13.4.
mvp-aristotle-comment-41
13.4
THE CHARACTER THAT REMAINS IS A MEDIUM BETWEEN THESE: A MAN NEITHER EMINENTLY CONSPICUOUS FOR VIRTUE AND JUSTICE, NOR REDUCED TO MISERY BY WICKEDNESS AND VILLAINY; BUT RATHER ONE IN HIGH REPUTATION AND PROSPERITY SUFFERING THROUGH SOME HUMAN FRAILTY.
THIS choice of the proper character for tragedy is justified by reason and experience. The critic has already objected both to confummate virtue and confummate vice. The person he has now selected partakes enough of the first to interest us in his favor, and of the last to prevent our indignation and disgust at his sufferings. The crime, or the error, that occafions his distress, should not be brought upon him in confequence of a good action, (which sometimes happens in real life) or be even involuntary; neither should it arise from radical and deliberate villainy, but should result from fome violent paffion, or imprudent action, in a character not devoid of good qualities, though by no means perfect. In fuch colors has Shakespear drawn most of his principal tragic characters. Lear without radical vice is rash and choleric; Macbeth in the beginning of the play, exhibits a continued struggle between honor and ambition; Othello acts under the influence of an ungovernable paffion; Richard the Third appears an exception; and if we mean to reconcile the conduct of that play to this rule of Aristotle, we must I think adopt an excuse, mentioned indeed, but rejected by M. Leffing in
، [N] in his criticism on a German tragedy formed on the same story. • I may be told, perhaps we must give up Richard: the piece indeed • bears his name, but he is not for that reason the hero of it, nor the ، ⚫ character by which the proper effect of tragedy is attained: he can only be confidered as the cause of exciting our pity for others. Are not the queen and the princes objects of our pity?" The objection he starts to this, and it appears a just one, is that these characters are as improper from their innocence as Richard is from his guilt. The King Richard of Shakespear however has so many strokes of courage and dignity in his character, that his vices are sometimes hidden by them, and Cibber has even made his rival Richmond bear teftimony to his bravery when on the point of engaging him [o]. But no such circumstance attended the Richard of the German poet, who according to M. Lessing, ' is [P] so horrible a wretch, a devil incarnate so wicked, in whom it is so impoffible for us to find the smallest • trait of resemblance with ourselves, that I think we could fee him • fuffer all the torments of hell before our eyes without being affected by ، it, without having the least fear, that if such punishment is the consequence of fuch crimes only, it can ever fall upon ourselves.' DRA- MATURGIE, Part 11. p. 35. [N] Dramaturgie, Part 11. p. 36. [o] Nor should thy prowess Richard want my praise, But that thy cruel deeds have stampt thee tyrant.' [P] Un drôle fi horrible.' If the French tranflator has done justice to his original in this expreffion, the German Richard must have been totally deficient in poetical goodness, taken in the sense in which I conceive it used by Aristotle in chapter xv. See note 1, on that chapter. Modern
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. Modern manners have given to the theatre this defideratum of Ariftotle; the ἁμαρτία μεγάλη, the GREAT FRAILTY as it is excellently expressed by Mr. Twining, which is capable of involving a character in the deepest and most pathetic distress, and at the fame time so far from injuring its moral perfections, that it raises it in our esteem and occafions unmerited distress, without exciting either indignation or disgust. I mean the pafsion of love; that grand hinge on which modern fable, narrative as well as dramatic generally, I had almost said universally, turns. This paffion is to be found in ancient fable, but without the same diftinguishing character. It was confidered like every other passion as a fource of misfortune, and when ungovernable and carried to excess, as a vice. But in modern fable, however violent in its effects, it appears to stamp merit on the character in proportion to its force. I have no doubt that if Mark Antony had been prior to Aristotle he would have conceived him as a very bad person falling from happiness to misery in consequence of his crimes, and confequently no proper fubject for a tragic story. But the magic of this paffion, dressed in the garb of modern gallantry, has changed his nature; and the inglorious death of an abandoned profligate in the lap of floth and prostitution, becomes the glorious facrifice of a generous hero at the shrine of difinterested love. Thomson's tragedy of Tancred and Sigismunda furnishes another instance of this kind. Old Siffredi, who fills the office of the ancient chorus, though throughout the piece he is continually urging Tancred to facrifice his paffion to his duty, in his concluding speech inculcates the neceffity of indulging the passions. I much doubt if such sentiments would have been received with great applause by an Athenian audience. Kk Love
! Love is rather more confpicuous among the Roman poets; but the principal female character in the comedies of Terence is generally a prostitute, while the young woman of virtue is reduced to the situation of a mute. What are the Citheris, the Cynthia, the Delia and the Neæra of Gallus Propertius and Tibullus [Q], but mercenary harlots? The observation of Voltaire on the passion of love, as a subject for the drama, seems perfectly just. It is,' he says, ' of all the passions the ، moft theatrical, the most fertile in sentiments, the most varied. It ought to be the foul of a dramatic piece, or be entirely banished from ' from it.' EPISTLE TO M. MAFFEI ON MEROPE. What Voltaire discovered through art, our Shakespear produced from nature near two centuries before. The passion of love is no where more the entire subject, or if you will the foul of the drama, than in Cymbeline and [R] Romeo and Juliet; but he has introduced no infipid love tale as an under plot in his Macbeth, his Othello, or any of his historical plays, as Addison has in his Cato, and Dryden and Corneille have in the tragedy of Edipus. Shakespear however, the best master of general nature, [Q] Hammond in his Love Elegies, is a direct tranflator of Tibullus: his manners are all Roman. He abuses his mistresses for their venality, and talks of making a campaign, not as his nobler editor suggests to forget Neæra, but to accumulate money to fatisfy her avarice. And I through war must seek detefted gold, • Not for myself, but for my venal fair.' ELEGY II. I believe a campaign has seldom been the road to wealth except to the general and the commiffary. [R] Of this laft tragedy Lessing says, 'I know but of one tragedy to which love has put his * own hand, it is the Romeo and Juliet of Shakespear.' DRAMATURGIE, Part I. page 30. knew
