several places very distant from each other on the same parallels and the same meridians, to endeavour to discover the number and position of the magnetic poles in the earth, on the supposition that the present theory of its being one great magnet is the true onethe other, by a set of experiments at the same places, with an invariable pendulum, to ascertain to a greater degree of accuracy the figure of the earth in the southern hemisphere--In the prosecution of such an undertaking M. Freycinet must carry with him the good wishes of every lover of science. ART. X. The Tragic Drama.-The Apostate; a Tragedy, in Five Acts. By Richard Sheil, Esq. 8vo. London. 1817. No department of literature has found more assailants and cham pions than the drama: this may in some degree be owing to the publicity of its claims. Most other branches win their way in comparative silence, amid the stillness of the closet, and the calmness of literary discussion; the pleasure which they give is wholly ab stracted from the senses, and the impression which they leave is generally unaided by the passions. The drama, on the contrary, though it demands to be censured in judgment, awakes the sense to judge;' it addresses an assembled multitude, who, from physical and mental causes, are, for the most part, in a state of excitement that must be sustained by a continued and powerful appeal, and who require to be dismissed with feelings too various for distinct perception, and too rapturous for sober analysis. Possessing and asserting this large share of influence, its importance has nevertheless been exaggerated both by those who have attacked and those who have defended it; and perhaps, as is often the case, it has suffered more from the zeal of its friends than from the malignity of its enemies. By the latter it has been represented as operating to the pollution of morals, the relaxation of laws, and even the subversion of governments. By the former it has been praised as not only polishing the manners and refining the taste of a nation, but as essentially connected with the harmony of society, and the morals of mankind. The truth is, that the drama is not a cause, but an effect of the state of society. Men go to a theatre neither to be improved nor depraved, neither to learn nor unlearn the precepts of morality or the rules of life; they go to it as to a place where the mind is to be employed, while the senses are gratified, where genius is to appear arrayed in the graces of elocution, and the splendour of external decoration; they go to witness the representation of sufferings to which all are exposed, or of follies in which all have participated; and they return with their principles neither confirmed nor shaken, except by the operations of the passions which they brought with them, and which would perhaps have operated if they had never entered the walls of a theatre. They go, in a word, to be amused, to seek, in the representations of fictitious life, a solace or a forgetfulness of the evils of reality; and if amusement can be obtained without mischief, though it is the lowest praise with which the admirers of the drama will be contented, it is, perhaps, among the highest that can be bestowed on any known mode of public recreation. The Drama, which owed its origin in Greece to religion, is indebted to the same cause for its revival in modern Europe. The monks, anxious to interest their audience by sensible representations of the facts of religion, or, perhaps, to diversify the sullen and monotonous gloom of conventual life, exhibited the Mysteries, the first rude form in which the drama re-appeared.-In some respects we trace an involuntary resemblance between them and the Grecian tragedy; they were exhibited sub dio, and their foundation rested invariably on the national creed. At the period of the Reformation, the teachers of the new religion, though professing and generally maintaining a greater strictness of demeanour, attempted to wrest this powerful engine from the hands of their adversaries, and to turn it against them; and controversy, after deluging every other department of literature, forced its way even into the indirect and impracticable channel of the drama. The comedies of Bale exhibited the most awful mysteries of religion clothed in the dark drapery of Calvinistic theology, and the audience with edifying patience sat out dramas, which extended from Adam to the commencement of the Gospel dispensation, and of which the characters were those whom it would now be justly deemed impiety to allude to on the stage, and irreverence even to name on ordinary occasions. Bale had numerous associates in the arduous task of dramatizing the Bible, and we must remember that at that time plays were acted more frequently in the halls of colleges and the palaces of bishops than in theatres, before we can believe that such subjects were selected for dramatic representation, or that actors could be found to personate them. The drama, however, was not much improved by this extraordinary coalescence; into which the tragic muse seems to have entered somewhat ungracefully:* the very means which her reverend teachers took to break her to their purpose tended (as might have been foreseen) to defeat it. To accommodate the drama to popular conception, they had *The defence suggested by Warton of the Mysteries and Moralities, that they tended to abolish the barbarity of military games is, perhaps, the best that can be offered. But how can Warton seriously say, that they taught the great truths of Scripture to men who could not read the Bible?' They taught little but licentiousness and impiety, and the sacred names which they use, instead of consecrating, aggravate the profanation. to mingle the narratives of Scripture with the incidents of ordinary life, and the language of inspiration with the refuse of colloquial abuse, and depraved idiom-hence their representations were without dignity, and their morality without effect. At various times, it has been attempted to engage the drama in a service equally foreign, and to make it the organ of political sentiment--the attempt was equally unsuccessful, and the reason is obvious. At the dramas above-mentioned all who were assembled know what they had to expect: every man sat to be delighted with the echo of his own religious opinions, to have the doctrines on which he rested his future hopes confirmed by example, and enlivened by sensible representation; and retired to compare with his Bible the testimony of confessors, or to meditate on the tortures of martyrs, to which, according to the prevalent creed, he might soon be summoned to add his own. The man who could sit to witness the attributes of the Deity or the Covenant of Grace made the subject of theatrical representation, would have shrunk with horror from the scenical martyrdom of a catholic saint. Every man at each assembly was of the same mind, and the satisfaction, however obtained, was universal. But in a drama which is rendered the vehicle of political sentiment, the case is widely different. Such a drama must include the supposition of a state so constituted as to render the theatre accessible to various parties; the