But Wilhelm had scarcely
finished
the selection when the
sound of applause was heard under the windows.
sound of applause was heard under the windows.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v10 - Emp to Fro
Charlotte Corday insisted.
Subdued
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left. A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture. The blood of the
2d of September was dripping back upon his heart. Disease
showed itself subtle and merciless to him, and played with his
expiring body as with an elected victim, who in his one death
must expiate all the violent deaths in which the popular influence
of his newspaper had given him a sort of moral complicity.
God purifies by fiery coals and by the bed of thorns, before
he withdraws from the world those whose hateful mission has
been to purify by the sword.
Suddenly Marat heard in the ante-chamber the harsh voice of
his housekeeper, contesting a very young voice whose clear and
tempting tones reached him in his bath:
"Citizen Marat? "
"This is the place, but he is not at home. "
"I must see him. I have just come from Caen. I wrote him
this morning. "
"I tell you he cannot receive any one.
He is ill. Call again
in a few days. "
"I implore you to give him my name. He must have had
my letter.
I am sure he will not refuse me a short interview. "
The housekeeper, a rather nervous and neutral nature, gently
but decidedly continued to refuse; and Charlotte, murmuring, was
already turning back toward the door, which the woman seemed
anxious to close behind her.
Now a gentle emotion entered Marat's heart with this fresh
voice, which he thought he must have heard before. This young
voice took him back to the better springtime years of his youth.
Impressed by its purity, which made it seem the natural music
of a beautiful spirit, he called to his friend, "Let her come in. "
"But, citizen, you are worn out with business. You are suf-
fering. The doctor has forbidden you to see any one. "
"The doctors are ignorant fellows, who can do nothing to
cure me. I won't be a slave to them. "
"But you should not admit every chance comer like that.
There are rumors of assassination. You know yourself that the
Royalists and the Girondists are plotting. Marat, you once told
me that you were to die by the hand of a woman. "
An old servant of Marat's named Catherine, who claimed to
be a sorceress and to divine the future, had predicted his violent
death. "Take heed," she had added, "against girls in red fichus. "
## p. 5564 (#130) ###########################################
5564
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"True," " answered Marat after a silence and a bitter sigh;
"but I have no faith in such follies. Women don't like me well
enough to kill me. ”
«< Well, I shall send away this intruder. "
"No, I tell you; let her come in. This girl comes from
Caen, where the rebel deputies are. She wrote me this morning.
She is unhappy. " Marat emphasized the last words. Then the
woman grumblingly obeyed, and showed the unknown into the
bath-room. When Charlotte Corday entered, Marat had his head
inclined upon his naked breast.
The gloomy little room is at the back of the house; heavy
silence reigns there night and day; a window, then of heavy
divisions with dull glass, received light from the court.
The woman stood motionless near the bath. The Gironde and
the Mountain, as represented by Charlotte Corday and Marat, had
a terrible struggle before them. Charlotte already bore signs of
victory in her brilliant eyes, her robust health, her bright color,
her magnificent arm and firm and resolute hand. Marat lay in
his bath with outstretched arms; a white sheet draped the tub in
careless folds. It looked like a bier. The woman stood looking
fixedly. Her face had the fatal and extraordinary beauty called
forth by an heroic deed. The old servant closed the door of the
dark and narrow room, and left Charlotte almost touching Marat.
All at once Marat uttered a great cry- Help! Help! " and
having uttered it, turned his head aside and died. The house-
keeper and some servants of the house rushed to the bath-room.
They found Marat with great drops of blood welling from his
side, his eyes open, his tongue moving but speechless. The
murderous knife had fallen on the floor. Charlotte Corday was
standing near the window. At first she had put her hand to her
head; then, calm, severe, and haughty, she seemed to be spell-
bound beside the corpse. The pride of success, the realization of
the immense thing she had accomplished, plunged her into a
moral transport. In killing Marat she had killed the plebeian
king of the Revolution.
―――――
«<
## p. 5565 (#131) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5565
THE POET'S LITTLE HOME
From The Enchanted Castle>
THE
HERE is a narrow two-story house in one of the suburbs of
Berlin, where about fifty years ago Theodore Wilhelm and
his wife Vertua were living. They were a young couple,
very poor but happy, for Wilhelm and Vertua loved each other.
One evening the young wife was sewing at her window, when
the needle paused between her fingers, the work fell on her
apron, and a tear rolled down her cheek. At the same moment
the bell rang over her head. Vertua rose, wiped her red eyes,
and opened the door with a smile on her lips. It was Wilhelm
returning.
"I was sewing and forgot all about the time," she said, throw-
ing her arm around her husband and receiving his kiss.
« We
won't have much of a supper to-day; but then we don't care. "
While saying this, she placed on the table a dish of boiled pota-
toes and some dry nuts.
"You must be out of money," remarked Wilhelm gloomily.
"No, I have some," she said, shaking some copper coins in
her apron pocket.
"I think I have found a place," went on Wilhelm, in a tone
not very hopeful. "If I accept it, I will begin work to-morrow. "
"What place? " asked Vertua.
"I am promised the position of head of the orchestra in a
small theatre. The salary is not very much, but as I know a
little about painting I can act as decorator at the same time.
Then, as I still have great faith in my literary talent, I will
induce them to play some of my compositions there. "
Vertua smiled indulgently at her husband's golden dreams.
Their meal was tranquil and gay. Love, great worker of mira-
cles, found a way to change the water in their pitcher to a wine
better than that of the wedding at Cana.
After supper Theodore Wilhelm spoke of writing. Vertua
dared not tell him that there was no oil for the lamp.
"Bah! " said she. "It's too fine an evening to light that hor-
rid wick. Let us stay at the window and watch the stars, the
lights of the good God. "
Theodore Wilhelm understood that he was reduced to the state
of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who went without working at
night, non avendo candele per scriver i versi suoi.
## p. 5566 (#132) ###########################################
5566
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
«< Perhaps I would have been wiser," he said, "to have stuck
to my first studies. By this time I would have been a coun-
selor. "
"Why these regrets, dear? "
"At least you would have a servant and new clothes," con-
tinued Wilhelm, who was cut to the heart by his wife's depriva-
tions.
"I don't need anything," interrupted Vertua, with a smile
which she tried to make natural. "If I don't wear my fine
clothes, it is because I don't think I need them in order to please
you. "
The next morning Vertua awoke before dawn, and crept
softly out of bed to get things ready for her husband. Her eyes
reviewed sadly the shabby black coat, white on the seams and on
the back of the cuffs; the shapeless shoes, and the worn cravat.
In vain she brushed them, caught up broken threads with her
needle, touched the garment here and there with ink,—she could
never restore the irreparable injury of years. Just before Wil-
helm started out, he looked at himself in the mirror.
"You are all right," said Vertua in a confident voice. "That
coat looks quite new, and the hat seems fresh enough to have
been bought yesterday. "
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
Theodore Wilhelm obtained a position in the orchestra of a
little theatre where he was the only musician, but he lost it
again in a few days. Then he tried various callings, which cost
much to his self-love and which barely satisfied the first needs of
life.
Ten years later, the same man was the most popular author
of all Germany.
In the early days of his success, Wilhelm plunged his lips
eagerly in this cup of gold; but it soon transformed him, and he
fell into a bored and dreary frenzy. Satiety brought disgust.
