Perhaps we may trace this difference to something analogous in physical organization, situation, religion and manners. First, the natural organization of the Greeks seems to have been more perfect, more susceptible of external impressions, and more in harmony with external nature than ours, who have not the same advantages of climate and constitution. Born of a beautiful and vigorous race, with quick senses and a clear understanding, and placed under a mild heaven, they gave the fullest development to their external faculties: and where all is perceived easily, every thing is perceived in harmony and proportion. It is the stern genius of the North which drives men back upon their own resources, which makes them slow to perceive, and averse to feel, and which, by rendering them insensible to the single, successive impressions of things, requires their collective and combined force to rouse the imagination violently and unequally. It should be remarked, however, that the early poetry of some of the Eastern nations has even more of that irregularity, wild enthusiasm, and disproportioned grandeur, which has been considered as the distinguishing character of the Northern nations.
Again, a good deal may be attributed to the state of manners and political institutions. The ancient Greeks were warlike tribes encamped in cities. They had no other country than that which was enclosed within the walls of the town in which they lived. Each individual belonged, in the first instance, to the State; and his relations to it were so close, as to take away, in a great measure, all personal independence and free-will. Every one was mortised to his place in society, and had his station assigned him as part of the political machine, which could only subsist by strict subordination and regularity. Every man was as it were perpetually on duty, and his faculties kept constant watch and ward. Energy of purpose, and intensity of observation, became the necessary characteristics of such a state of society; and the general principle communicated itself from this ruling concern for the public, to morals, to art, to language, to every thing.—The tragic poets of Greece were among her best soldiers; and it is no wonder that they were as severe in their poetry as in their discipline. Their swords and their styles carved out their way with equal sharpness. This state of things was afterwards continued under the Roman empire. In the ages of chivalry and romance, which, after a considerable interval, succeeded its dissolution, and which have stamped their character on modern genius and literature, all was reversed. Society was again resolved into its component parts; and the world was, in a manner, to begin anew. The ties which bound the citizen and the soldier to the State being loosened, each person was thrown back, as it were, into the circle of the domestic affections, or left to pursue his doubtful way to fame and fortune alone. This interval of time might be accordingly supposed to give birth to all that was constant in attachment, adventurous in action, strange, wild and extravagant in invention. Human life took the shape of a busy, voluptuous dream, where the imagination was now lost amidst ‘antres vast and deserts idle;’ or, suddenly transported to stately palaces, echoing with dance and song. In this uncertainty of events, this fluctuation of hopes and fears, all objects became dim, confused and vague. Magicians, dwarfs, giants, followed in the train of romance; and Orlando’s enchanted sword, the horn which he carried with him, and which he blew thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero’s winged horse, were not sufficient to protect them in their unheard-of encounters, or deliver them from their inextricable difficulties. It was a return to the period of the early heroic ages; but tempered by the difference of domestic manners, and the spirit of religion. The marked difference in the relation of the sexes, arose from the freedom of choice in women, which, from being the slaves of the will and passions of men, converted them into the arbiters of their fate, which introduced the modern system of gallantry, and first made love a feeling of the heart, founded on mutual affection and esteem. The leading virtues of the Christian religion, self-denial and generosity, assisted in producing the same effect.—Hence the spirit of chivalry, of romantic love, and honour!
The mythology of the romantic poetry differed from the received religion: both differed essentially from the classical. The religion, or mythology of the Greeks, was nearly allied to their poetry: it was material and definite. The Pagan system reduced the Gods to the human form, and elevated the powers of inanimate nature to the same standard. Statues carved out of the finest marble, represented the objects of their religious worship in airy porticos, in solemn temples and consecrated groves. Mercury was seen ‘new-lighted on some heaven-kissing hill;’ and the Naiad or Dryad came gracefully forth as the personified genius of the stream or wood. All was subjected to the senses. The Christian religion, on the contrary, is essentially spiritual and abstract; it is ‘the evidence of things unseen.’ In the Heathen mythology, form is everywhere predominant; in the Christian, we find only unlimited, undefined power. The imagination alone ‘broods over the immense abyss, and makes it pregnant.’ There is, in the habitual belief of an universal, invisible Principle of all things, a vastness and obscurity which confounds our perceptions, while it exalts our piety. A mysterious awe surrounds the doctrines of the Christian faith: the Infinite is everywhere before us, whether we turn to reflect on what is revealed to us of the Divine nature or our own.
