Athens: Its Rise and Fall Part 39

At length Orestes reveals himself, and now the plot draws to its catastrophe. Clytemnestra is alone in her house, preparing a caldron for the burial; Electra and the chorus are on the stage; the son--the avenger, is within; suddenly the cries of Clytemnestra are heard.

Again--again! Orestes re-enters a parricide! [367] He retires as Aegisthus is seen approaching; and the adulterous usurper is now presented to us for the first and last time--the crowning victim of the sacrifice. He comes flushed with joy and triumph. He has heard that the dreaded Orestes is no more. Electra entertains him a few moments with words darkly and exultingly ambiguous. He orders the doors to be thrown open, that all Argos and Mycenae may see the remains of his sole rival for the throne. The scene opens. On the threshold (where, with the Greeks, the corpse of the dead was usually set out to view) lies a body covered with a veil or pall. Orestes (the supposed Phocian) stands beside.

"Aegisthus. Great Jove! a grateful spectacle!--if thus May it be said unsinning; yet if she, The awful Nemesis, be nigh and hear, I do recall the sentence! Raise the pall.

The dead was kindred to me, and shall know A kinsman's sorrow.

Orestes. Lift thyself the pall; Not mine, but thine, the office to survey That which lies mute beneath, and to salute, Lovingly sad, the dead one.

Aegisthus. Be it so-- It is well said. Go thou and call the queen: Is she within?

Orestes. Look not around for her-- She is beside thee!"

Aegisthus lifts the pall, and beholds the body of Clytemnestra! He knows his fate at once. He knows that Orestes is before him. He attempts to speak. The fierce Electra cuts him short, and Orestes, with stern solemnity, conducts him from the stage to the spot on which Aegisthus had slain Agamemnon, so that the murderer might die by the son's hand in the place where the father fell. Thus artistically is the catastrophe not lessened in effect, but heightened, by removing the deed of death from the scene--the poetical justice, in the calm and premeditated selection of the place of slaughter, elevates what on the modern stage would be but a spectacle of physical horror into the deeper terror and sublimer gloom of a moral awe; and vindictive murder, losing its aspect, is idealized and hallowed into religious sacrifice.

IX. Of the seven plays left to us, "The Trachiniae" is usually considered the least imbued with the genius of Sophocles; and Schlegel has even ventured on the conjecture, singularly dest.i.tute of even plausible testimony, that Sophocles himself may not be the author.

The plot is soon told. The play is opened by Deianira, the wife of Hercules, who indulges in melancholy reflections on the misfortunes of her youth, and the continual absence of her husband, of whom no tidings have been heard for months. She soon learns from her son, Hyllus, that Hercules is said to be leading an expedition into Euboea; and our interest is immediately excited by Deianira's reply, which informs us that oracles had foretold that this was to be the crisis [368] in the life of Hercules--that he was now to enjoy rest from his labours, either in a peaceful home or in the grave; and she sends Hyllus to join his father, share his enterprise and fate. The chorus touchingly paint the anxious love of Deianira in the following lines:

"Thou, whom the starry-spangled Night did lull Into the sleep from which--her journey done Her parting steps awake thee--beautiful Fountain of flame, oh Sun!

Say, on what seagirt strand, or inland sh.o.r.e (For earth is bared before thy solemn gaze), In orient Asia, or where milder rays Tremble on western waters, wandereth he Whom bright Alcmena bore?

Ah! as some bird within a lonely nest The desolate wife puts sleep away with tears; And ever ills to be Haunting the absence with dim hosts of fears, Fond fancy shapes from air dark prophets of the breast."

In her answer to the virgin chorus, Deianira weaves a beautiful picture of maiden youth as a contrast to the cares and anxieties of wedded life:

"Youth pastures in a valley of its own; The scorching sun, the rains and winds of Heaven, Mar not the calm--yet virgin of all care; But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up The airy halls of life."

