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Cornell University Library 
 PN 1892.V36 
 
 Types of tragic drama 
 
 3 1924 026 104 194 
 
TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO. Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
TYPES 
 
 OF 
 
 TRAGIC DRAMA 
 
 BY 
 
 C. E. VAUGHAN 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1908 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following pages make no pretension to 
 completeness. They are, in fact, a reproduction, 
 more or less faithful, of a course of lectures 
 delivered to a general audience in this University 
 during the winter of 1906. Each lecture was 
 written out within a week after delivery ; and the 
 result, I believe, commonly represents the substance 
 of what was then said. Some of the lectures, 
 however, have been expanded, and a section on the 
 dramas of Victor Hugo has been added. 
 
 I have made no attempt to alter the lecture form, 
 nor to remove the roughnesses and unshaded 
 statements which are almost inseparable from spoken 
 utterance. In order to get rid of these defects, the 
 whole thing must have been recast from top to 
 bottom ; and it is probable that more would have 
 been lost than gained in the process. 
 
 No one could be more keenly alive to these, and 
 other, defects than I am. In particular, I must 
 regret that limits of time have often compelled me 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 either to indicate important considerations, instead 
 of working them out with some approach to 
 completeness, or to omit them altogether. This is 
 especially the case with the last lecture. And I can 
 only hope that the limitations under which I spoke 
 may be borne in mind. I may perhaps say that, 
 having seen a perfoirmance of A DolFs House while 
 these sheets were in the press, I am now less 
 disposed to question its dramatic truth than I was 
 when I wrote the words on p. 268. 
 
 I have to express my warmest thanks to my 
 colleague, Professor Rhys Roberts, who kindly 
 revised the first five lectures, and to Professor 
 Herford, who did the like service ungrudgingly for 
 the whole. Without their aid, the defects of the 
 book would have been still more numerous and 
 glaring than they are. 
 
 C. E. VAUGHAN. 
 
 Leeds, Dec. z8, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory ........ i 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 Greek . Tragedy : jiEschylus . . . . .19 
 / 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 Greek Tragedy : Sophocles . . . . -41 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 Greek Tragedy: Euripides . . . .^. ~r — ^l 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 Roman Tragedy : Seneca . . . . . -85 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 Modern Classical Tragedy : Racine, Alfieri ^ . 109 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 Romantic Tragedy: Shakespeare . . . - — -.>- 141 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 Romantic Tragedy : Calderon . . . . . 1 67 
 
 LECTURE IX 
 
 Romantic Tragedy : Historical Drama : Goethe's 
 
 Faust ... 196 
 
 LECTURE X 
 
 Fusion of Classical and Romantic Tragedy : Goethe's 
 
 Tphigenie : Dramas of Victor Hugo . . .221 
 
 LECTURE XI 
 
 Some Types of Recent Drama : Browning, Maeterlinck, 
 
 Ibsen ......... 248 
 
 INDEX 273 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The subject of the following Lectures is extremely, 
 perhaps unduly, wide, and it is manifest that the 
 treatment must be summary and imperfect. It is 
 only possible to take the most general points, and 
 to handle them in the most general manner. What 
 then may we hope to gain from such a study ? 
 What purpose may it be expected to serve.'' It 
 is something surely to study the growth of any 
 one form in which the imagination of man has 
 taken body ; above all, when the form in question 
 is that on which the highest poetic genius has 
 been spent. And we may perhaps go further 
 than this. We may hope, I trust, to extend our 
 knowledge of the treasures offered by imaginative 
 art ; and, with this object, I shall always base what 
 I have to say upon particular dramas ; upon those 
 which common consent has pronounced to be the 
 most characteristic. And, what is yet more im- 
 portant, we may hope to gain something of that 
 
2 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lkct. 
 
 comprehensiveness of view, that liberality, that toler- 
 ance, without which we can never enter into the spirit 
 of poetry, or indeed of imaginative art in any 
 form. The House Beautiful, like another house still 
 nobler and more sacred, has many mansions. And 
 if in the course of these Lectures we are led to realise 
 that truth, we shall not have spent our time in vain. 
 At the outset we shall do well to anticipate, 
 loosely and broadly, the results at which we may 
 expect to arrive ; to map out, in a very general 
 way, the ground we are about to traverse^ There 
 are, it is generally admitted, two main types of 
 tragic drama — those known to critics under the 
 names classical and romantic. The classical «type, 
 in its purest form, is that which belongs to the 
 tragedy of ancient Greece. It is also that which 
 appears in what remains to us of Latin tragedy 
 and in the drama of modern Italy and of France. 
 It reappears, finally, in some of the most remarkable 
 work of Goethe and df Schiller. The romantic 
 type, on the other hand, is an essentially modern 
 creation. It is the type taken by the tragic drama 
 of Spain ; by that of the Elizabethans ; by the 
 most characteristic creations of Goethe and Schiller ; 
 by those of Browning, so far as, in any sense, his 
 genius was capable of lending itself to the limits of the 
 stage ; and finally, though in a very special form, 
 by the efforts of Hugo and the "romantic" 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 dramatists of France. It need hardly be said — 
 for the same applies to all literary classifications 
 — that each of these main types includes under 
 it several subordinate forms. But it is well to 
 insist from the outset that it is often extremely 
 difficult to say under which of the main types a 
 given play should properly be brought. The 
 boundaries between the two shade off by almost 
 imperceptible gradations ; and the dramatist would 
 often have seemed to work under a double 
 inspiration. Thus there are certainly elements 
 which it is difficult not to recognise as romantic 
 in the tragic drama of the Greeks, to a yet 
 greater extent in that of the Italians and the 
 French. On the other hand, it is impossible to 
 deny the influence of the classical type upon 
 the Elizabethans, particularly upon the essentially 
 romantic genius of Marlowe. Nor, with all his 
 efforts, did Hugo ever succeed in shaking entirely 
 free from the classical tradition which circumstances 
 had riveted upon the tragic drama of France. 
 
 Jt_ will_b.g._ observed that_„no provision is here 
 made for certain recent developments jof the dirania ; 
 liT particular for the " realistic^^_tragedy which_ we 
 are apt — not, as we shall see, altogether justly — 
 to associate ..witKjhe name of Ibsen. The truth 
 is that we have here an entirely new departure, 
 and one the ultimate consequences of which 
 
4 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 it is impossible to foresee. Accordingly, in the 
 limited time at our disposal, I have thought it 
 best to confine myself, in this matter, to Ibsen. In 
 the course of the present lecture, and again at the 
 end of our survey, I shall have occasion to speak 
 of his work, and to indicate the relation in which 
 I believe it to stand to the main line which tragic 
 drama has hitherto followed in its growth. 
 
 From what has already been said it will be clear 
 that, in my view, the general trend of that develop- 
 ment has been from the classical to the romantic 
 type. And I do not think that this will be seriously 
 disputed. Returns upon the classical model there 
 have doubtless been. The whole history of the 
 drama in France and Italy bears witness to the fact. 
 So does the classical revival promoted by Goethe 
 and Schiller. But that the general line of advance 
 has been what I say, there is, I think, no doubt 
 whatever. What then, it will be asked, are the 
 essential characteristics of our two main types, and 
 wherein is the fundamental distinction to be found ? 
 
 It is sometimes said that the essential quality of 
 the romantic drama is to follow nature ; and that 
 the essence of the advance, which we are here to 
 consider, is to have been a progress from the 
 artificial to the natural, from the conventional to 
 the real. In this notion there is a grain of truth. 
 But it is misleading in itself; misleading as a 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 description alike of the classical and the romantic 
 drama. And It is still more misleading in its 
 obvious implication. That implication, it need 
 hardly be said, is that the true function of the 
 drama is to "copy nature," to "hold up the 
 mirror to nature," to reproduce human life exactly as 
 it is. This, however, is hardly the function of art in 
 any shape. It has certainly not been the function 
 of the drama, as understood by its greatest masters. 
 
 For what are the facts ? Consider, firstly, the 
 more formal aspect of the case. I n^ respect of the_ 
 classical dram j^itb_really_.not worth arguing. No 
 one could assert that either iEschylus or Racine { 
 even attempted to reflect life as it is. But do we 
 fare much better with the romantic dramatist ? 
 Even he is unable to paint life as a whole. Like 
 all "Other artists, he is forced, by the purely material 
 conditions of his task if by nothings else, to select. 
 And the moment selection begins, the attempt to 
 reproduce the object before him as a whole, to give 
 an absolutely faithflil copy of it, necessarily ceases. 
 Again, if he gets rid of such conventions as the 
 unities, it is only to set up other conventions of 
 his own ; the convention, for instance, that the 
 imagination of the spectator shall leap from place 
 to place, from time to time, at the bidding of 
 scenery which every one knows to be a deception, 
 or a stage-direction which he is commonly left to 
 
6 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 gather from the circumstances that follow. In the 
 romantic no less than in the classical drama the 
 whole performance is a tissue of conventions : 
 conventions which we all instinctively make, but 
 which are none the less conventions because we 
 are hardly conscious of having made them. 
 
 Once more. Consider the soliloquies of the 
 romantic drama, above all of the tragedies of 
 Shakespeare. If we were asked to point to the 
 passages of Hamlet or Macbeth which are the most 
 significant, which let us the most deeply into the 
 secret of the hero's character, and enable us the most 
 surely to " pluck out the heart of his mystery," 
 we should at once lay our finger on the great 
 soliloquies. There is no part of these master- 
 pieces which we would not surrender more willingly 
 than these. And the same applies to the soliloquies 
 of Marlowe's Faustus and of Faust. Yet where 
 could a more glaring convention be found than 
 the soliloquy ? Who ever heard of a man in real 
 life folding his arms and discoursing glorious poetry 
 to his own shadow ? Lastly, consider the deep 
 significance of that poetic speech for which we 
 instinctively look in any tragedy which we approach 
 with high expectations, and seldom look in vain. 
 The poetic form, we feel, is well-nigh of the essence 
 of the deepest tragedy. Without it, the very spirit 
 would be lost or maimed. But, once more, where 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 can we find a more manifest convention ? And does 
 it not hold good as strongly with the romantic as 
 with the classical drama? The prose scenes inter- 
 spersed in Shakespeare or Faust only prove, what no 
 one will deny, that the romantic drama is more 
 elastic in this matter than the classical. And the 
 few notable tragedies written wholly in prose are 
 after all, exceptions which prove the rule rather than 
 confute it ; while the most notable of them all, 
 Emilia Galotti, partakes at least as much of the 
 classical as of the romantic type. T^e poetic form 
 then ce may say, _isaltaQSt,-i£-OQt.q^ uite, essential to- 
 the hi ghest traged y. It has been adopted almost, if 
 not quite, as completely by the romantic as by the 
 classical dramatists. Yet, like all the other points 
 here indicated, it is a pure convention. Like all the 
 rest, it betrays that the real aim of the dramatist is 
 not to copy nature but to transform her, not to obey 
 her but to use her for imaginative ends. 
 
 The same thing appears still more clearly when 
 we turn from the form to the spirit of the romantic 
 drama. If we approach Faust or Hamlet with the 
 determination to find in them no more than a reflec- 
 tion of life as we know it, we shall make no more 
 of them than we should make of Antigone or the 
 Eumenides under the same conditions. More of life, 
 more of experience, is doubtless taken up into the 
 modern examples, and herein lies their greatness. 
 
8 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 Not, however, in the bare fact that the material is 
 more complete, more widely gathered, more close 
 to life as we find it ; but that, being all this, it 
 is fused as completely by the imagination of the 
 dramatist, it appeals as deeply to the imagination of 
 the spectator or reader, as the more jealously sifted, 
 the more obviously idealised, material of the ancients. 
 Indeed, from one point of view we may truly 
 say that the modern drama, so far from being less, 
 is yet more, ideal than the ancient. The life which 
 the moderns have scrutinised more closely, the 
 experience ■ from which they have drawn more 
 widely, is after all npt that which lies without us, 
 not that which meets the eye, even of the keenest 
 observer. In man's outward circumstances and con- 
 ditions. It is the inner life, the world not of 
 outward fact, nor even of outward action, but of the 
 inmost thoughts, feelings, instincts, and passions of 
 mankind.) What distinguishes the modern from the 
 ancient drama above all other things is its greater 
 inwardness. | And that, when we come to think of it,, 
 is only another way of saying that it is more ideal. 
 Let any one read Faust or Hamlet, above all let him 
 read those supreme passages which embody the very 
 heart and soul of their intention, let him compare 
 them with the greatest plays and the supreme 
 passages of ^schylus or Sophocles ; and let him 
 deny the truth of this assertion, if he can. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 __JB"rom-.aiijhis it_r£su][tejthat the true function of. 
 the dpama,., romantic as well as classical, is not to 
 reproduce nature butxtg""13^1ise 3^ | Undi that_in 
 some ways, and those not the" least important, . the 
 modern drama does so more completely, in a sense 
 yet more pregnant, than the ancient. And ma'yliot 
 the same thing be said of art In general, of all the 
 forms in which the imaginative instinct can take 
 shape ? Is it not as true of painting or sculpture 
 as it is of poetry or the drama ? So far as form 
 goes, the truth is here still more apparent. Rob a 
 picture of its distribution of light and shade, of the 
 subtle harmonies of its scheme of colours ; rob a 
 statue of its proportion and its grace ; rob them, 
 in short, of all that is noi in nature, and you will 
 have no picture, and no statue, left. The result 
 may be much more " like life," like the crude object 
 presented by nature. But it will have ceased to be 
 a work of art, it will have ceased to have any charm ; 
 and the first glance will satisfy us that this is so. In 
 the same way with what we loosely call the spirit. 
 The true artist is not he who is content with the 
 mere outward form, however beautiful. It is he 
 who by subtle touches makes us feel the pulse of 
 life within. The supreme artist is not he who re- 
 produces the commonplace and the trivial ; but he 
 who gives bodily form to the noblest capacities of 
 man, to the "thought which wanders through 
 
lo TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 eternity," to the will which breaks its way through 
 every obstacle, to the love which triumphs over 
 death. And that, through different channels, in a 
 different matter and with other instruments, is the 
 function also of the dramatist. 
 
 Let us take a few instances by way of illustration. 
 Compare, firstly, the Madonna della Seggia with two 
 other pictures by the same artist ; the Madonna di 
 San Sisto and the Madonna del Granduca. All three 
 deal ostensibly with the same subject. All three are 
 painted with the same consummate art. But it will 
 be felt at once that between the first and the two 
 others there is the widest possible difference. The 
 one paints a purely human love, the love of the 
 earthly mother for her first-born. One would 
 say that Raphael had deliberately done every- 
 thing in his power to bind us to the earth, 
 to make us forget who the mother was, and 
 who the child, to confine us within the bounds 
 of a purely human pathos. How different is it 
 with the two other pictures ! Here the human 
 love is assuredly not lost. But by a hundred 
 touches, which perhaps no critic could define, it 
 is lifted into the yet higher and purer love 
 which clasps all heaven and earth within its arms, 
 which surrenders life and heaven itself to save 
 the wandering and the lost. Will any one deny 
 that this is the impression left by each of these 
 
I INTRODUCTORY ii 
 
 two pictures as a whole ? Will any one deny 
 that it is something different in kind from the 
 effect, glorious as it is, wrought by the peasant 
 mother and the peasant babe of the companion 
 picture ? And will any one doubt which of the two 
 effects is the higher ? 
 
 An example from sculpture is more perilous. For 
 there are many who hold the statuary to be bound 
 fast within the world of outward beauty ; who 
 consider that, the moment he ventures himself in 
 the world of spirit, he is lost. There are others, 
 however, who refuse to recognise the validity of 
 such restrictions. And for them the following com- 
 parison — a comparison which refers to a distinction 
 different from, though kindred with, the foregoing 
 — may have weight. Compare, then, two statues 
 by the greatest of modern sculptors ; the Adone 
 and the Creposcolo, both from the hand of Michael 
 Angelo. The contrast here is not, as in the preceding 
 case, between the actual and the ideal — for both 
 statues are highly idealised — but between two 
 different types of the ideal ; between that which 
 limits itself to the portrayal of outward beauty and 
 that which aims at giving bodily form to the world of 
 spirit and of soul. If we look only at the pose of the 
 two figures, we may find a superficial resemblance. 
 There is something of the same droop of the limbs ; 
 the droop of death in the one case, of sleep, or the 
 
12 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 first reluctant awakening from sleep, in the other. 
 But the resemblance is quite forgotten in the contrast. 
 The one gives us the perfection of bodily beauty ; a 
 beauty so calm and self-contained that even death 
 is powerless to trouble it ; so marvellous that, in 
 defiance of death, it seems to hold the hearts of all 
 men at its will. The other, the woman, has less 
 of grace, and the spirit of calm has gone from her 
 for ever. The weariness of the world has taken 
 possession of her soul. It breathes from every limb 
 and looks out, in sorrow and agony, from her brow 
 and fi"om her eyes. Her true life is not in the 
 present, but in the past and the future, in the 
 torture of memory and the forebodings of despair, 
 in the ideal vision before which all actual achieve- 
 ment seems a mockery or an outrage. The body, 
 beautiful as it is, has become the mere instrument 
 of the spirit. Her physical beauty is necessarily 
 less ; for it is purposely subordinated to the nobility 
 of the soul which broods and suffers within. But 
 in that spiritual life there is an intensity which more 
 than compensates for the loss of outward grace, for 
 the sacrifice of that exquisite poise of all the faculties 
 which is stamped on the face and on every limb 
 of the other. The one "has the serenity of infinite 
 beauty, the other the unrest of 
 
 Infinite passion, and the pain 
 Of finite hearts that yearn. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 Once again, can we doubt that in the latter the artist 
 has attempted both a harder and a higher task ? or 
 that his boldness is more than justified by the result ? 
 Let our last example be taken from literature; 
 let us compare the Antigone of Sophocles with a 
 striking modern play, An Enemy of the People. The 
 theme of both, if for the moment we make abstrac- 
 tion of everything that gives form and colour and 
 distinctive character to a work of art, is virtually the 
 same ; the revolt of theJndivi dual con science against 
 the community and its tyran ny. Each, according 
 to its own scheme, is most skilFully constructed. 
 But in the methods they foUow, In the effect they 
 produce, the two are poles asunder. In the modern 
 play everything is done to throw stress upon the 
 outward circumstances, the squalor of the social 
 surroundings, against which the individual rebels. 
 The petty intrigues of the mushroom watering-place, 
 its greed, its spite, its scandal, its very drains, are 
 brought bodily upon the stage ; and it is the essence 
 of Ibsen's method that they should be. In the same 
 way the figure of the hero, the rebel doctor, is 
 painted with the utmost minuteness of surrounding 
 detail. Moreover, we are at once struck with some- 
 thing peculiar in the light under which he is presented. 
 His cause is good and, under the given conditions, it 
 is driven home to our imagination with uncommon 
 power. But, at the end of the account, the cause is 
 
14 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lbct. 
 
 almost lost in the man, in the delight with which he 
 clasps the opportunity of revolt, in the exulting 
 assertion of his own naked individuality. No one 
 will deny that this is true to life, nor that the result, 
 in its own way, is strikingly dramatic. No one will 
 wish the play written otherwise than it is. For 
 when the end attained is so impressive, it is absurd 
 to quarrel with the means of its attainment. 
 
 Yet, if we compare Ibsen's play with that of 
 Sophocles, we can hardly fail to recognise that the 
 latter moves throughout upon a higher plane, that 
 alike in conception and handling it is a nobler 
 achievement. The circumstances are more inspiring 
 in themselves, and they are not obtruded on us with 
 the detail which, in the modern play, goes far to 
 stun and deaden the imagination. What is __ygt 
 more significant, we are made to feel, fro m the fir st 
 scene to the last, that the weightiest issues are at 
 stakej^ that the ind ividual characters, Creon and 
 Antigone, have their feet plante d on the rock, that 
 theyjdrawj:heir strength and their_yery being from 
 the causes for which they stand, and that thos e 
 causes are the greatest for which man can shed his 
 blood, or t he h uman wWi imperil all that it hoLjT 
 dear. The one stands for human justice, the other 
 
 for divine"; the one tor~the law of the land,' the 
 
 I ' ' — — ^ , _,_, , .._ , ^ ' , 
 
 other for the eternal rights which are the same in 
 gne^cit^ as in another. Each of the confllHrfig- 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 faiths has its justification, each is founded on prin- 
 ciples which are essential to the well-being of man- 
 kind. It is an evil day for men when the bands 
 of human justice prove themselves too narrow, when 
 they have to be torn asunder and the individual is 
 left with nothing but his own conscience, his innate 
 sense of equity, to guide his dealings with his fellow- 
 men. But such days have come, and will continue 
 to come until the end of the world. And when 
 they do come, there is nothing for it but that the 
 individual should take his conscience in his hand and 
 appeal from the injustice of that which is seen to the 
 justice of that which is unseen and abides. 
 
 So in the play before us. Both characters 
 alike h ave fait h in their own cause ; both7 iiTsome 
 sense, appeal to right ; Creon to the concrete, 
 traditional right of man, Antigone to th e mvisible, 
 etern al right which dwells with God , ^etw een the 
 two there is no possibility of reconc iliation, ihey 
 close, as i t is inevitable the y should close, in mortaT 
 conflict. Tha t whic h is humanly the weaker is^ in "fKe 
 human sense, cru shed and groun d to pow der. Bu T 
 / tri~its~very3efeat it has'T bund TiHSEyT And the- 
 conqueror himself bows in utter abasement before 
 the divine law which he had obstinately defie d. 
 Surely it must be admitted that we move here m 
 a purer atmosphere, that we are brought face to face 
 with a more spiritual and a nobler world than that 
 
1 6 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 of the self-centred, self-asserting characters of An 
 Enemy of the People. Once more, the region of the 
 ^highest poetry is not the outward but the inward ; its 
 function is not to reproduce but to idealise ; its 
 noblest task is to idealise, not the lower, but the 
 , higher side of our nature. And the man who can 
 do this with the supreme genius of Sophocles is not 
 only the nobler spirit, but the greater artist. 
 
 The above examples are purposely drawn from 
 different fields, and they illustrate different sides of 
 the truth which it concerns us to enforce. It is 
 perhaps well to add a warning. To idealise is 
 doubtless the highest task of the dramatist. But 
 let it not be supposed that such idealisation is to 
 be attained solely, or chiefly, by exclusion. Let us 
 not demand of the dramatic poet, as some have 
 done, that he shall turn his back on the fret and 
 stir of earthly passion, upon the conditions and 
 struggles of man's life, as we know it. It is a false 
 and narrow idealism which turns to such shifts as 
 these. It may easily cease to be idealism at all. It 
 may become a majestic pageant, it may become a 
 tale full of sound and fury, in either case " signi- 
 fying nothing." Such is not the idealism of jiEschylus 
 and Sophocles ; still less is it that of Shakespeare. 
 The last and highest work of the dramatist is to 
 idealise. But idealisation presupposes something 
 to idealise ; a matter which becomes ideal, which 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 receives a new form, which is inspired by a new 
 
 spirit at the plastic touch of the poet's imagination. 
 
 And if the object of the poet, as has been said, be to 
 
 interpret life, then the more of that matter he can bring 
 
 within his magic circle, the more completely has he 
 
 succeeded ; the more ideal, the more truly imaginative, 
 
 is his genius. Hence the strength of the romantic, 
 
 the unrivalled strength of the Shakespearean, drama. 
 
 And this brings us to the dominant thought on 
 
 which these Lectures are based, to the point round 
 
 which the remainder of the course will largely turn. 
 
 The more we study the history of the drama, the 
 
 stronger in all probability will be our conviction that 
 
 the general line of development has been from_ex-_ 
 
 clusioirto inclusion, from a less, to- a -mOfe complete 
 
 idealisation of the material offered by human life, 
 
 from a narrower to a wider rendering of all that the! 
 
 heart of man presents to our observation. And iv 
 
 we ask, What is the precise road which this course of 
 
 development has followed .'' — the answer is : it has 
 
 been, on the whole, a change from the presentation/ 
 
 of action to the presentation of character, a gradual 
 
 shifting of the scene from that which is without to^ 
 
 that which is within. And so it is that the romantic 
 
 drama is, taken all in all, at once wider and deeper 
 
 than the classical. Wider, in that it comprehends 
 
 more of the actual experience of life, more of the 
 
 actual " stuff of the conscience " and the heart ; 
 
 c 
 
1 8 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. i 
 
 deeper, in that it has sought this fresh matter not 
 from without, but from within ; not in the mere 
 surroundings and outward trappings of man's exist- 
 ence, but In his most secret passions, thoughts, feelings, 
 and aspirations. Consider the whole scope and spirit 
 of Shakespeare's tragedies ; consider above all the great 
 soliloquies of Hamlet and Macbeth ; consider Faust or 
 the plays of Browning ; and we shall at once recognise 
 that this is the case. Nor is it easy to deny that we 
 have here a gain, an enormous gain, to the main end 
 and purpose of the drama ; which is to represent, and 
 in representing, to interpret and idealise life. 
 
 At the same time, it is right to acknowledge that 
 this gain carried with it, inevitably carried with it, a 
 corresponding loss. Extend the scope of the drama, 
 enlarge it so as to take in a wider stretch of life, 
 deepen it so as to include the ultimate springs of 
 action and character ; and it is impossible that the 
 issue should be so sharply defined, the characters so 
 clear-cut, the action so closely serried, the situation 
 so simple, pointed, and compact — the form, generally 
 speaking, so finely chiselled — as in the classical drama 
 where all these conditions are reversed. To secure 
 that " statuesqueness " of form, which, as De Quincey 
 said, is the essence of the greatest classical dramas, a 
 certain amount of exclusion, of limitation, is indis- 
 pensable. And that exclusion, that limitation, it is 
 of the essence of the romantic drama to overthrow. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 GREEK tragedy: ^SCHYLUS 
 
 I SAID in the last lecture that the Greek drama was, 
 in my opinion, unrivalled in respect of form. Let 
 us begin by trying to call before our imagination the 
 spectacle which a Greek tragedy actually presented. 
 It is something so utterly different from anything we 
 have seen, or shaU ever see, that a considerable effort 
 is required. Imagine the brilliant sky of Greece. 
 Imagine a vast concourse, thirty thousand,^ men and 
 women,^ assembled beneath it, to watch, not a horse- 
 race, not a football match, but a presentment of the 
 mightiest forces that can rule the wiU of man, 
 gathered in mortal struggle for the possession of his 
 soul. Imagine this mental conflict set forth with all 
 the charm that majestic language and music, the 
 noblest spectacular effect, the deepest associations of 
 
 ' See Plato, Symposium, p. 175. The reference is to one of the tragedies of 
 Agathon, ~a considerably younger contemporary of Euripides. All his works 
 have unfortunately perished. The possible number of spectators is by some put 
 at 15,000. 
 
 ^ It may be remarked that there is some doubt as to the admission of women. 
 On the whole, however, the evidence seems to be in favour of the statement in 
 the text. 
 
 19 
 
20 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 religion have the power to give. Imagine the multi- 
 tude ranged, tier above tier, round three-quarters of 
 a vast circle ; the eyes of all fixed upon a stage far 
 ampler than any we have seen, and beneath it 
 an altar round which the Chorus either stands, or 
 moves in stately measures, doing honour to Dionysus, 
 the god of inspired dance and song and action, taking 
 part in the dramatic movement of the tragedy, 
 invoking divine and human justice upon the deeds 
 and words of those whose destinies are at stake before 
 their eyes. Imagine all this, and we have some faint 
 reflection, but only a reflection, of what the tragic 
 drama was to Greece.^ 
 
 Suppose the tragedy to be the Eumenides, the- last ^ 
 of the dramas of ^schylus which have come down to 
 us — the last and perhaps the greatest. The back- 
 ground of the stage in the opening scene is the 
 most sacred spot in the whole world of the Hellenic 
 race, the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The priestess 
 of the god appears, and, in a few solemn words, 
 rehearses the sacredness of her mission. Then she 
 passes within the temple doors, to consult the will of 
 the god, to seek guidance for those who come on 
 pilgrimage to his shrine. For a few minutes the 
 stage is empty. Then the priestess staggers back 
 
 ^ The above may serve as a general description of the Greek tragic stage. 
 There are several exceptions, and the Eumenides is one. 
 
 ^ It v^as, of course, produced at the same time (458 b.c.) as the two earlier 
 sections of the Oresteia, of which it forms the conclusion. 
 
II GREEK TRAGEDY : ^SCHYLUS 21 
 
 into the light of day, her face blanched with terror, 
 her knees failing beneath her with horror of the sight 
 she has seen within. The scene opens, and the inside 
 of the temple is revealed to view. There, cowering 
 at the altar, his hands still red with blood, lies a 
 hunted criminal : Orestes, who to avenge his father's 
 murder had lifted the sword against his guilty mother. 
 Round the fugitive crouches a ghastly, inhuman band 
 — the avenging spirits, the Furies ; their skin black 
 and wrinkled, their eyes oozing, their very breath 
 defiled, with the blood of the victims they have 
 hunted to their doom. An uneasy sleep has fallen 
 upon them, wearied out for the moment by the heat 
 of the chase. But even in sleep they seem still to be 
 pursuing their victim and to be panting for his blood. 
 Above the criminal stands the god of the temple, 
 with one arm stretched out to warn the bloodhounds 
 off, the other to give protection and courage to their 
 prey. " It is true," he says, " that thou hast slain 
 thy mother. But it was I who bade thee do it. 
 Take heart therefore, and know that I am with thee 
 and will not forsake thee. Fly over sea and land ; 
 and though the hell-hounds are on thy track, be sure 
 that after weary wanderings thou shalt reach Athens 
 at last ; there the goddess, my sister, shall throw her 
 shield over thee, there thy cause shall be brought to 
 solemn trial, and thou shalt be freed from thy pur- 
 suers." At these words Orestes rises and is guided 
 
22 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 by the god Hermes from the temple. Apollo alone 
 remains, and the Furies, still couched in sleep upon 
 the ground.^ The next moment the spirit of Clytem- 
 nestra, the murdered mother, appears to reproach 
 them with the flight of the murderer, and to goad 
 them on his track. Like sleeping hounds they whine 
 and groan at the visions with which she troubles 
 their slumber. At length they start up and demand 
 how the fugitive has been able to " leap over the net." 
 The god hurls scorn and wrath upon them, and a 
 bitter altercation follows. Then, with cries of rage, 
 they depart in pursuit of their prey. 
 
 The scene changes to Athens, to the temple of 
 Athene. Once more Orestes is seen kneeling at the 
 shrine, and clasping the image of the goddess in his 
 arms. But the hell-hounds are still hard upon his 
 track ; and forthwith they sweep in, as " dogs close 
 round upon the wounded fawn." Orestes does not 
 lose heart. He cries aloud on the goddess to come 
 to his aid ; he shows his pursuers that the blood of 
 murder is already faded from his hand. The Furies 
 answer with words of assured defiance. They warn 
 him that he is the victim fatted and devoted to their 
 
 ^ So, I suppose, it is generally taken ; so it was certainly in the fine perform- 
 ance at Cambridge (December 1906). I cannot, however, convince myself that 
 Apollo remains in the temple (luring the appearance of Clytemnestra. Is it 
 not more impressive if we suppose him to depart after his last words to Orestes 
 (1. 93), and to return to drive the Furies forth (1. 179) ? The abruptness of the 
 opening of the latter speech, together with other considerations, inclines me to 
 this view. 
 
II GREEK TRAGEDY : iESCHYLUS 23 
 
 vengeance ; they break out into a solemn hymn, 
 denouncing the enormity of the deed, and the fatal 
 blow dealt at all human justice if it should be pardoned. 
 As the accusing chant closes, the goddess appears. 
 She hears what the accusers have to say, and what 
 the accused. " No one man," she replies, " nor any 
 god, may rightly judge this suit. Let the trumpet 
 sound, let the elders of the land be summoned, and, 
 under my guidance, let the way of justice be laid 
 .down for all time." Once more the scene changes*: 
 this time to the sacred hill beyond the walls of 
 Athens, the hill where centuries later Saint Paul was 
 to plead the gospel of love and mercy before the 
 descendants of those who first listened to this drama. 
 The elders assemble ; the jury is empanelled ; Apollo 
 appears to plead the cause of the accused ; the votes 
 are cast into the urn, the goddess herself casting the 
 last vote, and casting it for acquittal. The votes on 
 either side are equal, and Orestes — narrowly, but 
 none the less surely — is freed from guilt. It remains 
 to soften the wrath of the avengers and to stay their 
 resentment. Athene offers them an honoured home 
 in the city that she loves. Their sternness is at 
 length melted, their pride relents ; and, after pro- 
 nouncing a solemn blessing on the land, they are led 
 forth with rejoicings to their promised abode. The 
 doom of the house of Atreus is at last rolled away. 
 But the avenging spirits remain to keep watch and 
 
24 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA 
 
 ward over human life, and to exact eternal reckoning 
 for bloodshed. 
 
 The first thing to strike us in this is the 
 extraordinary command of dramatic effect to which 
 it bears witness. The next isj the deeply religious 
 spirit which pervades the whole drama. And 
 this is to the last degree important ; for during 
 the palmy days of Greek tragedy, throughout the 
 work of ^^chy4«8--and_,_Soghocles, it remained an 
 invariable characteristic, and none is lTS6re"significant. 
 With the Greeks, indeed, tragedy in its first begin- 
 nings had been nothing more nor less than a solemn, 
 act of religious worship ; land though other elements' 
 were afterwards introduced — elements which, at first 
 sight, might seem to throw these primitive origins 
 into the shade — it retained the essentially religious 
 character till the end ; or rather, till Euripides, among 
 many other changes, went far to change this also in 
 the form which he inherited from his predecessors. 
 And unless we bear this in mind, the greatest achieve- 
 ments of the Greek drama will remain a sealed book 
 to us for ever. 
 
 But, it may be said, what has an act of religious 
 worship to do with the drama ? Is it not the essence 
 of the drama to give us a picture of human life ? And 
 how can that enter into an act of religious worship ? 
 This is perfectly true ; and, in the beginning, the 
 performances of the Greek stage were, in truth, 
 
11 GREEK TRAGEDY: ^SCHYLUS 25 
 
 entirely undramatic. In the first instance, it would 
 seem, there were no actors at all. The Chorus 
 supplied the only personages of the piece ; and the 
 Chorus acted, in the strictest sense, as a collective 
 body, whose function was to sing hymns — hymns, it 
 is quite possible, often woven around the tale of some 
 mythical or national hero ^ — in honour of Dionysus. 
 It is manifest that we have here nothing that can 
 fairly be called drama. The first step away from this 
 purely ritual performance was taken, as some critics 
 suppose, when one member of the Chorus, the leader 
 perhaps, was detached from the rest and a kind of 
 antiphone instituted between him and them. Such 
 was, or may have been, the beginning of dialogue. 
 Before any extant drama was composed, a second step 
 had already been taken. There was now one perfectly 
 distinct and separate actor upon the stage, and he 
 carried on a formal and regular dialogue with the 
 Chorus ; the Chorus, on its side, taking a more 
 specific, a more equal — one might almost say, a more 
 dramatic — part in action than was subsequently the 
 case. This was the phase in which the drama came 
 into the hands of ./lEschylus. And in one of his 
 plays at least — the Supplices, which in spirit is alto- 
 gether the most primitive that has come down to us 
 — this 1% in fact, the plan adopted throughout the 
 greater/part of the piece. And it is significant that 
 
 1 Such an ode is to be found in jititigone, 11. 944-87. 
 
26 TYPES OF Tragic drama lect. 
 
 in this play the Chorus is still the chief, as it was once 
 the sole, bearer of the action ; the " protagonist," 
 the leading actor, to adopt the term applied by the 
 Greeks themselves. The next step in advance was 
 to add a second actor ; and this step, as we know 
 on the authority of Aristotle, was taken by iEschylus. 
 Yet a third was added by Sophocles, and the reform 
 was adopted by ^schylus in his later plays. The 
 general effect of all these changes was to depose the 
 Chorus from the first place to the second ; in the 
 emphatic phrase of Aristotle, to " make the dialogue 
 the protagonist " ; in one word, to create the drama.^ 
 Yet the drama, so created, was something very 
 different from ours. To us the first, though by no 
 means the only, thing suggested by the word is the 
 portrayal of character. To the Greeks character, 
 as distinguished from action, plot, situation, always 
 remained a subordinate — though, it need hardly be 
 said, a highly important — element. It enters only in 
 so far as it bears directly upon the main action. It 
 counts, to use the phrase of Aristotle, only in so far 
 as " carried in the train of action." The action, the 
 plot, is, in the words of the same great critic, " the 
 vital principle, the very soul, of the drama." And if 
 we limit his words to the Greek drama — whichj it 
 
 ^ The above is the commonly accepted account, and it is mainly based on 
 Aristotle. Statements which either are, or appear to be, in contradiction with 
 it are made by other ancient writers ; and the whole subject is full of difficulties. 
 See Lessing, Lehen des Sop/iokles, Note h. 
 
II GREEK TRAGEDY : ^SCHYLUS 27 
 
 need hardly be said, was the only one present to 
 his mind — this is emphatically true. It may be 
 admitted, as modern critics have pointed out, that, by 
 the term " action " or " plot," Aristotle intended to 
 cover more than we perhaps should be apt to do. 
 "The specific quality," he says in another place, 
 " is given to the action by the characters." But, 
 after all allowance has been made for this, it remains 
 true that he does explicitly distinguish " action " 
 from " character," to the disadvantage. If we may say 
 so, of the latter. It remains true that, alike In theory 
 and in practice, the Greek drama was primarily a 
 drama of action, of plot, of situation ; that It was only 
 in a secondary degree a drama of character. And this 
 is above all the case with the tragedies of iEschylus. 
 
 Of the three terms which I have just applied to 
 the general scope and nature of the Greek drama, 
 "situation" is that v^ich is most germane to the 
 plays of ^schylus. I incline to think he was the 
 greatest master of dramatic situation that has ever 
 arisen. And, as this has not merely a personal 
 but a general bearing, as It marks an Important stage 
 in. the whole development of the drama, it is perhaps 
 well to pause for a moment in order to consider what 
 is the precise meaning which we attach to this and to 
 the two other terms in question. Action, situation, 
 plot — this would seem, at any rate, from one point 
 of view, to form an ascending scale of intensity in 
 
28 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 regard to the spectacle presented by the stage, and 
 the handling of the elements which unite to make it. 
 Action as such, in the sense of incident, may be 
 regarded as the simplest, the most rudimentary, form 
 of the drama. It may exist without situation and 
 without plot. It does so exist in the Tamburlaine of 
 Marlowe and in some of the historical plays of 
 Shakespeare, above all in the First Part of Henry VI. 
 And so divorced from situation and plot, it is mani- 
 fest that action can yield only an extremely imperfect 
 form of drama. A play so constructed may be made 
 up of incidents quite detached and disconnected from 
 each other. It may have little or no unity. It lacks 
 that " beginning, middle, and end " which Aristotle 
 rightly declared to be essential to the drama, in any 
 true or high sense of the term. Now it is remarkable 
 that the Greek drama, as it has come down to us, 
 presents no example of a play constructed in this 
 fashion. And it is possible that the innate artistic 
 sense of the Greeks may have saved them altogether 
 from what is obviously so great an error. It is highly 
 significant that this should have been the besetting 
 sin not of the classical, but of the romantic drama. 
 And in the romantic drama it may fairly be regarded 
 as a revolt — an instinctive and largely unconscious 
 revolt — against the comparative lack of action, under- 
 stood as incident, in the drama of the ancients and in 
 the neo-classical drama which was based upon it. 
 
a GREEK TRAGEDY : vESCHYLUS 29 
 
 The next step in our scale is to be found in 
 dramatic situation. Of action, in the wider sense — 
 and even in the narrower sense of incident — a certain 
 amount is here necessarily involved. Without inci- 
 dent — past, present, or imminent — no such thing as 
 situation is conceivable. But it is important to 
 notice that, in this connection, action has already lost 
 its absolute and independent meaning. It is no 
 longer pure incident. It is incident directed to a 
 certain definite end, grouped in a certain definite 
 manner, charged with a certain definite significance. 
 It has dropped its abstract and isolated existence. It 
 has been taken up into a higher principle, the principle 
 of a given artistic unity, a given imaginative effect. 
 Now when that effect is perfectly simple, when it 
 admits of being crystallised round a single point and 
 presented, as it were, at a single glance, we commonly 
 speak of it as a situation. Such is the group of 
 events — or, if we prefer to say so, of events and 
 persons — presented by the fo urth act of the Mer- 
 chant of Venice, by the culminating scene of an y 
 trfi geHy — or. for that mattex »-££-akaQSt-.-anLcgmedy 
 — that we like to name. ' 
 
 The plot, finally, may be described as a succession 
 of situations — or, in some cases, as a larger, more 
 comprehensive, succession of events — all bearing on 
 the same point, all directed to the same end, all 
 combining, therefore, all as we say " working up," 
 
30 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 to produce an imaginative effect which the spectator 
 recognises as forming an organic, an articulated 
 whole. The plot is, on this showing, nothing more 
 than an extension of the same principle which had 
 already given rise to the situation. It is, so to speak, 
 the situation enlarged so as to embrace the whole 
 action of the play ; the situation regarded as diffused 
 throughout the whole play, from beginning to end. 
 And it is of action in this sense, of action as identical 
 with plot, that Aristotle habitually speaks. 
 
 There is little difficulty in applying these remarks 
 to the plays of ^sghyius in particular. Of action 
 in the primitive sense of the term, of action as 
 equivalent to incident, there is often little or nothing 
 in his tragedies. That is true of the Supflices ; it is 
 still more true oi Prometheus and the Persae. Of the 
 two latter pieces it may fairly be said that nothing 
 happens from beginning to end. Prometheus is 
 clamped to the rock in the opening scene ; a storm 
 breaks on him at the close ; and that is all. A 
 messenger brings to the Persian capital the tidings 
 of Salamis and Plataea ; the spirit of Darius rises to , 
 lament over the disaster ; Xerxes himself returns ; 
 and that again is all. Nothing could be more simple ; 
 nothing, some critics will tell you, could be more 
 childish. These plays, in truth, are destitute not 
 only of incident but of plot. There is a succession 
 of stately scenes, each of which, under a fresh light, 
 
11 GREEK TRAGEDY : iESCHYLUS 31 
 
 drives home the same imaginative eiFect ; and there 
 is nothing more. Even in the great trilogy — that of 
 which the Eumenides forms the closing act — though 
 here it will at once be felt that we have a far more 
 distinctively dramatic effect, there is comparatively 
 little of incident or of plot. Certainly, the plot is 
 put together far more loosely, it is far less serried 
 and compact, than is the case with the masterpieces 
 of Sophocles — Antigone, for instance, or CEdipus 
 Tyrannus. It was probably this consideration which 
 led Goethe to say that many of the plays of .ffischylus 
 — he must have been thinking in particular of the 
 SuppUces and the Persae — are, so far as structure 
 goes, in the nature of ballads.^ It is an illuminating 
 criticism ; and a comparison between the Persae and 
 Chevy Chase would hold good in more than one 
 direction. 
 
 The plays of ^schylus, then, are sparing of 
 incident ; they are of extreme simplicity in plot. 
 And it may be asked : What in respect of distinc- 
 tively dramatic quality, what apart from their glorious 
 poetry, is left for them to claim ? The answer is thatj_ 
 almost without exception, they are masterpieces of 
 'dramatic situation. Where, indeed, in this respect, 
 shall we find his equal among dramatists? Where 
 can we point to situations so simple, so majestic, 
 so overpowering in their appeal to the heart and the 
 
 1 See Goethe's GesprSche (Ed. Biedermann), i. 287. 
 
32 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 imagination ? It is to the last degree significant that 
 the earliest dramatist whose works have come down 
 to us should have excelled above all in that which — 
 incident pure and simple being set aside for the 
 reasons just assigned — is the most elementary form 
 of the dramatic instinct, which may fairly be said to 
 contain within itself the germ of the whole subse- 
 quent development of the drama. Let us take a 
 few illustrations from the best known and greatest 
 of his tragedies. 
 
 And first, consider the situation in Prometheus. 
 Imagine the scene among the cliffs and chasms of the 
 Caucasus. Prometheus, the god who has befriended 
 man and raised him from weakness and desolation, 
 is dragged in by two brutal ruffians. Force and 
 Might. With every kind of torture they clamp him 
 to the rocks, at the bidding of the highest god, Zeus, 
 the jealous tyrant whose will is law, " whom reason 
 hath equalled, whom force," at least for the moment, 
 " hath made supreme above his equals." So long as 
 the tormentors are present, the suff^erer disdains to 
 open his lips. No sooner are they departed than he 
 breaks out into a cry of indignant protest — Hear, 
 O heavens, and give ear, O earth ! — against the enor- 
 mity of his wrongs. The rest of the play is one long 
 cry of defiance against an unjust god, of pity for 
 mankind so cruelly oppressed. And at the close of 
 the drama, when as a penalty for his firmness his 
 
n GREEK TRAGEDY : iESCHYLUS 33 
 
 tortures are redoubled, when the storm bursts in 
 thunder and lightning on his head, we see his will 
 still unbroken, his courage still undaunted, we still 
 hear him denouncing the injustice of his doom. 
 Could any situation be more simple ? Could any 
 be more stirring in itself, or presented amid surround- 
 ings more striking to the eye and the imagination ? 
 