His celebrity dazed him. Long before this, he had moved from
the little house in the suburb to a rich and commodious mansion
in the city. One evening Vertua took his hand in hers and said
to him:
-:
"We are not happy any more. Happiness was to love each
other, and now that we are rich we no longer do so. This
miserable gold has destroyed all the charm of our home. When
## p. 5567 (#133) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5567
we were poor I used to see you all day. Now other people have
you. You are called here and there, you are invited by the
whole town, you are sought after by women, and I am unhappy.
Are you yourself content? No, Wilhelm, acknowledge the truth.
This life wearies you; you regret the time when we suffered the
bitter privations of life together. "
"You are right, Vertua. For a long time I have thought all
that you have just said, but I have never dared to tell you.
When we were living in our little house the necessity of fighting
outside evils calmed the agitation of my spirit. The struggle
was good for me, and helpful. Now I am afraid of going mad.
No, I have never suffered so much as since I have been delivered
from the hard necessities of life and delivered to myself. My
cruel imagination is an enemy ten times more insupportable than
poverty. Fame is killing me. I am no longer free, now that I
am celebrated. I am stifling under this cape of gold, which
Divine justice has thrown on my shoulders to punish my foolish
ambitions. "
me.
"I too hate this glory, as a rival who has made you desert
Since you have given yourself up to it, you hardly care for
me. But I do not ask you to relinquish it; I know what such
ties mean.
However much one curses, he has never the strength
to relinquish them. But let us do one thing. That little house
in the suburb, of which you were just speaking, I have been
renting for the last ten years without telling you so; our old
furniture, which I pretended to sell, is all there just as we left
it. Let us go back and spend the day to-morrow in this old
nest of our early love. "
Wilhelm threw his arms around Vertua, in gratitude for this
happy thought.
The next morning they rose before the sun and fled to the
little house in the suburb. A gentle emotion touched them even
to tears, as they entered the two rooms where they had passed
the bitter, beautiful days of delightful youth. The straw chairs
were neatly ranged as when Vertua's hand took care to keep
them so. Vertua opened the oaken wardrobe, which was nearly
all the furniture in the place, and drew out Wilhelm's old coat,
so often inked over on the seams, and handed it to her husband
to put on.
"I never saw you look so handsome," she said, gazing at him
with delight.
## p. 5568 (#134) ###########################################
5568
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
She herself laid on the bed her veil, her velvet bonnet, her
cashmere shawl, her dress trimmed with lace, and put on again
the simple cap, the fichu, and the linen blouse, in which Wilhelm
had loved her.
After this, Vertua prepared the breakfast with her own hands,
as in the days when she had no other servant than her activity
of twenty years. She set the table with two pewter spoons, two
flowered delft cups, and two coarse linen napkins. The milk was
boiling on the chafing-dish, with its white foam gathering on top.
For the first time in ten years, Theodore Wilhelm felt hun-
gry. A rustic perfume of youth and sentiment entered his heart.
The little birds came in at the window as in the old days, and
picked the dry bread which Vertua crumbled for them under the
table.
Wilhelm and Vertua sat opposite each other as in their happy
time; their knees touched under the little pine table. Their
breakfast was delicious. They felt themselves back in the old
love, when their hearts were young and black care evaporated in
a ray of sunshine.
Breakfast was short, and after it Wilhelm drew his violin from
its case and practiced his lesson for the evening, as he had done
when employed in the orchestra of the theatre. Vertua, who
had not sung for ten years, accompanied him with her voice. It
was a simple and touching piece which suited their mood. The
little room was all stirred with it, and the birds responded from
the roof.
But Wilhelm had scarcely finished the selection when the
sound of applause was heard under the windows. Some friends
or some inquisitive people (how know which? ) had followed
Vertua and her husband.
"We are discovered," the poet murmured sadly.
"Alas! " said Vertua; "I was afraid of it. "
"Not to be able to go where one wants or to do what one
chooses without being spied upon; to suffer everybody's follies
because one is said to have talent; to be forced to abjure calm
of spirit; charm in one's home; love in one's heart: what is it
all? »
"This," answered Vertua timidly, "is what men seek after.
It is glory. "
This man, so long pursued by misfortune, and later pursued
by glory, this Theodore Wilhelm, was Hoffmann.
## p. 5568 (#135) ###########################################
## p. 5568 (#136) ###########################################
ΤΟΠΙΚΗΣ
EURIPIDES
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## p. 5568 (#137) ###########################################
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## p. 5569 (#139) ###########################################
5569
EURIPIDES
(480-406 B. C. )
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
URIPIDES, latest in age and perhaps least in rank among the
three surviving tragic poets of Athens, was said to have
been born on Salamis, during the decisive battle for free-
dom, when his mother, like the homeless folk of Attica generally,
was in temporary exile upon the little island. This legend was at
least an artistic invention, since Eschylus shared in the sea fight,
and Sophocles, as a beautiful stripling, led the band of boys who
danced about the trophy of victory.
The supreme rank of these three is no accident of survival. When
news of Euripides's death reached Athens, Sophocles bade his chorus
appear in mourning for him; and a few months later, when both were
in the underworld, Aristophanes, in his comedy The Frogs,' makes
the god Dionysos follow them thither, and beg Pluto to restore to
earth one dramatist worthy to grace the annual contest at his festi-
val. This testimony from the lifelong enemy and ridiculer of Euripi-
des is borne out by all the evidence we have.
He was probably of good Attic stock, the stories of his parents'
poverty being inventions of the comic poets. He was one of the first
to collect a large library. He was carefully educated, at first as an
athlete, from a misunderstanding of an oracle to the effect that he
was to "win prizes in contests. " He also developed youthful skill,
like his friend Socrates, as an artist. At twenty-five he first obtained
the honor of competing as one of the three chosen tragic poets at
the Dionysia. All these facts point to good social rank.
He did not, however, like the youthful Sophocles, win at once the
popular heart. At his first venture he was placed last. He secured
highest honors not once until fourteen years later, and only five times
altogether. Yet toward the end of his life, and after his death, his
influence, not merely in Athens but throughout Greek lands, was un-
rivaled. It is no accident that seven dramas of Eschylus, seven of
Sophocles, nineteen of Euripides, have been preserved for us. Euripi-
des is said to have composed twenty-three tetralogies, ninety-two
dramas! Each play was doubtless an independent and complete work
of art, so that the number is indeed surprising.
X-349
## p. 5570 (#140) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5570
No worthy successors to this brief line ever arose. The three and
their forgotten rivals filled the fifth century B. C. with their splendor.
The likeness of them all should strike a modern student, before their
differences. All their plays graced the greatest State festival and
were a part of the popular religious ceremonial. All save Eschylus's
'Persians'- no real exception in its spirit-aim to represent a re-
mote heroic age. The characters are chiefly gods or the immediate
offspring of gods. The vain struggle of man against Fate is always
a motive, usually the chief thread of the tale. As to outward form,
also, the chorus remains to the end the central feature, though its
importance is somewhat lessened. The small number of actors, the
stiffness of mask and buskin, the simple stage setting, the avoidance
of violent or confused action, continued apparently little modified.
Still, there has been a very general conviction in ancient and
modern times, first uttered effectively by Aristophanes, that Euripides
was a radical innovator, both in art and in religion. Of course this
is necessarily true in some degree of any original creative artist.
