Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846

The Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus is not properly a drama; at least, it has so little of the peculiar interest belonging to that species of poetry, that it can hardly be called such. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the most sublime composition that ever came from the thoughts of uninspired man. It is meant to portray the heroic devotion, the undaunted courage of Prometheus – the friend of man, the assuager of his sufferings, the aider of his enterprises – who was chained to a rock, exposed to the burning heats of summer, the shivering frosts of winter, by Jupiter, for having stolen fire – the parent of art, the spring of enterprise, the source of improvement – from heaven, to give it to the human race. From the expressions he uses on the ultimate results of that inestimable gift, one would almost suppose he had a prophetic anticipation of the marvels of Steam. The opening scene, where Prometheus is chained to a rock in Scythia, by Vulcan, in presence of "Force and Strength," the agents of Jupiter's commands; and the closing one, where he remains firm and unshaken amidst the wrath of the elements, the upheaving of the ocean, and the lightnings of heaven hurled at his devoted head, are of unrivalled sublimity. They literally realize the idea of the poet —

"Si fractus illabatur orbis,Impavidum ferient ruinæ."

The Prometheus Vinctus is the Inferno of Dante dramatised; but it is fraught with a nobler moral. It does not portray the sufferings of sin for past guilt; it exhibits the heroism of virtue under present injustice. It paints the triumph of devoted benevolence, sustained by unconquerable will, over the oppression of physical force, the tyranny of resistless power. It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the Paradise Regained, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is chained on the burning lake, in Paradise Lost. It is the prophetical wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from external injustice.

The Iphigenia in Aulis is the most perfect of all the tragedies of Euripides, and the best adapted for modern representation. The well-known story of the daughter of the King of Men being devoted to sacrifice, to appease the angry deities, and procure favourable gales for the fleet on the way to Troy, and of the agony of her parents under the infliction, is developed with all the pathos and eloquence of which that great master of the tragic art was capable. Nothing can exceed the progressive interest which the character of Iphigenia excites. At first, horrorstruck, and shrinking with the timidity of her sex from the axe of the priest, she gradually rises when her fate appears inevitable, and at length devotes herself for her country with a woman's devotion, and more than a man's fortitude. In the French plays on the same subject, a love episode is introduced between her and Achilles; but the simplicity of the Greek original appears preferable, in which she had no previous acquaintance with the son of Peleus, and he is interested in her fate, and strives to avert it, only from finding that his name, as her betrothed, had, without his knowledge, been used by Agamemnon to induce Clytemnestra to bring her to the Grecian camp. Doubtless, the tenderness of Racine in the love-scenes between her and Achilles, is inimitable; but the simplicity of the Greek original, where grief on her parents' part for her loss, and her own heroic self-sacrifice on the altar of patriotic duty, are undisturbed by any other emotion, is yet more touching, and far more agreeable to ancient manners, where love on the woman's part, previous to marriage, was, as now in the East, almost unknown.

In these great masterpieces of ancient art, the unity of emotions is strictly preserved; and it is that, joined to the lofty moral tone preserved through the drama, which constitutes their unequalled charm. This, however, is not always the case in the Greek tragedies. They are not insensible to the effect of a high moral tone, or the development of poetical justice; but they did not regard either as the principal object, or even a material part, of dramatic composition. To delineate the play of the passions was their great object: Aristotle says expressly that was the end of tragedy. To that object they devoted all their powers; they succeeded in laying bare the human heart in its most agonized moments, and in its inmost recesses, with terrible fidelity. In this way, they frequently represented it as torn by a double distress, each prompting to atrocious actions; as in the Medea of Euripides, where the unhappy wife of Jason distracted by jealousy at the desertion and second marriage of her husband, destroys her own children in the fury of her vengeance against him; or the Hecuba of the same author, where the discrowned and captive widow of Priam, doomed in one day to see her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the dead body of her son washed ashore by the waves, takes a terrible vengeance on his murderer, by putting his children to death, and turning him, after his eyes have been put out, to beg his way through the world. The Greeks seem to have been deeply impressed with the evils, vicissitudes, and sufferings of life. No word occurs so frequently in their dramas as evils, (κακα.) In witnessing the delineation of its miseries on the stage, they seem to have held somewhat of the same stern pleasure which the North American Indians have in beholding the prolonged torture inflicted on a condemned captive at the stake. Every one felt a thrill of interest at beholding how another could bear a series of reverses and sufferings, which might any day be his own.

