The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians Part 9

It is worth our trouble to examine briefly in what manner this pa.s.sion, which has always been deemed a weakness and a blemish in the greatest characters, got such footing upon our stage. Corneille, who was the first who brought the French tragedy to any perfection, and whom all the rest have followed, found the whole nation enamoured with the perusal of romances, and little disposed to admire any thing not resembling them.

From the desire of pleasing his audience, who were at the same time his judges, he endeavoured to move them in the manner they had been accustomed to be affected; and, by introducing love in his scenes, to bring them the nearer to the predominant taste of the age for romance. From the same source arose that multiplicity of incidents, episodes, and adventures, with which our tragic pieces are crowded and obscured; so contrary to probability, which will not admit such a number of extraordinary and surprising events in the short s.p.a.ce of four-and-twenty hours; so contrary to the simplicity of ancient tragedy; and so adapted to conceal, by the a.s.semblage of so many different objects, the sterility of the genius of a poet, more intent upon the marvellous, than upon the probable and natural.

Both the Greeks and Romans have preferred the iambic to the heroic verse in their tragedies; not only because the first has a kind of dignity better adapted to the stage, but, whilst it approaches nearer to prose, retains sufficiently the air of poetry to please the ear; and yet has too little of it to put the audience in mind of the poet, who ought not to appear at all in representations, where other persons are supposed to speak and act. Monsieur Dacier makes a very just reflection on this subject. He says, that it is the misfortune of our tragedy to have almost no other verse than what it has in common with epic poetry, elegy, pastoral, satire, and comedy; whereas the learned languages have a great variety of versification.

This inconvenience is highly obvious in our tragedy; which consequently is obliged to lose sight of nature and probability, as it obliges heroes, princes, kings, and queens, to express themselves in a pompous strain in their familiar conversation, which it would be ridiculous to attempt in real life. The giving utterance to the most impetuous pa.s.sions in an uniform cadence, and by hemistichs and rhymes, would undoubtedly be tedious and offensive to the ear, if the charms of poetry, the elegance of expression, and the spirit of the sentiments, and perhaps, more than all of them, the resistless force of custom, had not in a manner subjected our reason, and spread a veil before our judgment.

It was not chance, therefore, which suggested to the Greeks the use of iambics in their tragedy. Nature itself seems to have dictated that kind of verse to them. Instructed by the same unerring guide, they made choice of a different versification for the chorus, better adapted to the motions of the dance, and the variations of the song; because it was necessary for poetry here to shine out in all its l.u.s.tre, whilst the mere conversation between the real actors was suspended. The chorus was an embellishment of the representation, and a relaxation to the audience, and therefore required more exalted poetry and numbers to support it, when united with music and dancing.

Of the Old, Middle, and New Comedy.

Whilst tragedy was thus rising to perfection at Athens, comedy, the second species of dramatic poetry, and which, till then, had been much neglected, began to be cultivated with more attention. Nature was the common parent of both. We are sensibly affected with the dangers, distresses, misfortunes, and, in a word, with whatever relates to the lives and conduct of ill.u.s.trious persons; and this gave birth to tragedy. And we are as curious to know the adventures, conduct, and defects of our equals; which supply us with occasions of laughing, and being merry at the expense of others. Hence comedy derives itself; which is properly an image of private life. Its design is to expose defects and vices upon the stage, and, by affixing ridicule to them, to make them contemptible; and, consequently, to instruct by diverting. Ridicule, therefore, (or, to express the same word by another, pleasantry,) ought to prevail in comedy.

This species of entertainment took at different times three different forms at Athens, as well from the genius of the poets, as from the influence of the government, which occasioned various alterations in it.

The old comedy, so called by Horace,(194) and which he dates after the time of aeschylus, retained something of its original rudeness, and the liberty it had been used to take of throwing out coa.r.s.e jests and reviling the spectators from the cart of Thespis. Though it was become regular in its plan, and worthy of a great theatre, it had not learnt to be more reserved. It represented real transactions, with the names, dress, gestures, and likeness, in masks, of whomsoever it thought fit to sacrifice to the public derision. In a state where it was held good policy to unmask whatever carried the air of ambition, singularity, or knavery, comedy a.s.sumed the privilege to harangue, reform, and advise the people upon their most important interests. No one was spared in a city of so much liberty, or rather licentiousness, as Athens was at that time.

Generals, magistrates, government, the very G.o.ds were abandoned to the poet's satirical vein; and all was well received, provided the comedy was diverting, and the Attic salt not wanting.

