Part 2 (2/2)

All is lost! the kingdom's fallen! Father and daughter lie in mingled dust!

_Ch_. By what snare taken?

_Mess_. By gifts, the snare of kings.

_Ch_. What harm could lurk in them?

_Mess_. Myself I marvel, and scarce though the deed is done can I believe it possible. How died they?

Devouring flames rage through all the palace as at her command. Now the whole house is fallen and men fear for the city.

_Ch_. Let water quench the flames.

_Mess_. Nay, in this overthrow is this added wonder.

Water feeds the flames and opposition makes the fire burn fiercer. It hath seared even that which should have stayed its power.

That is all: if we had not read Euripides we should scarcely understand the connexion between the gifts and the mysterious fire. Seneca, with the lack of proportion displayed in nearly all his dramas, has spent so much time in describing the wholly irrelevant and absurd details of Medea's incantations that he finds no room to give what might be a really dramatic description of the all-important catastrophe in which Medea's vengeance finds issue. There is hardly a play which will not provide similar instances of the lack of genuine constructive power. In the _Oedipus_ we get the same long narrative of horror that has disfigured the _Hercules Furens_ and the _Medea_. Creon describes to us the dark rites of incantation used to evoke the shade of Laius.[180] In the _Phaedra_ we find what at first would seem to be a clever piece of stagecraft. Hippolytus, scandalized at Phaedra's avowal of her incestuous pa.s.sion, seizes her by the hair and draws his sword as though to slay her. He changes his purpose, but the nurse has seen him and calls for aid, denouncing Hippolytus' violence and clearly intending to make use of it as d.a.m.ning evidence against him. But the chorus refuse to credit her, and the incident falls flat.[181] Everywhere there is the same casual workmans.h.i.+p. If we stop short of denying to Seneca the possession of any dramatic talent, it is at any rate hard to resist the conviction that he treated the plays as a _parergon_, spending little thought or care on their _ensemble_, though at times working up a scene or scenes with an elaboration and skill as unmistakable as it is often misdirected.

The plays are, in fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, _drames de recette_. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients--description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, for all their cleverness, Seneca's description and declamation are radically bad. It is but rarely that he shows himself capable of simple and natural language. If a tragic event enacted off the stage requires description, it must outdo all other descriptions of the same type. And seeing that one of the chief uses of narrative in tragedy is to present to the imagination of the audience events which are too horrible for their eyes, the result in Seneca's hands is often little less than revolting. For example, the self-blinding of Oedipus is set forth with every detail of horror, possible and impossible, till the imagination sickens.

(961) gemuit et dirum fremens ma.n.u.s in ora torsit, at contra truces oculi steterunt et suam intenti manum ultro insequuntur, vulneri occurrunt suo.

scrutatur avidus manibus uncis lumina, radice ab ima funditus vulsos simul evolvit orbes; haeret in vacuo ma.n.u.s et fixa penitus unguibus lacerat cavos alte recessus luminum et inanes sinus saevitque frustra plusque quam satis est furit.

The last line is an epitome of Seneca's methods of description. Yet more revolting is the speech of the messenger describing the banquet, at which Atreus placed the flesh of Thyestes' murdered sons before their father (623-788). Nothing is spared us, much that is impossible is added.[182] At times, moreover, this love of horrors leads to the introduction of descriptions wholly alien to the play. In the _Hercules Furens_ the time during which Hercules is absent from the scene, engaged in the slaying of the tyrant Lycus, is filled by a description of Hades from the mouth of Theseus, who is fresh-come from the underworld. The speech is not peculiarly bad in itself; it is only very long[183]

(658-829) and very irrelevant.

The effect of the declamation is not less unhappy. Seneca's dramatis personae rarely speak like reasoning human beings: they rant at one another or at the audience with such overwrought subtleties of speech and rhetorical perversions that they give the impression of being no more than mechanical puppets handled by a crafty but inartistic showman.

All speak the same strange language, a language born in the rhetorical schools of Greece and Rome. G.o.ds and mortals alike suffer the same melancholy fate. Juno, when she declares her resolve to afflict Hercules with madness, addresses the furies who are to be her ministers as follows (_H.F._ 105):

concut.i.te pectus, acrior mentem excoquat quam qui caminis ignis Aetnaeis furit: ut possit animo captus Alcides agi magno furore percitus, n.o.bis prius insaniendum est--Iuno, cur nondum furis?

me me, sorores, mente deiectam mea versate primam, facere si quicquam apparo dignum noverca; vota mutentur mea: natos reversus videat incolumes precor manuque fortis redeat: inveni diem invisa quo nos Herculis virtus iuvet.

me vicit et se vincat et cupiat mori ab inferis reversus....

pugnanti Herculi tandem favebo.

Distract his heart with madness: let his soul More fiercely burn than that hot fire which glows On Aetna's forge. But first, that Hercules May be to madness driven, smitten through With mighty pa.s.sion, I must be insane.

Why rav'st thou not, O Juno? Me, oh, me, Ye sisters, first of sanity deprive, That something worthy of a stepdame's wrath I may prepare. Let all my hate be change To favour. Now I pray that he may come To earth again, and see his sons unharmed; May he return with all his old time strength.

Now have I found a day when Hercules May help me with his strength that I deplore.

Now let him equally o'ercome himself And me; and let him, late escaped from death, Desire to die... And so at last I'll help Alcides in his wars. MILLER.

She is clearly a near relative of that Oedipus who, in the _Phoenissae_, begs Antigone to lead him to the rock where the Sphinx sat of old (120):

dirige huc gressus pedum, hic siste patrem. dira ne sedes vacet.

monstrum repone maius. hoc saxum insidens obscura nostrae verba fortunae loquar, quae nemo solvat.

... saeva Thebarum lues luctifica caecis verba committens modis quid simile posuit? quid tam inextricabile?

avi gener patrisque rivalis sui frater suorum liberum et fratrum parens; uno avia partu liberos. peperit viro, sibi et nepotes. monstra quis tanta explicat?

ego ipse, victae spolia qui Sphingis tuli, haerebo fati tardus interpres mei.

<script>