 Or turn to the last and most dramatic of the 
 poet's works — the trilogy, the threefold drama, 
 known as the Oresteia, the Doom of the house of 
 Atreus. The subject of the first part is the murder 
 of Agamemnon by his wife and her paramour ; of 
 the second, the vengeance taken, after years of 
 waiting, by Orestes ; of the third, the hounding 
 of Orestes by the avenging spirits of his mother, 
 and his final purging at the judgment-seat of God 
 and man. Each of the three parts is crystaUised 
 in a supreme situation — in one case, a series of 
 situations — as simple as it is impressive. "What, for 
 instance, could be more striking than the central 
 scene of the first part, Agamemnon ? The king, 
 returning triumphant from the sack of Troy, is 
 led by his false wife within the fatal doors of the 
 palace. His captive, Cassandra, remains without. 
 As she waits, the spirit of prophecy comes over her ; 
 the darkness is lifted from her eyes ; she beholds 
 in rapt vision the deeds of horror which have 
 brought a curse upon the house of Atreus in the 
 
34 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 past ; she foresees the no less accursed deed which 
 treachery is preparing against the returned warrior 
 at that moment. Even while she speaks, while the 
 Chorus listens horror-stricken to her inspired utter- 
 ance, the cry of the murdered king is heard from 
 within. Clytemnestra sweeps forth, to glory in 
 the deed. Cassandra herself is led within, to share 
 her captor's doom. Once more the situation is 
 seized and presented with unequalled mastery of all 
 the effects of horro|^. And this is the more notable 
 when we remember that the situation in question 
 embodies what is, in truth, the sole incident of the 
 piece ; that all which has gone before is cunningly 
 designed to lead up to it, and all which follows 
 to drive home and enhance its imaginative effect. „ 
 
 In the same way with the Choephoroe, the second 
 drama of the series, though here the situations are 
 multiplied, and a nearer approach to a sustained plot 
 is clearly to be detected. Roughly, it may be said 
 that the play condenses itself in three successive 
 situations. In the first of these, the brother and 
 sister nerve themselves for the hideous deed which 
 lies before them by a passionate recital of their 
 father's murder, of the ghastly circumstances which 
 surrounded it, and of the cruel wrongs inflicted on 
 themselves. In the second, the vengeance is carried 
 out, first on the wretched accomplice, then, after 
 a heartrending plea for pity — a plea which for one 
 
II GREEK TRAGEDY : ^SCHYLUS 35 
 
 moment shakes even the grim purpose of Orestes 
 — upon Clytemnestra, the chief criminal, herself. 
 Lastly, while Orestes displays the blood-stained 
 implements of his father's murder, as though to 
 justify his appalling act, the avenging spirits of his 
 mother, the ghastly figures of the Furies, seem to 
 appear already closing round their victim. His very 
 reason becomes darkened. But before the night falls 
 utterly upon his soul, he calls God and man to 
 witness that all has been done in justice, and hurriesl 
 from the slaughter-house to seek sanctuary at the' 
 shrine of Apollo. 
 
 Here we have no less than three situations, each 
 of which springs naturally from the subject, while all 
 are bound together by the closest possible connection. 
 And if any one chose to maintain that there is a 
 fourth, the recognition between brother and sister 
 at the opening of the play, he would be well within 
 his rights. It is plain, therefore, that we have here 
 a memorable example of skill in the weaving of a 
 plot ; the more memorable, when we consider 
 how little power in this matter is displayed in 
 the earlier tragedies of .Sschylus, and how little 
 guidance, if we except the possible influence of his 
 younger rival, Sophocles, he can have had from the 
 work of others. Even here, however, it remains 
 true that each situation taken singly is still more 
 notable than the plot, regarded as a whole. The 
 
36 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 two closing scenes in particular — the tragic pleading 
 between Orestes and his doomed mother, his swift 
 revulsion to despair directly the doom has been 
 enforced — have, as situations, never been surpassed. 
 In dramatic intensity, in instinctive knowledge of 
 the inmost windings of man's heart, they stand 
 alone. Of the third play, the Eumenides, it is 
 unnecessary to speak. The sketch of it given at 
 the beginning of this lecture will suffice to show that 
 in this, his latest play, the hand of ^Eschylus had 
 in no wise lost its cunning. 
 
 But what of the remaining element which all 
 admit to be necessary to the completion of the 
 drama, the element which Aristotle unceremoniously 
 thrust into the second place, but which modern 
 writers, alike in theory and in practice, have eagerly 
 promoted to the first, the element of character .' 
 Even if the Greeks had had no prepossessions on 
 this subject — and from the remarks of Aristotle it 
 is quite clear that they had — at this early stage of 
 the drama it would be idle to look for any great 
 subtlety in the handling of the dramatis fersonae. 
 Nor is it easy to see how anything of this kind 
 would have fitted into the stately structure of Greek 
 tragedy, into the almost unearthly grandeur of its 
 ideals, into the peculiar outward conditions under 
 which it was set forth. Confining ourselves to the 
 last point — not because it is the most important, 
 
II GREEK TRAGEDY: iESCHYLUS 37 
 
 but because it is the easiest to grasp — we may readily 
 understand that the mere necessity of declaiming 
 to so vast an audience, and declaiming through a 
 mask, at once robbed the actor of those modulations 
 of the voice, of that ceaseless play of feature, which 
 are perhaps the chief resource of the modern stage, 
 and without which it is impossible to render the 
 subtler workings, the more shifting emotions, of 
 the soul within. For this and other reasonsrw? 
 find the Greek dramatists, in particular the two 
 earlier and greater ones, content to give types 
 rather than individuals, to paint the characters of 
 men rather in their broad outlines and their most 
 essential features than in that finer detail, that 
 rapid interchange of light and shade, which is the 
 ambition of the modern dramatist and the supreme 
 achievement of Shakespeare. And this is still more 
 true of ^schylus than of Sophocles. _^ 
 
 The characters of ^schylus are drawn with a bold 
 sweep. They stand out sharply from the stormy 
 background of the situation and the action. 
 Prometheus and Clytemnestra, Eteocles and Orestes, 
 Electra and Antigone — all these are sketched with 
 the fewest possible strokes ; but each impresses itself 
 distinctly and indelibly on the imagination. This 
 is perhaps best illustrated from his Antigone, the 
 heroine of the Seven against Thebes. She is on 
 the stage only for one short scene, a scene of barely 
 
38 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 a hundred lines at the close of the drama. She 
 does not speak more than forty lines. But in that 
 brief space she lays bare the whole secret of her 
 nature — a tenderness passing the tenderness of 
 women on the one hand, a will armed to break 
 down every barrier upon the other. When 
 Sophocles years after took up the theme in his 
 greatest tragedy, he did little more than fill in the 
 portrait which .ffischylus had sketched. 
 
 Thus much on the methods of ^schylus in 
 general. There are, however, two qualities on 
 which it is necessary to lay stress, and which at 
 first sight appear to tend in opposite directions. 
 On the one side, as has already been indicated, he 
 has, as at the close of the Choephoroe^ sudden flashes 
 of insight into the deepest recesses of the heart. 
 And it may be observed that here at any rate — 
 nor would it perhaps be easy to produce any other 
 instance of this particular faculty — his inspiration 
 is due less to his mastery of character, as such, 
 than to the extraordinary keenness of his moral 
 vision, his insight into the spiritual forces which 
 bear upon the life of man, as a moral being. Oh 
 the other side, he has a genius — a genius which 
 in its intensity is perhaps unequalled — for embodying 
 these spiritual, elemental forces in outward, visible 
 shape, for incarnating them in figures of flesh and 
 blood. Prometheus, the supreme embodiment of 
 
n GREEK TRAGEDY : iESCHYLUS 39 
 
 defiant will, bent to the purposes of heroic justice, 
 is one instance of this. The Eumenides, an incarna- 
 tion of the avenging stings of conscience, are another. 
 And if in the former instance -iEschylus may be held 
 to find a formidable rival in Milton, in the latter 
 I do not know where to look for any parallel, unless 
 it be in the Mephistopheles of Goethe. So that 
 what has been said of the French Titan may be 
 applied in a still more literal sense to the Greek : — 
 
 For thee man's spirit stood 
 
 Disrobed of flesh and blood. 
 And bare the heart of the most secret hours ; 
 
 And to thy hand, more tame 
 
 Than birds in winter, came 
 High hopes and unknown, flying forms of powers. 
 
 And from thy table fed, and sang 
 Till with the tune men's ears took fire and rang.^ 
 
 Of j^schylus, then, we may say that, apart from 
 his technical contributions to the deepening of the 
 Greek drama — and these alone would suffice to 
 make him a landmark of the first importance — he 
 laid the foundations of plot ; that, within the limits 
 which the Greeks never markedly outstepped, he 
 had a striking command of human character and 
 motive ; that he was unrivalled in his grip of the 
 elemental forces which surround, and largely control, 
 the life of man ; and that, above all, he was a 
 consummate master of situation. To all this it 
 
 ' Sec Swinburne's poem, 'to Victor Hugo. 
 
40 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. n 
 
 must be added that he was a supremely great 
 poet. Turn to the picture of the battle of Salamis 
 in the Persae ; turn to the appeals and defiance of 
 the injured god in Prometheus, to the choric odes 
 of Agamemnon and the Eumenides, and this will 
 at once be felt. Indeed, with one single exception 
 — an exception which there is no need to specify 
 to an English audience — I should say that, of all 
 dramatists, he is the greatest poet. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES 
 
 Sophocles wrote in the latter half of the fifth 
 century before Christ, as ^schylus in the former. 
 He built upon the foundations laid by his great 
 precursor. But he carried the work farther, and, 
 what is yet more important, he carried it forward 
 in the direction which, as was said in the first lecture, 
 the drama has, on the whole, followed in its 
 subsequent development. The ge neral tren d of 
 his genius, the general effect of his work, was to 
 ideStify the drama more closely^ with human life, 
 to itTcorpoFate it more completely in the form of 
 Tummn wirr~an3r~Kuinan" passions Than had been 
 ^ne by \^schylus. _ In the elder dramatist, the 
 great forces which determine man's life are con- 
 stantly presented as lying outside of, or apart 
 from, man. In Sophocles they a re habitually 
 identified with man ; they appear only as embgdied .. 
 in his will, his instincts, and his passions. . This 
 "may be illustrated by a comparison between 
 
 41 
 
42 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 Prometheus or the Oresieia on the one hand and 
 Antigone or CEdipus Tyrannus, the two greatest 
 achievements of Sophocles, upon the other. 
 
 In Prometheus, it need hardly be said, the hero 
 is a god. He meets the supreme god on equal 
 terms, dares him to do the worst, and, though 
 vanquished, looks forward with assurance to ultimate 
 victory. His will is a more than human will. He 
 belongs to mankind, not by nature but by sympathy 
 and love. The whole play is based on this assump- 
 tion. As man, Prometheus would to the Greek 
 mind have been an object not of admiration but 
 of horror, we might almost say repulsion. A refer- 
 ence to the story of Capaneus in the Seven against 
 Thebes and other plays, to the CEdipus of Sophocles, 
 to the Bacchae of Euripides, is enough to establish 
 this. It is only as god that such a character could 
 be hero of a play which is obviously designed to 
 enlist our sympathies on his side. Now, so far as 
 we know, Sophocles never dealt with a theme 
 belonging to mythology, pure and simple ; he never 
 took a god for the principal figure of a drama:-^ On 
 the other hand, besides Prometheus Bound, there are 
 at least two plays, unfortunately lost, where this 
 seems to have been done by ^schylus.^ For this 
 
 ^ They are Prometheus Unbound and Psychostasia ' {The Weighing of Souls), 
 Zeus himself seems to have been a principal figure in the latter. See the passages 
 from Plutarch and Pollux, quoted in Dindorf s Poetae Scenici, appendix, p. 21. 
 I cannot find anything in the Fragments of Sophocles which suggests a purely 
 
ni GREEK TRAGEDY: SOPHOCLES 43 
 
 reason we are entitled to say that Sophocles shifted 
 the scene from the world of the gods to the world 
 of men. 
 
 Or again, consider the Oresteia. Here we have 
 another side of the same tendency, that we have 
 already seen in Prometheus. It is no longer the 
 world of the gods to which iEschylus transports 
 us. It is the heart and soul of man. The field 
 of human action is the ground on which we move. 
 And the Furies appear to the fevered vision of 
 Orestes long before they sweep in bodily form upon 
 the stage. Yet, in the end, the anguished vision 
 does take bodily shape ; and during the remainder 
 of the drama the avenging spirits are present to 
 the eye, and hurl their denunciations in the ear, ot 
 the spectator. The inmost woes of the heart have 
 taken flesh and blood at the bidding of the dramatist. 
 And in reading the play we have not a moment's 
 doubt of their actual, physical existence. What 
 must have been the impression upon those who 
 saw it ! Women, we are told, fell down in con- 
 vulsions at the spectacle, and secret criminals 
 betrayed their guilt by cries of terror and remorse. 
 The unseen forces which sway the soul of man are 
 
 mythological subject. Inachus would seem to come nearest to this description. 
 Divine beings appear in two of his extant plays ; Athene at the beginning of 
 Ajax, and Heracles at the end of Plalocutes. But, in both cases, the appearance 
 is rather after the manner of Euripides. 
 
 1 See Schiller's stirring poem. Die Kraiticie des Uykus. 
 
44 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 here made visible not merely to the imagination 
 but to the very sight. So far as I know, there is 
 nothing quite comparable to it in the whole range 
 of literature. There is certainly nothing like it in 
 the ojays of Sophocles. 
 
 rhe methods of Sophocles are, indeed, entirely 
 different. Of the spiritual powers which surround 
 and control the life of man he had, doubtless, a sense 
 only less keen than that of ^schylus himself. 
 Antigone and the two dramas on CEdipus are 
 sufficient proof of this. But those powers exist for 
 him only as embodied in the will of man, only as 
 interwoven with the very woof and texture of his 
 passions and resolves. Take first CEdipus Tyrannus. 
 Here at first sight it might seem as though we were 
 face to face with a dra ma in which Fate, the unseen 
 power tha^ moves behind and dominates the life of 
 man, was indeed the princi pal figure. The doom 
 foretold to CEdipus is that he shall slay his father 
 and marry with his mother. And, all unwittingly, 
 he carries out that doom to the very letter. 
 Tl iroughout he has b ee n a puppet in th gjiands-of 
 Fate ; so far as purpose and even consciousness are 
 concerned, it is not he but Fate that is the agent. 
 In all this we seem to be confronted with a conception 
 of Fate far cruder, far more external to the will and 
 purpose of man, than anything to be found in 
 .Slschylus. But, when we look more closely, we 
 
in GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES 45 
 
 become aware that this crude, irrational element has 
 little or nothing to do with the present action of the 
 drama ; that it enters only into the presuppositions 
 of the action, into the incidents which are indeed 
 necessary to the plot but which are carefully kept 
 out of it ; that the whole interest of the play — and it 
 is among the most moving that have ever been 
 written — is centred on the purely human passions, 
 the cruel and tragic situation, to which the discovery 
 of the hideous truth inevitably gives rise. It is not 
 the wanton ma lice of Fate, it is th e pasginpg whirli 
 follow ea ch other, wave after wave, beating o n the 
 heart of" Ltidipus and finall y breaking it in pieces, 
 that form ^he^reaT~su^ect'of this tragedy.^ So that 
 the very play which, at the first glance, might seem 
 to confute what has been said of the way pursued by 
 Sophocles, proves in the end to support it in a very 
 significant fashion. 
 
 An equally clear, but very difli^erent, example, may 
 be drawn from Antigone. There, as we have seen, 
 the whole substance of the action is contributed by 
 the forces which make the tissue of man's moral life. 
 JFVornhepjnnm g to end we are in presence o fLajaortal 
 conflict between two ideals of justice . Both are 
 sacred : J^oth are essential to t he welfare of-ma n-aund 
 the^jjuli-dggel&pment: of his powers. The_^one^ is 
 
 ' The crucial scene is that between CEdipus and the servant who had been 
 charged by Laius to expose him, 11. 1 121-85. 
 
46 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 h uman justice : that justi ce whic h bids a mari' figh t 
 for his city or his country, which rightly lays the 
 curse of the trai tor upon hi m'wfatHi-fts-tiic-swer^ 
 ""against his fathe rland or calls in the ai3" of tfie^en 
 to ^jQxgrlhroMC. it. .- Tli£.joti[ier justice is yet higKgr, 
 and it is divine. It^ is the unwritten justice~v?hich 
 rests not on the letter but -tlia- spirit ; which warns 
 man that the "highest right," when enforced 
 without regard to provocation or circumstance^^^ay 
 Tecome the " deepest "wrong " ; which above all 
 forbids him 'to"carry his resentments beyond the 
 g rave, to inflict a death-w ound on the— natttral 
 promptings of kinship, upon the eternal rights'^of 
 manlcin3r7~But these principles, which in ^schylus 
 might have taken bodily shape, which might have 
 been thrown altogether outside of the world of 
 human action, are by Sophocles embodied in two 
 human wills. And those wills are not mere 
 personifications of abstractions. They are wills 
 touched by human frailties and human shrinkings ; 
 wills belonging to beings of like passions with 
 ourselves. 
 
 On the one side is the monarch of the injured, 
 and now victorious, city ; harsh, narrow, obstinate ; 
 but still resting on the right which no man can deny, 
 the right of the State to defend itself against the 
 foreign and the civil sword, to reward its defenders 
 and to punish its foes. On the other side is a lonely. 
 
in GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES 47 
 
 weak, defenceless girl. She, too, knows the sacred- 
 ness of the fatherland ; she, too, is stirred by love 
 of the hallowed spots she has known from childhood. 
 And one of the most moving touches in the latter 
 part of the play is the longing with which she looks 
 for the last time on the springs and groves where 
 she was nurtured, on the city which has doomed her 
 to death because she does battle for the right.^ But, 
 when she sees that love of country is used as a cloak 
 for mean revenge, when she sees the divine law 
 trampled under foot in the name of a law which is 
 merely human, then she throws all other thoughts 
 ^to the winds ; she takes her life in her hand ; she 
 goes forth with none to help her, or v/ish her well, 
 or even excuse her ; ^ and in defiance of the ruler, in 
 defiance of a public will which blindly bows before 
 his bidding, she performs the last duties to the dead, 
 she buries the brother who had been cast out to the 
 ravens and the kites. 
 
 There is here no question of divine intervention, 
 no embodiment of human promptings or terrors in 
 a superhuman shape. It is two human wills thrown 
 into the sharpest conflict with each other, with 
 nothing but the force of circumstance, and the more 
 irresistible force of their own nature and their own 
 
 1 Antigone, 11. 838-52. 
 
 2 The chorus — a chorus, tqo, composed solely of men — throughout blames 
 her for unreason, obstinacy, and presumption. See, in particular, 11. 380-4, 834-7, 
 853.6, 872-5. 
 
48 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lbct. 
 
 ideals, to drive them on. And, if any further doubt 
 were possible, the dramatist has spared no pains to 
 sweep it aside by the sequel. When the fatal deed 
 has been accomplished, then and not till then is there 
 a return of each stubborn will upon itself. Then 
 and not till then is each visited by the human 
 compunctions, or the human shrinkings, which by a 
 law of our being are apt to follow upon any irrevoc- 
 able act. ^ Jitigon e glories in h er " holy crime " 
 until the^last ; and she does well to glo ry. But w ith 
 pathetic long ing s he clings to the life^^ ich she haa 
 deliberately for feited. Her eye lingers on the "last 
 gleam of light " which is granted her by the tyrant, 
 and she passes lamenting to her living tomb.^ In 
 the same way, though necessarily at a later point of 
 the action, with the tyrant, Creon. He, too, is an 
 essentially human figure ; human not only in the 
 caprice and obstinacy of the earlier scenes, but also, 
 and above all, in the unavailing remorse and the 
 crushing despair which fall upon him at the close. 
 
 All this justifies us in saying that, broadly speaking, 
 a line may be drawn between ^lEschylus and 
 Sophocles ; and that, in the history of the drama, it 
 is the especial distinction of Sophocles to have made 
 the action more human, to have embodied it more 
 completely in the will and passions of man, than had 
 
 • Antigone, 1. 600; 11. 806-941, especially the well-known speech — "O 
 grave, O bridal bed, O rock-dug home" — II, 891-942. 
 
in GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES ^9 
 
 been done by ^Eschylus. And this means, as I said 
 at starting, that he marks an important stage in the 
 process which, on the whole, has been carried out 
 from first to last in the history of the drama ; that, 
 if in some sense he was himself anticipated by 
 ^Eschylus, it is no less true that he in turn prepared 
 the way for the " humanism " of the modern drama, 
 above all for the boundless humanity of Shakespeare. 
 It also means, as I think has been generally 
 recognised, that his genius is more specifically and 
 intensely Greek than that of iEschylus. The genius 
 of Greece was, after all, an essentially human genius. 
 Its main interest lay with the world of sense, above 
 all with the world of man. The very gods of the 
 Greeks were cast in human shape. And if it could 
 not be claimed for them, as it has been for Goethe, 
 the most Greek of moderns, that they "did not 
 make God too much a man," at least the converse 
 would be true, that they "did not make man too 
 much a god." And this is pre-eminently true of 
 Sophocles. Now the same thing could hardly be 
 said of iEschylus. In his genius there is manifestly 
 an element which is alien to the general temper of 
 his country, an element which perhaps can best be 
 described as Hebraic, And this is no less the case 
 with his treatment of man and of the elemental 
 forces which encompass and control the life of man, 
 than it is with his lyric inspiration and the extra- 
 
50 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 ordinary sublimity of his language. Again and again, 
 as we read him, we are reminded of the Hebrew 
 prophets ; above all of the greatest and most Hebraic 
 ' of them, Ezekiel. And it is not for nothing that 
 the supreme appeal of Prometheus is couched in 
 almost the same words as the opening prophecy of 
 Isaiah. Now, of this Hebraic element there is no 
 trace in the genius of Sophocles. Here, for the first 
 time in the history of the Greek drama, we are 
 brought face to face with the Greek spirit, pure and 
 simple ; and we may add, not only for the first time 
 but the last. Euripides, as we shall see, represents 
 not the Greek mind, but a curious anticipation of 
 the modern. The baffling problems of life weighed 
 heavily upon his spirit, and he lost much of the calm 
 which belongs to the most characteristic figures of 
 his race. His love of effect, his striving after the 
 unfamiliar, his interest in the abnormal, all told in 
 \ the same direction. And it remains true that, of the 
 ' three dramatists, Sophocles, alike by the spirit and 
 by the outward form of his art, is the most typically 
 Greek. 
 
 In regard to plot, again, there is a marked 
 difference between Sophocles and iEschylus. The 
 plots of the latter, as we have seen, are in the main 
 of extreme simplicity. In some of his plays there 
 can hardly be said to be a plot at all. Sophocles, on 
 the other hand, shows a clear preference for com- 
 
m GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES 51 
 
 ^locity. The best illustration of this is to be found, 
 perhaps, in Electra, where he returns to a theme 
 already treated by the elder dramatist. Compare 
 Electra with the Ckoephoroe, and the difference of 
 method at once becomes apparent. The latter, it 
 will be remembered, is austerely simple. The 
 recognition between brother and sister once ac- 
 complished, the tragedy moves on without a halt, 
 without reversal of fortune or hope, to the predestined 
 end, the murder of Clytemnestra. In Sophocles, 
 identically the same train of action is handled in an 
 entirely different manner. Orestes, who appears 
 (as with jEschylus) in the opening lines, does not 
 reveal himself to Electra until the play is nearing its 
 close.* In the interval he has conveyed to his 
 mo'ther and sister, through the mouth of a faithful 
 servant, the false tidings of his death ; and in an 
 elaborately wrought passage the whole scene, with all 
 its lying pomp of circumstance, is unfolded before 
 their eyes. Clytemnestra triumphs, Electra is 
 bowed down with despair. But the thought of 
 vengeance quickly prevails in her heart ; and no 
 sooner is Clytemnestra departed than, scornfully 
 thrusting aside her sister, who enters with the joyful 
 news that Orestes must have returned, she proceeds 
 to conspire the death of Clytemnestra and her para- 
 
 ' In the Chocphoroe the recognition comes at 1. Zi6 (out of 1065 lines) 5 in 
 Electra, at I. izzo (out of 1505 lines); in the former one -fifth, in the latter 
 four-fifths, of the action lieing transacted before it takes place. 
 
52 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 mour. Chrysothemis, fully convinced by the eager 
 proofs of Electra that Orestes is indeed dead, timidly 
 refuses to join in the perilous attempt, and retires 
 before the storm of contempt and indignation which 
 breaks upon her head. Then once more Orestes 
 enters, disguised and bearing, as he alleges, the ashes 
 of the slain exile in his hand. A pathetic lament 
 from the bereaved sister follows, at the end of which 
 Orestes declares himself. He cuts short Electra's 
 denunciations of their mother and her accomplice, and 
 promptly enters the palace, still carrying the funeral 
 urn. Electra stands in the doorway, to witness the 
 promised end. The cries of Clytemnestra are 
 immediately heard, and Electra shouts to her brother 
 within to complete the deed. The next moment he 
 comes forth, his arm still reeking with his mother's 
 blood. Yet another moment, and ^gisthus 
 approaches the palace, recalled by the joyful tidings 
 of Orestes' death. Orestes, still disguised, wheels 
 forth the bier holding the veiled body of Clytem- 
 nestra, and informs jiEgisthus that the corpse of his 
 dreaded enemy lies before him. As the tyrant 
 exults, Orestes suddenly withdraws the veil, and 
 reveals the terrible truth. ^Egisthus is at once led 
 within to be slain on the very spot where he had 
 murdered Agamemnon. 
 
 We see at a glance at what pains Sophocles has 
 been to complicate the action, to give variety to the 
 
in GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES S3 
 
 situations and emotions. The means employed may 
 be legitimate or no. But the intention is beyond 
 doubt ; so also is the success of the dramatist in 
 fulfilling it. Equally plain is the contrast with the 
 severe simplicity of action, the deliberate monotony 
 of situation, maintained during at least four-fifths of 
 the play of ^schylus. And this is the more notice- 
 able when we consider that the Choephoroe is by no 
 means the simplest drama of the latter ; that, on the 
 contrary, there is none of them which, as a whole, is 
 more varied or more intense in its dramatic passion ; 
 while, on the other hand, it would have been easy to 
 instance plays of Sophocles, in particular CEdipus, in i 
 which the mastery of plot is still more conspicuous' 
 than in Electra. The example we have taken, there- 
 fore, may be regarded as a crucial one. It proves 
 beyond possibility of question that, in elaboration of 
 plot, iEschylus was little more than a novice, as com- 
 pared with Sophocles. An indirect confirmation of 
 this may be found in the Poetics. To plot, as has - 
 already been pointed out, Aristotle, attached extreme, 
 if not exaggerated importance. To him it was " the ; 
 vital principle, the very soul of the drama." And it 
 is highly significant that in his remarks on "recogni- 
 tion" and "reversal of fortune" — the two pillars which, 
 in his view, bear up the whole structure of the plot — 
 he draws his crowning instances from the plays of 
 Sophocles ; in fact, from the very play which has just 
 
54 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lbct. 
 
 been mentioned as the supreme example of his genius , 
 in this matter, CEdipus Tyrannus. 
 
 Sophocles, then ^js a^consummate master of plot. 
 And,as Such, he lays himsel£-jopen,_to_ the dangers 
 which inevitably beset those who have made elabora- 
 j tion of plot the chief goal of their endeavours. 
 Above all, he is apt to sacrifice everything to effect. 
 As an illustration of this, I would rS5F once more'to 
 Electra. Can any one claim that this tragedy is either 
 so true in its successive dramatic motives, or so strong 
 in its imaginative appeal, as its far simpler, far less 
 artfully constructed, counterpart in .Slschylus ^ We 
 have indeed a powerful presentment of the alterna- 
 tions of hope and fear in the hearts of Electra and 
 Clytemnestra. We have a succession of brilliant 
 episodes, the fictitious chariot-race and the fictitious 
 death of the young hero, blended with pathetic 
 lamentations, which the audience knows all the time 
 to have no foundation. But where is the gradual 
 nerving of Orestes to the deed of horror .? Where 
 is the tragic pleading between him and his mother, 
 the instant's hesitation, the bitter cry of remorse that 
 follows on the irrevocable deed ? Where is the wild 
 vision of the gathering Furies, the undaunted assertion 
 of innocence, the hasty flight before the implacable 
 avengers } All this has been thrown to the winds. 
 The very order of the action is inverted, and inverted 
 surely for the worse. In .Slschylus, ^gisthus is the 
 
m GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES 55 
 
 first to perish ; the climax does not come till the 
 murder of Clytemnestra. In Sophocles, the end of 
 the latter is hurriedly passed over, and it happens 
 first. The whole stress, it would seem, is thrown 
 on the slaughter of ^gisthus. That, and not the 
 murder of the mother by the son, forms the crowning 
 point of the action. There is, in fact, nothing to 
 indicate that Sophocles felt the horror of the deed, 
 the appalling tragedy of the situation with which he 
 had set himself to deal. Napoleon, we are told, after 
 listening to Cherubini's Opera on the same subject, 
 impatiently asked the author why he had ended in 
 a strain of despair and gloom. "Your hero has 
 triumphed," he said, " you ought to have closed in 
 the key of exultation." " He has killed his mother," 
 was the laconic answer. And the same answer will 
 serve as a justification of ^schylus against Sophocles.^ 
 The truth is that attention to plot, important and 
 necessary as it is, is yet a matter which needs to be 
 jealously guarded. It is apt to degenerate into a 
 mere love of effect. The whole history of the 
 modern classical drama — of the romantic drama also, 
 at least as it took shape in France and Germany — 
 bears witness to this peril. The classical drama, in 
 some of Corneille's tragedies and in many of 
 
 • It is only fair to say that, in this point, Euripides returns to the better way 
 of ^schylus. It is a pity that he has gone far to spoil his version of the tragedy 
 {Electro) by a forced naturalism and by an elaborate and highly sensational 
 " relation " of the murder of .iEgisthus. 
 
56 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 Voltaire's, became a cunning manipulation of startling 
 incidents, elaborately interwoven, with no high appeal 
 to the imagination, with no moral, or even human, 
 significance. And the same thing, though in a very 
 different way, may be said of some at least of the 
 dramas of Hugo. To charge this upon those who, 
 whether by precept or example, first laid stress upon 
 the importance of plot, to charge it upon Sophocles 
 or Aristotle, would, it need hardly be said, be the 
 grossest injustice. It would be equally absurd to 
 prescribe neglect of plot as a remedy. It^ is true, 
 however, that, with the cult of plot, a new danger 
 arose to threaten the_drani,a,_and---:tha±.Jiothing bi^_the 
 most constant vigilance can guard against it. The 
 great dramatist is he who triumphs over it ; or 
 rather, who converts what might be an enemy into 
 the surest of allies. And it is only just to remember 
 that, if any man ever succeeded in this task, it was 
 Sophocles himself, in his two greatest plays, CEdipus 
 and Antigone. The former of these in particular, as 
 Aristotle clearly felt, offers the most consummate 
 plot that antiquity has bequeathed to us ; nor has 
 the modern drama, anything that, in point of plot, 
 can be put above it. And it is no less remarkable 
 for dramatic intensity and dramatic truth. 
 
 The comparative failure of Electra suggests 
 another reflection. This is that, among ^the qualities 
 which are indispensable to a great dramatist, not the 
 
Ill GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES 57 
 
 least important is keenness and s oundness of mora l 
 j udgment . It was the possession of such a judgment 
 ^hich went far to give Shakespeare so immeasurable 
 a superiority over many of his brother Elizabethans. 
 It is the same thing which, in the last resort, accounts 
 for the superiority, in this instance, of iEschylus over 
 Sophocles. It would, of course, be absurd to say that 
 this, in itself, is enough to make a dramatist. If it 
 were, many a plain man who has been talking prose 
 all his life would be as great as Shakespeare. But, 
 given the iniagination, the cre ative faculty , the know - 
 led ge of human nature , which are obviously the first 
 conditions, it remains true that all these will be 
 powerless to achieve the highest effects which lie 
 within reach of the dramatist, unless they go hand in 
 hand with a sure and subtle instinct in those matters 
 which form the tissue of our moral experience, which 
 constitute the groundwork of our action, for good or 
 bad, in the ordinary affairs of life. 
 
 It remains to say a few words on the more formal 
 side of the genius of Sophocles. It was inevitable 
 that, when he humanised the theme of the drama, 
 when he brought it down from heaven to earth, his 
 language also should be cast in a lower key than was 
 commonly struck by iEschylus. It was inevitable, 
 and it was also fitting ; the one change rightly carried/ 
 the other in its train. Accordingly we must not look 
 in Sophocles for the gigantic figures, the titanic 
 
58 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 imagery, we must not look for the wildness and 
 sublimity, of !ffischylus. These things belonged to 
 " the large utterance of the early gods " ; and with 
 the Gods and Titans they necessarily vanished. It 
 would, however, be a fatally false judgment to 
 suppose that the poetry of Sophocles is lacking in force 
 or passion, that his style is, in any sense, the style of 
 ordinary speech. He has, doubtless, less passion than 
 -Slschylus, he approaches more nearly to the language, 
 of common life. Few are the poets of whom the 
 same rttight not be said. But bothinjthough£_arid 
 language he moves, and it comes naturally to him to 
 move, gnj^latrerfkr above-the-woiMda wTifch jnan|s 
 4 aUy l ife is cast. In_Jangiiager-as in jhought, he is 
 
 consistently idea l The prevailing character oj His" 
 
 style, as of his conceptions, is a marvellous harin6H3r- 
 v^and sweetness, the qualities which earned for hun, 
 among his countrymen, the name of the Bee. But, 
 when thefitting^moment. comes, he instinctively rises 
 tp a strain„of .high£r-:^assiQn,.andLhis thoughts shape 
 themselves unbidden in the most vivid imagery. So 
 it is with the defiance and the lamentations of 
 Antigone ; so with the despair of CEdipus and Ajax,^ 
 the choric odes oi Antigone and the two dramas on the 
 fate of CEdipus. There is, moreover, one quality of 
 his style to which attention was drawn by Shelley, a 
 
 ' See, in particular, AnAgme, 11. 450-70, S91-942; (Edipus Tyramm, 
 U. 1369-1416; ^ax, U. 430-80, 646-92, 815-65. 
 
in GREEK TRAGEDY : SOPHOCLES 59 
 
 quality in which he has never been surpassed. That 
 is his genius for investing the simplest objects of the 
 external world, the most familiar imagery, with a 
 remoteness, a subtle suggestion of things unseen, 
 which gives to them an "almost unfathomable 
 depth of poetry,"^ This is a power as precious 
 as it is uncommon ; and it finds its counterpart 
 in his whole treatment of human character and 
 passion. 
 
 On the whole, then, it may be said that Sophocles 
 contributed two elements of great importance to the 
 development of the drama. He brought the tragic 
 rnotive more completely within, the sphere of human 
 action and .human passion^ than iEschylus had done'^ 
 and he gave greater consistency, a more closely woven 
 texture, in thg. plot. To these it may be added that in 
 his latest tragedy, CEdifus Coloneus, there are curious 
 anticipations of tendencies which reappear in the 
 later dramas, particularly in the so-called romances, 
 of Shakespeare. The Coloneus is a drama of suffer- 
 ing rather than of action ; and in this it resembles 
 what is among the last of Shakespeare's tragedies. 
 King Lear. Indeed, the very words of Lear, those 
 words which sum up and crystallise that aspect of/ 
 his fate — " I am a man more sinned against than 
 sinning " — are almost a verbal echo of the plea of 
 
 ■ See Mrs. Shelley's note on Promuheus Unbound, containing an extract from 
 lier husband's manuscripts. Moxon's Edition (1869), p. 127. 
 
6o TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. m 
 
 CEdipus — " My deeds are deeds of suffering rather 
 than>f doing." ^ Again, the Coloneus, like Cymbeline 
 or The Winter's Tale or The Tempest, is essentially a 
 drama of reconciliation. The sharp contrasts of 
 human life are here softened down ; its conflicts 
 are resolved ; the victim of a cruel doom is at last 
 reconciled with Heaven. One tragic scene excepted 
 — that in which CEdipus, not without justice, thrusts 
 awa,y his injured but guilty son — the whole note is 
 that of atonement, of " calm of mind, all passion 
 spent." In his earlier plays Sophocles had forged 
 one link in the chain which has made the drama 
 the highest , expression of human life and human 
 passion. He had proved his mastery of that cunning 
 elaboration of plot which was to remain a distinguish- 
 ing mark of the classical type of tragedy. It was 
 reserved for his latest , play to give a still wider 
 extension to the general scope of the drama ; to 
 anticipate by a flash of genius that which was to 
 prove among the highest achievements of romantic 
 tragedy, the search for an ultimate reconciliation, 
 the feeling after an " ampler ether, a diviner air," 
 in which all discords are resolved. In CEdipus at 
 Colonus, he struck a note which, centuries later, was 
 to be taken up in the romances of Shakespeare and 
 the two masterpieces of Goethe. 
 
 ^ CEdipus Cohnem, 11. 266-7. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 
 
 Sophocles is the last representative of the purely 
 classical spirit in Greek tragedy. With Euripides 
 new elements force their way into prominence, the 
 character of Greek tragedy is profoundly changed, 
 and the classical mould is strained to the point of 
 breaking. The genius of Euripides was full of 
 originality ; his temper was naturally restless ; and, 
 cast in. a time when the traditional beliefs of the 
 Greek world were rudely shaken and the established 
 forms of Greek polity showed clear signs of decay, 
 he eagerly welcomed the spirit of innovation which 
 was at work on every side of him, and applied it 
 with feverish activity in the field of tragedy. All 
 this was as it should be. The drama, like all other 
 things, must change with its surroundings. And the 
 Greek drama, just because it was bound up so closely 
 with the whole fabric of Greek life and thought, just 
 because it was a pre-eminently indigenous growth, 
 
 6i 
 
62 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 was peculiarly sensitive to any change in the inward 
 faith or outward institutions of the community which 
 nurtured it. To quarrel with Euripides for seeking 
 change is therefore unreasonable and unjust. A 
 change of form, a change of spirit — both were 
 probably a necessity, if Greek tragedy was to keep 
 its vitality, if it was to be saved from the living 
 death which inevitably comes when the old forms 
 are retained after the breath of life has gone out of 
 them. But in considering the work of Euripides, 
 as of any other revolutionist, we are entitled to ask : 
 Do these particular changes take the direction which 
 later experience has shown to be the most fruitful of 
 results ? are they consistently carried out ? and has 
 their influence upon the subsequent course of events 
 been, in the main, for good or for evil ? The last 
 question requires to be handled with great caution ; 
 for it is manifest that accident may here play a dis- 
 turbing part. But the two first stand upon firmer 
 ground, and they admit, in this case as in others, of 
 a tolerably definite answer. 
 
 Let us begin by recognising the great qualities of 
 Euripides. He was a true poet ; his dramatic work 
 is not only full of interest but has an abiding charm ; 
 he had a keen eye for t he human problems which 
 sup ply the matter of the tr agjfi. Hrgmajjat a still 
 keener for all that makes them effective on the 
 stage. Hence his plays always act as a spur to 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 63 
 
 the intellect, and they offer a lively satisfaction to 
 the eye. Whatever else may be true about him, 
 so much at any rate is not to be denied. And 
 there are further qualities which will fall to be 
 noticed, as we go on our way. 
 
 It is clear that throughout his career as dramatist 
 — It must be remembered that he was a slightly 
 younger contemporary of Sophocles — he chafed 
 against the restrictions of the classical type which 
 came to him from the hands of the two elder 
 dramatists, and that he worked under the fixed 
 resolve to widen them by every means at his com- 
 mand. Indeed, if the traditional mould had broken 
 utterly in the process, we have little warrant for 
 thinking that he would have been seriously dis- 
 turbed. What then was it, we may ask, in the 
 classical model that galled him the most heavily ? 
 Against what points in the ring-fence was his attack 
 most persistently directed ? It was not, as might 
 perhaps have been expected, the comparative lack of 
 outward action, the practice of leaving the more 
 stirring incidents to be told by " relation." ^ On 
 the contrary, one of the first things to strike us in 
 his dramas is the enormous extension given to the 
 part of the " Messenger," the recognised medium 
 of such descriptions. This at once fixes a barrier 
 
 ' The death of Evadne, who hurls herself from the roof of the palace into 
 the funeral pyre of her husband, Capaneus, would seem to be an exception. I 
 do not recall any other instance. See Sufflices, 11. 984-1079. 
 
64 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 between him and the romantic rebels of a later day. 
 Nor again, as we shall see directly, was it the 
 tradition that the personages of tragedy must be 
 drawn from heroic legend.^ The mythologica l. 
 e]g]iienfc--is, on the whole, still stronger in him than 
 in . ^schy lus and Sophocles. He introduces the 
 gn ds miirh mnr p frpp l y ; and he is even ready, as 
 in the case of Helena, to coin legends of his own. 
 It seems to have been rather the stately character of 
 the traditional form that roused his discontent ; the 
 ideal atmosphere, the air of calm and remoteness, 
 which both ^schylus and Sophocles had cast around 
 it. To destroy that atmosphere, to bring the drama 
 nearer to the actual interests and emotions — we can 
 hardly say to the actual life — of his own day, to 
 give it variety of every possible kind — variety of 
 incident, variety of dialogue, variety of description, 
 variety of poetic effect, variety of rhythm, variety of 
 dress and scenery ^ — this, one would say, was his 
 main object. And to this end he bent all the powers 
 of his ingenuity and invention. 
 
 Now, one at least of the means he chose for this 
 purpose is, in itself, entirely legitimate. It has often 
 been noticed that, of all ancient dramatists, Euripides 
 is the most pathetic. Alcestis, the story of the wife 
 
 ^ This tradition was defied by iSscliylus in the Persac, and by Phrynichus in 
 the Fall of Miletus. See Herodotus, vi. 21. 
 
 2 Hence the significance of the words, "In all things, sweet is change," 
 Orestes, 1. 434. 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 65 
 
 who consents to die in place of her husband, and is 
 then miraculously restored to him, is the most 
 familiar instance of this quality. And there are 
 passages of that drama which, for truth and sim- 
 plicity of pathos, it would be impossible to surpass. 
 There are, however, other examples in abundance. 
 The appeal of Iphigeneia to her father,^ the parting 
 between Orestes and Electra,^ above all, t he descent 
 of Artemis to sooth the last suff gripg^ "f FTippnjyfns ^ 
 — all these, and more besides, show the dramatist at 
 his highest ; and nothing has done so much to win 
 for him the admiration and affection of his readers. 
 It is none the less true that, by his very pathos, 
 Euripides profoundly modified the character of 
 tragedy as it came to him from vEschylus and 
 Sophocles, as indeed it has been conceived by the 
 tragic poets of all ages and nations.* To them, the 
 sterner note is of the essence of trage^)^ ; and pathos, 
 however much it may enter into thtir dramas, enters 
 only as an element, an element which is strictly 
 subordinated to the more austere strain distinctivq^ 
 of tragedy. " Nothing is here for tears "—that is 
 the silent conviction which un4erlies' the supreme 
 
 1 Jphigei&ia in Aulis, 11. 1211-75, ^^^ ^^^ subsequSnt lament, 11. 1279-1335. 
 
 ^ Electro, 11. 1308-1340. 
 
 ^ Hifpolytus, 11. 1389-1443. 
 
 * Aristotle describes Euripides as " the most tragic of all poets." But he is 
 careful to limit the term to one particular point — the poet's preference for sad 
 endings— and to add the qualifying clause, " even though the structure of his 
 plays be otherwise faulty." The passage [Poetics, xiii. 6) is too often quoted 
 without these qualifications. 
 
 F 
 
66 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lbct. 
 
 creations of tragedy, the unspoken feeling they call 
 out, to whatever age or nation they may belong. 
 And moving as is the pathos of Euripides, we 
 cannot but feel that it carries us, and is intended to 
 carry us, into a region distinct from that of tragedy ; 
 a lower region, we must admit, and one nearer to 
 that of our daily experience and emotion. I do 
 not think that this judgment applies to Hippolytus, 
 a play which, on other grounds also, would seem to 
 stand apart from the rest of the poet's work. But 
 I think it holds good of the other dramas just 
 mentioned. It does so still more of such plays as 
 Hecuba and the Troades. And the note is struck so 
 persistently by Euripides that no estimate, for the 
 good or the less good, can fail to take account of it. 
 In close connection with the pathos of Euripides, 
 we may take his deep and innate humanity. This 
 is a quality which is clearly distinct from the 
 imaginative and artistic endowment of the poet. 
 But it plays a curiously large part in his dramas, and 
 is not seldom the inspiration of his most passionate 
 effects. Again and again his love of justice, his zeal 
 for mercy and pity, break out in glowing utterances; 
 and there are two at least of his plays, the Supplices 
 and the Heracleidae, which would seem to have been 
 written largely with the object of commending 
 to his fellow-citizens the faith which he himself 
 had at heart. In each of these plays the .cause of 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 67 
 
 mercy and justice is presented as bound up with , 
 the traditional policy of Athens, and as forming her 
 chief title to glory ; while in another play he goes 
 out of his way to make a pointed attack on Sparta, 
 on her cruelty and treachery, on her trust in brute 
 force, and, perhaps with less justification, on the 
 corruption of her women.^ How far this strain of 
 patriotic feeling, of devotion to the city of his birth 
 and of hatred for her foes, was a diplomatic device, 
 adopted for the sake of gaining a more favourable 
 hearing, it is impossible to say. But it may well 
 be that he was wholly sincere in identifying the 
 cause of humanity with the supremacy of Athens ; 
 that, like Pericles, he regarded Athens as the 
 " schoolmistress of Greece," the guardian of all 
 that was best and purest and most beautiful in the 
 Hellenic tradition. And who shall say that he was 
 wrong ? At the same time it is pretty clear that 
 the love of humanity in him was still stronger than 
 the love of country ; and that, in so far as the latter 
 seems to prevail, it is because Athens — 
 
 Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
 And eloquence — 
 
 to him stood for the cause of truth and justice 
 throughout the world. We can hardly be wrong 
 
 1 Andromache, 11. 445-63, 595-601, 724-6. The praises of Athens are also 
 sung in a famous chorus of Medea, 11. 824-50. 
 
68 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 in recognising the humanitarian impulse as one of 
 the things which distinguish him most markedly 
 from iEschylus and Sophocles, nor In connecting it 
 with the philosophical strain in his nature and his 
 I known admiration for Socrates. In any case it is 
 clear that, with all its attractiveness, this impulse 
 had its perils, that it led him at times to sacrifice 
 the strictly dramatic ends of tragedy to the purposes 
 of the moralist and the philosopher. 
 
 Through his reflective, no less than his pathetic 
 ^nt^ Euripides profoundly modified the spirit of 
 Greek tragedy. So far, however, he had done 
 little to touch its vital character ; still less had 
 he done anything which seriously affected its tra- 
 ditional form. Can the same thing be said of 
 another quality, the " naturalism " which has often 
 been attributed to him, and which, in a certain 
 sense, is not to be denied ? Here, I think, we come 
 to something which strikes still deeper than any 
 change we have hitherto noticed ; and it is the more 
 necessary to define exactly the direction which his 
 naturalism took, and the degree to which he carried 
 it. The personages of his drama are still taken 
 from heroic legend ; but they are manifestly brought 
 nearer to the men and women of everyday life than 
 their prototypes in .Slschylus and Sophocles. They 
 are so in themselves, they are so still more in their 
 dramatic setting, their external surroundings. 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 69 
 
 They are so in themselves. It is not to be denied 
 that the characters of Euripides are apt to be less 
 stately, that they are more violent in their passions 
 and resolves than those of the elder dramatists. 
 And this applies, in particular, to his women. Electra 
 and Hermione ^ are hardly characters we should expect 
 to meet in ^iEschylus or Sophocles. Nor again, 
 though in a different way, is Medea. The ill-bred 
 pertness of Hermione would probably have seemed 
 trivial to them ; the vindictiveness of Electra would 
 have been rejected as savage. Euripides eagerly 
 welcomes such sitters to his studio, and paints their 
 portraits with unmistakable delight. But it is hard 
 to check the conviction that they are out of keeping 
 with the heroic framework in which they are set. 
 And, in the case of Electra, we recall with something 
 of resentment the noble features, here coarsened into 
 those of a virago. 
 
