Euripides (Mahaffy)/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
HIS PLOTS.
33. When we speak of the plot of a play in the modern sense, we mean that ingenious complication of the action which keeps the spectator interested as to its progress and curious as regards the final result. In this sense very few Greek plays have any plot, and its earliest use may be traced to the inventive genius of Euripides. The earlier dramatists illustrated some well-known legend, some celebrated mythical catastrophe, and sought by loftiness of style and nobility of sentiments to instruct and awe the spectator by drawing various lessons from a familiar tradition. The deeper moral meaning, the hidden spiritual forces engaged, the display of character under the strain of great misfortunes—these were the topics which gave the Greek drama its matter, to be expressed in noble language and with dignified accessories. The dramas of Æschylus (and of Sophocles at first) were therefore not dramas of plot or intrigue, but of character or of situation. In many of them, such as the Supplices and Persæ of Æschylus, or the Œdipus at Colonus of Sophocles, there is no plot at all, but a series of scenes grouped around some central figure or situation, as in the Samson Agonistes of Milton. We find several such plays among those of Euripides also, who seems often to have reverted to this old and simple form of tragedy for peculiar reasons of his own. There is therefore a propriety in speaking of dramas of plot as a separate class of Greek tragedies, which might seem unmeaning to those only acquainted with modern literature.
The other two divisions are dramas of character and dramas of situation. In the former, the human will asserts itself against the power of destiny, and even when crushed in the conflict, asserts its inalienable dignity and liberty. This is the highest and the most essential kind of Greek tragedy, and one in which Æschylus and Sophocles were never equalled except by Shakspere in his greatest character plays. In the latter class, the characters are represented as dominated by misfortunes, which pour in upon them in succession like the messengers in the Book of Job.
34. It is easy to see how the nascent drama would take this simple form, and excite the pity of the audience by a series of pathetic scenes and poetical complaints; but we marvel how Euripides, who had discovered the use of plots, should have written a whole play like the Troades, which is merely the pathetic history of the last day of the captives in their ruined native land. The large proportion of lyrical monodies and choral odes in this class of plays suggests to us that Euripides here intended rather a musical than a dramatic effect. We know that he was much censured by the old school for the introduction of monodies and of irrelevant odes, which can have had no intention but to display the musical effects of the school of Timotheus, and of other composers who made both voice and instrument the vehicles of strong emotions and of bitter grief. Thus a play like the Troades may have been partly a musical intermezzo among the more intellectual and dramatic pieces of the tetralogy. But it is also evident that a poet like Euripides, who had a peculiar talent for painting pathetic scenes, was enabled in such plays to bring up a loosely connected series of such scenes, each of which would have a powerful effect upon a sensitive audience. In both Phœnissæ and Troades this is essentially the case.
35. The few cases, like the Supplices, where dialogue is also prominent, are to be explained by regarding them as occasional pieces composed for a political object, in which the plot is intended to be subordinate to political discussions and to encomiums upon Athens or attacks upon her foes. To those who rightly protest that this is no proper object of tragedy, we may reply by again calling attention to the great rapidity of production, and to the fact that, when plays were produced in groups of four, it may have been unavoidable to make some of them mere plays of occasion. It is of course easy to cite their absence from the works of Sophocles, from which only seven plays have reached us. Probably if a score had survived, we should find among them patriotic pieces with no more plot or character-painting than we find in Euripides' dramas of situation.
We will now consider examples of the three classes, which are of course not absolutely severed, no plot being possible without characters, and neither without tragic situations. But according as these elements predominate we are justified in making a division, which will be far more instructive than a mere chronological enumeration, even if such were possible.
36. It is very remarkable that any classification by sameness of subject or sameness of treatment is found impracticable, owing to the marvellous variety with which the poet handles the same characters and like situations. In one or two isolated cases we find him imitating a former plot, but seldom with any direct borrowing of ideas or situations or language. This applies to the vital parts of the play, whereas the introductions and conclusions, on which he spent little trouble, Were generally formed on a fixed and seldom varied plan. I classify under the head of tragedies of plot seven of the extant plays the Ion, both Iphigenias, the Helena, the Alcestis, the Orestes, and the Electra. Of these the Ion may be considered first, as the most perfect specimen of its kind.