In one of these comedies,(195) not only the priest of Jupiter determines to quit his service, because no more sacrifices are offered to the G.o.d; but Mercury himself comes, in a starving condition, to seek his fortune amongst mankind, and offers to serve as a porter, sutler, bailiff, guide, door-keeper; in short, in any capacity, rather than return to heaven. In another,(196) the same G.o.ds, reduced to the extremity of famine, from the birds having built a city in the air, whereby their provisions are cut off, and the smoke of incense and sacrifices prevented from ascending to heaven, depute three amba.s.sadors in the name of Jupiter to conclude a treaty of accommodation with the birds, upon such conditions as they shall approve. The chamber of audience, where the three famished G.o.ds are received, is a kitchen well stored with excellent game of all sorts. Here Hercules, deeply smitten with the smell of roast meat, which he apprehends to be more exquisite and nutritious than that of incense, begs leave to make his abode, and to turn the spit, and a.s.sist the cook upon occasion.

The other pieces of Aristophanes abound with strokes still more satirical and severe upon the princ.i.p.al divinities.

I am not much surprised at the poet's insulting the G.o.ds, and treating them with the utmost contempt, as from them he had nothing fear; but I cannot help wondering at his having brought the most ill.u.s.trious and powerful persons of Athens upon the stage, and presuming to attack the government itself, without any manner of respect or reserve.

Cleon having returned triumphant, contrary to the general expectation, from the expedition against Sphacteria, was looked upon by the people as the greatest captain of that age. Aristophanes, to set that bad man in a true light, who was the son of a tanner, and a tanner himself, and whose rise was owing solely to his temerity and impudence, was so bold as to make him the subject of a comedy,(197) without being awed by his power and influence: but he was obliged to play the part of Cleon himself, and appeared for the first time upon the stage in that character; not one of the comedians daring to represent it, nor to expose himself to the resentment of so formidable an enemy. His face was smeared over with wine-lees; because no workman could be found, that would venture to make a mask resembling Cleon, as was usual when persons were brought upon the stage. In this piece he reproaches him with embezzling the public treasures, with a violent pa.s.sion for bribes and presents, with craft in seducing the people, and denies him the glory of the action at Sphacteria, which he attributes chiefly to the share his colleague had in it.

In the _Acharnians_, he accuses Lamachus of having been made general, rather by bribery than merit. He imputes to him his youth, inexperience, and idleness; at the same time that he, and many others, whom he covertly designates, convert to their own use the rewards due only to valour and real services. He reproaches the republic with their preference of the younger citizens to the elder, in the government of the state, and the command of their armies. He tells them plainly, that when peace shall be concluded, neither Cleonymus, Hyperbolus, nor many other such knaves, all mentioned by name, shall have any share in the public affairs; they being always ready to accuse their fellow-citizens of crimes, and to enrich themselves by such informations.

In his comedy called the _Wasps_, imitated by Racine in his _Plaideurs_, he exposes the mad pa.s.sion of the people for prosecutions and trials at law, and the enormous injustice frequently committed in pa.s.sing sentence and giving judgment.

The poet,(198) concerned to see the republic obstinately bent upon the unhappy expedition to Sicily, endeavours to excite in the people a thorough disgust for so ruinous a war, and to inspire them with the desire of a peace, as much the interest of the victors as the vanquished, after a war of several years' duration, equally pernicious to each party, and capable of involving all Greece in ruin.

None of Aristophanes's pieces explains better his boldness, in speaking upon the most delicate affairs of the state in the crowded theatre, than his comedy called _Lysistrata_. One of the princ.i.p.al magistrates of Athens had a wife of that name, who is supposed to have taken it into her head to compel Greece to conclude a peace. She relates, how, during the war, the women inquiring of their husbands the result of their counsels, and whether they had not resolved to make peace with Sparta, received no answers but imperious looks, and orders to mind their own business: that, however, they perceived plainly to what a low condition the government was declined: that they took the liberty to remonstrate mildly to their husbands upon the sad consequences of their rash determinations, but that their humble representations had no other effect than to offend and enrage them: that, at length, being confirmed by the general opinion of all Attica, that there were no longer any men in the state, nor heads for the administration of affairs, their patience being quite exhausted, the women had thought it proper and advisable to take the government upon themselves, and preserve Greece, whether it would or no, from the folly and madness of its resolves. "For her part, she declares, that she has taken possession of the city and treasury, in order," says she, "to prevent Pisander and his confederates, the four hundred administrators, from exciting troubles, according to their custom, and from robbing the public as usual." (Was ever any thing so bold?) She goes on to prove, that the women only are capable of retrieving affairs by this burlesque argument; that admitting things to be in such a state of perplexity and confusion, the s.e.x, accustomed to untangling their threads, were the only persons to set them right again, as being best qualified with the necessary address, patience, and moderation. The Athenian politics are thus made inferior to those of the women, who are only represented in a ridiculous light, to turn the derision upon their husbands, who were engaged in the administration of the government.

