CHAPTER X. EURIPIDES.-THE ALCESTIS. * the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. As Greece is wonderful among nations, so Athens was wonderful in Greece. In poetical, philosophical, oratorical eminence, that city far outshone all its rivals in arts and arms. There the universal ear was ready tuned to high and cunning melodies, which elsewhere are lost in forgetfulness before they reach the slow and callous perceptions of their hearers. There Providence had prepared the highest order of human intellect to take the lead in every department of mental excellence; and the highest order of subject material for it to work upon. In no more striking particular are these remarks exemplified than in the co-existence and almost co-equality of the three great tragedians, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Of these, the two former have already been brought before our readers. They have gazed upon the abrupt and superhuman grandeur of Eschylus; have admired the consummate skill and artist-power of Sophocles; and now they will have a poet brought before them, deficient in both the excellences of the other two, but clothed in a peculiar manner with an excellence entirely his own. Euripides is the poet of the sympathies of the human heart-the mighty master of hope and fear and tender affection. He is, of the three great masters, unquestionably the greatest Dramatist, in the modern sense of the word. He is also of the three, the greatest lyric poet; his choral songs being perfect poems, and abounding in gorgeous imagery and melody of diction, more than is the case either in the plays of Eschylus or Sophocles. Still Euripides has his faults; and they are great ones. He was much derided by the critics and the wits of his day for degrading poetry into a household thing, and introducing into the high intercourse of gods and heroes the petty cares of every-day life. Certainly, considering the lofty structure of ancient Tragedy, the accusation was not unjust. There was in Euripides a yearning after the realities of human feeling, incongruous with the entirely artificial casting of the Attic drama. He was also charged with a leaning towards the obscure and mystical; an imputation which the poets of the human heart have been compelled to bear, from his time to the present; and a bias to which, from the very depth of that wonderful science which they handle, they must ever be in some measure prone. Euripides had studied under Anaxagoras the philosopher, whose unfettered speculations in matters held sacred at Athens had procured for him persecution and banishment. To him, doubtless, we owe many of the 'guesses at truth' which occur in the poetry of Euripides, and they, it must be confessed, are tinged with the same free-thinking spirit. It was also objected to him that his plots were deficient in moral tendency, resting frequently on incidents which the decencies of society forbade to bring forward into prominence. The charge can hardly be denied, while at the same time it must be insisted on, that Euripides is not an impure poet; and that these his transgressions are rather the blunders of a weak judgment, than the tokens of a depraved moral sense. In the very plays in which they occur, the handling of the plot, and the dialogue throughout, is purity itself; and after all, we must remember that the awful crimes of Edipus, and the matricide of Orestes, were subjects treated alike by the three. Out of the three most beautiful plays of our author,* we have selected as a specimen of his peculiar powers, that entitled the ALCESTIS. We are strongly tempted, instead of following our usual plan, to give our readers an almost entire translation of this beautiful play; avoiding if possible, on the one hand, the stiffness of a literal version, and on the other, the fault of clothing what is essentially Grecian poetry in a dress adapted to English and modern habits. It should be premised, that neither according to our own. notions, nor to those of the ancients, is this play a perfect tragedy. In its latter part a comic tendency prevails, and a melodramatic interest is given by the introduction into the house of mourning of a boisterous and apparently annoying personage, but through whose agency the happy event is brought about. But now to the play. Euripides has a custom of introducing a prologue telling the whole story of the plot, which will save us the trouble.+ PERSONS REPRESENTED. Admètus, king of Phere in Thessaly Eumèlus, son of Admètus. A servant. The god Apollo. Hercules, not yet deified. Death. Alcestis, wife to Admetus. A maidservant. Chorus of inhabitants of Pheræ. SCENE. Before the Palace of Admètus at Pheræ. Enter Apollo. Apollo. Hail, palace of Admetus, in which I, Although a god, once suffered servitude. *No one will dispute the preeminence of the Ion, the Iphigeneia in Aulis, and the Alcestis. + Some liberties of omission have been taken, especially where the short choric strains of which the music formed the charm, would be wearisome and tautological to the modern reader. Zeus was the cause: who having killed my son, Provoked my vengeance, so that I destroyed Death, the high priest of the infernal gods, Enter Death. Death. Out and alas! What makest thou, Apollo, About these walls? why tarriest thou Who rule the dead, a second time And did it not suffice that thou Shouldst have deprived them of Admetus, * Better known as Esculapius. Apollo. Fear not: for I am just, and mean no ill. Apollo. Well-and if she die old, her burial's rich. Death. Ha, ha! you are no friend to heirs, I see. Apollo. What sayest? is ev'n Death become a sophist? To fetch Eurystheus, from the wintry clime Death. Thou talkest much, but gainest none the more; Even now I go for her, and will begin The sacrifice with this my sword: for he Is the devoted to the gods beneath, Whose locks of severed hair this blade hath hallowed. [Exeunt. |