The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor Part 1

The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor.

by Various.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER III.

SOPHOCLES--EURIPIDES--DIONYSIUS.

aeSCHYLUS and SHAKSPEARE have each been styled the father of the drama of his country: yet their claims to this distinction stand on very different grounds. aeschylus laid the plan and foundation of the Grecian tragedy and built upon it; but to his successor belongs the glory of improving upon his invention. Shakspeare raised the drama of his country at once to the utmost degree of perfection: succeeding poets have been able to do nothing more than walk in the path trod by him, at an immense distance, and endeavour to copy but without equalling his perfections.

The general admiration in which aeschylus was held, gave birth to a herd of imitators, among whom were sons and nephews of his own; but as, like most imitators, they could do little more than mimic his defects without reaching his excellencies, they served only as a foil to set off the l.u.s.tre of his great successor Sophocles, who, while yet his scholar, aspired to be his compet.i.tor, and gained the preeminence at the age of twenty-five.

SOPHOCLES was born four hundred and ninety-seven years before the birth of Christ, and at an early age rendered himself, like his master aeschylus, conspicuous by his superior talents in war and in poetry. It happened, when Sophocles was not yet five and twenty, that the remains of Theseus were brought from Scyros to Athens, where festivals and games were made in honour of that heroic monarch, as well as to commemorate the taking of that island: among those a yearly contest was inst.i.tuted for the palm in tragedy. Sophocles became a candidate, and though there were many compet.i.tors, and among them aeschylus himself, he bore away the prize. The fondness of the Greeks for the theatre was so pa.s.sionately strong, that in order to excite emulation among the poets, they gave rewards to those, who among the compet.i.tors, were judged to have the preference; and they entrusted the management of their theatres to none but persons of the most considerable rank and character. Hitherto the prize was disputed by four dramatic pieces only, three of which were tragedies--while the fourth was a comedy; but Sophocles brought about a new arrangement, and by opposing, in all cases, tragedy to tragedy, completely excluded comedy from its pretensions.

Another and an excellent revolution in the drama was brought about by this great man. He added one actor more to the dramatis personae, and raised the chorus to fifteen persons, introducing them into the main action, and giving to all of them such parts to perform as tended to the carrying on of one uniform, regular plot. Encouraged by the great success of his pieces, the honours conferred upon him, and the deference paid to his opinions, he continued to write with unabated enthusiasm for the stage, and obtained the public prize no less than twenty different times. The admiration and wonder with which his genius was spoken of through all Greece, induced a general opinion that he was specially favoured by heaven, and that he held an intimate communication with the G.o.ds. Cicero himself has gone so far as to a.s.sert that Hercules had a prodigious esteem for him; and Apollonius[1] of Thyana, a Pythagorean philosopher, said in an oration he delivered before the tyrant Domitian, that "Sophocles, the Athenian, could tie up the winds, and stop their fury."

That Sophocles was a man of transcendant powers of mind, no one has ever doubted, aeschylus himself condescended to visit him at his own house: Aristotle made his works the ground work of his Art of Poetry: The eulogists of Plato compared the advancements made by that great man in philosophy, to those made by Sophocles in tragedy: Cicero gives him the epithet of "the divine"--Virgil decidedly preferred him to all writers of tragedy; and to this day, his works make a part of the course appointed for students in the Greek language in all the great colleges and seminaries of Europe. The great rival of Sophocles was Euripides, who, in their public contentions for the prize, divided with him the applause of the populace. At that time the theatre was held to be an object of the highest magnitude and importance, and made an essential and magnificent part of their pagan wors.h.i.+p. The Athenians, therefore, were delighted by the contentions of these two prodigious men: but, as it generally happens in cases of rivals.h.i.+p between public favourites, the people divided into two parties, one of which maintained the superiority of Sophocles, while the other insisted on the preeminence of Euripides. The truth is, that though rivals, and perhaps equals in talent, they could not afford a just subject of comparison. _Magis pares quam similes_--they were rather equal, than like to each other. In dignity and sublimity Sophocles takes the lead, as Euripides does in tenderness, feeling, and pathetic expression.