37. The Ion.—We must discard the prologue as spurious, but not altogether because it details the whole plot and anticipates the solution—a vital defect in the prologue of a modern play, and therefore contrary to modern practice. For the Greeks, even in plots of ingenuity, did not propose primarily to instruct the hearers in the solution, but rather in the manner with which a known complication was worked out. The real objection to admitting the present opening of the Ion is that the whole matter is expounded over again in the opening scenes of the play, so that I believe its original form was that of the lost Andromeda,[1] and perhaps of other Euripidean plays. It opened therefore with the lyrical monody of Ion, and, like both the Andromeda and the Aulid Iphigenia, with the actor's attention fixed upon the heavens, thus announcing the time and scene of the action.
38. Ion, the hallowed attendant of the Delphic temple, a youth of the beauty and purity which we imagine in the child Samuel when he ministered in the temple of Jehovah, appears and sings a descriptive hymn (vv. 82–183) in discharge of his morning duties. A chorus of Athenian women enter in separate groups, delighted sightseers of the wonders of the great shrine, wandering with questions and exclamations from one art-treasure to another, and in attendance upon a silent and troubled lady, to whom they point as their queen when questioned by Ion, after his courteous refusal to admit mere visitors within the shrine. At the sight of Apollo's temple, the queen (Creusa) bursts into tears, and betrays strange emotion, but masters herself when Ion asks with wonder why she is in sorrow where all others come with joy. It is a situation not unlike that of Samuel's mother, agitated and weeping in the temple before Eli. "Stranger," she replies (v. 247), "I hold it no rudeness in you to wonder at my tears. But the sight of the temple of Apollo brought back to me some old memories, and my mind wandered to my home from this scene. (Aside.) Alas! the lot of women; alas! the violences of the gods; what then? whither shall we refer our plaint, if we are ruined by the injustice of heaven?" She then, in reply to his questioning, tells of her home and marriage, and of her mission to Delphi in relief of childlessness, hut with many allusions to her sad fortune which do not escape the audience. Again in turn Ion answers her of his origin, how he was a foundling in the temple, and brought up to minister within its precincts. His reply that he has no clue to find his parents leads her to question him on her own case, hidden under the guise of a friend's misfortune, who had born a child to Apollo, and exposed it in his cave, from which it had disappeared. Would the god reveal its fate? Ion thinks he will be ashamed, and will not confess his fault. But the story suggests to both that Ion's mother may have endured a similar sorrow. While Creusa is expostulating with the god, her husband Xuthus enters with good news from the oracle of Trophonius, whither he had turned aside for advice on the way. They were not to leave the Delphic shrine childless. While they prepare for the solemn inquiry, Ion speaks a curious and familiar soliloquy (429–451) of expostulation with the god for his conduct in the case reported by Creusa.
The chorus pray to Athena Nike, and to Artemis, that the old house of Erechtheus may not be left childless. The epode (a passage of rare picturesqueness) sings of the grotto of Pan and the shrine of Aglauros on the Acropolis, and the violence attributed to Apollo.[2]
Xuthus now reappears and hails Ion, whom he forthwith meets, as his child, but the latter resents his affection till, on inquiry, he finds that the oracle has declared him to be so, and that Xuthus can explain it by a youthful adventure. But the boy consents with coldness, and his thoughts turn with great tenderness from Xuthus' congratulations to his unknown mother (v. 563): "Dear mother, when shall I behold thy form? Now more than ever do I desire to see thee. But perhaps thou art dead, and our wishes are of no avail." Xuthus formally sympathises with this wish, but urges him to come away to Athens and enjoy the wealth and splendour to which he is heir. But Ion hesitates and declines. He knows the pride of Athens, and their contempt of strangers. He is only with difficulty persuaded, and longs that his mother may prove an Athenian, which alone will give him his proper position. They both leave to enjoy the feast given in honour of the oracle's response.
