character so little exalted. Still more amusing is it when the deceiver is
+caught in his own snare; for instance, when he is to keep up a lie, but
+has a bad memory. On the other hand, the mistake of the deceived party,
+when not seriously dangerous, is a comic situation, and the more so in
+proportion as this error of the understanding arises from previous abuse
+of the mental powers, from vanity, folly, or obliquity. But above all when
+deceit and error cross one another, and are by that means multiplied, the
+comic situations produced are particularly excellent. For instance, two
+men meet with the intention of deceiving one another; each however is
+forewarned and on his guard, and so both go away deceived only in respect
+to the success of their deception. Or again, one wishes to deceive
+another, but unwittingly tells him the truth; the other person, however,
+being suspicious, falls into the snare, merely from being over-much, on
+his guard. We might in this way compose a sort of comic grammar, which
+should show how the separate motives are to be entangled one with another,
+with continually increasing effect, up to the most artificial
+complication. It might also point out how that tangle of misunderstanding
+which constitutes a Comedy of Intrigue is by no means so contemptible a
+part of the comic art, as the advocates of the fine-spun Comedy of
+Character are pleased to assert.
+
+Aristotle describes the laughable as an imperfection, an impropriety which
+is not productive of any essential harm. Excellently said! for from the
+moment that we entertain a real compassion for the characters, all
+mirthful feeling is at an end. Comic misfortune must not go beyond an
+embarrassment, which is to be set right at last, or at most, a deserved
+humiliation. Of this description are corporeal means of education applied
+to grown people, which our finer, or at least more fastidious age, will
+not tolerate on the stage, although Molière, Holberg, and other masters,
+have frequently availed themselves of them. The comic effect arises from
+our having herein a pretty obvious demonstration of the mind's dependence
+on external things: we have, as it were, motives assuming a palpable form.
+In Comedy these chastisements hold the same place that violent deaths, met
+with heroic magnanimity, do in Tragedy. Here the resolution remains
+unshaken amid all the terrors of annihilation; the man perishes but his
+principles survive; there the corporeal existence remains, but the
+sentiments suffer an instantaneous change.
+
+As then Comedy must place the spectator in a point of view altogether
+different from that of moral appreciation, with what right can moral
+instruction be demanded of Comedy, with what ground can it be expected?
+When we examine more closely the moral apophthegms of the Greek comic
+writers, we find that they are all of them maxims of experience. It is
+not, however, from experience that we gain a knowledge of our duties, of
+which conscience gives us an immediate conviction; experience can only
+enlighten us with respect to what is profitable or detrimental. The
+instruction of Comedy does not turn on the dignity of the object proposed
+but on the sufficiency of the means employed. It is, as has been already
+said, the doctrine of prudence; the morality of consequences and not of
+motives. Morality, in its genuine acceptation, is essentially allied to
+the spirit of Tragedy.
+
+Many philosophers have on this account reproached Comedy with immorality,
+and among others, Rousseau, with much eloquence, in his _Epistle on the
+Drama_. The aspect of the actual course of things in the world is, no
+doubt, far from edifying; it is not, however, held up in Comedy as a model
+for imitation, but as a warning and admonition. In the doctrine of morals
+there is an applied or practical part: it may be called the Art of Living.
+Whoever has no knowledge of the world is perpetually in danger of making a
+wrong application of moral principles to individual cases, and, so with
+the very best intentions in the world, may occasion much mischief both to
+himself and others. Comedy is intended to sharpen our powers of
+discrimination, both of persons and situations; to make us shrewder; and
+this is its true and only possible morality.
+
+So much for the determination of the general idea, which must serve as our
+clue in the examination of the merits of the individual poets.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+Plautus and Terence as Imitators of the Greeks, here examined and
+characterized in the absence of the Originals they copied--Motives of the
+Athenian Comedy from Manners and Society--Portrait-Statues of two
+Comedians.
+
+
+On the little of the New Comedy of the Greeks that has reached us, either
+in fragments or through the medium of Roman imitations, all I have to say
+may be comprised in a few words.
+
+In this department Greek literature was extremely rich: the mere list of
+the comic writers whose works are lost, and of the names of their works,
+so far as they are known to us, makes of itself no inconsiderable
+dictionary. Although the New Comedy developed itself and flourished only
+in the short interval between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the
+first successors of Alexander the Great, yet the stock of pieces amounted
+to thousands; but time has made such havoc in this superabundance of
+talented and ingenious works, that nothing remains in the original but a
+number of detached fragments, of which many are so disfigured as to be
+unintelligible, and, in the Latin, about twenty translations or recasts of
+Greek originals by Plautus, and six by Terence. Here is a fitting task for
+the redintegrative labours of criticism, to put together all the
+fragmentary traces which we possess, in order to form from them something
+like a just estimate and character of what is lost. The chief requisites
+in an undertaking of this kind, I will take upon myself to point out. The
+fragments and moral maxims of the comic writers are, in their
+versification and language, distinguished by extreme purity, elegance, and
+accuracy; moreover, the tone of society which speaks in them breathes a
+certain Attic grace. The Latin comic poets, on the other hand, are
+negligent in their versification; they trouble themselves very little
+about syllabic quantity, and the very idea of it is almost lost amidst
+their many metrical licences. Their language also, at least that of
+Plautus, is deficient in cultivation and polish. Several learned Romans,
+and Varro among others, have, it is true, highly praised the style of this
+poet, but then we must make the due distinction between philological and
+poetical approbation. Plautus and Terence were among the most ancient
+Roman writers, and belonged to an age when a book-language had hardly yet
+an existence, and when every phrase was caught up fresh from the life.
+This _naïve_ simplicity had its peculiar charms for the later Romans
+of the age of learned cultivation: it was, however, rather the gift of
+nature than the fruit of poetical art. Horace set himself against this
+excessive partiality, and asserted that Plautus and the other comic poets
+threw off their pieces negligently, and wrote them in the utmost haste,
+that they might be the sooner paid for them. We may safely affirm,
+therefore, that in the graces and elegances of execution, the Greek poets
+have always lost in the Latin imitations. These we must, in imagination,
+retranslate into the finished elegance which we perceive in the Greek
+fragments. Moreover, Plautus and Terence made many changes in the general
+plan, and these could hardly be improvements. The former at times omitted
+whole scenes and characters, and the latter made additions, and
+occasionally ran two plays into one. Was this done with an artistic
+design, and were they actually desirous of excelling their Grecian
+predecessors in the structure of their pieces? I doubt it. Plautus was
+perpetually running out into diffuseness, and he was obliged to remedy in
+some other way the lengthening which this gave to the original; the
+imitations of Terence, on the other hand, from his lack of invention,
+turned out somewhat meagre, and he filled up the gaps with materials
+borrowed from other pieces. Even his contemporaries reproached him with
+having falsified or corrupted a number of Greek pieces, for the purpose of
+making out of them a few Latin ones.
+
+Plautus and Terence are generally mentioned as writers in every respect
+original. In Romans this was perhaps pardonable: they possessed but little
+of the true poetic spirit, and their poetical literature owed its origin,
+for the most part, first to translation, then to free imitation, and
+finally to appropriation and new modelling, of the Greek. With them,
+therefore, a particular sort of adaptation passed for originality. Thus we
+find, from Terence's apologetic prologues, that they had so lowered the
+notion of plagiarism, that he was accused of it, because he had made use
+of matter which had been already adapted from the Greek. As we cannot,
+therefore, consider these writers in the light of creative artists, and
+since consequently they are only important to us in so far as we may by
+their means become acquainted with the shape of the Greek New Comedy, I
+will here insert the few remarks I have to make on their character and
+differences, and then return to the Greek writers of the New Comedy.
+
+Among the Greeks, poets and artists were at all times held in honour and
+estimation; among the Romans, on the contrary, polite literature was at
+first cultivated by men of the lowest rank, by needy foreigners, and even
+by slaves. Plautus and Terence, who closely followed each other in time,
+and whose lifetime belongs to the last years of the second Punic war, and
+to the interval between the second and third, were of the lowest rank: the
+former, at best a poor day labourer, and the latter, a Carthaginian slave,
+and afterwards a freed man. Their fortunes, however, were very different.
+Plautus, when he was not employed in writing comedies, was fain to hire
+himself out to do the work of a beast of burthen in a mill; Terence was
+domesticated with the elder Scipio and his bosom friend Laelius, who
+deigned to admit him to such familiarity, that he fell under the
+honourable imputation of being assisted in the composition of his pieces
+by these noble Romans, and it was even said that they allowed their own
+labours to pass under his name. The habits of their lives are perceptible
+in their respective modes of writing: the bold, coarse style of Plautus,
+and his famous jests, betray his intercourse with the vulgar; in that of
+Terence, we discern the traces of good society. They are further
+distinguished by their choice of matter. Plautus generally inclines to the
+farcical, to overwrought, and often disgusting drollery; Terence prefers
+the more delicate shades of characterization, and, avoiding everything
+like exaggeration, approaches the seriously instructive and sentimental
+kind. Some of the pieces of Plautus are taken from Diphilus and Philemon,
+but there is reason to believe that he added a considerable degree of
+coarseness to his originals; from whom he derived the others is unknown,
+unless, perhaps, the assertion of Horace, "It is said that Plautus took
+for his model the Sicilian Epicharmus," will warrant the conjecture that
+he borrowed the _Amphitryo_, a piece which is quite different in kind
+from all his others, and which he himself calls a Tragi-comedy, from that
+old Doric comedian, who we know employed himself chiefly on mythological
+subjects. Among the pieces of Terence, whose copies, with the exception of
+certain changes of the plan and structure, are probably much more faithful
+in detail than those of the other, we find two from Apollodorus, and the
+rest from Menander. Julius Caesar has honoured Terence with some verses,
+in which he calls him a half Menander, praising the smoothness of his
+style, and only lamenting that he has lost a certain comic vigour which
+marked his original.
+
+This naturally brings us back to the Grecian masters. Diphilus, Philemon,
+Apollodorus, and Menander, are certainly four of the most celebrated names
+among them. The palm, for elegance, delicacy, and sweetness, is with one
+voice given to Menander, although Philemon frequently carried off the
+prize before him, probably because he studied more the taste of the
+multitude, or because he availed himself of adscititious means of
+popularity. This was at least insinuated by Menander, who when he met his
+rival one day said to him, "Pray, Philemon, dost thou not blush when thou
+gainest a victory over me?"
+
+Menander flourished after the times of Alexander the Great, and was the
+contemporary of Demetrius Phalereus. He was instructed in philosophy by
+Theophrastus, but his own opinions inclined him to that of Epicurus, and
+he boasted in an epigram, "that if Themistocles freed his country from
+slavery, Epicurus freed it from irrationality." He was fond of the
+choicest sensual enjoyments: Phaedrus, in an unfinished tale, describes
+him to us as even in his exterior, an effeminate voluptuary; and his amour
+with the courtesan Glycera is notorious. The Epicurean philosophy, which
+placed the supreme happiness of life in the benevolent affections, but
+neither spurred men on to heroic action, nor excited any sense of it in
+the mind, could hardly fail to be well received among the Greeks, after
+the loss of their old and glorious freedom: with their cheerful mild way
+of thinking, it was admirably calculated to console them. It is perhaps
+the most suitable for the comic poet, as the stoical philosophy is for the
+tragedian. The object of the comedian is merely to produce mitigated
+impressions, and by no means to excite a strong indignation at human
+frailties. On the other hand, we may easily comprehend why the Greeks
+conceived a passion for the New Comedy at the very period when they lost
+their freedom, as it diverted them from sympathy with the course of human
+affairs in general, and with political events, and absorbed their
+attention wholly in domestic and personal concerns.
+
+The Grecian theatre was originally formed for higher walks of the drama;
+and we do not attempt to dissemble the inconveniences and disadvantages
+which its structure must have occasioned to Comedy. The frame was too
+large, and the picture could not fill it. The Greek stage was open to the
+heavens, and it exhibited little or nothing of the interior of the houses
+[Footnote: To serve this purpose recourse was had to the encyclema, which,
+no doubt, in the commencement of the _Clouds_, exhibited Strepsiades
+and his son sleeping on their beds. Moreover, Julius Pollux mentions among
+the decorations of New Comedy, a sort of tent, hut, or shed, adjoining to
+the middle edifice, with a doorway, originally a stable, but afterwards
+applicable to many purposes. In the _Sempstresses_ of Antiphanes, it
+represented a sort of workshop. Here, or in the encyclema, entertainments
+were given, which in the old comedies sometimes took place before the eyes
+of the spectators. With the southern habits of the ancients, it was not,
+perhaps, so unnatural to feast with open doors, as it would be in the
+north of Europe. But no modern commentator has yet, so far as I know,
+endeavoured to illustrate in a proper manner the theatrical arrangement of
+the plays of Plautus and Terence. [See the Fourth Lecture, &c., and the
+Appendix on the Scenic Arrangement of the Greek Theatre.]]. The New Comedy
+was therefore under the necessity of placing its scene in the street. This
+gave rise to many inconveniences; thus people frequently come out of their
+houses to tell their secrets to one another in public. It is true, the
+poets were thus also saved the necessity of changing the scene, by
+supposing that the families concerned in the action lived in the same
+neighbourhood. It may be urged in their justification, that the Greeks,
+like all other southern nations, lived a good deal out of their small
+private houses, in the open air. The chief disadvantage with which this
+construction of the stage was attended, was the limitation of the female
+parts. With that due observance of custom which the essence of the New
+Comedy required, the exclusion of unmarried women and young maidens in
+general was an inevitable consequence of the retired life of the female
+sex in Greece. None appear but aged matrons, female slaves, or girls of
+light reputation. Hence, besides the loss of many agreeable situations,
+arose this further inconvenience, that frequently the whole piece turns on
+a marriage with, or a passion for, a young woman, who is never once seen.
+
+Athens, where the fictitious, as well as the actual, scene was generally
+placed, was the centre of a small territory, and in no wise to be compared
+with our capital cities, either in extent or population. Republican
+equality admitted of no marked distinction of ranks; there was no proper
+nobility: all were alike citizens, richer or poorer, and for the most part
+had no other occupation than the management of their several properties.
+Hence the Attic New Comedy could not well admit of the contrasts arising
+from diversity of tone and mental culture; it generally moves within a
+sort of middle rank, and has something citizen-like, nay, if I may so say,
+something of the manners of a small town about it, which is not at all to
+the taste of those who would have comedy to portray the manners of a
+court, and the refinement or corruption of monarchical capitals.
+
+With respect to the intercourse between the two sexes, the Greeks knew
+nothing of the gallantry of modern Europe, nor the union of love with
+enthusiastic veneration. All was sensual passion or marriage. The latter
+was, by the constitution and manners of the Greeks, much more a matter of
+duty, or an affair of convenience, than of inclination. The laws were
+strict only in one point, the preservation of the pure national extraction
+of the children, which alone was legitimate. The right of citizenship was
+a great prerogative, and the more valuable the smaller the number of
+citizens, which was not allowed to increase beyond a certain point. Hence
+marriages with foreign women were invalid. The society of a wife, whom, in
+most cases, the husband had not even seen before his marriage with her,
+and who passed her whole life within the walls of her house, could not
+afford him much entertainment; this was sought among women who had
+forfeited all title to strict respect, and who were generally foreigners
+without property, or freed slaves, and the like. With women of this
+description the easy morality of the Greeks allowed of the greatest
+license, especially to young unmarried men. The ancient writers,
+therefore, of the New Comedy paint this mode of life with much less
+disguise than we think decorous. Their comedies, like all comedies in the
+world, frequently end with marriages (it seems this catastrophe brings
+seriousness along with it); but the marriage is often entered upon merely
+as a means of propitiating a father incensed at the irregularities of some
+illicit amour. It sometimes happens, however, that the amour is changed
+into a lawful marriage by means of a discovery that the supposed foreigner
+or slave is by birth an Athenian citizen. It is worthy of remark, that the
+fruitful mind of the very poet who carried the Old Comedy to perfection,
+put forth also the first germ of the New. _Cocalus_, the last piece
+which Aristophanes composed, contained a seduction, a recognition, and all
+the leading circumstances which were afterwards employed by Menander in
+his comic pieces.
+
+From what has been said, it is easy to overlook the whole round of
+characters; nay, they are so few, and so perpetually recur, that they may
+be almost all enumerated. The austere and stingy, or the mild easy father,
+the latter not unfrequently under the dominion of his wife, and making
+common cause with his son against her; the housewife either loving and
+sensible, or scolding and domineering, and presuming on the accession she
+has brought to the family property; the young man giddy and extravagant,
+but frank and amiable, who even in a passion sensual at its commencement
+is capable of true attachment; the girl of light character, either
+thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning, and selfish, or still good-hearted and
+susceptible of better feelings; the simple and clownish, and the cunning
+slave who assists his young master in cheating his old father, and by all
+manner of knavish tricks procures him money for the gratification of his
+passions; (_as this character plays a principal part, I shall shortly
+make some further observations on it_;) 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 law-suits, for
+the conduct of which he offered his services; the gasconading soldier,
+returned from foreign service, generally cowardly and simple, but who
+assumes airs and boasts of his exploits abroad; and lastly, a servant or
+pretended mother, who preaches very indifferent morals to the young girl
+entrusted to her care; and the slave-dealer, who speculates on the
+extravagant passions of young people, and regards nothing but his own
+pecuniary advantage. The two last characters, with their revolting
+coarseness, are, to our feelings, a real blot in the Greek Comedy; but its
+very subject-matter rendered it impossible for it to dispense with them.
+
+The knavish servant is generally also the buffoon, who takes pleasure in
+avowing, and even exaggerating, his own sensuality and want of principle,
+and who jokes at the expense of the other characters, and occasionally
+even addresses the pit. This is the origin of the comic servants of the
+moderns, but I am inclined to doubt whether, with our manners, there is
+propriety and truth in introducing such characters. The Greek servant was
+a slave, subject for life to the arbitrary caprice of his master, and
+frequently the victim of the most severe treatment. A man, who, thus
+deprived by the constitution of society of all his natural rights, makes
+trick and artifice his trade may well be pardoned: he is in a state of war
+with his oppressors, and cunning is his natural weapon. But in our times,
+a servant, who is free to choose his situation and his master, is a good-
+for-nothing scoundrel if he assists the son to deceive the father. With
+respect, on the other hand, to the open avowal of fondness of good eating
+and drinking which is employed to give a comic stamp to servants and
+persons in a low rank of life, it may still be used without impropriety:
+of those to whom life has granted but few privileges it does not require
+much; and they may boldly own the vulgarity of their inclinations, without
+giving any shock to our moral feelings. The better the condition of
+servants in real life, the less adapted are they for the stage; and this
+at least redounds to the praise of our more humane age, that in our
+"family picture" tales we meet with servants who are right worthy
+characters, better fitted to excite our sympathy than our derision.
+
+The repetition of the same characters was as it were acknowledged by the
+Greek comic writers, by their frequent use of the same names, and those
+too in part expressive of character. In this they did better than many
+comic poets of modern times, who, for the sake of novelty of character,
+torture themselves to attain complete individuality, by which efforts no
+other effect generally is produced than that of diverting our attention
+from the main business of the piece, and dissipating it on accessory
+circumstances. And then after all they imperceptibly fall back again into
+the old well-known character. It is better to delineate the characters at
+first with a certain breadth, and to leave the actor room to touch them up
+more accurately, and to add the nicer and more personal traits, according
+to the requirements of each composition. In this respect the use of masks
+admits of justification; which, like many other peculiarities of the
+ancient theatre, (such as the acting in the open air,) were still
+retained, though originally designed for other departments of the drama,
+and though they seem a greater incongruity in the New Comedy than in the
+Old, and in Tragedy. But certainly it was unsuitable to the spirit of the
+New, that, while in other respects the representation approached nature
+with a more exact, nay, illusive resemblance, the masks deviated more from
+it than in the Old, being overcharged in the features, and almost to
+caricature. However singular this may appear, it is too expressly and
+formally attested to admit of a doubt. [Footnote: See Platonius, in
+_Aristoph. cur. Küster_, p. xi.] As they were prohibited from bringing
+portraits of real persons on the stage they were, after the loss of their
+freedom, very careful lest they should accidentally stumble upon any
+resemblance, and especially to any of their Macedonian rulers; and in
+this way they endeavoured to secure themselves against the danger. Yet the
+exaggeration in question was hardly without its meaning. Accordingly we
+find it stated, that an unsymmetrical profile, with one eyebrow drawn up
+and the other down, denoted an idle, inquisitive, and intermeddling busy-
+body, [Footnote: See _Jul. Pollux_, in the section of comic masks.
+Compare Platonius as above, and Quinctilian, 1. xi. c. 3. The supposed
+wonderful discovery of Voltaire respecting tragic masks, which I mentioned
+in the fourth Lecture, will hardly be forgotten.] and we may in fact
+remark that men, who are in the habit of looking at things with anxious
+exact observation, are apt to acquire distortions of this kind.
+
+Among other peculiarities the masks in comedy have this advantage, that
+from the unavoidable repetition of the same characters the spectator knew
+at once what he had to expect. I once witnessed at Weimar a representation
+of the _Adelphi_ of Terence, entirely in ancient costume, which, under the
+direction of Goethe, furnished us a truly Attic evening. The actors used
+partial masks, cleverly fitted to the real countenance, [Footnote: This
+also was not unknown to the ancients, as it proved by many comic masks
+having in the place of the mouth a circular opening of considerable width,
+through which the mouth and the adjoining features were allowed to appear;
+and which, with their distorted movements, must have produced a highly
+ludicrous effect, from the contrast in the fixed distortion of the rest of
+the countenance.] and notwithstanding the smallness of the theatre, I did
+not find that they were in any way prejudicial to vivacity. The mask was
+peculiarly favourable for the jokes of the roguish slave: his uncouth
+physiognomy, as well as his apparel, stamped him at once as a man of a
+peculiar race, (as in truth the slaves were, partly even by extraction,)
+and he might therefore well be allowed to act and speak differently from
+the rest of the characters.
+
+Out of the limited range of their civil and domestic life, and out of the
+simple theme of the characters above mentioned, the invention of the Greek
+comic writers contrived to extract an inexhaustible multitude of
+variations, and yet, what is deserving of high praise, even in that on
+which they grounded their development and catastrophe, they ever remained
+true to their national customs.
+
+The circumstances of which they availed themselves for this purpose were
+generally the following:--Greece consisted of a number of small separate
+states, lying round about Athens on the coast and islands. Navigation was
+frequent, piracy not unusual, which, moreover, was directed against human
+beings in order to supply the slave-market. Thus, even free-born children
+might be kidnapped. Not unfrequently, too, they were exposed by their own
+parents, in virtue of their legal rights, and being unexpectedly saved
+from destruction, were afterwards restored to their families. All this
+prepared a ground-work for the recognitions in Greek Comedy between
+parents and children, brothers and sisters, &c., which as a means of
+bringing about the dénouement, was borrowed by the comic from the tragic
+writers. The complicated intrigue is carried on within the represented
+action, but the singular and improbable accident on which it is founded,
+is removed to a distance both of time and place, so that the comedy,
+though taken from every-day life, has still, in some degree, a marvellous
+romantic back-ground.
+
+The Greek Comic writers were acquainted with Comedy in all its extent, and
+employed themselves with equal diligence on all its varieties, the Farce,
+the Play of Intrigue, and the various kinds of the Play of Character, from
+caricature to the nicest delicacy of delineation, and even the serious or
+sentimental drama. They possessed moreover a most enchanting species, of
+which, however, no examples are now remaining. From the titles of their
+pieces, and other indications, it appears they sometimes introduced
+historical personages, as for instance the poetess Sappho, with Alcaeus's
+and Anacreon's love for her, or her own passion for Phaon; the story of
+her leap from the Leucadian rock owes, perhaps, its origin, solely to the
+invention of the comic writers. To judge from their subject-matter, these
+comedies must have approached to our romantic drama; and the mixture of
+beautiful passion with the tranquil grace of the ordinary comic
+representation must undoubtedly have been very attractive.
+
+In the above observations I have, I conceive, given a faithful picture of
+the Greek Comedy. I have not attempted to disguise either its defects or
+its limitation. The ancient Tragedy and the Old Comedy are inimitable,
+unapproachable, and stand alone in the whole range of the history of art.
+But in the New Comedy we may venture to measure our strength with the
+Greeks, and even attempt to surpass them. Whenever we descend from the
+Olympus of true poetry to the common earth, in other words, when once we
+mix the prose of a definite reality with the ideal creations of fancy, the
+success of productions is no longer determined by the genius alone, and a
+feeling for art, but the more or less favourable nature of circumstances.
+The figures of the gods of the Grecian sculptors stand before us as the
+perfect models for all ages. The noble occupation of giving an ideal
+perfection to the human form having once been entered upon by the fancy,
+all that is left even to an equal degree of inspiration is but to make a
+repetition of the same attempts. In the execution, however, of personal
+and individual resemblances, the modern statuary is the rival of the
+ancient: but this is no pure creation of art; observation must here come
+in: and whatever degree of science, profundity, and taste may be displayed
+in the execution, the artist is still tied down to the object which is
+actually before him.
+
+In the admirable portrait-statues of two of the most celebrated comic
+writers, Menander and Posidippus (in the Vatican), the physiognomy of the
+Greek New Comedy appears to me to be almost visibly and personally
+expressed! Clad in the most simple dress, and holding a roll in their
+hands, they are sitting in arm-chairs with all the ease and self-
+possession which mark the conscious superiority of the master; and in that
+maturity of age which befits the undisturbed impartial observation which
+is requisite for Comedy, but yet hale and active, and free from all
+symptoms of decay. We recognise in them that corporeal vigour, which
+testifies at once to equal soundness both of mind and of temper; no lofty
+enthusiasm, but at the same time nothing of folly or extravagance; rather
+does a sage seriousness dwell on a brow wrinkled indeed, though not with
+care, but with the exercise of thought; while in the quick-searching eye,
+and in the mouth half curling into a smile, we have the unmistakable
+indications of a light playful irony.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+Roman Theatre--Native kinds: Atellane Fables, Mimes, Comoedia Togata--
+Greek Tragedy transplanted to Rome--Tragic Authors of a former Epoch, and
+of the Augustan Age--Idea of a National Roman Tragedy--Causes of the want
+of success of the Romans in Tragedy--Seneca.
+
+
+The examination of the nature of the Drama in general, as well as the
+consideration of the Greek theatre, which was as peculiar in its origin as
+in its maturity it was actually perfect, have hitherto alone occupied our
+attention. Our notice of the dramatic literature of most of the other
+nations, which principally call for consideration, must be marked with
+greater brevity; and yet, we are not afraid that we shall be accused in
+either case of either disproportionate length or conciseness.
+
+And first, with respect to the Romans, whose theatre is in every way
+immediately attached to that of the Greeks, we have only, as it were, to
+notice one great gap, which partly arises from their own want of creative
+powers in this department, and partly from the loss, with the exception of
+a few fragments, of all that they did produce in it. The only works which
+have descended to us from the good classical times are those of Plautus
+and Terence, whom I have already characterised as _copyists_ of the
+Greeks.
+
+Poetry in general had no native growth in Rome; it was first artificially
+cultivated along with other luxuries in those later times when the
+original character of Rome was being fast extinguished under an imitation
+of foreign manners. In the Latin we have an example of a language modelled
+into poetical expression, altogether after foreign grammatical and
+metrical forms. This imitation of the Greek was not accomplished easily
+and without force: the Graecising was carried even to the length of a
+clumsy intermixture of the two languages. Gradually only was the poetical
+style smoothed and softened, and in Catullus we still perceive the last
+traces of its early harshness, which, however, are not without a certain
+rugged charm. Those constructions, and especially those compounds which
+were too much at variance with the internal structure of the Latin, and
+failed to become agreeable to the Roman ear, were in time rejected, and at
+length, in the age of Augustus, the poets succeeded in producing the most
+agreeable combination of the peculiarities, native and borrowed. Hardly,
+however, had the desired equilibrium been attained when a pause ensued;
+all free development was checked, and the poetical style, notwithstanding
+a seeming advance to greater boldness and learning, was irrevocably
+confined within the round of already sanctioned modes of expression. Thus
+the language of Latin poetry flourished only within the short interval
+which elapsed between the period of its unfinished state and its second
+death; and as to the spirit also of poetry, it too fared no better.
+
+To the invention of theatrical amusements the Romans were not led from any
+desire to enliven the leisure of their festivals with such exhibitions as
+withdraw the mind from the cares and concerns of life; but in their
+despondency under a desolating pestilence, against which all remedies
+seemed unavailing, they had recourse to the theatre, as a means of
+appeasing the anger of the gods, having previously been only acquainted
+with the exercises of the gymnasium and the games of the circus. The
+_histriones_, however, whom for this purpose they summoned from Etruria,
+were merely dancers, who probably did not attempt any pantomimic dances,
+but endeavoured to delight their audience by the agility of their
+movements. Their oldest spoken plays, the _Fabulae Atellanae_, the
+Romans borrowed from the Osci, the aboriginal inhabitants of Italy. With
+these _saturae_, (so called because first they were improvisatory
+farces, without dramatic connexion; _satura_ signifying a medley, or
+mixture of every thing,) they were satisfied till Livius Andronicus,
+somewhat more than five hundred years after the foundation of Home, began
+to imitate the Greeks; and the regular compositions of Tragedy and the New
+Comedy (the Old it was impossible to transplant) were then, for the first
+time, introduced into Rome.
+
+Thus the Romans owed the first idea of a play to the Etruscans, of the
+effusions of a sportive humour to the Oscans, and of a higher class of
+dramatic works to the Greeks. They displayed, however, more originality in
+the comic than in the tragic department. The Oscans, whose language soon
+ceasing to be spoken, survived only in these farces, were at least so near
+akin to the Romans, that their dialect was immediately understood by a
+Roman audience: for how else could the Romans have derived any amusement
+from the _Atellanae_? So completely did they domesticate this species
+of drama that Roman youths, of noble families, enamoured of this
+entertainment, used to exhibit it on their festivals; on which account
+even the players who acted in the Atellane fables for money enjoyed
+peculiar privileges, being exempt from the infamy and exclusion from the
+tribes which attached to all other theatrical artists, and were also
+excused from military service.
+
+The Romans had, besides, their own _Mimes_. The foreign name of these
+little pieces would lead us to conclude that they bore a great affinity to
+the Greek _Mimes_; they differed, however, from them considerably in
+form; we know also that the manners portrayed in them had a local truth,
+and that the subject-matter was not derived from Greek compositions.
+
+It is peculiar to Italy, that from the earliest times its people have
+displayed a native talent for a merry, amusing, though very rude
+buffoonery, in extemporary speeches and songs, with accompanying
+appropriate gestures; though it has seldom been coupled with true dramatic
+taste. This latter assertion will be fully justified when we shall have
+examined all that has been accomplished in the higher walks of the Drama
+in that country, down to the most recent times. The former might be easily
+substantiated by a number of circumstances, which, however, would lead us
+too far from our object into the history of the Saturnalia and similar
+customs, Even of the wit which prevails in the dialogues of the
+_Pasquino_ and the _Marforio_ and of their apposite and popular ridicule
+on passing events, many traces are to be found even in the times of the
+Emperors, however little disposed they were to be indulgent to such
+liberties. But what is more immediately connected with our present purpose
+is the conjecture--that in these _Mimes_ and _Atellane Fables_ we have
+perhaps the first germ of the _Commedia dell' arte_, the improvisatory
+farce with standing masks. A striking affinity between the latter and the
+_Atellanae_ consists in the employment of dialects to produce a ludicrous
+effect. But how would Harlequin and Pulcinello be astonished were they to
+be told that they descended in a direct line from the buffoons of the
+ancient Romans, and even from the Oscans!--With what drollery would they
+requite the labours of the antiquarian who should trace their glorious
+pedigree to such a root! From the figures on Greek vases, we know that the
+grotesque masks of the Old Comedy bore a dress very much resembling
+theirs: long trousers, and a doublet with sleeves, articles of dress which
+the Greeks, as well as the Romans, never used except on the stage. Even in
+the present day _Zanni_ is one of the names of Harlequin; and _Sannio_ in
+the Latin farces was a buffoon, who, according to the accounts of ancient
+writers, had a shaven head, and a dress patched together of gay parti-
+coloured pieces. The exact resemblance of the figure of Pulcinello is said
+to have been found among the frescoes of Pompeii. If he came originally
+from Atella, he is still mostly to be met with in the old land of his
+nativity. The objection that these traditions could not well have been
+preserved during the cessation for so many centuries of all theatrical
+amusements, will be easily got over when we recollect the licences
+annually enjoyed at the Carnival, and the Feasts of Fools in the middle
+ages.
+
+The Greek Mimes were dialogues in prose, and not destined for the stage;
+the Roman were in verse, were acted, and often delivered extempore. The
+most celebrated authors of this kind were Laberius and Syrus,
+contemporaries of Julius Caesar. The latter when dictator, by an imperial
+request, compelled Laberius, a Roman knight, to appear publicly in his own
+Mimes, although the scenic employment was branded with the loss of civil
+rights. Laberius complained of this in a prologue, which is still extant,
+and in which the painful feeling of annihilated self-respect is nobly and
+affectingly expressed. We cannot well conceive how, in such a state of
+mind, he could be capable of making ludicrous jokes, nor how, with so
+bitter an example of despotic degradation [Footnote: What humiliation
+Caesar would have inwardly felt, could he have foreseen that, within a few
+generations, Nero, his successor in absolute authority, out of a lust for
+self-degradation, would expose himself frequently to infamy in the same
+manner as he, the first despot, had exposed a Roman of the middle rank,
+not without exciting a general feeling of indignation.] before their eyes,
+the spectators could take any delight in them. Caesar, on his part, kept
+his engagement: he gave Laberius a considerable sum of money, and invested
+him anew with the equestrian rank, which, however, could not re-instate
+him in the opinion of his fellow-citizens. On the other hand, he took his
+revenge for the prologue and other allusions by bestowing the prize on
+Syrus, the slave, and afterward the freedman and scholar of Laberius in
+the mimetic art. Of the Mimes of Syrus we have still extant a number of
+sentences, which, in matter and elegant conciseness of expression, are
+deserving of a place by the side of Menander's. Some of them even go
+beyond the moral horizon of serious Comedy, and assume an almost stoical
+elevation. How was the transition from low farce to such elevation
+effected? And how could such maxims be at all introduced, without the same
+important involution of human relations as that which is exhibited in
+perfect Comedy? At all events, they are calculated to give us a very
+favourable idea of the Mimes. Horace, indeed, speaks slightingly of the
+literary merit of Laberius' Mimes, either on account of the arbitrary
+nature of their composition, or of the negligent manner in which they were
+worked out. However, we ought not to allow our own opinion to be too much
+influenced against him by this critical poet; for, from motives which are
+easy to understand, he lays much greater stress on the careful use of the
+file, than on original boldness and fertility of invention. A single
+entire Mime, which time unfortunately has denied us, would have thrown
+more light on this question than all the confused notices of grammarians,
+and all the conjectures of modern scholars.
+
+The regular Comedy of the Romans was, for the most part, _palliata_,
+that is, it appeared in a Grecian costume, and represented Grecian
+manners. This is the case with all the comedies of Plautus and Terence.
+But they had also a _comoedia togata_; so called from the Roman dress
+which was usually worn in it. Afranius is celebrated as the principal
+writer in this walk. Of these comedies we have no remains whatever, and
+the notices of them are so scanty, that we can-not even determine with
+certainty whether the togatae were original comedies of an entirely new
+invention, or merely Greek comedies recast with Roman manners. The latter
+case is the more probable, as Afranius lived in a period when Roman genius
+had not yet ventured to try a flight of original invention; although, on
+the other hand, it is not easy to conceive how the Attic comedies could,
+without great violence and constraint, have been adapted to local
+circumstances so entirely different. The tenor of Roman life was, in
+general, earnest and grave, although in private society they had no small
+turn for wit and joviality. The diversity of ranks among the Romans,
+politically, was very strongly marked, and the opulence of private
+individuals was frequently almost kingly; their women lived much more in
+society, and acted a much more important part than the Grecian women did,
+and from this independence they fully participated in the overwhelming
+tide of corruption which accompanied external refinement. The differences
+being so essential, an original Roman comedy would have been a remarkable
+phenomenon, and would have enabled us to see these conquerors of the world
+in an aspect altogether new. That, however, this was not accomplished by
+the _comoedia togata_, is proved by the indifferent manner in which
+it is mentioned by the ancients. Quinctilian does not scruple to say, that
+the Latin literature limps most in comedy; this is his expression, word
+for word.
+
+With respect to Tragedy, we must, in the first place, remark, that the
+Grecian theatre was not introduced into Rome without considerable changes
+in its arrangement. The chorus, for instance, had no longer a place in the
+orchestra, where the most distinguished spectators, the knights and
+senators, now sat; but it remained on the stage itself. Here, then, was
+the very disadvantage which we alleged in objection to the modern attempts
+to introduce the chorus. Other deviations from the Grecian mode of
+representation were also sanctioned, which can hardly be considered as
+improvements. At the very first introduction of the regular drama, Livius
+Andronicus, a Greek by birth, and the first tragic poet and actor of Rome,
+in his monodies (lyrical pieces which were sung by a single person, and
+not by the whole chorus), separated the song from the mimetic dancing, the
+latter only remaining to the actor, in whose stead a boy, standing beside
+the flute-player, accompanied him with his voice. Among the Greeks, in
+better times, the tragic singing, and the accompanying rhythmical
+gestures, were so simple, that a single person was able to do at the same
+time ample justice to both. The Romans, however, it would seem, preferred
+separate excellence to harmonious unity. Hence arose, at an after period,
+their fondness for pantomime, of which the art was carried to the greatest
+perfection in the time of Augustus. Prom the names of the most celebrated
+of the performers, Pylades, Bathyllus, &c., it would appear that it was
+Greeks that practised this mute eloquence in Rome; and the lyric pieces
+which were expressed by their dances were also delivered in Greek. Lastly,
+Roscius frequently played without a mask, and in this respect probably he
+did not stand alone; but, as far as we know, there never was any instance
+of it among the Greeks. The alteration in question might be favourable to
+the more brilliant display of his own skill, and the Romans, who were
+pleased with it, showed here also that they had a higher relish for the
+disproportionate and prominent talents of a virtuoso, than for the
+harmonious impression of a work of art considered as a whole.
+
+In the tragic literature of the Romans, two epochs are to be
+distinguished: the first that of Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, and
+also Pacuvius and Attius, who both flourished somewhat later than Plautus
+and Terence; and the second, the refined epoch of the Augustan age. The
+former produced none but translators and remodellers of Greek works, but
+it is probable that they succeeded better in Tragedy than in Comedy.
+Elevation of expression is usually somewhat awkward in a language as yet
+imperfectly cultivated, but still its height may be attained by
+perseverance; but to hit off the negligent grace of social wit requires
+natural humour and refinement Here, however, (as well as in the case of
+Plautus and Terence,) we do not possess a single fragment of any work
+whose Greek original is extant, to enable us to judge of the accuracy and
+general felicity of the copy; but a speech of considerable length from
+Attius' _Prometheus Unbound_, is in no respect unworthy of--Aeschylus, and
+the versification, also, is much more careful [Footnote: In what metres
+could these tragedians have translated the Greek choral odes? Horace
+declares the imitation, in Latin, of Pindar, whose lyrical productions
+bear great resemblance to those of Tragedy, altogether impracticable.
+Probably they never ventured into the labyrinths of the choral strophes,
+which were neither calculated for the language nor for the ear of the
+Romans. Beyond the anapest, the tragedies of Seneca never ascend higher
+than a sophic or choriambic verse, which, when monotonously repeated, is
+very disagreeable to the ear.] than that of the Latin comic writers
+generally. This earlier style was carried to perfection by Pacuvius and
+Attius, whose pieces alone kept their place on the stage, and seem to have
+had many admirers down to the times of Cicero, and even still later.
+Horace directs his jealous criticism against these, as well as all
+the other old poets.
+
+It was the ambition of the contemporaries of Augustus, to measure their
+powers with the Greeks in a more original manner; but their labours were
+not attended with equal success in every department. The number of
+amateurs who attempted to shine in Tragedy was particularly great; and
+works of this kind by the Emperor himself even are mentioned. Hence there
+is much in favour of the conjecture that Horace wrote his epistle to the
+Pisos, chiefly with the view of deterring these young men from so
+dangerous a career, being, in all probability, infected by the universal
+passion, without possessing the requisite talents. One of the most
+renowned tragic poets of this age was the famous Asinius Pollio, a man of
+a violently impassioned disposition, as Pliny informs us, and who was fond
+of whatever bore the same character in works of fine art. It was he who
+brought with him from Rhodes, and erected at Rome, the well-known group of
+the Farnese Bull. If his tragedies bore the same relation to those of
+Sophocles, which this bold, wild, but somewhat overwrought group does to
+the calm sublimity of the Niobe, we have every reason to regret their
+loss. But Pollio's political influence might easily blind his
+contemporaries to the true value of his poetical labours. Ovid, who tried
+so many departments of poetry, also attempted Tragedy, and was the author
+of a _Medea_. To judge from the wordy and commonplace displays of
+passion in his _Heroides_, we might expect from him, in Tragedy, at
+most, a caricature of Euripides. Quinctilian, however, asserts that he
+proved here, for once, what he might have done, had he chosen to restrain
+himself instead of yielding to his natural propensity to diffuseness.
+
+This, and all the other tragic attempts of the Augustan age, have
+perished. We cannot estimate with certainty the magnitude of the loss
+which we have here suffered, but from all appearances it is not
+extraordinarily great.--First of all the Grecian Tragedy had in Rome to
+struggle with all the disadvantages of a plant removed to a foreign soil;
+the Roman religion was in some degree akin to that of the Greeks, (though
+by no means so completely identical with it as many people suppose,) but
+at all events the heroic mythology of Greece was first introduced into
+Rome by the poets, and was in no wise interwoven with the national
+recollections, as was the case in so many ways with those of Greece. The
+ideal of a genuine Roman Tragedy floats before me dimly indeed, and in the
+background of ages, and with all the indistinctness which must surround an
+entity, which never issued out of the womb of possibility into reality. It
+would be altogether different in form and significance from that of the
+Greeks, and, in the old Roman sense, religious and patriotic. All truly
+creative poetry must proceed from the inward life of a people, and from
+religion, the root of that life. The spirit of the Roman religion was
+however originally, and before the substance of it was sacrificed to
+foreign ornament, quite different from that of the Grecian. The latter was
+yielding and flexible to the hand of art, the former immutable beneath the
+rigorous jealousy of priestcraft. The Roman faith, and the customs founded
+on it, were more serious, more moral, and pious, displaying more insight
+into nature, and more magical and mysterious, than the Greek religion, at
+least than that part of it which was extrinsecal to the mysteries. As the
+Greek Tragedy represented the struggle of the free man with destiny, a
+true Roman Tragedy would exhibit the subjection of human motives to the
+holy and binding force of _religion_, and its visible presence in all
+earthly things. But this spirit had been long extinct, before the want of
+a cultivated poetry was first felt by them. The Patricians, originally an
+Etruscan sacerdotal school, had become mere secular statesmen and
+warriors, who regarded their hereditary priesthood in no other light than
+that of a political form. Their sacred books, their _Vedas_, were become
+unintelligible to them, not so much from obsoleteness of character,
+as because they no longer possessed the higher knowledge which was the key
+to that sanctuary. What the heroic tales of the Latins might have become
+under an earlier development, as well as their peculiar colouring, we may
+still see, from some traces in Virgil, Propertius, and Ovid, although even
+these poets did but handle them as matters of antiquity.
+
+Moreover, desirous as the Romans were of becoming thorough Hellenists,
+they wanted for it that milder humanity which is so distinctly traceable
+in Grecian history, poetry, and art, even in the time of Homer. Prom the
+most austere virtue, which buried every personal inclination, as Curtius
+did his life, in the bosom of father-land, they passed with fearful
+rapidity to a state of corruption, by avarice and luxury, equally without
+example. Never in their character did they belie the legend that their
+first founder was suckled, not at the breast of woman, but of a ravening
+she-wolf. They were the tragedians of the world's history, who exhibited
+many a deep tragedy of kings led in chains and pining in dungeons; they
+were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers for the
+sake of raising at last, out of the ruins, the mausoleum of their own
+dignity and freedom, in the midst of the monotonous solitude of an
+obsequious world. To them, it was not given to excite emotion by the
+tempered accents of mental suffering, and to touch with a light and
+delicate hand every note in the scale of feeling. They naturally sought
+also in Tragedy, by overleaping all intervening gradations, to reach at
+once the extreme, whether in the stoicism of heroic fortitude, or in the
+monstrous fury of criminal desire. Of all their ancient greatness nothing
+remained to them but the contempt of pain and death whenever an
+extravagant enjoyment of life must finally be exchanged for them. This
+seal, therefore, of their former grandeur they accordingly impressed on
+their tragic heroes with a self-satisfied and ostentatious profusion.
+
+Finally, even in the age of cultivated literature, the dramatic poets were
+still in want of a poetical public among a people fond, even to a degree
+of madness, of shows and spectacles. In the triumphal processions, the
+fights of gladiators, and of wild beasts, all the magnificence of the
+world, all the renders of every clime, were brought before the eye of the
+spectator, who was glutted with the most violent scenes of blood. On
+nerves so steeled what effect could the more refined gradations of tragic
+pathos produce? It was the ambition of the powerful to exhibit to the
+people in one day, on stages erected for the purpose, and immediately
+afterwards destroyed, the enormous spoils of foreign or civil war. The
+relation which Pliny gives of the architectural decoration of the stage
+erected by Scaurus, borders on the incredible. When magnificence could be
+carried no farther, they endeavoured to surprise by the novelty of
+mechanical contrivances. Thus, a Roman, at his father's funeral solemnity,
+caused two theatres to be constructed, with their backs resting against
+each other, and made moveable on a single pivot, so that at the end of the
+play they were wheeled round with all the spectators within them, and
+formed into one circus, in which gladiator combats were exhibited. In the
+gratification of the eye that of the ear was altogether lost; rope-dancers
+and white elephants were preferred to every kind of dramatic
+entertainment; the embroidered purple robe of the actor was applauded, as
+we are told by Horace, and so far was the great body of the spectators
+from being attentive and quiet, that he compares their noise to that of
+the roar of the ocean, or of a mountain forest in a storm.
+
+Only one sample of the tragical talent of the Romans has come down to us,
+from which, however, it would be unjust to form a judgment of the
+productions of better times; I allude to the ten tragedies which pass
+under Seneca's name. Their claim to this title appears very doubtful;
+perhaps it is founded merely on a circumstance which would lead rather to
+a different conclusion; that, namely, in one of them, the _Octavia_,
+Seneca himself appears among the dramatic personages. The opinions of the
+learned are very much divided on the subject; some ascribe them partly to
+Seneca the philosopher, and partly to his father the rhetorician; others,
+again, assume the existence of a Seneca, a tragedian, a different person
+from both. It is generally allowed that the several pieces are neither all
+from the same hand, nor were of the same age. For the honour of the Roman
+taste, one would be disposed to consider them the productions of a very
+late period of antiquity: but Quinctilian quotes a verse from the _Medea_
+of Seneca, which is found in the play of that name in our collection, and
+therefore no doubt can be raised against the authenticity of this piece,
+though it seems to be in no way pre-eminent above the rest. [Footnote: The
+author of this _Medea_ makes the heroine strangle her children before the
+eyes of the people, notwithstanding the admonition of Horace, who probably
+had some similar example of the Roman theatre before his eyes; for a Greek
+would hardly have committed this error The Roman tragedians must have had
+a particular rage for novelty and effect to seek them in such atrocities.]
+We find also in Lucan, a contemporary of Nero, a similar display of
+bombast, which distorts everything great into nonsense. The state of
+constant outrage in which Rome was kept by a series of blood-thirsty
+tyrants, gave an unnatural character even to eloquence and poetry.
+The same effect has been observed in similar periods of modern history.
+Under the wise and mild government of a Vespasian and a Titus, and more
+especially of a Trajan, the Romans returned to a purer taste. But whatever
+period may have given birth to the tragedies of Seneca, they are beyond
+description bombastic and frigid, unnatural both in character and action,
+revolting from their violation of propriety, and so destitute of
+theatrical effect, that I believe they were never meant to leave the
+rhetorical schools for the stage. With the old tragedies, those sublime
+creations of the poetical genius of the Greeks, these have nothing in
+common, but the name, the outward form, and the mythological materials;
+and yet they seem to have been composed with the obvious purpose of
+surpassing them; in which attempt they succeed as much as a hollow
+hyperbole would in competition with a most fervent truth. Every tragical
+common-place is worried out to the last gasp; all is phrase; and even the
+most common remark is forced and stilted. A total poverty of sentiment is
+dressed out with wit and acuteness. There is fancy in them, or at least a
+phantom of it; for they contain an example of the misapplication of every
+mental faculty. The 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 nor real beings, but misshapen gigantic puppets, who are set in
+motion at one time by the string of an unnatural heroism, and at another
+by that of a passion equally unnatural, which no guilt nor enormity can
+appal.
+
+In a history, therefore, of Dramatic Art, I should altogether have passed
+over the tragedies of Seneca, if, from a blind prejudice for everything
+which has come down to us from antiquity, they had not been often imitated
+in modern times. They were more early and more generally known than the
+Greek tragedies. Not only scholars, without a feeling for art, have judged
+favourably of them, nay, preferred them to the Greek tragedies, but even
+poets have accounted them worth studying. The influence of Seneca on
+Corneille's idea of tragedy cannot be mistaken; Racine too, in his
+_Phaedra_, has condescended to borrow a good deal from him, and among
+other things, nearly the whole scene of the declaration of love; as may be
+seen in Brumoy's enumeration.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+The Italians--Pastoral Dramas of Tasso and Guarini--Small progress in
+Tragedy--Metastasio and Alfieri--Character of both--Comedies of Ariosto,
+Aretin, Porta--Improvisatore Masks--Goldoni--Gozzi--Latest state.
+
+
+Leaving now the productions of Classical Antiquity, we proceed to the
+dramatic literature of the moderns. With respect to the order most
+convenient for treating our present subject, it may be doubtful whether it
+is better to consider, _seriatim_, what each nation has accomplished
+in this domain, or to pass continually from one to another, in the train
+of their reciprocal but fluctuating influences. Thus, for instance, the
+Italian theatre, at its first revival, exercised originally an influence
+on the French, to be, however, greatly influenced in its turn by the
+latter. So, too, the French, before their stage attained its full
+maturity, borrowed still more from the Spaniards than from the Italians;
+in later times, Voltaire attempted to enlarge their theatrical circle, on
+the model of the English; the attempt, however, was productive of no great
+effect, even because everything had already been immutably fixed, in
+conformity with their ideas of imitation of the ancients, and their taste
+in art. The English and Spanish stages are nearly independent of all the
+rest, and also of each other; on those of other countries, however, they
+have exercised a great influence, but experienced very little in return.
+But, to avoid the perplexity and confusion which would attend such a plan,
+it will be advisable to treat the several literatures separately, pointing
+out, at the same time, whatever effects foreign influence may have
+produced. This course is also rendered necessary, by the circumstance that
+among modern nations the principle of imitation of the ancients has in
+some prevailed, without check or modification; while in others, the
+romantic spirit predominated, or at least an originality altogether
+independent of classical models The former is the case with the Italians
+and French, and the latter with the English and Spaniards.
+
+I have already indicated, in passing, how even before the eruption of the
+northern conquerors had put an end to everything like art, the diffusion
+of Christianity led to the abolition of plays, which, both with Greeks and
+Romans, had become extremely corrupt. After the long sleep of the dramatic
+and theatrical spirit in the middle ages, which, however uninfluenced by
+the classical models, began to awake again in the Mysteries and
+Moralities, the first attempt to imitate the ancients in the theatre, as
+well as in the other arts and departments of poetry, was made by the
+Italians. The _Sophonisba_ of Trissino, which belongs to the beginning of
+the sixteenth century, is generally named as the first regular tragedy.
+This literary curiosity I cannot boast of having read, but from other
+sources I know the author to be a spiritless pedant. Those even of the
+learned, who are most zealous for the imitation of the ancients, pronounce
+it a dull laboured work, without a breath of true poetical spirit; we may
+therefore, without further examination, safely appeal to their judgment
+upon it. It is singular, that while all ancient forms, even the Chorus,
+are scrupulously retained, the province of mythology is abandoned for that
+of Roman history.
+
+The pastoral dramas of Tasso and Guarini (which belong to the middle of
+the sixteenth century), whose subjects, though for the most part not
+tragical, are yet noble, not to say ideal, may be considered to form an
+epoch in the history of dramatic poetry. They are furnished with choruses
+of the most ravishing beauty, which, however, are but so many lyrical
+voices floating in the air; they do not appear as personages, and still
+less are they introduced with due regard to probability as constant
+witnesses of the represented actions. These compositions were, there is no
+doubt, designed for the theatre; and they were represented at Ferrara and
+at Turin with great pomp, and we may presume with eminent taste. This
+fact, however, serves to give us an idea of the infantine state of the
+theatre at that time; although, as a whole, they have each their plot and
+catastrophe, the action nevertheless stands still in some scenes. Their
+popularity, therefore, would lead us to conclude that the spectators,
+little accustomed to theatrical amusements, were consequently not
+difficult to please, and patiently followed the progress of a beautiful
+poem, even though deficient in dramatic development. The _Pastor Fido_, in
+particular, is an inimitable production; original and yet classical;
+romantic in the spirit of the love which it portrays; in its form
+impressed with the grand but simple stamp of classical antiquity; and
+uniting with the sweet triflings of poetry, the high and chaste beauty of
+feeling. No poet has succeeded so well as Guarini in combining the
+peculiarities of the modern and antique. He displays a profound feeling of
+the essence of Ancient Tragedy; for the idea of fate pervades the subject-
+matter, and the principal characters may be said to be ideal: he has also
+introduced caricatures, and on that account called the composition a
+Tragi-Comedy; but it is not from the vulgarity of their manners that they
+are caricatures, as from their over-lofty sentiments, just as in Ancient
+Tragedy the subordinate personages ever are invested with more or less of
+the general dignity.
+
+The great importance of this work, however, belongs rather to the History
+of Poetry in general; on Dramatic Poetry it had no effect, as in truth it
+was not calculated to produce any.
+
+I then return to what may properly be called the Tragedy of the Italians.
+After the _Sophonisba_, and a few pieces of the same period, which
+Calsabigi calls the first tragic lispings of Italy, a number of works of
+the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are cited; but of
+these none made, or at any rate maintained any considerable reputation.
+Although all these writers, in intention at least, laboured, to follow the
+rules of Aristotle, their tragical abortions are thus described by
+Calsabigi, a critic entirely devoted to the French system:--"Distorted,
+complicated, improbable plots, ill-understood scenic regulations, useless
+personages, double plots, inconsistent characters, gigantic or childish
+thoughts, feeble verses, affected phrases, the poetry neither harmonious
+nor natural; all this decked out with ill-timed descriptions and similes,
+or idle philosophical and political disquisitions; in every scene some
+silly amour, with all the trite insipidity of common-place sentimentality;
+of true tragic energy, of the struggle of conflicting passions, of
+overpowering theatrical catastrophes, not the slightest trace." Amongst
+the lumber of this forgotten literature we cannot stop to rummage, and we
+shall therefore proceed immediately to the consideration of the
+_Merope_ of Maffei, which appeared in the beginning of the eighteenth
+century. Its success in Italy, on its first publication, was great; and in
+other countries, owing to the competition of Voltaire, it also obtained an
+extraordinary reputation. The object of both Maffei and Voltaire was, from
+Hyginus' account of its contents, to restore in some measure a lost piece
+of Euripides, which the ancients highly commended. Voltaire, pretending to
+eulogize, has given a rival's criticism of Maffei's _Merope_; there
+is also a lengthened criticism on it in the _Dramaturgie_ of Lessing,
+as clever as it is impartial. He pronounces it, notwithstanding its purity
+and simplicity of taste, the work of a learned antiquary, rather than of a
+mind naturally adapted for, and practised in the dramatic art. We must
+therefore judge accordingly of the previous state of the drama in the
+country where such a work could arrive at so great an estimation.
+
+After Maffei came Metastasio and Alfieri; the first before the middle, and
+the other in the latter half of the eighteenth century. I here include the
+musical dramas of Metastasio, because they aim in general at a serious and
+pathetic effect, because they lay claim to ideality of conception, and
+because in their external form there is a partial observance of what is
+considered as belonging to the regularity of a tragedy. Both these poets,
+though totally differing in their aim, were nevertheless influenced in
+common by the productions of the French stage. Both, it is true, declared
+themselves too decidedly against the authority of this school to be
+considered properly as belonging to it; they assure us that, in order to
+preserve their own originality, they purposely avoided reading the French
+models. But this very precaution appears somewhat suspicious: whoever
+feels himself perfectly firm and secure in his own independence, may
+without hesitation study the works of his predecessors; he will thus be
+able to derive from them many an improvement in his art, and yet stamp on
+his own productions a peculiar character. But there is nothing on this
+head that I can urge in support of these poets: if it be really true that
+they never, or at least not before the completion of their works, perused
+the works of French tragedians, some invisible influence must have
+diffused itself through the atmosphere, which, without their being
+conscious of it, determined them. This is at once conceivable from the
+great estimation which, since the time of Louis XIV, French Tragedy has
+enjoyed, not only with the learned, but also with the great world
+throughout Europe; from the new-modelling of several foreign theatres to
+the fashion of the French; from the prevailing spirit of criticism, with
+which negative correctness was everything, and in which France gave the
+tone to the literature of other countries. The affinity is in both
+undeniable, but, from the intermixture of the musical element in
+Metastasio, it is less striking than in Alfieri. I trace it in the total
+absence of the romantic spirit; in a certain fanciless insipidity of
+composition; in the manner of handling mythological and historical
+materials, which is neither properly mythological nor historical; lastly,
+in the aim to produce a tragic purity, which degenerates into monotony.
+The unities of both place and time have been uniformly observed by
+Alfieri; the latter only could be respected by Metastasio, as change of
+scene is necessary to the opera poet. Alfieri affords in general no food
+for the eyes. In his plots he aimed at the antique simplicity, while
+Metastasio, in his rich intrigues, followed Spanish models, and in
+particular borrowed largely from Calderon. [Footnote: This is expressly
+asserted by the learned Spaniard Arteaga, in his Italian work on the
+_History of the Opera_.] Yet the harmonious ideality of the ancients
+was as foreign to the one, as the other was destitute of the charm of the
+romantic poets, which arises from the indissoluble mixture of elements
+apparently incongruous.
+
+Even before Metastasio, Apostolo Zeno had, as it is called, purified the
+opera, a phrase which, in the sense of modern critics, often means
+emptying a thing of all its substance and vigour. He formed it on the
+model of Tragedy, and more especially of French Tragedy; and a too
+faithful, or rather too slavish approximation to this model, is the very
+cause why he left so little room for musical development, on which account
+his pieces were immediately driven from the stage of the opera by those of
+his more expert successor. It is in general an artistic mistake for one
+species to attempt, at evident disadvantage, that which another more
+perfectly accomplishes, and in the attempt, to sacrifice its own peculiar
+excellencies. It originates in a chilling idea of regularity, once for all
+established for every kind alike, instead of ascertaining the spirit and
+peculiar laws of each distinct species.
+
+Metastasio quickly threw Zeno into the shade, since, with the same object
+in view, he displayed greater flexibility in accommodating himself to the
+requisitions of the musician. The merits which have gained for him the
+reputation of a classic among the Italians of the present day, and which,
+in some degree, have made him with them what Racine is with the French,
+are generally the perfect purity, clearness, elegance, and sweetness of
+his language, and, in particular, the soft melody and the extreme
+loveliness of his songs. Perhaps no poet ever possessed in a greater
+degree the talent of briefly bringing together all the essential features
+of a pathetic situation; the songs with which the characters make their
+exit, are almost always the purest concentrated musical extract of their
+state of mind. But, at the same time, we must own that all his
+delineations of passion are general: his pathos is purified, not only from
+all characteristic, as well as from all contemplative matter; and,
+consequently, the poetic representation, unencumbered thereby, proceeds
+with a light and easy motion, leaving to the musician the care of a richer
+and fuller development. Metastasio is musical throughout; but, to follow
+up the simile, we may observe, that of poetical music, melody is the only
+part that he possesses, being deficient in harmonious compass, and in the
+mysterious effects of counterpoint. Or, to express myself in different
+terms, he is musical, but in no respect picturesque. His melodies are
+light and pleasant, but they are constantly repeated with little or no
+variation: when we have read a few of his pieces, we know them all; and
+the composition as a whole is always without significance. His heroes,
+like those of Corneille, are gallant; his heroines tender, like those of
+Racine; but this has been too severely censured by many, without a due
+consideration of the requirements of the Opera. To me he appears
+censurable only for the selection of subjects, whose very seriousness
+could not without great incongruity be united with such triflings. Had
+Metastasio not adopted great historical names--had he borrowed his
+subject-matter more frequently from mythology, or from still more fanciful
+fictions--had he made always the same happy choice as that in his
+_Achilles in Scyros_, where, from the nature of the story, the Heroic
+is interwoven with the Idyllic, we might then have pardoned him if he
+invariably depicts his personages as in love. Then should we, if only we
+ourselves understood what ought to be expected from an opera, willingly
+have permitted him to indulge in feats of fancy still more venturesome. By
+his tragical pretensions he has injured himself: his powers were
+inadequate to support them, and the seductive movingness at which he aimed
+was irreconcileable with overpowering energy. I have heard a celebrated
+Italian poet assert that his countrymen were moved to tears by Metastasio.
+We cannot get over such a national testimony as this, except by throwing
+it back on the nation itself as a symptom of its own moral temperament. It
+appears to me undeniable, that a certain melting softness in the
+sentiments, and the expression of them, rendered Metastasio the delight of
+his contemporaries. He has lines which, from their dignity and vigorous
+compression, are perfectly suited to Tragedy, and yet we perceive in them
+an indescribable something, which seems to show that they were designed
+for the flexible throat of a soprano singer.
+
+The astonishing success of Metastasio throughout all Europe, and
+especially at courts, must also in a great measure be attributed to his
+being a court poet, not merely by profession, but also by the style in
+which he composed, and which was in every respect that of the tragedians
+of the era of Louis XIV. A brilliant surface without depth; prosaic
+sentiments and thoughts decked out with a choice poetical language; a
+courtly moderation throughout, whether in the display of passion, or in
+the exhibition of misfortune and crime; observance of the proprieties, and
+an apparent morality, for in these dramas voluptuousness is but breathed,
+never named, and the heart is always in every mouth; all these properties
+could not fail to recommend such tragical miniatures to the world of
+fashion. There is an unsparing pomp of noble sentiments, but withal most
+strangely associated with atrocious baseness. Not unfrequently does an
+injured fair one dispatch a despised lover to stab the faithless one from
+behind. In almost every piece there is a crafty knave who plays the
+traitor, for whom, however, there is ready prepared some royal
+magnanimity, to make all right at the last. The facility with which base
+treachery is thus taken into favour, as if it were nothing more than an
+amiable weakness, would have been extremely revolting, if there had been
+anything serious in this array of tragical incidents. But the poisoned cup
+is always seasonably dashed from the lips; the dagger either drops, or is
+forced from the murderous hand, before the deadly blow can be struck; or
+if injury is inflicted, it is never more than a slight scratch; and some
+subterranean exit is always at hand to furnish the means of flight from
+the dungeon or other imminent peril. The dread of ridicule, that
+conscience of all poets who write for the world of fashion, is very
+visible in the care with which he avoids all bolder flights as yet
+unsanctioned by precedent, and abstains from everything supernatural,
+because such a public carries not with it, even to the fantastic stage of
+the opera, a belief in wonders. Yet this fear has not always served as a
+sure guide to Metastasio: besides such an extravagant use of the "aside,"
+as often to appear ludicrous, the subordinate love-stories frequently
+assume the appearance of being a parody on the others. Here the Abbé,
+thoroughly acquainted with the various gradations of Cicisbeism, its pains
+and its pleasures, at once betrays himself. To the favoured lover there is
+generally opposed an importunate one, who presses his suit without return,
+the _soffione_ among the _cicisbei_; the former loves in silence, and
+frequently finds no opportunity till the end of the piece, of offering his
+little word of declaration; we might call him the _patito_. This
+unintermitting love-chase is not confined to the male parts, but extended
+also to the female, that everywhere the most varied and brilliant
+contrasts may offer themselves.
+
+A few only of the operas of Metastasio still keep possession of the stage,
+owing to the change of musical taste, which demands a different
+arrangement of the text. Metastasio seldom has choruses, and his airs are
+almost always for a single voice: with these the scenes uniformly close,
+and with them the singer never fails to make his exit. It appears as if,
+proud of having played off this highest triumph of feeling, he left the
+spectators to their astonishment at witnessing the chirping of the
+passions in the recitatives rising at last in the air, to the fuller
+nightingale tones. At present we require in an opera more frequent duos
+and trios, and a crashing finale. In fact, the most difficult problem for
+the opera poet is to reduce the mingled voices of conflicting passions in
+one pervading harmony, without destroying any one of them: a problem,
+however, which is generally solved by both poet and musician in a very
+arbitrary manner.
+
+Alfieri, a hold and proud man, disdained to please by such meretricious
+means as those of which Metastasio had availed himself: he was highly
+indignant at the lax immorality of his countrymen, and the degeneracy of
+his contemporaries in general. This indignation stimulated him to the
+exhibition of a manly strength of mind, of stoical principles and free
+opinions, and on the other hand, led him to depict the horrors and
+enormities of despotism. This enthusiasm, however, was by far more
+political and moral than poetical, and we must praise his tragedies rather
+as the actions of the man than as the works of the poet. From his great
+disinclination to pursue the same path with Metastasio, he naturally fell
+into the opposite extreme: I might not unaptly call him a Metastasio
+reversed. If the muse of the latter he a love-sick nymph, Alfieri's muse
+is an Amazon. He gave her a Spartan education; he aimed at being the Cato
+of the theatre; but he forgot that, though the tragic poet may himself he
+a stoic, tragic poetry itself, if it would move and agitate us, must never
+be stoical. His language is so barren of imagery, that his characters seem
+altogether devoid of fancy; it is broken and harsh: he wished to steel it
+anew, and in the process it not only lost its splendour, but became
+brittle and inflexible. Not only is he not musical, but positively anti-
+musical; he tortures our feelings by the harshest dissonances, without any
+softening or solution. Tragedy is intended by its elevating sentiments in
+some degree to emancipate our minds from the sensual despotism of the
+body; but really to do this, it must not attempt to strip this dangerous
+gift of heaven of its charms: but rather it must point out to us the
+sublime majesty of our existence, though surrounded on all sides by
+dangerous abysses. When we read the tragedies of Alfieri, the world looms
+upon us dark and repulsive. A style of composition which exhibits the
+ordinary course of human affairs in a gloomy and troublous light, and
+whose extraordinary catastrophes are horrible, resembles a climate where
+the perpetual fogs of a northern winter should be joined with the fiery
+tempests of the torrid zone. Profound and delicate delineation of
+character is as little to be looked for in Alfieri as in Metastasio: he
+does but exhibit the opposite but equally partial view of human nature.
+His characters also are cast in the mould of naked general notions, and he
+frequently paints the extremes of black and white, side by side, and in
+unrelieved contrast. His villains for the most part betray all their
+deformity, in their outward conduct; this might, perhaps, be allowed to
+pass, although indeed such a picture will hardly enable us to recognise
+them in real life; but his virtuous persons are not amiable, and this is a
+defect open to much graver censure. Of all seductive graces, and even of
+all subordinate charms and ornaments, (as if the degree in which nature
+herself had denied them to this caustic genius had not been sufficient,)
+he studiously divested himself, because as he thought it would best
+advance his more earnest moral aim, forgetting, however, that the poet has
+no other means of swaying the minds of men than the fascinations of his
+art.
+
+From the tragedy of the Greeks, with which he did not become acquainted
+until the end of his career, he was separated by a wide chasm; and I
+cannot consider his pieces as an improvement on the French tragedy. Their
+structure is more simple, the dialogue in some cases less conventional; he
+has also got rid of confidants, and this has been highly extolled as a
+difficulty overcome, and an improvement on the French system; he had the
+same aversion to chamberlains and court ladies in poetry as in real life.
+But in captivating and brilliant eloquence, his pieces bear no comparison
+with the better French tragedies; they also display much less skill in the
+plot, its gradual march, preparations, and transitions. Compare, for
+instance, the _Britannicus_ of Racine with the _Octavia_ of Alfieri. Both
+drew their materials from Tacitus: but which of them has shown the more
+perfect understanding 01 this profound master of the human heart? Racine
+appears here before us as a man who was thoroughly acquainted with all the
+corruptions of a court, and had beheld ancient Rome under the Emperors,
+reflected in this mirror of observation. On the other hand, if Alfieri did
+not expressly assure us that his Octavia was a daughter of Tacitus, we
+should be inclined to believe that it was modelled on that of the
+pretended Seneca. The colours with which he paints his tyrants are
+borrowed from the rhetorical exercises of the school. Who can recognise,
+in his blustering and raging Nero, the man who, as Tacitus says, seemed
+formed by nature "to veil hatred with caresses?"--the cowardly Sybarite,
+fantastically vain till the very last moment of his existence, cruel at
+first, from fear, and afterwards from inordinate lust.
+
+If Alfieri has, in this case, been untrue to Tacitus, in the _Conspiracy
+of the Pazzi_ he has equally failed in his attempt to translate Macchiavel
+into the language of poetry. In this and other pieces from modern history,
+the _Filippo_ for instance, and the _Don Garcia_, he has by no means hit
+the spirit and tone of modern times, nor even of his own nation: his ideas
+of the tragic style were opposed to the observance of everything like a
+local and determinate costume. On the other hand it is astonishing to
+observe the subjects which he has borrowed from the tragic cycles of the
+Greeks, such as the _Orestiad_, for instance, losing under his hands all
+their heroic magnificence, and assuming a modern, not to say a vulgar air.
+He has succeeded best in painting the public life of the Roman republic;
+and it is a great merit in the _Virginia_ that the action takes place in
+the forum, and in part before the eyes of the people. In other pieces,
+while the Unity of Place is strictly observed, the scene chosen is for the
+most part so invisible and indeterminate, that one would fain imagine it
+is some out-of-the-way corner, where nobody comes but persons involved in
+painful and disagreeable transactions. Again, the stripping his kings and
+heroes, for the sake of simplicity, of all their external retinue,
+produces the impression that the world is actually depopulated around
+them. This stage-solitude is very striking in _Saul_, where the scene is
+laid before two armies in battle-array, on the point of a decisive
+engagement. And yet, in other respects this piece is favourably
+distinguished from the rest, by a certain Oriental splendour, and the
+lyrical sublimity in which the troubled mind of Saul gives utterance to
+itself. _Myrrha_ is a perilous attempt to treat with propriety a subject
+equally revolting to the senses and the feelings. The Spaniard Arteaga has
+criticised this tragedy and the _Filippo_ with great severity but with
+great truth.
+
+I reserve for my notice of the present condition of the Italian theatre
+all that I have to remark on the successors of Alfieri, and go back in
+order of time in order to give a short sketch of the history of Comedy.
+
+In this department the Italians began with an imitation of the ancients,
+which was not sufficiently attentive to the difference of times and
+manners, and translations of Plautus and Terence were usually represented
+in their earliest theatres; they soon fell, however, into the most
+singular extravagancies. We have comedies of Ariosto and Macchiavelli--
+those of the former are in rhymeless verse, _versi sdruccioli_, and
+those of the latter in prose. Such men could produce nothing which did not
+bear traces of their genius. But Ariosto in the structure of his pieces
+kept too close to the stories of the ancients, and, therefore, did not
+exhibit any true living picture of the manners of his own times. In
+Macchiavelli this is only the case in his _Clitia_, an imitation of
+Plautus; the _Mandragola_, and another comedy, which is without a
+name, are sufficiently Florentine; but, unfortunately, they are not of a
+very edifying description. A simple deceived husband, and a hypocritical
+and pandering monk, form the principal parts. Tales, in the style of the
+free and merry tales of Boccacio, are boldly and bluntly, I cannot say,
+dramatised: for with respect to theatrical effect they are altogether
+inartificial, but given in the form of dialogue. As _Mimes_, that is,
+as pictures of the language of ordinary life with all its idioms, these
+productions are much to be commended. In one point they resemble the Latin
+comic poets; they are not deficient in indecency. This was, indeed, their
+general tone. The comedies of Pietro Aretino are merely remarkable for
+their shameless immodesty. It almost seems as if these writers, deeming
+the spirit of refined love inconsistent with the essence of Comedy, had
+exhausted the very lees of the sensual amours of Greek Comedy.
+
+At a still earlier period, in the beginning, namely, of the sixteenth
+century, an unsuccessful attempt had been made in the _Virginia_ of
+Accolti to dramatise a serious novel, as a middle species between Comedy
+and Tragedy, and to adorn it with poetical splendour. Its subject is the
+same story on which Shakspeare's _All's Well that Ends Well_, is founded.
+I have never had an opportunity of reading it, but the unfavourable report
+of a literary man disposes me to think favourably of it. [Footnote:
+Bouterwek's _Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit.--Ersten Band_, s.
+334, &c.] According to his description, it resembles the older pieces of
+the Spanish stage before it had attained to maturity of form, and in
+common with them it employs the stanza for its metre. The attempts at
+romantic drama have always failed in Italy; whereas in Spain, on the
+contrary, all endeavours to model the theatre according to the rules of
+the ancients, and latterly of the French, have from the difference of
+national taste uniformly been abortive.
+
+We have a comedy of Tasso's, _Gli Intrichi d'Amore_, which ought rather to
+be called a lengthy romance in the form of dialogue. So many and such
+wonderful events are crowded together within the narrow limit of five
+acts, that one incident treads closely upon the heels of another, without
+being in the least accounted for by human motives, so as to give to the
+whole an insupportable hardness. Criminal designs are portrayed with
+indifference, and the merriment is made to consist in the manner in which
+some accident or other invariably frustrates their consequences. We cannot
+here recognise the Tasso whose nice sense of love, chivalry, and honour
+speaks so delightfully in the _Jerusalem Delivered_, and on this ground it
+has even been doubted whether this work be really his. The richness of
+invention, if we may give this name to a rude accumulation of incidents,
+is so great, that the attention is painfully tortured in the endeavour to
+keep clear and disentangled the many and diversely crossing threads.
+
+We have of this date a multitude of Italian comedies on a similar plan,
+only with less order and connexion, and whoso aim apparently is to delight
+by means of indecency. A parasite and procuress are standing characters in
+all. Among the comic poets of this class, Giambatista Porta deserves to be
+distinguished. His plots, it is true, are like the rest, imitations of
+Plautus and Terence, or dramatised tales; but, throughout the love-
+dialogues, on which he seems to have laboured with peculiar fondness,
+there breathes a tender feeling which rises even from the midst of the
+rudeness of the old Italian Comedy, and its generally uncongenial
+materials.
+
+In the seventeenth century, when the Spanish theatre flourished in all its
+glory, the Italians seem to have borrowed frequently from it; but not
+without misemploying and disfiguring whatever they so acquired. The
+neglect of the regular stage increased with the all-absorbing passion for
+the opera, and with the growing taste of the multitude for improvisatory
+farces with standing masks. The latter are not in themselves to be
+despised: they serve to fix, as it were, so many central points of the
+national character in the comic exhibition, by the external peculiarities
+of speech, dress, &c. Their constant recurrence does not by any means
+preclude the greatest possible diversity in the plot of the pieces, even
+as in chess, with a small number of men, of which each has his fixed
+movement, an endless number of combinations is possible. But as to
+extemporary playing, it no doubt readily degenerates into insipidity; and
+this may have been the case even in Italy, notwithstanding the great fund
+of drollery and fantastic wit, and a peculiar felicity in farcical
+gesticulation, which the Italians possess.
+
+About the middle of the last century, Goldoni appeared as the reformer of
+Italian Comedy, and his success was so great, that he remained almost
+exclusively in possession of the comic stage. He is certainly not
+deficient in theatrical skill; but, as the event has proved, he is wanting
+in that solidity, that depth of characterization, that novelty and
+richness of invention, which are necessary to ensure a lasting reputation.
+His pictures of manners are true, but not sufficiently elevated above the
+range of every-day life; he has exhausted the surface of life; and as
+there is little progression in his dramas, and every thing turns usually
+on the same point, this adds to the impression of shallowness and ennui,
+as characteristic of the existing state of society. Willingly would he
+have abolished masks altogether, but he could hardly have compensated for
+them out of his own resources; however, he retained only a few of them, as
+Harlequin, Brighella, and Pantaloon, and limited their parts. And yet he
+fell again into a great uniformity of character, which, indeed, he partly
+confesses in his repeated use of the same names: for instance, his
+Beatrice is always a lively, and his Rosaura a feeling young maiden; and
+as for any farther distinction, it is not to be found in him.
+
+The excessive admiration of Goldoni, and the injury sustained thereby by
+the masked comedy, for which the company of Sacchi in Venice possessed the
+highest talents, gave rise to the dramas of Gozzi. They are fairy tales in
+a dramatic form, in which, however, along side of the wonderful,
+versified, and more serious part, he employed the whole of the masks, and
+allowed them full and unrestrained development of their peculiarities.
+They, if ever any were, are pieces for effect, of great boldness of plot,
+still more fantastic than romantic; even though Gozzi was the first among
+the comic poets of Italy to show any true feeling for honour and love. The
+execution does not betoken either care or skill, but is sketchily dashed
+off. With all his whimsical boldness he is still quite a popular writer;
+the principal motives are detailed with the most unambiguous perspicuity,
+all the touches are coarse and vigorous: he says, he knows well that his
+countrymen are fond of _robust_ situations. After his imagination had
+revelled to satiety among Oriental tales, he took to re-modelling Spanish
+plays, and particularly those of Calderon; but here he is, in my opinion,
+less deserving of praise. By him the ethereal and delicately-tinted poetry
+of the Spaniard is uniformly vulgarised, and deepened with the most
+glaring colours; while the weight of his masks draws the aerial tissue to
+the ground, for the humorous introduction of the _gracioso_ in the
+Spanish is of far finer texture. On the other hand, the wonderful
+extravagance of the masked parts serves as an admirable contrast to the
+wild marvels of fairy tale. Thus the character of these pieces was, in the
+serious part, as well as in the accompanying drollery, equally removed
+from natural truth. Here Gozzi had fallen almost accidentally on a fund of
+whose value he was not, perhaps, fully aware: his prosaical, and for the
+most part improvisatory, masks, forming altogether of themselves the irony
+on the poetical part. What I here mean by irony, I shall explain more
+fully when I come to the justification of the mixture of the tragic and
+comic in the romantic drama of Shakspeare and Calderon. At present I shall
+only observe, that it is a sort of confession interwoven into the
+representation itself, and more or less distinctly expressed, of its
+overcharged one-sidedness in matters of fancy and feeling, and by means of
+which the equipoise is again restored. The Italians were not, however,
+conscious of this, and Gozzi did not find any followers to carry his rude
+sketches to a higher degree of perfection. Instead of combining like him,
+only with greater refinement, the charms of wonderful poetry with
+exhilarating mirth; instead of comparing Gozzi with the foreign masters of
+the romantic drama, whom he resembles notwithstanding his great disparity,
+and from the unconscious affinity between them in spirit and plan, drawing
+the conclusion that the principle common to both was founded in nature;
+the Italians contented themselves with considering the pieces of Gozzi as
+the wild offspring of an extravagant imagination, and with banishing them
+from the stage. The comedy with masks is held in contempt by all who
+pretend to any degree of refinement, as if they were too wise for it, and
+is abandoned to the vulgar, in the Sunday representations at the theatres
+and in the puppet-shows. Although this contempt must have had an injurious
+influence on the masks, preventing, as it does, any actor of talent from
+devoting himself to them, so that there are no examples now of the spirit
+and wit with which they were formerly filled up, still the _Commedia
+dell' Arte_ is the only one in Italy where we can meet with original
+and truly theatrical entertainment. [Footnote: A few years ago, I saw in
+Milan an excellent Truffaldin or Harlequin, and here and there in obscure
+theatres, and even in puppet-shows, admirable representations of the old
+traditional jokes of the country. [Unfortunately, on my last visit to
+Milan, my friend was no longer to be met with. Under the French rule,
+Harlequin's merry occupation had been proscribed in the Great Theatres,
+from a care, it was alleged, for the dignity of man. The Puppet-theatre of
+Gerolamo still flourishes, however but a stranger finds it difficult to
+follow the jokes of the Piedmontese and Milan Masks.--LAST EDITION.]]
+
+In Tragedy the Italians generally imitate Alfieri, who, although it is the
+prevailing fashion to admire him, is too bold and manly a thinker to be
+tolerated on the stage. They have produced some single pieces of merit,
+but the principles of tragic art which Alfieri followed are altogether
+false, and in the bawling and heartless declamation of their actors, this
+tragic poetry, stripped with stoical severity of all the charms of
+grouping, of musical harmony, and of every tender emotion, is represented
+with the most deadening uniformity and monotony. As all the rich rewards
+are reserved for the singers, it is only natural that their players, who
+are only introduced as a sort of stop-gaps between singing and dancing,
+should, for the most part, not even possess the very elements of their
+art, viz., pure pronunciation, and practised memory. They seem to have no
+idea that their parts can be got by heart, and hence, in an Italian
+theatre, we hear every piece as it were twice over; the prompter speaking
+as loud as a good player elsewhere, and the actors in order to be
+distinguished from him bawling most insufferably. It is exceedingly
+amusing to see the prompter, when, from the general forgetfulness, a scene
+threatens to fall into confusion, labouring away, and stretching out his
+head like a serpent from his hole, hurrying through the dialogue before
+the different speakers. Of all the actors in the world, I conceive those
+of Paris to have their parts best by heart; in this, as well as in the
+knowledge of versification, the Germans are far inferior to them.
+
+One of their living poets, Giovanni Pindemonti, has endeavoured to
+introduce greater extent, variety, and nature into his historical plays,
+but he has been severely handled by their critics for descending from the
+height of the cothurnus to attain that truth of circumstance without which
+it is impossible for this species of drama to exist; perhaps also for
+deviating from the strict observation of the traditional rules, so blindly
+worshipped by them. If the Italian verse be in fact so fastidious as not
+to consort with many historical peculiarities, modern names and titles for
+instance, let them write partly in prose, and call the production not a
+tragedy, but an historical drama. It seems in general to be assumed as an
+undoubted principle, that the _verso sciolto_, or rhymeless line, of
+eleven syllables, is alone fit for the drama, but this does not seem to me
+to be by any means proved. This verse, in variety and metrical
+signification, is greatly inferior to the English and German rhymeless
+iambic, from its uniform feminine termination, and from there being merely
+an accentuation in Italian, without any syllabic measure. Moreover, from
+the frequent transition of the sense from verse to verse, according to
+every possible division, the lines flow into one another without its being
+possible for the ear to separate them. Alfieri imagined that he had found
+out the genuine dramatic manner of treating this verse correspondent to
+the form of his own dialogue, which consists of simply detached periods,
+or rather of propositions entirely unperiodical and abruptly terminated.
+It is possible that he carried into his works a personal peculiarity, for
+he is said to have been extremely laconic; he was also, as he himself
+relates, influenced by the example of Seneca: but how different a lesson
+might he have learned from the Greeks! We do not, it is true, in
+conversation, connect our language so closely as in an oratorical
+harangue, but the opposite extreme is equally unnatural. Even in our
+common discourses, we observe a certain continuity, we give a development
+both to arguments and objections, and in an instant passion will animate
+us to fulness of expression, to a flow of eloquence, and even to lyrical
+sublimity. The ideal dialogue of Tragedy may therefore find in actual
+conversation all the various tones and turns of poetry, with the exception
+of epic repose. The metre therefore of Metastasio, and before him, of
+Tasso and Guarini, in their pastoral dramas, seems to me much more
+agreeable and suitable than the monotonous verse of eleven syllables: they
+intermingle with it verses of seven syllables, and occasionally, after a
+number of blank lines, introduce a pair of rhymes, and even insert a rhyme
+in the middle of a verse. From this the transition to more measured
+strophes, either in _ottave rime_, or in direct lyrical metres, would
+be easy. Rhyme, and the connexion which it forms, have nothing in them
+inconsistent with the essence of dramatic dialogue, and the objection to
+change of measure in the drama rests merely on a chilling idea of
+regularity.
+
+No suitable versification for Comedy has yet been invented in Italy. The
+_verso sciolto_, it is well known, does not answer; it is not sufficiently
+familiar. The verse of twelve syllables, with a _sdrucciolo_ termination
+selected by Ariosto, is much better, resembling the trimeter of the
+ancients, but is still somewhat monotonous. It has been, however, but
+little cultivated. The Martellian verse, a bad imitation of the
+Alexandrine, is a downright torture to the ear. Chiari, and occasionally
+Goldoni, came at last to use it, and Gozzi by way of derision. It still
+remains therefore to the prejudice of a more elegant style of prose.