Notwithstanding all our admiration for the Greek tragedies, and firmly believing that they are framed on the true principle of dramatic composition – the neglect of which has occasioned its long-continued decline in this country – we are yet far from thinking them perfect. The age of the world, the peculiarities of ancient manners, rendered it impossible it should be so. We could conceive dramas more perfect and varied than any even of the masterpieces of Sophocles or Euripides. We are persuaded the world will yet see them outdone; though they will be outdone only by those who follow out their principles. But there are three particulars, in which, in modern times, themes of surpassing interest and importance are opened to the dramatic poet, which were of necessity unknown to the writers of antiquity; and it is by blending the skilful use of these with the simplicity and pathos of the Greek originals, that the highest perfection of this noble art is to be attained.

In the first place, the Greeks had no idea whatever of a system of divine superintendence, or moral retribution, in this world. On the contrary their ideas were just the reverse. Fate, superior to the decrees of Jove himself, was the supreme power which they discerned in all the changes of time; and it was the crushing of a human soul beneath its chariot-wheels that they principally delighted to portray. The omnipotence of Fate, in their opinion, was more shown in the destruction than the rewards of the good. Success in life they were willing enough to ascribe to the able conduct of the persons concerned; they only began, like the French, to speak about destiny when they were unfortunate. Their ignorance of the fundamental principles of religion, familiar to every peasant in Europe, shines forth in every page of Sophocles and Euripides. The noblest tragedy of Æschylus, the Prometheus Vinctus, is intended to portray the highest divine benevolence overpowered by supreme power, and eternally suffering under eternal injustice. The frequent overthrow of virtue by wickedness, of innocence by fraud, of gentleness by violence, in this world, seems to have produced an indelible impression on their minds. They not only had no confidence in the divine justice, or the ultimate triumph of virtue over vice, but they had the reverse. They had a mournful conviction that innocence in this vale of tears was everlastingly doomed to suffering; that vice would eternally prove triumphant; and that it was in inward strength and resolution that the only refuge for oppressed virtue was to be found. Their greatest philosophers thought the same. Their tragedies were dramatised Stoicism. Grandeur of character, force of mind, the indomitable will, might be portrayed to perfection under such a belief; but the mild graces, the confidence in God, the resignation to his will, breathed into the human heart by the Gospel, were unknown. What a volume of thoughts and sentiments, of virtues and graces, were wanting in a world to which faith, hope, and charity were unknown! A dramatic Raphael was impossible in antiquity; it was the spirit of the Redeemer which inspired his Holy Families. Their morality, accordingly, is of a sterner cast than any thing with which we are acquainted in modern times. They were full of admiration of the qualities which formed the patriot and the hero, and have portrayed them to perfection in their dramas; but they were ignorant of that more heavenly disposition of mind, which

"sits a blooming bride,By valour's arm'd and awful side."

They perceived the tendency of firm and unbending virtue to elevate the soul above all that is earthly; but they knew not, in the sublime language of Milton,

"That if virtue feeble were,Heaven itself would stoop to her."

As a necessary consequence of this, the dramas of antiquity were destitute of those feelings of PIETY, which form so important a part in the most elevated characters of modern Europe. The ancients carried mere human virtue to the very highest point; in their poetry, their tragedies, their philosophy, they represented man resting on himself alone in the noblest aspect. But they were ignorant of God; they had no correct ideas of Heaven. The devotion to the divine will, the forgetfulness of self, the reliance on Supreme protection to innocence, the appeal to the Almighty, and the judgment of another world against the injustice of this, which runs through the most exalted conceptions of modern times, were to them unknown. Their ideas of the celestial beings were entirely drawn from human models: Olympus was peopled by gods and goddesses animated by passions, divided by jealousies, stimulated by desires entirely akin to those which are felt in this world. The shades below were a dark and gloomy region, the entrance to which was placed in the jaws of Vesuvius, or the dreary expanse of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, through which the cries of the damned in Tartarus incessantly resounded; and where even the blessed spirits in Elysium were continually regretting the joys and excitement of the upper world. Dante, in his Inferno, has painted to the life their prevailing ideas of futurity; the next world to them contained nothing but successive circles of Malebolge. Homer has expressed their feeling in a line, when he makes Achilles, in Elysium, say to Ulysses, on his descent to the infernal regions, that he would rather command the Grecian army one day, than dwell where he was through an infinity of ages. Compare this with the ideas of the Crusaders in modern Europe; with the death of the chivalric Bayard, when, mortally wounded, seated on the ground, with his eyes fixed on the cross of his sword, he said to the victorious Constable de Bourbon, "Pity not me – pity those who fight against their king, their country, and their oath!"

