DRAMA. 



87 



Drama. Hangs o'er my hated murderers, arenge me ! 



V T-" P ' **# 



This is the state of man ; a passing shadow 



Throws down the baseless fabric of his joy ; 



And when the tablet of his fleeting state 



Is character'd with all felicity, 



Comes malice with a sponge, moistened in gall, 



And wipes the beauteous images away. 



In three successive tragedies, ^Eschylus has followed 

 out tlie history of Agamemnon's family. In Agamemnon, 

 the prince is killed. In the Choephorae his death is 

 avenged by his son Orestes ; and in the Eumenides, 

 Orestes is pursued by the Furies. The two last pieces 

 have something of a nearer approach to that progressive 

 and involved action, which is necessary to an interesting 



Bioephorae. drama. Of the two, the Choephorse is perhaps the first 

 piece deserving the name of a tragedy, with which the 

 history of literature presents us ; for the Prometheus, 

 the seven chiefs, the Persians, the Suppliants, and even 

 his Agamemnon, can hardly be pronounced more than 

 terrific theatrical pageants. 



From the time that the serious drama commenced 

 in Greece with .schylus, there appeared in the space 

 of about half a century after him, Sophocles, Euri- 

 pides, Cherillus, Aristarchus, Empedocles, Ion, Noma- 

 chus, and Cepbedorus, who disputed for the prizes of 

 tragic genius at the Olympic games before assembled 

 Greece. The fertility of their genius appears immense, 

 when we consider that .Sschylus wrote eighty pieces ; 

 Sophocles, an hundred and twenty ; Euripides, ninety; 

 Cherillus, an hundred and fifty; and their rivals nearly 

 as many. The entire works of none of those authors 

 have come down to posterity; but from those which 

 have reached us, of the three great masters, the general 



Comparison opinion has assigned the palm of sublimity to ./Eschylus, 

 fSopho- o f pathos and sentiment to Sophocles, and of tragic art 

 ' to E ur '|>'des. In the plays of Sophocles, however, we 

 trace a wonderful progress of the art from its crude, 

 though suhlin.c, iinniHturity in the works of Eschylus. 

 He seems to have had in his mind's eye, a fine idea of the 

 general characters by which human nature is distinguish- 

 ed. He drew mankind such as they should be. We 

 find in him, elevation, dignity, ideal beauty of human 

 character, particularly in his high-minded portraiture of 

 Neoptolemus. His plays have a noble, not a desolate, 

 simplicity ; like those of JEtcbylvf, they have plot suf- 

 ficient to awaken attention, and keep it alive by tender, 

 as well as terrible, emotions. This remark will be found 

 particularly applicable to the sympathy which he excites 

 for the sorrows of Tecmessa, the wife of Ajax, in the 

 tragedy bearing that name, and in the two-fold distress 

 of Philoctetest and the generous son of Achilles ; the one 

 clinging to his 1'tnefactor to save him from the desert 

 island, and the other distracted between his duty to 

 Greece and his compassion for the unfortunate man. 

 Sophocles drew men according to the general outline of 

 the ideal beautiful. Euripides, it is alleged, came closer 

 to individual nature, and drew men as they really are. 

 Notwithstanding a passage in Aristotle, which seems to 

 ao'init, that this was the general opinion of their contem- 

 poraries, we confess that, with all deference to higher 

 authority, we are not convinced of the justice of this dis- 

 tinction. The cliaracters of Sophocles, we venture to 



think, are as entirely true to nature as those of the later Drama, 

 dramatist, at least their expressions seem to come more '~~~^~~~ / 

 immediately and truly from the heart. Every one must, 

 however, acknowledge Euripides to be, as Aristotle pro- 

 nounces him, the most tragic of poets. By studying and 

 refining on preceding models, he contrived more con- 

 summately tragic situations. He found in, Sophocles 

 sufficient proofs that the natural affections are the first 

 resources of the pathetic. He completed his pictures 

 of these with higher art; he combined the tenderness of 

 Sophocles with the terrors of Eschylus ; and new-model- 

 led some of the stories of the former with a splendour 

 and fancy peculiar to his genius. His tragic creations 

 are richer and more full of picture and incident than those 

 of Sophocles. It may be doubted if he any where keeps 

 the heart in more terrible suspence than Sophocles does 

 in his CEdipus ; but he launches bolder passions on the 

 stage, as in the jealousy of Medea, and in the love-born 

 frenzy of Phaedra. 



We have noticed already the resemblance of ancient Resem- 

 tragedy, to modern opera. This circumstance is too blance of 



important to be slightly passed over. Aristotle tells ' he ancient 



'. , . T, . J ' . ,, i- \ drama to 



us in his Poetics, that music (Meliopoia) is an essen- ^ m 



tial part of tragedy ; but how it became essential, this opera. 

 philosopher does not inform us. M. Dacier has en- 

 deavoured to supply this omission, by suggesting that 

 custom, and the natural passion of the Greeks for music, 

 had incorporated it into their drama. Perhaps the fes- 

 tive origin of tragedy, already mentioned, points it out 

 much better than Dacier' s commentary. It explains, at 

 least, sufficiently the musical nature of the choruses. 

 Nor, as Dr Burney has observed, will the custom of 

 (setting the acts of a play to music, appear strange 

 to such as recollect that they were written in verse, 

 and that all verse was sung, particularly such as was 

 intended for the entertainment of the public, assem- 

 bled in spacious theatres, or in the open air, where it 

 could only be heard by means of a very slow, sonorous 

 and articulate utterance. It is true, continues the same 

 writer, that tragedy is an imitation of nature; but it 

 is an exalted and embellished nature ; take away mu- 

 sic and versification, and it loses its most captivating 

 ingredients. Those who think it unnatural to sing dur- 

 ing distress, and the agonies even of death, forget that 

 music is a language that can accommodate its accents and 

 tones to every human sensation and passion ; and that 

 the colouring of these upon the stage must be higher 

 than in common life, or else why is blank verse, or a 

 lofty figurative language, necessary ?J From these and 

 other circumstances, Dr Burney observes, there can re- 

 main no doubt but that the ancient dramas were sung. 

 Dramatic representation having been constantly called by 

 the Greeks /.<.o.^ mclady, and by the Latins modulatio 

 modus canticam, and other musical terms which imply 

 singing. Indeed, so immense was the size of the theatres 

 of Greece and Italy, that we may naturally conclude a 

 musical declamation to have been a necessaiy con- 

 sequence of speaking loud ; for whoever shouts, halloos, 

 or bawls with sufficient force to be heard farther than 

 common speech can penetrate, makes use of fixed tones, 

 which if softened would become musical ; and it is well 

 known that the tones of speech are too transient and un- 

 determined to be ascertained by those of music, or to' be 



Wr hv ventured to make a slight change from the translation of this passage by Potter, 

 "f In the tragedy of Philoctetes. 



* These we give at Dr Burncy's ideas on melo-drama, which, however, his own opinion of the Opera, in another passage, rather 

 centradicu. 



