strictly interpreted and received as inviolable, along with other conventional rules, have had on the shape of French tragedy. With a state of the stage altogether different, 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, in so far as they knew them from Aristotle. They prescribed the same simplicity of action as in the Grecian tragedy, and yet they left out the lyrical part, which is a protracted developement of the moment, and consequently a pause in the action. This part could not indeed be retained, as we no longer possess the ancient music, which was subservient to the poetry instead of governing it like ours. When we deduct from the Greek tragedies the choral odes, and the lyrical pieces which are often put into the mouths of individuals, they are nearly one half shorter than a common French tragedy. Voltaire complains frequently in his prefaces of the great difficulty of procuring materials for five long acts. How are the gaps arising from the leaving out of the lyrical parts now filled up? By intrigue. With the Greeks the action, which is calculated for a few great moments, rolls on without interruption to its determination; but instead of this the French have been obliged to introduce secondary characters, whose opposite views may give rise to a multitude of impending incidents, that our attention, or rather our curiosity, may be kept up to the close. Everything like simplicity was now therefore at an end; but they flattered themselves that they had preserved a unity for the understanding, by means of an artificial intrigue. Intrigue is not a tragical motive in itself; it is essential to the new comedy, as we have already shown. Comedy must often be satisfied with an obreptitious resting-place for the understanding, but this is by no means the poetical side of this demi-prosaic species of drama. Although the French tragedy endeavours in particular parts to rise as high as possible above comedy, by means of seriousness, dignity and pathos, it still, in my opinion, in its general structure and composition, bears but too much affinity to it. In many French tragedies I find only a unity for the understanding, while the feeling remains unsatisfied. From the complication of painful and violent situations we come at last, it is true, happily or unhappily, to a state of repose; but in the course of affairs exhibited to us there is no secret and mysterious revelation of a higher order of things; we find no allusion to the consolatory idea of heaven, in the display of the dignity of human nature, either in its conflicts with fate or with an over-ruling providence. To such a tranquillization of feeling poetical justice is partly unnecessary, and partly also, from the very ambiguous 198 LECTURES ON DRAMATIC LITERATURE and imperfect manner in which it is usually exercised, very far from sufficient. But even poetical justice (which I cannot help considering as an exemplification of a doctrine false in itself, and of which the aim is not 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 short duration of an important action. For whoever carries on intrigues is expeditious, and loses no time in attaining his object. But the violent course of human destinies proceeds with measured step, like the change of seasons: great designs ripen slowly; the dark suggestions of deadly fraud are shy and dilatory in leaving 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 retaliation.* Let any one attempt, for instance, to circumscribe the gigantic picture of Macbeth's murder, his tyrannical usurpation, and final fall, within the narrow limits of the unity of time, and he will then see, that, however many of the events which Shakspeare successively exhibits before us in such dread array, he may have placed anterior to the commencement of the piece, and made the subject of after recital, he has altogether deprived it of its sublimity of import. This drama, it is true, comprehends a considerable period of time: but in the rapidity of its progress have we leisure to calculate this? We see, as it were, the fates weaving their dark web on the bosom of time; and the storm and whirlwind of events, which impel the hero to the first daring attempt, which afterwards lead him to commit innumerable crimes to secure the fruits of it, and drive him at last, amidst numerous perils, to his destruction in the heroic combat, draws us irresistibly along with them. Such a tragical exhibition resembles the course of a comet, which, hardly visible at first, and only important to the astronomic eye, when appearing in the heaven in a nebulous distance, soon soars with an unheard of and perpetually increasing rapidity towards the central point of our system, spreading dismay among the nations of the earth, till in a moment, with its portentous tail, it overspreads half of the firmament with a flaming fire. Rarò antecedentem scelestur TRANS. LECTURE X. The same subject continued.-Influence of these rules on French tragedy. Manner of treating mythological and historical materials.-Idea of tragical dignity. Observations of conventional rules.-False system of expositions. -Use at first made of the Spanish theatre.-General character of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire.—Review of their most important works.