and confining themselves in their unities and their rules, have removed action from their stage, and brought themselves down to unbearable monotony and dryness. They lack originality, naturalness, variety, fulness. Contented to be thinly regular. . . Their tongue enfeebled is refined too much, More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay.'' Let them laugh as much as they like at Fletcher and Shakspeare; there is in them 'a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing than there is in any of the French.' Though exaggerated, this criticism is good; and because it is good, I mistrust the works which the writer is to produce. It is dangerous for an artist to be excellent in theory; the creative spirit is hardly consonant with the criticising spirit: he who, quietly seated on the shore, discusses and compares, is hardly capable of plunging straight and boldly into the stormy sea of invention. Moreover, Dryden holds himself too evenly poised betwixt the moods; original artists love solely and without justice a certain idea and a certain world; the rest disappears from their eyes; confined in one region of art, they deny or scorn the other; it is because they are limited that they are strong. We see beforehand that Dryden, pushed one way by his English mind, will be drawn another way by his French rules; that he will alternately venture and restrain himself; that he will attain mediocrity, that is, platitude; that by reason of his faults he will fall into incongruities, that is, into absurdities. All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated from without: it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it from elsewhere; it constitutes an inviolable whole; it is an animated existence, which lives on its own blood, and which languishes or dies if deprived of some of its blood and supplied from the veins of another. Shakspeare's imagination cannot be guided by Racine's reason, nor Racine's reason be exalted by Shakspeare's imagination; each is good in itself, and excludes its rival; to unite them would be to produce a bastard, a sick child and a monster. Disorder, violent and sudden action, harsh words, horror, depth, truth, exact imitation of reality, and the lawless outbursts of mad passions, these features of Shakspeare become each other. Order, measure, eloquence, aristocratic refinement, worldly urbanity, exquisite painting of delicacy and virtue, all Racine's features suit each other. It would destroy the one to attenuate, the other to inflame him. Their whole being and beauty consist in the agreement of their parts: to mar this agreement would be to abolish their being and their beauty. In order to produce, we must invent a personal and harmonious conception; we must not 1 Epistle xiv., to Mr. Motteux, xi. 70. mingle two strange and opposite ones. Dryden has left undone what he should have done, and has done what he should not have done. He had, moreover, the worst of audiences, debauched and frivolous, void of individual taste, floundering amid confused recollections of the national literature and deformed imitations of foreign literature, expecting nothing from the stage but the pleasure of the senses or the gratification of their curiosity. In reality, the drama, like every work of art, only makes sensible a profound idea of man and of existence; there is a hidden philosophy under its circumvolutions and violences, and the audience ought to be capable of comprehending it, as the poet is of conceiving it. The hearer must have reflected or felt with energy or refinement, in order to take in energetic or refined thoughts; Hamlet and Iphigénie will never move a vulgar roisterer or a lover of money. The character who weeps on the stage only rehearses our own tears; our interest is but that of sympathy; and the drama is like an external conscience, which shows us what we are, what we love, what we have felt. What could the drama teach to gamesters like Saint Albans, drunkards like Rochester, prostitutes like Castlemaine, old children like Charles II.? What spectators were those coarse epicureans, incapable even of an assumed decency, lovers of brutal pleasures, barbarians in their sports, obscene in words, void of honour, humanity, politeness, who made the court a house of ill fame! The splendid decorations, change of scenes, the patter of long verse and forced sentiments, the observance of a few rules imported from Paris,-such was the natural food of their vanity and folly, and such the theatre of the English Restoration. I take one of these tragedies, very celebrated in time past, Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr,-a fine title, and fit to make a stir. The royal martyr is Saint Catharine, a princess of royal blood as it appears, who is brought before the tyrant Maximin. She confesses her faith, and a pagan philosopher Apollonius is set loose against her, to refute her. Maximin says: 'War is my province !-Priest, why stand you mute? You gain by heaven, and, therefore, should dispute.' Thus encouraged, the priest argues; but St. Catharine replies in the following words: '... Reason with your fond religion fights, For many gods are many infinites; This to the first philosophers was known, Who, under various names, ador'd but one.'1 Apollonius scratches his ear a little, and then answers that there are great truths and good moral rules in paganism. The pious logician immediately replies: 1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 2. 1. 'Then let the whole dispute concluded be Betwixt these rules, and Christianity."1 Being nonplussed, Apollonius is converted on the spot, insults the prince, who, finding St. Catharine very beautiful, becomes suddenly enamoured, and makes jokes: 'Absent, I may her martyrdom decree, But one look more will make that martyr me.'? In this dilemma he sends Placidius, a great officer,' to St. Catharine; the great officer quotes and praises the gods of Epicurus; forthwith the saint propounds the doctrine of final causes, which upsets that of Maximin comes himself, and says: atoms. 