Lastly, the passion of love, as it is understood and felt in modern times, was unknown in antiquity; and to those who reflect how important a part it bears in the romances and plays of Europe, this will probably appear like performing Hamlet with the character of the Prince of Denmark omitted on the occasion. It was impossible they could have it, because their manners were much more Oriental than European; and young persons of opposites sexes rarely, if ever, met before marriage. They had a perfect idea of the mutual affection which arises after marriage; the tenderness of Hector and Andromache never has been surpassed in any tongue. With the passions of the harem they were perfectly familiar, and the dreadful pangs of jealousy never have been painted with more consummate ability, or more thorough knowledge of human nature. Euripides, in particular, has delineated the terrible effects of that passion with a master's hand; witness the raving of Medea at the desertion of Jason; the fury of Hermione at the captive Andromache. Love also, as it arises now in an Eastern seraglio, was not unknown to them; the passion of Phædra for Hippolytus, as painted by Euripides, is a proof of it. But the love they thus conceived, had scarce any resemblance to the passion of the same name, which has risen up with the general intercourse of the sexes, and chivalrous manners of modern Europe. It is represented rather as a fever, as a fit of insanity, than any thing else; and is usually held forth as the withering blast inflicted by an offended deity, or the mania bequeathed as an inheritance on an accursed race. The refined and ennobling passion, so well-known and exquisitely described by the great masters of the human heart in modern times, that of Othello for Desdemona, of Tancrede for Clorinda, of Corinne for Oswald, was unknown in antiquity. Even the passions described by Ovid, which arose amidst the freer manners of the Roman patricians, had little resemblance to the refined sentiments, the bequest of the age of chivalry; the one was founded on the subjugation of mind by the senses, the other on the oblivion of the senses in the mind. What a vast addition to the range and interest of the drama has the refining and spiritualizing of this master-passion of the human breast, by the influence of Christianity, and the institutions of chivalry, made; and how inexcusable does it render modern genius, if, with such an additional chord to touch in the human heart, it has never yet rivalled the great models of antiquity!

And has modern genius not yet equalled the masterpieces of the drama in ancient Greece? We answer, decidedly not – either on the Continent or this country – any more than modern sculpture has rivalled the perfections of Grecian statuary. Neither in the old French and Italian school, which followed the ancient models, nor in the Romantic school in which old England and young France proposed to rival it, has any thing approaching to the interest and pathos of the Athenian dramatists been produced. It is not difficult to see what have been the causes of this inferiority, and they seem to have been these.

