Chapter 29

A new aera of French Tragedy begins with Voltaire, whose first appearance, in his early youth, as a writer for the theatre, followed close upon the age of Louis the Fourteenth. I have already, in a general way, alluded to the changes and enlargements which he projected, and partly carried into execution. Corneille and Racine led a true artist's life: they were dramatic poets with their whole soul; their desire, as authors, was confined to that object alone, and all their studies were directed to the stage. Voltaire, on the contrary, wished to shine in every possible department; a restless vanity permitted him not to be satisfied with the pursuit of perfection in any single walk of literature; and from the variety of subjects on which his mind was employed, it was impossible for him to avoid shallowness and immaturity of ideas. To form a correct idea of his relation to his two predecessors in the tragic art, we must institute a comparison between the characteristic features of the preceding classical age and of that in which he gave the tone. In the time of Louis the Fourteenth, a certain traditionary code of opinions on all the most important concerns of humanity reigned in full force and unquestioned; and even in poetry, the object was not so much to enrich as to form the mind, by a liberal and noble entertainment. But now, at length, the want of original thinking began to be felt; however, it unfortunately happened, that bold presumption hurried far in advance of profound inquiry, and hence the spread of public immorality was quick followed by a dangerous scoffing scepticism, which shook to the foundation every religious and moral conviction, and the very principles of society itself. Voltaire was by turns philosopher, rhetorician, sophist, and buffoon. The want of singleness, which more or less characterised all his views, was irreconcileable with a complete freedom of prejudice even as an artist in his career. As he saw the public longing for information, which was rather tolerated by the favour of the great than authorised and formally approved of and dispensed by appropriate public institutions, he did not fail to meet their want, and to deliver, in beautiful verses, on the stage, what no man durst yet preach from the pulpit or the professor's chair. He made use of poetry as a means to accomplish ends foreign and extrinsecal to it; and this has often polluted the artistic purity of his compositions. Thus, the end of his _Mahomet_ was to portray the dangers of fanaticism, or rather, laying aside all circumlocution, of a belief in revelation. For this purpose, he has most unjustifiably disfigured a great historical character, revoltingly loaded him with the most crying enormities, with which he racks and tortures our feelings. Universally known, as he was, to be the bitter enemy of Christianity, he bethought himself of a new triumph for his vanity; in _Zaire_ and _Alzire_, he had recourse to Christian sentiments to excite emotion: and here, for once, his versatile heart, which, indeed, in its momentary ebullitions, was not unsusceptible of good feelings, shamed the rooted malice of his understanding; he actually succeeded, and these affecting and religious passages cry out loudly against the slanderous levity of his petulant misrepresentations. In England he had acquired a knowledge of a free constitution, and became an enthusiastic admirer of liberty. Corneille had introduced the Roman republicanism and general politics into his works, for the sake of their poetical energy. Voltaire again exhibited them under a poetical form, because of the political effect he thought them calculated to produce on popular opinion. As he fancied he was better acquainted with the Greeks than his predecessors, and as he had obtained a slight knowledge of the English theatre and Shakspeare, which, before him, were for France, quite an unknown land, he wished in like manner to use them to his own advantage.--He insisted on the earnestness, the severity, and the simplicity of the Greek dramatic representation; and actually in so far approached them, as to exclude love from various subjects to which it did not properly belong. He was desirous of reviving the majesty of the Grecian scenery; and here his endeavours had this good effect, that in theatrical representation the eye was no longer so miserably neglected as it had been. He borrowed from Shakspeare, as he thought, bold strokes of theatrical effect; but here he was the least successful; when, in imitation of that great master, he ventured in _Semiramis_ to call up a ghost from the lower world, he fell into innumerable absurdities. In a word he was perpetually making experiments with dramatic art, availing himself of some new device for effect. Hence some of his works seem to have stopt short half way between studies and finished productions; there is a trace of something unfixed and unfinished in his whole mental formation. Corneille and Racine, within the limits which they set themselves, are much more perfect; they are altogether that which they are, and we have no glimpses in their works of any supposed higher object beyond them. Voltaire's pretensions are much more extensive than his means. Corneille has expressed the maxims of heroism with greater sublimity, and Racine the natural emotions with a sweeter gracefulness; while Voltaire, it must be allowed, has employed the moral motives with greater effect, and displayed a more intimate acquaintance with the primary and fundamental principles of the human mind. Hence, in some of his pieces, he is more deeply affecting than either of the other two.

