Euripides (Donne)/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
THE CYCLOPS.
"This is as strange a thing as e'er I looked on.
He is as disproportioned in his manners
As in his shape."
—"Tempest."
We can hardly be grateful enough for the care or caprice of the grammarian or the collector of old plays who has preserved for us one sample of the Greek satyric drama. Some uncertainty still exists about the precise nature of this curious appendage to the tragic Trilogy; but without such aid as we get from the "Cyclops" of Euripides, we should depend on fragments or guess-work, if not be quite in the dark. Even with this single plank from the general wreck of these after-pieces before us, we look at the species through a veil. The severe and solemn Æschylus is recorded to have been a successful composer of such light and cheerful pieces; but this bit of information by no means helps to clear up doubts. Sweetness may have come out of the strong, but of what kind was Æschylean mirth, or even relaxation from gravity? The decorous Sophocles is reported to have enacted the part of Nausicaa, and played at ball with the handmaidens of the princess in a satyric story evidently taken from one of the most beautiful scenes in the Odyssey. But how the serene and majestic artist managed to comport himself under such circumstances we have still to wonder. All we know for certain about the Greek fourth play is, that it was intended to soothe and calm down the feelings of the spectators after they had been strained and agitated by the prophetic swan-song of Cassandra, by the wail of Jason for his murdered children, by the scene in which Orestes flies from the Furies, or that wherein the noble Antigone and the loving Hæmon are clasped together in their death-embrace.
Such relaxation of excited feeling was in the true spirit of Greek art in its best days, which required even in the hurricane of tragic passion a moderating element, and the means of returning to composure. Let not, however, the English reader imagine that, although the satyric drama was designed to send home the audience in a tranquil and even cheerful mood, it bore any resemblance to farce, much less to burlesque. Welcome as parodies of scenes or verses from "the lofty grave tragedians" were to Athenian ears, skilful as the comic writers were in such travesties, a Greek audience in the time of Euripides would have hurled sticks, stones, and hard-shelled fruit at the buffoons who committed such profanation. "Hamlet," if performed at Athens, would not have been followed by "a popular farce"! Perhaps there is no better definition of the satyric drama than this—and it is one of ancient date—it was "a sportive tragedy." It was not written by comic, but always by tragic poets: it was in some measure a performance of "state and ancientry." Seldom, if ever, was it acted apart from tragedy. It may have been a shadow or reminiscence of the primeval age of stage-plays, when the actors were all strollers and the theatre was a cart. Prone to change in their favour or affection to their rulers—ostracising or crowning them as the whim of the moment suggested—the Athenians were very conservative in their opinions on art, and so may have chosen to retain a sample of the rude entertainments of Thespis, even in the "most high and palmy state" of the tragic drama. The satyric dramatis personæ were grave and dignified personages,—demi-gods and heroes, kings and prophets, councillors and warriors,—who spoke a dialogue, as Ulysses does in the "Cyclops," only a little less grave than that of the preceding tragedies, perchance a little more ironical than the buskin would have allowed. To make wild laughter was the function of the comedian; to excite cheerfulness rather than mirth was probably the function of these appendages.
In a city where the Homeric poems were sung or said in the streets, the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops was as familiar to the ears of gentle and simple as "household words." The plot of it and some of the humour are Homer's. But the one-eyed giant of the Odyssey is a solitary bachelor, and the Chorus of Satyrs, indispensable for the piece, was a later invention. In Homeric days, Sicily and southern Italy were the wonder-land of the eastern Greeks. Like Prospero's island, they were thought to harbour very strange beasts. In Sicily dwelt a band of gigantic brethren, who lived, while they had nothing better to eat, on the milk, cheese, and mutton supplied by their flocks, but who were always glad to mend their fare by devouring strangers unlucky enough to come into their neighbourhood. This ill luck befell Ulysses and his ship's crew—sole survivors of the Ithacan flotilla—on their return from Troy. Contrary winds had driven them far from their course: want of water compelled them to land on the Sicilian shore. In quest of spring or brook, they go to the cavern of the Cyclops. He, fortunately for them, is not just then at home; but his servants, Silenus and the Satyrs, are within, and after a short parley with their unexpected visitors, they consent to supply their need, and even to sell the Greek captain some of their master's goods, tempted by the quite irresistible bribe of a flask of excellent wine. It may be as well to say at once what had brought such strange domestics into the Cyclops' country, and thus the reader will see why they were so glad to taste wine again, and why they acted dishonestly in selling the lambs and kids. The Satyrs had lost their lord and master Bacchus, who had