William Bodham Donne

“ Agamemnon, however, declares, he is so compromised with the Greeks that he cannot recede. His own life will be in danger from the infuriated host, if he any longer withholds the appointed victim. Again Achilles rushes on with the news that his soldiers have sworn to kill him, if for the sake of a young maiden he any longer detains them at Aulis. And now the daughter of a line of heroes shows herself heroic. She will be the victim whom the goddess demands. Troy shall fall: Greece shall triumph: in place of marriage and happy years, she will die for the common weal. ”

“ But as soon as Hercules extracts from the servant the real cause of the family grief, all levity departs from him. He is almost wroth with his friend for such overstrained delicacy, and hurries out to render him such "yeoman's service" as no one except the strongest of mankind can perform. Alcestis has been laid in her grave; the mourners have all come back to the palace; and Death, easy in his mind as to Apollo, and secure, as he deems himself, from interruption, is making ready for a ghoulish feast on her corpse. But he has reckoned without the guest. ”

“ Has any stage-poet, if we except Shakespeare, supplied moralists and philosophers with more grave or shrewd maxims than he has done? Has any ancient poet taken wider or more liberal views of humanity?
Again, the scenic philosopher was reputed unsound in his theology; and this, no doubt, is an offence in every well-regulated community. Without going beyond the bounds of England, we find that it was no want of will on the part of their opponents that saved Chillingworth, Hobbes, or even John Locke, from something akin to the cup of hemlock tendered to Socrates. ”

“ Even the sorrow of the Chorus is significant: it is composed not of susceptible women, but of ancient men—past the age in which the affections are active, and when the lengthening shadows on the dial often render the old less sensible of others' woe. And this tribute from the elders of the neighbourhood completes the circle of grief on the removal of Alcestis from all she had loved—from the cheering sunlight, the lucid streams, the green pastures, which from the palace windows had so often gladdened her eyes. ”

“ In a war between Athens and Eubœa, one Xuthus had done them good service; his recompense for it was the hand of the Erectheid princess Creusa, and the issue of the marriage was Ion, from whom the Athenians claimed, remotely, to descend. But when, after the decline of Argos, they had risen to a level with Corinth and Sparta, they aspired to the honour of a divine ancestry on the spear-side, as well as that of a royal one on the spindle. A wandering soldier no longer sufficed; the son of Creusa must not be born in mortal wedlock, but derive his origin from a god. ”

“ To allow our view of his character to be biassed by a person's opinions is not a discovery of modern times. It was by no means prudent for any one residing in Athens to be wiser than his neighbours in physical science, or to speak or write of the gods otherwise than custom sanctioned. The most orthodox of spectators at the theatre was justly shocked by being told, that the gods he had no scruples about laughing at in the "Frogs" or "Birds" of Aristophanes, were really little more than men's inventions—caricatures rather than portraits of the deity as contemplated by the philosopher. ”

“ The gifts are envenomed. Glaucè and Creon, wrapt in a sheet of phosphoric flame, expire in torments. Jason is a widowed bridegroom; all Corinth is aroused to take vengeance on the barbaric sorceress. Surely this must be the end of the tragedy. No; "bad begins, but worse remains behind." One more blow remains to be dealt. Jason is wifeless, he shall be childless too, before Medea speeds in her dragon-borne car—the chariot of the Sun, her grandsire—to hospitable Athens. ”

“ The deliverance of the friends and the priestess is still hard to accomplish; they are begirt with peril. Iphigenia knows too well the religious rigour of the Taurian king. Thoas is a devout worshipper of Diana; is an inexorable foe to Greeks. His subjects and his guards are equally hostile towards strangers and loyal to their goddess. If they cannot escape, the intruders will be immolated, and the priestess be a third victim on the blood-stained altar. And now Iphigenia proves that she is Greek to the core. She can plot craftily: she will even hazard the wrath of a deity by a timely fraud. ”

“ The character of Achilles is delineated with great skill and felicity. The hero of the Iliad is a most dramatic portraiture of one who has, in spite of his pride and wilfulness, many compensating virtues. If his passions are strong, so are his affections; if he is implacable to mailed foes, he is generous and even tender to weeping Priam: he knows that he bears a doomed life if he tarries on Trojan ground, yet though highly provoked by Agamemnon, he abides constant to the oath he had taken as one of the suitors of Helen. ”

“ Is there any improbability in supposing Euripides, a man of the new era, to have viewed the grim though picturesque stories of the old and waning times as inconsistent with the bright, free, and intelligent Athens in which he dwelt? The pupil of Anaxagoras and Prodicus might well regard a people as little beyond the verge of barbarism for whom the priest was the philosopher, whose heroes yet strove with wild beasts, who trembled at the phenomena of nature, and among whom ignorance generally prevailed. ”