+
+Of Comedy, the modern Italians have nothing worth the name. What they
+have, are nothing but pictures of manners still more dull and superficial
+than those of Goldoni, without drollery, or invention, and from their
+every-day commonplace, downright disagreeable. They have, on the other
+hand, acquired a true relish for the sentimental drama and familiar
+tragedy; they frequent with great partiality the representation of popular
+German pieces of this description, and even produce the strangest and
+oddest imitations of them. Long accustomed to operas and ballets, as their
+favourite entertainments, wherein nothing is ever attempted beyond a
+beautiful air or an elegant movement, the public seems altogether to have
+lost all sense of dramatic connexion: they are perfectly satisfied with
+seeing the same evening two acts from different operas, or even the last
+act of an opera before the first.
+
+We believe, therefore, that we are not going too far if we affirm, that
+both dramatic poetry and the histrionic art are in a lamentable state of
+decline in Italy, that not even the first foundations of a true national
+theatre have yet been laid, and that there is no prospect of it, till the
+prevailing ideas on the subject shall have undergone a total change.
+
+Calsabigi attributes the cause of this state to the want of permanent
+companies of players, and of a capital. In this last reason there is
+certainly some foundation: in England, Spain, and France, a national
+system of dramatic art has been developed and established; in Italy and
+Germany, where there are only capitals of separate states, but no general
+metropolis, great difficulties are opposed to the improvement of the
+theatre. Calsabigi could not adduce the obstacles arising from a false
+theory, for he was himself under their influence.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+Antiquities of the French Stage--Influence of Aristotle and the Imitation
+of the Ancients--Investigation of the Three Unities--What is Unity of
+Action?--Unity of Time--Was it observed by the Greeks?--Unity of Place as
+connected with it.
+
+
+We now proceed to the Dramatic Literature of France. We have no intention
+of dwelling at length on the first beginnings of Tragedy in this country,
+and therefore leave to French critics the task of depreciating the
+antiquities of their own literature, which, with the mere view of adding
+to the glory of the later age of Richelieu and Louis XIV., they so
+zealously enter upon. Their language, it is true, was at this time first
+cultivated, from an indescribable waste of tastelessness and barbarity,
+while the harmonious diction of the Italian and Spanish poetry, which had
+long before spontaneously developed itself in the most beautiful
+luxuriance, was rapidly degenerating. Hence we are not to be astonished if
+the French lay such great stress on negative excellences, and so carefully
+endeavour to avoid everything like impropriety, and that from dread of
+relapse into rudeness this has ever since been the general object of their
+critical labours. When La Harpe says of the tragedies of Corneille, that
+"their tone rises above flatness, only to fall into the opposite extreme
+of affectation," judging from the proofs which he adduces, we see no
+reason to differ from him. The publication recently of Legouvé's _Death
+of Henry the Fourth_, has led to the reprinting of a contemporary piece
+on the same subject, which is not only written in a ludicrous style, but
+in the general plan and distribution of the subject, with its prologue
+spoken by Satan, and its chorus of pages, with its endless monologues and
+want of progress and action, betrays the infancy of the dramatic art; not
+a naïve infancy, full of hope and promise, but one disfigured by the most
+pedantic bombast and absurdity. For a character of the earlier tragical
+attempts of the French in the last half of the sixteenth and the first
+thirty or forty years of the seventeenth century, we refer to Fontenelle,
+La Harpe, and the _Mélanges Littéraires_ of Suard and André. We shall
+confine ourselves to the characteristics of three of their most celebrated
+tragic poets, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, who, it would seem, have
+given an immutable shape to their tragic stage. Our chief object, however,
+is an examination of the _system of tragic art_ practically followed
+by these poets, and by them, in part, but by the French critics
+universally, considered as alone entitled to any authority, and every
+deviation from it viewed as an offence against good taste. If only the
+system be in itself the right one, 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 the earlier attempts it is only necessary for us to observe, that the
+endeavour to imitate the ancients showed itself from the very earliest
+period in France. Moreover, they considered it the surest method of
+succeeding in this endeavour to observe the outward regularity of form, of
+which their notion was derived from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca,
+rather than from any intimate acquaintance with the Greek models
+themselves. In the first tragedies that were represented, the _Cleopatra_,
+and _Dido_ of Jodelle, a prologue and chorus were introduced; Jean de la
+Peruse translated the _Medea_ of Seneca; and Garnier's pieces are all
+taken from the Greek tragedies or from Seneca, but in the execution they
+bear a much closer resemblance to the latter. The writers of that day,
+moreover, modelled themselves diligently on the _Sophonisbe_ of Trissino,
+in good confidence of its classic form. Whoever is acquainted with the
+procedure of true genius, how it is impelled by an almost unconscious and
+immediate contemplation of great and important truths, and in no wise by
+convictions obtained mediately, and by circuitous deductions, will be on
+that ground alone 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, according to general admission, the
+classical aera of French tragedy commences, and which is certainly one of
+his best, the _Cid_, is well known to have been borrowed from the Spanish.
+It violates in a great degree 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 in strict accordance with the rules of Aristotle, was so
+universally predominant, that it bore down all opposition. Almost at the
+close of his dramatic career, Corneille began to entertain scruples of
+conscience, and in a separate treatise endeavoured to prove that, although
+in the composition of his pieces he had never even thought of Aristotle,
+they were yet all accurately written according to his rules. This was no
+easy task, and he was obliged to have recourse to all manner of forced
+explanations. If he had been able to establish his case satisfactorily, it
+would but lead to the inference that the rules of Aristotle must be very
+loose and indeterminate, if works so dissimilar in spirit and form, as the
+tragedies of the Greeks and those of Corneille are yet equally true to
+them.
+
+It is quite otherwise with Racine: of all the French poets he was, without
+doubt, the one who was best acquainted with the ancients; and not merely
+did he study them as a scholar, he felt them also as a poet. He found,
+however, the practice of the theatre already firmly established, and he
+did not, for the sake of approaching these models, undertake to deviate
+from it. He contented himself, therefore, with appropriating the separate
+beauties of the Greek poets; but, whether from deference to the taste of
+his age, or from inclination, he remained faithful to the prevailing
+gallantry so alien to the spirit of Greek tragedy, and, for the most part,
+made it the foundation of the complication of his plots.
+
+Such, nearly, was the state of the French theatre before the appearance of
+Voltaire. His knowledge of the Greeks was very limited, although he now
+and then spoke of them with enthusiasm, in order, on other occasions, to
+rank them below the more modern masters of his own nation, including
+himself still, he always felt himself bound to preach up the grand
+severity and simplicity of the Greeks as essential to Tragedy. He censured
+the deviations of his predecessors therefrom as mistakes, 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 antechamber. He at first spoke of Shakspeare's bursts of
+genius, 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 stronger theatrical effect; he called for a
+scene more majestically ornamented; and, lastly, he frequently endeavoured
+to give to his pieces a political or philosophical interest altogether
+foreign to poetry. His labours hare unquestionably been of utility to the
+French stage, although in language and versification (which in the
+classification of dramatic excellences ought only to hold a secondary
+place, though in France they alone almost decide the fate of a piece), he
+is, by most critics, considered inferior to his predecessors, or at least
+to Racine. It is now the fashion to attack this idol of a bygone
+generation on every point, and with the most unrelenting and partial
+hostility. His innovations on the stage are therefore cried down as so
+many literary heresies, even by watchmen of the critical Zion, who seem to
+think that the age of Louis XIV. has left nothing for all succeeding time,
+to the end of the world, but a passive admiration of its perfections,
+without a presumptuous thought of making improvements of its own. For
+authority is avowed with so little disguise as the first principle of the
+French critics, that this expression of literary heresy is quite current
+with them.
+
+In so far as we have to raise a doubt of the unconditional authority of
+the rules followed by the old French tragic authors, of the pretended
+affinity between the spirit of their works and the spirit of the Greek
+tragedians, and of the indispensableness of many supposed proprieties, we
+find an ally in Voltaire. But in many other points he has, without
+examination, nay even unconsciously, adopted the maxims of his
+predecessors, and followed their practice. He is alike implicated with
+them in many opinions, which are perhaps founded more on national
+peculiarities than on human nature and the essence of tragic poetry in
+general. On this account we may include him in a common examination with
+them; for we are here concerned not with the execution of particular
+parts, but with the general principles of tragic art which reveal
+themselves in the shape of the works.
+
+The consideration of the dramatic regularity for which these critics
+contend brings us back to the so-called Three Unities of Aristotle. We
+shall therefore examine the doctrine delivered by the Greek philosopher on
+this subject: how far the Greek tragedians knew or observed these rules;
+whether the French poets have in reality overcome the difficulty of
+observing them without the sacrifice of freedom and probability, or merely
+dexterously avoided it; and finally, whether the merit of this observance
+is actually so great and essential as it has been deemed, and does not
+rather entail the sacrifice of still more essential beauties.
+
+There is, however, another aspect of French Tragedy from which it cannot
+appeal to the authority of the ancients: this is, the tying of poetry to a
+number of merely conventional proprieties. On this subject the French are
+far less clear than on that of the rules; for nations are not usually more
+capable of knowing and appreciating themselves than individuals are. It
+is, however, intimately connected with the spirit of French poetry in
+general, nay, rather of their whole literature and the very language
+itself. All this, in France, has been formed under the guardianship of
+society, and, in its progressive development, has uniformly been guided
+and determined by it--the guardianship of a society which zealously
+imitated the tone of the capital, which again took its direction from the
+reigning modes of a brilliant court. If, as there is indeed no difficulty
+in proving, such be really the case, we may easily conceive why French
+literature, of and since the age of Louis XIV., has been, and still is, so
+well received in the upper ranks of society and the fashionable world
+throughout Europe, whereas the body of the people, everywhere true to
+their own customs and manners, have never shown anything like a cordial
+liking for it. In this way, even in foreign countries, it again in some
+measure finds the place of its birth.
+
+The far-famed Three Unities, which have given rise to a whole Iliad of
+critical wars, are the Unities of Action, Time, and Place.
+
+The validity of the first is universally allowed, but the difficulty is to
+agree about its true meaning; and, I may add, that it is no easy matter to
+come to an understanding on the subject.
+
+The Unities of Time and of Place are considered by some quite a
+subordinate matter, while others lay the greatest stress upon them, and
+affirm that out of the pale of them there is no safety for the dramatic
+poet. In France this zeal is not confined merely to the learned world, but
+seems to be shared by the whole nation in common. Every Frenchman who has
+sucked in his Boileau with his mother's milk, considers himself a born
+champion of the Dramatic Unities, much in the same way that the kings of
+England since Henry VIII. are hereditary Defenders of the Faith.
+
+It is amusing enough to see Aristotle driven perforce to lend his name to
+these three Unities, whereas the only one of which he speaks with any
+degree of fulness is the first, the Unity of Action. With respect to the
+Unity of Time he merely throws out a vague hint; while of the Unity of
+Place he says not a syllable.
+
+I do not, therefore, find myself in a polemical relation to Aristotle, for
+I by no means contest the Unity of Action properly understood: I only
+claim a greater latitude with respect to place and time for many species
+of the drama, nay, hold it essential to them. In order, however, that we
+may view the matter in its true light, I must first say a few words on the
+_Poetics_ of Aristotle, those few pages which have given rise to such
+voluminous commentaries.
+
+It is well established that this treatise is merely a fragment, for it
+does not even touch upon many important matters. Several scholars have
+even been of opinion, that it is not a fragment of the true original, but
+of an abridgment which some one had made for his own improvement. On one
+point all philological critics are unanimous: namely, that the text is
+very much corrupted, and they have endeavoured to restore it by
+conjectural emendations. Its great obscurity is either expressly
+complained of by commentators, or substantiated by the fact, that all in
+turn reject the interpretations of their predecessors, while they cannot
+approve their own to those who succeed them.
+
+Very different is it with the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle. It is undoubtedly
+genuine, perfect, and easily understood. But how does he there consider
+the oratorical art? As a sister of Logic: for as this produces conviction
+by its syllogism, so must Rhetoric in a kindred manner operate persuasion.
+This is about the same as to consider architecture simply as the art of
+building solidly and conveniently. This is, certainly, the first
+requisite, but a great deal more is still necessary before we can consider
+it as one of the fine arts. What we require of architecture is, that it
+should combine these essential objects of an edifice with beauty of plan
+and harmony of proportion, and give to the whole a correspondent
+impression. Now when we see how Aristotle, without allowing for
+imagination or feeling, has viewed oratory only on that side which is
+accessible to the understanding, and is subservient to an external aim,
+can it surprise us if that he has still less fathomed the mystery of
+poetry, that art which is absolved from every other aim but its own
+unconditional one of creating the beautiful by free invention and clothing
+it in suitable language?--Already have I had the hardihood to maintain
+this heresy, and hitherto I have seen no reason for retracting my opinion.
+Lessing thought otherwise. But what if Lessing, with his acute analytical
+criticism, split exactly on the same rock? This species of criticism is
+completely victorious when it exposes the contradictions for the
+understanding in works composed exclusively with the understanding; but it
+could hardly rise to the idea of a work of art created by the true genius.
+
+The philosophical theory of the fine arts collectively was, as a distinct
+science, little cultivated among the ancients; of technical works on the
+several arts individually, in which the means of execution were alone
+considered, they had no lack. Were I to select a guide from among the
+ancient philosophers, it should undoubtedly be Plato, who acquired the
+idea of the beautiful not by dissection, which never can give it, but by
+intuitive inspiration, and in whose works the germs of a genuine
+Philosophy of Art, are every where scattered.
+
+Let us now hear what Aristotle says on the Unity of Action.
+
+"We affirm that Tragedy is the imitation of a perfect and entire action
+which has a certain magnitude: for there may be a whole without any
+magnitude whatever. Now a whole is what has a beginning, middle, and end.
+A beginning is that which is not necessarily after some other thing, but
+that which from its nature has something after it, or arising out of it.
+An end, on the other hand, is that which from its nature is after
+something else, either necessarily, or usually, but after which there is
+nothing, A middle, what is itself after some other thing, and after which
+also there is something. Hence poems which are properly composed must
+neither begin nor end accidentally, but according to the principles above
+laid down."
+
+Strictly speaking, it is a contradiction in terms to say that a whole,
+which has parts, can be without magnitude. But Aristotle goes on to state,
+in explanation, that by "magnitude" as a requisition of beauty, he means,
+a certain measure which is neither so small as to preclude us from
+distinguishing its parts, nor so extensive as to prevent us from taking
+the whole in at one view. This is, therefore, merely an external
+definition of the beautiful, derived from experience, and founded on the
+quality of our organs of sense and our powers of comprehension. However,
+his application of it to the drama is remarkable. "It must have an
+extension, but such as may easily be taken in by the memory. The
+determination of the length according to the wants of the representation,
+does not come within the province of Art. With respect to the essence of
+the thing, the composition will be the more beautiful the more extensive
+it is without prejudice to its comprehensibility." This assertion would be
+highly favourable for the compositions of Shakspeare and of other romantic
+poets, who have included in one picture a more extensive circle of life,
+characters, and events, than is to be found in the simple Greek tragedy,
+if only we could show that they have given it the necessary unity, and
+such a magnitude as can be clearly taken in at a view, and this we have no
+hesitation in affirming to be actually the case.
+
+In another place Aristotle requires the same unity of action from the epic
+as from the dramatic poet; he repeats the preceding definitions, and says
+that the poet must not resemble the historian, who relates contemporary
+events, although they have no bearing on one another. Here we have still a
+more express demand of that connexion of cause and effect between the
+represented events, which before, in his explanation of the parts of a
+whole, was at most implied. He admits, however, that the epic poet may
+take in a much greater number of events connected with one main action,
+since the narrative form enables him to describe many things as going on
+at the same time; on the other hand, the dramatic poet cannot represent
+several simultaneous actions, but only so much as is going on upon the
+stage, and the part which the persons who appear there take in one action.
+But what if a different construction of the scene, and a more skilful
+theatric perspective, should enable the dramatic poet, duly and without
+confusion, although in a more compressed space, to develope a fable not
+inferior in extent to the epic poem? Where would be the objection, if the
+only obstacle were the supposed impossibility?
+
+This is nearly all that is to be found in the _Poetics_ of Aristotle
+on Unity of Action. A short investigation will serve to show how very much
+these anatomical ideas, which have been stamped as rules, are below the
+essential requisites of poetry.
+
+Unity of Action is required. What is action? Most critics pass over this
+point, as if it were self-evident In the higher, proper signification,
+action is an activity dependent on the will of man. Its unity will consist
+in the direction towards a single end; and to its completeness belongs all
+that lies between the first determination and the execution of the deed.
+
+This idea of action is applicable to many tragedies of the ancients (for
+instance, Orestes' murder of his mother, Oedipus' determination to
+discover and punish the murderer of Laius), but by no means to all; still
+less does it apply to the greater part of modern tragedies, at least if
+the action is to be sought in the principal characters. What comes to pass
+through them, and proceeds with them, has frequently no more connexion
+with a voluntary determination, than a ship's striking on a rock in a
+storm. But further, in the term action, as understood by the ancients, we
+must include the resolution to bear the consequences of the deed with
+heroic magnanimity, and the execution of this determination will belong to
+its completion. The pious resolve of Antigone to perform the last duties
+to her unburied brother is soon executed and without difficulty; but
+genuineness, on which alone rests its claim to be a fit subject for a
+tragedy, is only subsequently proved when, without repentance, and without
+any symptoms of weakness, she suffers death as its penalty. And to take an
+example from quite a different sphere, is not Shakspeare's _Julius
+Caesar_, as respects the action, constructed on the same principle?
+Brutus is the hero of the piece; the completion of his great resolve does
+not consist in the mere assassination of Caesar (an action ambiguous in
+itself, and of which the motives might have been ambition and jealousy),
+but in this, that he proves himself the pure champion of Roman liberty, by
+the calm sacrifice of his amiable life.
+
+Farther, there could be no complication of the plot without opposition,
+and this arises mostly out of the contradictory motives and views of the
+acting personages. If, therefore, we limit the notion of an action to the
+determination and the deed, then we shall, in most cases, have two or
+three actions in a single tragedy. Which now is the principal action?
+Every person thinks his own the most important, for every man is his own
+central point. Creon's determination to maintain his kingly authority, by
+punishing the burial of Polynices with death, is equally fixed with
+Antigone's determination, equally important, and, as we see at the end,
+not less dangerous, as it draws after it the ruin of his whole house. It
+may be perhaps urged that the merely negative determination is to be
+considered simply as the complement of the affirmative. But what if each
+determines on something not exactly opposite, but altogether different? In
+the _Andromache_ of Bacine, Orestes wishes to move Hermione to return
+his love; Hermione is resolved to compel Pyrrhus to marry her, or she will
+be revenged on him; Pyrrhus wishes to be rid of Hermione, and to be united
+to Andromache; Andromache is desirous of saving her son, and at the same
+time remaining true to the memory of her husband. Yet nobody ever
+questioned the unity of this piece, as the whole has a common connexion,
+and ends with one common catastrophe. But which of the actions of the four
+persons is the main action? In strength of passion, their endeavours are
+pretty nearly equal--in all the whole happiness of life is at stake; the
+action of Andromache has, however, the advantage in moral dignity, and
+Racine was therefore perfectly right in naming the piece after her.
+
+We see here a new condition in the notion of action, namely, the reference
+to the idea of moral liberty, by which alone man is considered as the
+original author of his own resolutions. For, considered within the
+province of experience, the resolution, as the beginning of action, is not
+a cause merely, but is also an effect of antecedent motives. It was in
+this reference to a higher idea, that we previously found the _unity_
+and _wholeness_ of Tragedy in the sense of the ancients; namely, its
+absolute beginning is the assertion of Free-will, and the acknowledgment
+of Necessity its absolute end. But we consider ourselves justified in
+affirming that Aristotle was altogether a stranger to this view; he
+nowhere speaks of the idea of Destiny as essential to Tragedy. In fact, we
+must not expect from him a strict idea of action as a resolution and deed.
+He says somewhere--"The extent of a tragedy is always sufficiently great,
+if, by a series of probable or necessary consequences, a reverse from
+adversity to prosperity, or from happiness to misery, is brought about."
+It is evident, therefore, that he, like all the moderns, understood by
+_action_ something merely that takes place. This action, according to
+him, must have beginning, middle, and end, and consequently consist of a
+plurality of connected events. But where are the limits of this plurality?
+Is not the concatenation of causes and effects, backwards and forwards,
+without end? and may we then, with equal propriety, begin and break off
+wherever we please? In this province, can there be either beginning or
+end, corresponding to Aristotle's very accurate definition of these
+notions? Completeness would therefore be altogether impossible. If,
+however, for the unity of a plurality of events nothing more is requisite
+than casual connexion, then this rule is indefinite in the extreme, and
+the unity admits of being narrowed or enlarged at pleasure. For every
+series of incidents or actions, which are occasioned by each other,
+however much it be prolonged, may always be comprehended under a single
+point of view, and denoted by a single name. When Calderon in a single
+drama describes the conversion of Peru to Christianity, from its very
+beginning (that is, from the discovery of the country) down to its
+completion, and when nothing actually occurs in the piece which had not
+some influence on that event, does he not give us as much Unity in the
+above sense as the simplest Greek tragedy, which, however, the champions
+of Aristotle's rules will by no means allow?
+
+Corneille was well aware of the difficulty of a proper definition of
+unity, as applicable to an inevitable plurality of subordinate actions;
+and in this way did he endeavour to get rid of it. "I assume," says he,
+"that in Comedy, Unity of Action consists in Unity of the Intrigue; that
+is, of the obstacles raised to the designs of the principal persons; and
+in Tragedy, in the unity of the danger, whether the hero sinks under, or
+extricates himself from it. By this, however, I do not mean to assert that
+several dangers in Tragedy, and several intrigues or obstacles in Comedy,
+may not be allowable, provided only that the personage falls necessarily
+from one into the other; for then the escape from the first danger does
+not make the action complete, for it draws a second after it, as also the
+clearing up of one intrigue does not place the acting persons at their
+ease, because it involves them in another."
+
+In the first place the difference here assumed between tragic and comic
+Unity is altogether unessential. For the manner of putting the play
+together is not influenced by the circumstance, that the incidents in
+Tragedy are more serious, as affecting person and life; the embarrassment
+of the characters in Comedy when they cannot accomplish their design and
+intrigues, may equally be termed a danger. Corneille, like most others,
+refers all to the idea of connexion between cause and effect. No doubt
+when the principal persons, either by marriage or death, are set at rest,
+the drama comes to a close; but if nothing more is necessary to its Unity
+than the uninterrupted progress of an opposition, which serves to keep up
+the dramatic movement, simplicity will then come but poorly off: for,
+without violating this rule of Unity, we may go on to an almost endless
+accumulation of events, as in the _Thousand and One Nights_, where
+the thread of the story is never once broken.
+
+De la Motte, a French author, who wrote against the Unities in general,
+would substitute for Unity of action, the _Unity of interest_. If the
+term be not confined to the interest in the destinies of some single
+personage, but is taken to mean in general the direction which the mind
+takes at the sight of an event, this explanation, so understood, seems
+most satisfactory and very near the truth.
+
+But we should derive but little advantage from groping about empirically
+with the commentators on Aristotle. The idea of _One_ and _Whole_ is in no
+way whatever derived from experience, but arises out of the primary and
+spontaneous activity of the human mind. To account for the manner in which
+we in general arrive at this idea, and come to think of one and a whole,
+would require nothing short of a system of metaphysics.
+
+The external sense perceives in objects only an indefinite plurality of
+distinguishable parts; the judgment, by which we comprehend these into an
+entire and perfect unity, is in all cases founded on a reference to a
+higher sphere of ideas. Thus, for example, the mechanical unity of a watch
+consists in its aim of measuring time; this aim, however, exists only for
+the understanding, and is neither visible to the eye, nor palpable to the
+touch: the organic unity of a plant or an animal consists in the idea of
+life; but the inward intuition of life, which, in itself uncorporeal,
+nevertheless manifests itself through the medium of the corporeal world,
+is brought by us to the observation of the individual living object,
+otherwise we could not obtain it from that object.
+
+The separate parts of a work of art, and (to return to the question before
+us,) the separate parts, consequently, of a tragedy, must not be taken in
+by the eye and ear alone, but also comprehended by the understanding.
+Collectively, however, they are all subservient to one common aim, namely,
+to produce a joint impression on the mind. Here, therefore, as in the
+above examples, the Unity lies in a higher sphere, in the feeling or in
+the reference to ideas. This is all one; for the feeling, so far as it is
+not merely sensual and passive, is our sense, our organ for the Infinite,
+which forms itself into ideas for us.
+
+Far, therefore, from rejecting the law of a perfect Unity in Tragedy as
+unnecessary, I require a deeper, more intrinsic, and more mysterious unity
+than that with which most critics are satisfied. This Unity I find in the
+tragical compositions of Shakspeare, in as great perfection as in those of
+Aeschylus and Sophocles; while, on the contrary, I do not find it in many
+of those tragedies which nevertheless are lauded as correct by the critics
+of the dissecting school.
+
+Logical coherence, the causal connexion, I hold to be equally essential to
+Tragedy and every serious drama, because all the mental powers act and
+react upon each other, and if the Understanding be compelled to take a
+leap, Imagination and Feeling do not follow the composition with equal
+alacrity. But unfortunately the champions of what is called regularity
+have applied this rule with a degree of petty subtlety, which can have no
+other effect than that of cramping the poet, and rendering true excellence
+impossible.
+
+We must not suppose that the order of sequences in a tragedy resembles a
+slender thread, of which we are every moment in anxious dread lest it
+should snap. This simile is by no means applicable, for it is admitted
+that a plurality of subordinate actions and interests is inevitable; but
+rather let us suppose it a mighty stream, which in its impetuous course
+overcomes many obstructions, and loses itself at last in the repose of the
+ocean. It springs perhaps from different sources, and certainly receives
+into itself other rivers, which hasten towards it from opposite regions.
+Why should not the poet be allowed to carry on several, and, for a while,
+independent streams of human passions and endeavours, down to the moment
+of their raging junction, if only he can place the spectator on an
+eminence from whence he may overlook the whole of their course? And if
+this great and swollen body of waters again divide into several branches,
+and pour itself into the sea by several mouths, is it not still one and
+the same stream?
+
+So much for the Unity of Action. With respect to the Unity of Time, we
+find in Aristotle no more than the following passage: "Moreover, the Epos
+is distinguished from Tragedy by its length: for the latter seeks as far
+as possible to circumscribe itself within one revolution of the sun, or to
+exceed it but little; the Epos is unlimited in point of time, and in that
+respect differs from Tragedy. At first, however, the case was in this
+respect alike in tragedies and epic poems."
+
+We may in the first place observe that Aristotle is not giving a precept
+here, but only making historical mention of a peculiarity which he
+observed in the Grecian examples before him. But what if the Greek
+tragedians had particular reasons for circumscribing themselves within
+this extent of time, which with the constitution of our theatres no longer
+exist? We shall immediately see that this was really the case.
+
+Corneille with great reason finds the rule extremely inconvenient; he
+therefore prefers the more lenient interpretation, and says, "he would not
+scruple to extend the duration of the action even to thirty hours."
+Others, however, most rigorously insist on the principle that the action
+should not occupy a longer period than that of its representation, that is
+to say, from two to three hours.--The dramatic poet must, according to
+them, be punctual to his hour. In the main, the latter plead a sounder
+cause than the more lenient critics. For the only ground of the rule is
+the observation of a probability which they suppose to be necessary for
+illusion, namely, that the actual time and that of the representation
+should be the same. If once a discrepancy be allowed, such as the
+difference between two hours and thirty, we may upon the same principle go
+much farther. This idea of illusion has occasioned great errors in the
+theory of art. By this term there has often been understood the
+unwittingly erroneous belief that the represented action is reality. In
+that case the terrors of Tragedy would be a true torture to us, they would
+be like an Alpine load on the fancy. No, the theatrical as well as every
+other poetical illusion, is a waking dream, to which we voluntarily
+surrender ourselves. To produce it, the poet and actors must powerfully
+agitate the mind, and the probabilities of calculation do not in the least
+contribute towards it. This demand of literal deception, pushed to the
+extreme, would make all poetic form impossible; for we know well that the
+mythological and historical persons did not speak our language, that
+impassioned grief does not express itself in verse, &c. What an unpoetical
+spectator were he who, instead of following the incidents with his
+sympathy, should, like a gaoler, with watch or hour-glass in hand, count
+out to the heroes of the tragedy, the minutes which they still have to
+live and act! Is our soul then a piece of clock-work, that tells the hours
+and minutes with infallible accuracy? Has it not rather very different
+measures of time for agreeable occupation and for wearisomeness? In the
+one case, under an easy and varied activity, the hours fly apace; in the
+other, while we feel all our mental powers clogged and impeded, they are
+stretched out to an immeasurable length. Thus it is during the present,
+but in memory quite the reverse: the interval of dull and empty uniformity
+vanishes in a moment; while that which marks an abundance of varied
+impressions grows and widens in the same proportion. Our body is subjected
+to external astronomical time, because the organical operations are
+regulated by it; but our mind has its own ideal time, which is no other
+but the consciousness of the progressive development of our beings. In
+this measure of time the intervals of an indifferent inactivity pass for
+nothing, and two important moments, though they lie years apart, link
+themselves immediately to each other. Thus, when we have been intensely
+engaged with any matter before we fell asleep, we often resume the very
+same train of thought the instant we awake and the intervening dreams
+vanish into their unsubstantial obscurity. It is the same with dramatic
+exhibition: our imagination overleaps with ease the times which are
+presupposed and intimated, but which are omitted because nothing important
+takes place in them; it dwells solely on the decisive moments placed
+before it, by the compression of which the poet gives wings to the lazy
+course of days and hours.
+
+But, it will be objected, the ancient tragedians at least observed the
+Unity of Time. This expression is by no means precise; it should at least
+be the identity of the imaginary with the material time. But even then it
+does not apply to the ancients: what they observe is nothing but the
+_seeming_ continuity of time. It is of importance to attend to this
+distinction--the seeming; for they unquestionably allow much more to take
+place during the choral songs than could really happen within their actual
+duration. Thus the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus comprises the whole interval,
+from the destruction of Troy to his arrival in Mycenae, which, it is
+plain, must have consisted of a very considerable number of days; in
+the _Trachiniae_ of Sophocles, during the course of the play, the voyage
+from Thessaly to Euboea is thrice performed; and again, in the _Supplices_
+of Euripides, during a single choral one, the _entire_ march of an army
+from Athens to Thebes is supposed to take place, a battle to be fought,
+and the General to return victorious. So far were the Greeks from this
+sort of minute and painful calculations! They had, however, a particular
+reason for observing the seeming continuity of time in the constant
+presence of the Chorus. When the Chorus leaves the stage, the continuous
+progress is interrupted; of this we have a striking instance in the
+_Eumenides_ of Aeschylus, where the whole interval is omitted which was
+necessary to allow Orestes to proceed from Delphi to Athens. Moreover,
+between the three pieces of a trilogy, which were acted consecutively, and
+were intended to constitute a whole, there were saps of time as
+considerable as those between the three acts of many a Spanish drama.
+
+The moderns have, in the division of their plays into acts, which,
+properly speaking, were unknown to Greek Tragedy, a convenient means of
+extending the period of representation without any ill effect. For the
+poet may fairly reckon so far on the spectator's imagination as to presume
+that during the entire suspension of the representation, he will readily
+conceive a much longer interval to have elapsed than that which is
+measured by the rhythmical time of the music between the acts; otherwise
+to make it appear the more natural to him, it might be as well to invite
+him to come and see the next act to-morrow. The division into acts had its
+origin with the New Comedy, in consequence of the exclusion of the chorus.
+Horace prescribes the condition of a regular play, that it should have
+neither more nor less than five acts. The rule is so unessential, that
+Wieland thought Horace was here laughing at the young Pisos in urging a
+precept like this with such solemnity of tone as if it were really of
+importance. If in the ancient Tragedy we may mark it as the conclusion of
+an act wherever the stage remains empty, and the chorus is left alone to
+proceed with its dance and ode, we shall often have fewer than five acts,
+but often also more than five. As an observation that in a representation,
+between two or three hours long, such a number of rests are necessary for
+the attention, it may be allowed to pass. But, considered in any other
+light, I should like to hear a reason for it, grounded on the nature of
+Dramatic Poetry, why a drama must have so many and only so many divisions.
+But the world is governed by prescription and tradition: a smaller number
+of acts has been tolerated; to transgress the consecrated number of five
+[Footnote: Three unities, five acts: why not seven persons? These rules
+seem to proceed according to odd numbers.] is still considered a dangerous
+and atrocious profanation.
+
+As a general rule, the division into acts seems to me erroneous, when, as
+is so often the case in modern plays, nothing takes place in the intervals
+between them, and when the persons at the beginning of the new act are
+exhibited in exactly the same situation as at the close of the foregoing
+one. And yet this stand-still has given much less offence than the
+assumption of a considerable interval, or of incidents omitted in the
+representation, because the former is merely a negative error.
+
+The romantic poets take the liberty even of changing the scene during the
+course of an act. As the stage is always previously left empty, these also
+are such interruptions of the continuity, as would warrant them in the
+assumption of as many intervals. If we stumble at this, but admit the
+propriety of a division into acts, we have only to consider these changes
+of scene in the light of a greater number of short acts. But then, it will
+perhaps be objected, this is but justifying one error by another, the
+violation of the Unity of Time by the violation of the Unity of Place: we
+shall, therefore, proceed to examine more at length how far the last-
+mentioned rule is indispensable.
+
+In vain, as we have already said, shall we look to Aristotle for any
+opinion on this subject. It is asserted that the rule was observed by the
+ancients. Not always, only generally. Of seven plays by Aeschylus, and the
+same number by Sophocles, there are two, the _Eumenides_ and the _Ajax_,
+in which the scene is changed. That they generally retain the same scene
+follows naturally from the constant presence of the chorus, which must be
+got rid of by some suitable device before there can be a change of place.
+And then, again, it must not be forgotten, that their scene represented a
+much wider extent than in most cases ours does; not a mere room, but the
+open space before several buildings: and the disclosing the interior of a
+house by means of the encyclema, may be considered in the same light as
+the drawing a back curtain on our stage.
+
+The objection to the change of scene is founded on the same erroneous idea
+of illusion which we have already discussed. To transfer the action to
+another place would, it is urged, dispel the illusion. But now if we are
+in reality to consider the imaginary for the actual place, then must stage
+decoration and scenery be altogether different from what it now is.
+[Footnote: It is calculated merely for a single point of view: seen from
+every other point, the broken lines betray the imperfection of the
+imitation. Even as to the architectural import, so little attention do the
+audience in general pay to these niceties, that they are not even shocked
+when the actors enter and disappear through a wall without a door, between
+the side scenes.] Johnson, a critic who, in general, is an advocate for
+the strict rules, very justly observes, that if our imagination once goes
+the length of transporting us eighteen hundred years back to Alexandria,
+in order to figure to ourselves the story of Antony and Cleopatra as
+actually taking place before us, the next step, of transporting ourselves
+from Alexandria to Rome, is easier. The capability of our mind to fly in
+thought, with the rapidity of lightning, through the immensity of time and
+space, is well known and acknowledged in common life; and shall poetry,
+whose very purpose it is to add all manner of wings to our mind, and which
+has at command all the magic of genuine illusion, that is, of a lively and
+enrapturing fiction, be alone compelled to renounce this universal
+prerogative?
+
+Voltaire wishes to derive the Unity of Place and Time from the Unity of
+Action, but his reasoning is shallow in the extreme. "For the same
+reason," says he, "the Unity of Place is essential, because no one action
+can go on in several places at once." But still, as we have already seen,
+several persons necessarily take part in the one principal action, since
+it consists of a plurality of subordinate actions, and what should hinder
+these from proceeding in different places at the same time? Is not the
+same war frequently carried on simultaneously in Europe and India; and
+must not the historian recount alike in his narrative the events which
+take place on both these scenes?
+
+"The Unity of Time," he adds, "is naturally connected with the two first.
+If the poet represents a conspiracy, and extends the action to fourteen
+days, he must account to me for all that takes place in these fourteen
+days." Yes, for all that belongs to the matter in hand; all the rest,
+being extraneous to it, he passes over in silence, as every good
+storyteller would, and no person ever thinks of the omission. "If,
+therefore, he places before me the events of fourteen days, this gives at
+least fourteen different actions, however small they may be." No doubt, if
+the poet were so unskilful as to wind off the fourteen days one after
+another with visible precision; if day and night are just so often to come
+and go and the characters to go to bed and get up again just so many
+times. But the clever poet thrusts into the background all the intervals
+which are connected with no perceptible progress in the action, and in his
+picture annihilates all the pauses of absolute stand-still, and contrives,
+though with a rapid touch, to convey an accurate idea of the period
+supposed to have elapsed. But why is the privilege of adopting a much
+wider space between the two extremes of the piece than the material time
+of the representation important to the dramatist, and even indispensable
+to him in many subjects? The example of a conspiracy given by Voltaire
+comes in here very opportunely.
+
+A conspiracy plotted and executed in two hours is, in the first place, an
+incredible thing. Moreover, with reference to the characters of the
+personages of the piece, such a plot is very different from one in which
+the conceived purpose, however dangerous, is silently persevered in by all
+the parties for a considerable time. Though the poet does not admit this
+lapse of time into his exhibition immediately, in the midst of the
+characters, as in a mirror, he gives us as it were a perspective view of
+it. In this sort of perspective Shakspeare is the greatest master I know:
+a single word frequently opens to view an almost interminable vista of
+antecedent states of mind. Confined within the narrow limits of time, the
+poet is in many subjects obliged to mutilate the action, by beginning
+close to the last decisive stroke, or else he is under the necessity of
+unsuitably hurrying on its progress: on either supposition he must reduce
+within petty dimensions the grand picture of a strong purpose, which is no
+momentary ebullition, but a firm resolve undauntedly maintained in the
+midst of all external vicissitudes, till the time is ripe for its
+execution. It is no longer what Shakspeare has so often painted, and what
+he has described in the following lines:--
+
+  Between the acting of a dreadful thing,
+  And the first motion, all the interim is
+  Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
+  The genius, and the mortal instruments,
+  Are then in council; and the state of man,
+  Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
+  The nature of an insurrection.
+
+But why are the Greek and romantic poets so different in their practice
+with respect to place and time? The spirit of our criticism will not allow
+us to follow the practice of many critics, who so summarily pronounce the
+latter to be barbarians. On the contrary, we conceive that they lived in
+very cultivated times, and were themselves highly cultivated men. As to
+the ancients, besides the structure of their stage, which, as we have
+already said, led naturally to the seeming continuity of time and to the
+absence of change of scene, their observance of this practice was also
+favoured by the nature of the materials on which the Grecian dramatist had
+to work. These materials were mythology, and, consequently, a fiction,
+which, under the handling of preceding poets, had collected into
+continuous and perspicuous masses, what in reality was detached and
+scattered about in various ways. Moreover, the heroic age which they
+painted was at once extremely simple in its manners, and marvellous in its
+incidents; and hence everything of itself went straight to the mark of a
+tragic resolution.
+
+But the principal cause of the difference lies in the plastic spirit of
+the antique, and the picturesque spirit of the romantic poetry. Sculpture
+directs our attention exclusively to the group which it sets before us, it
+divests it as far as possible from all external accompaniments, and where
+they cannot be dispensed with, it indicates them as slightly as possible.
+Painting, on the other hand, delights in exhibiting, along with the
+principal figures, all the details of the surrounding locality and all
+secondary circumstances, and to open a prospect into a boundless distance
+in the background; and light and shade with perspective are its peculiar
+charms. Hence the Dramatic, and especially the Tragic Art, of the
+ancients, annihilates in some measure the external circumstances of space
+and time; while, by their changes, the romantic drama adorns its more
+varied pictures. Or, to express myself in other terms, the principle of
+the antique poetry is ideal; that of the romantic is mystical: the former
+subjects space and time to the internal free-agency of the mind; the
+latter honours these incomprehensible essences as supernatural powers, in
+which there is somewhat of indwelling divinity.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+Mischief resulting to the French Stage from too narrow Interpretation of
+the Rules of Unity--Influence of these rules on French Tragedy--Manner of
+treating Mythological and Historical Materials--Idea of Tragical Dignity--
+Observation of Conventional Rules--False System of Expositions.
+
+
+I come now to the influence which the above rules of Unity, strictly
+interpreted and received as inviolable, have, with other conventional
+rules, exercised on the shape of French tragedy.
+
+With the stage of a wholly different structure, with materials for the
+most part dissimilar, and handled in an opposite spirit, they were still
+desirous of retaining the rules of the ancient Tragedy, so far as they are
+to be learnt from Aristotle.
+
+They prescribed the same simplicity of action as the Grecian Tragedy
+observed, and yet rejected the lyrical part, which is a protracted
+development of the present moment, and consequently a stand-still of the
+action. This part could not, it is true, be retained, since we no longer
+possess the ancient music, which was subservient to the poetry, instead of
+overbearing it as ours does. If we deduct from the Greek Tragedies the
+choral odes, and the lyrical pieces which are occasionally put into the
+mouths of individuals, they will be found nearly one-half shorter than an
+ordinary French tragedy. Voltaire, in his prefaces, frequently complains
+of the great difficulty in procuring materials for five long acts. How now
+have the gaps arising from the omission of the lyrical parts been filled
+up? By intrigue. While with the Greeks the action, measured by a few great
+moments, rolls on uninterruptedly to its issue, the French have introduced
+many secondary characters almost exclusively with the view that their
+opposite purposes may give rise to a multitude of impeding incidents, to
+keep up our attention, or rather our curiosity, to the close. There was
+now an end therefore of everything like simplicity; still they flattered
+themselves that they had, by means of an artificial coherence, preserved
+at least a unity for the understanding.
+
+Intrigue is not, in itself, a Tragical motive; to Comedy, it is essential,
+as we have already shown. Comedy, even at its close, must often be
+satisfied with mere suppositions for the understanding; but this is by no
+means the poetic side of this demi-prosaic species of the Drama. Although
+the French Tragedy endeavours in the details of execution to rise by
+earnestness, dignity, and pathos, as high as possible above Comedy, in its
+general structure and composition, it still bears, in my opinion, but too
+close an affinity to it. In many French tragedies I find indeed a Unity
+for the Understanding, but the Feeling is left unsatisfied. Out of a
+complication of painful and violent situations we do, it is true, arrive
+at last, happily or unhappily, at a state of repose; but in the
+represented course of affairs there is no secret and mysterious revelation
+of a higher order of things; there is no allusion to any consolatory
+thoughts of heaven, whether in the dignity of human nature successfully
+maintained in its conflicts with fate, or in the guidance of an over-
+ruling providence. To such a tranquillizing feeling the so-called poetical
+justice is partly unnecessary, and partly also, so very questionably and
+obliquely is it usually administered, very insufficient. But even poetical
+justice (which I cannot help considering as a made-up example of a
+doctrine false in itself, and one, moreover, which by no means tends to
+the excitation of truly moral feelings) has not unfrequently been
+altogether neglected by the French tragedians.
+
+The use of intrigue is certainly well calculated to effect the all-desired
+short duration of an important action. For the intriguer is ever
+expeditious, and loses no time in attaining to his object. But the mighty
+course of human destinies proceeds, like the change of seasons, with
+measured pace: great designs ripen slowly; stealthily and hesitatingly the
+dark suggestions of deadly malice quit the abysses of the mind for the
+light of day; and, as Horace, with equal truth and beauty observes, "the
+flying criminal is only limpingly followed by penal retribution."
+[Footnote:
+  Rarò antecedentem scelestum
+  Deseruit pede paena claudo.--TRANS.] Let only the attempt be made, for
+instance, to bring within the narrow frame of the Unity of Time
+Shakspeare's gigantic picture of Macbeth's murder of Duncan, his
+tyrannical usurpation and final fall; let as many as may be of the events
+which the great dramatist successively exhibits before us in such dread
+array be placed anterior to the opening of the piece, and made the subject
+of an after recital, and it will be seen how thereby the story loses all
+its sublime significance. This drama does, it is true, embrace a
+considerable period of time: but does its rapid progress leave us leisure
+to calculate this? We see, as it were, the Fates weaving their dark web on
+the whistling loom of time; and we are drawn irresistibly on by the storm
+and whirlwind of events, which hurries on the hero to the first atrocious
+deed, and from it to innumerable crimes to secure its fruits with
+fluctuating fortunes and perils, to his final fall on the field of battle.
+Such a tragic exhibition resembles a comet's course, which, hardly visible
+at first, and revealing itself only to the astronomic eye, appears at a
+nebulous distance in the heavens, but soon soars with unheard-of and
+accelerating rapidity towards the central point of our system, scattering
+dismay among the nations of the earth, till, in a moment, when least
+expected, with its portentous tail it overspreads the half of the
+firmament with resplendent flame.
+
+For the sake of the prescribed Unity of Time the French poets must fain
+renounce all those artistic effects which proceed from the gradually
+accelerated growth of any object in the mind, or in the external world,
+through the march of time, while of all that in a drama is calculated to
+fascinate the eye they were through their wretched arrangement of stage-
+scenery deprived in a great measure by the Unity of Place. Accidental
+circumstances might in truth enforce a closer observance of this rule, or
+even render it indispensable. From a remark of Corneille's [Footnote: In
+his _Premier Discours sur la Poésie Dramatique_ he says: "Une chanson
+a quelquefois bonne grâce; et dans les pièces de machines cet ornement est
+redevenu nécessaire pour remplir les oreilles du spectateur, _pendant
+que les machines descendent_."] we are led to conjecture that stage-
+machinery in France was in his time extremely clumsy and imperfect. It was
+moreover the general custom for a number of distinguished spectators to
+have seats on both sides of the stage itself, which hardly left a breadth
+of ten paces for the free movements of the actors. Regnard, in _Le
+Distrait_, gives us an amusing description of the noise and disorder
+these fashionable _petit-maîtres_ in his day kept up in this privileged
+place, how chattering and laughing behind the backs of the actors they
+disturbed the spectators, and drew away attention from the play to
+themselves as the prominent objects of the stage. This evil practice
+continued even down to Voltaire's time, who has the merit of having by his
+zealous opposition to it obtained at last its complete abolition, on the
+appearance of his _Semiramis_. How could they have ventured to make a
+change of scene in presence of such an unpoetical chorus as this, totally
+unconnected with the piece, and yet thrust into the very middle of the
+representation? In the _Cid_, the scene of the action manifestly changes
+several times in the course of the same act, and yet in the representation
+the material scene was never changed. In the English and Spanish plays of
+the same date the case was generally the same; certain signs, however,
+were agreed on which served to denote the change of place, and the docile
+imagination of the spectators followed the poet whithersoever he chose.
+But in France, the young men of quality who sat on the stage lay in wait
+to discover something to laugh at; and as all theatrical effect requires a
+certain distance, and when viewed too closely appears ludicrous, all
+attempt at it was, in such a state of things, necessarily abandoned, and
+the poet confined himself principally to the dialogue between a few
+characters, the stage being subjected to all the formalities of an
+antechamber.
+
+And in truth, for the most part, the scene did actually represent an
+antechamber, or at least a hall in the interior of a palace. As the action
+of the Greek tragedies is always carried on in open places surrounded by
+the abode or symbols of majesty, so the French poets have modified their
+mythological materials, from a consideration of the scene, to the manners
+of modern courts. In a princely palace no strong emotion, no breach of
+social etiquette is allowable; and as in a tragedy affairs cannot always
+proceed with pure courtesy, every bolder deed, therefore, every act of
+violence, every thing startling and calculated strongly to impress the
+senses, as transacted behind the scenes, and related merely by confidants
+or other messengers. And yet as Horace, centuries ago remarked, whatever
+is communicated to the ear excites the mind far more feebly than what is
+exhibited to the trusty eye, and the spectator informs himself of. What he
+recommends to be withdrawn from observation is only the incredible and the
+revoltingly cruel. The dramatic effect of the visible may, it is true, be
+liable to great abuse; and it is possible for a theatre to degenerate into
+a noisy arena of mere bodily events, to which words and gestures may be
+but superfluous appendages. But surely the opposite extreme of allowing to
+the eye no conviction of its own, and always referring to something
+absent, is deserving of equal reprobation. In many French tragedies the
+spectator might well entertain a feeling that great actions were actually
+taking place, but that he had chosen a bad place to be witness of them. It
+is certain that the obvious impression of a drama is greatly impaired when
+the effects, which the spectators behold, proceed from invisible and
+distant causes. The converse procedure of this is preferable,--to exhibit
+the cause itself, and to allow the effect to be simply recounted. Voltaire
+was aware of the injury which theatrical effect sustained from the
+established practice of the tragic stage in France; he frequently insisted
+on the necessity of richer scenical decorations; and he himself in his
+pieces, and others after his example, have ventured to represent many
+things to the eye, which before would have been considered as unsuitable,
+not to say, ridiculous. But notwithstanding this attempt, and the still
+earlier one of Racine in his _Athalie_, the eye is now more out of
+favour than ever with the fashionable critics. Wherever any thing is
+allowed to be seen, or an action is performed bodily before them, they
+scent a melodrama; and the idea that Tragedy, if its purity, or rather its
+bald insipidity, was not watchfully guarded, would be gradually
+amalgamated with this species of play, (of which a word hereafter,) haunts
+them as a horrible phantom.
+
+Voltaire himself has indulged in various infractions of the Unity of Time;
+nevertheless he has not dared directly to attack the rule itself as
+unessential. He did but wish to see a greater latitude given to its
+interpretation. It would, he thought, be sufficient if the action took
+place within the circuit of a palace or even of a town, though in a
+different part of them. In order however, to avoid a change of scene, he
+would have it so contrived as at once to comprise the several localities.
+Here he betrays very confused ideas, both of architecture and perspective.
+He refers to Palladio's theatre at Vicenza, which he could hardly have
+ever seen: for his account of this theatre, which, as we have already
+observed, is itself a misconception of the structure of the ancient stage,
+appears to be altogether founded on descriptions which clearly he did not
+understand. In the _Semiramis_, the play in which he first attempted
+to carry into practice his principles on this subject, he has fallen into
+a singular error. Instead of allowing the persons to proceed to various
+places, he has actually brought the places to the persons. The scene in
+the third act is a cabinet; this cabinet, to use Voltaire's own words,
+gives way (without--let it be remembered--the queen leaving it), to a
+grand saloon magnificently furnished. The Mausoleum of Ninus too, which
+stood at first in an open place before the palace, and opposite to the
+temple of the Magi, has also found means to steal to the side of the
+throne in the centre of this hall. After yielding his spirit to the light
+of day, to the terror of many beholders, and again receiving it back, it
+repairs in the following act to its old place, where it probably had left
+its obelisks behind. In the fifth act we see that the tomb is extremely
+spacious, and provided with subterraneous passages. What a noise would the
+French critics make were a foreigner to commit such ridiculous blunders.
+In _Brutus_ we have another example of this running about of the
+scene with the persons. Before the opening of the first act we have a long
+and particular description of the scenic arrangement: the Senate is
+assembled between the Capitoline temple and the house of the Consuls, in
+the open air. Afterwards, on the rising of the assembly, Arons and Albin
+alone remain behind, and of them it is now said: _qui sont supposés être
+entrés de la salle d'audience dans un autre appartement de la maison de
+Brutus_. What is the poet's meaning here? Is the scene changed without
+being empty, or does he trust so far to the imagination of his spectators,
+as to require them against the evidence of their senses, to take for a
+chamber a scene which is ornamented in quite a different style? And how
+does that which in the first description is a public place become
+afterwards a hall of audience? In this scenic arrangement there must be
+either legerdemain or a bad memory.
+
+With respect to the Unity of Place, we may in general observe that it is
+often very unsatisfactorily observed, even in comedy, by the French poets,
+as well as by all who follow the same system of rules. The scene is not,
+it is true, changed, but things which do not usually happen in the same
+place are made to follow each other. What can be more improbable than that
+people should confide their secrets to one another in a place where they
+know their enemies are close at hand? or that plots against a sovereign
+should be hatched in his own antechamber? Great importance is attached to
+the principle that the stage should never in the course of an act remain
+empty. This is called binding the scenes. But frequently the rule is
+observed in appearance only, since the personages of the preceding scene
+go out at one door the very moment that those of the next enter at
+another. Moreover, they must not make their entrance or exit without a
+motive distinctly announced: to ensure this particular pains are taken;
+the confidants are despatched on missions, and equals also are expressly,
+and sometimes not even courteously, told to go out of the way. With all
+these endeavours, the determinations of the places where things take place
+are often so vague and contradictory, that in many pieces, as a German
+writer [Footnote: Joh. Elias Schlegel, in his _Gedanken zur Aufnahme des
+Dänischen Theatres_.] has well said, we ought to insert under the list
+of the _dramatis personae_--"The scene is on the theatre."
+
+These inconveniences arise almost inevitably from an anxious observance of
+the Greek rules, under a total change of circumstances. To avoid the
+pretended improbability which would lie in springing from one time and one
+place to another, they have often involved themselves in real and grave
+improbabilities. A thousand times have we reason to repeat the observation
+of the Academy, in their criticism on the _Cid_, respecting the crowding
+together so many events in the period of twenty-four hours: "From the fear
+of sinning against the rules of art, the poet has rather chosen to sin
+against the rules of nature." But this imaginary contradiction between art
+and nature could only be suggested by a low and narrow range of artistic
+ideas.
+
+I come now to a more important point, namely, to the handling of the
+subject-matter unsuitably to its nature and quality. The Greek tragedians,
+with a few exceptions, selected their subjects from the national
+mythology. The French tragedians borrow theirs sometimes from the ancient
+mythology, but much more frequently from the history of almost every age
+and nation, and their mode of treating mythological and historical
+subjects respectively, is but too often not properly mythological, and not
+properly historical. I will explain myself more distinctly. The poet who
+selects an ancient mythological fable, that is, a fable connected by
+hallowing tradition with the religious belief of the Greeks, should
+transport both himself and his spectators into the spirit of antiquity; he
+should keep ever before our minds the simple manners of the heroic ages,
+with which alone such violent passions and actions are consistent and
+credible; his personages should preserve that near resemblance to the gods
+which, from their descent, and the frequency of their immediate
+intercourse with them, the ancients believed them to possess; the
+marvellous in the Greek religion should not be purposely avoided or
+understated, but the imagination of the spectators should be required to
+surrender itself fully to the belief of it. Instead of this, however, the
+French poets have given to their mythological heroes and heroines the
+refinement of the fashionable world, and the court manners of the present
+day; they have, because those heroes were princes ("shepherds of the
+people," Homer calls them), accounted for their situations and views by
+the motives of a calculating policy, and violated, in every point, not
+merely archaeological costume, but all the costume of character. In
+_Phaedra_, this princess is, upon the supposed death of Theseus, to
+be declared regent during the minority of her son. How was this compatible
+with the relations of the Grecian women of that day? It brings us down to
+the times of a Cleopatra. Hermione remains alone, without the protection
+of a brother or a father, at the court of Pyrrhus, nay, even in his
+palace, and yet she is not married to him. With the ancients, and not
+merely in the Homeric age, marriage consisted simply in the bride being
+received into the bridegroom's house. But whatever justification of
+Hermione's situation may be found in the practice of European courts, it
+is not the less repugnant to female dignity, and the more indecorous, as
+Hermione is in love with the unwilling Pyrrhus, and uses every influence
+to incline him to marriage. What would the Greeks have thought of this
+bold and indecent courtship? No doubt it would appear equally offensive to
+a French audience, if Andromache were exhibited to them in the situation
+in which she appears in Euripides, where, as a captive, her person is
+enjoyed by the conqueror of her country. But when the ways of thinking of
+two nations are so totally different, why should there be so painful an
+effort to polish a subject founded on the manners of the one, with the
+manners of the other? What is allowed to remain after this polishing
+process will always exhibit a striking incongruity with that which is new-
+modelled, and to change the whole is either impossible, or in nowise
+preferable to a new invention. The Grecian tragedians certainly allowed
+themselves a great latitude in changing the circumstances of their myths,
+but the alterations were always consistent with the general and prevalent
+notions of the heroic age. On the other hand, they always left the
+characters as they received them from tradition and an earlier fiction, by
+means of which the cunning of Ulysses, the wisdom of Nestor, and the wrath
+of Achilles, had almost become proverbial. Horace particularly insists on
+the rule. But how unlike is the Achilles of 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 tenderest emotions? In vain recourse is had to the
+powerful influences of religion: history teaches that a cruel religion
+invariably becomes milder with the softening manners of a people.
+
+In these new exhibitions of ancient fables, the marvellous has been
+studiously rejected as alien to our belief. But when we are once brought
+from a world in which it was a part of the very order of things, into a
+world entirely prosaical and historically settled, then whatever marvel
+the poet may exhibit must, from the insulated state in which it stands,
+appear only so much the more incredible. In Homer, and in the Greek
+tragedians, everything takes place in the presence of the gods, and when
+they become visible, or manifest themselves in some wonderful operation,
+we are in no degree astonished. On the other hand, all the labour and art
+of the modern poets, all the eloquence of their narratives, cannot
+reconcile our minds to these exhibitions. Examples are superfluous, the
+thing is so universally known. Yet I cannot help cursorily remarking how
+singularly Racine, cautious as he generally is, has on an occasion of this
+kind involved himself in an inconsistency. Respecting the origin of the
+fable of Theseus descending into the world below to carry off Proserpine
+for his friend Pirithöus, he adopts the historical explanation of
+Plutarch, that he was the prisoner of a Thracian king, whose wife he
+endeavoured to carry off for his friend. On this he grounds the report of
+the death of Theseus, which, at the opening of the play, was current. And
+yet he allows Phaedra [Footnote:
+  Je l'aime, non point tel que l'ont vu les enfers,
+  Volage adorateur de mille objets divers,
+  Qui va du dieu des morts déshonorer la couche.] to mention the fabulous
+tradition as an earlier achievement of the hero. How many women then did
+Theseus wish to carry off for Pirithöus? Pradon manages this much better:
+when Theseus is asked by a confidant if he really had been in the world
+below, he answers, how could any sensible man possibly believe so silly a
+tale! he merely availed himself of the credulity of the people, and gave
+out this report from political motives.
+
+So much with respect to the manner of handling mythological materials.
+With respect to the historical, in the first place, the same objection
+applies, namely, that the French manners of the day are substituted to
+those which properly belong to the several persons, and that the
+characters do not sufficiently bear the colour of their age and nation.
+But to this we must add another detrimental circumstance. A mythological
+subject is in its nature poetical, and ever ready to take a new poetical
+shape. In the French Tragedy, as in the Greek, an equable and pervading
+dignity is required, and the French language is even much more fastidious
+in this respect, as very many things cannot be at all mentioned in French
+poetry. But in history we are on a prosaic domain, and the truth of the
+picture requires conditions, circumstances, and features, which cannot be
+given without a greater or less descent from the elevation of the tragical
+cothurnus; such as has been made without hesitation by Shakspeare, the
+most perfect of historical dramatists. The French tragedians, however,
+could not bring their minds to submit to this, and hence their works are
+frequently deficient in those circumstances which give life and truth to a
+picture; and when an obstinate prosaical circumstance must after all be
+mentioned, they avail themselves of laboured and artificial
+circumlocutions.
+
+Respecting the tragic dignity of historical subjects, peculiar principles
+have prevailed. Corneille was in the best way of the world when he brought
+his _Cid_ on the stage, a story of the middle ages, which belonged to
+a kindred people, 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 the tragic
+Ceremonial would have disappeared of themselves; Tragedy from its greater
+verisimilitude, and being most readily intelligible, and deriving its
+motives from still current modes of thinking and acting, would have come
+more home to the heart: the very nature of the subjects would alone have
+turned them from the stiff observation of the rules of the ancients, which
+they did not understand, as indeed Corneille never deviated so far from
+these rules as, in the train, no doubt, of his Spanish model, he does in
+this very piece; in one word, the French Tragedy would have become
+national and truly romantic. But I know not what malignant star was in the
+ascendant: notwithstanding the extraordinary success of his _Cid_,
+Corneille did not go one step further, and the attempt which he made found
+no imitators. In the time of Louis XIV. it was considered as a matter
+established beyond dispute, that the French, nay generally the modern
+European history was not adapted for the purposes of tragedy. They had
+recourse therefore to the ancient universal history: besides the Romans
+and Grecians, 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,
+according to his own confession, made a hazardous attempt with the Turks;
+it was successful, and since that time the necessary tragical dignity has
+been allowed to this barbarous people, among whom the customs and habits
+of the rudest despotism and the most abject slavery are often united in
+the same person, and nothing is known of love, but the most luxurious
+sensuality; while, on the other hand, it has been refused to the
+Europeans, notwithstanding that their religion, their sense of honour, and
+their respect for the female sex, plead so powerfully in their behalf. But
+it was merely modern, and more particularly French names that, as
+untragical and unpoetical, could not, for a moment, be tolerated; for the
+heroes of antiquity are with them Frenchmen in everything but the name;
+and antiquity was merely a thin veil beneath which the modern French
+character might 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 that Louis XIV. and the Duchess de la Vallière are
+represented under the names Titus and Berenice? The poet has himself
+flatteringly alluded to his sovereign. Voltaire's expression is somewhat
+strong, when he says that in reading the tragedies which succeeded those
+of Racine we might fancy ourselves perusing the romances of Mademoiselle
+Scuderi, which paint citizens of Paris under the names of heroes of
+antiquity. He alluded herein more particularly to Crebillon. Corneille and
+Racine, however, deeply tainted as they were with the way of thinking of
+their own nation, were still at times penetrated with the spirit of true
+objective exhibition. Corneille gives us a masterly picture of the
+Spaniards in the _Cid_; and this is conceivable enough, for he drew
+his materials from the fountain-head. 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 unbending 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, and their
+religious submissiveness, was beyond his reach. Racine has admirably
+painted the corruptions of the Romans of the Empire, and the first timid
+outbreaks of Nero's tyranny. It is true, as he himself gratefully
+acknowledges, he had in this Tacitus for a predecessor, but still it is a
+great merit so ably to translate history into poetry. He had also a just
+perception of the general spirit of Hebrew history; here he was guided by
+religious reverence, which, in greater or less degree, the poet ought
+always to bring with him to his subject. He was less successful with the
+Turks: Bajazet makes love quite in the style of an European; the
+bloodthirsty policy of Eastern despotism is well portrayed, it is true, in
+the Vizier: but the whole resembles Turkey upside down, where the women,
+instead of being slaves, have contrived to get possession of the
+government, which thereupon assumes so revolting an appearance as to
+incline us to believe the Turks are, after all, not 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_; throughout we
+miss the glowing colouring of Oriental fancy. Voltaire has, however, this
+great merit, that as he insisted on treating subjects with more historical
+truth, he made it also the object of his own endeavours; and farther, that
+he again raised 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 truthful, affecting, and noble creations; his _Tancred_,
+although as a whole the invention is deficient in keeping, will always,
+like his namesake in Tasso, win every heart. _Alzire_, in a historical
+point of view, is highly eminent. It is singular enough that Voltaire, in
+his restless search after tragic materials, has actually travelled the
+whole world over; for as in _Alzire_ he exhibits the American tribes of
+the other hemisphere, in his _Dschingiskan_ he brings Chinese on the
+stage, from the farthest extremity of ours, who, however, from the
+faithful observation of their costume, have almost the stamp of comic or
+grotesque figures.
+
+Unfortunately Voltaire came too late with his projected reformation of the
+theatre: much had been already ruined by the trammels within which French
+Tragedy had been so long confined; and the prejudice which gave such
+disproportionate importance to the observance of external rules and
+proprieties was, at it appears, established firmly and irrevocably.
+
+Next to the rules regarding the external mechanism, which without
+examination they had adopted from the ancients, the prevailing national
+ideas of social propriety were the principal hindrances which impeded the
+French poets in the exercise of their talents, and in many cases put it
+altogether out of their power to reach the highest tragical effect. The
+problem which the dramatic poet has to solve is to combine poetic form
+with nature and truth, and consequently nothing ought to be included in
+the former which is inadmissible by the latter. French Tragedy, from the
+time of Richelieu, developed itself under the favour and protection of the
+court; and even its scene had (as already observed) the appearance of an
+antechamber. In such an atmosphere the spectators might impress the poet
+with the idea that courtesy is one of the original and essential
+ingredients of human nature. But in Tragedy men are either matched with
+men in fearful strife, or set in close struggle with misfortune; we can,
+therefore, exact from them only an ideal dignity, for from the nice
+observance of social punctilios they are absolved by their situation. So
+long as they possess sufficient presence of mind not to violate them, so
+long as they do not appear completely overpowered by their grief and
+mental agony, the deepest emotion is not as yet reached. The poet may
+indeed be allowed to take that care for his persons which Caesar, after
+his death-blow, had for himself, and make them fall with decorum. He must
+not exhibit human nature in all its repulsive nakedness. The most heart-
+rending and dreadful pictures must still be invested with beauty, and
+endued with a dignity higher than the common reality. This miracle is
+effected by poetry: it has its indescribable sighs, its immediate accents
+of the deepest agony, in which there still runs a something melodious. It
+is only a certain full-dressed and formal beauty, which is incompatible
+with the greatest truth of expression. And yet it is exactly this beauty
+that is demanded in the style of a French tragedy. No doubt something too
+is to be ascribed to the quality of their language and versification. The
+French language is wholly incapable of many bold flights, it has little
+poetical freedom, and it carries into poetry all the grammatical stiffness
+of prose. This their poets have often acknowledged and lamented. Besides,
+the Alexandrine with its couplets, with its hemistichs of equal length, is
+a very symmetrical and monotonous species of verse, and far better adapted
+for the expression of antithetical maxims, than for the musical
+delineation of passion with its unequal, abrupt, and erratic course of
+thoughts. But the main cause lies in a national feature, in the social
+endeavour never to forget themselves in presence of others, and always to
+exhibit themselves to the greatest possible advantage. 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 awn presence of mind, his cool reflections on their situation,
+and his desire to shine on all occasions. When most of their tragical
+speeches are closely examined, they are seldom found to be such as the
+persons speaking or acting by themselves without restraint would deliver;
+something or other is generally discovered in them which betrays a
+reference to the spectator more or less perceptible. Before, however, our
+compassion can be powerfully excited, we must be familiar with the
+persons; but how is this possible if we are always to see them under the
+yoke of their designs and endeavours, or, what is worse, of an unnatural
+and assumed grandeur of character? We must overhear them in their
+unguarded moments, when they imagine themselves alone, and throw aside all
+care and reserve.
+
+Eloquence may and ought to have a place in Tragedy, but in so far as it is
+in some measure artificial in its method and preparation, it can only be
+in character when the speaker is sufficiently master of himself; for, for
+overpowering passion, an unconscious and involuntary eloquence is alone
+suitable. The truly inspired orator forgets himself in the subject of his
+eloquence. We call it rhetoric when he thinks less of his subject than of
+himself, and of the art in which he flatters himself he has obtained a
+mastery. 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, however, have come 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
+reserve our pity. This sort of conventional dignity is, as it were, a coat
+of mail, which prevents the pain from reaching the inmost heart. 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 engravings who
+lie in bed, crown, sceptre, robes and all.
+
+This social refinement prevails through the whole of French literature and
+art. Social refinement sharpens, no doubt, the sense for the ludicrous,
+and even on that account, when it is carried to a fastidious excess, it is
+the death of every thing like enthusiasm. For all enthusiasm, all poetry,
+has a ludicrous aspect for the unfeeling. When, therefore, such a way of
+thinking has once become universal in a nation, a certain negative
+criticism will be associated with it. A thousand different things must be
+avoided, and in attending to these, the highest object of all, that which
+ought properly to be accomplished, is lost sight of. The fear of ridicule
+is the conscience of French poets; it has clipt their wings, and impaired
+their flight. For it is exactly in the most serious kind of poetry that
+this fear must torment them the most; for extremes run into one another,
+and whenever pathos fails it gives rise to laughter and parody. It is
+amusing to witness Voltaire's extreme agony when he was threatened with a
+parody of his _Semiramis_ on the Italian theatre. In a petition to
+the queen, this man, whose whole life had been passed in turning every
+thing great and venerable into ridicule, urges his situation as one of the
+servants of the king's household, as a ground for obtaining from high
+authority the prohibition of a very innocent and allowable amusement. As
+French wits have indulged themselves in turning every thing in the world
+into ridicule, and more especially the mental productions of other
+nations, they will also allow us on our part to divert ourselves at the
+expense of their tragic writers, if with all their care they have now and
+then split upon the rock of which they were most in dread. Lessing has,
+with the most irresistible and victorious wit, pointed out the ludicrous
+nature of the very plans of _Rodogune_, _Semiramis_, _Merope_, and
+_Zaire_. But both in this respect and with regard to single laughable
+turns, a rich harvest might yet be gathered. [Footnote: A few examples of
+the latter will be sufficient. The lines with which Theseus in the
+_Oedipus_ of Corneille opens his part, are deserving of one of the first
+places:
+  Quelque ravage affreux qu'étale ici la peste
+  L'absence aux vrais amans est encore plus funeste.
+The following from his _Otho_ are equally well known:
+  Dis moi donc, lorsqu' Othon s'est offert à Camille,
+  A-t-il paru contraint? a-t-elle été facile?
+  Son hommage auprès d'elle a-t-il eu plein effet?
+  Comment l'a-t-elle pris, et comment l'a-t-il fait?
+Where it is almost inconceivable, that the poet could have failed to see
+the application which might be made of the passage, especially as he
+allows the confidant to answer, _J'ai tout vu._ That _Attila_ should treat
+the kings who are dependent on him like good-for-nothing fellows:
+  Ils ne sont pas venus, nos deux rois; qu'on leur die
+  Qu'ils se font trop attendre, et qu' Attila s'ennuie
+  Qu'alors que je les mande ils doivent se hâter:
+may in one view appear very serious and true; but nevertheless it appears
+exceedingly droll to us from the turn of expression, and especially from
+its being the opening of the piece. Generally speaking, with respect to
+the ludicrous, Corneille lived in a state of great innocence; since his
+time the world has become a great deal more witty. Hence, after making all
+allowances for what he cannot justly be blamed for, what, namely, arises
+merely from his language having become obsolete, we shall still find an
+ample field remaining for our ridicule. Among the numerous plays which are
+not reckoned among his master-pieces, we have only to turn up any one at
+random to light upon numerous passages susceptible of a ludicrous
+application. Racine, from the refinement and moderation which were natural
+to him, was much better guarded against this danger; but yet, here and
+there, expressions of the same kind escape from him. Among these we may
+include the whole of the speech in which Theramenes exhorts his pupil
+Hippolytus to yield himself up to love. The ludicrous can hardly be
+carried farther than it is in these lines:
+  Craint-on de s'égarer sur les traces d'Hercule?
+  Quels courages Venus n'a-t-elle pas domtés?
+  Vous même, _où seriez vous_, vous qui la combattez,
+  Si toujours Antiope, à ses loix opposée,
+  D'une _pudique_ ardeur n'eut brûlé pour Thésée?
+In _Berenice_, Antiochus receives his confidant, whom he had sent to
+announce his visit to the Queen, with the words: _Arsace, entrerons-
+nous?_ This humble patience in an antechamber would appear even
+undignified in Comedy, but it appears too pitiful even for a second-rate
+tragical hero. Antiochus says afterwards to the queen:
+         Je me suis tû cinq ans
+  Madame, et vais encore me taire plus long-tems--
+And to give an immediate proof of his intention by his conduct, he repeats
+after this no less than fifty verses in a breath.
+
+When Orosman says to Zaire, whom he pretends to love with European
+tenderness,
+  Je sais que notre loi, favorable aux plaisirs
+  Ouvre un champ sans limite _à nos vastes désirs_:
+his language is still more indecorous than laughable. But the answer of
+Zaire to her confidante, who thereupon reminded her that she is a
+Christian, is highly comic:
+  Ah! que dis-tu? pourquoi rappeler mes ennuis?
+Upon the whole, however, Voltaire is much more upon his guard against the
+ludicrous than his predecessors: this was perfectly natural, for in his
+time the rage of turning every thing into ridicule was most prevalent. We
+may boldly affirm that in our days a single verse of the same kind as
+hundreds in Corneille would inevitably ruin any play.] But the war which
+Lessing carried on against the French stage was much more merciless,
+perhaps, than we, in the present day, should be justified in waging. At
+the time when he published his _Dramaturgie_, we Germans had scarcely
+any but French tragedies upon our stages, and the extravagant predilection
+for them as classical models had not then been combated. At present the
+national taste has declared itself so decidedly against them, that we have
+nothing to fear of an illusion in that quarter.
+
+It is farther said that the French dramatists have to do with a public not
+only extremely fastidious in its dislike of any low intermixture, and
+highly susceptible of the ludicrous, but also extremely impatient. We will
+allow them the full enjoyment of this self-flattery: for we have no doubt
+that their real meaning is, that this impatience is a proof of quickness
+of apprehension and sharpness of wit. It is susceptible, however, of
+another interpretation: superficial knowledge, and more especially
+intrinsic emptiness of mind, invariably display themselves in fretful
+impatience. But however this may be, the disposition in question has had
+both a favourable and an unfavourable influence on the structure of their
+pieces. Favourable, in so far as it has compelled them to lop off every
+superfluity, to go directly to the main business, to be perspicuous, to
+study compression, to endeavour to turn every moment to the utmost
+advantage. All these are good theatrical proprieties, and have been the
+means of recommending the French tragedies as models of perfection to
+those who in the examination of works of art, measure everything by the
+dry test of the understanding, rather than listen to the voice of
+imagination and feeling. It has been unfavourable, in so far as even
+motion, rapidity, and a continued stretch of expectation, become at length
+monotonous and wearisome. It is like a music from which the _piano_
+should be altogether excluded, and in which even the difference between
+_forte_ and _fortissimo_ should, from the mistaken emulation of the
+performers, be rendered indistinguishable. I find too few resting-places
+in their tragedies similar to those in the ancient tragedies where the
+lyric parts come in. There are moments in human life which are dedicated
+by every religious mind to self-meditation, and when, with the view turned
+towards the past and the future, it keeps as it were holiday. This
+sacredness of the moment is not, I think, sufficiently reverenced: the
+actors and spectators alike are incessantly hurried on to something that
+is to follow; and we shall find very few scenes indeed, where a mere
+state, independent of its causal connexion, is represented developing
+itself. The question with them is always _what_ happens, and only too
+seldom _how_ happens it. And yet this is the main point, if an impression
+is to be made on the witnesses of human events. Hence every thing like
+silent effect is almost entirely excluded from their domain of dramatic
+art. The only leisure which remains for the actor for his silent pantomime
+is during the delivery of the long discourses addressed to him, when,
+however, it more frequently serves to embarrass him than assists him
+in the development of his part. They are satisfied if the web of the
+intrigue keeps uninterruptedly in advance of their own quickness of tact,
+and if in the speeches and answers the shuttle flies diligently backwards
+and forwards to the end.
+
+Generally speaking, impatience is by no means a good disposition for the
+reception of the beautiful. Even dramatic poetry, the most animated
+production of art, has its contemplative side, and where this is
+neglected, the representation, from its very rapidity and animation,
+engenders only a deafening tumult in our mind, instead of that inward
+music which ought to accompany it.
+
+The existence of many technical imperfections in their tragedy has been
+admitted even by French critics themselves; the confidants, for instance.
+Every hero and heroine regularly drags some one along with them, a
+gentleman in waiting or a court lady. In not a few pieces, we may count
+three or four of these merely passive hearers, who sometimes open their
+lips to tell something to their patron which he must have known better
+himself, or who on occasion are dispatched hither and thither on messages.
+The confidants in the Greek tragedies, either old guardian-slaves and
+nurses, or servants, have always peculiar characteristical destinations,
+and the ancient tragedians felt so little the want of communications
+between a hero and his confidant, to make us acquainted with the hero's
+state of mind and views, that they even introduce as a mute personage so
+important and proverbially famous a friend as a Pylades. But whatever
+ridicule was cast on the confidants, and however great the reproach of
+being reduced to make use of them, no attempt was ever made till the time
+of Alfieri to get rid of them.
+
+The expositions or statements of the preliminary situation of things are
+another nuisance. They generally consist of choicely turned disclosures to
+the confidants, delivered in a happy moment of leisure. That very public
+whose impatience keeps the poets and players under such strict discipline,
+has, however, patience enough to listen to the prolix unfolding of what
+ought to be sensibly developed before their eyes. It is allowed that an
+exposition is seldom unexceptionable; that in their speeches the persons
+generally begin farther back than they naturally ought, and that they tell
+one another what they must both have known before, &c. If the affair is
+complicated, these expositions are generally extremely tedious: those of
+Heraclius and Rodogune absolutely make the head giddy. Chaulieu says of
+Crebillon's _Rhadamiste_, "The piece would be perfectly clear were it
+not for the exposition." To me it seems that their whole system of
+expositions, both in Tragedy and in High Comedy, is exceedingly erroneous.
+Nothing can be more ill-judged than to begin at once to instruct us
+without any dramatic movement. At the first drawing up of the curtain the
+spectator's attention is almost unavoidably distracted by external
+circumstances, his interest has not yet been excited; and this is
+precisely the time chosen by the poet to exact from him an earnest of
+undivided attention to a dry explanation,--a demand which he can hardly be
+supposed ready to meet. It will perhaps be urged that the same thing was
+done by the Greek poets. But with them the subject was for the most part
+extremely simple, and already known to the spectators; and their
+expositions, with the exception of the unskilful prologues of Euripides,
+have not the didactic particularising tone of the French, but are full of
+life and motion. How admirable again are the expositions of Shakspeare and
+Calderon! At the very outset they lay hold of the imagination; and when
+they have once gained the spectator's interest and sympathy they then
+bring forward the information necessary for the full understanding of the
+implied transactions. This means is, it is true, denied to the French
+tragic poets, who, if at all, are only very sparingly allowed the use of
+any thing calculated to make an impression on the senses, any thing like
+corporeal action; and who, therefore, for the sake of a gradual
+heightening of the impression are obliged to reserve to the last acts the
+little which is within their power.
+
+To sum up all my previous observations in a few words: the French have
+endeavoured to form their tragedy according to a strict idea; but instead
+of this they have set up merely an abstract notion. They require tragical
+dignity and grandeur, tragical situations, passions, and pathos,
+altogether simple and pure, and without any foreign appendages. Stript
+thus of their proper investiture, they lose much in truth, profundity, and
+character; and the whole composition is deprived of the living charm of
+variety, of the magic of picturesque situations, and of all those
+ravishing effects which a light but preparatory matter, when left to
+itself, often produces on the mind by its marvellous and spontaneous
+growth. With respect to the theory of the tragic art, they are yet at the
+very same point that they were in the art of gardening before the time of
+Lenotre. All merit consisted, in their judgment, in extorting a triumph
+from nature by means of art. They had no other idea of regularity than the
+measured symmetry of straight alleys, clipped edges, &c. Vain would have
+been the attempt to make those who laid out such gardens to comprehend
+that there could be any plan, any hidden order, in an English park, and
+demonstrate to them that a succession of landscapes, which from their
+gradation, their alternation, and their opposition, give effect to each
+other, did all aim at exciting in us a certain mental impression.
+
+The rooted and lasting prejudices of a whole nation are seldom accidental,
+but are connected with some general want of intrinsic capacities, from
+which even the eminent minds who read the rest are not exempted. We are
+not, therefore, to consider such prejudices merely as causes; we must also
+consider them at the same time as important effects. We allow that the
+narrow system of rules, that a dissecting criticism of the understanding,
+has shackled the efforts of the French tragedians; still, however, it
+remains doubtful whether of their own inclination they would ever have
+made choice of more comprehensive designs, and, if so, in what way they
+would have filled them up. The most distinguished among them have
+certainly not been deficient in means and talents. In a particular
+examination of their different productions we cannot show them any favour;
+but, on a general view, they are more deserving of pity than censure; and
+when, under such unfavourable circumstances, they yet produce what is
+excellent, they are doubly entitled to our admiration, although we can by
+no means admit the justice of the common-place observation, that the
+overcoming of difficulty is a source of pleasure, nor find anything
+meritorious in a work of art merely because it is artificially composed.
+As for the claim which the French advance to set themselves up, in spite
+of all their one-sidedness and inadequacy of view, as the lawgivers of
+taste, it must be rejected with becoming indignation.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+Use at first made of the Spanish Theatre by the French--General Character
+of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire--Review of the principal Works of
+Corneille and of Racine--Thomas Corneille and Crebillon.
+
+
+I have briefly noticed all that was necessary to mention of the
+antiquities of the French stage. The duties of the poet were gradually
+more rigorously laid down, under a belief in the authority of the
+ancients, and the infallibility of Aristotle. By their own inclination,
+however, the poets were led to the Spanish theatre, as long as the
+Dramatic Art in France, under a native education, had not attained its
+full maturity. They not only imitated the Spaniards, but, from this mine
+of ingenious invention, even borrowed largely and directly. I do not
+merely allude to the earlier times under Richelieu; this state of things
+continued through the whole of the first half of the age of Louis XIV.;
+and Racine is perhaps the oldest poet who seems to have been altogether
+unacquainted with the Spaniards, or at least who was in no manner
+influenced by them. The comedies of Corneille are nearly all taken from
+Spanish pieces; and of his celebrated works, the _Cid_ and _Don Sancho of
+Aragon_ are also Spanish. The only piece of Rotrou which still keeps its
+place on the theatre, _Wenceslas_, is borrowed from Francisco de Roxas:
+Molière's unfinished _Princess of Etis_ is from Moreto, his _Don Garcia of
+Navarre_ from an unknown author, and the _Festin de Pierre_ carries its
+origin in its front: [Footnote: And betrays at the same time Molière's
+ignorance of Spanish. For if he had possessed even a tolerable knowledge
+of it, how could he have translated _El Convidado de Piedra_ (the Stone
+Guest) into the _Stone Feast_, which has no meaning here, and could only
+be applicable to the Feasts of Midas?] we have only to look at the works
+of Thomas Corneille to be at once convinced that, with the exception of a
+few, they are all Spanish; as also are the earlier labours of Quinault,
+namely, his comedies and tragi-comedies. The right of drawing without
+scruple from this source was so universal, that the French imitators, when
+they borrowed without the least disguise, did not even give themselves the
+trouble of naming the author of the original, and assigning to the true
+owner a part of the applause which they might earn. In the _Cid_ alone the
+text of the Spanish poet is frequently cited, and that only because
+Corneille's claim to originality had been called in question.
+
+We should certainly derive much instruction from a discovery of the
+prototypes, when they are not among the more celebrated, or already known
+by their titles, and thereupon instituting a comparison between them and
+their copies. We must, however, go very differently to work from Voltaire
+in _Heraclius_, in which, as Garcia de la Huerta [Footnote: In the
+introduction to his Theatro Hespañol.] has incontestably proved, he
+displays both great ignorance and studied and disgusting perversions. If
+the most of these imitations give little pleasure to France in the present
+day, this decision is noways against the originals, which must always have
+suffered considerably from the recast. The national characters of the
+French and Spanish are totally different; and consequently also the spirit
+of their language and poetry. The most temperate and restrained character
+belongs to the French; the Spaniard, though in the remotest West,
+displays, what his history may easily account for, an Oriental vein, which
+luxuriates in a profusion of bold images and sallies of wit. When we strip
+their dramas of these rich and splendid ornaments, when, for the glowing
+colours of their romance and the musical variations of the rhymed strophes
+in which they are composed, we compel them to assume the monotony of the
+Alexandrine, and submit to the fetters of external regularities, while the
+character and situations are allowed to remain essentially the same, there
+can no longer be any harmony between the subject and its mode of
+treatment, and it loses that truth which it may still retain within the
+domain of fancy.
+
+The charm of the Spanish poetry consists, generally speaking, in the union
+of a sublime and enthusiastic earnestness of feeling, which peculiarly
+descends from the North, with the lovely breath of the South, and the
+dazzling pomp of the East. Corneille possessed an affinity to the Spanish
+spirit but only in the first point; he might be taken for a Spaniard
+educated in Normandy. It is much to be regretted that he had not, after
+the composition of the _Cid_, employed himself without depending on
+foreign models, upon subjects which would have allowed him to follow
+altogether his feeling for chivalrous honour and fidelity. But on the
+other hand he took himself to the Roman history; and the severe patriotism
+of the older, and the ambitious policy of the later Romans, supplied the
+place of chivalry, and in some measure assumed its garb. It was by no
+means so much his object to excite our terror and compassion as our
+admiration for the characters and astonishment at the situations of his
+heroes. He hardly ever affects us; and is seldom capable of agitating our
+minds. And here I may indeed observe, that such is his partiality for
+exciting our wonder and admiration, that, not contented with exacting it
+for the heroism of virtue, he claims it also for the heroism of vice, by
+the boldness, strength of soul, presence of mind, and elevation above all
+human weakness, with which he endows his criminals of both sexes. Nay,
+often his characters express themselves in the language of ostentatious
+pride, without our being well able to see what they have to be proud of:
+they are merely proud of their pride. We cannot often say that we take an
+interest in them: they either appear, from the great resources which they
+possess within themselves, to stand in no need of our compassion, or else
+they are undeserving of it. He has delineated the conflict of passions and
+motives; but for the most part not immediately as such, but as already
+metamorphosed into a contest of principles. It is in love that he has been
+found coldest; and this was because he could not prevail on himself to
+paint it as an amiable weakness, although he everywhere introduced it,
+even where most unsuitable, either out of a condescension to the taste of
+the age or a private inclination for chivalry, where love always appears
+as the ornament of valour, as the checquered favour waving at the lance,
+or the elegant ribbon-knot to the sword. Seldom does he paint love as a
+power which imperceptibly steals upon us, and gains at last an involuntary
+and irresistible dominion over us; but as an homage freely chosen at
+first, to the exclusion of duty, but afterwards maintaining its place
+along with it. This is the case at least in his better pieces; for in his
+later works love is frequently compelled to give way to ambition; and
+these two springs of action mutually weaken each other. His females are
+generally not sufficiently feminine; and the love which they inspire is
+with them not the last object, but merely a means to something beyond.