'Since you neglect to answer my desires, Thereupon she beards and defies him, calls him a slave, and walks off. Touched by these delicate manners, he wishes to marry her lawfully, and to repudiate his wife. Still, to omit no expedient, he employs a magician, who utters invocations (on the stage), summons the infernal spirits, and brings up a troop of Spirits: these dance and sing voluptuous songs about the bed of St. Catharine. Her guardian-angel comes and drives them away. As a last resource, Maximin has a wheel brought on the stage, on which to expose St. Catharine and her mother. Whilst the executioners are going to strip the saint, a modest angel descends in the nick of time, and breaks the wheel; after which they are carried off, and their throats are cut behind the wings. Add to these pretty inventions a twofold intrigue, the love of Maximin's daughter Valeria for Porphyrius, captain of the Prætorian bands, and that of Porphyrius for Berenice, Maximin's wife; then a sudden catastrophe, three deaths, and the triumph of the good people, who get married and interchange polite phrases. Such is this tragedy, which is called French-like; and most of the others are like it. In Secret Love, in Marriage à la Mode, in Aureng-Zebe, in the Indian Emperor, and especially in the Conquest of Granada, everything is extravagant. People cut one another to pieces, take towns, stab each other, shout lustily. These dramas have just the truth and naturalness of the libretto of an opera. Incantations abound; a spirit appears in the Indian Emperor, and declares that the Indian gods ' are driven to exile from their native lands.' Ballets are also there; Vasquez and Pizarro, seated in 'a pleasant grotto,' watch like conquerors the dances of the Indian girls, who gambol voluptuously about them. 1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 2. 1. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 3. 1. This Maximin has a turn for jokes. Porphyrius, to whom he offers his daughter in marriage, says that 'the distance was so vast ;' whereupon Maximin replies: "Yet heaven and earth, which so remote appear, are by the air, which flows betwixt them, near' (2. 1). Scenes worthy of Lulli1 are not wanting; Almeria, like Armide, comes to slay Cortez in his sleep, and suddenly conceives a love for him. Yet the libretti of the opera have no incongruities; they avoid all which might shock the imagination or the eyes; they are written for men of taste, who shun ugliness and heaviness of any sort. Would you believe it? In the Indian Emperor, Montezuma is tortured on the stage, and to cap all, a priest tries to convert him in the meanwhile." I recognise in this frightful pedantry the handsome cavaliers of the time, logicians and hangmen, who fed on controversy, and for pleasure went to look at the tortures of the Puritans. I recognise behind these heaps of improbabilities and adventures the puerile and worn-out courtiers, who, sodden with wine, were past seeing discordances, and whose nerves were only stirred by the shock of surprises and the barbarity of events. Let us go still further. Dryden would set up on his stage the beauties of French tragedy, and in the first place, nobility of sentiments. Is it enough to copy, as he does, phrases of chivalry? He would need a whole world, for a whole world is necessary to form noble souls. Virtue, in the French tragic poets, is founded on reason, religion, education, philosophy. Their characters have that uprightness of mind, that clearness of logic, that lofty judgment, which plant in a man settled maxims and self-government. We perceive in their company the doctrines of Bossuet and Descartes; with them, reflection aids conscience; the habits of society add tact and finesse. The avoidance of violent actions and physical horrors, the meed of order and fable, the art of disguising or shunning coarse or low-bred persons, the continuous perfection of the most measured and noble style, everything contributes to raise the stage to a sublime region, and we believe in higher souls by seeing them in a purer air. Can we believe in them in Dryden? Frightful or infamous characters every instant drag us down by their crudities in their own mire. Maximin, 1 Lulli (1633-1687), a renowned Italian composer. Armide is one of his chief works.-TR. 2 Christian Priest. But we by martyrdom our faith avow. To prove religion true, If either wit or sufferings would suffice, All faiths afford the constant and the wise, And yet even they, by education sway'd, In age defend what infancy obeyed. Christian Priest. Since age by erring childhood is misled, Montezuma. Man, and not err! what reason can you give? Pizarro. Increase their pains, the cords are yet too slack. -The Indian Emperor, ii. 2. having stabbed Placidius, sits on his body, stabs him twice more, and says to the guards: 'Bring me Porphyrius and my empress dead: I would brave heaven, in my each hand a head.'1 Nourmahal, repulsed by her husband's son, insists four times with such indecent pedantry as this: And why this niceness to that pleasure shown, Brother and sister made the second pair, ... And doubled by their love their piety. . . Illusion vanishes at once; instead of being in a room with noble characters, we meet with a mad prostitute and a drunken savage. Lift the masks; the others are little better. Almeria, to whom a crown is offered, says insolently: 'I take this garland, not as given by you, But as my merit, and my beauty's due.' 3 Indamora, to whom an old courtier makes love, settles him with the boastfulness of an upstart and the coarseness of a kitchen-maid: Were I no queen, did you my beauty weigh, My youth in bloom, your age in its decay.' 4 None of these heroines know how to conduct themselves; they look on impertinence as dignity, sensuality as tenderness; they have the 1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 5. 1. When dying Maximin says: And shoving back this earth on which I sit, I'll mount, and scatter all the Gods I hit.' 2 Aureng-Zebe, v. 4. 1. Dryden thought he was imitating Racine, when six lines further on he makes Nourmahal say: 'I am not changed, I love my husband still; And the first down began to shade his face : That image does my virgin-flames renew, And all your father shines more bright in you.' Racine's Phèdre (2. 5) thinks her husband Theseus dead, and says to her stepson Hippolytus : 'Oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée : Je l'aime. Mais fidèle, mais fier, et même un peu farouche, Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage; Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage.' According to a note in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden's works, Langbaine traces this speech also to Seneca's Hippolytus. --TR. 3 The Indian Emperor, ii. 2. 4 Aureng-Zebe, v. 2. 1. |