The Bride of Messina, and On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy

CAJETAN                 Shall I invite   The brotherhood of monks, with rights ordained   By holy church of old, to celebrate   The office of departed souls, and hymn   The buried one to everlasting rest?DON CAESAR   Their strains above my tomb shall sound for ever   Amid the torches' blaze – no solemn rites   Beseem the day when gory murder scares   Heaven's pardoning grace.CAJETAN                 Oh, let not wild despair   Tempt thee to impious, rash resolve. My prince   No mortal arm shall e'er avenge this deed;   And penance calms, with soft, atoning power,   The wrath on high.DON CAESAR             If for eternal justice   Earth has no minister, myself shall wield   The avenging sword; though heaven, with gracious ear,   Inclines to sinners' prayers, with blood alone   Atoned is murder's guilt.CAJETAN                 To stem the tide   Of dire misfortune, that with maddening rage   Bursts o'er your house, were nobler than to pile   Accumulated woe.DON CAESAR            The curse of old   Shall die with me! Death self-imposed alone   Can break the chain of fate.CAJETAN                  Thou owest thyself   A sovereign to this orphaned land, by thee   Robbed of its other lord!DON CAESAR                 The avenging gods   Demand their prey – some other deity   May guard the living!CAJETAN               Wide as e'er the sun   In glory beams, the realm of hope extends;   But – oh remember! nothing may we gain   From Death!DON CAESAR          Remember thou thy vassal's duty;   Remember and be silent! Leave to me   To follow, as I list, the spirit of power   That leads me to the goal. No happy one   May look into my breast: but if thy prince   Owns not a subject's homage, dread at least   The murderer! – the accursed! – and to the head   Of the unhappy – sacred to the gods —   Give honors due. The pangs that rend my soul —   What I have suffered – what I feel – have left   No place for earthly thoughts!

DONNA ISABELLA, DON CAESAR, The Chorus.