But the question goes much deeper.
That wonderful fifth century falls inevitably into three periods.
The generation that saw the terrific invading host of Xerxes melt
away like a dream, and Athens arise from her ashes to become queen
of the Egean and the foremost State in the Greek world, could
hardly escape a fervent belief in divine guidance of all earthly affairs.
Eschylus, himself a Marathonian warrior, probably stamped upon
tragedy much of his own intensely religious nature. His human char-
acters seem almost helpless in the grip of stern but just Fate.
In Sophocles the gods are rarely seen on the stage. Man is sub-
ject indeed to their rule, but he usually works out his own doom of
ill or happiness by ways not inscrutable. In the prosperous period of
Kimon and Pericles which formed his early maturity, Athens doubt-
less felt herself quite capable of accomplishing her own destiny.
Pericles and the enlightened circle about him probably troubled them-
selves very little beyond judicious outward conformity with the
traditional mythology. To many admiring readers, Sophocles seems
cold. His 'Electra' best illustrates what we cannot here discuss.
His conformity to Eschylean theology seems usually a mere artistic
utterance of his own rather vague optimism.
Euripides lived through the same period also. But he was not so
harmonious and happy a nature. The pathos of human life, the
capriciousness of destiny, the seemingly unjust distribution of lots,
distressed and perplexed him. This may not have been so largely
true of his earlier work. We have only one play (the 'Alcestis')
previous to his fiftieth year. At that very time began the great na-
tional tragedy of the Thirty Years' War, destined to end in the utter
## p. 5571 (#141) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5571
humiliation and downfall of imperial Athens. The plague, and the
death of Pericles, made even the beginnings of the great strife seem
tragic. The appalling disaster in Sicily foreshadowed the end, and
indeed made it inevitable, long years before it came.
It is not strange
if the favorite, the popular Athenian poet of that darkening day, often
doubted the Divine wisdom, - felt a strife, which his art could not
reconcile, between man and Providence.
Whatever the reason, the gods do take again a prominent share
in Euripidean as in Eschylean drama; but they often, perhaps usu-
ally, act from less noble motives than the human characters. It has
been maintained, even,- especially by a living English scholar, Pro-
fessor Verrall, that Euripides made it his lifelong purpose to under-
mine and destroy any belief in the real existence of Zeus and Apollo,
Pallas Athene, and all their kin; that he was an aggressive agnostic,
using the forms of the traditional gods only to show their helpless-
ness, their imbecility, their impossibility.
But surely the generation that slew Socrates for "introducing
strange gods and not honoring those of the State," would have
detected and resented any such flagrant misuse of the holy place and
day. Moreover, any such lifelong cynicism would have corroded the
artistic powers themselves. Lucian, Voltaire, Swift, illustrate this
truth. Many of the pessimistic outbursts often cited as Euripides's
own are uttered in character by his sufferers and sinners, and are
mere half-conscious cries of distress or protest. His dramatic power
was not always sufficient to recast the old myths in an ethical form
which satisfied him. He knew men and women thoroughly, loved
them, found them heroic, generous, noble,—and he so painted them.
The gods, whom he did not know, fared worse at his hands. Often
one is introduced in spectacular fashion at the close, to cut the knot
which the poet had failed to untie in the natural course of his plot.
(Even Sophocles, once at least,-in the Philoctetes,' - does very
much the same thing. ) In general, Euripides seems distinctly inferior
to his two masters, at their best, in construction, in plot. The world
of scholarship is still laughing, with Aristophanes, at Euripides's long
narrative prologues. (See Mr. Shorey's translation of the scene in the
'Frogs, Vol. ii. of this work, pages 786-7. ) His long messengers'
speeches, fine as they are, seem almost epic in their broad descrip-
tions of what we have not seen. (Again, as Professor Mahaffy him-
self remarks, Sophocles's 'Electra' is the most unfortunate perversion
of this indulgence. )
On the other hand, in romantic lyric, in connected picturesque
description, in pathos, in sympathy with elemental human feeling,
Euripides has no Attic rival whatever. His women, his slaves, his
humbler characters generally, are evidently drawn with especial ten-
derness. He is perhaps so far a "realist" in his art, that he should
-
## p. 5572 (#142) ###########################################
5572
EURIPIDES
not have been restricted to the stately figures and famous names of
the national myths. Much of his work seems more fitted to frankly
contemporaneous drama. He is drawing men and women whom he
has known, and should be allowed to say so. His fussy old nurse in
the 'Hippolytus,' his homely rustic husband of 'Electra,' certainly
cannot be set upon a pedestal.
But should a work of art, above all of dramatic art, be set upon
any pedestal at all? Should not the dramatist, rather, hold the mir-
ror up to nature, bid living men and women walk and talk before
us? It is in part the old antagonism, actual or supposed, of Idealism,
or Classicism, against Realism, that has raged so long about the
name of Euripides. There is much to be said, and truly said, on
both sides; but certainly Euripides is, for us, by far the most import-
ant of the Attic dramatists. He influenced far more than any other
the later course of his art; hastened the fusion of tragedy and com-
edy in the society melodrama of Menander and Philemon; dominated
the Roman stage, and through it, modern dramatic art.
His claim to be a great ethical teacher cannot be successfully dis-
puted. Whatever we may think of his divinities, the world is not the
worse but better (as Mr. Browning puts it) –
"Because Euripides shrank not to teach,
If gods be strong and wicked, man, though weak,
May prove their match by willing to be good. "
Primarily and chiefly, however, he is a poet. His pictures are
vivid, his characters are alive; they speak usually in their own voice,
and are a part of the mimic scene. There are indeed instants when
we hear, beyond or through them, a sigh from the poet's own soul;
the cry of a perplexed truth-seeker in an age of doubt and discour-
agement. Thus, when Menelaus promises to punish Helen for her
long guilt, there is no adequate dramatic reason for Hecuba's far-
thought apostrophe:-
"O Thou
That bearest earth, thyself by earth upborne,
Whoe'er thou art, hard for our powers to guess,
Or Zeus, or Nature's law, or mind of man,-
To thee I pray, for all the things of earth
In right thou guidest on thy noiseless way. "
Such passages are not rare, especially in choral odes, where the
poet oftener seeks to utter the general belief or feeling of mankind
as it appears to himself. It is never perfectly safe to ascribe them
to Euripides the man, least of all when quoting from a lost play,
where the very sentiment preserved may have been signally refuted.
## p. 5573 (#143) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5573
As we associate Eschylus first of all with the suffering Titan
Prometheus, and Sophocles with the stately figure of an Edipus or
an Antigone, proudly facing the blows of fate with human courage,
so the pathetic, even elegiac tale of Hippolytus' is the most char-
acteristic Euripidean study. Here, for the first time, the passion of
love is made the central motive of a great poem. Here, too, every
human character is fearless in life and in death, while the gods are
quarrelsome, vindictive, and ignoble. It is the very play on which
Aristophanes lavished his biting wit and ridicule. It was performed
in 428 B. C. , and appealed to the audience as an Attic myth, centred
about their great legendary king Theseus, who is a central though
not a leading character.
A madder system of superhuman government, surely, was never
outlined, even in Aristophanes's own realm of Cloud-cuckooville. But
these divinities, after all, supply merely a spectacular tableau at the
beginning and end, and the pathetic elegiac motive.
Their appear-
ance clears Phædra, Hippolytus, even Theseus, of all fault.
The nobler tone is supplied in the splendid courage displayed by
men and women; even by the old attendants; even by the messen-
ger who tells the prince's mishaps, and faces fearlessly the unforgiv-
ing sire:-
"I am a slave within thy house, O King,
But this at least I never will believe,
That he, thy son, was guilty: not although
The whole of womankind go hang themselves,
And with their letters fill the pines that grow
On Ida! »
Throughout the play there are fresh glimpses of outdoor life, fra-
grant breezes blown from glen and sea; strange far-off visions of en-
chantment arise at the magician's call. Again, the Birds form the
only rival of scenes worthy to be mentioned with 'Midsummer Night's
Dream' itself. And yet again, Phædra's plea for death to destroy the
mad desire that horrifies her wifely heart, the youthful athlete's pit-
eous plea to his frenzied steeds as they trample upon their beloved
master, these are realism of the noblest kind. And all these varied
pictures are included in a play not fifteen hundred lines in length!
Racine's 'Phèdre' is much longer, and far less effective.
Better known, and simpler in its plot, is Euripides's earliest extant
play, the 'Alcestis. ' The dying Alcestis is one of the most noble and
pathetic figures in literature. It was popular at once, for her words
are parodied by Aristophanes. Milton felt its power, as a famous son-
net reveals. Mr. Browning has made it the centre of his great imagi-
native poem, 'Balaustion's Adventure. ' This character should alone
## p. 5574 (#144) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5574
secure Euripides from the epithet of "woman-hater," first cast at him
by the most audacious scoffer at women who ever lived.
There are cruel and wicked women in Euripides, though none
approaches Eschylus's Clytemnestra. The most terrible of them is
Medea, who murders her own children to punish their unfaithful
father, Jason the Argonaut. Even her action is adequately justified,
in a dramatic sense. It is made quite credible that a wronged woman,
with the blood of gods and savages in her veins, should do the deeds
she dares. The ethical question hardly comes up at all. The capital
fault of the play is, that we have no adequate reward at last for all
the horrors we have undergone. Indeed, Medea is promised safe
refuge in Athens, and the innocent Corinthians are bidden to atone
for her deeds. In truth, Medea is in earlier forms of the myth merely
sinned against. Euripides's love of striking contrasts often, perhaps
too often, tempted him into making a seemingly defenseless woman's
hand deal the decisive stroke of fate.
So in the 'Hecuba,' the Trojan queen, dethroned, enslaved, bereft
of all her dearest ones, strikes an unexpected and deadly blow at
the most cruel and selfish of men, the Thracian king who for love
of gold has murdered his guest, her young son Polydorus. The com-
paratively noble Agamemnon, who fights for just revenge, or slays
the innocent only at superhuman command, is made the half-willing
tool of her imperial vengeance.
This tale may remind us that more than half the extant plays, and
countless others known by titles and scanty fragments, dealt with
characters familiar from the Homeric poems. The great tragedians
wisely avoided, as a rule, the very scenes immortalized in Iliad or
Odyssey, seizing by preference on earlier or later episodes in the same
storm-lost lives.
The most curious illustration here is doubtless the 'Helena. '
After utilizing Menelaus's faithless queen as an ignoble and much-
berated character in several plays, Euripides gives her the title rôle
in a drama intended to rescue her character. It is but a wraith that
Paris has wooed and defended for twenty years. Happier than the
many heroes who perish in her defense, she herself has been living
safe and innocent all these years, under enchantment, in Egypt, the
abode of mystery. Here Menelaus, sailing homeward triumphant
with the Eidolon, is made doubly happy by receiving a stainless
Helen once more. This strange myth, if we can accept it, at least
effaces in some degree our indignant sense of injustice, aroused when
the ageless daughter of Zeus appears in the Odyssey reigning once
more happily over a contented people and an uxorious husband. But
Helen, the immortal ideal of beauty, should not be judged, I sup-
pose, by anything so narrow and puritanical as an ethical standard!
## p. 5575 (#145) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5575
Among Euripides's happiest works is the Tauric Iphigenia. The
happy outcome of this Greek play is by no means rare on the Attic
stage. A certain spirit of reconciliation, or submission at least, seems
to have been demanded for a closing scene. At the end of his life
Euripides returned to this myth, to depict the earlier scene of sacri-
fice at Aulis. The play seems to have been left unfinished, and many
lines have been added by a weaker hand. Still, the fearless prin-
cess, facing death cheerfully for the honor of her people, is a most
pathetic figure, and was used with thrilling effect in the quadri-
millennial Harvard oration of James Russell Lowell, who compared
to her the glad young martyrs of the Civil War. The return of the
et to a theme already used, as was said, in an earlier year, doubt-
less illustrated the narrow range of myths acceptable to his audience.
So all the great three wrote on Phædra and Hippolytus, on Electra
and Orestes, on Philoctetes and his bow. The courageous surrender
of life at the altar, or under similar conditions, is also repeated in a
number of plays, and may remind us of the startling truth that
human sacrifice was not absolutely unknown, even in the most en-
lightened age of historical Hellas. Polyxena, in the 'Hecuba,' is
more forlorn than Iphigenia, since she actually perishes, at a foe-
man's hand, and without the faintest hope of saving even her mother
and sisters from slavery, much less of restoring her native city from
its ashes. The poet who created such noble and inspiring types of
women deserves the eternal gratitude of all who love and honor
heroic wives and mothers.
It is not possible nor desirable to discuss here all the nineteen
Euripidean plays. We will only mention further the 'Baccha. ' It
was written near the close of the century, when the poet was living
in voluntary exile, as the honored guest of Archelaus the Macedonian
monarch. Those who regard Euripides as a heretic and a skeptic
sometimes consider this play as a sort of death-bed recantation. Cer-
tainly the divine power of Semele's child is revealed by a terrific
vengeance on those of his own kin who had denied and persecuted
him. The play is badly mutilated in the MSS. ; its ethical tone is
low, and the chief interest centres upon the splendid choral odes in
Dionysos's honor. Out of such odes, as is well known, the drama
itself took its rise. It is curious that from this one tragedy alone, at
the very close of the century of creative dramatic art, we must form
what conception we may of the early dithyramb. More perhaps than
other arts, literature as a rule survives in its maturer forms only, and
rarely affords us adequate materials for studying its development.
Here, as in other fields of Greek literature, we must say that chance,
or Providence, has preserved a mere handful out of a whole library
of scrolls; but these are, in the main, the masterpieces of the great-
est masters.
## p. 5576 (#146) ###########################################
5576
EURIPIDES
The only available edition of Euripides's plays with English notes
is the one in the Bibliotheca Classica, by the indefatigable F. A.
Paley. It is not very satisfactory, and there are many better editions
of single plays. A large part of Euripides has been excellently edited
in French by Weil. The great work upon the dramatist's art is in
the same language: Paul Decharme's 'Euripide et l'Esprit de son
Théâtre. ' One of the most readable chapters in J. A. Symonds's
'Greek Poets' is devoted to our author. Professor Jebb has a mas-
terly article in the Britannica, but his sympathies are on the whole
with the elder school.
It is much better, however, to let the poet make his own impres-
sion on us, even if only in translation.
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left. A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture. The blood of the
2d of September was dripping back upon his heart. Disease
showed itself subtle and merciless to him, and played with his
expiring body as with an elected victim, who in his one death
must expiate all the violent deaths in which the popular influence
of his newspaper had given him a sort of moral complicity.
God purifies by fiery coals and by the bed of thorns, before
he withdraws from the world those whose hateful mission has
been to purify by the sword.
Suddenly Marat heard in the ante-chamber the harsh voice of
his housekeeper, contesting a very young voice whose clear and
tempting tones reached him in his bath:
"Citizen Marat? "
"This is the place, but he is not at home. "
"I must see him. I have just come from Caen. I wrote him
this morning. "
"I tell you he cannot receive any one.
He is ill. Call again
in a few days. "
"I implore you to give him my name. He must have had
my letter.
I am sure he will not refuse me a short interview. "
The housekeeper, a rather nervous and neutral nature, gently
but decidedly continued to refuse; and Charlotte, murmuring, was
already turning back toward the door, which the woman seemed
anxious to close behind her.
Now a gentle emotion entered Marat's heart with this fresh
voice, which he thought he must have heard before. This young
voice took him back to the better springtime years of his youth.
Impressed by its purity, which made it seem the natural music
of a beautiful spirit, he called to his friend, "Let her come in. "
"But, citizen, you are worn out with business. You are suf-
fering. The doctor has forbidden you to see any one. "
"The doctors are ignorant fellows, who can do nothing to
cure me. I won't be a slave to them. "
"But you should not admit every chance comer like that.
There are rumors of assassination. You know yourself that the
Royalists and the Girondists are plotting. Marat, you once told
me that you were to die by the hand of a woman. "
An old servant of Marat's named Catherine, who claimed to
be a sorceress and to divine the future, had predicted his violent
death. "Take heed," she had added, "against girls in red fichus. "
## p. 5564 (#130) ###########################################
5564
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"True," " answered Marat after a silence and a bitter sigh;
"but I have no faith in such follies. Women don't like me well
enough to kill me. ”
«< Well, I shall send away this intruder. "
"No, I tell you; let her come in. This girl comes from
Caen, where the rebel deputies are. She wrote me this morning.
She is unhappy. " Marat emphasized the last words. Then the
woman grumblingly obeyed, and showed the unknown into the
bath-room. When Charlotte Corday entered, Marat had his head
inclined upon his naked breast.
The gloomy little room is at the back of the house; heavy
silence reigns there night and day; a window, then of heavy
divisions with dull glass, received light from the court.
The woman stood motionless near the bath. The Gironde and
the Mountain, as represented by Charlotte Corday and Marat, had
a terrible struggle before them. Charlotte already bore signs of
victory in her brilliant eyes, her robust health, her bright color,
her magnificent arm and firm and resolute hand. Marat lay in
his bath with outstretched arms; a white sheet draped the tub in
careless folds. It looked like a bier. The woman stood looking
fixedly. Her face had the fatal and extraordinary beauty called
forth by an heroic deed. The old servant closed the door of the
dark and narrow room, and left Charlotte almost touching Marat.
All at once Marat uttered a great cry- Help! Help! " and
having uttered it, turned his head aside and died. The house-
keeper and some servants of the house rushed to the bath-room.
They found Marat with great drops of blood welling from his
side, his eyes open, his tongue moving but speechless. The
murderous knife had fallen on the floor. Charlotte Corday was
standing near the window. At first she had put her hand to her
head; then, calm, severe, and haughty, she seemed to be spell-
bound beside the corpse. The pride of success, the realization of
the immense thing she had accomplished, plunged her into a
moral transport. In killing Marat she had killed the plebeian
king of the Revolution.
―――――
«<
## p. 5565 (#131) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5565
THE POET'S LITTLE HOME
From The Enchanted Castle>
THE
HERE is a narrow two-story house in one of the suburbs of
Berlin, where about fifty years ago Theodore Wilhelm and
his wife Vertua were living. They were a young couple,
very poor but happy, for Wilhelm and Vertua loved each other.
One evening the young wife was sewing at her window, when
the needle paused between her fingers, the work fell on her
apron, and a tear rolled down her cheek. At the same moment
the bell rang over her head. Vertua rose, wiped her red eyes,
and opened the door with a smile on her lips. It was Wilhelm
returning.
"I was sewing and forgot all about the time," she said, throw-
ing her arm around her husband and receiving his kiss.
« We
won't have much of a supper to-day; but then we don't care. "
While saying this, she placed on the table a dish of boiled pota-
toes and some dry nuts.
"You must be out of money," remarked Wilhelm gloomily.
"No, I have some," she said, shaking some copper coins in
her apron pocket.
"I think I have found a place," went on Wilhelm, in a tone
not very hopeful. "If I accept it, I will begin work to-morrow. "
"What place? " asked Vertua.
"I am promised the position of head of the orchestra in a
small theatre. The salary is not very much, but as I know a
little about painting I can act as decorator at the same time.
Then, as I still have great faith in my literary talent, I will
induce them to play some of my compositions there. "
Vertua smiled indulgently at her husband's golden dreams.
Their meal was tranquil and gay. Love, great worker of mira-
cles, found a way to change the water in their pitcher to a wine
better than that of the wedding at Cana.
After supper Theodore Wilhelm spoke of writing. Vertua
dared not tell him that there was no oil for the lamp.
"Bah! " said she. "It's too fine an evening to light that hor-
rid wick. Let us stay at the window and watch the stars, the
lights of the good God. "
Theodore Wilhelm understood that he was reduced to the state
of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who went without working at
night, non avendo candele per scriver i versi suoi.
## p. 5566 (#132) ###########################################
5566
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
«< Perhaps I would have been wiser," he said, "to have stuck
to my first studies. By this time I would have been a coun-
selor. "
"Why these regrets, dear? "
"At least you would have a servant and new clothes," con-
tinued Wilhelm, who was cut to the heart by his wife's depriva-
tions.
"I don't need anything," interrupted Vertua, with a smile
which she tried to make natural. "If I don't wear my fine
clothes, it is because I don't think I need them in order to please
you. "
The next morning Vertua awoke before dawn, and crept
softly out of bed to get things ready for her husband. Her eyes
reviewed sadly the shabby black coat, white on the seams and on
the back of the cuffs; the shapeless shoes, and the worn cravat.
In vain she brushed them, caught up broken threads with her
needle, touched the garment here and there with ink,—she could
never restore the irreparable injury of years. Just before Wil-
helm started out, he looked at himself in the mirror.
"You are all right," said Vertua in a confident voice. "That
coat looks quite new, and the hat seems fresh enough to have
been bought yesterday. "
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
Theodore Wilhelm obtained a position in the orchestra of a
little theatre where he was the only musician, but he lost it
again in a few days. Then he tried various callings, which cost
much to his self-love and which barely satisfied the first needs of
life.
Ten years later, the same man was the most popular author
of all Germany.
In the early days of his success, Wilhelm plunged his lips
eagerly in this cup of gold; but it soon transformed him, and he
fell into a bored and dreary frenzy. Satiety brought disgust.
His celebrity dazed him. Long before this, he had moved from
the little house in the suburb to a rich and commodious mansion
in the city. One evening Vertua took his hand in hers and said
to him:
-:
"We are not happy any more. Happiness was to love each
other, and now that we are rich we no longer do so. This
miserable gold has destroyed all the charm of our home. When
## p. 5567 (#133) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5567
we were poor I used to see you all day. Now other people have
you. You are called here and there, you are invited by the
whole town, you are sought after by women, and I am unhappy.
Are you yourself content? No, Wilhelm, acknowledge the truth.
This life wearies you; you regret the time when we suffered the
bitter privations of life together. "
"You are right, Vertua. For a long time I have thought all
that you have just said, but I have never dared to tell you.
When we were living in our little house the necessity of fighting
outside evils calmed the agitation of my spirit. The struggle
was good for me, and helpful. Now I am afraid of going mad.
No, I have never suffered so much as since I have been delivered
from the hard necessities of life and delivered to myself. My
cruel imagination is an enemy ten times more insupportable than
poverty. Fame is killing me. I am no longer free, now that I
am celebrated. I am stifling under this cape of gold, which
Divine justice has thrown on my shoulders to punish my foolish
ambitions. "
me.
"I too hate this glory, as a rival who has made you desert
Since you have given yourself up to it, you hardly care for
me. But I do not ask you to relinquish it; I know what such
ties mean.
However much one curses, he has never the strength
to relinquish them. But let us do one thing. That little house
in the suburb, of which you were just speaking, I have been
renting for the last ten years without telling you so; our old
furniture, which I pretended to sell, is all there just as we left
it. Let us go back and spend the day to-morrow in this old
nest of our early love. "
Wilhelm threw his arms around Vertua, in gratitude for this
happy thought.
The next morning they rose before the sun and fled to the
little house in the suburb. A gentle emotion touched them even
to tears, as they entered the two rooms where they had passed
the bitter, beautiful days of delightful youth. The straw chairs
were neatly ranged as when Vertua's hand took care to keep
them so. Vertua opened the oaken wardrobe, which was nearly
all the furniture in the place, and drew out Wilhelm's old coat,
so often inked over on the seams, and handed it to her husband
to put on.
"I never saw you look so handsome," she said, gazing at him
with delight.
## p. 5568 (#134) ###########################################
5568
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
She herself laid on the bed her veil, her velvet bonnet, her
cashmere shawl, her dress trimmed with lace, and put on again
the simple cap, the fichu, and the linen blouse, in which Wilhelm
had loved her.
After this, Vertua prepared the breakfast with her own hands,
as in the days when she had no other servant than her activity
of twenty years. She set the table with two pewter spoons, two
flowered delft cups, and two coarse linen napkins. The milk was
boiling on the chafing-dish, with its white foam gathering on top.
For the first time in ten years, Theodore Wilhelm felt hun-
gry. A rustic perfume of youth and sentiment entered his heart.
The little birds came in at the window as in the old days, and
picked the dry bread which Vertua crumbled for them under the
table.
Wilhelm and Vertua sat opposite each other as in their happy
time; their knees touched under the little pine table. Their
breakfast was delicious. They felt themselves back in the old
love, when their hearts were young and black care evaporated in
a ray of sunshine.
Breakfast was short, and after it Wilhelm drew his violin from
its case and practiced his lesson for the evening, as he had done
when employed in the orchestra of the theatre. Vertua, who
had not sung for ten years, accompanied him with her voice. It
was a simple and touching piece which suited their mood. The
little room was all stirred with it, and the birds responded from
the roof.
But Wilhelm had scarcely finished the selection when the
sound of applause was heard under the windows. Some friends
or some inquisitive people (how know which? ) had followed
Vertua and her husband.
"We are discovered," the poet murmured sadly.
"Alas! " said Vertua; "I was afraid of it. "
"Not to be able to go where one wants or to do what one
chooses without being spied upon; to suffer everybody's follies
because one is said to have talent; to be forced to abjure calm
of spirit; charm in one's home; love in one's heart: what is it
all? »
"This," answered Vertua timidly, "is what men seek after.
It is glory. "
This man, so long pursued by misfortune, and later pursued
by glory, this Theodore Wilhelm, was Hoffmann.
## p. 5568 (#135) ###########################################
## p. 5568 (#136) ###########################################
ΤΟΠΙΚΗΣ
EURIPIDES
100
## p. 5568 (#137) ###########################################
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## p. 5568 (#138) ###########################################
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## p. 5569 (#139) ###########################################
5569
EURIPIDES
(480-406 B. C. )
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
URIPIDES, latest in age and perhaps least in rank among the
three surviving tragic poets of Athens, was said to have
been born on Salamis, during the decisive battle for free-
dom, when his mother, like the homeless folk of Attica generally,
was in temporary exile upon the little island. This legend was at
least an artistic invention, since Eschylus shared in the sea fight,
and Sophocles, as a beautiful stripling, led the band of boys who
danced about the trophy of victory.
The supreme rank of these three is no accident of survival. When
news of Euripides's death reached Athens, Sophocles bade his chorus
appear in mourning for him; and a few months later, when both were
in the underworld, Aristophanes, in his comedy The Frogs,' makes
the god Dionysos follow them thither, and beg Pluto to restore to
earth one dramatist worthy to grace the annual contest at his festi-
val. This testimony from the lifelong enemy and ridiculer of Euripi-
des is borne out by all the evidence we have.
He was probably of good Attic stock, the stories of his parents'
poverty being inventions of the comic poets. He was one of the first
to collect a large library. He was carefully educated, at first as an
athlete, from a misunderstanding of an oracle to the effect that he
was to "win prizes in contests. " He also developed youthful skill,
like his friend Socrates, as an artist. At twenty-five he first obtained
the honor of competing as one of the three chosen tragic poets at
the Dionysia. All these facts point to good social rank.
He did not, however, like the youthful Sophocles, win at once the
popular heart. At his first venture he was placed last. He secured
highest honors not once until fourteen years later, and only five times
altogether. Yet toward the end of his life, and after his death, his
influence, not merely in Athens but throughout Greek lands, was un-
rivaled. It is no accident that seven dramas of Eschylus, seven of
Sophocles, nineteen of Euripides, have been preserved for us. Euripi-
des is said to have composed twenty-three tetralogies, ninety-two
dramas! Each play was doubtless an independent and complete work
of art, so that the number is indeed surprising.
X-349
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No worthy successors to this brief line ever arose. The three and
their forgotten rivals filled the fifth century B. C. with their splendor.
The likeness of them all should strike a modern student, before their
differences. All their plays graced the greatest State festival and
were a part of the popular religious ceremonial. All save Eschylus's
'Persians'- no real exception in its spirit-aim to represent a re-
mote heroic age. The characters are chiefly gods or the immediate
offspring of gods. The vain struggle of man against Fate is always
a motive, usually the chief thread of the tale. As to outward form,
also, the chorus remains to the end the central feature, though its
importance is somewhat lessened. The small number of actors, the
stiffness of mask and buskin, the simple stage setting, the avoidance
of violent or confused action, continued apparently little modified.
Still, there has been a very general conviction in ancient and
modern times, first uttered effectively by Aristophanes, that Euripides
was a radical innovator, both in art and in religion. Of course this
is necessarily true in some degree of any original creative artist.
But the question goes much deeper.
