178 LECTURES ON DRAMATIC LITERATURE. No suitable versification has yet been invented in Italy for comedy. The verso sciolto, as is well known, does not answer; it is not sufficiently familiar. The verse of twelve syllables, with a sdrucciolo termination selected by Ariosto, is much better, resembling the trimeter of the ancients, but is still somewhat monotonous. It has been however but little cultivated. The Martellian verse, a bad imitation of the Alexandrine, is a downright torture to the ear. Chiari, and occasionally Goldoni, at last used it, and Gozzi by way of derision. It still remains therefore to the prejudice of a more elegant style in prose. Of new comedies the Italians have none; if they have, the pictures of manners are still more dull and superficial than those of Goldoni, without drollery, without invention, and, from their everyday common-place, downrightly disgusting. But they have acquired a just relish for the sentimental drama and familiar tragedy; they play with great fondness the popular German pieces of this description, and even produce the most detestable imitations of them. From being accustomed to operas and ballets. their favourite dramatic amusements, in which nothing more is attempted than a beautiful air or an elegant movement, from time to time, it would seem that the public have altogether lost all sense of dramatic connexion: they are perfectly well satisfied with two acts from different operas in the same evening, or with seeing the representation of the last act of an opera before the first. We do not therefore believe that we are saying too much when we affirm, that both dramatic poetry and the histrionic art are in the most woful decline in Italy,* that the first foundation of a national theatre has not yet been laid, and that there is no prospect of their ever having one, till the prevailing ideas on the subject undergo a total change. * Calsabigi attributes the cause of this state to the want of permanent com. panies of players, and of a capital. In this last reason there is certainly some foundation: in England, Spain, and France, a national system of dramatic art has been developed and established; in Italy and Germany, where there are only capitals of separate states, but no general metropolis, great difficulties are opposed to the improvement of the theatre. Calsabigi could not adduce the obstacles arising from a false theory, for he was himself under their influence, LECTURE IX. Antiquities of the French stage.-Influence of Aristotle and the imitation of the ancients.-Investigation of the three unities.-What is unity of action? -Unity of time.-Was it observed by the Greeks?-Unity of place as connected with it.-Mischief resulting from too narrow rules on the subject. WE now proceed to the dramatic literature of the French. We find no reason for dwelling at any length on the first beginnings of tragedy in France. We may therefore leave to the French critics the task of depreciating the antiquities of their own literature, which they do with the mere view of adding to the glory of the succeeding age of Richelieu and Louis XIV. Their language, it is true, was then for the first time elaborated from the most indescribable wilderness of tastelessness and barbarity, while the harmonious diction of the Italian and Spanish poetry, which had long before developed itself without effort in the most beautiful luxuriance, was at that time rapidly degenerating. Hence, we are not to be astonished that the French lay such great stress on all the negative excellencies, and endeavour so much to avoid everything like impropriety, and that from the dread of a relapse, this has always, since the period in question, been the general object of their critical labours. When La Harpe says of the tragedies of Corneille, that their tone rises above flatness only to fall into the opposite extreme of affectation, in the proofs which he adduces we see no reason to differ from him.— A contemporary piece of Legouvé, The Death of Henry the Fourth, has been lately printed, which is not only written in a ludicrous style, but in the general plan and distribution of the subject, with its prologue spoken by Satan and a chorus of pages, with its endless monologues and want of progress and action, betrays the infancy of the dramatic art, not a naive infancy full of hope and expectation, but one disfigured by the most pedantic bombast and absurdity. With respect to the earlier tragical attempts of the French in the last half of the sixteenth, and the first third part of the seventeenth century, we refer to Fontenelle, La Harpe, the Melanges literaires of Suard and André. We shall confine ourselves to the characterization of three of their most celebrated tragic poets, Corneille, Racine and Voltaire, who it would seem have given an immutable shape to their tragic stage. Our chief object however is an examination of the system of tragic art, practically followed by these poets, and by them partly, but by the French critics universally, considered as alone entitled to any authority, and every deviation from it viewed as a sin against good taste. If the system is in itself the best, we shall be compelled to allow that its execution is masterly, perhaps not to be surpassed. But the great question here is, how far the French tragedy is in spirit and inward essence related to the Greek, and whether it deserves to be considered as an improvement upon it. Of their first attempts it is only consistent with our object to observe, that the endeavour to imitate the ancients displayed itself at a very early period in France; and that they considered that the surest method of succeeding in this endeavour was to observe the strictest outward regularity of form, of which they derived their ideas more from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca, than from an intimate acquaintance with the Greek models themselves. In the first tragedies which were represented, the Cleopatra and Dido of Jodelle, a prologue and chorus were introduced: Jean de la Peruse translated the Medea of Seneca; Garnier's pieces are all taken from the Greek tragedies or from Seneca, but in the execution they bear a much closer resemblance to the latter. The writers of that day employed themselves also diligently on the Sophonisbe of Trissino, from a regard for its classic appearance. Whoever is acquainted with the mode of proceeding of real genius, which is impelled by the almost unconscious and immediate contemplation of great and important truths, and in nowise by mediate convictions obtained from deductions drawn in a roundabout way, will be on that account extremely suspicious of all activity in art, which