Page images
PDF
EPUB

beauties of our English tragedy: I mean those par-
ticular speeches which are commonly known by the
name of Rants. The warm and passionate parts of
a tragedy are always the most taking with the au-
dience; for which reason we often see the players
pronouncing, in all the violence of action, several
parts of the tragedy which the author writ with great
temper, and designed that they should have been so
acted. I have seen Powell very often raise himself
a loud clap by this artifice. The poets that were ac-
quainted with this secret, have given frequent occa-
sion for such emotions in the actor, by adding vehe-
mence to words where there was no passion, or
inflaming a real passion into fustian. This hath
filled the mouths of our heroes with bombast; and
given them such sentiments as proceed rather from
a swelling than a greatness of mind. Unnatural ex-
clamations, curses, vows, blasphemies, a defiance of
mankind, and an outraging of the gods, frequently
pass upon the audience for towering thoughts, and
have accordingly met with infinite applause.

No. 41.] TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 1711.

49

Tu non inventa reperta es.-OVID. Met. i. 654. So found, is worse than lost.-ADDISON. COMPASSION for the gentleman who writes the following letter should not prevail upon me to fall upon the fair sex, if it were not that I find they are frequently fairer than they ought to be. Such impostures are not to be tolerated in civil society, and I think his misfortune ought to be made public, as a warning for other men to examine into what they admire. "SIR,

66

ledge, I make my application to you on a very par 'Supposing you to be a person of general knowticular occasion. I have a great mind to be rid of my wife, and hope, when you consider my case, you will be of opinion I have very just pretensions to a divorce. I am a mere man of the town, and have very little improvement but what I have got from I shall here add a remark, which I am afraid our Dr. Cutberd, or Dr. Otter (I forget which), makes plays. I remember in the Silent Woman, the learned tragic writers may make an ill use of. As our heroes one of the causes of separation to be Error Persona are generally lovers, their swelling and blustering when a man marries a woman, and finds her not to upon the stage very much recommends them to the be the same woman whom he intended to marry, fair part of the audience. The ladies are wonder- but another. If that be law, it is, I presume, exfully pleased to see a man insulting kings, or affront-actly my case. ing the gods, in one scene, and throwing himself at For you are to know, Mr. Specthe feet of his mistress in another. Let him behave tator, that there are women who do not let their hushimself insolently towards the men, and abjectly tobands see their faces till they are married. wards the fair one, and it is ten to one but he proves a favourite with the boxes. Dryden and Lee, in several of their tragedies, have practised this secret with good success.

But to show how a rant pleases beyond the most just and natural thought that is not pronounced with vehemence, I would desire the reader, when he sees the tragedy of Edipus, to observe how quietly the hero is dismissed at the end of the third act, after having pronounced the following lines, in which the thought is very natural, and apt to move compassion:

To you, good gods, I make my last appear;
Or clear my virtues, or my crimes reveal.
If in the maze of fate I blindly run,

And backward tread those paths I sought to shun;
Impute my errors to your own decree!

My hands are guilty, but my heart is free.

Let us then observe with what thunder-claps of plause he leaves the stage, after the impieties and apexecrations at the end of the fourth act; and you will wonder to see an audience so cursed and so pleased at the same time.

O that, as oft I have at Athens seen

that part of the sex who paint. They are some of "Not to keep you in suspense, I mean plainly them so exquisitely skilful in this way, that give them but a tolerable pair of eyes to set up with, and by their own industry. As for my dear, never was they will make bosom, lips, cheeks, and eyebrows, neck, and arms, as well as the bright jet of her hair; a man so enamoured as I was of her fair forehead, but to my great astonishment I find they were all the effect of art.

practice, that when she first wakes in a morning, she scarce seems young enough to be the mother of her whom I carried to bed the night before. I shall take the liberty to part with her by the first opportunity, unless her father will make her portion suitable to her real, not her assumed, countenance. This I thought fit to let him and her know by your "I am, Sir,

Her skin is so tarnished with this

means.