For the sake of human nature it is to be lamented that popular applause produced envy, and jealousy between them, and notwithstanding their divine talents, they sunk into the littleness that degrades the lowest of the poets (irritabile genus) and regarded each other with abhorrence.

It is said, in vindication of the character of these great men, that they were abused into a mutual dislike merely by the calumnious misrepresentations of pretended friends. Finding, however, that their animosities provoked general ridicule and contempt, and that their quarrels had become the common theme with which the witlings and poetasters of Greece amused the people,[2] they judiciously resolved to treat each other with the respect and confidence that became such exalted characters, and became friends again. It should seem that Euripides was the first to make an advance towards reconciliation; as appears from a letter of his, in which he speaks thus: "Inconstancy is not my character. I have retained every friend except Sophocles; though I no longer see him, I do not hate him. Injustice has alienated me from him; justice reproaches me for it. I hope time will cement our reunion.

What mortal ill is not caused at times by those wicked spirits who are never so happy as when they sow dissension among those who by nature and reason are meant to promote the felicity of each other."

A weakness of voice under which Sophocles laboured often prevented his appearing in his own tragedies; but this did not at all injure his fame, for he continued to write into extreme old age with uniformly increasing reputation. It is recorded that he composed one hundred and twenty tragedies, of which not more than seven are extant--namely, AJAX, ELECTRA, OEDIPUS THE TYRANT, ANTIGONE, THE TRACHINIae, PHILOCTETES, and OEDIPUS AT COLONOS. The last of those tragedies has been ever marked with particular regard on account of a most interesting circ.u.mstance that attended its production, and made it the apex of that great man's fame and fortune.

Like old Lear, Sophocles was cursed with ungrateful children.

Shakspeare's imagination went no further than TWO ungrateful daughters: Sophocles had in reality _four sons_, all as ungrateful as those monsters of Shakspeare's brain. The extreme age and bodily infirmities of their venerable parent, having for sometime inflamed their anxiety to become masters of his possessions, they grew at last impatient and, weary of his living so long, formed a conspiracy against him, and accused him before the Areopagus, of being insane, a driveller incapable of governing his family, or managing his concerns--in short, a fool, a madman. He had fortunately, at that time, just finished his OEDIPUS AT COLONOS. When he heard the charge made against him by his ingrate sons, he offered no defence but this tragedy, which he read to the judges, and then with the boldness of conscious superiority demanded of them whether the author of that piece could be taxed with insanity. Heart-struck with the exquisite beauties and sublime sentiments of the piece, and astonished at the vigorous mind, the exalted truth, the profound moral wisdom, the accurate and solid judgment, and the almost divinely persuasive language that pervaded every act of it, they heaped honours along with their acquittal upon his head, dismissed him with a shout of praise, and sent his sons home covered with shame and confusion. If firm reliance can be placed on the authority of Lucian, the sons were, by the Areopagus, voted madmen for having accused their father.

Like aeschylus, Sophocles was a high military character, and was ranked among the foremost defenders of his country. He commanded an army in the war which the Athenians (by the desire of the renowned Pericles, who so willed it at the instance of his mistress Aspasia) waged against the inhabitants of Samos; and he returned from it triumphant.

Great men are seldom let to die like ordinary people: a man like Sophocles of course must be provided with one or more modes of death unlike those which take off other men. Some have said that on the extraordinary success of one of his tragedies, he expired with extreme joy;--an effect rather extreme for one who had for more than sixty years been accustomed to such successes. Others have a.s.serted that he dropped dead in consequence of holding in his breath, while reading his tragedy of Antigonus, so long that the action of his lungs ceased--an event not at all probable. Another (Lucian) says he was choked by a grape-stone.

These various rumours destroying each other, not only by their contradiction but by their improbability, leaves the cause of his death in that uncertainty in which it might hitherto, and may forever remain, without any injury to the subject. Men of ninety-five are likely enough to go off suddenly, without violent joy--violent exertion, or even grape-stones. The story of the grape-stone is told also of Anacreon.

Perhaps in both cases it was a poetical fiction to mark the love of wine which distinguished these two personages; for Sophocles is accused by Athenaeus of licentiousness and debauchery, particularly when he commanded the Athenian army. In like manner it is a.s.serted by Pausanias that Bacchus appeared to aeschylus under the shadow of a vine, and ordered him to write tragedies, thereby figuratively alluding to the well known truth that that poet drank wine excessively, and composed his tragedies while he was drunk.