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. knew that love, though a very dramatic passion, was not the only one, and many, indeed most of his tragedies are founded on others. And a French critic says, ' However much we may be prejudiced in favor of ' those tragedies whose interest turns upon love, it is nevertheless true, ، (and we have often remarked it,) that those tragedies which have fuc- ' ceeded best, do not owe their success to the love scenes.' LETTER FROM LE PERE TOURNEMINE TO LE PERE BRUMOY, PREFIXED TO VOLTAIRE'S MEROPE. Now it is obfervable, that from the restoration till within these last five and twenty years, when Garrick had reformed the stage by the school of Shakespear, almost the only tragedies which do not depend on a love story are the Isabella of Southern, and the Venice Preserved of Otway; and to the great interest of both, the stage at this hour bears the strongest teftimony. To Otway indeed may be applied, with the strictest justice, the character given by our critic to Euripides in this chapter, ' that if he does not conduct his • fable so well in other circumstances he is allowed to be the most tragic • of our poets.' Indeed what but the deep pathos of the catastrophe could induce a refined people to tolerate such a compilation of indecency, impiety, and immorality, as the Orphan [R]. From the fecluded life of modest women in [s] Greece, they neither took any part in the ferious concerns of life, out of their own family, nor could they be present at any public spectacle, therefore they were not in [R] • The famous Orphan of Otway, notwithstanding its real beauties, could hardly have ⚫ taken so prodigiously as it hath done if there were not somewhere a defect of good sense as < well as of good morals.' BISHOP OF WORCESTER'S NOTE ON HORACE'S ART OF POETRY, V. 19. See alfo Note 1. Chap. xv. [s] See Note II. ibid. Kk 2 reality
reality principal objects for the drama, which turned chiefly on public actions; nor was the theatre interested in obtaining their fuffrages, by selecting those stories in which they might take a confpicuous part. The revival of the arts found women in a very different situation; in real life they were in high confideration, and in the regions of narrative fable they were, as they continue to be, every thing. -Their bright eyes • Rain'd influence and judg'd the prize ' Of wit and arms, while both contend • To win her grace whom all commend.' We have therefore rather cause to wonder at their not assuming the same universal empire over the earlier modern drama, and that our first writers, and even Shakespear, have represented them actuated by ambition as often as by love, and as mothers, wives, and daughters, rather than as mistresses. But on confidering that all womens parts were played by men before the civil wars, our wonder will ceafe, and we are rather inclined to think that very paffionate love scenes, like some in Romeo and Juliet, must be more disgustful than pleasing [T]. After [T] Befides the effect on the audience it must greatly influence the sensibility of the actor, on whose feelings the true expression of the paffion, and consequently the feelings of the spectator must greatly depend, and these will be affected by a much finaller incongruity. Το cite the words of a writer very well informed as to dramatic effect, (Hill's Actor, chap. xv.) • As love can neither be concealed nor dissembled in real life before eyes that have any degree of difcernment, so on the ftage that illusion which is the foul of all theatrical reprefentations will never be well kept up in a love scene unless the perfons who perform the characters have hearts naturally susceptible of the passion; and we shall then see it in the • greatest perfection when those who are to protest, and figh, and vow to one another on the 4 stage in reality sigh and doat on one another off. We can remember two persons who though they
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. After the restoration, when the theatre acquired its last and brightest ornament, the addition of beautiful and elegant female performers, love reigned unrivalled in the drama; and from that period for many years, except the tragedies just mentioned, no new drama was exhibited without a love tale either principal or fubordinate. Of late years, as we have before observed, the stage has been taking a different turn. We have feen Douglas, the Grecian Daughter, and other tragedies of the fame nature, brought forward with applause suitable to their merit. And this complexion of our drama feems to be encreasing. The peculiar abilities of a justly celebrated actress for the representation of matrons, though excellent in all parts, has occafioned love in almost every new tragedy to give place to conjugal and maternal affection; indeed, so much has the latter got poffeffion of the theatre, that the introduction of a nursery is become almost a hacknied stage trick. ' they had both great merit as players, and had neither any thing of that diffolute life too fre- ، quent among those of their profession, yet when they were to be lovers on the stage never • played naturally. It will be seen that I have in my eye Mr. and Mrs. -. Happy as they were in one another the flat poffeffion put an end to transport; and though perhaps enjoying fomething much worthier and better they could not dissemble that. We may on the ⚫ other hand recollect instances, (but I shall not name the perfons) where those who were • pretended lovers on the stage were real lovers off it, and we never faw characters performed ⚫ in such perfection.' See Note VIII. Chap. xv. and Note 11. Chap. XI. and Note II.. Chap. XVII. as also the note immediately preceding this. NOTE
