little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans a single writer who attempted both.* From this remark it appears, that Dr. Johnson was unacquainted with the Cyclops of Euripides. It may, however, be observed, that Dr. Johnson, perhaps, was misled by the following passage in Dryden's Essay on Dramatick Poesy: "Tragedies and Comedies were not writ then as they are now, promiscuously, by the same person; but he who found his genius bending to the one, never attempted the other way. This is so plain, that I need not instance to you that Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, never any of them writ a tragedy; Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca, never meddled with comedy: the sock and buskin were not worn by the same poet." And yet, to show the uncertain state of Dryden's memory, in his Dedication to his Juvenal he has expended at least a page in describing the Cyclops of Euripides. So intimately connected with this subject are the following remarks of Mr. Twining in his excellent commentary on the Poetick of Aristotle, that they ought not to be withheld from our readers. "The prejudiced admirers of the ancients are very angry at the least insinuation that they had any idea of our barbarous tragicomedy. But, after all, it cannot be dissembled, that, if they had not the name, they had the thing, or something very nearly approaching to it. If that be tragi-comedy, which is partly serious and partly comical, I do not know why we should scruple to say, that the Alcestis of Euripides is, to all intents and purposes, a tragi-comedy. I have not the least doubt, that it had upon an Athenian audience the proper effect of tragi-comedy; that is, that in some places it made them cry, and in others, laugh. And the best thing we have to hope, for the credit of Euripides, is, that he intended to produce this effect. For though he may be an unskilful poet, who purposes to write a tragi-comedy, he surely is a more unskilful poet, who writes one without knowing it. "The learned reader will understand me to allude particularly to the scene, in which the domestick describes the behaviour of Hercules; and to the speech of Hercules himself, which follows. Nothing can well be of a more comick cast than the servant's complaint. He describes the hero as the most greedy and illmannered guest he had ever attended, under his master's hospitable roof; calling about him, eating, drinking, and singing, in a room by himself, while the master and all the family were in the height of funereal lamentation. He was not contented with such refreshments as had been set before him: ἔτι σωφρόνως ἐδέξατο Τα προστυχοντα ξενια Αλλ' ει τι μη φερομεν, ΩΤΡΥΝΕΝ φερειν. Shakspeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition, Then he drinks Εως ἐθερμην αυτον αμφιβασα φλοξ Οιν crowns himself with myrtle, and sings, ΑΜΟΥΣ ΥΛΑΚΤΩΝ -and all this, alone. "Cette description,' says Fontenelle, 'est si burlesque, qu'on diroit d'un crocheteur qui est de confrairie.' A censure somewhat justified by Euripides himself, who makes the servant take Hercules for a thief: · πανέργον ΚΛΩΠΑ και ΛΗΙΣΤΗΝ τινα. “The speech of Hercules, φιλοσοφωντος ἐν μέθη, as the scholiast observes (v. 776,) philosophizing in his cups,' is still more curious. It is, indeed, full of the φλοξ δινε, and completely jus tifies the attendant's description. Nothing can be more jolly. It is in the true spirit of a modern drinking song; recommending it to the servant to uncloud his brow, enjoy the present hour, think nothing of the morrow, and drown his cares in love and wine: ΟΥΤΟΣ- -τι σεμνον και πεφροντικΘ- βλέπεις ; ΔΕΥΡ' ΕΛΘ', ὅπως ἀν και σοφωτερος γένη. ΟΙΜΑΙ μεν ΟΥ ΠΟΘΕΝ ΓΑΡ;ἀλλ ̓ ἀκυε με. Βροτοις άπασι κατθανείν ὀφείλεται, Κεκ ἔστι θνητων ὅστις ἐξεπιξαται Την άυριον μελλέσαν ἐι βιώσεται. Ευφραινε σαυτόν ΠΙΝΕ!—τον καθ μεραν Βιον λογιζε σον, τα δ' άλλα, της τυχης. Τιμα δε και την πλείστον ἡδιστην θεών ΚΥΠΡΙΝ βροτοισιν— κ. τ. λ. V. 783-128. "If any man can read this, without supposing it to have set the audience in a roar, I certainly cannot demonstrate that he is mistaken. I can only say, that I think he must be a very grave man himself, and must forget that the Athenians were not a very grave people. The zeal of Pere Brumoy in defending this tragedy, betrays him into a little indiscretion. He says, 'tout cela à fait penser à quelques critiques modernes que cette piece etoit une tragi-comedie ; chimere inconnu aux anciens. Cette piece est du gout des autres tragedies antiques.' Indeed they, who call this play a tragi-comedy, give it rather a favourable name ; for, Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the in the scenes alluded to, it is, in fact, of a lower species than our tragi-comedy: it is rather burlesque tragedy; what Demetrius calls τραγωδία παίζεσα. Much of the comick cast prevails in other scenes; though mixed with those genuine strokes of simple and universal nature, which abound in this poet, and which I should be sorry to exchange for that monotonous and unaffecting level of tragick dignity, which never falls, and never rises. "I will only mention one more instance of this tragi-comick mixture, and that from Sophocles. The dialogue between Minerva and Ulysses, in the first scene of the Ajax, from v. 74 to 88, is perfectly ludicrous. The cowardice of Ulysses is almost as comick as the cowardice of Falstaff. In spite of the presence of Minerva, and her previous assurance that she would effectually guard him from all danger by rendering him invisible, when she calls Ajax out, Ulysses, in the utmost trepidation, exclaims Τι δρας, Αθανα; μηδαμως σφ' εξω καλει. "What are you about, Minerva?