“ He lays flattering unction on his soul—perhaps somewhat in this wise: "My wife, as well as myself, must one day die: perchance the Fates may not be in haste for either of us—may even, with Apollo to friend us, renew the bond." When the inexorable missive comes for her, he is indeed deeply cast down: yet even then there is not a spark of manliness in him. ”

“ There shall be no more mirth or feasting in his dominions; the sound of tabret and harp shall never more be heard in his dwelling; black shall be his only wear; no second wife shall occupy the room of his first; had he the lute of Orpheus, he would go down to Pluto's gloomy realm, and bring her to upper air. He "doth profess too much:" he lacks the heroic spirit that dwelt in Polyxena, Macaria, and Iphigenia. Some excuse for one so weak as Admetus may perhaps be found in the view of death, or life after death, taken by the Greeks generally. ”

“ From the moment when the young daughter of Agamemnon is borne away from the altar at Aulis, she has been devoted to the service of Diana at Tauri—a goddess who, like the ferocious deities of the Mexicans, delighted in the savour of human blood. From that moment, also, Iphigenia has remained Ignorant of the great events that have taken place since her rescue. She knows not that Troy has fallen; that her father has been murdered and avenged; that her brother Orestes and her sister Electra yet live, but under the ban of gods and men ”

“ To represent Clito as vending her own wares was an irresistible temptation to comic dramatists, indifferent whom they used for mirth and, laughter, whether it were a Pericles or a Cleon.
Like many fathers before him and since, Mnesarchus was puzzled about his son's proper calling in life; and so, as modern parents often consult some sound divine about the choice of a school for their lads, he took counsel of those who understood what the stars or birds of the air forebode as to the destiny of mortals. ”

“ They did not possess the funds that Cimon and Pericles commanded for great public works. They presided over a jealous people by force of arms, and dreaded provoking it by offensive displays either of wealth or power. Not until the democracy was satisfied with its representatives, and proud of its land and its capital, was it possible to indulge in lavish, expenditure, or to win for Athens the titles of "the eye of Greece" and "the violet Queen." ”

“ The action of this play takes place a few days before that of the "Hecuba." It is not, properly speaking, a drama, for it has scarcely any fable. "It is," says Dean Milman, "a series of pathetic speeches and exquisite odes on the fall of Troy. What can be more admirable, in the midst of all these speeches of woe and sorrow, than the wild outburst of Cassandra into a bridal song, instead of, as Shakespeare describes her, 'shrilling her dolours forth'!" ”

“ Suffering even lends her new force to act; the deeper her woe the more clearly she perceives that all help is vain if it come not from her own dauntless spirit. It is the tragedy of Hecuba, not of Polyxena or Polydorus.
English readers may find an excuse, if one be needed, of which ancient objectors could not avail themselves. For is not the Hecuba of Euripides near of kin, as a dramatic character, to the Queen Margaret of Shakespeare? Her also accumulated woes strengthen even when they seem to crush. She also is made childless; she, like her Greek prototype, is a widow and discrowned. ”

“ We are all pious worshippers of your 'great father' Neptune. We have built him many temples in Greece. Much have we endured by war and land and sea, and it will be very hard on us, after escaping so many perils, to be now roasted or boiled for a supper to Neptune's son."
The reply of Polyphemus is just what might have been looked for from such a sensual barbarian. It is unfilial, and even blasphemous. "A fig," he cries, "for your temples and their gods. The wise man knows of nothing worth worshipping except wealth." ”

“ But Euripides had too deeply studied human character not to be aware that in nature there are no monsters—none at least lit for the ends of dramatic poetry; and accordingly his Medea, though deeply wronged, is yet a woman who loved not wisely but too well. Even Lady Macbeth, though far more criminal than the heroine of this tragedy, since she had no wrongs to avenge, but sins for ambition's sake alone, is not entirely devoid of human feeling. ”

“ Of him no more need be said than that, by promising by his gods to shelter Medea, and yield her up to none, he removes the one difficulty in her way which still perplexed her. Now at last she is armed at all points—she has an assured home and protector, time to strike down every foe, weapons they cannot guard against, and means to escape if pursued.
Her wronged children shall be the instrument of her vengeance. As to Jason himself, she has changed her purpose; he shall not have the privilege of dying, for she can make life to him more wretched than many deaths. ”

“ Perhaps there is no better definition of the satyric drama than this—and it is one of ancient date—it was "a sportive tragedy." It was not written by comic, but always by tragic poets: it was in some measure a performance of "state and ancientry." Seldom, if ever, was it acted apart from tragedy. It may have been a shadow or reminiscence of the primeval age of stage-plays, when the actors were all strollers and the theatre was a cart. ”