The public influence of Sophocles was so great that, at his instance, the people of Athens went to the most unbounded expense in the construction and decoration of their theatres. The additional magnificence they derived from him is scarcely credible. In fact the expense was carried so far that it became a reproach to the country, and it was said that the Athenians lavished away more money on the representation of a single play, than on all their wars with the barbarians.

Some of the sons of Sophocles composed tragedy and wrote some lyric poems. But there exist no remains of their works, nor anything particular respecting themselves; some loose anecdotes excepted, which Plutarch has related respecting one of them of the name of Antiphon, who wrote a tragedy by which Dionysius the tyrant obtained a prize, long after he had put the author to death for dispraising his compositions.

EURIPIDES was born at Salamis in the year four hundred and eighty-five before the Christian era, and on the very day on which Themistocles with a handful of Grecians defeated the immense army of Xerxes. He was n.o.bly descended on the maternal side, and was placed in due time under the first preceptors. From Prodicus he learned eloquence; from Socrates, ethics, and under Anaxagoras he studied philosophy. His parents having, before he was born, consulted the oracle of Apollo respecting his fate, were informed that the world should witness his fame, and that he would gain a crown. Of this answer which, like all the responses of the oracle, was constructed with purposed ambiguity, they could come to no decisive explanation: however, thinking it unlikely that the oracle could mean any other than the athletic crown, the father took especial care to fit him for a wrestler, and with such success, that he actually won the athletic crown at the games and festivals celebrated in honour of Ceres.

His original destination was to painting, to the study of which he applied for sometime, and, as tradition informs us, with considerable success. But nature, and the impulse of a vigorous genius, pointed out another road to him. He abandoned the pencil, and devoted his whole labours to the study of morality, philosophy and poetry. The drama being most congenial to his mind, greatly engrossed his attention: he lamented that the tragedies of even aeschylus and Sophocles themselves, contained very little philosophy, and he diligently applied himself to the effecting of a more intimate union between moral philosophy and dramatic representation.

As he possessed the powers for accomplis.h.i.+ng this valuable purpose in an eminent degree, his writings became the subject of universal applause and admiration with his countrymen. Indeed the effects that are related to have been produced by his compositions, are so prodigious as almost to stagger belief. His verses were in the mouths of persons in all countries in which the Greek language was spoken; if prisoners pleaded their cause in his words, they were dismissed with freedom; and it is an historical fact that the unfortunate Greeks who had accompanied NICIAS in his expedition against Syracuse, and were enslaved in Sicily, obtained their liberty by repeating some appropriate verses taken from one of his tragedies.

Sophocles was the great object first of his imitation, and then of his envy and jealousy. In order to enable himself to contest the palm of superiority with that great poet, Euripides frequently withdrew from the haunts of men, and confined himself in a solitary cave near Salamis, where he composed and finished some of the most excellent of his tragedies. The full vein of philosophy which pervaded his dramatic compositions, obtained for him the name of the philosophic poet, and so loudly did fame proclaim his extraordinary excellence, that Socrates, who never before visited the theatre, went constantly to attend the tragedies of Euripides. Alexander admired him beyond all other writers--Demosthenes confessed that he had learned declamation from his works, and when Cicero was a.s.sa.s.sinated, the works of Euripides were found clutched in his hands.

Together with this rare and felicitous genius, Euripides enjoyed the blessing of a firm undaunted spirit, a great and bold dignity, and a courage which nothing could shake. During the representation of one of his tragedies, the audience took offence at some lines in the composition and immediately ordered him to strike them out of the piece.

Euripides took fire at their presumption, and indignantly advancing forward on the stage told the spectators that "he came there to instruct them, and not to receive instruction." Another time on the first representation of a new play, the audience expressed great dissatisfaction at a speech in which he called "riches the _summum bonum_, and the admiration of G.o.ds and men." The poet stepped forward, reproved the audience for their hasty conclusion, and magisterially desired them to listen to the play with the silent attention that was due to it, and they would in the end find their error, as the catastrophe would show them the just punishment which attended the lovers of wealth. The last of these anecdotes is a proof of the moral excellence and chast.i.ty, which the Grecian poets were constrained to observe in their public compositions.