These extracts from Aristophanes, taken almost word for word from father Brumoi, seemed to me very proper to give an insight into that poet's character, and the genius of the ancient comedy, which was, as we see, a satire of the most poignant and severe kind, that had a.s.sumed to itself an independency from respect to persons, and to which nothing was sacred. It is no wonder that Cicero condemns so licentious and uncurbed a liberty. It might, he says,(199) have been tolerable, had it attacked only bad citizens, and seditious orators, who endeavoured to raise commotions in the state, such as Cleon, Cleophon, and Hyperbolus; but when a Pericles, who for many years had governed the commonwealth both in war and peace with equal wisdom and authority (he might have added, and a Socrates, declared by Apollo the wisest of mankind) is brought upon the stage to be laughed at by the public, it is as if our Plautus or Naevius had attacked the Scipios, or Caecilius had dared to revile Marcus Cato in his plays.

That liberty is still more offensive to us, who are born, and live under a monarchical government, which is far from being favourable to licentiousness. But without intending to justify the conduct of Aristophanes, which is certainly inexcusable, I think, to judge properly of it, it would be necessary to lay aside the prejudices of birth, nations, and times, and to imagine we live in those remote ages in a state purely democratical. We must not fancy Aristophanes to have been a person of little consequence in his republic, as the comic writers generally are in our days. The king of Persia had a very different idea of him.(200) It is a known story, that in an audience of the Greek amba.s.sadors, his first inquiry was after a certain comic poet (meaning Aristophanes) that put all Greece in motion, and gave such effectual counsels against him.

Aristophanes did that upon the stage, which Demosthenes did afterwards in the public a.s.semblies. The poet's reproaches were no less animated than the orator's. In his comedies he uttered the same sentiments as he had a right to deliver from the public rostrum. They were addressed to the same people, upon the same occasions of the state, the same means of success, and the same obstacles to their measures. In Athens the whole people were the sovereign, and each of them had an equal share in the supreme authority. Upon this they were continually intent, were fond of discoursing upon it themselves, and of hearing the sentiments of others.

The public affairs were the business of every individual, on which they were desirous of being fully informed, that they might know how to conduct themselves on every occasion of war or peace, which frequently offered, and to decide upon their own, as well as upon the destiny of their allies or enemies. Hence rose the liberty taken by the comic poets, of discussing affairs of the state in their performances. The people were so far from being offended at it, or at the manner in which those writers treated the princ.i.p.al persons of the state, that they conceived their liberty in some measure to consist in it.

Three poets(201) particularly excelled in the old comedy; Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. The last is the only one of them, whose pieces have come down to us entire; and, out of the great number which he composed, eleven are all that remain. He flourished in an age when Greece abounded with great men, and was contemporary with Socrates and Euripides, whom he survived. During the Peloponnesian war, he made his greatest figure; less as a writer to amuse the people with his comedies, than as a censor of the government, retained to reform the state, and to be almost the arbiter of his country.

He is admired for an elegance, poignancy, and happiness of expression, or, in a word, that Attic salt and spirit, to which the Roman language could never attain, and for which Aristophanes(202) is more remarkable than any other of the Greek authors. His particular excellence was raillery. None ever touched what was ridiculous in the characters whom he wished to expose with such success, or knew better how to convey it in all its full force to others. But it would be necessary to have lived in his times, to be qualified to judge of this. The subtle salt and spirit of the ancient raillery, according to father Brumoi, is evaporated through length of time, and what remains of it is become flat and insipid to us; though the sharpest part will retain its vigour throughout all ages.

Two considerable defects are justly imputed to this poet, which very much obscure, if not entirely efface, his glory. These are, low buffoonery, and gross obscenity; and it has in vain been attempted to offer, in excuse for the first of these faults, the character of his audience; the bulk of which generally consisted of the poor, the ignorant, and dregs of the people, whom, however, it was as necessary to please, as the learned and the rich. The depraved taste of the lower order of people, which once banished Cratinus and his company, because his scenes were not grossly comic enough for them, is no excuse for Aristophanes, as Menander could find out the art of changing that grovelling taste, by introducing a species of comedy, not altogether so modest as Plutarch seems to insinuate, yet much less licentious than any before his time.

