193. Officiumque virile] Heinsius takes virile adverbially for viriliter. But this is thought harsh. What hinders, but that it may be taken adjectively? And then, agreeably to his interpretation, officium virile will mean a strenuous, diligent office, such as becomes a person interested in the progress of the action. The precept is leveled against the practice of those poets, who, though they allot the part of a persona dramatis to the chorus, yet for the most part make it so idle and insignificant an one, as is of little consequence in the representation: by which means the advantage of probability, intended to be drawn from this use of the chorus, is, in great measure, lost.
194. Neu quid medios intercinat actus, Quod non proposito conducat et haereat apte.] How necessary this advice might be to the writers of the Augustan age cannot certainly appear; but, if the practice of Seneca may give room for any suspicion, it should seem to have been much wanted; in whom I scarcely believe there is one single instance of the chorus being employed in a manner, consonant to its true end and character. To support this general censure, which may seem to bear hard on the poet, let us examine, in this view, one of the best of his plays, I mean, the Hippolytus; whose chorus, throughout, bears a very idle and uninteresting part—hath no share in the action—and sings impertinently.
At the end of the first act, when Phædra had avowed her passion for Hippolytus, instead of declaiming against her horrid purpose, enlarging on the danger and impiety of giving way to unnatural lusts, or something of this nature, which was surely the office of the chorus, it expatiates wantonly, and with a poetic luxuriance, on the sovereign, wide-extended powers of love.
In the close of the second act, instead of applauding the virtuous obstinacy of Hippolytus, and execrating the mad attempt of Phædra, it coolly sings the danger of beauty.
The third act contains the false accusation of Hippolytus, and the too easy deception of Theseus. What had the chorus to do here, but to warn against a too great credulity, and to commiserate the case of the deluded father? Yet it declaims, in general, on the unequal distribution of good and ill.
After the fourth act, the chorus should naturally have bewailed the fate of Hippolytus, and reverenced the mysterious conduct of Providence in suffering the cruel destiny of the innocent. This, or something like it, would have been to the purpose. But, as if the poet had never heard of this rule of coherence, he harangues, in defiance of common sense, on the instability of an high fortune, and the security of a low.
It will further justify this censure of Seneca, and be some amusement to the critical reader, to observe, how the several blunders, here charged upon him, arose from an injudicious imitation of Euripides.
I. There are two places in the Greek Hippolytus, which Seneca seems to have had in view in his first chorus. We will consider them both.
1. When the unhappy Phædra at length suffers the fatal secret of her passion to be extorted from her, she falls, as was natural, into all the horrors of self-detestation, and determines not to survive the confession of so black a crime. In this conjuncture, the nutrix, who is not drawn, as in modern tragedy, an unmeaning confidante, the mere depositary of the poet’s secrets, but has real manners assigned to her, endeavours, with the highest beauty of character, to divert these horrid intentions, and mitigate in some sort the guilt of her passion, by representing to her the resistless and all-subduing force of love. “Venus, says this virtuous monitrix, is not to be withstood, when she rushes upon us with all her power. Nor is any part of creation vacant from her influence. She pervades the air, and glides through the deeps. We, the inhabitants of the earth, are all subject to her dominion. Nay, ask of the ancient bards, and they will tell you, that the Gods themselves are under her controul.” And so goes on, enumerating particular examples, from all which she infers at last the necessity of Phædra’s yielding to her fate. Again,