"Your most obedient humble servant.

lady will do for this injured gentleman, but must alI cannot tell what the law or the parents of the low he has very much justice on his side. I have indeed very long observed this evil, and distinguished those of our women who wear their own, from those

[Where, by the way, there was no stage till many in borrowed complexions, by the Picts and the years after Edipus.]

The stage arise, and the big clouds descend;

So now, in very deed, I might behold

This pon'drous globe, and all yon marble roof,
Meet, like the hands of Jove, and crush mankind.
For all the elements, &c.

ADVERTISEMENT.

British. There does not need any great discernment to judge which are which. The British have a lively animated aspect; the Picts, though never so beautiful, have dead uninformed countenances. The muscles of a real face sometimes swell with soft passion, sudden surprise, and are flushed with agreeable confusions, according as the objects before

Having spoken of Mr. Powell, as sometimes rais-them, or the ideas presented to them, affect their ing himself applause from the ill taste of an audience, imagination. But the Picts behold all things with I must do him the justice to own, that he is excel the same air, whether they are joyful or sad; the lently formed for a tragedian, and, when he pleases, same fixed insensibility appears upon all occasions. deserves the admiration of the best judges; as IA Pict, though she takes all that pains to invite the doubt not but he will in the Conquest of Mexico, which is acted for his own benefit to-morrow night.

SPECTATOR-Nos. 7 & 8.

C.

approach of lovers, is obliged to keep them at a certain distance; a sigh in a languishing lover, if fetched too near her, would dissolve a feature; and a kiss snatched by a forward one, might transfer the complexion of the mistress to the admirer. It is

E

hard to speak of these false fair ones, without saying something uncomplaisant, but I would only recommend to them to consider how they like to come into a room new painted; they may assure themselves the near approach of a lady who uses this practice is much more offensive.

How like is this lady, and how unlike is a Pict, to that description Dr. Donne gives of his mistress Her pure and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one would almost say her body thought.
ADVERTISEMENT.

N.B. She is also well skilled in the drapery part, and puts on hoods, and mixes ribands so as to suit the colours of the face, with great art and success.

R.

No. 42.] WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 1711.
Garganum mugire putes nemus, aut mare Thuscum;
Tantum cum strepitu ludi spectantur, et artes,
Divitiæque peregrina; quibus oblitus actor
Cum stetit in scena, concurrit dextera lævæ
Dixit adhuc aliquid? Nil sane. Quid placet ergo?
Lana Tarentino violas imitata veneno.-HOR. 2 Ep. i. 202.

Will Honeycomb told us one day, an adventure he once had with a Pict. This lady had wit, as well A young gentlewoman of about nineteen years of as beauty, at will; and made it her business to gain age (bred in the family of a person of quality, lately deceased), who paints the finest flesh-colour, wants hearts, for no other reason but to rally the torments of her lovers. She would make great advances to a place, and is to be heard of at the house of Myn heer Grotesque, a Dutch painter in Barbican. insnare men, but without any manner of scruple break off when there was no provocation. Her illnature and vanity made my friend very easily proof against the charms of her wit and conversation; but her beauteous form, instead of being blemished by her falsehood and inconstancy, every day increased upon him, and she had new attractions every time he saw her. When she observed Will irrevocably her slave, she began to use him as such, and after many steps towards such a cruelty, she at last utterly banished him. The unhappy lover strove in vain, by servile epistles, to revoke his doom; till at length he was forced to the last refuge, a round sum of money to her maid. This corrupt attendant placed him early in the morning behind the hangings in her mistress's dressing-room. He stood very conveniently to observe, without being seen. The Pict begins the face she designed to wear that day, and I have heard him protest she had worked a full half hour before he knew her to be the same woman. As soon as he saw the dawn of that complexion, for which he had so long languished, he thought fit to break from his concealment, repeating that verse of Cowley:

Th' adorning thee with so much art
Is but a barbarous skill;
"Tis like the pois'ning of a dart,
Too apt before to kill.