 For Medea, no doubt, more is to be said. And 
 in the earlier scenes of the play the dramatist has 
 done everything to soften the harshness of the 
 impression which is inevitably left by the whole. 
 Nor can it be denied that the portrait is throughout 
 painted with consummate subtlety, that the painter 
 has put forth all his genius to make us feel its 
 fidelity to nature. His heroine is a barbarian by 
 birth and temper ; she has been cruelly wronged. 
 
 ^ In Andromaclie. 
 
70 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 What more natural than that her deeds also should 
 be barbarous, her revenge as cruel as her wrongs? 
 All this is very true. But when she punishes her 
 faithless husband by murdering the children she has 
 borne to him, our faith is staggered. And even 
 if that point were yielded — and it is more than 
 doubtful whether it ought — other objections still 
 remain behind. Is not such an act too loathsome 
 for dramatic treatment of any sort ? Is it not in 
 crying discord with a stage so ideal as the Greek .'' 
 Is not the figure of Medea wholly out of harmony 
 with the other figures, as well as with the general 
 character, of the piece ? Compare the theme as 
 presented by Euripides with exactly the same theme 
 as handled in one of the oldest Norse poems, the 
 Atla-mal, and we at once feel the superiority of the 
 latter. There, quite apart from the fact that the 
 scene is not presented to the eye, the whole atmos- 
 phere is primitive and barbarous. Our conviction 
 that so the thing must have been is never for one 
 instant shaken. The harmony of horror and heroic 
 daring is unbroken from beginning to end. Gudrun 
 acts, as a barbarian would act, on an overmastering 
 impulse. Medea refines and sophisticates at every 
 step. Moreover, with all her savagery, there is a 
 nobility in Gudrun to which Medea never rises. 
 She acts not to avenge her own wrongs, but the 
 murder of her brothers. Medea, on the contrary. 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 71 
 
 is fighting simply for herself. In view of these 
 considerations, can we say that Medea has the unity 
 of tone demanded by a poem? Can we even say 
 that the heroine is convincing as a dramatic 
 portrait ? 
 
 The case of Phasdra, I think, stands on different 
 ground. Ijer_^assioa^.tf;r,rihlr though .-it-be^js_jsL 
 notjoalijsaaie. And the poet has spared no pains 
 to make us feel that she is th e__victi m nf a fo rce 
 w hicbr^je- homan will has the pnwgr tn resist. She 
 is in the grip of a relsntlfias-fate, and, struggle as 
 she may, s he is driven forward blind l y to her doom . 
 Even so, her innate nobility does not desert her, and 
 she resolves to die rat her than_ stoop to sham e. It 
 is only when the act of another has betrayed her| 
 secret that' she bl'ea6;a^^l'~Boun31^nd, to save herl 
 own fame, launches a cruel slander against her step-l 
 son. "TKeFrlrnotfimg^'fierr^hich ckn be callecj 
 unnatural or repulsive ; nothing which, in a modern 
 drama at any rate, would strike us as out of place. 
 Whether it is altogether in tune with the severe 
 forms of the classical drama is another question. 
 But even on this ground I cannot but think that 
 the record of the dramatist is clear. It may, I 
 think, be at once admitted that such a theme would 
 have been avoided by iEschylus. But is that enough 
 to prove that it is necessarily incompatible with the 
 classical model? And if not, can we deny our 
 
72 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 admiration to the man who enlarged the scope of 
 an ideal which always tended to err on the side 
 of exclusiveness ? It Is here, I believe, that the 
 true originality of Euripides is to be sought : here 
 that his services towards the development of the 
 drama, as he received it from his predecessors, were 
 the greatest. This, the introduction of new types 
 of character and passion, was manifestly the most 
 ^fruitful line of innovation that lay before him. 
 And one can only regret that his endeavours In 
 this direction should have been so comparatively 
 rare ; that Hippolytus should in fact be the only 
 instance in which they were put forth with a con- 
 sistent purpose, or in which they can be said wholly 
 to have succeeded. In this one instance, however, 
 we have his noblest achievement. Of all his 
 tragedies, Hippolytm is the most original, the most 
 beautiful In Itself, and the most worthy to be set 
 side by side with the masterpieces of jSschylus and 
 Sophocles. Xhf; ^•^if'j'fi as we shall see, was taken 
 up by two later writers, Se]ie£a.„and Racin e. But, 
 much as the latter added both in subtlety and 
 nobility to the character of the heroine, splendid as 
 are both his poetry and his dramatic genius, it can 
 hardly be said that Vhhdre is, as a whole, so great 
 a drama as Hippolytus. It Is certainly no greater. 
 
 Thus much as to the attempts of Euripides to 
 widen the scope of the classical drama in respect of 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 73 
 
 character. To the outward trappings of his person- 
 ages and the outward adornments of his stage he 
 gave an attention that was far more persistent. 
 Here his main object seems to have been variety ; 
 a variety which was often clearly intended to give 
 a gentle shock of mild surprise to the spectator. 
 Orestes tossing feverishly on his bed after the 
 murder of his mother,^ Antigone stealing timidly 
 down the stairs to catch a sight of the invading 
 army,^ Electra married to a peasant — rwhom, how- 
 ever, she keeps at a respectful distance — and drawing 
 water for her household needs,^ Xuthus coming 
 flushed with wine from the banquet,* Creusa intent 
 upon the swaddling-clothes in which years before 
 she had wrapped her infant,^ Agamemnon tearing 
 up his letters," Clytemnestra stepping with the 
 utmost pomp and circumstance from her carriage 
 — an incident so dear to Euripides as to be twice 
 repeated, once to an accompaniment of parcels, 
 bandboxes, and babies '' — the rags of Telephus,^ the 
 tarpaulin of Menelaus " ; all these are instances of 
 
 1 Orestei, 11. 1-315. ^ Phcenissae, 11. 83-201. 
 
 2 Electra,\L 54-81. * Ion, 11. 517-62. 
 
 ^ Ion, 11. 1402-32. ^ Iphigeneiain Aulis, 11. 1-48. 
 
 ' Electra, 11. 998-1003, Iphigeneia in AulU, 11. 607-37. It is right to say 
 that the genuineness of the latter passage has been disputed. 
 
 ^ TeUfhus has perished, but there are several allusions to it in Aristophanes j 
 e.g. Acharniam, 11. 410-46. If we may judge from that passage, the same 
 device seems to have been adopted in (Enms, Phihctetes, Phoenix, BelUrofhon, all 
 of which are lost. 
 
 ' Helena, 11. 420-24, 1204-88. 
 
74 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 the peculiarity in question. And they might easily 
 be multiplied. They are so frequent as to betray 
 a fixed intention on the part of the dramatist to 
 break through the majestic mould of classical 
 tragedy, and to bring its stately figures, if not 
 in soul and character, at least in outward garb, 
 bearing, and surroundings down to the level of 
 common life, if not below it. It was this, more 
 perhaps than anything else, which excited the 
 ridicule of his own day, an echo of which is to 
 be found in the satire of Aristophanes. Nor can 
 it be said that the satire is undeserved. It was 
 well that Euripides should attempt to widen the 
 bounds of classical tragedy. It was not well that 
 he should pay so little heed to the weightier matters, 
 to the treatment of passion, cha racter, and inciden t ; 
 that his zeal should chiefly spend itself upon the 
 mint and anise of outward circumstance and stage- 
 properties and costumes. 
 
 All this has led some critics to describe Euripides 
 as a "realist," which may be taken as an extreme 
 form of the belief already indicated, that he has a 
 vein of naturalism. This, however, would seem to 
 be an exaggeration, and that for two reasons. In 
 the first place, it would be a very poor sort of 
 realism which confined itself — or, with few excep- 
 tions, tended to confine itself — to the mere externals 
 of the drama. The true field of realism is in the 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 75 
 
 treatment of character. Its essence is to paint 
 chai-acter, not with a bold sweep, but in minute 
 detail ; tQjpaJnteverj__sid£jof_it, b ad as welL -as 
 good ; to paint it as moulded by outward circum- 
 stance and surroundings ; to paint it, finally — for 
 this has been the general tendency of the great 
 realists — rather in its weakness than its strength, 
 rather on the dark side than the bright. Now, if 
 the account just given be at all correct, it cannot 
 be said, unless of some few dramas, that Euripides 
 concerns himself greatly with character at all. He 
 is, on the whole, more interested in ci rcumstance s 
 and s urroundin gs. And, so far as he does deal 
 with character, his method is at least as much 
 that of the idealist as the realist. Menelaus )among 
 his men, Medea and Phaedra among his women, these 
 are perhaps the only instances that could plausibly 
 be brought on the other side. And if we except 
 Menelaus, whom neither party will be particularly 
 anxious to claim,^ even these instances will hardly 
 stand a close examination. Both are, in truth, 
 conceived rather under the romantic than the 
 realist inspiration. 
 
 And this brings us to the second, and more signi- 
 ficant, ground for rejecting the name "realist" as 
 applied to Euripides. Alike in his treatment of 
 character and his treatment of circumstance, he 
 
 1 Aristotle cites him as an example of " causeless baseness." — Poetics, chap xv. 
 
76 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 shows but little of the realist method. Of the 
 realist temper, the realist motive, he has nothing 
 at all. The impulse of the realist is to paint the 
 thing simply because he finds it ; his ideal is strict 
 fidelity to nature, to matter of fact. Hence his 
 wealth of detail, his tendency to reproduce even 
 trivial detail, lest anything should be lost. 
 Euripides, no doubt, paints detail in abundance. 
 Not, however, because it is in the subject before 
 him, not because it is offered to him by nature. 
 On the contrary, he carefully selects his detail ; he 
 takes a great deal less than he leaves. And I do 
 not think we shall be wrong in saying that what 
 he does take, he takes not because it is " true to 
 life," but because it is picturesque. He takes it 
 not for its own sake, but for the sake of a contrast 
 with something else ; with something which is either 
 present to the eye, or on which he may fairly count 
 as being present to the imagination, of the spectator. 
 It is the rags of a king, the destitution of a princess, 
 the degradation of a hero, that in reality concern 
 him ; the contrast between what the spectator would 
 expect and what he actually finds. In other words, 
 so far from being a realist, he is' in fact a romanticist 
 of a very pronounced and highly specialised type. 
 
 It is sometimes assumed that he retained the 
 figures of heroic legend only on compulsion, and 
 that, had he been free to do so, he would have 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 77 
 
 swept them away for men and women drawn from 
 a very different world, the world of familiar experi- 
 ence, the world of his own day and his own city. 
 I cannot think that this assumption is borne out 
 by the facts or, where the facts fail, by the inferences 
 which other and kindred facts seem inevitably to 
 suggest. If this had really been the mind of 
 Euripides, there is no reason why he should not 
 have forestalled, or followed, the example of his 
 younger rival Agathon, whom we know to have 
 done something of this kind.^ Still less is there any 
 reason why he should have gone out of his way 
 to draw from the world of Greek mythology : why 
 the gods, as to whom it is almost certain that he 
 was profoundly sceptical, and whom there was 
 absolutely no compulsion to introduce at all, should 
 play a far larger — if a far more mechanical — part in his 
 tragedies than in those of iEschylus and Sophocles.^ 
 The truth is that by poetic instinct, if not by reason, 
 he was closely wedded to the forms inherited from 
 the past ; that his imagination clung to them with 
 peculiar fondness ; and that, divorced from them, his 
 genius would have been changed beyond all power of 
 recognition. What is assumed to be mere accident 
 
 1 In his Anthos or The Floiver (the title, however, is uncertain, and may be 
 Antheus—a proper name), in which "both the names and the incidents are the 
 poet's invention." See Aristotle, Poetics, chap ix. 
 
 2 Out of seventeen tragedies by Euripides, the gods appear in ten. Out of the 
 remaining seven, there is a divine personage in one {Atidronwcie), and a ghost in 
 another (flecuba). 
 
78 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 is, in fact, of the very essence of his tragedies. It 
 supplied the romance, the craving for something 
 remote from familiar experience, which was, I believe, 
 one of the dominant notes of his temperament, alike 
 as dramatist and as poet. 
 
 Euripides was, in truth, a romantic to the very 
 core. And it is not hard to satisfy ourselves of this 
 by a few examples. Think, for instance, of the 
 romantic settings which he has given to many of his 
 plays ; above all to those which common consent 
 admits to be the greatest, and where, if anywhere, we 
 must look for the true bent of his genius. Think 
 in particular, of Medea and Hippolytus and the 
 Bacchae. Take away the romantic setting from 
 any of these — strike out the barbarous background 
 of the first, t h£ mythological, backgroun d,ja[£,-the 
 twft_Jast;;— and half the charm will have vanished.'' 
 in the case of Medea and the Bacchae, we may 
 almost say there will be nothing left. Think again 
 of the romantic touches scattered throughout his 
 tragedies : of Cassandra's ghastly ravings,^ of Ion 
 scaring the wild birds, the swans and eagles, from 
 the temple where he has been nurtured,^ of the 
 seven queens prostrate before the altar in the 
 
 ' In the case of Hippolytus, a comparison with Racine's Phidre will illustrate 
 this. By sacrificing the bond between Hippolytus and Artemis — the offering of the 
 garland in the opening scene, the descent of the goddess at the close — Racine did 
 much to set his tragedy at a disadvantage in comparison with that of Euripides, 
 It needed all the subtlety of the rest of his drama to restore the balance, 
 
 ^ Trottdes, 11, 3S3-4.61. ' Job, U, 153-83. 
 
IV GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 79 
 
 Supplices, of lolaus shepherding the outcast children 
 in the Heracleidae. Think, once more, of the set ! 
 descriptions, so unfailing in the plays of Euripides, 
 so picturesque in their detail, and so highly wrought. 
 That of Pentheus torn in pieces by his wife and 
 mother and the other Masnads in the Bacchae^ that 
 of Orestes and Pylades discovered by the cowherds 
 in Iphigeneia,^ that of the pictures embroidered on the 
 tent in lon,^ are perhaps the most elaborate. But 
 they could be paralleled more or less closely from 
 almost any other of his plays. And with the possible 
 exception of the chariot-race in Electra, there is 
 nothing either in ^schylus or Sophocles of which 
 the intention is so manifestly that of the word-' 
 painter, of which the spirit is so decisively romantic. 
 Think, finally, of those plays which are pure pieces 
 of fantasy, or adventure, or both together : such 
 plays as Helena, or Orestes, or Ion. Here the poet 
 has exhausted his invention to heap impossibility on 
 impossibility, to pile Pelion upon Ossa in the way 
 of far-fetched fancy and highly-spiced adventure. 
 Taking all these things together, can we resist the 
 conclusion that they betray the romanticist of pure 
 blood, that they could not possibly have proceeded 
 from a realist ? 
 
 Touches of" realism, or something closely akin to 
 
 • Bacchae, 11. 1043-1152. ^ Ipkigeneia in Tauris, 11. 260-339. 
 
 2 Ion, II. 1 1 32, 65. 
 
8o TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 it, no doubt he has. But so have the romanticists 
 of other days, and perhaps a clearer consciousness of 
 their art. So has Shakespeare, so has Coleridge, 
 so above all has Hugo. The telling detail, the 
 unexpected descent into the region of hard fact 
 and crude reality, can go perfectly well with the 
 romantic motive, the romantic effect. They have 
 always been an accredited weapon in the armoury 
 of romance. When skilfully employed, so far from 
 impairing, they decisively enhance the romantic 
 impression. The porter of Macbeth, the biscuit- 
 worms of Coleridge, the brass knob of the door 
 handle in Les MisSrables, are instances in point. 
 So in another, a far more questionable, way are 
 the homely touches, the realistic adornments of the 
 heroes and heroines of Euripides. In these matters 
 it is not enough merely to note the presence of 
 certain qualities. If the critic stops there, he has 
 done less than half his task. He must go on to 
 inquire what is the proportion they bear, the relation 
 they stand in, to the general economy of the whole. 
 And in the case of Euripides, it is pretty clear that 
 the realism is not an independent element, but that 
 it is strictly subordinated to an effect which has all 
 the qualities of romance. 
 
 Indeed we may go further than this. It is 
 difficult to resist the impression that the dominant 
 note in his dramas, the ruling passion of his genius, 
 
IV 
 
 GREEK TRAGEDY: EURIPIDES 8] 
 
 is the love of effect ; that, so long as an effect was 
 obtained, he was comparatively indifferent as to the 
 means by which it was secured.-' Hence, in all 
 probability, his extraordinary recklessness in the 
 choice of themes. A modernisation of antique 
 legend, the creation of a legend more fantastic 
 than anything in antiquity ; an indictment of the 
 gods, a glorification of the worst qualities attributed 
 to the gods — it seems to have mattered little, so , 
 long as an effective subject was the result, so long 
 as a good opening was found for picturesque detail, 
 for strokes likely to catch the ear of the audience, 
 for scenes which would take a strong grip of their 
 imagination. Hence, perhaps we may add, the loose 
 construction of his plays, the enormous extension of 
 " relations," the immoderate use of the deus ex 
 machind, the childish device of the prologue, which 
 serves as a labour-saving machine, a theatrical gazette 
 to inform the audience of such circumstances as the 
 dramatist would not be at the pains to incorporate 
 in the regular action of his piece. Hence, finally, 
 the sententious sayings, the rhetorical discourses, 
 the set arguments, often manifestly sophistical, in 
 which he revels. An attempt has been made to 
 defend the last peculiarity on the ground that it 
 
 1 Longinus had clearly felt the artificiality of Euripides. " Not being by 
 nature sublime," he says, " Euripides often does violence to himself to produce a 
 tragic eflFect, in the way of sublimity." And he goes on to describe the poet as 
 " lashing himself into a fury."— /)« Subimitate, chap. xv. 
 
 G 
 
82 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 faithfully reflects an inveterate habit of the Athenian 
 mind, a favourite fashion of the society for which 
 the dramatist composed. That may be very true. 
 But it is one of those defences which are more 
 damaging than any admission, and are obviously 
 the last resource of an advocate in distress. This, 
 in fact, is precisely the complaint which may be 
 made against Euripides : that he deliberately put 
 the lower end before the higher ; that, so long as 
 he could please the audience of the moment, he 
 was ready to sacrifice the abiding purposes of 
 imaginative art. It is the duty of the dramatist 
 to select what may be moulded to those purposes. 
 He is under no obligation to follow the fashions of 
 the hour or the year. 
 
 But, with all his blemishes, Euripides remains a 
 great figure in poetry, a landmark of the first 
 importance in the history of the drama. The 
 changes that he brought into the form and spirit 
 of Greek tragedy are not, indeed, of the kind 
 which is sometimes supposed. They are in the 
 "direction not of realism, bHt_ of romanc e. Yet 
 none the less they had the effect of including 
 much that the austere ideal of his predecessors 
 had decisively rejected, of extending the range of 
 matter on which the dramatist could draw, of 
 giving flexibility to the mould created by -Slschylus 
 and Sophocles. That, in doing this, he went far to 
 
rv GREEK TRAGEDY : EURIPIDES 83 
 
 destroy the perfection of the classical model must, 
 I think, be admitted. He was, in fact, labouring 
 rather for the future than the present : for a time 
 when the temper of men should have been changed, 
 by a series of revolutions, rather than for the Greek 
 world by which his view was inevitably bounded. 
 The immediate future did little to profit by his 
 experiments. But that was his misfortune rather 
 than his fault. The creative spit-it of the Greeks, 
 at least in the field of tragic drama, had spent its 
 force by the time of his death. And nearly five 
 centuries were to pass before his work was seriously 
 taken up. His influence on Seneca can hardly be 
 overrated; And both directly and through Seneca 
 it was at least as great on the men of the 
 Renaissance. Thus, by a double irony, the man 
 who wrote largely for the effect of the moment 
 did not come into his inheritance till nearly two 
 thousand years after his death ; the dramatist who 
 least represented the genius of classical antiquity was 
 accepted by the moderns as its typical figure. The 
 star of iEschylus and Sophocles paled mto msigni- 
 ficance before that of their rival ; Sophocles counted 
 for little,^ ^schylus for nothing, in the birth of the 
 modern drama. Here Euripides and his Roman 
 
 1 The only instance to the contrary, I think, is that of Trissino's Sofmisba, 
 which contains more than one adaptation both from Antigone and Ajax. Even 
 here, however, the debt to the Alcestis of Euripides is stiU larger. 
 
84 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. iv 
 
 disciple stand virtually alone. And their influence 
 on the romantic drama was hardly less great, and far 
 more fruitful, than on the classical revival. That 
 however, is a subject of formidable extent, and I 
 must reserve what our limits will allow me to say 
 of it until the next lecture, in which I hope to speak 
 of Seneca. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 
 
 With Euripides the history of Greek tragedy, as it 
 has come down to us, abruptly closes. And before 
 turning to the next chapter of the story, we may 
 pause for a moment to review the ground we have 
 already traversed. For our purposes, ^schylus may 
 be called the creator of the Greek drama. It was he 
 who peopled the stage with gods and heroes, he who 
 cast the majestic framework in which they were to 
 move. It was he who " made the dialogue the 
 protagonist." It was he who first found the true 
 tragic theme, who first sounded the depths of 
 passion, hope, despair, and invincible resolution. In 
 its main outline all this was retained by Sophocles. 
 But two changes of great significance were carried 
 out. On the one hand, the element of plot, of 
 the closely woven tissue of incidents and situations, 
 was carefully elaborated. On the other hand, the 
 dramatic theme was brought more completely within 
 the world of human passion, and, by a natural conse- 
 
 85 
 
86 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 quence, the workings of that passion were painted, if 
 not with greater force, at least with more subtlety 
 and minuteness. Moreover, by exclusion of the 
 more primitive and titanic elements of iEschylean 
 tragedy, a greater unity, a more complete harmony, 
 was given to the general tenor of the whole. What 
 Euripides did in his turn will be fresh in our 
 memory. 1 He attempted a greater variety of passion, 
 he gave a far greater variety of incident and 
 surrounding.J These and other changes that he 
 made, however, were not such as easily to harmonise 
 with one another ; still less, perhaps, with the 
 classical groundwork on which they were imposed. 
 His naturalism brought the drama nearer to common 
 life. His romanticism worked in exactly the opposite 
 direction. Neither was altogether in keeping with 
 the ideal form, the ideal characters, which he inherited 
 from his forerunners. But for that very reason he 
 stood closer to the essentially modern temper of 
 Rome and the Renaissance, and appealed to it more 
 directly. His very detachment from the Greek 
 spirit won him a readier hearing from men reared 
 under new conditions and striving after other ideals. 
 Hence his influence on the subsequent growth of the 
 drama far surpasses that of his greater rivals. The 
 remainder of our inquiry will do much to illustrate 
 this assertion. 
 
 We pass over five hundred years, or nearly so, 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 87 
 
 and pause on Seneca. He is the one tragic poet of 
 Rome whose work has come down to us, and, so far 
 as we know, he had but few fellow-labourers in the 
 field.^ Of his identity we cannot be certain. He 
 may or may not have been the well-known philo- 
 sopher and statesman ; ^ opinions differ. For our 
 purpose, however, the point is of no importance. 
 We have only to consider the place which his 
 tragedies hold in the history of the drama. And 
 from this point of view he is well worthy of arresting 
 our attention. His plays are powerful in themselves. 
 They are still more significant from the vast influence 
 which they wielded on the revival of the drama, 
 whether classical or romantic, at the time of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 What, then, is the line of succession in which he 
 stands ? What are the characteristics which he either 
 introduced, or deepened, in the general nature of 
 tragedy, as he received it from the Greeks ? In the 
 main, it is clear that he based himself on Euripides, 
 that he adopted and carried further many of the 
 changes initiated by the third of the Greek tragedians. 
 Like Euripides, he was a powerful master of dramatic 
 situations : the more tensely strung, the more highly 
 
 1 Ennius (c. zoo b.c), Attius (c. 120 b.c), and Varius, a contemporary 
 of Virgil, are the chief names. Ovid wrote a Medea. Attius, in addition to 
 various tragedies on Greeic subjects, wrote two on Roman themes. Deems and 
 Brutus. 
 
 '^ If he was, his plays would belong to about 50 a.d. 
 
88 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 spiced, the better. Like Euripides, but to a far 
 greater extent, he abounds in declamation and descrip- 
 tion. Like Euripides, but again in a more extreme 
 fashion, he delights in epigrams and sententious 
 sayings. Like Euripides finally, but once more in a 
 higher degree, he has a curious eye for romantic 
 incidents and picturesque adornments. Let us 
 illustrate each of these points by a few instances. 
 
 And first, his mastery of dramatic situation. The 
 best example of this — and I begin with one which 
 seems to me in every way admirable — is to be found 
 in Troas, which I should say is altogether the finest 
 drama that he wrote. The subject of the tragedy is 
 the vengeance taken by the Greeks, at the bidding of 
 the shade of Achilles, upon the surviving Trojans. 
 Apart from Prologue and Epilogue — which give us 
 respectively the lament of Andromache, and, in 
 " relation," the sacrifice of her son Astyanax and her 
 husband's sister Polyxena — there are three acts, each 
 of which presents a striking and truly dramatic 
 situation. In the first, Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, 
 demands of Agamemnon the fulfilment of his father's 
 behest ; and the dispute between them is a master- 
 piece of dramatic skill. In the second, Ulysses, by a 
 stroke of cunning, compels Andromache to reveal the 
 hiding-place of her son. Here the conflict in the 
 heart of the unhappy mother between reverence for 
 her husband's tomb and devotion to her son is 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 89 
 
 painted with extraordinary force. In the third, 
 Helen, loathing her mission, informs Andromache 
 and Hecuba of the fate preparing for Polyxena. 
 And once more the anguish of the mother, Hecuba, 
 is rendered with speaking truth and with a simplicity 
 which is rare indeed in Seneca. The power of this 
 tragedy is thrown into further relief by comparison 
 with the two dramas, perhaps the feeblest which 
 have come down to us, written by Euripides on the 
 same subject, the Troades and Hecuba. The play of 
 Seneca has more unity, more dramatic genius, and a 
 truer pathos — it is moreover, far more effective — 
 than either of these. 
 
 A nd this brins^s us to another point, the highly 
 wrought, th e melo dramatic , element iiTTKe plays of 
 Seneca. As with Euripides, this. is -toJa e seen in his 
 treatment of character, it is to be seen still more in 
 his treat ment of situatio n. For an illustration ot 
 both aspects we may turn to two plays in which, as 
 in our last instance, he takes up a theme that 
 Euripides had treated before him, Hippolytus and 
 Medea. In the Hippolytus of Euripides nothing is 
 more remarkable than the pains which the dramatist 
 has taken to joften all that is shocking in the passio n 
 of Phadr? ^nr hp** g<-ppsQ" She is stricken to the 
 heart with sham e at her own d e gradati on ; she has 
 resolved.-^ Jake_.her. iife-- -lathfir-^than^ ; 
 
 she buries her secret deep within her heart ; and it is 
 
90 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 dragged from her only by the artful persistence of a 
 trusted servant. In all this Euripides followed an 
 instinct not only morally true but dramatically 
 sound. Had he always written thus, he would have 
 disputed the palm with ^schylus or Sophocles, and 
 ranked among the supreme dramatists of the world. 
 Contrast with this the conception and methods of 
 Seneca. It would not be fair to say that the Phasdra 
 of the latter feels no shame. On the contrary, she 
 professes it in abundance. But i.n J ier first words, an d 
 without a hjat-of-prompting from another, shejoudly 
 proclaims her terrible secret, and. bitterly laments that 
 HipLpolyJittfr-is- insensible -to love. In the following 
 act, she throws oiF her queenly robe and, in the hope 
 to win her stepson's favour, clothes herself in the 
 scanty garments of an Amazon and huntress. The 
 sgenicxffect is doubtless very great. But how much 
 of dramatic truth and moral delicacy has been sacri- 
 ficed to attain it.? The same indifference to the 
 higher ends of the drama, the same worship of scenic 
 efFecti might be traced through the remainder of the 
 play. But we pass at once to Medea. The Medea 
 of Euripides, as we have seen, is open to grave 
 objections. Far more is this the case with that of 
 Seneca. Euripides, it is true, presents his heroine as 
 a monster. But he is careful not to unfold the full 
 recklessness of her cruelty till he has done all that 
 was humanly possible to throw our sympathies on heir 
 
V ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 91 
 
 side, to create a strong prejudice in her favour. We 
 have seen her bowed to the earth beneath her wrongs, 
 we have heard her threaten to avenge them on her 
 husband and his accomplice, we have watched her 
 buffeted by a hundred insults and by hypocrisies worse 
 than insults, before she reveals the full horror of her 
 purpose, before she swears to involve her own 
 children in the general slaughter. Even then, the 
 thing may be incredible or repulsive. But at least 
 the dramatist has spared no pains to blind us to the 
 fact, to offer every palliation that was possible. Now 
 of all this there is no trace in Seneca. In her very 
 first speech, that which opens the play, his Medea 
 announces her design against her children ; and from 
 that moment onwards she never ceases to glory in 
 her wickedness. With her, we may fairly say, it is 
 crime for crime's sake ; the more unheard of, 
 the more staggering, the better. She " does not 
 commit crimes for her designs, she forms designs 
 that she may commit crimes." What Burke, rather 
 perversely, said of the French Revolutionists may be 
 applied with much truth to the Roman dramatist. 
 No doubt there is more than a trace of this in the 
 latter part of the play of Euripides ; and it is one of 
 the things which are most damaging to its greatness. 
 But in Seneca it is paraded with far more insistence, 
 and it is hurled at our head, almost in the first line, 
 without one softening touch or one word of prepara- 
 
92 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 tion. The same thing appears no less clearly at the 
 close. In Euripides, Medea at least has the grace to 
 slay her children behind the scene. In Seneca, she 
 mounts to an upper window of the palace, and there, 
 in full sight of Jason, who kneels below imploring 
 mercy, she cuts the throat first of one child, then of 
 the other. Having accomplished her purpose, having 
 stunned the world with horror, she rides off in 
 triumph on the chariot of the Sun. Once more, a 
 masterpiece of scenic eiFect. Once more, an entire 
 lack of dramatic delicacy. Yet in spite of these 
 defects, perhaps because of them, a special interest 
 attaches to this character and to the one other which 
 seems to have been conceived under -^e same in- 
 spiration ;^ lhe ch axactet^-e£- ^treus in TAvestes.- In 
 their open profession of villainy, in their deliberate 
 effort to amaze and appal mankind, there is little 
 doubt that these characters are the ancestors of a 
 whole class which meets us again and again in the 
 Elizabethan drama. Barabas in the Jew of Malta, 
 Lorenzo in the Spanish Tragedy, Richard of Glouces- 
 , ter, these are the most familiar examples of it. But 
 it reappears in Antonio s Revenge and The Malcontent 
 of Marston ; and through him it was transmitted to 
 the Atheist, we may add perhaps to the Revenger, of 
 Tourneur. And a softened echo of it is to be found 
 in the White Devil of Webster. In many of these 
 the groundwork of Seneca is doubtless crossed with 
 
V ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 93 
 
 reminiscences of Machiavelli, or rather the image 
 of that sinister figure which popular imagination 
 had conjured up. But the debt to Seneca is un- 
 mistakable. And it is one of the points in which his 
 influence on the Elizabethans is most clearly marked 
 and most fruitful of imaginative effect. 
 
 There is, however, one particular device, which 
 deserves more than a passing notice. And that, not 
 only for its intrinsic value, which is considerable, but 
 for the unequalled fascination which it had for thjpi 
 earlier Elizabethans. This is the employment of th; 
 Ghost ; and, in especial, of the Ghost who comes t ) 
 execute revenge. Neither in the general nor in th : 
 particular form was Seneca the inventor of the Ghost! 
 Euripides was familiar with it, though he uses it in\ 
 the most bungling and ineffective manner. What 
 could be less impressive, what less in keeping with 
 its known character, than that a ghost should appear 
 at the rising of the curtain to put the audience in 
 possession of the facts which it is necessary, or rather, 
 convenient to the author, that they should be aware 
 of ? Yet this is the function entrusted to the ghost 
 of Polydorus in the Hecuba of Euripides. In this 
 respect Seneca may be readily admitted to have 
 bettered the instruction of his master. ^In Thyestes, 
 for instance, the ghost of Tantalus presents himself, 
 hdt ~tO' save the authoT trouble, not to serve the 
 pi^£os e of a play -bill, but driven bv~tHeTiuries ; 
 
94 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 in part to aggravate his own sufferings — for even 
 Hell has no tortures comparable to those of the house 
 of Atreus — in part to join with the Furies, one of 
 whom stands by him on the stage, in launching a 
 curse upon his doomed descendants. This may be 
 melodramatic, but it is highly impressive. And that 
 is more than can be said for the newspaper-ghost 
 of Hecuba. In the companion play of Seneca, 
 Agamemnon, the device is carried a step further. 
 Here the ghost of Thyestes is essentially the spirit of 
 revenge. And that was the specific form under which 
 the ghost passed into the tragedy of the Elizabethans. 
 The most notable instance of this is to be found in 
 the Spanish Tragedy, the most popular play of its 
 time, in which the ghost of the murdered Andrea, 
 hand in hand (so to speak) with the Spirit of Revenge, 
 appears, at the beginning of each Act to incite the 
 living to exact vengeance for his death. And the 
 ghost of Hamlet, the most famous of all dramatic 
 spirits, is clearly an offshoot of Andrea, though an 
 offshoot grafted by the hand of genius. One instance 
 among many of the debt which the Elizabethans, and 
 Shakespeare certainly not the least of them, owed to 
 the rhetorical and melodramatic dramatist of Rome. 
 Curiously enough, in this particular instance the debt 
 goes back, all unconsciously, to iEschylus. It may 
 be doubted whether even the ghost of Hamlet's 
 father produces an effect so appalling as that of 
 
V ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 95 
 
 Clytemnestra, goading the Furies on the track of 
 Orestes, in the Eumenides} That, in all probability, 
 was the source from which Seneca took the hint, and, 
 as so often, spoiled it in the taking. Not that the 
 ghost of Thyestes is at all to be despised. But he is 
 not so impressive as either his spiritual mother, or his 
 spiritual descendant ; either as the ghost of Clytem- 
 nestra, or the ghost of "the vanished majesty of 
 Denmark." 
 
 What is true of the melodramatic vein in 
 Euripides is equally so of the declamatory and 
 descriptive. These also are taken over by Seneca, 
 and greatly extended in the process. The Messenger's 
 speech, for instance, plays an inordinate part in 
 Euripides. It plays a part more inordinate yet in 
 Seneca. It is the bravura movement which we 
 invariably look for in both dramatists, and which we 
 as invariably find. But, whereas in Euripides it is 
 commonly limited to a hundred lines, with a few 
 extra thrown in for make-weight, in Seneca it is at 
 least twice extended generously to half as much 
 again.^ Now, however natural under the conditions 
 of the classical stage such episodes may be, it must 
 be admitted that they are in the nature of an 
 accretion, not to say an excrescence ; that, while the 
 
 ' The appearance of the spirit of Darius in the Perme is deeply impressive ; 
 but it stands on rather different grounds. 
 
 ^ Agamemnm, 11. 415-582, a description of a storm ; and Thyi:stes,'^\\. 620-786, 
 the murder of the eons of Thyestes and the banquet which followed. 
 
96 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 " relation " is made, the real action of the drama 
 inevitably stands still ; and that the two greater 
 dramatists of the Greeks, with the one unhappy 
 exception of Sophocles in Electra, are at obvious 
 pains to keep it within bounds. This is especially 
 true of ^schylus. The Persae is the one play in 
 which the Messenger plays a dominant part ; and 
 his speech is one of the most thrilling things in the 
 whole body of the Greek drama. In four out of the 
 six remaining plays, there is no Messenger at all. In 
 the fifth, the Messenger, mounted on a watch-tower, 
 recounts to the citizens the fortunes of the battle that 
 is waging beneath the walls ; his words have the force 
 of deeds that are being transacted before our eyes.^ 
 Euripides was troubled with no such scruples. Still 
 less was Seneca. Both dramatists revelled in these 
 essentially undramatic episodes. Both eagerly seized 
 the opportunity to indulge their brilliant gifts of 
 description. 
 
 So it is also with the more dramatic portions of 
 these tragedies. Seneca, following in the steps of 
 Euripides, and, as usual, improving on his model, 
 turns each speech into a declamation. The declamation 
 is not seldom extremely fine ; there are i&w things in 
 Euripides finer in their way than the scene between 
 Phaedra and Theseus in the last Act of Hippolytus. 
 
 ' Seven against Thebes, i\. 4ZZ-652. His "relation" is much broken by 
 dialogue. 
 
V ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 97 
 
 Yet even here there is a hint too much of rhetoric ; 
 and in other ..pas sages— f or instance, the lurid scene 
 between the ghflaL-o f Tan t alus^d Mcgjcra at the 
 beginning^^o£_j Qj)f estes — the hint swells in to a cry.^ 
 Nor is this all. That the declamations should teem'' 
 with mythological allusions is bad enough in itself. It 
 is stiU worse when such allusions are put, as they often 
 are, on the lips of the inevitable nurse — one of the 
 numerous properties inherited by Seneca from Euri- 
 pides. The Classical Dictionary has been ransacked for 
 the purpose ; and the unhappy modern is often driven 
 to his Lempriere before he can see his way through the 
 jungle of the nurse's learning.^ Here again, no one 
 who is familiar with the earlier Elizabethan drama 
 can fail to trace the influence of Seneca. 
 
 In epigram and sharp sentences, in the art of 
 logic-chopping and hair-splitting, Seneca more than 
 follows the example of Euripides. He has not, 
 
 ^ A curious illustration of Seneca's rhetoric may be found at the end of 
 Agamemnon (1. 938). Electra, having handed the child Orestes to the safe care 
 of Strophius, follows the departing chariot with the triumphant cry, Excessit, 
 aiiit. These are the very words which open one of Cicero's famous declamations 
 against Catiline. But the exigencies of metre have caused an alteration of order 
 which goes far to spoil the quotation. 
 
 2 Perhaps the most grotesque instance is to be found in Octavia, which, 
 though it can hardly be by Seneca himself, is manifestly of his school. The 
 nurse, a Roman of the first century, consoles the heroine for her desertion by 
 Nero with a long list of the provocations given by Jupiter to Juno {Octavia, 
 11. 198-218]. Altogether, the nurse of Euripides and Seneca is ancestress of the 
 confidante of the French classical stage. She appears in five out of the ten 
 plays attributed to Seneca. In one of them, Octa-uia, her part is doubled, both 
 the heroine and her rival being provided with a lady's maid. In a sixth, 
 Tkyestei, there is a male slave, or valet, who fulfils the same function. 
 
 H 
 
1 
 
 98 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 indeed, those interminable screeds of repartee — of 
 "thrusting and parrying in bright monostich," 
 extending sometimes to more than a hundred lines ^ 
 — in which Euripides exulted. And for this relief 
 we must be thankful. But he abounds still more 
 profusely in epigrams and apophthegms, some of 
 them, it may be freely admitted, uncommonly 
 good ; and he is still more reckless in his choice 
 of the persons who deliver them. His nurses, 
 for instance, have a fine literary sense, and might 
 have taken lessons from Congreve or Sheridan.^ In 
 some editions of his plays, the bulk of the text is 
 printed in italics, Roman letters being reserved for 
 the sharp sayings and epigrams. And as we look 
 down the pages, we are amazed to see the number 
 of these oases peppered about amid the surrounding 
 desert. In this respect also, the influence of Seneca 
 was strong upon the earlier Elizabethans ; and we 
 need only refer to a famous passage of Richard III. 
 for an illustration.^ The passage of Shakespeare is 
 doubtless far more dramatic than anything of the 
 kind to be found in Seneca, or, for that matter, 
 in Euripides either. But it is curious as a survival of 
 the classical influence upon the least classical of writers. 
 Yet more significant are the obviously romantic 
 touches in which the plays of Seneca abound. In 
 
 ' e.g. Ion, U. 264-368. 
 
 '^ e.g. Medea, 11. 153-76 ; Hippolytus, 11. 128-272. 
 
 ' Richard III. act iv. sc. Iv. II. 342-67. 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 99 
 
 the very tempest and whirlwind of his classical 
 passion, he loves to transport us to the world of the 
 picturesque, the unfamiliar, the fantastic, above all, 
 the supernatural, to which, once more, Euripides 
 had shown him the way. Apart from his ghosts, 
 which have already been mentioned, the most 
 obvious illustrations of this are to be found in two 
 scenes of CEdipus and two of Medea} The former 
 of the two scenes of CEdipus brings upon the 
 stage the offering of sacrifice by Teiresias and 
 the ghastly prophecies of coming woe which he 
 draws from the resulting omens. The latter, which 
 is in the nature of a Messenger's speech, describes 
 the evocation of the shade of Laius by Teiresias 
 and the curse which the spirit hurls against his 
 stricken race. The former might, up to a certain 
 point, be paralleled by the description of the sacrifice 
 in the Electra of Euripides. But, besides that this 
 is recounted merely in " relation," Euripides handles 
 the incident in a far less sombre way, with infinitely 
 less suggestion of the supernatural. And the same 
 thing applies still more forcibly to the latter scene, 
 which seeks and finds an intensity of supernatural 
 horror, never attempted by Euripides. The two 
 passages of Medea virtually form one continuous 
 scene which recites the incantations that summon 
 the powers of darkness to aid the heroine in 
 
 1 (Edipm, 11. 291-402, 530-658 J Medea, II. 670-738, 739-840. 
 
loo TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 gathering her poisons, and paints the concoction 
 of the venomous drugs which she smears on the 
 fatal robe destined for her rival. Such scenes may 
 be said to trace their origin to the romantic pictures 
 of Euripides, of which I spoke in the last lecture. 
 And in their turn they served as the model of 
 scenes lavishly scattered about the early Elizabethans ; 
 for instance, the scene in Tamburlaine, which describes 
 the symbolic colours assumed by the grim hero on 
 the successive days of the siege of a doomed city, 
 or the lurid passage of the Spanish Tragedy, which 
 paints the road to hell. But neither by his fore- 
 runner, nor by his followers, is the brush so heavily 
 loaded as by Seneca. The rhetoric of the Roman is 
 more than questionable ; but in command of all the 
 effects of horror he is hardly to be surpassed. 
 
 From all this it is clear that Seneca, himself 
 following in the footsteps of Euripides, gave a more 
 rhetorical and declamatory turn to the drama than 
 is to be seen in any of his predecessors ; that this 
 extended to the whole presentation of character, 
 as well as to the diction and style ; and that, as with 
 Euripides, it went hand in hand on the one side 
 with a marked abuse of epigram and sententious 
 argument, on the other side with a strong tendency 
 towards the introduction of romantic episodes and 
 /descriptions, of all that appeals to the sense of 
 horror, and, in particular, of the supernatural. It 
 
ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA loi 
 
 is only when we remember this, and when we further 
 consider the vast influence which he wielded on the 
 classical revival of the same date, that the strange 
 blending of classical with romantic which meets us 
 in the earlier Elizabethans is to be understood. It 
 would be difficult to say whether the classical or the 
 romantic drama of modern times stands more deeply 
 in his debt. 
 
 Before leaving the tragedy of the ancients it is 
 well to notice one special point which there has been 
 no opportunity of considering. That is the develop- 
 ment of the Chorus. In iEschylus, as we saw, the 
 Chorus still takes a large part in the direct action 
 of the piece. In two at least of his plays, the 
 SwppUces and Eumenides, it might fairly be described 
 as the principal actor. Even in Agamemnon, the 
 general effect of which is far less primitive, it plays 
 an important part, and in the final scene it is not 
 far from coming to blows with Clytemnestra and 
 her accomplice. When we turn to Sophocles we 
 are conscious of a marked change in its position. 
 It now stands aloof from the direct action. Its 
 part is confined to lively sympathy or dignified 
 rebuke, to pleas for mercy towards man and piety 
 towards the gods. The one play in which it returns 
 to something of its older functions is (Edipus Coloneus. 
 There the Chorus welcomes the persecuted king to 
 his last refuge ; it stands forward as the protector 
 
I02 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 of innocence, the champion of divine and human 
 mercy. But in this play, as has already been 
 noticed, the , action is comparatively slight. Its 
 appeal lies mainly to our sympathy with suffering, 
 to the hallowed associations of a particular religious 
 worship. It was 'not unnatural therefore that the 
 Chorus should here return to something of its 
 ancient rights, that the general practice of the 
 author should here be set aside. The change begun 
 by Sophocles was carried still farther by Euripides. 
 With him the Chorus, as a rule, ceases even to 
 advise. It sings picturesque hymns, it makes 
 pathetic lamentations, more or less closely related 
 to the action of the piece, but with no bearing on 
 the conduct of the personages. Apart from this, 
 it tends to sink more and more into the position 
 of confidante, a position which, in Hippolytus, at 
 any rate, it shares with the_ officious nurse. The 
 latter function is dropped by Seneca, the former is 
 retained ; and_naariyof J;he mo st striking p assages 
 in his tragedies, as indeed in those of Euripides, 
 are to be found in the choric odes. These, 
 however, with one notable exception,^ are rather 
 in the nature of interludes than integral parts of 
 the drama ; and the same might be said, though 
 in a less degree, of the Chorus in Euripides.^ 
 
 1 Troas,\\. 66-159. 
 
 ^ Aristotle clearly felt the difference between the Chorus of Sophocles and 
 that of Euripides, though he docs not define it, and it may be doubted whether 
 
V ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 103 
 
 Altogether it is clear that, from the time of 
 Euripides onward, the Chorus was little more than 
 a survival ; an excresence doomed sooner or later 
 to be lopped off. It reappears in several of the 
 earlier plays of the Renaissance, But all the 
 outward conditions of the drama were now hope- 
 lessly against it. And in spite of repeated attempts 
 to galvanise it into fresh life, it vanished no less from 
 the classical than the romantic drama of the moderns. 
 
 Again we leap forward, this time over nearly 
 fifteen hundred years, and find ourselves in the 
 dawn of the classical revival. In the interval 
 the drama, for our purposes, had been a blank. 
 For I cannot convince myself that either the Mystery 
 Plays, or their successors the Moralities, had any 
 substantial bearing, anything more than a sporadic 
 influence, upon the subsequent course of tragedy. 
 With comedy the case would be very different. 
 Let us attempt then to realise what was the effect 
 of the classical revival, what its significance to the 
 men of the Renaissance. 
 
