A HINT,
TOUCHING THE GREEK DRAMA.
While there is an active literary faction in America, who decry the study of the ancient classics, it is still pleasing to observe, upon a comprehensive survey, that these consecrated remains are assuming in public esteem the place which they deserve. I hope therefore to meet with some indulgence when I offer a few desultory remarks, not in behalf of classic lore in general, so much as in commendation of a single branch. The observations which follow are meant to shew some reasons why our scholars should devote special attention to the Greek Tragedies.
It is believed that these relics, unfortunately not more than thirty in number, have been more neglected in our schools and among our private scholars than any portion of ancient letters. That this has not been the case in England will be very apparent to any one who is familiar with the lives and labors of such men as Bentley, Porson, Markham, and Blomfield. Especially in the University of Cambridge the ardor with which these works have been restored to purity of text, and elucidated by indefatigable research, has been almost excessive.
The intrinsic difficulties in the Greek plays are not such as should deter any well grounded scholar. After an ordinary training in the Attic idioms of Zenophon, Plato, and Demosthenes, the labor will be small. From the nature of the versification, there is a limit to the construction, so that the sense cannot be thrown beyond a few lines. And the metres themselves, except in the most difficult choral parts, have been robbed of their intricacies by the labors of the critics.
There is this obvious inducement for the scholar to take up a Greek tragedy, that it is short. Even if he study with minute analysis, a few days will complete his task. But he who begins the Odyssey is loth to lay it aside until he has finished it, which is the work of months. The tragedy is complete in itself, “totus teres atque rotundus.”
It has been maintained by some scholars, that no human productions have the perfection of literary finish, as it is possessed by the dramas of Euripides. And we may include his two great predecessors in the remark, that their works, like the Hellenic sculptures, will remain unrivalled, the models of all who aim to present nature idealized to its utmost point.
The ancient tragedy, from its very nature, contains the concentration of high passion. This was the very notion of it, as tragedy. And this quality renders it an indispensable study to all those whose province it is to scrutinize or to awaken the active powers; in other words, to the metaphysician, the poet, and especially the orator. No doubt it was this view of the subject which led a man no less visionary than Mr. Fox to declare, as he does in his correspondence with Dr. Parr, that if he had a son to educate for the senate, he would cause him to be profoundly versed in the writings of Euripides.1 And yet so far as mere passion is concerned, we find it more strongly developed in the “desolate simplicity” of Aeschylus, than in either of his followers. This use of dramatic composition is doubtless involved in that celebrated and vexed passage of Aristotle's Poetics, in which tragedy is said to be efficacious to purge the passions. Barker quotes Jamblichus, in illustration of this παθηματων καθαρσις, where he says: “By contemplating the passions of others in tragedy and comedy, we settle our own passions, render them more temperate, and purify them.” Milton also, whose whole soul was steeped in Grecian poesy, alludes in the introduction to his Samson Agonistes, to this same remark of Aristotle, where tragedy is said “to be of power by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure.”
1 See Appendix to Parr's Works, Johnstone's edition. Vol. vii. and viii.
Alike in name, ancient and modern tragedy scarcely belong to the same species. The grand distinction of the former is the chorus, which is altogether inadmissible in the latter. According to the most specious hypothesis this was the nucleus of the Greek drama, around which, by slow degrees, the dialogue was gathered. It was the chorus, as a train of personages unconnected with the plot, that relieved the tedium or directed the excitement of the dialogue. Sometimes, as they appear in significant dance, they advise, exhort, or suggest a moral; sometimes they echo back the feeling of the actors, and always augment the grandeur of the pageant. Thus we find the chorus ever and anon breaking in to temper the unnatural rage of Medea, and in this respect discharging the duty indicated by Horace,
Ille bonis faveat, et concilietur amice:
Et regat iratos, et amet pacare tumentes:
Ille dapes laudet mensac brevis: ille salubrem
Justitiam, legesque, et apertis otia portis:
Ille tegat commissa, &c.
Ad Pisones 195.
The mere English reader will have a fair conception of this singular ingredient of the ancient drama, by perusing Milton's tragedy above-named, which is cast in the most rigorous Attic mould; and which, we are tempted to imagine would have been received even at Athens, if it could have been brought out in the astonishing Greek version of Glasse. If Gray had not dissipated his matchless powers upon mere fugitive efforts, he might have done more than all other scholars to produce a spirited repristination of the antique chorus. Mason's Elfrida on the same plan has been thought a failure. His estimate of the ancient chorus however merits attention. “Shakspeare” says he, speaking of the poetic element in the drama, “had the power of introducing this naturally, and what is most strange, of joining it with pure passion; but I make no doubt, if we had a tragedy of his formed on the Greek model, we should find in it more frequent, if not nobler, instances of his high poetical capacity. I think you have a proof of this in those parts of his historical plays, which are called choruses, and written in the common dialogue metre. And your imagination will easily conceive, how fine an ode the description of the night preceding the battle of Agincourt would have made in his hands, and what additional grace it would receive from that form of composition.” He also shows that the chorus augmented the pathetic, both in its odes and dialogue; by music, by the dance, by aiding and carrying forward the impression, and by showing to the spectators other spectators strongly affected by the action. These remarks are cited merely to throw light on this cardinal attribute of the ancient drama, not to recommend its revival among the moderns. The German scholar will find the “Iphigenia in Tauris” perhaps the severest and happiest imitation of the antique; yet it does not “come home to our business and bosoms.”
The relative importance of these great productions should cause them to be placed in a commanding position at our great schools. This has already been effected in England. A taste for this branch of study is fostered by the rank which it is made to hold in the university examinations. Porson's noted prize is awarded annually to the best translation into Greek verse of a given passage of Shakspeare. In the Cambridge examinations, the three great objects of competition in classical literature, are the University Scholarships—the Classical Tripos, and the Chancellor's Medal. Among other exercises demanded of candidates, they are expected to translate into English verse any given portions of the three tragedians, as well as of Aristophanes. A passage, usually from Shakspeare or Milton, is assigned, to be translated into Greek verse. The metre is generally Tragic Iambic; sometimes Tragic Trochaic; sometimes Anapæstic; rarely Heroic, and still more seldom Comic Iambic. The obvious tendency of such measures, is to excite the most intense emulation in the whole literary corps, and to keep before the mind of the learned the highest models. Familiarity with these amazing conflicts of passion is not merely a literary luxury; it is a great preparative for those real scenes in which the statesman, the advocate and the orator, are called upon to reach the hidden springs of human action, to sway the motives, and wield “at will the fierce democraty.” The American student therefore who is awake to his own interest, will not deem it beneath his notice to work in this mine, and will say with Milton,
Sometimes let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the Tale of Troy divine;
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.
BOREALIS.
N. Jersey.