+They drive their lovers into great dangers, and sometimes also to great
+crimes; and the men too often appear to disadvantage, while they allow
+themselves to become mere instruments in the hands of women, or to be
+dispatched by them on heroic errands, as it were, for the sake of winning
+the prize of love held out to them. Such women as Emilia in _Cinna and
+Rodogune_, must surely be unsusceptible of love. But if in his principal
+characters, Corneille, by exaggerating the energetic and underrating the
+passive part of our nature, has departed from truth; if his heroes display
+too much volition and too little feeling, he is still much more unnatural
+in his situations. He has, in defiance of all probability, pointed them in
+such a way that we might with great propriety give them the name of
+tragical antitheses, and it becomes almost natural if the personages
+express themselves in a series of epigrammatical maxims. He is fond of
+exhibiting perfectly symmetrical oppositions. His eloquence is often
+admirable from its strength and compression; but it sometimes degenerates
+into bombast, and exhausts itself in superfluous accumulations. The later
+Romans, Seneca the philosopher, and Lucan, were considered by him too much
+in the light of models; and unfortunately he possessed also a vein of
+Seneca the tragedian. From this wearisome pomp of declamation, a few
+simple words interspersed here and there, have been often made the subject
+of extravagant praise. [Footnote: For instance, the _Qu'il mourût_ of the
+old Horatius; the _Soyons amis, Cinna_: also the _Moi_ of Medea, which, we
+may observe in passing, is borrowed from Seneca.] If they stood alone they
+would certainly be entitled to praise; but they are immediately followed
+by long harangues which destroy their effect. When the Spartan mother, on
+delivering the shield to her son, used the well-known words, "This, or on
+this!" she certainly made no farther addition to them. Corneille was
+peculiarly well qualified to portray ambition and the lust of power, a
+passion which stifles all other human feelings, and never properly erects
+its throne till the mind has become a cold and dreary wilderness. His
+youth was passed in the last civil wars, and he still saw around him
+remains of the feudal independence. I will not pretend to decide how much
+this may have influenced him, but it is undeniable that the sense which he
+often showed of the great importance of political questions was altogether
+lost in the following age, and did not make its appearance again before
+Voltaire. However he, like the rest of the poets of his time, paid his
+tribute of flattery to Louis the Fourteenth, in verses which are now
+forgotten.
+
+Racine, who for all but an entire century has been unhesitatingly
+proclaimed the favourite poet of the French nation, was by no means during
+his lifetime in so enviable a situation, and, notwithstanding many an
+instance of brilliant success, could not rest as yet in the pleasing and
+undisturbed possession of his fame. His merit in giving the last polish to
+the French language, his unrivalled excellence both of expression and
+versification, were not then allowed; on the stage he had rivals, of whom
+some were undeservedly preferred before him. On the one hand, the
+exclusive admirers of Corneille, with Madame Sevigné at their head, made a
+formal party against him; on the other hand, Pradon, a younger candidate
+for the honours of the Tragic Muse, endeavoured to wrest the victory from
+him, and actually succeeded, not merely, it would appear, in gaining over
+the crowd, but the very court itself, notwithstanding the zeal with which
+he was opposed by Boileau. The chagrin to which this gave rise,
+unfortunately interrupted his theatrical career at the very period when
+his mind had reached its full maturity: a mistaken piety afterwards
+prevented him from resuming his theatrical occupations, and it required
+all the influence of Madame Maintenon to induce him to employ his talent
+upon religious subjects for a particular occasion. It is probable that but
+for this interruption, he would have carried his art still higher: for in
+the works which we have of him, we trace a gradually advancing
+improvement. He is a poet in every way worthy of our love: he possessed a
+delicate susceptibility for all the tenderer emotions, and great sweetness
+in expressing them. His moderation, which never allowed him to transgress
+the bounds of propriety, must not be estimated too highly: for he did not
+possess strength of character in any eminent degree, nay, there are even
+marks of weakness perceptible in him, which, it is said, he also exhibited
+in private life. He has also paid his homage to the sugared gallantry of
+his age, where it merely serves as a show of love to connect together the
+intrigue; but he has often also succeeded completely in the delineation of
+a more genuine love, especially in his female characters; and many of his
+love-scenes breathe a tender voluptuousness, which, from the veil of
+reserve and modesty thrown over it, steals only the more seductively into
+the soul. The inconsistencies of unsuccessful passion, the wanderings of a
+mind diseased, and a prey to irresistible desire, he has portrayed more
+touchingly and truthfully than any French poet before him, or even perhaps
+after him. Generally speaking, he was more inclined to the elegiac and the
+idyllic, than to the heroic. I will not say that he would never have
+elevated himself to more serious and dignified conceptions than are to be
+found in his _Britannicus_ and _Mithridate_; but here we must distinguish
+between that which his subject suggested, and what he painted with a
+peculiar fondness, and wherein he is not so much the dramatic artist as
+the spokesman of his own feelings. At the same time, it ought not to be
+forgotten that Racine composed most of his pieces when very young, and
+that this may possibly have influenced his choice. He seldom disgusts us,
+like Corneille and Voltaire, with the undisguised repulsiveness of
+unnecessary crimes; he has, however, often veiled much that in reality is
+harsh, base, and mean, beneath the forms of politeness and courtesy. I
+cannot allow the plans of his pieces to be, as the French critics insist,
+unexceptionable; those which he borrowed from ancient mythology are, in my
+opinion, the most liable to objection; but still I believe, that with the
+rules and observations which he took for his guide, he could hardly in
+most cases have extricated himself from his difficulties more cautiously
+and with greater propriety than he has actually done. Whatever may be the
+defects of his productions separately considered, when we compare him with
+others, and view him in connexion with the French literature in general,
+we can hardly bestow upon him too high a meed of praise.
+
+A new aera of French Tragedy begins with Voltaire, whose first appearance,
+in his early youth, as a writer for the theatre, followed close upon the
+age of Louis the Fourteenth. I have already, in a general way, alluded to
+the changes and enlargements which he projected, and partly carried into
+execution. Corneille and Racine led a true artist's life: they were
+dramatic poets with their whole soul; their desire, as authors, was
+confined to that object alone, and all their studies were directed to the
+stage. Voltaire, on the contrary, wished to shine in every possible
+department; a restless vanity permitted him not to be satisfied with the
+pursuit of perfection in any single walk of literature; and from the
+variety of subjects on which his mind was employed, it was impossible for
+him to avoid shallowness and immaturity of ideas. To form a correct idea
+of his relation to his two predecessors in the tragic art, we must
+institute a comparison between the characteristic features of the
+preceding classical age and of that in which he gave the tone. In the time
+of Louis the Fourteenth, a certain traditionary code of opinions on all
+the most important concerns of humanity reigned in full force and
+unquestioned; and even in poetry, the object was not so much to enrich as
+to form the mind, by a liberal and noble entertainment. But now, at
+length, the want of original thinking began to be felt; however, it
+unfortunately happened, that bold presumption hurried far in advance of
+profound inquiry, and hence the spread of public immorality was quick
+followed by a dangerous scoffing scepticism, which shook to the foundation
+every religious and moral conviction, and the very principles of society
+itself. Voltaire was by turns philosopher, rhetorician, sophist, and
+buffoon. The want of singleness, which more or less characterised all his
+views, was irreconcileable with a complete freedom of prejudice even as an
+artist in his career. As he saw the public longing for information, which
+was rather tolerated by the favour of the great than authorised and
+formally approved of and dispensed by appropriate public institutions, he
+did not fail to meet their want, and to deliver, in beautiful verses, on
+the stage, what no man durst yet preach from the pulpit or the professor's
+chair. He made use of poetry as a means to accomplish ends foreign and
+extrinsecal to it; and this has often polluted the artistic purity of his
+compositions. Thus, the end of his _Mahomet_ was to portray the dangers of
+fanaticism, or rather, laying aside all circumlocution, of a belief in
+revelation. For this purpose, he has most unjustifiably disfigured a great
+historical character, revoltingly loaded him with the most crying
+enormities, with which he racks and tortures our feelings. Universally
+known, as he was, to be the bitter enemy of Christianity, he bethought
+himself of a new triumph for his vanity; in _Zaire_ and _Alzire_, he had
+recourse to Christian sentiments to excite emotion: and here, for once,
+his versatile heart, which, indeed, in its momentary ebullitions, was not
+unsusceptible of good feelings, shamed the rooted malice of his
+understanding; he actually succeeded, and these affecting and religious
+passages cry out loudly against the slanderous levity of his petulant
+misrepresentations. In England he had acquired a knowledge of a free
+constitution, and became an enthusiastic admirer of liberty. Corneille had
+introduced the Roman republicanism and general politics into his works,
+for the sake of their poetical energy. Voltaire again exhibited them under
+a poetical form, because of the political effect he thought them
+calculated to produce on popular opinion. As he fancied he was better
+acquainted with the Greeks than his predecessors, and as he had obtained a
+slight knowledge of the English theatre and Shakspeare, which, before him,
+were for France, quite an unknown land, he wished in like manner to use
+them to his own advantage.--He insisted on the earnestness, the severity,
+and the simplicity of the Greek dramatic representation; and actually in
+so far approached them, as to exclude love from various subjects to which
+it did not properly belong. He was desirous of reviving the majesty of the
+Grecian scenery; and here his endeavours had this good effect, that in
+theatrical representation the eye was no longer so miserably neglected as
+it had been. He borrowed from Shakspeare, as he thought, bold strokes of
+theatrical effect; but here he was the least successful; when, in
+imitation of that great master, he ventured in _Semiramis_ to call up
+a ghost from the lower world, he fell into innumerable absurdities. In a
+word he was perpetually making experiments with dramatic art, availing
+himself of some new device for effect. Hence some of his works seem to
+have stopt short half way between studies and finished productions; there
+is a trace of something unfixed and unfinished in his whole mental
+formation. Corneille and Racine, within the limits which they set
+themselves, are much more perfect; they are altogether that which they
+are, and we have no glimpses in their works of any supposed higher object
+beyond them. Voltaire's pretensions are much more extensive than his
+means. Corneille has expressed the maxims of heroism with greater
+sublimity, and Racine the natural emotions with a sweeter gracefulness;
+while Voltaire, it must be allowed, has employed the moral motives with
+greater effect, and displayed a more intimate acquaintance with the
+primary and fundamental principles of the human mind. Hence, in some of
+his pieces, he is more deeply affecting than either of the other two.
+
+The first and last only of these three great masters of the French tragic
+stage can be said to be fruitful writers; and, even these can hardly be
+accounted so, if compared with the Greeks. That Racine was not more
+prolific, was owing partly to accidental circumstances. He enjoys this
+advantage, however, that with the exception of his first youthful
+attempts, the whole of his pieces have kept possession of the stage, and
+the public estimation. But many of Corneille's and Voltaire's, even such
+as were popular at first, have been since withdrawn from the stage, and at
+present are not even so much as read. Accordingly, selections only from
+their works, under the title of _Chef-d'oeuvres_, are now generally
+published. It is remarkable, that few only of the many French attempts in
+Tragedy have been successful. La Harpe reckons up nearly a thousand
+tragedies which have been acted or printed since the death of Racine; and
+of these not more than thirty, besides those of Voltaire, have kept
+possession of the stage. Notwithstanding, therefore, the great competition
+in this department, the tragic treasures of the French are far from ample.
+Still we do not feel ourselves called upon to give a full account even of
+these; and still farther is it from our purpose to enter into a
+circumstantial and anatomical investigation of separate pieces. All that
+our limits will allow us is, with a rapid pen, to sketch the character and
+relative value of the principal works of those three masters, and a few
+others specially deserving of mention.
+
+Corneille brilliantly opened his career of fame with the _Cid_, of
+which, indeed, the execution alone is his own: in the plan he appears to
+have closely followed his Spanish original. As the _Cid_ of Guillen
+de Castro has never fallen into my hands, it has been out of my power to
+institute an accurate comparison between the two works. But if we may
+judge from the specimens produced, the Spanish piece seems written with
+far greater simplicity; and the subject owes to Corneille its rhetorical
+pomp of ornament. On the other hand, we are ignorant how much he has left
+out and sacrificed. All the French critics are agreed in thinking the part
+of the Infanta superfluous. They cannot see that by making a princess
+forget her elevated rank, and entertain a passion for Rodrigo, the Spanish
+poet thereby distinguished him as the flower of noble and amiable knights;
+and, on the other hand, furnished a strong justification of Chimene's
+love, which so many powerful motives could not overcome. It is true, that
+to be attractive in themselves, and duly to aid the general effect, the
+Infanta's passion required to be set forth more musically, and Rodrigo's
+achievements against the Moors more especially, _i. e._, with greater
+vividness of detail: and probably they were so in the Spanish original.
+The rapturous applause, which, on its first appearance, universally
+welcomed a piece like this, which, without the admixture of any ignoble
+incentive, founded its attraction altogether on the represented conflict
+between the purest feelings of love, honour, and filial duty, is a strong
+proof that the romantic spirit was not yet extinct among spectators who
+were still open to such natural impressions. This was entirely
+misunderstood by the learned; with the Academy at their head, they
+affirmed that this subject (one of the most beautiful that ever fell to
+the lot of a poet) was unfit for Tragedy; incapable of entering
+historically into the spirit of another age, they made up improbabilities
+and improprieties for their censure. [Footnote: Scuderi speaks even of
+Chimene as a monster, and off-hand dismisses the whole, as "_ce méchant
+combat de l'amour et de l'honneur_." Excellent! Surely he understood
+the romantic!] The _Cid_ is not certainly a tragedy in the sense of
+the ancients; and, at first, the poet himself called it a Tragi-comedy.
+Would that this had been the only occasion in which the authority of
+Aristotle has been applied to subjects which do not belong to his
+jurisdiction!
+
+_The Horatii_ has been censured for want of unity; the murder of the
+sister and the acquittal of the victorious Roman is said to be a second
+action, independent of the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii. Corneille
+himself was talked into a belief of it. He appears, however, to me fully
+justified in what he has done. If the murder of Camilla had not made a
+part of the piece, the female characters in the first act would have been
+superfluous; and without the triumph of patriotism over family ties, the
+combat could not have been an action, but merely an event destitute of all
+tragic complication. But the real defect, in my opinion, is Corneille
+representing a public act which decided the fate of two states, as taking
+place altogether _infra privates parietes_, and stripping it of every
+visible pomp of circumstance. Hence the great flatness of the fifth act.
+What a different impression would have been produced had Horatius, in
+presence of the king and people, been solemnly condemned, in obedience to
+the stern mandate of the law, and afterwards saved through the tears and
+lamentations of his father, just as Livy describes it. Moreover, the poet,
+not satisfied with making, as the history does, one sister of the Horatii
+in love with one of the Curiatii, has thought proper to invent the
+marriage of a sister of the Curiatii with one of the Horatii: and as in
+the former the love of country yields to personal inclination, in the
+latter personal inclination yields to love of country. This gives rise to
+a great improbability: for is it likely that men would have been selected
+for the combat who, with a well-known family connexion of this kind, would
+have had the most powerful inducements to spare one another? Besides, the
+conqueror's murder of his sister cannot be rendered even poetically
+tolerable, except by supposing him in all the boiling impetuosity of
+ungovernable youth. Horatius, already a husband, would have shown a wiser
+and milder forbearance towards his unfortunate sister's language; else
+were he a ferocious savage.
+
+_Cinna_ is commonly ranked much higher than _The Horatii_; although, as to
+purity of sentiment, there is here a perceptible falling off from that
+ideal sphere in which the action of the two preceding pieces moves. All is
+diversely complicated and diseased. Cinna's republicanism is merely the
+cloak of another passion: he is a tool in the hands of Emilia, who, on her
+part, constantly sacrifices her pretended love to her passion of revenge.
+The magnanimity of Augustus is ambiguous: it appears rather the caution of
+a tyrant grown timid through age. The conspiracy is, with a splendid
+narration, thrust into the background; it does not excite in us that
+gloomy apprehension which so theatrical an object ought to do. Emilia, the
+soul of the piece, is called by the witty Balzac, when commending the
+work, "an adorable fury." Yet the Furies themselves could be appeased by
+purifications and expiations: but Emilia's heart is inaccessible to the
+softening influences of benevolence and generosity; the adoration of so
+unfeminine a creature is hardly pardonable even in a lover. Hence she has
+no better adorers than Cinna and Maximus, two great villains, whose
+repentance comes too late to be thought sincere.
+
+Here we have the first specimen of that Machiavellism of motives, which
+subsequently disfigured the poetry of Corneille, and which is not only
+repulsive, but also for the most part both clumsy and unsuitable. He
+flattered himself, that in knowledge of men and the world, in an
+acquaintance with courts and politics, he surpassed the most shrewd and
+clear-sighted observers. With a mind naturally alive to honour, he yet
+conceived the design of taking in hand the "doctrine of the murderous
+Machiavel;" and displays, broadly and didactically, all the knowledge
+which he had acquired of these arts. He had no suspicion that a
+remorseless and selfish policy goes always smoothly to work, and
+dexterously disguises itself. Had he been really capable of anything of
+the kind, he might have taken a lesson from Richelieu.
+
+Of the remaining pieces in which Corneille has painted the Roman love of
+liberty and conquest, the _Death of Pompey_ is the most eminent. It
+is full, however, of a grandeur which is more dazzling than genuine; and,
+indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of Lucan's hyperbolical
+antitheses. These bravuras of rhetoric are strung together on the thread
+of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of
+his sister Cleopatra, have a petty and miserable appearance alongside of
+the picture of the fate of the great Pompey, the vengeance-breathing
+sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Caesar. Scarcely has
+the conqueror paid the last honours to the reluctant shade of his rival,
+when he does homage at the feet of the beautiful queen; he is not only in
+love, but sighingly and ardently in love. Cleopatra, on her part,
+according to the poet's own expression, is desirous, by her love-ogling,
+to gain the sceptre of her brother. Caesar certainly made love, in his own
+way, to a number of women: but these cynical loves, if represented with
+anything like truth, would be most unfit for the stage. Who can refrain
+from laughing, when Rome, in the speech of Caesar, implores the
+_chaste_ love of Cleopatra for young Caesar?
+
+In _Sertorius_, a much later work, Corneille has contrived to make the
+great Pompey appear little, and the hero ridiculous. Sertorius on one
+occasion exclaims--
+
+  _Que c'est un sort cruel d'aimer par politique!_
+
+This admits of being applied to all the personages of the piece. In love
+they are not in the least; but they allow a pretended love to be
+subservient to political ends. Sertorius, a hardy and hoary veteran, acts
+the lover with the Spanish Queen, Viriata; he brings forward, however,
+pretext after pretext, and offers himself the while to Aristia; as Viriata
+presses him to marry her on the spot, he begs anxiously for a short delay;
+Viriata, along with her other elegant phrases, says roundly, that she
+neither knows love nor hatred; Aristia, the repudiated wife of Pompey,
+says to him, "Take me back again, or I will marry another;" Pompey
+beseeches her to wait only till the death of Sylla, whom he dare not
+offend: after this there is no need to mention the low scoundrel Perpenna.
+The tendency to this frigidity of soul was perceptible in Corneille, even
+at an early period of his career; but in the works of his old age it
+increased to an incredible degree.
+
+In _Polyeucte_, Christian sentiments are not unworthily expressed; yet we
+find in it more _superstitious reverence_ than _fervent enthusiasm_ for
+religion: the wonders of grace are rather _affirmed_, than embraced by a
+mysterious illumination. Both the tone and the situations in the first
+acts, incline greatly, as Voltaire observes, to comedy. A woman who, in
+obedience to her father, has married against her inclinations, and who
+declares both to her lover (who returns when too late) and to her husband,
+that "she still retains her first love, but that she will keep within the
+bounds of virtue;" a vulgar and selfish father, who is sorry that he has
+not chosen for his son-in-law the first suitor, now become the favourite
+of the Emperor; all this promises no very high tragical determinations.
+The divided heart of Paulina is in nature, and consequently does not
+detract from the interest of the piece. It is generally agreed that her
+situation, and the character of Severus, constitute the principal charm of
+this drama. But the practical magnanimity of this Roman, in conquering his
+passion, throws Polyeucte's self-renunciation, which appears to cost him
+nothing, quite into the shade. From this a conclusion has been partly
+drawn, that martyrdom is, in general, an unfavourable subject for Tragedy.
+But nothing can be more unjust than this inference. The cheerfulness with
+which martyrs embraced pain and death did not proceed from want of
+feeling, but from the heroism of the highest love: they must previously,
+in struggles painful beyond expression, have obtained the victory over
+every earthly tie; and by the exhibition of these struggles, of these
+sufferings of our mortal nature, while the seraph soars on its flight to
+heaven, the poet may awaken in us the most fervent emotion. In
+_Polyeucte_, however, the means employed to bring about the catastrophe,
+namely, the dull and low artifice of Felix, by which the endeavours of
+Severus to save his rival are made rather to contribute to his
+destruction, are inexpressibly contemptible.
+
+How much Corneille delighted in the symmetrical and nicely balanced play
+of intrigue, we may see at once from his having pronounced _Rodogune_
+his favourite work. I shall content myself with referring to Lessing, who
+has exposed pleasantly enough the ridiculous appearance which the two
+distressed princes cut, between a mother who says, "He who murders his
+mistress I will name heir to my throne," and a mistress who says, "He who
+murders his mother shall be my husband." The best and shortest way of
+going to work would have been to have locked up the two furies together.
+As for Voltaire, he is always recurring to the fifth act, which he
+declares to be one of the noblest productions of the French stage. This
+singular way of judging works of art by piecemeal, which would praise the
+parts in distinction from the whole, without which it is impossible for
+the parts to exist, is altogether foreign to our way of thinking.
+
+With respect to _Heraclius_, Voltaire gives himself the unnecessary
+trouble of showing that Calderon did not imitate Corneille; and, on the
+other hand, he labours, with little success, to give a negative to the
+question whether the latter had the Spanish author before him, and availed
+himself of his labours. Corneille, it is true, gives out the whole as his
+own invention; but we must not forget, that only when hard pressed did he
+acknowledge how much he owed to the author of the Spanish _Cid_. The
+chief circumstance of the plot, namely, the uncertainty of the tyrant
+Phocas as to which of the two youths is his own son, or the son of his
+murdered predecessor, bears great resemblance to an incident in a drama of
+Calderon's, and nothing of the kind is to be found in history; in other
+respects the plot is, it is true, altogether different. However this may
+be, in Calderon the ingenious boldness of an extravagant invention is
+always preserved in due keeping by a deeper magic colouring of the poetry;
+whereas in Corneille, after our head has become giddy in endeavouring to
+disentangle a complicated and ill-contrived intrigue, we are recompensed
+by a succession of mere tragical epigrams, without the slightest
+recreation for the fancy.
+
+_Nicomedes_ is a political comedy, the dryness of which is hardly in
+any degree relieved by the ironical tone which runs through the speeches
+of the hero.
+
+This is nearly all of Corneille's that now appears on the stage. His later
+works are, without exception, merely treatises or reasons of state in
+certain difficult conjunctures, dressed out in a pompous dialogical form.
+We might as well make a tragedy out of a game at chess.
+
+Those who have the patience to wade through the forgotten pieces of
+Corneille will perceive with astonishment that they are constructed on the
+same principles, and, with the exception of occasional negligences of
+style, executed with as much expenditure of what he considered art, as his
+admired productions. For example, _Attila_ bears in its plot a striking
+resemblance to _Rodogune_. In his own judgments on his works, it is
+impossible not to be struck with the unessential nature of things on which
+he lays stress; all along he seems quite unconcerned about that which is
+certainly the highest object of tragical composition, the laying open the
+depths of the mind and the destiny of man. For the unfavourable reception
+which he has so frequently to confess, his self-love can always find some
+excuse, some trifling circumstance to which the fate of his piece was to
+be attributed.
+
+In the two first youthful attempts of Racine, nothing deserves to be
+remarked, but the flexibility with which he accommodated himself to the
+limits fixed by Corneille to the career which he had opened. In the
+_Andromache_ he first broke loose from them and became himself. He
+gave utterance to the inward struggles and inconsistencies of passion,
+with a truth and an energy which had never before been witnessed on the
+French stage. The fidelity of Andromache to the memory of her husband, and
+her maternal tenderness, are affectingly beautiful: even the proud
+Hermione carries us along with her in her wild aberrations. Her aversion
+to Orestes, after he had made himself the instrument of her revenge, and
+her awaking from her blind fury to utter helplesssness and despair, may
+almost be called tragically grand. The male parts, as is generally the
+case with Racine, are not to advantageously drawn. The constantly repeated
+threat of Pyrrhus to deliver up Astyanax to death, if Andromache should
+not listen to him, with his gallant protestations, resembles the arts of
+an executioner, who applies the torture to his victim with the most
+courtly phrases. It is difficult to think of Orestes, after his horrible
+deed, as a light-hearted and patient lover. Not the least mention is made
+of the murder of his mother; he seems to have completely forgotten it the
+whole piece through; whence, then, do the Furies come all at once at the
+end? This is a singular contradiction. In short, the way in which the
+whole is connected together bears too great a resemblance to certain
+sports of children, where one always runs before and tries to surprise the
+other.
+
+In _Britannicus_, I have already praised the historical fidelity of
+the picture. Nero, Agrippina, Narcissus, and Burrhus, are so accurately
+sketched, and finished with such light touches and such delicate
+colouring, that, in respect to character, it yields, perhaps, to no French
+tragedy whatever. Racine has here possessed the art of giving us to
+understand much that is left unsaid, and enabling us to look forward into
+futurity. I will only notice one inconsistency which has escaped the poet.
+He would paint to us the cruel voluptuary, whom education has only in
+appearance tamed, breaking loose from the restraints of discipline and
+virtue. And yet, at the close of the fourth act, Narcissus speaks as if he
+had even then exhibited himself before the people as a player and a
+charioteer. But it was not until he had been hardened by the commission of
+grave crimes that he sunk to this ignominy. To represent the perfect Nero,
+that is, the flattering and cowardly tyrant, in the same person with the
+vain and fantastical being who, as poet, singer, player, and almost as
+juggler, was desirous of admiration, and in the agony of death even
+recited verses from Homer, was compatible only with a mixed drama, in
+which tragical dignity is not required throughout.
+
+To _Berenice_, composed in honour of a virtuous princess, the French
+critics generally seem to me extremely unjust. It is an idyllic tragedy,
+no doubt; but it is full of mental tenderness. No one was better skilled
+than Racine in throwing a veil of dignity over female weakness.--Who
+doubts that Berenice has long yielded to Titus every proof of her
+tenderness, however carefully it may be veiled over? She is like a
+Magdalena of Guido, who languishingly repents of her repentance. The chief
+error of the piece is the tiresome part of Antiochus.
+
+On the first representation of _Bajazet_, Corneille, it seems was heard to
+say, "These Turks are very much Frenchified." The censure, as is well
+known, attaches principally to the parts of _Bajazet_ and _Atalide_. The
+old Grand Vizier is certainly Turkish enough; and were a Sultana ever to
+become the Sultan, she would perhaps throw the handkerchief in the same
+Sultanic manner as the disgusting Roxane. I have already observed that
+Turkey, in its naked rudeness, hardly admits of representation before a
+cultivated public. Racine felt this, and merely refined the forms without
+changing the main incidents. The mutes and the strangling were motives
+which in a seraglio could hardly be dispensed with; and so he gives, on
+several occasions, very elegant circumlocutory descriptions of strangling.
+This is, however, inconsistent; when people are so familiar with the idea
+of a thing, they usually call it also by its true name.
+
+The intrigue of _Mithridate_, as Voltaire has remarked, bears great
+resemblance to that of the _Miser_ of Molière. Two brothers are rivals for
+the bride of their father, who cunningly extorts from her the name of her
+favoured lover, by feigning a wish to renounce in his favour. The
+confusion of both sons, when they learn that their father, whom they
+had believed dead, is still alive, and will speedily make his appearance,
+is in reality exceedingly comic. The one calls out: _Qu'avons nous fait?_
+This is just the alarm of school-boys, conscious of some impropriety, on
+the unexpected entrance of their master. The political scene, where
+Mithridates consults his sons respecting his grand project of conquering
+Rome, and in which Racine successfully competes with Corneille, is no
+doubt logically interwoven in the general plan; but still it is unsuitable
+to the tone of the whole, and the impression which it is intended to
+produce. All the interest is centred in Monime: she is one of Racine's
+most amiable creations, and excites in us a tender commiseration.
+
+On no work of this poet will the sentence of German readers differ more
+from that of the French critics and their whole public, than on the
+_Iphigenie_.--Voltaire declares it the tragedy of all times and all
+nations, which approaches as near to perfection as human essays can; and
+in this opinion he is universally followed by his countrymen. But we see
+in it only a modernised Greek tragedy, of which the manners are
+inconsistent with the mythological traditions, its simplicity destroyed by
+the intriguing Eriphile, and in which the amorous Achilles, however brave
+in other respects his behaviour may be, is altogether insupportable. La
+Harpe affirms that the Achilles of Racine is even more Homeric than that
+of Euripides. What shall we say to this? Before acquiescing in the
+sentences of such critics, we must first forget the Greeks.
+
+Respecting _Phèdre_ I may express myself with the greater brevity, as
+I have already dedicated a separate Treatise to that tragedy. However much
+Racine may have borrowed from Euripides and Seneca, and however he may
+have spoiled the former without improving the latter, still it is a great
+advance from the affected mannerism of his age to a more genuine tragic
+style. When we compare it with the _Phaedra_ of Pradon, which was so
+well received by his contemporaries for no other reason than because no
+trace whatever of antiquity was discernible in it, but every thing reduced
+to the scale of a modern miniature portrait for a toilette, we must
+entertain a higher admiration of the poet who had so strong a feeling for
+the excellence of the ancient poets, and the courage to attach himself to
+them, and dared, in an age of vitiated and unnatural taste, to display so
+much purity and unaffected simplicity. If Racine actually said, that the
+only difference between his _Phaedra_ and that of Pradon was, that he
+knew how to write, he did himself the most crying injustice, and must have
+allowed himself to be blinded by the miserable doctrine of his friend
+Boileau, which made the essence of poetry to consist in diction and
+versification, instead of the display of imagination and fancy.
+
+Racine's last two pieces belong, as is well known, to a very different
+epoch of his life: they were both written at the same instigation; but are
+extremely dissimilar to each other. _Esther_ scarcely deserves the name of
+a tragedy; written for the entertainment of well-bred young women in a
+pious seminary, it does not rise much higher than its purpose. It had,
+however, an astonishing success. The invitation to the representations in
+St. Cyr was looked upon as a court favour; flattery and scandal delighted
+to discover allusions throughout the piece; Ahasuerus was said to
+represent Louis XIV; Esther, Madame de Maintenon; the proud Vasti, who is
+only incidentally alluded to, Madame de Montespan; and Haman, the Minister
+Louvois. This is certainly rather a profane application of the sacred
+history, if we can suppose the poet to have had any such object in view.
+In _Athalie_, however, the poet exhibited himself for the last time,
+before taking leave of poetry and the world, in his whole strength. It is
+not only his most finished work, but, I have no hesitation in declaring it
+to be, of all French tragedies the one which, free from all mannerism,
+approaches the nearest to the grand style of the Greeks. The chorus is
+conceived fully in the ancient sense, though introduced in a different
+manner in order to suit our music, and the different arrangement of our
+theatre. The scene has all the majesty of a public action. Expectation,
+emotion, and keen agitation succeed each other, and continually rise with
+the progress of the drama: with a severe abstinence from all foreign
+matter, there is still a display of the richest variety, sometimes of
+sweetness, but more frequently of majesty and grandeur. The inspiration of
+the prophet elevates the fancy to flights of more than usual boldness. Its
+import is exactly what that of a religious drama ought to be: on earth,
+the struggle between good and evil; and in heaven the wakeful eye of
+providence beaming, from unapproachable glory, rays of constancy and
+resolution. All is animated by one breath--the poet's pious enthusiasm, of
+whose sincerity neither his life nor the work itself allow us a moment to
+doubt. This is the very point in which so many French works of art with
+their great pretensions are, nevertheless, deficient: their authors were
+not inspired by a fervent love of their subject, but by the desire of
+external effect: and hence the vanity of the artist is continually
+breaking forth to throw a damp over our feelings.
+
+The unfortunate fate of this piece is well known. Scruples of conscience
+as to the propriety of all theatrical representations (which appear to be
+exclusively entertained by the Gallican church, for both in Italy and
+Spain men of religion and piety have thought very differently on this
+subject,) prevented the representation in St. Cyr; it appeared in print,
+and was universally abused and reprobated; and this reprobation of it long
+survived its author. So incapable of every thing serious was the puerile
+taste of the age.
+
+Among the poets of this period, the younger Corneille deserves to be
+mentioned, who did not seek, like his brother, to excite astonishment by
+pictures of heroism so much as to win the favour of the spectators by
+"those tendernesses which," to use the words of Pradon, "are so
+agreeable." Of his numerous tragedies, two, only the _Comte d'Essex_
+and _Ariadné_, keep possession of the stage; the rest are consigned to
+oblivion. The latter of the two, composed after the model of _Berenice_,
+is a tragedy of which the catastrophe may, properly speaking, be said to
+consist in a swoon. The situation of the resigned and enamoured Ariadne,
+who, after all her sacrifices, sees herself abandoned by Theseus and
+betrayed by her own sister, is expressed with great truth of feeling.
+Whenever an actress of an engaging figure, and with a sweet voice, appears
+in this character, she is sure to excite our interest. The other parts,
+the cold and deceitful Theseus, the intriguing Phaedra, who continues to
+the last her deception of her confiding sister, the pandering Pirithbus,
+and King Oenarus, who instantly offers himself in the place of the
+faithless lover, are all pitiful in the extreme, and frequently even
+laughable. Moreover, the desert rocks of Naxos are here smoothed down to
+modern drawing-rooms; and the princes who people them, with all the
+observances of politeness seek to out-wit each other, or to beguile the
+unfortunate princess, who alone has anything like pretensions to nature.
+
+Crebillon, in point of time, comes between Racine and Voltaire, though he
+was also the rival of the latter. A numerous party wished to set him, when
+far advanced in years, on a par with, nay, even to rank him far higher
+than, Voltaire. Nothing, however, but the bitterest rancour of party, or
+the utmost depravity of taste, or, what is most probable, the two
+together, could have led them to such signal injustice. Far from having
+contributed to the purification of the tragic art, he evidently attached
+himself, not to the better, but the more affected authors of the age of
+Louis the Fourteenth. In his total ignorance of the ancients, he has the
+arrogance to rank himself above them. His favourite books were the
+antiquated romances of a Calprenede, and others of a similar stamp: from
+these he derived his extravagant and ill-connected plots. One of the means
+to which he everywhere has recourse, is the unconscious or intentional
+disguise of the principal characters under other names; the first example
+of which was given in the _Heraclius_. Thus, in Crebillon's _Electra_,
+Orestes does not become known to himself before the middle of the piece.
+The brother and sister, and a son and daughter of Aegisthus, are almost
+exclusively occupied with their double amours, which neither contribute
+to, nor injure, the main action; and Clytemnestra is killed by a blow from
+Orestes, which, without knowing her, he unintentionally and involuntarily
+inflicts. He abounds in extravagances of every kind; of such, for
+instance, as the shameless impudence of Semiramis, in persisting in her
+love after she has learnt that its object is her own son. A few empty
+ravings and common-place displays of terror, have gained for Crebillon the
+appellation of _the terrible_, which affords us a standard for judging of
+the barbarous and affected taste of the age, and the infinite distance
+from nature and truth to which it had fallen. It is pretty much the same
+as, in painting, to give the appellation of the majestic to Coypel.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+Voltaire--Tragedies on Greek Subjects: _Oedipe_, _Merope_, _Oreste_--
+Tragedies on Roman Subjects: _Brute_, _Mort de César_, _Catiline_, _Le
+Triumvirat_--Earlier Pieces: _Zaire_, _Alzire_, _Mahomet_, _Semiramis_,
+and _Tancred_.
+
+
+To Voltaire, from his first entrance on his dramatic career, we must give
+credit both for a conviction that higher and more extensive efforts
+remained to be made, and for the zeal necessary to accomplish all that was
+yet undone. How far he was successful, and how much he was himself blinded
+by the very national prejudices against which he contended, is another
+question. For the more easy review of his works, it will be useful to
+class together the pieces in which he handled mythological materials, and
+those which he derived from the Roman history.
+
+His earliest tragedy, _Oedipe_, is a mixture of adherence to the Greeks
+[Footnote: His admiration of them seems to have been more derived
+from foreign influence than from personal study. In his letter to the
+Duchess of Maine, prefixed to _Oreste_, he relates how, in his early
+youth, he had access to a noble house where it was a custom to read
+Sophocles, and to make extemporary translations from him, and where there
+were men who acknowledged the superiority of the Greek Theatre over the
+French. In vain, in the present day, should we seek for such men in
+France, among people of any distinction, so universally is the study of
+the classics depreciated.] (with the proviso, however, as may be supposed,
+of improving on them,) and of compliance with the prevailing manner. The
+best feature of this work Voltaire owed to Sophocles, whom he nevertheless
+slanders in his preface; and in comparison with whose catastrophe his own
+is flat in the extreme. Not a little, however, was borrowed from the
+frigid _Oedipus_ of Corneille; and more especially the love of Philoctetus
+for Jocaste, which may be said to correspond nearly with that of Theseus
+and Dirce in Corneille. Voltaire alleged in his defence the tyranny of the
+players, from which a young and unknown writer cannot emancipate himself.
+We may notice the frequent allusions to priestcraft, superstition, &c.,
+which even at that early period betray the future direction of his mind.
+
+The _Merope_, a work of his ripest years, was intended as a perfect
+revival of Greek tragedy, an undertaking of so great difficulty, and so
+long announced with every note of preparation. Its real merit is the
+exclusion of the customary love-scenes (of which, however, Racine had
+already given an example in the _Athalie_); for in other respects
+German readers hardly need to be told how much is not conceived in the
+true Grecian spirit. Moreover the confidants are also entirely after the
+old traditional cut. The other defects of the piece have been
+circumstantially, and, I might almost say, too severely, censured by
+Lessing. The tragedy of _Merope_, if well acted, can hardly fail of
+being received with a certain degree of favour. This is owing to the
+nature of its subject. The passionate love of a mother, who, in dread of
+losing her only treasure, and threatened with cruel oppression, still
+supports her trials with heroic constancy, and at last triumphs over them,
+is altogether a picture of such truth and beauty, that the sympathy it
+awakens is beneficent, and remains pure from every painful ingredient.
+Still we must not forget that the piece belongs only in a very small
+measure to Voltaire. How much he has borrowed from Maffei, and changed--
+not always for the better--has been already pointed out by Lessing.
+
+Of all remodellings of Greek tragedies, _Oreste_, the latest, appears
+the farthest from the antique simplicity and severity, although it is free
+from any mixture of love-making, and all mere confidants are excluded.
+That Orestes should undertake to destroy Aegisthus is nowise singular, and
+seems scarcely to merit such marked notice in the tragical annals of the
+world. It is the case which Aristotle lays down as the most indifferent,
+where one enemy knowingly attacks the other. And in Voltaire's play
+neither Orestes nor Electra have anything beyond this in view:
+Clytemnestra is to be spared; no oracle consigns to her own son the
+execution of the punishment due to her guilt. But even the deed in
+question can hardly be said to be executed by Orestes himself: he goes to
+Aegisthus, and falls, simply enough it must be owned, into the net, and is
+only saved by an insurrection of the people. According to the ancients,
+the oracle had commanded him to attack the criminals with cunning, as they
+had so attacked Agamemnon. This was a just retaliation: to fall in open
+conflict would have been too honourable a death for Aegisthus. Voltaire
+has added, of his own invention, that he was also prohibited by the oracle
+from making himself known to his sister; and when carried away by
+fraternal love, he breaks this injunction, he is blinded by the Furies,
+and involuntarily perpetrates the deed of matricide. These certainly are
+singular ideas to assign to the gods, and a most unexampled punishment for
+a slight, nay, even a noble crime. The accidental and unintentional
+stabbing of Clytemnestra was borrowed from Crebillon. A French writer will
+hardly venture to represent this subject with mythological truth; to
+describe, for instance, the murder as intentional, and executed by the
+command of the gods. If Clytemnestra were depicted not as rejoicing in the
+success of her crime, but repentant and softened by maternal love, then,
+it is true, her death would no longer be supportable. But how does this
+apply to so premeditated a crime? By such a transition to littleness the
+whole profound significance of the dreadful example is lost.
+
+As the French are in general better acquainted with the Romans than the
+Greeks, we might expect the Roman pieces of Voltaire to be more
+consistent, in a political point of view, with historical truth, than his
+Greek pieces are with the symbolical original of mythology. This is,
+however, the case only in _Brutus_, the earliest of them, and the
+only one which can be said to be sensibly planned. Voltaire sketched this
+tragedy in England; he had there learned from _Julius Caesar_ the
+effect which the publicity of Republican transactions is capable of
+producing on the stage, and he wished therefore to hold something like a
+middle course between Corneille and Shakspeare. The first act opens
+majestically; the catastrophe is brief but striking, and throughout the
+principles of genuine freedom are pronounced with a grave and noble
+eloquence. Brutus himself, his son Titus, the ambassador of the king, and
+the chief of the conspirators, are admirably depicted. I am by no means
+disposed to censure the introduction of love into this play. The passion
+of Titus for a daughter of Tarquin, which constitutes the knot, is not
+improbable, and in its tone harmonizes with the manners which are
+depicted. Still less am I disposed to agree with La Harpe, when he says
+that Tullia, to afford a fitting counterpoise to the republican virtues,
+ought to utter proud and heroic sentiments, like Emilia in _Cinna_.
+By what means can a noble youth be more easily seduced than by female
+tenderness and modesty? It is not, generally speaking, natural that a
+being like Emilia should ever inspire love.
+
+The _Mort de César_ is a mutilated tragedy: it ends with the speech
+of Antony over the dead body of Caesar, borrowed from Shakspeare; that is
+to say, it has no conclusion. And what a patched and bungling thing is it
+in all its parts! How coarse-spun and hurried is the conspiracy! How
+stupid Caesar must have been, to allow the conspirators to brave him
+before his face without suspecting their design! That Brutus, although he
+knew Caesar to be his father, nay, immediately after this fact had come to
+his knowledge, should lay murderous hands on him, is cruel, and, at the
+same time, most un-Roman. History affords us many examples of fathers in
+Rome who condemned their own sons to death for crimes of state; the law
+gave fathers an unlimited power of life and death over their children in
+their own houses. But the murder of a father, though perpetrated in the
+cause of liberty, would, in the eyes of the Romans, have stamped the
+parricide an unnatural monster. The inconsistencies which here arise from
+the attempt to observe the unity of place, are obvious to the least
+discerning eye. The scene is laid in the Capitol; here the conspiracy is
+hatched in the clear light of day, and Caesar the while goes in and out
+among them. But the persons, themselves, do not seem to know rightly where
+they are; for Caesar on one occasion exclaims, "_Courons au Capitole!_"
+
+The same improprieties are repeated in _Catiline_, which is but a little
+better than the preceding piece. From Voltaire's sentiments respecting the
+dramatic exhibition of a conspiracy, which I quoted in the foregoing
+Lecture, we might well conclude that he had not himself a right
+understanding on this head, were it not quite evident that the French
+system rendered a true representation of such transactions all but
+impossible, not only by the required observance of the Unities of Place
+and Time, but also on account of a demand for dignity of poetical
+expression, such as is quite incompatible with the accurate mention of
+particular circumstances, on which, however, in this case depends the
+truthfulness of the whole. The machinations of a conspiracy, and the
+endeavours to frustrate them, are like the underground mine and counter-
+mine, with which the besiegers and the besieged endeavour to blow up each
+other.--Something must be done to enable the spectators to comprehend the
+art of the miners. If Catiline and his adherents had employed no more art
+and dissimulation, and Cicero no more determined wisdom, than Voltaire has
+given them, the one could not have endangered Rome, and the other could
+not have saved it. The piece turns always on the same point; they all
+declaim against each other, but no one acts; and at the conclusion, the
+affair is decided as if by accident, by the blind chance of war. When we
+read the simple relation of Sallust, it has the appearance of the genuine
+poetry of the matter, and Voltaire's work by the side of it looks like a
+piece of school rhetoric. Ben Jonson has treated the subject with a very
+different insight into the true connexion of human affairs; and Voltaire
+might have learned a great deal from the man in traducing whom he did not
+spare even falsehood.
+
+The _Triumvirat_ belongs to the acknowledged unsuccessful essays of his
+old age. It consists of endless declamations on the subject of
+proscription, which are poorly supported by a mere show of action. Here we
+find the Triumvirs quietly sitting in their tents on an island in the
+small river Rhenus, while storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes rage around
+them; and Julia and the young Pompeius, although they are travelling on
+terra firma, are depicted as if they had been just shipwrecked on the
+strand; besides a number of other absurdities. Voltaire, probably by way
+of apology for the poor success which the piece had on its representation,
+says, "This piece is perhaps in the English taste."--Heaven forbid!
+
+We return to the earlier tragedies of Voltaire, in which he brought on the
+stage subjects never before attempted, and on which his fame as a dramatic
+poet principally rests: _Zaire_, _Alzire_, _Mahomet_, _Semiramis_, and
+_Tancred_.
+
+_Zaire_ is considered in France as the triumph of tragic poetry in
+the representation of lore and jealousy. We will not assert with Lessing,
+that Voltaire was acquainted only with the _legal_ style of love. He
+often expresses feeling with a fiery energy, if not with that familiar
+truth and _naïveté_ in which an unreserved heart lays itself open.
+But I see no trace of an oriental colouring in Zaire's cast of feeling:
+educated in the seraglio, she should cling to the object of her passion
+with all the fervour of a maiden of a glowing imagination, rioting, as it
+were, in the fragrant perfumes of the East. Her fanciless love dwells
+solely in the heart; and again how is this conceivable with such a
+character! Orosman, on his part, lays claim indeed to European tenderness
+of feeling; but in him the Tartar is merely varnished over, and he has
+frequent relapses into the ungovernable fury and despotic habits of his
+race. The poet ought at least to have given a credibility to the
+magnanimity which he ascribes to him, by investing him with a celebrated
+historical name, such as that of the Saracen monarch Saladin, well known
+for his nobleness and liberality of sentiment. But all our sympathy
+inclines to the oppressed Christian and chivalrous side, and the glorious
+names to which it is appropriated. What can be more affecting than the
+royal martyr Lusignan, the upright and pious Nerestan, who, though in the
+fire of youth, has no heart for deeds of bloody enterprise except to
+redeem the associates of his faith? The scenes in which these two
+characters appear are uniformly excellent, and more particularly the whole
+of the second act. The idea of connecting the discovery of a daughter with
+her conversion can never be sufficiently praised. But, in my opinion, the
+great effect of this act is injurious to the rest of the piece. Does any
+person seriously wish the union of Zaire with Orosman, except lady
+spectators flattered with the homage which is paid to beauty, or those of
+the male part of the audience who are still entangled in the follies of
+youth? Who else can go along with the poet, when Zaire's love for the
+Sultan, so ill-justified by his acts, balances in her soul the voice of
+blood, and the most sacred claims of filial duty, honour, and religion?
+
+It was a praiseworthy daring (such singular prejudices then prevailed in
+France) to exhibit French heroes in _Zaire_. In _Alzire_ Voltaire went
+still farther, and treated a subject in modern history never yet touched
+by his countrymen. In the former piece he contrasted the chivalrous and
+Saracenic way of thinking; in this we have Spaniards opposed to Peruvians.
+The difference between the old and new world has given rise to
+descriptions of a truly poetical nature. Though the action is a pure
+invention, I recognise in this piece more historical and more of what we
+may call symbolical truth, than in most French tragedies. Zamor is a
+representation of the savage in his free, and Monteze in his subdued
+state; Guzman, of the arrogance of the conqueror; and Alvarez, of the mild
+influence of Christianity. Alzire remains between these conflicting
+elements in an affecting struggle betwixt attachment to her country, its
+manners, and the first choice of her heart, on the one part, and new ties
+of honour and duty on the other. All the human motives speak in favour of
+Alzire's love, which were against the passion of Zaire. The last scene,
+where the dying Guzman is dragged in, is beneficently overpowering. The
+noble lines on the difference of their religions, by which Zamor is
+converted by Guzman, are borrowed from an event in history: they are the
+words of the Duke of Guise to a Huguenot who wished to kill him; but the
+glory of the poet is not therefore less in applying them as he has done.
+In short, notwithstanding the improbabilities in the plot, which are
+easily discovered, and have often been censured, _Alzire_ appears to
+be the most fortunate attempt, and the most finished of all Voltaire's
+compositions.
+
+In _Mahomet_, want of true singleness of purpose has fearfully avenged
+itself on the artist. He may affirm as much as he pleases that his aim was
+directed solely against fanaticism; there can be no doubt that he wished
+to overthrow the belief in revelation altogether, and that for that object
+he considered every means allowable. We have thus a work which is
+productive of effect; but an alarmingly painful effect, equally repugnant
+to humanity, philosophy, and religious feeling. The Mahomet of Voltaire
+makes two innocent young persons, a brother and sister, who, with a
+childlike reverence, adore him as a messenger from God, unconsciously
+murder their own father, and this from the motives of an incestuous love
+in which, by his allowance, they had also become unknowingly entangled;
+the brother, after he has blindly executed his horrible mission, he
+rewards with poison, and the sister he reserves for the gratification of
+his own vile lust. This tissue of atrocities, this cold-blooded delight in
+wickedness, exceeds perhaps the measure of human nature; but, at all
+events, it exceeds the bounds of poetic exhibition, even though such a
+monster should ever have appeared in the course of ages. But, overlooking
+this, what a disfigurement, nay, distortion, of history! He has stripped
+her, too, of her wonderful charms; not a trace of oriental colouring is to
+be found. Mahomet was a false prophet, but one certainly under the
+inspiration of enthusiasm, otherwise he would never by his doctrine have
+revolutionized the half of the world. What an absurdity to make him merely
+a cool deceiver! One alone of the many sublime maxims of the Koran would
+be sufficient to annihilate the whole of these incongruous inventions.
+
+_Semiramis_ is a motley patchwork of the French manner and mistaken
+imitations. It has something of _Hamlet_, and something of _Clytemnestra_
+and _Orestes_; but nothing of any of them as it ought to be. The passion
+for an unknown son is borrowed from the _Semiramis_ of Crebillon. The
+appearance of Ninus is a mixture of the Ghost in _Hamlet_ and the shadow
+of Darius in Aeschylus. That it is superfluous has been admitted even by
+the French critics. Lessing, with his raillery, has scared away the Ghost.
+With a great many faults common to ordinary ghost-scenes, it has this
+peculiar one, that its speeches are dreadfully bombastic. Notwithstanding
+the great zeal displayed by Voltaire against subordinate love intrigues in
+tragedy, he has, however, contrived to exhibit two pairs of lovers, the
+_partie carrée_ as it is called, in this play, which was to be the
+foundation of an entirely new species.
+
+Since the _Cid_, no French tragedy had appeared of which the plot was
+founded on such pure motives of honour and love without any ignoble
+intermixtures, and so completely consecrated to the exhibition of
+chivalrous sentiments, as _Tancred_. Amenaide, though honour and life
+are at stake, disdains to exculpate herself by a declaration which would
+endanger her lover; and Tancred, though justified in esteeming her faith
+less, defends her in single combat, and, in despair, is about to seek a
+hero's death, when the unfortunate mistake is cleared up. So far the piece
+is irreproachable, and deserving of the greatest praise. But it is
+weakened by other imperfections. It is of great detriment to its
+perspicuity, that we are not at the very first allowed to hear the letter
+without superscription which occasions all the embarrassment, and that it
+is not sent off before our eyes. The political disquisitions in the first
+act are extremely tedious; Tancred does not appear till the third act,
+though his presence is impatiently looked for, to give animation to the
+scene. The furious imprecations of Amenaide, at the conclusion, are not in
+harmony with the deep but soft emotion with which we are overpowered by
+the reconciliation of the two lovers, whose hearts, after so long a mutual
+misunderstanding, are reunited in the moment of separation by death.
+
+In the earlier piece of the _Orphelin de la Chine_, it might be considered
+pardonable if Voltaire represented the great Dschingis-kan in love. This
+drama ought to be entitled _The Conquest of China_, with the conversion of
+the cruel Khan of Tartary, &c. Its whole interest is concentrated in two
+children, who are never once seen. The Chinese are represented as the most
+wise and virtuous of mankind, and they overflow with philosophical maxims.
+As Corneille, in his old age, made one and all of his characters
+politicians, Voltaire in like manner furnished his out with philosophy,
+and availed himself of them to preach up his favourite opinions. He was
+not deterred by the example of Corneille, when the power of representing
+the passions was extinct, from publishing a host of weak and faulty
+productions.
+
+Since the time of Voltaire the constitution of the French stage has
+remained nearly the same. No genius has yet arisen sufficiently mighty to
+advance the art a step farther, and victoriously to refute, by success,
+their time-strengthened prejudices. Many attempts have been made, but they
+generally follow in the track of previous essays, without surpassing them.
+The endeavour to introduce more historical extent into dramatic
+composition is frustrated by the traditional limitations and restraints.
+The attacks, both theoretical and practical, which have been made in
+France itself on the prevailing system of rules, will be most suitably
+noticed and observed upon when we come to review the present condition of
+the French stage, after considering their Comedy and the other secondary
+kinds of dramatic works, since in these attempts have been made either to
+found new species, or arbitrarily to overturn the classification hitherto
+established.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+French Comedy--Molière--Criticism of his Works--Scarron, Beursault,
+Regnard; Comedies in the Time of the Regency; Marivaux and Destouches;
+Piron and Gresset--Later Attempts--The Heroic Opera: Quinault--Operettes
+and Vaudevilles--Diderot's attempted Change of the Theatre--The Weeping
+Drama--Beaumarchais--Melo-Dramas--Merits and Defects of the Histrionic
+Art.
+
+
+The same system of rules and proprieties, which, as I have endeavoured to
+show, must inevitably have a narrowing influence on Tragedy, has, in
+France, been applied to Comedy much more advantageously. For this mixed
+species of composition has, as already seen, an unpoetical side; and some
+degree of artificial constraint, if not altogether essential to Comedy, is
+certainly beneficial to it; for if it is treated with too negligent a
+latitude, it runs a risk, in respect of general structure, of falling into
+shapelessness, and in the representation of individual peculiarities, of
+sinking into every-day common-place. In the French, as well as in the
+Greek, it happens that the same syllabic measure is used in Tragedy and
+Comedy, which, on a first view, may appear singular. But if the
+Alexandrine did not appear to us peculiarly adapted to the free imitative
+expression of pathos, on the other hand, it must be owned that a comical
+effect is produced by the application of so symmetrical a measure to the
+familiar turns of dialogue. Moreover, the grammatical conscientiousness of
+French poetry, which is so greatly injurious in other species of the
+drama, is fully suited to Comedy, where the versification is not purchased
+at the expense of resemblance to the language of conversation, where it is
+not intended to elevate the dialogue by sublimity and dignity above real
+life, but merely to communicate to it greater ease and lightness. Hence
+the opinion of the French, who hold a comedy in verse in much higher
+estimation than a comedy in prose, seems to me to admit fairly of a
+justification.
+
+I endeavoured to show that the Unities of Place and Time are inconsistent
+with the essence of many tragical subjects, because a comprehensive action
+is frequently carried on in distant places at the same time, and because
+great determinations can only be slowly prepared. This is not the case in
+Comedy: here Intrigue ought to prevail, the active spirit of which quickly
+hurries towards its object; and hence the unity of time may here be almost
+naturally observed. The domestic and social circles in which Comedy moves
+are usually assembled in one place, and, consequently, the poet is not
+under the necessity of sending our imagination abroad: only it might
+perhaps have been as well not to interpret the unity of place so very
+strictly as not to allow the transition from one room to another, or to
+different houses of the same town. The choice of the street for the scene,
+a practice in which the Latin comic writers were frequently followed in
+the earlier times of Modern Comedy, is quite irreconcileable with our way
+of living, and the more deserving of censure, as in the case of the
+ancients it was an inconvenience which arose from the construction of
+their theatre.
+
+According to French critics, and the opinion which has become prevalent
+through them, Molière alone, of all their comic writers, is classical; and
+all that has been done since his time is merely estimated as it
+approximates more or less to this supposed pattern of an excellence which
+can never be surpassed, nor even equalled. Hence we shall first proceed to
+characterize this founder of the French Comedy, and then give a short
+sketch of its subsequent progress.
+
+Molière has produced works in so many departments, and of such different
+value, that we are hardly able to recognize the same author in all of
+them; and yet it is usual, when speaking of his peculiarities and merits,
+and the advance which he gave to his art, to throw the whole of his
+labours into one mass together.
+
+Born and educated in an inferior rank of life, he enjoyed the advantage of
+learning by direct experience the modes of living among the industrious
+portion of the community--the so-called _Bourgeois_ class--and of
+acquiring the talent of imitating low modes of expression. At an after
+period, when Louis XIV. took him into his service, he had opportunities,
+though from a subordinate station, of narrowly observing the court. He was
+an actor, and, it would appear, of peculiar power in overcharged and
+farcical comic parts; so little was he possessed with prejudices of
+personal dignity, that he renounced all the conditions by which it was
+accompanied, and was ever ready to deal out, or to receive the blows which
+were then so frequent on the stage. Nay, his mimetic zeal went so far,
+that, actually sick, he acted and drew his last breath in representing his
+_Imaginary Invalid_ (_Le Malade Imaginaire_), and became, in the truest
+sense, a martyr to the laughter of others. His business was to invent all
+manner of pleasant entertainments for the court, and to provoke "the
+greatest monarch of the world" to laughter, by way of relaxation from
+his state affairs or warlike undertakings. One would think, on the
+triumphant return from a glorious campaign, this might have been
+accomplished with more refinement than by the representation of the
+disgusting state of an imaginary invalid. But Louis XIV. was not so
+fastidious; he was very well content with the buffoon whom he protected,
+and even occasionally exhibited his own elevated person in the dances of
+his ballets. This external position of Molière was the cause why many of
+his labours had their origin as mere occasional pieces in the commands of
+the court. And, accordingly, they bear the stamp of that origin. Without
+travelling out of France, he had opportunities of becoming acquainted with
+the _lazzis_ of the Italian comic masks on the Italian theatre at Paris,
+where improvisatory dialogues were intermixed with scenes written in
+French: in the Spanish comedies he studied the ingenious complications
+of intrigue: Plautus and Terence taught him the salt of the Attic wit, the
+genuine tone of comic maxims, and the nicer shades of character. All this
+he employed, with more or less success, in the exigency of the moment, and
+also in order to deck out his drama in a sprightly and variegated dress,
+made use of all manner of means, however foreign to his art: such as the
+allegorical opening scenes of the opera prologues, musical intermezzos, in
+which he even introduced Italian and Spanish national music, with texts in
+their own language; ballets, at one time sumptuous and at another
+grotesque; and even sometimes mere vaulting and capering. He knew how to
+turn everything to profit: the censure passed upon his pieces, the defects
+of rival actors imitated to the life by himself and his company, and even
+the embarrassment in not being able to produce a theatrical entertainment
+as quickly as it was required by the king,--all became for him a matter
+for amusement. The pieces he borrowed from the Spanish, his pastorals and
+tragi-comedies, calculated merely to please the eye, and also three or
+four of his earlier comedies, which are even versified, and consequently
+carefully laboured, the critics give up without more ado. But even in the
+farces, with or without ballets, and intermezzos, in which the
+overcharged, and frequently the self-conscious and arbitrary comic of
+buffoonery prevails, Molière has exhibited an inexhaustible store of
+excellent humour, scattered capital jokes with a lavish hand, and drawn
+the most amusing caricatures with a bold and vigorous pencil. All this,
+however, had been often done before his time; and I cannot see how, in
+this department, he can stand alone, as a creative and altogether original
+artist: for example, is Plautus' braggadocio soldier less meritorious in
+grotesque characterization than the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_? We shall
+immediately examine briefly whether Molière has actually improved the
+pieces which he borrowed, in whole or in part, from Plautus and Terence.
+When we bear in mind that in these Latin authors we have only a faint and
+faded copy of the new Attic Comedy, we shall then be enabled to judge
+whether he would have been able to surpass its masters had they come down
+to us. Many of his shifts and inventions, I am induced to suspect, are
+borrowed; and I am convinced that we should soon discover the sources,
+were we to search into the antiquities of farcical literature [Footnote:
+The learned Tiranoschi (_Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, Lib. III. §
+25) attests this in very strong language: "Molière," says he, "has made so
+much use of the Italian comic writers, that were we to take from him all
+that he has taken from others, the volumes of his comedies would be very
+much reduced in bulk."]. Others are so obvious, and have so often been
+both used and abused, that they may in some measure be considered as the
+common stock of Comedy. Such is the scene in the _Malade Imaginaire_,
+where the wife's love is put to the test by the supposed death of the
+husband--an old joke, which our Hans Sachs has handled drolly enough.
+[Footnote: I know not whether it has been already remarked, that the idea
+on which the _Mariage Forcé_ is founded is borrowed from Rabelais; who
+makes Panurge enter upon the very same consultation as to his future
+marriage, and receive from Pantagruel just such a sceptical answer as
+Sganarelle does from the second philosopher.] We have an avowal of
+Molière's, which plainly shows he entertained no very great scruples of
+conscience on the sin of plagiarism. In the undignified relations amidst
+which he lived, and in which every thing was so much calculated for
+dazzling show, that his very name did not legally belong to him, we see
+less reason to wonder at all this.
+
+And even when in his farcical pieces Molière did not lean on foreign
+invention, he still appropriated the comic manners of other countries, and
+more particularly the buffoonery of Italy. He wished to introduce a sort
+of masked character without masks, who should constantly recur with the
+same name. They did not, however, succeed in becoming properly
+domiciliated in France; because the flexible national character of the
+French, which so nimbly imitates every varying mode of the day, is
+incompatible with that odd originality of exterior to which in other
+nations, where all are not modelled alike by the prevailing social tone,
+humorsome and singular individuals carelessly give themselves up. As the
+Sganarelles, Mascarilles, Scapins, and Crispins, must be allowed to retain
+their uniform, that every thing like consistency may not be lost, they
+have become completely obsolete on the stage. The French taste is,
+generally speaking, little inclined to the self-conscious and arbitrary
+comic, with its droll exaggerations, even because these kinds of the comic
+speak more to the fancy than the understanding. We do not mean to censure
+this, nor to quarrel about the respective merits of the different species.
+The low estimation in which the former are held may perhaps contribute the
+more to the success of the comic of observation, And, in fact, the French
+comic writers have here displayed a great deal of refinement and
+ingenuity: in this lies the great merit of Molière, and it is certainly
+very eminent. Only, we would ask, whether it is of such a description as
+to justify the French critics, on account of some half a dozen of so-
+called regular comedies of Molière, in holding in such infinite contempt
+as they do all the rich stores of refined and characteristic delineation
+which other nations possess, and in setting up Molière as the unrivalled
+Genius of Comedy.
+
+If the praise bestowed by the French on their tragic writers be, both from
+national vanity and from ignorance of the mental productions of other
+nations, exceedingly extravagant; so their praises of Molière are out of
+all proportion with their subject. Voltaire calls him the Father of
+Genuine Comedy; and this may be true enough with respect to France.
+According to La Harpe, Comedy and Molière are synonymous terms; he is the
+first of all moral philosophers, his works are the school of the world.
+Chamfort terms him the most amiable teacher of humanity since Socrates;
+and is of opinion that Julius Caesar who called Terence a half Menander,
+would have called Menander a half Molière.--I doubt this.
+
+The kind of moral which we may in general expect from Comedy I have
+already shown: it is an applied doctrine of ethics, the art of life. In
+this respect the higher comedies of Molière contain many admirable
+observations happily expressed, which are still in the present day
+applicable; others are tainted with the narrowness of his own private
+opinions, or of the opinions which were prevalent in his age. In this
+sense Menander was also a philosophical comic writer; and we may boldly
+place the moral maxims which remain of his by the side at least of those
+of Molière. But no comedy is constructed of mere apophthegms. The poet
+must be a moralist, but his personages cannot always be moralizing. And
+here Molière appears to me to have exceeded the bounds of propriety: he
+gives us in lengthened disquisitions the _pro_ and _con_ of the character
+exhibited by him; nay, he allows these to consist, in part, of principles
+which the persons themselves defend against the attacks of others. Now
+this leaves nothing to conjecture; and yet the highest refinement and
+delicacy of the comic of observation consists in this, that the characters
+disclose themselves unconsciously by traits which involuntarily escape
+from them. To this species of comic element, the way in which Oronte
+introduces his sonnet, Orgon listens to the accounts respecting Tartuffe
+and his wife, and Vadius and Trissotin fall by the ears, undoubtedly
+belongs; but the endless disquisitions of Alceste and Philinte as to the
+manner in which we ought to behave amid the falsity and corruption of the
+world do not in the slightest respect belong to it. They are serious, and
+yet they cannot satisfy us as exhausting the subject; and as dialogues
+which at the end leave the characters precisely at the same point as at
+the beginning, they are devoid in the necessary dramatic movement. Such
+argumentative disquisitions which lead to nothing are frequent in all the
+most admired pieces of Molière, and nowhere more than in the
+_Misanthrope_. Hence the action, which is also poorly invented, is found
+to drag heavily; for, with the exception of a few scenes of a more
+sprightly description, it consists altogether of discourses formally
+introduced and supported, while the stagnation is only partially concealed
+by the art employed on the details of versification and expression. In a
+word, these pieces are too didactic, too expressly instructive; whereas in
+Comedy the spectator should only be instructed incidentally, and, as it
+were, without its appearing to have been intended.
+
+Before we proceed to consider more particularly the productions which
+properly belong to the poet himself, and are acknowledged as master-
+pieces, we shall offer a few observations on his imitations of the Latin
+comic writers.
+
+The most celebrated is the _Avare_. The manuscripts of the _Aulularia_ of
+Plautus are unfortunately mutilated towards the end; but yet we find
+enough in them to excite our admiration. From this play Molière has merely
+borrowed a few scenes and jokes, for his plot is altogether different. In
+Plautus it is extremely simple: his Miser has found a treasure, which he
+anxiously watches and conceals. The suit of a rich bachelor for his
+daughter excites a suspicion that his wealth is known. The preparations
+for the wedding bring strange servants and cooks into his house; he
+considers his pot of gold no longer secure, and conceals it out of doors,
+which gives an opportunity to a slave of his daughter's chosen lover, sent
+to glean tidings of her and her marriage, to steal it. Without doubt the
+thief must afterwards have been obliged to make restitution, otherwise the
+piece would end in too melancholy a manner, with the lamentations and
+imprecations of the old man. The knot of the love intrigue is easily
+untied: the young man, who had anticipated the rights of the marriage
+state, is the nephew of the bridegroom, who willingly renounces in his
+favour. All the incidents serve merely to lead the miser, by a gradually
+heightening series of agitations and alarms, to display and expose his
+miserable passion. Molière, on the other hand, without attaining this
+object, puts a complicated machine in motion. Here we have a lover of the
+daughter, who, disguised as a servant, flatters the avarice of the old
+man; a prodigal son, who courts the bride of his father; intriguing
+servants; an usurer; and after all a discovery at the end. The love
+intrigue is spun out in a very clumsy and every-day sort of manner; and it
+has the effect of making us at different times lose sight altogether of
+Harpagon. Several scenes of a good comic description are merely
+subordinate, and do not, in a true artistic method, arise necessarily out
+of the thing itself. Molière has accumulated, as it were, all kinds of
+avarice in one person; and yet the miser who buries his treasures and he
+who lends on usury can hardly be the same. Harpagon starves his coach-
+horses: but why has he any? This would apply better to a man who, with a
+disproportionate income, strives to keep up a certain appearance of rank.
+Comic characterization would soon be at an end were there really only one
+universal character of the miser. The most important deviation of Molière
+from Plautus is, that while the one paints merely a person who watches
+over his treasure, the other makes his miser in love. The love of an old
+man is in itself an object of ridicule; the anxiety of a miser is no less
+so. We may easily see that when we unite with avarice, which separates a
+man from others and withdraws him within himself, the sympathetic and
+liberal passion of love, the union must give rise to the most harsh
+contrasts. Avarice, however, is usually a very good preservative against
+falling in love. Where then is the more refined characterization; and as
+such a wonderful noise is made about it, where shall we here find the more
+valuable moral instruction?--in Plautus or in Molière? A miser and a
+superannuated lover may both be present at the representation of Harpagon,
+and both return from the theatre satisfied with themselves, while the
+miser says to himself, "I am at least not in love;" and the lover, "Well,
+at all events I am not a miser." High Comedy represents those follies
+which, however striking they may be, are reconcilable with the ordinary
+course of things; whatever forms a singular exception, and is only
+conceivable amid an utter perversion of ideas, belongs to the arbitrary
+exaggeration of farce. Hence since (and it was undoubtedly the case long
+before) the time of Molière, the enamoured and avaricious old man has been
+the peculiar common-place of the Italian masked comedy and _opera buffa_,
+to which in truth it certainly belongs. Molière has treated the main
+incident, the theft of the chest of gold, with an uncommon want of skill.
+At the very beginning Harpagon, in a scene borrowed from Plautus, is
+fidgetty with suspicions lest a slave should have discovered his treasure.
+After this he forgets it; for four whole acts there is not a word about
+it, and the spectator drops, as it were, from the clouds when the servant
+all at once brings in the stolen coffer; for we have no information as to
+the way in which he fell upon the treasure which had been so carefully
+concealed. Now this is really to begin again, not truly to work out. But
+Plautus has here shown a great deal of ingenuity: the excessive anxiety of
+the old man for his pot of gold, and all that he does to save it, are the
+very cause of its loss. The subterraneous treasure is always invisibly
+present; it is, as it were, the evil spirit which drives its keeper to
+madness. In all this we have, an impressive moral of a very different
+kind. In Harpagon's soliloquy, after the theft, the modern poet has
+introduced the most incredible exaggerations. The calling on the pit to
+discover the theft, which, when well acted, produces so great an effect,
+is a trait of the old comedy of Aristophanes, and may serve to give us
+some idea of its powers of entertainment.
+
+The _Amphitryon_ is hardly anything more than a free imitation of the
+Latin original. The whole plan and order of the scenes is retained. The
+waiting-woman, or wife of Sosia, is the invention of Molière. The parody
+of the story of the master's marriage in that of the servant is ingenious,
+and gives rise to the most amusing investigations on the part of Sosia to
+find out whether, during his absence a domestic blessing may not have also
+been conferred on him as well as on Amphitryon. The revolting coarseness
+of the old mythological story is refined as much as it possibly could
+without injury to its spirit and boldness; and in general the execution is
+extremely elegant. The uncertainty of the personages respecting their own
+identity and duplication is founded on a sort of comic metaphysics:
+Sosia's reflections on his two _egos_, which have cudgelled each other,
+may in reality furnish materials for thinking to our philosophers of the
+present day.
+
+The most unsuccessful of Molière's imitations of the ancients is that of
+the _Phormio_ in the _Fourberies de Scapin_. The whole plot is borrowed
+from Terence, and, by the addition of a second invention, been adapted,
+well or ill, or rather tortured, to a consistency with modern manners. The
+poet has indeed gone very hurriedly to work with his plot, which he has
+most negligently patched together. The tricks of Scapin, for the sake of
+which he has spoiled the plot, occupy the foremost place: but we may well
+ask whether they deserve it? The Grecian Phormio, a man who, for the sake
+of feasting with young companions, lends himself to all sorts of hazardous
+tricks, is an interesting and modest knave; Scapin directly the reverse.
+He had no cause to boast so much of his tricks: they are so stupidly
+planned that in justice they ought not to have succeeded. Even supposing
+the two old men to be obtuse and brainless in the extreme, we can hardly
+conceive how they could so easily fall into such a clumsy and obvious
+snare as he lays for them. It is also disgustingly improbable that
+Zerbinette, who as a gipsy ought to have known how to conceal knavish
+tricks, should run out into the street and tell the first stranger that
+she meets, who happens to be none other than Geronte himself, the deceit
+practised upon him by Scapin. The farce of the sack into which Scapin
+makes Geronte to crawl, then bears him off, and cudgels him as if by the
+hand of strangers, is altogether a most inappropriate excrescence. Boileau
+was therefore well warranted in reproaching Molière with having
+shamelessly allied Terence to Taburin, (the merry-andrew of a mountebank).
+In reality, Molière has here for once borrowed, not, as he frequently did,
+from the Italian masks, but from the Pagliasses of the rope-dancers and
+vaulters.
+
+We must not forget that the _Rogueries of Scapin_ is one of the latest
+works of the poet. This and several others of the same period, as
+_Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, _La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas_, and even his
+last, the _Malade Imaginaire_, sufficiently prove that the maturity of his
+mind as an artist did not keep pace with the progress of years, otherwise
+he would have been disgusted with such loose productions. They serve,
+moreover, to show that frequently he brought forth pieces with great
+levity and haste, even when he had full leisure to think of posterity. If
+he occasionally subjected himself to stricter rules, we owe it more to his
+ambition, and his desire to be numbered among the classical writers of the
+golden age, than to any internal and growing aspiration after the highest
+excellence.
+
+The high claims already mentioned, which the French critics make in behalf
+of their favourite, are principally founded on the _École des Femmes_,
+_Tartuffe_, _Le Misanthrope_, and _Les Femmes Savantes_; pieces which are
+certainly finished with great care and diligence. Now, of these, we must
+expressly state in the outset, that we leave the separate beauties of
+language and versification altogether to the decision of native critics.
+These merits can only be subordinate requisites; and the undue stress
+which is laid in France on the manner in which a piece is written and
+versified has, in our opinion, been both in Tragedy and Comedy injurious
+to the development of other and more essential requisites of the dramatic
+art. We shall confine our exceptions to the general spirit and plan of
+these comedies.
+
+_L'École des Femmes_, the earliest of them, seems to me also the most
+excellent; it is the one in which there is the greatest display of
+vivacious humour, rapidity, and comic vigour. As to the invention: a man
+arrived at an age unsuitable for wedlock, purposely educating a young girl
+in ignorance and simplicity, that he may keep her faithful to himself,
+while everything turns out the very reverse of his wishes, was not a new
+one: a short while before Molière it had been employed by Scarron, who
+borrowed it from a Spanish novel. Still, it was a lucky thought in him to
+adapt this subject to the stage, and the execution of it is most masterly.
+Here we have a real and very interesting plot; no creeping investigations
+which do not carry forward the plot; all the matter is of one piece,
+without foreign levers and accidental intermixtures, with the exception of
+the catastrophe, which is brought about somewhat arbitrarily, by means of
+a scene of recognition. The _naïve_ confessions and innocent devices
+of Agnes are full of sweetness; they, together with the unguarded
+confidence reposed by the young lover in his unknown rival, and the
+stifled rage of the old man against both, form a series of comic scenes of
+the most amusing, and at the same time of the most refined description.
+
+As an example how little the violation of certain probabilities diminishes
+our pleasure, we may remark that Molière, with respect to the choice of
+scene, has here indulged in very great liberties. We will not inquire how
+Arnolph frequently happens to converse with Agnes in the street or in an
+open place, while he keeps her at the same time so carefully locked up.
+But if Horace does not know Arnolph to be the intended husband of his
+mistress, and betrays everything to him, this can only be allowable from
+Arnolph's passing with her by another name. Horace ought therefore to look
+for Arnolph in his own house in a remote quarter, and not before the door
+of his mistress, where yet he always finds him, without entertaining any
+suspicion from that circumstance. Why do the French critics set such a
+high value on similar probabilities in the dramatic art, when they must be
+compelled to admit that their best masters have not always observed them?
+
+_Tartuffe_ is an exact picture of hypocritical piety held up for
+universal warning; it is an excellent serious satire, but with the
+exception of separate scenes it is not a comedy. It is generally admitted
+that the catastrophe is bad, as it is brought about by a foreign means. It
+is bad, too, because the danger which Orgon runs of being driven from his
+house and thrown into prison is by no means such an embarrassment as his
+blind confidence actually merited. Here the serious purpose of the work is
+openly disclosed, and the eulogium of the king is a dedication by which
+the poet, even in the piece itself, humbly recommends himself to the
+protection of his majesty against the persecutions which he dreaded.
+
+In the _Femmes Savantes_ raillery has also the upper hand of mirth;
+the action is insignificant and not in the least degree attractive; and
+the catastrophe, after the manner of Molière, is arbitrarily brought about
+by foreign means. Yet these technical imperfections might well be excused
+for the sake of its satirical merit. But in this respect the composition,
+from the limited nature of its views, is anything but equal throughout. We
+are not to expect from the comic poet that he should always give us, along
+with the exhibition of a folly, a representation also of the opposite way
+of wisdom; in this way he would announce his object of instructing us with
+too much of method. But two opposite follies admit of being exhibited
+together in an equally ludicrous light. Molière has here ridiculed the
+affectation of a false taste, and the vain-gloriousness of empty
+knowledge. Proud in their own ignorance and contempt for all higher
+enlightenment, these characters certainly deserve the ridicule bestowed on
+them; but that which in this comedy is portrayed as the correct way of
+wisdom falls nearly into the same error. All the reasonable persons of the
+piece, the father and his brother, the lover and the daughter, nay, even
+the ungrammatical maid, are all proud of what they are not, have not, and
+know not, and even what they do not seek to be, to have, or to know.
+Chyrsale's limited view of the destination of the female sex, Clitander's
+opinion on the inutility of learning, and the sentiments elsewhere
+advanced respecting the measure of cultivation and knowledge which is
+suitable to a man of rank, were all intended to convey Molière's own
+opinions himself on these subjects. We may here trace in him a certain
+vein of valet-de-chambre morality, which also makes its appearance on many
+other points. We can easily conceive how his education and situation
+should lead him to entertain such ideas; but they are hardly such as
+entitle him to read lectures on human society. That, at the end, Trissotin
+should be ignominiously made to commit an act of low selfishness is
+odious; for we know that a learned man then alive was satirized under this
+character, and that his name was very slightly disguised. The vanity of an
+author is, on the whole, a preservative against this weakness: there are
+many more lucrative careers than that of authorship for selfishness
+without a feeling of honour.
+
+The _Misanthrope_, which, as is well known, was at first coldly received,
+is still less amusing than the two preceding pieces: the action
+is less rapid, or rather there is none at all; and there is a great want
+of coherence between the meagre incidents which give only an apparent life
+to the dramatic movement,--the quarrel with Oronte respecting the sonnet,
+and its adjustment; the decision of the law-suit which is ever being
+brought forward; the unmasking of Celimene through the vanity of the two
+Marquisses, and the jealousy of Arsinöe. Besides all this, the general
+plot is not even probable. It is framed with a view to exhibit the
+thorough delineation of a character; but a character discloses itself much
+more in its relations with others than immediately. How comes Alceste to
+have chosen Philinte for a friend, a man whose principles were directly
+the reverse of his own? How comes he also to be enamoured of a coquette,
+who has nothing amiable in her character, and who entertains us merely by
+her scandal? We might well say of this Celimene, without exaggeration,
+that there is not one good point in her whole composition. In a character
+like that of Alceste, love is not a fleeting sensual impulse, but a
+serious feeling arising from a want of a sincere mental union. His dislike
+of flattering falsehood and malicious scandal, which always characterise
+the conversation of Celimene, breaks forth so incessantly, that, we feel,
+the first moment he heard her open her lips ought to have driven him for
+ever from her society. Finally, the subject is ambiguous, and that is its
+greatest fault. The limits within which Alceste is in the right and beyond
+which he is in the wrong, it would be no easy matter to fix, and I am
+afraid the poet himself did not here see very clearly what he would be at.
+Philinte, however, with his illusory justification of the way of the
+world, and his phlegmatic resignation, he paints throughout as the
+intelligent and amiable man. As against the elegant Celimene, Alceste is
+most decidedly in the right, and only in the wrong in the inconceivable
+weakness of his conduct towards her. He is in the right in his complaints
+of the corruption of the social constitution; the facts, at least, which
+he adduces, are disputed by nobody. He is in the wrong, however, in
+delivering his sentiments with so much violence, and at an unseasonable
+time; but as he cannot prevail on himself to assume the dissimulation
+which is necessary to be well received in the world, he is perfectly in
+the right in preferring solitude to society. Rousseau has already censured
+the ambiguity of the piece, by which what is deserving of approbation
+seems to be turned into ridicule. His opinion was not altogether
+unprejudiced; for his own character, and his behaviour towards the world,
+had a striking similarity to that of Alceste; and, moreover, he mistakes
+the essence of dramatic composition, and founds his condemnation on
+examples of an accidentally false direction.
+
+So far with respect to the famed moral philosophy of Molière in his
+pretended master-piece. From what has been stated, I consider myself
+warranted to assert, in opposition to the prevailing opinion, that Molière
+succeeded best with the coarse and homely comic, and that both his talents
+and his inclination, if unforced, would have determined him altogether to
+the composition of farces such as he continued to write even to the very
+end of his life. He seems always to have whipped himself up as it were to
+his more serious pieces in verse: we discover something of constraint in
+both plot and execution. His friend Boileau probably communicated to him
+his view of a correct mirth, of a grave and decorous laughter; and so
+Molière determined, after the carnival of his farces, to accommodate
+himself occasionally to the spare diet of the regular taste, and to unite
+what in their own nature are irreconcileable, namely, dignity and
+drollery. However, we find even in his prosaic pieces traces of that
+didactical and satirical vein which is peculiarly alien to Comedy; for
+example, in his constant attacks on physicians and lawyers, in his
+disquisitions upon the true correct tone of society, &c., the intention of
+which is actually to censure, to refute, to instruct, and not merely to
+afford entertainment.
+
+The classical reputation of Molière still preserves his pieces on the
+stage, [Footnote: If they were not already in possession of the stage, the
+indecency of a number of the scenes would cause many of them to be
+rejected, as the public of the present day, though probably not less
+corrupt than that of the author's times, is passionately fond of throwing
+over every thing a cloak of morality. When a piece of Molière is acted,
+the head theatre of Paris is generally a downright solitude, if no
+particular circumstance brings the spectators together. Since these
+Lectures were held, _George Dandin_ has been hissed at Paris, to the
+great grief of the watchmen of the critical Sion. This was probably not on
+account of mere indecency. Whatever may be said in defence of the morality
+of the piece, the privileges of the higher classes are offensively
+favoured in it; and it concludes with the shameless triumph of arrogance
+and depravity over plain honesty.] although in tone and manners they are
+altogether obsolete. This is a danger to which the comic poet is
+inevitably exposed from that side of his composition which does not rest
+on a poetical foundation, but is determined by the prose of external
+reality. The originals of the individual portraits of Molière have long
+since disappeared. The comic poet who lays claim to immortality must, in
+the delineation of character and the disposition of his plan, rest
+principally on such motives as are always intelligible, being taken not
+from the manners of any particular age, but drawn from human nature
+itself.
+
+In addition to Molière we have to notice but a few older or contemporary
+comedians. Of Corneille, who from the imitation of Spanish comedies
+acquired a name before he was known as a tragic author, only one piece
+keeps possession of the stage, _Le Menteur_, from Lope de Vega; and
+even this evinces, in our opinion, no comic talent. The poet, accustomed
+to stilts, moves awkwardly in a species of the drama the first requisites
+of which are ease and sweetness. Scarron, who only understood burlesque,
+has displayed this talent or knack in several comedies taken from the
+Spanish, of which two, _Jodelle_, or the _Servant turned Master_, and _Don
+Japhet of Armenia_, have till within these few years been occasionally
+acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. The plot
+of the _Jodelle_, which belongs to Don Francisco de Roxas, is excellent;
+the style and the additions of Scarron have not been able altogether to
+disfigure it. All that is coarse, nauseous, and repugnant to taste,
+belongs to the French writer of the age of Louis XIV., who in his day was
+not without celebrity; for the Spanish work is throughout characterized by
+a spirit of tenderness. The burlesque tone, which in many languages may be
+tolerated, has been properly rejected by the French, for whenever it is
+not guided by judgment and taste, it sinks to disgusting vulgarity. _Don
+Japhet_ represents in a still ruder manner the mystification of a coarse
+fool. The original belongs to the kind which the Spaniards call _Comedias
+de Figuron_: it also has undoubtedly been spoiled by Scarron, The worst of
+the matter is, that his exaggerations are trifling without being amusing.