Of seventy-five tragedies which this admirable poet wrote and had represented, nineteen only are in existence. The best of those are his PHNISSae, his ORESTES, MEDEA, ANDROMACHE, ELECTRA, IPHIGENIA IN AULIS, IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS, HERCULES, and the TROADES.

Euripides is particularly happy in expressing the pa.s.sion of love, especially when it is exalted to the most lively, ardent tenderness.

His pieces are not so perfect as those of Sophocles, but they are more replete with those exquisite beauties which strike the heart with the electrical fire of poetry, and his language is more soft and persuasive.

The drama is on the whole, however, much more indebted to Sophocles, to whom Aristotle, who is certainly the very highest authority, gives the precedence in point of general arrangement, disposition of parts, and characteristic manner, and indeed in style also.

The most obvious point of inferiority in Euripides is the choice of his subjects, which are charged with meanness and effeminacy; while Sophocles and aeschylus chose for theirs the most dignified and n.o.ble pa.s.sions. He has moreover given very disgraceful pictures of the fair s.e.x, making women the contrivers, the agents, and the instruments of the most impure and diabolical machinations. This unjust perversion was attributed to a hatred he had to women, which occasioned him to be called ?s??????, or the woman-hater; but this he st.u.r.dily refuted by insisting that in those bad characters he had faithfully copied the nature of the s.e.x. Notwithstanding this, he was married twice; but was so injudicious in his choice of wives, that he was compelled to divorce both. In his person Euripides was n.o.ble and majestic, and in his deportment grave and serious.

No poet ever took more pains than Euripides in polis.h.i.+ng and perfecting his tragedies. He composed very slow, and laboured his periods with the greatest care and difficulty; antic.i.p.ating the valuable instructions long afterwards given by Horace to poets. A wretched author, whose heart was as malicious as his poetry was miserable, once sarcastically observed that _he_ had written a hundred verses in three days, while Euripides had written only three. "True," replied Euripides, "but there is this difference between your poetry and mine; yours will expire in three days, but mine will live for ages."

The disputes between Sophocles and our poet, the jealousy and envy of his great fame and endowments, and, as some say, the resentment of the female part of Athens, subjected him to a degree of ridicule and rancorous invective, which induced him to leave Athens; when he went into Macedonia, and lived at the court of king Archelaus, who considered it an honour to patronise such a great poet, bestowing upon him the most conspicuous marks of his friends.h.i.+p and munificence, and even carrying his esteem and admiration so far, as to make him his prime minister.

This dignified office Euripides held when he lost his life, in a manner the most cruel and horrible that can be conceived.

In one of his solitary walks, in a wood to which he had been accustomed to repair every evening, for the purpose of uninterrupted contemplation, a pack of dogs belonging to the king set upon him and tore him to pieces in the seventy-eighth year of his age. So extraordinary and deplorable a death naturally gave rise to a mult.i.tude of conjectures, and, of course, not very charitable ones. By some, the creatures of Archelaus's court who hated him as a successful rival, and envied him the high favours bestowed upon him by the king, were suspected of having purposely procured the dogs to be let loose upon, in order to destroy him: a conjecture not at all probable. By others again it has been suggested that he was torn to pieces by women in revenge for his black pictures of the s.e.x: a still more improbable conjecture, and probably borrowed from the fate of Orpheus; but which still serves to show how little kindness he was thought to deserve from the women; while others more rationally concluded that his encountering the dogs and their attacking him, was purely an accidental circ.u.mstance; and that having in the abstraction and absence of mind, attendant upon very profound meditation, encroached upon some part of the palace grounds, which the dogs were appointed to guard, he found his mistake too late to escape from their fury.

Sophocles outlived Euripides about a year, leaving behind him no one capable of improving, or even of tolerably supporting the tragic stage of Greece. The hopes of the Grecian drama was buried in the grave along with him. Of those who succeeded him we know nothing; nor should we know that any did succeed, if the history of Aristophanes did not inform us, that there were such, who served only as b.u.t.ts for his malevolent wit.

