The Age of Dryden Part 7

'Wished morning's come! And now upon the plains And distant mountains, where they feed their flocks, The happy shepherds leave their homely huts, And with their pipes proclaim the new-born day.

The l.u.s.ty swain comes with his well-filled scrip Of healthful viands, which, when hunger calls, With much content and appet.i.te he eats, To follow in the fields his daily toil, And dress the grateful glebe that yields him fruits.

The beasts that under the warm hedges slept, And weathered out the cold bleak night, are up, And looking towards the neighbouring pastures, raise Their voice, and bid their fellow-brutes good-morrow.

The cheerful birds, too, on the tops of trees a.s.semble all in quires, and with their notes Salute and welcome up the rising sun.

There's no condition here so cursed as mine.'

_Venice Preserved_, Otway's most memorable work, though inferior in mere poetry and unstudied simplicity to _The Orphan_, surpa.s.ses it in tragic grandeur, in variety of action, and in intensity of interest. It has the further great advantage that the interest does not entirely arise from the situation, but that at least one of the characters is a skilful piece of painting from the life, and very probably from the author. In Jaffier we have a vivid portrait of the man who is entirely governed by the affections, and who sways from ardent resolution to a weakness hardly distinguishable from treachery, as friendship and love alternately incline him. The little we know of Otway warrants the impression that he was such a man, and a.s.suredly he could not have excited such warm interest in a character so feeble in his offence, so abject in his repentance, and in general so perilously verging on the despicable, without a keen sympathy with the subject of his portrait.

_Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner._ Pierre, though an imposing figure, is much less subtly painted than his friend; and Belvidera, her husband's evil genius, interests only through her sorrows. The 'despicable scenes of low farce' which eke the drama out, are a grievous blot upon it. M. Taine may be right in deeming some comic relief allowable, but such trash is neither relief nor comedy. The language of the serious portion of the play, however, is in general dignified and tragic. Perhaps the best conducted, as it is the best known, is that in which Pierre spurns the remorseful Jaffier:

'_Jaff._ I must be heard, I must have leave to speak.

Thou hast disgraced me, Pierre, by a vile blow: Had not a dagger done thee n.o.bler justice?

But use me as thou wilt, thou canst not wrong me, For I am fallen beneath the basest injuries; Yet look upon me with an eye of mercy, With pity and with charity behold me; Shut not thy heart against a friend's repentance, But, as there dwells a G.o.dlike nature in thee, Listen with mildness to my supplications.

_Pier._ What whining monk art thou? what holy cheat, That wouldst encroach upon my credulous ears, But cant'st thus vilely? Hence! I know thee not.

Dissemble and be nasty: leave me, hypocrite.

_Jaff._ Not know me, Pierre?

_Pier._ No, know thee not: what art thou?

_Jaff._ Jaffier, thy friend, thy once loved, valued friend, Though now deservedly scorned, and used most hardly.

_Pier._ Thou Jaffier! thou my once loved, valued friend?

By Heavens, thou liest! The man so called, my friend, Was generous, honest, faithful, just, and valiant, n.o.ble in mind, and in his person lovely, Dear to my eyes and tender to my heart: But thou, a wretched, base, false, worthless coward, Poor even in soul, and loathsome in thy aspect; All eyes must shun thee, and all hearts detest thee.

Pr'ythee avoid, nor longer cling thus round me, Like something baneful, that my nature's chilled at.

_Jaff._ I have not wronged thee, by these tears I have not, But still am honest, true, and hope, too, valiant; My mind still full of thee: therefore still n.o.ble.

Let not thy eyes then shun me, nor thy heart Detest me utterly: oh, look upon me, Look back and see my sad, sincere submission!

How my heart swells, as even 'twould burst my bosom, Fond of its goal, and labouring to be at thee!

What shall I do--what say to make thee hear me?

_Pier._ Hast thou not wronged me? Dar'st thou call thyself Jaffier, that once loved, valued friend of mine, And swear thou hast not wronged me? Whence these chains?

Whence the vile death which I may meet this moment?

Whence this dishonour, but from thee, thou false one?

_Jaff._ All's true, yet grant one thing, and I've done asking.

_Pier._ What's that?

_Jaff._ To take thy life on such conditions The Council have proposed: thou and thy friends May yet live long, and to be better treated.

_Pier._ Life! ask my life? confess! record myself A villain, for the privilege to breathe, And carry up and down this cursed city A discontented and repining spirit, Burthensome to itself, a few years longer, To lose it, may be, at last in a lewd quarrel For some new friend, treacherous and false as thou art!