ISABELLA (enters with hesitating steps, and looks irresolutely towards DON CAESAR; at last she approaches, and addresses him with collected tones)   I thought mine eyes should ne'er behold thee more;   Thus I had vowed despairing! Oh, my son!   How quickly all a mother's strong resolves   Melt into air! 'Twas but the cry of rage   That stifled nature's pleading voice; but now   What tidings of mysterious import call me   From the desolate chambers of my sorrow?   Shall I believe it? Is it true? one day   Robs me of both my sons?Chorus      Behold! with willing steps and free,       Thy son prepares to tread      The paths of dark eternity       The silent mansions of the dead.      My prayers are vain; but thou, with power confessed,      Of nature's holiest passion, storm his breast!ISABELLA   I call the curses back – that in the frenzy   Of blind despair on thy beloved head   I poured. A mother may not curse the child   That from her nourishing breast drew life, and gave   Sweet recompense for all her travail past;   Heaven would not hear the impious vows; they fell   With quick rebound, and heavy with my tears   Down from the flaming vault!                  Live! live! my son!   For I may rather bear to look on thee —   The murderer of one child – than weep for both!DON CAESAR   Heedless and vain, my mother, are thy prayers   For me and for thyself; I have no place   Among the living: if thine eyes may brook   The murderer's sight abhorred – I could not bear   The mute reproach of thy eternal sorrow.ISABELLA   Silent or loud, my son, reproach shall never   Disturb thy breast – ne'er in these halls shall sound   The voice of wailing, gently on my tears   My griefs shall flow away: the sport alike   Of pitiless fate together we will mourn,   And veil the deed of blood.DON CAESAR (with a faltering voice, and taking her hand)                  Thus it shall be,   My mother – thus with silent, gentle woe   Thy grief shall fade: but when one common tomb   The murderer and his victim closes round —   When o'er our dust one monumental stone   Is rolled – the curse shall cease – thy love no more   Unequal bless thy sons: the precious tears   Thine eyes of beauty weep shall sanctify   Alike our memories. Yes! In death are quenched   The fires of rage; and hatred owns subdued,   The mighty reconciler. Pity bends   An angel form above the funeral urn,   With weeping, dear embrace. Then to the tomb   Stay not my passage: – Oh, forbid me not,   Thus with atoning sacrifice to quell   The curse of heaven.ISABELLA              All Christendom is rich   In shrines of mercy, where the troubled heart   May find repose. Oh! many a heavy burden   Have sinners in Loretto's mansion laid;   And Heaven's peculiar blessing breathes around   The grave that has redeemed the world! The prayers   Of the devout are precious – fraught with store   Of grace, they win forgiveness from the skies; —   And on the soil by gory murder stained   Shall rise the purifying fane.DON CAESAR                   We pluck   The arrow from the wound – but the torn heart   Shall ne'er be healed. Let him who can, drag on   A weary life of penance and of pain,   To cleanse the spot of everlasting guilt; —   I would not live the victim of despair;   No! I must meet with beaming eye the smile   Of happy ones, and breathe erect the air   Of liberty and joy. While yet alike   We shared thy love, then o'er my days of youth   Pale envy cast his withering shade; and now,   Think'st thou my heart could brook the dearer ties   That bind thee in thy sorrow to the dead?   Death, in his undecaying palace throned,   To the pure diamond of perfect virtue   Sublimes the mortal, and with chastening fire   Each gathered stain of frail humanity   Purges and burns away: high as the stars   Tower o'er this earthly sphere, he soars above me;   And as by ancient hate dissevered long,   Brethren and equal denizens we lived,   So now my restless soul with envy pines,   That he has won from me the glorious prize   Of immortality, and like a god   In memory marches on to times unborn!ISABELLA   My Sons! Why have I called you to Messina   To find for each a grave? I brought ye hither   To calm your strife to peace. Lo! Fate has turned   My hopes to blank despair.DON CAESAR                 Whate'er was spoke,   My mother, is fulfilled! Blame not the end   By Heaven ordained. We trode our father's halls   With hopes of peace; and reconciled forever,   Together we shall sleep in death.ISABELLA                     My son,   Live for thy mother! In the stranger's land,   Say, wouldst thou leave me friendless and alone,   To cruel scorn a prey – no filial arm   To shield my helpless age?DON CAESAR                 When all the world   With heartless taunts pursues thee, to our grave   For refuge fly, my mother, and invoke   Thy sons' divinity – we shall be gods!   And we will hear thy prayers: – and as the twins   Of heaven, a beaming star of comfort shine   To the tossed shipman – we will hover near thee   With present help, and soothe thy troubled soul!ISABELLA   Live – for thy mother, live, my son —   Must I lose all?

[She throws her arms about him with passionate emotion.

He gently disengages himself, and turning his face away extends to her his hand.

DON CAESAR            Farewell!ISABELLA                  I can no more;   Too well my tortured bosom owns how weak   A mother's prayers: a mightier voice shall sound   Resistless on thy heart.

[She goes towards the entrance of the scene.

                My daughter, come.   A brother calls him to the realms of night;   Perchance with golden hues of earthly joy   The sister, the beloved, may gently lure   The wanderer to life again.

[BEATRICE appears at the entrance of the scene.

DONNA ISABELLA, DON CAESAR, and the Chorus.

DON CAESAR (on seeing her, covers his face with his hands)                  My mother!   What hast thou done?ISABELLA (leading BEATRICE forwards)              A mother's prayers are vain!   Kneel at his feet – conjure him – melt his heart!   Oh, bid him live!DON CAESAR             Deceitful mother, thus   Thou triest thy son! And wouldst thou stir my soul   Again to passion's strife, and make the sun   Beloved once more, now when I tread the paths   Of everlasting night? See where he stands —   Angel of life! – and wondrous beautiful,   Shakes from his plenteous horn the fragrant store   Of golden fruits and flowers, that breathe around   Divinest airs of joy; – my heart awakes   In the warm sunbeam – hope returns, and life   Thrills in my breast anew.ISABELLA (to BEATRICE)                 Thou wilt prevail!   Or none! Implore him that he live, nor rob   The staff and comfort of our days.BEATRICE                     The loved one   A sacrifice demands. Oh, let me die   To soothe a brother's shade! Yes, I will be   The victim! Ere I saw the light forewarned   To death, I live a wrong to heaven! The curse   Pursues me still: 'twas I that slew thy son —   I waked the slumbering furies of their strife —   Be mine the atoning blood!CAJETAN                 Ill-fated mother!   Impatient all thy children haste to doom,   And leave thee on the desolate waste alone   Of joyous life.BEATRICE            Oh, spare thy precious days   For nature's band. Thy mother needs a son;   My brother, live for her! Light were the pang   To lose a daughter – but a moment shown,   Then snatched away!DON CAESAR (with deep emotion)              'Tis one to live or die,   Blest with a sister's love!BEATRICE                  Say, dost thou envy   Thy brother's ashes?DON CAESAR              In thy grief he lives   A hallowed life! – my doom is death forever!BEATRICE   My brother!DON CAESAR          Sister! are thy tears for me?BEATRICE   Live for our mother!DON CAESAR (dropping her hand, and stepping back)              For our mother?BEATRICE (hiding her head in his breast)                       Live   For her and for thy sister!Chorus (BOHEMUND)                  She has won!   Resistless are her prayers. Despairing mother,   Awake to hope again – his choice is made!   Thy son shall live!