The chorus are discontented. They suspect the oracle, and comment on the blow which it will give to the hopes of their mistress.
Accordingly, when she reappears, she extorts with difficulty from a trusty old retainer and the chorus, that the answer, though favourable to Xuthus, is ruin to her own hopes for her lost child. The splendid burst of indignation against Apollo, and her confession of the whole secret, is given in a lyrical monody which has few parallels in any tragedy (vv. 859 sqq. beginning ὦ ψυχὰ, πῶς σιγάσω). The old pedagogue, in astonishment, questions her more closely, and then attempts to turn her from despair to vengeance. Let her burn the god's temple, or if not, at least slay the lad who has supplanted her and her child. He then discloses his plan that they shall accomplish it by aid of a subtle poison which he carries about him; and they leave the stage to accomplish it here, at Delphi, and not at Athens.
The chorus reflect generally upon the situation, but offer no opposition to the conspiracy.
Then comes a messenger in haste to say that the plot has failed. His descriptive speech (1122–1228) enters into excessive detail about the feast, and stays the interest till he tells us how a pigeon from the tamed flock about the temple fell dead upon tasting the cup prepared by the old retainer for Ion, and how, upon the old man's interrogation and confusion, Creusa's death by stoning has been forthwith determined. Creusa rushes on in flight, and with the advice of the chorus takes refuge as a suppliant at the altar. Ion comes in pursuit, and an angry altercation ensues. But while he hesitates to slay her at the altar, and complains that a criminal should thus evade justice, the aged Pythia appears, carrying with her the swaddling clothes and tokens which she had long ago found with the infant Ion, and hidden away, and which she is now moved to restore to him on his departure for Athens—to her the loss of a dear and long-adopted child. Ion receives these tokens of his unknown mother with great emotion, and then follows a famous recognition scene, where Creusa proves that the embroidery is her work, and that she is the mother of the lad whom she had just attempted to slay, and who now seeks in turn to slay her. Ion is only half convinced, and is about to enter the temple to demand from Phœbus an explanation of his answer to Xuthus, when Athene appears aloft and removes all remaining doubts. The play ends by Ion, Creusa, and the chorus retracting their charges against Apollo, and confessing that the righteous fare well in the end, and the wicked can never continue to prosper.
30. Nothing can be more ingenious than the construction of this play, which is not a tragedy, but a melodrama. The action is sustained and the interest excited throughout, and there is, moreover, great tact in the handling of the two personages who take no very respectable part in the play. Apollo is throughout attacked and challenged, yet he never appears, and commissions Athene to explain his providence at the close. Xuthus, who is in some sort the dupe of the oracle, is in the first place painted as an obtrusive good-natured nonentity, and then is removed from sight when his position becomes awkward. The heroine is interesting—not from her character, but from her fortunes. And her fortunes are such as come home to the sympathy of any audience, though her wild scheme of vengeance is rather too Greek to please modern readers. Thus we have in the Ion, a drama depending almost wholly upon the plot, and not prominent in the drawing of any of its characters, except that of Ion at the opening of the play.
We know nothing of its date beyond what can inferred from the allusion to Rhion (v. 1592), where the Athenians made an obscure promontory famous by a victory in 429 B.C. Moreover, the Athenians built a stoa at Delphi in honour of this victory, which would accordingly lend interest to the scenery. If so, the play came out about 425 B.C. It is remarkable that as in the Heracles and Helen there are practically two prologues, so here there are two resolutions of the plot—as it were two dii ex machinâ—one by the Delphian priestess, the other by Athene, who appear at the end to dispel remaining doubts. Of Creusa's character we shall have again to speak. I will only here note that the tragic situation of a distracted mother seeking her son's death unwittingly was again used by Euripides in the Cresphontes, from which a beautiful choral hymn to Peace still remains, as the readers of Mr. Browning will remember (Aristoph. Apol., p. 178).
