Greek tragedy

by Gilbert Norwood

If we now consider Æschylus on his purely dramatic side, as a builder of plays, we find again the three distinctive notes, grandeur, simplicity, and picturesqueness. The grandeur of his architecture is an authentic sign of his massive genius—it by no means depends on his selection of divine or terrific figures; the Persæ and the Septem are witnesses. It is the outcome of his conception of life as the will of God impinging upon human character. Æschylus knows nothing about “puppets of fate.” Around and above men is a divine government about which many things may be obscure, but of which we surely know that it is righteous and the guardian of righteousness. Man by sin enters into collision with the law. The drama of Æschylus is his study of the will and moral consciousness of man in its efforts to understand, to justify to itself, and to obey that law. Supreme justice working itself out in terms of human will—such is his theme. Another source of grandeur lies in the perspectives which his works reveal. This, perhaps most evident in the Prometheus, runs through the other plays; and a technical result of this power is the skill with which the whole trilogies are wrought. To compose trilogies rather than simple tragedies shows indeed the instinct for perspective working at the very heart of his method. Again, if this instinct likens his work to painting, still more are we led by historical considerations to make a comparison with sculpture. It has been said[288] that the earliest play is “like one of those archaic statues which stand with limbs stiff and countenance smiling and stony.” This brilliant simile is full of enlightenment. Just as those early Greek statues which seem to the casual observer merely distressing are to be contrasted, not with the achievement of Praxiteles but with non-Hellenic art, the winged bulls of Assyria and the graven hummocks which present the kings of Egypt, whereupon we perceive the stirrings of life and beauty; so should the Supplices, were it only in our power, be compared to the rigid declamations from which, to all seeming, tragedy was born. In the Supplices tragedy came alive like the marble Galatea. Dædalus was reputed to have made figures that walked and ran; it is no fable of Æschylus, but the history of his art.

Simplicity, the second note of Æschylus, needs little demonstration after the detailed account of his plots. The four earlier works contain each the very minimum of action. The characterization is noble, but far from subtle. All the persons are simply drawn, deriving their effect from one informing concept and from the circumstances to which they react. Euripides in the Frogs[289] fastens upon this, remarking, “You took over from Phrynichus an audience who were mere fools”. A later generation demanded smartness and subtlety; Æschylus was anything but artful, and so the same critic accuses him of obscurity in his prologues.[290] The Oresteia exhibits a marked advance in construction. Leaving on one side the vexed question of the plot in the Agamemnon,[291] we observe in the Choephorœ what we may call intrigue. Orestes has a device for securing admission to the palace; the libations by which Clytæmnestra intends to secure herself are turned into a weapon against her; the chorus intercept the nurse and alter her message so as to aid the conspiracy. This ingenuity is perhaps due to the influence of Sophocles.

Thirdly, what may be termed picturesqueness in structure is a matter of vital import for Æschylus. To write dramatically is to portray life by exhibiting persons, the vehicles of principles, in contact and collision. For an artist of the right bent, it is not difficult to select a scene of history or an imagined piece of contemporary life which under manipulation and polishing will show the hues of drama. But the earliest of dramatists turns aside in the main from such topics. His favourite themes are the deepest issues, not of individual life, but the life of the race, or the structure of the universe. What is the relation between Justice and Mercy? Why is the omnipotent omniscient? May a man of free will and noble instincts escape a hereditary curse sanctioned by heaven? Such musings demand surely a quiet unhurried philosophic poem, not the decisive shock of drama. Æschylus devoted himself, nevertheless, not to literature in the fashion of Wordsworth, but to tragedy. How was he to write a play about Justice and Mercy, to discuss a compromise between the rigidity of safe government and the flexibility of wise government? Justice and Mercy are both essential to the moral universe, says the theologian—but they are incompatible. Friendship and strife are both essential to the physical universe, says Empedocles—but how can they be wedded? This impossibility is everywhere, and everywhere by miracle it is achieved. This union of opposites pervades the world, from the primitive protoplasm which must be rigid to resist external shock but flexible to grow and reproduce itself, to the august constitution of the eternal kingdom in which “righteousness and peace have kissed each other”. Where, then, is the playwright to find foothold? His innumerable instances merge into one another. Æschylus, with noble audacity, lifts us out of the current of time and imagines a special instance, an instance which presents the problem in dual form—for example the human tangle of the Atridean house and the superhuman conflict between Zeus and the powers of earth. It is assumed that there has been no earlier, less decisive, jar. In the future, there will be no more. The great question is raised once for all in its completest, most difficult form. The gradual processes of time are abolished. Thus Atlas[292] is punished by condemnation to the task of upholding heaven for ever; how it was sustained before his offence is a question we must not raise. Hypermnestra[293] is put on trial for disobeying her father that her husband may live. She is saved by Aphrodite; and the innumerable cases of conflicts of duty which have broken hearts in days past are summed up (rather than disregarded) by this ultimate example. In the Oresteia a man is hunted well-nigh to death by fiends because he has obeyed the will of God. Why? It can only be said that until the judgment in the Eumenides all is nebulous, the world is being governed desperately as by some committee of public safety; morals, justice, and equity are still upon the anvil. After this one case no man will ever again be tortured like Orestes; nor indeed, we may conjecture, will the oracles of Zeus issue behests so merciless as that which he received.

Finally, something should be said about Æschylus’ views on religion. Other subjects had an interest for him, geography, history, and politics,[294] but his never-failing and profound interest in religion overshadows these. Not only was he interested in the local cults of Athens, as were his great successors; he is at home in the deepest regions of theology. Even more than this, he brings back strange messages from the eternal world, he seeks to purify the beliefs of his fellows by his deep sense of spiritual fact; he writes the chronicles of Heaven and bears witness to the conquests of the Most High. Among Greek writers he is the most religious, and, with Plato and Euripides, most alive to the importance of belief to the national health. He is not ashamed of the traditional gospel when he thinks it true: “the act comes back upon him that did it; so runs the thrice-old saw”.[295] Still less is he ashamed to denounce false maxims: “From of old hath this hoary tale been spread abroad among men, that when prosperity hath grown to its full stature it brings forth offspring and dies not childless; yea, that from good hap a man’s posterity shall reap unendingly a harvest of woe. But I stand apart from others, nor is my mind like theirs.”[296] This originality and sincere mood is shown everywhere. Already we have noted how earnestly just he is towards the claims of the Furies. The case was no foregone conclusion for him. To realize how terrible the quarrel was in his eyes we have only to imagine our feelings had Apollo been defeated. And defeated he nearly is; the human judges vote equally.

The poet’s clear thinking and ethical soundness are shown in his treatment of the hereditary Curse or Até (ἄτη). Some great sin brings this curse into being, and it oppresses the sinner’s family with an abnormal tendency to further crime. But the descendants are not forced to sin. The action of the curse, according to Æschylus, is upon their imagination. When some temptation to wrong-doing occurs to them, as to all men, they may suddenly remember the curse and exclaim in effect: “Why struggle against this temptation? our house is ridden by an Até which drives us to sin”. Thus they rush upon evil with a desperate gusto and abandon. So Eteocles[297] cries:—

Since Heav’n thus strongly urges on th’ event,

Let Laius’ race, by Phœbus loathed, all, all

Before the wind sweep down the stream of Hell!

But the curse can be resisted. The house of Atreus fed its curse from generation to generation by criminal bloodshed. But Orestes shed blood only at the behest of Heaven, and so combined necessary vengeance with innocence. Thus the curse was laid to rest.[298]