been carried off by Tyrrhenian pirates. So they left their homes in Arcadian highland or Thessalian woods, and went to sea in quest of him, lovers of the wine-cask as they were. Probably these hairy and unkempt folks were imperfectly versed in navigation, or they may have had a drunken steersman, or the winds may have been as perverse as they were to Ulysses. In one respect, either their hideousness or their years—Silenus, at least, was advanced in life—may have befriended them, for Polyphemus does not eat them raw or broiled on the embers, but keeps them in his cave for the service of his dairy and his kine. At last Polyphemus enters; and now we can imagine some excitement on the part of the junior Athenians, sedate smiles on that of their elders, and even a scream or two from the place where the women were packed together. No known art or device, we may be sure, was neglected by the managers in making up the giant for his part. If Ulysses were of the usual stature of Greek performers, Polyphemus must have worn far higher soles and loftier head-gear than the Ithacan king. The monster must have been at least by "the altitude of a chopine" taller than his guest. A yawning mask doubtless aggravated the terror of his visage; his voice must have been like that of an irate bull; and his single eye as big as an ordinary-sized plate, and red as a live coal. The Satyrs may have reminded their beholders of the well-known features of Socrates; nor could the philosopher have been justly angry at a resemblance that he himself had pointed out. Polyphemus is too stupid to be either "witty in himself or a cause of wit in others;" accordingly, such comic business as there is in the piece devolves on Silenus and his companions, who relieve gigantic dulness by quips and cranks, much as the celebrated Jack relieves the stolidity of Blunderbore by some friendly conversation before he rips him up.
The Cyclops had been absent on Ætna, hunting with his dogs. Like King Lear on his return from the chase, he calls out lustily for his dinner, after a previous inquiry about his lambs, ewes, and cheese-baskets. He discerns that something unusual has taken place during his absence, and threatens to beat Silenus until he rains tears, unless he anwers promptly. Next his eye lights on the strangers, and also on something still more irritating to him as a grazier:—
"What is this crowd I see beside the stalls?
Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern-home
I see my young lambs coupled two by two
With willow-bands: mixed with my cheeses lie
Their implements; and this old fellow here
Has his bald head broken with stripes."[1]
The shrewd but perfidious Silenus has inflicted these stripes on himself in order to make his story of being robbed credible to his master—a device of a similar kind to that which Bardolph says caused him to blush.
"Sil.Ah me!
I have been beaten till I burn with fever.
Cyc.By whom? who laid his list upon your head?
Sil.Those men, because I would not suffer them
To steal your goods.
Cyc.Did not the rascals know
I am a god, sprung from the race of heaven?
Sil.I told them so, but they bore off your things,
And ate the cheese in spite of all I said,
And carried out the lambs."
And inasmuch as this capital felony was, he alleged, accompanied by threats of personal violence to Polyphemus himself, he not unreasonably flies into a terrible passion, and hastens to enforce Cyclopian law on the spoilers of his goods:—
"Cycl. In truth? nay, haste, and place in order quickly
The cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth,
And kindle it, a great fagot of wood;
As soon as they are slaughtered they shall fill
My belly, broiling warm from the live coals,
Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron.
I am quite sick of the wild mountain-game,
Of stags and lions I have gorged enough,
And I grow hungry for the flesh of men."
In vain Ulysses assures Polyphemus that he has never laid hands on Silenus; that he purchased the lambs for wine, honestly as he thought, and that the lying old Satyr's nose will vouch for the exchange and barter. All was done
"By mutual compact, without force;
There is no word of truth in all he says,
For slily he was selling all your store."
But as well might a poacher accused of snaring hares or trapping foxes have pleaded innocence before that worshipful justice Squire Western, as Ulysses expect his plain tale to put down the evidence, confirmed by the very hard swearing, of Silenus. The Chorus, indeed, following its proper function of mediator between "contending opposites," assures the Cyclops that the stranger tells the simple truth, and that they saw Silenus giving the lambs to him. "You lie!" exclaims the giant "this old fellow is juster than Rhadamanthus: I believe his story." Now, for a few minutes, curiosity prevails over hunger for the flesh of men, and Polyphemus inquires about the race, adventures, life, and conversation of the intruders on his cavern. Ulysses, carefully concealing his real name, gives the required information. He is one of the chiefs who have taken Troy: he is on his return home to Ithaca: not choice, but tempests, have brought him to this land. "Moreover," he adds, "if you kill and eat me or my comrades, you will be very ungrateful. We are all pious worshippers of your 'great father' Neptune. We have built him many temples in Greece. Much have we endured by war and land and sea, and it will be very hard on us, after escaping so many perils, to be now roasted or boiled for a supper to Neptune's son."