 Classical civilisation, classical literature, had been 
 buried under the ruins of the barbarian invasions. 
 The knowledge of Greek had, for practical purposes, 
 
 he realised its full importance. " The Chorus," he says, " ought to be one of 
 the actors, and to be an integral part of the whole play, and to take a share in 
 the action — not, however, as in Euripides, but as in Sophocles." He goes on to 
 speak of Agathon as being the first to use the Chorus "as an interlude." — 
 Poetics, chap, xviii. 
 
I04 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 entirely vanished. That of Latin — if, for the 
 moment, we may confine the term to the literature 
 of the Republic and the first century of the Empire 
 — was limited to a comparatively few authors, and 
 it was approached in a moralising, and therefore 
 entirely unclassical, spirit. When Greek literature 
 was rediscovered, when Latin literature was once 
 more read by its light, it was a new world to 
 which they were given back. The old institutions, 
 the old framework of society, had been swept away. 
 Two rival powers, each of which was entirely alien 
 to the spirit of the ancient world, held the field — 
 the Medieval Church now tottering to its fall^ and 
 the Feudal State which, however little we may like 
 to think it, still held the germ of the Modern State 
 within its womb. Can we wonder that men who 
 watched the dreary struggle between these two 
 powers, who saw the inexpressible barrenness of 
 the literature which languished beneath their 
 shadow — a literature which since the generation 
 of Boccaccio and Chaucer seemed to have fallen 
 under a blight — should have turned with unfeigned 
 and infinite relief to the two great literatures of 
 the ancient world .'' They forgot, if they had ever 
 known, all that Medieval literature had given to 
 Europe. They forgot the primitive poetry, to us 
 so priceless in value, of the Norse, the Old English, 
 the Germans, and the French. They forgot the 
 
V ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 105 
 
 courtly poetry which succeeded it, the brilliant fruit 
 of chivalry and romance. They forgot the great 
 creation of Dante, inspired though it was, in respect 
 of form, by the very models which they worshipped. 
 Nothing found favour in their eyes which did not 
 bear the stamp of the classical form and the classical 
 spirit. And, nurtured as they had been on the 
 formless void of Medieval Latin, on the survivals 
 of a dying civilisation, can we wonder at their 
 enthusiasm ? As they turned to the treasures of 
 the " new learning," might they not naturally say : 
 Here is something utterly different from anything 
 we have seen before ; here is a new fountain of 
 thought and feeling opened for us to draw from ; 
 here is a perfection of imaginative form, such as 
 we had never conceived possible.'' Such was the 
 spell that classical literature cast upon the generation 
 which immediately followed the revival of learning, 
 the spell which held Europe bound for at least a 
 century and a half. 
 
 In no field was the possession more complete and 
 absolute than in the drama. The old Mystery 
 and Miracle Plays were contemptuously thrust aside. 
 The new life that was rising, the keen and vivid 
 passions which were stirring on all hands and seemed 
 to cry out for a dramatist to reproduce them, were 
 as if they had no existence. It was the themes 
 of the ancient world that alone seemed worthy of 
 
io6 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 attention ; the forms of the ancient drama that 
 alone seemed worthy of imitation. In this new-born 
 zeal the men of the new learning were blind to 
 distinctions which to us are as clear as day. 
 Between Latin and Greek, between one ancient 
 dramatist and another, they made no difference. 
 The elder dramatists and Euripides, Euripides and 
 Seneca — all were lumped together as classics, and all 
 were equally surrounded with the classical halo. 
 ^Eschylus and Sophocles, indeed, seem to have been 
 little studied. It was the most questionable of the 
 Greek dramatists, to a much greater degree it was 
 Seneca, who stood for the universal model. It is the 
 figure of Seneca which really dominates the destinies 
 of the new drama. 
 
 First Seneca, after him Euripides — these are the 
 forces which moulded the modern drama. And 
 their influence was hardly less strong upon the 
 romantic than on the classical type. It is with 
 the latter, however, that we are for the moment 
 concerned. In both dramatists, as we have seen, 
 there were romantic elements, elements which were 
 faithfully reproduced by their modern disciples. 
 But in both the classical strain, inherited from the 
 older dramatists, decisively predominated. It pre- 
 dominated also in the general influence which they 
 exercised upon the modern drama. For at least 
 three centuries, the classical type was in the bulk 
 
V ROMAN TRAGEDY : SENECA 107 
 
 of Western Europe received as the only legitimate 
 type of tragic drama. And, to a large extent, it 
 drew the classical subject, the subject taken straight 
 from classical mythology or classical history, in its 
 train. Italy led the way ; France followed in her 
 steps.^ And, being ahead of all other nations in 
 culture, they laid down the law for the rest of 
 Europe. As each of the other nations was brought 
 within the pale of civilisation, it accepted, almost 
 as a matter of course, the " legislation of Parnassus." 
 This was true of Germany, the Norse countries, and 
 Russia. It had bid fair to be true even of England 
 and Spain. The genius of Cervantes, by nature 
 an essentially romantic genius, struggled hard to 
 impose the classical type on the drama of Spain. 
 The talent of Sackville, the critical energies of 
 Sidney, strove to accomplish a like result in the 
 drama of England. In both countries the innate 
 temper of the people, the genius of a handful of 
 great writers, happily proved too strong for the 
 invader. In both he was ultimately defeated with 
 loss. But for a long time the issue hung trembling 
 in the balance. It needed Marlowe and Shakespeare 
 in the one country, it needed Lope de Vega and 
 Calderon in the other, to decide the conflict. Nor 
 can it be said that the critical mind of either 
 
 ' The drama of Italy, however, turned directly to the Greeks ; the French, 
 like the English, mainly approached the classics through the medium of Seneca. 
 
io8 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. v 
 
 country was ever thoroughly convinced. Lope 
 never concealed his contempt, as critic, for the 
 principles which he carried out so brilliantly as 
 dramatist. In our own country it was the same. 
 From Sidney to Jonson, from Jonson to Milton, 
 from Milton to Addison, there was a continuous 
 undercurrent of protest against the new model 
 which we can now see to constitute the chief glory 
 of the literature of England. 
 
 Save in these two countries, the classical ideal 
 swept everything before it. And Voltaire was 
 abundantly justified in saying that the French 
 drama, the classical tragedy of Corneille and Ra©ine, 
 and another whom he did not care actually to 
 name, had made the round of Europe and was at 
 home in every capital, not excepting London ; 
 while, except in their own land, the dramas of Spain 
 and England were absolutely without honour, or 
 rather were utterly unknown. This remained true 
 until the third quarter of the eighteenth century 
 was nearly run out ; till a great revolution came 
 over the literary temper of Western Europe ; till 
 Lessing and Goethe in Germany, and a band of 
 despised rebels in France, found in Shakespeare 
 the highest expression of the imaginative ideal which 
 they themselves were striving to attain. The assault 
 on the classical drama was the key to the triumph of 
 the romantic revolt. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY : RACINE, ALFIERI 
 
 We now turn to consider the modern classical 
 drama, the drama which traces its source to Seneca 
 and Euripides. In this, two figures stand out 
 before all others : they are Racine and Alfieri. 
 In the drama, these are the two typical products 
 of the classical Renaissance. The work of Corneille 
 and Voltaire is doubtless of vast importance. But 
 there are two reasons why, in the limited time at 
 our disposal, it is necessary to pass them over. 
 In the first place, neither of them, purely as 
 dramatist, can, in my opinion, claim to have shown 
 the same genius as the two writers I have mentioned. 
 In the second place — and this is a less disputable 
 position — both of them mingled in their plays so 
 many elements which, at least by courtesy, may be 
 called romantic that the distinctly classical impression 
 is largely done away. 
 
 For the present we confine ourselves to Racine. 
 
 What exactly, we ask, does he stand for? What 
 
 109 
 
no TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 precisely is the ideal by which his dramas are 
 inspired ? First and foremost, I should say, he 
 stands for extreme simplic ity. extrenie^saaceatEa- 
 tioiLjo£-pkjt. By this I do not mean that his plays 
 are devoid of incident, if we may understand the 
 word " incident " in a wide sense ; that they do not 
 abound in striking situations!' On the contrary, 
 there is hardly any dramatist — none, perhaps, except 
 Alfieri— whose tragedies are so closely packed with 
 emotional incidents, whose work is so elaborate a 
 tissue of finely -wrought situations. But each one 
 of those incidents, each one of those situations, is 
 so carefully calculated, every turn of the action or 
 the emotions is so cunningly devised, that it bears 
 immediately and solely upon the main theme ; that 
 it is the main theme — the mental conflicts, the 
 final destiny of the few le ading c haracters — which 
 is kept before us, to the exclusion of all else, from 
 the first scene to the last. There are no episodes, 
 no side-lights. The theme is turned first this way, 
 and then that. The light is thrown first on one 
 face of it, then on another. But it is always the 
 same clear-cut crystal ; the same conflict, the same 
 fundaniental situation, from beginning to end. 
 There is no relief ; none of these scenes which have 
 so much bearing on character but which stand so 
 entirely apart from the main action, the plot, with 
 which we are familiar in the tragedies of Shakespeare. 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY iii 
 
 The tr agic tensi on is maintained at full pitch from 
 the opening to the close. ~ 
 
 This, I think, is the first point in which Racine 
 stands pre-eminent. And it is a crucial point, a 
 point of fundamental difference between the classical 
 and the romantic drama. In this respect he goes 
 back to the best traditions of the Greek drama, 
 to the Hippolytus of Euripides ; still more to such 
 plays as the Tyrannus of Sophocles and the Choephoroe 
 of iEschylus. And the Tyrannus is perhaps the 
 only ancient tragedy which, in this point, can be 
 placed quite on the same level as the masterpieces of 
 Racine. The method is, no doubt, a perilous one. 
 In inferior hands it lends itself to a mechanical 
 manipulation of plot, to a total disregard of all 
 human interest and human passion, which is 
 unutterably wearisome. It does so in the weaker 
 plays of Corneille and Voltaire ; it does so, though 
 to a less degree, in some few of the plays of Alfieri. 
 But, in skilful hands, it secures a unity of effect, 
 it makes a concentrated appeal to the imagination, 
 which the romantic drama, with its more dispersive 
 methods, its slow accumulation of scattered effects — 
 line upon line, sample upon sample, here a little 
 and there a little — is hardly capable of attaining. 
 No doubt this gain goes hand in hand with an 
 inevitable loss. To the richness and fulness of life 
 which marks the romantic drama at its best, to the 
 
112 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lbct. 
 
 revelation of the most secret springs of motive and 
 character which we find in Shakespeare, to the 
 flights of contemplation and lyric rapture which 
 necessarily shake themselves free from the immediate 
 circumstances of the action, which for the moment 
 detach both speaker and audience from the trammels 
 of time and place and fill them with " thoughts 
 that wander through eternity," the scheme of Racine 
 allows no room whatever. The very concentration 
 of method bars out this wider world from the 
 beginning. 
 
 There is a further limitation which is not perhaps 
 inherent in the classical method, but which is no 
 doubt closely connected with it, which from circum- 
 stances has come to be regarded as an integral part of 
 it, and which, in the end, did more than anything else 
 to bring it into discredit. This is the comparative 
 absence of action in the strict sense of the term : 
 that is, of outward incident, of all that appeals 
 directly to the eye and physical senses of the 
 spectator. Ofjjaffiard -actjgn, of emgtienatiftBifient, 
 
 fhery is ahiinrlanf;-p • anri it is Racine's chief title 
 
 to supreme greatness as dramatist. But it is 
 undoubtedly true that outward incident, incident 
 as such, counts for little with him, for little with 
 the classical dramatists as a body. Nearly all the 
 action is transacted behind the scenes ; it is merely 
 reported to those concerned, or to their survivors, 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 113 
 
 by a messenger or some other supernumerary im- 
 ported for the purpose. This was a tradition which 
 had come down from the Greek stage, and it was 
 regarded as more or less closely connected with the 
 absurd doctrine of the unities of time and place. 
 That, however, would not in itself account for the 
 abhorrence of violent action — of death and murders 
 and the like — which undoubtedly prevailed upon 
 the French stage. 'Still less would it account for 
 the same tendency upon the Greek stage, to 
 which — as rules of binding force — the unities 
 were unknown. In each case there was clearly a 
 repugnance to anything in the nature of violent 
 action, as such. It was held to disturb the calm 
 and the dignity which were thought essential to the 
 imaginative effect of the whole. And this feeling v/ 
 existed entirely apart from the laws of the unities, 
 though their adoption, no doubt, tended to reinforce 
 it. In any case, it was the lack of outward and 
 visible action which eventually proved fatal to the 
 pure, model of the drama, as conceived and perfected 
 by Racine. From the time of Voltaire onwards, the 
 protests against it became louder and louder. They 
 begin with the preface to Brutus (1730) ; they take 
 practical shape in La Mart de Cesar (written soon 
 after Brutus, not performed till 1743), and still more 
 in Simiramis (1748). They are finally formulated 
 
 in the curious Essais of Mercier (1773-8), a romantic 
 
 I 
 
114 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 before the time, and in the resounding preface to 
 Cromwell (1827). It was the plea for stirring and 
 vivid action which ultimately struck the classical 
 arama to the ground. And as action came in at 
 pne door, the preposterous unities made their escape 
 through the other. 
 
 The plays of Racine, then, are marked negatively 
 by an absence of oj it ward action , positively by an 
 extreme concentration of plot and passion. Within 
 the bounds of this somewhat limited form, he is 
 a consummate master of tragic drama. He has a 
 profound, if not wide, knowledge of the human 
 heart. He has supreme skill in the choice of theme. 
 In the latter point, indeed, he has few equals and no 
 superior. The theme he loves to take is that which 
 brings a given gro up of charact ers into i nstant;,, ^nd 
 violent collision. And his plot is so constructed 
 that every turn of it shall present those characters 
 in a new light, shall drive them to a fresh resolve, 
 until their doom finally closes round them and they 
 pe dashed in pieces before our eyes. It is as though 
 he had taken them and hemmed them in like wild 
 beasts within the narrow walls of J'atality,^ that 
 fatality which springs from the joint action of 
 their own passions and of circumstance. They 
 beat themselves against the bars of their prison- 
 house in front. They hurl themselves against the 
 wall on this side and on that. But all is to no 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 115 
 
 avail. The barriers rapidly close in upon them, and 
 they are crushed by a relentless doom. 
 
 So again with his portrayal of character. It is 
 doubtless limited, and limited of set purpose, to that 
 which has immediate bearing upon the main action 
 of the piece. But, within these limits, it is sur- 
 prisingly sure and surprisingly complete. In paint- 
 ing the subtle doublings and windings of the will, 
 the fixed resolves and sudden repentances of the 
 heart, he is — given that somewhat narrow ground 
 — almost without a rival. His PhMre, the four 
 principal figures in Andromaque, surely suffice to put 
 this beyond doubt. " Did any one ever approach 
 this man in knowledge of the human heart.? " asked 
 Voltaire in triumph. An Englishman instinctively 
 replies : " Yes, Shakespeare ; and, what is more, 
 surpassed him." That cannot be denied. Of the 
 boundless wealth of Shakespeare's world, of his 
 endless variety, of his penetration into the most 
 secret springs of character and passion, there is 
 no trace in Racine. - There was no room for it 
 within the limits of the type which he deliberately 
 chose. But this must not blind us to the 
 dramatic truth and force of that which he has 
 to oflfer. Nor is it fair to forget that, to him as to 
 the Greeks before him, the Shakespearean drama 
 would probably have seemed to be entirely lack- 
 ing in artistic unity ; to be lacking also in the 
 
ii6 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 calm which is necessary to the highest imaginative 
 effects. 
 
 These, then, are the supreme qualities of Racine : 
 his deep knowledge of human character, so far as it 
 bears directly upon action ; his power of directing 
 the action so as to grip the given characters at close 
 quarters, to wake the energies of their soul to the 
 utmost intensity, to call forth the strongest instincts 
 of their heart. The two plays in which these 
 qualities reveal themselves most clearly are probably 
 Andromaque and Phedre. A slight sketch of each 
 will serve to illustrate the general statements with 
 which we have hitherto been concerned. Let us 
 begin with Andromaque (1667). 
 
 The number of characters in this play is unusually 
 large. There are no less than four whose participa- 
 tion is absolutely indispensable to the action of 
 the whole. That action, however, is cunningly 
 centred round two figures, those of Pyrrhus and 
 Andromaque. In the last resort all hangs upon 
 the will of the latter. And the conditions are 
 such that her will is torn in two. If love for her 
 child prevails, she will give her hand to Pyrrhus 
 and so find protection from her enemies. If fidelity 
 to her slaughtered husband is the stronger, she will 
 reject Pyrrhus, and her child will be given over 
 to certain death. To Pyrrhus she is absolutely 
 indifferent — worse than indifferent, and with reason. 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 117 
 
 It was he who gave all her kinsmen to fire and 
 sword ; it was his father who slew her husband and 
 mangled his lifeless corpse. Pyrrhus, on his side, 
 is bound by every tie of interest and honour, by 
 oaths solemnly given before the eyes of the Greek 
 host, to wed Hermione. But he is madly in love 
 with Andromaque, and at a word from her is ready 
 to sacrifice everything, to defend her and Astyanax 
 against the whole force of the Greeks. Such is the 
 face of things when the drama opens. And the other 
 partners to the action, Hermione and Orestes, are 
 so placed that, by every instinct and every passion, 
 by love, by hatred, by desire of vengeance, they 
 are driven to fan the flames into a fury. Orestes, 
 as the envoy of the Greeks, appears to demand fhe 
 instant surrender of Astyanax. But at the sight of 
 Hermione, his old love for her is awakened, and from 
 that moment he sets himself to play on her frantic 
 jealousy of Andromaque. The three others are 
 tossed to and fro between conflicting impulses. His 
 will alone is undivided, and his will inevitably pre- 
 vails. Andromaque, cut ofi^ from all other hope, 
 at length yields to the prayers of Pyrrhus, resolved 
 to slay herself the moment her son's safety is 
 assured. Hermione, maddened by mortification 
 and jealousy, pledges Orestes to the murder of 
 Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus, as he stands before the marriage- 
 altar, is treacherously cut down, and Orestes returns 
 
ii8 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 to find himself repudiated by a woman who had never 
 loved him and now flies with loathing from his 
 presence to slay herself over the body of his hated 
 rival. The drama closes with a vision of the Furies, 
 once more gathering round him to exact the reckon- 
 ing for blood. Of the four who sustain the action 
 of the piece, one only has nothing wherewith to 
 reproach herself. And she has seen the hero, who 
 staked all to save her, treacherously slaughtered at 
 her side. 
 
 If any fault is to be found with this impetuous 
 tragedy, it is that the plot is too elaborate and 
 symmetrical ; that it presents us with something 
 too much in the nature of a pariie carrh, a fatal 
 game of whist. That, no doubt, is the danger 
 attendant on the distinctive methods of French 
 tragedy ; it might even be said, of classical 
 tragedy in general. And the same criticism, 
 with others far more damaging, might be passed 
 on Iphiginie. But there is at least one of Racine's 
 dramas which escapes altogether from this charge, 
 the last of his distinctively classical tragedies, 
 Phedre (1677). 
 
 !• Here we have substantially the same story as in 
 ithe Hippolytus of Euripides and of Seneca. All that 
 is necessary, therefore, is to record the points in 
 which Racine has departed from his predecessors, 
 and to ask ourselves what is the bearing of these 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 119 
 
 variations upon the general character of the whole. 
 In the first place, then, t he supernatural p ]?,n\r"^T 
 which plays so large a part in the drama of 
 Euripides, is struck out by both the later 
 dramatists, by the Roman no less than by the 
 French. So far as Aphrodite is concerned, this is 
 a clear gain. Her intervention is a disturbing 
 element in the Greek play : disturbing because it 
 
 her into a to ol. What Euripides gained by this was 
 to soften the horror of her subsequent action. But 
 the price he paid was heavy, and it remains a ques- 
 tion whether he might not have attained his end 
 by other and more dramatic means. The excision 
 of Artemis is a more doubtful matter. The 
 dramatic force, as well as the poetry, of the 
 opening prayer of Hippolytus is incomparably 
 great. So is the pathos of the farewell between 
 him and the goddess at the close. Still, in a 
 drama which aimed at being a living thing to the 
 men of his generation, it was obviously impossible 
 for Racine to introduce a personage of pagan 
 mythology ; and the same thing probably applies 
 to Seneca. 
 
 The disappearance of Artemis almost inevita bly 
 transfers the character of Hippalytus-to-a-different 
 plane. Seneca, indeed, strives to maintain the stern 
 temperance, the noble savagery, of the hero by 
 
I20 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 touches interwoven with the dramatic texture of 
 the piece. But he only succeeds in making him 
 a declamatory pedant. It may be doubted, how- 
 ever, if Racine does not do still worse by presenting 
 this virgin soul, the chosen friend of the virgin 
 goddess, as fluttered by a respectful and timid love 
 for an insipid damsel, specially created for the 
 purpose and armed with the inevitable confidante. 
 And this is by far the weakest spot in the play. 
 It is in his handling of PhMre that he rises to his 
 full strength. Here he drops all that is revolting 
 in both his predecessors ; he adopts all that is best 
 in each ; and trusting to the intuitions of his own 
 genius, creates a character inexpressibly moving and 
 inexpressibly tragic. In the opening scenes, by a 
 perfectly just instinct, he follows in the steps of 
 the Greek. Phedrejike the Phaedra of Eu ripides, 
 is-bowed. down with ^am&.-aL, her own passion. It 
 is against her will, it is half without her knowledge, 
 that her secret is dragged from her by the officious 
 cudoskjL- gf the nurs e. From that point onwards, 
 again I think by a just instinct, he takes his rough 
 draft from Seneca. The avowal- tO ' Hippoly te is 
 made not by t he n urs e, but b.y :„-ElisdE£ herself. 
 This is undeniably more vivid. And — given the 
 agonies, the hesitation, and the shame, with which 
 t is made by the heroine of Racine, though not of 
 Jeneca — it is also more dramatic, more true to 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 121 
 
 nature, and richer in illumination of character. 
 The scene is manifestly crucial, and throughout it 
 is managed with incomparably greater delicacy, as 
 well as with far greater dramatic power, by Racine 
 than by Seneca. This will be admitted by all with 
 reference to PhMre. But it is no less true of 
 Hippolyte. In Seneca, beside himself with horror, 
 he seizes the unhappy woman by the hair and draws 
 his sword against her, only throwing it aside when 
 she implores him to plunge it in her breast ; ne 
 quid exores, because the smallest compliance with her 
 will is an abomination to him. Tn 'Rarine^ it is 
 Phedre herself who, appalled at her own confess ion, 
 demands the sword at his hand^ and^ having received 
 it, at once flies_from his presence, xesolved on instant 
 death. So again with the subsequent incidents. In 
 Seneca, the nurse at the first moment conceives the 
 infamous project of jiaiKknjlgJHiiJPQl^s, and, after 
 cunningly paving the way with Theseus, leaves to 
 
 Phsedra the task of carrying i t to execution. In 
 
 Racine, the slander is an afterthoug ht, begotten of 
 sudden panic at the unexpected return of Theseus. 
 Phedre, surprised into compliance, greets her husband 
 with a few ambiguous, but none the less criminal, 
 words. She then hurries into the palace, overcome 
 with a double shame, and leaves to_^none^ the 
 odious work of poisoning his mind against his 
 guiltless son. Then, with hardly a moment's pause, 
 
122 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 comes the , inevitable revulsion. She implores 
 Theseus to revoke his curse upon Hippolyte. 
 She is on the brink of accusing herself to save 
 him. But, from her husband's reply, she learns 
 for the first time of the love between Hippolyte 
 and Aricie, and the words of truth are frozen on 
 her lips. Left alone, she once more comes to her 
 true self. In black despair at her own baseness, 
 she covers CEnone with imprecations, and departs to 
 end her life by poison. No more is seen of her 
 until, with the hand of death upon her, she appears 
 to declare the truth over the dead body of her step- 
 son, and to fall in the last agony at her husband's 
 feet. Compare all this with the closing scenes of the 
 Latin play, and it will at once be evident that, in 
 accepting the rough draft of Seneca, Racine has 
 penetrated far more deeply into the windings and 
 sudden revulsions of the human heart ; that he is 
 at once more dramatic and more truly tragic than 
 his model. A comparison with the masterpiece of 
 Euripides is here impossible. {But, though the 
 strictly dramatic power of Euripides, his insight 
 into motive and passion, is probably less, yet in the 
 grief of Artemis and in the atonement between 
 Theseus and his deeply injured son, there is a tragic 
 pathos — " after the storm a calm " — which nothing 
 can surpass. \ 
 
 It will be seen that of the over-elaboration of 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 123 
 
 plot and outward circumstance, which may perhaps 
 be charged upon Andromaquey there is nothing in 
 Phedre. The same may be said of the intermediate 
 drama, Britannicus (1669), the third of the great 
 masterpieces of Racine. Here, however, as indeed 
 in Phedre, there are other qualities which it would 
 be unjust to pass by in silence. The character of 
 Nero could only have come from the hand of a 
 master. It is not only that the first dawn of a 
 cruelty, which has since passed into a byword, is 
 here painted with marvellous insight and subtlety. 
 That is the part of his task which Racine seems to 
 have laboured the most diligently, and on which he 
 dwells with the greatest pride. But there is one 
 scene which displays yet rarer powers : that in which 
 Nero, himself unseen, still dominates every word 
 and every gesture which passes between the hapless 
 lovers. The mad jealousy, the brutal hatred of the 
 tyrant make themselves felt in every syllable, in 
 every pause of the dialogue, like some hideous 
 spectre whose presence weighs heavy upon the soul, 
 though the eye is powerless to discern it. In the 
 power of striking horror to the heart there is no 
 other scene like this in Racine. There are not 
 many in other dramatists ; none perhaps where the 
 effect is wrought by means so subtle, yet so natural. 
 Here, if anywhere, we have the unmistakable stamp 
 of a great imagination. Something of the same 
 
124 TYPES^OF TRAGIC^ DRAMA „„lsct^ 
 
 imaginative genius, though in a very different kind, 
 may be seen in the horror which sweeps over Phedre 
 i^hen she is driven to realise the full baseness of her 
 leeds.** — " Where," she cries in her anguish, " shall 
 fz place be found for me ? The earth is weary of 
 me ; the heavens will have none of me ; if I go 
 down to hell, the very spirits of the accursed will 
 fly before me ; and there, at the judgment- seat, I 
 shall stand before my father, Minos, and he will 
 shudder at the sight of his own daughter, whom 
 he is doomed to visit with unheard-of penalties for 
 unheard-of crimes." The whole passage is in the 
 truest vein of poetry. It springs naturally from the 
 despair of the speaker ; and yet it lifts us into a 
 higher region, one less trammelled and bound by the 
 immediate action of the piece, than is common in 
 the classical drama. 
 
 Such, then, are the most obvious characteristics of 
 French classical tragedy, as conceived and practised 
 by its most accomplished master. An extreme, 
 occasionally an undue, elaboration of plot ; but an 
 elaboration in which it is never forgotten that the 
 plot is after all but a means to an end, and that 
 this end is to exhibit, so far as action can exhibit, 
 certain typical characters, certain typical passions, 
 working themselves out to their inevitable doom. 
 All that does not directly and manifestly serve this 
 purpose is rigidly excluded. It is right to observe, 
 
* 
 
 VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 125 
 
 however, that after Andromaque the extreme tension 
 of the plot is in some measure relaxed, the structure 
 of the drama somewhat loosened, and on the whole 
 a freer scope allowed for the portrayal of character. 
 This is perhaps true of Britannicus ; it is certainly 
 so of Phedre. And if we except Athalie, which is 
 manifestly a type by itself, it is by these three dramas 
 that Racine must be judged. 
 
 It remains to consider briefly the style in which 
 these plays are written. And here again we are 
 brought very close to the heart of the classical ideal. 
 Of the vividness and fire of Shakespeare's style, of 
 the variety which ranges at will through the whole 
 scale of human character and utterance, there is no 
 spark in Racine. He would have rejected them, 
 even if they had lain within his grasp. His is 
 a carefully sifted, a deliberately heightened, style. 
 And it has, naturally, the defects of its qualities. 
 There is little, indeed, of that pinchbeck diction, 
 that elaborate avoidance of the mot propre, which -^ 
 became so absurd in the decay of the classical drama ; 
 though an enemy might object that this is partly 
 because the things for which the proper word stands 
 are also rigorously banished. But to those who 
 have been trained on the bracing boldness of the 
 Elizabethans, such a style, one so watchfully adorned 
 and weeded, is, no doubt, apt to seem monotonous. 
 And in the monotony, we are liable to overlook the 
 
126 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 extraordinary unity, grace, and harmony which 
 undoubtedly belong to it. "Racine has perfect 
 grace," said Joubert, "but he has not the supreme 
 grace of Virgil." That is as near the truth as it is 
 given to man to come. And it is, as it was meant 
 to be, uncommonly high praise. Nor must it be 
 forgotten that, to the tense and heightened passions 
 of Racine, as to the tense and heightened scenes of 
 Shakespeare, none but a heightened style would be 
 appropriate. And if he lacks, as he does lack, 
 the supreme touches of such Shakespearean scenes, 
 that is not because he had a difFerent ideal of the 
 drama, but because he was the lesser poet. What 
 distinguishes his general scheme from that of 
 Shakespeare is that, with him, the whole drama is 
 pitched in this exalted key. And that, no doubt, 
 depends upon a difference of ideal. Here, as in all 
 worthy art, form and matter are inseparable. 
 
 The unpardonable sin of Racine, in point of style, 
 — and this has nothing to do with that which is vital 
 or essential — is that he sinks sometimes into the 
 jargon of the drawing-room. That the personages of 
 a tragedy should bow and scrape to each other with 
 My lord and My lady, that their " eyes should do 
 famous execution " on their lovers, would in any 
 case be bad enough.^ But, when these personages 
 
 ' e.g. Me cherchiez-vous, Madame ? 
 
 Un espoir si charmant me aeroit-il permis ? — And. I. iv. — 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 127 
 
 are the titanic figures of Greek heroic legend, it 
 is ten times worse. What have Pyrrhus and 
 Andromache, what have Clytemnestra and Achilles, 
 to do with the mincing minauderies of Versailles? 
 Still, it is highly unjust to lay much stress on this. 
 When all is told, it counts for extremely little in the 
 general effect. And on the whole it remains true 
 that, within the limits imposed by the classical ideal 
 and the classical matter, the style of Racine is 
 singularly noble ; that it has a harmony and a unity 
 which have seldom been surpassed. Above all, it is a 
 style in complete accord with the matter it sets forth. 
 
 Alfieri (i 749-1 803), like Racine, adopts the 
 classical mould. But there the resemblance between 
 them may be said to cease. In matter, still more in 
 style and treatment, the Italian presents a marked 
 contrast to the Frenchman. Love plays a far less 
 prominent part in his tragedies. The courtly atmo- 
 sphere is swept away. The passion is yet fiercer and 
 more tense. The language, so far from being smooth, 
 errs, if anything, on the side of abruptness ; of what 
 Alfieri himself would have called "ferocity." 
 
 No doubt, in his plays, as in those of Racine, the 
 presence of certain romantic elements must at once 
 
 — Mais que vos yeux sur moi se sont bien exerc6s ! 
 
 Qu'ils m'ont vendu bien cher les pleurs qu'ils ont versus ! — Ibid, 
 
 It is only fair to say that it would be difficult to parallel these inanities from 
 either Britannims or Phidre, 
 
128 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 be admitted. In one at least of them, Maria 
 Stuarda, there are passages instinct with a lyrical 
 genius, which stands out in sharp contrast with the 
 abrupt severity of the tragic passion which dominates 
 the rest. They are the passages in which John 
 Knox, under the alias of Lamorre, reveals to the 
 outraged queen the miseries which her violence is 
 destined to bring upon the land. , Such passages are, 
 however, exceedingly rare ; I doubt whether any 
 other instance could be brought. In some of his 
 plays, again, we may notice a tendency to avoid all 
 action, and to centre the whole interest round the 
 bare situation, which remains unchanged from 
 beginning to end. And this, by something of a 
 stretch, may perhaps fairly be reckoned as a 
 characteristic of romance. Certainly, we shall meet 
 it again in the romantic tragedies of the following 
 century, notably in those of Browning and 
 Maeterlinck. The two plays in which this tendency 
 is most marked — and they present a glaring contrast 
 to the rest — are Saul and Mirra. By some judges 
 these two plays are reckoned the finest creations 
 of Alfieri. For myself, I cannot but think that he 
 is more at home when he adopts, as he does far 
 more often, the purely classical type. 
 
 For, when all abatements have been made, his 
 genius is essentially classical. It is as the last great 
 representative of classical tragedy that he stands out. 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 129 
 
 And his supreme greatness lies in this : that, 
 retaining the classical model in its most severe form, 
 he gave to it an intensity of action and of passion, 
 he breathed into his characters a fire and fury, he 
 informed the whole with a dramatic subtlety and 
 vividness, which were hardly to be supposed possible 
 within those narrow limits. It is this which makes 
 him so significant a figure in the history of the 
 drama. Compressing his matter within an almost 
 incredibly narrow space, and rigorously smiting off 
 ah that is not at the white heat of passion, he gives 
 to the classical mould the utmost pitch of dramatic • 
 intensity which it is capable of receiving. The 
 result is that, in his greatest plays, the characters are 
 painted with such fullness and richness of colour, 
 such subtle mastery of light and shade, as is elsewhere 
 to be found only in the looser structure of the 
 romantic drama ; we might almost say, only in the 
 tragedies of Shakespeare. 
 
 What is the secret of this unique eiFect ? It may 
 be found, I think, in three instincts, all of which are 
 possessed by Alfieri in the highest degree, while each 
 stands in the closest connection with the others. In 
 the first place, his characters are of a passionate 
 intensity which, in the classical drama at any rate, has 
 never been approached. Secondly, he never rests 
 until he has cast these characters into a train of 
 action so framed as to ^bring them into instant and 
 
 K 
 
I30 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 vehement conflict. Lastly, he has an unerring eye 
 for realising the capabilities of such a situation down 
 to the minutest detail ; so that each turn of the 
 incidents, each fluctuation of the emotions, presents 
 the situation in a fresh aspect ; the characters, by 
 whose conflict it is created, in an entirely new light. 
 Something of this power we have already observed 
 in Racine, and it is the surest source of his greatness. 
 But few, I think, will deny that it was possessed by 
 Alfieri in a yet greater degree, with an intensity still 
 more fiery. This is true, above all, of the passionate 
 vehemence of his characters. And, with him, the 
 initial choice of characters is the determining factor 
 in the ultimate result. With Racine, on the contrary, 
 the situation is perhaps the first thing ; and the 
 characters are largely determined by the force of the 
 circumstances that hem them in. 
 
 Thus with Alfieri everything depends upon the 
 vehemence of the characters, on the volcanic force 
 which keeps them in eruption from the first moment 
 to the last. And when we consider the character of 
 the dramatist himself, we shall cease to be surprised. 
 In his Autobiography we have an unique record of a 
 nature which hurled itself like a hurricane upon life, 
 upon each object in turn that it marked out for its 
 own. A breakneck rider, a reckless duellist in his 
 youth, he threw the same ardour into the love and 
 poetry, into the study and reflection, into the " fierce 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 131 
 
 and furious hatred of tyranny," whether kingly or 
 popular, which fired his manhood. His personages 
 are the faithful echo of the stormy resolves, the 
 headstrong vehemence, which swayed his own heart. 
 They are embodied wills, incarnate passions, which 
 cleave their way through every obstacle, until they 
 dash themselves in pieces against each other. And 
 this is as true of the nobler, as of the baser, natures 
 which work out their destiny upon his stage ; as true 
 of Polinice or Antigone as it is of Creonte ; as true of 
 Clitennestra or Oreste as of Egisto ; as true of 
 Carlos or Garzia as of Piero or Filippo. In good 
 and bad alike, we have a nature charged to the 
 muzzle with will and passion, and discharging itself 
 flash upon flash against all who venture to cross the 
 path of its ambitions or resolves. 
 
 Characters so strongly marked tend naturally, and 
 in no invidious sense, to fall into certain groups or 
 types. On the one hand we have the jealous tyrant, 
 incapable of love, trampling on all opposition, 
 ruthlessly crushing all who dare to thwart his designs 
 or lift a finger against his arbitrary fiat. We have 
 Creonte defying the laws of God and man that he 
 may draw Antigone within his toils ; we have 
 Filippo hunting Carlos to his doom.^ In each case 
 tyranny, the lust of arbitrary power, is the ground- 
 
 1 In Antigone and Filiffm respectively. The first instalment of Alfieri's 
 tragedies was published in 1783, the second in 1789. 
 
132 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 work of the character. But in each case the original 
 strain is crossed and deepened by one yet more 
 degraded ; by cowardice or festering hatred or 
 insensate jealousy. In other plays we have the same 
 i type of character in the making ; not yet in possession 
 i of supreme power, but plotting to attain it ; securing 
 its ends not by open violence but by a still more 
 hateful subtlety and deceit. Such are Creonte in 
 the earlier play where he appears, and Piero, and, 
 above all, Egisto.^ The last is a masterpiece of 
 dramatic portraiture. The cunning with which, 
 without seeming to stir a finger, he leads Clltennestra 
 step by step to the murder of her husband is nothing 
 short of diabolical. Had Alfieri created no other 
 character, this alone would secure him a place among 
 great dramatists. 
 
 On the other hand we have a group of characters 
 essentially noble in nature, but maddened by passion 
 and hurried by passion to their ruin. Such is Garzia ; 
 such are Oreste and Polinice; such, in a supreme 
 degree, is Clltennestra.^ In botn plays where she 
 appears she is painted with consummate vividness and 
 insight. In the earlier play, the conflict between 
 duty and lawless love, between jealousy and a 
 lingering respect, between thirst for vengeance and 
 the stings of conscience ; in the later play, the 
 
 ^ In Polinice and Don Garzia and Agamennone respectively. 
 
 ^ The last in Agamennone and Oreste ; the others in the plays which bear their 
 
MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 133 
 
 ceaseless struggle between affection and contempt for 
 the wretched man whose heart is now laid bare before 
 her, between love to her paramour and devotion 
 to her son — seldom has any dramatist given so subtle 
 a portraiture as this. Or again, we have a character 
 of pure nobility, who defies all earthly power in 
 defence of truth and justice, whose courage nothing 
 can shake, who stands firm as a rock against all the 
 tortures that hatred or jealousy can devise. There is 
 perhaps only one character of this cast in the plays of 
 Alfieri ; and we should hardly wish for more. But 
 the Antigone of Alfieri is not unworthy to take 
 place beside the Antigone of Sophocles. 
 
 But, if subtlety cannot be denied to Alfieri, it is 
 subtlety within clearly defined limits. And no one 
 will credit him with such complexity as we find, for 
 instance, in Hamlet. That, even if it had lain 
 within his power, would have carried him altogether 
 beyond the bounds of the classical drama. And his 
 play of passion, surprising as it is within his appointed 
 limits, cannot compete for a moment with that which 
 genius can draw from the wider range and looser 
 structure of romantic tragedy. The comparative 
 simplicity of Alfieri's method can perhaps best be 
 seen when we turn from his Filippo to the companion 
 play, written some ten years later by Schiller. 
 Nothing could show more plainly the essential differ- 
 ence between the classical and the romantic type of 
 
134 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 tragedy. The Philip of Schiller is a strangely subtle 
 creation. Tyranny and jealousy are, no doubt, at 
 the root of it. But they do not exclude a certain 
 honesty of purpose, a fitful openness to new 
 impressions, a capacity for sudden self-questionings, 
 for sharp returns upon his most deeply cherished 
 policies and convictions. Hence the frenzied struggle 
 with vile suspicions, which almost reconciles us to 
 what is odious in his nature. Hence his submission, 
 if it be but a momentary submission, to the masterful 
 enthusiasm of Posa. All this may be, and is, 
 entirely unhistorical. But that is not the point. 
 The question is whether such a character is humanly 
 possible, whether it is dramatically convincing, 
 whether it finds a fitting place in the general economy 
 of the tragedy, or no. And on all these questions 
 the answer, I believe, is wholly favourable to 
 Schiller.. Of an utterly diflferent cast is the Filippo 
 of Alfieri. Of the complications imagined by 
 Schiller he has no hint. He is the tyrannical ruler, 
 the jealous husband and father, and he is nothing 
 else. Indeed, odious as these features are in them- 
 selves, Alfieri has spared no pains to make them 
 more odious yet. Filippo h^s not only the ruthless 
 fury of tyranny and jealousy ; he has also their 
 treacherous cunning and their profound dissimulation. 
 Such a character might but too easily have sunk into 
 a mere monster, a theatrical puppet without vitality. 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 135 
 
 and without any claim upon our interest or con- 
 viction. But, harshly as the lines are drawn, the 
 portrait is yet, I think, intensely real. And the 
 tyrant is surrounded with such an atmosphere of 
 terror that, even when absent, his figure still seems 
 to dominate the stage ; his will to lurk in every word 
 and every action of his victims. We have here 
 something of the same genius that we have already 
 noticed in the Britannicus of Racine. Now to an 
 effect of this particular kind it is clear that a simple 
 presentment of character is indispensable. It was so 
 with the Clytemnestra of iEschylus ; it was so with 
 the Nero of Racine ; it is so once more with Alfieri's 
 Filippo. And that a like effect could be brought 
 about by the more elaborate methods of romantic 
 drama is almost inconceivable. 
 
 Yet within the limits which he had marked out 
 for himself — limits which are indeed of the essence 
 of classical tragedy — the methods of Alfieri are, as I 
 have said, by no means incompatible with subtlety of 
 portraiture. On the contrary, that subtlety is often 
 surprisingly great. This cannot surely be denied of 
 Clitennestra and Egisto, nor of Eteocle and Polinice, 
 nor of Creonte as he is painted in Antigone. 
 
 As we saw, however, it is not only in the choice 
 and conception of his characters that Alfieri excels. 
 He is great also in his moulding of the situation, in 
 his marshalling of the circumstances which reveal 
 
136 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 them and call them out. In no dramatist is the 
 action so closely serried. In none is the situation so 
 clearly and minutely thought out. In none does it 
 press the characters at such close quarters, or cut 
 more deeply into the quick of their energies and 
 passions. The best examples of this are probably 
 Polinice and Oreste. The storm that tears the breast 
 of the two brothers, so like yet so different, in the 
 one, the conflict which rends the soul of Clitennestra 
 in the other, are painted with such a mastery of 
 detail, such command of light and shade, of the 
 shifting emotions which each turn and counter-turn 
 of the circumstances must excite, as have seldom been 
 equalled in the whole history of the drama. Such 
 scenes — and they are prolonged almost through the 
 whole length of the tragedy — are the ripest fruit of 
 his genius. And with the compactness of plot, the 
 close structure, which marks the classical type of 
 tragedy, they combine something of the fullness 
 and complexity of motive which is characteristic of 
 romance. 
 
 It remains only to say a word as to the sources 
 from which he habitually drew his subjects, and as 
 to the relation between his matter and his style. As 
 to the first point, the two fields in which he. is most 
 at home are the heroic legends of Greece, and, in a 
 less degree, the stormy history of the courts of Italy 
 and Spain. Two of his best tragedies, Don Garzia 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 137 
 
 and Filippo, are drawn from the latter. The rest, 
 almost without exception, from the former. No 
 other field could have offered so free a scope for 
 his genius, for no other is so rich in those violent 
 passions to which he naturally turned. At the same 
 time, he displays the utmost freedom in his handling 
 of such stories. He moulds his material imperiously 
 to his own purposes. In so doing, he followed in 
 the steps of the Greek tragedians themselves ; it may 
 even be said that he bettered their instruction. The 
 clearest example of this is to be found once more in his 
 handling of Clytemnestra, whose character, motives, 
 and fate all present a startling departure from any- 
 thing to be found in the Greek tragedians ; nor is 
 there more than a hint of it in Seneca. In Agamen- 
 none she is entirely under the spell of a mad passion 
 for Egisto, who, apparently without one spark of 
 love for her, cunningly eggs her on to the murder 
 of her husband ; and, that once accomplished, at 
 once lays plots, but in vain, for the destruction of 
 her children. In Oreste, the eyes of the unhappy 
 woman have long been opened to the baseness of 
 her accomplice. But neither baseness nor outrages 
 are of any avail against her infatuation. She is torn 
 asunder between that infatuation and remorse for the 
 murder of her husband — between her passion for 
 Egisto and her love for the son whose one purpose 
 is to slay him. And in the end, by a tragic irony. 
 
138 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 she is herself slain by Oreste as she vainly strives to 
 save the wretched coward for whom she has sacrificed 
 both honour and conscience. Oreste, blinded by 
 fury, is utterly unconscious that he has shed his 
 mother's blood. When consciousness returns, he is 
 beside himself with despair. Among many departures 
 from all forms of the original tradition, the last is 
 
 "' perhaps the most startling. And it is manifestly 
 dictated by the sense that, if the story was to be a 
 living thing to the modern imagination, not a mere 
 antiquarian revival, such a change was a necessity. 
 And the same, though in a less degree, is probably 
 true of the other alterations. Certainly the general 
 effect of them all is to bring both characters and 
 incidents more or less into accord with the moral 
 sense of the present. Can it seriously be doubted 
 that the dramatist was justified ? 
 
 Severity, as we have seen, is the general charac- 
 teristic of these tragedies — severity of conception 
 
 J and severity of execution. It is no less the charac- 
 teristic of their style. Few styles are so concise, so 
 serried as Alfieri's ; few are so bare of adornment. 
 It would be hard to find a single simile in his 
 tragedies. Even metaphors, vivid when they occur, 
 are comparatively scarce. Such a thing as " ampli- 
 fication " is almost unknown. Each thought is 
 compressed into the narrowest compass ; each follows 
 a natural turn of the passion or emotion ; each 
 
VI MODERN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY 139 
 
 succeeds the other with the rapidity of lightning. 
 Sometimes, it must be admitted that this is carried 
 to affectation. One of the acts oi Antigone opens with 
 the following duel between the heroine and Creonte : 
 "Thy choice ? "—"'Tis made."— " Hsmon ? "— 
 "No, death." — "'Tis thine" ;^ five speeches in the 
 course of a single line ; a " staircase," as Hazlitt 
 sarcastically describes a similar, but not equal, ex- 
 travagance in Ford. But such aberrations are rare. 
 And on the whole it will probably be admitted that 
 the style of Alfieri is both singularly striking in itself 
 and singularly in harmony with the matter and spirit 
 which it embodies. When we consider the enormous 
 difficulties with which he had to contend, when we 
 remember that the very language in which he wrote 
 had to be learnt in the first instance as a foreign 
 language, it is difficult to set bounds to our admira- 
 tion. His very sententiousness is, more often than 
 not, in the service of his dramatic genius. " Lord 
 of the world, what yet doth fail thee ? — Peace." ^ — 
 where shall we find a more dramatic opening to a 
 tragedy than this .'' 
 