[At this moment an anthem is heard. The folding doors are thrown open, and in the church is seen the catafalque erected, and the coffin surrounded with candlesticks.

DON CAESAR (turning to the coffin)              I will not rob thee, brother!   The sacrifice is thine: – Hark! from the tomb,   Mightier than mother's tears, or sister's love,   Thy voice resistless cries: – my arms enfold   A treasure, potent with celestial joys,   To deck this earthly sphere, and make a lot   Worthy the gods! but shall I live in bliss,   While in the tomb thy sainted innocence   Sleeps unavenged? Thou, Ruler of our days,   All just – all wise – let not the world behold   Thy partial care! I saw her tears! – enough —   They flowed for me! I am content: my brother!   I come!

[He stabs himself with a dagger, and falls dead at his sister's feet. She throws herself into her mother's arms.

Chorus, CAJETAN (after a deep silence)       In dread amaze I stand, nor know   If I should mourn his fate. One truth revealed   Speaks in my breast; – no good supreme is life;   But all of earthly ills the chief is – Guilt!THE END

ON THE USE OF THE CHORUS IN TRAGEDY

A poetical work must vindicate itself: if the execution be defective, little aid can be derived from commentaries.

On these grounds I might safely leave the chorus to be its own advocate, if we had ever seen it presented in an appropriate manner. But it must be remembered that a dramatic composition first assumes the character of a whole by means of representation on the stage. The poet supplies only the words, to which, in a lyrical tragedy, music and rhythmical motion are essential accessories. It follows, then, that if the chorus is deprived of accompaniments appealing so powerfully to the senses, it will appear a superfluity in the economy of the drama – a mere hinderance to the development of the plot – destructive to the illusion of the scene, and wearisome to the spectators.

To do justice to the chorus, more especially if our aims in poetry be of a grand and elevated character, we must transport ourselves from the actual to a possible stage. It is the privilege of art to furnish for itself whatever is requisite, and the accidental deficiency of auxiliaries ought not to confine the plastic imagination of the poet. He aspires to whatever is most dignified, he labors to realize the ideal in his own mind – though in the execution of his purpose he must needs accommodate himself to circumstances.

The assertion so commonly made that the public degrades art is not well founded. It is the artist that brings the public to the level of his own conceptions; and, in every age in which art has gone to decay, it has fallen through its professors. The people need feeling alone, and feeling they possess. They take their station before the curtain with an unvoiced longing, with a multifarious capacity. They bring with them an aptitude for what is highest – they derive the greatest pleasure from what is judicious and true; and if, with these powers of appreciation, they deign to be satisfied with inferior productions, still, if they have once tasted what is excellent, they will in the end insist on having it supplied to them.

It is sometimes objected that the poet may labor according to an ideal – that the critic may judge from ideas, but that mere executive art is subject to contingencies, and depends for effect on the occasion. Managers will be obstinate; actors are bent on display – the audience is inattentive and unruly. Their object is relaxation, and they are disappointed if mental exertion be required, when they expected only amusement. But if the theatre be made instrumental towards higher objects, the diversion, of the spectator will not be increased, but ennobled. It will be a diversion, but a poetical one. All art is dedicated to pleasure, and there can be no higher and worthier end than to make men happy. The true art is that which provides the highest degree of pleasure; and this consists in the abandonment of the spirit to the free play of all its faculties.