The gross obscenities, with which all Aristophanes's comedies abound, have no excuse; they only denote to what a pitch the libertinism of the spectators, and the depravity of the poet, had proceeded. Had he even impregnated them with the utmost wit, which however is not the case, the privilege of laughing himself, or of making others laugh, would have been too dearly purchased at the expense of decency and good manners.(203) And in this case it may well be said, that it were better to have no wit at all, than to make so ill a use of it.(204) F. Brumoi is very much to be commended for having taken care, in giving a general idea of Aristophanes's writings, to throw a veil over those parts of them that might have given offence to modesty. Though such behaviour be the indispensable rule of religion, it is not always observed by those who pique themselves most on their erudition, and sometimes prefer the t.i.tle of scholar to that of Christian.

The old comedy subsisted till Lysander's time; who, upon having made himself master of Athens, changed the form or the government, and put it into the hands of thirty of the princ.i.p.al citizens. The satirical liberty of the theatre was offensive to them, and therefore they thought fit to put a stop to it. The reason of this alteration is evident, and confirms the reflection made before upon the privilege which the poets possessed of criticizing with impunity the persons at the head of the state. The whole authority of Athens was then invested in tyrants. The democracy was abolished. The people had no longer any share in the government. They were no more the prince; their sovereignty had expired. The right of giving their opinions and suffrages upon affairs of state was at an end; nor dared they, either in their own persons or by the poets, presume to censure the sentiments and conduct of their masters. The calling persons by their names upon the stage was prohibited: but poetical ill-nature soon found the secret of eluding the intention of the law, and of making itself amends for the restraint which was imposed upon it by the necessity of using feigned names. It then applied itself to discover what was ridiculous in known characters, which it copied to the life, and from thence acquired the double advantage of gratifying the vanity of the poets, and the malice of the audience, in a more refined manner: the one had the delicate pleasure of putting the spectators upon guessing their meaning, and the other of not being mistaken in their suppositions, and of affixing the right name to the characters represented. Such was the comedy, since called the _Middle Comedy_, of which there are some instances in Aristophanes.

It continued till the time of Alexander the Great, who, having entirely a.s.sured himself of the empire of Greece by the defeat of the Thebans, caused a check to be put upon the licentiousness of the poets, which increased daily. From thence the _New Comedy_ took its birth, which was only an imitation of private life, and brought nothing upon the stage but feigned names, and fict.i.tious adventures.

Chacun peint avec art dans ce nouveau miroir, S'y vit avec plaisir, ou crut ne s'y pas voir.

L'avare des premiers rit du tableau fidele D'un avare souvent trace sur son modele; Et mille fois un fat, finement exprime, Meconnut le portrait sur lui-meme forme.

In this new gla.s.s, whilst each himself survey'd, He sat with pleasure, though himself was play'd: The miser grinn'd whilst avarice was drawn, Nor thought the faithful likeness was his own; His own dear self no imag'd fool could find, But saw a thousand other fops design'd.(205)

This may properly be called fine comedy, and is that of Menander. Of one hundred and eighty, or rather eighty plays, according to Suidas, composed by him, all of which Terence is said to have translated, there remain only a few fragments. We may form a judgment of the merit of the originals from the excellence of the copy. Quintilian, in speaking of Menander, is not afraid to say,(206) that with the beauty of his works, and the height of his reputation, he obscured, or rather obliterated, the fame of all other writers in the same way. He observes in another pa.s.sage,(207) that his own times were not so just to his merit as they ought to have been, which has been the fate of many others; but that he was sufficiently made amends by the favourable opinion of posterity. And indeed Philemon, a comic poet, who flourished about the same period, though older than Menander, was preferred before him.

The Theatre of the Ancients described.

I have already observed, that aeschylus was the first founder of a fixed and durable theatre adorned with suitable decorations. It was at first, as well as the amphitheatres, composed of wooden planks, the seats in which rose one above another; but those having one day broke down, by having too great a weight upon them, the Athenians, excessively enamoured of dramatic representations, were induced by that accident to erect those superb structures, which were imitated afterwards with so much splendour by the Roman magnificence. What I shall say of them, has almost as much relation to the Roman as the Athenian theatres; and is extracted entirely from M.

Boindin's learned dissertation upon the theatre of the ancients,(208) who has treated the subject in its fullest extent.