“ Yet we can easily conceive the votary of the chaste Diana passing through life quite as contentedly in her service as Ion would have passed his days as a minister of Apollo. It was the hard destiny of the son of Theseus to have incurred the heavy displeasure of one goddess through his earnest devotion to another. The life-battle he has to fight is indeed really a contest between two rival divinities; and were second titles possible in Greek plays, this affecting and noble tragedy might be entitled "Hippolytus, or the Contest between Venus and Diana." ”

“ The "Iphigenia in Aulis," in its relation to the Grecian world, possessed, we may fairly surmise, universal interest. For an audience composed, as that in the Dionysiac theatre was, of Athenians, allies, and strangers, there were associations with the first general armament of the Greeks against foreigners, with which a modern reader can but imperfectly sympathise. Priam, Paris, Hector, Agamemnon, Achilles, Helen, and Iphigenia had indeed, centuries before, vanished into the shadow-land of Hades, and the quiet sheep fed or the tortoise crawled over the mounds where Troy once stood. ”

“ But Iris, one of the Olympian couriers, tells Lyssa, whom she accompanies, that "Juno is not a person to be trifled with; that unless mortals in future be permitted to beard divinities, Hercules must be made to feel the full weight of celestial wrath. If a god or a goddess be out of temper, even the best and most valiant of men must smart." ”

“ She concludes with a prediction of the fortunes of the Ionian race, and of the Dorians, who are to descend from Dorus, a son she is to bear to Xuthus. And thus Apollo is absolved from wrong, and Creusa rejoices in the prospect of becoming the mother of two Greek nations, and these the rival leaders of the Hellenic world.
Should this exquisitely beautiful play be ranked among tragedies or comedies? Neither title exactly suits it. Rather is it a melodrama. And but for a few ceremonies inherent in or necessary to the Greek stage, might it not be almost accounted the work of a modem poet? ”

“ It is not Admetus the king, but Admetus the husband, whom we commiserate: that she is a queen adds nothing to our admiration of the tender and self-devoting Alcestis. Among the faults found with this drama is one that sounds strangely to modern ears. It wrought, say the objectors, upon the feelings of spectators by an exhibition of woe beneath the dignity of the sufferers, who are therefore degraded by the pity excited on their behalf. This seems "hedging kings" with a most preposterous "divinity,"—setting them apart from common humanity by making them void of human affections. ”

“ Whatever the cause may have been, there is more faith than doubt or speculation to be found in this tragedy.
The action of "The Bacchanals" is laid in a remote age, and there is an Oriental quite as much as a Greek savour in the poetry. Cadmus, who has ceded the Theban sceptre to his grandson Pentheus, was by birth a Phœnician, not a Bœotian. He lived before the Greek Argo had rushed through the blue Symplegades to the Colchian strand. He is beyond recorded time; he "antiquates" common "antiquity." His intercourse with the gods has been intimate but not happy. ”

“ By his mandate the crime of blood is cancelled: all shall live; and the remaining years of Orestes, Electra, and Pylades, pass unclouded by woe.
In the "Andromache" Orestes appears once more, but not as a leading character. He might, indeed, were it not for his relatives Menelaus and Hermione, have been another person so named, since of the hero of so many Greek dramas there is scarcely a trace left, except a disposition to do murder. Most people, after shedding so much human blood as he has done, would be contented with living thenceforward at peace with all men—even his rivals in love. ”

“ We can hardly be grateful enough for the care or caprice of the grammarian or the collector of old plays who has preserved for us one sample of the Greek satyric drama. Some uncertainty still exists about the precise nature of this curious appendage to the tragic Trilogy; but without such aid as we get from the "Cyclops" of Euripides, we should depend on fragments or guess-work, if not be quite in the dark. Even with this single plank from the general wreck of these after-pieces before us, we look at the species through a veil. ”

“ The story of Medea, unconnected as it is with any workings of destiny or fatal necessity—such as humbled the pride of Theban and Argive Houses—has been taxed with a want of proper tragical grandeur, as if a picture of human passion were less fit for the drama than one of the strife between Fate and Free-will. ”

“ By the magic of your song, though 'sung in a strange land,' we poor survivors were rescued and redeemed from graves and the prison-house, from hunger and nakedness, from the burning sun and the sharp night-frosts of autumn, and from what was as hard to bear, the scoffs of the insolent foe gazing down upon us from mom to eve, and aggravating by brutal taunts and ribald jests the pains of the living and the terrors of the dying. ”