The regular drama of France was addressed, entirely and exclusively, to the court, the noble, and the highly educated classes. It was nothing more than an extension of the theatres of Versailles. The opinion of Louis XIV., his ministers or mistresses, of the Duke of Orleans, and a few leading nobles of Louvois, and one or two statesmen, were all in all. The approbation of the king stamped a tragedy in public opinion, as his dancing with her stamped the estimation of a new court beauty. The voice and feelings of the middle or lower ranks of society had no more to say on the subject than they had in the formation of court dresses, or the etiquette of the Œil de Bœuf. They took their opinions from that of the magnates of the land, as milliners and tailors now do from the dresses of London and Paris. Rank and fashion were paramount in literature, as they are still in manner, dancing, and etiquette. It was impossible that the drama, addressed to, and having its success dependent on, the approbation of such an audience, could faithfully paint the human heart. The stately dances and haughty seigneurs of Versailles, would have been shocked with the vehement bursts of passion, the pathetic traits of nature, the undisguised expression of feeling, which appeared in Euripides and Sophocles, and entranced the mixed and more natural audience of Athens. It would have appeared vulgar and painful; it revealed what it was the great object of art and education to conceal. The stately Alexandrine verses, the sonorous periods, the dignified and truly noble thoughts, which so strongly characterize the French tragedies, arose naturally, and perhaps unavoidably, from the habits and tastes of the exclusive aristocratic circle to which they were addressed. In addition to this, the audience were all highly educated; at least according to the ideas and habits of the times. Classical images were those which recalled the most pleasing associations in every mind; classical events awakened the emotions most likely to prove generally attractive. The ancient models were before every mind, from the effect of early and universal education. Classical allusions and subjects were as unavoidable, as they now are in the prize poems of Oxford or Cambridge. Thus, the drama of Athens naturally was assumed as the model of modern imitation; but on it was ingrafted, not the vehemence and nature of the Greek originals, addressed to all mankind, but the measured march of heroic versification, intended for a narrow and dignified feudal circle.

Making allowance for this peculiarity, and considering the drama as, from this cause, diverted from its real object and highest flight, it is impossible to conceive any thing more perfect than the masterpieces of the French stage. Corneille was their greatest composer; he had most original genius, and was least fettered by artificial rules. He was the Æschylus of the French theatre. Voltaire said, that the king's ministers should be compelled to attend the performance of his finest pieces, to acquire the knowledge of human nature, and statesmanlike views requisite for the government of man. Napoleon said, if Corneille had lived in his time, he would have made him a counsellor of state; for he alone, of all writers, felt the overpowering importance of state necessity. The great Condé wept at the generosity of sentiment portrayed in his Britannicus. It is impossible to conceive any thing more dignified and elevated, more calculated to rouse the generous and lofty feelings, to nourish that forgetfulness of self and devotion to others, which is the foundation of every thing great and good in this world, than his finest tragedies. They are, however, very unequal. Cinna, Les Horaces, the Cid, and Rodogune, are his masterpieces; it is they which have won for him, by the consent of all nations, the surname of "le Grand Corneille." But still it is not nature which is generally represented in his tragedies. It is an ideal nature, seven foot high, clad in impenetrable panoply, steeled against the weaknesses, as above the littlenesses of humanity. Persons of a romantic, lofty tone of mind, will to the end of the world be fascinated by his pages; heroic resolutions, great deeds, will ever be prompted by his sentiments. But they are above the standard of common life. They evince a deep knowledge of human nature, but of human nature in noble and heroic bosoms only – and that is widely different from what it obtains with ordinary men. Hence his pieces are little adapted for general representation; and certainly, even the best translations of them never could succeed in this country.

Racine is a more general favourite than Corneille, because he paints feelings more commonly experienced; but he wants his great and heroic sentiments. No one ever thought of calling him the Great. Less deeply embued with the lofty spirit of chivalry, less romantic in his structure, less commanding in his ideas, he is more polished, more equal, and has a greater command of the pathetic. He is to Corneille what Virgil was to Homer, what Raphael to Michael Angelo. The anguish of the human heart was what he chiefly loved to represent, because he felt that there he excelled; and hence his tragedies are chiefly formed on the Greek model, and on the subjects already treated by Sophocles and Euripides. Agamemnon, Achilles, Alcestes, Orestes, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Œdipus, Hermione, Jocasta, Antigone, reappear on his pages, as in those of the masters of the Greek drama. But they reappear in a modern dress. They are very different from the inimitable simplicity of the originals. The refinements, conceits, extravagant flattery, politeness, and stately manners of the Grand Monarque, shine through every line. Achilles makes love to Iphigenia as if she were in the marbled gardens of Versailles; the passion of Phèdre for Hippolyte, is the refined effusion of modern delicacy, not the burning fever and maniac delirium of Phædra in Euripides. His Greek heroes and heroines address each other as if they were in the Œil de Bœuf; it is "monsieur" and "madame" at every step. Under classical names, and with the scene laid in distant lands, it is still the ancient régime of France which is portrayed in all his pieces – it is the passions and distresses of an old and highly civilized society which are depicted. Even Athalie, his masterpiece, has none of the ancient Jewish spirit in it; it is the modern priesthood which is represented as resisting oppression in the temple of Jerusalem. But the beauty of language, the melody of versification, the delicacy of sentiments, the frequent touches of the pathetic which his writings exhibit, will for ever secure him a high place in the opinion of men; and justify the saying of Voltaire, that whoever would acquire a pure and elegant French style, must have the Petit Carême of Massillon, and Athalie of Racine, constantly lying on his writing table.

