Roman Theatre--Native kinds: Atellane Fables, Mimes, Comoedia Togata--
Greek Tragedy transplanted to Rome--Tragic Authors of a former Epoch, and
of the Augustan Age--Idea of a National Roman Tragedy--Causes of the want
of success of the Romans in Tragedy--Seneca.
The examination of the nature of the Drama in general, as well as the
consideration of the Greek theatre, which was as peculiar in its origin as
in its maturity it was actually perfect, have hitherto alone occupied our
attention. Our notice of the dramatic literature of most of the other
nations, which principally call for consideration, must be marked with
greater brevity; and yet, we are not afraid that we shall be accused in
either case of either disproportionate length or conciseness.
And first, with respect to the Romans, whose theatre is in every way
immediately attached to that of the Greeks, we have only, as it were, to
notice one great gap, which partly arises from their own want of creative
powers in this department, and partly from the loss, with the exception of
a few fragments, of all that they did produce in it. The only works which
have descended to us from the good classical times are those of Plautus
and Terence, whom I have already characterised as _copyists_ of the
Greeks.
Poetry in general had no native growth in Rome; it was first artificially
cultivated along with other luxuries in those later times when the
original character of Rome was being fast extinguished under an imitation
of foreign manners. In the Latin we have an example of a language modelled
into poetical expression, altogether after foreign grammatical and
metrical forms. This imitation of the Greek was not accomplished easily
and without force: the Graecising was carried even to the length of a
clumsy intermixture of the two languages. Gradually only was the poetical
style smoothed and softened, and in Catullus we still perceive the last
traces of its early harshness, which, however, are not without a certain
rugged charm. Those constructions, and especially those compounds which
were too much at variance with the internal structure of the Latin, and
failed to become agreeable to the Roman ear, were in time rejected, and at
length, in the age of Augustus, the poets succeeded in producing the most
agreeable combination of the peculiarities, native and borrowed. Hardly,
however, had the desired equilibrium been attained when a pause ensued;
all free development was checked, and the poetical style, notwithstanding
a seeming advance to greater boldness and learning, was irrevocably
confined within the round of already sanctioned modes of expression. Thus
the language of Latin poetry flourished only within the short interval
which elapsed between the period of its unfinished state and its second
death; and as to the spirit also of poetry, it too fared no better.
To the invention of theatrical amusements the Romans were not led from any
desire to enliven the leisure of their festivals with such exhibitions as
withdraw the mind from the cares and concerns of life; but in their
despondency under a desolating pestilence, against which all remedies
seemed unavailing, they had recourse to the theatre, as a means of
appeasing the anger of the gods, having previously been only acquainted
with the exercises of the gymnasium and the games of the circus. The
_histriones_, however, whom for this purpose they summoned from Etruria,
were merely dancers, who probably did not attempt any pantomimic dances,
but endeavoured to delight their audience by the agility of their
movements. Their oldest spoken plays, the _Fabulae Atellanae_, the
Romans borrowed from the Osci, the aboriginal inhabitants of Italy. With
these _saturae_, (so called because first they were improvisatory
farces, without dramatic connexion; _satura_ signifying a medley, or
mixture of every thing,) they were satisfied till Livius Andronicus,
somewhat more than five hundred years after the foundation of Home, began
to imitate the Greeks; and the regular compositions of Tragedy and the New
Comedy (the Old it was impossible to transplant) were then, for the first
time, introduced into Rome.
Thus the Romans owed the first idea of a play to the Etruscans, of the
effusions of a sportive humour to the Oscans, and of a higher class of
dramatic works to the Greeks. They displayed, however, more originality in
the comic than in the tragic department. The Oscans, whose language soon
ceasing to be spoken, survived only in these farces, were at least so near
akin to the Romans, that their dialect was immediately understood by a
Roman audience: for how else could the Romans have derived any amusement
from the _Atellanae_? So completely did they domesticate this species
of drama that Roman youths, of noble families, enamoured of this
entertainment, used to exhibit it on their festivals; on which account
even the players who acted in the Atellane fables for money enjoyed
peculiar privileges, being exempt from the infamy and exclusion from the
tribes which attached to all other theatrical artists, and were also
excused from military service.