 Here we must take leave of the last great classical 
 dramatist ; the last, it may well be, who is ever likely 
 
 ^ Scegliesti? 
 
 Ho scelto. 
 
 Emone ? 
 
 Morte. 
 
 L'avrai. — Antigone, act iv. 
 2 Signor del mondo, che ti manca? — Pace. — Ottavia, act i. 
 
HO TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. vi 
 
 to appear. If any criticism is to be made upon his 
 dramas, it is that they are too dramatic ; that they 
 are more closely packed with matter than their 
 narrow limits will well bear ; that they lay too 
 great a burden upon the genius of the actor and the 
 capacities of the spectator. Where, one is tempted 
 to ask, is the spectator who could stand the strain of 
 passions so violent, let loose to buffet each other 
 from the first scene to the last .'' Where is the 
 actor whose" genius could rise to demands so intense 
 and long sustained } But this, if it be a fault, is at 
 least a fault on the right side ; if an error, at least 
 a noble one. For it springs from the determinatijjn 
 of the dramatist to sacrifice everything to what, after 
 all, is the noblest end the dramatist can seek ; the 
 portrayal of character in all its windings ; the pre- 
 sentment of passion in all its intensity ; if we may 
 use a word which Alfieri himself uses in a like 
 connection, in all its " ferocity." 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 ROMANTIC TRAGEDY : SHAKESPEARE 
 
 We pass now from the classical to the romantic 
 drama ; from one great type of tragedy to its 
 opposite. It is true that classical tragedy had 
 undergone many modifications since it left the 
 hands of ^schylus and Sophocles. It is true that 
 many of what may fairly be called romantic elements 
 had been introduced by Euripides and Seneca ; that 
 they hold their own, to some degree, even in so 
 convinced a classicist as Racine. It is true, on the 
 other side, that the influence of Seneca was a great, 
 perhaps the dominant, influence upon the romantic 
 predecessors of Shakespeare, and indeed upon Shake- 
 speare himself, no less than on their classical rivals. 
 But, for all that, it cannot be denied that the difi^er- 
 ence between the romantic and the classical type 
 proclaims itself at the first glance ; and that in no 
 two writers is that contrast more strongly marked 
 
 than it is between Racine and Shakespeare. 
 
 141 
 
142 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 T^j:ontrast_ appears, first and foremost, in_the 
 amount of action, of outward incident, a dmit ted by 
 thg ^bne d ramatist and the other. Racine, as we have 
 seen, is to the last degree sparing in this matter. 
 Everything in the shape of violent action is jealously 
 excluded. As Hugo complained, it is only the 
 " elbows of action " that appear upon his stage ; 
 the hand that strikes the blow, the heart that bleeds 
 from it, are laboriously hidden. And when the 
 romantic revolt at last began, the first cry was 
 invariably for more, and more vivid, action. On 
 this point, though in practice he lacked the courage 
 of his convictions, Voltaire was hardly less emphatic 
 than Hugo himself. How different is the stage of 
 the Elizabethans ! Erom the first scene to the last 
 it is alive with action. Nothing"" is left to relationT" 
 Everything is presented to the eye. And in spite of 
 obvious abuses, this was a healthy instinct. The eye 
 will not be satisfied with hearing. It demands, and 
 rightly demands, to see as well. Aristotle had felt 
 this from the beginning ; and few passages of the 
 Poetics are more striking, few bear stronger witness 
 to his sagacity and detachment, than those in which 
 he asserts the claims of the spe ctacular element in 
 tragedy. Even Horace, though his authority did 
 more perhaps than any thing else to sanction the 
 banishment of action, had fitful glimmerings of the 
 truth : — 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 143 
 
 Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures 
 Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus. 
 
 Yet, in spite of these protests from within the camp, 
 the classical tyranny maintained itself unbroken. 
 And it was only the reckless unconventionality of the 
 Elizabethans and the Spaniards which had the power 
 to overthrow it. It may be readily admitted that 
 the revolt was not seldom carried to excess. In 
 some of the Elizabethans, both early and late, the 
 action is too much akin to melodrama. In Dryden 
 — and there are many earlier instances too — it is apt 
 to degenerate into sound and fury, into mere empty 
 bustle and noise. Even in Shakespeare, it has a 
 habit of defeating its own ends ; of bringing upon 
 the stage things which, with the appliances of the 
 stage, can only look farcical and absurd ; battles, for 
 instance, where the armies of two great kingdoms, 
 as Addison said, are represented by " a pair of 
 scene-shifters and a couple of candle-snufFers." Such 
 scenes, however, occur mainly in the Histories, which 
 are necessarily of looser build, and must obviously 
 be judged by their own laws. 
 
 Apart from these, there is a class of incident 
 which is freely admitted to the Shakespearean stage, 
 but which to Racine would have seemed an abomina- 
 tion. These are the murders and sudden deaths 
 which, at the close of Hamlet and other tragedies, 
 leave the stage fairly choked with corpses. " Look 
 
144 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 on the tragic loading of this bed," says Lodovico at 
 the end of Othello. And the same words, with slight 
 variations, would apply to almost any other of the great 
 tragedies. Here an English taste will find nothing 
 to complain of, though a Frenchman would be apt 
 to feel very differently. On the whole, it would 
 seem that the gain of admitting such action far 
 outweighs all possible drawbacks. For not only is 
 it natural that such deeds should take place on the 
 scene, and in the heat, of the passions which provoke 
 them ; but, as Horace himself saw, they make a far 
 deeper impression on the imagination when presented 
 to the eye than when merely reported to the. ear. 
 And, after all, they, are just the deeds which, in the 
 outward sense at any rate, constitute the tragedy. 
 Moreover, the devices on which the classical drama- 
 tists are driven in their efiForts to sweep them into 
 the side-scenes are uncommonly clumsy ; and the 
 Messenger's speech, with its arrest of action and 
 its inevitable tendency to rhetorical description, is 
 one of the least tolerable things in the classical 
 drama, ancient as well as modern. In the main, 
 then, we may say that Shakespeare is abundantly 
 justified in his prodigality of action. Certainly, he 
 is not less, but more scrupulous on the point than 
 many of his fellow Elizabethans. A glance at the 
 Spanish Tragedy and the Jew of Malta, or, to take 
 later instances, at the Duchess of Malfi, and one at 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 145 
 
 least of the great tragedies of Ford, will suffice to 
 put this beyond doubt. There is, however, one 
 incident in Shakespeare which most readers will 
 surrender without a pang. This is the tearing out 
 of Gloucester's eyes in Lear. The mere physical 
 repulsion, the sickening horror, of such a sight is 
 enough to condemn it. But when all allowance has 
 been made for such excesses, it surely remains true 
 that the demure inaction of the classical drama is 
 well replaced by the fire and vividness of the 
 Elizabethan and the Spanish. 
 
 We pass now to a matter where the contrast 
 between, the classical and the romantic drama is still 
 more significant, and its consequences still more 
 deep-reaching. No one who compares a tragedy of 
 Racine with one of Shakespeare's — Othello is, perhaps, 
 a partial exception — can fail tojiQtice_that~tlie_latter, 
 is far looser in its general structure than the former. 
 And this is as true — it is, in fact, still more true — of 
 the Elizabethans in general. But, for convenience' 
 sake, the following remarks will be mainly confined 
 to Shakespeare. With him the drama is no longer 
 limited to the main action, the single situation. Its 
 scope is far wider ; the range it includes far richer 
 and more varied. There may be a secondary action. 
 There are sure to be episodes, side-lights, by-scenes, 
 where the action stands still, but where those strains of 
 character which do not and cannot come to the surface 
 
146 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 in the main action, or indeed in any action at all, are 
 thrown into relief. We take each of these points 
 singly ; and first, the admission of a secondary action. 
 No doubt, in the hands of the less skilful writers, 
 this practice is liable to abuse. In the noblest of 
 Middleton's tragedies, for instance, The Changeling, 
 the imaginative eiFect of the main action comes near 
 to being lost — it is certainly much weakened — by 
 the insertion, at regular intervals, of a side-action 
 entirely independent of it, entirely detached from it, 
 and entirely alien from it in character and temper. 
 Here the two plots are simply cut neatly into slips 
 and laid alongside of each other ; no attempt is 
 made to bring the one into any sort or kind of vital 
 connection with the other. Such, however, is not 
 Shakespeare's way of working. In one only of his 
 tragedies. King Lear, does he admit a secondary 
 action at all, though in his comedies he does so 
 more often than not. And in that one tragedy, the 
 story of Gloucester and his sons is so interwoven 
 with that of Lear and his daughters that it would be 
 impossible to sever the two without destruction to 
 the whole drama. Nor is the connection simply 
 that of incidents and personages. The minor action, 
 if we may call it so, is, in idea and substance, an echo 
 of the main action. And in the cunning brutality 
 of Edmund we have a reverberation of the " dog- 
 hearted " cruelty of Goneril and Regan. Thus, what 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 147 
 
 might have destroyed the unity of the piece serves only 
 to strengthen and enhance it. The imaginative effect, 
 so far from being weakened, is made more intense. 
 
 So also with those scene* which, though they 
 involve no secondary action, yet stand manifestly 
 apart from the plot and the main business of the 
 tragedy. Such are the scenes with the players and 
 the grave-diggers in Hamlet ; the scene between 
 Lear and Edgar, the real and the assumed madman, 
 on the heath ; the scene between Desdemona and 
 lagQ nn thp..4uay__at Cyprus ; and, if we interpret- 
 the term " main action'~at~all rigorously, the sleep- 
 walking scene in Macbeth. In all these the action 
 halts, or rather is deliberately suspended. In all it 
 is replaced by talk ; talk which, in every case but 
 the last, has little or no reference to the plot. Yet 
 in all a searching light is thrown upon the characters ; 
 and the plays would have been quite infinitely poorer 
 without them. Can any one honestly say that he 
 would know so much about the character of Hamlet, 
 its inward strength and its inward weakness, that he 
 would understand so well the causes of his action or 
 his inaction, if the scenes in question were cut out .'' 
 Or the characters of Desdemona and lago ? Or that 
 of Lady Macbeth .? Or the sublime tenderness which j 
 lies hid behind the ungovernable passion of Lear } 
 To maintain any of these things would surely be 
 impossible. 
 
148 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 Yet again, there are scenes which seem to have 
 no bearing either upon character or action ; to stand 
 there simply and solely for their imaginative effect. 
 The most famous instance of this, and perhaps the 
 only certain and complete one, is the Porter-scene 
 in Macbeth. It is obvious that neither action nor 
 character is here in question. But what other means 
 would have served so well to drive home to our 
 imagination the infinite horror of the deed which has 
 just been done almost before our eyes ? Could any- 
 thing have thrown into such sharp relief the tragedy 
 of the hellish passions let loose above, as the cynical 
 comedy of the half- drunken churl below ? the 
 roysterer who, even as he speaks, has become, not in 
 jest but in grim earnest, the " porter of hell-gate " ? 
 
 Now it does not need much reflection to show us 
 that — whether they serve merely to make an appeal 
 to our imagination, or to throw light on character 
 and temperament, or to introduce a distinct and 
 secondary thread of action — all such scenes would 
 infallibly have been barred out by the classical 
 tradition. There is not one of them which does 
 not violate the " unity of action," as it was under- 
 stood not only by such critics as Aristotle or Horace, 
 but, what is far more important, by dramatists such 
 as ^schylus, Sophocles, and Racine. It is clear, 
 therefore, that we have here nothing short of a 
 revolution in the whole conception of tragic drama. 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 149 
 
 And, as those scenes which let us into the secrets 
 of character and motive are manifestly the most . 
 significant among those we have considered, it is 
 also clear wherein exactly that revolution consists^ 
 The ideal of Aristotle, which was also the practice 
 of the classical dramatists, has been entirely reversed. 
 The plot, which with them held the first place, is^ 
 now thrust down into the second. Character, whic hU 
 had been the subordinate interest, is now treated aak 
 the principal. By the anc' ''rit° f^^H^*''''' """^ ''^grtH'^d 
 as the means, and plot as the end. With Shii kr^pearp 
 character becomes the end, and plot sinks injto the_ 
 position of the means.^~THe™ceritre of gravity has 
 been shifted from plot to 'character. And character 
 has come to have an independent and intrinsic value 
 of its own. 
 
 We have seen an earnest of this revolution in the 
 works of the ancients themselves ; under one form 
 in Sophocles, under another in Euripides. We have 
 seen the principle carried still further by Racine, and 
 further yet by Alfieri. And seeing that the drama, 
 on any showing, is a presentation of human life, seeing 
 that of all the conditions which go to make the web 
 of human life and human destiny character is beyond 
 comparison the most important, it is a principle 
 which, so long as any vitaUty remains to the drama, 
 is bound to assert itself and extend itself. But, so 
 long as the classical form was the accepted mould in 
 
I50 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 which all tragedy was cast, so long it was inevit- 
 able that plot should play a commanding, if not a 
 preponderating part. And so long as it did so, it 
 was impossible that character should come by its full 
 rights. The rigid mould had to be broken up ; the 
 structure of the plot had to be loosened. Then, and 
 then only, was it possible to obtain a free scope for the 
 portrayal of character. To break down the barriers, 
 to employ the free space, thus opened, for the 
 noblest ends which the drama can achieve — this was 
 the glory of the romanticists in England and Spain. 
 It was — so far as the latter point is concerned — the 
 glory, above all, of Shakespeare. 
 
 The principle was applied in a variety of ways. 
 Of these, we must content ourselves with the most 
 obvious. And, in the first place, no one can fail to 
 notice the weight given by Shakespeare to that which 
 is the highest, and at the same time the most tragic, 
 quality of character, its capacity for growth or decay. 
 In two of his tragedies, Macbeth and Lear, this may 
 be said to form the point round which the whole is 
 centred. Sin Macbeth this is sufficiently obvious. 
 Two wills, 'each cast in an entirely different mould, are 
 suddenly-dazzled, by -hopesHEefiOTe which JthgyiresT' 
 conscience might have^avered. Both have a touch 
 of heroism. The man has the^eroism of great 
 physical courage — " I dare do all that, may become 
 a man " — and of a name hitherto honoured and 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 151 
 
 unsullied ; the woman, the heroism of a commanding 
 temper and dauntless resolution. Both give way 
 to ambition ; they join hands in an unpardonable 
 crime. The life of both is for ever poisoned by the 
 deed. But the poison works in utterly different 
 ways. The woman, who before the deed had been 
 all fire and determination, breaks down directly the 
 strain of prompt decision is taken off. The remainder 
 of the action sweeps by her, a helpless witness of her 
 partner's crimes. In the closing scene, we see her 
 once more, now a hopeless wreck, her whole being 
 absorbed in the memory of the fatal moment, which 
 was "to all her nights and days to come" to have 
 " given solely sovereign sway and masterdom," and 
 which has ended thus. It is quite otherwise with 
 the man. The deed which came on him irresolute, 
 leaves him "whole as the marble, founded as the 
 rock." To the first murder he had nerved himself 
 only by a dead effort, only when " chastised by the 
 valour of a woman's tongue." In the others he has 
 no qualm. He accepts them as his doom. He 
 moves on to each in turn with the force and precision 
 of a machine. But, none the less, his soul is poisoned, 
 and his peace is departed from him. He is a hunted 
 creature ; alone in a world of curses ; stripped of 
 everything save the will to do evil, and the know- 
 ledge that, with the evil, will come its own punish- 
 ment of self-torture and despair. So his doom closes 
 
152 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 round him, and he dies at last, like " a bear tied to 
 the stake," fighting with desperate courage against 
 a world in arms ; the same world from which he 
 had " bought golden opinions " before his trial came 
 and found him wanting, y 
 
 The reverse of the picture is given in Lear. Like 
 ' Macbeth, Lear is one man at the opening of the 
 tragedy and another at its close. At the opening, 
 he is rash, choleric, swept by gusts of ungovernable 
 fury. But trouble, the direct consequence of his 
 own rashness, falls upon him and hurls him not only 
 from his throne but from his former self. He is 
 purified by suffering. In his own sorrows he learns 
 to feel the sorrows of mankind. He bows himself 
 in passionate repentance, to seek forgiveness of those 
 he has wronged and who yet love him and would 
 give all to save him. The old world, the old self, 
 have fallen from him. He lives now in a world 
 where all things are made new, and where, as 
 " God's spy," he mocks at the earthly pomp which 
 once had been his pride ; now, in a truer sense than 
 when he used the words, " every inch a king." And 
 if a fit of the old wilfulness once again comes on him, 
 it is to take vengeance on the ruffian who murders 
 her whom he had once cast from him with contempt. 
 The old self survives in the new, the " one touch of 
 nature " which binds him more closely than ever to 
 our hearts. 
 
vn ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 153 
 
 Now it is perfectly clear that we have nothing like 'i 
 this in the classical dramatists. And the reason is 
 plain. So long as the unity of time, even in its laxest 
 form, is a condition of tragedy, so long any growth 
 or deterioration of character — except in so far as the 
 past may be reflected in the action of the present ^ — 
 is impossible. Time is essential to this ; and time is 
 just what the classical drama obstinately refuses to 
 give. And if it be true that even in the romantic 
 drama the thing is strangely rare, that besides Shake- 
 speare but few romantic dramatists have attempted it, 
 that is not because of any outward conditions, it is not 
 due to any obstacle imposed by the dramatic form, 
 but either to lack of genius or its diversion into other 
 channels. Still it must not be forgotten that in one 
 at least of Calderon's tragedies, Amar desfues de la 
 Muerte, the same theme is taken ; nor that in the 
 most famous of all modern dramas, Goethe's Faust, 
 it is carried out with triumphant success. 
 
 The defiance of the other external unity, that of 
 place, cuts, no doubt, less deep. But it, too, is of 
 great importance. It allows the dramatist a far 
 greater freedom in his choice both of incidents 
 and personages than would otherwise have been 
 possible. And the shifts to which the classical 
 dramatists are driven in their frantic eiForts to 
 
 1 As is repeatedly the case in the plays of Ibsen, who observes the unity of 
 time more or less closely j e.g. Ghosts or Rosmerslalm. 
 
154 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 preserve this unity are in themselves sufficient to 
 condemn it. On the other hand, if we turn to 
 the tragedies of Shakespeare, we see at once what 
 is gained by its violation. What would Lear be 
 without the scene on the heath .'' or Hamlet without 
 those on the platform and in the grave-yard .'' or 
 Othello without the guard -room and Desdemona's 
 chamber, or Macbeth without the blasted heath and 
 the witches' cave .? Not to mention that most of 
 these scenes permit the introduction of personages — 
 the witches, for instance — who, given the unity of 
 place, must inevitably have been excluded. 
 
 That character should now be presented as a 
 thing capable of growth is, then, one of the things 
 which mark the change both of form and spirit that 
 came over the drama with the triumph of romance. 
 But there is another, still more significant and still 
 more worthy of attention. This is the blending of 
 reflection with the more active energies, which stamps 
 the romantic drama in general and the tragedies of 
 Shakespeare in particular. It appears in some of the 
 greatest plays of Calderon ; for instance. La Vida es 
 Sueno. It appears in Faust. It appears, above all, 
 in the soliloquies of Shakespeare. Here again the 
 action is for the moment suspended, nay, forgotten ; 
 and that, it may be, at the most critical moment of 
 its course. Take, for instance, the best known of 
 all reflective speeches, the soliloquy of Hamlet. The 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 155 
 
 hero has just taken the resolution on which .his 
 subsequent action, or inaction, is absolutely to depend. 
 He has designed the test which is to put the guilt 
 or innocence of his enemy to the proof. I'he 
 moment before he has been all fire and eagerness 
 over this device. Now all is forgotten. He enters 
 entirely wrapt up in other thoughts. "Will the 
 scheme fail or will it prosper ? " — that is what we 
 should have expected. Not in the least. " To be, 
 or not to be ? " — to priit an end to himself, or no ? — 
 that is the question that now absorbs every energy of 
 his soul. And the same preoccupation, the weari- 
 ness of life and the fascination of the mystery of 
 death, runs through the poignant dialogue with 
 Ophelia, which follows. So, in truth, to the very 
 end of the tragedy. It is the inner, r ather than 
 the outer^J ife of Hamlet ; his reflection, rat her than 
 his deeds ; hi TTiiaetioTiTl^th er than his a ctionT^Juch 
 is th e true them e ot the ^rama. YesT'Tnnay be 
 objected, and just for "that reason it is not a fair 
 instance to take. The character of Hamlet is so 
 abnormal that it could only be presented by ex- 
 ceptional means. This is true. But the fact remains 
 that, for the subject of his masterpiece, Shakespeare 
 took a theme which could not possibly have found a 
 place in classical tragedy, and that, in his hands, the 
 end abundantly justified the means. 
 
 Moreover, the same objection cannot possibly be 
 
156 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 urged in the case of his other tragedies. Yet there 
 too, doubtless under a different form, the same 
 method reappears. It is hardly less characteristic 
 of Lear, Macbeth, or even Othello, than it is of 
 Hamlet. On Lear, which is avowedly a play of 
 suffering rather than of action, it is unnecessary to 
 dwell ; though, once again, the mere choice of such 
 a subject is intensely significant. Othello, at first 
 sight, may seem to ofFer no confirmation of the point 
 now under consideration. None of Shakespeare's 
 lieriaea js less reflective in temper ; to none, is so little 
 of anything^ ev e n distantly approachi iig-6o-.SQliloquy 
 assigned ; and what little there is bears directly 
 and obviously upon the action of the moment. Yet 
 in the gre at speeches of Othello .sss-Jasi SS,. if not 
 reflection, at~any f aTrjt^]T^m~note in its highest 
 ^CQSsi Eir' intensi ty! And the lyric "note has tKiTlH 
 common with reflection, that it raises the soul of the 
 speaker far above the mere purposes and circum- 
 stances of the moment. It exalts him to a region 
 of which the actual world, its passions and sufferings, 
 are but a pale and fleeting image, to the region which 
 is his true home, which abides when all that he has 
 loved and striven for in this world is torn from 
 him or dashed in pieces. Nothing, therefore, could 
 serve to bring out more strongly, to press more 
 closely home upon our imagination, that innate 
 heroism, that largeness of soul, which is the seal of 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 157 
 
 Shakespeare's tragic figures, and of none more than 
 of Othello, " once so good," now 
 
 Fallen in the practice of a damned slave, 
 
 a " demi-devil," who has had the cunning to 
 "ensnare him, soul and body." And that is the 
 reason why such lyric outbursts as 
 
 Never, lago ! Like to the Pontic sea. 
 
 or, 
 or, 
 or. 
 
 Had it pleased heaven to' try me with affliction, 
 
 Put out the light, and then — put out the light, 
 
 If heaven vi^ould make me such another world 
 Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, 
 I'd not have sold her for it 
 
 have power to move us to the very depth of our 
 soul. 
 
 B ut, after all, the most strikii^g nfall illustrations 
 is fo^ e drawn from Macbeth. Hereis~a subj ect 
 which only the highest genius could have ma de 
 available^ foTTiie purposes of art. But for the 
 instinctive surene ss of Shakespear e's touch, we should 
 probably have felt for jthe hero nothing but horror 
 . and repulsion. By what means does Shakespeare 
 check this repulsion ? By what means does he 
 ■COa yert it into interest, pity, and admiration? It 
 js no t only that from thenrst he makes us feel that 
 both hero and heHsiwr'haVe something above the 
 common in their nature ; that they are cast' in a 
 
158 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 larger mould than the men and women among whom 
 we habitually move ; that their powers, both for 
 good and evil, are greater ; that their passions are 
 stronger and more masterful than those of ordinary- 
 clay. This would apply equally to Richard III. ; 
 and there is no reader but will feel that Macbeth 
 and his wife move upon a higher plane than their 
 earlier prototype, and that their story has a far 
 deeper tragic appeal than his. Where, then, does 
 the difference lie .'* Partly^ no doubt, in the atmo- 
 sphere of the appalling and the supernatural with 
 which Shakespeare has surrounded the whole action 
 from first to last. Yet more in the amazing fidelity 
 and minuteness with which he has traced every deed 
 to its conflicting motives ; every purpose from its 
 first dim conception to its final accomplishment and 
 its remotest effects upon the soul and conscience ; 
 every hesitation, every revulsion in the fatal march 
 of ' crime ; every contortion of the victim, self- 
 doomed for ever 
 
 On the torture of the mind to lie 
 In restless ecstasy, 
 
 crushed beneath the consciousness of its own defile- 
 ment and degradation. Most of all, perhaps, in 
 the lyric outbursts which are nowhere so abundant 
 as in this gloomiest and most despairing of human 
 tragedies. It is surely intensely significant that one 
 of the deepest reflections on the vanity of human 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 159 
 
 life and human effort, and by far the most im- 
 passioned to be found in Shakespeare should be 
 placed on the lips of a criminal, red with the blood 
 of murder, and at the moment when he might seem 
 to have lost all sense of the bond which unites 
 him to other men, to have retained nothing save 
 the blind instinct of the hunted beast. 
 
 The significance of such passages, the impress 
 they give to the whole spirit and substance of the 
 tragedies in which they occur, is hardly to be 
 exaggerated. They carry us into a world that lies 
 far apart from, and far above, the direct action, 
 /^e immediate surroundings of the speaker. Yet 
 there are no passages which let us so deeply into 
 the hidden springs of character ; none which so 
 powerfully serve to enforce the end and purpose 
 of tragedy, as the dramatist conceived it ; to 
 quicken and deepen our sense that the whole man 
 is something greater than his actual achievement ; 
 that, in his deepest abasement as in his highest 
 exaltation, he has " thoughts which can ne'er be 
 packed into the narrow act " ; that the heroism 
 of the hero will shine through the darkest or 
 most distorted deed in which he has imprisoned 
 it ; that he is not at , the mercy of his success or 
 failure in the purposes, perverted or noble, which 
 he would seem to have staked all on attaining. 
 Beyond the action however engrossing, beyond the 
 
i6o TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lbct. 
 
 passion however intense, there is an inner region 
 
 into which the soul withdraws herself and is alone ; 
 
 where the noble spirit is brought face to face with 
 
 the beauty and purity for which in this life it seeks 
 
 in vain ; where the perverse or the criminal, if a 
 
 spark of heroism still lingers in his breast, is 
 
 confronted with the truth and justice which he 
 
 has defied and trampled on in this life and is 
 
 forced "even to the teeth and forehead of his 
 
 faults to give in evidence," to confess the emptiness 
 
 and the ugliness of that which he has lost all to win. 
 
 So it is that to Macbeth, racked by the torture of 
 
 his own memories, 
 
 Life's but a walking shadow ... a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing. 
 
 To Hamlet, tossed to and fro between thought 
 and action, buffeted by the thousand natural shocks 
 that flesh is heir to, death is a " sleep, a consumma- 
 tion devoutly to be wished." For Othello, wielding 
 the " sword of justice," the relentless purpose half 
 breaks as he gazes on his victim, and he stoops 
 to kiss her as she sleeps. Then, when his eyes 
 are at length opened, there is nothing for him 
 but to seek refuge in death ; and once again he 
 I kisses her as he falls, self-slain, at her side : — 
 
 I kissed thee, ere I killed thee. No way but this, 
 Killing myself to die upon a kiss. 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY i6i 
 
 No other dramatist has seen so clearly the double life 
 of the soul. None has held the scales so evenly between 
 the two worlds which contend for her possession. 
 None has grasped so unerringly the tragedy, so bitter 
 and so ennobling, which springs from their collisioHi^ 
 There is yet another aspect of the reflective 
 and lyrical passages of Shakespeare on which we 
 may pause for a moment. That is their more 
 formal aspect, the purely poetical purpose which 
 they serve in the general economy of his tragedies. 
 In such passages it is fair to say that we have 
 some equivalent for the purely lyrical episodes, the 
 choric interludes, of the Greek drama. The Chorus 
 of Greek tragedy has, almost inevitably, failed to 
 find a place in the modern drama. It is too alien 
 from modern conditions ; and the attempts to 
 introduce it, or something distantly approaching 
 to it, have seldom been successful. In that form, 
 we may take it, the lyric element is no longer 
 available for dramatic uses. And the question 
 arises : Is it possible to find some other embodiment 
 for it, to discover some imaginative equivalent.? 
 Now, in the classical drama of the moderns, bound 
 as it has commonly been within the limits of a 
 highly concentrated action, it is seldom that the 
 spirit of poetry, as such, can disengage itself ; seldom 
 that the purely lyrical element can win its flight, 
 even for a moment, from the cage of cunningly 
 
 M 
 
1 62 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 woven plot or the pressure of circumstances and 
 situation. The passionate anguish of Phedre may 
 be cited as an exception ; but it is an exception 
 that stands almost alone. In the romantic drama, 
 with its looser structure and its wider range of 
 passion and feeling, the case is different. Witness, 
 on the one hand, the lyric outbursts of Calderon ; 
 on the other, the soliloquies and the often essentially 
 lyrical dialogue of Shakespeare. Here, if anywhere, 
 is to be found the equivalent of which we are in 
 search. And it is significant that, while in the 
 Greek drama, the choric ode was a thing quite 
 apart from the general movement of the piece, in 
 the romantic drama, above all in that of Spain and 
 England, the lyrical element is part and parcel of 
 the dramatic structure ; bone of its bone, and flesh 
 of its flesh ; in the strictest sense, the most dramatic 
 thing in it ; the element which, more than any other, 
 reveals the deepest springs of character and embodies 
 the specifically tragic appeal to the imagination. 
 /^ But the loosening of the general structure in 
 romantic tragedy has further consequences yet. 
 And one of these is so far-reaching that, even in 
 this cursory view, we are not entitled to overlook 
 it. This is the enormous widening of the dramatic 
 range which it carries with it ; the infinite variety 
 of human character which it admits. That is, 
 perhaps, the first thing to strike us in the dramas of 
 
vii ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 163 
 
 Shakespeare as contrasted with those of Sophocles 
 or Racine. And there is no need to dwell on its 
 significance. There is, however, one special point 
 on which we may linger for a moment. The 
 classical drama confines itself to the serious side 
 of life ; the romantic includes the grotesque and 
 the humorous as well. And the surest way, perhaps, 
 to realise the importance of this is to remind our- 
 selves that, in the French revival of 1830, it formed 
 the battle-ground between the romantic and the 
 classical armies. A glance at the preface to Cromwell 
 will put this beyond doubt. And, however little 
 the author of that manifesto may have succeeded in 
 naturalising the humorous, or even the grotesque, 
 in his own dramas, he was abundantly justified in 
 his contention that it is one of the marks which 
 serve most clearly to distinguish the romantic from 
 the classical type of tragedy. 
 
 Roughly speaking, it may be said that in romantic 
 tragedy the grotesque, the humorous, takes two 
 distinct forms, a higher and a lower. In the lower 
 shape, it is simply laid alongside of the more serious 
 theme, and little or no attempt is made to blend 
 them, or give them organic unity. An extreme 
 instance of this is found in Middleton's Changeling. 
 Here there are two distinct plots, one serious, the 
 other comic ; and between them there is absolutely 
 no connection. The result is a tragedy with a 
 
1 64 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 succession of comic interludes interspersed at stated 
 intervals. And the effect is in the last degree baffling 
 to the imagination. In the Spanish drama we have 
 something of the same method, but turned to issues 
 far more legitimate. Here the humorous element 
 is embodied in personages — generally servants, or 
 graziosos — who fill a natural part in the serious 
 action of the piece. But the comic scenes are 
 studiously held apart from the tragic ; as often as 
 not they oiFer a sort of burlesque mimicry of the 
 tragic circumstances, the tragic passions, which form 
 the main theme of the play. And this holds true — 
 the burlesque apart — of Shakespeare's earlier effort 
 to unite the humorous with the tragic ; the scene 
 in Romeo where Capulet storms in the kitchen, while 
 Juliet lies to all appearance dead in the chamber 
 above. In the later tragedies his method is very 
 /different. And here we come to the highest form 
 which the union of tragedy and humour can take. 
 Here the two elements are, in the strictest sense, 
 fused and blended with each other. The sorrow is 
 thrown into relief by the laughter ; the jest of the 
 clown or fool only serves to make the tragedy more 
 poignant. The scene of the porter in Macbeth, the 
 scene between Hamlet and the gravediggers, above all 
 the scenes between the King and the Fool in Lear, are 
 the supreme instances of this. And nowhere does the 
 genius of Shakespeare rise more triumphantly than here. 
 
VII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 165 
 
 All sides of life are represented in the matter 
 of Shakespeare's tragedies. All sides of human 
 character are reflected in his style. Who has not 
 felt the marvellous variety of his style, the unflagging 
 ease with which he passes from one style to another, 
 in obedience to the mood or character of the speaker ? 
 The speech of Hamlet is not the speech of Macbeth ; 
 the speech of Macbeth is not that of Lea,r or 
 of Othello. The language of lago is not that of 
 Edmund ; the language of Horatio not that 
 of Banquo or of Kent. Passing, as he did, when- 
 ever he was truly himself, into the inmost soul of 
 each character in turn, by an unprompted instinct 
 Shakespeare fell upon the speech appropriate to 
 each. And few things in his dramas are more 
 remarkable than the infinite range of style, speech, 
 dialect they unfold before us. In no one play is 
 this so clearly seen as in Othello. There he comes 
 nearer to the common circumstances of life than in 
 any other of his tragedies. And this is clearly 
 reflected in the style. From the pure colloquial, 
 the cynical brutality, of lago — in the earlier scenes 
 almost every phrase bites into the memory — to 
 the fiery indignation of Emilia at the close, from the 
 moving wail of Desdemona to the passionate anguish 
 and the no less passionate repentance of Othello, he 
 seems to sweep the whole scale in which human 
 baseness and human nobility can find utterance. 
 
1 66 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 vn 
 
 Here, then, once more we come back to the 
 battle of classicism and romance — a battle as sharply 
 waged in the field of style as it is in that of 
 substance and of treatment. The variety of Shake- 
 speare's style, its daring transitions from gay to 
 grave, from sublime to familiar, would have seemed 
 to Racine a profanation of the drama. To those 
 .who have entered into the spirit of Shakespearean 
 f tragedy the sustained harmony of Racine will 
 inevitably seem monotonous. The diffused glow 
 of Racine, the lights and shadows of Shakespeare, 
 these represent two contrary ideals, and between the 
 two there is no possibility of compromise. Each 
 has its own legitimate effect ; but the two are 
 mutually exclusive. And few will now be found 
 to deny that the ideal of Shakespeare is a wider 
 ideal, and the effect of his style a more dramatic 
 effect, than those which were sought and found 
 by Racine. The variety of his style, however, is 
 but the outward and visible sign of the endless 
 variety of his theme. And that is the secret of 
 its importance. It is because he had scanned life 
 and character so widely that he has grasped their 
 significance so clearly. It is because he had sounded 
 the depths of the soul more deeply than any other 
 man that he touches our imagination more strongly, 
 and grips our heart-strings with more power. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 ROMANTIC TRAGEDY : CALDERON 
 
 In England, as we have seen, the romantic drama 
 had to fight its way inch by inch against the prestige 
 of the classical tradition. And had it not been for 
 the romantic elements in Seneca, who offered a 
 meeting ground between the two hostile camps, it 
 may be doubted whether the victory would have 
 been so speedily won. At the other end of Europe 
 the same struggle was waged, and the supremacy 
 of the classical ideal yet more violently challenged. 
 
 In this, as in other matters, Spain asserted herself 
 against the rest of Europe. Here the dramatic 
 revival declared itself earlier than in any country 
 with the possible exception of Italy ; and declared > 
 itself unequivocally in the form of romance. This 
 was before the end of the fifteenth century ; and ' 
 the drama in question was the famous Celestina, a 
 fantastic story, but vivid to the point of realism, 
 of witchcraft and love potions ; a story which is 
 indeed little more than a romance, or novel, cast 
 
 167 
 
1 68 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 in a dramatic shape. This, however, was an isolated 
 phenomenon. And the full birth of the drama was 
 delayed in Spain, as in most other countries, till 
 the middle of the following century. In the interval 
 th& romantic leaven had been silently working, 
 and from the first moment that the drama fairly 
 took shape it was sufficiently clear that the romantic 
 type was likely to prevail. Yet even in Spain the 
 victory was not won without a struggle. And it 
 is significant that the greatest Spaniard of the age, 
 a man of romantic genius if there ever was one, 
 set himself, so far as might be, to stem the torrent 
 and uphold the claims of the classical ideal. The 
 ' Numancia of Cervantes (1583) is not without 
 romantic elements. But the classical spirit is 
 unmistakably predominant ; and the author of Don 
 Quixoie, it is true with an ill grace, is here seen 
 fighting on the side of Trissino and of Sackville. 
 But the whole genius of his country was against 
 him. In no people had chivalry taken so firm a 
 root ; in none had circumstances and passions, 
 political and religious, done so much to interweave 
 the ideals of chivalry with the national character. 
 The point of honour was the life-blood of the 
 Spaniard ; his very instincts had taken the ply of 
 fantasy and romance. Thus the romantic type 
 of drama was the only one which could reflect 
 the genius of the country. And with the coming 
 
vm 
 
 ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 169 
 
 of Lope de Vega (c. 1585), its triumph was 
 assured. 
 
 The flowering time of the Spanish drama may be 
 placed in the hundred years from 1580 to 1680; 
 and its two greatest names are Lope de Vega and 
 Calderon. The life of the former (1562-1635) | 
 includes the whole period of the Elizabethan and Jaco- 
 bean drama in England. That of the latter (1600- 
 1680) covers the whole life of Milton, with a margin 
 of six or seven years at either end, together with the 
 whole dramatic careers of Corneille, Dryden, Moli^re, 
 and Racine. It is a great space in the literary annals 
 of mankind, and brilliantly was it filled by these two 
 dramatists. Of Lope it is impossible to speak on 
 this occasion. Time forbids, and moreover his 
 supreme field was rather comedy than tragedy. We 
 confine ourselves to Calderon. 
 
 The first thing to strike us as we turn his pages 
 — and the same would be true of Lope — is the 
 enormous variety of the sources from which he draws 
 his material. We set aside, of course, his distinc- 
 tively religious plays, the Autos Sacramentaks, which 
 in themselves fill six volumes of his collected works ; 
 we set aside his comedies also. Any complete esti- 
 mate of his genius would have to take ample count 
 of both these fields. For in the auto, an unique 
 outgrowth of the Spanish genius, he is admittedly 
 supreme ; and in comedy too he shows powers of 
 
170 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 a very high order. La Dama Duende {The Fairy 
 Lady), for instance, is a most airy creation, and it 
 is worked out with inimitable grace and spirit. But 
 all these things lie beyond our scope, and we are to 
 consider him solely as a tragic poet. Here again we 
 are at once met by the vast variety of his themes. 
 
 ; Roman history, Jewish history, Spanish history, 
 English history, classical legend, Christian legend — 
 all these serve as storehouses for his art. But his 
 chief haunt, it need hardly be said, is the life of his 
 own time and country ; his chief creation, romantic 
 tragedy in the special sense which it naturally bore 
 to a Spaniard : a highly idealised reflection of the 
 passions of chivalry as they fired the hearts, if 
 not of his own time, at least of a well remem- 
 
 ;bered and ever regretted past. The religion, the 
 
 '] romance, the chivalry, the blending of gaiety and 
 martial pride, the whole tissue of passions and 
 
 ■ instincts which made the Spaniard of that age a 
 marked man, an object at once of admiration and 
 resentment to the rest of Europe — all these may 
 have been painted with greater brilliance, their 
 surface caught with greater exactitude, by Lope de 
 Vega. That would seem to be the prevailing 
 opinion among Spanish critics of the present day. 
 But if we would see all these things lifted to a 
 higher power, revealed in the fullest significance 
 that can be drawn from them by imaginative 
 
VIII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 171 
 
 genius, we must surely turn to Calderon. Some 
 of his plays, for instance A secreto Agravio secreta 
 Venganza, stand in the closest relation to the courtly 
 drama, the " Comedia di Capa y Espada," which was 
 among the most characteristic creations of Spain. 
 Others have a yet sterner and more relentless cast. 
 It is among the latter that his greatest master- 
 pieces are to be found : El Medico de su Honra, El 
 Pintor de su Deshonra, Amur despues de la Muerte, 
 and, in spite of its glad ending, La Vida es Sueno, 
 the most profound and the most lyrical of them all. 
 
 There is doubtless another sense in which variety 
 can hardly be claimed for the tragedies of Calderon. 
 The passions he best loves to paint are limited in 
 their range. And there are two in particular round 
 which his imagination lingers with peculiar affection.. 
 These are vengeance and, above all, the vengeance 
 which springs from jealousy and outraged honour. 
 The latter in its various forms appears and reappears 
 as the theme of his most notable tragedies. And, 
 Shakespeare apart, there is no dramatist who has 
 painted its workings with such imaginative insight, 
 with such command of pathos and of tragic effect. 
 That is the region which he had chosen for his own. 
 
 In his handling of • character he is singularly ' 
 simple and direct. The outline is drawn with a 
 firm hand, the colours laid on with a bold sweep 
 of the brush. There is little or no attempt at subtle 
 
172 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 shading from one tint to another. But the figures 
 stand out in vigorous relief from the canvas, and a 
 magic harmony is spread over the whole. Moreover, 
 though the theme in many dramas is the same, the 
 characters assuredly are not. Take four of the most 
 striking among his tragedies of jealousy, and we see 
 at once that the leading characters are cast in com- 
 pletely different moulds. Don Juan of El Pintor 
 could not for one moment be confounded with the 
 hero of El Medico, nor of Secreta Venganza, nor of 
 El Mayor Monstruo los Zelos. Serafina is of a 
 nature quite other than Marianne or Dona Mencia 
 or Leonora. And the same would hold good of the 
 other chief personages in these tragedies. 
 
 Before we pass on to consider more precisely the 
 place of Calderon in the general history of tragedy, 
 a word must be added concerning the poetic.form of 
 the Spanish drama. At first sight we might be 
 tempted to say that it is at once curiously exotic and 
 curiously undramatic. We are confronted with 
 a strange variety of metres, drawn in the first 
 instance from the poetry of Italy. Ottava rima, 
 the metre of Ariosto, terza rima, the metre of 
 Dante, and Petrarchan sonnet — all these are scat- 
 tered with lavish hand over the pages of Calderon 
 and his fellow-dramatists. The two first, it may be 
 thought, are better adapted for purposes of narration, 
 the last for those of lyrical reflection. And it would 
 
vni ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 173 
 
 be absurd to contend that their employment by the 
 Spanish dramatists, and even by Calderon, is always 
 congruous or defensible. Two things, however, are 
 to be remembered. In the first place, a language soj 
 flexible and so rich in rhyme as the Spanish is able! 
 to bend these elaborate forms to purposes which, in 
 a language like ours, would be absolutely impossible. 
 And as a matter of fact such passages flow with an 
 ease and spontaneity which, without the irrefragable 
 proof of eye and ear, would have seemed incredible. 
 In the second place, as we shall see directly, the 
 lyrical element in the Spanish drama is far stronger 
 than in that of any other nation. And therefore 
 lyric measures like the sonnet, or measures, such as the v 
 ottava, which may fairly be used for lyric purposes, 
 have a place in Spanish tragedy which they certainly 
 would not have in the tragedy of France, or even in 
 that of England. Accordingly, when full allowance 
 has been made for aberrations, it cannot, I think, be 
 fairly said that the general effect of such metres is 
 either unnatural or undramatic. 
 
 And after all, the proportion which such passages 
 bear to the whole is, in general, extremely small. 
 It cannot possibly be urged that the prevailing 
 character of Spanish tragedy, in respect of form, 
 is other than in a high degree indigenous, spon- 
 taneous and dramatic. The groundwork of the 
 whole, it must be remembered, is the old national 
 
174 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 ballad metre — a metre much resembling that of our 
 own ballads, save that assonance is substituted for 
 rhyme — a metre extraordinarily flexible and lending 
 itself, as few metres could, to that expression of 
 rapidly changing emotion, mood, and thought, which 
 is of the essence of the drama. In this metre the 
 greater part of the tragedy is commonly written. 
 But with it are interwoven — and the transition is 
 so natural as often to be almost imperceptible — such 
 other national metres as the quadrilla, the short- 
 lined rhyming quatrain (abba is the scheme of 
 rhyme), or the more elaborate silva, in rhymed 
 lines of varying length, which is the metre com- 
 monly employed for the more highly -wrought 
 passages of lyric utterance. Thus, with certain 
 exceptions above indicated, the general result, so 
 far as form goes, is strikingly varied and dramatic, 
 but at the same time strikingly harmonious. 
 
 We now turn to consider more closely the leading 
 characteristics of the tragic type created by Spain ; 
 and, in particular, the place of Calderon in the 
 general development of tragic drama. The unities, it 
 is perhaps hardly necessary to say, are no less completely 
 disregarded by Calderon than by Shakespeare. That 
 yoke never succeeded in imposing itself upon the 
 drama of Spain. The unity of place, for instance, 
 is thrown to the winds in El Magico Prodigioso and 
 El Pintor de su Deshonra, to take two of the most 
 
viii ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 175 
 
 notable examples from the plays of Calderon. In 
 the former play the scene shifts backwards and 
 forwards from the lonely hermitage of Cipriano to 
 the house of Justina in Antioch, and then again to 
 the prison and the place of execution. In the latter 
 we are transported from Gaeta to Barcelona, and 
 then back again to Italy, where the scene hovers 
 between the city and the lonely grange whither 
 Serafina has been carried by her ruffian lover. In 
 the same way with the unity of time. In El Magico 
 more than a year passes between the opening and 
 the close : the year, namely, which, with the object 
 of gaining Justina, Cipriano devotes to the service 
 of the Devil and the Black Art. And this year is 
 both preceded and followed by events for which 
 further time must be allowed. So also with Amur 
 despues de la Muerte {Love triumphant over Death). 
 Here there is an interval of three years between the 
 first act and the rest. The revolt of the Moriscos, 
 which is merely impending in the first act, is at the 
 beginning of the second a long-accomplished fact. 
 And a further space elapses — how much is not, I 
 think, anywhere precisely indicated — between the 
 murder of the heroine and its expiation. Instances 
 of such defiance of the unities might be multiplied 
 indefinitely. 
 