The theatre of the ancients was divided into three princ.i.p.al parts; each of which had its peculiar appellation. The division for the actors was called in general the scene, or stage; that for the spectators was particularly termed the theatre, which must have been of vast extent,(209) as at Athens it was capable of containing above thirty thousand persons; and the orchestra, which amongst the Greeks was the place a.s.signed for the pantomimes and dancers, though at Rome it was appropriated to the senators and vestal virgins.

The theatre was of a semicircular form on one side, and square on the other. The s.p.a.ce contained within the semicircle was allotted to the spectators, and had seats placed one above another to the top of the building. The square part in the front of it was appropriated to the actors; and in the interval, between both, was the orchestra.

The great theatres had three rows of porticoes, raised one upon another, which formed the body of the edifice, and at the same time three different stories for the seats. From the highest of those porticoes the women saw the representation, sheltered from the weather. The rest of the theatre was uncovered, and all the business of the stage was performed in the open air.

Each of these stories consisted of nine rows of seats, including the landing-place, which divided them from each other, and served as a pa.s.sage from side to side. But as this landing-place and pa.s.sage took up the s.p.a.ce of two benches, there were only seven to sit upon, and consequently in each story there were seven rows of seats. They were from fifteen to eighteen inches in height, and twice as much in breadth; so that the spectators had room to sit at their ease, and without being incommoded by the legs of the people above them, no foot-boards being provided for them.

Each of these stories of benches were divided in two different manners; in their height by the landing-places, called by the Romans _Praecinctiones_, and in their circ.u.mferences by several staircases, peculiar to each story, which intersecting them in right lines, tending towards the centre of the theatre, gave the form of wedges to the quant.i.ty of seats between them, from whence they were called _Cunei_.

Behind these stories of seats were covered galleries, through which the people thronged into the theatre by great square openings, contrived for that purpose in the walls next the seats. Those openings were called _Vomitoria_, from the mult.i.tude of people crowding through them into their places.

As the actors could not be heard to the extremity of the theatre, the Greeks contrived a means to supply that defect, and to augment the force of the voice, and make it more distinct and articulate. For that purpose they invented a kind of large vessels of copper, which were disposed under the seats of the theatre, in such a manner, as made all sounds strike upon the ear with more force and distinctness.

The orchestra being situated, as I have observed, between the two other parts of the theatre, of which one was circular, and the other square, it partic.i.p.ated of the form of each, and occupied the s.p.a.ce between both. It was divided into three parts.

The first and most considerable was more particularly called the orchestra, from a Greek word(210) that signifies to dance. It was appropriated to the pantomimes and dancers, and to all such subaltern actors as played between the acts, and at the end of the representations.

The second was named ??????, from its being square, in the form of an altar. Here the chorus was generally placed.

And in the third the Greeks disposed their band of music. They called it ?p?s??????, from its being situate at the bottom of the princ.i.p.al part of the theatre, to which they gave the general name of the scene.

I shall describe here this third part of the theatre, called the scene; which was also subdivided into three different parts.

The first and most considerable was properly called the scene, and gave its name to this whole division. It occupied the whole front of the building from side to side, and was the place allotted for the decorations. This front had two small wings at its extremity, from which hung a large curtain, that was let down to open the scene, and drawn up between the acts, when any thing in the representation made it necessary.

The second, called by the Greeks indifferently p??s??????, and ??te??? and by the Romans _proscenium_, and _pulpitum_, was a large open s.p.a.ce in front of the scene, in which the actors performed their parts, and which, by the help of the decorations, represented either a public square or forum, a common street, or the country; but the place so represented was always in the open air.

The third division was a part reserved behind the scenes, and called by the Greeks pa?as??????. Here the actors dressed themselves, and the decorations were locked up. In the same place were also kept the machines, of which the ancients had abundance in their theatres.

As only the porticoes and the building of the scene were roofed, it was necessary to draw sails, fastened with cords to masts, over the rest of the theatre, to screen the audience from the heat of the sun. But as this contrivance did not prevent the heat, occasioned by the perspiration and breath of so numerous an a.s.sembly, the ancients took care to allay it by a kind of rain; conveying the water for that use above the porticoes, which falling again in form of dew through an infinity of small pores concealed in the statues, with which the theatre abounded, did not only diffuse a grateful coolness all around, but the most fragrant exhalations along with it; for this dew was always perfumed. Whenever the representations were interrupted by storms, the spectators retired into the porticoes behind the seats of the theatre.