Scenes worthy of Lulli' are not wanting; Almeria, like Armide, comes to slay Cortez in his sleep, and suddenly conceives a love for him. Yet the libretti of the opera have no incongruities; they avoid all which might shock the imagination or the eyes; they are written for men of taste, who shun ugliness and heaviness of any sort. Would you believe it? In the Indian Emperor, Montezuma is tortured on the stage, and to cap all, a priest tries to convert him in the meanwhile. I recognise in this frightful pedantry the handsome cavaliers of the time, logicians and hangmen, who fed on controversy, and for pleasure went to look at the tortures of the Puritans. I recognise behind these heaps of improbabilities and adventures the puerile and worn-out courtiers, who, sodden with wine, were past seeing discordances, and whose nerves were only stirred by the shock of surprises and the barbarity of events. Let us go still further. Dryden would set up on his stage the beauties of French tragedy, and in the first place, nobility of sentiments. Is it enough to copy, as he does, phrases of chivalry? He would need a whole world, for a whole world is necessary to form noble souls. Virtue, in the French tragic poets, is founded on reason, religion, education, philosophy. Their characters have that uprightness of mind, that clearness of logic, that lofty judgment, which plant in a man settled maximis and self-government. We perceive in their company the doctrines of Bossuet and Descartes; with them, reflection aids conscience; the habits of society add tact and finesse. The avoidance of violent actions and physical horrors, the meed of order and fable, the art of disguising or shunning coarse or low-bred persons, the continuous perfection of the most measured and noble style, everything contributes to raise the stage to a sublime region, and we believe in higher souls by seeing them in a purer air. Can we believe in them in Dryden? Frightful or infamous characters every instant drag us down by their crudities in their own mire. Maximin, 1 Lulli (1633-1687), a renowned Italian composer. Armide is one of his chief works.-TR. * Christian Priest. But we by martyrdom our faith avow. To prove religion true, If either wit or sufferings would suffice, All faiths afford the constant and the wise, And yet even they, by education sway'd, In age defend what infancy obeyed. Christian Priest. Since age by erring childhood is misled, Montezuma. Man, and not err! what reason can you give? Pizarro. Increase their pains, the cords are yet too slack. -The Indian Emperor, ii. 2 having stabbed Placidius, sits on his body, stabs him twice more, and says to the guards: 'Bring me Porphyrius and my empress dead : I would brave heaven, in my each hand a head.'1 Nourmahal, repulsed by her husband's son, insists four times with such indecent pedantry as this: And why this niceness to that pleasure shown, ... And doubled by their love their piety. . . Illusion vanishes at once; instead of being in a room with noble characters, we meet with a mad prostitute and a drunken savage. Lift the masks; the others are little better. Almeria, to whom a crown is offered, says insolently: 'I take this garland, not as given by you, But as my merit, and my beauty's due.'3 Indamora, to whom an old courtier makes love, settles him with the boastfulness of an upstart and the coarseness of a kitchen-maid: 'Were I no queen, did you my beauty weigh, My youth in bloom, your age in its decay.'4 None of these heroines know how to conduct themselves; they look on impertinence as dignity, sensuality as tenderness; they have the 1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 5. 1. When dying Maximin says: And shoving back this earth on which I sit, I'll mount, and scatter all the Gods I hit.' 2 Aureng-Zebe, v. 4. 1. Dryden thought he was imitating Racine, when six lines further on he makes Nourmahal say: I am not changed, I love my husband still; And all your father shines more bright in you.' Racine's Phèdre (2. 5) thinks her husband Theseus dead, and says to her stepson Hippolytus: 'Oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée: Je l'aime .. Mais fidèle, mais fier, et même un peu farouche, Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage; According to a note in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden's works, Langbaine traces this speech also to Seneca's Hippolytus.--TR. 3 The Indian Emperor, ii. 2. 4 Aureng-Zebe, v. 2. 1. recklessness of the courtesan, the jealousies of the grisette, the pettiness of a chapman's wife, the billingsgate of a fishwoman. The heroes are the most unpleasant of swashbucklers. Leonidas, first recognised as hereditary prince, then suddenly forsaken, consoles himself with this modest reflection: "Tis true I am alone. So was the godhead, ere he made the world, And better served himself than served by nature. . . . I have scene enough within To exercise my virtue.'1 2 Shall I speak of that great trumpet-blower Almanzor, painted, as Dryden confesses, after Artaban, a redresser of wrongs, a battalionsmiter, a destroyer of kingdoms ?3 They are but overcharged sentiments, extemporised devotions, exaggerated generosities, high-sounding brag of a clumsy chivalry; at bottom the characters are clods and barbarians, who have tried to deck themselves in French honour and fashionable politeness. And such, in fact, was the English court: it imitated that of Louis XIV. as a sign-painter imitates an artist. It had neither taste nor refinement, and wished to appear as if it possessed them. Panders and licentious women, bullying or butchering courtiers, who would go and see Harrison drawn, or mutilate Coventry, maids of honour who have awkward accidents at a ball, or sell to the planters the convicts presented to them, a palace full of baying dogs and yelling gamesters, a king who would bandy obscenities in public with his halfnaked mistresses,—such was this illustrious society; from French modes they took but those of dress, from their noble sentiments but highsounding words. IV. The second point worthy of imitation in classical tragedy is the style. Dryden, in fact, purifies his own, and renders it more clear, by introducing close reasoning and precise words. He has oratorical discussions like Corneille, well-delivered retorts, symmetrical, like a 1 Marriage à la Mode, iv. 3. 