The Pict stood before him in the utmost confusion, with the prettiest smirk imaginable on the finished side of her face, pale as ashes on the other. Honeycomb seized all her gallipots and washes, and carried off his handkerchief full of brushes, scraps of Spanish wool, and phials of unguents. The lady went into the country, the lover was cured.

IMITATED.

Loua as the wolves on Orca's stormy steep,
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep:
Such is the shout, the long applauding note,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat:
Or when from court a birth-day suit bestow'd
Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.
Booth enters-hark! the universal peal!—
But has he spoken ?-Not a syllable-

What shook the stage, and made the people stare?
Cato's long wig, flower'd gown, and lacker'd chair.-POPE

ARISTOTLE has observed, that ordinary writers in tragedy endeavour to raise terror and pity in their audience, not by proper sentiments and expressions, but by the dresses and decorations of the stage. There is something of this kind very ridiculous in the English theatre. When the author has a mind to terrify us, it thunders; when he would make us melancholy, the stage is darkened. But among all our tragic artifices, I am the most offended at those which are made use of to inspire us with magnificent ideas of the persons that speak. The ordinary method of making a hero, is to clap a huge plume of feathers upon his head, which rises so very high that It is certain no faith ought to be kept with cheats, there is often a greater length from his chin to the and an oath made to a Pict is of itself void. I top of his head than to the sole of his foot. One would therefore exhort all the British ladies to sin- would believe that we thought a great man and a gle them out, nor do I know any but Lindamira tall man the same thing. This very much embarwho should be exempt from discovery: for her own rasses the actor, who is forced to hold his neck excomplexion is so delicate, that she ought to be al-tremely stiff and steady all the while he speaks; and lowed the covering it with paint, as a punishment notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for for choosing to be the worst piece of art extant, in his mistress, his country, or his friends, one may see stead of the master-piece of nature. As for my by his action that his greatest care and concern is to part, who have no expectations from women, and keep the plume of feathers from falling off his head. consider them only as they are part of the species, For my own part, when I see a man uttering his I do not half so much fear offending a beauty, as a complaints under such a mountain of feathers, I am woman of sense; I shall therefore produce several apt to look upon him rather as an unfortunate lunafaces which have been in public these many years, tic than a distressed hero. As these superfluous orand never appeared. It will be a very pretty en-naments upon the head make a great man, a princess tertainment in the play-house (when I have abolished this custom) to see so many ladies, when they first lay it down, incog. in their own faces.

In the meantime, as a pattern for improving their charms, let the sex study the agreeable Statira. Her features are enlivened with the cheerfulness of her mind, and good-humour gives an alacrity to her eyes. She is graceful without affecting an air, and unconcerned without appearing careless. Her having no manner of art in her mind, makes her want none in her person.

generally receives her grandeur from those additional encumbrances that fall into her tail-I mean the broad sweeping train that follows her in all her motions, and finds constant employment for a boy who stands behind her to open and spread it to advantage. I do not know how others are affected at this sight, but I must confess my eyes are wholly taken up with the page's part; and, as for the queen, I am not so attentive to any thing she speaks, as to the right adjusting of her train, lest it should chance to trip up her heels, or incommode her, as she walks

to and fro upon the stage. It is, in my opinion, a very odd spectacle, to see a queen venting her passions in a disordered motion, and a little boy taking care all the while that they do not ruffle the tail of her gown. The parts that the two persons act on the stage at the same time are very different. The princess is afraid lest she should incur the displeasure of the king her father, or lose the hero her lover, whilst her attendant is only concerned lest she should entangle her feet in her petticoat.