The Romans had, besides, their own _Mimes_. The foreign name of these
little pieces would lead us to conclude that they bore a great affinity to
the Greek _Mimes_; they differed, however, from them considerably in
form; we know also that the manners portrayed in them had a local truth,
and that the subject-matter was not derived from Greek compositions.
It is peculiar to Italy, that from the earliest times its people have
displayed a native talent for a merry, amusing, though very rude
buffoonery, in extemporary speeches and songs, with accompanying
appropriate gestures; though it has seldom been coupled with true dramatic
taste. This latter assertion will be fully justified when we shall have
examined all that has been accomplished in the higher walks of the Drama
in that country, down to the most recent times. The former might be easily
substantiated by a number of circumstances, which, however, would lead us
too far from our object into the history of the Saturnalia and similar
customs, Even of the wit which prevails in the dialogues of the
_Pasquino_ and the _Marforio_ and of their apposite and popular ridicule
on passing events, many traces are to be found even in the times of the
Emperors, however little disposed they were to be indulgent to such
liberties. But what is more immediately connected with our present purpose
is the conjecture--that in these _Mimes_ and _Atellane Fables_ we have
perhaps the first germ of the _Commedia dell' arte_, the improvisatory
farce with standing masks. A striking affinity between the latter and the
_Atellanae_ consists in the employment of dialects to produce a ludicrous
effect. But how would Harlequin and Pulcinello be astonished were they to
be told that they descended in a direct line from the buffoons of the
ancient Romans, and even from the Oscans!--With what drollery would they
requite the labours of the antiquarian who should trace their glorious
pedigree to such a root! From the figures on Greek vases, we know that the
grotesque masks of the Old Comedy bore a dress very much resembling
theirs: long trousers, and a doublet with sleeves, articles of dress which
the Greeks, as well as the Romans, never used except on the stage. Even in
the present day _Zanni_ is one of the names of Harlequin; and _Sannio_ in
the Latin farces was a buffoon, who, according to the accounts of ancient
writers, had a shaven head, and a dress patched together of gay parti-
coloured pieces. The exact resemblance of the figure of Pulcinello is said
to have been found among the frescoes of Pompeii. If he came originally
from Atella, he is still mostly to be met with in the old land of his
nativity. The objection that these traditions could not well have been
preserved during the cessation for so many centuries of all theatrical
amusements, will be easily got over when we recollect the licences
annually enjoyed at the Carnival, and the Feasts of Fools in the middle
ages.
The Greek Mimes were dialogues in prose, and not destined for the stage;
the Roman were in verse, were acted, and often delivered extempore. The
most celebrated authors of this kind were Laberius and Syrus,
contemporaries of Julius Caesar. The latter when dictator, by an imperial
request, compelled Laberius, a Roman knight, to appear publicly in his own
Mimes, although the scenic employment was branded with the loss of civil
rights. Laberius complained of this in a prologue, which is still extant,
and in which the painful feeling of annihilated self-respect is nobly and
affectingly expressed. We cannot well conceive how, in such a state of
mind, he could be capable of making ludicrous jokes, nor how, with so
bitter an example of despotic degradation [Footnote: What humiliation
Caesar would have inwardly felt, could he have foreseen that, within a few
generations, Nero, his successor in absolute authority, out of a lust for
self-degradation, would expose himself frequently to infamy in the same
manner as he, the first despot, had exposed a Roman of the middle rank,
not without exciting a general feeling of indignation.] before their eyes,
the spectators could take any delight in them. Caesar, on his part, kept
his engagement: he gave Laberius a considerable sum of money, and invested
him anew with the equestrian rank, which, however, could not re-instate
him in the opinion of his fellow-citizens. On the other hand, he took his
revenge for the prologue and other allusions by bestowing the prize on
Syrus, the slave, and afterward the freedman and scholar of Laberius in
the mimetic art. Of the Mimes of Syrus we have still extant a number of
sentences, which, in matter and elegant conciseness of expression, are
deserving of a place by the side of Menander's. Some of them even go
beyond the moral horizon of serious Comedy, and assume an almost stoical
elevation. How was the transition from low farce to such elevation
effected? And how could such maxims be at all introduced, without the same
important involution of human relations as that which is exhibited in
perfect Comedy? At all events, they are calculated to give us a very
favourable idea of the Mimes. Horace, indeed, speaks slightingly of the
literary merit of Laberius' Mimes, either on account of the arbitrary
nature of their composition, or of the negligent manner in which they were
worked out. However, we ought not to allow our own opinion to be too much
influenced against him by this critical poet; for, from motives which are
easy to understand, he lays much greater stress on the careful use of the
file, than on original boldness and fertility of invention. A single
entire Mime, which time unfortunately has denied us, would have thrown
more light on this question than all the confused notices of grammarians,
and all the conjectures of modern scholars.
