The Life of Thomas Hardy
nevolent Personality. As Æschylus does not hesitate to declare that Zeus himself would come to grief if he disobeyed the predestined Law, so Napoleon's Promethean vision is clearly set forth in the most critical moments of his career, at the opening of the Russian campaign and at Waterloo, where he declares himself to be moved "by laws imposed on me exorably!"
Again the female characters in The Dynasts may be compared with the women of classical tragedy. The weak and altogether pathetic figures of the two empresses, Josephine and Marie, represent the characteristic Greek attitude towards women, as childlike, rather "no-account" people.
They are in effect the only real puppets in the work, and in themselves exercise almost no influence over the main action. Essentially futile, also, is the character of Queen Louisa of Prussia. Except for his rather sentimental treatment of these women (the deathbed scene of Josephine exceeds almost anything in the novels for sheer pathos), Hardy is more typically Hellenic in his rigid subordination of female characters than is Æschylus himself. The fifty suppliant-maids, Antigone, Ismene, Atossa and perhaps also Cassandra, represent the types we expect to find in Greek tragedy and in classical literature in general, but there are no parallels in The Dynasts for the strength of will exhibited by Electra, and more particularly by Clytemnestra.
The supernatural plays a large role in most of Æschylus's tragedies and in The Dynasts. Both poets display a temperament taking a keen and naïve delight in playing with all the old machinery and tinsel belonging to the realm of the ghost-story. Dramatic use of prophecies,
[248]