The first and last only of these three great masters of the French tragic stage can be said to be fruitful writers; and, even these can hardly be accounted so, if compared with the Greeks. That Racine was not more prolific, was owing partly to accidental circumstances. He enjoys this advantage, however, that with the exception of his first youthful attempts, the whole of his pieces have kept possession of the stage, and the public estimation. But many of Corneille's and Voltaire's, even such as were popular at first, have been since withdrawn from the stage, and at present are not even so much as read. Accordingly, selections only from their works, under the title of _Chef-d'oeuvres_, are now generally published. It is remarkable, that few only of the many French attempts in Tragedy have been successful. La Harpe reckons up nearly a thousand tragedies which have been acted or printed since the death of Racine; and of these not more than thirty, besides those of Voltaire, have kept possession of the stage. Notwithstanding, therefore, the great competition in this department, the tragic treasures of the French are far from ample. Still we do not feel ourselves called upon to give a full account even of these; and still farther is it from our purpose to enter into a circumstantial and anatomical investigation of separate pieces. All that our limits will allow us is, with a rapid pen, to sketch the character and relative value of the principal works of those three masters, and a few others specially deserving of mention.

Corneille brilliantly opened his career of fame with the _Cid_, of which, indeed, the execution alone is his own: in the plan he appears to have closely followed his Spanish original. As the _Cid_ of Guillen de Castro has never fallen into my hands, it has been out of my power to institute an accurate comparison between the two works. But if we may judge from the specimens produced, the Spanish piece seems written with far greater simplicity; and the subject owes to Corneille its rhetorical pomp of ornament. On the other hand, we are ignorant how much he has left out and sacrificed. All the French critics are agreed in thinking the part of the Infanta superfluous. They cannot see that by making a princess forget her elevated rank, and entertain a passion for Rodrigo, the Spanish poet thereby distinguished him as the flower of noble and amiable knights; and, on the other hand, furnished a strong justification of Chimene's love, which so many powerful motives could not overcome. It is true, that to be attractive in themselves, and duly to aid the general effect, the Infanta's passion required to be set forth more musically, and Rodrigo's achievements against the Moors more especially, _i. e._, with greater vividness of detail: and probably they were so in the Spanish original. The rapturous applause, which, on its first appearance, universally welcomed a piece like this, which, without the admixture of any ignoble incentive, founded its attraction altogether on the represented conflict between the purest feelings of love, honour, and filial duty, is a strong proof that the romantic spirit was not yet extinct among spectators who were still open to such natural impressions. This was entirely misunderstood by the learned; with the Academy at their head, they affirmed that this subject (one of the most beautiful that ever fell to the lot of a poet) was unfit for Tragedy; incapable of entering historically into the spirit of another age, they made up improbabilities and improprieties for their censure. [Footnote: Scuderi speaks even of Chimene as a monster, and off-hand dismisses the whole, as "_ce méchant combat de l'amour et de l'honneur_." Excellent! Surely he understood the romantic!] The _Cid_ is not certainly a tragedy in the sense of the ancients; and, at first, the poet himself called it a Tragi-comedy. Would that this had been the only occasion in which the authority of Aristotle has been applied to subjects which do not belong to his jurisdiction!

_The Horatii_ has been censured for want of unity; the murder of the sister and the acquittal of the victorious Roman is said to be a second action, independent of the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii. Corneille himself was talked into a belief of it. He appears, however, to me fully justified in what he has done. If the murder of Camilla had not made a part of the piece, the female characters in the first act would have been superfluous; and without the triumph of patriotism over family ties, the combat could not have been an action, but merely an event destitute of all tragic complication. But the real defect, in my opinion, is Corneille representing a public act which decided the fate of two states, as taking place altogether _infra privates parietes_, and stripping it of every visible pomp of circumstance. Hence the great flatness of the fifth act. What a different impression would have been produced had Horatius, in presence of the king and people, been solemnly condemned, in obedience to the stern mandate of the law, and afterwards saved through the tears and lamentations of his father, just as Livy describes it. Moreover, the poet, not satisfied with making, as the history does, one sister of the Horatii in love with one of the Curiatii, has thought proper to invent the marriage of a sister of the Curiatii with one of the Horatii: and as in the former the love of country yields to personal inclination, in the latter personal inclination yields to love of country. This gives rise to a great improbability: for is it likely that men would have been selected for the combat who, with a well-known family connexion of this kind, would have had the most powerful inducements to spare one another? Besides, the conqueror's murder of his sister cannot be rendered even poetically tolerable, except by supposing him in all the boiling impetuosity of ungovernable youth. Horatius, already a husband, would have shown a wiser and milder forbearance towards his unfortunate sister's language; else were he a ferocious savage.