History, as well as religion, has contributed to enlarge the bounds of imagination; and both together, by showing past and future objects at an interminable distance, have accustomed the mind to contemplate and take an interest in the obscure and shadowy. The ancients were more circumscribed within ‘the ignorant present time,’—spoke only their own language,—were conversant only with their own customs,—were acquainted only with the events of their own history. The mere lapse of time then, aided by the art of printing, has served to accumulate for us an endless mass of mixed and contradictory materials; and, by extending our knowledge to a greater number of things, has made our particular ideas less perfect and distinct. The constant reference to a former state of manners and literature, is a marked feature in modern poetry. We are always talking of the Greeks and Romans;—they never said any thing of us. This circumstance has tended to give a certain abstract elevation, and etherial refinement to the mind, without strengthening it. We are lost in wonder at what has been done, and dare not think of emulating it. The earliest modern poets, accordingly, may be conceived to hail the glories of the antique world, dawning through the dark abyss of time; while revelation, on the other hand, opened its path to the skies: As Dante represents himself as conducted by Virgil to the shades below; while Beatrice welcomes him to the abodes of the blest.
We must now return, however, to our author, whose sketch of the rise and progress of the Drama, will be interesting to our readers.
‘The invention of the dramatic art, and of a theatre, seem to lie very near one another. Man has a great disposition to mimicry. When he enters vividly into the situation, sentiments and passions of others, he even involuntarily puts on a resemblance to them in his gestures. Children are perpetually going out of themselves: it is one of their chief amusements to represent those grown people whom they have had an opportunity of observing, or whatever comes in their way: And with the happy flexibility of their imagination, they can exhibit all the characteristics of assumed dignity in a father, a schoolmaster, or a king. The sole step which is requisite for the invention of a drama, namely, the separating and extracting the mimetic elements and fragments from social life, and representing them collected together into one mass, has not, however, been taken in many nations. In the very minute description of ancient Egypt in Herodotus and other writers, I do not recollect observing the smallest trace of it. The Etrurians, again, who in many respects resembled the Egyptians, had their theatrical representations; and, what is singular enough, the Etruscan name for an actor, histrio, is preserved in living languages down to the present day. The Arabians and Persians, though possessed of a rich poetical literature, are unacquainted with any sort of drama. It was the same with Europe in the middle ages. On the introduction of Christianity, the plays handed down among the Greeks and Romans were abolished, partly from their reference to Heathen ideas, and partly because they had degenerated into the most impudent and indecent immorality; and they were not again revived till after the lapse of nearly a thousand years. Even in the fourteenth century, we do not find in Boccacio, who, however, gives us a most accurate picture of the whole constitution of social life, the smallest trace of plays. In place of them, they had then only story-tellers, minstrels, and jugglers. On the other hand, we are by no means entitled to assume, that the invention of the drama has only once taken place in the world, or that it has always been borrowed by one people from another. The English navigators mention, that among the islanders of the South Seas, who, in every mental acquirement, are in such a low scale of civilization, they yet observed a rude drama, in which a common event in life was imitated for the sake of diversion. And to go to the other extreme:—Among the Indians, the people from whom, perhaps, all the cultivation of the human race has been derived, plays were known long before they could have experienced any foreign influence. It has lately been made known to Europe, that they have a rich dramatic literature, which ascends back for more than two thousand years. The only specimen of their plays (nataks) hitherto known to us, is the delightful sakontala, which, notwithstanding the colouring of a foreign climate, bears, in its general structure, such a striking resemblance to our romantic drama, that we might be inclined to suspect we owe this resemblance to the predilection for Shakespear entertained by Jones the English translator, if his fidelity were not confirmed by other learned Orientalists. In the golden times of India, the representation of this natak served to delight the splendid imperial court of Delhi; but it would appear that, from the misery of numberless oppressions, the dramatic art in that country is now entirely at an end. The Chinese, again, have their standing national theatre, stationary perhaps in every sense of the word; and I do not doubt that, in the establishment of arbitrary rules, and the delicate observance of insignificant points of decorum, they leave the most correct Europeans very far behind them. When the new European stage, in the fifteenth century, had its origin in the allegorical and spiritual pieces called Moralities and Mysteries, this origin was not owing to the influence of the ancient dramatists, who did not come into circulation till some time afterwards. In those rude beginnings lay the germ of the romantic drama as a peculiar invention.’ p. 28.
