THE WASPS.
This comedy, which was produced by its author the year after the
performance of ‘The Clouds,’ may be taken as in some sort a companion
picture to that piece. Here the satire is directed against the passion
of the Athenians for the excitement of the law-courts, as in the former
its object was the new philosophy. And as the younger generation--the
modern school of thought--were there the subjects of the caricature, so
here the older citizens, who took their seats in court as jurymen day by
day, to the neglect of their private affairs and the encouragement of a
litigious disposition, appear in their turn in the mirror which the
satirist holds up. It is calculated that in the ten courts at Athens,
when all were open, there might sometimes be required as many as six
thousand jurymen, and there was never any difficulty in obtaining them.
It was not the mere temptation of the “threepence,” more or less, to
which each juryman was entitled as compensation for his loss of time,
which drew so many to the courts, however convenient it might be for the
purposes of burlesque to assume that it was so. No doubt the pay was an
object to some of the poorer citizens; and so far the influence of such
a regulation was bad, inasmuch as it led to the juries being too often
struck from an inferior class, less independent and less intelligent.
Nor need we be so uncharitable as the historian Mitford, and calculate
that “besides the pay, which was small, there was the hope of bribes,
which might be large.” It is not probable that bribery could often be
applied to so numerous a body. But the sense of dignity and personal
importance which attaches to the right of giving a judicial decision,
and the interest and excitement which are aroused by legal or criminal
questions, especially in those who have to investigate them, are
feelings perfectly well understood in our days, as well as in those of
Aristophanes. Such feelings are not only natural, but have their use,
more especially when the cause to be decided is, as it so often was at
Athens, of a public character. Plato considered that a citizen who took
no interest in these duties made himself a kind of alien in the state,
and we Englishmen hold very much the same doctrine. But the passion for
hearing and deciding questions, judicial or political, was carried to
great excess among the Athenians at this date. Their own historians and
orators are full of references to this national peculiarity, and
Aristophanes is not the only satirist who has taken advantage of it.
Lucian, in one of his very amusing dialogues, represents Menippus as
looking down from the moon upon the earth below, and watching the
various pursuits of the inhabitants. The northern hordes are fighting,
the Egyptian is ploughing, the Phœnician is carrying his merchandise
over the sea, the Spartan is undergoing corporal discipline, and the
Athenian is “sitting in the jury-box.”[39]
This is perhaps the least amusing of all Aristophanes’s productions to a
modern reader, although it was adopted by Racine as the basis of his
only comedy, “Les Plaideurs.” There are but two characters in it of any
importance to the action, a father and son. Philocleon,[40] the father,
is strongly possessed with this mania for the courts. His family cannot
keep him at home. He neglects his person, hardly sleeps at night for
thinking of his duties in the courts, and is off before daylight in the
morning to secure a good seat; he even declares the cock must have been
bribed, by some profligates who have reason to dread the terrors of the
law, not to crow loud enough to awake him. He keeps in his house “a
whole beach” of little round pebbles, that he may always have one ready
for giving his vote; and goes about holding his three fingers pinched
together as if he had got one between them ready to slip into the
ballot-box. In vain has his son remonstrated, and had him washed and
dressed, and sent for the physicians, and even the priests, to try to
rid him of his malady. And now, as a last resource, they have been
obliged to lock him up, and set a watch upon the house. His
contrivances to escape are in the very wildest vein of extravaganza. He
tries to get out through the chimney, and pretends he’s “only the
smoke;” and they all rush to put a cover on the chimney-top, and a great
stone on it. He escapes through a hole in the tiles and sits on the
roof, pretending to be “only a sparrow;” and they have to set a net to
catch him. His son--a young gentleman of the more modern school--and the
two slaves who are set to watch him day and night, have a very trying
time of it.
The second scene introduces the Chorus of the play, consisting of
Philocleon’s fellow-jurymen. The time is early daybreak, and they are
already on their way to the courts, preceded by two or three boys with
torches. Their appearance is of the strangest,--they are the “Wasps” who
give the name to the piece. A mask resembling a wasp’s head, a black and
yellow body, and some comic appendage in their rear to represent a
sting,--were, we may presume, the costume provided by the stage manager.