The reply of Polyphemus is just what might have been looked for from such a sensual barbarian. It is unfilial, and even blasphemous. "A fig," he cries, "for your temples and their gods. The wise man knows of nothing worth worshipping except wealth."
"All other things are a pretence and boast.
What are my father's ocean promontories,
The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me?
Strangers, I laugh to scorn Jove's thunderbolt:
I know not that his strength is more than mine;
As to the rest I care not."
"Jupiter may send snow or rain or wind as he list. I have a weather-proof cave, plenty of fuel and milk; my larder is ever provided with a haunch of lion or a fat calf; and so that I have a good crop of grass in yonder meadows, I and my cattle care alike for your Jupiter." And then he winds up with a declaration of his purpose to have a good dinner:—
"I well know
The wise man's only Jupiter is this,
To eat and drink during his little day,
And give himself no care. And as for those
Who complicate with laws the life of man,
I freely give them tears for their reward.
I will not cheat my soul of its delight,
Or hesitate in dining upon you."
Clearly, after hearing these hospitable intentions, Ulysses will need all the cunning for which he was famed. "This," he thinks, "is by far the worst scrape I ever was in. Very near was I to death when I entered Troy town as a spy, and when I cajoled Queen Hecuba to let me out of it. I just missed being transfixed by Philoctetes in Lemnos by one of his poisoned arrows, when Machaon, that skilful surgeon, was many leagues away from me, and when, even if he had been at hand, he could not perhaps have counteracted the old centaur's venom. 'About my brain,' I must not faint, but contrive to foil this brute's designs. If I cannot, better had it been for me to have died by the hand of the mad Ajax, for then I should have been decently buried by the Greeks, and Penelope have known what became of me; whereas, if I am to go down this monster's 'insatiate maw,' she may go on for ten years more weeping and weaving, and after all be forced to many one of her suitors. Now, if ever, Pallas Athenè befriend me."
The stage is cleared, and the Chorus sing appropriate but not cheerful stanzas, with reference to present circumstances:—
"The Cyclops Ætnean is cruel and bold,
He murders the strangers
That sit on his hearth,
And dreads no avengers
To rise from the earth.
He roasts the men before they are cold,
He snatches them broiling from the coal,
And from the caldron pulls them whole,
And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone
With his cursed teeth till all be gone."
Ulysses re-enters; he has been surveying the Cyclopian larder and kitchen, and is as terrified by the sight of their contents as Fatima was when she rushed out of Bluebeard's chamber of horrors. He has seen Polyphemus providing for his own comforts. He kindles a huge fire,—
"Casting on the broad hearth
The knotty limbs of an enormous oak,
Three waggon-loads at least."
He spreads upon the ground a couch of pine-leaves: he milks his cows,—
"And fills a bowl
Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much
As would contain three amphoræ, and bound it
With ivy."
He puts on the fire a pot to boil, and makes red-hot the points of sundry spits, and, when all is ready, he seizes two of the Ithacans,—
"And killed them in a measured kind of manner;
For he flung one against the brazen rivets
Of the huge caldron, and caught the other
By the foot's tendon, and knocked out his brains
Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone."
One he boiled, the other he roasted, while Ulysses,
"With the tears raining from his eyes,
Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to him."
But while waiting at table, a happy thought presents itself to Ulysses. "If I can but make him drunk enough, then I can deal with him." He plies him well with Maronian wine at dinner; but Polyphemus is as yet "na that fou" to fall into the trap. He is still sober enough to remember that his brother-giants may relish a cheerful glass no less than himself. They inhabit a village on Ætna not far off, and he will go and invite them to share his Bacchic drink. The Chorus advise Ulysses to walk with him, and pitch him over a precipice, as he is somewhat unsteady on his legs. "That will never do," responds the sagacious Ithacan. "I have a far more subtle device. I will appeal to his appetite: tell him how unwise it were to summon partners for his revelry. Why not prolong his pleasure by keeping this particular Maronian for his own sole use?" The Cyclops presently returns, singing—
"Ha! ha! I am full of wine,
Heavy with the joy divine,
With the young feast oversated;
Like a merchant's vessel freighted
To the water's edge, my crop
Is laden to the gullet's top.
The fresh meadow-grass of spring
Tempts me forth thus wandering
To my brothers on the mountains,
Who shall share the wine's sweet fountains.
Bring the cask, O stranger, bring!"