+
+Racine hit upon a very different plan of imitation from that which was
+then followed, in his _Plaideurs_, of which the idea is derived from
+Aristophanes. The piece in this respect stands alone. The action is merely
+a light piece of legerdemain; but the follies which it portrays belong to
+a circle, and, with the imitations of the officers of court and advocates,
+form a complete whole. Many lines are at once witty sallies and
+characteristic traits; and some of the jokes have that apparently aimless
+drollery, which genuine comic inspiration can alone inspire. Racine would
+have become a dangerous rival of Molière, if he had continued to exercise
+the talent which he has here displayed.
+
+Some of the comedies of a younger contemporary and rival of Molière,
+Boursault, have still kept possession of the stage; they are all of the
+secondary description, which the French call _pièces à tiroir_, and
+of which Molière gave the first example in _Le Fâcheux_. This kind,
+from the accidental succession of the scenes, which are strung together on
+some one common occasion, bear in so far a resemblance to the _Mimes_
+of the ancients; they are intended also to resemble them in the accurate
+imitation of individual peculiarities. These subjects are particularly
+favourable for the display of the Mimic art in the more limited
+signification of the word, as the same player always appears in a
+different disguise, and assumes a new character. It is advisable not to
+extend such pieces beyond a single act, as the want of dramatic movement,
+and the uniformity of the occasion through all the different changes, are
+very apt to excite impatience. But Boursault's pieces, which otherwise are
+not without merit, are tediously spun out to five acts. The idea of
+exhibiting Aesop, a slave-born sage, and deformed in person, in possession
+of court favour, was original and happy. But in the two pieces, _Aesop
+in the City_, and _Aesop at Court_, the fables which are tacked to
+every important scene are drowned in diffuse morals; besides, they are
+quite distinct from the dialogue, instead of being interwoven with it,
+like the fable of Menenius Agrippa in Shakespeare; and modern manners do
+not suit with this childish mode of instruction. In the _Mercure Galant_
+all sorts of out-of-the-way beings bring their petitions to the writer of
+a weekly paper. This thought and many of the most entertaining details
+have, if I am not mistaken, been borrowed by a popular German author
+without acknowledgment.
+
+A considerable time elapsed after the death of Molière before the
+appearance of Regnard, to whom in France the second place in Comedy is
+usually assigned. He was a sort of adventurer who, after roaming a long
+time up and down the world, fell to the trade of a dramatic writer, and
+divided himself betwixt the composition of regular comedies in verse, and
+the Italian theatre, which still continued to flourish under Gherardi, and
+for which he sketched the French scenes. The _Joueur_, his first
+play, is justly preferred to the others. The author was acquainted with
+this passion, and a gamester's life, from his own experience: it is a
+picture after nature, with features strongly drawn, but without
+exaggeration; and the plot and accessory circumstances, with the exception
+of a pair of caricatures which might well have been dispensed with, are
+all appropriate and in character. The _Distrait_ possesses not only
+the faults of the methodical pieces of character which I have already
+censured, but it is not even a peculiar character at all; the mistakes
+occasioned by the unfortunate habit of being absent in thought are all
+alike, and admit of no heightening: they might therefore have filled up an
+after-piece, but, certainly did not merit the distinction of being spun
+out into a comedy of five acts. Regnard has done little more than
+dramatize a series of anecdotes which La Bruyère had assembled together
+under the name of a certain character. The execution of the _Légataire
+Universel_ shows more comic talent; but from the error of the general
+plan, arising out of a want of moral feeling, this talent is completely
+thrown away. La Harpe declares this piece the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of comic
+pleasantry. It is, in fact, such a subject for pleasantry as would
+move a stone to pity,--as enlivening as the grin of a death's head. What a
+subject for mirth: a feeble old man in the very arms of death, teased by
+young profligates for his property, has a false will imposed on him while
+he is lying insensible, as is believed, on his death-bed! If it be true
+that these scenes have always given rise to much laughter on the French
+stage, it only proves the spectators to possess the same unfeeling levity
+which disgusts us in the author. We have elsewhere shown that, with an
+apparent indifference, a moral reserve is essential to the comic poet,
+since the impressions which he would wish to produce are inevitably
+destroyed whenever disgust or compassion is excited.
+
+Legrand the actor, a contemporary of Regnard, was one of the first comic
+poets who gained celebrity for after-pieces in verse, a species of
+composition in which the French have since produced a number of elegant
+trifles. He has not, however, risen to any thing like the same height of
+posthumous fame as Regnard: La Harpe dismisses him with very little
+ceremony. Yet we should be disposed to rank him very high as an artist,
+even if he had composed nothing else than the _King of Lubberland_
+(_Le Roi de Cocagne_), a sprightly farce in the marvellous style,
+overflowing with what is very rare in France, a native fanciful wit,
+animated by the most lively mirth, which although carried the length of
+the most frolicsome giddiness, sports on and round all subjects with the
+utmost harmlessness. We might call it an elegant and ingenious piece of
+madness; an example of the manner in which the play of Aristophanes, or
+rather that of Eupolis, [Footnote: See page 167.] who had also dramatised
+the tale _of Lubberland_, might be brought on our stage without
+exciting disgust, and without personal satire. And yet Legrand was,
+certainly, unacquainted with the Old Comedy, and his own genius (we
+scruple not to use the expression) led him to the invention. The execution
+is as careful as in a regular comedy; but to this title in the French
+opinion it can have no pretensions, because of the wonderful world which
+it represents, of several of the decorations, and of the music here and
+there introduced. The French critics show themselves in general
+indifferent, or rather unjust towards every suggestion of genuine fancy.
+Before they can feel respect for a work it must present a certain
+appearance of labour and effort. Among a giddy and light-minded people,
+they have appropriated to themselves the post of honour of pedantry: they
+confound the levity of jocularity, which is quite compatible with
+profundity in art, with the levity of shallowness, which (as a natural
+gift or natural defect,) is so frequent among their countrymen.
+
+The eighteenth century produced in France a number of comic writers of the
+second and third rank, but no distinguished genius capable of advancing
+the art a step farther; in consequence of which the belief in Molière's
+unapproachable excellence has become still more firmly riveted. As we have
+not space at present to go through all these separate productions, we
+shall premise a few observations on the general spirit of French Comedy
+before entering on the consideration of the writers whom we have not yet
+mentioned.
+
+The want of easy progress, and over-lengthy disquisitions in stationary
+dialogue, have characterized more or less every writer since the time of
+Molière, on whose regular pieces also the conventional rules applicable to
+Tragedy have had an indisputable influence. French Comedy in verse has its
+tirades as well as Tragedy. Besides, there was another circumstance, the
+introduction of a certain degree of stiff etiquette. The Comedy of other
+nations has generally, from motives which we can be at no loss in
+understanding, descended into the circle of the lower classes: but the
+French Comedy is usually confined to the upper ranks of society. Here,
+then, we trace the influence of the court as the central point of the
+whole national vanity. Those spectators who in reality had no access to
+the great world, were flattered by being surrounded on the stage with
+marquises and chevaliers, and while the poet satirized the fashionable
+follies, they endeavoured to snatch something of that privileged tone
+which was so much the object of envy. Society rubs off the salient angles
+of character; its only amusement consists in the pursuit of the
+ridiculous, and on the other hand it trains us in the faculty of being
+upon our guard against the observations of others. The natural, cordial,
+and jovial comic of the inferior classes is thrown aside, and instead of
+it another description (the fruit of polished society, and bearing in its
+insipidity the stamp of so purposeless a way of living) is adopted. The
+object of these comedies is no longer life but society, that perpetual
+negotiation between conflicting vanities which never ends in a sincere
+treaty of peace: the embroidered dress, the hat under the arm, and the
+sword by the side, essentially belong to them, and the whole of their
+characterization is limited to painting the folly of the men and the
+coquetry of the women. The insipid uniformity of these pictures was
+unfortunately too often seasoned by the corruption of moral principles
+which, more especially after the age of Louis XIV., it became, under the
+Regency of Louis XV., the fashion openly to avow. In this period the
+favourite of the women, the _homme à bonnes fortunes_, who in the
+tone of satiety boasts of the multitude of his conquests too easily won,
+was not a character invented by the comic writers, but a portrait
+accurately taken from real life, as is proved by the numerous memoirs of
+the last century, even down to those of a Besenval. We are disgusted with
+the unveiled sensuality of the love intrigues of the Greek Comedy: but the
+Greeks would have found much more disgusting the love intrigues of the
+French Comedy, entered into with married women, merely from giddy vanity.
+Limits have been fixed by nature herself to sensual excess; but when
+vanity assumes the part of a sensuality already deadened and enervated, it
+gives birth to the most hollow corruption. And even if, in the constant
+ridicule of marriage by the petit-maîtres, and in their moral scepticism
+especially with regard to female virtue, it was the intention of the poets
+to ridicule a prevailing depravity, the picture is not on that account the
+less immoral. The great or fashionable world, which in point of numbers is
+the little world, and yet considers itself alone of importance, can hardly
+be improved by it; and for the other classes the example is but too
+seductive, from the brilliancy with which the characters are surrounded.
+But in so far as Comedy is concerned, this deadening corruption is by no
+means invariably entertaining; and in many pieces, in which fools of
+quality give the tone, for example in the _Chevalier à la mode de
+Dancourt_, the picture of complete moral dissoluteness which, although
+true, is nevertheless both unpoetical and unnatural, is productive not
+merely of _ennui_, but of the most decided repugnance and disgust.
+
+From the number of writers to whom this charge chiefly applies, we must in
+justice except Destouches and Marivaux, fruitful or at least diligent
+comic writers, the former in verse and the latter in prose. They acquired
+considerable distinction among their contemporaries in the first half of
+the eighteenth century, but on the stage few of their works survived
+either of them. Destouches was a moderate, tame, and well-meaning author,
+who applied himself with all his powers to the composition of regular
+comedies, which were always drawn out to the length of five acts, and in
+which there is nothing laughable, with the exception of the vivacity
+displayed in virtue of their situation, by Lisette and her lover Frontin,
+or Pasquin. He was in no danger, from any excess of frolicsome petulance,
+of falling from the dignified tone of the supposed high comic into the
+familiarity of farce, which the French hold in such contempt. With
+moderate talents, without humour, and almost without vivacity, neither
+ingenious in invention, nor possessed of a deep insight into the human
+mind and human affairs, he has in some of his productions, _Le Glorieux_,
+_Le Philosophe Marié_, and especially _L'Indécis_, shewn with great credit
+to himself what true and unpretending diligence is by itself capable of
+effecting. Other pieces, for instance, _L'Ingrat_ and _L'Homme Singulier_,
+are complete failures, and enable us to see that a poet who considers
+_Tartuffe_ and _The Misanthrope_ as the highest objects of imitation, (and
+with Destouches this was evidently the case,) has only another step to
+take to lose sight of the comic art altogether. These two works of Molière
+have not been friendly beacons to his followers, but false lights to their
+ruin. Whenever a comic poet in his preface worships _The Misanthrope_ as a
+model, I can immediately foretell the result of his labours. He will
+sacrifice every thing like the gladsome inspiration of fun and all truly
+poetical amusement, for the dull and formal seriousness of prosaic life,
+and for prosaical applications stamped with the respectable name of
+morals.
+
+That Marivaux is a mannerist is so universally acknowledged in France,
+that the peculiar term of _marivaudage_ has been invented for his
+mannerism. But this is at least his own, and at first sight by no means
+unpleasing. Delicacy of mind cannot be denied to Marivaux, only it is
+coupled with a certain littleness. We have stated it to be the most
+refined species of the comic of observation, when a peculiarity or
+property shows itself most conspicuously at the very time its possessor
+has the least suspicion of it, or is most studious to conceal it. Marivaux
+has applied this to the passions; and _naïveté_ in the involuntary
+disclosure of emotions certainly belongs to the domain of Comedy. But then
+this _naïveté_ is prepared by him with too much art, appears too
+solicitous for our applause, and, we may almost say, seems too well
+pleased with it himself. It is like children in the game of hide and seek,
+they cannot stay quiet in their corner, but keep popping out their heads,
+if they are not immediately discovered; nay, sometimes, which is still
+worse, it is like the squinting over a fan held up from affected modesty.
+In Marivaux we always see his aim from the very beginning, and all our
+attention is directed to discovering the way by which he is to lead us to
+it. This would be a skilful mode of composing, if it did not degenerate
+into the insignificant and the superficial. Petty inclinations are
+strengthened by petty motives, exposed to petty probations, and brought by
+petty steps nearer and nearer to a petty conclusion. The whole generally
+turns on a declaration of love, and all sorts of clandestine means are
+tried to elicit it, or every kind of slight allusion is hazarded to hasten
+it. Marivaux has neither painted characters, nor contrived intrigues. The
+whole plot generally turns on an unpronounced word, which is always at the
+tongue's end, and which is frequently kept back in a pretty arbitrary
+manner. He is so uniform in the motives that he employs, that when we have
+read one of his pieces with a tolerable degree of attention we know all of
+them. However, we must still rank him above the herd of stiff imitators;
+something is to be learned even from him, for he possessed a peculiar
+though a very limited view of the essence of Comedy.
+
+Two other single works are named as master-pieces in the regular Comedy in
+verse, belonging to two writers who here perhaps have taken more pains,
+but in other departments have given a freer scope to their natural talent:
+the _Métromanie_ of Piron and the _Méchant_ of Gresset. The _Métromanie_
+is not written without humorous inspiration. In the young man possessed
+with a passion for poetry, Piron intended in some measure to paint
+himself; but as we always go tenderly to work in the ridicule of
+ourselves, together with the amiable weakness in question, he endows his
+hero with talents, magnanimity, and a good heart. But this tender reserve
+is not peculiarly favourable for comic strength. As to the _Méchant_, it
+is one of those gloomy comedies which might be rapturously hailed by a
+Timon as serving to confirm his aversion to human society, but which, on
+social and cheerful minds, can only give rise to the most painful
+impression. Why paint a dark and odious disposition which, devoid of all
+human sympathy, feeds its vanity in a cold contempt and derision of
+everything, and solely occupies itself in aimless detraction? Why exhibit
+such a moral deformity, which could hardly be tolerated even in Tragedy,
+for the mere purpose of producing domestic discontent and petty
+embarrassments?
+
+Yet, according to the decision of the French critics, these three
+comedies, the _Glorieux_, the _Métromanie_, and the _Méchant_, are all
+that the eighteenth century can oppose to Molière. We should be disposed
+to rank the _Le Vieux Bachelier_ of Collin d'Harleville much higher; but
+for judging this true picture of manners there is no scale afforded in the
+works of Molière, and it can only be compared with those of Terence. We
+have here the utmost refinement and accuracy of characterization, most
+felicitously combined with an able plot, which keeps on the stretch and
+rivets our attention, while a certain mildness of sentiment is diffused
+over the whole.
+
+I purpose now to make a few observations on the secondary species of the
+_Opera_, _Operettes_, and _Vaudevilles_, and shall conclude with a view of
+the present condition of the French stage with reference to the histrionic
+art.
+
+In the serious, heroic, or rather the ideal _opera_, if we may so
+express ourselves, we can only mention one poet of the age of Louis XIV.,
+Quinault--who is now little read, but yet deserving of high praise. As a
+tragic poet, in the early period of his career, he was satirized by
+Boileau; but he was afterwards highly successful in another species, the
+musical drama. Mazarin had introduced into France a taste for the Italian
+opera; Louis was also desirous of rivalling or surpassing foreign
+countries in the external magnificence of the drama, in decoration,
+machinery, music, and dancing; these were all to be employed in the
+celebration of the court festivals; and accordingly Molière was employed
+to write gay, and Quinault serious operas, to the music of Lulli. I am not
+sufficiently versed in the earlier literature of the Italian opera to be
+able to speak with accuracy, but I suspect that here also Quinault
+laboured more after Spanish than Italian models; and more particularly,
+that he derived from the Fiestas of Calderon the general form of his
+operas, and their frequently allegorical preludes which are often to be
+found in them. It is true, poetical ornament is much more sparingly dealt
+out, as the whole is necessarily shortened for the sake of the music, and
+the very nature of the French language and versification is incompatible
+with the splendid magnificence, the luxurious fulness, displayed by
+Calderon. But the operas of Quinault are, in their easy progress, truly
+fanciful; and the serious opera cannot, in my opinion, be stripped of the
+charm of the marvellous without becoming at length wearisome. So far
+Quinault appears to me to have taken a much better road towards the true
+vocation of particular departments of art, than that on which Metastasio
+travelled long after him. The latter has admirably provided for the wants
+of a melodious music expressive solely of feeling; but where does he
+furnish the least food for the imagination? On the other hand, I am not so
+sure that Quinault is justly entitled to praise for sacrificing, in
+compliance with the taste of his countrymen, everything like comic
+intermixture. He has been censured for an occasional play on language in
+the expression of feeling. But is it just to exact the severity of the
+tragical cothurnus in light works of this description? Why should not
+Poetry also be allowed her arabesque? No person can be more an enemy to
+mannerism than I am; but to censure it aright, we ought first to
+understand the degree of nature and truth which we have a right to expect
+from each species, and what is alone compatible with it. The verses of
+Quinault have no other _naïveté_ and simplicity than those of the
+madrigal; and though they occasionally fall into the luscious, at other
+times they express a languishing tenderness with gracefulness and a soft
+melody. The opera ought to resemble the enchanted gardens of Armida, of
+which Quinault says,
+
+  _Dans ces lieux enchantés la volupté préside._
+
+We ought only to be awaked out of the voluptuous dreams of feeling to
+enjoy the magical illusions of fancy. When once we have come to imagine,
+instead of real men, beings whose only language is song, it is but a very
+short step to represent to ourselves creatures whose only occupation is
+love; that feeling which hovers between the sensible and intellectual
+world; and the first invention becomes natural again by means of the
+second.
+
+Quinault has had no successors. How far below his, both in point of
+invention and of execution, are the French operas of the present day! The
+heroic and tragic have been required in a department where they cannot
+produce their proper effect. Instead of handling with fanciful freedom
+mythological materials or subjects taken from chivalrous or pastoral
+romances, they have after the manner of Tragedy chained themselves down to
+history, and by means of their heavy seriousness, and the pedantry of
+their rules, they have so managed matters, that Dulness with leaden
+sceptre presides over the opera. The deficiencies of their music, the
+unfitness of the French language for composition in a style anything
+higher than that of the most simple national melodies, the unaccented and
+arbitrary nature of their recitative, the bawling bravura of the singers,
+must be left to the animadversions of musical critics.
+
+With pretensions far lower, the _Comic Opera_ or _Operette_ approaches
+much more nearly to perfection. With respect to the composition, it may
+and indeed ought to assume only a national tone. The transition from song
+to speech, without any musical accompaniment or heightening, which was
+censured by Rousseau as an unsuitable mixture of two distinct modes of
+composition, may be displeasing to the ear; but it has unquestionably
+produced an advantageous effect on the structure of the pieces. In the
+recitatives, which generally are not half understood, and seldom listened
+to with any degree of attention, a plot which is even moderately
+complicated cannot be developed with due clearness. Hence in the Italian
+_opera buffa_, the action is altogether neglected; and along with its
+grotesque caricatures, it is distinguished for uniform situations, which
+admit not of dramatic progress. But the comic opera of the French,
+although from the space occupied by the music it is unsusceptible of any
+very perfect dramatic development, is still calculated to produce a
+considerable stage effect, and speaks pleasingly to the imagination. The
+poets have not here been prevented by the constraint of rules from
+following out their theatrical views. Hence these fleeting productions are
+in no wise deficient in the rapidity, life, and amusement, which are
+frequently wanting in the more correct dramatic works of the French. The
+distinguished favour which the _operettes_ of a Favart, a Sedaine and
+later poets, of whom some are still alive, always meet with in Germany,
+(where foreign literature has long lost its commanding influence, and
+where the national taste has pronounced so strongly against French
+Tragedy,) is by no means to be placed to the account of the music; it is
+in reality owing to their poetical merit. To cite only one example out of
+many, I do not hesitate to declare the whole series of scenes in _Raoul
+Sire de Créquy_, where the children of the drunken turnkey set the
+prisoner at liberty, a master-piece of theatrical painting. How much were
+it to be wished that the Tragedy of the French, and even their Comedy in
+court-dress, had but a little of this truth of circumstance, this vivid
+presence, and power of arresting the attention. In several _operettes_,
+for instance in a _Richard Coeur de Lion_ and a _Nina_, the traces of the
+romantic spirit are not to be mistaken.
+
+The _vaudeville_ is but a variation of the comic opera. The essential
+difference is that it dispenses with composition, by which the comic opera
+forms a musical whole, as the songs are set to well-known popular airs.
+The incessant skipping from the song to the dialogue, often after a few
+scrapes of the violin and a few words, with the accumulation of airs
+mostly common, but frequently also in a style altogether different from
+the poetry, drives an ear accustomed to Italian music to despair. If we
+can once make up our minds to bear with this, we shall not unfrequently be
+richly recompensed in comic drollery; even in the choice of a melody, and
+the allusion to the common and well-known words, there is often a display
+of wit. In earlier times writers of higher pretensions, a Le Sage and a
+Piron have laboured in the department of the _vaudeville_, and even for
+_marionettes_. The wits who now dedicate themselves to this species are
+little known out of Paris, but this gives them no great concern. It not
+unfrequently happens that several of them join together, that the fruit of
+their common talents may be sooner brought to light. The parody of new
+theatrical pieces, the anecdotes of the day, which form the common talk
+among all the idlers of the capital, must furnish them with subjects in
+working up which little delay can be brooked. These _vaudevilles_ are like
+the gnats that buzz about in a summer evening; they often sting, but they
+fly merrily about so long as the sun of opportunity shines upon them. A
+piece like the _Despair of Jocrisse_, which, after a lapse of years, may
+be still occasionally brought out, passes justly among the ephemeral
+productions for a classical work that has gained the crown of immortality.
+We must, however, see it acted by Brunet, whose face is almost a mask, and
+who is nearly as inexhaustible in the part of the simpleton as Puncinello
+is in his.
+
+From a consideration of the sportive secondary species, formed out of a
+mixture of the comic with the affecting, in which authors and spectators
+give themselves up without reserve to their natural inclinations, it
+appears to me evident, that as comic wit with the Italians consists in
+grotesque mimicry or buffoonery, and with the English in humour, with the
+French it consists in good-natured gaiety. Among the lower orders
+especially this property is everywhere visible, where it has not been
+supplanted by the artifice of corruption.
+
+With respect to the present condition of Dramatic Art in France, every
+thing depends on the endeavours to introduce the theatrical liberties of
+other countries, or mixed species of the drama. The hope of producing any
+thing truly new in the two species which are alone admitted to be regular,
+of excelling the works already produced, of filling up the old frames with
+richer pictures, becomes more and more distant every day. A new work
+seldom obtains a decided approbation; and, even at best, this approbation
+only lasts till it has been found out that the work is only a new
+preparation of their old classical productions.
+
+We have passed over several things relating to these endeavours, that we
+may deliver together all the observations which we have to make on the
+subject. The attacks hitherto made against the French forms of art, first
+by De la Motte, and afterwards by Diderot and Mercier, have been like
+voices in the wilderness. It could not be otherwise, as the principles on
+which these writers proceeded were in reality destructive, not merely of
+the conventional forms, but of all poetical forms whatever, and as none of
+them showed themselves capable of suitably supporting their doctrine by
+their own example, even when they were in the right they contrived,
+nevertheless, by a false application, to be in the wrong.
+
+The most remarkable among them is Diderot, whom Lessing calls the best
+critic of the French. In opposition to this opinion I should be disposed
+to affirm that he was no critic at all. I will not lay any stress on his
+mistaking the object of poetry and the fine arts, which he considered to
+be merely moral: a man may be a critic without being a theorist. But a man
+cannot be a critic without being thoroughly acquainted with the
+conditions, means, and styles of an art; and here the nature of Diderot's
+studies and acquirements renders his critical capabilities extremely
+questionable. This ingenious sophist deals out his blows with such
+boisterous haste in the province of criticism, that the half of them are
+thrown away. The true and the false, the old and the new, the essential
+and the unimportant, are so mixed up together, that the highest praise we
+can bestow upon him is, that he is worthy of the labour of disentangling
+them. What he wished to accomplish had either been accomplished, though
+not in France, or did not deserve to be accomplished, or was altogether
+impracticable. His attack on the formality and holiday primness of the
+dramatic probabilities, of the excessive symmetry of the French
+versification, declamation, and mode of acting, was just; but, at the same
+time, he objected to all theatrical elevation, and refused to allow to the
+characters anything like a perfect mode of communicating what was passing
+within them. He nowhere assigns the reason why he held versification as
+not suitable, or prose as more suitable, to familiar tragedy; this has
+been extended by others, and among the rest, unfortunately, by Lessing, to
+every species of the drama; but the ground for it evidently rests on
+nothing but the mistaken principles of illusion and nature, to which we
+have more than once adverted. [Footnote: I have stated and refuted them in
+a treatise _On the Relation of the Fine Arts to Nature_ in the fifth
+number of the periodical work _Prometheus_, published by Leo von
+Seckendorf.] And if he gives an undue preference to the sentimental drama
+and the familiar tragedy, species valuable in themselves, and susceptible
+of a truly poetic treatment; was not this on account of the application?
+The main thing, according to him, is not character and situations, but
+ranks of life and family relations, that spectators in similar ranks and
+relations may lay the example to heart. But this would put an end to
+everything like true enjoyment in art. Diderot recommended that the
+composition should have this direction, with the very view which, in the
+case of a historical tragedy founded on the events of their own times, met
+with the disapprobation of the Athenians, and subjected its author
+Phrynichus to their displeasure [Footnote: See page 72.]. The view of a
+fire by night may, from the wonderful effect produced by the combination
+of flames and darkness, fill the unconcerned spectator with delight; but
+when our neighbour's house is burning,--_jam oreximus ardet Ucalegon_--we
+shall hardly be disposed to see the affair in such a picturesque light.
+
+It is clear that Diderot was induced to take in his sail as he made way
+with his own dramatic attempts. He displayed the greatest boldness in an
+offensive publication of his youth, in which he wished to overturn the
+entire dramatic system of the French; he was less daring in the dialogues
+which accompany the _Fils Naturel_, and he showed the greatest moderation
+in the treatise appended to the _Père de Famille_. He carried his
+hostility a great deal too far with respect to the forms and the objects
+of the dramatic art. But in other respects he has not gone far enough: in
+his view of the Unities of Place and Time, and the mixture of seriousness
+and mirth, he has shown himself infected with the prejudices of his
+nation.
+
+The two pieces above mentioned, which obtained an unmerited reputation on
+their first appearance, have long since received their due appreciation.
+On the _Fils Naturel_ Lessing has pronounced a severe sentence, without,
+however, censuring the scandalous plagiarism from Goldoni. But the _Père
+de Famille_ he calls an excellent piece, but has forgotten, however, to
+assign any grounds for his opinion. Its defective plot and want of
+connexion have been well exposed by La Harpe. The execution of both pieces
+exhibits the utmost mannerism: the characters, which are anything but
+natural, become from their frigid prating about virtue in the most
+hypocritical style, and the tears which they are perpetually shedding,
+altogether intolerable. We Germans may justly say, _Hinc illae lacrymae!_
+hence the unnecessary tears with which our stage has ever since been
+overflowed. The custom which has grown up of giving long and
+circumstantial directions respecting the action, and which we owe also to
+Diderot, has been of the greatest detriment to dramatic eloquence. In this
+way the poet gives, as it were, an order on the player, instead of paying
+out of his own purse. [Footnote: I remember to have read the following
+direction in a German drama, which is not worse than many others:--"He
+flashes lightning at him with his eyes (_Er blitzt ihn mit den Augen
+an_) and goes off."] All good dramatists have uniformly had the action
+in some degree present to their minds; but if the actor requires
+instruction on the subject, he will hardly possess the talent of following
+it up with the suitable gestures. The speeches should be so framed that an
+intelligent actor could hardly fail to give them the proper action.
+
+It will he admitted, that long before Diderot there were serious family
+pictures, affecting dramas, and familial tragedies, much better than any
+which he was capable of executing. Voltaire, who could never rightly
+succeed in Comedy, gave in his _Enfant Prodigue_ and _Nanine_ a mixture of
+comic scenes and affecting situations, the latter of which are deserving
+of high praise. The affecting drama had been before attempted in France by
+La Chaussée. All this was in verse: and why not? Of the familiar tragedy
+(with the very same moral direction for which Diderot contended) several
+examples have been produced on the English stage: and one of them,
+_Beverley, or the Gamester_, is translated into French. The period of
+sentimentality was of some use to the affecting or sentimental drama; but
+the familiar tragedy was never very successful in France, where they were
+too much attached to brilliancy and pomp. The _Melanie_ of La Harpe (to
+whom the stage of the present day owes _Philoctete_, the most faithful
+imitation of a Grecian piece) abounds with those painful impressions which
+form the rock this species may be said to split upon. The piece may
+perhaps be well adapted to enlighten the conscience of a father who has
+determined to force his daughter to enter a cloister; but to other
+spectators it can only be painful.
+
+Notwithstanding the opposition which Diderot experienced, he was however
+the founder of a sort of school of which the most distinguished names are
+Beaumarchais and Mercier. The former wrote only two pieces in the spirit
+of his predecessor--_Eugenie_, and _La Mère Coupable_; and they display
+the very same faults. His acquaintance with Spain and the Spanish theatre
+led him to bring something new on the stage in the way of the piece of
+intrigue, a species which had long been neglected. These works were more
+distinguished by witty sallies than by humour of character; but their
+greatest attraction consisted in the allusions to his own career as
+an author. The plot of the _Barber of Seville_ is rather trite; the
+_Marriage of Figaro_ is planned with much more art, but the manners
+which it portrays are loose; and it is also censurable in a poetical point
+of view, on account of the number of foreign excrescences with which it is
+loaded. In both French characters are exhibited under the disguise of a
+Spanish costume, which, however, is very ill observed [Footnote: The
+numerous sins of Beaumarchais against the Spanish manners and observances,
+are pointed out by De la Huerta in the introduction to his _Teatro
+Español_.]. The extraordinary applause which these pieces met with
+would lead to the conclusion, that the French public do not hold the
+comedy of _intrigue_ in such low estimation as it is by the critics:
+but the means by which Beaumarchais pleased were certainly, in part it
+least, foreign to art.
+
+The attempt of Ducis to make his countrymen acquainted with Shakspeare by
+modelling a few of his tragedies according to the French rules, cannot be
+accounted an enlargement of their theatre. We perceive here and there
+indeed the "torn members of the poet"--_disjecta membra poetae_; but
+the whole is so constrained, disfigured, and, from the simple fulness of
+the original, tortured and twisted into such miserable intricacy, that
+even when the language is retained word for word, it ceases to convey its
+genuine meaning. The crowd which these tragedies attracted, especially
+from their affording an unusual room to the inimitable Talma for the
+display of his art, must be looked upon as no slight symptom of the
+people's dissatisfaction with their old works, and the want of others more
+powerfully agitating.
+
+As the Parisian theatres are at present tied down to certain kinds, and as
+poetry has here a point of contact with the police, the numerous mixed and
+new attempts are for the most part banished to the subordinate theatres.
+Of these new attempts the _Melo-dramas_ constitute a principal part.
+A statistical writer of the theatre informs us, that for a number of years
+back the new productions in Tragedy and regular Comedy have been fewest,
+and that the melo-dramas have in number exceeded all the others put
+together. They do not mean by melo-drama, as we do, a drama in which the
+pauses are filled up by monologue with instrumental music, but where
+actions in any wise wonderful, adventurous, or even sensuous, are
+exhibited in emphatic prose with suitable decorations and dresses.
+Advantage might be taken of this prevailing inclination to furnish a
+better description of entertainment: since most of the melo-dramas are
+unfortunately rude even to insipidity, and resemble abortive attempts at
+the romantic.
+
+In the sphere of dramatic literature the labours of a Le Mercier are
+undoubtedly deserving of the critic's attention. This able man endeavours
+to break through the prescribed limits in every possible way, and is so
+passionately fond of his art that nothing can deter him from it; although
+almost every new attempt which he makes converts the pit into a regular
+field of battle. [Footnote: Since these Lectures were held, such a tumult
+arose in the theatre at Paris on the representation of his _Christopher
+Columbus_, that several of the champions of Boileau came off with
+bruised heads and broken shins. They were in the right to fight like
+desperadoes; for if this piece had succeeded, it would have been all over
+with the consecrated Unities and good taste in the separation of the
+heroic and the low. The first act takes place in the house of Columbus,
+the second at the court of Isabella, the third and last on shipboard near
+the New World. The object of the poet was to show that the man in whom any
+grand idea originates is everywhere opposed and thwarted by the limited
+and common-place views of other men; but that the strength of his
+enthusiasm enables him to overcome all obstacles. In his own house, and
+among his acquaintances, Columbus is considered as insane; at court he
+obtains with difficulty a lukewarm support; in his own vessel a mutiny is
+on the point of breaking out, when the wished-for land is discovered, and
+the piece ends with the exclamation of "Land, land!" All this is conceived
+and planned very skilfully; but in the execution, however, there are
+numerous defects. In another piece not yet acted nor printed, called _La
+Journée des Dupes_, which I heard the author read, he has painted with
+historical truth, both in regard to circumstances and the spirit of the
+age, a well-known but unsuccessful court-cabal against Cardinal Richelieu.
+It is a political comedy, in which the rag-gatherer and the king express
+themselves in language suitable to their stations. The poet has, with the
+greatest ingenuity, shown the manner in which trivial causes assist or
+impede the execution of a great political design, the dissimulation
+practised by political personages towards others, and even towards
+themselves, and the different tones which they assume according to
+circumstances; in a word, he has exhibited the whole inward aspect of the
+game of politics.]
+
+From all this we may infer, that the inclinations of the French public,
+when they forget the duties they have imbibed from Boileau's _Art of
+Poetry_, are not quite so hostile to the dramatic liberties of other
+nations as might be supposed, and that the old and narrow system is
+chiefly upheld by a superstitious attachment to traditional opinions.
+
+The histrionic art, particularly in high comedy and tragedy, has been long
+carried in France to great perfection. In external dignity, quickness,
+correctness of memory, and in a wonderful degree of propriety and elegance
+in the delivery of verse, the best French actors are hardly to be
+surpassed. Their efforts to please are incredible: every moment they pass
+on the stage is a valuable opportunity, of which they must avail
+themselves. The extremely fastidious taste of a Paris pit, and the
+wholesome severity of the journalists, excite in them a spirit of
+incessant emulation; and the circumstance of acting a number of classical
+works, which for generations have been in the possession of the stage,
+contributes also greatly to their excellence in their art. As the
+spectators have these works nearly by heart, their whole attention may be
+directed to the acting, and every faulty syllable meets in this way with
+immediate detection and reprobation.
+
+In high comedy the social refinement of the nation affords great
+advantages to their actors. But with respect to tragical composition, the
+art of the actor should also accommodate itself to the spirit of the
+poetry. I am inclined to doubt, however, whether this is the case with the
+French actors, and whether the authors of the tragedies, especially those
+of the age of Louis XIV. would altogether recognise themselves in the mode
+in which these compositions are at present represented.
+
+The tragic imitation and recitation of the French oscillate between two
+opposite extremes, the first of which is occasioned by the prevailing tone
+of the piece, while the second seems rather to be at variance with it,--
+between measured formality and extravagant boisterousness. The first might
+formerly preponderate, but the balance is now on the other side.
+
+Let us hear Voltaire's description of the manner in which, in the time of
+Louis XIV., Augustus delivered his discourse to Cinna and Maximus.
+Augustus entered with the step of a braggadocio, his head covered with a
+four-cornered peruque, which hung down to his girdle; the peruque was
+stuck full of laurel leaves, and above this he wore a large hat with a
+double row of red feathers. He seated himself on a huge fauteuil, two
+steps high, Cinna and Maximus on two low chairs; and the pompous
+declamation fully corresponded to the ostentatious manner in which he made
+his appearance. As at that time, and even long afterwards, tragedies were
+acted in a court-dress of the newest fashion, with large cravats, swords,
+and hats, no other movements were practicable but such as were allowable
+in an antechamber, or, at most, a slight waving of the hand; and it was
+even considered a bold theatrical attempt, when, in the last scene of
+_Polyeucte_, Severus entered with his hat on his head for the purpose
+of accusing Felix of treachery, and the latter listened to him with his
+hat under his arm.
+
+However, there were even early examples of an extravagance of an opposite
+description. In the _Mariamne_ of Mairet, an older poet than Corneille,
+the player who acted Herod, roared himself to death. This may, indeed, be
+called "out-heroding Herod!" When Voltaire was instructing an actress in
+some tragic part, she said to him, "Were I to play in this manner, sir,
+they would say the devil was in me."--"Very right," answered Voltaire, "an
+actress ought to have the devil in her." This expression proves, at least,
+no very keen sense for that dignity and sweetness which in an ideal
+composition, such as the French Tragedy pretends to be, ought never to be
+lost sight of, even in the wildest whirlwind of passion.
+
+I found occasionally, even in the action of the very best players of the
+present day, sudden leaps from the measured solemnity in recitation and
+gesticulation which the general tone of the composition required, to a
+boisterousness of passion absolutely convulsive, without any due
+preparation or softening by intervening gradations. They are led to this
+by a sort of obscure feeling, that the conventional forms of poetry
+generally impede the movements of nature; when the poet any where leaves
+them at liberty, they then indemnify themselves for the former constraint,
+and load, as it were, this rare moment of abandonment with the whole
+amount of life and animation which had been kept back, and which ought to
+have been equally diffused over the whole. Hence their convulsive and
+obstreperous violence. In bravura they take care not to be deficient; but
+they frequently lose sight of the true spirit of the composition. In
+general, (with the single exception of the great Talma,) they consider
+their parts as a sort of mosaic work of brilliant passages, and they
+rather endeavour to make the most of each separate passage, independently
+of the rest, than to go back to the invisible central point of the
+character, and to consider every expression of it as an emanation from
+that point. They are always afraid of underdoing their parts; and hence
+they are worse qualified for reserved action, for eloquent silence, where,
+under an appearance of outward tranquillity, the most hidden emotions of
+the mind are betrayed. However, this is a part which is seldom imposed on
+them by their poets; and if the cause of such excessive violence in the
+expression of passion is not to be found in the works themselves, they at
+all events occasion the actor to lay greater stress on superficial
+brilliancy than on a profound knowledge of character [Footnote: See a
+treatise of M. Von Humboldt the elder, in Goethe's _Propyläen_, on
+the French acting, equally distinguished for a refined and solid spirit of
+observation.].
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+Comparison of the English and Spanish Theatres--Spirit of the Romantic
+Drama--Shakspeare--His age and the circumstances of his Life.
+
+
+In conformity with the plan which we laid down at the first, we shall now
+proceed to treat of the English and Spanish theatres. We have been, on
+various occasions, compelled in passing to allude cursorily, sometimes to
+the one and sometimes to the other, partly for the sake of placing, by
+means of contrast, many ideas in a clearer light, and partly on account of
+the influence which these stages have had on the theatres of other
+countries. Both the English and Spaniards possess a very rich dramatic
+literature, both have had a number of prolific and highly talented
+dramatists, among whom even the least admired and celebrated, considered
+as a whole, display uncommon aptitude for dramatic animation, and insight
+into the essence of theatrical effect. The history of their theatres has
+no connexion with that of the Italians and French, for they developed
+themselves wholly out of the abundance of their own intrinsic energy,
+without any foreign influence: the attempts to bring them back to an
+imitation of the ancients, or even of the French, have either been
+attended with no success, or not been made till a late period in the decay
+of the drama. The formation of these two stages, again, is equally
+independent of each other; the Spanish poets were altogether unacquainted
+with the English; and in the older and most important period of the
+English theatre I could discover no trace of any knowledge of Spanish
+plays, (though their novels and romances were certainly known,) and it was
+not till the time of Charles II. that translations from Calderon first
+made their appearance.
+
+So many things among men have been handed down from century to century and
+from nation to nation, and the human mind is in general so slow to invent,
+that originality in any department of mental exertion is everywhere a rare
+phenomenon. We are desirous of seeing the result of the efforts of
+inventive geniuses when, regardless of what in the same line has elsewhere
+been carried to a high degree of perfection, they set to work in good
+earnest to invent altogether for themselves; when they lay the foundation
+of the new edifice on uncovered ground, and draw all the preparations, all
+the building materials, from their own resources. We participate, in some
+measure, in the joy of success, when we see them advance rapidly from
+their first helplessness and need to a finished mastery in their art. The
+history of the Grecian theatre would afford us this cheering prospect
+could we witness its rudest beginnings, which were not preserved, for they
+were not even committed to writing; but it is easy, when we compare
+together Aeschylus and Sophocles, to form some idea of the preceding
+period. The Greeks neither inherited nor borrowed their dramatic art from
+any other people; it was original and native, and for that very reason was
+it able to produce a living and powerful effect. But it ended with the
+period when Greeks imitated Greeks; namely, when the Alexandrian poets
+began learnedly and critically to compose dramas after the model of the
+great tragic writers. The reverse of this was the case with the Romans:
+they received the form and substance of their dramas from the Greeks; they
+never attempted to act according to their own discretion, and to express
+their own way of thinking; and hence they occupy so insignificant a place
+in the history of dramatic art. Among the nations of modern Europe, the
+English and Spaniards alone (for the German stage is but forming), possess
+as yet a theatre entirely original and national, which, in its own
+peculiar shape, has arrived at maturity.
+
+Those critics who consider the authority of the ancients as models to be
+such, that in poetry, as in all the other arts, there can be no safety out
+of the pale of imitation, affirm, that as the nations in question have not
+followed this course, they have brought nothing but irregular works on the
+stage, which, though they may possess occasional passages of splendour and
+beauty, must yet, as a whole, be for ever reprobated as barbarous, and
+wanting in form. We have already, in the introductory part of these
+Lectures, stated our sentiments generally on this way of thinking; but we
+must now examine the subject somewhat more closely.
+
+If the assertion be well founded, all that distinguishes the works of the
+greatest English and Spanish dramatists, a Shakspeare and a Calderon, must
+rank them far below the ancients; they could in no wise be of importance
+for theory, and would at most appear remarkable, on the assumption that
+the obstinacy of these nations in refusing to comply with the rules, may
+have afforded a more ample field to the poets, to display their native
+originality, though at the expense of art. But even this assumption, on a
+closer examination, appears extremely questionable. The poetic spirit
+requires to be limited, that it may move with a becoming liberty, within
+its proper precincts, as has been felt by all nations on the first
+invention of metre; it must act according to laws derivable from its own
+essence, otherwise its strength will evaporate in boundless vacuity.
+
+The works of genius cannot therefore be permitted to be without form; but
+of this there is no danger. However, that we may answer this objection of
+want of form, we must understand the exact meaning of the term form, since
+most critics, and more especially those who insist on a stiff regularity,
+interpret it merely in a mechanical, and not in an organical sense. Form
+is mechanical when, through external force, it is imparted to any material
+merely as an accidental addition without reference to its quality; as, for
+example, when we give a particular shape to a soft mass that it may retain
+the same after its induration. Organical form, again, is innate; it
+unfolds itself from within, and acquires its determination
+contemporaneously with the perfect development of the germ. We everywhere
+discover such forms in nature throughout the whole range of living powers,
+from the crystallization of salts and minerals to plants and flowers, and
+from these again to the human body. In the fine arts, as well as in the
+domain of nature--the supreme artist, all genuine forms are organical,
+that is, determined by the quality of the work. In a word, the form is
+nothing but a significant exterior, the speaking physiognomy of each
+thing, which, as long as it is not disfigured by any destructive accident,
+gives a true evidence of its hidden essence.
+
+Hence it is evident that the spirit of poetry, which, though imperishable,
+migrates, as it were, through different bodies, must, so often as it is
+newly born in the human race, mould to itself, out of the nutrimental
+substance of an altered age, a body of a different conformation. The forms
+vary with the direction taken by the poetical sense; and when we give to
+the new kinds of poetry the old names, and judge of them according to the
+ideas conveyed by these names, the application which we make of the
+authority of classical antiquity is altogether unjustifiable. No one
+should be tried before a tribunal to which he is not amenable. We may
+safely admit, that the most of the English and Spanish dramatic works are
+neither tragedies nor comedies in the sense of the ancients: they are
+romantic dramas. That the stage of a people who, in its foundation and
+formation, neither knew nor wished to know anything of foreign models,
+will possess many peculiarities; and not only deviate from, but even
+exhibit a striking contrast to, the theatres of other nations who had a
+common model for imitation before their eyes, is easily supposable, and we
+should only be astonished were it otherwise. But when in two nations,
+differing so widely as the English and Spanish, in physical, moral,
+political, and religious respects, the theatres (which, without being
+known to each other, arose about the same time,) possess, along with
+external and internal diversities, the most striking features of affinity,
+the attention even of the most thoughtless cannot but be turned to this
+phenomenon; and the conjecture will naturally occur, that the same, or, at
+least, a kindred principle must have prevailed in the development of both.
+This comparison, however, of the English and Spanish theatre, in their
+common contrast with every dramatic literature which has grown up out of
+an imitation of the ancients, has, so far as we know, never yet been
+attempted. Could we raise from the dead a countryman, contemporary, and
+intelligent admirer of Shakspeare, and another of Calderon, and introduce
+to their acquaintance the works of the poet to which in life they were
+strangers, they would both, without doubt, considering the subject rather
+from a national than a general point of view, enter with difficulty into
+the above idea, and have many objections to urge against it. But here a
+reconciling criticism [Footnote: This appropriate expression was, if we
+mistake not, first used by M. Adam Müller in his _Lectures on German
+Science and Literature_. If, however, he gives himself out for the
+inventor of the thing itself, he is, to use the softest word, in error.
+Long before him other Germans had endeavoured to reconcile the
+contrarieties of taste of different ages and nations, and to pay due
+homage to all genuine poetry and art. Between good and bad, it is true, no
+reconciliation is possible.] must step in; and this, perhaps, may be best
+exercised by a German, who is free from the national peculiarities of
+either Englishmen or Spaniards, yet by inclination friendly to both, and
+prevented by no jealousy from acknowledging the greatness which has been
+earlier exhibited in other countries than in his own.
+
+The similarity of the English and Spanish theatres does not consist merely
+in the bold neglect of the Unities of Place and Time, and in the
+commixture of comic and tragic elements: that they were unwilling or
+unable to comply with the rules and with right reason, (in the meaning of
+certain critics these terms are equivalent,) may be considered as an
+evidence of merely negative properties. The ground of the resemblance lies
+far deeper, in the inmost substance of the fictions, and in the essential
+relations, through which every deviation of form, becomes a true
+requisite, which, together with its validity, has also its significance.
+What they have in common with each other is the spirit of the romantic
+poetry, giving utterance to itself in a dramatic shape. However, to
+explain ourselves with due precision, the Spanish theatre, in our opinion,
+down to its decline and fall in the commencement of the eighteenth
+century, is almost entirely romantic; the English is completely so in
+Shakspeare alone, its founder and greatest master: in later poets the
+romantic principle appears more or less degenerated, or is no longer
+perceivable, although the march of dramatic composition introduced by
+virtue of it has been, outwardly at least, pretty generally retained. The
+manner in which the different ways of thinking of the two nations, one a
+northern and the other a southern, have been expressed; the former endowed
+with a gloomy, the latter with a glowing imagination; the one nation
+possessed of a scrutinizing seriousness disposed to withdraw within
+themselves, the other impelled outwardly by the violence of passion; the
+mode in which all this has been accomplished will be most satisfactorily
+explained at the close of this section, when we come to institute a
+parallel between Shakspeare and Calderon, the only two poets who are
+entitled to be called great.
+
+Of the origin and essence of the romantic I treated in my first Lecture,
+and I shall here, therefore, merely briefly mention the subject. The
+ancient art and poetry rigorously separate things which are dissimilar;
+the romantic delights in indissoluble mixtures; all contrarieties: nature
+and art, poetry and prose, seriousness and mirth, recollection and
+anticipation, spirituality and sensuality, terrestrial and celestial, life
+and death, are by it blended together in the most intimate combination. As
+the oldest lawgivers delivered their mandatory instructions and
+prescriptions in measured melodies; as this is fabulously ascribed to
+Orpheus, the first softener of the yet untamed race of mortals; in like
+manner the whole of the ancient poetry and art is, as it were, a
+_rhythmical nomos_ (law), an harmonious promulgation of the permanently
+established legislation of a world submitted to a beautiful order, and
+reflecting in itself the eternal images of things. Romantic poetry, on the
+other hand, is the expression of the secret attraction to a chaos which
+lies concealed in the very bosom of the ordered universe, and is
+perpetually striving after new and marvellous births; the life-giving
+spirit of primal love broods here anew on the face of the waters. The
+former is more simple, clear, and like to nature in the self-existent
+perfection of her separate works; the latter, notwithstanding its
+fragmentary appearance, approaches more to the secret of the universe. For
+Conception can only comprise each object separately, but nothing in truth
+can ever exist separately and by itself; Feeling perceives all in all at
+one and the same time.  Respecting the two species of poetry with which we
+are here principally occupied, we compared the ancient Tragedy to a group
+in sculpture: the figures corresponding to the characters, and their
+grouping to the action; and to these two in both productions of art is the
+consideration exclusively directed, as being all that is properly
+exhibited. But the romantic drama must be viewed as a large picture, where
+not merely figure and motion are exhibited in larger, richer groups, but
+where even all that surrounds the figures must also be portrayed; where we
+see not merely the nearest objects, but are indulged with the prospect of
+a considerable distance; and all this under a magical light, which assists
+in giving to the impression the particular character desired.
+
+Such a picture must be bounded less perfectly and less distinctly, than
+the group; for it is like a fragment cut out of the optic scene of the
+world. However the painter, by the setting of his foreground, by throwing
+the whole of his light into the centre, and by other means of fixing the
+point of view, will learn that he must neither wander beyond the
+composition, nor omit any thing within it.
+
+In the representation of figure, Painting cannot compete with Sculpture,
+since the former can only exhibit it by a deception and from a single
+point of view; but, on the other hand, it communicates more life to its
+imitations, by colours which in a picture are made to imitate the lightest
+shades of mental expression in the countenance. The look, which can be
+given only very imperfectly by Sculpture, enables us to read much deeper
+in the mind, and to perceive its lightest movements. Its peculiar charm,
+in short, consists in this, that it enables us to see in bodily objects
+what is least corporeal, namely, light and air.
+
+The very same description of beauties are peculiar to the romantic drama.
+It does not (like the Old Tragedy) separate seriousness and the action, in
+a rigid manner, from among the whole ingredients of life; it embraces at
+once the whole of the chequered drama of life with all its circumstances;
+and while it seems only to represent subjects brought accidentally
+together, it satisfies the unconscious requisitions of fancy, buries us in
+reflections on the inexpressible signification of the objects which we
+view blended by order, nearness and distance, light and colour, into one
+harmonious whole; and thus lends, as it were, a soul to the prospect
+before us.
+
+The change of time and of place, (supposing its influence on the mind to
+be included in the picture; and that it comes to the aid of the theatrical
+perspective, with reference to what is indicated in the distance, or half-
+concealed by intervening objects;) the contrast of sport and earnest
+(supposing that in degree and kind they bear a proportion to each other;)
+finally, the mixture of the dialogical and the lyrical elements, (by which
+the poet is enabled, more or less perfectly, to transform his personages
+into poetical beings:) these, in my opinion, are not mere licenses, but
+true beauties in the romantic drama. In all these points, and in many
+others also, the English and Spanish works, which are pre-eminently worthy
+of this title of Romantic, fully resemble each other, however different
+they may be in other respects.
+
+Of the two we shall first notice the English theatre, because it arrived
+earlier at maturity than the Spanish. In both we must occupy ourselves
+almost exclusively with a single artist, with Shakspeare in the one and
+Calderon in the other; but not in the same order with each, for Shakspeare
+stands first and earliest among the English; any remarks we may have to
+make on earlier or contemporary antiquities of the English stage may be
+made in a review of his history. But Calderon had many predecessors; he is
+at once the summit and the close nearly of dramatic art in Spain.
+
+The wish to speak with the brevity which the limits of my plan demand, of
+a poet to the study of whom I have devoted many years of my life, places
+me in no little embarrassment. I know not where to begin; for I should
+never be able to end, were I to say all that I have felt and thought on
+the perusal of his works. With the poet as with the man, a more than
+ordinary intimacy prevents us, perhaps, from putting ourselves in the
+place of those who are first forming an acquaintance with him: we are too
+familiar with his most striking peculiarities, to be able to pronounce
+upon the first impression which they are calculated to make on others. On
+the other hand, we ought to possess, and to have the power of
+communicating, more correct ideas of his mode of procedure, of his
+concealed or less obvious views, and of the meaning and import of his
+labours, than others whose acquaintance with him is more limited.
+
+Shakspeare is the pride of his nation. A late poet has, with propriety,
+called him "the genius of the British isles." He was the idol of his
+contemporaries: during the interval indeed of puritanical fanaticism,
+which broke out in the next generation, and rigorously proscribed all
+liberal arts and literature, and during the reign of the Second Charles,
+when his works were either not acted at all, or if so, very much changed
+and disfigured, his fame was awhile obscured, only to shine forth again
+about the beginning of the last century with more than its original
+brightness; and since then it has but increased in lustre with the course
+of time; and for centuries to come, (I speak it with the greatest
+confidence,) it will, like an Alpine _avalanche_, continue to gather
+strength at every moment of its progress. Of the future extension of his
+fame, the enthusiasm with which he was naturalized in Germany, the moment
+that he was known, is a significant earnest. In the South of Europe,
+[Footnote: This difficulty extends also to France; for it must not be
+supposed that a literal translation can ever be a faithful one. Mrs.
+Montague has done enough to prove how wretchedly, even Voltaire, in his
+rhymeless Alexandrines, has translated a few passages from _Hamlet_
+and the first act of _Julius Caesar_.] his language, and the great
+difficulty of translating him with fidelity, will be, perhaps, an
+invincible obstacle to his general diffusion. In England, the greatest
+actors vie with each other in the impersonation of his characters; the
+printers in splendid editions of his works; and the painters in
+transferring his scenes to the canvas. Like Dante, Shakspeare has received
+the perhaps indispensable but still cumbersome honour of being treated
+like a classical author of antiquity. The oldest editions have been
+carefully collated, and where the readings seemed corrupt, many
+corrections have been suggested; and the whole literature of his age has
+been drawn forth from the oblivion to which it had been consigned, for the
+sole purpose of explaining the phrases, and illustrating the allusions of
+Shakspeare. Commentators have succeeded one another in such number, that
+their labours alone, with the critical controversies to which they have
+given rise, constitute of themselves no inconsiderable library. These
+labours deserve both our praise and gratitude; and more especially the
+historical investigations into the sources from which Shakspeare drew the
+materials of his plays, and also into the previous and contemporary state
+of the English stage, and other kindred subjects of inquiry. With respect,
+however, to their merely philological criticisms, I am frequently
+compelled to differ from the commentators; and where, too, considering him
+simply as a poet, they endeavour to enter into his views and to decide
+upon his merits, I must separate myself from them entirely. I have hardly
+ever found either truth or profundity in their remarks; and these critics
+seem to me to be but stammering interpreters of the general and almost
+idolatrous admiration of his countrymen. There may be people in England
+who entertain the same views of them with myself, at least it is a well-
+known fact that a satirical poet has represented Shakspeare, under the
+hands of his commentators, by Actaeon worried to death by his own dogs;
+and, following up the story of Ovid, designated a female writer on the
+great poet as the snarling Lycisca.
+
+We shall endeavour, in the first place, to remove some of these false
+views, in order to clear the way for our own homage, that we may thereupon
+offer it the more freely without let or hindrance.
+
+From all the accounts of Shakspeare which have come down to us, it is
+clear that his contemporaries knew well the treasure they possessed in
+him; and that they felt and understood him better than most of those who
+succeeded him. In those days a work was generally ushered into the world
+with Commendatory Verses; and one of these, prefixed to an early edition
+of Shakspeare, by an unknown author, contains some of the most beautiful
+and happy lines that ever were applied to any poet [Footnote: It begins
+with the words: _A mind reflecting ages past_, and is subscribed,
+I.M.S.]. An idea, however, soon became prevalent that Shakspeare was a
+rude and wild genius, who poured forth at random, and without aim or
+object, his unconnected compositions. Ben Jonson, a younger contemporary
+and rival of Shakspeare, who laboured in the sweat of his brow, but with
+no great success, to expel the romantic drama from the English stage, and
+to form it on the model of the ancients, gave it as his opinion that
+Shakspeare did not blot enough, and that as he did not possess much
+school-learning, he owed more to nature than to art. The learned, and
+sometimes rather pedantic Milton was also of this opinion, when he says,
+
+  Our sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,
+  Warbles his native wood-notes wild.
+
+Yet it is highly honourable to Milton, that the sweetness of Shakspeare,
+the quality which of all others has been least allowed, was felt and
+acknowledged by him. The modern editors, both in their prefaces, which may
+be considered as so many rhetorical exercises in praise of the poet, and
+in their remarks on separate passages, go still farther. Judging them by
+principles which are not applicable to them, not only do they admit the
+irregularity of his pieces, but on occasions they accuse him of bombast,
+of a confused, ungrammatical, and conceited mode of writing, and even of
+the most contemptible buffoonery. Pope asserts that he wrote both better
+and worse than any other man. All the scenes and passages which did not
+square with the littleness of his own taste, he wished to place to the
+account of interpolating players; and he was in the right road, had his
+opinion been taken, of giving us a miserable dole of a mangled Shakspeare.
+It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if foreigners, with the exception
+of the Germans latterly, have, in their ignorance of him, even improved
+upon these opinions. [Footnote: Lessing was the first to speak of
+Shakspeare in a becoming tone; but he said unfortunately a great deal too
+little of him, as in the time when he wrote the _Dramaturgie_ this poet
+had not yet appeared on our stage. Since that time he has been more
+particularly noticed by Herder in the _Blütter von deutscher Art und
+Kunst_; Goethe, in _Wilhelm Meister_; and Tieck, in Letters on Shakspeare
+(_Poetisches Journal_, 1800), which break off, however, almost at the
+commencement.]. They speak in general of Shakspeare's plays as monstrous
+productions, which could only have been given to the world by a disordered
+imagination in a barbarous age; and Voltaire crowns the whole with more
+than usual assurance, when he observes that _Hamlet_, the profound master-
+piece of the philosophical poet, "seems the work of a drunken savage."
+That foreigners, and in particular Frenchmen, who ordinarily speak the
+most strange language of antiquity and the middle ages, as if cannibalism
+had only been put an end to in Europe by Louis XIV. should entertain this
+opinion of Shakspeare, might be pardonable; but that Englishmen should
+join in calumniating that glorious epoch of their history, [Footnote: The
+English work with which foreigners of every country are perhaps best
+acquainted is Hume's _History_; and there we have a most unjustifiable
+account both of Shakspeare and his age. "Born in a _rude age_, and
+educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either _from the
+world_ or from books." How could a man of Hume's acuteness suppose for a
+moment that a poet, whose characters display such an intimate acquaintance
+with life, who, as an actor and manager of a theatre, must have come in
+contact with all descriptions of individuals, had no instruction from the
+world? But this is not the worst; he goes even so far as to say, "a
+reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold." This is
+nearly as offensive as Voltaire's "drunken savage."--TRANS.] which laid
+the foundation of their national greatness, is incomprehensible.
+Shakspeare flourished and wrote in the last half of the reign of Queen
+Elizabeth and first half of that of James I.; and, consequently, under
+monarchs who were learned themselves, and held literature in honour. The
+policy of modern Europe, by which the relations of its different states
+have been so variously interwoven with each other, commenced a century
+before. The cause of the Protestants was decided by the accession of
+Elizabeth to the throne; and the attachment to the ancient belief cannot
+therefore be urged as a proof of the prevailing darkness. Such was the
+zeal for the study of the ancients, that even court ladies, and the queen
+herself, were acquainted with Latin and Greek, and taught even to speak
+the former; a degree of knowledge which we should in vain seek for in the
+courts of Europe at the present day. The trade and navigation which the
+English carried on with all the four quarters of the world, made them
+acquainted with the customs and mental productions of other nations; and
+it would appear that they were then more indulgent to foreign manners than
+they are in the present day. Italy had already produced all nearly that
+still distinguishes her literature, and in England translations in verse
+were diligently, and even successfully, executed from the Italian. Spanish
+literature also was not unknown, for it is certain that _Don Quixote_ was
+read in England soon after its first appearance. Bacon, the founder of
+modern experimental philosophy, and of whom it may be said, that he
+carried in his pocket all that even in this eighteenth century merits the
+name of philosophy, was a contemporary of Shakspeare. His fame, as a
+writer, did not, indeed, break forth into its glory till after his death;
+but what a number of ideas must have been in circulation before such an
+author could arise! Many branches of human knowledge have, since that
+time, been more extensively cultivated, but such branches as are totally
+unproductive to poetry: chemistry, mechanics, manufactures, and rural and
+political economy, will never enable a man to become a poet. I have
+elsewhere [Footnote: In my Lectures on the _Spirit of the Age_.] examined
+into the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which looks
+with such contempt on all preceding ages; I have shown that at bottom it
+is all little, superficial, and unsubstantial. The pride of what has been
+called the existing maturity of human intensity, has come to a miserable
+end; and the structures erected by those pedagogues of the human race have
+fallen to pieces like the baby-houses of children.
+
+With regard to the tone of society in Shakspeare's day, it is necessary to
+remark that there is a wide difference between true mental cultivation and
+what is called polish. That artificial polish which puts an end to every
+thing like free original communication, and subjects all intercourse to
+the insipid uniformity of certain rules, was undoubtedly wholly unknown to
+the age of Shakspeare, as in a great measure it still is at the present
+day in England. It possessed, on the other hand, a fulness of healthy
+vigour, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with
+petulance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen,
+who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne,
+and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact,
+well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent
+enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of glory and renown.
+The feudal independence also still survived in some measure; the nobility
+vied with each other in splendour of dress and number of retinue, and
+every great lord had a sort of small court of his own. The distinction of
+ranks was as yet strongly marked: a state of things ardently to be desired
+by the dramatic poet. In conversation they took pleasure in quick and
+unexpected answers; and the witty sally passed rapidly like a ball from
+mouth to mouth, till the merry game could no longer be kept up. This, and
+the abuse of the play on words, (of which King James was himself very
+fond, and we need not therefore wonder at the universality of the mode,)
+may, doubtless, be considered as instances of a bad taste; but to take
+them for symptoms of rudeness and barbarity, is not less absurd than to
+infer the poverty of a people from their luxurious extravagance. These
+strained repartees are frequently employed by Shakspeare, with the view of
+painting the actual tone of the society in his day; it does not, however,
+follow, that they met with his approbation; on the contrary, it clearly
+appears that he held them in derision. Hamlet says, in the scene with the
+Gravedigger, "By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of
+it: the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near
+the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." And Lorenzo, in the
+_Merchant of Venice_, alluding to Launcelot:
+
+  O dear discretion, how his words are suited!
+  The fool hath planted in his memory
+  An army of good words: and I do know
+  A many fools, that stand in better place,
+  Garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy word.
+  Defy the matter.
+
+Besides, Shakspeare, in a thousand places, lays great and marked stress on
+correct and refined tone of society, and lashes every deviation from it,
+whether of boorishness or affected foppery; not only does he give
+admirable discourses on it, but he represents it in all its shades and
+modifications by rank, age, or sex. What foundation is there, then, for
+the alleged barbarity of his age? Its offences against propriety? But if
+this is to be admitted as a test, then the ages of Pericles and Augustus
+must also be described as rude and uncultivated; for Aristophanes and
+Horace, who both were considered as models of urbanity, display, at times,
+the coarsest indelicacy. On this subject, the diversity in the moral
+feeling of ages depends on other causes. Shakspeare, it is true, sometimes
+introduces us to improper company; at others, he suffers ambiguous
+expressions to escape in the presence of women, and even from women
+themselves. This species of petulance was probably not then unusual. He
+certainly did not indulge in it merely to please the multitude, for in
+many of his pieces there is not the slightest trace of this sort to be
+found: and in what virgin purity are many of his female parts worked out!
+When we see the liberties taken by other dramatic poets in England in his
+time, and even much later, we must account him comparatively chaste and
+moral. Neither must we overlook certain circumstances in the existing
+state of the theatre. The female parts were not acted by women, but by
+boys; and no person of the fair sex appeared in the theatre without a
+mask. Under such a carnival disguise, much might be heard by them, and
+much might be ventured to be said in their presence, which in other
+circumstances would have been absolutely improper. It is certainly to be
+wished that decency should be observed on all public occasions, and
+consequently also on the stage. But even in this it is possible to go too
+far. That carping censoriousness which scents out impurity in every bold
+sally, is, at best, but an ambiguous criterion of purity of morals; and
+beneath this hypocritical guise there often lurks the consciousness of an
+impure imagination. The determination to tolerate nothing which has the
+least reference to the sensual relation between the sexes, may be carried
+to a pitch extremely oppressive to a dramatic poet, and highly prejudicial
+to the boldness and freedom of his compositions. If such considerations
+were to be attended to, many of the happiest parts of Shakspeare's plays,
+for example, in _Measure for Measure_, and _All's Well that Ends Well_,
+which, nevertheless, are handled with a due regard to decency, must be set
+aside as sinning against this would-be propriety.
+
+Had no other monument of the age of Elizabeth come down to us than the
+works of Shakspeare, I should, from them alone, have formed the most
+favourable idea of its state of social culture and enlightenment. When
+those who look through such strange spectacles as to see nothing in them
+but rudeness and barbarity cannot deny what I have now historically
+proved, they are usually driven to this last resource, and demand, "What
+has Shakspeare to do with the mental culture of his age? He had no share
+in it. Born in an inferior rank, ignorant and uneducated, he passed his
+life in low society, and laboured to please a vulgar audience for his
+bread, without ever dreaming of fame or posterity."
+
+In all this there is not a single word of truth, though it has been
+repeated a thousand times. It is true we know very little of the poet's
+life; and what we do know consists for the most part of raked-up and
+chiefly suspicious anecdotes, of such a description nearly as those which
+are told at inns to inquisitive strangers, who visit the birthplace or
+neighbourhood of a celebrated man. Within a very recent period some
+original documents have been brought to light, and among them his will,
+which give us a peep into his family concerns. It betrays more than
+ordinary deficiency of critical acumen in Shakspeare's commentators, that
+none of them, so far as we know, have ever thought of availing themselves
+of his sonnets for tracing the circumstances of his life. These sonnets
+paint most unequivocally the actual situation and sentiments of the poet;
+they make us acquainted with the passions of the man; they even contain
+remarkable confessions of his youthful errors. Shakspeare's father was a
+man of property, whose ancestors had held the office of alderman and
+bailiff in Stratford, and in a diploma from the Heralds' Office for the
+renewal or confirmation of his coat of arms, he is styled _gentleman_. Our
+poet, the oldest son but third child, could not, it is true, receive an
+academical education, as he married when hardly eighteen, probably from
+mere family considerations. This retired and unnoticed life he continued
+to lead but a few years; and he was either enticed to London from
+wearisomeness of his situation, or banished from home, as it is said, in
+consequence of his irregularities. There he assumed the profession of a
+player, which he considered at first as a degradation, principally,
+perhaps, because of the wild excesses [Footnote: In one of his sonnets he
+says:
+  O, for my sake do you with fortune chide,
+  The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
+  That did not better for my life provide,
+  _Than public means which public manners breeds_.
+And in the following:--
+  Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
+  Which _vulgar scandal_ stamp'd upon my brow.] into which he was
+seduced by the example of his comrades. It is extremely probable, that the
+poetical fame which in the progress of his career he afterwards acquired,
+greatly contributed to ennoble the stage, and to bring the player's
+profession into better repute. Even at a very early age he endeavoured to
+distinguish himself as a poet in other walks than those of the stage, as
+is proved by his juvenile poems of _Adonis_ and _Lucrece_. He quickly rose
+to be a sharer or joint proprietor, and also manager of the theatre for
+which he wrote. That he was not admitted to the society of persons of
+distinction is altogether incredible. Not to mention many others, he found
+a liberal friend and kind patron in the Earl of Southampton, the friend of
+the unfortunate Essex. His pieces were not only the delight of the great
+public, but also in great favour at court: the two monarchs under whose
+reigns he wrote were, according to the testimony of a contemporary, quite
+"taken" with him [Footnote: Ben Jonson:--
+  And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
+  That so did take Eliza and our James!]. Many were acted at court; and
+Elizabeth appears herself to have commanded the writing of more than one
+to be acted at her court festivals. King James, it is well known, honoured
+Shakspeare so far as to write to him with his own hand. All this looks
+very unlike either contempt or banishment into the obscurity of a low
+circle. By his labours as a poet, player, and stage-manager, Shakspeare
+acquired a considerable property, which, in the last years of his too
+short life, he enjoyed in his native town in retirement and in the society
+of a beloved daughter. Immediately after his death a monument was erected
+over his grave, which may be considered sumptuous for those times.
+
+In the midst of such brilliant success, and with such distinguished proofs
+of respect and honour from his contemporaries, it would be singular indeed
+if Shakspeare, notwithstanding the modesty of a great mind, which he
+certainly possessed in a peculiar degree, should never have dreamed of
+posthumous fame. As a profound thinker he had pretty accurately taken the
+measure of the circle of human capabilities, and he could say to himself
+with confidence, that many of his productions would not easily be
+surpassed. What foundation then is there for the contrary assertion, which
+would degrade the immortal artist to the situation of a daily labourer for
+a rude multitude?--Merely this, that he himself published no edition of
+his whole works. We do not reflect that a poet, always accustomed to
+labour immediately for the stage, who has often enjoyed the triumph of
+overpowering assembled crowds of spectators, and drawing from them the
+most tumultuous applause, who the while was not dependent on the caprice
+of crotchety stage directors, but left to his own discretion to select and
+determine the mode of theatrical representation, naturally cares much less
+for the closet of the solitary reader. During the first formation of a
+national theatre, more especially, we find frequent examples of such
+indifference. Of the almost innumerable pieces of Lope de Vega, many
+undoubtedly were never printed, and are consequently lost; and Cervantes
+did not print his earlier dramas, though he certainly boasts of them as
+meritorious works. As Shakspeare, on his retiring from the theatre, left
+his manuscripts behind with his fellow-managers, he may have relied on
+theatrical tradition for handing them down to posterity, which would
+indeed have been sufficient for that purpose if the closing of the
+theatres, under the tyrannical intolerance of the Puritans, had not
+interrupted the natural order of things. We know, besides, that the poets
+used then to sell the exclusive copyright of their pieces to the theatre
+[Footnote: This is perhaps not uncommon still in some countries. The
+Venetian Director Medebach, for whose company many of Goldoni's Comedies
+were composed, claimed an exclusive right to them.--TRANS.]: it is
+therefore not improbable that the right of property in his unprinted
+pieces was no longer vested in Shakspeare, or had not at least yet
+reverted to him. His fellow-managers entered on the publication seven
+years after his death (which probably cut short his own intention,) as it
+would appear on their own account and for their own advantage.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+Ignorance or Learning of Shakspeare--Costume as observed by Shakspeare,
+and how far necessary, or may be dispensed with in the Drama--Shakspeare
+the greatest drawer of Character--Vindication of the genuineness of his
+pathos--Play on words--Moral delicacy--Irony--Mixture of the Tragic and
+Comic--The part of the Fool or Clown--Shakspeare's Language and
+Versification.
+
+
+Our poet's want of scholarship has been the subject of endless
+controversy, and yet it is surely a very easy matter to decide. Shakspeare
+was poor in dead school-cram, but he possessed a rich treasury of living
+and intuitive knowledge. He knew a little Latin, and even something of
+Greek, though it may be not enough to read with ease the writers in the
+original. With modern languages also, the French and Italian, he had,
+perhaps, but a superficial acquaintance. The general direction of his mind
+was not to the collection of words but of facts. With English books,
+whether original or translated, he was extensively acquainted: we may
+safely affirm that he had read all that his native language and literature
+then contained that could be of any use to him in his poetical avocations.
+He was sufficiently intimate with mythology to employ it, in the only
+manner he could wish, in the way of symbolical ornament. He had formed a
+correct notion of the spirit of Ancient History, and more particularly of
+that of the Romans; and the history of his own country was familiar to him
+even in detail. Fortunately for him it had not as yet been treated in a
+diplomatic and pragmatic spirit, but merely in the chronicle-style; in
+other words, it had not yet assumed the appearance of dry investigations
+respecting the development of political relations, diplomatic
+negotiations, finances, &c., but exhibited a visible image of the life and
+movement of an age prolific of great deeds. Shakspeare, moreover, was a
+nice observer of nature; he knew the technical language of mechanics and
+artisans; he seems to have been well travelled in the interior of his own
+country, while of others he inquired diligently of travelled navigators
+respecting their peculiarity of climate and customs. He thus became
+accurately acquainted with all the popular usages, opinions, and
+traditions which could be of use in poetry.
+
+The proofs of his ignorance, on which the greatest stress is laid, are a
+few geographical blunders and anachronisms. Because in a comedy founded on
+an earlier tale, he makes ships visit Bohemia, he has been the subject of
+much laughter. But I conceive that we should be very unjust towards him,
+were we to conclude that he did not, as well as ourselves, possess the
+useful but by no means difficult knowledge that Bohemia is nowhere bounded
+by the sea. He could never, in that case, have looked into a map of
+Germany, who yet describes elsewhere, with great accuracy, the maps of
+both Indies, together with the discoveries of the latest navigators.
+[Footnote: _Twelfth Night, or What You Will_--Act iii. scene ii.] In
+such matters Shakspeare is only faithful to the details of the domestic
+stories. In the novels on which he worked, he avoided disturbing the
+associations of his audience, to whom they were known, by novelties--the
+correction of errors in secondary and unimportant particulars. The more
+wonderful the story, the more it ranged in a purely poetical region, which
+he transfers at will to an indefinite distance. These plays, whatever
+names they bear, take place in the true land of romance, and in the very
+century of wonderful love stories. He knew well that in the forest of
+Ardennes there were neither the lions and serpents of the Torrid Zone, nor
+the shepherdesses of Arcadia: but he transferred both to it, [Footnote:
+_As You Like It._] because the design and import of his picture
+required them. Here he considered himself entitled to take the greatest
+liberties. He had not to do with a hair-splitting, hypercritical age like
+ours, which is always seeking in poetry for something else than poetry;
+his audience entered the theatre, not to learn true chronology, geography,
+and natural history, but to witness a vivid exhibition. I will undertake
+to prove that Shakspeare's anachronisms are, for the most part, committed
+of set purpose and deliberately. It was frequently of importance to him to
+move the exhibited subject out of the background of time, and bring it
+quite near us. Hence in _Hamlet_, though avowedly an old Northern
+story, there runs a tone of modish society, and in every respect the
+costume of the most recent period. Without those circumstantialities it
+would not have been allowable to make a philosophical inquirer of Hamlet,
+on which trait, however, the meaning of the whole is made to rest. On that
+account he mentions his education at a university, though, in the age of
+the true Hamlet of history, universities were not in existence. He makes
+him study at Wittenberg, and no selection of a place could have been more
+suitable. The name was very popular: the story of _Dr. Faustus of
+Wittenberg_ had made it well known; it was of particular celebrity in
+protestant England, as Luther had taught and written there shortly before,
+and the very name must have immediately suggested the idea of freedom in
+thinking. I cannot oven consider it an anachronism that Richard the Third
+should speak of Macchiavel. The word is here used altogether proverbially:
+the contents, at least, of the book entitled _Of the Prince (Del
+Principe,)_ have been in existence ever since the existence of tyrants;
+Macchiavel was merely the first to commit them to writing.
+
+That Shakspeare has accurately hit the essential costume, namely, the
+spirit of ages and nations, is at least acknowledged generally by the
+English critics; but many sins against external costume may be easily
+remarked. But here it is necessary to bear in mind that the Roman pieces
+were acted upon the stage of that day in the European dress. This was, it
+is true, still grand and splendid, not so silly and tasteless as it became
+towards the end of the seventeenth century. (Brutus and Cassius appeared
+in the Spanish cloak; they wore, quite contrary to the Roman custom, the
+sword by their side in time of peace, and, according to the testimony of
+an eye witness, [Footnote: In one of the commendatory poems in the first
+folio edition:
+  And on the stage at _half sword parley_ were
+  Brutus and Cassius.] it was, in the dialogue where Brutus stimulates
+Cassius to the conspiracy, drawn, as if involuntarily, half out of the
+sheath.) This does in no way agree with our way of thinking: we are not
+content without the toga. The present, perhaps, is not an inappropriate
+place for a few general observations on costume, considered with reference
+to art. It has never been more accurately observed than in the present
+day; art has become a slop-shop for pedantic antiquities. This is because
+we live in a learned and critical, but by no means poetical age. The
+ancients before us used, when they had to represent the religions of other
+nations, which deviated very much from their own, to bring them into
+conformity with the Greek mythology. In Sculpture, again, the same dress,
+namely, the Phrygian, was adopted, once for all, for every barbaric tribe.
+Not that they did not know that there were as many different dresses as
+nations; but in art they merely wished to acknowledge the great contrast
+between barbarian and civilized: and this, they thought, was rendered most
+strikingly apparent in the Phrygian garb. The earlier Christian painters
+represent the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, the Patriarchs, and the Apostles
+in an ideal dress; but the subordinate actors or spectators of the action,
+in the dresses of their own nation and age. Here they were guided by a
+correct feeling: the mysterious and sacred ought to be kept at an awe-
+inspiring distance, but the human cannot be rightly understood if seen
+without its usual accompaniments. In the middle ages all heroical stories
+of antiquity, from Theseus and Achilles down to Alexander, were
+metamorphosed into true tales of chivalry. What was related to themselves
+spoke alone an intelligible language to them; of differences and
+distinctions they did not care to know. In an old manuscript of the
+_Iliad_, I saw a miniature illumination representing Hector's funeral
+procession, where the coffin is hung with noble coats of arms, and carried
+into a Gothic church. It is easy to make merry with this piece of
+simplicity, but a reflecting mind will see the subject in a very different
+light. A powerful consciousness of the universal validity and the solid
+permanency of their own manner of being, an undoubting conviction that it
+has always so been and will ever continue so to be in the world: these
+feelings of our ancestors were symptoms of a fresh fulness of life; they
+were the marrow of action in reality as well as in fiction. Their plain
+and affectionate attachment to every thing around them, handed down from
+their fathers, is by no means to be confounded with the obstreperous
+conceit of ages of mannerism, who, out of vanity, introduce the fleeting
+modes and fashion of the day into art, because to them everything like
+noble simplicity seems boorish and rude. The latter impropriety is now
+abolished: but, on the other hand, our poets and artists, if they would
+hope for our approbation, must, like servants, wear the livery of distant
+centuries and foreign nations. We are everywhere at home except at home.
+We do ourselves the justice to allow that the present mode of dressing,
+forms of politeness, &c., are altogether unpoetical, and art is therefore
+obliged to beg, as an alms, a poetical costume from the antiquaries. To
+that simple way of thinking, which is merely attentive to the inward truth
+of the composition, without stumbling at anachronisms, or other external
+inconsistencies, we cannot, alas! now return; but we must envy the poets
+to whom it offered itself; it allowed them a great breadth and freedom in
+the handling of their subject.
+
+Many things in Shakspeare must be judged of according to the above
+principles, respecting the difference between the essential and the merely
+learned costume. They will also in their measure admit of an application
+to Calderon.
+
+So much with respect to the spirit of the age in which Shakspeare lived,
+and his peculiar mental culture and knowledge. To me he appears a profound
+artist, and not a blind and wildly luxuriant genius. I consider, generally
+speaking, all that has been said on the subject a mere fable, a blind and
+extravagant error. In other arts the assertion refutes itself; for in them
+acquired knowledge is an indispensable condition of clever execution. But
+even in such poets, as are usually given out as careless pupils of nature,
+devoid of art or school discipline, I have always found, on a nearer
+consideration of the works of real excellence they may have produced, even
+a high cultivation of the mental powers, practice in art, and views both
+worthy in themselves and maturely considered. This applies to Homer as
+well as to Dante. The activity of genius is, it is true, natural to it,
+and, in a certain sense, unconscious; and, consequently, the person who
+possesses it is not always at the moment able to render an account of the
+course which he may have pursued; but it by no means follows, that the
+thinking power had not a great share in it. It is from the very rapidity
+and certainty of the mental process, from the utmost clearness of
+understanding, that thinking in a poet is not perceived as something
+abstracted, does not wear the appearance of reflex meditation. That notion
+of poetical inspiration, which many lyrical poets have brought into
+circulation, as if they were not in their senses, and like Pythia, when
+possessed by the divinity, delivered oracles unintelligible to themselves
+--this notion, (a mere lyrical invention,) is least of all applicable to
+dramatic composition, one of the most thoughtful productions of the human
+mind. It is admitted that Shakspeare has reflected, and deeply reflected,
+on character and passion, on the progress of events and human destinies,
+on the human constitution, on all the things and relations of the world;
+this is an admission which must be made, for one alone of thousands of his
+maxims would be a sufficient refutation of whoever should attempt to deny
+it. So that it was only for the structure of his own pieces that he had no
+thought to spare? This he left to the dominion of chance, which blew
+together the atoms of Epicurus. But supposing that, devoid of any higher
+ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and
+wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the
+perfection of its works, he had merely laboured to please the unlettered
+crowd; still this very object alone and the pursuit of theatrical effect,
+would have led him to bestow attention to the structure and adherence of
+his pieces. For does not the impression of a drama depend in an especial
+manner on the relation of the parts to each other? And, however beautiful
+a scene may be in itself, if yet it be at variance with what the
+spectators have been led to expect in its particular place, so as to
+destroy the interest which they had hitherto felt, will it not be at once
+reprobated by all who possess plain common sense, and give themselves up
+to nature? The comic intermixtures may be considered merely as a sort of
+interlude, designed to relieve the straining of the mind after the stretch
+of the more serious parts, so long as no better purpose can be found in
+them; but in the progress of the main action, in the concatenation of the
+events, the poet must, if possible, display even more expenditure of
+thought than in the composition of individual character and situations,
+otherwise he would be like the conductor of a puppet-show who has
+entangled his wires, so that the puppets receive from their mechanism
+quite different movements from those which he actually intended.
+
+The English critics are unanimous in their praise of the truth and uniform
+consistency of his characters, of his heartrending pathos, and his comic
+wit. Moreover, they extol the beauty and sublimity of his separate
+descriptions, images, and expressions. This last is the most superficial
+and cheap mode of criticising works of art. Johnson compares him who
+should endeavour to recommend this poet by passages unconnectedly torn
+from his works, to the pedant in Hierocles, who exhibited a brick as a
+sample of his house. And yet how little, and how very unsatisfactorily
+does he himself speak of the pieces considered as a whole! Let any man,
+for instance, bring together the short characters which he gives at the
+close of each play, and see if the aggregate will amount to that sum of
+admiration which he himself, at his outset, has stated as the correct
+standard for the appreciation of the poet. It was, generally speaking, the
+prevailing tendency of the time which preceded our own, (and which has
+showed itself particularly in physical science,) to consider everything
+having life as a mere accumulation of dead parts, to separate what exists
+only in connexion and cannot otherwise be conceived, instead of
+penetrating to the central point and viewing all the parts as so many
+irradiations from it. Hence nothing is so rare as a critic who can elevate
+himself to the comprehensive contemplation of a work of art. Shakspeare's
+compositions, from the very depth of purpose displayed in them, have been
+especially liable to the misfortune of being misunderstood. Besides, this
+prosaic species of criticism requires always that the poetic form should
+he applied to the details of execution; but when the plan of the piece is
+concerned, it never looks for more than the logical connexion of causes
+and effects, or some partial and trite moral by way of application; and
+all that cannot be reconciled therewith is declared superfluous, or even a
+pernicious appendage. On these principles we must even strike out from the
+Greek tragedies most of the choral songs, which also contribute nothing to
+the development of the action, but are merely an harmonious echo of the
+impressions the poet aims at conveying. In this they altogether mistake
+the rights of poetry and the nature of the romantic drama, which, for the
+very reason that it is and ought to be picturesque, requires richer
+accompaniments and contrasts for its main groups. In all Art and Poetry,
+but more especially in the romantic, the Fancy lays claims to be
+considered as an independent mental power governed according to its own
+laws.
+
+In an essay on _Romeo and Juliet_, [Footnote: In the first volume of
+_Charakteristiken und Kritiken_, published by my brother and myself.]