-by no means call him out.' Minerva answers Ου σιγ' άνεξη, μηδε δειλίαν αρεις ; "Will you not be silent, and lay aside your fears?' But Ulysses cannot conquer his fears : ΜΗ, ΠΡΟΣ ΘΕΩΝ- ἀλλ ̓ ἐνδον ἀρκειτω μενων. "Don't call him out, for heaven's sake :—let him stay within." And in this tone the conversation continues; till, upon Minerva's repeating her promise that Ajax should not see him, he consents to stay; but in a line of most comical reluctance, and with an aside, that is in the true spirit of Sancho Pança : Μενοιμ' ἀν' ΗΘΕΛΟΝ Δ' ΑΝ ΕΚΤΟΣ ΩΝ ΤΥΧΕΙΝ. "I'll stay-(aside) but I wish I was not here.' 'J'avoue,' says Brumoy, que ce trait n'est pas à la louange d'Ulysse, ni de Sophocle.' "No unprejudiced person, I think, can read this scene without being convinced, not only, that it must actually have produced, but that it must have been intended to produce, the effect of comedy. "It appears indeed to me, that we may plainly trace in the Greek tragedy, with all its improvements, and all its beauties, pretty strong marks of its popular and tragi-comick origin. For Tpaywola, we are told, was, originally, the only dramatick appellation; and when, afterwards, the ludicrous was separated from the serious, and distinguished by its appropriated name of Comedy, the separation seems to have been imperfectly made, and Tragedy, distinctively so called, still seems to have retained a tinc design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter. That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alternations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by showing how great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation. It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy may be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety. The players, who in their edition divided our author's works into comedies, histories, and tragedies, seem not to have distinguished the three kinds, by any very exact or definite ideas. An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion constituted a comedy. This ture of its original merriment. Nor will this appear strange, if we consider the popular nature of the Greek spectacles. The people, it is probable, would still require, even in the midst of their tragick emotion, a little dash of their old satyrick fun, and poets were obliged to comply, in some degree, with their taste." Twining's Notes, pp. 202, 203, 204, 205, 206. STEEvens. idea of a comedy continued long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow*. Tragedy was not in those times a poem of more general dignity or elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion, with which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever lighter pleasure it afforded in its progress. History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological succession, independent on each other, and without any tendency to introduce and regulate the conclusion. It is not always very nicely distinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity of action in the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, than in the history of Richard the Second. But a history might be continued through many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits. Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakspeare's mode of composition is the same; an interchange of seriousness and merriment, by which the mind is softened at one time, and exhilarated at another. But whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or depress, or to conduct the story, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of easy and familiar dialogue, he never fails to attain his purpose; as he commands us, we laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expectation, in tranquillity without indifference. When Shakspeare's plan is understood, most of the criticisms of Rymer and Voltaire vanish away. The play of Hamlet is opened, without impropriety, by two centinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio's window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms which a modern audience would not easily endure; the character of Polonius. is seasonable and useful; and the Gravediggers themselves may be heard with applause. Shakspeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known * Thus, says Downes the Prompter, p. 22: "The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was made some time after [1662] into a tragicomedy, by Mr. James Howard, he preserving Romeo and Juliet alive; so that when the tragedy was revived again, 'twas play'd alternately, tragical one day, and tragi-comical another, for several days together." STEEVENS. |