There have been but few imitations of this play. It was brought out in a debased version by August Schlegel in 1803, but so unsuccessfully, that old Goethe, who had taken great interest in its preparation, was obliged to stand up and command silence in the pit. The Ion of Talfourd has only a general resemblance.
40. The Helena.—I do not think that any other play of Euripides can be ranked, as to prominence of plot, with the Ion, except the Helena; for the Orestes and the Electra, which stand next, though the plot is prominent and the chief personages disagreeable, yet contain much character painting of a peculiar kind—not ideal, but mere psychological analysis.
The Helena is also a melodrama, and turns upon the adventures of the real Helen, who, according to a less popular myth, was conveyed away and secreted in Egypt, while a mere phantom deluded Greeks and Trojans at Troy. Helen, who is in this play represented as a loyal and affectionate wife, is in danger of being forced to marry the young king Theoclymenus, whose prophetic sister, Theonoe, plays a small but interesting and sympathetic part. Instead of having no prologue, we have in this play two distinct prologues—first, that of Helen, who explains the general situation; and then, after Teucer has appeared and given her vague and gloomy news about the scattering of the returning Greeks, concerning which she and the chorus lament in lyrical strains, we have the prologue of Menelaus. The recognition of husband and wife, the disappearance of the phantom Helen, and the schemes by which they effect their flight from Egypt successfully, occupy the rest of the play. The text comes to us, like some other plays, through one MS. alone, in this case the Florentine C, and moreover in a very corrupt and much corrected copy. To this cause is partly due the neglect with which it has been treated. It seems to have come out, with the Andromeda, in 413–412 B.C., and was certainly ridiculed by Aristophanes in his Thesmophoriazusæ not without some reason. This play may he compared in one respect with the Electra, I mean as regards the curiously free handling of the celebrated legend of the rape of Helen. The version that she had never been in Troy, but had been kept in Egypt, while a phantom Helen deceived both Greeks and Trojans, was first invented by Stesichorus, and was repeated by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, whose history did not appear till about the date of this play. The palinode of Stesichorus, in which he invented this legend to atone for having offended the heroine, was very celebrated, and is repeatedly alluded to by Plato. Nevertheless it seems very bold to transfer to the national stage at Athens the literary fancy of a few learned men, and in any case tu contradict the greatest and best known of all the epic stories.
It is evident that this innovation did not prosper. Isocrates in his Encomium of Helen, passes it by in silence, nor do I know of any modern reproduction, save that of the German Wieland. There is all through the play a friendly and even respectful handling of Sparta and the Spartans, which is unique among the extant tragedies. Again, though there is much scepticism expressed, especially as regards prophecies, his noblest character is here a prophetess, who possesses an unerring knowledge of the future. Menelaus again, who is elsewhere a mean and cowardly bully, is here a ragged and distressed, but honourable and adventurous hero, with no trace of his usual Euripidean attributes. Lastly, Helen is a faithful and persecuted wife, though in the shortly preceding Troades, and succeeding Orestes, appears in most odious colours. These anomalies make the Helena full of difficulties to the student of Euripides' opinions. We wonder how he should have chosen that mythical couple, whose conjugal relations in all his other tragedies were most disagreeable, exemplify the purest and most enduring domestic affection. Their recognition scene may take its place with the matchless narrative in the Odyssey, for the love of husband and wife was rarely idealised by the Greeks, and these exceptions are worthy of special note.
I suppose that by this bold contradiction not only of the current views about Helen, but of his own treatment of her and Menelaus in other plays, the poet meant to teach that the myths were only convenient vehicles for depicting human character and passion, and had no other value.
I have not analysed this argument minutely, as the poet has taken up an analogous subject, and treated it with far greater power and with less of miracle in his Tauric Iphigenia—one of the most perfect of his plays. But here again it is still the plot which affords the main interest, though the characters are carefully and pathetically drawn. Yet they are general characters—an exiled sister longing for tidings of her family and her home; the devoted friendship of two noble youths, one of whom is afflicted with remorseful madness for a bygone crime.