Every one expects from the imaginative arts a certain emancipation from the bounds of reality: we are willing to give a scope to fancy, and recreate ourselves with the possible. The man who expects it the least will nevertheless forget his ordinary pursuits, his everyday existence and individuality, and experience delight from uncommon incidents: – if he be of a serious turn of mind he will acknowledge on the stage that moral government of the world which he fails to discover in real life. But he is, at the same time, perfectly aware that all is an empty show, and that in a true sense he is feeding only on dreams. When he returns from the theatre to the world of realities, he is again compressed within its narrow bounds; he is its denizen as before – for it remains what it was, and in him nothing has been changed. What, then, has he gained beyond a momentary illusive pleasure which vanished with the occasion?

It is because a passing recreation is alone desired that a mere show of truth is thought sufficient. I mean that probability or vraisemblance which is so highly esteemed, but which the commonest workers are able to substitute for the true.

Art has for its object not merely to afford a transient pleasure, to excite to a momentary dream of liberty; its aim is to make us absolutely free; and this it accomplishes by awakening, exercising, and perfecting in us a power to remove to an objective distance the sensible world; (which otherwise only burdens us as rugged matter, and presses us down with a brute influence;) to transform it into the free working of our spirit, and thus acquire a dominion over the material by means of ideas. For the very reason also that true art requires somewhat of the objective and real, it is not satisfied with a show of truth. It rears its ideal edifice on truth itself – on the solid and deep foundations of nature.

But how art can be at once altogether ideal, yet in the strictest sense real; how it can entirely leave the actual, and yet harmonize with nature, is a problem to the multitude; and hence the distorted views which prevail in regard to poetical and plastic works; for to ordinary judgments these two requisites seem to counteract each other.

It is commonly supposed that one may be attained by the sacrifice of the other; – the result is a failure to arrive at either. One to whom nature has given a true sensibility, but denied the plastic imaginative power, will be a faithful painter of the real; he will adapt casual appearances, but never catch the spirit of nature. He will only reproduce to us the matter of the world, which, not being our own work, the product of our creative spirit, can never have the beneficent operation of art, of which the essence is freedom. Serious indeed, but unpleasing, is the cast of thought with which such an artist and poet dismisses us; we feel ourselves painfully thrust back into the narrow sphere of reality by means of the very art which ought to have emancipated us. On the other hand, a writer endowed with a lively fancy, but destitute of warmth and individuality of feeling, will not concern himself in the least about truth; he will sport with the stuff of the world, and endeavor to surprise by whimsical combinations; and as his whole performance is nothing but foam and glitter, he will, it is true, engage the attention for a time, but build up and confirm nothing in the understanding. His playfulness is, like the gravity of the other, thoroughly unpoetical. To string together at will fantastical images is not to travel into the realm of the ideal; and the imitative reproduction of the actual cannot be called the representation of nature. Both requisites stand so little in contradiction to each other that they are rather one and the same thing; that art is only true insomuch as it altogether forsakes the actual, and becomes purely ideal. Nature herself is an idea of the mind, and is never presented to the senses. She lies under the veil of appearances, but is herself never apparent. To the art of the ideal alone is lent, or rather absolutely given, the privilege to grasp the spirit of the all and bind it in a corporeal form.

Yet, in truth, even art cannot present it to the senses, but by means of her creative power to the imaginative faculty alone; and it is thus that she becomes more true than all reality, and more real than all experience. It follows from these premises that the artist can use no single element taken from reality as he finds it – that his work must be ideal in all its parts, if it be designed to have, as it were, an intrinsic reality, and to harmonize with nature.

What is true of art and poetry, in the abstract, holds good as to their various kinds; and we may apply what has been advanced to the subject of tragedy. In this department it is still necessary to controvert the ordinary notion of the natural, with which poetry is altogether incompatible. A certain ideality has been allowed in painting, though, I fear, on grounds rather conventional than intrinsic; but in dramatic works what is desired is allusion, which, if it could be accomplished by means of the actual, would be, at best, a paltry deception. All the externals of a theatrical representation are opposed to this notion; all is merely a symbol of the real. The day itself in a theatre is an artificial one; the metrical dialogue is itself ideal; yet the conduct of the play must forsooth be real, and the general effect sacrificed to a part. Thus the French, who have utterly misconceived the spirit of the ancients, adopted on their stage the unities of tine and place in the most common and empirical sense; as though there were any place but the bare ideal one, or any other time than the mere sequence of the incidents.