originates in an abstract theory. But Corneille did not, like an antiquary, execute his dramas as so many learned school exercises, on the model of the ancients. Seneca, it is true, led him astray, but he knew and loved the Spanish theatre, and it had a great influence on his mind. The first of his pieces with which it is generally allowed that the classical epoch of French tragedy begins, and which is certainly one of his best, the Cid, is well known to have been borrowed from the Spanish. It violates considerably the unity of place, if not also that of time, and it is animated throughout by the spirit of chivalrous love and honour. But the opinion of his contemporaries, that a tragedy must be framed accurately according to the rules of Aristotle, was so universally prevalent that it bore down all opposition. Corneille, almost at the close of his dramatic career, began to entertain scruples of conscience, and endeavoured in a separate treatise to prove that his pieces, in the composition of which he had never even thought of Aristotle, were however all accurately written according to his rules. This was no easy task, for he was obliged to have recourse to all manner of forced explanations. If he had established his case satisfactorily, we could only infer from it that the rules of Aristotle must be very loose and indeterminate, if such dissimilar works in spirit and form, as the tragedies of the Greeks and those of Corneille, should be equally true to them. It is quite otherwise with Racine: of all the French poets he was, without doubt, the one who was best acquainted with the ancients, and he did not merely study them as a scholar, he felt them as a poet. He found however the practice of the theatre already firmly established, and he did not undertake to deviate from it for the sake of approaching these models. He only therefore appropriated the separate beauties of the Greek poets; but whether from respect for the taste of his age, or from inclination, he remained faithful to the prevailing gallantry so foreign to the Greek tragedy, and for the most part made it the foundation of the intrigues of his piece. Such was nearly the state of the French theatre till Voltaire made his appearance. He possessed but a moderate knowledge of the Greeks, of whom however he now and then spoke with enthusiasm, that on other occasions he might rank them below the more modern masters of his own nation, including himself; but yet he always considered himself bound to preach up the grand severity and simplicity of the Greeks as essential to tragedy. He censured the deviations of his predecessors as errors, and insisted on purifying and at the same time enlarging the stage, as in his opinion, from the constraint of court manners, it had been almost straitened to the dimensions of an anti-chamber. He at first spoke of the bursts of genius in Shakspeare, and borrowed many things from this poet, at that time altogether unknown to his countrymen; he insisted too on greater depth in the delineation of passion, on a more powerful theatrical effect; he demanded a scene ornamented in a more majestic manner; and, lastly, he not unfrequently endeavoured to give to his pieces a political or philosophical interest altogether foreign to poetry. His labours have unquestionably been of utility to the French stage, although in language and versification (which in the classification of dramatic excellencies ought only to hold a secondary place, though in France they are alone decisive of the fate of a piece), he is, by most critics, considered as inferior to his predecessors, or at least to Racine. It is now the fashion to attack this idol of the last age on every point with the most unrelenting and partial hostility. His innovations on the stage are therefore cried down as so many literary heresies, even by the critical watchmen, who seem to think that the age of Louis XIV. has left nothing remaining throughout every succession of ages till the very end of the world, but a passive admiration of its perfections, and who therefore will not listen to the unhallowed idea of anything like improvement. For authority is avowed with so little disguise as the first principle of the French critics, that this expression is quite current with them. In so far as we have to express doubts of the unconditional authority of the rules followed by the old French tragic authors, of the pretended affinity between the spirit of their works, and the spirit of the Greek tragedians, and of the validity of many things which have been supposed to be essential properties, we find an associate in Voltaire. But in many other points he has, without examination, nay even unconsciously, adopted the maxims of his predecessors, and followed their practice. In opinions founded perhaps more on national peculiarities than on human nature and the essence of tragic poetry in general, he is equally implicated with them. On this account we may include him along with them in the common examination; we are not speaking of the execution of particular parts, but of the general principles of tragic art, which we are to collect from the shape of the works. The consideration of the regularity insisted on brings us back to what are called the three unities of Aristotle. We shall examine the doctrine delivered by the Greek philosopher on this subject; how far these rules were known to or observed by the Greek tragedians; whether the French poets have in reality overcome the difficulty of observing them without constraint and improbability, or merely escaped from it with dexterity; and finally, whether the merit of this observance is actually so great and essential as it has been deemed, and whether on the other hand more essential beauties must not be sacrificed for the sake of complying with it. We may view the French tragedy under another aspect, in which it does not rest on the authority of the ancients: this is the union of poetry, with a number of social observances founded only on consent. On the subject in question the French are far less clear than on that of the rules; for nations are usually not more capable of knowing and appreciating themselves than individuals. It is intimately connected with the spirit of French poetry in general, nay with their whole literature and the very language itself. All this has in France been formed under the guardianship of society, and has uniformly been guided and determined by it, a society which zealously imitated the tone of the capital, and this again took its direction from the modes of a brilliant court. If such is really the case, as there can indeed be no difficulty in proving, we may easily conceive why the French |