41. The Tauric Iphigenia.—Iphigenia, priestess of Artemis among the Tauri, opens the play with a prologue, announcing her miraculous escape from the sacrifice at Aulis, and her grim duty of consecrating for sacrifice the Greek strangers who land on the coast. She then goes out to seek the attendants she had summoned to join the funeral libations for her brother Orestes. For she feels convinced of his death by a vivid dream of her shattered home, and a single pillar standing, endowed with human voice. The stage is thus left vacant for the entry of Orestes and Pylades, who have come to attempt the carrying off of the image of Artemis, in accordance with an oracle.
When they withdraw to wait for the night, Iphigenia and her attendant chorus reappear, and sing the dirge which accompanies their funeral offering. Then comes a cowherd to tell of the discovery of the youths, the sudden paroxysm of Orestes, and his mad sally against the king's cattle, together with the attack of the herdsmen, and the valiant resistance and mutual devotion of the prisoners, whom she now orders to be brought before her. The soliloquy which follows (vv. 342–392), in which she contemplates her former pity for hapless strangers, and now her cruel resolve when she thinks Orestes dead, is very touching, though it ends with that sceptical questioning of the morality of her office which imparts a cold and critical tone to a pathetic passage.
After an irrelevant chorus we have the splendid scene in which Iphigenia interrogates the prisoners with returning compassion, and learns all the family woes which have happened since her departure from Argos. She proposes to dismiss one of the victims, if he will carry home a letter for her brother; and this gives rise to the celebrated contest between the friends, which of them shall die and which escape. But be it remarked that this conflict is here not worked out in much detail, as it is by Euripides' modern imitators, and that Pylades soon yields to the stronger will of the life-weary Orestes. When she goes out to seek the letter, they both break out into surprise at the anxious questioning of the priestess about Argos and its royal house. The reappearance of Iphigenia with the letter, which she reads aloud to Pylades, lest any accident should befall it—a frequent stage device—leads to the affecting recognition of the brother and sister. There follow the rejoicings of all, and the discussion of schemes to carry off the image. But these schemes are not successful, like the escape in the Helena, and though the chorus act as accomplices of the fugitives, and endeavour by false directions to prevent the announcement of their recapture reaching the king, they are only saved by the intervention of Athene, who commands them to be set at liberty and sent to their home.
Here again there is interest in the plot throughout, and in every respect higher interest than in the analogous Helena. The recognition scene, so gradual and yet exciting, is finer than the beautiful recognition of Menelaus and Helen. The escape of the fugitives is less triumphant, and their knavery less successful. Above all, the more than fraternal affection of Orestes and Pylades adds a new interest to the story, and makes it one of the most suggestive of plays. The deceit practised towards king Thoas was thoroughly excusable in Greek morals, though it so offended Goethe that, in his imitation, he altered the plot in order to avoid it, and made Iphigenia, in a moment of remorse, confess her schemes to the noble king, who (after the model of the Helena) is also turned into her romantic lover. But these modern features are fatal to the essentially Greek character of the story, as was clearly seen by all critics when the first storm of applause had subsided. The play of Goethe is in fact an unfortunate mixture of Greek scenery and modern sentiment, and as such is rather a literary curiosity than a great play.
There were far more successful imitations of Euripides in older days. Pacuvius wrote for the Roman stage his Dulorestes, in which, according to Cicero, the mutual devotion of the friends in the presence of death brought down thunders of applause. After several early French versions Racine undertook the subject, and we still have his abstract of the intended scenes of the first act. Like all the other Frenchmen, he felt compelled to introduce the king en soupirant, after the model of the Helena. Among succeeding attempts we may mention Guimond de la Touche's play (1757), which pleased everybody in France at the moment except Voltaire, Grimm, and Diderot—three mighty dissenters. But Gluck's opera laid a real hold on the musical public of Europe.