 It is true, no doubt, that with Calderon this 
 is commonly a matter more of externals than it is 
 
176 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 with the greatest of the Elizabethans ; that he 
 seldom even attempted to draw from it the same 
 strength, the same vital consequences which, as we 
 have seen, were drawn by Shakespeare. As a rule, 
 for instance, he can hardly be said to use it as an 
 opening for portraying the growth of character. 
 There is little in him that is even remotely parallel 
 to the profound change which comes over the 
 character of the hero in Macbeth or Lear. Still, 
 even here, there is one notable exception ^ it is to be 
 found in one of the most striking of his tragedies, 
 Amar despues de la Muerte. And the point is 
 manifestly so important that it may be illustrated 
 by a brief sketch of the plot. 
 
 |It is the time of the Morisco persecution. The 
 heroine of the play is Clara, daughter of Malec, who 
 traces his descent to the Moorish kings of Cordova. 
 In the , opening scene Malec is grossly insulted by 
 Mendoza, a Castilian nobleman ; and Tuzani, a noble 
 Morisco who has long been in love with Clara, 
 comes forward to avenge his honour. His offer is 
 rejected both by Clara and her father. But, in spite 
 of this, he forces his way into Mendoza's presence. 
 A duel ensues, in which both men perform prodigies 
 of valour. It is, however, cut short by Mendoza's 
 friends, who, by way of atonement for the insult, 
 propose that Mendoza shall offer his hand to Clara. 
 This he scornfully refuses. 
 
vi.i ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 177 
 
 Three years pass, and the Moriscos are now in 
 full revolt under Malec's kinsman, Valor, who has 
 married Tuzani's sister. For the moment they hold 
 the Spaniards at bay, and, in a pause of the fighting, 
 Tuzani and Clara are married amid general rejoi- 
 cings. But hardly is their troth plighted when news 
 is brought that the Spanish army is suddenly advan- 
 cing. Tuzani hastily parts from Clara, vowing to 
 return the same night to claim her as his bride. He 
 does so, and is only severed from the city by one 
 ravine wheA a wild explosion is heard ; the wall Is 
 torn open, and he sees the Spaniards rush in through 
 the breach. The next moment he sees Clara 
 dragged to a window by a ruffianly soldier and 
 mortally wounded, while he is powerless to help. 
 He leaps down the ravine and reaches the city 
 only to clasp the dying woman in his arms. Still 
 holding the lifeless body, he swears never to rest 
 until he has run down the murderer and proved his 
 undying love by vengeance. But what hope has he 
 that the oath will ever be fulfilled ? He knows 
 neither the name of the murderer, nor his face, nor 
 any mark to tell him by. His only help is in God, 
 and God will surely guide him to the mark. Chance 
 does the work. Disguised as a Spanish soldier, he 
 makes his way into the enemy's camp. There a 
 squabble arises In the guard-room over the Morisco 
 booty. Tuzani and a Spanish soldier, Garces, are 
 
1 78 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 both involved, and both put under arrest. A chance 
 word arouses Tuzani's suspicions, and he draws 
 Garces into talk. "What," Garces inquires, "is 
 your history ? " " I am come in search of a man. 
 I know neither his face, nor his name, nor any token 
 of him . . . but I have found him." "You talk 
 riddles ; but I care not ; for I at least am sure to be 
 set free ; not a hair of my head will the General 
 touch ; it was I who laid the mine under the 
 enemy's city ; it was I who led the assault . . . 
 Would it had not been so!" " Hovvc is that?" 
 cried Tuzani, starting forward, as though to lose 
 no word nor tone of the other's tale. " Well, it is 
 a horrible story. Chance brought me to the chamber 
 of a Moorish woman, the most beautiful I had ever 
 seen. My passions rose. I seized her and was 
 about to ravish her, when I heard the steps of my 
 comrades. I could not bear that any should share my 
 triumph, and — yes, it was a cowardly deed — I raised 
 
 my arm " " Was (his the blow you struck ?"^ 
 
 shouts Tuzani, as the murderer falls dead at his feet. 
 The close is a splendid example of the Lances de 
 Calderon, the surprises, the coups de thidtre, for which 
 he was renowned. But the play is remarkable on at 
 least two other grounds. It shows a capacity for 
 sympathy with an alien race and a hostile creed of 
 which we should hardly have suspected so stout a 
 
 1 Fue como esta la punalada ? — Amar desfua de la Muerte, Jornada iii. 
 
vni ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 179 
 
 Spaniard and so bigoted a Catholic. And, what is 
 more immediately to our purpose, it shows a sense of 
 the deep change which a great trial may bring over 
 a man's character, over his most deeply rooted 
 impulses, which is surely a most remarkable proof 
 of the penetration of his genius. At the beginning 
 of the drama Tuzani is all fire and flame, eager, 
 impetuous, unguarded. In the closing scenes he 
 is the very opposite of all this. His probation has 
 come ; he is tried in the fire, and is not found 
 wanting. He guards himself with invincible 
 patience ; he measures his ground at every step ; 
 he is cool, cautious, calculating, crafty. Then, 
 when the proof is at last complete, when suspicion 
 has deepened into certainty and certainty into 
 indelible conviction, in an instant his old self 
 blazes out and sweeps away all obstacles, like 
 chafF before the wind. No one, of course, will 
 assert that we have here anything of the subtlety, 
 the minute shading, that is to be found in Shake- 
 speare. But we may fairly claim to discern something \ 
 of the same sense of moral growth. 
 
 This, however, is no doubt an exception. And 
 as a general rule the characters of Calderon, allowing \ 
 for change of circumstances, remain at the end' 
 substantially what they were at the beginning. Yet, 
 if he did not commonly draw all the resources that 
 Shakespeare drew from violation of the unities, at 
 
i8o TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 least he secured for his tragedies a liveliness and 
 variety, he gave them an air of life and truth to 
 nature, which are hardly to be found in the classical 
 type of tragedy : certainly not in its more modern 
 examples. In variety of incident, in fidelity to the 
 atmosphere of Spanish life, in vivid reproduction of 
 those somewhat idealised types of Spanish character 
 and moral temper to which he devoted himself, it 
 would be impossible to surpass the creations of 
 Calderon. And it is well to note that it is pr.e- 
 cisely those qualities, variety and fidelity to nature, 
 3n which his great precursor, Lope, had fastened 
 is those to gain which he had sacrificed all his 
 " rules," and put the classical models " under lock 
 and key." 
 
 It may be fully admitted that one ot these 
 
 qualities, liveliness of incident and circumstance, is 
 
 liable to abuse ; that it sometimes takes a form 
 
 which can only be described as melodramatic ; and 
 
 sometimes, at any rate to a mind which Is not 
 
 Spanish, degenerates into sheer childishness or 
 
 brutality. Thus, in two at least of Calderon's 
 
 f plays, El Magico Prodigioso and El Joseph de las 
 
 \ Mugeres — the latter a truly charming title — the 
 
 I Devil appears under conditions which to us are 
 
 j simply ludicrous : as a crocodile stranded upon a 
 
 i rock and vainly snapping his jaws as his Christian 
 
 I prey is borne up to heaven. Or again, take that 
 
 V 
 
VIII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY i8i 
 
 highly curious drama, La Cisma de Inglaterra. 
 Here the chief villain of the piece, Cardinal 
 Wolsey, ends with begging his bread of the saintly 
 Catherine, while, at the fall of the curtain, Henry 
 and his daughter Mary take their seats on the throne 
 in triumph, with the head of Anne Boleyn for their 
 footstool. There are two other plays upon which 
 still stronger criticisms might be passed. These are 
 ha Devocion de la Cruz and El Medico de su Honra. 
 The former is one of the least defensible of the 
 dramatist's creations, as it is among the earliest. 
 The hero is a brigand, who has been guilty of almost 
 every conceivable crime. At last, amid genefal 
 execrations, he is hunted down and shot. But the 
 print of the Cross is discovered on his body, and 
 the curses are at once turned into adoration. His 
 remains are treated as saintly relics, he is regarded as 
 blessed with the special favour of Heaven. Could 
 anything be more revolting than this? Could 
 anything be less dramatic ^ 
 
 Against the dramatic quality of the other play, 
 El Medico, nothing is to be said. It is indeed one ^ 
 of the most dramatic — as, saving the close, it is 
 among the finest — of Calderon's tragedies.^ As has 
 already been mentioned, it is one of the many which 
 have jealousy for their theme. The hero, Don 
 
 ' Calderon's play has been said to be based on one of the same title by Lope 
 de Vega. But the assertion seems disputable. See Obras de Lapc de Vega 
 (Madrid, 1890, etc.), V. i. 456. 
 
1 82 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 Gutierre, has grounds — plausible enough, but, in fact, 
 unfounded — to suspect his wife of unfaithfulness. 
 At length he discovers her writing a letter to her 
 supposed lover, the king's brother. She swoons 
 away in terror. When she awakes, she finds a 
 letter in her hand. She opens it and reads as 
 follows : " You have but two hours to live. You 
 are a Christian. Spend them in seeking salvation 
 for your soul ; your body is doomed." The scene 
 changes. Gutierre appears at the door of the 
 house, leading a surgeon blindfold. On pain of 
 instant death, he forces the man to swear obedi- 
 ence to his commands. Then he leads him in, 
 and, through a grating, shows him a woman's 
 form stretched, apparently senseless, on a couch. 
 " You will bleed that body to death." Again the 
 surgeon hesitates, but, on peril of his life, at length 
 consents. The deed done, the surgeon is led out, 
 again blindfold, and, after a few streets have been 
 traversed, is left to find his way home as best he 
 can. After a few steps he falls into the arms of 
 the king, Don Pedro of Aragon, who is painted as 
 a Spanish Haroun al Raschid. The surgeon forth- 
 with guides him to the house of murder, which he 
 ligd been careful to mark with his bloody hand as he 
 was led out from the door. Gutierre is called forth, 
 and breaks into loud lamentations over the untimely 
 death of his beloved wife, "the fairest and chastest 
 
viii ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 183 
 
 of women." The king, divining the truth, plights 
 him on the spot to another woman, and then asks 
 him what he would do if he should ever come to 
 suspect her faith, adding the pointed question : 
 " What is the meaning of that bloody hand upon 
 your door ? " To the first question he replies : 
 " If all else failed, I Would cure her malady by 
 bleeding." To the second : " That is my mark, 
 my scutcheon ; and your Majesty knows that a 
 stain on the honour is only to be washed away by 
 blood." The lady joins with the king in applaud- 
 ing his discretion. Let us hope she liked her 
 bargain. 
 
 We pass to another characteristic of the Spanish 
 drama, and, in particular, that of Calderon — the 
 blending of tragedy with comedy. It may be noted 
 that this is one of the practices which Lope de Vega 
 is at special pains to defend, and which he considers 
 to have added much to " the variety and fidelity " of 
 his country's drama. He is, however, careful to add 
 that the comic action of a tragedy ought not to be in 
 the nature of an " episode " ; that it ought to be 
 furnished by characters who play an integral part in 
 the general action of the piece. With this condition 
 Calderon invariably complies. And this serves to 
 distinguish his method from such plays as Middle- 
 ton's Changeling. His plan is that the comic 
 element is supplied by the attendants of those who 
 
184 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 sustain the tragic action of the drama ; and their 
 actions or comments generally take the form of a 
 /burlesque, or parody, on the serious action of the 
 play. An illustration may be taken from El Magico 
 Prodigioso. The heroine of the play, Justina, is beset 
 by lovers, of whom two, Cipriano and another, are 
 the most importunate. She rejects them both. Her 
 servant is immediately beset by their servants. She 
 accepts them both. " But, my dear girl, won't this 
 be rather awkward.?" "Not at all. I'll take the 
 two of you — alternative " (in good scholastic Latin). 
 " What does that mean ? " " Oh, every other day ; 
 you on Monday, him on Tuesday." The bargain is 
 struck. But after a day or two Cipriano's servant is 
 called off — unfortunately, on his day — to aid in his 
 master's unlawful studies. He returns on the same 
 day in the next year, to find his rival in possession. 
 " Hold hard ! it's my day." " Not at all. It was 
 your day this day last year ; there are 365 days'nn 
 the year — an odd number ; therefore it's my day this 
 year. Don't you see .? " " Ah, my good friend, 
 you've forgotten that it's leap year — an even number. 
 So it's my day. Don't you see .? " This is excellent 
 fooling ; and, when all is said and done, it is, I 
 think, perfectly legitimate in a tragedy. As Lope 
 pleaded, it gives "variety and nature," if it does 
 nothing else. And I cannot believe that it interferes 
 seriously with the tragic effect of the whole. On the 
 
vi„ ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 185 
 
 other hand, it cannot be said to enhance that effect, 
 as the parallel scenes in Shakespeare enhance the 
 tragic effect of Macbeth and Hamlet and King Lear. 
 And for that reason, neither Lope nor Calderon can 
 claim to have gained what the highest genius alone 
 had the power to gain from that which, by England 
 as well as by Spain, was accepted in the first instance 
 simply as a tradition of the national stage. 
 
 But there are qualities in Calderon still deeper, 
 and still more characteristic, than those on which we 
 have hitherto dwelt. These are his tragic pathos and. 
 his lyric inspiration, two qualities in which he takes I 
 rank among the greatest masters, and which make 
 him, as they made Shakespeare, not only a great 
 dramatist, but a great dramatic poet. To Illustrate 
 the former we may take El Pintor de su Deshonra, 
 one of the most pathetic tragedies ever written, 
 rehearsing its plot as succinctly — and unfortunately, 
 as-taldly — as we may. 
 
 Serafina, a lady of Naples, has loved Alvaro and 
 secretly betrothed herself to him. He, however, 
 suddenly disappears, and she, with her father's con- 
 sent, is wooed by Don Juan, a Spanish nobleman 
 many years older than herself, and widely known for 
 his genius as a painter. Faithful to Alvaro, she long 
 refuses him. But at length news is brought of 
 Alvaro's death, and she reluctantly consents to be 
 Juan's wife. The play opens with the morning of 
 
1 86 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 their marriage. No sooner are they man and wife 
 than Alvaro returns and, finding Serafina alone, 
 passionately urges her to accept him as her lover. 
 She firmly refuses, admitting her love, but swearing 
 that she will never forget her duty to her husband. 
 The next moment Juan enters and takes ship with 
 his bride for Barcelona. So ends the first act. 
 
 The second opens, a few weeks or months later, in 
 Juan's studio at Barcelona. He is painting Serafina's 
 portrait. But, for the first time in his experience, 
 his cunning fails him and the brush drops from his 
 hand. In words of exquisite tenderness, he tells her 
 why this is. Till now, he has always been inspired 
 by an ideal more beautiful than the form he strove 
 to render. Now the ideal itself has taken flesh 
 and blood in his model, and his art is powerless 
 to embody it. Discouraged by the failure, he goes 
 out ; and Alvaro at once enters, disguised as a 
 mariner. Once more, he implores her to betray 
 her husband. Once more she sternly repulses him. 
 Juan shortly returns and begs her to take part with 
 him in the rejoicings of the carnival. Full of fore- 
 bodings, she suffers herself to be led to the public 
 square. There Alvaro again presents himself, 
 masked in a fresh disguise, and offers to dance 
 with her. She hesitates ; but, at her husband's 
 bidding, accepts. They dance a few steps, and she 
 uses the moment peremptorily to bid him depart at 
 
VIII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 187 
 
 once. She then leaves the square with her husband 
 for the house of a friend hard by ; Alvaro lingers, 
 in despair. Suddenly a cry of fire is raised, and 
 Juan rushes in with Serafina swooning in his arms. 
 He leaves her in charge of a group of sailors, and 
 hastens back to save the others from the flames. 
 Among the sailors is Alvaro, who basely seizes the 
 chance, carries off Serafina to his ship and at once 
 sets sail. Juan returns to see the ship weighing 
 anchor and to hear that his wife is in it. He 
 plunges into the water ; but, after a pause, is 
 carried back, half drowned, from his fruitless effort. 
 
 In the last act the scene again shifts to Italy. 
 Alvaro has returned with Serafina to a lonely grange 
 near Naples. She is inconsolable at her own shame 
 and the mortal wrong done to her husband. Juan, 
 meantime, has left all and come to Naples, as the sole 
 chance of finding her. He has taken service with 
 the Prince, and been commissioned by him to paint 
 one of the halls of the palace. The fresco is now 
 completed, and he requests an audience of the Prince 
 to show him the work on which his best powers have 
 been spent. It is the story of Deianira carried off 
 by the Centaur before the eyes of Hercules ; under 
 the guise of the old fable, he has painted the history 
 of his own sorrow and shame. And, as he explains 
 the picture, the memory of his cruel wrong sweeps 
 over him, and he well-nigh betrays the secret which 
 
1 88 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 it is his chief purpose to guard. The Prince is loud 
 in praise, and, struck by a sudden thought, bids Juan 
 follow him to the grange — whither a strange chance 
 had led him that morning — in order to paint the 
 portrait of a mysterious and beautiful lady, unknown 
 to herself. Juan, his mind clouded with tragic fore- 
 bodings, orders the attendant to prepare both colours 
 and pistols. " Who knows," he whispers, " but my 
 next portrait may be painted in blood ? " Reaching 
 the grange, he is placed in a grated balcony, and 
 Serafina is brought into the adjoining room. Worn 
 out with sorrow, she falls asleep, and in her sleep is 
 recognised by her husband. "Shall he obey the 
 ruthless law of honour," he debates with himself, 
 " and avenge his wrongs on the instant, or shall he 
 wait for yet more damning proof.? " As he ques- 
 tions, Serafina starts from a dream in which she has 
 seen herself murdered by her husband. At her cries, 
 Alvaro rushes in to render help. And Juan, his 
 doubts now swept to the winds, discharges both 
 pistols through the bars. He had painted the 
 story of his own shame ; he has now painted the 
 picture out with blood. 
 
 The pathos of the original is indescribable ; and 
 at the close it passes into the yet higher region of 
 tragedy. This will seem the more remarkable, when 
 we consider the essentially romantic, the adventurous, 
 character of the story. In the hands of a lesser poet 
 
vni ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 189 
 
 the interest, we can hardly be wrong in saying, would 
 infallibly have centred round the outward incidents. 
 The genius of Calderon forces us to see through 
 them, and by their aid, to the human passions and 
 the sense of tears in human things which constitute 
 the tragedy. 
 
 Even more significant is the lyric strain which 
 runs though the music of Calderon and gives the 
 dominant tone to his whole work. What has already 
 been said of Shakespeare in this connection applies, 
 perhaps in a yet higher degree, to Calderon. For 
 the lyric strain plays a still larger part with him than 
 it does with Shakespeare ; and, as with Shakespeare, 
 it takes the double shape of passion and reflection. 
 It is well to quote a few passages by way of illustra- 
 tion. The first shall be taken from one of the two 
 crucial scenes of Amar despues de la Muerte ; the 
 scene in which Tuzani holds his dead bride in his 
 arms and swears to take vengeance on the 
 murderer : — 
 
 Ye heavens which look down upon my woes, ye 
 mountains who bear witness to my suffering, ye winds who 
 hearken to my sorrows, ye flames who see my anguish, how 
 could ye all conspire that the purest of all lights should be 
 quenched, the fairest of all flowers be withered, the sweetest 
 of all breaths should feil ? Ye men who know love's secret, 
 oh, tell me in this agony ! oh, counsel me in this trial ! 
 What should the lover do who, coming to greet his lady on 
 the night which is to crown the love of years, finds her 
 
I90 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 bathed in her own blood, that white flesh dabbled with 
 crimson, that gold tried seven times in the furnace of 
 affliction ? What should the doomed man do who, seeking 
 his bridal bed, found it a tomb where the fairest form that 
 God ever shaped in His own image lay a corpse within his 
 arms ? But no, answer me not. Give me no counsel. 
 For if, in such a fate, man finds no prompting in his sorrow, 
 what help can counsel give ? Ye rocks of Alpujarra, thou 
 scene of a deed the most cowardly, of a victory the most 
 shameful, of a glory the most infamous that hath ever been 
 achieved, would that never the peaks of thy mountains, 
 would that never the depths of thy valleys had gazed upon a 
 beauty so ill-starred ! But what serves it to lament, if my 
 laments are whistled down the wind ? . . . . Since, then, 
 this beauty hath wasted, since this flower, this gracious rose, 
 is plucked — a marvel in life, a marvel still in death — here I 
 swear, I take a lover's oath, that I will have vengeance for 
 her death ; and since ... the drum of the Spaniard is now 
 scarce heard and his hosts are withdrawn, I will follow upon 
 their track, and I will pick the murderer from their 
 thousands, and I will avenge, if not her death, at least the 
 pangs of my own heart ; that so the flames which behold it 
 and the winds which hear it and the world which knows it 
 and the doom which decrees it and the Heaven which grants 
 it ; that so man and beast and fish and bird, the sun, the 
 moon, the stars, the flowers — ^that water, earth and air and 
 fire may see and understand, may know and blaze abroad 
 that in an Arab breast and in an Arab heart Love reigns 
 triumphant over Death, and Death himself may never boast 
 his power to part two constant lovers. 
 
 Here surely, if anywhere, we have passion in 
 spate ; a torrent of lava which sweeps everything 
 before it. Even through the baldness of a rough 
 version the irresistible force of it can hardly fail to 
 
VII. ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 191 
 
 strike us ; nor the breathless speed with which itf 
 hurries us along ; nor the magnificent ease with which i 
 the poet's inspiration leaps out in one unbroken 
 blaze of gorgeous imagery. 
 
 The two other passages shall be taken from 
 La Vida es Sueito {Life is a Dream). A few words 
 of preface will put us in possession of the plot. At 
 the bidding of the astrologers, the King of Poland 
 has cast his son, Segismundo, into a dungeon, where, 
 when the play opens, he lies laden with fetters. 
 Soon after, his father's caprice changing, he is 
 released and brought to the palace. There he bears 
 himself as might have been expected ; he has been 
 treated like a brute, and like a brute he behaves. 
 At the king's order he is cast back hastily into 
 prison. The former of our two passages belongs to 
 the scene of his brief release. Meeting the heroine, 
 Rosaura, he is deeply struck with her beauty and asks 
 her name. She, concealing the truth, replies that she 
 serves the Princess Estrella (the Star). Segismundo 
 breaks out in indignant protest : — 
 
 In the realm of the fragrance of flowers 
 
 I have seen the Rose 
 Crowned queen of the emerald bowers, 
 
 Queen of all that blows. 
 
 'Mid the jewelled hosts deep hidden 
 
 In the wromb of earth 
 I have seen the Diamond bidden 
 
 Reign by right of birth. 
 
192 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 In the dazzling spaces of even, 
 
 When the sky is bare, 
 I have seen on the throne of heaven 
 
 The Evening Star. 
 
 'Mid the seven spheres I have noted 
 
 The Sun bear sway. 
 To the rule of the restless promoted, 
 
 The Lord of day. 
 
 How then, if in all things the fairest 
 
 Is worshipped of all. 
 How beseems it that thou not sharest 
 
 The dues to thy peers that fall ? 
 
 The due of the Gem that is meetest. 
 
 Of the Star that glows. 
 The due of the brightest, the sweetest. 
 
 Of the Sun and the Rose ? 
 
 This will perhaps waken an echo of another poem, 
 the famous lines of Heine : — 
 
 The rose and the lily and the sun and the dove, 
 I loved them all once with a rapture of love. 
 — I love them no more. I love now all alone 
 The pure, the ethereal, the fairy, the one ; 
 Who, herself the sole fount of all love. 
 Is rose and lily and sun and dove. 
 
 To an English ear the simpler strain of the 
 German may come home with yet greater force than 
 the jewelled splendour of the Spaniard. But there is 
 room for both. 
 
 Our last instance is drawn from a later scene of 
 the same play, the scene which follows Segismundo's 
 return to the dungeon. The faithful old courtier, 
 
VIII ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 193 
 
 Clotaldo, visits him there and strives to persuade 
 him that his brief hour of light and liberty was no 
 more than a dream. This is his reply : — 
 
 'Tis true ; then let us cast away 
 
 Ambition's feverish, mad display. 
 
 And dream in sooth, while dream we may. 
 
 For in this world of stress and strife 
 
 The dream, the only dream, is life ; 
 
 And he who lives, 'tis proved too well. 
 
 Dreams till he wakes at fate's loud knell. 
 
 Dreameth the king upon his throne, 
 
 A phantom, to himself unknown ; 
 
 And all the praise he seeks and finds 
 
 He writes upon the fleeting winds. 
 
 Till death alas ! turn all to dust. 
 
 How shall he then his kingship trust 
 
 — A dream that's broken at a breath 
 
 And wakens to the dream of death ? 
 
 Dreameth the rich amid his store. 
 
 Heaping up sorrows evermore ; 
 
 Dreameth the needy in his dearth, 
 
 Dreameth the thrall who spurns his birth, 
 
 Dreameth the proud who toils for fame, 
 
 Dreameth the foe who works him shame ; 
 
 All, all men dream, though no man knows it ; 
 
 So comes man's hour of life, so goes it. 
 
 / dream these fetters bind me here ; 
 
 I dreamt that throne was mine — ah, where ? 
 
 The flattering vision melts in air. 
 
 What then is life ? A frenzied fit, 
 
 A trance that mocks man's puny wit, 
 
 A mist, where flickering phantoms gleam, 
 
 Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
 
 — All but the shadow of a dream.i 
 
 ' It will be observed that the last two lines of this translation are taken from 
 the close of Shelley's Sensitive Plant. I believe, however, that I am only 
 
 O 
 
194 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 Once again, we are reminded of another poet, of 
 Shakespeare's 
 
 We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
 And once again, all we can say is, there is room 
 for both ; for the inexhaustible imagery of Calderon, 
 no less than for the stern simplicity of Shakespeare. 
 In each alike the spirit of brooding reflection has 
 taken flight in a form which, lyric as it is, is none the 
 less essentially dramatic. 
 
 After Calderon, a great blight fell upon the 
 Spanish drama, as it did also upon that of England. 
 For a time the classical model was imposed ; and 
 all that was vital withered beneath its heavy hand. 
 When, towards the close of the next century, a 
 brighter day began to dawn, it was to Calderon that 
 the romantic revival looked for inspiration. In this 
 movement La Huerta, himself a dramatist of some 
 power, led the way ; and, as was fitting, a collection 
 
 restoring to Calderon his own. For I have little doubt that Shelley, consciously 
 or unconsciously, was adapting from the passage in the text. We know, from 
 Mrs. Shelley and other witnesses, that he had the greatest admiration for 
 Calderon (not, 1 imagine, as his wife says, for the autos, but for the comedias)^ 
 and in at least one other passage, the Song of the Earth at the close of 
 Prometieus, there is an undoubted translation of a phrase from this very play : — 
 
 As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze, 
 The unquiet republic of the maze 
 Of planets. 
 
 " The unquiet republic of the planets " is the literal rendering of some words 
 in the last stanza but two of the lyric quoted above. Shelley's translation of 
 scenes from El Magico will be in the memory of all. 
 
vm ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 195 
 
 of Spanish dramas, largely drawn from Calderon, was 
 the chief counter in the game. To this collection 
 La Huerta prefixed a preface, La Escena Hespanola 
 defendida, in which he vigorously turned the tables 
 upon his classical opponents. One of them, the 
 editor of Le The&tre fran(ais, had said : " The plays 
 of Racine are worth those of all the dramatists ot 
 other nations put together." " Not so," replies La 
 Huerta, "it would be more true to say that the 
 plays of Calderon are worth all those of France, Italy, 
 and England put together." Such disputes are 
 childish, though it is easy to understand the irritation 
 .of the zealous Spaniard. Once more, we are driven 
 to say there is room for both ; for the majestic 
 tenderness, the concentrated passion, of Racine, no 
 less than for the infinite variety, the poignant pathos, 
 the profound reflection, the lyric rapture of Calderon 
 and Shakespeare. 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
 romantic tragedy : historical drama : 
 Goethe's faust 
 
 Again we leap over a hundred years, and find 
 ourselves in the thick of what is known as the 
 Romantic Revival (c. 1 770-1 840). In the interval, 
 it need hardly be said, the classical yoke had estab- 
 lished itself over the whole of Europe, and in no 
 field more completely than in the drama. The spirit 
 of France had triumphed not only in Italy, whence 
 indeed it had sprung in the first instance, but in 
 Germany, England, and Spain. To break the force 
 of that spirit, to liberate those countries where it had 
 always been an alien and an invader, to shake it even 
 in the land of its birth, was the work of the close of 
 the eighteenth century and the beginning of the 
 nineteenth. The classical rules were everywhere 
 questioned ; in every direction bold experiments were 
 made. A new spirit, a new imaginative force, was 
 
 poured into the literature of Europe. And the result 
 
 ig6 
 
LBCT. IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 197 
 
 was such an awakening as had not been known since 
 the days of the Renaissance. 
 
 It is, in fact, nothing short of a revolution — a 
 revolution in thought, imagination, and social ideals 
 — with which we are confronted. In thought, this 
 revolution is bound up with the speculations of 
 Rousseau, Kant, and the German disciples of Kant. ^ 
 And the general effect of it was to overthrow the 
 narrow conception of reason which had prevailed 
 during the last century, to bring man once more 
 face to face with the mysteries which surround life 
 on every side, to force him once more to reckon 
 with the world which is laid open by his religious, ' 
 imaginative, and emotional experience. In the field 
 of imagination, the same movement gave us the 
 work of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Byron and^ 
 Shelley, of Chateaubriand and Hugo, of Goethe and 
 Schiller. In the field of action, it resulted in that - 
 upheaval which has changed the face of Western 
 Europe, and which we sum up under the name of 
 the French Revolution. 
 
 The literature of the period reflects, as has been 
 said, the unrest of this great revolution in thought 
 and action. There is not one of the leading writers 
 who is not, in some way or other, afl?ected by it. 
 Even those who, like Burke, abhorred its working 
 in the realm of action, accepted it with a whole 
 heart in the field of thought and imagination. And 
 
198 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 on the poets it worked with peculiar intensity. One 
 and all — Wordsworth no less than Shelley, Goethe 
 no less than Schiller — drew their inspiration from its 
 spell. One and all chafe against the shackles of the 
 old order ; they look forward, with eager aspiration, 
 to the new order which, as faith bade them hope, 
 was to shape itself from the ruins. 
 
 In the drama, as in other fields, the age was 
 fertile in experiments. And this is true above all 
 of Germany, with which we are concerned in the 
 present lecture. The drama of reflection, the drama 
 of pure fantasy, the revival of the classical drama, 
 the creation of the historical drama — all these were 
 among the ambitions — can it also be said that they 
 were among the achievements? — of the time. The 
 last is of particular importance. It was here that 
 — with one exception, to be noticed directly — the 
 attempt came nearest to achievement ; here that it was 
 most conspicuously original ; here that it was most 
 persistently renewed. The historical drama remained 
 for two generations the chief battle-ground of the 
 romantic army ; and the experiment of Goethe and 
 Schiller was repeated by Byron, Manzoni, and Hugo. 
 The historical drama was, moreover, an entirely new 
 creation. Before this period, it can hardly, except in 
 name, be said to have existed. The historical plays 
 of Shakespeare present the nearest approach to it ; 
 but they retain so much of the mere chronicle — 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 199 
 
 they are, moreover, in some cases so purely individual 
 and personal in their interest — as to offer no fair 
 analogy to that which was now attempted. And the 
 same statement, with marked qualifications, would 
 probably hold good even of the Roman tragedies 
 of Shakespeare and Jonson. We are entitled to say, 
 therefore, that the historical play, as essayed by 
 Goethe and Schiller, opens a new horizon, that it 
 forms a wholly new departure, in the history ot 
 the drama. 
 
 In what, then, does the originality of the historical 
 drama consist ? In what sense can it be said to offer a 
 type of play distinct in kind from either classical 
 or Elizabethan tragedy ? It can only, I think, claim 
 to do so if it brings the corporate, as distinct from 
 the individual, life of man upon the stage ; if in the 
 personages of the drama it embodies, more or less 
 completely, some aspect of the national, political, or 
 social conflicts of humanity. Now it is clear that 
 the difficulties of such a task are enormous, if not 
 insuperable ; that it is only too likely to end either 
 in giving us the old individualist drama under a new 
 disguise, with a certain outfit of picturesque trappings 
 and adornments ; or in presenting us with mere 
 abstractions, mere walking doctrines, destitute of 
 flesh and blood. In the former case, it ceases to be 
 the historical drama. In the latter, it cannot claim 
 to be any drama at all. The idols of the platform 
 
200 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 are well enough upon the platform. On the stage 
 they are empty and irritating phantoms.^ 
 
 From these dangers it cannot be said that the 
 dramatists of the romantic revival entirely escaped. 
 The greater number of the historical dramas pro- 
 duced during this period are historical only in name. 
 This is true of Marino Faliero ; it is true to a con- 
 siderable degree of Carmagmla ajid Adelchi ; it is 
 true in some measure even of Gstz and Wallenstein. 
 Of the opposite defect there is doubtless not so 
 much trace ; for the simple reason that the historical 
 drama, pure and simple, was seldom attempted. The 
 dramatists of the time shrank, perhaps wisely, from 
 the inherent difficulties of the task. And the one 
 drania in which the attempt is seriously made, 
 Schiller's T)on Carlos, has been charged — whether 
 justly or not, we will not ask for the moment — 
 with sinking into those political abstractions which 
 are the danger besetting this form of tragedy. 
 
 Yet, whatever the success of the endeavour, it 
 would surely be in the last degree pedantic and 
 narrow-minded to quarrel with those who were bold 
 enough to make it. Such experiments can do nothing 
 but good ; and the moment they cease to be possible, 
 
 ' An illuminating Essay on the Historical Drama (// dramma storko) will be 
 found in Mazzini, Ofere II. pp. 198-272. It is written from the point of view 
 of an ardent believer. Another brilliant exposition of the Historical Drama, as it 
 might be, is contained in the Preface to Cromwell (see, in particular, pp. 49-50, 
 67-8) ; and Cromwell itself, though manifestly crude, comes far nearer to the 
 ideal than most dramas of the iiind. 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 201 
 
 the moment they are barred out in the name of 
 artistic righteousness, we may be very sure that the 
 imaginative spirit is not far from fossilisation and 
 decay. In this particular case, moreover, there was, 
 when all abatements have been made, a considerable 
 measure of success. And that applies especially to 
 the work of Goethe and Schiller. In Egmont, indeed, 
 and in that later play where Goethe set himself to 
 embody in dramatic form the vast issues raised by 
 the French Revolution {Die natUrliche Tochter), the 
 poet can hardly be said to have outstepped the limits 
 of purely individual tragedy ; and neither of them 
 can be reckoned among his greater triumphs. But 
 in some scenes of G'dtz he must surely be admitted 
 to have dramatised with startling vividness the 
 corporate spirit of the age which he strove to 
 bring before us. And the same must be said of 
 the prologue to Schiller's Wallenstein (Das Lager). 
 There the whole temper of the traitor general's 
 camp, .the spirit of the army of fortune swept 
 together from all the ends of the earth, is painted 
 to the life. If we except the corresponding scenes 
 in Henry V. — scenes which, still more life-like, are 
 painted on a far smaller scale and a far more com- 
 passable canvas — there is nothing like it in dramatic 
 literature. 
 
 A still more striking example, as I believe, is to 
 be found in Schiller's Carlos. The outward incidents 
 
202 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 of this are drawn from that grim chapter of Spanish 
 history which relates the murder of his eldest son 
 by Philip II. The same theme had been taken a 
 few years earlier by Alfieri in his first tragedy, 
 Filippo. Both dramatists drew their material from 
 the same source, the romance of Saint Real. But 
 while the Italian confines himself to the purely 
 personal side of the subject, the love of Carlos for 
 his father's wife, once his own affianced bride, Eliza- 
 beth of Valois, the German widens his canvas ; his 
 theme is the struggle between the old faith and the 
 new, between the forces of freedom on the one side 
 and those of tyranny and repression upon the other. 
 It has been urged that Posa, the prophet of the new 
 order, is a pure ^abstraction, the lifeless embodiment 
 of Schiller's own views, an " enthusiast of humanity." 
 I do not agree with this opinion, though I may easily 
 be mistaken. To me it seems that we have here not 
 only a great work of art, but an entirely original 
 form of drama ; the one instance in which the 
 historical drama, as I conceive it might be in the 
 hands of a man of genius, is consistently carried 
 out ; in which the corporate life of man is embodied 
 in real figures of flesh and blood ; in which we are 
 brought face to face with the invisible forces, which 
 rule that collective life, disputing for the possession 
 of the individual soul. 
 
 In the same play we find a shining example of 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 203 
 
 another quality which, as we have already seen, is 
 among the most marked characteristics of the 
 romantic drama, understood in the wider sense, as 
 a general name for that form of drama which shaped 
 itself in direct opposition to the classical model. 
 This is the power of presenting character not as 
 a fixed quantity, but in growth. We have noticed 
 this already in Shakespeare ; we have noticed it, 
 under a more modest form, in Calderon. And 
 here, in Don Carlos, we have the same thing boldly 
 attempted and, as I think, successfully carried out. 
 The hero is one man at the beginning of the play, 
 quite another at the end. Under the influence of 
 a stronger will and more ardent temperament than 
 his own, the timid and despairing lover of the 
 opening scenes becomes the enthusiast, now dreamy, 
 now fired by faith and passion, of the close. This, 
 I should say, is significant in itself ; it is still more 
 significant from its bearing on the general course of 
 the development of the drama. We have seen it 
 before ; we shall see it again in connection with the 
 dramatic work of Browning, not to mention a yet 
 more notable instance of which I am to speak 
 directly. I am quite prepared to admit that, in 
 this respect as in others, Carlos shows signs of 
 immaturity and crudeness. In performance, I think 
 it great; but I consider that it is still greater in 
 promise. And that promise, I should say, was 
 
204 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 never adequately fulfilled. More than ten years 
 separated Carlos from the author's next drama, 
 Wallenstein. And in the interval he had fallen 
 under an influence which to him was an alien 
 influence, the influence of Goethe. That and the 
 later plays, of which Die Braut von Messina is 
 perhaps the finest, are avowedly an approximation 
 to the classical model ; and if they have a magni- 
 ficence and an artistic finish, they have also a stiffness 
 and a remoteness, which are not to be found in 
 Carlos. And for myself, I would gladly barter the 
 magnificence of Wallenstein and the gorgeousness of 
 Die Braut, not to speak of the rhetoric of Tell and Die 
 Jungfrau von Orleans, for the historical genius and 
 the power of penetrating character, above all character 
 in growth, which I find in Carlos. 
 
 From the greatest of Schiller's plays we naturally 
 pass to that which holds the same rank in the plays 
 of Goethe. You will understand that I speak of 
 Faust. And here let me repeat a warning which I 
 have often given, and might have given still more 
 often than I have. Let me remind you that our 
 subject in this course is strictly limited, and that the 
 types we select have to be treated rather as landmarks 
 in the general growth and development of the drama 
 than on their own intrinsic merits. I trust, therefore, 
 you will not suppose that I am about to attempt 
 a complete account of this celebrated poem. 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 205 
 
 Among the innumerable things that might be 
 said about Goethe's masterpiece, we must content 
 ourselves with picking out two. And it will be 
 seen that each of these has the closest bearing upon 
 what has been said of Schiller and other dramatists 
 of the period. The first is that in Faust we have a 
 supreme instance of that presentation of character in 
 growth which we have already seen to be character- 
 istic of the romantic drama. The second is that 
 in Faust we have also a supreme instance of that 
 symbolic method, that endeavour to embody the 
 corporate or common life of humanity in an in- 
 dividual which, under a strangely different form, 
 we have seen to lie at the root of the historical 
 drama. Let us take each of these singly. 
 
 Every reader of Faust must have noticed the 
 former peculiarity. In the course of the play — 
 we are, of course, bound to treat the two parts as 
 forming, in the conception of the dramatist, an 
 organic whole — the character of the hero undergoes 
 a complete transformation. A self-absorbed thinker 
 at the beginning, brought to despair by the im- 
 potence of human reason, by the sense that " nothing 
 worthy proving can be proven," he first throws 
 himself blindly into a reckless and selfish passion, 
 then into the stir and stress of action, and finally 
 finds peace in ceaseless toil for the good of others. 
 If this is not change of character, we should clearly 
 
2o6 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 be at a loss to say what is. The thing is so marked 
 that some critics have denied the presence of any 
 character at all. It is, they have urged, simply a 
 collection of scenes strung together at random, 
 without any coherent conception, without any unity 
 to bind them into a dramatic whole. There is a 
 sense in which this is true. And it is manifest 
 that neither the drama, nor the character of the 
 hero, either has or is intended to have the same 
 unity that we find in Hamlet or in Lear. Of that 
 more is to be said directly. It is enough here to 
 urge that such a view is sometimes presented in a 
 most distorted and untenable form ; to assert that, 
 both in the character and in the drama, there is 
 a unity, though it is not of that closely knit kind 
 that we have in the classical drama, or even, with 
 obvious relaxations, in the tragedies of Shakespeare, 
 The criticism, however, may be made to serve our 
 immediate purpose. For it shows, what is not to 
 be disputed, that the character of Faust, during an 
 " action " which covers a lifetime, undergoes greater 
 changes than would have been possible in dramas 
 which carry their action at most over a few years 
 and whose duration is probably to be reckoned by 
 months, if not by weeks. 
 
 It is obvious that character could not have been 
 handled in this way had not the whole structure 
 of the drama been proportionably loosened. And 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 207 
 
 this is one of the first things to strike us in reading 
 Faust. The structure of Shakespeare's tragedies, as 
 we have seen, is infinitely looser than that of the 
 classical masterpieces. But they are closeness itself 
 as compared with Faust. Throughout the second 
 part, in particular, act follows upon act with little 
 apparent connection ; and the task of filling in the 
 intervals is left to the imagination of the reader 
 or spectator. The same thing, though doubtless to 
 a less degree, is true of the first part also. This, 
 no doubt, may conceivably be due to the circum- 
 stances under which the poem was written ; and, 
 so far, it may point to a real defect in the vital 
 unity of the whole. Certain it is that the 
 composition of Faust covers nearly the whole 
 lifetime of the poet ; that it was begun when he 
 was little more than twenty, and was not finished '- 
 — " if indeed," to use his own words, " it can 
 even now be said to be finished " — until a few 
 months before his death, at the age of eighty-two. 
 But the arguments against this rather disparaging 
 explanation would seem to be exceedingly strong. 
 For on the one hand the objection applies with 
 not very much less force to the first part than 
 to the second. And yet the truly vital scenes of 
 the first part, disconnected as they often are in 
 appearance, were almost certainly composed at what 
 may fairly be called a single jet, during the few 
 
2o8 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 years which immediately preceded the poet's settle- 
 ment at Weimar (I'JTS) 5 '^^hile the scenes which 
 were added later — for instance, the attempted 
 self-destruction of Faust, the compact with 
 Mephistopheles, and even the great monologue, 
 Erhabener Geist, have often a more obvious con- 
 nection with the rest than several of those which 
 belong to the first draft of the poem. And, on 
 the other hand, small as the outward bond, the 
 bond of incident and action, between the scenes 
 may be, the inward connection, the connection of 
 thought, of sentiment, of natural progress in the 
 character of the hero, is never wanting. On the 
 contrary, to a careful reader it is always abundantly 
 plain. From all this I should conclude that the 
 I breaks in the outward action, the general loosening 
 I of the structure, were in the deliberate intention 
 i of the dramatist ; and that he adopted this plan 
 ■as the only means by which he could find scope 
 for his real subject, for what Browning calls " the 
 incidents in the development of a soul " in its long 
 pilgrimage — if it be lawful to adapt the words 
 of the Prologue — " from earth, through hell, to 
 heaven." 
 
 What is certain is that the one bond which 
 holds the drama together is the character of the 
 hero ; a character in endless growth, we may almost 
 say, from the cradle to the grave. To throw light 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 209 
 
 on this character, all the rest is cast into the shade. 
 By the side of this character, all the others, with 
 one exception, are mere sketches and outlines. 
 And even that exception, from one point of view, 
 is more in appearance than reality. The character 
 of Mephistopheles, masterly as it is and a work of 
 genius if ever any was, is in truth no more than 
 an echo and reflection of one side of Faust himself. '^ 
 He merely puts into words — or it may be, deeds — 
 the barren doubt, the reckless selfishness which 
 whispers in the heart of the man whom he hopes 
 to make his tool. Hence the amazing reality — it 
 would not be too much to say, the extraordinary 
 humanity — of Goethe's conception ; the very 
 qualities, that is, which distinguish it from the 
 pathetic gloom of Marlowe's and the defiant heroism 
 of Milton's. Thus even Mephistopheles, with all 
 his independence and all his daring originality, is 
 in fact subordinate to Faust ; to use the phrase of 
 Aristotle, his character is " carried in the train " 
 of Faust. And the same, in a still more obvious 
 sense, is true of the other figures in the drama. It is 
 true even of the pure and noble figure of Gretchen. 
 
 The other point, which cannot fail to strike us 
 at the first glance, is the symbolic method which 
 Goethe has here adopted. The character of Faust 
 is the embodiment of Goethe's own spiritual 
 experience ; of the experience, we may rather say. 
 
2IO TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 of the whole age which he represented, of which 
 his own life and reflection and ideals are the ripest 
 fruit. Here again he was guided by a perfecdy 
 sound instinct. The old Christian legend, the 
 agony of the soul in its thirst for the unattainable, 
 naturally lent itself to a symbolic treatment. It 
 was only by such treatment that its full significance 
 could be brought out. Even in its more primitive 
 forms — in Rutebceuf, for instance, and in Marlowe 
 — something of symbolism can be traced. And 
 with the far deeper conception which hovered 
 before the imagination of Goethe, the employment 
 of symbolism, on a yet larger scale, became an 
 absolute necessity. Faust is, in truth, not so much 
 an individual as a type ; the type of a whole 
 ^ age ; the type, as far as any one imaginative 
 creation can be so, of humanity itself. The only 
 scenes in which the reader might be tempted to 
 forget this are those which paint his reckless passion 
 for Gretchen. And the common verdict has 
 stamped them, and justly stamped them, as the 
 finest scenes in the whole drama. But even these 
 would lose half their force if torn from the place 
 they hold in the economy of the whole. And in 
 all else, not only in that 'which follows but 
 in that which goes before, the symbolic design is 
 unmistakable. It is not the tragedy of the single 
 soul, of Hamlet or Othello ; it is the doubts, the 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 211 
 
 cravings, the aspirations, the passions, the struggles 
 and achievements of mankind, of the soul of man, 
 that the dramatist sets before us. 
 