By the introduction of a metrical dialogue an important progress has been made towards the poetical tragedy. A few lyrical dramas have been successful on the stage, and poetry, by its own living energy, has triumphed over prevailing prejudices. But so long as these erroneous views are entertained little has been done – for it is not enough barely to tolerate as a poetical license that which is, in truth, the essence of all poetry. The introduction of the chorus would be the last and decisive step; and if it only served this end, namely, to declare open and honorable warfare against naturalism in art, it would be for us a living wall which tragedy had drawn around herself, to guard her from contact with the world of reality, and maintain her own ideal soil, her poetical freedom.

It is well-known that the Greek tragedy had its origin in the chorus; and though in process of time it became independent, still it may be said that poetically, and in spirit, the chorus was the source of its existence, and that without these persevering supporters and witnesses of the incident a totally different order of poetry would have grown out of the drama. The abolition of the chorus, and the debasement of this sensibly powerful organ into the characterless substitute of a confidant, is by no means such an improvement in the tragedy as the French, and their imitators, would have it supposed to be.

The old tragedy, which at first only concerned itself with gods, heroes and kings introduced the chorus as an essential accompaniment. The poets found it in nature, and for that reason employed it. It grew out of the poetical aspect of real life. In the new tragedy it becomes an organ of art, which aids in making the poetry prominent. The modern poet no longer finds the chorus in nature; he must needs create and introduce it poetically; that is, he must resolve on such an adaption of his story as will admit of its retrocession to those primitive times and to that simple form of life.

The chorus thus renders more substantial service to the modern dramatist than to the old poet – and for this reason, that it transforms the commonplace actual world into the old poetical one; that it enables him to dispense with all that is repugnant to poetry, and conducts him back to the most simple, original, and genuine motives of action. The palaces of kings are in these days closed – courts of justice have been transferred from the gates of cities to the interior of buildings; writing has narrowed the province of speech; the people itself – the sensibly living mass – when it does not operate as brute force, has become a part of the civil polity, and thereby an abstract idea in our minds; the deities have returned within the bosoms of mankind. The poet must reopen the palaces – he must place courts of justice beneath the canopy of heaven – restore the gods, reproduce every extreme which the artificial frame of actual life has abolished – throw aside every factitious influence on the mind or condition of man which impedes the manifestation of his inward nature and primitive character, as the statuary rejects modern costume: – and of all external circumstances adopts nothing but what is palpable in the highest of forms – that of humanity.

But precisely as the painter throws around his figures draperies of ample volume, to fill up the space of his picture richly and gracefully, to arrange its several parts in harmonious masses, to give due play to color, which charms and refreshes the eye – and at once to envelop human forms in a spiritual veil, and make them visible – so the tragic poet inlays and entwines his rigidly contracted plot and the strong outlines of his characters with a tissue of lyrical magnificence, in which, as in flowing robes of purple, they move freely and nobly, with a sustained dignity and exalted repose.

In a higher organization, the material, or the elementary, need not be visible; the chemical color vanishes in the finer tints of the imaginative one. The material, however, has its peculiar effect, and may be included in an artistical composition. But it must deserve its place by animation, fulness and harmony, and give value to the ideal forms which it surrounds instead of stifling them by its weight.

In respect of the pictorial art, this is obvious to ordinary apprehension, yet in poetry likewise, and in the tragical kind, which is our immediate subject, the same doctrine holds good. Whatever fascinates the senses alone is mere matter, and the rude element of a work of art: – if it takes the lead it will inevitably destroy the poetical – which lies at the exact medium between the ideal and the sensible. But man is so constituted that he is ever impatient to pass from what is fanciful to what is common; and reflection must, therefore, have its place even in tragedy. But to merit this place it must, by means of delivery, recover what it wants in actual life; for if the two elements of poetry, the ideal and the sensible, do not operate with an inward mutuality, they must at least act as allies – or poetry is out of the question. If the balance be not intrinsically perfect, the equipoise can only be maintained by an agitation of both scales.