43. The Orestes.—The Orestes, produced in 409 B.C., a tragedy exceedingly popular and much quoted m antiquity, but equally censured of late years, is in Euripides' later style, if there be such a distinction. Indeed there are strong reasons for asserting it from a metrical point of view, as in this, the Phœnissæ and the Helena, many licences are admitted which we do not find in the earlier plays, Yet even here the Bacchæ disproves the rule, being one of his latest works and yet metrically strict. But as to plot, it seems that the poet became fonder of crowding together incidents, even so far as to combine two separate actions in the same piece, as we shall see in the sequel. When such separate actions are not naturally connected, we cannot speak of the play as a drama of plot, and the Orestes narrowly escapes this charge. For with the condemnation of Orestes and Electra, and their affectionate leave-taking of one another and of Pylades, the play properly ends (v. 1070); but is started afresh by the sudden interference of Pylades, who suggests that they shall be avenged on their false uncle, Menelaus, before they die. This suggestion, eagerly adopted by them, that they shall slay Helen and Hermione, and burn the palace, leads us on to several exciting and indeed semi-comic scenes, which are only concluded by the active interference of Apollo, who carries off Helen aloft, and makes peace among the warring relatives. It is this part of the play which has incurred the adverse criticism of modern scholars, and indeed, except in the very comic appearance of the Phrygian slave and his curious monody, no interest remains. The sudden reconciliation and betrothal of deadly enemies at the close is evidently a parody on such dénoûments.
These defects of the play as a whole have naturally prevented any direct imitation of it on the modern stage. But the citations and indirect imitations of the Orestes as well as translations of the great mad scene, have been common in every age. Thus the famous lines on the blessed comfort of sleep to the anxious and the distressed (vv. 211 sqq.) may be frequently paralleled, and nowhere more closely than in two passages of Shakspere. Here is the version of Euripides given by Mr. Symonds:
O soothing sleep, dear friend! best nurse in sickness!
How sweetly came you in my hour of need.
Blest Lethe of all woes, how wise you are,
How worthy of the prayers of wretched men!
The ravings of Orestes have suggested to Goethe in his Iphigenia like wanderings at the moment when his sister declares herself, but anyone who will compare the far-fetched images of Goethe's insanity with the infinite nature of Euripides' scene, will see how far the great imitator falls behind his model. The subject is the same as that of Æschylus' Eumenides, but instead of visible Furies in visible pursuit, the horrors of a diseased imagination, and the sufferings of feverish sleeplessness are brought upon the stage, and the purely human affection of a sister ministers relief to the woes which the very gods cannot heal in Æschylus.
But this admirable passage follows upon a very satirical drawing of the vanity and selfishness of Helen, with spiteful comments by the bitter Electra. Menelaus, when he arrives, is no better. But when old Tyndareus comes to urge the execution of Orestes, he speaks with great power and wisdom on the majesty of the law, and the necessity of submitting men's passions to its calm decrees. He will not in any way palliate the shocking crime of his daughter Clytemnestra; but still it was Orestes' duty to bring a legal action against her, and to have ejected her thus formally from his palace, instead of propagating violence from generation to generation. This argument, which was very common and popular with the Athenian democracy, is now hardly yet re-established in our modern culture, and may well be noted as one of the most modern traits in Euripides. The entry of Pylades, who comes to support the tottering Orestes to the assembly where his case is tried, is very affecting, and full of dramatic force, but in the vivid description of the debate, there is a good deal of satire, and it is not unlikely that the poet was drawing pictures of leading Athenians in describing his speakers.
43. The Electra.—The same leading characters appear in the Electra, or matricide of Orestes to avenge his father's death, a play intended as a critique of the corresponding Choephoræ of Æschylus, and perhaps of the Electra of Sophocles. For the expedients of the conspirators to entice Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus within their power are all carefully altered; Electra is relegated to an obscure cottage, where she lives the pretended wife of an honest farmer, or the same type as the country-speaker in the Orestes; there are idyllic scenes of great charm, when the two young men appear, as strangers coming from Phocis. Ægisthus is surprised, not in the palace, which (as we are critically informed) is sure to be well guarded, but at a sacrifice in the country, and Clytemnestra is induced to come to Electra's humble cottage, where she meets her doom. The drawing of the characters will be considered in a future chapter.
