Part 10 (1/2)

Euripides says that he found the Muse

Puffed and pampered With pompous sentences, a c.u.mbrous huge virago.

In order to bring her to a more genteel figure:

I fed her with plain household phrase and cool familiar salad, With water gruel episode, with sentimental jelly, With moral mince-meat, till at length I brought her into compa.s.s.

I kept my plots distinct and clear to prevent confusion.

My leading characters rehea.r.s.ed their pedigrees for prologues.

”For all this,” says aeschylus, ”you ought to have been hanged.” aeschylus now speaks of the grand old days, of the great themes and works of early poetry:

Such is the duty, the task of a poet, Fulfilling in honor his duty and trust.

Look to traditional history, look; See what a blessing ill.u.s.trious poets Conferred on mankind in the centuries past.

Orpheus instructed mankind in religion, Reclaimed them from bloodshed and barbarous rites.

Musaeus delivered the doctrine of medicine, And warnings prophetic for ages to come.

Next came old Hesiod, teaching us husbandry, Rural economy, rural astronomy, Homely morality, labor and thrift.

Homer himself, our adorable Homer, What was his t.i.tle to praise and renown?

What but the worth of the lessons he taught us, Discipline, arms, and equipment of war.

And here the poet comes to speak of a question which is surely prominent to-day in the minds of thoughtful people. aeschylus, in his argument against Euripides, speaks of the n.o.ble examples which he himself has brought upon the stage, reproaches his adversary with the objectionable stories of Sthen.o.baeus and Phaedra, with which he, Euripides has corrupted the public taste.

Euripides alleges in his own defence that he did not invent those stories. ”Phaedra's affair was a matter of fact.” aeschylus rejoins:

A fact with a vengeance, but horrible facts Should be buried in silence, not bruited abroad, Nor brought forth on the stage, nor emblazoned in poetry.

Children and boys have a teacher a.s.signed them; The bard is a master for manhood and youth, Bound to instruct them in virtue and truth Beholden and bound.

I do not know which of the plays of Aristophanes is considered the best by those who are competent to speak authoritatively upon their merits; but of those that I know, this drama of ”The Frogs” seems to me to exhibit most fully the scope and extent of his comic power.

Condescending in parts to what is called low comedy,--_i.e._, the farcical, based upon the sense of what all know and experience,--it rises elsewhere to the highest domain of literary criticism and expression.

The action between Bacchus and his slave forcibly reminds us of Cervantes, though master and man alike have in them more of Sancho Panza than of Quixote. In the journey to the palace of Pluto, I see the prototype of what the great mediaeval poet called ”The Divine Comedy.” I find in both the same weird imagination, the same curious interbraiding of the ridiculous and the grandiose. This, of course, with the difference that the Greek poet affords us only a brief view of h.e.l.l, while Dante detains us long enough to give us a realizing sense of what it is, or might be. This same mingling of the awful and the grotesque suggests to me pa.s.sages in our own Hawthorne, similarly at home with the supernatural, which underlies the story of ”The Scarlet Letter,”

and flashes out in ”The Celestial Railroad.” But I must come back to Dante, who can amuse us with the tricks of demons, and can lift us to the music of the spheres. So Aristophanes can show us, on the one hand, the humorous relations of a coward and a clown; and, on the other, can put into the mouth of the great aeschylus such words as he might fitly have spoken.

Perhaps the very extravagance of fun is carried even further in the drama of ”The Birds” than in those already quoted from. Its conceits are, at any rate, most original, and, so far as I know, it is without prototype or parallel in its matter and manner.

The argument of the play can be briefly stated. Peisthetairus, an Athenian citizen, dissatisfied with the state of things in his own country, visits the Hoop with the intention of securing his a.s.sistance in founding a new state, the dominion of the birds. He takes with him a good-natured simpleton of a friend, Well-hoping, by name. Now the Hoop in question, according to the old legend, had been known in a previous state of being as Tereus, King of Thrace, and the metamorphosis which changed him to a bird had changed his subjects also into representatives of the various feathered tribes. These, however, far from sharing the polite and hospitable character of their master, become enraged at the intrusion of the strangers, and propose to attack them in military style. The visitors seize a spit, the lid of a pot, and various other culinary articles, and prepare to make what defence they may, while the birds ”present beaks,” and prepare to charge. The Hoop here interposes, and claims their attention for the project which Peisthetairus has to unfold.

The wily Athenian begins his address with prodigious flattery, calling the feathered folk ”a people of sovereigns,” more ancient of origin than man, his deities, or his world. In support of this last clause, he quotes a fable of aesop, who narrates that the lark was embarra.s.sed to bury his father, because the earth did not exist at the time of his death. Sovereignty, of old, belonged to the birds. The stride of the c.o.c.k sufficiently shows his royal origin, and his authority is still made evident by the alacrity with which the whole slumbering world responds to his morning reveille. The kite once reigned in Greece; the cuckoo in Sidon and Egypt. Jupiter has usurped the eagle's command, but dares not appear without him, while

Each of the G.o.ds had his separate fowl,-- Apollo the hawk and Minerva the owl.

Peisthetairus proposes that, in order to recover their lost sovereignty, the birds shall build in the air a strongly fortified city. This done, they shall send a herald to Jove to demand his immediate abdication. If the celestials refuse to govern themselves accordingly, they are to be blockaded. This blockade seems presently to obtain, and heavenly Iris, flying across the sky on a message from the G.o.ds, is caught, arraigned, and declared worthy of death,--the penalty of non-observance. The prospective city receives the name of ”Nephelococcagia,” and this is scarcely decided upon before a poet arrives to celebrate in an ode the mighty Nephelococcagia state.

Then comes a soothsayer to order the appropriate sacrifices; then an astronomer, with instruments to measure the due proportions of the city; then a would-be parricide, who announces himself as a lover of the bird empire, and especially of that law which allows a man to beat his father. Peisthetairus confesses that, in the bird domain, the chicken is sometimes applauded for clapper-clawing the old c.o.c.k. When, however, his visitor expresses a wish to throttle his parent and seize upon his estate, Peisthetairus refers him to the law of the storks, by which the son is under obligation to feed and maintain the parent. This law, he says, prevails in Nephelococcagia, and the parricide accordingly betakes himself elsewhere.

All this admirable fooling ends in the complete success of the birds.