Never were greater honours conferred by national grat.i.tude and pride than those which were paid by Greece to the memory of aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Statues were erected to them by public edict, and their works were recorded as matters of state in the archives of the nation. This part of the history is worthy of very particular consideration. That great, wise, and high spirited free nation, who understood man's nature, and national policy of the best kind, as well as any other people that ever existed, knew the efficacy of the stage in meliorating the morals, the manners, and the opinions of a people, and, therefore, made use of it as a great state engine. Their poets studiously interwove the public events of Greece into their dramatic poetry, and made their tragedies national concerns, which, as such, were sanctioned by law and supported out of the public treasury. Thus the glories of their heroes were registered and rewarded--the influence of their example extended--a lively ambition to excel in valour, virtue, and wisdom was disseminated by the sentiments which the genius and skill of the poets put into the mouths of their leading characters, and young men endeavoured to model themselves by those characters and sentiments.

Dramatic criticism was not left by the Greeks, as it is by the moderns, to operate at random, or yielded up to the will or the caprice of vain, ignorant, presumptuous, or corrupt pretenders. A bench of judges to the number of ten, selected for their learning, integrity, and acknowledged excellence, were appointed by law to preside at theatric representations, and to determine what was fit for the public to hear, and what not. These were sworn to decide impartially, and they were vested with an authority which extended to the infliction of summary punishment on impure, mischievous, or offensive pieces. They had the power to punish with whipping, and were authorised to bestow great rewards for merit. Thus, Sophocles was awarded a dignified and lucrative government for one of his pieces, and an unfortunate comic poet of the name of Evangelus was publicly whipped. This circulated a spirit of correctness, and a chaste and delicate taste through the people, as was evidenced in the case already mentioned, of one of the tragedies of Euripides, which was instantly censured for the introduction of a vitious sentiment in favour of riches. How unlike our playhouse critics of modern times were those Athenians. By them, no regard was paid to private solicitation, to personal partiality, or to national, party, or other prejudice. At these times it is otherwise, at least in Great Britain and America; and the sentence to be pa.s.sed on the piece or the player, in common with most other popular decisions, too often turns on the great master hinge of party spirit or personal prejudice. Imbecility is bolstered up, and merit blasted by the clamours of an ignorant and corrupt few, who, with roar and ruffian impudence spread their perverted opinions, and at last pa.s.s them through the ignorant mult.i.tude with the current stamp of public decision.

It would be unpardonable to omit in this part of the history the circ.u.mstance of Dionysius, the horrible tyrant of Syracuse, having been a candidate for fame in dramatic poetry. Though utterly dest.i.tute of poetical talents, or of any means of obtaining approbation for his writings, save only that of extorting it by terror, and even by the infliction of death, he laboured under the most inveterate pa.s.sion for poetic honours. By means not known, he got possession of some loose writings and memorandums of aeschylus, and from them patched up some pieces which he vainly endeavoured to pa.s.s for his own: but the people were not to be deceived. With a view to extend his fame he despatched his brother Theodorus to Olympia, with orders to repeat there in public, some verses in his name, in compet.i.tion with some other poets for the poetical prize: the people, however, had too much taste to endure them, and rewarded his muse with groans and hisses. At Athens, however, he had better success; for he obtained the prize there for a composition which he sent in his name, but which was chiefly written by Antiphon, the son of Sophocles, whom he put to death for declining to praise some of his verses. Conscious, as he must have been, that the prize, though awarded to his name, did not belong to himself, he was more overjoyed at obtaining it than at all the victories he had ever obtained in the field of blood. And absurd as it may appear, he had so obstinately set his heart upon being considered a great poet, that he had recourse to the most mean as well as cruel expedients to accomplish it. For this purpose, he endeavoured to suborn a poet who lived under his patronage.

The man, whose name was Philoxenus, had lost the favour of the king, and was imprisoned by him for the seduction of one of his female singers.