We are told, that an ancient tragic poet, to move the pity of his audience for his exiled kings and distressed heroes, used to make the actors represent them in dresses and clothes that were thread-bare and decayed. This artifice for moving pity seems as ill contrived as that we have been speaking of to inspire us with a great idea of the persons introduced upon the stage. In short, I would have our conceptions raised by the dignity of thought and sublimity of expression, rather than by a train of robes or a plume of feathers.

Another mechanical method of making great men, and adding dignity to kings and queens, is to accompany them with halberts and battle-axes. Two or three shifters of scenes, with the two candle-snuffers, make up a complete body of guards upon the English stage; and by the addition of a few porters dressed in red coats, can represent above a dozen legions. I have sometimes seen a couple of armies drawn up together upon the stage, when the poet has been disposed to do honour to his generals. It is impossible for the reader's imagination to multiply twenty men into such prodigious multitudes, or to fancy that two or three hundred thousand soldiers are fighting in a room of forty or fifty yards in com pass. Incidents of such nature should be told, not represented.

Non tamen intus

Digna geri promes in scenam: multaque tolles
Ex oculis, quæ mox narret facundia præsans.
HOR. Ars. Poet. ver. 182.

Yet there are things improper for a scene,
Which men of judgment only will relate.-RoscoMMON.
I should, therefore, in this particular, recommend
to my countrymen the example of the French stage,
where the kings and queens always appear unat-
tended, and leave their guards behind the scenes. I
should likewise be glad if we imitated the French in
banishing from our stage the noise of drums, trum-
pets, and huzzas, which is sometimes so very great,
that when there is a battle in the Haymarket theatre,
one may hear it as far as Charing-cross.

I have here only touched upon those particulars which are made use of to raise and aggrandize the persons of a tragedy; and shall show, in another paper, the several expedients which are practised by authors of a vulgar genius to move terror, pity, or admiration in their hearers.

The tailor and the painter often contribute to the success of a tragedy more than the poet. Scenes affect ordinary minds as much as speeches; and our actors are very sensible that a well-dressed play has sometimes brought them as full audiences as a wellwritten one. The Italians have a very good phrase to express this art of imposing upon the spectators by appearances: they call it the "Fourberia della scena, "The knavery, or trickish part of the drama." But however the show and outside of the tragedy may work upon the vulgar, the more under standing part of the audience immediately see through it, and despise it.

A good poet will give the reader a more lively idea

of an army or a battle, in a description, than if he actually saw them drawn up in squadrons and bat talions, or engaged in the confusion of a fight. Our minds should be opened to great conceptions, and inflamed with glorious sentiments by what the actor speaks, more than by what he appears. Can all the trappings or equipage of a king or hero, give Brutus half that pomp and majesty which he receives from a few lines in Shakspeare ?-C.

No. 43.] THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 1711, Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.-VIRG. Æn. vi. 854. Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, Be these thy arts; to bid contention cease, Chain up stern wars, and give the nations peace; O'er subject lands extend thy gentle sway, And teach with iron rod the haughty to obey. THERE are crowds of men, whose great misfortune it is that they were not bound to mechanic arts or trades; it being absolutely necessary for them to be laid by some continual task or employment. These are such as we commonly call dull fellows; persons who for want of something to do, out of a certain vacancy of thought rather than curiosity, are ever meddling with things for which they are unfit. I cannot give you a notion of them better, than by presenting you with a letter from a gentleman, who belongs to a society of this order of men, residing at Oxford.

"SIR,

"Oxford, April 13, 1711. Four o'clock in the morning. "In some of your late speculations, I find some sketches towards a history of clubs; but you seem to me to shew them in somewhat too ludicrous a light. I have well weighed that matter, and think, that the most important negociations may be best carried on in such assemblies. I shall, therefore, for the good of mankind (which I trust you and I are equally concerned for,) propose an institution of that nature for example sake.

