CHAPTER V.
THE WASPS.
This comedy, which was produced by its author the year after the performance of ‘The Clouds,’ may be taken as in some sort a companion picture to that piece. Here the satire is directed against the passion of the Athenians for the excitement of the law-courts, as in the former its object was the new philosophy. And as the younger generation—the modern school of thought—were there the subjects of the caricature, so here the older citizens, who took their seats in court as jurymen day by day, to the neglect of their private affairs and the encouragement of a litigious disposition, appear in their turn in the mirror which the satirist holds up. It is calculated that in the ten courts at Athens, when all were open, there might sometimes be required as many as six thousand jurymen, and there was never any difficulty in obtaining them. It was not the mere temptation of the “threepence,” more or less, to which each juryman was entitled as compensation for his loss of time, which drew so many to the courts, however convenient it might be for the purposes of burlesque to assume that it was so. No doubt the pay was an object to some of the poorer citizens; and so far the influence of such a regulation was bad, inasmuch as it led to the juries being too often struck from an inferior class, less independent and less intelligent. Nor need we be so uncharitable as the historian Mitford, and calculate that “besides the pay, which was small, there was the hope of bribes, which might be large.” It is not probable that bribery could often be applied to so numerous a body. But the sense of dignity and personal importance which attaches to the right of giving a judicial decision, and the interest and excitement which are aroused by legal or criminal questions, especially in those who have to investigate them, are feelings perfectly well understood in our days, as well as in those of Aristophanes. Such feelings are not only natural, but have their use, more especially when the cause to be decided is, as it so often was at Athens, of a public character. Plato considered that a citizen who took no interest in these duties made himself a kind of alien in the state, and we Englishmen hold very much the same doctrine. But the passion for hearing and deciding questions, judicial or political, was carried to great excess among the Athenians at this date. Their own historians and orators are full of references to this national peculiarity, and Aristophanes is not the only satirist who has taken advantage of it. Lucian, in one of his very amusing dialogues, represents Menippus as looking down from the moon upon the earth below, and watching the various pursuits of the inhabitants. The northern hordes are fighting, the Egyptian is ploughing, the Phœnician is carrying his merchandise over the sea, the Spartan is undergoing corporal discipline, and the Athenian is “sitting in the jury-box.”[39]
This is perhaps the least amusing of all Aristophanes’s productions to a modern reader, although it was adopted by Racine as the basis of his only comedy, “Les Plaideurs.” There are but two characters in it of any importance to the action, a father and son. Philocleon,[40] the father, is strongly possessed with this mania for the courts. His family cannot keep him at home. He neglects his person, hardly sleeps at night for thinking of his duties in the courts, and is off before daylight in the morning to secure a good seat; he even declares the cock must have been bribed, by some profligates who have reason to dread the terrors of the law, not to crow loud enough to awake him. He keeps in his house “a whole beach” of little round pebbles, that he may always have one ready for giving his vote; and goes about holding his three fingers pinched together as if he had got one between them ready to slip into the ballot-box. In vain has his son remonstrated, and had him washed and dressed, and sent for the physicians, and even the priests, to try to rid him of his malady. And now, as a last resource, they have been obliged to lock him up, and set a watch upon the house. His contrivances to escape are in the very wildest vein of extravaganza. He tries to get out through the chimney, and pretends he’s “only the smoke;” and they all rush to put a cover on the chimney-top, and a great stone on it. He escapes through a hole in the tiles and sits on the roof, pretending to be “only a sparrow;” and they have to set a net to catch him. His son—a young gentleman of the more modern school—and the two slaves who are set to watch him day and night, have a very trying time of it.
The second scene introduces the Chorus of the play, consisting of Philocleon’s fellow-jurymen. The time is early daybreak, and they are already on their way to the courts, preceded by two or three boys with torches. Their appearance is of the strangest,—they are the “Wasps” who give the name to the piece. A mask resembling a wasp’s head, a black and yellow body, and some comic appendage in their rear to represent a sting,—were, we may presume, the costume provided by the stage manager. The poet probably intended to represent the acrimonious temper which delighted in the prosecution of individuals without much reference to their actual guilt, and the malevolence which often instigated the accusation. But he allows them to give, on their own behalf, another and more honourable explanation of their name, which, though it occurs later in the play, may find its place here. It is the old story, which the dramatist knew his audience were never tired of hearing:—
If any of this good company should note our strange array—
The wasp-like waists and cross-barred suits that we have donned to-day—
And if he asks what means this sting we brandish, as you see,
Him will we undertake to teach, dull scholar though he be
All we who wear this tail-piece claim true Athenian birth
The rightful Aborigines, sole sons of Mother earth;[41]
A lusty race, who struck good blows for Athens in the fight,
What time as the Barbarian came on us like the night.
With torch and brand the Persian horde swept on from east to west,
To storm the hives that we had stored, and smoke us from our nest:
Then we laid our hand to spear and targe, and met him on his path;
Shoulder to shoulder, close we stood, and bit our lips for wrath.
So fast and thick the arrows flew, that none might see the heaven,
But the gods were on our side that day, and we bore them back at even.
High o’er our heads, an omen good, we saw the owlet wheel,
And the Persian trousers in their backs felt the good Attic steel.
Still as they fled we followed close, a swarm of vengeful foes,
And stung them where we chanced to light, on cheek, and lip, and nose.
So to this day, barbarians say, when whispered far or near,
More than all else the Attic Wasp is still a name of fear.
The party are come, as usual, to summon their trusty comrade Philocleon to go with them to the courts. What makes him so late this morning? He was never wont to be the last on these occasions. They knock at the door, and call him loudly by name. He puts his head out of the window, and begging them not to make such a noise for fear they should awake his guard, explains to them his unfortunate case. He will try to let himself down to the street by a rope, if they will catch him,—and if he should fall and break his neck, they must promise to bury him with all professional honours “within the bar.” But he is discovered in the attempt by one of the watchful slaves, and thrust back again.
Then the leader of the Chorus, a veteran Wasp who has seen service, cheers on his troops to the attack of the fortress in which their comrade is so unjustifiably confined. He reminds them of the exploits of their youth:—
Forward, good friends—advance! Quick march!—Now, Comias, why so slow, man?
There was a day when I may say you and I gave way to no man;
Then you were as tough as dog’s hide—now Charinades moves faster!
Ha! Strymodorus! in the Courts ’twere hard to find your master!
Where’s Chabes? and Euérgides?—do any of ye know?—
Alack! alack! for the young blood that warmed us long ago!
Dost mind when at Byzantium we two kept watch together,
And walked our rounds at night, old boy, in that tremendous weather?
And how we stole the kneading-trough from that old baker’s wife,
Split it, and fried our rations with it?—Ha, ha!—Ay, that was life!
Shakspeare had assuredly never read ‘The Wasps;’ but the mixture of the farcical with the pathetic which always accompanies the garrulous reminiscences of old age, and which Aristophanes introduces frequently in his comedies, is common to both these keen observers. In the comrades of the old Athenian’s youth we seem to recognise Master Shallow’s quondam contemporaries: “There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barr, and Francis Pickbone, and “Will Squele, a Cotswold man,—you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns of Court again.... O the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!”[42]
A battle-royal takes place on the stage; the Wasps, with their formidable stings, trying to storm the house, while the son and his retainers defend their position with clubs and other weapons, and especially by raising a dense smoke, which is known to be very effective against such an enemy.