Having written some verses, the tyrant bethought him of establis.h.i.+ng their reputation by getting Philoxenus to express publicly his approbation of them, and for that purpose ordered him from his prison: but the poet, too proud and virtuous to purchase his liberty by the sacrifice of truth, refused; in consequence of which, Dionysius ordered him to the quarries to work as a slave. Some time afterwards, being released, he was asked at a public feast, his opinion of some of the king's verses; upon which, knowing that the inquirers were the tyrant's agents, he answered, by exclaiming aloud, "Lead me back to the quarries!" His answer had such an effect upon Dionysius that he forgave Philoxenus, and restored him to his favour.

[Footnote 1: This was the same Apollonius, who while one day vehemently haranguing the populace at Ephesus, suddenly broke off and exclaimed--_Strike the tyrant, strike him!--the blow is given!--he is wounded--he is fallen--he dies!_ And at that very moment the emperor Domitian had been stabbed at Rome.]

[Footnote 2: Aristophanes ridiculed them both on the stage with great humour and success.]

BIOGRAPHY--FOR THE MIRROR

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE MR. HODGKINSON.

The ill.u.s.trious lord Verulam, detailing in one of his essays the various motives to envy in the human bosom, says, "men of birth are noted to be envious towards new men--for their distance is altered." His lords.h.i.+p might with safety have extended the proposition to those whom either wealth, or casualty unconnected with high descent or personal merit, have raised to worldly power and prosperity. Men who have been lifted to the summits of society by the acc.u.mulation of money, still more than those who stand there in right of the decayed merit of their ancestry look down with scorn upon their fellow-beings who toil below, and too often view with jealousy and repugnance, the endeavours of those who aspire to that eminence, of which they themselves are so vain and ostentatious. Elevation from an humble condition to conspicuity and rank, bespeaks superior personal merit; and to many of those who figure in, what is called, high life, it is to be feared that the bare mention of personal merit, would look like an indirect reproach.

Not only in that cla.s.s, however, but in most others of society, there are mult.i.tudes who can boast of very different sentiments--men of real worth and discernment, who do not disdain to contemplate the exertions of a powerful mind in its aspirations to dignity, nor turn with contempt from the man whom nature has enriched, though it should have been his lot to come into the world under the depression of a needy or obscure parentage.--Persons of liberal hearts, and luminous minds well know that in the moral world there are natural laws, which like those of gravitation in the physical, oppose the elevation of all whom chance has thrown down to the bottom of life, rendering it difficult or rather indeed utterly impracticable for them to rise, but by means of the most gigantic powers; and therefore consider those who emerge to the top by the fair exercise of their natural talents, as the only valuable levellers--the real and substantial a.s.serters of the equality of men.

No apology therefore can be expected, for offering to the public a short sketch of the life of John Hodgkinson--a man, who, though dropped, at his birth, a darkling, into the world, contrived by the exercise of his personal endowments, without aid, friend, influence, or advantage, save those which nature in her bounty vouchsafed him, to mount to the highest rank in his profession--a profession to excel in which, requires more rich endowments of mind and person jointly, than any of those to which men have recourse for the acquisition of fame or fortune.

There may be some to whom the history of such a man, and the equitable adjudication of applause to such talents as he possessed will not be very palatable. Feeble men, ever jealous, ever envious, sicken at the praise of greatness, and pride will elevate its supercilious brow in disdain, at the eulogy of the lowly born. But the former may set their hearts at rest (if such hearts can have rest) when they are told that in the present instance truth will qualify the praise so richly deserved, with some alloy of censure not less so: and the latter, who affect to despise the stage while they draw from it delight and instruction, will perhaps forgive the man's endowments in consideration of his calling, and think the sin of his talents atoned by the penance of being a player.

The paternal name of this extraordinary actor was Meadowcroft;--but this he relinquished on a certain necessity that will be mentioned hereafter, taking in its stead, that of his mother's family, which he continued to retain long after that necessity had ceased to exist, and bore to the day of his death. At the time of his birth his father was an humble husbandman, and lived not far from Manchester; and very near to the mansion-house of ---- Harrison, esquire. From this, he moved into the city where he set up a public house well known to several persons now in America, one of whom recollects to have seen young John figuring there in capacity of waiter, or as it is commonly called in England, pot-boy.

His father dying, the widow married another husband--and John was put out to an apprentices.h.i.+p, in some inferior department of the silk trade.