"I must confess the design and transactions of too many clubs are trifling, and manifestly of no consequence to the nation or public weal. Those I will give you up. But you must do me then the justice to own, that nothing can be more useful or laudable, than the scheme we go upon. To avoid nick-names and witticisms, we call ourselves The Hebdomadal Meeting. Our president continues for a year at least, and sometimes for four or five; we are all grave, serious, designing men in our way; we think it our duty, as far as in us lies, to take care the constitution receives no harm-Ne quid detrimenti res capiat publica-To censure doctrines or facts, persons or things, which we do not like; to settle the nation at home, and to carry on the war abroad, where and in what manner we think fit. If other people are not of our opinion, we cannot help that. It were better they were. Moreover, we now and then condescend to direct in some measure the little affairs of our own university.

"Verily, Mr. Spectator, we are much offended at the act for importing French wines. A bottle or two of good solid edifying port at honest George's, made a night cheerful, and threw off reserve. But this plaguy French claret will not only cost us more money, but do us less good. Had we been aware of it before it had gone too far, I must tell you, we would have petitioned to be heard upon that subject. But let that pass.

"I must let you know likewise, good Sir, that we look upon a certain northern prince's march, in conjunction with infidels, to be palpably against our

good-will and liking; and for ail Monsieur Palmquist, a most dangerous innovation; and we are by no means yet sure, that some people are not at the bottom of it. At least, my own private letters leave room for a politician, well versed in matters of this nature, to suspect as much, as a penetrating friend of mine tells me.

"We think we have at last done the business with the malcontents in Hungary, and shall clap up a peace there.

"What the neutrality army is to do, or what the army in Flanders, and what two or three other princes, is not yet fully determined among us; and we wait impatiently for the coming in of the next Dyer's, who you must know is our authentic intelligence, our Aristotle in politics. And, indeed, it is but fit there should be some dernier resort, the absolute decider of controversies.

many other distichs no less to be quoted on this ac-
count, I cannot but recite the two following lines:
A painted vest Prince Voltiger had on,
Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won.
Here, if the poet had not been vivacious as well
as stupid, he could not, in the warmth and hurry of
nonsense, have been capable of forgetting that nei-
ther Prince Voltiger nor his grandfather could strip
a naked man of his doublet; but a fool of a colder
constitution would have staid to have flayed the Pict,
and made buff of his skin, for the wearing of the
conqueror.

To bring these observations to some useful purposes of life-what I would propose should be, that we imitated those wise nations, wherein every man learns some handicraft-work-Would it not employ a beau prettily enough, if, instead of eternally playing with a snuff-box, he spent some part of his time in making one? Such a method as this would very much conduce to the public emolument, by making every man living good for something; for there would then be no one member of human society but would have some little pretension for some degree in it: like him who came to Will's coffee-house, upon the merit of having writ a posy of a ring.-R.

"We were lately informed, that the gallant trained-bands had patrolled all night long about the streets of London. We indeed could not imagine any occasion for it, we guessed not a tittle on it aforehand, we were in nothing of the secret; and that city tradesmen, or their apprentices, should do duty or work during the holidays, we thought absolutely impossible. But Dyer being positive in it, and some letters from other people, who had talked No. 44.] FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1711. with some who had it from those who should know, giving some countenance to it, the chairman reported Tu, quid ego et populus mecum desideret, audi. from the committee appointed to examine into that HOR. Ars. Poet. ver. 123. affair, that it was possible there might be something Now hear what evcry auditor expects.-RoscoMMON. in it. I have much more to say to you, but my two AMONG the several artifices which are put in good friends and neighbours Dominic and Slyboots practice by the poets to fill the minds of an auare just come in, and the coffee is ready. I am, indience with terror, the first place is due to thunder the meantime,