+written a number of years ago, I went through the whole of the scenes in
+their order, and demonstrated the inward necessity of each with reference
+to the whole; I showed why such a particular circle of characters and
+relations was placed around the two lovers; I explained the signification
+of the mirth here and there scattered, and justified the use of the
+occasional heightening given to the poetical colours. From all this
+it seemed to follow unquestionably, that with the exception of a few
+witticisms, now become unintelligible or foreign to the present taste,
+(imitations of the tone of society of that day,) nothing could be taken
+away, nothing added, nothing otherwise arranged, without mutilating and
+disfiguring the perfect work. I would readily undertake to do the same for
+all the pieces of Shakspeare's maturer years, but to do this would require
+a separate book. Here I am reduced to confine my observations to the
+tracing his great designs with a rapid pencil; but still I must previously
+be allowed to deliver my sentiments in a general manner on the subject of
+his most eminent peculiarities.
+
+Shakspeare's knowledge of mankind has become proverbial: in this his
+superiority is so great, that he has justly been called the master of the
+human heart. A readiness to remark the mind's fainter and involuntary
+utterances, and the power to express with certainty the meaning of these
+signs, as determined by experience and reflection, constitutes "the
+observer of men;" but tacitly to draw from these still further
+conclusions, and to arrange the separate observations according to grounds
+of probability, into a just and valid combination, this, it may be said,
+is to know men. The distinguishing property of the dramatic poet who is
+great in characterization, is something altogether different here, and
+which, (take it which way we will,) either includes in it this readiness
+and this acuteness, or dispenses with both. It is the capability of
+transporting himself so completely into every situation, even the most
+unusual, that he is enabled, as plenipotentiary of the whole human race,
+without particular instructions for each separate case, to act and speak
+in the name of every individual. It is the power of endowing the creatures
+of his imagination with such self-existent energy, that they afterwards
+act in each conjuncture according to general laws of nature: the poet, in
+his dreams, institutes, as it were, experiments which are received with as
+much authority as if they had been made on waking objects. The
+inconceivable element herein, and what moreover can never be learned, is,
+that the characters appear neither to do nor to say any thing on the
+spectator's account merely; and yet that the poet simply, by means of the
+exhibition, and without any subsidiary explanation, communicates to his
+audience the gift of looking into the inmost recesses of their minds.
+Hence Goethe has ingeniously compared Shakspeare's characters to watches
+with crystalline plates and cases, which, while they point out the hours
+as correctly as other watches, enable us at the same time to perceive the
+inward springs whereby all this is accomplished.
+
+Nothing, however, is more foreign to Shakspeare than a certain anatomical
+style of exhibition, which laboriously enumerates all the motives by which
+a man is determined to act in this or that particular manner. This rage of
+supplying motives, the mania of so many modern historians, might be
+carried at length to an extent which would abolish every thing like
+individuality, and resolve all character into nothing but the effect of
+foreign or external, influences whereas we know that it often announces
+itself most decidedly in earliest infancy. After all, a man acts so
+because he is so. And what each man is, that Shakspeare reveals to us most
+immediately: he demands and obtains our belief, even for what is singular
+and deviates from the ordinary course of nature. Never perhaps was there
+so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakspeare. It not only
+grasps every diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of
+infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket,
+the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness; not only
+does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray
+with the greatest accuracy (a few apparent violations of costume excepted)
+the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in the wars with the
+English, of the English themselves during a great part of their history,
+of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of many comedies), the
+cultivated society of the day, and the rude barbarism of a Norman fore-
+time; his human characters have not only such depth and individuality that
+they do not admit of being classed under common names, and are
+inexhaustible even in conception: no, this Prometheus not merely forms
+men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits, calls up the
+midnight ghost, exhibits before us the witches with their unhallowed
+rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings,
+though existing only in the imagination, nevertheless possess such truth
+and consistency, that even with such misshapen abortions as Caliban, he
+extorts the assenting conviction, that were there such beings they would
+so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries a bold and pregnant fancy
+into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he carries nature into the
+regions of fancy, which lie beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in
+astonishment at the close intimacy he brings us into with the
+extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard-of.
+
+Pope and Johnson appear strangely to contradict each other, when the first
+says, "all the characters of Shakspeare are individuals," and the second,
+"they are species." And yet perhaps these opinions may admit of
+reconciliation. Pope's expression is unquestionably the more correct. A
+character which should be merely a personification of a naked general idea
+could neither exhibit any great depth nor any great variety. The names of
+genera and species are well known to be merely auxiliaries for the
+understanding, that we may embrace the infinite variety of nature in a
+certain order. The characters which Shakspeare has so thoroughly
+delineated have undoubtedly a number of individual peculiarities, but at
+the same time they possess a significance which is not applicable to them
+alone: they generally supply materials for a profound theory of their most
+prominent and distinguishing property. But even with the above correction,
+this opinion must still have its limitations. Characterization is merely
+one ingredient of the dramatic art, and not dramatic poetry itself. It
+would be improper in the extreme, if the poet were to draw our attention
+to superfluous traits of character, at a time when it ought to be his
+endeavour to produce other impressions. Whenever the musical or the
+fanciful preponderates, the characteristical necessarily falls into the
+background. Hence many of the figures of Shakspeare exhibit merely
+external designations, determined by the place which they occupy in the
+whole: they are like secondary persons in a public procession, to whose
+physiognomy we seldom pay much attention; their only importance is derived
+from the solemnity of their dress and the duty in which they are engaged.
+Shakspeare's messengers, for instance, are for the most part mere
+messengers, and yet not common, but poetical messengers: the messages
+which they have to bring is the soul which suggests to them their
+language. Other voices, too, are merely raised to pour forth these as
+melodious lamentations or rejoicings, or to dwell in reflection on what
+has taken place; and in a serious drama without chorus this must always be
+more or less the case, if we would not have it prosaical.
+
+If Shakspeare deserves our admiration for his characters, he is equally
+deserving of it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its
+widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone,
+from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He
+gives us the history of minds; he lays open to us, in a single word, a
+whole series of their anterior states. His passions do not stand at the
+same height, from first to last, as is the case with so many tragic poets,
+who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style
+of love. He paints, with inimitable veracity, the gradual advance from the
+first origin; "he gives," as Lessing says, "a living picture of all the
+slight and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls, of
+all the imperceptible advantages which it there gains, of all the
+stratagems by which it makes every other passion subservient to itself,
+till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions." Of all
+the poets, perhaps, he alone has portrayed the mental diseases,
+melancholy, delirium, lunacy, with such inexpressible and, in every
+respect, definite truth, that the physician may enrich his observations
+from them in the same manner as from real cases.
+
+And yet Johnson has objected to Shakspeare that his pathos is not always
+natural and free from affectation. There are, it is true, passages, though
+comparatively speaking very few, where his poetry exceeds the bounds of
+actual dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a too luxuriant wit,
+rendered a complete dramatic forgetfulness of himself impossible. With
+this exception, the censure originated in a fanciless way of thinking, to
+which everything appears unnatural that does not consort with its own tame
+insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos,
+which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery and nowise elevated
+above every-day life. But energetical passions electrify all the mental
+powers, and will consequently, in highly-favoured natures, give utterance
+to themselves in ingenious and figurative expressions. It has been often
+remarked that indignation makes a man witty; and as despair occasionally
+breaks out into laughter, it may sometimes also give vent to itself in
+antithetical comparisons.
+
+Besides, the rights of the poetical form have not been duly weighed.
+Shakspeare, who was always sure of his power to excite, when he wished,
+sufficiently powerful emotions, has occasionally, by indulging in a freer
+play of fancy, purposely tempered the impressions when too painful, and
+immediately introduced a musical softening of our sympathy. [Footnote: A
+contemporary of the poet, the author of the already-noticed poem,
+(subscribed I. M. S.,) tenderly felt this while he says--
+  Yet so to temper passion, that our ears
+  Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears
+  Both smile and weep.] He had not those rude ideas of his art which many
+moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must
+strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution
+against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said,
+dries so soon as tears; and Shakspeare acted conformably to this ingenious
+maxim without having learned it. The paradoxical assertion of Johnson that
+"Shakspeare had a greater talent for comedy than tragedy, and that in the
+latter he has frequently displayed an affected tone," is scarcely
+deserving of lengthy notice. For its refutation, it is unnecessary to
+appeal to the great tragical compositions of the poet, which, for
+overpowering effect, leave far behind them almost everything that the
+stage has seen besides; a few of their less celebrated scenes would be
+quite sufficient. What to many readers might lend an appearance of truth
+to this assertion are the verbal witticisms, that playing upon words,
+which Shakspeare not unfrequently introduces into serious and sublime
+passages, and even into those also of a peculiarly pathetic nature.
+
+I have already stated the point of view in which we ought to consider this
+sportive play upon words. I shall here, therefore, merely deliver a few
+observations respecting the playing upon words in general, and its
+poetical use. A thorough investigation would lead us too far from our
+subject, and too deeply into considerations on the essence of language,
+and its relation to poetry, or rhyme, &c.
+
+There is in the human mind a desire that language should exhibit the
+object which it denotes, sensibly, by its very sound, which may be traced
+even as far back as in the first origin of poetry. As, in the shape in
+which language comes down to us, this is seldom perceptibly the case, an
+imagination which has been powerfully excited is fond of laying hold of
+any congruity in sound which may accidentally offer itself, that by such
+means he may, for the nonce, restore the lost resemblance between the word
+and the thing. For example, How common was it and is it to seek in the
+name of a person, however arbitrarily bestowed, a reference to his
+qualities and fortunes,--to convert it purposely into a significant name.
+Those who cry out against the play upon words as an unnatural and affected
+invention, only betray their own ignorance of original nature. A great
+fondness for it is always evinced among children, as well as with nations
+of simple manners, among whom correct ideas of the derivation and affinity
+of words have not yet been developed, and do not, consequently, stand in
+the way of this caprice. In Homer we find several examples of it; the
+Books of Moses, the oldest written memorial of the primitive world, are,
+as is well known, full of them. On the other hand, poets of a very
+cultivated taste, like Petrarch, or orators, like Cicero, have delighted
+in them. Whoever, in _Richard the Second_, is disgusted with the affecting
+play of words of the dying John of Gaunt on his own name, should remember
+that the same thing occurs in the _Ajax_ of Sophocles. We do not mean to
+say that all playing upon words is on all occasions to be justified. This
+must depend on the disposition of mind, whether it will admit of such a
+play of fancy, and whether the sallies, comparisons, and allusions, which
+lie at the bottom of them, possess internal solidity. Yet we must not
+proceed upon the principle of trying how the thought appears after it is
+deprived of the resemblance in sound, any more than we are to endeavour to
+feel the charm of rhymed versification after depriving it of its rhyme.
+The laws of good taste on this subject must, moreover, vary with the
+quality of the languages. In those which possess a great number of
+homonymes, that is, words possessing the same, or nearly the same,
+sound, though quite different in their derivation and signification, it is
+almost more difficult to avoid, than to fall on such a verbal play. It
+has, however, been feared, lest a door might be opened to puerile
+witticism, if they were not rigorously proscribed. But I cannot, for my
+part, find that Shakspeare had such an invincible and immoderate passion
+for this verbal witticism. It is true, he sometimes makes a most lavish
+use of this figure; at others, he has employed it very sparingly; and at
+times (for example, in _Macbeth_), I do not believe a vestige of it
+is to be found. Hence, in respect to the use or the rejection of the play
+upon words, he must have been guided by the measure of the objects, and
+the different style in which they required to be treated, and probably
+have followed here, as in every thing else, principles which, fairly
+examined, will bear a strict examination.
+
+The objection that Shakspeare wounds our feelings by the open display of
+the most disgusting moral odiousness, unmercifully harrows up the mind,
+and tortures even our eyes by the exhibition of the most insupportable and
+hateful spectacles, is one of greater and graver importance. He has, in
+fact, never varnished over wild and blood-thirsty passions with a pleasing
+exterior--never clothed crime and want of principle with a false show of
+greatness of soul; and in that respect he is every way deserving of
+praise. Twice he has portrayed downright villains, and the masterly way in
+which he has contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature may be
+seen in Iago and Richard the Third. I allow that the reading, and still
+more the sight, of some of his pieces, is not advisable to weak nerves,
+any more than was the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus; but is the poet, who
+can only reach an important object by a bold and hazardous daring, to be
+checked by considerations for such persons? If the effeminacy of the
+present day is to serve as a general standard of what tragical composition
+may properly exhibit to human nature, we shall be forced to set very
+narrow limits indeed to art, and the hope of anything like powerful effect
+must at once and for ever be renounced. If we wish to have a grand
+purpose, we must also wish to have the grand means, and our nerves ought
+in some measure to accommodate themselves to painful impressions, if, by
+way of requital, our mind is thereby elevated and strengthened. The
+constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of
+the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakspeare lived in an age extremely
+susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had yet inherited
+enough of the firmness of a vigorous olden time, not to shrink with dismay
+from every strong and forcible painting. We have lived to see tragedies of
+which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured princess: if
+Shakspeare falls occasionally into the opposite extreme, it is a noble
+error, originating in the fulness of a gigantic strength. And this
+tragical Titan, who storms the heavens and threatens to tear the world
+from off its hinges, who, more terrible than Aeschylus, makes our hair to
+stand on end, and congeals our blood with horror, possessed at the same
+time the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poesy; he toys with love
+like a child, and his songs die away on the ear like melting sighs. He
+unites in his soul the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most
+opposite and even apparently irreconcilable properties subsist in him
+peaceably together. The world of spirits and nature have laid all their
+treasures at his feet: in strength a demi-god, in profundity of view a
+prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a guardian spirit of a higher order, he
+lowers himself to mortals as if unconscious of his superiority, and is as
+open and unassuming as a child.
+
+If the delineation of all his characters, separately considered, is
+inimitably bold and correct, he surpasses even himself in so combining and
+contrasting them, that they serve to bring out each other's peculiarities.
+This is the very perfection of dramatic characterization: for we can never
+estimate a man's true worth if we consider him altogether abstractedly by
+himself; we must see him in his relations with others; and it is here that
+most dramatic poets are deficient. Shakspeare makes each of his principal
+characters the glass in which the others are reflected, and by like means
+enables us to discover what could not be immediately revealed to us. What
+in others is most profound, is with him but surface. Ill-advised should we
+be were we always to take men's declarations respecting themselves and
+others for sterling coin. Ambiguity of design with much propriety he makes
+to overflow with the most praiseworthy principles; and sage maxims are not
+unfrequently put in the mouth of stupidity, to show how easily such
+common-place truisms may be acquired. Nobody ever painted so truthfully as
+he has done the facility of self-deception, the half self-conscious
+hypocrisy towards ourselves, with which even noble minds attempt to
+disguise the almost inevitable influence of selfish motives in human
+nature. This secret irony of the characterization commands admiration as
+the profound abyss of acuteness and sagacity; but it is the grave of
+enthusiasm. We arrive at it only after we have had the misfortune to see
+human nature through and through; and when no choice remains but to adopt
+the melancholy truth, that "no virtue or greatness is altogether pure and
+genuine," or the dangerous error that "the highest perfection is
+attainable." Here we therefore may perceive in the poet himself,
+notwithstanding his power to excite the most fervent emotions, a certain
+cool indifference, but still the indifference of a superior mind, which
+has run through the whole sphere of human existence and survived feeling.
+
+The irony in Shakspeare has not merely a reference to the separate
+characters, but frequently to the whole of the action. Most poets who
+pourtray human events in a narrative or dramatic form take themselves a
+part, and exact from their readers a blind approbation or condemnation of
+whatever side they choose to support or oppose. The more zealous this
+rhetoric is, the more certainly it fails of its effect. In every case we
+are conscious that the subject itself is not brought immediately before
+us, but that we view it through the medium of a different way of thinking.
+When, however, by a dexterous manoeuvre, the poet allows us an occasional
+glance at the less brilliant reverse of the medal, then he makes, as it
+were, a sort of secret understanding with the select circle of the more
+intelligent of his readers or spectators; he shows them that he had
+previously seen and admitted the validity of their tacit objections; that
+he himself is not tied down to the represented subject, but soars freely
+above it; and that, if he chose, he could unrelentingly annihilate the
+beautiful and irresistibly attractive scenes which his magic pen has
+produced. No doubt, wherever the proper tragic enters every thing like
+irony immediately ceases; but from the avowed raillery of Comedy, to the
+point where the subjection of mortal beings to an inevitable destiny
+demands the highest degree of seriousness, there are a multitude of human
+relations which unquestionably may be considered in an ironical view,
+without confounding the eternal line of separation between good and evil.
+This purpose is answered by the comic characters and scenes which are
+interwoven with the serious parts in most of those pieces of Shakspeare
+where romantic fables or historical events are made the subject of a noble
+and elevating exhibition. Frequently an intentional parody of the serious
+part is not to be mistaken in them; at other times the connexion is more
+arbitrary and loose, and the more so the more marvellous the invention of
+the whole, and the more entirely it is become a light revelling of the
+fancy. The comic intervals everywhere serve to prevent the pastime from
+being converted into a business, to preserve the mind in the possession of
+its serenity, and to keep off that gloomy and inert seriousness which so
+easily steals upon the sentimental, but not tragical, drama. Most
+assuredly Shakspeare did not intend thereby, in defiance to his own better
+judgment, to humour the taste of the multitude: for in various pieces, and
+throughout considerable portions of others, and especially when the
+catastrophe is approaching, and the mind consequently is more on the
+stretch and no longer likely to give heed to any amusement which would
+distract their attention, he has abstained from all such comic
+intermixtures. It was also an object with him, that the clowns or buffoons
+should not occupy a more important place than that which he had assigned
+them: he expressly condemns the extemporizing with which they love to
+enlarge their parts [Footnote: In Hamlet's directions to the players. Act
+iii, sc. 2.]. Johnson founds the justification of the species of drama in
+which seriousness and mirth admixed, on this, that in real life the vulgar
+is found close to the sublime, that the merry and the sad usually
+accompany and succeed one another. But it does not follow that because
+both are found together, therefore they must not be separable in the
+compositions of art. The observation is in other respects just, and this
+circumstance invests the poet with a power to adopt this procedure,
+because every thing in the drama must be regulated by the conditions of
+theatrical probability; but the mixture of such dissimilar, and apparently
+contradictory, ingredients, in the same works, can only be justifiable on
+principles reconcilable with the views of art, which I have already
+described. In the dramas of Shakspeare the comic scenes are the
+antechamber of the poetry, where the servants remain; these prosaic
+attendants must not raise their voices so high as to deafen the speakers
+in the presence-chamber; however, in those intervals when the ideal
+society has retired they deserve to be listened to; their bold raillery,
+their presumption of mockery, may afford many an insight into the
+situation and circumstances of their masters.
+
+Shakspeare's comic talent is equally wonderful with that which he has
+shown in the pathetic and tragic: it stands on an equal elevation, and
+possesses equal extent and profundity; in all that I have hitherto said, I
+only wished to guard against admitting that the former preponderated. He
+is highly inventive in comic situations and motives: it will be hardly
+possible to show whence he has taken any of them, whereas, in the serious
+part of his dramas, he has generally laid hold of some well-known story.
+His comic characterization is equally true, various, and profound, with
+his serious. So little is he disposed to caricature, that rather, it may
+be said, many of his traits are almost too nice and delicate for the
+stage, that they can only be made available by a great actor, and fully
+understood by an acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of
+folly, but even of sheer stupidity has he contrived to give a most
+diverting and entertaining picture. There is also in his pieces a peculiar
+species of the farcical, which apparently seems to be introduced more
+arbitrarily, but which, however, is founded on imitation of some actual
+custom. This is the introduction of the merry-maker, the fool with his cap
+and bells, and motley dress, called more commonly in England _Clown_,
+who appears in several comedies, though not in all, but of the tragedies
+in _Lear_ alone, and who generally merely exercises his wit in
+conversation with the principal persons, though he is also sometimes
+incorporated into the action. In those times it was not only usual for
+princes to have their court fools, but many distinguished families, among
+their other retainers, kept such an exhilarating housemate as a good
+antidote against the insipidity and wearisomeness of ordinary life, and as
+a welcome interruption of established formalities. Great statesmen, and
+even ecclesiastics, did not consider it beneath their dignity to recruit
+and solace themselves after important business with the conversation of
+their fools; the celebrated Sir Thomas More had his fool painted along
+with himself by Holbein. Shakspeare appears to have lived immediately
+before the time when the custom began to be abolished; in the English
+comic authors who succeeded him the clown is no longer to be found. The
+dismissal of the fool has been extolled as a proof of refinement; and our
+honest forefathers have been pitied for taking delight in such a coarse
+and farcical amusement. For my part, I am rather disposed to believe, that
+the practice was dropped from the difficulty in finding fools able to do
+full justice to their parts: [Footnote: See Hamlet's praise of Yorick. In
+_The Twelfth Night_, Viola says:--
+  This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,
+  And to do that well craves a kind of wit;
+  He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
+  The quality of the persons, and the time;
+  And like the haggard, check at every feather
+  That comes before his eye. This is a practice
+  As full of labour as a wise man's art:
+  For folly that he wisely shows if fit,
+  But wise mens' folly fall'n quite taints their wit.--AUTHOR.
+The passages from Shakspeare, in the original work, are given from the
+author's masterly translation. We may be allowed, however, to observe that
+the last line--
+  "Doch wozu ist des Weisen Thorheit nutz?"
+literally, _Of what use is the folly of the wise?_--does not convey
+the exact meaning of Shakespeare.--TRANS.] on the other hand, reason, with
+all its conceit of itself, has become too timid to tolerate such bold
+irony; it is always careful lest the mantle of its gravity should be
+disturbed in any of its folds; and rather than allow a privileged place to
+folly beside itself, it has unconsciously assumed the part of the
+ridiculous; but, alas! a heavy and cheerless ridicule. [Footnote: "Since
+the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise
+men have makes a greater show."--_As You Like It_. Act i., sc. 2.] It
+would be easy to make a collection of the excellent sallies and biting
+sarcasms which have been preserved of celebrated court fools. It is well
+known that they frequently told such truths to princes as are never now
+told to them. [Footnote: Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, is known to have
+frequently boasted that he wished to rival Hannibal as the greatest
+general of all ages. After his defeat at Granson, his fool accompanied him
+in his hurried flight, and exclaimed, "Ah, your Grace, they have for once
+Hanniballed us!" If the Duke had given an ear to this warning raillery, he
+would not so soon afterwards have come to a disgraceful end.] Shakspeare's
+fools, along with somewhat of an overstraining for wit, which cannot
+altogether be avoided when wit becomes a separate profession, have for the
+most part an incomparable humour, and an infinite abundance of intellect,
+enough indeed to supply a whole host of ordinary wise men.
+
+I have still a few observations to make on the diction and versification
+of our poet. The language is here and there somewhat obsolete, but on the
+whole much less so than in most of the contemporary writers, a sufficient
+proof of the goodness of his choice. Prose had as yet been but little
+cultivated, as the learned generally wrote in Latin: a favourable
+circumstance for the dramatic poet; for what has he to do with the
+scientific language of books? He had not only read, but studied the
+earlier English poets; but he drew his language immediately from life
+itself, and he possessed a masterly skill in blending the dialogical
+element with the highest poetical elevation. I know not what certain
+critics mean, when they say that Shakspeare is frequently ungrammatical.
+To make good their assertion, they must prove that similar constructions
+never occur in his contemporaries, the direct contrary of which can,
+however, be easily shown. In no language is every thing determined on
+principle; much is always left to the caprice of custom, and if this has
+since changed, is the poet to be made answerable for it? The English
+language had not then attained to that correct insipidity which has been
+introduced into the more recent literature of the country, to the
+prejudice, perhaps, of its originality. As a field when first brought
+under the plough produces, along with the fruitful shoots, many luxuriant
+weeds, so the poetical diction of the day ran occasionally into
+extravagance, but an extravagance originating in the exuberance of its
+vigour. We may still perceive traces of awkwardness, but nowhere of a
+laboured and spiritless display of art. In general Shakspeare's style yet
+remains the very best model, both in the vigorous and sublime, and the
+pleasing and tender. In his sphere he has exhausted all the means and
+appliances of language. On all he has impressed the stamp of his mighty
+spirit. His images and figures, in their unsought, nay, uncapricious
+singularity, have often a sweetness altogether peculiar. He becomes
+occasionally obscure from too great fondness for compressed brevity; but
+still, the labour of poring over Shakspeare's lines will invariably meet
+an ample requital.
+
+The verse in all his plays is generally the rhymeless Iambic of ten or
+eleven syllables, occasionally only intermixed with rhymes, but more
+frequently alternating with prose. No one piece is written entirely in
+prose; for even in those which approach the most to the pure Comedy, there
+is always something added which gives them a more poetical hue than
+usually belongs to this species. Many scenes are wholly in prose, in
+others verse and prose succeed each other alternately. This can only
+appear an impropriety in the eyes of those who are accustomed to consider
+the lines of a drama like so many soldiers drawn up rank and file on a
+parade, with the same uniform, arms, and accoutrements, so that when we
+see one or two we may represent to ourselves thousands as being every way
+like them.
+
+In the use of verse and prose Shakspeare observes very nice distinctions
+according to the ranks of the speakers, but still more according to their
+characters and disposition of mind. A noble language, elevated above the
+usual tone, is only suitable to a certain decorum of manners, which is
+thrown over both vices and virtues, and which does not even wholly
+disappear amidst the violence of passion. If this is not exclusively
+possessed by the higher ranks, it still, however, belongs naturally more
+to them than to the lower; and therefore in Shakspeare dignity and
+familiarity of language, poetry, and prose, are in this manner distributed
+among the characters. Hence his tradesmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors,
+servants, but more especially his fools and clowns, speak almost without
+exception, in the tone of their actual life. However, inward dignity of
+sentiment, wherever it is possessed, invariably displays itself with a
+nobleness of its own, and stands not in need, for that end, of the
+artificial elegancies of education and custom; it is a universal right of
+man, of the highest as well as the lowest; and hence also, in Shakspeare,
+the nobility of nature and morality is ennobled above the artificial
+nobility of society. Not unfrequently also he makes the very same persons
+express themselves at times in the sublimest language, and at others in
+the lowest; and this inequality is in like manner founded in truth.
+Extraordinary situations, which intensely occupy the head and throw mighty
+passions into play, give elevation and tension to the soul: it collects
+together all its powers, and exhibits an unusual energy, both in its
+operations and in its communications by language. On the other hand, even
+the greatest men have their moments of remissness, when to a certain
+degree they forget the dignity of their character in unreserved
+relaxation. This very tone of mind is necessary before they can receive
+amusement from the jokes of others, or what surely cannot dishonour even a
+hero, from passing jokes themselves. Let any person, for example, go
+carefully through the part of Hamlet. How bold and powerful the language
+of his poetry when he conjures the ghost of his father, when he spurs
+himself on to the bloody deed, when he thunders into the soul of his
+mother! How he lowers his tone down to that of common life, when he has to
+do with persons whose station demands from him such a line of conduct;
+when he makes game of Polonius and the courtiers, instructs the player,
+and even enters into the jokes of the grave-digger. Of all the poet's
+serious leading characters there is none so rich in wit and humour as
+Hamlet; hence he it is of all of them that makes the greatest use of the
+familiar style. Others, again, never do fall into it; either because they
+are constantly surrounded by the pomp of rank, or because a uniform
+seriousness is natural to them; or, in short, because through the whole
+piece they are under the dominion of a passion, calculated to excite, and
+not, like the sorrow of Hamlet, to depress the mind. The choice of the one
+form or the other is everywhere so appropriate, and so much founded in the
+nature of the thing, that I will venture to assert, even where the poet in
+the very same speech makes the speaker leave prose for poetry, or the
+converse, this could not be altered without danger of injuring or
+destroying some beauty or other. The blank verse has this advantage, that
+its tone may be elevated or lowered; it admits of approximation to the
+familiar style of conversation, and never forms such an abrupt contrast as
+that, for example, between plain prose and the rhyming Alexandrines.
+
+Shakspeare's Iambics are sometimes highly harmonious and full sounding;
+always varied and suitable to the subject, at one time distinguished by
+ease and rapidity, at another they move along with ponderous energy. They
+never fall out of the dialogical character, which may always be traced
+even in the continued discourses of individuals, excepting when the latter
+run into the lyrical. They are a complete model of the dramatic use of
+this species of verse, which, in English, since Milton, has been also used
+in epic poetry; but in the latter it has assumed a quite different turn.
+Even the irregularities of Shakspeare's versification are expressive; a
+verse broken off, or a sudden change of rhythmus, coincides with some
+pause in the progress of the thought, or the entrance of another mental
+disposition. As a proof that he purposely violated the mechanical rules,
+from a conviction that too symmetrical a versification does not suit with
+the drama, and on the stage has in the long run a tendency to lull the
+spectators asleep, we may observe that his earlier pieces are the most
+diligently versified, and that in the later works, when through practice
+he must have acquired a greater facility, we find the strongest deviations
+from the regular structure of the verse. As it served with him merely to
+make the poetical elevation perceptible, he therefore claimed the utmost
+possible freedom in the use of it.
+
+The views or suggestions of feeling by which he was guided in the use of
+rhyme may likewise be traced with almost equal certainty. Not unfrequently
+scenes, or even single speeches, close with a few rhyming lines, for the
+purpose of more strongly marking the division, and of giving it more
+rounding. This was injudiciously imitated by the English tragic poets of a
+later date; they suddenly elevated the tone in the rhymed lines, as if the
+person began all at once to speak in another language. The practice was
+welcomed by the actors from its serving as a signal for clapping when they
+made their exit. In Shakspeare, on the other hand, the transitions are
+more easy: all changes of forms are brought about insensibly, and as if of
+themselves. Moreover, he is generally fond of heightening a series of
+ingenious and antithetical sayings by the use of rhyme. We find other
+passages in continued rhyme, where solemnity and theatrical pomp were
+suitable, as, for instance, in the mask, [Footnote: I shall take the
+opportunity of saying a few words respecting this species of drama when I
+come to speak of Ben Jonson.] as it is called, _The Tempest_, and in
+the play introduced in _Hamlet_. Of other pieces, for instance, the
+_Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _Romeo and Juliet_, the rhymes form a
+considerable part; either because he may have wished to give them a
+glowing colour, or because the characters appropriately utter in a more
+musical tone their complaints or suits of love. In these cases he has even
+introduced rhymed strophes, which approach to the form of the sonnet, then
+usual in England. The assertion of Malone, that Shakspeare in his youth
+was fond of rhyme, but that he afterwards rejected it, is sufficiently
+refuted by his own chronology of the poet's works. In some of the
+earliest, for instance, in the Second and Third Part of _Henry the
+Sixth_, there are hardly any rhymes; in what is stated to be his last
+piece, _The Twelfth Night, or What You Will_, and in _Macbeth_, which is
+proved to have been composed under the reign of King James, we find them
+in no inconsiderable number. Even in the secondary matters of form
+Shakspeare was not guided by humour and accident, but, like a genuine
+artist, acted invariably on good and solid grounds. This we might also
+show of the kinds of verse which he least frequently used; for instance,
+if the rhyming verses of seven and eight syllables, were we not afraid of
+dwelling too long on merely technical peculiarities.
+
+In England the manner of handling rhyming verse, and the opinion as to its
+harmony and elegance, have, in the course of two centuries, undergone a
+much greater change than is the case with the rhymeless Iambic or blank
+verse. In the former, Dryden and Pope have become models; these writers
+have communicated the utmost smoothing to rhyme, but they have also tied
+it down to a harmonious uniformity. A foreigner, to whom antiquated and
+new are the same, may perhaps feel with greater freedom the advantages of
+the more ancient manner. Certain it is, the rhyme of the present day, from
+the too great confinement of the couplet, is unfit for the drama. We must
+not estimate the rhyme of Shakspeare by the mode of subsequent times, but
+by a comparison with his contemporaries or with Spenser. The comparison
+will, without doubt, turn out to his advantage. Spenser is often diffuse;
+Shakspeare, though sometimes hard, is always brief and vigorous. He has
+more frequently been induced by the rhyme to leave out something necessary
+than to insert anything superfluous. Many of his rhymes, however, are
+faultless: ingenious with attractive ease, and rich without false
+brilliancy. The songs interspersed (those, I mean, of the poet himself)
+are generally sweetly playful and altogether musical; in imagination,
+while we merely read them, we hear their melody.
+
+The whole of Shakspeare's productions bear the certain stamp of his
+original genius, but yet no writer was ever farther removed from every
+thing like a mannerism derived from habit or personal peculiarities.
+Rather is he, such is the diversity of tone and colour, which varies
+according to the quality of his subjects he assumes, a very Proteus. Each
+of his compositions is like a world of its own, moving in its own sphere.
+They are works of art, finished in one pervading style, which revealed the
+freedom and judicious choice of their author. If the formation of a work
+throughout, even in its minutest parts, in conformity with a leading idea;
+if the domination of one animating spirit over all the means of execution,
+deserves the name of correctness (and this, excepting in matters of
+grammar, is the only proper sense of the term); we shall then, after
+allowing to Shakspeare all the higher qualities which demand our
+admiration, be also compelled, in most cases, to concede to him the title
+of a correct poet.
+
+It would be in the highest degree instructive to follow, if we could, in
+his career step by step, an author who at once founded and carried his art
+to perfection, and to go through his works in the order of time. But, with
+the exception of a few fixed points, which at length have been obtained,
+all the necessary materials for this are still wanting. The diligent
+Malone has, indeed, made an attempt to arrange the plays of Shakspeare in
+chronological order; but he himself only gives out the result of his
+labours for hypothetical, and it could not possibly be attended with
+complete success, since he excluded from his inquiry a considerable number
+of pieces which have been ascribed to the poet, though rejected as
+spurious by all the editors since Rowe, but which, in my opinion, must, if
+not wholly, at least in great measure be attributed to him. [Footnote:
+Were this book destined immediately for an English public, I should not
+have hazarded an opinion like this at variance with that which is
+generally received, without supporting it by proofs. The inquiry, however,
+is too extensive for our present limits, and I have therefore reserved it
+for a separate treatise. Besides at the present moment, while I am putting
+the last hand to my Lectures, no collection of English books but my own is
+accessible to me. The latter I should have enlarged with a view to this
+object, if the interruption of intercourse with England had not rendered
+it impossible to procure any other than the most common English books. On
+this point, therefore, I must request indulgence. In an Appendix to this
+Lecture I shall merely make a few cursory observations.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+Criticisms on Shakspeare's Comedies.
+
+
+The best and easiest mode of reviewing Shakspeare's dramas will be to
+arrange them in classes. This, it must be owned, is merely a makeshift:
+several critics have declared that all Shakspeare's pieces substantially
+belong to the same species, although sometimes one ingredient, sometimes
+another, the musical or the characteristical, the invention of the
+wonderful or the imitation of the real, the pathetic or the comic,
+seriousness or irony, may preponderate in the mixture. Shakspeare himself,
+it would appear, did but laugh at the petty endeavours of critics to find
+out divisions and subdivisions of species, and to hedge in what had been
+so separated with the most anxious care; thus the pedantic Polonius in
+_Hamlet_ commends the players, for their knowledge of "tragedy, comedy,
+history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-
+historical, tragical-comical, historical-pastoral, scene-undividable, or
+poem unlimited." On another occasion he ridicules the limitation of
+Tragedy to an unfortunate catastrophe:
+
+  "And tragical, my noble lord, it is;
+For Pyramus therein doth kill himself."
+
+However the division into Comedies, Tragedies, and Historical Dramas,
+according to the usual practice, may in some measure be adopted, if we do
+not lose sight of the transitions and affinities. The subjects of the
+comedies are generally taken from novels: they are romantic love tales;
+none are altogether confined to the sphere of common or domestic
+relations: all of them possess poetical ornament, some of them run into
+the wonderful or the pathetic. With these two of his most famous tragedies
+are connected by an immediate link, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Othello_; both
+true novels, and composed on the same principles. In many of the
+historical plays a considerable space is occupied by the comic characters
+and scenes; others are serious throughout, and leave behind a tragical
+impression. The essential circumstance by which they are distinguished is,
+that the plot bears reference to a poetical and national interest. This is
+not equally the case in _Hamlet_, _Lear_, and _Macbeth_; and therefore it
+is that we do not include these tragedies among the historical pieces,
+though the first is founded on an old northern, the second on a national
+tradition; and the third comes even within the era of Scottish history,
+after it ceased to be fabulous.
+
+Among the comedies, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _The Taming of the
+Shrew_, and _The Comedy of Errors_, bear many traces of an early origin.
+_The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ paints the irresolution of love, and its
+infidelity to friendship, pleasantly enough, but in some degree
+superficially, we might almost say with the levity of mind which a passion
+suddenly entertained, and as suddenly given up, presupposes. The faithless
+lover is at last, on account of a very ambiguous repentance, forgiven
+without much difficulty by his first mistress; for the more serious part,
+the premeditated flight of the daughter of a Prince, the capture of her
+father along with herself by a band of robbers, of which one of the Two
+Gentlemen, the betrayed and banished friend, has been against his will
+elected captain: for all this a peaceful solution is soon found. It is as
+if the course of the world was obliged to accommodate itself to a
+transient youthful caprice, called love. Julia, who accompanies her
+faithless lover in the disguise of a page, is, as it were, a light sketch
+of the tender female figures of a Viola and an Imogen, who, in the latter
+pieces of Shakspeare, leave their home in similar disguises on love
+adventures, and to whom a peculiar charm is communicated by the display of
+the most virginly modesty in their hazardous and problematical situation.
+
+_The Comedy of Errors_ is the subject of the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus,
+entirely recast and enriched with new developments: of all the works of
+Shakspeare this is the only example of imitation of, or borrowing
+from, the ancients. To the two twin brothers of the same name are added
+two slaves, also twins, impossible to be distinguished from each other,
+and of the same name. The improbability becomes by this means doubled: but
+when once we have lent ourselves to the first, which certainly borders on
+the incredible, we shall not perhaps be disposed to cavil at the second;
+and if the spectator is to be entertained by mere perplexities they cannot
+be too much varied. In such pieces we must, to give to the senses at least
+an appearance of truth, always pre-suppose that the parts by which the
+misunderstandings are occasioned are played with masks, and this the poet
+no doubt observed. I cannot acquiesce in the censure that the discovery is
+too long deferred: so long as novelty and interest are possessed by the
+perplexing incidents, there is no need to be in dread of wearisomeness.
+And this is really the case here: matters are carried so far that one of
+the two brothers is first arrested for debt, then confined as a lunatic,
+and the other is forced to take refuge in a sanctuary to save his life. In
+a subject of this description it is impossible to steer clear of all sorts
+of low circumstances, abusive language, and blows; Shakspeare has however
+endeavoured to ennoble it in every possible way. A couple of scenes,
+dedicated to jealousy and love, interrupt the course of perplexities which
+are solely occasioned by the illusion of the external senses. A greater
+solemnity is given to the discovery, from the Prince presiding, and from
+the re-union of the long separated parents of the twins who are still
+alive. The exposition, by which the spectators are previously instructed
+while the characters themselves are still involved in ignorance, and which
+Plautus artlessly conveys in a prologue, is here masterly introduced in an
+affecting narrative by the father. In short, this is perhaps the best of
+all written or possible Menaechmi; and if the piece be inferior in worth
+to other pieces of Shakspeare, it is merely because nothing more could be
+made of the materials.
+
+_The Taming of the Shrew_ has the air of an Italian comedy; and indeed the
+love intrigue, which constitutes the main part of it, is derived mediately
+or immediately from a piece of Ariosto. The characters and passions are
+lightly sketched; the intrigue is introduced without much preparation, and
+in its rapid progress impeded by no sort of difficulties; while, in the
+manner in which Petruchio, though previously cautioned as to Katherine,
+still encounters the risks in marrying her, and contrives to tame her--in
+all this the character and peculiar humour of the English are distinctly
+visible. The colours are laid on somewhat coarsely, but the ground is
+good. That the obstinacy of a young and untamed girl, possessed of none of
+the attractions of her sex, and neither supported by bodily nor mental
+strength, must soon yield to the still rougher and more capricious but
+assumed self-will of a man: such a lesson can only be taught on the
+stage with all the perspicuity of a proverb.
+
+The prelude is still more remarkable than the play itself: a drunken
+tinker, removed in his sleep to a palace, where he is deceived into the
+belief of being a nobleman. The invention, however, is not Shakspeare's.
+Holberg has handled the same subject in a masterly manner, and with
+inimitable truth; but he has spun it out to five acts, for which such
+material is hardly sufficient. He probably did not borrow from the English
+dramatist, but like him took the hint from a popular story. There are
+several comic motives of this description, which go back to a very remote
+age, without ever becoming antiquated. Here, as well as everywhere else,
+Shakspeare has proved himself a great poet: the whole is merely a slight
+sketch, but in elegance and delicate propriety it will hardly ever be
+excelled. Neither has he overlooked the irony which the subject naturally
+suggested: the great lord, who is driven by idleness and ennui to deceive
+a poor drunkard, can make no better use of his situation than the latter,
+who every moment relapses into his vulgar habits. The last half of this
+prelude, that in which the tinker, in his new state, again drinks himself
+out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former
+condition, is from some accident or other, lost. It ought to have followed
+at the end of the larger piece. The occasional remarks of the tinker,
+during the course of the representation of the comedy, might have been
+improvisatory, but it is hardly credible that Shakspeare should have
+trusted to the momentary suggestions of the players, whom he did not hold
+in high estimation, the conclusion, however short, of a work which he had
+so carefully commenced. Moreover, the only circumstance which connects the
+play with the prelude, is, that it belongs to the new life of the supposed
+nobleman to have plays acted in his castle by strolling actors. This
+invention of introducing spectators on the stage, who contribute to the
+entertainment, has been very wittily used by later English poets.
+
+_Love's Labour Lost_ is also numbered among the pieces of his youth.
+It is a humorsome display of frolic; a whole cornucopia of the most
+vivacious jokes is emptied into it. Youth is certainly perceivable in the
+lavish superfluity of labour in the execution: the unbroken succession of
+plays on words, and sallies of every description, hardly leave the
+spectator time to breathe; the sparkles of wit fly about in such
+profusion, that they resemble a blaze of fireworks; while the dialogue,
+for the most part, is in the same hurried style in which the passing masks
+at a carnival attempt to banter each other. The young king of Navarre,
+with three of his courtiers, has made a vow to pass three years in rigid
+retirement, and devote them to the study of wisdom; for that purpose he
+has banished all female society from his court, and imposed a penalty on
+the intercourse with women. But scarcely has he, in a pompous harangue,
+worthy of the most heroic achievements, announced this determination, when
+the daughter of the king of France appears at his court, in the name of
+her old and bed-ridden father, to demand the restitution of a province
+which he held in pledge. Compelled to give her audience, he falls
+immediately in love with her. Matters fare no better with his companions,
+who on their parts renew an old acquaintance with the princess's
+attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing
+that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as
+they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest:
+every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the
+beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and
+rallies the king and the two others, till the discovery of a love-letter
+forces him also to hang down his head. He extricates himself and his
+companions from their dilemma by ridiculing the folly of the broken vow,
+and, after a noble eulogy on women, invites them to swear new allegiance
+to the colours of love. This scene is inimitable, and the crowning beauty
+of the whole. The manner in which they afterwards prosecute their love-
+suits in masks and disguise, and in which they are tricked and laughed at
+by the ladies, who are also masked and disguised, is, perhaps, spun out
+too long. It may be thought, too, that the poet, when he suddenly
+announces the death of the king of France, and makes the princess postpone
+her answer to the young prince's serious advances till the expiration of
+the period of her mourning, and impose, besides, a heavy penance on him
+for his levity, drops the proper comic tone. But the tone of raillery,
+which prevails throughout the piece, made it hardly possible to bring
+about a more satisfactory conclusion: after such extravagance, the
+characters could not return to sobriety, except under the presence of some
+foreign influence. The grotesque figures of Don Armado, a pompous
+fantastic Spaniard, a couple of pedants, and a clown, who between whiles
+contribute to the entertainment, are the creation of a whimsical
+imagination, and well adapted as foils for the wit of so vivacious a
+society.
+
+_All's Well that Ends Well_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, _Measure for
+Measure_, and _The Merchant of Venice_, bear, in so far, a resemblance to
+each other, that, along with the main plot, which turns on important
+relations decisive of nothing less than the happiness or misery of life,
+and therefore is calculated to make a powerful impression on the moral
+feeling, the poet, with the skill of a practised artist, has contrived to
+combine a number of cheerful accompaniments. Not, however, that the poet
+seems both to allow full scope to the serious impressions: he merely adds
+a due counterpoise to them in the entertainment which he supplies for the
+imagination and the understanding. He has furnished the story with all the
+separate features which are necessary to give to it the appearance of a
+real, though extraordinary, event. But he never falls into the lachrymose
+tone of the sentimental drama, nor into the bitterness of those dramas
+which have a moral direction, and which are really nothing but moral
+invectives dramatized. Compassion, anxiety, and dissatisfaction become too
+oppressive when they are too long dwelt on, and when the whole of a work
+is given up to them exclusively. Shakspeare always finds means to
+transport us from the confinement of social institutions or pretensions,
+where men do but shut out the light and air from each other, into the open
+space, even before we ourselves are conscious of our want.
+
+_All's Well that Ends Well_ is the old story of a young maiden whose
+love looked much higher than her station. She obtains her lover in
+marriage from the hand of the King as a reward for curing him of a
+hopeless and lingering disease, by means of a hereditary arcanum of her
+father, who had been in his lifetime a celebrated physician. The young man
+despises her virtue and beauty; concludes the marriage only in appearance,
+and seeks in the dangers of war, deliverance from a domestic happiness
+which wounds his pride. By faithful endurance and an innocent fraud, she
+fulfils the apparently impossible conditions on which the Count had
+promised to acknowledge her as his wife. Love appears here in humble
+guise: the wooing is on the woman's side; it is striving, unaided by a
+reciprocal inclination, to overcome the prejudices of birth. But as soon
+as Helena is united to the Count by a sacred bond, though by him
+considered an oppressive chain, her error becomes her virtue.--She affects
+us by her patient suffering: the moment in which she appears to most
+advantage is when she accuses herself as the persecutor of her inflexible
+husband, and, under the pretext of a pilgrimage to atone for her error,
+privately leaves the house of her mother-in-law. Johnson expresses a
+cordial aversion for Count Bertram, and regrets that he should be allowed
+to come off at last with no other punishment than a temporary shame, nay,
+even be rewarded with the unmerited possession of a virtuous wife. But has
+Shakspeare ever attempted to soften the impression made by his unfeeling
+pride and light-hearted perversity? He has but given him the good
+qualities of a soldier. And does not the poet paint the true way of the
+world, which never makes much of man's injustice to woman, if so-called
+family honour is preserved? Bertram's sole justification is, that by the
+exercise of arbitrary power, the King thought proper to constrain him, in
+a matter of such delicacy and private right as the choice of a wife.
+Besides, this story, as well as that of Grissel and many similar ones, is
+intended to prove that woman's truth and patience will at last triumph
+over man's abuse of his superior power, while other novels and
+_fabliaux_ are, on the other hand, true satires on woman's inconsistency
+and cunning. In this piece old age is painted with rare favour: the plain
+honesty of the King, the good-natured impetuosity of old Lafeu, the
+maternal indulgence of the Countess to Helena's passion for her son, seem
+all as it were to vie with each other in endeavours to overcome the
+arrogance of the young Count. The style of the whole is more sententious
+than imaginative: the glowing colours of fancy could not with propriety
+have been employed on such a subject. In the passages where the
+humiliating rejection of the poor Helena is most painfully affecting, the
+cowardly Parolles steps in to the relief of the spectator. The
+mystification by which his pretended valour and his shameless slanders are
+unmasked must be ranked among the most comic scenes that ever were
+invented: they contain matter enough for an excellent comedy, if
+Shakspeare were not always rich even to profusion. Falstaff has thrown
+Parolles into the shade, otherwise among the poet's comic characters he
+would have been still more famous.
+
+The main plot in _Much Ado about Nothing_ is the same with the story
+of _Ariodante and Ginevra_ in Ariosto; the secondary circumstances
+and development are no doubt very different. The mode in which the
+innocent Hero before the altar at the moment of the wedding, and in the
+presence of her family and many witnesses, is put to shame by a most
+degrading charge, false indeed, yet clothed with every appearance of
+truth, is a grand piece of theatrical effect in the true and justifiable
+sense. The impression would have been too tragical had not Shakspeare
+carefully softened it in order to prepare for a fortunate catastrophe. The
+discovery of the plot against Hero has been already partly made, though
+not by the persons interested; and the poet has contrived, by means of the
+blundering simplicity of a couple of constables and watchmen, to convert
+the arrest and the examination of the guilty individuals into scenes full
+of the most delightful amusement. There is also a second piece of
+theatrical effect not inferior to the first, where Claudio, now convinced
+of his error, and in obedience to the penance laid on his fault, thinking
+to give his hand to a relation of his injured bride, whom he supposes
+dead, discovers on her unmasking, Hero herself. The extraordinary success
+of this play in Shakspeare's own day, and even since in England, is,
+however, to be ascribed more particularly to the parts of Benedict and
+Beatrice, two humoursome beings, who incessantly attack each other with
+all the resources of raillery. Avowed rebels to love, they are both
+entangled in its net by a merry plot of their friends to make them believe
+that each is the object of the secret passion of the other. Some one or
+other, not over-stocked with penetration has objected to the same artifice
+being twice used in entrapping them; the drollery, however, lies in the
+very symmetry of the deception. Their friends attribute the whole effect
+to their own device; but the exclusive direction of their raillery against
+each other is in itself a proof of a growing inclination. Their witty
+vivacity does not even abandon them in the avowal of love; and their
+behaviour only assumes a serious appearance for the purpose of defending
+the slandered Hero. This is exceedingly well imagined; the lovers of
+jesting must fix a point beyond which they are not to indulge in their
+humour, if they would not be mistaken for buffoons by trade.
+
+In _Measure for Measure_ Shakspeare was compelled, by the nature of
+the subject, to make his poetry more familiar with criminal justice than
+is usual with him. All kinds of proceedings connected with the subject,
+all sorts of active or passive persons, pass in review before us: the
+hypocritical Lord Deputy, the compassionate Provost, and the hard-hearted
+Hangman; a young man of quality who is to suffer for the seduction of his
+mistress before marriage, loose wretches brought in by the police, nay,
+even a hardened criminal, whom even the preparations for his execution
+cannot awaken out of his callousness. But yet, notwithstanding this
+agitating truthfulness, how tender and mild is the pervading tone of the
+picture! The piece takes improperly its name from punishment; the true
+significance of the whole is the triumph of mercy over strict justice; no
+man being himself so free from errors as to be entitled to deal it out to
+his equals. The most beautiful embellishment of the composition is the
+character of Isabella, who, on the point of taking the veil, is yet
+prevailed upon by sisterly affection to tread again the perplexing ways of
+the world, while, amid the general corruption, the heavenly purity of her
+mind is not even stained with one unholy thought: in the humble robes of
+the novice she is a very angel of light. When the cold and stern Angelo,
+heretofore of unblemished reputation, whom the Duke has commissioned,
+during his pretended absence, to restrain, by a rigid administration of
+the laws, the excesses of dissolute immorality, is even himself tempted by
+the virgin charms of Isabella, supplicating for the pardon of her brother
+Claudio, condemned to death for a youthful indiscretion; when at first, in
+timid and obscure language, he insinuates, but at last impudently avouches
+his readiness to grant Claudio's life to the sacrifice of her honour; when
+Isabella repulses his offer with a noble scorn; in her account of the
+interview to her brother, when the latter at first applauds her conduct,
+but at length, overcome by the fear of death, strives to persuade her to
+consent to dishonour;--in these masterly scenes, Shakspeare has sounded
+the depths of the human heart. The interest here reposes altogether on the
+represented action; curiosity contributes nothing to our delight, for the
+Duke, in the disguise of a Monk, is always present to watch over his
+dangerous representative, and to avert every evil which could possibly be
+apprehended; we look to him with confidence for a happy result. The Duke
+acts the part of the Monk naturally, even to deception; he unites in his
+person the wisdom of the priest and the prince. Only in his wisdom he is
+too fond of round-about ways; his vanity is flattered with acting
+invisibly like an earthly providence; he takes more pleasure in
+overhearing his subjects than governing them in the customary way of
+princes. As he ultimately extends a free pardon to all the guilty, we do
+not see how his original purpose, in committing the execution of the laws
+to other hands, of restoring their strictness, has in any wise been
+accomplished. The poet might have had this irony in view, that of the
+numberless slanders of the Duke, told him by the petulant Lucio, in
+ignorance of the person whom he is addressing, that at least which
+regarded his singularities and whims was not wholly without foundation. It
+is deserving of remark, that Shakspeare, amidst the rancour of religious
+parties, takes a delight in painting the condition of a monk, and always
+represents his influence as beneficial. We find in him none of the black
+and knavish monks, which an enthusiasm for Protestantism, rather than
+poetical inspiration, has suggested to some of our modern poets.
+Shakspeare merely gives his monks an inclination to busy themselves in the
+affairs of others, after renouncing the world for themselves; with
+respect, however, to pious frauds, he does not represent them as very
+conscientious. Such are the parts acted by the monk in _Romeo and Juliet_,
+and another in _Much Ado about Nothing_, and even by the Duke, whom,
+contrary to the well-known proverb, the cowl seems really to make a monk.
+
+The _Merchant of Venice_ is one of Shakspeare's most perfect works:
+popular to an extraordinary degree, and calculated to produce the most
+powerful effect on the stage, and at the same time a wonder of ingenuity
+and art for the reflecting critic. Shylock, the Jew, is one of the
+inimitable masterpieces of characterization which are to be found only in
+Shakspeare. It is easy for both poet and player to exhibit a caricature of
+national sentiments, modes of speaking, and gestures. Shylock, however, is
+everything but a common Jew: he possesses a strongly-marked and original
+individuality, and yet we perceive a light touch of Judaism in everything
+he says or does. We almost fancy we can hear a light whisper of the Jewish
+accent even in the written words, such as we sometimes still find in the
+higher classes, notwithstanding their social refinement. In tranquil
+moments, all that is foreign to the European blood and Christian
+sentiments is less perceptible, but in passion the national stamp comes
+out more strongly marked. All these inimitable niceties the finished art
+of a great actor can alone properly express. Shylock is a man of
+information, in his own way, even a thinker, only he has not discovered
+the region where human feelings dwell; his morality is founded on the
+disbelief in goodness and magnanimity. The desire to avenge the wrongs and
+indignities heaped upon his nation is, after avarice, his strongest spring
+of action. His hate is naturally directed chiefly against those Christians
+who are actuated by truly Christian sentiments: a disinterested love of
+our neighbour seems to him the most unrelenting persecution of the Jews.
+The letter of the law is his idol; he refuses to lend an ear to the voice
+of mercy, which, from the mouth of Portia, speaks to him with heavenly
+eloquence: he insists on rigid and inflexible justice, and at last it
+recoils on his own head. Thus he becomes a symbol of the general history
+of his unfortunate nation. The melancholy and self-sacrificing magnanimity
+of Antonio is affectingly sublime. Like a princely merchant, he is
+surrounded with a whole train of noble friends. The contrast which this
+forms to the selfish cruelty of the usurer Shylock was necessary to redeem
+the honour of human nature. The danger which almost to the close of the
+fourth act, hangs over Antonio, and which the imagination is almost afraid
+to approach, would fill the mind with too painful anxiety, if the poet did
+not also provide for its recreation and diversion. This is effected in an
+especial manner by the scenes at Portia's country-seat, which transport
+the spectator into quite another world. And yet they are closely connected
+with the main business by the chain of cause and effect: Bassanio's
+preparations for his courtship are the cause of Antonio's subscribing the
+dangerous bond; and Portia again, by the counsel and advice of her uncle,
+a famous lawyer, effects the safety of her lover's friend. But the
+relations of the dramatic composition are the while admirably observed in
+yet another respect. The trial between Shylock and Antonio is indeed
+recorded as being a real event, still, for all that, it must ever remain
+an unheard-of and singular case. Shakspeare has therefore associated it
+with a love intrigue not less extraordinary: the one consequently is
+rendered natural and probable by means of the other. A rich, beautiful and
+clever heiress, who can only be won by the solving the riddle--the locked
+caskets--the foreign princes, who come to try the venture--all this
+powerfully excites the imagination with the splendour of an olden tale of
+marvels. The two scenes in which, first the Prince of Morocco, in the
+language of Eastern hyperbole, and then the self-conceited Prince of
+Arragon, make their choice among the caskets, serve merely to raise our
+curiosity, and give employment to our wits; but on the third, where the
+two lovers stand trembling before the inevitable choice, which in one
+moment must unite or separate them for ever, Shakspeare has lavished all
+the charms of feeling--all the magic of poesy. We share in the rapture of
+Portia and Bassanio at the fortunate choice: we easily conceive why they
+are so fond of each other, for they are both most deserving of love. The
+judgment scene, with which the fourth act is occupied, is in itself a
+perfect drama, concentrating in itself the interest of the whole. The knot
+is now untied, and according to the common ideas of theatrical
+satisfaction, the curtain ought to drop. But the poet was unwilling to
+dismiss his audience with the gloomy impressions which Antonio's
+acquittal, effected with so much difficulty, and contrary to all
+expectation, and the condemnation of Shylock, were calculated to leave
+behind them; he has therefore added the fifth act by way of a musical
+afterlude in the piece itself. The episode of Jessica, the fugitive
+daughter of the Jew, in whom Shakspeare has contrived to throw a veil of
+sweetness over the national features, and the artifice by which Portia and
+her companion are enabled to rally their newly-married husbands, supply
+him with the necessary materials. The scene opens with the playful
+prattling of two lovers in a summer evening; it is followed by soft music,
+and a rapturous eulogy on this powerful disposer of the human mind and the
+world; the principal characters then make their appearance, and after a
+simulated quarrel, which is gracefully maintained, the whole end with the
+most exhilarating mirth.
+
+_As You Like It_ is a piece of an entirely different description. It
+would be difficult to bring the contents within the compass of an ordinary
+narrative; nothing takes place, or rather what is done is not so essential
+as what is said; even what may be called the _dénouement_ is brought
+about pretty arbitrarily. Whoever can perceive nothing but what can as it
+were be counted on the fingers, will hardly be disposed to allow that it
+has any plan at all. Banishment and flight have assembled together, in the
+forest of Arden, a strange band: a Duke dethroned by his brother, who,
+with the faithful companions of his misfortune, lives in the wilds on the
+produce of the chase; two disguised Princesses, who love each other with a
+sisterly affection; a witty court fool; lastly, the native inhabitants of
+the forest, ideal and natural shepherds and shepherdesses. These lightly-
+sketched figures form a motley and diversified train; we see always the
+shady dark-green landscape in the background, and breathe in imagination
+the fresh air of the forest. The hours are here measured by no clocks, no
+regulated recurrence of duty or of toil: they flow on unnumbered by
+voluntary occupation or fanciful idleness, to which, according to his
+humour or disposition, every one yields himself, and this unrestrained
+freedom compensates them all for the lost conveniences of life. One throws
+himself down in solitary meditation under a tree, and indulges in
+melancholy reflections on the changes of fortune, the falsehood of the
+world, and the self-inflicted torments of social life; others make the
+woods resound with social and festive songs, to the accompaniment of their
+hunting-horns. Selfishness, envy, and ambition, have been left behind in
+the city; of all the human passions, love alone has found an entrance into
+this wilderness, where it dictates the same language alike to the simple
+shepherd and the chivalrous youth, who hangs his love-ditty to a tree. A
+prudish shepherdess falls at first sight in love with Rosalind, disguised
+in men's apparel; the latter sharply reproaches her with her severity to
+her poor lover, and the pain of refusal, which she feels from experience
+in her own case, disposes her at length to compassion and requital. The
+fool carries his philosophical contempt of external show, and his raillery
+of the illusion of love so far, that he purposely seeks out the ugliest
+and simplest country wench for a mistress. Throughout the whole picture,
+it seems to be the poet's design to show that to call forth the poetry
+which has its indwelling in nature and the human mind, nothing is wanted
+but to throw off all artificial constraint, and restore both to mind and
+nature their original liberty. In the very progress of the piece, the
+dreamy carelessness of such an existence is sensibly expressed: it is even
+alluded to by Shakspeare in the title. Whoever affects to be displeased,
+if in this romantic forest the ceremonial of dramatic art is not duly
+observed, ought in justice to be delivered over to the wise fool, to be
+led gently out of it to some prosaical region.
+
+_The Twelfth Night, or What you Will_, unites the entertainment of an
+intrigue, contrived with great ingenuity, to a rich fund of comic
+characters and situations, and the beauteous colours of an ethereal
+poetry. In most of his plays, Shakspeare treats love more as an affair of
+the imagination than the heart; but here he has taken particular care to
+remind us that, in his language, the same word, _fancy_, signified
+both fancy and love. The love of the music-enraptured Duke for Olivia is
+not merely a fancy, but an imagination; Viola appears at first to fall
+arbitrarily in love with the Duke, whom she serves as a page, although she
+afterwards touches the tenderest strings of feeling; the proud Olivia is
+captivated by the modest and insinuating messenger of the Duke, in whom
+she is far from suspecting a disguised rival, and at last, by a second
+deception, takes the brother for the sister. To these, which I might call
+ideal follies, a contrast is formed by the naked absurdities to which the
+entertaining tricks of the ludicrous persons of the piece give rise, under
+the pretext also of love: the silly and profligate Knight's awkward
+courtship of Olivia, and her declaration of love to Viola; the imagination
+of the pedantic steward Malvolio, that his mistress is secretly in love
+with him, which carries him so far that he is at last shut up as a
+lunatic, and visited by the clown in the dress of a priest. These scenes
+are admirably conceived, and as significant as they are laughable. If this
+were really, as is asserted, Shakspeare's latest work, he must have
+enjoyed to the last the same youthful elasticity of mind, and have carried
+with him to the grave the undiminished fulness of his talents.
+
+_The Merry Wives of Windsor_, though properly a comedy in the usual
+acceptation of the word, we shall pass over at present, till we come to
+speak of _Henry the Fourth_, that we may give our opinion of the character
+of Falstaff in connexion.
+
+_The Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Tempest_, may be in so far compared
+together that in both the influence of a wonderful world of spirits is
+interwoven with the turmoil of human passions and with the farcical
+adventures of folly. _The Midsummer Night's Dream_ is certainly an earlier
+production; but _The Tempest_, according to all appearance, was written in
+Shakspeare's later days: hence most critics, on the supposition that the
+poet must have continued to improve with increasing maturity of mind, have
+honoured the last piece with a marked preference. I cannot, however,
+altogether concur with them: the internal merit of these two works are, in
+my opinion, pretty nearly balanced, and a predilection for the one or the
+other can only be governed by personal taste. In profound and original
+characterization the superiority of _The Tempest_ is obvious: as a whole
+we must always admire the masterly skill which he has here displayed in
+the economy of his means, and the dexterity with which he has disguised
+his preparations,--the scaffoldings for the wonderful aërial structure. In
+_The Midsummer Night's Dream_, on the other hand, there flows a luxuriant
+vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary
+combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have been brought
+about without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours
+are of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the variegated
+fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described
+resembles those elegant pieces of arabesque, where little genii with
+butterfly wings rise, half embodied, above the flower-cups. Twilight,
+moonshine, dew, and spring perfumes, are the element of these tender
+spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves,
+many-coloured flowers, and glittering insects; in the human world they do
+but make sport childishly and waywardly with their beneficent or noxious
+influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery;
+their passions, stripped of all earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream.
+To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted as a poetical
+enchantment, which, by a contrary enchantment, may be immediately
+suspended, and then renewed again. The different parts of the plot; the
+wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania's quarrel, the flight
+of the two pair of lovers, and the theatrical manoeuvres of the mechanics,
+are so lightly and happily interwoven that they seem necessary to each
+other for the formation, of a whole. Oberon is desirous of relieving the
+lovers from their perplexities, but greatly adds to them through the
+mistakes of his minister, till he at last comes really to the aid of their
+fruitless amorous pain, their inconstancy and jealousy, and restores
+fidelity to its old rights. The extremes of fanciful and vulgar are united
+when the enchanted Titania awakes and falls in love with a coarse mechanic
+with an ass's head, who represents, or rather disfigures, the part of a
+tragical lover. The droll wonder of Bottom's transformation is merely the
+translation of a metaphor in its literal sense; but in his behaviour
+during the tender homage of the Fairy Queen we have an amusing proof how
+much the consciousness of such a head-dress heightens the effect of his
+usual folly. Theseus and Hippolyta are, as it were, a splendid frame for
+the picture; they take no part in the action, but surround it with a
+stately pomp. The discourse of the hero and his Amazon, as they course
+through the forest with their noisy hunting-train, works upon the
+imagination like the fresh breath of morning, before which the shapes of
+night disappear. Pyramus and Thisbe is not unmeaningly chosen as the
+grotesque play within the play; it is exactly like the pathetic part of
+the piece, a secret meeting of two lovers in the forest, and their
+separation by an unfortunate accident, and closes the whole with the most
+amusing parody.
+
+_The Tempest_ has little action or progressive movement; the union of
+Ferdinand and Miranda is settled at their first interview, and Prospero
+merely throws apparent obstacles in their way; the shipwrecked band go
+leisurely about the island; the attempts of Sebastian and Antonio on the
+life of the King of Naples, and the plot of Caliban and the drunken
+sailors against Prospero, are nothing but a feint, for we foresee that
+they will be completely frustrated by the magical skill of the latter;
+nothing remains therefore but the punishment of the guilty by dreadful
+sights which harrow up their consciences, and then the discovery and final
+reconciliation. Yet this want of movement is so admirably concealed by the
+most varied display of the fascinations of poetry, and the exhilaration of
+mirth, the details of the execution are so very attractive, that it
+requires no small degree of attention to perceive that the
+_dénouement_ is, in some degree, anticipated in the exposition. The
+history of the loves of Ferdinand and Miranda, developed in a few short
+scenes, is enchantingly beautiful: an affecting union of chivalrous
+magnanimity on the one part, and on the other of the virgin openness of a
+heart which, brought up far from the world on an uninhabited island, has
+never learned to disguise its innocent movements. The wisdom of the
+princely hermit Prospero has a magical and mysterious air; the
+disagreeable impression left by the black falsehood of the two usurpers is
+softened by the honest gossipping of the old and faithful Gonzalo;
+Trinculo and Stephano, two good-for-nothing drunkards, find a worthy
+associate in Caliban; and Ariel hovers sweetly over the whole as the
+personified genius of the wonderful fable.
+
+Caliban has become a by-word as the strange creation of a poetical
+imagination. A mixture of gnome and savage, half daemon, half brute, in
+his behaviour we perceive at once the traces of his native disposition,
+and the influence of Prospero's education. The latter could only unfold
+his understanding, without, in the slightest degree, taming his rooted
+malignity: it is as if the use of reason and human speech were
+communicated to an awkward ape. In inclination Caliban is maliciously
+cowardly, false, and base; and yet he is essentially different from the
+vulgar knaves of a civilized world, as portrayed occasionally by
+Shakspeare. He is rude, but not vulgar; he never falls into the prosaic
+and low familiarity of his drunken associates, for he is, in his way, a
+poetical being; he always speaks in verse. He has picked up every thing
+dissonant and thorny in language to compose out of it a vocabulary of his
+own; and of the whole variety of nature, the hateful, repulsive, and
+pettily deformed, have alone been impressed on his imagination. The
+magical world of spirits, which the staff of Prospero has assembled on the
+island, casts merely a faint reflection into his mind, as a ray of light
+which falls into a dark cave, incapable of communicating to it either heat
+or illumination, serves merely to set in motion the poisonous vapours. The
+delineation of this monster is throughout inconceivably consistent and
+profound, and, notwithstanding its hatefulness, by no means hurtful to our
+feelings, as the honour of human nature is left untouched.
+
+In the zephyr-like Ariel the image of air is not to be mistaken, his name
+even bears an allusion to it; as, on the other hand Caliban signifies the
+heavy element of earth. Yet they are neither of them simple, allegorical
+personifications but beings individually determined. In general we find in
+_The Midsummer Night's Dream_, in _The Tempest_, in the magical part of
+_Macbeth_, and wherever Shakspeare avails himself of the popular belief in
+the invisible presence of spirits, and the possibility of coming in
+contact with them, a profound view of the inward life of nature and her
+mysterious springs, which, it is true, can never be altogether unknown to
+the genuine poet, as poetry is altogether incompatible with mechanical
+physics, but which few have possessed in an equal degree with Dante and
+himself.
+
+_The Winter's Tale_ is as appropriately named as _The Midsummer Night's
+Dream_. It is one of those tales which are peculiarly calculated to
+beguile the dreary leisure of a long winter evening, and are even
+attractive and intelligible to childhood, while animated by fervent
+truth in the delineation of character and passion, and invested with the
+embellishments of poetry lowering itself, as it were, to the simplicity of
+the subject, they transport even manhood back to the golden age of
+imagination. The calculation of probabilities has nothing to do with such
+wonderful and fleeting adventures, when all end at last in universal joy;
+and, accordingly, Shakspeare has here taken the greatest license of
+anachronisms and geographical errors; not to mention other incongruities,
+he opens a free navigation between Sicily and Bohemia, makes Giulio Romano
+the contemporary of the Delphic oracle. The piece divides itself in some
+degree into two plays. Leontes becomes suddenly jealous of his royal
+bosom-friend Polyxenes, who is on a visit to his court; makes an attempt
+on his life, from which Polyxenes only saves himself by a clandestine
+flight;--Hermione, suspected of infidelity, is thrown into prison, and the
+daughter which she there brings into the world is exposed on a remote
+coast;--the accused Queen, declared innocent by the oracle, on learning
+that her infant son has pined to death on her account, falls down in a
+swoon, and is mourned as dead by her husband, who becomes sensible, when
+too late, of his error: all this makes up the three first acts. The last
+two are separated from these by a chasm of sixteen years; but the
+foregoing tragical catastrophe was only apparent, and this serves to
+connect the two parts. The Princess, who has been exposed on the coast of
+Polyxenes's kingdom, grows up among low shepherds; but her tender beauty,
+her noble manners, and elevation of sentiment, bespeak her descent; the
+Crown Prince Florizel, in the course of his hawking, falls in with her,
+becomes enamoured, and courts her in the disguise of a shepherd; at a
+rural entertainment Polyxenes discovers their attachment, and breaks out
+into a violent rage; the two lovers seek refuge from his persecutions at
+the court of Leontes in Sicily, where the discovery and general
+reconciliation take place. Lastly, when Leontes beholds, as he imagines,
+the statue of his lost wife, it descends from the niche: it is she
+herself, the still living Hermione, who has kept herself so long
+concealed; and the piece ends with universal rejoicing. The jealousy of
+Leontes is not, like that of Othello, developed through all its causes,
+symptoms and variations; it is brought forward at once full grown and
+mature, and is portrayed as a distempered frenzy. It is a passion whose
+effects the spectator is more concerned with than with its origin, and
+which does not produce the catastrophe, but merely ties the knot of the
+piece. In fact, the poet might perhaps have wished slightly to indicate
+that Hermione, though virtuous, was too warm in her efforts to please
+Polyxenes; and it appears as if this germ of inclination first attained
+its proper maturity in their children. Nothing can be more fresh and
+youthful, nothing at once so ideally pastoral and princely as the love of
+Florizel and Perdita; of the prince, whom love converts into a voluntary
+shepherd; and the princess, who betrays her exalted origin without knowing
+it, and in whose hands nosegays become crowns. Shakspeare has never
+hesitated to place ideal poetry side by side of the most vulgar prose: and
+in the world of reality also this is generally the case. Perdita's foster-
+father and his son are both made simple boors, that we may the more
+distinctly see how all that ennobles her belongs only to herself.
+Autolycus, the merry pedlar and pickpocket, so inimitably portrayed, is
+necessary to complete the rustic feast, which Perdita on her part seems to
+render meet for an assemblage of gods in disguise.
+
+_Cymbeline_ is also one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions.
+He has here combined a novel of Boccacio's with traditionary tales of the
+ancient Britons reaching back to the times of the first Roman Emperors,
+and he has contrived, by the most gentle transitions, to blend together
+into one harmonious whole the social manners of the newest times with
+olden heroic deeds, and even with appearances of the gods.
+
+In the character of Imogen no one feature of female excellence is omitted:
+her chaste tenderness, her softness, and her virgin pride, her boundless
+resignation, and her magnanimity towards her mistaken husband, by whom she
+is unjustly persecuted, her adventures in disguise, her apparent death,
+and her recovery, form altogether a picture equally tender and affecting.
+The two Princes, Guiderius and Arviragus, both educated in the wilds, form
+a noble contrast to Miranda and Perdita. Shakspeare is fond of showing the
+superiority of the natural over the artificial. Over the art which
+enriches nature, he somewhere says, there is a higher art created by
+nature herself. [Footnote: The passage in Shakspeare here quoted, taken
+with the context, will not bear the construction of the author. The whole
+runs thus:--
+  Yet nature is made better by no mean,
+  But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art
+  Which you say adds to nature, is an art
+  That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
+  A gentler scion to the wildest stock;
+  And make conceive a bark of baser kind
+  By bud of nobler race: this is an art
+  Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
+  The art itself is nature.
+             _Winter's Tale_, Act iv. sc. 3.
+Shakspeare does not here mean to institute a comparison between the
+relative excellency of that which is innate and that which we owe to
+instruction; but merely says, that the instruction or art is itself a part
+of nature. The speech is addressed by Polyxenes to Perdita, to persuade
+her that the changes effected in the appearance of flowers by the art of
+the gardener are not to be accounted unnatural; and the expression of
+_making conceive a bark of baser kind by bud of nobler race_ (i.e.,
+engrafting), would rather lead to the inference, that the mind derived its
+chief value from the influence of culture.--TRANS.] As Miranda's
+unconscious and unstudied sweetness is more pleasing than those charms
+which endeavour to captivate us by the brilliant embellishments of a
+refined cultivation, so in these two youths, to whom the chase has given
+vigour and hardihood, but who are ignorant of their high destination, and
+have been brought up apart from human society, we are equally enchanted by
+a _naïve_ heroism which leads them to anticipate and to dream of
+deeds of valour, till an occasion is offered which they are irresistibly
+compelled to embrace. When Imogen comes in disguise to their cave; when,
+with all the innocence of childhood, Guiderius and Arviragus form an
+impassioned friendship for the tender boy, in whom they neither suspect a
+female nor their own sister; when, on their return from the chase, they
+find her dead, then "sing her to the ground," and cover the grave with
+flowers:--these scenes might give to the most deadened imagination a new
+life for poetry. If a tragical event is only apparent, in such case,
+whether the spectators are already aware of it or ought merely to suspect
+it, Shakspeare always knows how to mitigate the impression without
+weakening it: he makes the mourning musical, that it may gain in solemnity
+what it loses in seriousness. With respect to the other parts, the wise
+and vigorous Belarius, who after long living as a hermit again becomes a
+hero, is a venerable figure; the Italian Iachimo's ready dissimulation and
+quick presence of mind is quite suitable to the bold treachery which he
+plays; Cymbeline, the father of Imogen, and even her husband Posthumus,
+during the first half of the piece, are somewhat sacrificed, but this
+could not be otherwise; the false and wicked Queen is merely an instrument
+of the plot; she and her stupid son Cloton (the only comic part in the
+piece) whose rude arrogance is portrayed with much humour, are, before the
+conclusion, got rid of by merited punishment. As for the heroical part of
+the fable, the war between the Romans and Britons, which brings on the
+dénouement, the poet in the extent of his plan had so little room to
+spare, that he merely endeavours to represent it as a mute procession. But
+to the last scene, where all the numerous threads of the knot are untied,
+he has again given its full development, that he might collect together
+into one focus the scattered impressions of the whole. This example and
+many others are a sufficient refutation of Johnson's assertion, that
+Shakspeare usually hurries over the conclusion of his pieces. Rather does
+he, from a desire to satisfy the feelings, introduce a great deal which,
+so far as the understanding of the _dénouement_ requires, might in a
+strict sense be justly spared: our modern spectators are much more
+impatient to see the curtain drop, when there is nothing more to be
+determined, than those of his day could have been.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+Criticisms on Shakspeare's Tragedies.
+
+
+_Romeo and Juliet_, and _Othello_, differ from most of the pieces which we
+have hitherto examined, neither in the ingredients of the composition, nor
+in the manner of treating them: it is merely the direction of the whole
+that gives them the stamp of Tragedy. _Romeo and Juliet_ is a picture of
+love and its pitiable fate, in a world whose atmosphere is too sharp for
+this the tenderest blossom of human life. Two beings created for each
+other feel mutual love at the first glance; every consideration disappears
+before the irresistible impulse to live in one another; under
+circumstances hostile in the highest degree to their union, they unite
+themselves by a secret marriage, relying simply on the protection of an
+invisible power. Untoward incidents following in rapid succession, their
+heroic constancy is within a few days put to the proof, till, forcibly
+separated from each other, by a voluntary death they are united in the
+grave to meet again in another world. All this is to be found in the
+beautiful story which Shakspeare has not invented, and which, however
+simply told, will always excite a tender sympathy: but it was reserved for
+Shakspeare to join in one ideal picture purity of heart with warmth of
+imagination; sweetness and dignity of manners with passionate intensity of
+feeling. Under his handling, it has become a glorious song of praise on
+that inexpressible feeling which ennobles the soul and gives to it
+its highest sublimity, and which elevates even the senses into soul,
+while at the same time it is a melancholy elegy on its inherent and
+imparted frailty; it is at once the apotheosis and the obsequies of love.
+It appears here a heavenly spark, that, as it descends to the earth, is
+converted into the lightning flash, which almost in the same moment sets
+on fire and consumes the mortal being on whom it lights. All that is most
+intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring,--all that is languishing
+in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the
+rose, all alike breathe forth from this poem. But even more rapidly than
+the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, does it from the first
+timidly-bold declaration and modest return of love hurry on to the most
+unlimited passion, to an irrevocable union; and then hastens, amidst
+alternating storms of rapture and despair, to the fate of the two lovers,
+who yet appear enviable in their hard lot, for their love survives them,
+and by their death they have obtained an endless triumph over every
+separating power. The sweetest and the bitterest love and hatred, festive
+rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchral horrors,
+the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are here all brought close to
+each other; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of
+impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind
+resembles a single but endless sigh.
+
+The excellent dramatic arrangement, the significance of every character in
+its place, the judicious selection of all the circumstances, even the most
+minute, have already been dwelt upon in detail. I shall only request
+attention to a trait which may serve for an example of the distance to
+which Shakspeare goes back to lay the preparatory foundation. The most
+striking and perhaps incredible circumstance in the whole story is the
+liquor given by the Monk to Julia, by which she for a number of hours not
+merely sleeps, but fully resembles a corpse, without however receiving the
+least injury. How does the poet dispose us to believe that Father Lorenzo
+possesses such a secret?--At his first appearance he exhibits him in a
+garden, where he is collecting herbs and descanting on their wonderful
+virtues. The discourse of the pious old man is full of deep meaning: he
+sees everywhere in nature emblems of the moral world; the same wisdom with
+which he looks through her has also made him master of the human heart. In
+this manner a circumstance of an ungrateful appearance, has become the
+source of a great beauty.
+
+If _Romeo and Juliet_ shines with the colours of the dawn of morning,
+but a dawn whose purple clouds already announce the thunder of a sultry
+day, _Othello_ is, on the other hand, a strongly shaded picture: we
+might call it a tragical Rembrandt. What a fortunate mistake that the Moor
+(under which name in the original novel, a baptized Saracen of the
+Northern coast of Africa was unquestionably meant), has been made by
+Shakspeare in every respect a negro! We recognize in Othello the wild
+nature of that glowing zone which generates the most ravenous beasts of
+prey and the most deadly poisons, tamed only in appearance by the desire
+of fame, by foreign laws of honour, and by nobler and milder manners. His
+jealousy is not the jealousy of the heart, which is compatible with the
+tenderest feeling and adoration of the beloved object; it is of that
+sensual kind which, in burning climes, has given birth to the disgraceful
+confinement of women and many other unnatural usages. A drop of this
+poison flows in his veins, and sets his whole blood in the wildest
+ferment. The Moor _seems_ noble, frank, confiding, grateful for the
+love shown him; and he is all this, and, moreover, a hero who spurns at
+danger, a worthy leader of an army, a faithful servant of the state; but
+the mere physical force of passion puts to flight in one moment all his
+acquired and mere habitual virtues, and gives the upper hand to the savage
+over the moral man. This tyranny of the blood over the will betrays itself
+even in the expression of his desire of revenge upon Cassio. In his
+repentance, a genuine tenderness for his murdered wife, and in the
+presence of the damning evidence of his deed, the painful feeling of
+annihilated honour at last bursts forth; and in the midst of these painful
+emotions he assails himself with the rage wherewith a despot punishes a
+runaway slave. He suffers as a double man; at once in the higher and the
+lower sphere into which his being was divided.--While the Moor bears the
+nightly colour of suspicion and deceit only on his visage, Iago is black
+within. He haunts Othello like his evil genius, and with his light (and
+therefore the more dangerous,) insinuations, he leaves him no rest; it is
+as if by means of an unfortunate affinity, founded however in nature, this
+influence was by necessity more powerful over him than the voice of his
+good angel Desdemona. A more artful villain than this Iago was never
+portrayed; he spreads his nets with a skill which nothing can escape. The
+repugnance inspired by his aims becomes tolerable from the attention of
+the spectators being directed to his means: these furnish endless
+employment to the understanding. Cool, discontented, and morose, arrogant
+where he dare be so, but humble and insinuating when it suits his
+purposes, he is a complete master in the art of dissimulation; accessible
+only to selfish emotions, he is thoroughly skilled in rousing the passions
+of others, and of availing himself of every opening which they give him:
+he is as excellent an observer of men as any one can be who is
+unacquainted with higher motives of action from his own experience; there
+is always some truth in his malicious observations on them. He does not
+merely pretend an obdurate incredulity as to the virtue of women, he
+actually entertains it; and this, too, falls in with his whole way of
+thinking, and makes him the more fit for the execution of his purpose. As
+in every thing he sees merely the hateful side, he dissolves in the rudest
+manner the charm which the imagination casts over the relation between the
+two sexes: he does so for the purpose of revolting Othello's senses, whose
+heart otherwise might easily have convinced him of Desdemona's innocence.
+This must serve as an excuse for the numerous expressions in the speeches
+of Iago from which modesty shrinks. If Shakespeare had written in our days
+he would not perhaps have dared to hazard them; and yet this must
+certainly have greatly injured the truth of his picture. Desdemona is a
+sacrifice without blemish. She is not, it is true, a high ideal
+representation of sweetness and enthusiastic passion like Juliet; full of
+simplicity, softness, and humility, and so innocent, that she can hardly
+form to herself an idea of the possibility of infidelity, she seems
+calculated to make the most yielding and tenderest of wives. The female
+propensity wholly to resign itself to a foreign destiny has led her into
+the only fault of her life, that of marrying without her father's consent.
+Her choice seems wrong; and yet she has been gained over to Othello by
+that which induces the female to honour in man her protector and guide,--
+admiration of his determined heroism, and compassion for the sufferings
+which he had undergone. With great art it is so contrived, that from the
+very circumstance that the possibility of a suspicion of her own purity of
+motive never once enters her mind, she is the less reserved in her
+solicitations for Cassio, and thereby does but heighten more and more the
+jealousy of Othello. To throw out still more clearly the angelic purity of
+Desdemona, Shakspeare has in Emilia associated with her a companion of
+doubtful virtue. From the sinful levity of this woman it is also
+conceivable that she should not confess the abstraction of the
+handkerchief when Othello violently demands it back: this would otherwise
+be the circumstance in the whole piece the most difficult to justify.
+Cassio is portrayed exactly as he ought to be to excite suspicion without
+actual guilt,--amiable and nobly disposed, but easily seduced. The public
+events of the first two acts show us Othello in his most glorious aspect,
+as the support of Venice and the terror of the Turks: they serve to
+withdraw the story from the mere domestic circle, just as this is done in
+_Romeo and Juliet_ by the dissensions between the houses of Montague
+and Capulet. No eloquence is capable of painting the overwhelming force of
+the catastrophe in _Othello_,--the pressure of feelings which measure
+out in a moment the abysses of eternity.
+
+_Hamlet_ is singular in its kind: a tragedy of thought inspired by
+continual and never-satisfied meditation on human destiny and the dark
+perplexity of the events of this world, and calculated to call forth the
+very same meditation in the minds of the spectators. This enigmatical work
+resembles those irrational equations in which a fraction of unknown
+magnitude always remains, that will in no way admit of solution. Much has
+been said, much written, on this piece, and yet no thinking head who anew
+expresses himself on it, will (in his view of the connexion and the
+signification of all the parts) entirely coincide with his predecessors.