No, this vile world and I have long been jangling, And cannot part on better terms than now, When only men like thee are fit to live in't.

_Jaff._ By all that's just--

_Pier._ Swear by some other powers, For thou hast broke that sacred oath too lately.

_Jaff._ Then, by that h.e.l.l I merit, I'll not leave thee, Till to thyself, at least, thou'rt reconciled, However thy resentments deal with me.

_Pier._ Not leave me!

_Jaff._ No; thou shalt not force me from thee.

Use me reproachfully, and like a slave; Tread on me, buffet me, heap wrongs on wrongs On my poor head; I'll bear it all with patience, Shall weary out thy most unfriendly cruelty: Lie at thy feet and kiss them, though they spurn me, Till, wounded by my sufferings, thou relent, And raise me to thy arms with dear forgiveness.

_Pier._ Art thou not--

_Jaff._ What?

_Pier._ A traitor?

_Jaff._ Yes.

_Pier._ A villain?

_Jaff._ Granted.

_Pier._ A coward, a most scandalous coward, Spiritless, void of honour, one who has sold Thy everlasting fame for shameless life?

_Jaff._ All, all, and more, much more: my faults are numberless.

_Pier._ And wouldst thou have me live on terms like thine?

Base as thou'rt false--

_Jaff._ No; 'tis to me that's granted.

The safety of thy life was all I aimed at, In recompense for faith and trust so broken.

_Pier._ I scorn it more, because preserved by thee: And as when first my foolish heart took pity On thy misfortunes, sought thee in thy miseries, Relieved thy wants, and raised thee from thy state Of wretchedness in which thy fate had plunged thee, To rank thee in my list of n.o.ble friends, All I received in surety for thy truth Were unregarded oaths; and this, this dagger, Given with a worthless pledge thou since hast stolen, So I restore it back to thee again; Swearing by all those powers which thou hast violated, Never from this cursed hour to hold communion, Friendship, or interest with thee, though our years Were to exceed those limited the world.

Take it--farewell!--for now I owe thee nothing.

_Jaff._ Say thou wilt live then.

_Pier._ For my life, dispose it Just as thou wilt, because 'tis what I'm tired with.

_Jaff._ O Pierre!

_Pier._ No more.

_Jaff._ My eyes won't lose the sight of thee, But languish after thine, and ache with gazing.

_Pier._ Leave me.--Nay, then thus, thus I throw thee from me, And curses, great as is thy falsehood, catch thee!'

[Sidenote: Nathaniel Lee (1653-1691).]

The only tragic dramatist of the age, after Dryden and Otway, who had any pretension to rank as a poet, was Nathaniel Lee, and his claims are not very high. Notwithstanding his absurd rants, however, there are fire and pa.s.sion in his verse which lift him out of the cla.s.s of mere playwrights. After receiving a Cambridge education, Lee came up to town to seek his fortune. Thrown on the world, it is said, by the failure of the Duke of Ormond to redeem his promises of patronage, Lee became an actor, but obtained no success, although celebrated for the beauty of his elocution as a dramatic reader. The transition from actor to author was easy. Lee produced three bad rhyming plays in the taste of the time, and in 1677 did himself more justice in _The Rival Queens_, a tragedy on the history of Alexander the Great, which kept the stage for nearly a century and a half. _Mithridates_ (1678) was also successful, and Dryden thought sufficiently well of Lee to combine with him in the production of an _Oedipus_, which continued to be acted until 1778, when the situation, rather than the diction, was found unendurable. Kemble wished to revive it so late as 1802, but was prevented by the reluctance of Mrs. Siddons. It is true that on a modern stage the piece must want the religious consecration which accompanied it on the Greek. Lee wrote on, enjoying the notoriety of the prohibition by authority of his _Lucius Junius Brutus_, in which allusions, merely imaginary, to the vices of Charles II., were discovered by the Court, and regaining his lost favour by the tragedy of _The Duke of Guise_ (1682), a play full of political allusions, in which also Dryden had a hand. In 1684 he was disabled by an attack of insanity, brought on, it is alleged, by his intemperate habits; and although he recovered sufficiently to be released from confinement, he wrote no more, his last two published plays being compositions of an earlier date. He died miserably in returning from the tavern on a winter's night, fallen down and stifled in the snow.

That Lee was a poet, a pa.s.sage quoted by Mr. Saintsbury would prove, had he written nothing else:

'Thou coward! yet Art living? canst not, wilt not, find the road To the great palace of magnificent death, Though thousand ways lead to his thousand doors, Which day and night are still unbarred for all?'