-Thomas Corneille, and Crebillon. THE French poets, for the sake of the unity of time to which they are subjected, must renounce all those effects which proceed from the gradually accelerated growth of any object in the mind, or in the external world, through the course of time. The unity of time, with their wretched decoration of the stage, deprived them in a great measure of whatever in a drama is calculated to fascinate the eye. Accidental circumstances might recommend a more close observance of this rule, or render it even indispensable. From an observation of Corneille,* we are led to conjecture that machinery was at that time, in France, 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 his Distrait, gives us an amusing description of the noise and confusion occasioned by the fashionable petit maitres who in his day occupied this privileged place, and who chattered and laughed behind the backs of the actors, disturbing the spectators, and drawing their attention from the play. This impropriety continued down to the time of Voltaire, who had the merit, after repeated endeavours, of at last obtaining its complete abolition, when Semiramis was brought out. How could they have ventured on a change of decoration 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 manifestly changes several times in the course of the same act, and yet it is never changed in the representation. In the English and Spanish plays of those times, this was also generally the case, but still certain signs were agreed on which served to denote the change of place, In his Premier Discours sur la Poesie Dramatique he says: "Une chanson a quelquefois bonne grace; et dans les pieces des machines cet ornement est redevenu necessaire pour remplir les oreilles du spectateur, pendant que les machines descendent. and the pliant 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 for opportunities of making laughable discoveries; and as all theatrical effect requires a certain distance, and appears ludicrous when too closely seen, everything was confined to the dialogue between a few characters, and the stage was subjected to all the formalities of an anti-chamber. The scene, for the most part, actually represented an antichamber, 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 majestically surrounded, the French poets have given to their mythological materials, in so far as the scene is concerned, the manners of modern courts. In a princely palace no violence, no failure in social decency is allowed; and as in a tragedy affairs cannot always proceed with pure compliment, every act of a bolder description, every exercise of power, everything calculated to make a strong impression on the senses, is transacted behind the scenes, and merely related by confidents or other messengers. And yet Horace long ago remarked, that what is communicated to the ear excites the mind in a much feebler degree than what is exhibited to the eye, and what the spectator relates to himself. He only recommends that what is incredible and revoltingly cruel should be withdrawn from observation. The dramatic effect of the visible may, it is true, be very much abused; and it is possible for a theatre to degenerate into a noisy arena of mere bodily exhibitions, to which words and gestures may be superfluous appendages. But the opposite extreme, of allowing no conviction to the eye, and always referring to something absent, is certainly equally undeserving of approbation. In many French tragedies the spectator might be led to entertain a feeling that great actions were actually taking place, but that he had made choice of a place which would not admit him to be an eye-witness of them. It is certain that the effect of a drama is very much impaired when the effects which we observe proceed from causes which are invisible and at a distance. The converse of this is preferable,-to show the cause itself, and merely to allow the effect to be recounted. Voltaire was aware of the injury which theatrical effect suffered from the established practice of the tragic stage in France; he frequently insists on 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 or ridiculous. But notwithstanding this attempt, and the earlier one of Racine in Athalie, the eye is now more out of favour than ever with the fashionable critics. Wherever anything is to be seen, or any action to be bodily executed, they scent a melodrama; and the idea that tragedy, if they were not incessantly to watch over its purity or rather its bald insipidity, might be gradually amalgamated with this species of play, (of which a word hereafter,) is a downright abomination to them. Voltaire has indulged in various infractions of the unity of time, but still he has not dared directly to attack the rule itself as unessential. He merely wishes to see a greater latitude given to its interpretation. It is sufficient if the action takes place within the walls of a palace or a town, though in different parts of it. He wishes however, in order to avoid a change of decoration, that it should be so contrived, as at once to comprehend the various scenes. Here he betrays very confused ideas, both of architecture and perspective. He refers to the theatre of Palladio at Vicenza, which he could hardly have ever seen: for his account of this theatre, which, as we have already observed, is in itself only a misconception of the nature of the antique scene, appears to be altogether founded on descriptions which he did not understand. In his Semiramis, where he first attempted to carry his principles on this subject into practice, he has fallen into a singular error. Instead of allowing the persons to proceed to various places, he has made the places actually repair to the persons. The scene in the third act is a cabinet; this cabinet, in Voltaire's own words (before the queen leaves it,) gives way to a large hall splendidly ornamented. The Mausoleum of Ninus, which was at first in an open place before the palace, opposite to the temple of the Magi, has also found means to steal to the side of the throne in this hall. After giving out its ghost 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 it is very spacious, and provided with subterraneous passages. What a noise the French critics would make, were any foreigner to commit such ridiculous blunders.* * In Brutus we have another example of this running about of the scene with the persons. In front there is a spacious decoration: the Senate is assembled between the Capitoline temple and the house of Brutus, in the open air. Afterwards, on the rising of the assembly, Arons and Albin alone remain behind, and now it is said: qui sont supposés étre entrês 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 suppose that, contrary to the evidence of their senses, they will take a scene for a chamber, which is ornamented in a style altogether different? And how does what in the first description is a public place become afterwards a hall of audience? This decoration is either conversant with legerdemain, or it has a bad memory. |