 It is this that forms the link between Faust and 
 that historical drama, of which we have already 
 spoken. In Faust, as in those rare plays which 
 can justly claim to be historical, it is the common, 
 if not the corporate, life of man that is brought 
 upon the stage. But the task of Goethe, difficult 
 though it was, is lightness itself compared with that 
 which falls on the historical dramatist. In both 
 cases alike the individual has to become a type ; 
 the character which moves before our eyes, a symbol 
 of something wider and greater that looms behind. 
 But to the historical dramatist the thing symbolised 
 is apt to remain an abstraction ; and, what is more, 
 a controversial abstraction. To Goethe it is some- 
 thing which, with all its inwardness, is liable to 
 enter into the experience of each one of us. To the 
 former it is that which, from the nature of the case, 
 can never be embodied in any individual character, 
 or any series of individual acts. For the corporate 
 life, by its very essence, can never be identified 
 with the individual. To the latter it is that 
 which, though unseen and perhaps unrealised, is 
 still present in the life of every individual, is among 
 the chief forces that govern it, and, in moments 
 of exceptional insight or exaltation, becomes the 
 
212 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 IS 
 
 only reality amid a world of shadows. It 
 the inner experience, the life of reflection, the 
 instinctive or conscious pursuit of a given ideal, 
 the desire to penetrate the mystery surrounding 
 us, the quest of unattainable beauty, the craving 
 to help our fellow-men or to leave some enduring 
 monument behind us. And all these things, though 
 they may never have been united in one single 
 soul, still exist dispersedly and by fragments in 
 thousands. What Goethe did was to gather these 
 broken lights into a single prism, to crystallise 
 these scattered capacities in a single character. And 
 in that character he reflects his own ideal of life ; 
 the faith, wrung from a life-long experience, as to 
 the steps by which man may strengthen his weakness, 
 repair his imperfection, and slowly win his way from 
 (bondage to freedom. The enterprise was perilous 
 enough. But that which the historical dramatist 
 takes upon himself is more perilous yet. 
 
 It is manifest that, by the adoption of such a 
 method, something of dramatic reality was inevitably 
 sacrificed. The character of Faust, take it from 
 beginning to end, has more sides than it is possible — 
 or, at least, easily conceivable — for any one character 
 to have. It cannot claim to be a character in the 
 sense in which we apply the term to Hamlet or 
 Othello. It is more shadowy, less coherent, less 
 humanly possible, than they. This was not to be 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 213 
 
 avoided. It is the price the dramatist had to pay 
 for widening the scope of his presentment, for 
 attempting to paint not the individual, as such, 
 but the spiritual experience of a whole age, or of 
 mankind. It is not possible that a dramatic figure 
 should be at the same time a symbol and a man 
 entirely of like passions with ourselves. Under 
 these conditions, the wonder is not that Faust has 
 so little unity and reality, but that he has so 
 much ; not that he has so few, but so many, 
 points in common with ordinary flesh and blood. 
 Throughout the whole of the first part — and in 
 many scenes of the second, among which the whole 
 of the last act must be included — the character 
 has hardly less of dramatic intensity than of symbolic 
 significance. And that will be admitted even by 
 those who realise the most clearly the full bearing 
 of the opening scenes and their apparent, but only 
 apparent, discrepancy with those that follow. 
 
 It may be asked, Why should we go behind 
 the outward letter of this drama ? What warrant 
 is there for saying that the personages and incidents 
 are designed to carry a spiritual meaning ? To 
 this there are two answers. In the first place, the 
 whole character of ths play and its very structure 
 suggest such an interj^retation. There is no 
 legitimate reason for the glaring differences between 
 it and other dramas, unless we make some such 
 
214 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 assumption. And, though difficult, it is not 
 impossible to work out, to verify, the assumption 
 in detail. And, in the second place, it may fairly 
 be said that we have the authority of Goethe 
 himself, and of those who were best in the position 
 to know Goethe's inner mind, for this interpretation. 
 In proof of this we may appeal to two records. 
 
 The first is a piece of high comedy. It is to 
 be found in the collected edition of Goethe's 
 Conversations, and is the story of a long discussion 
 between him and Professor Luden, of Jena, on the 
 subject of Faust} Luden, who must have been an 
 insufferable puppy, and who ends with informing 
 the author of the exact order in which he had 
 composed the various scenes of the Fragment,^ 
 opened the ball by pouring scorn on his student 
 friends, mostly disciples of Schelling and Wilhelm 
 Schlegel, who had sought to discover a mystical 
 meaning in Faust. They had urged that Faust 
 was " a Divina Tragedia, embodying the spirit of 
 the whole history of the world, embracing the 
 whole Ufe of humanity, past, present, and to 
 
 1 Goethe's Gej/)r2i:/(e (ed. Biedermann), T. ii. pp. 42-78 (Aug. 19, 1806). 
 
 " Roughly, it may be said that the Fragment, published in 1790, contained 
 the First Scene, down to the exit of Wagner ; the scene in Auerbach's Keller ; 
 and the whole story of Gretchen. The First Part was not published complete 
 until 1808. It has, besides numerous additions, one important alteration in the 
 order of the scenes. The scene Wald und H'ihle, which in the Fragment came 
 between the scene Am Brunnen and Gretchen's prayer to the Virgin, was placed 
 where it now stands, immediately after the scene in Martha's garden. The 
 Second Part was not published till after the poet's death, 1832. 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 215 
 
 come." Luden had proved, by line and level, that 
 this was " in flat contradiction with the whole 
 nature of tragedy" as set forth by the most 
 approved philosophers, ancient and modern, to say 
 nothing of the whole nature of history, which to 
 man is an undecipherable riddle. " Moreover, what 
 warrant has Faust to call himself the representative 
 of humanity ? where are his credentials ? and how 
 in the world can he define his relation to the 
 other personages of the drama ?" " All that is 
 very well," replied the poet, " but, after aU, it is 
 a mere string of negations, and it leads nowhere. 
 Come now, what do you make of the poem 
 yourself?" "Oh, I take it as it is. Without 
 troubling myself over the endless contradictions, 
 I take each character as it stands, and each word 
 in its simple natural sense ; and I find it all deeply 
 interesting." " Oh yes ! in that way all kinds of 
 bestialities and trivialities might have their interest ; 
 but it would be a trivial and disjointed interest. 
 Surely Faust must have a higher interest than that 
 — the idea which inspired the poet, which gives 
 unity to the whole, which Is the law governing 
 the particulars and giving each of them its signifi- 
 cance." " I don't believe that it is to be found 
 in the Fragment." " Yet men of talent and learning 
 have felt the need of seeking it. And what has 
 made them feel it ? Surely, the Fragment itself. 
 
2i6 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 There must be something in the booklet, something 
 running all through it, which points the way to the 
 central thought, the idea which comes everywhere 
 to the surface . . . You yourselt seem to attribute 
 the deep interest which Faust has aroused not to 
 the work itself, not to the force of its poetry, but 
 to a mystical something which lies behind it. The 
 reader, you seem to say, is attracted not by what 
 is actually given him, but by something which he is 
 impelled to seek and which he is never able to find." 
 After a pause the poet began to turn the tables upon 
 the Professor, poking fun at his calling — he held 
 the chair of History — and mischievously repeating 
 the anecdote of Raleigh throwing the manuscript 
 of his History on the fire as a pack of lies. It was 
 as much as to say : " You don't believe in my 
 poem ; no more do I in your subject." But all 
 this was lost on the imperturbable self-complacency 
 of the Professor, who — though he had noticed the 
 poet's eyes rolling, as well they might, during 
 the first part of the conversation — came away 
 under the belief that he had made an excellent 
 impression. Throughout, Goethe was manifestly 
 on his guard against showing his hand more than 
 he could help. Yet even so we have a tolerably 
 explicit admission of an " idea which comes every- 
 where to the surface, of a law which gives signifi- 
 cance to each of the details." 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 217 
 
 This admission is clinched by the second record, 
 which is contained in the Correspondence between 
 Goethe and Schiller. On hearing that Goethe, after 
 an interval of many years, was again busying himself 
 with Faust, Schiller wrote to him as follows : -^ — 
 " I will content myself with saying that, with all 
 its poetic individuality, Faust cannot entirely set 
 aside the claim to carry with it a symbolic meaning. 
 And that is probably your own conception. The 
 double character of man's nature, his fruitless efforts 
 to blend the divine and the material in his own 
 being — this is never lost sight of. And, as the 
 story passes, and is bound to pass, into the formless 
 and horrible, the reader is not willing to stop short 
 with the outward object, but is led on from and 
 by that object to ideas. In short, the demands 
 on Faust are at once philosophical and poetic, and, 
 turn as you will, you will find that the very nature 
 of the object forces on you a philosophical treatment 
 of the matter, and your imagination will have to 
 resign itself to the service of a philosophical idea." 
 To this Goethe replies : " Thank you for your 
 first words on the rising of Faust from the dead. 
 We shaU assuredly not dilFer in our conception 
 of the poem. But one comes to a task with quite 
 a fresh spirit when one sees one's own thoughts 
 
 ^ Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goeths, Letters 331, 332 (June 23, 
 H, 1797)- 
 
21 8 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lkct. 
 
 and intentions signalised by another mind, and your 
 sympathy is fruitful in more senses than one." 
 From a man who was so habitually shy of explaining 
 or commenting upon his own conceptions, this is 
 very strong testimony. A more complete acceptance 
 of Schiller's interpretation was hardly to be expected. 
 
 On the whole, then, we shall not be wrong in 
 concluding that Faust has, and is intended to have, 
 a symbolic meaning ; that the leading figure in the 
 drama stands for something more than his individual, 
 naked self; that, in some sense, he represents the 
 struggles of the human soul in the quest of com- 
 pleteness and of freedom. And this, as we have seen 
 and as the Professor, a reluctant witness, had the 
 grace to admit, involves an entirely new type of 
 tragic drama. 
 
 How, then, does Goethe handle the legend which 
 forms the groundwork of the whole tragedy .'' The 
 answer is, he recasts it from top to bottom. The 
 primitive and barbaric elements are thrown into the 
 background. It becomes the framework for the 
 poet's pwn most vital experience, for his reading 
 of the riddle presented by the age in which he lived. 
 The original of the story is as clay in the hands of 
 the potter. There are rejections here, additions 
 there, and a new shape and purpose given to the 
 whole. The boldest of the innovations — an innova- 
 tion, in all probability, suggested by the legendary 
 
IX ROMANTIC TRAGEDY 219 
 
 loves of Faust and Helen — is, without doubt, 
 the story of Gretchen ; and it is also, with- 
 out doubt, the highest triumph of the dramatist. 
 Nothing has done so much to win admiration for the 
 poem, and nowhere is that admiration more justly 
 placed. It gives the purely human touch, the touch 
 of passion, which is necessarily wanting to many 
 parts of the drama ; and gives it with a genius 
 which, unless we except Romeo and Juliet, has never 
 been surpassed. 
 
 But, after all, it is not in any single episode that 
 we must look for the full purpose, nor even for the 
 highest originality, of the poem. For these we must 
 look to the drama as a whole, to the genius which 
 lit up a form so beautiful with the inner light of 
 ennobling ideas. The old order — so we may con- 
 ceive the imagination of the poet as working in 
 its glorious dawn — is breaking to pieces before our 
 eyes, and the individual soul, left without support 
 from others, is driven in upon itself. Man seeks in 
 his own reason a strength which it is powerless to 
 give ; until, baffled again and again, he is convinced 
 of the vanity of all knowledge and the futility of all 
 endeavours to pierce behind the veil. Torn by 
 despair, he takes refuge in blind activity, in a reck- 
 less passion which sweeps himself and all that is 
 dearest to him into the abyss. Yet in his very 
 defeat he has found a strength unknown to him 
 
220 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. ix 
 
 before. He has learnt that man does not stand 
 alone, that his lot is inseparably linked with that of 
 his fellows. He has learnt the healing power of 
 action and of renunciation. So strengthened, he 
 throws himself once more on the quest of light 
 and freedom. He braves the terrors of death and 
 of hell itself in the search for ideal beauty — a beauty 
 which the eye of man is powerless to conceive — only 
 to find, as he seizes it, that it fades, like a phantom, 
 in his grasp. Yet once again, he starts upon the 
 old quest, and hurls himself wildly into toil for the 
 service of his fellows. Here, after all his wander- 
 ings, he finds something of peace. Here, despite a 
 sharp return of the old reckless self at the very close, 
 he finds freedom and atonement — here, and in the 
 ennobling memory of a great passion, his passion 
 for the woman he had brought to destruction, and 
 who is the first to welcome him among the spirits of 
 the blessed. And the angelic chorus with which the 
 drama closes recalls, so far as such things may, the 
 general purport of the whole : — 
 
 Yonder fleeting world 
 
 Is but a symbol ; 
 
 That which was incomplete 
 
 Here grows to ripeness ; 
 
 That which no tongue can tell 
 
 Here is brought to pass ; 
 
 The eternal spell of womanhood 
 
 Draws us above. 
 
LECTURE X 
 
 fusion of classical and romantic tragedy : 
 Goethe's iphigenie : dramas of victor hugo 
 
 During the generation of Goethe and that which 
 followed, the general flow of the tide was un- 
 doubtedly away from classical ideals and towards 
 those which we loosely distinguish as romantic. 
 Yet at the very height of the romantic revival there 
 was, no less undoubtedly, a return upon the classi- 
 cal ideals ; not indeed upon the largely spurious 
 classicism of Boileau and the Augustans, but upon 
 the true classicism — the simplicity, the calm, the fresh- 
 ness — of Homer and the Greeks. This reversion 
 to Hellenism plays a large, perhaps a determining, 
 part in the later work of Goethe and Schiller. It 
 makes itself felt also on the corresponding movement , 
 of French and English poetry ; on the work of 
 Collins, and, at a later period, of Shelley and Keats 
 in the one country ; on that of Andr6 Ch6nier, and 
 perhaps even of Chateaubriand, in the other. There 
 is a sense in which we may trace its influence on the 
 
222 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 fiery genius of Alfieri. His true kinship is rather 
 with the Greek dramatists than with Racine ; rather 
 with Hellenism, or certain aspects ot Hellenism, than 
 with the Augustans. 
 
 How far this tendency was due to a reaction 
 against romantic workings, how far it represents 
 those workings under another, and a very special 
 form, it is often difficult to say. And this is not 
 the place to enter on the question. We are here 
 concerned not with causes, but with results ; not 
 with " streams of tendency," but with certain specific 
 types of drama to which they gave rise. In particu- 
 lar, I shall call your attention to that drama of 
 Goethe, the Ifhigenie, which, amid glaring differ- 
 ences of form and treatment, approaches most nearly 
 in genius to Faust. I shall speak also — though the 
 result was obviously reached by a wholly different 
 path — of the effort made by the great poet of the 
 next generation to overthrow the classical tradition 
 in its stronghold, to revolutionise the tragic drama of 
 France. I refer, I need hardly say, to the dramas ot 
 Victor Hugo. Of the two poets, the one approaches 
 classicism from the side of romance ; the other re- 
 verses the process, and approaches romance from 
 the side of classicism. It is to the former only that 
 the considerations just brought forward immediately 
 apply. But a natural and significant contrast is 
 afforded by the latter. 
 
X GOETHE'S IPHIGENIE 223 
 
 Iphigenie, though by far the greatest, Is by no 
 means the only monument of this phase in the 
 history of the German drama. Much might be 
 said, for instance, of Schiller's classical tragedy, Die 
 Braut von Messina, which in respect of form — 
 the retention, for example, of the chorus — adheres 
 much more closely to the Athenian model than 
 anything produced by Goethe. But, while Die 
 Braut von Messina is an interesting experiment, the 
 Iphigenie is a supreme creation. Of all Goethe's 
 writings, if we except some of the lyrics, it is the 
 most perfect in form ; of all, if we except Faust, 
 it is the deepest and most moving. What concerns 
 us here, however, is that it stands as a type entirely 
 by itself. In one respect, no doubt, it has close 
 affinities with the play of Schiller to which we have 
 just alluded. Like that, it represents a fusion of the 
 classical form with the romantic spirit. Not only, 
 however, is each of these elements raised to a higher 
 power in the play of Goethe, but the fusion between 
 them is far more complete. While in SchiUer's 
 tragedy they meet but refuse to blend, in Goethe's 
 drama they form an inseparable growth, an absolutely 
 harmonious and organic unity. This Is the more 
 remarkable when we remember the source from 
 which Goethe drew his material. 
 
 The framework of the play is taken direct from^ 
 the Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides. But as Goethe 
 
224 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 had dealt with the medieval matter in Faust, so he 
 deals with the classical matter in Iphigenie. He 
 retains the classical form ; or rather, he raises it to a 
 purity and severity of which there is small trace in 
 his immediate model. But the matter he recasts 
 from top to bottom ; he deals with it not as an 
 antiquarian, but as a poet and a creator. To speak 
 with perfect plainness, he literally turns it inside out. 
 What m Euripides takes the foremost place', the out- 
 ward incidents and circumstances; with him fades into 
 the background. What in Euripides is of little or 
 no moment — the inward conflict, the strife of motive 
 and emotion, the struggle in the heart of the 
 heroine between desire and duty — to Goethe becomes 
 the dominant theme of the whole drama ; that on 
 which the Imagination is centred from beginning to 
 end. And the conflict on which our attention is 
 thus fastened is among the deepest, the most inward, 
 which it is possible to conceive. The last word, 
 throughout the whole play, is said not by passion, nor 
 by desire nor by reason, but by instinct. Instinct, 
 the dim instinct of a woman's heart — that is the true 
 hero of the piece. Nothing could well be more 
 opposed to the spirit of the ancients ; nothing could 
 be more essentially modern — in the widest sense, more 
 romantic — than this. Yet it is precisely this which 
 Goethe has chosen to embody in a purely classical 
 form. And the calm to which the heroine attains by 
 
X GOETHE'S IPHIGENIE 225 
 
 following the promptings of instinct, when both 
 reason and interest seem to be dead against them, 
 finds a fitter expression in the noble severity of the 
 classical model than it could easily have found in the 
 more impassioned utterance of romance. It is there 
 that the genius of the poet found the meeting-point 
 between his form and his matter. Or rather, it 
 was the calm which breathed from his conception of 
 the matter that took shape, naturally and instinct- 
 ively, in the form best adapted to express it. 
 
 The classical form, it need hardly be said, pre- 
 sented at least one acute difficulty ; and with this 
 difficulty Goethe was not slow to grapple. Is it 
 possible for the modern stage to reproduce the 
 Chorus ? or failing that, can anything be found 
 which may fairly be regarded as an equivalent for 
 it.? Schiller, as we have seen, accepted the former 
 alternative, and he can hardly be said to have 
 succeeded. Goethe made a bold attempt in the 
 direction of the latter. The Chorus itself, his 
 instinct rightly told him, was inadmissible. But 
 the lyric element, which may be described as the 
 basis of the Chorus, might find a natural place, even 
 under the conditions of the modern stage. In no 
 fewer than four scenes of Iphigenie do such lyrical , 
 passages — lyrical not only in substance but in form 
 — occur ; and in each case the experiment is amply 
 justified by the result. The prayer of Iphigenie at 
 
226 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 the end of the first act, the vision of Orestes near 
 the end of the third, the praise of the constancy of 
 Pylades at the beginning of the fourth, and, above 
 all, the song of the Parcae at its close- — the effect of 
 all these is very striking ; that of Orestes' vision and 
 the song of the Parcas is overwhelming. The lyric 
 form adopted by the pofet in all is the unrhymed 
 rhythmical movement employed in some of his reflec- 
 ,ytive poems {Das Gmliche^ for instance) ; and it is 
 clear that such a form suited his purpose better than 
 any rhymed stanza could possibly have done. The 
 contrast with the blank verse of the main body of 
 the drama is less abrupt ; and, in Goethe's hands 
 at any rate, the rhythmical effect is more majestic 
 and severe. 
 
 The play of Euripides from which Iphigenie is 
 drawn is far from being one of his best. To an 
 extent unusual even with him, it is concerned with 
 purely outward incident and description. The 
 recognition between brother and sister — a theme 
 in which, to judge from the remarks of Aristotle, 
 the Greek mind was apt to take a childish delight 
 * — is immeasurably spun out. There are two 
 Messengers' speeches ; one near the beginning 
 describing the discovery of the two strangers by 
 the herdsmen, the other near the close, describing 
 their hurried flight with Iphigenia and the image, 
 and the storm which beat them back upon the 
 
GOETHE'S IPHIGENIE 227 
 
 inhospitable shore ; while, to crown all, there is 
 a goddess ex machina, who descends to square all 
 differences and to cut ail inconvenient knots at the 
 finish. In the Iphigenie all this ornate scaffolding 
 is thrown to the winds. The core of the action, 
 up to the last act, is retained. But, no longer an 
 end in itself, it becomes merely the starting-point 
 for a mortal conflict in the heart of the heroine, 
 a conflict on the one hand between her gratitude to 
 Thoas and the inner voice which warns her that, 
 as she cannot return his love, she has no right to/ 
 sacrifice her freedom ; a conflict on the other hand 
 between her desire to save her brother and the 
 instinct which forbids her to deceive or betray the 
 man who had shown her kindness. In the last act, 
 the original incidents are changed out of all know- 
 ledge. The solution is found, not in the flight of^ 
 the heroine and the mechanical intervention of the) 
 goddess, but in Iphigenia's sudden remorse, in her 
 brave avowal of the plot, and in the magnanimous ( 
 self-effacement of the king. Who can doubt for a 
 moment that Goethe chose the nobler way, or that 
 the' nobler way was also the more moving and the 
 more dramatic .'' 
 
 This will best be seen by a brief account of the 
 plot. The starting-point of the story is the familiar 
 legend of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. When the fleet 
 of the Greeks was about to set sail for Troy, it was 
 
228 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 suddenly becalmed. The curse, said the soothsayers, 
 could only be removed if the king's daughter 
 were sacrificed to appease the wrath of Heaven. 
 Agamemnon, in bitterness of heart, at last consents. 
 But at the moment when the knife is laid at her 
 throat, Iphigenia is miraculously saved by the 
 goddess Artemis, and borne off in secret to her 
 temple in Tauris. There for many years she lives 
 as priestess to the goddess, befriended by the king 
 of the land, Thoas, over whom she wins a deep 
 influence and whom she even induces to abandon 
 the barbarous custom of sacrificing all strangers, 
 which from time immemorial had been the law of 
 the land. 
 
 All this is presupposed. At the point when the 
 play opens, Thoas returns in triumph from the war 
 in which he had taken vengeance on a neighbouring 
 tribe for the slaughter of his son ; he seeks an inter- 
 view with Iphigenie, to implore her once again to 
 accept the love which he had long offered her, and to 
 become his wife. Prompted by an instinct which she 
 can hardly justify even to herself, she refuses. She 
 shrinks from wedding herself to a man she does not 
 love. She shrinks from sacrificing for ever all hope 
 of return to her own land and kin. In order to 
 clinch the refusal, she reveals to Thoas, what hitherto 
 she had concealed, the story of her birth and of the 
 curse that hangs upon her house. But nothing 
 
X GOETHE'S IPHIGENIE 229 
 
 can soften the refusal to the king's ears. Deeply 
 wounded, he is convinced that a curse rests upon 
 himself and all his designs. And, to propitiate the 
 gods, he resolves — as Iphigenie had been warned was 
 probable — to renew the law of sacrifice ; to renew 
 it upon two strangers who have just been cast 
 ashore. 
 
 They are Orestes, the brother of Iphigenie, and 
 his friend Pylades. They have made their way to 
 Tauris in obedience to the oracle of Apollo, who 
 has bidden Orestes " bring his sister from Tauris 
 back to Greece " ; and this is interpreted by Orestes 
 to mean the image of Artemis, Apollo's sister, in 
 the temple of Tauris. Each of the two strangers 
 in turn is brought before the priestess, and a 
 recognition ultimately follows. But the mind of 
 Orestes, pursued by the avenging spirits of his 
 mother, gives way beneath the strain. As Iphigenie 
 reveals herself to him, the old madness sweeps 
 upon him, and in bitter irony he calls on her to 
 complete the doom of the house of Atreus and 
 to lift the knife against her brother, as he had 
 lifted it against their mother, as she had lifted it 
 against her husband. The fit at length passes. 
 Orestes and Pylades declare the purpose of their 
 coming ; and the three plan to escape, carrying 
 with them the sacred image of the goddess. The 
 two friends depart to make preparations. Iphigenie 
 
230 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 remains to secure the image and throw dust in the 
 eyes of the king. 
 
 Thoas soon appears, to reproach the priestess 
 with delay. Putting force on herself, she tells 
 the falsehood agreed upon with Pylades. But, as 
 she tells it, her innate nobility rises in revolt. 
 Throwing all self-interest and all prudence to the 
 winds, she confesses the whole truth and casts 
 herself, and with herself all that is dear to her, 
 upon his mercy. She reminds him that he had 
 sworn, if the means should ever offer, to restore 
 her to her home and people. Thoas, deeply moved, 
 appears about to yield, when Orestes, with his sword 
 drawn, suddenly returns, followed by Pylades and 
 his other comrades. Cut to the quick, the king 
 turns passionately upon him, and the cup of hope 
 seems dashed to the ground for ever. At length, 
 won by the undaunted bravery of the youth, he 
 professes himself ready to forgive all — all except 
 the attempted sacrilege against the goddess. " The 
 image, O King," is the answer of Orestes, " shall 
 sow no strife between us. My eyes are opened, 
 and I see it was my own sister the god bade me 
 fetch from Tauris. Let her be given to me, and 
 let all else be forgotten. Nobly she has trusted 
 thee ; let her trust be as nobly answered." Here 
 Iphigenie takes up the appeal : — 
 
X GOETHE'S IPHIGENIE 231 
 
 Think on thy plighted troth, and let thy soul 
 Be moved by his true words and loyal heart ! 
 Nay, look us in the face ! A golden hour 
 Is thine, to grasp the chance of golden deeds. 
 Refuse it canst thou not, then grasp it soon ! 
 
 Thoas {with face averted). So go then ! 
 
 Iphigenie. Not so, my king ; not thus ! Without thy blessing. 
 With thine ill-will, I may not part from thee. 
 Banish us not ! Oh, let a bond of kindness 
 Be knit between us ! So shall we not for ever 
 Be parted, torn asunder. Dear and precious, 
 Even as my father was, art thou to me, 
 And ever in my soul abides thine image. 
 Let but the humblest of thy people bear 
 Back to my ear the echo of that voice 
 Which, day by day, I caught once from thy lips ; 
 Clothed in thy garb let but the poorest seek me. 
 And I will greet him even as a god. 
 With my own hands will I prepare his bed. 
 By my own hearth will I draw close his seat. 
 And ask of nought but thee and of thy doings. 
 My prayers plead for thee with the gods. Thy goodness, ; 
 As is most just, may they reward with blessings ! 
 Farewell ! Oh, turn thy face on us, and give 
 A gracious word of parting, answering mine ! 
 So shall the wind blow softlier on our sails. 
 The tears will flow more healing from our eyes. 
 As the land fades. Farewell ! Let thy right hand. 
 In pledge of the old bond, be clasped in mine ! 
 
 Thoas {turning and clasping her hand). Farewell ! 
 
 Even in a poor translation, the force of the 
 closing passage will be more or less apparent. 
 Much more, remember, in the original. I have 
 quoted it, however, not only on account of its 
 intrinsic beauty, but as the crowning example of 
 
232 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 the dominant quality which runs through the whole 
 drama ; the blending, that is, of outward calm and 
 / intense emotion within ; the fusion of the classical 
 form — simple, self-restrained, austere — with the 
 fervour and inwardness, the " soul," as Schiller 
 called it, of romance. It is this that sets Iphigenie 
 wholly apart from all other dramas. In some 
 rare instances the same fusion has been attempted. 
 Never, to the best of my knowledge, has it been 
 achieved. 
 
 Before Goethe died some of the most striking 
 dramas of Hugo had already been published.^ 
 And a notice of Cromwell — not, it must be admitted, 
 in any way enthusiastic — is to be found among the 
 Reviews which prove that the old poet kept his 
 eyes open to all that was important in the literature 
 of Europe, and indeed of an area much wider than 
 Europe, to the very end.^ The contrast between 
 Iphigenie and the dramas of the French poet is 
 about as complete as it is possible to conceive. 
 The one embodies what may fairly be called a 
 romantic matter in a form which has all the 
 simplicity and severity of the classical model. 
 The form of the other is, in the main, violently 
 
 1 The dates are as follows: Cromioell, 1827; Hernani, 1830; Marion 
 Delorme, 1831 (written 1829) ; Le Roi s'amuse, 1832 ; Lucrhe Borgia, 1833 j 
 Marie Tudor, 1833 ; Angelo, 1835 ; Ruy Bias, 1838 ; Les Burgraves, 1843. 
 
 2 Auswiirtige Litteratur, Werke T. xxix. (Ed. Gotta, 1868), p. 88. He un- 
 equivocally condemned Hernani. 
 
VICTOR HUGO 233 
 
 romantic ; but, in spite of all the poet's eiForts, it 
 is still largely tinged with the classical spirit, and 
 presents unmistakable survivals of the classical form. 
 The revolt against the classical drama in France 
 had begun soon after the middle of the eighteenth 
 century. Critics, such as Mercier, had denounced 
 the old type of tragedy as hollow and lifeless.^ 
 Dramatists — Diderot, M. J. Chenier, and others — 
 had attempted to reform it ; to reform it, either 
 by bringing it nearer to common experience, or 
 by giving it more of action and of colour. 
 Shakespeare, much to the wrath of Voltaire, was 
 translated bodily and exalted as the " god of the 
 theatre," as the model whom none could approach, 
 but in whose steps all ought to follow.^ Before 
 the end of the century all his tragedies had been 
 adapted — " translated," after the fashion of Bottom 
 — for the French stage ; and in this guise — one 
 of the strangest travesties in the records of literature 
 — had been received with no little applause.' The 
 old classical tragedy was shaken on its throne. 
 The way was prepared for any revolutionary 
 chieftain who had the courage and genius to grasp 
 the sceptre. 
 
 ' See Mercier, Essai sur fart dramatique (1773) ; Essai sur la Litte'rature et Us 
 Litterateurs (1778). 
 
 2 Seethe account of Letourneur's Translation (1776-81) in M. Jusserand's 
 Shakespeare en France, pp. 301-320. 
 
 3 See the account of Duels' adaptations (1769-92) ; ih. pp. 333-352. 
 
234 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 Among the remarkable dramatists who led the 
 campaign against the classical tradition, the most 
 remarkable, it need hardly be said, was Victor 
 Hugo. The brief triumph of romantic tragedy 
 (1830-40) was mainly due to his genius, and its 
 history is inseparably bound up with his name. 
 It was he who crystallised the theory of the 
 romantic rebellion in the Preface to Cromwell 
 (1827). It was he who, in a succession of 
 dramas (1830-43) attempted — but with many lapses 
 from fidelity — to put the theory into practice. 
 The very infidelities of the attempt, however, are 
 that which, for our immediate purpose, give it 
 significance. It is just because he was unable 
 wholly to shake off the traditions, in which he 
 and the spectators who thronged to hear his pieces 
 had been reared, that he represents so curious — 
 and, when all abatements have been made, so 
 memorable — a phase in the history of tragic drama. 
 I will first give a slight sketch of the more crucial 
 parts of. the theory, and then go on to ask how 
 far the subsequent dramas can be said to have carried 
 it into effect. 
 
 The history of imaginative thought — argues the 
 poet, giving the widest possible scope to his inquiry 
 — naturally falls into three periods ; the primitive, 
 the classical, and the modern, or Christian. The 
 characteristic form of the first period is the lyric ; 
 
X VICTOR HUGO 235 
 
 that of the second, the epic ; that of Christendom, 
 the drama. It was, indeed, Christianity, with its 
 revelation of the double nature of man — the higher 
 and the lower, the soul and the body — that first 
 made the drama, in any full sense of the term, a 
 possibility. For the drama depends on contrast ; 
 and it is only in Christian times that the fuU 
 meaning of that contrast, and of the harmony 
 which results from it, has been realised.^ Bearing 
 this in mind, we shall see at once how empty and 
 barren a thing the modern classical drama, with its 
 " one or two characters, abstract types of a purely 
 metaphysical idea," must inevitably be ; ^ how false, 
 its avowed ambition to present nothing but the 
 sublime and the beautiful, to banish all that is 
 ugly, grotesque, or " common." ^ The fact is that 
 the beautiful can never attain its full effect unless 
 by contrast with that which is not in itself beautiful ; 
 that the grotesque and the ugly are the foils which 
 are needed to throw it into relief. The fact 
 further is, that the real aim of art is not so much 
 beauty as truth, or fidelity to nature ; that no 
 art is complete which does not embody all sides 
 of nature, the ugly as well as the beautiful, the 
 grotesque as well as the sublime ; that " everything 
 
 1 Preface de Crommell, pp. 12-17, 30, 31. The references are to the large 
 8vo. edition, Ne Varietur. 
 
 ^ Throughout, Hugo distinguishes between the modern classical drama and 
 the Greek ; e.g. ih. pp. 35, 36. ' lb. pp. 67, 68. 
 
236 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA 
 
 which is found in nature . is found in art also." ^ 
 Not, indeed, that art is a mere copy of nature. If 
 that were so, from the very conditions of the case 
 the copy, Hke objects reflected in a flat mirror, 
 would inevitably fall short of the original. It is 
 only by deepening the lines and heightening the 
 colours — in one word, by idealising — that the spirit 
 of the original, as opposed to its dead letter, can 
 be preserved.^ Hence the error of that false 
 romanticism, the mocking travesty of the true, 
 which seeks to reproduce nature, and nothing 
 more, which adopts the methods and ideals of 
 realism. Its results may be less disastrous than 
 those of classicism ; but none the less, it is a 
 delusion.^ With this limitation and this warning, 
 it remains true that the aim of art — and, in 
 particular, of the drama — is rather truth than 
 beauty ; that it is " the characteristic rather than the 
 beautiful " which it should strive to reproduce.* 
 
 This at once brings us to the absurdity of the 
 rules by which the classical tradition has tied and 
 bound the freedom of art, and of the drama in 
 particular. As a general principle, it may be laid 
 down that there are no rules, save, on the one 
 hand, those which are imposed by the nature of 
 art in general — those, namely, which are determined 
 
 1 Priface de Crcmwell, pp. 17-26, ■)!. 3 ij, pp_ 46-48. 
 
 ° «. pp.46. 53> 71- * /i.pp. 49. 
 
X VICTOR HUGO 237 
 
 by the very scope and mission of art, and which 
 have been roughly indicated above ; and, on the 
 other hand, those which are imposed by the nature 
 of the particular subject chosen by the artist, and 
 which, except for that particular subject, are of 
 no validity whatsoever.^ Apart from these two 
 restrictions, the artist has absolute freedom ; and 
 it is his right to give free play to his own 
 individuality. His very defects, as we may see 
 from Shakespeare, are commonly inseparable from 
 his greatness.^ 
 
 But, if rules in general are pernicious, what are 
 we to say of the particular rules which classical 
 tradition has forced upon the drama, the laws of 
 the unities ? The two narrower unities, those 
 round which the battle has most hotly raged — the 
 unities of time and place — must be unhesitatingly 
 rejected. They are illogical in themselves, and 
 disastrous in their results. Nothing has done so 
 much to destroy the drama, to rob it of all action 
 and all passion, as their observance.^ The unity 
 of action, on the other hand, is among the principles 
 which lie in the very nature of art. It must, no 
 less certainly, remain. It must, however, be 
 understood in a sense very different from that 
 given to it by the classical critics. It must not 
 be confounded with simplicity. Secondary plots, 
 
 1 Frlface de Cromwell, pp. 46-48. ^ Ih. pp. 71-73. ' Ih. pp. 34-38. 
 
238 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 episodes, multiplicity of characters — all these give 
 life and truth to the drama. So far from impairing 
 the true unity, the unity of general effect, they 
 enhance it. Above all, let the "relation" be 
 jealously banished. Let the whole action be trans- 
 acted before the eyes of the spectator, and let it 
 be given without stint. The classical drama shows 
 only the " elbows of action " ; let the reformed 
 drama exhibit the hand which strikes the blow, and 
 the victim who falls beneath it. ^ 
 
 It remains only to speak of the style at which 
 the dramatist should aim. Verse or prose — that 
 is a secondary question.^ But, on the whole, verse 
 — the verse rather of Molifere than of Racine — is to 
 be preferred. It is more solid ; it gives the thought 
 a more sensible, a more tangible, form. But the 
 verse which is to adapt itself to the drama must be 
 handled with the utmost freedom. It must never 
 scruple to call things by their right name ; it must 
 avoid periphrasis and inversion. It must be capable 
 of passing naturally " from comedy to tragedy, from 
 the sublime to the grotesque." It must lend itself 
 without effort to the given action and the given 
 personage. It must avoid " tirades," it must 
 find its home, above all, in dialogue. " It must 
 master the secret of taking a thousand different 
 
 ^ Friface de Crrniiuell, pp. 35 and 38. 
 
 ^ Three of Hugo's own dramas — among them, Lucrice Borgia — are written 
 in prose, 
 
X VICTOR HUGO 239 
 
 forms without losing its character or type. It 
 must be lyric, epic, dramatic, according to the need 
 of the moment." Poetical it will assuredly be ; 
 but, so to speak, " by accident and in spite of itself." 
 And its poetry will not be "descriptive," after the 
 manner of Delille — as we might say, of Thomson 
 or Erasmus Darwin — but essentially " picturesque." ^ 
 
 The chief points in this vigorous attack — an 
 attack which takes up the text much where it had 
 been left by Mercier — are not difficult to pick out. 
 They may perhaps be reduced to three : the assault 
 upon the rules, the assertion that the chief aim of 
 poetry is fidelity to nature, and the doctrine of style 
 which the author bases on the freedom of the poet 
 from all except the service of nature. In these, and 
 the consequences he draws from these, the whole 
 force of his theory may be said to lie. And by 
 these his practical achievement in tragic drama may 
 not unfairly be judged. 
 
 First, then, for the attack upon the rules. Here 
 it is manifest that the work of the poet was, in the 
 first instance, purely negative. And, as far as the 
 unities of time and place are concerned, it may be 
 urged that the cause was already decided. That, 
 however, was far from being the case in France, 
 where, up to the time when the Preface was written, 
 none but the most timid violations of the " absurd " 
 
 1 Preface de Cromitiell, pp. 51-55. 
 
240 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 laws had been attempted. And, even had the issue 
 been far more certain than it was, who would have 
 been willing to lose the resounding blows dealt 
 against the ancient " pedantries " by Hugo ? More 
 novel are his comments upon the unity of action ; 
 and it will be observed that, while accepting it (as, 
 in some sense, he was bound to do), he gives it 
 the widest possible interpretation ; an interpretation 
 which was specially designed to cover Shakespeare, 
 and which hardly excluded even Faust. The im- 
 portance of this it is impossible to exaggerate. The 
 unity of action, understood in the rigid sense, was 
 in fact, the stronghold of the classical theory. To 
 assail it was to assail the real key to the classical 
 position. The two other unities, galling as they 
 were, were little more than outposts. If they were 
 surrendered, it by no means followed that the citadel 
 which they protected would fall. If it were taken, 
 they were inevitably carried in its train. It is not 
 the least of Hugo's services that he was among the 
 first to recognise this, and to distinguish sharply 
 between the more and the less rigid, between the 
 false and the true, construction of the unity of 
 action. 
 
 As for his own practice on these points, it need 
 hardly be said that he persistently disregards the 
 unities of time and place. Whether he was equally 
 free in handling the unity of action, is a more 
 
X VICTOR HUGO 241 
 
 doubtful matter. Episodes there are in abundance 
 — the conspiracy against Don Carlos in Hernani, the 
 scene with the strolling players in Marion Delorme, 
 the scene of the slaves in Les Burgraves ; and they 
 are commonly of a highly romantic type. But, 
 except in Cromwell, which was never intended for 
 the stage, and Les Burgraves, which was a colossal 
 failure on the stage, the general effect is rather that 
 of a structure closely knit, than the reverse. The 
 plot is, after all, the first care of the poet ; and wide 
 as may be the space allowed for it in comparison 
 with the classical drama, this in itself is enough to 
 exclude that free expansion of character which was 
 the chief gain drawn by Shakespeare from the loose 
 structure of romance. That, however, is perhaps 
 only to say — what, in other respects also, would be 
 true — that the dramas of Hugo approach more 
 nearly to the Spanish type of romance than to the 
 English. Shakespeare may have presided over his 
 theory ; in practice he ranges himself rather under 
 the banner of Calderon. Let it be added that the 
 plot is commonly managed with inimitable skill ; 
 that it is dominated by a rigid sequence of cause and 
 effect ; that from the first scene to the last — we have 
 only to think of Lucrece Borgia or Le Roi s'amuse— 
 the characters are presented as struggling in the toils 
 of an inexorable fate. 
 
 We pass to the second question raised by the 
 
242 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 redoubtable Preface. Starting from the assertion 
 that art — and, above all, dramatic art — depends on 
 the contrast between the grotesque and the beautiful, 
 Hugo is led on step by step to the conclusion that 
 art must reflect all sides of nature, that " everything 
 which is found in nature is found in art also." In 
 other words, and with the restrictions pointed out 
 above, the secret of art is fidelity to nature. Here, 
 it must be confessed, the practice of the dramatist 
 presents results strangely different from those which 
 are suggested by his theory. Once again, Shake- 
 speare presides over the theory. And once again — 
 but in a far more disastrous fashion — the pj-actice 
 was guided by a very different inspiration. A glance 
 at his treatment of " contrast " will suffice. Here, 
 in a certain sense, he leaves nothing to be desired. 
 Take each play in turn, and we shall find that the 
 central figure is the living embodiment of a contrast 
 between the grotesque and the sublime, between 
 the beautiful and the ugly, an antithesis in flesh 
 1 and blood. In Marion Delorme it is a courtesan 
 
 ,1 
 
 ' who is won to chastity by love for a pure-minded ' ' 
 1 man ; in L.e Roi s" amuse, a cynical pander, who 
 is redeemed by a single-hearted devotion to his 
 daughter ; in Lucrece Borgia, a murderess, who is 
 lifted out of herself by an adoring love for her son. 
 And so on, through the whole gallery of plays, with 
 the possible exception of Hernani. It would be the 
 
* VICTOR HUGO 243 
 
 height of injustice to deny that there is dramatic 
 force, to deny that there is moral truth, in such a 
 conception. Such characters have been known ; and, 
 within measure, they are fit subjects for tragic drama. 
 But, when they reappear in play after play, when 
 the whole worjd appears to be peopled by these 
 anomalies, the strain on the faith of the spectator 
 becomes more than can be borne. His imagination, 
 as well as his reason, rises in revolt. Nor can it 
 even be said that each of these curiosities, taken 
 singly, is painted in such a way as to convince. All 
 shades and half-lights are deliberately banished. 
 Every device is exhausted to throw the two sides 
 of the character into the sharpest possible contrast, 
 to make each stand out, over against the other, in 
 the strongest possible relief. The method is, in 
 fact, the very reverse of that by which Shakespeare 
 wrought out his great creations — the tragic contrasts 
 involved in the characters of Hamlet or Macbeth. 
 There everything is shaded ; there we have an 
 infinity of gradations ; there we pass by a thousand 
 subtle transitions from one mood of the hero to its 
 apparent opposite. The Elizabethan is at as much \ 
 pains to soften the contrast as the Frenchman is to ! 
 sharpen it and to heighten its effect. Of nature 
 there is no thought in all this display of warring 
 opposites. The poet has followed the methods of 
 satire rather than of the drama. He has given us 
 
244 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 only the antithesis ; he has forgotten the underlying 
 I harmony on which it depends not only for its 
 'dramatic effect, but for the very possibility of its 
 existence. 
 
 The same appears in the style which is charac- 
 teristic of these dramas, and which, even apart from 
 its intrinsic beauty, is notable as an exact reflection 
 of the matter. No doubt, in many passages — for 
 instance, in the first act of Marion Delorme — the 
 poet attains that easy transition from the style of 
 comedy to that of tragedy which the Preface had 
 proclaimed as his ideal. And that in itself, without 
 regard to the more technical aspects of the versifica- 
 tion, would suffice to make these plays a landmark 
 in the history of French tragedy. But, if we turn 
 to the distinctively tragic passages, to those where 
 the whole soul of the poet manifestly finds utterance, 
 we are met with just those declamations, those 
 " tirades," which the Preface had denounced. The 
 great monologue of Charles V. at the tomb of 
 Charlemagne, the fiery outburst of Ruy Bias against 
 the baseness of Don Salluste, are only two instances 
 i out of a whole sheaf. As declamations, they are 
 ' magnificent. But that they are declamations — 
 as the corresponding passages of Shakespeare, 
 or Calderon, or Goethe, are not — is hardly to 
 be denied. The very antithesis, which we have 
 already seen in the characters themselves, re- 
 
X VICTOR HUGO 245 
 
 appears, chiselled and polished to the utmost, in 
 their words. The crowning stroke of Ruy 
 Bias— 
 
 J'ai I'habit d'un laquais, mais vous en avez I'Sme — 
 
 what are we to call an antithesis, if this is not ? 
 
 The truth is that, with all his contempt for the 
 classical drama, Hugo was never able to escape from 
 its methods and ideals. His characters, though in 
 a very different way, are hardly less " abstract and 
 metaphysical " than those of Corneille or Voltaire. 
 His set speeches only differ from theirs in being yet 
 more declamatory, yet more completely in the nature 
 of "tirades." Despite the romantic tissue and the 
 romantic drapery, the classical skeleton, some critics 
 have found, formed the framework of his poetic 
 genius. As a general description, this is disputable, 
 and more than disputable. But if we limit it to his 
 dramatic genius — for here too, with all its blemishes, - 
 the genius is unmistakable — it is not altogether un- 
 just. What the Preface to Cromwell had demanded 
 — and what Cromwell itself, in spite of youthful 
 crudenesses, had gone far to supply — was a complete 
 revolt from the classical tradition. It was something 
 concrete, human and dramatic ; something which 
 should frankly give the contradictions of man's 
 nature, but at the same time reconcile them and 
 harmonise them ; something essentially spontaneous. 
 
246 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 natural and real. What the later dramas oiFer — let 
 
 j this be at once admitted — is the passion in which 
 
 classical tragedy was commonly weak, and the action 
 
 in which it was altogether lacking. There was the 
 
 real advance of Hugo, as against his classical enemies. 
 
 There he ranges himself side by side with the lEliza- 
 
 bethans and the Spaniards. But when we come to 
 
 the other crucial demands of the drama — demands 
 
 which, in theory, none had recognised more clearly 
 
 or put forward more trenchantly than he — we find 
 
 I that his conception of character has all the abstraction, 
 
 land his style more than all the rhetoric, of the 
 
 classics. This may go far to account for the rapid 
 
 discredit which fell on the romantic drama of France. 
 
 Not, of course, that this is the only source of the 
 
 weakness which mingles with the strength of these 
 
 dramas, and which does much to mar their effect. 
 