The fault of this book is to have too much of every thing, but especially of Greece; and we cannot help feeling, that the bold and independent judgment which the author has applied to all other nations, is somewhat suborned or overawed by his excessive veneration for those ancient classics. There is a glow and a force, however, in all that he says upon the subject, that almost persuades us that he is in the right,—and that there was something incomparably more lofty in the conceptions of those early times, than the present undignified and degenerate age can imagine. This imposing and enthusiastic tone discloses itself in his introductory remarks on the Grecian theatre.
‘When we hear the word theatre,’ he says, ‘we naturally think of what with us bears the same name; and yet nothing can be more different from our theatre than the Grecian, in every part of its construction. If, in reading the Greek pieces, we associate our own stage with them, the light in which we shall view them must be false in every respect.—The theatres of the Greeks were quite open above, and their dramas were always acted in open day, and beneath the canopy of heaven. The Romans, at an after period, endeavoured by a covering to shelter the audience from the rays of the sun; but this degree of luxury was hardly ever enjoyed by the Greeks. Such a state of things appears very inconvenient to us: But the Greeks had nothing of effeminacy about them; and we must not forget, too, the beauty of their climate. When they were overtaken by a storm or a shower, the play was of course interrupted; and they would much rather expose themselves to an accidental inconvenience, than, by shutting themselves up in a close and crowded house, entirely destroy the serenity of a religious solemnity, which their plays certainly were. To have covered in the scene itself, and imprisoned gods and heroes in dark and gloomy apartments, imperfectly lighted up, would have appeared still more ridiculous to them. An action which so nobly served to establish the belief of the relation with heaven, could only be exhibited under an unobstructed sky, and under the very eyes of the gods, as it were, for whom, according to Seneca, the sight of a brave man struggling with adversity is an attractive spectacle. The theatres of the ancients were, in comparison with the small scale of ours, of a colossal magnitude, partly for the sake of containing the whole of the people, with the concourse of strangers who flocked to the festivals, and partly to correspond with the majesty of the dramas represented in them, which required to be seen at a respectful distance.’
One of the most elaborate and interesting parts of this work, is the account of the Greek tragedians, which is given in the fourth Lecture. Our extracts from it will be copious, both on account of the importance of the subject, and the ability with which it is treated.
‘Of the inexhaustible stores possessed by the Greeks in the department of tragedy, which the public competition at the Athenian festivals called into being, as the rival poets always contended for a prize, very little indeed has come down to us. We only possess works of three of their numerous tragedians, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and these in no proportion to the number of their compositions. The three authors in question were selected by the Alexandrian critics as the foundation for the study of ancient Greek literature, not because they alone were deserving of estimation, but because they afforded the best illustration of the various styles of tragedy. Of each of the two oldest poets, we have seven remaining pieces; in these, however, we have, according to the testimony of the ancients, several of their most distinguished productions. Of Euripides, we have a much greater number, and we might well exchange many of them for other works which are now lost; for example, the Satirical Dramas of Actæus, Æschylus and Sophocles; several pieces of Phrynichus, for the sake of comparison with Æschylus; or of Agathon, whom Plato describes as effeminate, but sweet and affecting, and who was a contemporary of Euripides, though somewhat younger.