The play must have appeared during the closing years of the Peloponnesian war, and must have been fresh in men's memory, when, as Plutarch tells us (Life of Lysander, c. 15), the deliberations about the fate of conquered Athens were determined by a Phocian actor singing the opening monody, which moved all to pity by its picture of a whilom princess reduced to miserable poverty. There is also a distinct reassertion of the legend of Helen as told in the Helena, which points back to that play. We may therefore confidently refer the Electra to those last years of the poet's life, when he appears more prolific and various to us than in any other part of his career. The real merits of this play are not admitted by recent German critics, who make it the special object of their censure or even their amusement. It is often called the weakest production among the extant plays, and an unfortunate attempt to improve upon the treatment of the same subject by Æschylus and Sophocles. The coryphæus of these critics is August Schlegel, whose own attempt to copy the despised Euripides in his Ion might have taught him more modesty.
The play is indeed intended as a critique of the defects of earlier Electras. It is a feuilleton spirituel, as the French call it, and from this point of view ranks with the works of literary criticism common in the Middle Comedy. After ridiculing (vv. 524 sqq.) the various proofs of recognition adduced by Æschylus, the poet criticises the long scene of rejoicing introduced by Sophocles, by cutting short these ebullitions, and proceeding at once with the plot against the royal assassins of Agamemnon. Far more important, however, than the external improvements is the ethical tone of the piece—the hesitation of Orestes when he sees his mother approaching, and the outburst of remorse in both brother and sister after the deed is done. Here is indeed a real advance beyond the happy piety of the pair in Sophocles' play, where the voice of Apollo sets at rest every scruple of filial piety or of natural instinct.
From another aspect we may regard the Electra as the most openly democratic of all Euripides' works. Elsewhere the poet has represented trusty slaves of high character and devotion, and insisted upon the fact that slavery is but an accident, and that there is nobility in men of low degree. Yet these instances occur in the retinue of princes, whereas here peasants are put upon the stage, and made the finest characters in the play. Electra's pretended husband is a moral hero, and the aged farmer from the Spartan frontier is the moving spirit in devising the plot of vengeance, whereas Orestes and Electra are the victims of oracles and family curses and crimes, which force them into exile and remorse.
44. The Iphigenia in Aulis.—We now turn to another example of the tragedies of plot—the Iphigenia in Aulis. This noble play was left unfinished by the poet, and there are great critical difficulties about many passages, which were completed or interpolated by inferior hands. The general outline, however, is fixed, and no essential feature of the plot has been lost. But the character drawing is here as prominent as the plot, so that the piece is one of the most remarkable in both respects.
It opens with a striking night-scene, in which Agamemnon appears tortured with agonising indecision as to his daughter, whose sacrifice had been suggested by Calchas and Odysseus, and whom he had summoned to Aulis with her mother under the pretence of a marriage with Achilles. He is writing missives and tearing them up again—missives to stop his child on the way, and save her from her fate. All this appears in the opening dialogue with an old and faithful retainer, who is at last despatched to stop the approach of the princess. But Menelaus meets him, and seizes his despatch, and they return in angry dispute, the old man remonstrating with the king's brother. Agamemnon and Menelaus then enter upon a very long altercation, in which at last Menelaus gives way, but Agamemnon in his turn becomes resolved for the sacrifice through mingled ambition and fear of public opinion.[3] The change in Menelaus ts produced by seeing his brother's despair on the sudden news that Iphigenia has arrived amid the acclamations of the host. The constancy of Agamemnon, on the contrary, is that curious obstinacy of an irresolute man who fears public opinion, and, having given way at first easily, finds himself the slave of a hasty and weak acquiescence. The entry of Queen Clytemnestra and her daughter, the further subterfuges of Agamemnon, the somewhat comic situation of Achilles—who meets Clytemnestra by chance, and is hailed to his surprise as her future son-in-law—lead to subtle developments of character, and heighten the interest of the play as it draws to its close. The courtliness and chivalry of Achilles, and the stout motherly homeliness of Clytemnestra, bring out the wretched weakness of the king and the noble resolve of the princess in striking relief. But these matters belong to another chapter.