_Cinna_ is commonly ranked much higher than _The Horatii_; although, as to purity of sentiment, there is here a perceptible falling off from that ideal sphere in which the action of the two preceding pieces moves. All is diversely complicated and diseased. Cinna's republicanism is merely the cloak of another passion: he is a tool in the hands of Emilia, who, on her part, constantly sacrifices her pretended love to her passion of revenge. The magnanimity of Augustus is ambiguous: it appears rather the caution of a tyrant grown timid through age. The conspiracy is, with a splendid narration, thrust into the background; it does not excite in us that gloomy apprehension which so theatrical an object ought to do. Emilia, the soul of the piece, is called by the witty Balzac, when commending the work, "an adorable fury." Yet the Furies themselves could be appeased by purifications and expiations: but Emilia's heart is inaccessible to the softening influences of benevolence and generosity; the adoration of so unfeminine a creature is hardly pardonable even in a lover. Hence she has no better adorers than Cinna and Maximus, two great villains, whose repentance comes too late to be thought sincere.

Here we have the first specimen of that Machiavellism of motives, which subsequently disfigured the poetry of Corneille, and which is not only repulsive, but also for the most part both clumsy and unsuitable. He flattered himself, that in knowledge of men and the world, in an acquaintance with courts and politics, he surpassed the most shrewd and clear-sighted observers. With a mind naturally alive to honour, he yet conceived the design of taking in hand the "doctrine of the murderous Machiavel;" and displays, broadly and didactically, all the knowledge which he had acquired of these arts. He had no suspicion that a remorseless and selfish policy goes always smoothly to work, and dexterously disguises itself. Had he been really capable of anything of the kind, he might have taken a lesson from Richelieu.

Of the remaining pieces in which Corneille has painted the Roman love of liberty and conquest, the _Death of Pompey_ is the most eminent. It is full, however, of a grandeur which is more dazzling than genuine; and, indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of Lucan's hyperbolical antitheses. These bravuras of rhetoric are strung together on the thread of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of his sister Cleopatra, have a petty and miserable appearance alongside of the picture of the fate of the great Pompey, the vengeance-breathing sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Caesar. Scarcely has the conqueror paid the last honours to the reluctant shade of his rival, when he does homage at the feet of the beautiful queen; he is not only in love, but sighingly and ardently in love. Cleopatra, on her part, according to the poet's own expression, is desirous, by her love-ogling, to gain the sceptre of her brother. Caesar certainly made love, in his own way, to a number of women: but these cynical loves, if represented with anything like truth, would be most unfit for the stage. Who can refrain from laughing, when Rome, in the speech of Caesar, implores the _chaste_ love of Cleopatra for young Caesar?

In _Sertorius_, a much later work, Corneille has contrived to make the great Pompey appear little, and the hero ridiculous. Sertorius on one occasion exclaims--

_Que c'est un sort cruel d'aimer par politique!_

This admits of being applied to all the personages of the piece. In love they are not in the least; but they allow a pretended love to be subservient to political ends. Sertorius, a hardy and hoary veteran, acts the lover with the Spanish Queen, Viriata; he brings forward, however, pretext after pretext, and offers himself the while to Aristia; as Viriata presses him to marry her on the spot, he begs anxiously for a short delay; Viriata, along with her other elegant phrases, says roundly, that she neither knows love nor hatred; Aristia, the repudiated wife of Pompey, says to him, "Take me back again, or I will marry another;" Pompey beseeches her to wait only till the death of Sylla, whom he dare not offend: after this there is no need to mention the low scoundrel Perpenna. The tendency to this frigidity of soul was perceptible in Corneille, even at an early period of his career; but in the works of his old age it increased to an incredible degree.

In _Polyeucte_, Christian sentiments are not unworthily expressed; yet we find in it more _superstitious reverence_ than _fervent enthusiasm_ for religion: the wonders of grace are rather _affirmed_, than embraced by a mysterious illumination. Both the tone and the situations in the first acts, incline greatly, as Voltaire observes, to comedy. A woman who, in obedience to her father, has married against her inclinations, and who declares both to her lover (who returns when too late) and to her husband, that "she still retains her first love, but that she will keep within the bounds of virtue;" a vulgar and selfish father, who is sorry that he has not chosen for his son-in-law the first suitor, now become the favourite of the Emperor; all this promises no very high tragical determinations. The divided heart of Paulina is in nature, and consequently does not detract from the interest of the piece. It is generally agreed that her situation, and the character of Severus, constitute the principal charm of this drama. But the practical magnanimity of this Roman, in conquering his passion, throws Polyeucte's self-renunciation, which appears to cost him nothing, quite into the shade. From this a conclusion has been partly drawn, that martyrdom is, in general, an unfavourable subject for Tragedy. But nothing can be more unjust than this inference. The cheerfulness with which martyrs embraced pain and death did not proceed from want of feeling, but from the heroism of the highest love: they must previously, in struggles painful beyond expression, have obtained the victory over every earthly tie; and by the exhibition of these struggles, of these sufferings of our mortal nature, while the seraph soars on its flight to heaven, the poet may awaken in us the most fervent emotion. In _Polyeucte_, however, the means employed to bring about the catastrophe, namely, the dull and low artifice of Felix, by which the endeavours of Severus to save his rival are made rather to contribute to his destruction, are inexpressibly contemptible.