Voltaire, though he adhered, in part at least, to the old subjects in his tragedies, is far more various and discursive in his mode of treating them. The prodigious fecundity of the author of a hundred volumes, the varied acquisitions of the philosopher, the historian, the satirist, the moralist, give diversity to his subjects, and an endless variety to his ideas. He possessed, as it were, a polyglot mind; he threw himself into the feelings and passions of every country and every age, and brought out in his dramas part at least of the inexhaustible store of human thoughts and events which have from the beginning of time agitated the human race. The East, with its sultans, its harems, its sultanas, and its jealousies, strongly arrested his imagination, and furnished the subjects of some of his finest pieces; witness Mahomet, Bajazet, Tamerlane, and Zaïre. For this reason his tragedies are more general favourites now than either those of Corneille or Racine; you will see the audience in the parterre of the Théâtre Français repeating whole speeches from Brutus, Alzire, or Le Fanatisme, after the performer on the stage. They have sunk deeper into the general mind than any of their predecessors; more of their lines have become household expressions, as is the case with Shakspeare, Gray, and Campbell in England, than those of any other author in the French language. Voltaire, too, was strongly impressed with the necessity of keeping up the interest of his piece from first to last; he drives on the story with an untiring hand, and even before the final catastrophe, contrives to produce a passing excitement at every step, by subordinate and yet important events. What he constantly complains of in his admirable commentaries on Corneille is, that, in his inferior pieces at least, that great master lets the story flag, the interest die away, and that, trusting to the fascination of his language, the power of his thoughts, he neglects the important matters of dramatic power and stage effect. His perfect knowledge of both these important auxiliaries of his art, is not the least of Voltaire's many excellences; and has secured for him, to all appearance permanently, if not the first, unquestionably the most popular place in the French theatre. But still his dramas do not represent nature. They are noble pieces of rhetoric put into rhyme. They are the ablest possible debate arrayed in the pomp of Alexandrine verse. But they do not touch the heart like a few words in Sophocles, Euripides, or Shakspeare.

Metastasio was fettered by a double set of rules; for he was compelled to attend at once to the dramatic unities of Aristotle, and the musical restraints of the opera. It was no common genius which, amidst such difficulties, could produce a series of dramas which should not merely charm the world, when arrayed in the enchanted garb of the opera, with all the attractions of music and scenery, but form a perpetual subject of pleasing study to the recluse, far from the pomp and magnificence of theatric representation. It is impossible to imagine any thing more attractive than his dramas, considered as visionary pieces. Formed on the events of the ancient world, he depicts, under the name of Alexander, Titus, Dido, Regulus, Cæsar, and Cleopatra, ideal beings having about as much resemblance to real mortals as the nymphs of the ballet have to ordinary women, or the recitative of Mozart to the natural human voice. But still they are very charming. If they are not a feature of this world, they are a vision of something above it; of a scene in which the littlenesses and selfishness of mortality are forgotten; in which virtue is generally in the end triumphant; in which honour in women proves victorious over love, and fortitude in men obtains the mastery of fortune. Generosity and magnanimity beyond what could have been even conceived, often furnishes the dénouement of the piece, and extricates the characters from apparently insurmountable difficulties. There can be no doubt this is not human life: Alexander the Great, Dido, Regulus, are not of every day's occurrence. But the total departure of such representations from the standard of reality, appears less reprehensible in the opera than the ordinary theatre, because the singing and recitative at any rate remove it from off the pale of mortality. We take up one of his dramas as we go to the opera, not to see any picture of actual existence, or any thing which shall recall the experienced feelings of the human heart, but to be charmed by a fairy tale, which, if it does not paint the stern realities of life, at least charms by its imagination.