Deianira afterward receives fresh news of Hercules. She gives way to her joy. Lichas, the herald, enters, and confides to her charge some maidens whom the hero had captured. Deianira is struck with compa.s.sion for their lot, and with admiration of the n.o.ble bearing of one of them, Iole. She is about to busy herself in preparation for their comfort, when she learns that Iole is her rival--the beloved mistress of Hercules. The jealousy evinced by Deianira is beautifully soft and womanly [369]. Even in uttering a reproach on Hercules, she says she cannot feel anger with him, yet how can she dwell in the same house with a younger and fairer rival;

"She in whose years the flower that fades in mine Opens the leaves of beauty."

Her affection, her desire to retain the love of the hero, suggests to her remembrance a gift she had once received from a centaur who had fallen by the shaft of Hercules. The centaur had a.s.sured her that the blood from his wound, if preserved, would exercise the charm of a filter over the heart of Hercules, and would ever recall and fix upon her his affection. She had preserved the supposed charm--she steeps with it a robe that she purposes to send to Hercules as a gift; but Deianira, in this fatal resolve, shows all the timidity and sweetness of her nature; she even questions if it be a crime to regain the heart of her husband; she consults the chorus, who advise the experiment (and here, it may be observed, that this is skilfully done, for it conveys the excuse of Deianira, the chorus being, as it were, the representative of the audience). Accordingly, she sends the garment by Lichas. Scarce has the herald gone, ere Deianira is terrified by a strange phenomenon: a part of the wool with which the supposed filter had been applied to the garment was thrown into the sunlight, upon which it withered away--"crumbling like sawdust"--while on the spot where it fell a sort of venomous foam froths up. While relating this phenomenon to the chorus, her son, Hyllus, returns [370], and relates the agonies of his father under the poisoned garment: he had indued the robe on the occasion of solemn sacrifice, and all was rejoicing, when,

"As from the sacred offering and the pile The flame broke forth,"

the poison began to work, the tunic clung to the limbs of the hero, glued as if by the artificer, and, in his agony and madness, Hercules dashes Lichas, who brought him the fatal gift, down the rock, and is now on his way home. On hearing these news and the reproaches of her son, Deianira steals silently away, and destroys herself upon the bridal-bed. The remainder of the play is very feeble. Hercules is represented in his anguish, which is but the mere raving of physical pain; and after enjoining his son to marry Iole (the innocent cause of his own sufferings), and to place him yet living upon his funeral pyre, the play ends.

The beauty of the "Trachiniae" is in detached pa.s.sages, in some exquisite bursts by the chorus, and in the character of Deianira, whose artifice to regain the love of her consort, unhappily as it terminates, is redeemed by a meekness of nature, a delicacy of sentiment, and an anxious, earnest, unreproachful devotion of conjugal love, which might alone suffice to show the absurdity of modern declamations on the debas.e.m.e.nt of women, and the absence of pure and true love in that land from which Sophocles drew his experience.

X. The "Ajax" is far superior to the "Trachiniae." The subject is one that none but a Greek poet could have thought of or a Greek audience have admired. The master-pa.s.sion of a Greek was emulation-- the subject of the "Ajax" is emulation defeated. He has lost to Ulysses the prize of the arms of Achilles, and the shame of being vanquished has deprived him of his senses.

In the fury of madness he sallies from his tent at night--slaughters the flocks, in which his insanity sees the Greeks, whose award has galled and humbled him--and supposes he has slain the Atridae and captured Ulysses. It is in this play that Sophocles has, to a certain extent, attempted that most effective of all combinations in the hands of a master--the combination of the ludicrous and the terrible [371]: as the chorus implies, "it is to laugh and to weep." But when the scene, opening, discovers Ajax sitting amid the slaughtered victims-- when that haughty hero awakens from his delirium--when he is aware that he has exposed himself to the mockery and derision of his foes-- the effect is almost too painful even for tragedy. In contrast to Ajax is the soothing and tender Tecmessa. The women of Sophocles are, indeed, gifted with an astonishing mixture of majesty and sweetness.