45. The Alcestis.—Though the Alcestis is among the list at the opening of this chapter, our consideration of the characters will sufficiently convey the plot which they sustain. I will only notice here that the powerlessness of Apollo to save his friend except by means of a substitute, and the grim determination of Death, as he approaches the palace from which the god is retiring—these facts, which are brought before us in the opening scene, greatly enhance our sense of the heroism of Heracles and the terrible conflict which he undertakes. The somewhat comic scenes in the play, the jocund revelling of the unsuspecting Heracles as he lectures the sad attendant on the joys of life, the conflict of selfishness between Admetus and his father (for as such the Greeks understood it), and the insistence of Heracles that his sorrowing host shall receive the veiled lady into his mourning house, are probably owing to the place of the Alcestis as fourth in the representation, in other words, as substitute for a satyric drama. We may suppose that the audience required not only a melodrama, but some room for laughter after the witnessing of three solemn tragedies.
This comparatively early play (438 B.C.) came out with the Cretan Women, the Alcmæon, and the Telephus, of which the last was sufficiently remarkable to excite Aristophanes' constant ridicule, on account of its ragged and suffering hero. The whole group obtained second prize, Sophocles being first. To us the mixture of comic and vulgar life with profoundly tragic scenes is peculiarly interesting in a Greek play. This combination appears in the very prologue, in which Apollo tells us how Admetus "having tested and gone through all his friends, his aged father, and the mother who bore him," can find no other substitute except his wife.
The chorus is throughout a sympathetic spectator of the action, and the choral odes are highly poetical and beautifully constructed, as well as strictly to the point. Thus even in the ode supposed to express the poet's mind (vv. 962 sqq.)—ἔγω διὰ Μούσας καὶ μετάρσιος ᾖξα—the learning alluded to by the chorus is that Thracian learning, which was naturally accessible to Thessalians, where the scene is laid. There is a remarkable external resemblance between the concluding scene, and that of the Winter's Tale, which has not escaped the commentators. Still closer is the parallel in the old Indian epic, the Mâha-Bhârata, where Sâvitri, like Alcestis, rescues her husband from the power of Yama, the lord of the nether world. These are of course accidental resemblances; the conscious reproductions have been innumerable, for no subject could prove more attractive than this beautiful legend, and yet no one has rivalled or even approached in excellence its treatment by Euripides. This play has had its enemies too, especially among the strict classicists, who are offended by the miraculous elements, and the comic vein which it contains. It may be enough to cite among its defenders Racine, who turns aside, in the preface to his Iphigénie, to defend it from these shallow attacks, and Alfieri, whose first reading of it was an epoch in his intellectual life.
46. I have now said enough to indicate how far Euripides anticipated the modern notion of an intricate plot, which is intended, apart from character drawing, to fix the attention of the hearer. We see in him the originator of this kind of drama, which Sophocles seems to have adopted from him in the days of their rivalry, but which ancient critics unanimously ascribed to the fertile invention of the younger poet. The devices were indeed not very complicated: an intrigue devised by the actors, which is defeated by Destiny—as in the Iphigenias; a pathetic recognition (the ἀναγνωρίσις adopted by the genteel comedy), such as those in the Ion, the Helena, and Tauric Iphigenia; in not a few an apparent miscarriage of Divine Providence, which is only rectified after severe trials of patience and of character. But the idea of weaving a complicated web to be unravelled on the stage is there, and was sure to bear its fruit.
- ↑ The opening lines of the Andromeda, with the statement that they are such, happen to be preserved in a quotation by the scholiast on Aristophanes (Thesm., v. 1065).
- ↑ The grotto is there still, and so are the ruined shrines, but no imagination can now restore the grace and holiness of the scene—Pan playing on his pipe in the cave, while the goddesses dance on the green sward above. Both rock and grotto are now defaced with ruins and with dire neglect.
- ↑ This is the scene which Dryden confesses to have borrowed for his re-written or re-arranged version of Shakspere's Troilus and Cressida, as he tells us in his preface to that play.