How much Corneille delighted in the symmetrical and nicely balanced play of intrigue, we may see at once from his having pronounced _Rodogune_ his favourite work. I shall content myself with referring to Lessing, who has exposed pleasantly enough the ridiculous appearance which the two distressed princes cut, between a mother who says, "He who murders his mistress I will name heir to my throne," and a mistress who says, "He who murders his mother shall be my husband." The best and shortest way of going to work would have been to have locked up the two furies together. As for Voltaire, he is always recurring to the fifth act, which he declares to be one of the noblest productions of the French stage. This singular way of judging works of art by piecemeal, which would praise the parts in distinction from the whole, without which it is impossible for the parts to exist, is altogether foreign to our way of thinking.

With respect to _Heraclius_, Voltaire gives himself the unnecessary trouble of showing that Calderon did not imitate Corneille; and, on the other hand, he labours, with little success, to give a negative to the question whether the latter had the Spanish author before him, and availed himself of his labours. Corneille, it is true, gives out the whole as his own invention; but we must not forget, that only when hard pressed did he acknowledge how much he owed to the author of the Spanish _Cid_. The chief circumstance of the plot, namely, the uncertainty of the tyrant Phocas as to which of the two youths is his own son, or the son of his murdered predecessor, bears great resemblance to an incident in a drama of Calderon's, and nothing of the kind is to be found in history; in other respects the plot is, it is true, altogether different. However this may be, in Calderon the ingenious boldness of an extravagant invention is always preserved in due keeping by a deeper magic colouring of the poetry; whereas in Corneille, after our head has become giddy in endeavouring to disentangle a complicated and ill-contrived intrigue, we are recompensed by a succession of mere tragical epigrams, without the slightest recreation for the fancy.

_Nicomedes_ is a political comedy, the dryness of which is hardly in any degree relieved by the ironical tone which runs through the speeches of the hero.

This is nearly all of Corneille's that now appears on the stage. His later works are, without exception, merely treatises or reasons of state in certain difficult conjunctures, dressed out in a pompous dialogical form. We might as well make a tragedy out of a game at chess.

Those who have the patience to wade through the forgotten pieces of Corneille will perceive with astonishment that they are constructed on the same principles, and, with the exception of occasional negligences of style, executed with as much expenditure of what he considered art, as his admired productions. For example, _Attila_ bears in its plot a striking resemblance to _Rodogune_. In his own judgments on his works, it is impossible not to be struck with the unessential nature of things on which he lays stress; all along he seems quite unconcerned about that which is certainly the highest object of tragical composition, the laying open the depths of the mind and the destiny of man. For the unfavourable reception which he has so frequently to confess, his self-love can always find some excuse, some trifling circumstance to which the fate of his piece was to be attributed.

In the two first youthful attempts of Racine, nothing deserves to be remarked, but the flexibility with which he accommodated himself to the limits fixed by Corneille to the career which he had opened. In the _Andromache_ he first broke loose from them and became himself. He gave utterance to the inward struggles and inconsistencies of passion, with a truth and an energy which had never before been witnessed on the French stage. The fidelity of Andromache to the memory of her husband, and her maternal tenderness, are affectingly beautiful: even the proud Hermione carries us along with her in her wild aberrations. Her aversion to Orestes, after he had made himself the instrument of her revenge, and her awaking from her blind fury to utter helplesssness and despair, may almost be called tragically grand. The male parts, as is generally the case with Racine, are not to advantageously drawn. The constantly repeated threat of Pyrrhus to deliver up Astyanax to death, if Andromache should not listen to him, with his gallant protestations, resembles the arts of an executioner, who applies the torture to his victim with the most courtly phrases. It is difficult to think of Orestes, after his horrible deed, as a light-hearted and patient lover. Not the least mention is made of the murder of his mother; he seems to have completely forgotten it the whole piece through; whence, then, do the Furies come all at once at the end? This is a singular contradiction. In short, the way in which the whole is connected together bears too great a resemblance to certain sports of children, where one always runs before and tries to surprise the other.