"Mr. Spectator,

A

and lightning, which are often made use of at the "Your admirer and humble servant, descending of a god, or the rising of a ghost, at the "ABRAHAM FROTH." vanishing of a devil, or at the death of a tyrant. You may observe the turn of their minds tends I have known a bell introduced into several trageonly to novelty, and not satisfaction in any thing. dies with good effect; and have seen the whole asIt would be disappointment to them to come to cer-sembly in a very great alarm all the while it has tainty in any thing, for that would gravel them, and been ringing. But there is nothing which delights put an end to their inquiries, which dull fellows dc and territies our English theatre so much as a ghost, not make for information, but for exercise. I do not especially when he appears in a bloody shirt. know but this may be a very good way of accounting spectre has very often saved a play, though he bas for what we frequently see-to wit, that dull fellows done nothing but stalked across the stage, or rose prove very good men of business. Business relieves through a cleft of it, and sunk again without speakthem from their own natural heaviness, by furnish- ing one word. There may be a proper season for ing them with what to do; whereas business to mer- these several terrors; and when they only come in curial men is an interruption from their real exist- as aids and assistances to the poet. they are not ence and happiness. Though the dull part of man-only to be excused, but to be applauded. Thus the kind are harmless in their amusements, it were to be wished they had no vacant time, because they usually undertake something that makes their wants conspicuous, by their manner of supplying them. You shall seldom find a dull fellow of good education, but, if he happens to have any leisure upon his hands, will turn his head to one of those two amusements for all fools of eminence, politics or poetry. The former of these arts is the study of all dull people in general; but when dulness is lodged in a person of a quick animal life, it generally exerts itself in poetry. One might here mention a few military writers, who give great entertainment to the age, by reason that the stupidity of their heads is quickened by the alacrity of their hearts. This constitution in a dull fellow, gives vigour to nonsense, and makes the puddle boil which would otherwise stagnate. The British Prince, that celebrated poem, which was written in the reign of King Charles the Second, and deservedly called by the wits of that age incomparable, was the effect of such a happy genius as we are speaking of. From among

sounding of the clock in Venice Preserved makes the hearts of the whole audience quake; and conveys a stronger terror to the mind than it is possible for words to do. The appearance of the ghost in Hamlet is a master-piece in its kind, and wrought up with all the circumstances that can create either attention or horror. The mind of the reader is wonderfully prepared for his reception by the discourses that precede it. His dumb behaviour at his first entrance strikes the imagination very strongly; but every time he enters, he is still more terrifying. Who can read the speech with which young Hamlet accosts him without trembling?

HOR. Look, my lord, it comes!

HAM. Angels and ministers of grace defena us!
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd:
Bring'st with thee airs from heav'n, or blasts from hell;
Be thy events wicked or charitable;

Thou com'st in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet,

Events for advents, comings, or visits. We read in other copies, intents.

King, Father, Royal Dane. Oh! answer me.
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements? Why the sepulchre
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again? What may this mean?
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous?

being upbraided by her for having slain her lover), in the height of his passion and resentment kills her. If any thing could extenuate so brutal an action, it would be the doing of it on a sudden, before the sentiments of nature, reason, or manhood, could take place in him. However, to avoid public bloodshed, as soon as his passion is wrought to its height, he follows his sister the whole length of the stage, and forbears killing her till they are both withdrawn behind the scenes. I must confess, had he murdered her before the audience, the indecency

I do not therefore find fault with the artifices above mentioned, when they are introduced with skill, and accompanied by proportionable sentiments and ex-might have been greater; but as it is, it appears pressions in the writing.

very unnatural, and looks like killing in cold blood. To give my opinion upon this case, the fact ought not to have been represented, but to have been told, if there was any occasion for it.