+What naturally most astonishes us, is the fact that with such hidden
+purposes, with a foundation laid in such unfathomable depth, the whole
+should, at a first view, exhibit an extremely popular appearance. The
+dread appearance of the Ghost takes possession of the mind and the
+imagination almost at the very commencement; then the play within the
+play, in which, as in a glass, we see reflected the crime, whose
+fruitlessly attempted punishment constitutes the subject-matter of the
+piece; the alarm with which it fills the King; Hamlet's pretended and
+Ophelia's real madness; her death and burial; the meeting of Hamlet and
+Laertes at her grave; their combat, and the grand determination; lastly,
+the appearance of the young hero Fortinbras, who, with warlike pomp, pays
+the last honours to an extinct family of kings; the interspersion of comic
+characteristic scenes with Polonius, the courtiers, and the grave-diggers,
+which have all of them their signification,--all this fills the stage with
+an animated and varied movement. The only circumstance from which this
+piece might be judged to be less theatrical than other tragedies of
+Shakspeare is, that in the last scenes the main action either stands still
+or appears to retrograde. This, however, was inevitable, and lay in the
+nature of the subject. The whole is intended to show that a calculating
+consideration, which exhausts all the relations and possible consequences
+of a deed, must cripple the power of acting; as Hamlet himself expresses
+it:--
+
+  And thus the native hue of resolution
+  Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
+  And enterprises of great pith and moment,
+  With this regard, their currents turn awry,
+  And lose the name of action.
+
+With respect to Hamlet's character: I cannot, as I understand the poet's
+views, pronounce altogether so favourable a sentence upon it as Goethe
+does. He is, it is true, of a highly cultivated mind, a prince of royal
+manners, endowed with the finest sense of propriety, susceptible of noble
+ambition, and open in the highest degree to an enthusiastic admiration of
+that excellence in others of which he himself is deficient. He acts the
+part of madness with unrivalled power, convincing the persons who are sent
+to examine into his supposed loss of reason, merely by telling them
+unwelcome truths, and rallying them with the most caustic wit. But in the
+resolutions which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, his
+weakness is too apparent: he does himself only justice when he implies
+that there is no greater dissimilarity than between himself and Hercules.
+He is not solely impelled by necessity to artifice and dissimulation, he
+has a natural inclination for crooked ways; he is a hypocrite towards
+himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his
+want of determination: thoughts, as he says on a different occasion, which
+have
+
+            ----but one part wisdom
+  And ever three parts coward.-----
+
+He has been chiefly condemned both for his harshness in repulsing the love
+of Ophelia, which he himself had cherished, and for his insensibility at
+her death. But he is too much overwhelmed with his own sorrow to have any
+compassion to spare for others; besides his outward indifference gives us
+by no means the measure of his internal perturbation. On the other hand,
+we evidently perceive in him a malicious joy, when he has succeeded in
+getting rid of his enemies, more through necessity and accident, which
+alone are able to impel him to quick and decisive measures, than by the
+merit of his own courage, as he himself confesses after the murder of
+Polonius, and with respect to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet has no
+firm belief either in himself or in anything else: from expressions of
+religious confidence he passes over to sceptical doubts; he believes in
+the Ghost of his father as long as he sees it, but as soon as it has
+disappeared, it appears to him almost in the light of a deception.
+[Footnote: It has been censured as a contradiction, that Hamlet in the
+soliloquy on self-murder should say,
+  The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
+  No traveller returns-----
+For was not the Ghost a returned traveller? Shakspeare, however, purposely
+wished to show, that Hamlet could not fix himself in any conviction of any
+kind whatever.] He has even gone so far as to say, "there is nothing
+either good or bad, but thinking makes it so;" with him the poet loses
+himself here in labyrinths of thought, in which neither end nor beginning
+is discoverable. The stars themselves, from the course of events, afford
+no answer to the question so urgently proposed to them. A voice from
+another world, commissioned it would appear, by heaven, demands vengeance
+for a monstrous enormity, and the demand remains without effect; the
+criminals are at last punished, but, as it were, by an accidental blow,
+and not in the solemn way requisite to convey to the world a warning
+example of justice; irresolute foresight, cunning treachery, and impetuous
+rage, hurry on to a common destruction; the less guilty and the innocent
+are equally involved in the general ruin. The destiny of humanity is there
+exhibited as a gigantic Sphinx, which threatens to precipitate into the
+abyss of scepticism all who are unable to solve her dreadful enigmas.
+
+As one example of the many niceties of Shakspeare which have never been
+understood, I may allude to the style in which the player's speech about
+Hecuba is conceived. It has been the subject of much controversy among the
+commentators, whether this was borrowed by Shakspeare from himself or from
+another, and whether, in the praise of the piece of which it is supposed
+to be a part, he was speaking seriously, or merely meant to ridicule the
+tragical bombast of his contemporaries. It seems never to have occurred to
+them that this speech must not be judged of by itself, but in connexion
+with the place where it is introduced. To distinguish it in the play
+itself as dramatic poetry, it was necessary that it should rise above the
+dignified poetry of the former in the same proportion that generally
+theatrical elevation soars above simple nature. Hence Shakspeare has
+composed the play in Hamlet altogether in sententious rhymes full of
+antitheses. But this solemn and measured tone did not suit a speech in
+which violent emotion ought to prevail, and the poet had no other
+expedient than the one of which he made choice: overcharging the pathos.
+The language of the speech in question is certainly falsely emphatical;
+but yet this fault is so mixed up with true grandeur, that a player
+practised in artificially calling forth in himself the emotion he is
+imitating, may certainly be carried away by it. Besides, it will hardly be
+believed that Shakspeare knew so little of his art, as not to be aware
+that a tragedy in which Aeneas had to make a lengthy epic relation of a
+transaction that happened so long before as the destruction of Troy, could
+neither be dramatical nor theatrical.
+
+Of _Macbeth_ I have already spoken once in passing, and who could exhaust
+the praises of this sublime work? Since _The Eumenides_ of Aeschylus,
+nothing so grand and terrible has ever been written. The witches are not,
+it is true, divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be: they are ignoble
+and vulgar instruments of hell. A German poet, therefore, very ill
+understood their meaning, when he transformed them into mongrel beings, a
+mixture of fates, furies, and enchantresses, and clothed them with tragic
+dignity. Let no man venture to lay hand on Shakspeare's works thinking to
+improve anything essential: he will be sure to punish himself. The bad is
+radically odious, and to endeavour in any manner to ennoble it, is to
+violate the laws of propriety. Hence, in my opinion, Dante, and even
+Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture of daemons than
+Milton. Whether the age of Shakspeare still believed in ghosts and
+witches, is a matter of perfect indifference for the justification of the
+use which in _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ he has made of pre-existing
+traditions.
+
+No superstition can be widely diffused without having a foundation in
+human nature: on this the poet builds; he calls up from their hidden
+abysses that dread of the unknown, that presage of a dark side of nature,
+and a world of spirits, which philosophy now imagines it has altogether
+exploded. In this manner he is in some degree both the portrayer and the
+philosopher of superstition; that is, not the philosopher who denies and
+turns it into ridicule, but, what is still more difficult, who distinctly
+exhibits its origin in apparently irrational and yet natural opinions. But
+when he ventures to make arbitrary changes in these popular traditions, he
+altogether forfeits his right to them, and merely holds up his own idle
+fancies to our ridicule. Shakspeare's picture of the witches is truly
+magical: in the short scenes where they enter, he has created for them a
+peculiar language, which, although composed of the usual elements, still
+seems to be a collection of formulae of incantation. The sound of the
+words, the accumulation of rhymes, and the rhythmus of the verse, form, as
+it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for
+using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies the kettle of
+the witches can be made effective with agreeable aromatics, is as wise as
+those who desire that hell should sincerely and honestly give good advice.
+These repulsive things, from which the imagination shrinks, are here
+emblems of the hostile powers which operate in nature; and the repugnance
+of our senses is outweighed by the mental horror. With one another the
+witches discourse like women of the very lowest class; for this was the
+class to which witches were ordinarily supposed to belong: when, however,
+they address Macbeth they assume a loftier tone: their predictions, which
+they either themselves pronounce, or allow their apparitions to deliver,
+have all the obscure brevity, the majestic solemnity of oracles.
+
+We here see that the witches are merely instruments; they are governed by
+an invisible spirit, or the operation of such great and dreadful events
+would be above their sphere. With what intent did Shakspeare assign the
+same place to them in his play, which they occupy in the history of
+Macbeth as related in the old chronicles? A monstrous crime is committed:
+Duncan, a venerable old man, and the best of kings, is, in defenceless
+sleep, under the hospitable roof, murdered by his subject, whom he has
+loaded with honours and rewards. Natural motives alone seem inadequate, or
+the perpetrator must have been portrayed as a hardened villain. Shakspeare
+wished to exhibit a more sublime picture: an ambitious but noble hero,
+yielding to a deep-laid hellish temptation; and in whom all the crimes to
+which, in order to secure the fruits of his first crime, he is impelled by
+necessity, cannot altogether eradicate the stamp of native heroism. He
+has, therefore, given a threefold division to the guilt of that crime. The
+first idea comes from that being whose whole activity is guided by a lust
+of wickedness. The weird sisters surprise Macbeth in the moment of
+intoxication of victory, when his love of glory has been gratified; they
+cheat his eyes by exhibiting to him as the work of fate what in reality
+can only be accomplished by his own deed, and gain credence for all their
+words by the immediate fulfilment of the first prediction. The opportunity
+of murdering the King immediately offers; the wife of Macbeth conjures him
+not to let it slip; she urges him on with a fiery eloquence, which has at
+command all those sophisms that serve to throw a false splendour over
+crime. Little more than the mere execution falls to the share of Macbeth;
+he is driven into it, as it were, in a tumult of fascination. Repentance
+immediately follows, nay, even precedes the deed, and the stings of
+conscience leave him rest neither night nor day. But he is now fairly
+entangled in the snares of hell; truly frightful is it to behold that same
+Macbeth, who once as a warrior could spurn at death, now that he dreads
+the prospect of the life to come [Footnote: We'd jump the life to come.],
+clinging with growing anxiety to his earthly existence the more miserable
+it becomes, and pitilessly removing out of the way whatever to his dark
+and suspicious mind seems to threaten danger. However much we may abhor
+his actions, we cannot altogether refuse to compassionate the state of his
+mind; we lament the ruin of so many noble qualities, and even in his last
+defence we are compelled to admire the struggle of a brave will with a
+cowardly conscience. We might believe that we witness in this tragedy the
+over-ruling destiny of the ancients represented in perfect accordance with
+their ideas: the whole originates in a supernatural influence, to which
+the subsequent events seem inevitably linked. Moreover, we even find here
+the same ambiguous oracles which, by their literal fulfilment, deceive
+those who confide in them. Yet it may be easily shown that the poet has,
+in his work, displayed more enlightened views. He wishes to show that the
+conflict of good and evil in this world can only take place by the
+permission of Providence, which converts the curse that individual mortals
+draw down on their heads into a blessing to others. An accurate scale is
+followed in the retaliation. Lady Macbeth, who of all the human
+participators in the king's murder is the most guilty, is thrown by the
+terrors of her conscience into a state of incurable bodily and mental
+disease; she dies, unlamented by her husband, with all the symptoms of
+reprobation. Macbeth is still found worthy to die the death of a hero on
+the field of battle. The noble Macduff is allowed the satisfaction of
+saving his country by punishing with his own hand the tyrant who had
+murdered his wife and children. Banquo, by an early death, atones for the
+ambitious curiosity which prompted the wish to know his glorious
+descendants, as he thereby has roused Macbeth's jealousy; but he preserved
+his mind pure from the evil suggestions of the witches: his name is
+blessed in his race, destined to enjoy for a long succession of ages that
+royal dignity which Macbeth could only hold for his own life. In the
+progress of the action, this piece is altogether the reverse of
+_Hamlet_: it strides forward with amazing rapidity, from the first
+catastrophe (for Duncan's murder may be called a catastrophe) to the last.
+"Thought, and done!" is the general motto; for as Macbeth says,
+
+  The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
+  Unless the deed go with it.
+
+In every feature we see an energetic heroic age, in the hardy North which
+steels every nerve. The precise duration of the action cannot be
+ascertained,--years perhaps, according to the story; but we know that to
+the imagination the most crowded time appears always the shortest. Here we
+can hardly conceive how so very much could ever have been compressed into
+so narrow a space; not merely external events,--the very inmost recesses
+in the minds of the dramatic personages are laid open to us. It is as if
+the drags were taken from the wheels of time, and they rolled along
+without interruption in their descent. Nothing can equal this picture in
+its power to excite terror. We need only allude to the circumstances
+attending the murder of Duncan, the dagger that hovers before the eyes of
+Macbeth, the vision of Banquo at the feast, the madness of Lady Macbeth;
+what can possibly be said on the subject that will not rather weaken the
+impression they naturally leave? Such scenes stand alone, and are to be
+found only in this poet; otherwise the tragic muse might exchange her mask
+for the _head of Medusa_.
+
+I wish merely to point out as a secondary circumstance the prudent
+dexterity of Shakspeare, who could still contrive to flatter a king by a
+work in every part of whose plan nevertheless the poetical views are
+evident. James the First drew his lineage from Banquo; he was the first
+who united the threefold sceptre of England, Scotland, and Ireland: this
+is foreshown in the magical vision, when a long series of glorious
+successors is promised to Banquo. Even the gift of the English kings to
+heal certain maladies by the touch, which James pretended to have
+inherited from Edward [Footnote: The naming of Edward the Confessor gives
+us at the same time the epoch in which these historically accredited
+transactions are made to take place. The ruins of Macbeth's palace are yet
+standing at Inverness; the present Earls of Fife are the descendants of
+the valiant Macduff, and down to the union of Scotland with England they
+were in the enjoyment of peculiar privileges for their services to the
+crown.] the Confessor, and on which he set a great value, is brought in
+very naturally.--With such occasional matters we may well allow ourselves
+to be pleased without fearing from them any danger to poetry: by similar
+allusions Aeschylus endeavoured to recommend the Areopagus to his fellow-
+citizens, and Sophocles to celebrate the glory of Athens.
+
+As in _Macbeth_ terror reaches its utmost height, in _King Lear_
+the science of compassion is exhausted. The principal characters here are
+not those who act, but those who suffer. We have not in this, as in most
+tragedies, the picture of a calamity in which the sudden blows of fate
+seem still to honour the head which they strike, and where the loss is
+always accompanied by some flattering consolation in the memory of the
+former possession; but a fall from the highest elevation into the deepest
+abyss of misery, where humanity is stripped of all external and internal
+advantages, and given up a prey to naked helplessness. The threefold
+dignity of a king, an old man, and a father, is dishonoured by the cruel
+ingratitude of his unnatural daughters; the old Lear, who out of a foolish
+tenderness has given away every thing, is driven out to the world a
+wandering beggar; the childish imbecility to which he was fast advancing
+changes into the wildest insanity, and when he is rescued from the
+disgraceful destitution to which he was abandoned, it is too late: the
+kind consolations of filial care and attention and of true friendship are
+now lost on him; his bodily and mental powers are destroyed beyond all
+hope of recovery, and all that now remains to him of life is the
+capability of loving and suffering beyond measure. What a picture we have
+in the meeting of Lear and Edgar in a tempestuous night and in a wretched
+hovel! The youthful Edgar has, by the wicked arts of his brother, and
+through his father's blindness, fallen, as the old Lear, from the rank to
+which his birth entitled him; and, as the only means of escaping further
+persecution, is reduced to assume the disguise of a beggar tormented by
+evil spirits. The King's fool, notwithstanding the voluntary degradation
+which is implied in his situation, is, after Kent, Lear's most faithful
+associate, his wisest counsellor. This good-hearted fool clothes reason
+with the livery of his motley garb; the high-born beggar acts the part of
+insanity; and both, were they even in reality what they seem, would still
+be enviable in comparison with the King, who feels that the violence of
+his grief threatens to overpower his reason. The meeting of Edgar with the
+blinded Gloster is equally heart-rending; nothing can be more affecting
+than to see the ejected son become the father's guide, and the good angel,
+who under the disguise of insanity, saves him by an ingenious and pious
+fraud from the horror and despair of self-murder. But who can possibly
+enumerate all the different combinations and situations by which our minds
+are here as it were stormed by the poet? Respecting the structure of the
+whole I will only make one observation. The story of Lear and his
+daughters was left by Shakspeare exactly as he found it in a fabulous
+tradition, with all the features characteristical of the simplicity of old
+times. But in that tradition there is not the slightest trace of the story
+of Gloster and his sons, which was derived by Shakspeare from another
+source. The incorporation of the two stories has been censured as
+destructive of the unity of action. But whatever contributes to the
+intrigue or the _dénouement_ must always possess unity. And with what
+ingenuity and skill are the two main parts of the composition dovetailed
+into one another! The pity felt by Gloster for the fate of Lear becomes
+the means which enables his son Edmund to effect his complete destruction,
+and affords the outcast Edgar an opportunity of being the saviour of his
+father. On the other hand, Edmund is active in the cause of Regan and
+Gonerill, and the criminal passion which they both entertain for him
+induces them to execute justice on each other and on themselves. The laws
+of the drama have therefore been sufficiently complied with; but that is
+the least: it is the very combination which constitutes the sublime beauty
+of the work. The two cases resembles each other in the main: an infatuated
+father is blind towards his well-disposed child, and the unnatural
+children, whom he prefers, requite him by the ruin of all his happiness.
+But all the circumstances are so different, that these stories, while they
+each make a correspondent impression on the heart, form a complete
+contrast for the imagination. Were Lear alone to suffer from his
+daughters, the impression would be limited to the powerful compassion felt
+by us for his private misfortune. But two such unheard-of examples taking
+place at the same time have the appearance of a great commotion in the
+moral world: the picture becomes gigantic, and fills us with such alarm as
+we should entertain at the idea that the heavenly bodies might one day
+fall from their appointed orbits. To save in some degree the honour of
+human nature, Shakspeare never wishes his spectators to forget that the
+story takes place in a dreary and barbarous age: he lays particular stress
+on the circumstance that the Britons of that day were still heathens,
+although he has not made all the remaining circumstances to coincide
+learnedly with the time which he has chosen. From this point of view we
+must judge of many coarsenesses in expression and manners; for instance,
+the immodest manner in which Gloster acknowledges his bastard, Kent's
+quarrel with the Steward, and more especially the cruelty personally
+inflicted on Gloster by the Duke of Cornwall. Even the virtue of the
+honest Kent bears the stamp of an iron age, in which the good and the bad
+display the same uncontrollable energy. Great qualities have not been
+superfluously assigned to the King; the poet could command our sympathy
+for his situation, without concealing what he had done to bring himself
+into it. Lear is choleric, overbearing, and almost childish from age, when
+he drives out his youngest daughter because she will not join in the
+hypocritical exaggerations of her sisters. But he has a warm and
+affectionate heart, which is susceptible of the most fervent gratitude;
+and even rays of a high and kingly disposition burst forth from the
+eclipse of his understanding. Of Cordelia's heavenly beauty of soul,
+painted in so few words, I will not venture to speak; she can only be
+named in the same breath with Antigone. Her death has been thought too
+cruel; and in England the piece is in acting so far altered that she
+remains victorious and happy. I must own, I cannot conceive what ideas of
+art and dramatic connexion those persons have who suppose that we can at
+pleasure tack a double conclusion to a tragedy; a melancholy one for hard-
+hearted spectators, and a happy one for souls of a softer mould. After
+surviving so many sufferings, Lear can only die; and what more truly
+tragic end for him than to die from grief for the death of Cordelia? and
+if he is also to be saved and to pass the remainder of his days in
+happiness, the whole loses its signification. According to Shakspeare's
+plan the guilty, it is true, are all punished, for wickedness destroys
+itself; but the virtues that would bring help and succour are everywhere
+too late, or overmatched by the cunning activity of malice. The persons of
+this drama have only such a faint belief in Providence as heathens may be
+supposed to have; and the poet here wishes to show us that this belief
+requires a wider range than the dark pilgrimage on earth to be established
+in full extent.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+Criticisms on Shakspeare's Historical Dramas.
+
+
+The five tragedies of which I have just spoken are deservedly the most
+celebrated of all the works of Shakspeare. In the three last, more
+especially, we have a display of a loftiness of genius which may almost be
+said to surpass the powers of human nature: the mind is as much lost in
+the contemplation of all the heights and depths of these works as our
+feelings are overpowered by the first impression which they produce. Of
+his historical plays, however, some possess a high degree of tragical
+perfection, and all are distinguished by peculiar excellencies.
+
+In the three Roman pieces, _Coriolanus_, _Julius Caesar_, and _Antony and
+Cleopatra_, the moderation with which Shakspeare excludes foreign
+appendages and arbitrary suppositions, and yet fully satisfies the wants
+of the stage, is particularly deserving of admiration. These plays are the
+very thing itself; and under the apparent artlessness of adhering closely
+to history as he found it, an uncommon degree of art is concealed. Of
+every historical transaction Shakspeare knows how to seize the true
+poetical point of view, and to give unity and rounding to a series of
+events detached from the immeasurable extent of history without in any
+degree changing them. The public life of ancient Rome is called up from
+its grave, and exhibited before our eyes with the utmost grandeur and
+freedom of the dramatic form, and the heroes of Plutarch are ennobled by
+the most eloquent poetry.
+
+In _Coriolanus_ we have more comic intermixtures than in the others,
+as the many-headed multitude plays here a considerable part; and when
+Shakspeare portrays the blind movements of the people in a mass, he almost
+always gives himself up to his merry humour. To the plebeians, whose folly
+is certainly sufficiently conspicuous already, the original old satirist
+Menenius is added by way of abundance. Droll scenes arise of a description
+altogether peculiar, and which are compatible only with such a political
+drama; for instance, when Coriolanus, to obtain the consulate, must
+solicit the lower order of citizens whom he holds in contempt for their
+cowardice in war, but cannot so far master his haughty disposition as to
+assume the customary humility, and yet extorts from them their votes.
+
+I have already shown [Footnote: Page 240.] that the piece of _Julius
+Caesar_, to complete the action, requires to be continued to the fall
+of Brutus and Cassius. Caesar is not the hero of the piece, but Brutus.
+The amiable beauty of this character, his feeling and patriotic heroism,
+are portrayed with peculiar care. Yet the poet has pointed out with great
+nicety the superiority of Cassius over Brutus in independent volition and
+discernment in judging of human affairs; that the latter from the purity
+of his mind and his conscientious love of justice, is unfit to be the head
+of a party in a state entirely corrupted; and that these very faults give
+an unfortunate turn to the cause of the conspirators. In the part of
+Caesar several ostentatious speeches have been censured as unsuitable. But
+as he never appears in action, we have no other measure of his greatness
+than the impression which he makes upon the rest of the characters, and
+his peculiar confidence in himself. In this Caesar was by no means
+deficient, as we learn from history and his own writings; but he displayed
+it more in the easy ridicule of his enemies than in pompous discourses.
+The theatrical effect of this play is injured by a partial falling off of
+the last two acts compared with the preceding in external splendour and
+rapidity. The first appearance of Caesar in festal robes, when the music
+stops, and all are silent whenever he opens his mouth, and when the few
+words which he utters are received as oracles, is truly magnificent; the
+conspiracy is a true conspiracy, which in stolen interviews and in the
+dead of night prepares the blow which is to be struck in open day, and
+which is to change the constitution of the world;--the confused thronging
+before the murder of Caesar, the general agitation even of the
+perpetrators after the deed, are all portrayed with most masterly skill;
+with the funeral procession and the speech of Antony the effect reaches
+its utmost height. Caesar's shade is more powerful to avenge his fall than
+he himself was to guard against it. After the overthrow of the external
+splendour and greatness of the conqueror and ruler of the world, the
+intrinsic grandeur of character of Brutus and Cassius is all that remain
+to fill the stage and occupy the minds of the spectators: suitably to
+their name, as the last of the Romans, they stand there, in some degree
+alone; and the forming a great and hazardous determination is more
+powerfully calculated to excite our expectation, than the supporting the
+consequences of the deed with heroic firmness.
+
+_Antony and Cleopatra_ may, in some measure, be considered as a
+continuation of _Julius Caesar_: the two principal characters of _Antony
+and Augustus_ are equally sustained in both pieces. _Antony and
+Cleopatra_, is a play of great extent; the progress is less simple
+than in _Julius Caesar_. The fulness and variety of political and
+warlike events, to which the union of the three divisions of the Roman
+world under one master necessarily gave rise, were perhaps too great to
+admit of being clearly exhibited in one dramatic picture. In this consists
+the great difficulty of the historical drama:--it must be a crowded
+extract, and a living development of history;--the difficulty, however,
+has generally been successfully overcome by Shakspeare. But now many
+things, which are transacted in the background, are here merely alluded
+to, in a manner which supposes an intimate acquaintance with the history;
+but a work of art should contain, within itself, every thing necessary for
+its being fully understood. Many persons of historical importance are
+merely introduced in passing; the preparatory and concurring circumstances
+are not sufficiently collected into masses to avoid distracting our
+attention. The principal personages, however, are most emphatically
+distinguished by lineament and colouring, and powerfully arrest the
+imagination. In Antony we observe a mixture of great qualities,
+weaknesses, and vices; violent ambition and ebullitions of magnanimity; we
+see him now sinking into luxurious enjoyment and then nobly ashamed of his
+own aberrations,--manning himself to resolutions not unworthy of himself,
+which are always shipwrecked against the seductions of an artful woman. It
+is Hercules in the chains of Omphale, drawn from the fabulous heroic ages
+into history, and invested with the Roman costume. The seductive arts of
+Cleopatra are in no respect veiled over; she is an ambiguous being made up
+of royal pride, female vanity, luxury, inconstancy, and true attachment.
+Although the mutual passion of herself and Antony is without moral
+dignity, it still excites our sympathy as an insurmountable fascination:--
+they seem formed for each other, and Cleopatra is as remarkable for her
+seductive charms as Antony for the splendour of his deeds. As they die for
+each other, we forgive them for having lived for each other. The open and
+lavish character of Antony is admirably contrasted with the heartless
+littleness of Octavius, whom Shakspeare seems to have completely seen
+through, without allowing himself to be led astray by the fortune and the
+fame of Augustus.
+
+_Timon of Athens_, and _Troilus and Cressida_, are not historical plays;
+but we cannot properly call them either tragedies or comedies. By the
+selection of the materials from antiquity they have some affinity to the
+Roman pieces, and hence I have hitherto abstained from mentioning them.
+
+_Timon of Athens_, of all the works of Shakspeare, possesses most the
+character of satire:--a laughing satire in the picture of the parasites
+and flatterers, and Juvenalian in the bitterness of Timon's imprecations
+on the ingratitude of a false world. The story is very simply treated, and
+is definitely divided into large masses:--in the first act the joyous life
+of Timon, his noble and hospitable extravagance, and around him the throng
+of suitors of every description; in the second and third acts his
+embarrassment, and the trial which he is thereby reduced to make of his
+supposed friends, who all desert him in the hour of need;--in the fourth
+and fifth acts, Timon's flight to the woods, his misanthropical
+melancholy, and his death. The only thing which may be called an episode
+is the banishment of Alcibiades, and his return by force of arms. However,
+they are both examples of ingratitude,--the one of a state towards its
+defender, and the other of private friends to their benefactor. As the
+merits of the General towards his fellow-citizens suppose more strength of
+character than those of the generous prodigal, their respective behaviours
+are not less different; Timon frets himself to death, Alcibiades regains
+his lost dignity by force. If the poet very properly sides with Timon
+against the common practice of the world, he is, on the other hand, by no
+means disposed to spare Timon. Timon was a fool in his generosity; in his
+discontent he is a madman: he is every where wanting in the wisdom which
+enables a man in all things to observe the due measure. Although the truth
+of his extravagant feelings is proved by his death, and though when he
+digs up a treasure he spurns the wealth which seems to tempt him, we yet
+see distinctly enough that the vanity of wishing to be singular, in both
+the parts that he plays, had some share in his liberal self-forgetfulness,
+as well as in his anchoritical seclusion. This is particularly evident in
+the incomparable scene where the cynic Apemantus visits Timon in the
+wilderness. They have a sort of competition with each other in their trade
+of misanthropy: the Cynic reproaches the impoverished Timon with having
+been merely driven by necessity to take to the way of living which he
+himself had long been following of his free choice, and Timon cannot bear
+the thought of being merely an imitator of the Cynic. In such a subject as
+this the due effect could only be produced by an accumulation of similar
+features, still, in the variety of the shades, an amazing degree of
+understanding has been displayed by Shakspeare. What a powerfully
+diversified concert of flatteries and of empty testimonies of devotedness!
+It is highly amusing to see the suitors, whom the ruined circumstances of
+their patron had dispersed, immediately flock to him again when they learn
+that he has been revisited by fortune. On the other hand, in the speeches
+of Timon, after he is undeceived, all hostile figures of speech are
+exhausted,--it is a dictionary of eloquent imprecations.
+
+_Troilus and Cressida_ is the only play of Shakspeare which he allowed to
+be printed without being previously represented. It seems as if he here
+for once wished, without caring for theatrical effect, to satisfy the
+nicety of his peculiar wit, and the inclination to a certain guile, if
+I may say so, in the characterization. The whole is one continued irony of
+that crown of all heroic tales, the tale of Troy. The contemptible nature
+of the origin of the Trojan war, the laziness and discord with which it
+was carried on, so that the siege was made to last ten years, are only
+placed in clearer light by the noble descriptions, the sage and ingenious
+maxims with which the work overflows, and the high ideas which the heroes
+entertain of themselves and each other. Agamemnon's stately behaviour,
+Menelaus' irritation, Nestor's experience, Ulysses' cunning, are all
+productive of no effect; when they have at last arranged a single combat
+between the coarse braggart Ajax and Hector, the latter will not fight in
+good earnest, as Ajax is his cousin. Achilles is treated worst: after
+having long stretched himself out in arrogant idleness, and passed his
+time in the company of Thersites the buffoon, he falls upon Hector at a
+moment when he is defenceless, and kills him by means of his myrmidons. In
+all this let no man conceive that any indignity was intended to the
+venerable Homer. Shakspeare had not the _Iliad_ before him, but the
+chivalrous romances of the Trojan war derived from _Dares Phrygius_.
+From this source also he took the love-intrigue of _Troilus and Cressida_,
+a story at one time so popular in England, that the name of Troilus had
+become proverbial for faithful and ill-requited love, and Cressida for
+female falsehood. The name of the agent between them, Pandarus, has even
+been adopted into the English language to signify those personages
+(_panders_) who dedicate themselves to similar services for inexperienced
+persons of both sexes. The endless contrivances of the courteous Pandarus
+to bring the two lovers together, who do not stand in need of him, as
+Cressida requires no seduction, are comic in the extreme. The manner in
+which this treacherous beauty excites while she refuses, and converts the
+virgin modesty which she pretends, into a means of seductive allurement,
+is portrayed in colours extremely elegant, though certainly somewhat
+voluptuous. Troilus, the pattern of lovers, looks patiently on, while his
+mistress enters into an intrigue with Diomed. No doubt, he swears that he
+will be revenged; but notwithstanding his violence in the fight next day,
+he does no harm to any one, and ends with only high-sounding threats. In a
+word, in this heroic comedy, where, from traditional fame, and the pomp of
+poetry, every thing seems to lay claim to admiration, Shakspeare did not
+wish that any room should be left, except, perhaps, in the character of
+Hector, for esteem and sympathy; but in this double meaning of the
+picture, he has afforded us the most choice entertainment.
+
+The dramas derived from the English history, ten in number, form one of
+the most valuable of Shakspeare's works, and partly the fruit of his
+maturest age. I say advisedly _one_ of his works, for the poet
+evidently intended them to form one great whole. It is, as it were, an
+historical heroic poem in the dramatic form, of which the separate plays
+constitute the rhapsodies. The principal features of the events are
+exhibited with such fidelity; their causes, and even their secret springs,
+are placed in such a clear light, that we may attain from them a knowledge
+of history in all its truth, while the living picture makes an impression
+on the imagination which can never be effaced. But this series of dramas
+is intended as the vehicle of a much higher and much more general
+instruction; it furnishes examples of the political course of the world,
+applicable to all times. This mirror of kings should be the manual of
+young princes; from it they may learn the intrinsic dignity of their
+hereditary vocation, but they will also learn from it the difficulties of
+their situation, the dangers of usurpation, the inevitable fall of
+tyranny, which buries itself under its attempts to obtain a firmer
+foundation; lastly, the ruinous consequences of the weaknesses, errors,
+and crimes of kings, for whole nations, and many subsequent generations.
+Eight of these plays, from _Richard the Second_ to _Richard the
+Third_, are linked together in an uninterrupted succession, and embrace
+a most eventful period of nearly a century of English history. The events
+portrayed in them not only follow one another, but they are linked
+together in the closest and most exact connexion; and the cycle of
+revolts, parties, civil and foreign wars, which began with the deposition
+of Richard II., first ends with the accession of Henry VII. to the throne.
+The careless rule of the first of these monarchs, and his injudicious
+treatment of his own relations, drew upon him the rebellion of
+Bolingbroke; his dethronement, however, was, in point of form, altogether
+unjust, and in no case could Bolingbroke be considered the rightful heir
+to the crown. This shrewd founder of the House of Lancaster never as Henry
+IV. enjoyed in peace the fruits of his usurpation: his turbulent Barons,
+the same who aided him in ascending the throne, allowed him not a moment's
+repose upon it. On the other hand, he was jealous of the brilliant
+qualities of his son, and this distrust, more than any really low
+inclination, induced the Prince, that he might avoid every appearance of
+ambition, to give himself up to dissolute society. These two circumstances
+form the subject-matter of the two parts of _Henry the Fourth_; the
+enterprises of the discontented make up the serious, and the wild youthful
+frolics of the heir-apparent supply the comic scenes. When this warlike
+Prince ascended the throne under the name of Henry V., he was determined
+to assert his ambiguous title; he considered foreign conquests as the best
+means of guarding against internal disturbances, and this gave rise to the
+glorious, but more ruinous than profitable, war with France, which
+Shakspeare has celebrated in the drama of _Henry the Fifth_. The early
+death of this king, the long legal minority of Henry VI., and his
+perpetual minority in the art of government, brought the greatest troubles
+on England. The dissensions of the Regents, and the consequently wretched
+administration, occasioned the loss of the French conquests and there
+arose a bold candidate for the crown, whose title was indisputable, if the
+prescription of three governments may not be assumed to confer legitimacy
+on usurpation. Such was the origin of the wars between the Houses of York
+and Lancaster, which desolated the kingdom for a number of years, and
+ended with the victory of the House of York. All this Shakspeare has
+represented in the three parts of _Henry the Sixth_. Edward IV. shortened
+his life by excesses, and did not long enjoy the throne purchased at the
+expense of so many cruel deeds. His brother Richard, who had a great share
+in the elevation of the House of York, was not contented with the regency,
+and his ambition paved himself a way to the throne through treachery and
+violence; but his gloomy tyranny made him the object of the people's
+hatred, and at length drew on him the destruction which he merited. He was
+conquered by a descendant of the royal house unstained by the guilt of the
+civil wars, and what might seem defective in his title was made good by
+the merit of freeing his country from a monster. With the accession of
+Henry VII. to the throne, a new epoch of English history begins: the curse
+seemed at length to be expiated, and the long series of usurpations,
+revolts, and civil wars, occasioned by the levity with which the Second
+Richard sported away his crown, was now brought to a termination.
+
+Such is the evident connexion of these eight plays with each other, but
+they were not, however, composed in chronological order. According to all
+appearance, the four last were first written; this is certain, indeed,
+with respect to the three parts of _Henry the Sixth_; and _Richard
+the Third_ is not only from its subject a continuation of these, but is
+also composed in the same style. Shakspeare then went back to _Richard
+the Second_, and with the most careful art connected the second series
+with the first. The trilogies of the ancients have already given us an
+example of the possibility of forming a perfect dramatic whole, which
+shall yet contain allusions to something which goes before, and follows
+it. In like manner the most of these plays end with a very definite
+division in the history: _Richard the Second_, with the murder of that
+King; _the Second Part of Henry the Fourth_, with the accession of his son
+to the throne; _Henry the Fifth_, with the conclusion of peace with
+France; _the First Part of Henry the Sixth_, also, with a treaty of Peace;
+the third, with the murder of Henry, and Edward's elevation to the throne;
+_Richard the Third_, with his overthrow and death. _The First Part of
+Henry the Fourth_, and _the Second of Henry the Sixth_, are rounded off in
+a less satisfactory manner. The revolt of the nobles was only half quelled
+by the overthrow of Percy, and it is therefore continued through the
+following part of the piece. The victory of York at St. Alban's could as
+little be considered a decisive event, in the war of the two houses.
+Shakspeare has fallen into this dramatic imperfection, if we may so call
+it, for the sake of advantages of much more importance. The picture of the
+civil war was too great and too rich in dreadful events for a single
+drama, and yet the uninterrupted series of events offered no more
+convenient resting-place. The government of Henry IV. might certainly have
+been comprehended in one piece, but it possesses too little tragical
+interest, and too little historical splendour, to be attractive, if
+handled in a serious manner throughout: hence Shakspeare has given to the
+comic characters belonging to the retinue of Prince Henry, the freest
+development, and the half of the space is occupied by this constant
+interlude between the political events.
+
+The two other historical plays taken from the English history are
+chronologically separate from this series: King John reigned nearly two
+centuries before Richard II., and between Richard III. and Henry VIII.
+comes the long reign of Henry VII., which Shakspeare justly passed over as
+unsusceptible of dramatic interest. However, these two plays may in some
+measure be considered as the Prologue and the Epilogue to the other eight.
+In _King John_, all the political and national motives which play so
+great a part in the following pieces are already indicated: wars and
+treaties with France; a usurpation, and the tyrannical actions which it
+draws after it; the influence of the clergy, the factions of the nobles.
+_Henry the Eighth_ again shows us the transition to another age; the
+policy of modern Europe, a refined court-life under a voluptuous monarch,
+the dangerous situation of favourites, who, after having assisted in
+effecting the fall of others, are themselves precipitated from power; in a
+word, despotism under a milder form, but not less unjust and cruel. By the
+prophecies on the birth of Elizabeth, Shakspeare has in some degree
+brought his great poem on English history down to his own time, as far at
+least as such recent events could be yet handled with security. He
+composed probably the two plays of _King John_ [Footnote: I mean the
+piece with this title in the collection of his works. There is an older
+_King John_, in two parts, of which the former is a re-cast:--perhaps
+a juvenile work of Shakspeare, though not hitherto acknowledged as such by
+the English critics. See the disquisition appended to this Lecture.] and
+_Henry the Eighth_ at a later period, as an addition to the others.
+
+In _King John_ the political and warlike events are dressed out with
+solemn pomp, for the very reason that they possess but little of true
+grandeur. The falsehood and selfishness of the monarch speak in the style
+of a manifesto. Conventional dignity is most indispensable where personal
+dignity is wanting. The bastard Faulconbridge is the witty interpreter of
+this language: he ridicules the secret springs of politics, without
+disapproving of them, for he owns that he is endeavouring to make his
+fortune by similar means, and wishes rather to belong to the deceivers
+than the deceived, for in his view of the world there is no other choice.
+His litigation with his brother respecting the succession of his pretended
+father, by which he effects his acknowledgment at court as natural son of
+the most chivalrous king of England, Richard Coeur de Lion, forms a very
+entertaining and original prelude in the play itself. When, amidst so many
+disguises of real sentiments, and so much insincerity of expression, the
+poet shows us human nature without a veil, and allows us to take deep
+views of the inmost recesses of the mind, the impression produced is only
+the more deep and powerful. The short scene in which John urges Hubert to
+put out of the way Arthur, his young rival for the possession of the
+throne, is superlatively masterly: the cautious criminal hardly ventures
+to say to himself what he wishes the other to do. The young and amiable
+prince becomes a sacrifice of unprincipled ambition: his fate excites the
+warmest sympathy. When Hubert, about to put out his eyes with the hot
+iron, is softened by his prayers, our compassion would be almost
+overwhelming, were it not sweetened by the winning innocence of Arthur's
+childish speeches. Constance's maternal despair on her son's imprisonment
+is also of the highest beauty; and even the last moments of John--an
+unjust and feeble prince, whom we can neither respect nor admire--are yet
+so portrayed as to extinguish our displeasure with him, and fill us with
+serious considerations on the arbitrary deeds and the inevitable fate of
+mortals.
+
+In _Richard the Second_, Shakspeare exhibits a noble kingly nature,
+at first obscured by levity and the errors of an unbridled youth, and
+afterwards purified by misfortune, and rendered by it more highly and
+splendidly illustrious. When he has lost the love and reverence of his
+subjects, and is on the point of losing also his throne, he then feels
+with a bitter enthusiasm the high vocation of the kingly dignity and its
+transcendental rights, independent of personal merit or changeable
+institutions. When the earthly crown is fallen from his head, he first
+appears a king whose innate nobility no humiliation can annihilate. This
+is felt by a poor groom: he is shocked that his master's favourite horse
+should have carried the proud Bolingbroke to his coronation; he visits the
+captive king in prison, and shames the desertion of the great. The
+political incident of the deposition is sketched with extraordinary
+knowledge of the world;--the ebb of fortune, on the one hand, and on the
+other, the swelling tide, which carries every thing along with it. While
+Bolingbroke acts as a king, and his adherents behave towards him as if he
+really were so, he still continues to give out that he has come with an
+armed band merely to demand his birthright and the removal of abuses. The
+usurpation has been long completed, before the word is pronounced and the
+thing publicly avowed. The old John of Gaunt is a model of chivalrous
+honour: he stands there like a pillar of the olden time which he has
+outlived. His son, Henry IV., was altogether unlike him: his character is
+admirably sustained throughout the three pieces in which he appears. We
+see in it that mixture of hardness, moderation, and prudence, which, in
+fact, enabled him to secure the possession of the throne which he had
+violently usurped; but without openness, without true cordiality, and
+incapable of noble ebullitions, he was so little able to render his
+government beloved, that the deposed Richard was even wished back again.
+
+The first part of _Henry the Fourth_ is particularly brilliant in the
+serious scenes, from the contrast between two young heroes, Prince Henry
+and Percy (with the characteristical name of Hotspur.) All the amiability
+and attractiveness is certainly on the side of the prince: however
+familiar he makes himself with bad company, we can never mistake him for
+one of them: the ignoble does indeed touch, but it does not contaminate
+him; and his wildest freaks appear merely as witty tricks, by which his
+restless mind sought to burst through the inactivity to which he was
+constrained, for on the first occasion which wakes him out of his unruly
+levity he distinguishes himself without effort in the most chivalrous
+guise. Percy's boisterous valour is not without a mixture of rude manners,
+arrogance, and boyish obstinacy; but these errors, which prepare for him
+an early death, cannot disfigure the majestic image of his noble youth; we
+are carried away by his fiery spirit at the very moment we would most
+censure it. Shakspeare has admirably shown why so formidable a revolt
+against an unpopular and really an illegitimate prince was not attended
+with success: Glendower's superstitious fancies respecting himself, the
+effeminacy of the young Mortimer, the ungovernable disposition of Percy,
+who will listen to no prudent counsel, the irresolution of his older
+friends, the want of unity of plan and motive, are all characterized by
+delicate but unmistakable traits. After Percy has departed from the scene,
+the splendour of the enterprise is, it is true, at an end; there remain
+none but the subordinate participators in the revolts, who are reduced by
+Henry IV., more by policy than by warlike achievements. To overcome this
+dearth of matter, Shakspeare was in the second part obliged to employ
+great art, as he never allowed himself to adorn history with more
+arbitrary embellishments than the dramatic form rendered indispensable.
+The piece is opened by confused rumours from the field of battle; the
+powerful impression produced by Percy's fall, whose name and reputation
+were peculiarly adapted to be the watchword of a bold enterprise, make him
+in some degree an acting personage after his death. The last acts are
+occupied with the dying king's remorse of conscience, his uneasiness at
+the behaviour of the prince, and lastly, the clearing up of the
+misunderstanding between father and son, which make up several most
+affecting scenes. All this, however, would still be inadequate to fill the
+stage, if the serious events were not interrupted by a comedy which runs
+through both parts of the play, which is enriched from time to time with
+new figures, and which first comes to its catastrophe at the conclusion of
+the whole, namely, when Henry V., immediately after ascending the throne,
+banishes to a proper distance the companions of his youthful excesses, who
+had promised to themselves a rich harvest from his kingly favour.
+
+Falstaff is the crown of Shakspeare's comic invention. He has, without
+exhausting himself, continued this character throughout three plays, and
+exhibited him in every variety of situation; the figure is drawn so
+definitely and individually, that even to the mere reader it conveys the
+clear impression of personal acquaintance. Falstaff is the most agreeable
+and entertaining knave that ever was portrayed. His contemptible qualities
+are not disguised: old, lecherous, and dissolute; corpulent beyond
+measure, and always intent upon cherishing his body with eating, drinking,
+and sleeping; constantly in debt, and anything but conscientious in his
+choice of means by which money is to be raised; a cowardly soldier, and a
+lying braggart; a flatterer of his friends before their face, and a
+satirist behind their backs; and yet we are never disgusted with him. We
+see that his tender care of himself is without any mixture of malice
+towards others; he will only not be disturbed in the pleasant repose of
+his sensuality, and this he obtains through the activity of his
+understanding. Always on the alert, and good-humoured, ever ready to crack
+jokes on others, and to enter into those of which he is himself the
+subject, so that he justly boasts he is not only witty himself, but the
+cause of wit in others, he is an admirable companion for youthful idleness
+and levity. Under a helpless exterior, he conceals an extremely acute
+mind; he has always at command some dexterous turn whenever any of his
+free jokes begin to give displeasure; he is shrewd in his distinctions,
+between those whose favour he has to win and those over whom he may assume
+a familiar authority. He is so convinced that the part which he plays can
+only pass under the cloak of wit, that even when alone he is never
+altogether serious, but gives the drollest colouring to his love-
+intrigues, his intercourse with others, and to his own sensual philosophy.
+Witness his inimitable soliloquies on honour, on the influence of wine on
+bravery, his descriptions of the beggarly vagabonds whom he enlisted, of
+Justice Shallow, &c. Falstaff has about him a whole court of amusing
+caricatures, who by turns make their appearance, without ever throwing him
+into the shade. The adventure in which the Prince, under the disguise of a
+robber, compels him to give up the spoil which he had just taken; the
+scene where the two act the part of the King and the Prince; Falstaff's
+behaviour in the field, his mode of raising recruits, his patronage of
+Justice Shallow, which afterwards takes such an unfortunate turn:--all
+this forms a series of characteristic scenes of the most original
+description, full of pleasantry, and replete with nice and ingenious
+observation, such as could only find a place in a historical play like the
+present.
+
+Several of the comic parts of _Henry the Fourth_, are continued in _The
+Merry Wives of Windsor_. This piece is said to have been composed by
+Shakspeare, in compliance with the request of Queen Elizabeth, [Footnote:
+We know with certainty, that it was acted before the Queen. Many local
+descriptions of Windsor and its neighbourhood, and an allusion in
+which the Order of the Garter is very poetically celebrated, make it
+credible that the play was destined to be first represented on the
+occasion of some festival of the Order at the palace of Windsor, where the
+Knights of the Garter have their hall of meeting.] who admired the
+character of Falstaff, and wished to see him exhibited once more, and in
+love. In love, properly speaking, Falstaff could not be; but for other
+purposes he could pretend to be so, and at all events imagine that he was
+the object of love. In the present piece accordingly he pays his court, as
+a favoured Knight, to two married ladies, who lay their heads together and
+agree to listen apparently to his addresses, for the sake of making him
+the butt of their just ridicule. The whole plan of the intrigue is
+therefore derived from the ordinary circle of Comedy, but yet richly and
+artificially interwoven with another love affair. The circumstance which
+has been so much admired in Molière's _School of Women_, that a
+jealous individual should be made the constant confidant of his rival's
+progress, had previously been introduced into this play, and certainly
+with much more probability. I would not, however, be understood as
+maintaining that it was the original invention of Shakspeare: it is one of
+those circumstances which must almost be considered as part of the common
+stock of Comedy, and everything depends on the delicacy and humour with
+which it is used. That Falstaff should fall so repeatedly into the snare
+gives us a less favourable opinion of his shrewdness than the foregoing
+pieces had led us to form; still it will not be thought improbable, if
+once we admit the probability of the first infatuation on which the whole
+piece is founded, namely, that he can believe himself qualified to inspire
+a passion. This leads him, notwithstanding his age, his corpulency, and
+his dislike of personal inconveniences and dangers, to venture on an
+enterprise which requires the boldness and activity of youth; and the
+situations occasioned by this infatuation are droll beyond all
+description. Of all Shakspeare's pieces, this approaches the nearest to
+the species of pure Comedy: it is exclusively confined to the English
+manners of the day, and to the domestic relations; the characters are
+almost all comic, and the dialogue, with the exception of a couple of
+short love scenes, is written in prose. But we see that it was a point of
+principle with Shakspeare to make none of his compositions a mere
+imitation of the prosaic world, and to strip them of all poetical
+decoration: accordingly he has elevated the conclusion of the comedy by a
+wonderful intermixture, which suited the place where it was probably first
+represented. A popular superstition is made the means of a fanciful
+mystification [Footnote: This word is French; but it has lately been
+adopted by some English writers.--TRANS.] of Falstaff; disguised as the
+Ghost of a Hunter who, with ragged horns, wanders about in the woods of
+Windsor, he is to wait for his frolicsome mistress; in this plight he is
+surprised by a chorus of boys and girls disguised like fairies, who,
+agreeably to the popular belief, are holding their midnight dances, and
+who sing a merry song as they pinch and torture him. This is the last
+affront put upon poor Falstaff; and with this contrivance the conclusion
+of the second love affair is made in a most ingenious manner to depend.
+
+King Henry the Fifth is manifestly Shakspeare's favourite hero in English
+history: he paints him as endowed with every chivalrous and kingly virtue;
+open, sincere, affable, yet, as a sort of reminiscence of his youth, still
+disposed to innocent raillery, in the intervals between his perilous but
+glorious achievements. However, to represent on the stage his whole
+history subsequent to his accession to the throne, was attended with great
+difficulty. The conquests in France were the only distinguished event of
+his reign; and war is an epic rather than a dramatic object. For wherever
+men act in masses against each other, the appearance of chance can never
+wholly be avoided; whereas it is the business of the drama to exhibit to
+us those determinations which, with a certain necessity, issue from the
+reciprocal relations of different individuals, their characters and
+passions. In several of the Greek tragedies, it is true, combats and
+battles are exhibited, that is, the preparations for them and their
+results; and in historical plays war, as the _ultima ratio regum_,
+cannot altogether be excluded. Still, if we would have dramatic interest,
+war must only be the means by which something else is accomplished, and
+not the last aim and substance of the whole. For instance, in _Macbeth_,
+the battles which are announced at the very beginning merely serve to
+heighten the glory of Macbeth and to fire his ambition; and the combats
+which take place towards the conclusion, before the eyes of the spectator,
+bring on the destruction of the tyrant. It is the very same in the Roman
+pieces, in the most of those taken from English history, and, in short,
+wherever Shakspeare has introduced war in a dramatic combination. With
+great insight into the essence of his art, he never paints the fortune of
+war as a blind deity who sometimes favours one and sometimes another;
+without going into the details of the art of war, (though sometimes he
+even ventures on this), he allows us to anticipate the result from the
+qualities of the general, and their influence on the minds of the
+soldiers; sometimes, without claiming our belief for miracles, he yet
+exhibits the issue in the light of a higher volition: the consciousness of
+a just cause and reliance on the protection of Heaven give courage to the
+one party, while the presage of a curse hanging over their undertaking
+weighs down the other. [Footnote: Aeschylus, with equal wisdom, in the
+uniformly warlike tragedy of the _Seven before Thebes_, has given to the
+Theban chiefs foresight, determination, and presence of mind; to their
+adversaries, arrogant audacity. Hence all the combats, excepting that
+between Eteocles and Polynices, turn out in favour of the former. The
+paternal curse, and the blindness to which it gives rise, carry headlong
+the two brothers to the unnatural strife in which they both fall by the
+hands of each other.--See page 91.] In _Henry the Fifth_, no opportunity
+was afforded Shakspeare of adopting the last-mentioned course, namely,
+rendering the issue of the war dramatic; but he has skilfully availed
+himself of the first.--Before the battle of Agincourt he paints in the
+most lively colours the light-minded impatience of the French leaders for
+the moment of battle, which to them seemed infallibly the moment of
+victory; on the other hand, he paints the uneasiness of the English King
+and his army in their desperate situation, coupled with their firm
+determination, if they must fall, at least to fall with honour. He applies
+this as a general contrast between the French and English national
+characters; a contrast which betrays a partiality for his own nation,
+certainly excusable in a poet, especially when he is backed with such a
+glorious document as that of the memorable battle in question.
+He has surrounded the general events of the war with a fulness of
+individual, characteristic, and even sometimes comic features. A heavy
+Scotchman, a hot Irishman, a well-meaning, honourable, but pedantic
+Welchman, all speaking in their peculiar dialects, are intended to show us
+that the warlike genius of Henry did not merely carry the English with
+him, but also the other natives of the two islands, who were either not
+yet fully united or in no degree subject to him. Several good-for-nothing
+associates of Falstaff among the dregs of the army either afford an
+opportunity for proving Henry's strictness of discipline, or are sent home
+in disgrace. But all this variety still seemed to the poet insufficient to
+animate a play of which the subject was a conquest, and nothing but a
+conquest. He has, therefore, tacked a prologue (in the technical language
+of that day a _chorus_) to the beginning of each act. These prologues,
+which unite epic pomp and solemnity with lyrical sublimity, and
+among which the description of the two camps before the battle of
+Agincourt forms a most admirable night-piece, are intended to keep the
+spectators constantly in mind, that the peculiar grandeur of the actions
+described cannot be developed on a narrow stage, and that they must,
+therefore, supply, from their own imaginations, the deficiencies of the
+representation. As the matter was not properly dramatic, Shakspeare chose
+to wander in the form also beyond the bounds of the species, and to sing,
+as a poetical herald, what he could not represent to the eye, rather than
+to cripple the progress of the action by putting long descriptions in the
+mouths of the dramatic personages. The confession of the poet that "four
+or five most vile and ragged foils, right ill disposed, can only disgrace
+the name of Agincourt," (a scruple which he has overlooked in the occasion
+of many other great battles, and among others of that of Philippi,) brings
+us here naturally to the question how far, generally speaking, it may be
+suitable and advisable to represent wars and battles on the stage. The
+Greeks have uniformly renounced them: as in the whole of their theatrical
+system they proceeded on ideas of grandeur and dignity, a feeble and petty
+imitation of the unattainable would have appeared insupportable in their
+eyes. With them, consequently, all fighting was merely recounted. The
+principle of the romantic dramatists was altogether different: their
+wonderful pictures were infinitely larger than their theatrical means of
+visible execution; they were every where obliged to count on the willing
+imagination of the spectators, and consequently they also relied on them
+in this point. It is certainly laughable enough that a handful of awkward
+warriors in mock armour, by means of two or three swords, with which we
+clearly see they take especial care not to do the slightest injury to one
+another, should decide the fate of mighty kingdoms. But the opposite
+extreme is still much worse. If we in reality succeed in exhibiting the
+tumult of a great battle, the storming of a fort, and the like, in a
+manner any way calculated to deceive the eye, the power of these sensible
+impressions is so great that they render the spectator incapable of
+bestowing that attention which a poetical work of art demands; and thus
+the essential is sacrificed to the accessory. We have learned from
+experience, that whenever cavalry combats are introduced the men soon
+become secondary personages beside the four-footed players [Footnote: The
+Greeks, it is true, brought horses on the tragic stage, but only in solemn
+processions, not in the wild disorder of a fight. Agamemnon and Pallas, in
+Aeschylus, make their appearance drawn in a chariot with four horses. But
+their theatres were built on a scale very different from ours.].
+Fortunately, in Shakspeare's time, the art of converting the yielding
+boards of the theatre into a riding course had not yet been invented. He
+tells the spectators in the first prologue in _Henry the Fifth_:--
+
+  Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
+  Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth.
+
+When Richard the Third utters the famous exclamation,--
+
+  A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
+
+it is no doubt inconsistent to see him both before and afterwards
+constantly fighting on foot. It is however better, perhaps, that the poet
+and player should by overpowering impressions dispose us to forget this,
+than by literal exactness to expose themselves to external interruptions.
+With all the disadvantages which I have mentioned, Shakspeare and several
+Spanish poets have contrived to derive such great beauties from the
+immediate representation of war, that I cannot bring myself to wish they
+had abstained from it. A theatrical manager of the present day will have a
+middle course to follow: his art must, in an especial manner, be directed
+to make what he shows us appear only as separate groups of an immense
+picture, which cannot be taken in at once by the eye; he must convince the
+spectators that the main action takes place behind the stage; and for this
+purpose he has easy means at his command in the nearer or more remote
+sound of warlike music and the din of arms.
+
+However much Shakspeare celebrates the French conquest of Henry, still he
+has not omitted to hint, after his way, the secret springs of this
+undertaking. Henry was in want of foreign war to secure himself on the
+throne; the clergy also wished to keep him employed abroad, and made an
+offer of rich contributions to prevent the passing of a law which would
+have deprived them of the half of their revenues. His learned bishops
+consequently are as ready to prove to him his indisputable right to the
+crown of France, as he is to allow his conscience to be tranquillized by
+them. They prove that the Salic law is not, and never was, applicable to
+France; and the matter is treated in a more succinct and convincing manner
+than such subjects usually are in manifestoes. After his renowned battles,
+Henry wished to secure his conquests by marriage with a French princess;
+all that has reference to this is intended for irony in the play. The
+fruit of this union, from which two nations promised to themselves such
+happiness in future, was the weak and feeble Henry VI., under whom every
+thing was so miserably lost. It must not, therefore, be imagined that it
+was without the knowledge and will of the poet that a heroic drama turns
+out a comedy in his hands, and ends in the manner of Comedy with a
+marriage of convenience.
+
+The three parts of _Henry the Sixth_, as I have already remarked,
+were composed much earlier than the preceding pieces. Shakspeare's choice
+fell first on this period of English history, so full of misery and
+horrors of every kind, because the pathetic is naturally more suitable
+than the characteristic to a young poet's mind. We do not yet find here
+the whole maturity of his genius, yet certainly its whole strength.
+Careless as to the apparent unconnectedness of contemporary events, he
+bestows little attention on preparation and development: all the figures
+follow in rapid succession, and announce themselves emphatically for what
+we ought to take them; from scenes where the effect is sufficiently
+agitating to form the catastrophe of a less extensive plan, the poet
+perpetually hurries us on to catastrophes still more dreadful. The First
+Part contains only the first forming of the parties of the White and Red
+Rose, under which blooming ensigns such bloody deeds were afterwards
+perpetrated; the varying results of the war in France principally fill the
+stage. The wonderful saviour of her country, Joan of Arc, is portrayed by
+Shakspeare with an Englishman's prejudices: yet he at first leaves it
+doubtful whether she has not in reality a heavenly mission; she appears in
+the pure glory of virgin heroism; by her supernatural eloquence (and this
+circumstance is of the poet's invention) she wins over the Duke of
+Burgundy to the French cause; afterwards, corrupted by vanity and luxury,
+she has recourse to hellish fiends, and comes to a miserable end. To her
+is opposed Talbot, a rough iron warrior, who moves us the more powerfully,
+as, in the moment when he is threatened with inevitable death, all his
+care is tenderly directed to save his son, who performs his first deeds of
+arms under his eye. After Talbot has in vain sacrificed himself, and the
+Maid of Orleans has fallen into the hands of the English, the French
+provinces are completely lost by an impolitic marriage; and with this the
+piece ends. The conversation between the aged Mortimer in prison, and
+Richard Plantagenet, afterwards Duke of York, contains an exposition of
+the claims of the latter to the throne: considered by itself it is a
+beautiful tragic elegy.
+
+In the Second Part, the events more particularly prominent are the murder
+of the honest Protector, Gloster, and its consequences; the death of
+Cardinal Beaufort; the parting of the Queen from her favourite Suffolk,
+and his death by the hand of savage pirates; then the insurrection of Jack
+Cade under an assumed name, and at the instigation of the Duke of York.
+The short scene where Cardinal Beaufort, who is tormented by his
+conscience on account of the murder of Gloster, is visited on his death-
+bed by Henry VI. is sublime beyond all praise. Can any other poet be named
+who has drawn aside the curtain of eternity at the close of this life with
+such overpowering and awful effect? And yet it is not mere horror with
+which the mind is filled, but solemn emotion; a blessing and a curse stand
+side by side; the pious King is an image of the heavenly mercy which, even
+in the sinner's last moments, labours to enter into his soul. The
+adulterous passion of Queen Margaret and Suffolk is invested with tragical
+dignity and all low and ignoble ideas carefully kept out of sight. Without
+attempting to gloss over the crime of which both are guilty, without
+seeking to remove our disapprobation of this criminal love, he still, by
+the magic force of expression, contrives to excite in us a sympathy with
+their sorrow. In the insurrection of Cade he has delineated the conduct of
+a popular demagogue, the fearful ludicrousness of the anarchical tumult of
+the people, with such convincing truth, that one would believe he was an
+eye-witness of many of the events of our age, which, from ignorance of
+history, have been considered as without example.
+
+The civil war only begins in the Second Part; in the Third it is unfolded
+in its full destructive fury. The picture becomes gloomier and gloomier;
+and seems at last to be painted rather with blood than with colours. With
+horror we behold fury giving birth to fury, vengeance to vengeance, and
+see that when all the bonds of human society are violently torn asunder,
+even noble matrons became hardened to cruelty. The most bitter contempt is
+the portion of the unfortunate; no one affords to his enemy that pity
+which he will himself shortly stand in need of. With all party is family,
+country, and religion, the only spring of action. As York, whose ambition
+is coupled with noble qualities, prematurely perishes, the object of the
+whole contest is now either to support an imbecile king, or to place on
+the throne a luxurious monarch, who shortens the dear-bought possession by
+the gratification of an insatiable voluptuousness. For this the celebrated
+and magnanimous Warwick spends his chivalrous life; Clifford revenges the
+death of his father with blood-thirsty filial love; and Richard, for the
+elevation of his brother, practises those dark deeds by which he is soon
+after to pave the way to his own greatness. In the midst of the general
+misery, of which he has been the innocent cause, King Henry appears like
+the powerless image of a saint, in whose wonder-working influence no man
+any longer believes: he can but sigh and weep over the enormities which he
+witnesses. In his simplicity, however, the gift of prophecy is lent to
+this pious king: in the moment of his death, at the close of this great
+tragedy, he prophesies a still more dreadful tragedy with which futurity
+is pregnant, as much distinguished for the poisonous wiles of cold-blooded
+wickedness as the former for deeds of savage fury.
+
+The part of Richard III. has become highly celebrated in England from its
+having been filled by excellent performers, and this has naturally had an
+influence on the admiration of the piece itself, for many readers of
+Shakspeare stand in want of good interpreters of the poet to understand
+him properly. This admiration is certainly in every respect well founded,
+though I cannot help thinking there is an injustice in considering the
+three parts of _Henry the Sixth_ as of little value compared with
+_Richard the Third_. These four plays were undoubtedly composed in
+succession, as is proved by the style and the spirit in the handling of
+the subject: the last is definitely announced in the one which precedes
+it, and is also full of references to it: the same views run through the
+series; in a word, the whole make together only one single work. Even the
+deep characterization of Richard is by no means the exclusive property of
+the piece which bears his name: his character is very distinctly drawn in
+the two last parts of _Henry the Sixth_; nay, even his first speeches
+lead us already to form the most unfavourable anticipations of his future
+conduct. He lowers obliquely like a dark thundercloud on the horizon,
+which gradually approaches nearer and nearer, and first pours out the
+devastating elements with which it is charged when it hangs over the heads
+of mortals. Two of Richard's most significant soliloquies which enable us
+to draw the most important conclusions with regard to his mental
+temperament, are to be found in _The Last Part of Henry the Sixth_.
+As to the value and the justice of the actions to which passion impels us,
+we may be blind, but wickedness cannot mistake its own nature; Richard, as
+well as Iago, is a villain with full consciousness. That they should say
+this in so many words, is not perhaps in human nature: but the poet has
+the right in soliloquies to lend a voice to the most hidden thoughts,
+otherwise the form of the monologue would, generally speaking, be
+censurable. [Footnote: What, however, happens in so many tragedies, where
+a person is made to avow himself a villain to his confidants, is most
+decidedly unnatural. He will, indeed, announce his way of thinking, not,
+however, under damning names, but as something that is understood of
+itself, and is equally approved of by others.] Richard's deformity is the
+expression of his internal malice, and perhaps in part the effect of it:
+for where is the ugliness that would not be softened by benevolence and
+openness? He, however, considers it as an iniquitous neglect of nature,
+which justifies him in taking his revenge on that human society from which
+it is the means of excluding him. Hence these sublime lines:
+
+  And this word love, which graybeards call divine.
+  Be resident in men like one another,
+  And not in me. I am myself alone.
+
+Wickedness is nothing but selfishness designedly unconscientious; however
+it can never do altogether without the form at least of morality, as this
+is the law of all thinking beings,--it must seek to found its depraved way
+of acting on something like principles. Although Richard is thoroughly
+acquainted with the blackness of his mind and his hellish mission, he yet
+endeavours to justify this to himself by a sophism: the happiness of being
+beloved is denied to him; what then remains to him but the happiness of
+ruling? All that stands in the way of this must be removed. This envy of
+the enjoyment of love is so much the more natural in Richard, as his
+brother Edward, who besides preceded him in the possession of the crown,
+was distinguished by the nobleness and beauty of his figure, and was an
+almost irresistible conqueror of female hearts. Notwithstanding his
+pretended renunciation, Richard places his chief vanity in being able to
+please and win over the women, if not by his figure at least by his
+insinuating discourse. Shakspeare here shows us, with his accustomed
+acuteness of observation, that human nature, even when it is altogether
+decided in goodness or wickedness, is still subject to petty infirmities.
+Richard's favourite amusement is to ridicule others, and he possesses an
+eminent satirical wit. He entertains at bottom a contempt for all mankind:
+for he is confident of his ability to deceive them, whether as his
+instruments or his adversaries. In hypocrisy he is particularly fond of
+using religious forms, as if actuated by a desire of profaning in the
+service of hell the religion whose blessings he had inwardly abjured.
+
+So much for the main features of Richard's character. The play named after
+him embraces also the latter part of the reign of Edward IV., in the whole
+a period of eight years. It exhibits all the machinations by which Richard
+obtained the throne, and the deeds which he perpetrated to secure himself
+in its possession, which lasted however but two years. Shakspeare intended
+that terror rather than compassion should prevail throughout this tragedy:
+he has rather avoided than sought the pathetic scenes which he had at
+command. Of all the sacrifices to Richard's lust of power, Clarence alone
+is put to death on the stage: his dream excites a deep horror, and proves
+the omnipotence of the poet's fancy: his conversation with the murderers
+is powerfully agitating; but the earlier crimes of Clarence merited death,
+although not from his brother's hand. The most innocent and unspotted
+sacrifices are the two princes: we see but little of them, and their
+murder is merely related. Anne disappears without our learning any thing
+farther respecting her: in marrying the murderer of her husband, she had
+shown a weakness almost incredible. The parts of Lord Rivers, and other
+friends of the queen, are of too secondary a nature to excite a powerful
+sympathy; Hastings, from his triumph at the fall of his friend, forfeits
+all title to compassion; Buckingham is the satellite of the tyrant, who is
+afterwards consigned by him to the axe of the executioner. In the
+background the widowed Queen Margaret appears as the fury of the past, who
+invokes a curse on the future: every calamity, which her enemies draw down
+on each other, is a cordial to her revengeful heart. Other female voices
+join, from time to time, in the lamentations and imprecations. But Richard
+is the soul or rather the daemon, of the whole tragedy. He fulfils the
+promise which he formerly made of leading the murderous Macchiavel to
+school. Notwithstanding the uniform aversion with which he inspires us, he
+still engages us in the greatest variety of ways by his profound skill in
+dissimulation, his wit, his prudence, his presence of mind, his quick
+activity, and his valour. He fights at last against Richmond like a
+desperado, and dies the honourable death of a hero on the field of battle.
+Shakspeare could not change this historical issue, and yet it is by no
+means satisfactory to our moral feelings, as Lessing, when speaking of a
+German play on the same subject, has very judiciously remarked. How has
+Shakspeare solved this difficulty? By a wonderful invention he opens a
+prospect into the other world, and shows us Richard in his last moments
+already branded with the stamp of reprobation. We see Richard and Richmond
+in the night before the battle sleeping in their tents; the spirits of the
+murdered victims of the tyrant ascend in succession, and pour out their
+curses against him, and their blessings on his adversary. These
+apparitions are properly but the dreams of the two generals represented
+visibly. It is no doubt contrary to probability that their tents should
+only be separated by so small a space; but Shakspeare could reckon on
+poetical spectators who were ready to take the breadth of the stage for
+the distance between two hostile camps, if for such indulgence they were
+to be recompensed by beauties of so sublime a nature as this series of
+spectres and Richard's awakening soliloquy. The catastrophe of _Richard
+the Third_ is, in respect of the external events, very like that of
+_Macbeth_: we have only to compare the thorough difference of handling
+them to be convinced that Shakspeare has most accurately observed poetical
+justice in the genuine sense of the word, that is, as signifying the
+revelation of an invisible blessing or curse which hangs over human
+sentiments and actions.
+
+Although the last four pieces of the historical series paint later events,
+yet the plays of _Henry the Fourth and Fifth_ have, in tone and
+costume, a much more modern appearance. This is partly owing to the number
+of comic scenes; for the comic must always be founded not only in
+national, but also in contemporary manners. Shakspeare, however, seems
+also to have had the same design in the serious part. Bloody revolutions
+and devastations of civil war appear to posterity as a relapse into an
+earlier and more uncultivated condition of society, or they are in reality
+accompanied by such a relapse into unbridled savageness. If therefore the
+propensity of a young poetical mind to remove its object to a wonderful
+distance has had an influence on the style in which _Henry the Sixth_
+and _Richard the Third_ are conceived, Shakspeare has been rightly
+guided by his instinct. As it is peculiar to the heroic poem to paint the
+races of men in times past as colossal in strength of body and resolution,
+so in these plays, the voices of a Talbot, a Warwick, a Clifford, and
+others, so ring on our ear that we imagine we hear the clanging trumpets
+of foreign or of civil war. The contest of the Houses of York and
+Lancaster was the last outbreak of feudal independence; it was the cause
+of the great and not of the people, who were only dragged into the
+struggle by the former. Afterwards the part was swallowed up in the whole,
+and no longer could any one be, like Warwick, a maker of kings. Shakspeare
+was as profound a historian as a poet; when we compare his _Henry the
+Eighth_ with the preceding pieces, we see distinctly that the English
+nation during the long, peaceable, and economical reign of Henry VII.,
+whether from the exhaustion which was the fruit of the civil wars, or from
+more general European influences, had made a sudden transition from the
+powerful confusion of the middle age, to the regular tameness of modern
+times. _Henry the Eighth_ has, therefore, somewhat of a prosaic
+appearance; for Shakspeare, artist-like, adapted himself always to the
+quality of his materials. If others of his works, both in elevation of
+fancy and in energy of pathos and character, tower far above this, we have
+here on the other hand occasion to admire his nice powers of
+discrimination and his perfect knowledge of courts and the world. What
+tact was requisite to represent before the eyes of the queen [Footnote: It
+is quite clear that _Henry the Eighth_ was written while Elizabeth
+was still alive. We know that Ben Jonson, in the reign of King James,
+brought the piece again on the stage with additional pomp, and took the
+liberty of making several changes and additions. Without doubt, the
+prophecy respecting James the First is due to Ben Jonson: it would only
+have displeased Elizabeth, and is so ill introduced that we at once
+recognize in it a foreign interpolation.] subjects of such a delicate
+nature, and in which she was personally so nearly concerned, without doing
+violence to the truth! He has unmasked the tyrannical king, and to the
+intelligent observer exhibited him such as he was actually: haughty and
+obstinate, voluptuous and unfeeling, extravagant in conferring favours,
+and revengeful under the pretext of justice; and yet the picture is so
+dexterously handled that a daughter might take it for favourable. The
+legitimacy of Elizabeth's birth depended on the invalidity of Henry's
+first marriage, and Shakspeare has placed the proceedings respecting his
+separation from Catharine of Arragon in a very doubtful light. We see
+clearly that Henry's scruples of conscience are no other than the beauty
+of Anne Boleyn. Catharine is, properly speaking, the heroine of the piece;
+she excites the warmest sympathy by her virtues, her defenceless misery,
+her mild but firm opposition, and her dignified resignation. After her,
+the fall of Cardinal Wolsey constitutes the principal part of the
+business. Henry's whole reign was not adapted for dramatic poetry. It
+would have merely been a repetition of the same scenes: the repudiation,
+or the execution of his wives, and the disgrace of his most estimable
+ministers, which was usually soon followed by death. Of all that
+distinguished Henry's life Shakspeare has given us sufficient specimens.
+But as, properly speaking, there is no division in the history where he
+breaks off, we must excuse him if he gives us a flattering compliment of
+the great Elizabeth for a fortunate catastrophe. The piece ends with the
+general joy at the birth of that princess, and with prophecies of the
+happiness which she was afterwards to enjoy or to diffuse. It was only by
+such a turn that the hazardous freedom of thought in the rest of the
+composition could have passed with impunity: Shakspeare was not certainly
+himself deceived respecting this theatrical delusion. The true conclusion
+is the death of Catharine, which under a feeling of this kind, he has
+placed earlier than was conformable to history.  I have now gone through
+all the unquestionably genuine works of Shakspeare. I have carefully
+abstained from all indefinite eulogies, which merely serve to prove a
+disproportion betwixt the feeling and the capability of expressing it. To
+many the above observations will appear too diffuse for the object and
+plan of these Lectures; to others they will perhaps seem unsatisfactory. I
+shall be satisfied if they place those readers who are not yet familiar
+with the poet in the right point of view, and pave the way for a solid
+knowledge, and if they recall to the minds of intelligent critics some of
+those thoughts which have occurred to themselves.
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+_Respecting the Pieces said to be falsely attributed to Shakspeare._
+
+The commentators of Shakspeare, in their attempts to deprive him of parts
+of his works, or even of whole pieces, have for the most part displayed
+very little of a true critical spirit. Pope, as is well known, was
+strongly disposed to reject whole scenes as interpolations by the players;
+but his opinion was not much listened to. However, Steevens acceded to the
+opinion of Pope, as to the apparition of the ghosts and of Jupiter, in
+_Cymbeline_, while Posthumus is sleeping in the dungeon. But Posthumus
+finds on waking a tablet on his breast, with a prophecy on which the
+_dénouement_ of the piece depends. Is it to be imagined that Shakspeare
+would require of his spectators the belief in a wonder without a visible
+cause? Can Posthumus have got this tablet with the prophecy by dreaming?
+But these gentlemen do not descend to this objection. The verses which the
+apparitions deliver do not appear to them good enough to be Shakspeare's.
+I imagine I can discover why the poet has not given them more of the
+splendour of diction. It is the aged parents and brothers of Posthumus,
+who, from concern for his fate, return from the world below: ought they
+not consequently to speak the language of a more simple olden time, and
+their voices, too, ought they not also to seem a feeble sound of wailing,
+when contrasted with the thundering oracular language of Jupiter? For this
+reason Shakspeare chose a syllabic measure which was very common before
+his time, but which was then going out of fashion, though it still
+continued to be frequently used, especially in translations of the
+classical poets. In some such manner might the shades express themselves
+in the then existing translations of Homer and Virgil. The speech of
+Jupiter is, on the other hand, majestic, and in form and style bears a
+complete resemblance to Shakspeare's sonnets. Nothing but incapacity to
+appreciate the views of the poet, and the perspective observed by him,
+could lead them to stumble at this passage.
+
+Pope would willingly have declared the _Winter's Tale_ spurious, one
+of the noblest creations of the equally bold and lovely fancy of
+Shakspeare. Why? I suppose on account of the ship coming to Bohemia, and
+of the chasm of sixteen years between the third and fourth acts, which
+Time as a prologue entreats us to overleap.
+
+_The Three Parts of Henry the Sixth_ are now at length admitted to be
+Shakspeare's. Theobald, Warburton, and lastly Farmer, affirmed that they
+were not Shakspeare's. In this case, we might well ask them to point out
+the other works of the unknown author, who was capable of inventing, among
+many others, the noble death-scenes of Talbot, Suffolk, Beaufort, and
+York. The assertion is so ridiculous, that in this case _Richard the
+Third_ might also not be Shakspeare's, as it is linked in the most
+immediate manner to the three other pieces, both by the subject, and the
+spirit and style of handling.
+
+All the editors, with the exception of Capell, are unanimous in rejecting
+_Titus Andronicus_ as unworthy of Shakspeare, though they always
+allow it to be printed with the other pieces, as the scape-goat, as it
+were, of their abusive criticism. The correct method in such an
+investigation is first to examine into the external grounds, evidences,
+&c., and to weigh their value; and then to adduce the internal reasons
+derived from the quality of the work. The critics of Shakspeare follow a
+course directly the reverse of this; they set out with a preconceived
+opinion against a piece, and seek, in justification of this opinion, to
+render the historical ground suspicious, and to set them aside. Now
+_Titus Andronicus_ is to be found in the first folio edition of
+Shakspeare's works, which it is known was published by Heminge and
+Condell, for many years his friends and fellow-managers of the same
+theatre. Is it possible to persuade ourselves that they would not have
+known if a piece in their repertory did or did not really belong to
+Shakspeare? And are we to lay to the charge of these honourable men an
+intentional fraud in this single case, when we know that they did not show
+themselves so very desirous of scraping everything together which went by
+the name of Shakspeare, but, as it appears, merely gave those plays of
+which they had manuscripts in hand? Yet the following circumstance is
+still stronger. George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of Shakspeare, in
+an enumeration of his works, mentions _Titus Andronicus_, in the year
+1598. Meres was personally acquainted with the poet, and so very
+intimately, that the latter read over to him his sonnets before they were
+printed. I cannot conceive that all the critical scepticism in the world
+would ever be able to get over such a testimony.
+
+This tragedy, it is true, is framed according to a false idea of the
+tragic, which by an accumulation of cruelties and enormities, degenerates
+into the horrible, and yet leaves no deep impression behind: the story of
+Tereus and Philomela is heightened and overcharged under other names, and
+mixed up with the repast of Atreus and Thyestes, and many other incidents.
+In detail there is no want of beautiful lines, bold images, nay, even
+features which betray the peculiar conception of Shakspeare. Among these
+we may reckon the joy of the treacherous Moor at the blackness and
+ugliness of his adulterous offspring; and in the compassion of Titus
+Andronicus, grown childish through grief, for a fly which had been struck
+dead, while his rage afterwards, when he imagines he discovers in it his
+black enemy, we recognize the future poet of _Lear_. Are the critics
+afraid that Shakspeare's fame would be injured, were it established that
+in his early youth he ushered into the world a feeble and immature work?
+Was Rome the less the conqueror of the world, because Remus could leap
+over its first walls? Let any one place himself in Shakspeare's situation
+at the commencement of his career. He found only a few indifferent models,
+and yet these met with the most favourable reception, because in the
+novelty of an art, men are never difficult to please, before their taste
+has been made fastidious by choice and abundance. Must not this situation
+have had its influence on him before he learned to make higher demands on
+himself, and by digging deeper in his own mind, discovered the rich veins
+of noble metal that ran there? It is even highly probable that he must
+have made several failures before he succeeded in getting into the right
+path. Genius is in a certain sense infallible, and has nothing to learn;
+but art is to be learned, and must be acquired by practice and experience.
+In Shakspeare's acknowledged works we find hardly any traces of his
+apprenticeship, and yet apprenticeship he certainly had. This every artist
+must have, and especially in a period where he has not before him the
+examples of a school already formed. I consider it as extremely probable
+that Shakspeare began to write for the theatre at a much earlier period
+than the one which is generally stated, namely, after the year 1590. It
+appears that, as early as the year 1584, when only twenty years of age, he
+had left his paternal home and repaired to London. Can we imagine that
+such an active head would remain idle for six whole years without making
+any attempt to emerge by his talents from an uncongenial situation? That
+in the dedication of the poem of _Venus and Adonis_ he calls it "the
+first heir of his invention," proves nothing against the supposition. It
+was the first which he printed; he might have composed it at an earlier
+period; perhaps, also, in this term, "heirs of his invention," he did not
+indulge theatrical labours, especially as they then conferred but little
+to his literary dignity. The earlier Shakspeare began to compose for the
+theatre, the less are we enabled to consider the immaturity and
+imperfection of a work a proof of its spuriousness in opposition to
+historical evidence, if only we can discern in it prominent features of
+his mind. Several of the works rejected as spurious, may still have been
+produced in the period betwixt _Titus Andronicus_, and the earliest of
+the acknowledged pieces.
+
+At last, in two supplementary volumes, Steevens published seven pieces
+ascribed to Shakspeare. It is to be remarked, that they all appeared in
+print in Shakspeare's life-time, with his name prefixed at full length.
+They are the following:--
+
+1. _Lochrine._ The proofs of the genuineness of this piece are not
+altogether unambiguous; the grounds for doubt, on the other hand, are
+entitled to attention. However, this question is immediately connected
+with that respecting _Titus Andronicus_, and must with it be resolved
+in the affirmative or negative.
+
+2. _Pericles, Prince of Tyre._ This piece was acknowledged by Dryden
+to be a work, but a youthful work of Shakspeare's. It is most undoubtedly
+his, and it has been admitted into several late editions of his works. The
+supposed imperfections originate in the circumstance, that Shakspeare here
+handled a childish and extravagant romance of the old poet Gower, and was
+unwilling to drag the subject out of its proper sphere. Hence he even
+introduces Gower himself, and makes him deliver a prologue in his own
+antiquated language and versification. This power of assuming so foreign a
+manner is at least no proof of helplessness.
+
+3. _The London Prodigal._ If we are not mistaken, Lessing pronounced
+this piece to be Shakspeare's, and wished to bring it on the German stage.
+
+4. _The Puritan; or The Widow of Wailing Street._ One of my literary
+friends, intimately acquainted with Shakspeare, was of opinion that the
+poet must have wished for once to write a play in the style of Ben Jonson,
+and that in this way we must account for the difference between the
+present piece and his usual manner. To follow out this idea, however,
+would lead to a long and very nice critical investigation.
+
+5. _Thomas Lord Cromwell._
+
+6. _Sir John Oldcastle._--First part.
+
+7. _A Yorkshire Tragedy._
+
+The three last pieces are not only unquestionably Shakspeare's, but in my
+opinion they deserve to be classed among his best and maturest works.
+Steevens at last admits, in some degree, that they, as well as the rest,
+except _Lochrine_, are Shakspeare's, but he speaks of all of them
+with great contempt, as worthless productions. His condemnatory sentence
+is not, however, in the slightest degree convincing, nor is it supported
+by much critical acumen. I should like to see how such a critic would, of
+his own natural suggestion, have decided on Shakspeare's acknowledged
+master-pieces, and how much he would have thought of praising in them, had
+not the public opinion already imposed on him the duty of admiration.
+_Thomas Lord Cromwell_ and _Sir John Oldcastle_ are biographical dramas,
+and in this species they are models: the first, by its subject, attaches
+itself to _Henry the Eighth_, and the second to _Henry the Fifth_. The
+second part of _Sir John Oldcastle_ is wanting; I know not whether a copy
+of the old edition has been discovered in England, or whether it is lost.
+_The Yorkshire Tragedy_ is a tragedy in one act, a dramatised tale of
+murder: the tragical effect is overpowering, and it is extremely important
+to see how poetically Shakspeare could handle such a subject.
+
+Still farther, there have been ascribed to him, 1st. _The Merry Devil of
+Edmonton_, a comedy in one act, printed in Dodsley's Collection of Old
+Plays. This has, certainly, some appearance in its favour. It contains a
+merry landlord, who bears great similarity to the one in _The Merry Wives
+of Windsor_. However, at all events, though a clever, it is but a hasty
+sketch. 2nd. _The Arraignment of Paris_. 3rd. _The Birth of Merlin_. 4th.
+_Edward the Third_. 5th. _The Fair Em_. (Emma). 6th. _Mucedorus_. 7th.
+_Arden of Feversham_. I have never seen any of these, and cannot therefore
+say anything respecting them. From the passages cited, I am led to
+conjecture that the subject of _Mucedorus_ is the popular story of
+Valentine and Orson: a beautiful subject which Lope de Vega has also taken
+for a play. _Arden of Feversham_ is said to be a tragedy on the story of a
+man from whom the poet descended by the mother's side. This circumstance,
+if the quality of the piece be not too directly at variance with its
+supposed authorship, would afford an additional probability in its favour.
+For such motives were not without their influence on Shakspeare: thus he
+treated with a manifest partiality, Henry VII., who had bestowed lands on
+his forefathers for services performed by them.
+
+Of Shakspeare's share in _The Two Noble Cousins_, it will be the time
+to speak when I come to mention Fletcher's works.
+
+It would be very instructive, if it could be proved that several earlier
+attempts of works, afterwards re-written, proceeded from himself, and not
+from an unknown author. We should thus be best enabled to trace his
+development as an artist. Of the older _King John_, in two parts, (printed
+by Steevens among six old plays,) this might probably be made out. That he
+sometimes returned to an old piece is certain. With respect to _Hamlet_,
+for instance, it is well known, that it was very gradually formed by him
+to its present perfect state.
+
+Whoever takes from Shakspeare a play early ascribed to him, and
+confessedly belonging to his time, is certainly bound to answer, with some
+degree of probability, this question: who then wrote it? Shakspeare's
+competitors in the dramatic walk are pretty well known, and if those of
+them who have even acquired a considerable reputation, a Lilly, a Marlow,
+a Heywood, are still very far below him, we can hardly imagine that the
+author of a work, which rises so high beyond theirs, could have remained
+unknown.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+Two periods of the English Theatre: the first the most important--The
+first conformation of the Stage, and its advantages--State of the
+Histrionic Art in Shakspeare's time--Antiquities of Dramatic Literature--
+Lilly, Marlow, Heywood--Ben Jonson--Criticism of his Works--Masques--
+Beaumont and Fletcher--General characterization of these Poets, and
+remarks on some of their Pieces--Massinger and other contemporaries of
+Charles the First.
+
+
+The great master of whom we have spoken in the preceding Lecture, forms so
+singular an exception to the whole history of art, that we are compelled
+to assign a particular place to him. He owed hardly anything to his
+predecessors, and he has had the greatest influence on his successors: but
+no man has yet learned from him his secret. For two whole centuries,
+during which his countrymen have diligently employed themselves in the
+cultivation of every branch of science and art, according to their own
+confession, he has not only never yet been surpassed, but has left every
+dramatic poet at a great distance behind him.
+
+In the sketch of a history of the English theatre which I am now to give,
+I shall be frequently obliged to return to Shakspeare. The dramatic
+literature of the English is very rich; they can boast of a large number
+of dramatic poets, who possessed in an eminent degree the talent of
+original characterization, and the knowledge of theatrical effect. Their
+hands were not shackled by prejudices, by arbitrary rules, and by the
+anxious observance of so-called proprieties. There has never been in
+England an academical court of taste; in art, as in life, every man there
+gives his voice for what best pleases him, or what is most suitable to his
+nature. Notwithstanding this liberty, their writers have not, however,
+been able to escape the influence either of varying modes, or of the
+spirit of different ages.
+
+We shall here remain true to our principle of merely dwelling at length on
+what we consider as the highest efforts of poetry, and of taking brief
+views of all that occupies but the second or third place.
+
+The antiquities of the English theatre have been sufficiently illustrated
+by the English writers, and especially by Malone. The earliest dramatic
+attempts were here as well as elsewhere Mysteries and Moralities. However
+it would seem that in these productions the English distinguished
+themselves at an earlier period than other nations. In the History of the
+Council of Constance it is recorded that the English prelates, in one of
+the intervals between the sittings, entertained their brethren with a
+spiritual play in Latin, such as the latter were either entirely
+unacquainted with, or at least in such perfection, (as perfection was
+understood by the simple ideas of art of those times). The beginning of a
+theatre, properly so called, cannot, however, be placed farther back than
+the reign of Elizabeth. John Heywood, the buffoon of Henry VIII. is
+considered as the oldest comic writer: the single _Interlude_ under
+his name, published in Dodsley's collection, is in fact merely a dialogue,
+and not a drama. But _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, which was first acted
+about the year 1560, certainly deserves the name of a comedy. However
+antiquated in language and versification, it possesses unequivocal merit
+in the low comic. The whole plot turns on a lost needle, the search for
+which is pursued with the utmost assiduity: the poverty of the persons of
+the drama, which this supposes, and the whole of their domestic condition,
+is very amusingly portrayed, and the part of a cunning beggar especially
+is drawn with much humour. The coarse comic of this piece bears a
+resemblance to that of the _Avocat Patelin_; yet the English play has
+not, like the French, been honoured with a revival on the stage in a new
+shape.
+
+The history of the English theatre divides itself naturally into two
+periods. The first begins nearly with the accession of Elizabeth, and
+extends to about the end of the reign of Charles I., when the Puritans
+gained the ascendency, and effected the prohibition of all plays
+whatsoever. The closing of the theatres lasted thirteen years; and they
+were not again opened till the restoration of Charles II. This
+interruption, the change which had taken place in the mean time on the
+general way of thinking and in manners, and lastly, the influence of the
+French literature which was then flourishing, gave quite a different
+character to the plays subsequently written. The works of the older school
+were indeed in part sought out, but the school itself was extinct. I apply
+the term of a "school" to the dramatical poets of the first aera, in the
+same sense as it is taken in art, for with all their personal differences
+we may still perceive on the whole a common character in their
+productions. Independently of the language or contemporary allusions, we
+should never be disposed to take a play of that school, though ignorant of
+its author, and the date of its production, for a work of the more modern
+period. The latter period admits of many subdivisions, but with these,
+however, we may dispense. The talents of the authors, and the taste of the
+public, have fluctuated in every possible way; foreign influence has
+gained more and more the ascendency, and (to express myself without
+circumlocution,) the English theatre has in its progress become more and
+more destitute of character and independence. For a critic, who everywhere
+seeks originality, troubling himself little about what has arisen from the
+following or the avoiding of imitation, the dramatic poets of the first
+period are by far the most important, although, with the exception of
+Shakspeare, they may be reproached with great defects and extravagances,
+and although many of the moderns are distinguished for a more careful
+polish.
+
+There are times when the human mind all at once makes gigantic strides in
+an art previously almost unknown, as if during its long sleep it had been
+collecting strength for the effort. The age of Elizabeth was in England
+such an epoch for dramatic poetry. This queen, during her long reign,
+witnessed the first infantine attempts of the English theatre, and its
+most masterly productions. Shakspeare had a lively feeling of this general
+and rapid development of qualities not before called into exercise; in one
+of his sonnets he calls his age, _these time-lettering days_. The
+predilection for the theatre was so great, that in a period of sixty
+years, under this and the following reign, seventeen play-houses were
+built or fitted up in London, whereas the capital of the present day, with
+twice the population, [Footnote: The author might almost have said six
+times.--TRANS.] is satisfied with two. No doubt they did not act every
+day, and several of these theatres were very small, and probably not much
+better fitted up than Marionette booths. However, they served to call
+forth the fertility of those writers who possessed, or supposed that they
+possessed, dramatic talents; for every theatre must have had its peculiar
+repertory, as the pieces were either not printed at all, or at least not
+till long after their composition, and as a single theatrical company was
+in the exclusive possession of the manuscripts. However many of feeble and
+lame productions might have been called forth, still it was impossible
+that such an extensive competition should not have been advantageous. Of
+all the different species of poetry the dramatic is the only one in which
+experience is necessary: and the failure of others is, for the man of
+talents, an experiment at their expense. Moreover, the exercise of this
+art requires vigorous determination, to which the great artist is often
+the least inclined, as in the execution he finds the greatest difficulty
+in satisfying himself; while, on the other hand, his greatest enjoyment
+consists in embodying in his own mind the beloved creation of his
+imagination. It is therefore fortunate for him when the bolder forwardness
+of those who, with trifling means, venture on this difficult career
+stimulates him to put fresh hand to the work. Further, it is of importance
+to the dramatic poet to be connected immediately with the stage, that he
+may either himself guide it, or learn to accommodate himself to its wants;
+and the dramatic poets of that day were, for the most part, also players.
+The theatre still made small claims to literature, and it thus escaped the
+pedantry of scholastic learning. There were as yet no periodical writings
+which, as the instrument of cabal, could mislead opinion. Of jealousies,
+indeed, and bickerings among the authors there was no want: this, however,
+was more a source of amusement than of displeasure to the public, who
+decided without prejudice or partiality according to the amount of
+entertainment. The poets and players, as well as the spectators, possessed
+in general the most essential requisite of success: a true love for the
+business. This was the more unquestionable, as the theatrical art was not
+then surrounded with all those foreign ornaments and inventions of luxury
+which serve to distract the attention and corrupt the sense, but made its
+appearance in the most modest, and we may well say in the most humble
+shape. For the admirers of Shakspeare it must be an object of curiosity to
+know what was the appearance of the theatre in which his works were first
+performed. We have an engraving of the play-house of which he was manager,
+and which, from the symbol of a Hercules supplying the place of Atlas, was
+called the Globe: it is a massive structure destitute of architectural
+ornaments, and almost without windows in the outward walls. The pit was
+open to the sky, and the acting was by day-light; the scene had no other
+decoration than wrought tapestry, which hung at some distance from the
+walls, and left space for several entrances. In the back-ground of the
+stage there was a second stage raised above it, a sort of balcony, which
+served for various purposes, and according to circumstances signified all
+manner of things. The players appeared, excepting on a few rare occasions,
+in the dress of their time, or at most distinguished by higher feathers on
+their hats and roses on their shoes. The chief means of disguise were
+false hair and beards, and occasionally also masks. The female parts were
+played by boys so long as their voice allowed it. Two companies of actors
+in London consisted entirely of boys, namely, the choir of the Queen's
+Chapel and that of St. Paul's. Betwixt the acts it was not customary to
+have music, but in the pieces themselves marches, dances, solo songs, and
+the like, were introduced on fitting occasions, and trumpet flourishes at
+the entrance of great personages. In the more early time it was usual to
+represent the action before it was spoken, in silent pantomime (_dumb
+show_) between each act, allegorically or even without any disguise, to
+give a definite direction to the expectation. Shakspeare has observed this
+practice in the play in _Hamlet_.
+
+By the present lavish appliance of every theatrical accessory;--of
+architecture, lighting, music, the illusion of decorations changing in a
+moment as if by enchantment, machinery and costume;--by all this, we are
+now so completely spoiled, that this earlier meagreness of stage
+decoration will in no wise satisfy us. Much, however, might be urged in
+favour of such a constitution of the theatre. Where the spectators are not
+allured by any splendid accessories, they will be the more difficult to
+please in the main thing, namely, the excellence of the dramatic
+composition, and its embodying by delivery and action. When perfection is
+not attainable in external decoration, the critic will rather altogether
+overlook it than be disturbed by its deficiencies and tastelessness. And
+how seldom has perfection been here attained! It is about a century and a
+half since attention began to be paid to the observance of costume on the
+European stage; what with this view has been accomplished has always
+appeared excellent to the multitude, and yet, to judge from the engravings
+which sometimes accompany the printed plays, and from every other
+evidence, it is plain that it was always characterized by puerility and
+mannerism, and that in none the endeavours to assume a foreign or antique
+appearance, could shake themselves free of the fashions of the time. A
+sort of hoop was long considered as an indispensable appendage of a hero;
+the long peruques and _fontanges_, or topknots, kept their ground in
+heroical tragedy as long as in real life; afterwards it would have been
+considered as barbarous to appear without powdered and frizzled hair; on
+this was placed a helmet with variegated feathers; a taffeta scarf
+fluttered over the gilt paper coat of mail; and the Achilles or Alexander
+was then completely mounted. We have now at last returned to a purer
+taste, and in some great theatres the costume is actually observed in a
+learned and severe style. We owe this principally to the antiquarian
+reform in the arts of design, and the approximation of the female dress to
+the Grecian; for the actresses were always the most inveterate in
+retaining on the stage those fashions by which they turned their charms to
+account in society. However, even yet there are very few players who know
+how to wear a Grecian purple mantle, or a toga, in a natural and becoming
+manner; and who, in moments of passion, do not seem to be unduly occupied
+with holding and tossing about their drapery.
+
+Our system of decoration was properly invented for the opera, to which it
+is also in reality best adapted. It has several unavoidable defects;
+others which certainly may be, but seldom are avoided. Among the
+inevitable defects I reckon the breaking of the lines in the side scenes
+from every point of view except one; the disproportion between the size of
+the player when he appears in the background, and the objects as
+diminished in the perspective; the unfavourable lighting from below and
+behind; the contrast between the painted and the actual lights and shades;
+the impossibility of narrowing the stage at pleasure, so that the inside
+of a palace and a hut have the same length and breadth, &c. The errors
+which may be avoided are, want of simplicity and of great and reposing
+masses; overloading the scenery with superfluous and distracting objects,
+either from the painter being desirous of showing his strength in
+perspective, or not knowing how otherwise to fill up the space; an
+architecture full of mannerism, often altogether unconnected, nay, even at
+variance with possibility, coloured in a motley manner which resembles no
+species of stone in the world. Most scene-painters owe their success
+entirely to the spectator's ignorance of the arts of design; I have often
+seen a whole pit enchanted with a decoration from which the eye of skill
+must have turned away with disgust, and in whose place a plain green wall
+would have been infinitely better. A vitiated taste for splendour of
+decoration and magnificence of dress, has rendered the arrangement of the
+theatre a complicated and expensive business, whence it frequently happens
+that the main requisites, good pieces and good players, are considered as
+secondary matters; but this is an inconvenience which it is here
+unnecessary to mention.
+
+Although the earlier English stage had properly no decorations, we must
+allow, however, that it was not altogether destitute of machinery: without
+it, it is almost impossible to conceive how several pieces, for instance,
+_Macbeth_, _The Tempest_, and others, could ever be represented. The
+celebrated architect, Inigo Jones, who lived in the reign of James the
+First, put in motion very complicated and artificial machines for the
+decoration of the Masques of Ben Jonson which were acted at court.
+
+With the Spanish theatre at the time of its formation, it was the same as
+with the English, and when the stage had remained a moment empty, and
+other persons came in by another entrance, a change of scene was to be
+supposed though none was visible; and this circumstance had the most
+favourable influence on the form of the dramas. The poet was not obliged
+to consult the scene-painter to know what could or what could not be
+represented; nor to calculate whether the store of decorations on hand
+were sufficient, or new ones would be requisite: he was not driven to
+impose restraint on the action as to change of times and places, but
+represented it entirely as it would naturally have taken place: [Footnote:
+Capell, an intelligent commentator on Shakspeare, unjustly underrated by
+the others, has placed the advantages in this respect in the clearest
+light, in an observation on _Antony and Cleopatra_. It emboldened the
+poet, when the truth of the action required it, to plan scenes which the
+most skilful mechanist and scene-painter could scarcely exhibit to the
+eye; as for instance, in a Spanish play where sea-fights occur.] he left
+to the imagination to fill up the intervals agreeably to the speeches, and
+to conceive all the surrounding circumstances. This call on the fancy to
+supply the deficiencies supposes, indeed, not merely benevolent, but also
+intelligent spectators of a poetical tone of mind. That is the true
+illusion, when the spectators are so completely carried away by the
+impressions of the poetry and the acting, that they overlook the secondary
+matters, and forget the whole of the remaining objects around them. To lie
+morosely on the watch to detect every circumstance that may violate an
+apparent reality which, strictly speaking, can never be attained, is in
+fact a proof of inertness of imagination and an incapacity for mental
+illusion. This prosaical incredulity may be carried so far as to render it
+utterly impossible for the theatrical artists, who in every constitution
+of the theatre require many indulgences, to amuse the spectators by their
+productions; and thus they are, in the end, the enemies of their own
+enjoyment.
+
+We now complain, and with justice, that in the acting of Shakspeare's
+pieces the too frequent change of scenes occasions an interruption. But
+the poet is here perfectly blameless. It ought to be known that the
+English plays of that time, as well as the Spanish, were printed without
+any mention of the scene and its changes. In Shakspeare the modern editors
+have inserted the scenical directions; and in doing so, they have
+proceeded with the most pedantic accuracy. Whoever has the management of
+the representation of a piece of Shakspeare's may, without any hesitation,
+strike out at once all such changes of scene as the following:-"Another
+room in the palace, another street, another part of the field of battle,"
+&c. By these means alone, in most cases, the change of decorations will be
+reduced to a very moderate number.
+
+Of the actor's art on a theatre which possessed so little external
+splendour as the old English, those who are in the habit of judging of the
+man from his dress will not be inclined to entertain a very favourable
+idea. I am induced, however, from this very circumstance, to draw quite a
+contrary conclusion: the want of attractions of an accessory nature
+renders it the more necessary to be careful in essentials. Several
+Englishmen [Footnote: See a Dialogue prefixed to the 11th volume of
+Dodsley's _Old Plays_.] have given it as their opinion, that the
+players of the first epoch were in all likelihood greatly superior to
+those of the second, at least with the exception of Garrick; and if we had
+no other proof, the quality of Shakspeare's pieces renders this extremely
+probable. That most of his principal characters require a great player is
+self-evident; the elevated and compressed style of his poetry cannot be
+understood without the most energetic and flexible delivery; besides, he
+often supposes between the speeches a mute action of great difficulty, for
+which he gives no directions. A poet who labours only and immediately for
+the stage will not rely for his main effect on traits which he must
+beforehand know will be lost in the representation from the unskilfulness
+of his interpreters. Shakspeare consequently would have been driven to
+lower the tone of his dramatic art, if he had not possessed excellent
+theatrical coadjutors. Of these, some have descended by name and fame even
+to our times. As for Shakspeare himself, since we are not fond of allowing
+any one man to possess two great talents in an equal degree, it has been
+assumed on very questionable grounds, that he was but an indifferent
+actor. [Footnote: No certain account has yet been obtained of any
+principal part played by Shakspeare in his own pieces. In _Hamlet_ he
+played the Ghost; certainly a very important part, if we consider that
+from the failure in it, the whole piece runs a risk of appearing
+ridiculous. A writer of his time says in a satirical pamphlet, that the
+Ghost whined in a pitiful manner; and it has been concluded from this that
+Shakspeare was a bad player. What logic! On the restoration of the theatre
+under Charles II., a desire was felt of collecting traditions and
+information respecting the former period. Lowin, the original Hamlet,
+instructed Betterton as to the proper conception of the character. There
+was still alive a brother of Shakspeare, a decrepid old man, who had never
+had any literary cultivation, and whose memory was impaired by age. From
+him they could extract nothing, but that he had sometimes visited his
+brother in town, and once saw him play an old man with grey hair and
+beard. From the above description it was concluded that this must have
+been the faithful servant Adam in _As You Like It_, also a second-
+rate part. In most of Shakspeare's pieces we have not the slightest
+knowledge of the manner in which the parts were distributed. In two of Ben
+Jonson's pieces we see Shakspeare's name among the principal actors.]
+Hamlet's instructions, however, to the players prove at least that he was
+an excellent judge of acting. We know that correctness of conception and
+judgment are not always coupled with the power of execution; Shakspeare,
+however, possessed a very important and too frequently neglected requisite
+for serious acting, a beautiful and noble countenance. Neither is it
+probable that he could have been the manager of the most respectable
+theatre, had he not himself possessed the talent both of acting and
+guiding the histrionic talents of others. Ben Jonson, though a meritorious
+poet, could not even obtain the situation of a player, as he did not
+possess the requisite qualifications. From the passage cited from
+_Hamlet_, from the burlesque tragedy of the mechanics in the _Midsummer
+Night's Dream_, and many other passages, it is evident that there was then
+an inundation of bad players, who fell into all the aberrations from
+propriety which offend at the present day, but the public, it would
+appear, knew well how to distinguish good and bad acting, and would not be
+easily satisfied. [Footnote: In this respect, the following simile in
+_Richard the Second_ is deserving of attention:--
+  As in a theatre the eyes of men,
+  After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
+  Are idly bent on him that enters next,
+  Thinking his prattle to be tedious, &c.]
+
+A thorough critical knowledge of the antiquities of the English theatre
+can only he obtained in England; the old editions of the pieces which
+belong to the earlier period are even there extremely rare, and in foreign
+libraries they are never to be met with; the modern collectors have merely
+been able to give a few specimens, and not the whole store. It would be
+highly important to see together all the plays which were undoubtedly in
+existence before Shakspeare entered on his career, that we might be able
+to decide with certainty how much of the dramatic art it was possible for
+him to learn from others. The year of the appearance of a piece on the
+stage is generally, however, difficult to ascertain, as it was often not
+printed till long afterwards. If in the labours of Shakspeare's
+contemporaries, even the older who continued to write at the same time
+with himself, we can discover resemblances to his style and traces of his
+art, still it will always remain doubtful whether we are to consider these
+as the feeble model, or the imperfect imitation. Shakspeare appears to
+have had all the flexibility of mind, and all the modesty of Raphael, who,
+also, without ever being an imitator and becoming unfaithful to his
+sublime and tranquil genius, applied to his own advantage all the
+improvements of his competitors.
+
+A few feeble attempts to introduce the form of the antique tragedy with
+choruses, &c., were at an early period made, and praised, without
+producing any effect. They, like most of the attempts of the moderns in
+this way, serve to prove how strange were the spectacles through which the
+old poets were viewed; for it is hardly to be conceived how unlike they
+are to the Greek tragedies, not merely in merit (for that we may easily
+suppose), but even in those external circumstances which may be the most
+easily seized and imitated. _Ferrex and Porrex, or the Tragedy of
+Gorboduc_, is most frequently cited, which was the production of a
+nobleman [Footnote: Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, conjointly with
+Norton.--F.D.], in the first part of the reign of Elizabeth. Pope bestows
+high praise on this piece, on account of its regularity, and laments that
+the contemporary poets did not follow in the same track; for thus he
+thought a classical theatre might have been formed in England. This
+opinion only proves that Pope (who, however, passes for a perfect judge of
+poetry,) had not even an idea of the first elements of Dramatic Art.
+Nothing can be more spiritless and inanimate, nor more drawling and
+monotonous in the language and the versification, than this _Ferrex and
+Porrex_; and although the Unities of Place and Time are in no way
+observed, and a number of events are crowded into it, yet the scene is
+wholly destitute of movement: all that happens is previously announced by
+endless consultations, and afterwards stated in equally endless
+narratives. _Mustapha_, another unsuccessful work of a kindred
+description, and also by a great lord, [Footnote: Grevile, Lord Broke.] is
+a tedious web of all sorts of political subtleties; the choruses in
+particular are true treatises. However, of the innumerable maxims in
+rhyme, there are many which might well have a place in the later pieces of
+Corneille. Kyd, one of the predecessors of Ben Jonson, and mentioned by
+him in terms of praise, handled the _Cornelia_ of Garnier. This may
+be called receiving an imitation of the ancients from the third or fourth
+hand.
+
+The first serious piece calculated for popular effect is _The Spanish
+Tragedy_ [by Thomas Kyd], so called from the scene of the story, and
+not from its being borrowed from a Spanish writer. It kept possession of
+the stage for a tolerable length of time, though it was often the subject
+of the ridicule and the parodies of succeeding poets. It usually happens
+that the public do not easily give up a predilection formed in their first
+warm susceptibility for the impressions of an art yet unknown to them,
+even after they have long been acquainted with better, nay, with excellent
+works. This piece is certainly full of puerilities; the author has
+ventured on the picture of violent situations and passions without
+suspecting his own want of power; the catastrophe, more especially, which
+in horror is intended to outstrip everything conceivable, is very sillily
+introduced, and produces merely a ludicrous effect. The whole is like the
+drawings of children, without the observance of proportion, and without
+steadiness of hand. With a great deal of bombast, the tone of the
+dialogue, however, has something natural, nay, even familiar, and in the
+change of scenes we perceive a light movement, which in some degree will
+account for the general applause received by this immature production.
+
+Lilly and Marlow deserve to be noticed among the predecessors of
+Shakspeare. Lilly was a scholar, and laboured to introduce a stilted
+elegance into English prose, and in the tone of dialogue, with such
+success, that for a period he was the fashionable writer, and the court
+ladies even formed their conversation after the model of his
+_Euphues_. His comedy in prose, _Campaspe_, is a warning example of the
+impossibility of ever constructing, out of mere anecdotes and epigrammatic
+sallies, anything like a dramatic whole. The author was a learned witling,
+but in no respect a poet.
+
+Marlow possessed more real talent, and was in a better way. He has handled
+the history of Edward the Second with very little of art, it is true, but
+with a certain truth and simplicity, so that in many scenes he does not
+fail to produce a pathetic effect. His verses are flowing, but without
+energy: how Ben Jonson could come to use the expression "_Marlow's
+mighty line_," is more than I can conceive. Shakspeare could neither
+learn nor derive anything from the luscious manner of Lilly: but in
+Marlow's _Edward the Second_ I certainly imagine that I can discover
+the feebler model of the earliest historical pieces of Shakspeare.
+
+Of the old comedies in Dodsley's collection, _The Pinner of Wakefielde_,
+and _Grim, the Collier of Croydon_, seem alone to belong to a period
+before Shakspeare. Both are not without merit, in the manner of Marionette
+pieces; in the first, a popular tradition, and in the second, a merry
+legend, is handled with hearty joviality.
+
+I have dwelt longer on the beginnings of the English theatre, than from
+their internal worth they deserve, because it has been affirmed recently
+in England that Shakspeare shows more affinity to the works of his
+contemporaries now sunk in oblivion than people have hitherto been usually
+disposed to believe. We are as little to wonder at certain outward
+resemblances, as at the similarity of the dresses in portraits of the same
+period. In a more limited sense, however, we apply the word resemblance
+exclusively to the relation of those features which express the spirit and
+the mind. Moreover, such plays alone can be admitted to be a satisfactory
+proof of an assertion of this kind as are ascertained to have been written
+before the commencement of Shakspeare's career; for in the works of his
+younger contemporaries, a Decker, Marston, Webster, and others, something
+of a resemblance may be very naturally accounted for: distinct traces of
+imitation of Shakspeare are sufficiently abundant. Their imitation was,
+however, merely confined to external appearance and separate
+peculiarities; these writers, without the virtues of their model, possess
+in reality all the faults which senseless critics have falsely censured in
+Shakspeare.
+
+A sentence somewhat more favourable is merited by Chapman, the translator
+of Homer, and Thomas Heywood, if we may judge of them from the single
+specimens of their works in Dodsley's collection. Chapman has handled the
+well-known story of the Ephesian matron, under the title of _The Widow's
+Tears_, not without comic talent. Heywood's _Woman Killed with Kindness_
+is a familiar tragedy: so early may we find examples of this species,
+which has been given out for new. It is the story of a wife tenderly
+beloved by her husband, and seduced by a man whom he had loaded with
+benefits; her sin is discovered, and the severest resolution which
+her husband can bring himself to form is to remove her from him, without
+proclaiming her dishonour; she repents, and grieves to death in bitter
+repentence. A due gradation is not observed in the seduction, but the last
+scenes are truly agitating. A distinct avowal of a moral aim is, perhaps,
+essential to the familiar tragedy; or rather, by means of such an aim, a
+picture of human destinies, whether afflicting kings or private families,
+is drawn from the ideal sphere into the prosaic world. But when once we
+admit the title of this subordinate species, we shall find that the
+demands of morality and the dramatic art coincide, and that the utmost
+severity of moral principles leads again to poetical elevation. The aspect
+of that false repentance which merely seeks exemption from punishment, is
+painful; repentance, as the pain arising from the irreparable forfeiture
+of innocence, is susceptible of a truly tragic portraiture. Let only the
+play in question receive a happy conclusion, such as in a well-known piece
+[Footnote: The author alludes to Kotzebue's play of _Menschenhass und
+Reue--(The Stranger)_.--TRANS.] has, notwithstanding this painful
+feeling, been so generally applauded in the present day--viz., the
+reconciliation of the husband and wife, not on the death-bed of the
+repentant sinner, but in sound mind and body, and the renewal of the
+marriage; and it will then be found that it has not merely lost its moral,
+but also its poetical impression.
+
+In other respects, this piece of Heywood is very inartistic, and
+carelessly finished: instead of duly developing the main action, the
+author distracts our attention by a second intrigue, which can hardly be
+said to have the slightest connection with the other. At this we need
+hardly be astonished, for Heywood was both a player and an excessively
+prolific author. Two hundred and twenty pieces were, he says, written
+entirely, or for the greatest part, by himself; and he was so careless
+respecting these productions, which were probably thrown off without any
+great labour, that he had lost the manuscript of the most of them, and
+only twenty-five remained for publication through the press.
+
+All the above authors, and many others beside, whatever applause they
+obtained in their life-time, have been unsuccessful in transmitting a
+living memorial of their works to posterity. Of Shakspeare's younger
+contemporaries and competitors, few have attained this distinction; and of
+these Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, are the chief.
+
+Ben Jonson found in Shakspeare a ready encourager of his talents. His
+first piece, imperfect in many respects, _Every Man in his Humour_,
+was by Shakspeare's intervention brought out on the stage; _Sejanus_
+was even retouched by him, and in both he undertook a principal character.
+This hospitable reception on the part of that great man, who was far above
+every thing like jealousy and petty rivalry, met with a very ungrateful
+return. Jonson assumed a superiority over Shakspeare on account of his
+school learning, the only point in which he really had an advantage; he
+introduced all sorts of biting allusions into his pieces and prologues,
+and reprobated more especially those magical flights of fancy, the
+peculiar heritage of Shakspeare, as contrary to genuine taste. In his
+excuse we must plead, that he was not born under a happy star: his pieces
+were either altogether unsuccessful, or, compared with the astonishing
+popularity of Shakspeare's, they obtained but a small share of applause;
+moreover, he was incessantly attacked, both on the stage and elsewhere, by
+his rivals, as a disgraceful pedant, who pretended to know every thing
+better than themselves, and with all manner of satires: all this rendered
+him extremely irritable and uneven of temper. He possessed in reality a
+very solid understanding; he was conscious that in the exercise of his art
+he displayed zeal and earnestness: that Nature had denied him grace, a
+quality which no labour can acquire, he could not indeed suspect. He
+thought every man may boast of his assiduity, as Lessing says on a similar
+occasion. After several failures on the stage, he formed the resolution to
+declare of his pieces in the outset that they were good, and that if they
+should not please, this could only proceed from the stupidity of the
+multitude. The epigraph on one of his unsuccessful pieces with which he
+committed it to the press, is highly amusing: "As it was never acted, but
+most negligently played by some, the King's servants, and more squeamishly
+beheld and censured by others, the King's subjects."
+
+Jonson was a critical poet in the good and the bad sense of the word. He
+endeavoured to form an exact estimate of what he had on every occasion to
+perform; hence he succeeded best in that species of the drama which makes
+the principal demand on the understanding and with little call on the
+imagination and feeling,--the comedy of character. He introduced nothing
+into his works which critical dissection should not be able to extract
+again, as his confidence in it was such, that he conceived it exhausted
+every thing which pleases and charms us in poetry. He was not aware that,
+in the chemical retort of the critic, what is most valuable, the volatile
+living spirit of a poem, evaporates. His pieces are in general deficient
+in soul, in that nameless something which never ceases to attract and
+enchant us, even because it is indefinable. In the lyrical pieces, his
+Masques, we feel the want of a certain mental music of imagery and
+intonation, which the most accurate observation of difficult measures
+cannot give. He is everywhere deficient in those excellencies which,
+unsought, flow from the poet's pen, and which no artist, who purposely
+hunts for them, can ever hope to find. We must not quarrel with him,
+however, for entertaining a high opinion of his own works; since, whatever
+merits they have, he owed like acquired moral properties altogether to
+himself. The production of them was attended with labour, and
+unfortunately it is also a labour to read them. They resemble solid and
+regular, edifices, before which, however, the clumsy scaffolding still
+remains, to interrupt and prevent us from viewing the architecture with
+ease, and receiving from it a harmonious impression.
+
+We have of Jonson two tragical attempts, and a number of comedies and
+masques.
+
+He could have risen to the dignity of the tragic tone, but, for the
+pathetic, he had not the smallest turn. As he incessantly preaches up the
+imitation of the ancients, (and he had, we cannot deny, a learned
+acquaintance with their works,) it is astonishing to observe how much his
+two tragedies differ, both in substance and form, from the Greek tragedy.
+From this example we see the influence which the prevailing tone of an
+age, and the course already pursued in any art, necessarily have upon even
+the most independent minds. In the historical extent given by Jonson to
+his _Sejanus_ and _Cataline_, unity of time and place were entirely out of
+the question; and both pieces are crowded with a multitude of secondary
+persons, such as are never to be found in a Greek tragedy. In _Cataline_,
+the prologue is spoken by the spirit of Sylla, and it bears a good deal of
+resemblance to that of Tantalus, in the _Atreus and Thyestes_ of Seneca;
+to the end of each act an instructive moralizing chorus is appended,
+without being duly introduced or connected with the whole. This is the
+extent of the resemblance to the ancients; in other respects, the form of
+Shakspeare's historical dramas is adhered to, but without their romantic
+charm. We cannot with certainty say, whether or not Jonson had the Roman
+pieces of Shakspeare before him: it is probable that he had in _Cataline_
+at least; but, at all events, he has not learned from him the art of being
+true to history, and yet satisfying the demands of poetry. In Jonson's
+hands, the subject continues history, without becoming poetry; the
+political events which he has described have more the appearance of a
+business than an action. _Cataline_ and _Sejanus_ are solid dramatic
+studies after Sallust and Cicero, after Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, and
+others; and that is the best which we can say of them. In _Cataline_,
+which upon the whole is preferable to _Sejanus_, he is also to be blamed
+for not having blended the dissimilarity of the masses. The first act
+possesses most elevation, though it disgusts us from its want of
+moderation: we see a secret assembly of conspirators, and nature appears
+to answer the furious inspiration of wickedness by dreadful signs. The
+second act, which paints the intrigues and loves of depraved women, by
+means of which the conspiracy was brought to light, treads closely on
+comedy; the last three acts contain a history in dialogue, developed with
+much good sense, but little poetical elevation. It is to be lamented that
+Jonson gave only his own text of _Sejanus_ without communicating
+Shakspeare's alterations. We should have been curious to know the means by
+which he might have attempted to give animation to the monotony of the
+piece without changing its plan, and how far his genius could adapt itself
+to another's conceptions.
+
+After these attempts, Jonson took his leave of the Tragic Muse, and in
+reality his talents were far better suited to Comedy, and that too merely
+the Comedy of Character. His characterization, however, is more marked
+with serious satire than playful ridicule: the later Roman satirists,
+rather than the comic authors, were his models. Nature had denied him that
+light and easy raillery which plays harmlessly round every thing, and
+which seems to be the mere effusion of gaiety, but which is so much the
+more philosophic, as it is not the vehicle of any definite doctrine, but
+merely the expression of a general irony. There is more of a spirit of
+observation than of fancy in the comic inventions of Jonson. From this
+cause his pieces are also defective in point of intrigue. He was a strong
+advocate for the purity of the species, was unwilling to make use of any
+romantic motives, and he never had recourse to a novel for the subject of
+his plots. But his contrivances for the entangling and disentangling his
+plot are often improbable and forced, without gaining over the imagination
+by their attractive boldness. Even where he had contrived a happy plot, he
+took so much room for the delineation of the characters, that we often
+lose sight of the intrigue altogether, and the action lags with heavy
+pace. Occasionally he reminds us of those over-accurate portrait painters,
+who, to insure a likeness, think they must copy every mark of the small-
+pox, every carbuncle or freckle. Frequently he has been suspected of
+having, in the delineation of particular characters, had real persons in
+his eye, while, at the same time, he has been reproached with making his
+characters mere personifications of general ideas; and, however
+inconsistent with each other these reproaches may appear, they are neither
+of them, however, without some foundation. He possessed a methodical head;
+consequently, where he had once conceived a character in its leading idea,
+he followed it out with the utmost rigour; whatever, having no reference
+to this leading idea, served merely to give individual animation, appeared
+to him in the light of a digression. Hence his names are, for the most
+part, expressive even to an unpleasant degree of distinctness: and, to add
+to our satiety, he not unfrequently tacks explanatory descriptions to the
+dramatis personae. On the other hand, he acted upon the principle, that
+the comic writer must exhibit real life, with a minute and petty accuracy.
+Generally he succeeded in seizing the manners of his own age and nation:
+in itself this was deserving of praise; but even here he confined himself
+too much to external peculiarities, to the singularities and affectations
+of the modish tone which were then called humours, and which from their
+nature are as transient as dresses. Hence a great part of his comic very
+soon became obsolete, and as early as the re-opening of the theatre under
+Charles II., no actors could be found who were capable of doing justice to
+such caricatures. Local colours like these can only be preserved from
+fading by the most complete seasoning with wit. This is what Shakspeare
+has effected. Compare, for instance, his Osric, in _Hamlet_, with
+Fastidius Brisk, in Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_: both are
+portraitures of the insipid affectation of a courtier of the day; but
+Osric, although he speaks his own peculiar language, will remain to the
+end of time an exact and intelligible image of foppish folly, whereas
+Fastidius is merely a portrait in a dress no longer in fashion, and
+nothing more. However, Jonson has not always fallen into this error; his
+Captain Bobadil, for example, in _Every Man in his Humour_, a beggarly and
+cowardly adventurer, who passes himself off with young and simple people
+for a Hector, is, it is true, far from being as amusing and original as
+Pistol; but he also, notwithstanding the change of manners, still remains
+a model in his way, and he has been imitated by English writers of comedy
+in after times.
+
+In the piece I have just named, the first work of Jonson, the action is
+extremely feeble and insignificant. In the following, _Every Man out of
+his Humour_, he has gone still farther astray, in seeking the comic
+effect merely in caricatured traits, without any interest of situation: it
+is a rhapsody of ludicrous scenes without connexion and progress. The
+_Bartholomew Fair_, also, is nothing but a coarse _Bambocciate_, in which
+no more connexion is to be found than usually exists in the hubbub, the
+noise, the quarrelling, and thefts, which attend upon such amusements of
+the populace. Vulgar delight is too naturally portrayed; the part of the
+Puritan, however, is deserving of distinction: his casuistical
+consultation, whether he ought to eat a sucking-pig according to the
+custom of the fair, and his lecture afterwards against puppet-shows as a
+heathen idolatry, are inimitable, and full of the most biting salt of
+comedy. Ben Jonson did not then foresee that, before the lapse of one
+generation, the Puritans would be sufficiently powerful to take a very
+severe revenge on his art, on account of similar railleries.
+
+In so far as plot is concerned, the greatest praise is merited by
+_Volpone, The Alchemist_, and _Epicoene, or the Silent Woman_. In
+_Volpone_ Jonson for once has entered into Italian manners, without,
+however, taking an ideal view of them. The leading idea is admirable, and
+for the most part worked out with masterly skill. Towards the end,
+however, the whole turns too much on swindling and villany, which
+necessarily call for the interference of criminal justice, and the piece,
+from the punishment of the guilty, has everything but a merry conclusion.
+In the _Alchemist_, both the deceivers and deceived supply a fund of
+entertainment, only the author enters too deeply into the learning of
+alchemy. Of an unintelligible jargon very short specimens at most ought to
+be given in comedy, and it is best that they should also have a secondary
+signification, of which the person who uses the mysterious language should
+not himself be aware; when carried to too great a length, the use of them
+occasions as much weariness as the writings themselves which served as a
+model. In _The Devil's an Ass_ the poet has failed to draw due advantage
+from a fanciful invention with which he opens, but which indeed was not
+his own; and our expectation, after being once deceived, causes us to
+remain dissatisfied with other scenes however excellently comic.
+
+Of all Jonson's pieces there is hardly one which, as it stands, would
+please on the stage in the present day, even as most of them failed to
+please in his own time; extracts from them, however, could hardly fail to
+be successful. In general, much might be borrowed from him, and much might
+be learned both from his merits and defects. His characters are, for the
+most part, solidly and judiciously drawn; what he most fails in, is the
+art of setting them off by the contrast of situations. He has seldom
+planned his scenes so successfully in this respect as in _Every Man in
+his Humour_, where the jealous merchant is called off to an important
+business, when his wife is in expectation of a visit of which he is
+suspicious, and when he is anxious to station his servant as a sentinel,
+without however confiding his secret to him, because, above all things he
+dreads the discovery of his own jealousy. This scene is a master-piece,
+and if Jonson had always so composed, we must have been obliged to rank
+him among the first of comic writers.
+
+Merely lest we should be charged with an omission do we mention _The
+Masques_: allegorical, occasional pieces, chiefly designed for court
+festivals, and decorated with machinery, masked dresses, dancing, and
+singing. This secondary species died again nearly with Jonson himself; the
+only subsequent production in this way of any fame is the _Comus_ of
+Milton. When allegory is confined to mere personification, it must
+infallibly turn out very frigid in a play; the action itself must be
+allegorical, and in this respect there are many ingenious inventions, but
+the Spanish poets have almost alone furnished us with successful examples
+of it. The peculiarity of Jonson's _Masques_ most deserving of remark
+seems to me to be the anti-masque, as they are called, which the poet
+himself sometimes attaches to his own invention, and generally allows to
+precede the serious act. As the ideal flatteries, for whose sake the gods
+have been brought down from Olympus, are but too apt to fall into
+mawkishness, this antidote on such occasions is certainly deserving of
+commendation.
+
+Ben Jonson, who in all his pieces took a mechanical view of art, bore a
+farther resemblance to the master of a handicraft in taking an apprentice.
+He had a servant of the name of Broome, who formed himself as a theatrical
+writer from the conversation and instructions of his master, and brought
+comedies on the stage with applause.
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher are always named together, as if they had been two
+inseparable poets, whose works were all planned and executed in common.
+This idea, however, is not altogether correct. We know, indeed, but little
+of the circumstances of their lives: this much however is known, that
+Beaumont died very young; and that Fletcher survived his younger friend
+ten years, and was so unremittingly active in his career as a dramatic
+poet, that several of his plays were first brought on the stage after his
+death, and some which he left unfinished were completed by another hand.
+The pieces collected under both names amount to upwards of fifty; and of
+this number it is probable that the half must be considered as the work of
+Fletcher alone. Beaumont and Fletcher's works did not make their
+appearance until a short time after the death of the latter; the
+publishers have not given themselves the trouble to distinguish critically
+the share which belonged to each, and still less to afford us any
+information respecting the diversity of their talents. Some of their
+contemporaries have attributed boldness of imagination to Fletcher, and a
+mature judgment to his friend: the former, according to their opinion, was
+the inventive genius; the latter, the directing and moderating critic. But
+this account rests on no foundation. It is now impossible to distinguish
+with certainty the hand of each; nor would the knowledge repay the labour.
+All the pieces ascribed to them, whether they proceed from one alone or
+from both, are composed in the same spirit and in the same manner. Hence
+it is probable that it was not so much the need of supplying the
+deficiencies of each other, as the great resemblance of their way of
+thinking, which induced them to continue so long and so inseparably
+united.
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher began their career in the lifetime of Shakspeare:
+Beaumont even died before him, and Fletcher only survived him nine years.
+From some allusions in the way of parody, we may conclude that they
+entertained no very extravagant admiration of their great predecessor;
+from whom, nevertheless, they both learned much, and unquestionably
+borrowed many of their thoughts. In the whole form of their plays they
+followed his example, regardless of the different principles of Ben Jonson
+and of the imitation of the ancients. Like him they drew from novels and
+romances; they combined pathetic and burlesque scenes in the same play,
+and, by the concatenation of the incidents, endeavoured to excite the
+impression of the extraordinary and the wonderful. A wish to surpass
+Shakspeare in this species is often evident enough; contemporary
+eulogists, indeed, have no hesitation in ranking Shakspeare far below
+them, and assert that the English stage was first brought to perfection by
+Beaumont and Fletcher. And, in reality, Shakspeare's fame was in some
+degree eclipsed by them in the generation which immediately succeeded, and
+in the time of Charles II. they still enjoyed greater popularity: the
+progress of time, however, has restored all three to their due places. As
+on the stage the highest excellence will wear out by frequent repetition,
+and novelty always possesses a great charm, the dramatic art is,
+consequently, much influenced by fashion; it is more than other branches
+of literature and the fine arts exposed to the danger of passing rapidly
+from a grand and simple style to dazzling and superficial mannerism.
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher were in fact men of the most distinguished talents;
+they scarcely wanted anything more than a profounder seriousness of mind,
+and that artistic sagacity which everywhere observes a due measure, to
+rank beside the greatest dramatic poets of all nations. They possessed
+extraordinary fecundity and flexibility of mind, and a facility which
+however too often degenerated into carelessness. The highest perfection
+they have hardly ever attained; and I should have little hesitation in
+affirming that they had not even an idea of it: however, on several
+occasions they have approached quite close to it. And why was it denied
+them to take this last step? Because with them poetry was not an inward
+devotion of the feeling and imagination, but a means to obtain brilliant
+results. Their first object was effect, which the great artist can hardly
+fail of attaining if he is determined above all things to satisfy himself.
+They were not like the most of their predecessors, players, [Footnote: In
+the privilege granted by James I. to the royal players, a _Laurence
+Fletcher_ is named along with Shakspeare as manager of the company. The
+poet's name was John Fletcher. Perhaps the former might be his brother or
+near relation.] but they lived in the neighbourhood of the theatre, were
+in constant intercourse with it, and possessed a perfect understanding of
+theatrical matters. They were also thoroughly acquainted with their
+contemporaries; but they found it more convenient to lower themselves to
+the taste of the public than to follow the example of Shakspeare, who
+elevated the public to himself. They lived in a vigorous age, which more
+willingly pardoned extravagancies of every description than feeblenesss
+and frigidity. They therefore never allowed themselves to be restrained by
+poetical or moral considerations; and in this confidence they found their
+account: they resemble in some measure somnambulists, who with closed eyes
+pass safely through the greatest dangers. Even when they undertake what is
+most depraved they handle it with a certain felicity. In the commencement
+of a degeneracy in the dramatic art, the spectators first lose the
+capability of judging of a play as a whole; hence Beaumont and Fletcher
+bestow very little attention on harmony of composition and the observance
+of due proportion between all the different parts. They not unfrequently
+lose sight of a happily framed plot, and appear almost to forget it; they
+bring something else forward equally capable of affording pleasure and
+entertainment, but without preparation, and in the particular place where
+it occurs without propriety. They always excite curiosity, frequently
+compassion--they hurry us along with them; they succeed better, however,
+in exciting than in gratifying our expectation. So long as we are reading
+them we feel ourselves keenly interested; but they leave very few
+imperishable impressions behind. They are least successful in their tragic
+attempts, because their feeling is not sufficiently drawn from the depths
+of human nature, and because they bestowed too little attention on the
+general consideration of human destinies: they succeed much better in
+Comedy, and in those serious and pathetic pictures which occupy a middle
+place betwixt Comedy and Tragedy. Their characters are often arbitrarily
+drawn, and, when it suits the momentary wants of the poet, become even
+untrue to themselves; in external matters they are tolerably in keeping.
+Beaumont and Fletcher employ the whole strength of their talents in
+pictures of passion; but they enter little into the secret history of the
+heart; they pass over the first emotions and the gradual heightening of a
+feeling; they seize it, as it were, in its highest maturity, and then
+develope its symptoms with the most overpowering illusion, though with an
+exaggerated strength and fulness. But though its expression does not
+always possess the strictest truth, nevertheless it still appears natural,
+every thing has free motion; nothing is laboriously constrained or far-
+fetched, however striking it may sometimes appear. In their dialogue they
+have completely succeeded in uniting the familiar tone of real
+conversation and the appearance of momentary suggestion with poetical
+elevation. They even run into that popular affectation of the natural
+which has ensured such great success to some dramatic poets of our own
+time; but as the latter sought it in the absence of all elevation of
+fancy, they could not help falling into insipidity. Beaumont and Fletcher
+generally couple nature with fancy; they succeed in giving an
+extraordinary appearance to what is common, and thus preserve a certain
+fallacious image of the ideal. The morality of these writers is ambiguous.
+Not that they failed in strong colours to contrast greatness of soul and
+goodness with baseness and wickedness, or did not usually conclude with
+the disgrace and punishment of the latter, but an ostentatious generosity
+is often favourably exhibited in lieu of duty and justice. Every thing
+good and excellent in their pictures arises more from transient ebullition
+than fixed principle; they seem to place the virtues in the blood; and
+close beside them impulses of merely a selfish and instinctive nature hold
+up their heads, as if they were of nobler origin. There is an incurable
+vulgar side of human nature which, when he cannot help but show it, the
+poet should never handle without a certain bashfulness; but instead of
+this Beaumont and Fletcher throw no veil whatever over nature. They
+express every thing bluntly in words; they make the spectator the
+unwilling confidant of all that more noble minds endeavour even to hide
+from themselves. The indecencies in which these poets indulged themselves
+go beyond conception. Licentiousness of language is the least evil; many
+scenes, nay, even whole plots, are so contrived that the very idea, not to
+mention the beholding of them, is a gross insult to modesty. Aristophanes
+is a bold mouth-piece of sensuality; but like the Grecian statuaries in
+the figures of satyrs, &c., he banishes them into the animal kingdom to
+which they wholly belong; and judging him by the morality of his times, he
+is much less offensive. But Beaumont and Fletcher hold up to view the
+impure and nauseous colours of vice in quite a different sphere; their
+compositions resemble the sheet, in the vision of the Apostle, full of
+pure and impure animals. This was the universal tendency of the dramatic
+poets under James and Charles I. They seem as if they purposely wished to
+justify the assertion of the Puritans, that theatres were so many schools
+of seduction and chapels of the Devil.
+
+To those who merely read for amusement and general cultivation, we can
+only recommend the works of Beaumont and Fletcher with some limitation
+[Footnote: Hence I cannot approve of the undertaking, which has been
+recently commenced, of translating them into German. They are not at all
+adapted for our great public, and whoever makes a particular study of
+dramatic poetry will have little difficulty in finding his way to the
+originals.]. For the practical artist, however, and the critical judge of
+dramatic poetry, an infinite deal may be learned from them; as well from
+their merits as their extravagancies. A minute dissection of one of their
+works, for which we have not here the necessary space, would serve to
+place this in the clearest light. With regard to representation, these
+pieces had, in their day, this advantage, that they did not require such
+great actors to fill the principal characters as Shakspeare's plays did.
+In order to bring them on the stage in our days, it would be necessary to
+re-cast most of them; which might be done with some of them by omitting,
+moderating, and purging various passages [Footnote: So far as I know only
+one play has yet been brought on the German theatre, namely, _Rule a Wife
+and have a Wife_, re-written by Schröder under the title of _Stille Wasser
+sind tief_ (Still Waters run deep) which, when well acted, has always been
+uncommonly well received.].
+
+_The Two Noble Kinsmen_ is deserving of more particular mention, as
+it is the joint production of Shakspeare and Fletcher. I see no ground for
+calling this in question; the piece, it is true, did not make its
+appearance till after the death of both; but what could be the motive with
+the editor or printer for any deception, as Fletcher's name was at the
+time in as great, at least, if not greater celebrity than Shakspeare's?
+Were it the sole production of Fletcher, it would, undoubtedly, have to be
+ranked as the best of his serious and heroic pieces. However, it would be
+unfair to a writer of talent to take from him a work simply because it
+seems too good for him. Might not Fletcher, who in his thoughts and images
+not unfrequently shows an affinity to Shakspeare, have for once had the
+good fortune to approach closer to him than usual? It would still be more
+dangerous to rest on the similarity of separate passages to others in
+Shakspeare. This might rather arise from imitation. I rely therefore
+entirely on the historical statement, which, probably, originated in a
+tradition of the players. There are connoisseurs, who, in the pictures of
+Raphael, (which, as is well know, were not always wholly executed by
+himself,) take upon them to determine what parts were painted by Francesco
+Penni, or Giulio Romano, or some other scholar. I wish them success with
+the nicety of their discrimination; they are at least secure from
+contradiction, as we have no certain information on the subject. I would
+only remind these connoisseurs, that Giulio Romano was himself deceived by
+a copy from Raphael of Andrea del Sarto's, and that, too, with regard to a
+figure which he had himself assisted in painting. The case in point is,
+however, a much more complicated problem in criticism. The design of
+Raphael's figures was at least his own, and the execution only was
+distributed in part among his scholars. But to find out how much of _The
+Two Noble Kinsmen_ may belong to Shakspeare, we must not only be able
+to tell the difference of hands in the execution, but also to determine
+the influence of Shakspeare on the plan of the whole. When, however, he
+once joined another poet in the production of a work, he must also have
+accommodated himself, in a certain degree, to his views, and renounced the
+prerogative of unfolding his inmost peculiarity. Amidst so many grounds
+for doubting, if I might be allowed to hazard an opinion, I should say,
+that I think I can perceive the mind of Shakspeare in a certain ideal
+purity, which distinguishes this piece from all others of Fletcher's, and
+in the conscientious fidelity with which the story adheres to that of
+Chaucer's _Palamon and Arcite_. In the style Shakspeare's hand is at
+first discoverable in a brevity and fulness of thought bordering on
+obscurity; in the colour of the expression, almost all the poets of that
+time bear a strong resemblance to each other. The first acts are most
+carefully laboured; afterwards the piece is drawn out to too great a
+length and in an epic manner; the dramatic law of quickening the action
+towards the conclusion, is not sufficiently observed. The part of the
+jailor's daughter, whose insanity is artlessly conducted in pure
+monologues, is certainly not Shakspeare's; for, in that case, we must
+suppose him to have had an intention of arrogantly imitating his own
+Ophelia.
+
+Moreover, it was then a very general custom for two or even three poets to
+join together in the production of one play. Besides the constant example
+of Beaumont and Fletcher, we have many others. The consultations,
+respecting the plan, were generally held at merry meetings in taverns.
+Upon one of these occasions it happened that one in a poetical
+intoxication calling out, "I will undertake to kill the king!" was
+immediately taken into custody as a traitor, till the misunderstanding was
+cleared up. This mode of composing may answer very well in the lighter
+species of the drama, which require to be animated by social wit. With
+regard to theatrical effect, four eyes may, in general, see better than
+two, and mutual objections may be of use in finding out the most suitable
+means. But the highest poetical inspiration is much more eremitical than
+communicative; for it always seeks to express something which sets
+language at defiance, which, therefore, can only be weakened and
+dissipated by detached words, and can only be attained by the common
+impression of the complete work, whose idea is hovering before it.
+
+_The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, of Beaumont and Fletcher, is an
+incomparable work and singular in its kind. It is a parody of the chivalry
+romances; the thought is borrowed from _Don Quixote_, but the imitation is
+handled with freedom, and so particularly applied to Spenser's _Fairy
+Queen_, that it may pass for a second invention. But the peculiarly
+ingenious novelty of the piece consists in the combination of the irony of
+a chimerical abuse of poetry with another irony exactly the contrary, of
+the incapacity to comprehend any fable, and the dramatic form more
+particularly. A grocer and his wife come as spectators to the theatre:
+they are discontented with the piece which has just been announced; they
+demand a play in honour of the corporation, and Ralph, their apprentice,
+is to act a principal part in it. Their humour is complied with; but still
+they are not satisfied, make their remarks on every thing, and incessantly
+address themselves to the players. Ben Jonson had already exhibited
+imaginary spectators, but they were either benevolent expounders or
+awkward censurers of the poet's views: consequently, they always conducted
+his, the poet's, own cause. But the grocer and his wife represent a whole
+genus, namely, those unpoetical spectators, who are destitute of a feeling
+for art. The illusion with them becomes a passive error; the subject
+represented has on them all the effect of reality, they accordingly resign
+themselves to the impression of each moment, and take part for or against
+the persons of the drama. On the other hand, they show themselves
+insensible to all genuine illusion, that is, of entering vividly into the
+spirit of the fable: for them Ralph, however heroically and chivalrously
+he may conduct himself, is always Ralph their apprentice; and in the whim
+of the moment they take upon them to demand scenes which are quite
+inconsistent with the plan of the piece that has been commenced. In short,
+the views and demands with which poets are often oppressed by a prosaical
+public are very cleverly and amusingly personified in these caricatures of
+spectators.
+
+_The Faithful Shepherdess_, a pastoral, is highly extolled by some
+English critics, as it is without doubt finished with great care, in
+rhymed, and partly, in lyrical verses. Fletcher wished also to be
+classical for once, and did violence to his natural talent. Perhaps he had
+the intention of surpassing Shakspeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_;
+but the composition which he has ushered into the world is as heavy as
+that of the other was easy and aërial. The piece is overcharged with
+mythology and rural painting, is untheatrical, and so far from pourtraying
+the genuine ideality of a pastoral world, it even contains the greatest
+vulgarities. We might rather call it an immodest eulogy of chastity. I am
+willing to hope that Fletcher was unacquainted with the _Pastor Fido_
+of Guarini, for otherwise his failure would admit of less justification.
+
+We are in want of space to speak in detail of the remaining works of
+Beaumont and Fletcher, although they might be made the subject of many
+instructive observations. On the whole, we may say of these writers that
+they have built a splendid palace, but merely in the suburbs of poetry,
+while Shakspeare has his royal residence in the very centre point of the
+capital.
+
+The fame of Massinger has been lately revived by an edition of his works.
+Some literary men wish to rank him above Beaumont and Fletcher, as if he
+had approached more closely to the excellence of Shakspeare. I cannot see
+it. He appears to me to bear the greatest resemblance to Beaumont and
+Fletcher in the plan of the pieces, in the tone of manners, and even in
+the language and negligences of versification. I would not undertake to
+decide, from internal symptoms, whether a play belonged to Massinger, or
+Beaumont and Fletcher. This applies also to the other contemporaries; for
+instance, to Shirley, of whose pieces two are stated to have crept into
+the works ascribed to the two last-named poets. There was (as already
+said) at this time in England a school of dramatic art, a school of which
+Shakspeare was the invisible and too often unacknowledged head; for Ben
+Jonson remained almost without successors. It is a characteristic of what
+is called manner in art to efface the features of personal originality,
+and to make the productions of various artists bear a resemblance to each
+other; and from manner no dramatic poet of this age, who succeeded
+Shakspeare, can be pronounced altogether free. When, however, we compare
+their works with those of the succeeding age, we perceive between them
+something about the same relation as between the paintings of the school
+of Michel Angelo and those of the last half of the seventeenth and the
+first half of the eighteenth century. Both are tainted with manner; but
+the manner of the former bears the trace of a sublime origin in the first
+ages; in the latter, all is little, affected, empty, and superficial. I
+repeat it: in a general history of the dramatic art, the first period of
+the English theatre is the only one of importance. The plays of the least
+known writers of that time, (I venture to affirm this, though I am far
+from being acquainted with all of them) are more instructive for theory,
+and more remarkable, than the most celebrated of all the succeeding times.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+Closing of the Stage by the Puritans--Revival of the Stage under Charles
+the Second--Depravity of Taste and Morals--Dryden, Otway, and others--
+Characterization of the Comic Poets from Wycherley and Congreve to the
+middle of the eighteenth century--Tragedies of the same Period--Rowe--
+Addison's _Cato_--Later Pieces--Familiar Tragedy: Lillo--Garrick--
+Latest state.
+
+
+In this condition nearly the theatre remained under the reign of Charles
+I. down to the year 1647, when the invectives of the Puritans (who had
+long murmured at the theatre, and at last thundered loudly against it,)
+were changed into laws. To act, or even to be a spectator of plays was
+prohibited under a severe penalty. A civil war followed, and the
+extraordinary circumstance here happened, that the players, (who, in
+general, do not concern themselves much about forms of government, and
+whose whole care is usually devoted to the peaceable entertainment of
+their follow-citizens,) compelled by want, joined that political party the
+interests of which were intimately connected with their own existence.
+Almost all of them entered the army of the King, many perished for the
+good cause, the survivors returned to London and continued to exercise
+their art in secret. Out of the ruins of all the former companies of
+actors, one alone was formed, which occasionally, though with very great
+caution, gave representations at the country seats of the great, in the
+vicinity of London. For among the other singularities to which the
+violence of those times gave rise, it was considered a proof of attachment
+to the old constitution to be fond of plays, and to reward and harbour
+those who acted them in private houses.
+
+Fortunately the Puritans did not so well understand the importance of a
+censorship as the Governments of our day, or the yet unprinted dramatic
+productions of the preceding age could not have issued from the press, by
+which means many of them would have been irrecoverably lost. These gloomy
+fanatics were such enemies of all that was beautiful, that they not only
+persecuted every liberal mental entertainment, calculated in any manner to
+adorn life, and more especially the drama, as being a public worship of
+Baal, but they even shut their ears to church music, as a demoniacal
+howling. If their ascendency had been maintained much longer, England must
+infallibly have been plunged in an irremediable barbarity. The oppression
+of the drama continued down to the year 1660, when the free exercise of
+all arts returned with Charles II.
+
+The influence which the government of this monarch had on the manners and
+spirit of the time, and the natural reaction against the principles
+previously dominant, are sufficiently well known. As the Puritans had
+brought republican principles and religious zeal into universal odium, so
+this light-minded monarch seemed expressly born to sport away all respect
+for the kingly dignity. England was inundated with foreign follies and
+vices in his train. The court set the fashion of the most undisguised
+immorality, and its example was the more contagious, the more people
+imagined that they could only show their zeal for the new order of things
+by an extravagant way of thinking and living. The fanaticism of the
+republicans had been associated with strictness of manners, nothing
+therefore could be more easy and agreeable than to obtain the character of
+royalists, by the extravagant indulgence of all lawful and unlawful
+pleasures. Nowhere was the age of Louis XIV. imitated with greater
+depravity. But the prevailing gallantry of the court of France had its
+reserve and a certain delicacy of feeling; they sinned (if I may so speak)
+with some degree of dignity, and no man ventured to attack what was
+honourable, however at variance with it his own actions might be. The
+English played a part which was altogether unnatural to them: they gave
+themselves up heavily to levity; they everywhere confounded the coarsest
+licentiousness with free mental vivacity, and did not perceive that the
+kind of grace which is still compatible with depravity, disappears with
+the last veil which it throws off.
+
+We can easily conceive the turn which, under such auspices, the new
+formation of taste must have taken. There existed no real knowledge of the
+fine arts, which were favoured merely like other foreign fashions and
+inventions of luxury. The age neither felt a true want of poetry, nor had
+any relish for it: in it they merely wished for a light and brilliant
+entertainment. The theatre, which in its former simplicity had attracted
+the spectators solely by the excellence of the dramatic works and the
+skill of the actors, was now furnished out with all the appliances with
+which we are at this day familiar; but what it gained in external
+decoration, it lost in internal worth.
+
+To Sir William Davenant, the English theatre, on its revival after the
+interruption which we have so often mentioned, owes its new institution,
+if this term may be here used. He introduced the Italian system of
+decoration, the _costume_, as it was then well or ill understood, the
+opera music, and in general the use of the orchestra. For this undertaking
+Charles II. had furnished him with extensive privileges. Davenant was a
+sort of adventurer and wit; in every way worthy of the royal favour; to
+enjoy which, dignity of character was never a necessary requisite. He set
+himself to work in every way that a rich theatrical repertory may render
+necessary; he made alterations of old pieces, and also wrote himself
+plays, operas, prologues, &c. But of all his writings nothing has escaped
+a merited oblivion.
+
+Dryden soon became and long remained the hero of the stage. This man, from
+his influence in fixing the laws of versification and poetical language,
+especially in rhyme, has acquired a reputation altogether disproportionate
+to his true merit. We shall not here inquire whether his translations of
+the Latin poets are not manneristical paraphrases, whether his political
+allegories (now that party interest is dead) can be read without the
+greatest weariness; but confine ourselves to his plays, which considered
+relatively to his great reputation, are incredibly bad. Dryden had a gift
+of flowing and easy versification; the knowledge which he possessed was
+considerable, but undigested; and all this was coupled with the talent of
+giving a certain appearance of novelty to what however was borrowed from
+all quarters; his serviceable muse was the resource of an irregular life.
+He had besides an immeasurable vanity; he frequently disguises it under
+humble prologues; on other occasions he speaks out boldly and confidently,
+avowing his opinion that he has done better than Shakspeare, Fletcher, and
+Jonson (whom he places nearly on the same level); all the merit of this he
+is, however, willing to ascribe to the refinement and advances of the age.
+The age indeed! as if that of Elizabeth compared with the one in which
+Dryden lived, were not in every respect "Hyperion to a Satyr!" Dryden
+played also the part of the critic: he furnished his pieces richly with
+prefaces and treatises on dramatic poetry, in which he chatters most
+confusedly about the genius of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and about the
+entirely opposite example of Corneille; of the original boldness of the
+British stage, and of the rules of Aristotle and Horace.--He imagined that
+he had invented a new species, namely the Heroic Drama; as if Tragedy had
+not from its very nature been always heroical! If we are, however, to seek
+for a heroic drama which is not peculiarly tragic, we shall find it among
+the Spaniards, who had long possessed it in the greatest perfection. From
+the uncommon facility of rhyming which Dryden possessed, it cost him
+little labour to compose the most of his serious pieces entirely in rhyme.
+With the English, the rhymed verse of ten syllables supplies the place of
+the Alexandrine; it has more freedom in its pauses, but on the other hand
+it wants the alternation of male and female rhymes; it proceeds in pairs
+exactly like the French Alexandrine, and in point of syllabic measure it
+is still more uniformly symmetrical. It therefore unavoidably communicates
+a great stiffness to the dialogue. The manner of the older English poets
+before them, who generally used blank verse, and only occasionally
+introduced rhymes, was infinitely preferable. But, since then, on the
+other hand, rhyme has come to be too exclusively rejected.
+
+Dryden's plans are improbable, even to silliness; the incidents are all
+thrown out without forethought; the most wonderful theatrical strokes fall
+incessantly from the clouds. He cannot be said to have drawn a single
+character; for there is not a spark of nature in his dramatic personages.
+Passions, criminal and magnanimous sentiments, flow with indifferent
+levity from their lips, without ever having dwelt in the heart: their
+chief delight is in heroical boasting. The tone of expression is by turns
+flat or madly bombastical; not unfrequently both at the same time: in
+short, this poet resembles a man who walks upon stilts in a morass. His
+wit is displayed in far-fetched sophistries; his imagination in long-spun
+similies, awkwardly introduced. All these faults have been ridiculed by
+the Duke of Buckingham in his comedy of _The Rehearsal_. Dryden was
+meant under the name of Bayes, though some features are taken from
+Davenant and other contemporary writers. The vehicle of this critical
+satire might have been more artificial and diversified; the matter,
+however is admirable, and the separate parodies are very amusing and
+ingenious. The taste for this depraved manner was, however, too prevalent
+to be restrained by the efforts of so witty a critic, who was at the same
+time a grandee of the kingdom.
+
+Otway and Lee were younger competitors of Dryden in tragedy. Otway lived
+in poverty, and died young; under more favourable circumstances greater
+things perhaps would have been done by him. His first pieces in rhyme are
+imitations of Dryden's manner; he also imitated the _Berenice_ of Racine.
+Two of his pieces in blank verse have kept possession of the stage--_The
+Orphan_ and _Venice Preserved_. These tragedies are far from being good;
+but there is matter in them, especially in the last; and amidst much empty
+declamation there are some truly pathetic passages. How little Otway
+understood the true rules of composition may be inferred from this, that
+he has taken the half of the scenes of his _Caius Marius_ verbally, or
+with disfiguring changes, from the _Romeo and Juliet_ of Shakspeare.
+Nothing more incongruous can well he conceived, than such an episode in
+Roman manners, and in a historical drama. This impudent plagiarism is in
+no manner justified by his confessing it.
+
+Dryden altered pieces of Shakspeare; for then, and even long afterwards,
+every person thought himself qualified for this task. He also wrote
+comedies; but Wycherley and Congreve were the first to acquire a name in
+this species of composition. The mixed romantic drama was now laid
+entirely aside; all was either tragedy or comedy. The history of each of
+these species will therefore admit of being separately handled--if,
+indeed, that can be correctly said to have a history where we can perceive
+no progressive development, but mere standing still, or even retrograding,
+and an inconstant fluctuation in all directions. However, the English,
+under Charles II. and Queen Anne, and down to the middle of the eighteenth
+century, had a series of comic writers, who may be all considered as
+belonging to one common class; for the only considerable diversity among
+them arises merely from an external circumstance, the varying tone of
+manners.
+
+I have elsewhere in these Lectures shown that elegance of form is of the
+greatest importance in Comedy, as from the want of care in this respect it
+is apt to degenerate into a mere prosaical imitation of reality, and
+thereby to forfeit its pretensions to rank as either poetry or art. It is
+exactly, however, in the form, that the English comedies are most
+negligent. In the first place, they are written entirely in prose. It has
+been well remarked by an English critic, that the banishment of verse from
+Comedy had even a prejudicial influence on versification in Tragedy. The
+older dramatists could elevate or lower the tone of their Iambics at
+pleasure; from the exclusion of this verse from familiar dialogue, it has
+become more pompous and inflexible. Shakspeare's comic scenes, it is true,
+are also written, for the most part, in prose; but in the Mixed Comedy,
+which has a serious, wonderful, or pathetic side, the prose, mixed with
+the elevated language of verse, serves to mark the contrast between vulgar
+and ideal sentiments; it is a positive means of exhibition. Continued
+prose in Comedy is nothing but the natural language, on which the poet has
+failed to employ his skill to refine and smoothe it down, while apparently
+he seems the more careful to give an accurate imitation of it: it is that
+prose which Molière's Bourgeois Gentilhomme has been speaking his whole
+lifetime without suspecting it.
+
+Moreover, the English comic poets tie themselves down too little to the
+unity of place. I have on various occasions declared that I consider
+change of scene even a requisite, whenever a drama is to possess
+historical extent or the magic of romance. But in the comedy of common
+life the case is somewhat altogether different. I am convinced that it
+would almost always have had a beneficial influence on the conduct of the
+action in the English plays, if their authors had, in this respect,
+subjected themselves to stricter laws.
+
+The lively trickery of the Italian masks has always found a more
+unfavourable reception in England than in France. The fool or clown in
+Shakspeare's comedies is far more of an ironical humorist than a mimical
+buffoon. Intrigue in real life is foreign to the Northern nations, both
+from the virtues and the defects of their character; they have too much
+openness of disposition, and too little acuteness and nicety of
+understanding. It is remarkable that, with greater violence of passion,
+the Southern nations possess, nevertheless, in a much higher degree the
+talent of dissembling. In the North, life is wholly founded on mutual
+confidence. Hence, in the drama, the spectators, from being less practised
+in intrigue, are less inclined to be delighted with concealment of views
+and their success by bold artifice, and with the presence of mind which,
+in unexpected events of an untoward nature, readily extricates its
+possessor from embarrassment. However, there may be an intrigue in Comedy,
+in the dramatic sense, though none of the persons carry on what is
+properly called intrigue. Still it is in the entangling and disentangling
+their plots that the English comic writers are least deserving of praise.
+Their plans are defective in unity. From this reproach I have, I conceive,
+sufficiently exculpated Shakspeare; it is rather merited by many of
+Fletcher's pieces. When, indeed, the imagination has a share in the
+composition, then it is far from being as necessary that all should be
+accurately connected together by cause and effect, as when the whole is
+framed and held together exclusively by the understanding. The existence
+of a double or even triple intrigue in many modern English comedies has
+been acknowledged even by English critics themselves. [Footnote: Among
+others, by the anonymous author of a clever letter to Garrick, prefixed to
+Coxeter's edition of _Massinger's Works_, who says--"What with their
+plots, and double plots, and counter-plots, and under-plots, the mind is
+as much perplexed to piece out the story as to put together the disjointed
+parts of an ancient drama."] The inventions to which they have recourse
+are often everything but probable, without charming us by their happy
+novelty; they are chiefly deficient, however, in perspicuity and easy
+development. Most English comedies are much too long. The authors overload
+their composition with characters: and we can see no reason why they
+should not have divided them into several pieces. It is as if we were to
+compel to travel in the same stage-coach a greater number of persons, all
+strangers to each other, than there is properly room for; the journey
+becomes more inconvenient, and the entertainment not a whit more lively.
+
+The great merit of the English comic poets of this period consists in the
+delineation of character; yet though many have certainly shown much
+talent, I cannot ascribe to any a peculiar genius for characterization.
+Even in this department the older poets (not only Shakspeare, for that may
+easily be supposed, but even Fletcher and Jonson) are superior to them.
+The moderns seldom possess the faculty of seizing the most hidden and
+involuntary emotions, and giving a comic expression to them; they
+generally draw merely the natural or assumed surface of men. Moreover, the
+same circumstance which in France, after Molière's time, was attended with
+such prejudicial effects, came here also into play. The comic muse,
+instead of becoming familiar with life in the middle and lower ranks (her
+proper sphere), assumed an air of distinction: she squeezed herself into
+courts, and endeavoured to snatch a resemblance of the _beau monde_.
+It was now no longer an English national, but a London comedy. The whole
+turns almost exclusively on fashionable love-suits and fashionable
+raillery; the love-affairs are either disgusting or insipid, and the
+raillery is always puerile and destitute of wit. These comic writers may
+have accurately hit the tone of their time; in this they did their duty;
+but they have reared a lamentable memorial of their age. In few periods
+has taste in the fine arts been at such a low ebb as about the close of
+the seventeenth and during the first half of the eighteenth century. The
+political machine kept its course; wars, negotiations, and changes of
+states, give to this age a certain historical splendour; but the comic
+poets and portrait-painters have revealed to us the secret of its
+pitifulness--the former in their copies of the dresses, and the latter in
+the imitation of the social tone. I am convinced that if we could now
+listen to the conversation of the _beau monde_ of that day, it would
+appear to us as pettily affected and full of tasteless pretension, as the
+hoops, the towering head-dresses and high-heeled shoes of the women, and
+the huge perukes, cravats, wide sleeves, and ribbon-knots of the men.
+[Footnote: When I make good or bad taste in dress an infallible criterion
+of social elegance or deformity, this must be limited to the age in which
+the fashion came up; for it may sometimes be very difficult to overturn a
+wretched fashion even when, in other things, a better taste has long
+prevailed. The dresses of the ancients were more simple, and consequently
+less subject to change of fashion; and the male dress, in particular, was
+almost unchangeable. However, even from the dresses alone, as we see them
+in the remains of antiquity, we may form a pretty accurate judgment of the
+character of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. In the female
+portrait-busts of the time of the later Roman emperors, we often find the
+head-dresses extremely tasteless; nay, even busts with peruques which may
+be taken off, probably for the purpose of changing them, as the originals
+themselves did.]
+
+The last, and not the least defect of the English comedies is their
+offensiveness. I may sum up the whole in one word by saying, that after
+all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we are
+still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and
+Congreve. Decency is not merely violated in the grossest manner in single
+speeches, and frequently in the whole plot; but in the character of the
+rake, the fashionable debauchee, a moral scepticism is directly preached
+up, and marriage is the constant subject of their ridicule. Beaumont and
+Fletcher portrayed an irregular but vigorous nature: nothing, however, can
+be more repulsive than rude depravity coupled with claims to higher
+refinement. Under Queen Anne manners became again more decorous; and this
+may easily be traced in the comedies: in the series of English comic
+poets, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Steele, Cibber, &c., we
+may perceive something like a gradation from the most unblushing indecency
+to a tolerable degree of modesty. However, the example of the predecessors
+has had more than a due influence on the successors. From prescriptive
+fame pieces keep possession of the stage such as no man in the present day
+durst venture to bring out. It is a remarkable phenomenon, the causes of
+which are deserving of inquiry, that the English nation, in the last half
+of the eighteenth century, passed all at once from the most opposite way
+of thinking, to an almost over-scrupulous strictness of manners in social
+conversation, in romances and plays, and in the plastic arts.
+
+Some writers have said of Congreve that he had too much wit for a comic
+poet. These people must have rather a strange notion of wit. The truth is,
+that Congreve and the other writers above mentioned possess in general
+much less comic than epigrammatic wit. The latter often degenerates into a
+laborious straining for wit. Steele's dialogue, for example, puts us too
+much in mind of the letters in the _Spectator_. Farquhar's plots seem
+to me to be the most ingenious of all.
+
+The latest period of English Comedy begins nearly with Colman. Since that
+time the morals have been irreproachable, and much has been done in the
+way of refined and original characterization; the form, however, has on
+the whole remained the same, and in that respect I do not think the
+English comedies at all models.
+
+Tragedy has been often attempted in England in the eighteenth century, but
+a genius of the first rank has never made his appearance. They laid aside
+the manner of Dryden, however, and that at least was an improvement. Rowe
+was an honest admirer of Shakspeare, and his modest reverence for this
+superior genius was rewarded by a return to nature and truth. The traces
+of imitation are not to be mistaken: the part of Gloster in _Jane Shore_
+is even directly borrowed from _Richard the Third_. Rowe did not possess
+boldness and vigour, but was not without sweetness and feeling; he could
+excite the softer emotions, and hence in his _Fair Penitent_, _Jane
+Shore_, and _Lady Jane Gray_, he has successfully chosen female heroines
+and their weaknesses for his subjects.
+
+Addison possessed an elegant mind, but he was by no means a poet. He
+undertook to purify the English Tragedy, by bringing it into a compliance
+with the supposed rules of good taste. We might have expected from a judge
+of the ancients, that he would have endeavoured to approach the Greek
+models. Whether he had any such intention I know not, but certain it is
+that he has produced nothing but a tragedy after the French model.
+_Cato_ is a feeble and frigid piece, almost destitute of action,
+without one truly overpowering moment. Addison has so narrowed a great and
+heroic picture by his timid manner of treating it, that he could not,
+without foreign intermixture, even fill up the frame. Hence, he had
+recourse to the traditional love intrigues; if we count well, we shall
+find in this piece no fewer than six persons in love: Cato's two sons,
+Marcia and Lucia, Juba and Sempronius. The good Cato cannot, therefore, as
+a provident father of a family, avoid arranging two marriages at the
+close. With the exception of Sempronius, the villain of the piece, the
+lovers are one and all somewhat silly. Cato, who ought to be the soul of
+the whole, is hardly ever shown to us in action; nothing remains for him
+but to admire himself and to die. It might be thought that the stoical
+determination of suicide, without struggle and without passion, is not a
+fortunate subject; but correctly speaking, no subjects are unfortunate,
+every thing depends on correctly apprehending them. Addison has been
+induced, by a wretched regard to Unity of Place, to leave out Caesar, the
+only worthy contrast to Cato; and, in this respect even Metastasio has
+managed matters better. The language is pure and simple, but without
+vigour; the rhymeless Iambic gives more freedom to the dialogue, and an
+air somewhat less conventional than it has in the French tragedies; but in
+vigorous eloquence, Cato remains far behind them.
+
+Addison took his measures well; he placed all the great and small critics,
+with Pope at their head, the whole militia of good taste under arms, that
+he might excite a high expectation of the piece which he had produced with
+so much labour. _Cato_ was universally praised, as a work without an
+equal. And on what foundation do these boundless praises rest? On
+regularity of form? This had been already observed by the French poets for
+nearly a century, and notwithstanding its constraints they had often
+attained a much stronger pathetic effect. Or on the political sentiments?
+But in a single dialogue between Brutus and Cassius in Shakspeare there is
+more of a Roman way of thinking and republican energy than in all _Cato_.
+
+I doubt whether this piece could ever have produced a powerful impression,
+but its reputation has certainly had a prejudicial influence on Tragedy in
+England. The example of _Cato_, and the translation of French tragedies,
+which became every day more frequent, could not, it is true, render
+universal the belief in the infallibility of the rules; but they were held
+in sufficient consideration to disturb the conscience of the dramatic
+poets, who consequently were extremely timid in availing themselves of the
+prerogatives they inherited from Shakspeare. On the other hand, these
+prerogatives were at the same time problems; it requires no ordinary
+degree of skill to arrange, with simplicity and perspicuity, such great
+masses as Shakspeare uses to bring together: more of drawing and
+perspective are required for an extensive fresco painting, than for a
+small oil picture. In renouncing the intermixture of comic scenes when
+they no longer understood their ironical aim, they did perfectly right:
+Southern still attempted them in his _Oroonoko_, but in his hands
+they exhibit a wretched appearance. With the general knowledge and
+admiration of the ancients which existed in England, we might have looked
+for some attempt at a true imitation of the Greek Tragedy; no such
+imitation has, however, made its appearance; in the choice and handling of
+their materials they show an undoubted affinity to the French. Some poets
+of celebrity in other departments of poetry, Young, Thomson, Glover, have
+written tragedies, but no one of them has displayed any true tragical
+talent.
+
+They have now and then had recourse to familiar tragedy to assist the
+barrenness of imagination; but the moral aim, which must exclusively
+prevail in this species, is a true extinguisher of genuine poetical
+inspiration. They have, therefore, been satisfied with a few attempts. The
+_Merchant of London_, and _The Gamester_, are the only plays in this way
+which have attained any great reputation. _George Barnwell_ is remarkable
+from having been praised by Diderot and Lessing, as a model for imitation.
+This error could only have escaped from Lessing in the keenness of his
+hostility to the French conventional tone. For in truth it is necessary to
+keep Lillo's honest views constantly in mind, to prevent us from finding
+_George Barnwell_ as laughable as it is certainly trivial. Whoever
+possesses so little, or rather, no knowledge of men and of the world,
+ought not to set up for a public lecturer on morals. We might draw a very
+different conclusion from this piece, from that which the author had in
+view, namely, that to prevent young people from entertaining a violent
+passion, and being led at last to steal and murder, for the first wretch
+who spreads her snares for them, (which they of course cannot possibly
+avoid,) we ought, at an early period, to make them acquainted with the
+true character of courtezans. Besides, I cannot approve of not making the
+gallows visible before the last scene; such a piece ought always to be
+acted with a place of execution in the background. With respect to the
+edification to be drawn from a drama of this kind, I should prefer the
+histories of malefactors, which in England are usually printed at
+executions; they contain, at least, real facts, instead of awkward
+fictions.
+
+Garrick's appearance forms an epoch in the history of the English theatre,
+as he chiefly dedicated his talents to the great characters of Shakspeare,
+and built his own fame on the growing admiration for this poet. Before his
+time, Shakspeare had only been brought on the stage in mutilated and
+disfigured alterations. Garrick returned on the whole to the true
+originals, though he still allowed himself to make some very unfortunate
+changes. It appears to me that the only excusable alteration of Shakspeare
+is, to leave out a few things not in conformity to the taste of the time.
+Garrick was undoubtedly a great actor. Whether he always conceived the
+parts of Shakspeare in the sense of the poet, I, from the very
+circumstances stated in the eulogies on his acting, should be inclined to
+doubt. He excited, however, a noble emulation to represent worthily the
+great national poet; this has ever since been the highest aim of actors,
+and even at present the stage can boast of men whose histrionic talents
+are deservedly famous.
+
+But why has this revival of the admiration of Shakspeare remained
+unproductive for dramatic poetry? Because he has been too much the subject
+of astonishment, as an unapproachable genius who owed everything to nature
+and nothing to art. His success, it is thought, is without example, and
+can never be repeated; nay, it is even forbidden to venture into the same
+region. Had he been considered more from an artistic point of view, it
+would have led to an endeavour to understand the principles which he
+followed in his practice, and an attempt to master them. A meteor appears,
+disappears, and leaves no trace behind; the course of a heavenly body,
+however, ought to be delineated by the astronomer, for the sake of
+investigating more accurately the laws of general mechanics.
+
+I am not sufficiently acquainted with the latest dramatic productions of
+the English, to enter into a minute account of them. That the dramatic art
+and the public taste are, however, in a wretched state of decline, may, I
+think, be safely inferred from the following circumstance. Some years ago,
+several German plays found their way to the English stage; plays, which,
+it is true, are with us the favourites of the multitude, but which are not
+considered by the intelligent as forming a part of our literature, and in
+which distinguished actors are almost ashamed of earning applause. These
+pieces have met with extraordinary favour in England; they have, properly
+speaking, as the Italians say, _fatto furore_, though indeed the critics
+did not fail to declaim against their immorality, veiled over by
+sentimental hypocrisy. From the poverty of our dramatic literature, the
+admission of such abominations into Germany may be easily comprehended;
+but what can be alleged in favour of this depravity of taste in a nation
+like the English, which possesses such treasures, and which must therefore
+descend from such an elevation? Certain writers are nothing in themselves;
+they are merely symptoms of the disease of their age; and were we to judge
+from them, there is but too much reason to fear that, in England, an
+effeminate sentimentality in private life is more frequent, than from the
+astonishing political greatness and energy of the nation we should be led
+to suppose.
+
+May the romantic drama and the grand historical drama, those truly native
+species, be again speedily revived, and may Shakspeare find such worthy
+imitators as some of those whom Germany has to produce!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+Spanish Theatre--Its three Periods: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon--
+Spirit of the Spanish Poetry in general--Influence of the National History
+on it--Form, and various species of the Spanish Drama--Decline since the
+beginning of the eighteenth century.
+
+
+The riches of the Spanish stage have become proverbial, and it has been
+more or less the custom of the Italian, French, and English dramatists, to
+draw from this source, and generally without acknowledgment. I have often,
+in the preceding Lectures, had occasion to notice this fact; it was
+incompatible, however, with my purpose, to give an enumeration of all that
+has been so borrowed, for it would have assumed rather a bulky appearance,
+and without great labour it could not have been rendered complete. What
+has been taken from the most celebrated Spanish poets might be easily
+pointed out; but the writers of the second and third rank have been
+equally laid under contribution, and their works are not easily met with
+out of Spain. Ingenious boldness, joined to easy clearness of intrigue, is
+so exclusively peculiar to the Spanish dramatists, that whenever I find
+these in a work, I consider myself justified in suspecting a Spanish
+origin, even though the circumstance may have been unknown to the author
+himself, who drew his plagiarism from a nearer source. [Footnote: Thus for
+example, _The Servant of two Masters_, of Goldoni, a piece highly
+distinguished above his others for the most amusing intrigue, passes for
+an original. A learned Spaniard has assured me, that he knows it to be a
+Spanish invention. Perhaps Goldoni had here merely an older Italian
+imitation before him.]