After a very pathetic farewell with his young son, Ajax affects to be reconciled to his lot, disguises the resolution he has formed, and by one of those artful transitions of emotion which at once vary and heighten interest on the stage, the chorus, before lamenting, bursts into a strain of congratulation and joy. The heavy affliction has pa.s.sed away--Ajax is restored. The Nuntius arrives from the camp.

Calchas, the soothsayer, has besought Teucer, the hero's brother, not to permit Ajax to quit his tent that day, for on that day only Minerva persecutes him; and if he survive it, he may yet be preserved and prosper. But Ajax has already wandered away, none know whither.

Tecmessa hastens in search of him, and, by a very rare departure from the customs of the Greek stage, the chorus follow.

Ajax appears again. His pa.s.sions are now calm and concentrated, but they lead him on to death. He has been shamed, dishonoured--he has made himself a mockery to his foes. n.o.bly to live or n.o.bly to die is the sole choice of a brave man. It is characteristic of the Greek temperament, that the personages of the Greek poetry ever bid a last lingering and half-reluctant farewell to the sun. There is a magnificent fulness of life in those children of the beautiful West; the sun is to them as a familiar friend--the affliction or the terror of Hades is in the thought that its fields are sunless. The orb which animated their temperate heaven, which ripened their fertile earth, in which they saw the type of eternal youth, of surpa.s.sing beauty, of incarnate poetry--human in its a.s.sociations, and yet divine in its nature--is equally beloved and equally to be mourned by the maiden tenderness of Antigone or the sullen majesty of Ajax. In a Chaldaean poem the hero would have bid farewell to the stars!

It is thus that Ajax concludes his celebrated soliloquy.

"And thou that mak'st high heaven thy chariot-course, Oh sun--when gazing on my father-land, Draw back thy golden rein, and tell my woes To the old man, my father--and to her Who nursed me at her bosom--my poor mother!

There will be wailing through the echoing walls When--but away with thoughts like these!--the hour Brings on the ripening deed. Death, death, look on me!

Did I say death?--it was a waste of words; We shall be friends hereafter.

'Tis the DAY, Present and breathing round me, and the car Of the sweet sun, that never shall again Receive my greeting!--henceforth time is sunless, And day a thing that is not! Beautiful light, My Salamis--my country--and the floor Of my dear household hearth--and thou, bright Athens, Thou--for thy sons and I were boys together-- Fountains and rivers, and ye Trojan plains, I loved ye as my fosterers--fare ye well!

Take in these words, the last earth hears from Ajax-- All else unspoken, in a spectre land I'll whisper to the dead!"

Ajax perishes on his sword--but the interest of the play survives him.

For with the Greeks, burial rather than death made the great close of life. Teucer is introduced to us; the protector of the hero's remains and his character, at once fierce and tender, is a sketch of extraordinary power. Agamemnon, on the contrary--also not presented to us till after the death of Ajax--is but a boisterous tyrant [372].

Finally, by the generous intercession of Ulysses, who redeems his character from the unfavourable conception we formed of him at the commencement of the play, the funeral rites are accorded, and a didactic and solemn moral from the chorus concludes the whole.

XI. The "Philoctetes" has always been ranked by critics among the most elaborate and polished of the tragedies of Sophocles. In some respects it deserves the eulogies bestowed on it. But one great fault in the conception will, I think, be apparent on the simple statement of the plot.

Philoctetes, the friend and armour-bearer of Hercules, and the heir of that hero's unerring shafts and bow, had, while the Grecian fleet anch.o.r.ed at Chryse (a small isle in the Aegaean), been bitten in the foot by a serpent; the pain of the wound was insufferable--the shrieks and groans of Philoctetes disturbed the libations and sacrifices of the Greeks. And Ulysses and Diomed, when the fleet proceeded, left him, while asleep, on the wild and rocky solitudes of Lemnos. There, till the tenth year of the Trojan siege, he dragged out an agonizing life. The soothsayer, Helenus, then declared that Troy could not fall till Philoctetes appeared in the Grecian camp with the arrows and bow of Hercules. Ulysses undertakes to effect this object, and, with Neoptolemus (son of Achilles), departs for Lemnos. Here the play opens. A wild and desolate sh.o.r.e--a cavern with two mouths (so that in winter there might be a double place to catch the sunshine, and in summer a twofold entrance for the breeze), and a little fountain of pure water, designate the abode of Philoctetes.

Agreeably to his character, it is by deceit and stratagem that Ulysses is to gain his object. Neoptolemus is to dupe him whom he has never seen with professions of friendship and offers of services, and to snare away the consecrated weapons. Neoptolemus--whose character is a sketch which Shakspeare alone could have bodied out--has all the generous ardour and honesty of youth, but he has also its timid irresolution--its docile submission to the great--its fear of the censure of the world. He recoils from the base task proposed to him; he would prefer violence to fraud; yet he dreads lest, having undertaken the enterprise, his refusal to act should be considered treachery to his coadjutor. It is with a deep and melancholy wisdom that Ulysses, who seems to comtemplate his struggles with compa.s.sionate and not displeased superiority, thus attempts to reconcile the young man:

"Son of a n.o.ble sire! I too, in youth, Had thy plain speech and thine impatient arm: But a stern test is time! I have lived to see That among men the tools of power and empire Are subtle words--not deeds."

Neoptolemus is overruled. Ulysses withdraws, Philoctetes appears.

The delight of the lonely wretch on hearing his native language; on seeing the son of Achilles--his description of his feelings when he first found himself abandoned in the desert--his relation of the hardships he has since undergone, are highly pathetic. He implores Neoptolemus to bear him away, and when the youth consents, he bursts into an exclamation of joy, which, to the audience, in the secret of the perfidy to be practised on him, must have excited the most lively emotions. The characteristic excellence of Sophocles is, that in his most majestic creations he always contrives to introduce the sweetest touches of humanity.--Philoctetes will not even quit his miserable desert until he has returned to his cave to bid it farewell--to kiss the only shelter that did not deny a refuge to his woes. In the joy of his heart he thinks, poor dupe, that he has found faith in man--in youth. He trusts the arrows and the bow to the hand of Neoptolemus.

Then, as he attempts to crawl along, the sharp agony of his wound completely overmasters him. He endeavours in vain to stifle his groans; the body conquers the mind. This seems to me, as I shall presently again observe, the blot of the play; it is a mere exhibition of physical pain. The torture exhausts, till insensibility or sleep comes over him. He lies down to rest, and the young man watches over him. The picture is striking. Neoptolemus, at war with himself, does not seize the occasion. Philoctetes wakes. He is ready to go on board; he implores and urges instant departure. Neoptolemus recoils-- the suspicions of Philoctetes are awakened; he thinks that this stranger, too, will abandon him. At length the young man, by a violent effort, speaks abruptly out, "Thou must sail to Troy--to the Greeks--the Atridae."

"The Greeks--the Atridae!" the betrayers of Philoctetes--those beyond pardon--those whom for ten years he has pursued with the curses of a wronged, and deserted, and solitary spirit. "Give me back," he cries, "my bow and arrows." And when Neoptolemus refuses, he pours forth a torrent of reproach. The son of the truth--telling Achilles can withstand no longer. He is about to restore the weapons, when Ulysses rushes on the stage and prevents him.

At length, the sufferer is to be left--left once more alone in the desert. He cannot go with his betrayers--he cannot give glory and conquest to his inhuman foes; in the wrath of his indignant heart even the desert is sweeter than the Grecian camp. And how is he to sustain himself without his shafts! Famine adds a new horror to his dreary solitude, and the wild beasts may now pierce into his cavern: but their cruelty would be mercy! His contradictory and tempestuous emotions, as the sailors that compose the chorus are about to depart, are thus told.