For the moving of pity, our principal machine is the handkerchief; and indeed, in our common tragedies, we should not know very often that the persons are in distress by any thing they say, if they It may not be unacceptable to the reader to see did not from time to time apply their handkerchiefs how Sophocles has conducted a tragedy under the to their eyes. Far be it from me to think of banish-like delicate circumstances. Orestes was under the ing this instrument of sorrow from the stage; I same condition with Hamlet in Shakspeare, his know a tragedy could not subsist without it; all that mother having murdered his father, and taken posI would contend for, is to keep it from being mis-session of his kingdom in conspiracy with her adulapplied. In a word, I would have the actor's tongue terer. That young prince, therefore, being detersympathise with his eyes, mined to revenge his father's death upon those who A disconsolate mother, with a child in her hand, filled his throne, conveys himself by a beautiful has frequently drawn compassion from the audience, stratagem into his mother's apartment, with a resoand has therefore gained a place in several trage-lution to kill her. But because such a spectacle dies. A modern writer, that observed how this had would have been too shocking to the audience, this took in other plays, being resolved to double the dreadful resolution is executed behind the scenes: distress, and melt his audience twice as much as the mother is heard calling out to her son for mercy; those before him had done, brought a princess upon and the son answering her, that she showed no the stage with a little boy in one hand, and a girl mercy to his father; after which she shrieks out in the other. This too had a very good effect. A that she is wounded, and by what follows we find third poet being resolved to outwrite all his prede- that she is slain. I do not remember that in any of cessors, a few years ago introduced three children our plays there are speeches made behind the with great success: and as I am informed, a young scenes, though there are other instances of this nagentleman, who is fully determined to break the ture to be met with in those of the ancients: and I most obdurate hearts, has a tragedy by him, where believe my reader will agree with me, that there is the first person that appears upon the stage is an something infinitely more affecting in this dreadful afflicted widow in her mourning weeds, with half-a-dialogue between the mother and her son behind the dozen fatherless children attending her, like those that usually hang about the figure of Charity. Thus several incidents that are beautiful in a good writer, become ridiculous by falling into the hands of a bad one.

scenes, than could have been in any thing transacted before the audience. Orestes immediately after meets the usurper at the entrance of his palace; and by a very happy thought of the poet, avoids killing him before the audience, by telling him that he should live some time in his present bitterness of soul before he would dispatch him, and by ordering him to retire into that part of the palace where he had slain his father, whose murder he would revenge in the very same place where it was committed. By this means the poet observes that decency, which Horace afterward established by a rule, of forbearing to commit parricides or unnatural musders before the audience.

Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet.

ARS POET. ver. 185

Let not Medea draw her murd'ring knife,
And spill her children's blood upon the stage.

ROSCOMMON

But among all our methods of moving pity or terror, there is none so absurd and barbarous, and which more exposes us to the contempt and ridicule of our neighbours, than that dreadful butchering of one another, which is so very frequent upon the English stage. To delight in seeing men stabbed, poisoned, racked, or impaled, is certainly the sign of a cruel temper: and as this is often practised before the British audience, several French eritics, who think these are grateful spectacles to us, take occasion from them to represent us as a people that delight in blood. It is indeed very odd, to see our stage strewed with carcases in the last scenes of a tragedy, and to observe in the wardrobe of the playhouse several daggers, poniards, wheels, bowls for The French have therefore refined too much upon poison, and many other instruments of death. Mur- Horace's rule, who never designed to banish all ders and executions are always transacted behind kinds of death from the stage; but only such as the scenes in the French theatre; which in general had too much horror in them, and which would have is very agreeable to the manners of a polite and ci- a better effect upon the audience when transacted vilised people: but as there are no exceptions to this behind the scenes. I would therefore recommend rule on the French stage, it leads them into absurdi- to my countrymen the practice of the ancient poets, ties almost as ridiculous as that which falls under who were very sparing of their public executions, our present censure. I remember in the famous and rather chose to perform them behind the scenes, play of Corneille, written upon the subject of the Horatii and Curiatii; the fierce young hero who had overcome the Curiatii one after another (instead of being congratulated by his sister for his victory,

if it could be done with as great an effect upon the audience. At the same time I must observe, that though the devoted persons of the tragedy were seldom slain before the audience, which has gene

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »