John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  Be pleased then in the first place to take notice, that the Greek Poesie, which Crites has affirm’d to have arriv’d to perfection in the Reign of the old Comedy, was so far from it, that the distinction of it into Acts was not known to them; or if it were, it is yet so darkly deliver’d to us that we can not make it out.

  All we know of it is from the singing of their Chorus, and that too is so uncertain that in some of their Playes we have reason to conjecture they sung more then five times: Aristotle indeed divides the integral parts of a Play into four: First, The Protasis or entrance, which gives light onely to the Characters of the persons, and proceeds very little into any part of the action: 2ly, The Epitasis, or working up of the Plot where the Play grows warmer: the design or action of it is drawing on, and you see something promising that it will come to pass: Thirdly, the Catastasis, or Counterturn, which destroys that expectation, imbroyles the action in new difficulties, and leaves you far distant from that hope in which it found you, as you may have observ’d in a violent stream resisted by a narrow passage; it runs round to an eddy, and carries back the waters with more swiftness then it brought them on: Lastly, the Catastrophe, which the Grecians call’d lysis, the French le denouement, and we the discovery or unravelling of the Plot: there you see all things setling again upon their first foundations, and the obstacles which hindred the design or action of the Play once remov’d, it ends with that resemblance of truth and nature, that the audience are satisfied with the conduct of it. Thus this great man deliver’d to us the image of a Play, and I must confess it is so lively that from thence much light has been deriv’d to the forming it more perfectly into Acts and Scenes; but what Poet first limited to five the number of the Acts I know not; onely we see it so firmly establish’d in the time of Horace, that he gives it for a rule in Comedy; Neu brevior quinto, neu sit productior actu: So that you see the Grecians cannot be said to have consummated this Art; writing rather by Entrances then by Acts, and having rather a general indigested notion of a Play, then knowing how and where to bestow the particular graces of it.

  But since the Spaniards at this day allow but three Acts, which they call Tornadas, to a Play; and the Italians in many of theirs follow them, when I condemn the Antients, I declare it is not altogether because they have not five Acts to every Play, but because they have not confin’d themselves to one certain number; ’tis building an House without a Modell: and when the succeeded in such undertakings, they ought to have sacrific’d to Fortune, not to the Muses.

  Next, for the Plot, which Aristotle call’d το μυθος and often Των πραγματων συνθεσις, and from him the Romans Fabula, it has already been judiciously observ’d by a late Writer, that in their Tragedies it was onely some Tale deriv’d from Thebes or Troy, or at lest some thing that happen’d in those two Ages; which was worn so thred bare by the Pens of all the Epique Poets, and even by Tradition it self of the Talkative Greeklings (as Ben Johnson calls them) that before it came upon the Stage, it was already known to all the Audience: and the people so soon as ever they heard the Name of Oedipus, knew as well as the Poet, that he had kill’d his Father by mistake, and committed Incest with his Mother, before the Play; that they were now to hear of a great Plague, an Oracle, and the Ghost of Laius: so that they sate with a yawning kind of expectation, till he was to come with his eyes pull’d out, and speak a hundred or two of Verses in a Tragick tone, in complaint of his misfortunes. But one Oedipus, Hercules, or Medea, had been tollerable; poor people they scap’d not so good cheap: they had still the Chapon Bouillé set before them, till their appetites were cloy’d with the same dish, and the Novelty being gone, the pleasure vanish’d: so that one main end of Dramatique Poesie in its Definition, which was to cause Delight, as of consequence destroy’d.

  In their Comedies, the Romans generally borrow’d their Plots from the Greek Poets; and theirs was commonly a little Girle stollen or wandred from her Parents, brought back unknown to the same City, there got with child by some lewd young fellow; who, by the help of his servant, cheats his father, and when her time comes, to cry Juno Lucina fer opem; one or other sees a little Box or Cabinet which was carried away with her, and so discovers her to her friends, if some God do not prevent it, by coming down in a Machine, and take the thanks of it to himself.

  By the Plot you may gues much of the Characters of the Persons. An Old Father that would willingly before he dies, see his Son well married; his Debauch’d Son, kind in his Nature to his Wench, but miserably in want of Money; a Servant or Slave, who has so much wit to strike in with him, and help to dupe his Father, a Braggadochio Captain, a Parasite, and a Lady of Pleasure.

  As for the poor honest Maid, whom all the Story is built upon, and who ought to be one of the principal Actors in the Play, she is commonly a Mute in it: She has the breeding of the Old Elizabeth way, for Maids to be seen and not to be heard; and it is enough you know she is willing to be married, when the Fifth Act requires it.

  These are Plots built after the Italian Mode of Houses, you see thorow them all at once; the Characters are indeed the Imitations of Nature, but so narrow as if they had imitated onely an Eye or an Hand, and did not dare to venture on the lines of a Face, or the Proportion of a Body.

  But in how straight a compass soever they have bounded their Plots and Characters, we will pass it by, if they have regularly pursued them, and perfectly observ’d those three Unities of Time, Place, and Action: the knowledge of which you say is deriv’d to us from them. But in the first place give me leave to tell you, that the Unity of Place, how ever it might be practised by them, was never any of their Rules: We neither find it in Aristotle, Horace, of any who have written of it, till in our age the French Poets first made it a Precept of the Stage. The unity of time, even Terence himself (who was the best and the most regular of them) has neglected: His Heautontimoroumenos or Self-Punisher takes up visibly two dayes; therefore sayes Scaliger, the two first Acts concluding the first day, were acted over-night; the three last on the ensuing day: and Eurypides, in trying himself to one day, has committed an absurdity never to be forgiven him: for in one of his Tragedies he has made Theseus go from Athens to Thebes, which was about 40 English miles, under the walls of it to give battel, and appear victorious in the next Act; and yet from the time of his departure to the return of the Nuntius, who gives the relation of his Victory, Æthra and the Chorus have but 36 Verses; that is not for every Mile a Verse.

  The like errour is as evident in Terence his Eunuch, when Laches, the old man, enters in a mistake the house of Thais, where betwixt his Exit and the entrance of Pythias, who comes to give an ample relation of the Garboyles he has rais’d within, Parmeno who was left upon the Stage, has not above five lines to speak: C’est bien employé un temps si court, sayes the French Poet, who furnish’d me with one of the observations; And almost all their Tragedies will afford us examples of the like nature.

  ’Tis true, they have kept the continuity, or as you call’d it Liaison des Scenes somewhat better: two do not perpetually come in together, talk, and go out together; and other two succeed them, and do the same throughout the Act, which the English call by the name of single Scenes; but the reason is, because they have seldom above two or three Scenes, properly so call’d, in every act; for it is to be accounted a new Scene, not every time the Stage is empty, but every person who enters, though to others, makes it so: because he introduces a new business: Now the Plots of their Plays being narrow, and the persons few, one of their Acts was written in a less compass then one of our well wrought Scenes, and yet they are often deficient even in this: To go no further then Terence, you find in the Eunuch Antipho entring single in the midst of the third Act, after Chremes and Pythias were gone off: In the same Play you have likewise Dorias beginning the fourth Act alone; and after she has made a relation of what was done at the Souldiers entertainment (which by the way was very inartificial to do, because she was presum’d to speak directly to the Audience, and to acquaint them with what was nece
ssary to be known, but yet should have been so contriv’d by the Poet as to have been told by persons of the Drama to one another, and so by them to have come to the knowledge of the people) she quits the Stage, and Phædria enters next, alone likewise: He also gives you an account of himself, and of his returning from the Country in Monologue, his Adelphi or Brothers, Syrus and Demea enter; after the Scene was broken by the departure of Sostrata, Geta and Cathara; and indeed you can scarce look into any of his Comedies, where you will not presently discover the same interruption.

  But as they have fail’d both in laying of their Plots, and managing of them, swerving from the Rules of their own Art, by mis-representing Nature to us, in which they have ill satified one intention of a Play, which was delight, so in the instructive part they have err’d worse: instead of punishing Vice and rewarding Virtue, they have often shown a Prosperous Wickedness, and Unhappy Piety: They have set before us a bloudy image of revenge in Medea, and given her Dragons to convey her safe from punishment. A Priam and Astyanax murder’d, and Cassandra ravish’d, and the lust and murder ending in the victory of him that acted them: In short, there is no indecorum in any of our modern Playes, which if I would excuse, I could not shaddow with some Authority from the Ancients.

  And one farther note of them let me leave you: Tragedies and Comedies were not writ then as they are now, promiscuously, by the same person; but he who found his genius bending to the one, never attempted the other way. This is so plain, that I need not instance to you, that Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, never any of them writ a Tragedy; Æschylus, Eurypides, Sophocles and Seneca, never medled with Comedy; the Sock and Buskin were not worn by the same Poet: having then so much care to excel in one kind, very little is to be pardon’d them if they miscarried in it; and this would lead me to the consideration of their wit, had not Crites given me sufficient warning not to be too bold in my judgment of it; because the languages being dead, and many of the Customes and little accidents on which it depended, lost to us, we are not competent judges of it. But though I grant that here and there we may miss the application of a Proverb or a Custom, yet a thing well said will be wit in all Languages; and though it may lose something in the Translation, yet, to him who reads it in the Original, ’tis still the same; He has an Idea of its excellency, though it cannot pass from his mind into any other expression or words then those in which he finds it. When Phædria — in the Eunuch had a command from his Mistress to be absent two dayes; and encouraging himself to go through with it, said; Tandem ego non illa caream, si opus sit, vel totum triduum? Parmeno to mock the softness of his Master, lifting up his hands and eyes, cryes out as it were in admiration; Hui! universum triduum! the elegancy of which universum, though it cannot be rendred in our language, yet leaves an impression of the wit upon our souls: but this happens seldom in him, in Plautus oftner; who is infinitely too bold in his Metaphors and coyning words; out of which many times his wit is nothing, which questionless was one reason why Horace falls upon him so severely in those Verses:

  Sed Proavi nostri Plautinos & numeros, &

  Laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque

  Ne dicam stolidè.

  For Horace himself was cautious to obtrude a new word upon his Readers, and makes custom and common use the best measure of receiving it into our writings.

  Multa renascentur quæ nunc cecidere, cadentque

  Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,

  Quem penes, arbitrium est, & jus, & norma loquendi.

  The not observing this Rule is that which the world has blam’d in our Satyrist Cleveland; to express a thing hard and unnaturally, is his new way of Elocution: ’Tis true, no Poet but may sometimes use a Catachresis; Virgil does it;

  Mistaque ridenti Colocasia fundet Acantho.

  In his Eclogue of Pollio, and in his 7th Æneid.

  — Miratur & undæ,

  Miratur nemus, insuetum fulgentia longe,

  Scuta virum fiuvio, pictasque innare carinas.

  And Ovid once so modestly, that he askes leave to do it:

  Si verbo audacia detur Haud metuam summi dixisse Palatia coeli.

  Calling the Court of Jupiter by the name of Augustus his Pallace, though in another place he is more bold, where he sayes, Et longas visent Capitolia pompas. But to do this alwayes, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admir’d by some few Pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best convey’d to us in the most easie language; and is most to be admir’d when a great thought comes drest in words so commonly receiv’d that it is understood by the meanest apprehensiions, as the best meat is the most easily digested: but we cannot read a verse of Cleveland’s without making a face at it, as if every word were a Pill to swallow: he gives us many times a hard Nut to break our Teeth, without a Kernel for our pains. So that there is this difference betwixt his Satyres and Doctor Donns, That the one gives us deep thought in common language, though rough cadence; the other gives us common thoughts in abstruse words: ’tis true, in some places his wit is independent of his words, as in that of the Rebel Scot:

  Had Cain been Scot God would have chang’d his doom;

  Not forc’d him wander, but confin’d him home.

  Si sic, omnia dixisset! This is wit in all languages: ’tis like Mercury, never to be lost or kill’d; and so that other;

  For Beauty like White-powder makes no noise,

  And yet the silent Hypocrite destroyes.

  You see the last line is highly Metaphorical, but it is so soft and gentle, that it does not shock us as we read it.

  But, to return from whence I have digress’d, to the consideration of the Ancients Writing and their Wit, (of which by this time you will grant us in some measure to be fit judges,) Though I see many excellent thoughts in Seneca, yet he, of them who had a Genius most proper for the Stage, was Ovid; he had a way of writing so fit to stir up a pleasing admiration and concernment, which are the objects of a Tragedy, and to show the various movements of a Soul combating betwixt two different Passions, that, had he live’d in our age, or in his own could have writ with our advantages, no man but must have yielded to him; and therefore I am confident the Medea is none of his: for, though I esteem it for the gravity and sentiousness of it, which he himself concludes to be suitable to a Tragedy, Omme genus scripti gravitate Tragoedia vincit, yet it moves not my soul enough to judge that he, who in the Epique way wrote things so near the Drama, as the Story of Myrrha, of Caunus and Biblis, and the rest, should stir up no more concernment where he most endeavour’d it. The Master piece of Seneca I hold to be that Scene in the Troades, where Vlysses is seeking for Astyanax to kill him; There you see the tenderness of a Mother, so represented in Andromache, that it raises compassion to a high degree in the Reader, and bears the nearest resemblance of any thing in their Tragedies to the excellent Scenes of Passion in Shakespeare, or in Fletcher: for Love-Scenes you will find few among them, their Tragique Poets dealt not with that soft passion, but with Lust, Cruelty, Revenge, Ambition, and those bloody actions they produc’d; which were more capable of raising horrour then compassion in an audience: leaving love untoucht, whose gentleness would have temper’d them, which is the most frequent of all the passions, and which being the private concernment of every person, is sooth’d by viewing its own image in a publick entertainment.

  Among their Comedies, we find a Scene or two of tenderness, and that where you would least expect it, in Plautus; but to speak generally, their Lovers say little, when they see each other, but anima mea, vita mea; ζωη και ψυχη, as the women in Juvenal’s time us’d to cry out in the fury of their kindness: then indeed to speak sense were an offence. Any sudden gust of passion (as an extasie of love in an unexpected meeting) cannot better be express’d than in a word and a sigh, breaking one another. Nature is dumb on such occasions, and to make her speak, would be to represent her unlike her self. But there are a thousand other concernments of Lovers, as jealousies, complaints, contrivances and the like, where
not to open their minds at large to each other, were to be wanting to their own love, and to the expectation of the Audience, who watch the movements of their minds, as much as the changes of their fortunes. For the imaging of the first is properly the work of a Poet, the latter he borrows of the Historian.

  Eugenius was proceeding in that part of his Discourse, when Crites interrupted him. I see, said he, Eugenius and I are never like to have this Question decided betwixt us; for he maintains the Moderns have acquir’d a new perfection in writing, I can onely grant they have alter’d the mode of it. Homer describ’d his Heroes men of great appetites, lovers of beef broild upon the coals, and good fellows; contrary to the practice of the French Romances, whose Heroes neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, for love. Virgil makes Æneas a bold Avower of his own virtues,