1. The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of Homer, the next from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third from the Artaban of Monsieur Calpranède.'-Preface to Almanzor. 3 The Moors have heaven, and me, to assist their cause' (i. 1). I'll whistle thy tame fortune after me' (3. 1). He falls in love, and speaks thus: "Tis he; I feel him now in every part; Like a new lord he vaunts about my heart, Surveys in state each corner of my breast, While poor fierce I, that was, am dispossess'd' (3. 1). 4 See vol. i. 471. Compare the song of the Zambra dance in the first part of Almanzor and Almahide, 3. 1. duel of argument. He has maxims vigorously enclosed in the compass of a single line, distinctions, developments, and the whole art of special pleading. He has happy antitheses, ornamental epithets, finely-wrought comparisons, and all the artifices of the literary mind. What is most striking is, that he abandons the dramatic and national verse, which is without rhyme, and the mixture of prose and verse common to the old authors, for a rhymed tragedy like the French, fancying that he is thus inventing a new species, which he calls heroic play. But in this transformation the good perished, the bad remains. For mark, rhyme is a different thing in different races. To an Englishman it resembles a song, and transports him at once to an ideal and fairy world. To a Frenchman it is only a conventionalism or an expediency, and transports him at once to an ante-chamber or a drawing-room; to him it is an ornamental dress and nothing more; if it mars prose, it ennobles it; it imposes respect, not enthusiasm, and changes a vulgar into a high-bred style. Moreover, in French aristocratic verse everything is connected; pedantry, logical machinery of every kind, is excluded from it; there is nothing more disagreeable to well-bred and refined persons than the scholastic rust. Images are rare, but always well kept up; bold poesy, real fantasy, have no place in it; their brilliancy and divergencies would derange the politeness and regular flow of the social world. The right word, the prominence of free expressions, are not to be met with in it; general terms, always rather threadbare, suit best the caution and niceties of select society. Dryden stumbles heavily against all these rules. His rhymes, to an Englishman's ear, scatter at once the whole illusion of the stage; they see that the characters who speak thus are but squeaking mannikins; he himself admits that his heroic tragedy is only fit to represent on the stage chivalric poems like those of Ariosto and Spenser. Poetic dash gives the finishing stroke to all likelihood. Would you recognise the dramatic accent in this epic comparison ? 'As some fair tulip, by a storm oppress'd, And, bending to the blast, all pale and dead, Hears, from within, the wind sing round its head,— So, shrouded up, your beauty disappears: Unveil, my love, and lay aside your fears, The storm, that caused your fright, is pass'd and done.'1 What a singular triumphal song are these concetti of Cortez as he lands: 'On what new happy climate are we thrown, So long kept secret, and so lately known? As if our old world modestly withdrew, And here in private had brought forth a new.' 2 The first part of Almanzor and Almahide, iv. 5. 2. Think how these patches of colour would contrast with the sober design of French dissertation. Here lovers lay siege with metaphors; there a wooer, in order to magnify the beafities of his mistress, says that 'bloody hearts lie panting in her hand. In every page harsh or vulgar words spoil the regularity of a noble style. Ponderous logic is broadly displayed in the speeches of princesses. 'Two ifs,' says Lyndaraxa, 'scarce make one possibility." Dryden sets his college cap on the heads of these poor women. Neither he nor his characters are well brought up; they have taken from the French but the outer garb of the bar and the schools; they have left behind symmetrical eloquence, measured diction, elegance and delicacy. A while before, the licentious coarseness of the Restoration pierced the mask of the fine sentiments with which it was covered; now the rude English imagination breaks the oratorical mould in which it tried to enclose itself. Let us turn the picture. Dryden would keep the foundation of the old English drama, and retains the abundance of events, the variety of plot, the surprise of accident, and the physical representation of bloody or violent action. He kills as many people as Shakspeare. Unfortunately, all poets are not justified in killing. When they take their spectators among murders and sudden accidents, they ought to have a hundred hidden preparations. Fancy a sort of rapture and romantic folly, a most daring style, eccentric and poetical, songs, pictures, reveries spoken aloud, frank scorn of all verisimilitude, a mixture of tenderness, philosophy, and mockery, all the retiring charms of varied feelings, all the whims of a buoyant fancy; the truth of events matters little. No one before Cymbeline or As you Like it was a politician or a historian; no one took these military processions, these accessions of princes, seriously; the spectators were present at dissolving views. They did not demand that things should proceed after the laws of nature; on the contrary, they willingly did require that they should proceed against the laws of nature. The irrationality is the charm. That new world must be all imagination; if it was only so by halves, no one would care to rise to it. This is why we do not rise to Dryden's. A queen dethroned, then suddenly set up again; a tyrant who finds his lost son, is deceived, adopts a girl in his place; a young prince led to punishment, who snatches the sword of a guard, and recovers his crown: such are the romances which constitute the Maiden Queen and the Marriage à la Mode. We can imagine what a display classical dissertations make in this medley; solid reason beats down imagination, stroke after stroke, to the ground. We cannot tell if the matter be a true portrait or a fancy painting; we remain suspended between truth and fancy; we should like either to get up to 1 The first part of Almanzor and Almahide, iv. 2. 1. This same Lyndaraxa says also to Abdalla (4. 2), 'Poor women's thoughts are all extempore, and logical, and coarse;' in Act 2. 1, to the same lover, who entreats her to make him ‘happy,' 'If I make you so, you shall pay my price.' |