The poet probably intended to represent the acrimonious temper which
delighted in the prosecution of individuals without much reference to
their actual guilt, and the malevolence which often instigated the
accusation. But he allows them to give, on their own behalf, another and
more honourable explanation of their name, which, though it occurs later
in the play, may find its place here. It is the old story, which the
dramatist knew his audience were never tired of hearing:--
If any of this good company should note our strange array--
The wasp-like waists and cross-barred suits that we have donned to-day--
And if he asks what means this sting we brandish, as you see,
Him will we undertake to teach, dull scholar though he be
All we who wear this tail-piece claim true Athenian birth
The rightful Aborigines, sole sons of Mother earth;[41]
A lusty race, who struck good blows for Athens in the fight,
What time as the Barbarian came on us like the night.
With torch and brand the Persian horde swept on from east to west,
To storm the hives that we had stored, and smoke us from our nest:
Then we laid our hand to spear and targe, and met him on his path;
Shoulder to shoulder, close we stood, and bit our lips for wrath.
So fast and thick the arrows flew, that none might see the heaven,
But the gods were on our side that day, and we bore them back at even.
High o’er our heads, an omen good, we saw the owlet wheel,
And the Persian trousers in their backs felt the good Attic steel.
Still as they fled we followed close, a swarm of vengeful foes,
And stung them where we chanced to light, on cheek, and lip, and nose.
So to this day, barbarians say, when whispered far or near,
More than all else the Attic WASP is still a name of fear.
The party are come, as usual, to summon their trusty comrade Philocleon
to go with them to the courts. What makes him so late this morning? He
was never wont to be the last on these occasions. They knock at the
door, and call him loudly by name. He puts his head out of the window,
and begging them not to make such a noise for fear they should awake his
guard, explains to them his unfortunate case. He will try to let himself
down to the street by a rope, if they will catch him,--and if he should
fall and break his neck, they must promise to bury him with all
professional honours “within the bar.” But he is discovered in the
attempt by one of the watchful slaves, and thrust back again.
Then the leader of the Chorus, a veteran Wasp who has seen service,
cheers on his troops to the attack of the fortress in which their
comrade is so unjustifiably confined. He reminds them of the exploits of
their youth:--
Forward, good friends--advance! Quick march!--Now,
Comias, why so slow, man?
There was a day when I may say you and I gave way to no man;
Then you were as tough as dog’s hide--now Charinades moves faster!
Ha! Strymodorus! in the Courts ’twere hard to find your master!
Where’s Chabes? and Euérgides?--do any of ye know?--
Alack! alack! for the young blood that warmed us long ago!
Dost mind when at Byzantium we two kept watch together,
And walked our rounds at night, old boy, in that tremendous weather?
And how we stole the kneading-trough from that old baker’s wife,
Split it, and fried our rations with it?--Ha, ha!--Ay, _that_ was life!
Shakspeare had assuredly never read ‘The Wasps;’ but the mixture of the
farcical with the pathetic which always accompanies the garrulous
reminiscences of old age, and which Aristophanes introduces frequently
in his comedies, is common to both these keen observers. In the comrades
of the old Athenian’s youth we seem to recognise Master Shallow’s
_quondam_ contemporaries: “There was I, and little John Doit of
Staffordshire, and black George Barr, and Francis Pickbone, and “Will
Squele, a Cotswold man,--you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all
the Inns of Court again.... O the mad days that I have spent! and to see
how many of my old acquaintance are dead!”[42]
A battle-royal takes place on the stage; the Wasps, with their
formidable stings, trying to storm the house, while the son and his
retainers defend their position with clubs and other weapons, and
especially by raising a dense smoke, which is known to be very effective
against such an enemy.
The Wasps are driven back, and the old gentleman and his son agree upon
a compromise. Bdelycleon promises, on condition that his father will no
longer attend the public trials, to establish a little private tribunal
for him at home. He shall there take cognisance of all domestic
offences; with this great advantage, that if it rains or snows he can
hold his courts without being obliged to turn out of doors. And--a
point on which the old gentleman makes very particular inquiries--his
fee shall be paid him every day as usual. On these terms, with the
approval of the Chorus, the domestic truce is concluded.