+
+From the political preponderance of Spain in the sixteenth century, a
+knowledge of its language became widely diffused throughout Europe. Even
+in the first half of the seventeenth century, many traces are to be found
+of an acquaintance with Spanish literature in France, Italy, England, and
+Germany; since that time, however, the study of it had every where fallen
+into neglect, till of late some zeal for it has been again excited in
+Germany. In France they have no other idea of the Spanish theatre, than
+what can be formed from the translations of Linguet. These again have been
+rendered into German, and their number has been increased by others, in no
+respect better, derived immediately from the originals. The translators
+have, however, confined themselves almost exclusively to the department of
+comedies of intrigue, and though all the Spanish plays with the exception
+of a few _Entremeses_, _Saynetes_, and those of a very late period, are
+versified, they have turned the whole into prose, and even considered
+themselves entitled to praise for having carefully removed every thing
+like poetical ornament. After such a mode of proceeding nothing but the
+material scaffolding of the original could remain; the beautiful colouring
+must have disappeared together with the form of execution. That
+translators who could show such a total want of judgment as to poetical
+excellences would not choose the best pieces of the store, may be easily
+supposed. The species in question, though in the invention of innumerable
+intrigues, of such a kind as the theatrical literature of all other
+countries can produce but few examples of it, it certainly shows
+astonishing acuteness, is, nevertheless, by no means the most valuable
+part of the Spanish theatre, which displays a much greater brilliancy in
+the handling of wonderful, mythological, or historical subjects.
+
+The selection published by De la Huerta in sixteen small volumes, under
+the title of _Teatro Hespañol_, with introductions giving an account
+of the authors of the pieces and the different species, will not afford,
+even to one conversant with the language, a very extensive acquaintance
+with the Spanish theatre. His collection is limited almost exclusively to
+the department of comedies in modern manners, and he has not admitted into
+it any of the pieces of an earlier period, composed by Lope de Vega, or
+his predecessors. Blankenburg and Bouterwek [Footnote: The former, in his
+annotations on _Sulzers Theorie der schönen Künste_, the latter in
+his _Geschichte der Spanischen Poesie_.] among ourselves have laboured to
+throw light on the earlier history of the Spanish theatre, before it
+acquired its proper shape and attained literary dignity,--a subject
+involved in much obscurity. But even at an after period, an immense number
+of works were written for the stage which never appeared in print, and
+which are either now lost or only exist in manuscript; while, on the other
+hand, there is hardly an instance of a piece being printed without having
+first been brought on the stage. A correct and complete history of the
+Spanish theatre, therefore, can only be executed in Spain. The notices of
+the German writers above-mentioned, are however of use, though not free
+from errors; their opinions of the poetical merit of the several pieces,
+and the general view which they have taken, appear to me exceedingly
+objectionable.
+
+The first advances of Dramatic Art in Spain were made in the last half of
+the sixteenth century; and with the end of the seventeenth it ceased to
+flourish. In the eighteenth, after the War of the Succession, (which seems
+to have had a very prejudicial influence on the Spanish literature in
+general,) very little can be mentioned which does not display
+extravagance, decay, the retention of old observances without meaning, or
+a tame imitation of foreign productions. The Spanish literari of the last
+generation frequently boast of their old national poets, the people
+entertain a strong attachment to them, and in Mexico, as well as Madrid,
+their pieces are always represented with impassioned applause.
+
+The various epochs in the formation of the Spanish theatre may be
+designated by the names of three of its most famous authors, Cervantes,
+Lope de Vega, and Calderon.
+
+The earliest and most valuable information and opinions on this subject
+are to be found in the writings of Cervantes; chiefly in _Don
+Quixote_ (in the dialogue with the Canon), in the Preface to his later
+plays, and in the _Journey to Parnassus_. He has also in various
+other places thrown out occasional remarks on the subject. He had
+witnessed in his youth the commencement of the dramatic art in Spain; the
+poetical poverty of which, as well as the meagreness of the theatrical
+decorations, are very humorously described by him. He was justified in
+looking upon himself as one of the founders of this art; for before he
+gained immortal fame by his _Don Quixote_ he had diligently laboured
+for the stage, and from twenty to thirty pieces (so negligently does he
+speak of them) from his pen had been acted with applause. On this account,
+however, he made no very high claims, nor after they had fulfilled their
+momentary destination did he allow any of them to be printed; and it was
+only lately that two of these earlier labours were for the first time
+published. One of these plays, probably Cervantes' first, _The Way of
+Living in Algiers_ (_El Trato de Argel_), still bears traces of the
+infancy of the art in the preponderance of narrative, in the general
+meagreness, and in the want of prominency in the figures and situations.
+The other, however, _The Destruction of Numantia_, has altogether the
+elevation of the tragical cothurnus; and, from its unconscious and
+unlaboured approximation to antique grandeur and purity, forms a
+remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern poetry. The idea of destiny
+prevails in it throughout; the allegorical figures which enter between the
+acts supply nearly, though in a different way, the place of the chorus in
+the Greek tragedies; they guide the reflection and propitiate the feeling.
+A great deed of heroism is accomplished; the extremity of suffering is
+endured with constancy; but it is the deed and the suffering of a whole
+nation whose individual members, it may almost be said, appear but as
+examples of the general fortitude and magnanimity, while the Roman heroes
+seem merely the instruments of fate. There is, if I may so speak, a sort
+of Spartan pathos in this piece: every single and personal consideration
+is swallowed up in the feeling of patriotism; and by allusions to the
+warlike fame of his nation in modern times, the poet has contrived to
+connect the ancient history with the interests of his own day.
+
+Lope de Vega appeared, and soon became the sole monarch of the stage;
+Cervantes was unable to compete with him; yet he was unwilling altogether
+to abandon a claim founded on earlier success; and shortly before his
+death, in the year 1615, he printed eight plays and an equal number of
+smaller interludes, as he had failed in his attempts to get them brought
+on the stage. They have generally been considered greatly inferior to his
+other prose and poetical works; their modern editor is even of opinion
+that they were meant as parodies and satires on the vitiated taste of the
+time: but to find this hypothesis ridiculous, we have only to read them
+without any such prepossession. Had Cervantes entertained such a design,
+he would certainly have accomplished it in a very different way in one
+piece, and also in a manner both highly amusing and not liable to
+misconception. No, they were intended as pieces in the manner of Lope:
+contrary to his own convictions, Cervantes has here endeavoured, by a
+display of greater variety, of wonderful plots, and theatrical effect to
+comply with the taste of his contemporaries. It would appear from them
+that he considered a superficial composition as the main requisite for
+applause; his own, at least, is for the most part, extremely loose and
+ill-connected, and we have no examples in his prose works of a similar
+degree of negligence. Hence, as he partly renounced his peculiar
+excellences, we need not be astonished that he did not succeed in
+surpassing Lope in his own walk. Two, however, of these pieces, _The
+Christian Slaves in Algiers (Los Baños de Argel_), an alteration of the
+piece before-mentioned, and _The Labyrinth of Love_, are, in their
+whole plot, deserving of great praise, while all of them contain so many
+beautiful and ingenious traits, that when we consider them by themselves,
+and without comparing them with the _Destruction of Numantia_, we
+feel disposed to look on the opinion entertained pretty generally by the
+Spanish critics as a mere prejudice. But on the other hand, when we
+compare them with Lope's pieces, or bear in mind the higher excellences to
+which Calderon had accustomed the public, this opinion will appear to
+admit of conditional justification. We may, on the whole, allow that the
+mind of this poet was most inclined to the epic, (taking the word in its
+more extensive signification, for the narrative form of composition); and
+that the light and gentle manner in which he delights to move the mind is
+not well suited to the making the most of every moment, and to the rapid
+compression which are required on the theatre. But when we, on the other
+hand, view the energetical pathos in _The Destruction of Numantia_,
+we are constrained almost to consider it as merely accidental that
+Cervantes did not devote himself wholly to this species of writing, and
+find room in it for the complete development of his inventive mind.
+
+The sentence pronounced by Cervantes on the dramas of his later
+contemporaries is one of the neglected voices which, from time to time, in
+Spain have been raised, insisting on the imitation of the ancient
+classics, while the national taste had decidedly declared in favour of the
+romantic drama in its boldest form. On this subject Cervantes, from causes
+which we may easily comprehend, was not altogether impartial. Lope de Vega
+had followed him as a dramatic writer, and by his greater fertility and
+the effective brilliancy of his pieces, had driven him from the stage; a
+circumstance which ought certainly to be taken into account in explaining
+the discontent of Cervantes in his advanced age with the direction of the
+public taste and the constitution of the theatre. It would appear, too,
+that in his poetical mind there was a certain prosaical corner in which
+there still lurked a disposition to reject the wonderful, and the bold
+play of fancy, as contrary to probability and nature. On the authority of
+the ancients he recommended a stricter separation of the several kinds of
+the drama; whereas the romantic art endeavours, in its productions, as he
+himself had done in his romances and novels, to blend all the elements of
+poetry; and he censured with great severity, as real offences against
+propriety, the rapid changes of time and place. It is remarkable that Lope
+himself was unacquainted with his own rights, and confessed that he wrote
+his pieces, contrary to the rules with which he was well acquainted,
+merely for the sake of pleasing the multitude. That this object entered
+prominently into his consideration is certainly true; still he remains one
+of the most extraordinary of all the popular and favourite theatrical
+writers that ever lived, and well deserves to be called in all seriousness
+by his rival and adversary, Cervantes, a wonder of nature.
+
+The pieces of Lope de Vega, numerous beyond all belief, have partly never
+been printed; while of those that have, a complete collection is seldom to
+be found, except in Spain. Many pieces are probably falsely ascribed to
+him; an abuse of which Calderon also complains. I know not whether Lope
+himself ever gave a list of the pieces actually composed by him; indeed he
+could hardly at last have remembered the whole of them. However, by
+reading a few, we shall advance pretty far towards an acquaintance with
+this poet; nor need we be much afraid lest we should have failed to peruse
+the most excellent, as in his separate productions he does not surprise us
+by any elevated flight nor by laying open the whole unfathomable depths of
+his mind. This prolific writer, at one time too much idolized, at another
+too much depreciated, appears here undoubtedly in the most advantageous
+light, as the theatre was the best school for the correction of his three
+great errors, want of connexion, diffuseness, and an unnecessary parade of
+learning. In some of his pieces, especially the historical ones, founded
+on old romances or traditional tales, for instance, _King Wamba_, _The
+Youthful Tricks of Bernardo del Carpio_, _The Battlements of Toro,_ &c.,
+there prevails a certain rudeness of painting, which, however, is not
+altogether without character, and seems to have been purposely chosen to
+suit the subjects: in others, which portray the manners of his own time,
+as for instance, _The Lively Fair One of Tolédo_, _The Fair deformed,_ we
+may observe a highly cultivated social tone. All of them contain, besides
+truly interesting situations, a number of inimitable jokes; and there are,
+perhaps, very few of them which would not, if skilfully treated and
+adapted to our stages, produce a great effect in the present day. Their
+chief defects are, a profusion of injudicious invention, and negligence in
+the execution. They resemble the groups which an ingenious sketcher
+scrawls on paper without any preparation, and without even taking the
+necessary time; in which, notwithstanding this hasty negligence every line
+is full of life and significance. Besides the want of careful finish, the
+works of Lope are deficient in depth, and also in those more delicate
+allusions which constitute the peculiar mysteries of the art.
+
+If the Spanish theatre had not advanced farther, if it had possessed only
+the works of Lope and the more eminent of his contemporaries, as Guillen
+de Castro, Montalban, Molina, Matos-Fragoso, &c., we should have to praise
+it, rather for grandeur of design and for promising subjects than for
+matured perfection. But Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca now made his
+appearance, a writer as prolific and diligent as Lope, and a poet of a
+very different kind,--a poet if ever any man deserved that name. The
+"wonder of nature," the enthusiastic popularity, and the sovereignty of
+the stage were renewed in a much higher degree. The years of Calderon
+[Footnote: Born in 1601.] keep nearly equal pace with those of the
+seventeeth century; he was consequently sixteen when Cervantes, and
+thirty-five when Lope died, whom he survived nearly half a century.
+According to his biographer's account, Calderon wrote more than a hundred
+and twenty plays, more than a hundred spiritual allegorical acts
+(_Autos_), a hundred merry interludes or _Saynetes_ [Footnote: This
+account is perhaps somewhat rhetorical. The most complete, and in every
+respect the best edition of the plays, that of Apontes, contains only
+a hundred and eight pieces. At the request of a great Lord, Calderon,
+shortly before his death, gave a list of his genuine works. He names a
+hundred and eleven plays; but among them there are considerably more than
+three which are not to be found in the collection of Apontes. Some of them
+may, indeed, be concealed under other titles, as, for instance, the piece,
+which Calderon himself calls, _El Tuzani de la Alpujarra_, is named
+in the collection, _Amar despues de la Muerte_. Others are unquestionably
+omitted, for instance, a _Don Quixote_, which I should be particularly
+desirous of seeing. We may infer from many circumstances that Calderon had
+a great respect for Cervantes. The collection of the _Autos sacramentales_
+contains only seventy-two, and of these several are not mentioned by
+Calderon. And yet he lays the greatest stress on these; wholly devoted to
+religion, he had become in his age more indifferent towards the temporal
+plays of his muse, although he did not reject them, and still continued to
+add to the number. It might well be with him as with an excessively
+wealthy man, who, in a general computation, is apt to forget many of the
+items of his capital. I have never yet been able to see any of the
+_Saynetes_ of Calderon; I cannot even find an account whether or not they
+have been ever collected and printed.] besides a number of poems which
+were not dramatical. As from his fourteenth to his eighty-first year, that
+in which he died, he continued to produce dramatic works, they spread over
+a great space, and we may therefore suppose that he did not write with the
+same haste as Lope; he had sufficient leisure to consider his plans
+maturely, which, without doubt, he has done. In the execution, he could
+not fail from his extensive practice to acquire great readiness.
+
+In this almost incalculable exuberance of production, we find nothing
+thrown out at random; all is finished in masterly perfection, agreeably to
+established and consistent principles, and with the most profound artistic
+views. This cannot be denied even by those who would confound the pure and
+high style of the romantic drama with mannerism, and consider these bold
+flights of poetry, on the extreme boundaries of the conceivable, as
+aberrations in art. For Calderon has every where converted that into
+matter what passed with his predecessors for form;--nothing less than the
+noblest and most exquisite excellence could satisfy him. And this is why
+he repeats himself in many expressions, images, comparisons, nay, even in
+many plays of situation; for he was too rich to be under the necessity of
+borrowing from himself, much less from others. The effect on the stage is
+with Calderon the first and last thing; but this consideration, which is
+generally felt by others as a restraint, is with him a positive end. I
+know of no dramatist equally skilled in converting effect into poetry, who
+is at once so sensibly vigorous and so ethereal.
+
+His dramas divide themselves into four principal classes: compositions on
+sacred subjects taken from scripture and legends; historical;
+mythological, or founded upon other fictitious materials; and finally,
+pictures of social life in modern manners.
+
+The pieces founded on the history of his own country are historical only
+in the more limited acceptation. The earlier periods of Spanish history
+have often been felt and portrayed by Calderon with the greatest truth;
+but, in general, he had too decided, I might almost say, too burning a
+predilection for his own nation, to enter into the peculiarities of
+another; at best he could have portrayed what verges towards the sun, the
+South and the East; but classical antiquity, as well as the North of
+Europe, were altogether foreign to his conception. Materials of this
+description he has therefore taken in a perfectly fanciful sense:
+generally the Greek mythology became in his hands a delightful tale, and
+the Roman history a majestic hyperbole.
+
+His sacred compositions must, however, in some degree, be ranked as
+historical; for although surrounded with rich fiction, as is always the
+case in Calderon, they nevertheless in general express the character of
+Biblical or legendary story with great fidelity. They are distinguished,
+however, from the other historical pieces by the frequent prominency of a
+significant allegory, and by the religious enthusiasm with which the poet,
+in the spiritual acts designed for the celebration of the festival of
+Corpus Christi, the _Autos_ exhibits the universe as it were, under
+an allegorical representation in the purple flames of love. In this last
+class he was most admired by his contemporaries, and here also he himself
+set the highest value on his labours. But without having read, at least,
+one of them in a truly poetical translation, my auditors could not form
+the slightest idea of them; while the due consideration of these
+_Autos_ would demand a difficult investigation into the admissibility
+of allegory into dramatical composition. I shall therefore confine myself
+to those of his dramas which are no allegorical. The characterization of
+these I shall be very far from exhausting; I can merely exhibit a few of
+their more general features.
+
+Of the great multitude of ingenious and acute writers, who were then
+tempted by the dazzling splendour of the theatrical career to write for
+the stage, the greater part were mere imitators of Calderon; a few only
+deserve to be named along with him, as Don Agustin Moreto, Don Franzisco
+de Roxas, Don Antonio de Solis, the acute and eloquent historian of the
+conquest of Mexico, &c. The dramatic literature of the Spaniards can even
+boast of a royal poet, Philip IV., the great patron and admirer [Footnote:
+This monarch seems, in reality, to have had a relish for the peculiar
+excellence of his favourite poet, whom he considered as the brightest
+ornament of his court. He was so prepossessed in favour of the national
+drama, that he forbade the introduction into Spain of the Italian opera,
+which was then in general favour at the different European courts: an
+example which deserves to be held up to the German Princes, who have
+hitherto, from indifference towards every thing national, and partiality
+for every thing foreign, done all in their power to discourage the German
+poets.] of Calderon, to whom several anonymous pieces, with the epigraph
+_de un ingenio de esta corte_, are ascribed. All the writers of that
+day wrote in a kindred spirit; they formed a true school of art. Many of
+them have peculiar excellences, but Calderon in boldness, fulness, and
+profundity, soars beyond them all; in him the romantic drama of the
+Spaniards attained the summit of perfection.
+
+We shall endeavour to give a feeble idea of the spirit and form of these
+compositions, which differ so widely from every other European production.
+For this purpose, however, we must enter in some measure into the
+character of the Spanish poetry in general, and those historical
+circumstances by which it has been determined.
+
+The beginnings of the Spanish poetry are extremely simple: its two
+fundamental forms were the romaunt and the song, and in these original
+national melodies we everywhere fancy we hear the accompaniment of the
+guitar. The romaunt, which is half Arabian in its origin, was at first a
+simple heroic tale; afterwards it became a very artificial species,
+adapted to various uses, but in which the picturesque ingredient always
+predominated even to the most brilliant luxuriance of colouring. The song
+again, almost destitute of imagery, expressed tender feelings in ingenious
+turns; it extends its sportiveness to the very limits where the self-
+meditation, which endeavours to transfuse an inexpressible disposition of
+mind into thought, wings again the thought to dreamlike intimations. The
+forms of the song were diversified by the introduction into poetry of what
+in music is effected by variation. The rich properties of the Spanish
+language however could not fully develop themselves in these species of
+poetry, which were rather tender and infantine than elevated. Hence
+towards the beginning of the sixteenth century they adapted the more
+comprehensive forms of Italian poetry, _Ottave Terzine_, _Canzoni_,
+_Sonetti_; and the Castilian language, the proudest daughter of the Latin,
+was then first enabled to display her whole power in dignity, beautiful
+boldness, and splendour of imagery. The Spanish with its guttural sounds,
+and frequent termination with consonants, is less soft than the Italian;
+but its tones are, if possible, more fuller and deeper, and fill the ear
+with a pure metallic resonance. It had not altogether lost the rough
+strength and heartiness of the Gothic, when Oriental intermixtures gave it
+a wonderful degree of sublimity, and elevated its poetry, intoxicated as
+it were with aromatic fragrances, far above all the scrupulous moderation
+of the sober West.
+
+The stream of poetical inspiration, swelled by every proud consciousness,
+increased with the growing fame in arms of this once so free and heroic
+nation. The Spaniards played a glorious part in the events of the middle
+ages, a part but too much forgotten by the envious ingratitude of modern
+times. They were then the forlorn out-posts of Europe; they lay on their
+Pyrenean peninsula as in a camp, exposed without foreign assistance to the
+incessant eruptions of the Arabians, but always ready for renewed
+conflicts. The founding of their Christian kingdom, through centuries of
+conflicts, from the time when the descendants of the Goths driven before
+the Moors into the mountains of the North first left their protecting
+shelter for the war of freedom and independence, down to the complete
+expulsion of the Arabian invaders, was one long adventure of chivalry;
+nay, the preservation of Christianity itself in the face of so powerful a
+foe seems the wondrous work of more than mortal guidance. Accustomed to
+fight at the same time for liberty and religion, the Spaniard clung to his
+faith with a fiery zeal, as an acquisition purchased by the costly
+expenditure of noble blood. These consolations of a holy worship were to
+him the rewards of heroic exertion; in every church he saw as it were a
+trophy of his forefathers' bravery. Ready to shed the last drop of his
+blood in the cause of his God and his King; tenderly sensitive of his
+honour; proud, yet humble in the presence of all that is sacred and holy;
+serious, temperate, and modest was the old Castilian: and yet forsooth
+some are found to scoff at a noble and a loyal race because even at the
+plough they were lothe to lay aside the beloved sword, the instrument of
+their high vocation of patriotism and liberty.
+
+This love of war, and spirit of enterprise, which so many circumstances
+had thus served to keep alive among their subjects, the monarchs of Spain
+made use of, at the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth
+century, in an attempt to obtain universal monarchy; and while the arms of
+the Spaniard were thus employed to effect the subjugation of other
+nations, he was himself deprived of his own political freedom. The
+faithless and tyrannical policy of Philip II. has unmeritedly drawn down
+on the whole nation the hatred of foreigners. In Italy, Macchiavelism was
+not confined to the Princes and Republican leaders; it was the universal
+character; all ranks were infected with the same love of artifice and
+fraud. But in Spain it must be laid to the charge of the Government alone,
+and even the religious persecutions in that country seldom or never
+proceeded from the outbreakings of a universal popular fury. The Spaniard
+never presumed to question the conduct of his spiritual and worldly
+superiors, and carried on their wars of aggression and ambition with the
+same fidelity and bravery which he had formerly displayed in his own wars
+of self-defence and patriotism. Personal glory, and a mistaken religious
+zeal, blinded him with respect to the justice of his cause. Enterprises
+before unexampled, were eagerly undertaken, and successfully achieved; a
+newly discovered world beyond the ocean was conquered by a handful of bold
+adventurers; individual instances of cruelty and avarice may have stained
+the splendour of resolute heroism, but the mass of the nation was
+uninfected by its contagion. Nowhere did the spirit of chivalry so long
+outlive its political existence as in Spain. Long after the internal
+prosperity, as well as the foreign influence of the nation, had fatally
+declined under the ruinous errors of the Second Philip, this spirit
+propagated itself even to the most flourishing period of their literature,
+and plainly imprinted upon it an indelible stamp. Here, in all their
+dazzling features, but associated with far higher mental culture, the
+middle ages were, as it were, renewed--those times when princes and nobles
+loved to indite the lays of love and bravery, and when, with hearts
+devoted equally to their lady-love and the Holy Sepulchre, knights
+joyfully exposed themselves to the dangers and hardships of pilgrimage to
+the Land of Promise, and when even a lion-hearted king touched the lute to
+tender sounds of amorous lamentation. The poets of Spain were not, as in
+most other countries of Europe, courtiers or scholars, or engaged in some
+peaceful art or other; of noble birth for the most part, they also led a
+warlike life. The union of the sword and the pen, and the exercise of arms
+and the nobler mental arts, was their watch-word. Garcilaso, one of the
+founders of Spanish poetry under Charles V., was a descendant of the Yncas
+of Peru, and in Africa, still accompanied by his agreeable muse, fell
+before the walls of Tunis: Camoëns, the Portuguese, sailed as a soldier to
+the remotest Indies, in the track of the glorious Adventurer whose
+discoveries he celebrated: Don Alonso de Ercilla composed his
+_Araucana_ in the midst of warfare with revolted savages, in a tent
+at the foot of the Cordilleras, or in wildernesses yet untrodden by men,
+or in a storm-tossed vessel on the restless ocean; Cervantes purchased,
+with the loss of an arm, and a long slavery in Algiers, the honour of
+having fought, as a common soldier, in the battle of Lepanto, under the
+illustrious John of Austria; Lope de Vega, among other adventures,
+survived the misfortunes of the Invincible Armada; Calderon served several
+campaigns in Flanders and in Italy, and discharged the warlike duties of a
+knight of Santiago until he entered holy orders, and thus gave external
+evidence that religion was the ruling motive of his life.
+
+If a feeling of religion, a loyal heroism, honour, and love, be the
+foundation of romantic poetry, it could not fail to attain to its highest
+development in Spain, where its birth and growth were cherished by the
+most friendly auspices. The fancy of the Spaniards, like their active
+powers, was bold and venturesome; no mental adventure seemed too hazardous
+for it to essay. The popular predilection for surpassing marvels had
+already shown itself in its chivalrous romaunts. And so they wished also
+to see the wonderful on the stage; when, therefore, their poets, standing
+on the lofty eminence of a highly polished state of art and society, gave
+it the requisite form, breathed into it a musical soul, and refined its
+beautiful hues and fragrance from all corporeal grossness, there arose,
+from the very contrast of the matter and the form, an irresistible
+fascination. Amid the harmony of the most varied metre, the elegance of
+fanciful allusions, and that splendour of imagery and simile which no
+other language than their own could hope to furnish, combined with
+inventions ever new, and almost always pre-eminently ingenious, the
+spectators perceived in imagination a faint refulgence of the former
+greatness of their nation which had measured the whole world with its
+victories. The most distant zones were called upon to contribute, for the
+gratification of the mother country, the treasures of fancy as well as of
+nature, and on the dominions of this poetry, as on that of Charles V., the
+sun may truly be said never to set.
+
+Even those plays of Calderon which, cast in modern manners, descend the
+most to the tone of common life, still fascinate us by a sort of fanciful
+magic, and cannot be considered in the same light with the ordinary run of
+comedies. Of those of Shakspeare, we have seen that they are always
+composed of two dissimilar elements: the comic, which, in so far as comic
+imitation requires the observance of local conditions, is true to English
+manners; and the romantic, which, as the native soil was not sufficiently
+poetical for it, is invariably transplanted to a foreign scene. In Spain,
+on the other hand, the national costume of that day still admitted of an
+ideal exhibition. This would not indeed have been possible, had Calderon
+introduced us into the interior of domestic life, where want and habit
+generally reduce all things to every-day narrowness. His comedies, like
+those of the ancients, end with marriages; but how different is all that
+precedes! With them the most immoral means are set in motion for the
+gratification of sensual passions and selfish views, human beings with
+their mental powers stand opposed to each other as mere physical beings,
+endeavouring to spy out and to expose their mutual weaknesses. Calderon,
+it is true, also represents to us his principal characters of both sexes
+carried away by the first ebullitions of youth, and in its unwavering
+pursuit of the honours and pleasures of life; but the aim after which they
+strive, and in the prosecution of which every thing else kicks the beam,
+is never in their minds confounded with any other good. Honour, love, and
+jealousy, are uniformly the motives out of which, by their dangerous but
+noble conflict, the plot arises, and is not purposely complicated by
+knavish trickery and deception. Honour is always an ideal principle; for
+it rests, as I have elsewhere shown, on that higher morality which
+consecrates principles without regard to consequences. It may sink down to
+a mere conventional observance of social opinions or prejudices, to a mere
+instrument of vanity, but even when so disfigured we may still recognize
+in it some faint feature of a sublime idea. I know no apter symbol of
+tender sensibility of honour as portrayed by Calderon, than the fable of
+the ermine, which is said to prize so highly the whiteness of its fur,
+that rather than stain it in flight, it at once yields itself up to the
+hunters and death. This sense of honour is equally powerful in the female
+characters; it rules over love, which is only allowed a place beside it,
+but not above it. According to the sentiments of Calderon's dramas, the
+honour of woman consists in loving only one man of pure and spotless
+honour, and loving him with perfect purity, free from all ambiguous homage
+which encroaches too closely on the severe dignity of woman. Love requires
+inviolable secrecy till a lawful union permits it to be publicly declared.
+This secrecy secures it from the poisonous intermixture of vanity, which
+might plume itself with pretensions or boasts of a confessed preference;
+it gives it the appearance of a vow, which from its mystery is the more
+sacredly observed. This morality does not, it is true, condemn cunning and
+dissimulation if employed in the cause of love, and in so far as the
+rights of honour may be said to be infringed; but nevertheless the most
+delicate consideration is observed in the conflict with other duties,--
+with the obligations, for instance, of friendship. Moreover, a power of
+jealousy, always alive and often breaking out into fearful violence,--not,
+like that of the East, a jealousy of possession,--but one watchful of the
+slightest emotions of the heart and its most imperceptible demonstrations
+serves to ennoble love, as this feeling, whenever it is not absolutely
+exclusive, ceases to be itself. The perplexity to which the mental
+conflict of all these motives gives rise, frequently ends in nothing, and
+in such cases the catastrophe is truly comic; sometimes, however, it takes
+a tragic turn, and then honour becomes a hostile destiny for all who
+cannot satisfy its requisitions without sacrificing either their happiness
+or their innocence.
+
+These are the dramas of a higher kind, which by foreigners are called
+Pieces of Intrigue, but by Spaniards, from the dress in which they are
+acted, Comedies of Cloak and Sword (_Comedias de Capa y Espada_).
+They have commonly no other burlesque part than that of the merry valet,
+known by the name of the _Gracioso_. This valet serves chiefly to parody
+the ideal motives from which his master acts, and this he frequently does
+with much wit and grace. Seldom is he with his artifices employed as an
+efficient lever in establishing the intrigue, in which we rather admire
+the wit of accident than of contrivance. Other pieces are called _Comedias
+de figuron_; all the figures, with one exception, are usually the same as
+those in the former class, and this one is always drawn in caricature, and
+occupies a prominent place in the composition. To many of Calderon's
+dramas we cannot refuse the name of pieces of character, although we
+cannot look for very delicate characterization from the poets of a nation
+in which vehemence of passion and exaltation of fancy neither leave
+sufficient leisure nor sufficient coolness for prying observation.
+
+Another class of his pieces is called by Calderon himself festal dramas
+(_fiestas_). They were destined for representation at court on solemn
+occasions; and though they require the theatrical pomp of frequent change
+of decoration and visible wonders, and though music also is often
+introduced into them, still we may call them poetical operas, that is,
+dramas which, by the mere splendour of poetry, perform what in the opera
+can only be attained by the machinery, the music, and the dancing. Here
+the poet gives himself wholly up to the boldest flights of fancy, and his
+creations hardly seem to touch the earth.
+
+The mind of Calderon, however, is most distinctly expressed in the pieces
+on religious subjects. Love he paints merely in its most general features;
+he but speaks her technical poetical language. Religion is his peculiar
+love, the heart of his heart. For religion alone he excites the most
+overpowering emotions, which penetrate into the inmost recesses of the
+soul. He did not wish, it would seem, to do the same for mere worldly
+events. However turbid they may be in themselves to him, such is the
+religious medium through which he views them, they are all cleared up and
+perfectly bright. Blessed man! he had escaped from the wild labyrinths of
+doubt into the stronghold of belief; from thence, with undisturbed
+tranquillity of soul, he beheld and portrayed the storms of the world; to
+him human life was no longer a dark riddle. Even his tears reflect the
+image of heaven, like dew-drops on a flower in the sun. His poetry,
+whatever its apparent object, is a never-ending hymn of joy on the majesty
+of the creation; he celebrates the productions of nature and human art
+with an astonishment always joyful and always new, as if he saw them for
+the first time in an unworn festal splendour. It is the first awaking of
+Adam, and an eloquence withal, a skill of expression, and a thorough
+insight into the most mysterious affinities of nature, such as high mental
+culture and mature contemplation can alone bestow. When he compares the
+most remote objects, the greatest and the smallest, stars and flowers, the
+sense of all his metaphors is the mutual attraction subsisting between
+created things by virtue of their common origin, and this delightful
+harmony and unity of the world again is merely a refulgence of the eternal
+all-embracing love.
+
+Calderon was still flourishing at the time when other countries of Europe
+began to manifest a strong inclination for that mannerism of taste in the
+arts, and those prosaic views in literature, which in the eighteenth
+century obtained such universal dominion. He is consequently to be
+considered as the last summit of romantic poetry. All its magnificence is
+lavished in his writings, as in fireworks the most brilliant and rarest
+combinations of colours, the most dazzling of fiery showers and circles
+are usually reserved for the last explosion.
+
+The Spanish theatre continued for nearly a century after Calderon to be
+cultivated in the same spirit. All, however, that was produced in that
+period is but an echo of previous productions, and nothing new and truly
+peculiar appeared such as deserves to be named after Calderon. After him a
+great barrenness is perceptible. Now and then attempts were made to
+produce regular tragedies, that is to say, after the French model. Even
+the declamatory drama of Diderot found imitators. I remember reading a
+Spanish play, which had for its object the abolition of the torture. The
+exhilaration to be expected from such a work may be easily conceived. A
+few Spaniards, apostates from the old national taste, extol highly the
+prosaical and moral dramas of Moratin; but we see no reason for seeking in
+Spain what we have as good, or, more correctly speaking, equally bad at
+home. The theatrical audience has for the most part preserved itself
+tolerably exempt from all such foreign influences; a few years ago when a
+_bel esprit_ undertook to reduce a justly admired piece of Moreto (_El
+Pareceido en la Corte_,) to a conformity with the three unities, the pit
+at Madrid were thrown into such a commotion that the players could only
+appease them by announcing the piece for the next day in its genuine
+shape.
+
+When in any country external circumstances, such, for instance, as the
+influence of the clergy, the oppression of the censorship, and even the
+jealous vigilance of the people in the maintenance of their old national
+customs, oppose the introduction of what in neighbouring states passes for
+a progress in mental culture, it frequently happens that clever
+description of heads will feel an undue longing for the forbidden fruit,
+and first begin to admire some artistic depravity, when it has elsewhere
+ceased to be fashionable. In particular ages certain mental maladies are
+so universally epidemic that a nation can never be secure from infection
+till it has been innoculated with it. With respect, however, to the fatal
+enlightenment of the last generation, the Spaniards it would appear have
+come off with the chicken-pox, while in the features of other nations the
+disfiguring variolous scars are but too visible. Living nearly in an
+insular situation, Spaniards have slept through the eighteenth century,
+and how in the main could they have applied their time better? Should the
+Spanish poetry ever again awake in old Europe, or in the New World, it
+would certainly have a step to make, from instinct to consciousness. What
+the Spaniards have hitherto loved from innate inclination, they must learn
+to reverence on clear principles, and, undismayed at the criticism to
+which it has in the mean time been exposed, proceed to fresh creations in
+the spirit of their greatest poets.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+Origin of the German Theatre--Hans Sachs--Gryphius--The age of Gottsched--
+Wretched Imitation of the French--Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller--Review of
+their Works--Their influence on Chivalrous Dramas, Affecting Dramas, and
+Family Pictures--Prospect for Futurity.
+
+
+In its cultivated state, the German theatre is much younger than any of
+those of which we hare already spoken, and we are not therefore to wonder
+if the store of our literature in valuable original works, in this
+department, is also much more scanty.
+
+Little more than half a century ago, German literature was in point of
+talent at the very lowest ebb; at that time, however, greater exertions
+first began to be made, and the Germans have since advanced with gigantic
+strides. And if Dramatic Art has not been cultivated with the same
+success, and I may add with the same zeal, as other branches, the cause
+must perhaps be attributed to a number of unfavourable circumstances
+rather than to any want of talents.
+
+The rude beginnings of the stage are with us as old as with other
+countries [Footnote: The first mention of the mysteries or religious
+representations in Germany, with which I am acquainted, is to be found in
+the _Eulenspiegel_. In the 13th History, we may see this merry, but
+somewhat disgusting trick, of the celebrated buffoon: "How Eulenspiegel
+made a play in the Easter fair, in which the priest and his maid-servant
+fought with the boors." Eulenspiegel is stated to have lived towards the
+middle of the fourteenth century, but the book cannot be placed farther
+back than the beginning of the fifteenth.]. The oldest drama which we have
+in manuscript is the production of one Hans Rosenpluet, a native of
+Nuremberg, about the middle of the fifteenth century. He was followed by
+two fruitful writers born in the same imperial city, Hans Sachs and Ayrer.
+Among the works of Hans Sachs we find, besides merry carnival plays, a
+great multitude of tragedies, comedies, histories both spiritual and
+temporal, where the prologue and epilogue are always spoken by the herald.
+The latter, it appears, were all acted without any theatrical apparatus,
+not by players, but by respectable citizens, as an allowable relaxation
+for the mind. The carnival plays are somewhat coarse, but not unfrequently
+extremely droll, as the jokes in general are; they often run out into the
+wildest farce, and, inspired by mirth and drollery, leave far behind the
+narrow bounds of the world of reality. In all these plays the composition
+is respectable, and without round-about goes at once to the point: all the
+characters, from God the Father downwards, state at once in the clearest
+terms what they have at heart, and the reasons which have caused them to
+make their appearance; they resemble those figures in old pictures who
+have written labels placed in their mouths, to aid the defective
+expression of the attitudes. In form they approach most nearly to what was
+elsewhere called Moralities; allegorical personages are frequent in them.
+These sketches of a dramatic art yet in its infancy, are feebly but not
+falsely drawn; and if only we had continued to proceed in the same path,
+we should have produced something better and more characteristic than the
+fruits of the seventeenth century.
+
+In the first half of this century, poetry left the sphere of common life,
+to which it had so long been confined, and fell into the hands of the
+learned. Opiz, who may be considered as the founder of its modern form,
+translated several tragedies from the ancients into verse, and composed
+pastoral operas after the manner of the Italians; but I know not whether
+he wrote anything expressly for the stage. He was followed by Andreas
+Gryphius, who may be styled our first dramatic writer. He possessed a
+certain extent of erudition in his particular department, as is proved by
+several of his imitations and translations; a piece from the French, one
+from the Italian, a tragedy from the Flemish of Vondel; lastly, a farce
+called _Peter Squenz_, an extension of the burlesque tragedy of _Pyramus
+and Thisbe_, in _The Midsummer Night's Dream_ of Shakspeare. The latter
+was then almost unknown beyond his own island; the learned Morhof, who
+wrote in the last half of the seventeenth century, confesses that he had
+never seen Shakspeare's works, though he was very well acquainted with Ben
+Jonson. Even about the middle of the last century, a writer of repute in
+his days, and not without merit, has in one of his treatises instituted a
+comparison between Shakspeare and Andreas Gryphius, the whole resemblance
+consisting in this, that Gryphius, like Shakspeare, was also fond of
+calling up the spirits of the departed. He seems rather to have had
+Vondel, the Fleming, before his eyes, a writer still highly celebrated by
+his countrymen, and universally called by them, the great Vondel, while
+Gryphius himself has been consigned to oblivion. Unfortunately the metre
+in Gryphius's plays is the Alexandrine; the form, however, is not so
+confined as that of the French at an after period; the scene sometimes
+changes, and the interludes, partly musical, partly allegorical, bear some
+resemblance to the English masques. In other respects, Gryphius possessed
+little theatrical skill, and I do not even know if his pieces were ever
+actually brought out on the stage. The tragedies of Lohenstein, who in his
+day may be styled the Marino of our literature, in their structure
+resemble those of Gryphius; but, not to mention their other faults, they
+are of such an immeasurable length as to set all ideas of representation
+at defiance.
+
+The pitiful condition of the theatre in Germany at the end of the
+seventeenth and during the first third part of the eighteenth century,
+wherever there was any other stage than that of puppet-shows and
+mountebanks, corresponded exactly to that of the other branches of our
+literature. We have a standard for this wretchedness, in the fact that
+Gottsched actually once passed for the restorer of our literature;
+Gottsched, whose writings resemble the watery beverage, which was then
+usually recommended to convalescent patients, from an idea that they could
+bear nothing stronger, which, however, did but still more enfeeble their
+stomachs. Gottsched, among his other labours, composed a great deal for
+the theatre; connected with a certain Madam Neuber, who was at the head of
+a company of players in Leipsic, he discarded Punch (Hanswurst), whom they
+buried solemnly with great triumph. I can easily conceive that the
+extemporaneous part of _Punch_, of which we may even yet form some
+notion from the puppet-shows, was not always very skilfully filled up, and
+that many platitudes were occasionally uttered by him; but still, on the
+whole, Punch had certainly more sense in his little finger than Gottsched
+in his whole body. Punch, as an allegorical personage, is immortal; and
+however strong the belief in his death may be, in some grave office-bearer
+or other he still pops up unexpectedly upon us almost every day.
+
+Gottsched and his school now inundated the German theatre, which, under
+the influence of these insipid and diffuse translations from the French,
+was hereafter to become regular. Heads of a better description began to
+labour for the stage; but, instead of bringing forth really original
+works, they contented themselves with producing wretched imitations; and
+the reputation of the French theatre was so great, that from it was
+borrowed the most contemptible mannerism no less than the fruits of a
+better taste. Thus, for example, Gellert still composed pastoral plays
+after bad French models, in which shepherds and shepherdesses, with rose-
+red and apple-green ribands, uttered all manner of insipid compliments to
+one another.
+
+Besides the versions of French comedies, others, translated from the
+Danish of Holberg, were acted with great applause. This writer has
+certainly great merit. His pictures of manners possess great local truth;
+his exhibitions of depravity, folly, and stupidity, are searching and
+complete; in strength of comic motives and situations he is not defective;
+only he does not show much invention in his intrigues. The execution runs
+out too much into breadth. The Danes speak in the highest terms of the
+delicacy of his jokes in their own language; but to our present taste the
+vulgarity of his tone is revolting, though in the low sphere in which he
+moves, and amidst incessant storms of cudgellings, it may be natural
+enough. Attempts have lately been made to revive his works, but seldom
+with any great success. As his principal merit consists in his
+characterization, which certainly borders somewhat on caricature, he
+requires good comic actors to represent him with advantage.
+
+A few plays of that time, in the manners of our own country, by Gellert
+and Elias Schlegel, are not without merit; only they have this error, that
+in drawing folly and stupidity the same wearisomeness has crept into their
+picture which is inseparable from them in real life.
+
+In tragedies, properly so called, after French models, the first who were
+in any degree successful were Elias Schlegel, and afterwards Cronegk and
+Weisse. I know not whether their labours, if translated into good French
+verse, would then appear as frigid as they now do in German. It is
+insufferable to us to read verses of an ell long, in which the style
+seldom rises above watery prose; for a true poetic language was not formed
+in German until a subsequent period. The Alexandrine, which in no language
+can be a good metre, is doubly stiff and heavy in ours. Long after our
+poetry had again begun to take a higher flight, Gotter, in his translation
+of French tragedies, made the last attempt to ennoble the Alexandrine and
+procure its re-admission into Tragedy, and, it appears to me, proved by
+his example that we must for ever renounce the idea. It serves admirably,
+however, for a parody of the stilted style of false tragical emphasis; its
+use, too, is much to be recommended in some kinds of Comedy, especially in
+small afterpieces. Those earlier tragedies, after the French model,
+notwithstanding the uncommon applause they met with in their day, show how
+little hope there is of any progress of art in the way of slavish
+imitation. Even a form, narrow in itself, when it has been established
+under the influence of a national way of thinking, has still some
+significance; but when it is blindly taken on trust in other countries, it
+becomes altogether a Spanish mantle.
+
+Thus bad translations of French comedies, with pieces from Holberg, and
+afterwards from Goldoni, and with a few imitations of a public nature, and
+without any peculiar spirit, constituted the whole repertory of our stage,
+till at last Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, successively appeared and
+redeemed the German theatre from its long-continued mediocrity.
+
+Lessing, indeed, in his early dramatic labours, did homage to the spirit
+of his age. His youthful comedies are rather insignificant; they do not
+already announce the great mind who was afterwards to form an epoch in so
+many departments of literature. He sketched several tragedies after the
+French rules, and executed several scenes in Alexandrines, but has
+succeeded with none: it would appear that he had not the requisite
+facility for so difficult a metre. Even his _Miss Sara Sampson_ is a
+familiar tragedy in the lachrymose and creeping style, in which we
+evidently see that he had _George Barnwell_ before his eyes as a
+model. In the year 1767, his connexion with a company of actors in
+Hamburgh, and the editorship of a periodical paper dedicated to theatrical
+criticism, gave him an opportunity of considering more closely into the
+nature and requisitions of theatrical composition. In this paper he
+displayed much wit and acuteness; his bold, nay, (considering the opinions
+then prevalent,) his hazardous attacks were especially successful in
+overthrowing the usurpation of French taste in Tragedy. With such success
+were his labours attended, that, shortly after the publication of his
+_Dramaturgie_, translations of French tragedies, and German tragedies
+modelled after them, disappeared altogether from the stage. He was the
+first who spoke with warmth of Shakspeare, and paved the way for his
+reception in Germany. But his lingering faith in Aristotle, with the
+influence which Diderot's writings had had on him, produced a strange
+compound in his theory of the dramatic art. He did not understand the
+rights of poetical imitation, and demanded not only in dialogue, but
+everywhere else also, a naked copy of nature, just as if this were in
+general allowable, or even possible in the fine arts. His attack on the
+Alexandrine was just, but, on the other hand, he wished to, and was only
+too successful in abolishing all versification: for it is to this that we
+must impute the incredible deficiency of our actors in getting by heart
+and delivering verse. Even yet they cannot habituate themselves to it. He
+was thus also indirectly the cause of the insipid affectation of nature of
+our Dramatic writers, which a general use of versification would, in some
+degree, have restrained.
+
+Lessing, by his own confession, was no poet, and the few dramas which he
+produced in his riper years were the slow result of great labour. _Minna
+van Barnhelm_ is a true comedy of the refined class; in point of form
+it holds a middle place between the French and English style; the spirit
+of the invention, however, and the social tone portrayed in it, are
+peculiarly German. Every thing is even locally determined; and the
+allusions to the memorable events of the Seven Years War contributed not a
+little to the extraordinary success which this comedy obtained at the
+time. In the serious part the expression of feeling is not free from
+affectation, and the difficulties of the two lovers are carried even to a
+painful height. The comic secondary figures are drawn with much drollery
+and humour, and bear a genuine German stamp.
+
+_Emilia Galotti_ was still more admired than _Minna von Barnhelm_, but
+hardly, I think, with justice. Its plan, perhaps, has been better
+considered, and worked out with still greater diligence; but _Minna von
+Barnhelm_ answers better to the genuine idea of Comedy than _Emilia
+Galotti_ to that of Tragedy. Lessing's theory of the Dramatic Art would,
+it is easily conceived, have much less of prejudicial influence on a demi-
+prosaic species than upon one which must inevitably sink when it does not
+take the highest flight. He was now too well acquainted with the world to
+fall again into the drawling, lachrymose, and sermonizing tone which
+prevails in his _Miss Sara Sampson_ throughout. On the other hand, his
+sound sense, notwithstanding all his admiration of Diderot, preserved him
+from his declamatory and emphatical style, which owes its chief effect to
+breaks and marks of interrogation. But as in the dialogue he resolutely
+rejected all poetical elevation, he did not escape this fault without
+falling into another. He introduced into Tragedy the cool and close
+observation of Comedy; in _Emilia Galotti_ the passions are rather acutely
+and wittily characterized than eloquently expressed. Under a belief that
+the drama is most powerful when it exhibits faithful copies of what we
+know, and comes nearest home to ourselves, he has disguised, under
+fictitious names, modern European circumstances, and the manners of the
+day, an event imperishably recorded in the history of the world, a famous
+deed of the rough old Roman virtue--the murder of Virginia by her father.
+Virginia is converted into a Countess Galotti, Virginius into Count
+Odoardo, an Italian prince takes the place of Appius Claudius, and a
+chamberlain that of the unblushing minister of his lusts, &c. It is not
+properly a familiar tragedy, but a court tragedy in the conversational
+tone, to which in some parts the sword of state and the hat under the arm
+as essentially belong as to many French tragedies. Lessing wished to
+transplant into the renownless circle of the principality of Massa Carara
+the violent injustice of the Decemvir's inevitable tyranny; but as by
+taking a few steps we can extricate ourselves from so petty a territory,
+so, after a slight consideration, we can easily escape from the assumption
+so laboriously planned by the poet; on which, however, the necessity of
+the catastrophe wholly rests. The visible care with which he has assigned
+a motive for every thing, invites to a closer examination, in which we are
+little likely to be interrupted by any of the magical illusions of
+imagination: and in such examination the want of internal connectedness
+cannot escape detection, however much of thought and reflection the
+outward structure of a drama may display.
+
+It is singular enough, that of all the dramatical works of Lessing, the
+last, _Nathan der Weise_, which he wrote when his zeal for the improvement
+of the German theatre had nearly cooled, and, as he says, merely with a
+view to laugh at theologists, should be the most conformable to the
+genuine rules of art. A remarkable tale of Boccacio is wrought up with a
+number of inventions, which, however wonderful, are yet not improbable, if
+the circumstances of the times are considered; the fictitious persons are
+grouped round a real and famous character, the great Saladin, who is drawn
+with historical truth; the crusades in the background, the scene at
+Jerusalem, the meeting of persons of various nations and religions on this
+Oriental soil,--all this gives to the work a romantic air, and with the
+thoughts, foreign to the age in question, which for the sake of his
+philosophical views the poet has interspersed, forms a contrast somewhat
+hazardous indeed, but yet exceedingly attractive. The form is freer and
+more comprehensive than in Lessing's other pieces; it is very nearly that
+of a drama of Shakspeare. He has also returned here to the use of
+versification, which he had formerly rejected; not indeed of the
+Alexandrine, for the discarding of which from the serious drama we are
+in every respect indebted to him, but the rhymeless Iambic. The verses in
+_Nathan_ are indeed often harsh and carelessly laboured, but truly
+dialogical; and the advantageous influence of versification becomes at
+once apparent upon comparing the tone of the present piece with the prose
+of the others. Had not the development of the truths which Lessing had
+particularly at heart demanded so much of repose, had there been more of
+rapid motion in the action, the piece would certainly have pleased also on
+the stage. That Lessing, with all his independence of mind, was still in
+his dramatical principles influenced in some measure by the general
+inclination and tastes of his age, I infer from this, that the imitators
+of _Nathan_ were very few as compared with those of _Emilia Galotti_.
+Among the striking imitations of the latter style, I will merely mention
+the _Julius van Tarent_.
+
+_Engel_ must be regarded as a disciple of Lessing. His small after-
+pieces in the manner of Lessing are perfectly insignificant; but his
+treatise on imitation (_Mimik_) shows the point to which the theory
+of his master leads. This book contains many useful observations on the
+first elements of the language of gesture: the grand error of the author
+is, that he considered it a complete system of mimicry or imitation,
+though it only treats of the expression of the passions, and does not
+contain a syllable on the subject of exhibition of character. Moreover, in
+his histrionic art he has not given a place to the ideas of tragic comic;
+and it may easily be supposed that he rejects ideality of every kind
+[Footnote: Among other strange things Engel says, that as the language of
+Euripides, the latest, and in his opinion the most perfect of the Greek
+tragedians has less elevation than that of his predecessors, it is
+probable that, had the Greeks carried Tragedy to further perfection, they
+would have proceeded a step farther: the next step forward would have been
+to discard verse altogether. So totally ignorant was Engel of the spirit
+of Grecian art. This approach to the tone of common life, which certainly
+may be traced in Euripides, is the very indication of the decline and
+impending fall of Tragedy: but even in Comedy the Greeks never could bring
+themselves to make use of prose.], and merely requires a bare copy of
+nature.
+
+The nearer I draw to the present times the more I wish to be general in my
+observations, and to avoid entering into a minute criticism of works of
+living writers with part of whom I have been, or still am, in relations of
+personal friendship or hostility. Of the dramatic career, however, of
+Goethe and Schiller, two writers of whom our nation is justly proud, and
+whose intimate society has frequently enabled me to correct and enlarge my
+own ideas of art, I may speak with the frankness that is worthy of their
+great and disinterested labours. The errors which, under the influence of
+erroneous principles, they at first gave rise to, are either already, or
+soon will be, sunk in oblivion, even because from their very mistakes they
+contrived to advance towards greater purity and perfectness; their works
+will live, and in them, to say the least, we have the foundation of a
+dramatic school at once essentially German, and governed by genuine
+principles of art.
+
+Scarcely had Goethe, in his _Werther_, published as it were a declaration
+of the rights of feeling in opposition to the tyranny of social relations,
+when, by the example which he set in _Götz von Berlichingen_, he protested
+against the arbitrary rules which had hitherto fettered dramatic poetry.
+In this play we see not an imitation of Shakspeare, but the inspiration
+excited in a kindred mind by a creative genius. In the dialogue, he put in
+practice Lessing's principles of nature, only with greater boldness; for
+in it he rejected not only versification and all embellishments, but also
+disregarded the laws of written language to a degree of licence which had
+never been ventured upon before. He avoided all poetical circumlocutions;
+the picture was to be the very thing itself; and thus he sounded in our
+ears the tone of a remote age in a degree illusory enough for those at
+least who had never learned from historical monuments the very language in
+which our ancestors themselves spoke. Most movingly has he expressed the
+old German cordiality: the situations which are sketched with a few rapid
+strokes are irresistibly powerful; the whole conveys a great historical
+meaning, for it represents the conflict between a departing and a coming
+age; between a century of rude but vigorous independence, and one of
+political tameness. In this composition the poet never seems to have had
+an eye to its representation on the stage; rather does he appear, in his
+youthful arrogance, to have scorned it for its insufficiency.
+
+It seems, in general, to have been the grand object of Goethe to express
+his genius in his works, and to give new poetical animation to his age; as
+to form, he was indifferent about it, though, for the most part, he
+preferred the dramatic. At the same time he was a warm friend of the
+theatre, and sometimes condescended even to comply with its demands as
+settled by custom and the existing taste; as, for instance, in his
+_Clavigo_, a familiar tragedy in Lessing's manner. Besides other defects
+of this piece, the fifth act does not correspond with the rest. In the
+four first acts Goethe adhered pretty closely to the story of
+Beaumarchais, but he invented the catastrophe; and when we observe that it
+strongly reminds the reader of Ophelia's burial, and the meeting of Hamlet
+and Laertes at her grave, we have said enough to convey an idea how strong
+a contrast it forms to the tone and colouring of the rest. In _Stella_
+Goethe has taken nearly the same liberty with the story of Count von
+Gleichen which Lessing did with that of _Virginia_, but his labours were
+still more unsuccessful; the trait of the times of the Crusades on which
+he founded his play is affecting, true-hearted, and even edifying; but
+_Stella_ can only flatter the sentimentality of superficial feeling.
+
+At a later period he endeavoured to effect a reconciliation between his
+own views of art and the common dramatic forms, even the very lowest, in
+all of which almost he has made at least a single attempt. In _Iphigenia_,
+he attempted to express the spirit of Ancient Tragedy, according to his
+conceptions of it, with regard especially to repose, perspicuity, and
+ideality. With the same simplicity, flexibility, and noble elegance, he
+composed his _Tasso_, in which he has availed himself of an historical
+anecdote to embody in a general significance the contrast between a court
+and a poet's life. _Egmont_ again is a romantic and historical drama, the
+style of which steers a middle course between his first manner in _Götz_,
+and the form of Shakspeare. _Erwin und Elmire_ and _Claudine von
+Villabella_, if I may say so, are ideal operettes, which breathe so
+lightly and airily that, with the accompaniments of music and acting, they
+would be in danger of becoming heavy and prosaic; in these pieces the
+noble and sustained style of the dialogue in _Tasso_ is diversified with
+the most tender songs. _Jery und Bätely_ is a charming natural picture of
+Swiss manners, and in the spirit and form of the best French operettes;
+_Scherz List und Bache_ again is a true _opera buffa_, full of Italian
+_Lazzi_. _Die Mitschuldigen_ is a comedy of common life in rhyme, and
+after the French rules. Goethe carried his condescension so far that he
+even wrote a continuation of an after-piece of Florian's; and his taste
+was so impartial that he even translated several of Voltaire's tragedies
+for the German stage. Goethe's words and rhythm no doubt have always
+golden resonance, but still we cannot praise these pieces as successful
+translations; and indeed it would be matter of regret if that had
+succeeded which ought never to have been attempted. To banish these
+unprofitable productions from the German soil, it is not necessary to call
+in the aid of Lessing's _Dramaturgie_; Goethe's own masterly parody
+on French Tragedy in some scenes of _Esther_, will do this much more
+amusingly and effectually.
+
+_Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit_ (The Triumph of Sensibility) is a
+highly ingenious satire of Goethe's own imitators, and inclines to the
+arbitrary comic, and the fancifully symbolical of Aristophanes, but a
+modest Aristophanes in good company and at court. At a much earlier period
+Goethe had, in some of his merry tales and carnival plays, completely
+appropriated the manner of our honest Hans Sachs.
+
+In all these transformations we distinctly recognize the same free and
+powerful poetical spirit, to which we may safely apply the Homeric lines
+on Proteus:
+
+  All' aetoi protista leon genet' aeugeneios--
+  Pineto d' aegron aedor, kai dendreon uphipertaelon.
+                _Odyss. lib._ iv
+
+  A lion now, he curls a surgy mane;
+  Here from our strict embrace a stream he glides,
+  And last, sublime his stately growth he rears,
+  A tree, and well-dissembled foliage wears.--POPE.
+[Footnote: I have here quoted the translation of Pope, though nothing can
+well be more vapid and more unlike the original, which is literally,
+"First, he  became a lion with a huge mane--and then flowing water; and a
+tree with lofty foliage."--It would not, perhaps, be advisable to recur to
+our earliest mode of classical translation, line for line, and nearly word
+for word; but when German Literature shall be better known in England, it
+will be seen from the masterly versions of Voss and Schlegel, that without
+diluting by idle epithets one line into three, as in the above example, it
+is still possible to combine fidelity with spirit. The German translation
+quoted by Mr. Schlegel runs,
+  Erstlich ward er ein Leu mit fürchterlich rollender Mähne,
+  Floss dann als Wasser dahin, und rauscht' als Baum in den Wolken.
+                          --TRANS.]
+
+To the youthful epoch belongs his _Faust_, a work which was early
+planned, though not published till a late period, and which even in its
+latest shape is still a fragment, and from its very nature perhaps must
+always remain so. It is hard to say whether we are here more lost in
+astonishment at the heights which the poet frequently reaches, or seized
+with giddiness at the depths which he lays open to our sight. But this is
+not the place to express the whole of our admiration of this labyrinthine
+and boundless work, the peculiar creation of Goethe; we hare merely to
+consider it in a dramatic point of view. The marvellous popular story of
+Faustus is a subject peculiarly adapted for the stage; and the Marionette
+play, from which Goethe, after Lessing [Footnote: Lessing has borrowed the
+only scene of his sketch which he has published, (Faustus summoning the
+evil spirits in order to select the nimblest for his servant,) from the
+old piece which bears the showy title: _Infelix Prudentia, or Doctor
+Joannes Faustus_. In England Marlow had long ago written a _Faustus_, but
+unfortunately it is not printed in Dodsley's Collection.], took the first
+idea of a drama, satisfies our expectation even in the meagre scenes and
+sorry words of ignorant puppet-showmen. Goethe's work, which in some
+points adheres closely to the tradition, but leaves it entirely in others,
+purposely runs out in all directions beyond the dimensions of the theatre.
+In many scenes the action stands quite still, and they consist wholly of
+long soliloquies, or conversations, delineating Faustus' internal
+conditions and dispositions, and the development of his reflections on the
+insufficiency of human knowledge, and the unsatisfactory lot of human
+nature; other scenes, though in themselves extremely ingenious and
+significant, nevertheless, in regard to the progress of the action,
+possess an accidental appearance; many again, while they are in the
+conception theatrically effective, are but slightly sketched,--rhapsodical
+fragments without beginning or end, in which the poet opens for a moment a
+surprising prospect, and then immediately drops the curtain again: whereas
+in the truly dramatic poem, intended to carry the spectators along with
+it, the separate parts must be fashioned after the figure of the whole, so
+that we may say, each scene may have its exposition, its intrigue, and
+winding up. Some scenes, full of the highest energy and overpowering
+pathos, for example, the murder of Valentine, and Margaret and Faustus in
+the dungeon, prove that the poet was a complete master of stage effect,
+and that he merely sacrificed it for the sake of more comprehensive views.
+He makes frequent demands on the imagination of his readers; nay, he
+compels them, by way of background for his flying groups, to supply
+immense moveable pictures, and such as no theatrical art is capable of
+bringing before the eye. To represent the _Faustus_ of Goethe, we must
+possess Faustus' magic staff, and his formulas of conjuration. And yet
+with all this unsuitableness for outward representation, very much may be
+learned from this wonderful work, with regard both to plan and execution.
+In a prologue, which was probably composed at a later period, the poet
+explains how, if true to his genius, he could not accommodate himself to
+the demands of a mixed multitude of spectators, and writes in some measure
+a farewell letter to the theatre.
+
+All must allow that Goethe possesses dramatic talent in a very high
+degree, but not indeed much theatrical talent. He is much more anxious to
+effect his object by tender development than by rapid external motion;
+even the mild grace of his harmonious mind prevented him from aiming at
+strong demagogic effect. _Iphigenia in Taurus_ possesses, it is true,
+more affinity to the Greek spirit than perhaps any other work of the
+moderns composed before Goethe's; but is not so much an ancient tragedy as
+a reflected image of one, a musical echo: the violent catastrophes of the
+latter appear here in the distance only as recollections, and all is
+softly dissolved within the mind. The deepest and most moving pathos is to
+be found in _Egmont_, but in the conclusion this tragedy also is
+removed from the external world into the domain of an ideal soul-music.
+
+That with this direction of his poetical career to the purest expression
+of his inspired imagining, without regard to any other object, and with
+the universality of his artistic studies, Goethe should not have had that
+decided influence on the shape of our theatre which, if he had chosen to
+dedicate himself exclusively and immediately to it, he might have
+exercised, is easily conceivable.
+
+In the mean time, shortly after Goethe's first appearance, the attempt had
+been made to bring Shakspeare on our stage. The effort was a great and
+extraordinary one. Actors still alive acquired their first laurels in this
+wholly novel kind of exhibition, and Schröder, perhaps, in some of the
+most celebrated tragic and comic parts, attained to the same perfection
+for which Garrick had been idolized. As a whole, however, no one piece
+appeared in a very perfect shape; most of them were in heavy prose
+translations, and frequently mere extracts, with disfiguring alterations,
+were exhibited. The separate characters and situations had been hit to a
+certain degree of success, but the sense of his composition was often
+missed.
+
+In this state of things Schiller made his appearance, a man endowed with
+all the qualifications necessary to produce at once a strong effect on the
+multitude, and on nobler minds. He composed his earliest works while very
+young, and unacquainted with that world which he attempted to paint; and
+although a genius independent and boldly daring, he was nevertheless
+influenced in various ways by the models which he saw in the already
+mentioned pieces of Lessing, by the earlier labours of Goethe, and in
+Shakspeare, so far as he could understand him without an acquaintance with
+the original.
+
+In this way were produced the works of his youth:--_Die Raüber_, _Cabale
+und Liebe_, and _Fiesco_. The first, wild and horrible as it was, produced
+so powerful an effect as even to turn the heads of youthful enthusiasts.
+The defective imitation here of Shakspeare is not to be mistaken: Francis
+Moor is a prosaical Richard III., ennobled by none of the properties which
+in the latter mingle admiration with aversion. _Cabale und Liebe_ can
+hardly affect us by its extravagant sentimentality, but it tortures us by
+the most painful impressions. _Fiesco_ is in design the most perverted, in
+effect the feeblest.
+
+So noble a mind could not long persevere in such mistaken courses, though
+they gained him applauses which might have rendered the continuance of his
+blindness excusable. He had in his own case experienced the dangers of an
+undisciplined spirit and an ungovernable defiance of all constraining
+authority, and therefore, with incredible diligence and a sort of passion,
+he gave himself up to artistic discipline. The work which marks this new
+epoch is _Don Carlos_. In parts we observe a greater depth in the
+delineation of character; yet the old and tumid extravagance is not
+altogether lost, but merely clothed with choicer forms. In the situations
+there is much of pathetic power, the plot is complicated even to
+epigrammatic subtlety; but of such value in the eyes of the poet were his
+dearly purchased reflections on human nature and social institutions,
+that, instead of expressing them by the progress of the action, he
+exhibited them with circumstantial fulness, and made his characters
+philosophize more or less on themselves and others, and by that means
+swelled his work to a size quite incompatible with theatrical limits.
+
+Historical and philosophical studies seemed now, to the ultimate profit of
+his art, to have seduced the poet for a time from his poetical career, to
+which he returned with a riper mind, enriched with varied knowledge, and
+truly enlightened at last with respect to his own aims and means. He now
+applied himself exclusively to Historical Tragedy, and endeavoured, by
+divesting himself of his personality, to rise to a truly objective
+representation. In _Wallenstein_ he has adhered so conscientiously to
+historical truth, that he could not wholly master his materials, an event
+of no great historical extent is spun out into two plays, with prologue in
+some degree didactical. In form he has closely followed Shakspeare; only
+that he might not make too large a demand on the imagination of the
+spectators, he has endeavoured to confine the changes of place and time
+within narrower limits. He also tied himself down to a more sustained
+observance of tragical dignity, and has brought forward no persons of mean
+condition, or at least did not allow them to speak in their natural tone,
+and banished into the prelude the mere people, here represented by the
+army, though Shakspeare introduced them with such vividness and truth into
+the very midst of the great public events. The loves of Thekla and Max
+Piccolomini form, it is true, properly an episode, and bear the stamp of
+an age very different from that depicted in the rest of the work; but it
+affords an opportunity for the most affecting scenes, and is conceived
+with equal tenderness and dignity.
+
+_Maria Stuart_ is planned and executed with more artistic skill, and
+also with greater depth and breadth. All is wisely weighed; we may censure
+particular parts as offensive: the quarrel for instance, between the two
+Queens, the wild fury of Mortimer's passion, &c.; but it is hardly
+possible to take any thing away without involving the whole in confusion.
+The piece cannot fail of effect; the last moments of Mary are truly worthy
+of a queen; religious impressions are employed with becoming earnestness;
+only from the care, perhaps superfluous, to exercise, after Mary's death,
+poetical justice on Elizabeth, the spectator is dismissed rather cooled
+and indifferent.
+
+With such a wonderful subject as the _Maid of Orleans_, Schiller
+thought himself entitled to take greater liberties. The plot is looser;
+the scene with Montgomery, an epic intermixture, is at variance with the
+general tone; in the singular and inconceivable appearance of the black
+knight, the object of the poet is ambiguous; in the character of Talbot,
+and many other parts, Schiller has entered into an unsuccessful
+competition with Shakspeare; and I know not but the colouring employed,
+which is not so brilliant as might be imagined, is an equivalent for the
+severer pathos which has been sacrificed to it. The history of the _Maid
+of Orleans_, even to its details, is generally known; her high mission
+was believed by herself and generally by her contemporaries, and produced
+the most extraordinary effects. The marvel might, therefore, have been
+represented by the poet, even though the sceptical spirit of his
+contemporaries should have deterred him from giving it out for real; and
+the real ignominious martyrdom of this betrayed and abandoned heroine
+would have agitated us more deeply than the gaudy and rose-coloured one
+which, in contradiction to history, Schiller has invented for her.
+Shakspeare's picture, though partial from national prejudice, still
+possesses much more historical truth and profundity. However, the German
+piece will ever remain as a generous attempt to vindicate the honour of a
+name deformed by impudent ridicule; and its dazzling effect, strengthened
+by the rich ornateness of the language, deservedly gained for it on the
+stage the most eminent success.
+
+Least of all am I disposed to approve of the principles which Schiller
+followed in _The Bride of Messina_, and which he openly avows in his
+preface. The examination of them, however, would lead me too far into the
+province of theory. It was intended to be a tragedy, at once ancient in
+its form, but romantic in substance. A story altogether fictitious is kept
+in a costume so indefinite and so devoid of all intrinsic probability,
+that the picture is neither truly ideal nor truly natural, neither
+mythological nor historical. The romantic poetry seeks indeed to blend
+together the most remote objects, but it cannot admit of combining
+incompatible things; the way of thinking of the people represented cannot
+be at once Pagan and Christian. I will not complain of him for borrowing
+openly as he has done; the whole is principally composed of two
+ingredients, the story of Eteocles and Polynices, who, notwithstanding the
+mediation of their mother Jocaste, contend for the sole possession of the
+throne, and of the brothers, in the _Zwillingen van Klinger_, and in
+_Julius von Tarent_, impelled to fratricide by rivalry in love. In
+the introduction of the choruses also, though they possess much lyrical
+sublimity and many beauties, the spirit of the ancients has been totally
+mistaken; as each of the hostile brothers has a chorus attached to his,
+the one contending against the other, they both cease to be a true chorus;
+that is, the voice of human sympathy and contemplation elevated above all
+personal considerations.
+
+Schiller's last work, _Wilhelm Tell_, is, in my opinion, also his best.
+Here he has returned to the poetry of history; the manner in which
+he has handled his subject, is true, cordial, and when we consider
+Schiller's ignorance of Swiss nature and manners, wonderful in point of
+local truth. It is true he had here a noble source to draw from in the
+speaking pictures of the immortal John Müller. This soul-kindling picture
+of old German manners, piety, and true heroism, might have merited, as a
+solemn celebration of Swiss freedom, five hundred years after its
+foundation, to have been exhibited, in view of Tell's chapel on the banks
+of the lake of Lucerne, in the open air, and with the Alps for a
+background.
+
+Schiller was carried off by an untimely death in the fulness of mental
+maturity; up to the last moment his health, which had long been
+undermined, was made to yield to his powerful will, and completely
+exhausted in the pursuit of most praiseworthy objects. How much might he
+not have still performed had he lived to dedicate himself exclusively to
+the theatre, and with every work attained a higher mastery in his art! He
+was, in the genuine sense of the word, a virtuous artist; with parity of
+mind he worshipped the true and the beautiful, and to his indefatigable,
+efforts to attain them his own existence was the sacrifice; he was,
+moreover, far removed from that petty self-love and jealousy but too
+common even among artists of excellence.
+
+Great original minds in Germany have always been followed by a host of
+imitators, and hence both Goethe and Schiller have been the occasion,
+without any fault of theirs, of a number of defective and degenerate
+productions being brought on our stage.
+
+_Götz van Berlichingen_ was followed by quite a flood of chivalrous
+plays, in which there was nothing historical but the names and other
+external circumstances, nothing chivalrous but the helmets, bucklers, and
+swords, and nothing of old German honesty but the supposed rudeness: the
+sentiments were as modern as they were vulgar. From chivalry-pieces they
+became true cavalry-pieces, which certainly deserved to be acted by horses
+rather than by men. To all those who in some measure appeal to the
+imagination by superficial allusions to former times, may be applied what
+I said of one of the most admired of them:
+
+  Mit Harsthörnern, und Burgen, uud Harnischen, pranget Johanna;
+  Traun! mir gefiele das Stück, wären nicht Worte dabey.
+[Footnote:
+  With trumpets, and donjons, and helmets, Johanna parades it.
+  It would certainly please were but the words all away.--ED.]
+
+The next place in the public favour has been held by the _Family Picture_
+and the _Affecting Drama_, two secondary species. From the charge of
+encouraging these both by precept and example Lessing, Goethe, and
+Schiller (the two last by their earliest compositions _Stella_, _Glavigo_,
+_Die Geschwister_, _Cabale und Liebe_), cannot be acquitted. I will name
+no one, but merely suppose that two writers of some talent and theatrical
+knowledge had dedicated themselves to these species, that they had both
+mistaken the essence of dramatic poetry, and laid down to themselves a
+pretended moral aim; but that the one saw morality under the narrow guise
+of economy, and the other in that of sensibility: what sort of fruits
+would thus be put forth, and how would the applause of the multitude
+finally decide between these two competitors?
+
+The family picture is intended to portray the every-day course of the
+middle ranks of society. The extraordinary events which are produced by
+intrigue are consequently banished from it: to cover this want of motion,
+the writer has recourse to a characterization wholly individual, and
+capable of receiving vividness from a practised player, but attaches
+itself to external peculiarities just as a bad portrait-painter endeavours
+to attain a resemblance by noticing every pit of small-pox and wart, and
+peculiar dress and cravat-tie: the motives and situations are sometimes
+humorous and droll, but never truly diverting, as the serious and
+prosaical aim which is always kept in view completely prevents this. The
+rapid determinations of Comedy generally end before the family life
+begins, by which all is fixed in every-day habits. To make economy
+poetical is impossible: the dramatic family painter will be able to say as
+little of a fortunate and tranquil domestic establishment, as the
+historian can of a state in possession of external and internal
+tranquillity. He is therefore driven to interest us by painting with
+painful accuracy the torments and the penury of domestic life--chagrins
+experienced in the honest exercise of duty, in the education of children,
+interminable dissensions between husband and wife, the bad conduct of
+servants, and, above all things, the cares of earning a daily subsistence.
+The spectators understand these pictures but too well, for every man knows
+where the shoe pinches; it may be very salutary for them to have, in
+presence of the stage, to run over weekly in thought the relation between
+their expenditure and income; but surely they will hardly derive from it
+elevation of mind or recreation, for they do but find again on the stage
+the very same thing which they have at home from morning to night.
+
+The sentimental poet, again, contrives to lighten their heart. His general
+doctrine amounts properly to this, that what is called a good heart atones
+for all errors and extravagances, and that, with respect to virtue, we are
+not to insist so strictly on principles. Do but allow, he seems to say to
+his spectators, free scope to your natural impulses; see how well it
+becomes my _naïve_ girls, when they voluntarily and without reserve
+confess every thing. If he only knows how to corrupt by means of
+effeminate emotions--rather sensual than moral, but at the close
+contrives, by the introduction of some generous benefactor, who showers
+out his liberality with open hands, to make all things pretty even, he
+then marvellously delights the vitiated hearts of his audience: they feel
+as if they had themselves done noble actions, without, however, putting
+their hands in their own pockets--all is drawn from the purse of the
+generous poet. In the long run, therefore, the affecting species can
+hardly fail to gain a victory over the economical; and this has actually
+been the case in Germany. But what in these dramas is painted to us not
+only as natural and allowable, but even as moral and dignified, is strange
+beyond all thought, and the seduction, consequently, is much more
+dangerous than that of the licentious Comedy, for this very reason, that
+it does not disgust us by external indecency, but steals into unguarded
+minds, and selects the most sacred names for a disguise.
+
+The poetical as well as moral decline of taste in our time has been
+attended with this consequence, that the most popular writers for the
+stage, regardless of the opinion of good judges, and of true repute, seek
+only for momentary applause; while others, who have both higher aims, keep
+both the former in view, cannot prevail on themselves to comply with the
+demands of the multitude, and when they do compose dramatically, have no
+regard to the stage. Hence they are defective in the theatrical part of
+art, which can only be attained in perfection by practice and experience.
+
+The repertory of our stage, therefore, exhibits, in its miserable wealth,
+a motley assemblage of chivalrous pieces, family pictures, and sentimental
+dramas, which are occasionally, though seldom, varied by works in a
+grander and higher style by Shakspeare and Schiller. In this state of
+things, translations and imitations of foreign novelties, and especially
+of the French after-pieces and operettes, are indispensable. From the
+worthlessness of the separate works, nothing but the fleeting charm of
+novelty is sought for in theatrical entertainment, to the great injury of
+the histrionic art, as a number of insignificant parts must be got by
+heart in the most hurried manner, to be immediately forgotten [Footnote:
+To this must be added, by way of rendering the vulgarity of our theatre
+almost incurable, the radically depraved disposition of every thing having
+any reference to the theatre. The companies of actors ought to be under
+the management of intelligent judges and persons practised in the dramatic
+art, and not themselves players. Engel presided for a time over the Berlin
+theatre, and eye-witnesses universally assert that he succeeded in giving
+it a great elevation. What Goethe has effected in the management of the
+theatre of Weimar, in a small town, and with small means, is known to all
+good theatrical judges in Germany. Rare talents he can neither create nor
+reward, but he accustoms the actors to order and discipline, to which they
+are generally altogether disinclined, and thereby gives to his
+representations a unity and harmony which we do not witness on larger
+theatres, where every individual plays as his own fancy prompts him. The
+little correctness with which their parts are got by heart, and the
+imperfection of their oral delivery, I have elsewhere censured. I have
+heard verses mutilated by a celebrated player in a manner which would at
+Paris be considered unpardonable in a beginner. It is a fact, that in a
+certain theatre, when they were under the melancholy necessity of
+representing a piece in verse they wrote out the parts as prose, that the
+players might not be disturbed in their darling but stupid affectation of
+nature, by observation of the quantity. How many "periwig-pated fellows"
+(as Shakspeare called such people), must we suffer, who imagine they are
+affording the public an enjoyment, when they straddle along the boards
+with their awkward persons, considering the words which the poet has given
+them to repeat merely as a necessary evil. Our players are less anxious to
+please than the French. By the creation of standing national theatres as
+they are called, by which in several capitals people suppose that they
+have accomplished wonders, and are likely to improve the histrionic art,
+they have on the contrary put a complete end to all competition. They
+bestow on the players exclusive privileges--they secure their salaries for
+life; having now nothing to dread from more accomplished rivals, and being
+independent of the fluctuating favour of the spectators, the only concern
+of the actors is to enjoy their places, like so many benefices, in the
+most convenient manner. Hence the national theatres have become true
+hospitals for languor and laziness. The question of Hamlet with respect to
+the players--"Do they grow rusty?" will never become obsolete; it must,
+alas! be always answered in the affirmative. The actor, from the ambiguous
+position in which he lives (which, in the nature of things, cannot well be
+altered), must possess a certain extravagant enthusiasm for his art, if he
+is to gain any extraordinary repute. He cannot be too passionately alive
+to noisy applause, reputation, and every brilliant reward which may crown
+his efforts to please. The present moment is his kingdom, time is his most
+dangerous enemy, as there is nothing durable in his exhibition. Whenever
+he is filled with the tradesman-like anxiety of securing a moderate
+maintenance for himself, his wife, and children, there is an end of all
+improvement. We do not mean to say that the old age of deserving artists
+ought not to be provided for. But to those players who from age, illness,
+or other accidents, have lost their qualifications for acting, we ought to
+give pensions to induce them to leave off instead of continuing to play.
+In general, we ought not to put it into the heads of the players that they
+are such important and indispensable personages. Nothing is more rare than
+a truly great player; but nothing is more common than the qualifications
+for filling characters in the manner we generally see them filled; of this
+we may be convinced in every amateur theatre among tolerably educated
+people. Finally, the relation which subsists with us between the managers
+of theatres and writers, is also as detrimental as possible. In France and
+England, the author of a piece has a certain share of the profits of each
+representation; this procures for him a permanent income, whenever any of
+his pieces are so successful as to keep their place on the theatre. Again,
+if the piece is unsuccessful, he receives nothing. In Germany, the
+managers of theatres pay a certain sum beforehand, and at their own risk,
+for the manuscripts which they receive. They may thus be very considerable
+losers; and on the other hand, if the piece is extraordinarily successful,
+the author is not suitably rewarded.
+
+The Author is under a mistake with respect to the reward which falls to
+the share of the dramatic writer in England. He has not a part of the
+profits of each representation. If the play runs three nights, it brings
+him in as much as if it were to run three thousand nights.--TRANS.] The
+labours of the poets who do not write immediately for the theatre take
+every variety of direction: in this, as in other departments, may be
+observed the ferment of ideas that has brought on our literature in
+foreign countries the reproach of a chaotic anarchy, in which, however,
+the striving after a higher aim as yet unreached is sufficiently visible.
+
+The more profound study of Aesthetics has among the Germans, by nature a
+speculative rather than a practical people, led to this consequence, that
+works of art, and tragedies more especially, have been executed on
+abstract theories, more or less misunderstood. It was natural that these
+tragedies should produce no effect on the theatre; nay, they are, in
+general, unsuited for representation, and wholly devoid of any inner
+principle of life.
+
+Others again, with true feeling for it, have, as it were, appropriated the
+very spirit of the ancient tragedians, and sought for the most suitable
+means of accommodating the simple and pure forms of ancient art to the
+present constitution of our stage.
+
+Men truly distinguished for their talents have attached themselves to the
+romantic drama, but in it they have generally adopted a latitude which is
+not really allowable, except in a romance, wholly disregarding the
+compression which the dramatic form necessarily requires. Or they have
+seized only the musically fanciful and picturesquely sportive side of the
+Spanish dramas, without their thorough keeping, their energetical power,
+and their theatrical effect.
+
+What path shall we now enter? Shall we endeavour to accustom ourselves
+again to the French form of Tragedy, which has been so long banished?
+Repeated experience of it has proved that, however modified in the
+translation and representation, for even in the hands of a Goethe or a
+Schiller some modification is indispensable, it can never be very
+successful. The genuine imitation of Greek Tragedy has far more affinity
+to our national ways of thinking; but it is beyond the comprehension of
+the multitude, and, like the contemplation of ancient statues, can never
+be more than an acquired artistic enjoyment for a few highly cultivated
+minds.
+
+In Comedy, Lessing has already pointed out the difficulty of introducing
+national manners which are not provincial, inasmuch as with us the tone of
+social life is not modelled after a common central standard. If we wish
+pure comedies, I would strongly recommend the use of rhyme; with the more
+artificial form they might, perhaps, gradually assume also a peculiarity
+of substance.
+
+To me, however, it appears that this is not the most urgent want: let us
+first bring to perfection the serious and higher species, in a manner
+worthy of the German character. Now here, it appears to me, that our taste
+inclines altogether to the romantic. What most attracts the multitude in
+our half-sentimental, half-humorous dramas, which one moment transport us
+to Peru, and the next to Kamschatka, and soon after into the times of
+chivalry, while the sentiments are all modern and lachrymose, is
+invariably a certain sprinkling of the romantic, which we recognize even
+in the most insipid magical operas. The true significance of this species
+was lost with us before it was properly found; the fancy has passed with
+the inventors of such chimeras, and the views of the plays are sometimes
+wiser than those of their authors. In a hundred play-bills the name
+"romantic" is profaned, by being lavished on rude and monstrous abortions;
+let us therefore be permitted to elevate it, by criticism and history,
+again to its true import. We have lately endeavoured in many ways to
+revive the remains of our old national poetry. These may afford the poet a
+foundation for the wonderful festival-play; but the most dignified species
+of the romantic is the historical.
+
+In this field the most glorious laurels may yet be reaped by dramatic
+poets who are willing to emulate Goethe and Schiller. Only let our
+historical drama be in reality and thoroughly national; let it not attach
+itself to the life and adventures of single knights and petty princes, who
+exercised no influence on the fortunes of the whole nation. Let it, at the
+same time, be truly historical, drawn from a profound knowledge, and
+transporting us back to the great olden time. In this mirror let the poet
+enable us to see, while we take deep shame to ourselves for what we are,
+what the Germans were in former times, and what they must again be. Let
+him impress it strongly on our hearts, that, if we do not consider the
+lessons of history better than we have hitherto done, we Germans--we,
+formerly the greatest and most illustrious nation of Europe, whose freely-
+elected prince was willingly acknowledged the head of all Christendom--are
+in danger of disappearing altogether from the list of independent nations.
+The higher ranks, by their predilection for foreign manners, by their
+fondness for exotic literature, which, transplanted from its natural
+climate into hot-houses, can only yield a miserable fruit, have long
+alienated themselves from the body of the people; still longer, even for
+three centuries, at least, has internal dissension wasted our noblest
+energies in civil wars, whose ruinous consequences are now first beginning
+to disclose themselves. May all who have an opportunity of influencing the
+public mind exert themselves to extinguish at last the old
+misunderstandings, and to rally, as round a consecrated banner, all the
+well-disposed objects of reverence, which, unfortunately, have been too
+long deserted, but by faithful attachment to which our forefathers
+acquired so much happiness and renown, and to let them feel their
+indestructible unity as Germans! What a glorious picture is furnished by
+our history, from the most remote times, the wars with the Romans, down to
+the establishment of the German Empire! Then the chivalrous and brilliant
+era of the House of Hohenstaufen! and lastly, of greater political
+importance, and more nearly concerning ourselves, the House of Hapsburg,
+with its many princes and heroes. What a field for a poet, who, like
+Shakspeare, could discern the poetical aspect of the great events of the
+world! But, alas, so little interest do we Germans take in events truly
+important to our nation, that its greatest achievements still lack even a
+fitting historical record.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on Dramatic Art and
+Literature, by August Wilhelm Schlegel, trans: John Black
+
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