That wonderful fifth century falls inevitably into three periods.
The generation that saw the terrific invading host of Xerxes melt
away like a dream, and Athens arise from her ashes to become queen
of the Egean and the foremost State in the Greek world, could
hardly escape a fervent belief in divine guidance of all earthly affairs.
Eschylus, himself a Marathonian warrior, probably stamped upon
tragedy much of his own intensely religious nature. His human char-
acters seem almost helpless in the grip of stern but just Fate.
In Sophocles the gods are rarely seen on the stage. Man is sub-
ject indeed to their rule, but he usually works out his own doom of
ill or happiness by ways not inscrutable. In the prosperous period of
Kimon and Pericles which formed his early maturity, Athens doubt-
less felt herself quite capable of accomplishing her own destiny.
Pericles and the enlightened circle about him probably troubled them-
selves very little beyond judicious outward conformity with the
traditional mythology. To many admiring readers, Sophocles seems
cold. His 'Electra' best illustrates what we cannot here discuss.
His conformity to Eschylean theology seems usually a mere artistic
utterance of his own rather vague optimism.
Euripides lived through the same period also. But he was not so
harmonious and happy a nature. The pathos of human life, the
capriciousness of destiny, the seemingly unjust distribution of lots,
distressed and perplexed him. This may not have been so largely
true of his earlier work. We have only one play (the 'Alcestis')
previous to his fiftieth year. At that very time began the great na-
tional tragedy of the Thirty Years' War, destined to end in the utter
## p. 5571 (#141) ###########################################
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5571
humiliation and downfall of imperial Athens. The plague, and the
death of Pericles, made even the beginnings of the great strife seem
tragic. The appalling disaster in Sicily foreshadowed the end, and
indeed made it inevitable, long years before it came.
It is not strange
if the favorite, the popular Athenian poet of that darkening day, often
doubted the Divine wisdom, - felt a strife, which his art could not
reconcile, between man and Providence.
Whatever the reason, the gods do take again a prominent share
in Euripidean as in Eschylean drama; but they often, perhaps usu-
ally, act from less noble motives than the human characters. It has
been maintained, even,- especially by a living English scholar, Pro-
fessor Verrall, that Euripides made it his lifelong purpose to under-
mine and destroy any belief in the real existence of Zeus and Apollo,
Pallas Athene, and all their kin; that he was an aggressive agnostic,
using the forms of the traditional gods only to show their helpless-
ness, their imbecility, their impossibility.
But surely the generation that slew Socrates for "introducing
strange gods and not honoring those of the State," would have
detected and resented any such flagrant misuse of the holy place and
day. Moreover, any such lifelong cynicism would have corroded the
artistic powers themselves. Lucian, Voltaire, Swift, illustrate this
truth. Many of the pessimistic outbursts often cited as Euripides's
own are uttered in character by his sufferers and sinners, and are
mere half-conscious cries of distress or protest. His dramatic power
was not always sufficient to recast the old myths in an ethical form
which satisfied him. He knew men and women thoroughly, loved
them, found them heroic, generous, noble,—and he so painted them.
The gods, whom he did not know, fared worse at his hands. Often
one is introduced in spectacular fashion at the close, to cut the knot
which the poet had failed to untie in the natural course of his plot.
(Even Sophocles, once at least,-in the Philoctetes,' - does very
much the same thing. ) In general, Euripides seems distinctly inferior
to his two masters, at their best, in construction, in plot. The world
of scholarship is still laughing, with Aristophanes, at Euripides's long
narrative prologues. (See Mr. Shorey's translation of the scene in the
'Frogs, Vol. ii. of this work, pages 786-7. ) His long messengers'
speeches, fine as they are, seem almost epic in their broad descrip-
tions of what we have not seen. (Again, as Professor Mahaffy him-
self remarks, Sophocles's 'Electra' is the most unfortunate perversion
of this indulgence. )
On the other hand, in romantic lyric, in connected picturesque
description, in pathos, in sympathy with elemental human feeling,
Euripides has no Attic rival whatever. His women, his slaves, his
humbler characters generally, are evidently drawn with especial ten-
derness. He is perhaps so far a "realist" in his art, that he should
-
## p. 5572 (#142) ###########################################
5572
EURIPIDES
not have been restricted to the stately figures and famous names of
the national myths. Much of his work seems more fitted to frankly
contemporaneous drama. He is drawing men and women whom he
has known, and should be allowed to say so. His fussy old nurse in
the 'Hippolytus,' his homely rustic husband of 'Electra,' certainly
cannot be set upon a pedestal.
But should a work of art, above all of dramatic art, be set upon
any pedestal at all? Should not the dramatist, rather, hold the mir-
ror up to nature, bid living men and women walk and talk before
us? It is in part the old antagonism, actual or supposed, of Idealism,
or Classicism, against Realism, that has raged so long about the
name of Euripides. There is much to be said, and truly said, on
both sides; but certainly Euripides is, for us, by far the most import-
ant of the Attic dramatists. He influenced far more than any other
the later course of his art; hastened the fusion of tragedy and com-
edy in the society melodrama of Menander and Philemon; dominated
the Roman stage, and through it, modern dramatic art.
His claim to be a great ethical teacher cannot be successfully dis-
puted. Whatever we may think of his divinities, the world is not the
worse but better (as Mr. Browning puts it) –
"Because Euripides shrank not to teach,
If gods be strong and wicked, man, though weak,
May prove their match by willing to be good. "
Primarily and chiefly, however, he is a poet. His pictures are
vivid, his characters are alive; they speak usually in their own voice,
and are a part of the mimic scene. There are indeed instants when
we hear, beyond or through them, a sigh from the poet's own soul;
the cry of a perplexed truth-seeker in an age of doubt and discour-
agement. Thus, when Menelaus promises to punish Helen for her
long guilt, there is no adequate dramatic reason for Hecuba's far-
thought apostrophe:-
"O Thou
That bearest earth, thyself by earth upborne,
Whoe'er thou art, hard for our powers to guess,
Or Zeus, or Nature's law, or mind of man,-
To thee I pray, for all the things of earth
In right thou guidest on thy noiseless way. "
Such passages are not rare, especially in choral odes, where the
poet oftener seeks to utter the general belief or feeling of mankind
as it appears to himself. It is never perfectly safe to ascribe them
to Euripides the man, least of all when quoting from a lost play,
where the very sentiment preserved may have been signally refuted.
## p. 5573 (#143) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5573
As we associate Eschylus first of all with the suffering Titan
Prometheus, and Sophocles with the stately figure of an Edipus or
an Antigone, proudly facing the blows of fate with human courage,
so the pathetic, even elegiac tale of Hippolytus' is the most char-
acteristic Euripidean study. Here, for the first time, the passion of
love is made the central motive of a great poem. Here, too, every
human character is fearless in life and in death, while the gods are
quarrelsome, vindictive, and ignoble. It is the very play on which
Aristophanes lavished his biting wit and ridicule. It was performed
in 428 B. C. , and appealed to the audience as an Attic myth, centred
about their great legendary king Theseus, who is a central though
not a leading character.
A madder system of superhuman government, surely, was never
outlined, even in Aristophanes's own realm of Cloud-cuckooville. But
these divinities, after all, supply merely a spectacular tableau at the
beginning and end, and the pathetic elegiac motive.