It seems doubtful, however, whether the household will supply sufficient
business for the court. They are thinking of beginning with an unlucky
Thracian slave-girl who has burnt a sauce-pan, when most opportunely one
of the other slaves rushes on the stage in hot pursuit of the house-dog
Labes, who has run off with a piece of Sicilian cheese.[43] The son
determines to bring this as the first case before his father, and a mock
trial ensues, in which all the appliances and forms of a regular court
of justice are absurdly travestied. Another dog appears in the character
of prosecutor, and he is allowed to bring the accusation forward through
Xanthias, one of the slaves. The indictment is drawn in due form, and
the counsel for the prosecution urges in aggravation that the prisoner
had refused to give the other dog, his client, a share of it.
Philocleon, with a contempt for the ordinary formalities of law which
would greatly shock the modern profession, is very much disposed to
convict the delinquent Labes at once, on the evidence of his own senses:
he stinks of cheese disgustingly, in the very nostrils of the court, at
this present moment. But his son recalls him to a sense of the
proprieties, and undertakes to be counsel for the defence. He calls as
witnesses the cheesegrater, the brazier, and other utensils, to prove
that a good deal of the said cheese had been used in the kitchen. He
lays stress also on poor Labes’s previous good character as a house-dog;
and pleads that, even if he has pilfered in this instance, it is
entirely owing to “a defective education.” The whole scene reads very
much like a chapter out of one of those modern volumes of clever nursery
tales, which are almost too clever for the children for whom they are
professedly intended. The Athenian audience did in fact resemble
children in many points--only children of the cleverest kind. The
advocate winds up with one of those visible appeals _ad misericordiam_
which were common at the Athenian as subsequently at the Roman bar, and
which even Cicero did not disdain to make use of--the production of the
unhappy family of the prisoner. The puppies are brought into court, and
set up such a lamentable yelping that Philocleon desires they may be
removed at once.[44] He shows, as his son thinks, some tokens of
relenting towards the prisoner. He moves towards the ballot-boxes, and
asks which is the one for the condemning votes. The son shows him the
wrong one, and into that he drops his vote. He has acquitted the dog by
mistake, and faints away when he finds out what he has done--he has
never given a vote for acquittal before in his life, and cannot forgive
himself. And with this double stroke at the bitter spirit of an Athenian
jury and at the ballot-box, the action of the comedy, according to our
notions of dramatic fitness, might very properly end.
So strongly does one of the ablest English writers upon Aristophanes, Mr
Mitchell, feel this, that in his translation he here divides the comedy,
and places the remaining portion in a sequel, to which he gives the
title of “The Dicast turned Gentleman.” Philocleon has been persuaded by
his son to renounce his old habits of life, and to become more
fashionable in his dress and conversation; but the new pursuits to which
he betakes himself are scarcely so respectable as his old ones. His son,
after a few lessons on modern conversation and deportment, takes him out
to a dinner-party, where he insults the guests, beats the servants, and
from which he returns in the last scene very far from sober, and not in
the best possible company. He is followed by some half-dozen
complainants, male and female, whom he has cudgelled in the streets on
his way home; and when they threaten to “take the law” of him, he laughs
uproariously at the old-fashioned notion. Law-courts, he assures them,
are quite obsolete. In vain his son remonstrates with him upon his
outrageous proceedings; he bids the “old lawyer,” as he calls him, get
out of his way. So that we have here the counterpart to the conclusion
of ‘The Clouds:’ as, in the former play, young Pheidippides gives up the
turf, at his father’s request, only to become a word-splitting
philosopher and an undutiful son; so here the father is weaned from the
law-courts, and persuaded to mix in more refined society, only to turn
out a “grey iniquity” like Falstaff. The moral, if there be one, is
somewhat hard to find. It may possibly be contained in a few words of
the Chorus, which speak of the difficulty and the danger of a sudden
change in all the habits of a man’s life. Or is it necessary always for
the writer of burlesques, any more than for the poet, to supply his
audience with any moral at all? Might it not be quite enough to have
raised a laugh at the absurd termination of the son’s attempt to reform
the father, and the tendency of all new converts to run into extremes?