audience is promiscuous, and, as at the first representation of Cato, one party applaud to show that they feel the application of the sentiments, and the other to show that they disregarded the application; they go not to be pleased with the performance, but with themselves, with their zeal in improving the sanction of their own sentiments, or their vehemence in decrying all that would venture to oppose them. But the mind delights to keep its pleasures distinct from its toils; and though a man may carry the spirit of a patriot to the theatre, he soon grows weary of the labour of gratuitously supporting it. Thus, after various trials, the adventitious drapery fell from the dramatic muse-gorgeous tragedy once more came sweeping by in her own sceptered pull, and the drama was restored to her legitimate rights of delighting by the living representation of the pas sions and manners of mankind elevated by poetry, and chastened by morality. We have thus briefly deduced the history of the drama to prove that its great object was to give delight with deference to certain restrictions, and we have been the more circumstantial in doing so, because it leads us to the notice of a phenomenon unparalleled in the history of literature. While in every other department of literature all means have been employed to excite and to satiate the appetite for novelty; while history, philosophy, and theology have contributed to enrich and diversify poetry, while it has sought to interest us not only by painting man in every situation in which he has yet been discovered, but in situations in which the vivid creations of fancy alone could give a habitation and a name, while the passions have been depicted not only in their visible operation on life, but in the silent and unwitnessed workings of the heart, the drama still rests her claim on the merit of her earliest productions, and the efforts of competitors or of imitators have only served to establish the triumphs of Shakspeare. That the genius of this great writer surpassed, and probably will continue to surpass, the powers of every other dramatic poet will scarcely be disputed. But since the mind of man is always in a state of progression, since the changes of society, though they could not alter the nature of the passions, have at least modified their expression,-since the improvement of our manners, by heightening and refining our sensibility, has afforded opportunities of displaying it in new situations and struggles before unimagined, since the artificial and imaginary causes of its excitement have multiplied, and thus given to morbid and factitious feeling the sympathy once bestowed only on real-writers of feebler powers might have hoped to please, at least by dramas more regularly constructed,--by feelings more philosophically traced, by exhibitions of complicated passion, which had never been depicted before but in their elements, by new combinations of qualities diversified by the more intricate relations of society, by imagery borrowed from sources which the limited state of literature did not then afford, and by a harmony of modulation with which the improvement of our language has enabled us to delight the ear. This at least might have been expected, but that the expectation has not been fulfilled is obvious, from our not having had, since the days of Rowe, (a writer of no poetical eminence,) more than two decisively and permanently successful performances. To inquire into the causes of this, may not be useless, and certainly cannot be uninteresting. * The history of the English stage presents us with two striking periods. The one, when dramatic composition, free from all external influence, formed a distinct and separate school of its own. The other, when the introduction of French rules, both in criticism and composition, gradually changed its aspect, and brought along with it a taste for the principles and structure of the Greek tragedy, on which the French is founded, and which indeed it very closely resembles. There are, in truth, some points of obvious difference, *The tragedies of Zanga and Douglas are the only exceptions we remember; those of the Gamester and the Fatal Marriage owed their revival to the inimitable talents of Mrs. Siddons. but it may be observed, in general, that the agreement is essential, and the difference merely accidental. The rigid preservation of the unities of time, place, and action; the historical subjects, regal personages, and public events; the developement of the story always at its commencement, and generally at its conclusion, committed to narrative, and usually intrusted to an inferior performer, the immeasurable length of the speeches in the dialogue, the absence of all vehement action in the scenes, or practical catastrophe on the stage, are points of invariable and original agreement, that not only assimilate, but in a measure identify the French and classical dramas with each other. The points of dissimilitude are few and unimportant, and, as we before remarked, arise rather from the difference of manners necessarily modified by the lapse of ages, than from any inherent discrepancy either in the conception of the authors or the taste of the audience. The predominance of love* as the principal agent among the passions, the consequent superiority of female interest in French plays, the bienséance of the heroes who appear to have changed sexes with the heroines, (the latter being licensed to rant, while the former are permitted only to whine,) the official niceties of court etiquette, preserved alike amid the courts of Epirus,t Babylon, Rome, and Constantinople, where they were all alike unknown, are features of the French drama impossible not to be recognized as national; but the difference produced by them is (to borrow the language of the schools) modal, not essential; they leave the general resemblance unaltered; the unity of their character, principle, and structure, unbroken. Such was the school that, at the period of which we speak, held the balance of dramatic criticism suspended with a lofty hand, and pronounced all the theatres in Europe barbarous but her own. Of the classical drama, on which it was founded, it may not be amiss to add a few words-to assist the inquiries of those who may be desirous of ascertaining why, supported as it has been by scholars and critics, it can never become popular on the modern stage? The basis of ancient tragedy is mythology-and that mythology, long exploded, can now scarcely afford a striking illustration to the theme of a school-boy, much less a popular subject for tragedy;— what, according to Gibbon, was viewed by contemporary philo *Voltaire, in the preface to his Merope, expresses his astonishment at the success of his play, because the interest was not founded on what the French call love. § Titus. + Andromaque. + Semiramide. || Bajazet! Abbé le Blanc gives a humorous defence of the politesse of the French stage, which he, perhaps, thought very serious. I am sure there is nothing half so insipid in Titus, or any of Racine's effeminate heroes, as in the title which Dryden gives to his celebra ted tragedy “All for Love, or The World Well Lost."' |