Their appear-
ance clears Phædra, Hippolytus, even Theseus, of all fault.
The nobler tone is supplied in the splendid courage displayed by
men and women; even by the old attendants; even by the messen-
ger who tells the prince's mishaps, and faces fearlessly the unforgiv-
ing sire:-
"I am a slave within thy house, O King,
But this at least I never will believe,
That he, thy son, was guilty: not although
The whole of womankind go hang themselves,
And with their letters fill the pines that grow
On Ida! »
Throughout the play there are fresh glimpses of outdoor life, fra-
grant breezes blown from glen and sea; strange far-off visions of en-
chantment arise at the magician's call. Again, the Birds form the
only rival of scenes worthy to be mentioned with 'Midsummer Night's
Dream' itself. And yet again, Phædra's plea for death to destroy the
mad desire that horrifies her wifely heart, the youthful athlete's pit-
eous plea to his frenzied steeds as they trample upon their beloved
master, these are realism of the noblest kind. And all these varied
pictures are included in a play not fifteen hundred lines in length!
Racine's 'Phèdre' is much longer, and far less effective.
Better known, and simpler in its plot, is Euripides's earliest extant
play, the 'Alcestis. ' The dying Alcestis is one of the most noble and
pathetic figures in literature. It was popular at once, for her words
are parodied by Aristophanes. Milton felt its power, as a famous son-
net reveals. Mr. Browning has made it the centre of his great imagi-
native poem, 'Balaustion's Adventure. ' This character should alone
## p. 5574 (#144) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5574
secure Euripides from the epithet of "woman-hater," first cast at him
by the most audacious scoffer at women who ever lived.
There are cruel and wicked women in Euripides, though none
approaches Eschylus's Clytemnestra. The most terrible of them is
Medea, who murders her own children to punish their unfaithful
father, Jason the Argonaut. Even her action is adequately justified,
in a dramatic sense. It is made quite credible that a wronged woman,
with the blood of gods and savages in her veins, should do the deeds
she dares. The ethical question hardly comes up at all. The capital
fault of the play is, that we have no adequate reward at last for all
the horrors we have undergone. Indeed, Medea is promised safe
refuge in Athens, and the innocent Corinthians are bidden to atone
for her deeds. In truth, Medea is in earlier forms of the myth merely
sinned against. Euripides's love of striking contrasts often, perhaps
too often, tempted him into making a seemingly defenseless woman's
hand deal the decisive stroke of fate.
So in the 'Hecuba,' the Trojan queen, dethroned, enslaved, bereft
of all her dearest ones, strikes an unexpected and deadly blow at
the most cruel and selfish of men, the Thracian king who for love
of gold has murdered his guest, her young son Polydorus. The com-
paratively noble Agamemnon, who fights for just revenge, or slays
the innocent only at superhuman command, is made the half-willing
tool of her imperial vengeance.
This tale may remind us that more than half the extant plays, and
countless others known by titles and scanty fragments, dealt with
characters familiar from the Homeric poems. The great tragedians
wisely avoided, as a rule, the very scenes immortalized in Iliad or
Odyssey, seizing by preference on earlier or later episodes in the same
storm-lost lives.
The most curious illustration here is doubtless the 'Helena. '
After utilizing Menelaus's faithless queen as an ignoble and much-
berated character in several plays, Euripides gives her the title rôle
in a drama intended to rescue her character. It is but a wraith that
Paris has wooed and defended for twenty years. Happier than the
many heroes who perish in her defense, she herself has been living
safe and innocent all these years, under enchantment, in Egypt, the
abode of mystery. Here Menelaus, sailing homeward triumphant
with the Eidolon, is made doubly happy by receiving a stainless
Helen once more. This strange myth, if we can accept it, at least
effaces in some degree our indignant sense of injustice, aroused when
the ageless daughter of Zeus appears in the Odyssey reigning once
more happily over a contented people and an uxorious husband. But
Helen, the immortal ideal of beauty, should not be judged, I sup-
pose, by anything so narrow and puritanical as an ethical standard!
## p. 5575 (#145) ###########################################
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Among Euripides's happiest works is the Tauric Iphigenia. The
happy outcome of this Greek play is by no means rare on the Attic
stage. A certain spirit of reconciliation, or submission at least, seems
to have been demanded for a closing scene. At the end of his life
Euripides returned to this myth, to depict the earlier scene of sacri-
fice at Aulis. The play seems to have been left unfinished, and many
lines have been added by a weaker hand. Still, the fearless prin-
cess, facing death cheerfully for the honor of her people, is a most
pathetic figure, and was used with thrilling effect in the quadri-
millennial Harvard oration of James Russell Lowell, who compared
to her the glad young martyrs of the Civil War. The return of the
et to a theme already used, as was said, in an earlier year, doubt-
less illustrated the narrow range of myths acceptable to his audience.
So all the great three wrote on Phædra and Hippolytus, on Electra
and Orestes, on Philoctetes and his bow. The courageous surrender
of life at the altar, or under similar conditions, is also repeated in a
number of plays, and may remind us of the startling truth that
human sacrifice was not absolutely unknown, even in the most en-
lightened age of historical Hellas. Polyxena, in the 'Hecuba,' is
more forlorn than Iphigenia, since she actually perishes, at a foe-
man's hand, and without the faintest hope of saving even her mother
and sisters from slavery, much less of restoring her native city from
its ashes. The poet who created such noble and inspiring types of
women deserves the eternal gratitude of all who love and honor
heroic wives and mothers.
It is not possible nor desirable to discuss here all the nineteen
Euripidean plays. We will only mention further the 'Baccha. ' It
was written near the close of the century, when the poet was living
in voluntary exile, as the honored guest of Archelaus the Macedonian
monarch. Those who regard Euripides as a heretic and a skeptic
sometimes consider this play as a sort of death-bed recantation. Cer-
tainly the divine power of Semele's child is revealed by a terrific
vengeance on those of his own kin who had denied and persecuted
him. The play is badly mutilated in the MSS. ; its ethical tone is
low, and the chief interest centres upon the splendid choral odes in
Dionysos's honor. Out of such odes, as is well known, the drama
itself took its rise. It is curious that from this one tragedy alone, at
the very close of the century of creative dramatic art, we must form
what conception we may of the early dithyramb. More perhaps than
other arts, literature as a rule survives in its maturer forms only, and
rarely affords us adequate materials for studying its development.
Here, as in other fields of Greek literature, we must say that chance,
or Providence, has preserved a mere handful out of a whole library
of scrolls; but these are, in the main, the masterpieces of the great-
est masters.
## p. 5576 (#146) ###########################################
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EURIPIDES
The only available edition of Euripides's plays with English notes
is the one in the Bibliotheca Classica, by the indefatigable F. A.
Paley. It is not very satisfactory, and there are many better editions
of single plays. A large part of Euripides has been excellently edited
in French by Weil. The great work upon the dramatist's art is in
the same language: Paul Decharme's 'Euripide et l'Esprit de son
Théâtre. ' One of the most readable chapters in J. A. Symonds's
'Greek Poets' is devoted to our author. Professor Jebb has a mas-
terly article in the Britannica, but his sympathies are on the whole
with the elder school.
It is much better, however, to let the poet make his own impres-
sion on us, even if only in translation.