He is diverted from his purpose by Ulysses; and for once Silenus acts a friendly part to him by asking his master, "What need have you of pot-companions? stay at home." Indeed the advice proceeds from a design to filch some of the wine himself—an impossibility if the cask is borne off to the village, where there will be so many eyes—single ones indeed—upon him. So it is agreed that the giant-brothers be kept in the dark, and quaff their bowls of milk, while Polyphemus drinks deep potations of Maron alone. The Greek stranger has now so ingratiated himself with his savage host, that the latter condescends to ask his name, and to promise to eat him last, in token of his gratitude for his drink and good counsel. "My name," says Ulysses, "is Nobody." With this information the Sicilian Caliban is content; and with the exception that Silenus teases him by putting the flagon out of his reach, with the above-mentioned felonious intent, all goes merry as a marriage-bell. Ulysses, now again cup-bearer, plies him so well, that the "poor monster" sees visions—
"The throne of Jove,
And the clear congregation of the Gods"—
and in the end drops off into slumber profound as Christopher Sly's.
Now comes the dramatic retribution. The trunk of an olive-tree has been sharpened to a point, is heated in the fire, and thrust by Ulysses and his surviving companions into the eye of the insensible giant. The Chorus, indeed, had promised to lend a hand in this operation, for they are anxious to be off in quest of their liege-lord Bacchus. But their courage fails them at the proper moment—some have sprained ankles, others have dust in their eyes, others weakness of spine. All they can or will do—and this service is truly operatic in its kind—is to sing a cheerful and encouraging accompaniment to the boring-out of the eye:—
"Hasten and thrust,
And parch up to dust,
The eye of the beast
Who feeds on his guest;
Burn and blind
The Ætnean hind;
Scoop and draw,
But beware lest he claw
Your limbs near his maw."
The last scene of the "Cyclops" has to the reader an appearance of being either imperfectly preserved or originally hurried over. It may be that, not having the action before us, we miss some connecting dumb-show. In the Odyssey the escape of Ulysses and his crew is effected with much difficulty, and great risk to their chief: in this satyric play they get out of the cave quickly as well as safely, though its owner says that—
"Standing at the outlet,
He'll bar the way and catch them as they pass:"
but either they creep under his huge legs, like so many Gullivers in Brobdingnag, or he is a very inefficient doorkeeper—drink and pain seemingly having rendered him as incapable of hearing as of sight. Indeed Polyphemus, blind and despairing, is the only sufferer in this flight of the Ithacans. In striking at them he beats the air, or cracks his skull against the rocky wall. The Chorus taunt and misguide him. "Are these villains on my right hand?" "No, on your left,"—whereupon he dashes at vacancy, and cries, "O woe on woe, I have broken my head!" "Did you fall into the fire when drunk?" ask the mocking Chorus, who had been witnesses of the whole transaction. "'Twas Nobody destroyed me." "Then no one is to blame." "I tell you, varlets as you are, Nobody blinded me." "Then you are not blind." "Where is that accursed Nobody?" "No where, Cyclops." But at last the secret comes out. "Detested wretch, where are you?" roars the baffled monster. The wretch replies:—
"Far from you,
I keep with care this body of Ulysses.
Cycl.What do you say? You proffer a new name!
Ulys.My father named me so: and I have taken
A full revenge for your unnatural feast:
I should have done ill to burn down Troy,
And not revenged the murder of my comrades.
Cycl.Ai, Ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished;
It said that I should have my eyesight blinded
By you coming from Troy, yet it foretold
That you should pay the penalty for this,
By wandering long over the homeless sea."
The humour of this after-piece may not seem to English readers of the first quality, and the quibble on Nobody and Nowhere to be far beneath the level of the jeu de mots in modern burlesque. But let them not therefore look down on Ancient Classics. Rome was not built in a day. Life is short, but the art of Punning is long. Even Aristophanes came not up to the mark of Thomas Hood. The world, it must be remembered, was comparatively young when Euripides wrote his "Cyclops"—much younger when Homer told the tale of Polyphemus and Ulysses. Moreover, a bucolical monster was not a person to throw away the cream of jests upon. Probably he never quite comprehended the point of Nobody, though in after-hours, and in the tedium of blindness, disabled from hunting the lion and the bear of Mount Ætna, he must have often pondered on his unlucky encounter with a crafty Greek. Also it should be borne in mind that the real fun and frolic of the Athenians was reserved for the comic drama. There, indeed, it was as extravagant, satyrical, and even boisterous as we can imagine, or spectators could desire. Possibly Euripides, grave, taciturn, and tender in his disposition, was not the best representative of this species of drama. That there was in him some latent humour, some disposition to slide out of the tragic into the comic vein, has already been observed in the sketch of his "Alcestis." "With all its shortcomings, the "Cyclops" is the sole contemporary clue we have to the nature of the fourth member of the usual batch of plays, and so, with Sancho, we must "be thankful for it, and not look the gift horse too closely in the mouth."
END OF EURIPIDES.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.