 On the contrary, some of the defects flow clearly 
 
 I from the opposite quarter ; from the restlessness, 
 the melodramatic instinct, the craving for startling 
 ji incident and overstrained sentirhent, which were part 
 of the heritage of romance — of romance, as it took 
 shape in the French revival of 1 830. These were the 
 qualities on which the hostile critics of the time fastened 
 most eagerly, and which provoked the classical re- 
 action of the following years. And, naturally enough, 
 they threw all else into the shade. None the less, 
 it is well to observe the unconscious workings of 
 
X VICTOR HUGO 247 
 
 the classical influence upon the man whose avowed 
 mission was to break its power ; to mark how that 
 influence acted partly in opposition to, partly in 
 concert with, the promptings of romance ; to remind 
 ourselves how hard it is for any poet — most of all, 
 perhaps, any dramatic poet — to free himself entirely 
 from the traditions which have wound themselves 
 around the art of his age and country, and in which 
 he himself has been brought up. 
 
 Yet who, that has ever felt their spell, would part 
 from these dramas without paying tribute to their 
 extraordinary power ? In mastery of situation they 
 are almost without a rival. They have some of the 
 great qualities alike of lyric and of epic. Where, 
 except in Romeo and Juliet, shall we find so lyrical 
 an expression of undying love as in Hernani ? Where, 
 through the whole history of the drama, shall we 
 meet such epic genius — such genius for bringing the 
 struggles of a whole epoch before the imagination — 
 as in some scenes of Hernani and hes Burgraves ? 
 Such scenes form a fitting prelude to La Ligende 
 des Siecles. Much in the tragedies of Hugo is 
 melodrama unabashed ; much is rhetorical, feverish, 
 unnatural ; but I prefer to think of their great 
 qualities, rather than of their defects. 
 
LECTURE XI 
 
 SOME TYPES OF RECENT DRAMA : BROWNING, 
 MAETERLINCK, IBSEN 
 
 In the drama of the last seventy years we may trace 
 two streams of tendency. There is, on the one 
 hand, the stream of romance, of a pronounced and 
 perhaps extreme idealism. On the other hand there 
 is, now for the first time in . the history of tragedy, 
 an equally marked tendency towards realism. In 
 the summary account which is all that time allows 
 us, it is only possible to take two or three figures 
 among the host of claimants who present themselves ; 
 Browning and Maeterlinck on the side of romance, 
 Ibsen on that of realism ; or what, with the limita- 
 tions to be indicated directly, may pass for realism. 
 
 Let us first consider the general development, 
 
 during this period, of idealism or romance. Roughly, 
 
 it may be said that the general tendency, a tendency 
 
 observable in each of our typical figures, is to drive 
 
 rthe dramatic motive still further inward, to make it 
 
 still more immaterial, still more subtle, than it had 
 
 248 
 
LECT. XI RECENT DRAMA 249 
 
 ever been before. The earlier phases of romance, 
 as we have seen, had shifted the centre of gravity 
 from action to character. The later phases, the 
 phases with which we are now to deal, shift it 
 still further backwards ; from the outworks of char- 
 acter, those aspects of it which stand in the closest 
 connection with action and issue most immediately 
 in action, to its inmost citadel, to those regions 
 where it withdraws most completely within itself. 
 And this process is carried yet further by Maeterlinck 
 than by Browning. 
 
 In Browning perhaps the first thing to strike us 
 is the marked stress laid on the situation, and the 
 peculiar way in which the situation is handled. Th^^ 
 situation is no longer the scene of a particular, 
 definite train of outward incidents or circumstances ; 
 nor does it lead, as it led in earlier dramatists, to a 
 particular, definite issue in outward action. It is 
 created, so to speak, from within ; by the particular 
 temperament, the unconscious, impalpable instincts, 
 of a given group of characters. It is a far more 
 intangible thing in its texture, and far more fleeting v 
 in its duration. It is a matter not of years, or months, 
 or weeks, as it is with Shakespeare ; but of a day, an 
 hour, even a moment — as in Luria, and In a Balcony, 
 and Vippa Passes. It is a light suddenly flashed , 
 upon the soul, and then, as suddenly, withdrawn. 
 
 And this peculiarity in the handling of the situa- 
 
250 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 tion leads to a peculiarity no less marked in the 
 presentation of character. Character is no longer 
 ^ regarded as something fixed and stable. It would 
 not even be enough to say that it is presented in 
 growth. It is rather in flux that Browning conceives 
 of it, and paints it ; as changing with each change of 
 the situation ; as unfolding to an utterly new life at 
 the call of some strange experience which confronts 
 it. We may compare it to a stream which reflects 
 the ever-changing aspect of the banks on each side of 
 it, and of the sky above it ; or to some tropical plant 
 leaping upwards to meet the light that pours through 
 an opening in the forest roof which overhangs it. 
 The situation is the crucial moment which tests 
 character to the uttermost, which reveals qualities 
 hitherto unknown and unsuspected, which brings to 
 the surface strains that might otherwise have been 
 permanently choked. The surprise of the one is 
 answered by a surprise no less astonishing in the 
 other. So it is, if we may illustrate from a play 
 which is not a tragedy, with Colombes Birthday ; so, 
 to take the poet's more sombre pieces, with In a 
 Balcony and, above all, with Vipfa Passes. 
 
 In the first of these, a mere girl, light-hearted and 
 utterly without experience, is called on to thread her 
 way through a web of intrigue woven round her by 
 the greed and craft of others. With no clue but her 
 own rectitude and nobility, she at once rises to the 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 251 
 
 trial, reads into the heart of the courtiers and the 
 suitors whom chance has thrown in her path, discerns 
 the noble from the base, and sacrifices all to choose 
 the one and reject the dazzling offers of the other. 
 Between the dawn and the nightfall of a single day, 
 the fate of a lifetime is decided. It is the same 
 with In a Balcony. The obliquity of Constance, her 
 preference for crooked paths, sets in motion a train 
 of circumstance which none could have foreseen. 
 Within the space of two hours, the queen has 
 wakened to a life of passionate love, she herself and 
 her almost innocent lover are swept into the abyss ; 
 but from despair itself she has drawn a strength and 
 sincerity of which but an hour before she was utterly 
 incapable. But the strongest instance is to be found 
 in^Pippa Passes, where the matter is no less original 
 than the dramatic method and the structure. This 
 play, it need hardly be said, is, in reality, four 
 separate plays strung into one. The connecting link 
 is the sudden flash of light which the " passing " of a 
 pure-hearted girl flashes upon the base or distorted 
 passions of four disconnected groups of men and 
 women, the sudden revulsion of purpose which her 
 joyous song brings to the heart of each, as it strikes 
 upon their ear. The fountain of shame or remorse 
 is instantaneously unsealed. It is the work, not of a 
 day nor of an hour, but of a single moment. 
 
 In all this we notice a marked affinity — it would 
 
 I 
 
252 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 hardly be too much to say, an identity — of method 
 with the more lyrical pieces of the poet ; with 
 Cristina, or The Worst of it, or A Last Ride Together. 
 And if, in one sense, it may be said that the method 
 is more legitimate in the lyric than the drama, it 
 must in fairness be remembered that in the dramas — 
 and this applies even to Pippa Passes — the way to 
 the transition from mood to mood is prepared with 
 a subtlety which. In the narrower limits of the lyric, 
 is manifestly impossible. The lyrics, no doubt, are, 
 as the author calls them, essentially "dramatic." 
 But the plays, besides their lyric note of concentrated 
 passion, have an inwardness of dramatic motive, a 
 swift play of thought and feeling, such as had been 
 attempted by no previous dramatist, and is only to 
 be realised by an incessant strain on the imagination 
 of the spectator or the reader. Their pith lies in the 
 swift passage from passion to passion, from emotion 
 to emotion. These vary with every turn of the 
 circumstances, and are often to be gathered only from 
 a chance word, or look, or gesture. It is probable 
 that no draihatist has ever made such heavy demands 
 upon the Intelligence of actor and spectator. 
 
 It is easy to see that such a method stands 
 in the closest possible connection with the author's 
 whole conception of human character, with his 
 deliberate judgment of that which does, and 
 that which does not, count in the tangle of men's 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 253 
 
 conduct and motives. To Browning, it need hardly 
 be said, it is not the outward act which counts, but 
 the inward motive ; not the conscious motive, we 
 may even say, but the whole tissue of instinct, 
 thought, feeling, and passion, which we sum 
 up under the vague word character. It is the 
 "Thoughts hardly to be packed Into the narrow 
 act " ; it is " The seed of the act, God holds appraising 
 in His hollow palm, Not act grown great thence on 
 the world below " ; it is " The soul o' the purpose, 
 ere it is shaped in act. Takes flesh i' the world and 
 clothes itself a king " ; it is by such tests as these 
 that he j udges the men and women who throng his 
 dramas and his poems. And if, more than any other 
 modern dramatist, he is apt to pick one act out of a 
 lifetime and by that one act pass judgment on the whole 
 character, that is because it is, or is assumed to be, a 
 crucial act ; one so decisive as to sum up all that is 
 essential in the life of the past, and to carry in it the 
 germ and sap of all the future. Such acts, just 
 because they make demands on the whole man, are, 
 in Browning's view, a truer test of character than the 
 dull routine of daily life, which at the best draws 
 only on fragments of thc' man and may never reach 
 the true man at all. The crucial act, on the other! 
 hand, if selected with just insight and laid before us 1 
 in all its bearings, in all the fleeting phases through I 
 which the soul passes in bringing it to accomplish- 
 
2 54 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 jment, leads us at once face to face with the true selt 
 land enables us to pass judgment on Its worth. To 
 do this, to enlist the aid of the reader or spectator in 
 doing it, is the main object of all Browning's work ; 
 or rather, of that part of it with which alone we are 
 here concerned. It is the object, above all, of his 
 dramas. Hence, on the one hand, the supreme 
 istress which he lays on the situation, upon the 
 circumstance, or train of circumstance, which for the 
 moment arrests the flux of thought, feeling, instinct, 
 passion which we describe as " character." Hence, 
 on the other hand, the extreme subtlety and inward- 
 ness of his dramatic method. 
 
 There is, however, one play in which, to a 
 large extent, he drops this particular method, and 
 approaches character from a different side. This is 
 
 ^ Luria, which is perhaps the finest of all his tragedies, 
 and which, as we shall see, presents a curious 
 resemblance to the method distinctive of our next 
 dramatist, Maeterlinck. Here it is not the subtle 
 play of character upon character which Browning 
 sets himself to render. The characters, indeed, 
 remain unchanged — remain, we may almost say, as 
 fixed types — from the beginning till the great 
 revulsion which comes upon all save one of them at 
 the close. The real interest of the drama lies in the 
 
 I bare opposition of type to type ; in the tragedy which 
 the incapacity of the one to understand the other 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 255 
 
 inevitably brings forth. The outward circumstances 
 of the play resemble in some measure those of Othello. 
 Othello is the " Moor of Venice " ; Luria might be 
 described as the Moor of Florence. But if in 
 subject the two dramas are akin, in method of 
 treatment they are utterly different. In Shakespeare 
 the loneliness of the Moor, the natural barrier between 
 him and the woman with whom his fortunes are 
 linked, though it was certainly not overlooked by the 
 dramatist, is kept markedly, perhaps deliberately, in 
 the background. The theme of the play is a passion 
 which may draw additional strength from the 
 accidents of birth, but which might have existed, and 
 has often existed, in complete independence of them. 
 In that passion the whole nature of the hero — his 
 frankness, his nobility, his heroism, his openness to 
 remorse — finds burning utterance. His jealousy is 
 as the jealousy of other men, save that it is purged of 
 all that is low and creeping, it is more intense, more 
 fiery, more impassioned than theirs. How different 
 is the conception of Luria ! There everything is 
 reduced to the most abstract shape ; to the bald 
 antagonism between the two irreconcilable tempera- 
 ments, the temperament of the East and that of the 
 North ; the one frank, impetuous, ardent in devotion ; 
 the other cold, calculating, ruthless. Before this 
 racial hostility all merely personal differences melt 
 into nothing. It is on the antagonism of blood and 
 
256 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 instinct that our eye is fixed from beginning to end. 
 The whole tragedy flows from this fountain ; and 
 the antagonism is not overcome until it is too late. 
 Now it is manifest that this carries us a stage further, 
 to a region yet more inward, because more instinctive 
 and more unconscious, than that of the previous 
 plays. Braccio, the moving spirit in the conspiracy 
 against Luria, may calculate probabilities. But this, 
 as he himself confesses, is mere logical fencing. In 
 the end he perpetually falls back on the blind instinct 
 from which he started ; on the unreasoning hatred 
 of Florentine for barbarian, on the fixed resolve that, 
 at all costs, intellect shall rule, that the sword, after it 
 has done its work of brute beast, shall be broken in 
 pieces. And the same thing, though in a very 
 diff^erent feshion, is true of Luria. With blind 
 devotion, and in spite of countless warnings, he 
 continues to adore Florence, to cherish the dream of 
 the reward that awaits him at her hands, until her 
 treachery is proved beyond dispute and no choice is 
 left him but to take vengeance or to die. But, 
 inward as is the region in which the struggle is 
 played out, it is for that very reason an invisible 
 struggle. The situation once given, there is nothing 
 more to be said. The characters speak to give 
 utterance to their instincts, to find expression for 
 their temperament, and nothing more. Not only is 
 ^ there no action, but there is no motion, in the drama 
 
^^ RECENT DRAMA 257 
 
 until the great revulsion of the close. The situation, 
 till that moment, remains without change and without 
 modification. There is no room for the dramatic 
 subtlety, for the ceaseless play of thought and feeling, 
 of character upon character, which is so notable in 
 the dramatist's other plays. And that perhaps is the 
 reason why Luria remains a solitary example of 
 this particular method. It is as though Brown- 
 ing instinctively felt that it was, in itself, a 
 perilous method ; as he must certainly have been 
 aware that it cut him off from the use of those 
 powers in which his genius was strongest, of those 
 weapons in which long training had given him most 
 skill. 
 
 For our purposes, however, the significant thing 
 is that, in Luria as in the rest of his dramatic work, 
 though doubtless in a very different way. Browning 
 is feeling after new methods and attempting to direct 
 the drama into new paths. And in one sense or 
 another, the novelty lies in the greater inwardness 
 and subtlety of the method, in the endeavour to 
 drive the dramatic motive further back, from 
 action to character, from the outer regions of 
 character into the inmost recesses of the heart. In 
 Luria, as in the other plays, the drama is transacted 
 not in the field of action, but in the inner workings 
 of the soul. There the struggle is to the last degree 
 poignant ; there it is intensely real. The one doubt 
 
258 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 which suggests itself is : How can a theme, so remote 
 from the world of sense, be brought home to the 
 bodily senses ? How can motives so spiritual be 
 made visible and palpable before the footlights ? 
 And it may well be that the poet has here attempted 
 to force the stage beyond what it can endure, that he 
 has striven to bring upon it more than it is able to 
 hold. For acting purposes, it is probable that his 
 dramas, even if angels were the performers, would 
 never completely satisfy ; that they are fitted rather 
 for the reader than the spectator, rather for the closet 
 than the stage. 
 
 With our other example, IMaeterlinck, this is still 
 more obviously the case. Here the dramatic motive 
 is driven a degree, perhaps several degrees, more 
 inward yet. It is not action, it is not even motive, 
 nor, in the ordinary sense, character which he brings 
 before us. It is rather that which lies behind both 
 conscious motive and character as formed by will 
 or deliberate purpose. It is character in its most 
 elemental and unalterable shape, the temperament 
 which comes to man by birth, the fixed mood which 
 ihe inherits from nature. Upon character, in this 
 sense, outward circumstance or incident leaves no 
 impression. Through all changes and chances, it 
 remains centred in itself, immovable as fate. Here 
 again, as with Luria, there can he no thought of 
 shifting motive, of rapid transition from thought to 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 259 
 
 thought, from feeling to feeling. Such changes as 
 there are are but ripples on the surface ; the real 
 self, the depth of the soul, remains untroubled and 
 unmoved. The strength of the dramatist is thrown 
 into a very different task ; into the problem of 
 rendering by speech the deepest, the most impalpable, , 
 experience of the soul. And it is only when that 
 experience is beyond the ken of common life, when 
 the type he selects is an exception to the familiar 
 types of manhood, that his full strength is put 
 forth. 
 
 The play in which these conditions are most 
 completely fulfilled is probably Aglavaine et Silysette. 
 The personages of this play are manifestly not those 
 of ordinary experience. Their life is not as ours. 
 They move in an atmosphere far rarer and more 
 ethereal than that which we commonly breathe. And 
 it requires an effort to raise ourselves to the level on 
 which they habitually move. Speech itself seems to 
 give way beneath the strain they impose upon it. It 
 becomes rather a symbol of feelings than the direct 
 expression of any definite thought. As we listen to 
 it we seem to hear voices from the spirit world, the 
 music as of soul communing direct with soul. They 
 are disembodied spirits, emanations, rather than . 
 beings of flesh and blood, belonging to the same 
 world as ourselves. 
 
 All this is very interesting and very beautiful. 
 
26o TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 There is a sense, a very real sense, in which it is 
 profoundly true. There are men and women who 
 do, in fact, belong to the ideal world which 
 Maeterlinck loves to paint ; who leave on us exactly 
 the impression which his characters are intended to 
 convey. When we are brought face to face with 
 such beings, we recognise that they are of a higher 
 order than ourselves, that their home is in a region 
 purer and brighter than our own. And when the 
 vision is once more taken from us, we know that it 
 is good for us to have been there and breathe, if but 
 for an hour, " the ampler ether, the diviner air " 
 from which we are commonly so far. But if this is 
 so, can it be doubted that it is well for the poet 
 to embody such creations, to bring home to the 
 imagination that which, from the nature of things, 
 can so seldom take shape in the experience of daily 
 life.? 
 
 Yet once again we are confronted with the 
 question : Is the drama the fitting medium for 
 imaginations so airy and so delicate ? Do they 
 not inevitably lose their brightness, is not that 
 which is most distinctive of them inevitably sacri- 
 ficed, when they receive a local habitation on the 
 stage and are dragged in bodily shape before the 
 footlights ? To the reader, doubtless, this objec- 
 tion neither has, nor ought to have, the slightest 
 weight. But to the spectator it is serious, if not 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 261 
 
 fatal. To him the eloquent symbolism of the poet 
 must be apt to seem incongruous, or something 
 worse ; he is bewildered to see the Peaseblossoms 
 and Mustardseeds of this spiritual world, like the 
 fairies of the Pantomime, take shape as chubby 
 children masquerading in gauze and flying on in- 
 geniously constructed wires. Once more, the drama 
 would seem to break down beneath the load which 
 is put upon it, the bottles to burst with the subtle 
 essence which the alchemist pours into them. 
 
 From this point of view, it is a relief to turn 
 to our last dramatist, Ibsen. Here at any rate 
 we are back with our feet on the solid earth. 
 Here at any rate the melody is not too subtle or 
 ethereal for the instrument charged with its con- 
 veyance. In all his greater, his more character- 
 istic plays, the personages are true figures of flesh 
 and blood, overflowing with energy and vitality, men 
 and women fighting for their very lives, fighting 
 with everything staked upon the issue, fighting 
 round the questions which bear upon the daily 
 lives of all of us and which come home with 
 intense force to our experience and conscience. 
 There is much beside this in his dramas. There 
 is, for instance, a curious vein of mysticism, to which 
 we must return directly. But this is the first thing 
 to strike us in his genius, and it is this which has left 
 the deepest mark on the history of the theatre. 
 
262 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 The plays of Ibsen cannot, like those of Browning 
 or Maeterlinck, be charged with undue inwardness. 
 Few dramatists have a greater command of scenic 
 effect. None has so persistently drawn his matter 
 from the life, and the vital struggles, of his own day. 
 
 "^t is this actuality, indeed, which, for our purposes, 
 gives the main interest to his plays. It is this 
 .which forms his most significant contribution to the 
 development of tragic drama. 
 
 Actuality, however, is one thing ; realism, which 
 we are sometimes tempted to confound with it, may 
 be quite another. And, on the threshold, we are 
 bound to ask ourselves whether the term " realist," 
 so often applied to Ibsen, is justified by the facts. 
 Few terms have been used more loosely, and few are 
 more difficult to define. In the strict sense, as we 
 have already seen, it would seem that realism denotes 
 a.garticukr method, a. particujax, attitude of the poet~ 
 or artist, toward his subject. It implies that he sets 
 
 (himself to reproduce the facts of human life or of 
 outward nature with minute accuracy ; without any 
 adornment ; without any attempt to use them for 
 ulterior issues. It may also be fairly held to carry 
 with it two further consequences. The man whom 
 we can rightly describe as realist will be apt to 
 exclude from his picture the more mysterious, the 
 more impalpable elements of human character ; to 
 confine himself to those elements which lie upon the 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 263 
 
 surface, which meet us in the more usual, the more 
 
 commonplace moments of our experience. Hg.jadU-~ 
 
 also be apt tojiraw his characters from the life of his 
 
 own day, to place thernlrr the surroundirrgs which, 
 
 both to himself and those for whom he writes, ars. the , 
 
 Inmost familiar. 
 
 Let us apply these considerations to Ibsen. In 
 
 the last of the three senses here attributed to the 
 term, he is undoubtedly a realist ; and it is his chief 
 distinction, the chief point which marks him ofF from 
 other tragic dramatists, to have been so. Of all the 
 dramatists, whose works we have considered in these 
 lecturesTTie is"tKe' onry^ne"who can fairly be said to 
 h^ve painted tlieTife of his own day and country ; 
 the only one who can claim to have reproduced its 
 outward conditions, to have recorded the spiritual 
 struggles, which during a. given period — a period of 
 ferment, if there ever was one — shook his own people 
 to its foundations ; as, from like causes, they found 
 an echo through the whole of at least Western and 
 Northern Europe. Calderon is the only dramatist 
 who, in this respect, can be said to have even dis- 
 tantly approached him. And the picture he. drew 
 of Spanish life is so highly idealised, the romantic 
 element in his dramas so far prevails over all the 
 others, that the wildest imagination could never 
 reckon him among the realists. 
 ■ And what of the other -two senses in which the 
 
264 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 term realism may be legitimately used ? With what 
 justice may they be applied to the plays of Ibsen? 
 Can it be said that it is his prime object to reproduce 
 the facts of life with minute accuracy? Can it be 
 said that he has excluded the more mysterious, the 
 more imponderable, elements of human character ? 
 He would be a rash man who should venture upon 
 either of these assertions. For, on the one hand, it 
 must be admitted that. Ibsen is much less concerned^ 
 to reproduce the. mere outward facts, of life — least, of 
 all, the mere outward facts— with literal fidelity, than- 
 he is to drive home certain views of human character 
 and conduct; to convince us, for instance, of the 
 inalienable sovereignty of the individual will, and the 
 various consequences which radiate from that, as 
 from a common centre. And, on the other hand, if 
 there is one thing for which he makes marked — as 
 some may think, excessive — allowance in his scheme" ' 
 of life, it is the part played by the obscurer, the 
 more mystical promptings of our nature. In illus- 
 tration of the former point, I would appeal' to such 
 plays as A Doll's House, The Pillars of Society, An 
 Enemy of the People. As examples of the latter, I 
 wpuld bring forward The Master Builder, Rosmers- 
 holm, and The Lady from the Sea. 
 
 Indeed, if Ibsen is open to criticism, it is from 
 having given too much play to these tendencies, 
 rather than too little. It is because he has made the 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 265 
 
 flag, for which his characters are fighting, somewhat 
 too conspicuous, it is because the symbolism by 
 which he represents the vaguer and more mysterious 
 elements of man's nature is at times either in itself 
 inappropriate or is obtruded on us too persistently, 
 that he has sometimes failed, or fallen short of the 
 success which seemed within his reach. Each of 
 these points calls for a word of consideration. 
 
 The former of the two brings us face to face with 
 the oft-repeated charge that his playa-ars. problem 
 . plays ,__jjiii_ _therefore inad missible. The first state- 
 ment may be at once accepted. The sting of the 
 charge, however, lies in the inference which is 
 drawn from it. And here there would seem to be 
 some confusion. That a dramatist should take a 
 " problem " Jor his theme, I should say, is only to be 
 resented if the problem remains a problem, jf It is 
 handled in an abstract fashion, if the characters are 
 overshadowed by it, if they lack vitality, if they are 
 wanting in that flesh and blood which is indispens- 
 able to the drama, or to any work which aims at a 
 high Imaginative effect. Now it cannot surely be 
 alleged that Ibsen's characters, even in what may be 
 reckoned the most aggressive of his problem plays — 
 A DolVs House, perhaps, excepted — are wanting in 
 flesh and blood. That would be the last charge one 
 could bring against Lona Hessel, or Dr. Stockman, 
 or — if the play to which she gives the title be indeed 
 
266 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 a problem play — against Hedda Gabler. We may 
 like such characters, or we may dislike them. But 
 to describe them as lacking in vigour or vitality, to 
 deny that they are true to life or that they are 
 painted with high dramatic power, would, I must 
 think, be impossible. The truth is that the problem 
 play is as old as the world ; as old as the Oresteia or 
 Antigone or the Book of Job. And, unless we are 
 prepared to bar out such creations as these, we 
 cannot reject the plays now in question on the bare ' 
 ground that they deal with problems. At the same 
 time, I am quite willing to admit that, real as are the 
 characters in these plays of Ibsen, and great as is the 
 
 ft 
 
 talent with which they are painted, the problem they 
 embody is thrust upon us with somewhat too 
 boisterous a touch, and that, at least in The Pillars of 
 Society "and An Enemy of the People, the imaginative 
 eiFect is proportionally dimmed. That, however, 
 has but a remote connection with realism, if indeed it 
 can be said to have any at all. 
 
 , The symbolism of Ibsen is a very curious questibn.. 
 And in The Master Builder., perhaps in The Wild 
 Duck, it may be allowed to overshoot the mark and 
 to come perilously near to the grotesque. But there 
 are other plays against which this charge can in no 
 wise be fairly brought. The white . horses of 
 Rosmersholm, the symbolism — assuming that it can 
 fitly be called symbolism — of The Lady from the Sea, 
 
XI 
 
 RECENT DRAMA 267 
 
 are impressive in themselves ; and it is hard to see 
 how the imaginative idea of the dramatist could have 
 been brought home to us so aptly. by other means. 
 Even in the case of The Wild Duck a very tolerable 
 defence could probably be made out. What chiefly 
 concerns us, however, is the purpose for which such 
 symbolism is employed by Ibsen, and the light which 
 it throws upon his dramatic methods and ideals. ..The^ 
 sole object of it clearly is to indicate the vaguer and 
 more mysterious promptings which hover dimly in 
 the hearts of his men and womien, the aspirations, 
 perverted or otherwise, which determine their out- 
 ward actions and their inmost desires or resolves. 
 Whether ' in a given case the symbol chosen be 
 appropriate, whether it be skilfully presented or no, 
 the intentioQ remains the same. And the man who 
 so constantly has recourse to such symbols, and who 
 uses them" with so deliberate a purpose, manifestly 
 cannot be the realist for which he has sometimes 
 been mistaken. 
 
 But, if Ibsen is not a realist, at least he has 
 certain qualities which are akin to realism, which 
 might easily have lent themselves to the methods 
 and purposes of the realist. This above all: that, 
 from first to last, he has striven, as no tragic 
 dramatist before him had striven, to cut his material 
 from the very quick of the life of his own time ; to ' 
 present it without adornment and without heighten- 
 
268 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 ing of colour ; to hold up the mirror to nature, as 
 she lay before him ; " to give the very age and body 
 of the time his form and pressure." He has done 
 this for the outward conditions of life, as he knew it ; 
 he has done so, with still more truth and genius, for 
 its spiritual conflicts. Here is his vital originality, 
 and the enduring significance of his dramas. 
 
 The attempt was a bold one ; and on two sides it 
 is open to challenge. How far, we may ask, is the 
 design itself to be reconciled with the highest ends 
 of tragedy ? Atjd how far, the design once granted, — 
 is it worthily carried out ? The latter question may 
 conveniently be taken first. 
 
 In some of his plays, the characters, it may at 
 once be admitted, are hardly strong enough to bear 
 the strain which is laid upon them. In ji Doll's 
 House, for instance, it is hard to imagine that any 
 woman, however fatuous her training, could have 
 grown up in ignorance that forgery is a crime ; still 
 harder to believe that such a being would be capable 
 of the sudden change with which she is credited by 
 the dramatist, that the doll of the opening scenes 
 could, at a turn of the hand, become the aggrieved 
 and majestic idealist of the close. Yet strike out 
 these two assumptions, and the whole drama falls in 
 pieces. A like doubt might, at first sight, suggest 
 itself as to the characters in The Wild Duck. But 
 reflection will show that the case here is very different. 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 269 
 
 These characters, pitiful though they are and are 
 intended to be, have at least the merit of consistency. 
 They are drawn with amazing vividness. And the 
 whole force of the tragedy — a tragedy in this instance 
 fused through and through with irony — lies in the 
 miserable self-delusions which are the source alike of 
 their pride, their futility, and their irrecoverable ruin. 
 With Ghosts we pass to yet another phase of the 
 same question. Here is a drama, the tragedy of 
 which lies solely in suffering, in the curse brought 
 by the sins of the father upon the whole life and 
 being of the son. In the character of the victim 
 there can, from the naturq^ of the case, be no attrac- 
 tion. His whole nature is shattered ; the taint has 
 entered into his very soul. All interest, save that of 
 bare sympathy with the weak and helpless, is de- 
 liberately excluded. And we are driven to ask our- 
 selves whether the elements of true tragedy are to be 
 drawn from material so remorselessly confined. In 
 the fullest and deepest sense, perhaps the answer 
 would be that they are not. Yet who can deny that 
 the impression left on our minds is one of the most 
 jippaUing that ever dramatist has produced ? 
 
 In considering Ghosts, we have already trenched 
 upon the answer to our final question : How far is 
 the scheme of Ibsen's dramas, the design as apart 
 from the execution of it, compatible with the highest 
 ends at which tragedy can aim ? Are not his details 
 
270 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. 
 
 ^ overloaded, his themes depressing, his characters too 
 
 \ persistently lacking in the nobler, the more heroic, 
 
 j qualities, without which our sympathies remain cold ? 
 
 I That these doubts have some foundation, I believe 
 
 ;can hardly be denied. I question whether plays, 
 
 constructed on such a model as that of Ghosts, could 
 
 I ever raise us to the purer atmosphere — the " calm of 
 
 ( mind, all passion spent " — which the master spirits of 
 
 tragic drama have habitually breathed. Before this 
 
 , atmosphere can create itself, there must be a sense of 
 
 \ victory beyond defeat, of calm after the tumult, of 
 
 jheroism rising above weakness or degradation. And 
 
 the means by which that sense is awakened the 
 
 plays of Ibsen have, for the most part, deliberately 
 
 renounced. 
 
 Yet this, however true it may be, is no reason for 
 shutting our eyes to the great qualities which, as I 
 think, Ibsen undoubtedly possesses :1 to his vivid 
 presentment of the problems which distract the 
 minds of men at the present day ; to the extra- 
 ordinary vividness of his characters'; to the con- 
 summate subtlety* with which they are often painted. 
 The last is his highest quality, as dramatist ; and it 
 is the root of all that is most remarkable in modern 
 tragedy. As proof of his greatness in this respett, I 
 would point to three characters in particular : to 
 Hedda Gabler, to Hialmar in The Wild Ducky and 
 to Rebecca West in Rosmersholm. The two first 
 
XI RECENT DRAMA 271 
 
 are types of perversity of the most diverse kinds, 
 each of which, to most minds, will seem inexpressibly 
 repulsive. The last is less typical ; and, partly for 
 that reason^ it makes a far stronger appeal to our 
 sympathies. What is yet more important, the play 
 of which this woman is the heroine is one of the few 
 plays where Ibsen has made some approach to the 
 tragic atmosphere of which I have just spoken ; 
 where even perversion is purified by a far-off touch 
 of heroism ; where loss itself points forward to 
 abiding gain. The other play in which, with many 
 differences, something of the same quality is shown 
 is, in my opinion, The Lady from the Sea. 
 
 This brings us to the end of the course which we 
 mapped out at starting. And, as we look back, we 
 may do well to ask how far our forecast has been 
 fulfilled, how far the general lie of the road has 
 answered our expectations. For this purpose, we are 
 justified in fixing our eyes upon the greatest figures, 
 in confining ourselves to the main stream of dramatic 
 tradition. And here it is hardly possible to be mis- 
 taken. The unvarying tendency oftra gedy — and 
 even the work oF Ibsen is jio„ exceptioH"=-has^ been 
 from the less to the more ideal, from .tjtie_l^s^ to the_ 
 more inwacd.. ... It has been from action to character, . 
 from the outer regions pf^ character_to jth5sejKh.i£il. 
 are more secret and impalpable ; to purpose^ motive. 
 
272 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA lect. xi 
 
 mood, temperament and instinct. This is the pro- 
 cess which we have seen gradually unfold itself, 
 from jEschylus to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare 
 to Goethe and Browning. With a difference, it is 
 the process revealed in the finest of Ibsen's prose 
 dramas, still more in Brand or in Peer Gynt. 
 Whether this process has always been to the ad- 
 vantage of the drama as an imaginative art, may 
 be disputed. But the fact itself can hardly be 
 denied. And, if a liberal construction be put upon 
 the words, no better statement of the creed which, 
 consciously or unconsciously, inspired those who 
 carried forward this revolution step by step can be 
 given than the pregnant lines of Wordsworth : — 
 
 Action is transitory — a step, a blow, 
 
 The motion of a muscle — this way or that — 
 
 'Tis done, and in the after vacancy 
 
 We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed; 
 
 Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark. 
 
 And shares the nature of infinity. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Action, in Greek tragedy, 267 
 
 ^schylus, his command of situation, 
 31-6 ; treatment of character, 36-9; 
 keenness of moral vision, 38, 57 ; 
 Hebraic element in his genius, 49- 
 50 ; sparseness of relations, 96 ; 
 style, 57-8 ; Agamemnon, 33-4, 40, 
 loi ; Choepharoe, 34-6, 53-5 ; 
 Eumenides, 20-3, 31, 40, 95, loi ; 
 Oresteia, 42-4 ; Persae, 30-2, 40, 
 64, 96 ; Frometheus, 30, 40, 42 j 
 SuppUces, 30-1, 10 1 ; Seven against 
 Tliehes, 37-8, 96 
 
 Agathon, Anthos (or Amheiu), jj, 
 103 
 
 Alfieri, romantic elements in, 128-9, 
 149 ; essentially classical genius, 
 128-9 j dramatic compression, 129, 
 140 J vehemence of his characters, 
 129-31 J his tyrants, 131-2; his 
 nobler characters, 132-3 ; his com- 
 mand of dramatic situation, 135-6 ; 
 use of his sources, 136-8 ; style, 
 138-9 ; Agammmne, 132, 135, 137 ; 
 Antigone, 131, 133, 135 ; Don 
 Garzia, 13 1-2 j Filipfo, 131, 133 ; 
 compared with Don Carlos, 133-5 i 
 Mirra, 128 j Oreste, 132, 136, 137- 
 138; Polinice, 132, 136; Saul, 128; 
 Maria Stuarda, 128 
 
 Angelo, Michael, 11-13 
 
 Aristophanes, his criticism of Euripides, 
 
 73-4 
 Aristotle, 26-7, 65, 75, 77, 103, 142, 
 
 149, 226 
 Autos sacramentttles, 169, 194 
 
 Browning, 2, 128, 208 ; extreme in- 
 wardness of his plays, 248-9; use 
 
 of dramatic situation, 249-50 ; bear- 
 ing of this on his view of character, 
 252-4 ; and on the acting quality 
 of his plays, 257-8 ; Colombe's 
 Birthday, 250-1 ; In a Balcony, 251 ; 
 Pippa Passes, 251 ; Luria, 254-7; 
 its stress on temperament, 254-6 ; 
 its relation to Othello, 255 
 Byron, 198, 200 
 
 Calderon, Italian metres, 172-3 ; 
 national metres, 173-4 ; disregard 
 of unities, 174-5 i treatment of 
 character, 175-6, 179; Lances de 
 Calderon, 178-9 ; his occasional 
 violence, 180-3; blending of tragedy 
 and comedy, 183-5 ; lyric strain, 
 189-92; reflective strain, 192-4; 
 Dama Duende, 170 ; Secreta Ven- 
 gan%a, 171-2 ; Medico de su Honra, 
 171-2, 1 81-3; Pintor de su Deshonra, 
 171-2, 175, 185-9 j ■^'X'"' despues 
 de la Muerte, 171, 175, 176-9, 
 189-90; yida es Sueiio, 171, 191-4; 
 Cisma de Inglaterra, 181 ; Devocion 
 de la Cruz, 181 ; El Joseph de las 
 Mugeres, 172 ; Magico Frodigioso, 
 174-5, 18°) 185 ; £/ Mayor Mon- 
 struo, 172 
 Cervantes, and classical drama, 107, 
 
 168 
 Character, in Greek tragedy, 36-8 
 Chorus, in Greek tragedy, 2, 5, 101-3; 
 in Seneca, 102 ; in Die Braut -von 
 Messina, 223, 225 ; equivalents in 
 Shakespeare, 161-2 ; in Iphigenie, 
 225-6 
 Convention, in drama, 5 
 Corneille, 109, ill, 169, 245 
 
 273 
 
274 
 
 TYPES OF TRAGIC DRAMA 
 
 Deus ex machina, 8i, 227 
 
 Diderot, advocacy of Le drame, 233 
 
 Dryden, 143, 169 
 
 Ducis, adaptations of Shakespeare, 233 
 
 Euripides, his originality, 61-2 ; revolt 
 against tradition, 63-4; pathos, 
 64-6 ; humanity, 66-8 ; reflective 
 vein, 67-8 ; alleged realism, 74-8, 
 80; love of effect, 75, 80-2; ro- 
 mantic vein, 76-80 ; relations and 
 descriptions, 81, 95 ; declamations, 
 96 5 influence on Seneca and modern 
 tragedy, 83-4, 106 ; compared vifith 
 Racine, 118-22; Alcestis, 64-5; 
 Andromache, 67, 69 ; Bacchae, 42 ; 
 Electra, 55, 65, 69, 73 ; Hecuha, 66, 
 93 ; Helena, 64, 73 ; Heraclidae, 
 78 ; Hippolytu!, 65-6, 71-2, 89, 102 ; 
 Ion, 73, 78, 79 ; Iphigenia in Aulis, 
 65, 73 ; Iphigenia in Tauris, 65, 
 223-7 ; Medea, 69-71, 90-2 ; Orestes, 
 73, 75 ; Pinenissaei 73 ; Supplices, 
 66 ; Telephus, 73 ; Troades, 66 
 
 Ford, 139, 145 
 
 Goethe, Faust, 6, 7, 8, 9, 18 ; historical 
 dramas, 198-9, 201 ; Faust, char- 
 acter in growth, 205-9 ; looseness 
 of structure, 206-9 i symbolic 
 method, 209-12 ; its loss and gain, 
 212-3 i symbolism of Faust ad- 
 mitted by Goethe, 214-8 j his treat- 
 ment of the Faust legend, 218-9 i 
 its significance, 219-20, 224, 240 ; 
 Iphigenie, its classical character, 223 ; 
 Iphigenia in Tauris recast, 223-7 ; 
 its calm, 224-5 9 lyrical passages, 
 225-6; plot, 228-30; character of 
 the heroine, 224, 230 
 
 Heine, 192 
 
 Historical drama, 198-204, 211-2 
 Hugo, 2, 3, 56, 114, 142, 208, 222, 
 232 ; Goethe's estimate of, 232 ; 
 revolt against classical tragedy, 234 ; 
 preface to Cromwell, 234-40 ; his 
 view of art, 235-6 ; attack on the 
 rules, 236-7 ; on the unities, 237 ; 
 his construction of the unity of 
 action, 237-8, 240 ; doctrine of 
 style, 238-9 ; disregard of unities, 
 240 ; structure of his plays, 241 ; 
 
 use of contrast, 242-4 ; style of 
 his dramas, 244-5 > survival of 
 classical influence on, 245-7 ; lyric 
 and epic strains in his dramas, 247 
 
 Ibsen, 3, 4, 1 3 - 14 ; his actuality, 261-2; 
 not to be confounded with realism, 
 262-7 ; reproduction of the inward 
 and outward life of his time, 263,267; 
 his view of life, 264 ; his symbolism, 
 265-7 i ^'^ problems, 265-6 ; re- 
 lation to realism, 267-71 ; subtlety 
 of his portraiture, 270-71 ; tragic 
 spirit, 271 ; Enemy of the People, 
 13-14, 264, 266 ; Pillars of Society, 
 264, 266 ; Doll's House, 264, 265, 
 268 ; Master Builder, 264, 266 ; 
 JVild Duck, 266-7, 268-9, ^7° j 
 Ghosts, 153, 269, 270 ; Hedda 
 Gahler, 266, 270 ; Rosmersholm, 153, 
 264, 266, 270-71 ; Lady from the 
 Sea, 264, 271 ; Brand, 272 ; Peer 
 Gynt, 272 
 
 Idealisation, 9-15, 17-18, 236 
 
 Incident, as an element of tragedy, 
 30-6 
 
 Inwardness of modern tragedy, 8, 17, 
 18, 147-50, 153, 156, 159-61, 
 176-9, 189, 203, 205-9, 2*4-5. 
 248-54, 257-8, 259-60, 264-5, 
 266-7, 271-2 
 
 Jonson, 108, 199 
 
 Kyd, Spanish Tragedy, 92, 94, 100, 144 
 
 Lessing, Emilia Galotti, 7 
 Letourneur, translation of Shakes- 
 peare, 233 
 Longinus, criticism of Euripides, 81 
 
 Maeterlinck, 128, 249 ; his stress on 
 temperament, 258-9 ; spirituality 
 of his characters, 259-61 ; Aglavaine 
 et Silysette, 260 
 Manzoni, 198, 200 
 Marlowe, Faustus, 3, 6, 209 ; Tambur- 
 laine, 28, 100 ; yew of Malta, 92, 
 144 
 Marston, his tragedies of Revenge, 92 
 Mazzini, // dramma storico, 200 
 Mercier, attack on classical tragedy, 
 233, 239 
 
INDEX 
 
 275 
 
 Middleton, 14.6, 163, 185 
 Milton, 108, 209 
 Morality Plays, 103 
 Mystery Plays, 103 
 
 Plot in tragedy, 29-30, 110-11, 114, 
 118, 124, 130, 136, 145-7, 153. 
 175, 206-208, 237-8, 241, 271 
 
 Racine, concentration of his plots, 
 IIO-I2; absence of outward incident, 
 112-4; choice of theme, 114; 
 knowledge of character, 115-6; 
 lyrical vein, 123-4 j s'y'e, 125-7 ; 
 165-6; Andromaque^ 116-8; Bri- 
 tannicus, 123, 135 ; Phidre com- 
 pared with Hippolytus of Euripides 
 and Seneca, 118-22 ; Athalic, 125 
 
 Raphael, 10, 11 
 
 Realism, 9-16, 74-9, 236, 262-8 
 
 Religious spirit of Greek tragedy, 
 24 
 
 Renaissance, 103-8 
 
 Rousseau, 197 
 
 Sackville, Gorhoduc, 107 
 
 Schiller, Don Carlos, 200, 201 - 204 ; 
 WalUmtein, 200-201 ; Braut -von 
 Messina, 204-23 
 
 Seneca, influence of Euripides on him, 
 83, 87 - 9 ; . his imfluence on 
 modern classical drama, 106-8 ; on 
 Renaissance Drama, 106, 141 ; on 
 Elizabethan tragedy, 92 - 5 ; dra- 
 matic power, 88 ; melodrama, 89- 
 95; descriptive passages, 95-6; 
 declamation, 95-7 ; epigrams, 97- 
 98 ; romantic element, 98-100 ; 
 compared with Racine, 1 19-22 ; 
 Agamemnon, 94-7 ; Hippolytus, 89- 
 90, 118-22; Medea, 90-92, 99; 
 CEdipus, 99 ; Oclavia, 97 ; Thyestes, 
 93-4> 97 j Tnas, 88-9. 
 
 Shakespeare, his abundance of out- 
 ward action, 142-3 ; its occasional 
 violence, 145 ; loosening of dramatic 
 structure, 145 ; secondary plots, 
 146 ; episodic scenes, 147-9 i stress 
 on character, 148-50 ; growth and 
 
 decay of character, 1 50-3 ; disregard 
 of unities, 148-54; reflective and lyric 
 veins, 154-61 ; their bearing pn his 
 treatment of character and of tragic 
 conflict, 156-61 ; his equivalents 
 fortheGreekChoru8,i6i-2; variety 
 of characters, 162-3 j use of humour 
 in tragedy, 163-4; style, 155-6; 
 Hamlet, 6, 8, 18, 133, 143, 147, 
 155 ; Macbeth, 6, 18, 147-8, 150-2, 
 157-9; Lear, 59, 146-7, 152-3; 
 Othello, 144-5, •47> 156-71 '6°' 1*5' 
 255 ; Romeo, 164, 219, 247 ; Richard 
 in., 98, 158; 1 Henry VI., 28; 
 Henry V., 201 ; Merchant of Venice, 
 29 ; " Romances," 60 
 
 Shelley, 58, 107-8, 193-4, 198 
 
 Situation, in Greek tragedy, 27-g ; in 
 Racine, 110-14; '" Alfieri, 130, 
 135-6 ; in Hugo, 241, 247 ; in 
 Browning, 249-50, 254-7 
 
 Soliloquies, 6, 9, 18 
 
 Sophocles, his humanisation of Greek 
 tragedy, 45-8 ; essentially Greek 
 spirit, 49-50 ; command of plot, 
 50-6 j his occasional sacrifice to 
 eflfect, 51-5; his spirit of reconcilia- 
 tion, 59-60 ; his style, 57-9 ; Ajax, 
 43, 83 ; Antigone, 13-16, 42, 45-8 ; 
 CEdipus Tyrannus, 44-5) 53*4 j 
 (Edipus Coloneus, ^<j-6o, 101 ; Electra, 
 51-5, 96 ; Philoctetes, 43 
 
 Symbolism, 205, 209-11, 212-3, ^59" 
 261, 265-7 
 
 Theatre, Greek, 19-20 
 Tourneur, Cyril, 92 
 Trissino, Sofinisba, 83 
 
 Unities of time, place, and action, 5, 
 20-3, 148-50, 153-4, 174-6, 179, 
 207-208, 237-8, 240, 251 
 
 Vega, Lope de, 107, 169, 180 
 Voltaire, 108, 109, ill, 113, 115, 
 233. 245 
 
 Webster, 92, 144 
 Wordsworth, 198, 272 
 
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