The chorus entreat him to accompany them.

Phil. Begone.

Chor. It is a friendly bidding--we obey-- Come, let us go. To ship, my comrades.

Phil. No-- No, do not go--by the great Jove, who hears Men's curses--do not go.

Chor. Be calm.

Phil. Sweet strangers!

In mercy, leave me not.

Chor. But now you bade us!

Phil. Ay--meet cause for chiding, That a poor desperate wretch, maddened with pain, Should talk as madmen do!

Chor. Come, then, with us.

Phil. Never! oh--never! Hear me--not if all The lightnings of the thunder-G.o.d were made Allies with you, to blast me! Perish Troy, And all beleaguered round its walls--yea; all Who had the heart to spurn a wounded wretch; But, but--nay--yes--one prayer, one boon accord me.

Chor. What wouldst thou have?

Phil. A sword, an axe, a something; So it can strike, no matter!

Chor. Nay--for what?

Phil. What! for this hand to hew me off this head-- These limbs! To death, to solemn death, at last My spirit calls me.

Chor. Why?

Phil. To seek my father.

Chor. On earth?

Phil. In Hades.

Having thus worked us up to the utmost point of sympathy with the abandoned Philoctetes, the poet now gradually sheds a gentler and holier light over the intense gloom to which we had been led.

Neoptolemus, touched with generous remorse, steals back to give the betrayed warrior his weapons--he is watched by the vigilant Ulysses-- an angry altercation takes place between them. Ulysses, finding he cannot intimidate, prudently avoids personal encounter with the son of Achilles, and departs to apprize the host of the backsliding of his comrade.--A most beautiful scene, in which Neoptolemus restores the weapons to Philoctetes--a scene which must have commanded the most exquisite tears and the most rapturous applauses of the audience, ensues; and, finally, the G.o.d so useful to the ancient poets brings all things, contrary to the general rule of Aristotle [373], to a happy close. Hercules appears and induces his former friend to accompany Neoptolemus to the Grecian camp, where his wound shall be healed.. The farewell of Philoctetes to his cavern--to the nymphs of the meadows--to the roar of the ocean, whose spray the south wind dashed through his rude abode--to the Lycian stream and the plain of Lemnos--is left to linger on the ear like a solemn hymn, in which the little that is mournful only heightens the majestic sweetness of all that is musical. The dramatic art in the several scenes of this play Sophocles has never excelled, and scarcely equalled. The contrast of character in Ulysses and Neoptolemus has in it a reality, a human strength and truth, that is more common to the modern than the ancient drama. But still the fault of the story is partly that the plot rests upon a base and ign.o.ble fraud, and princ.i.p.ally that our pity is appealed to by the coa.r.s.e sympathy with physical pain: the rags that covered the sores, the tainted corruption of the ulcers, are brought to bear, not so much on the mind as on the nerves; and when the hero is represented as shrinking with corporeal agony--the blood oozing from his foot, the livid sweat rolling down the brow--we sicken and turn away from the spectacle; we have no longer that pleasure in our own pain which ought to be the characteristic of true tragedy. It is idle to vindicate this error by any dissimilarity between ancient and modern dramatic art. As nature, so art, always has some universal and permanent laws. Longinus rightly considers pathos a part of the sublime, for pity ought to elevate us; but there is nothing to elevate us in the noisome wounds, even of a mythical hero; our human nature is too much forced back into itself--and a proof that in this the ancient art did not differ from the modern, is in the exceeding rarity with which bodily pain is made the instrument of compa.s.sion with the Greek tragedians. The Philoctetes and the Hercules are among the exceptions that prove the rule. [374]

XII. Another drawback to our admiration of the Philoctetes is in the comparison it involuntarily courts with the Prometheus of Aeschylus.