The regular Comedy of the Romans was, for the most part, _palliata_,
that is, it appeared in a Grecian costume, and represented Grecian
manners. This is the case with all the comedies of Plautus and Terence.
But they had also a _comoedia togata_; so called from the Roman dress
which was usually worn in it. Afranius is celebrated as the principal
writer in this walk. Of these comedies we have no remains whatever, and
the notices of them are so scanty, that we can-not even determine with
certainty whether the togatae were original comedies of an entirely new
invention, or merely Greek comedies recast with Roman manners. The latter
case is the more probable, as Afranius lived in a period when Roman genius
had not yet ventured to try a flight of original invention; although, on
the other hand, it is not easy to conceive how the Attic comedies could,
without great violence and constraint, have been adapted to local
circumstances so entirely different. The tenor of Roman life was, in
general, earnest and grave, although in private society they had no small
turn for wit and joviality. The diversity of ranks among the Romans,
politically, was very strongly marked, and the opulence of private
individuals was frequently almost kingly; their women lived much more in
society, and acted a much more important part than the Grecian women did,
and from this independence they fully participated in the overwhelming
tide of corruption which accompanied external refinement. The differences
being so essential, an original Roman comedy would have been a remarkable
phenomenon, and would have enabled us to see these conquerors of the world
in an aspect altogether new. That, however, this was not accomplished by
the _comoedia togata_, is proved by the indifferent manner in which
it is mentioned by the ancients. Quinctilian does not scruple to say, that
the Latin literature limps most in comedy; this is his expression, word
for word.
With respect to Tragedy, we must, in the first place, remark, that the
Grecian theatre was not introduced into Rome without considerable changes
in its arrangement. The chorus, for instance, had no longer a place in the
orchestra, where the most distinguished spectators, the knights and
senators, now sat; but it remained on the stage itself. Here, then, was
the very disadvantage which we alleged in objection to the modern attempts
to introduce the chorus. Other deviations from the Grecian mode of
representation were also sanctioned, which can hardly be considered as
improvements. At the very first introduction of the regular drama, Livius
Andronicus, a Greek by birth, and the first tragic poet and actor of Rome,
in his monodies (lyrical pieces which were sung by a single person, and
not by the whole chorus), separated the song from the mimetic dancing, the
latter only remaining to the actor, in whose stead a boy, standing beside
the flute-player, accompanied him with his voice. Among the Greeks, in
better times, the tragic singing, and the accompanying rhythmical
gestures, were so simple, that a single person was able to do at the same
time ample justice to both. The Romans, however, it would seem, preferred
separate excellence to harmonious unity. Hence arose, at an after period,
their fondness for pantomime, of which the art was carried to the greatest
perfection in the time of Augustus. Prom the names of the most celebrated
of the performers, Pylades, Bathyllus, &c., it would appear that it was
Greeks that practised this mute eloquence in Rome; and the lyric pieces
which were expressed by their dances were also delivered in Greek. Lastly,
Roscius frequently played without a mask, and in this respect probably he
did not stand alone; but, as far as we know, there never was any instance
of it among the Greeks. The alteration in question might be favourable to
the more brilliant display of his own skill, and the Romans, who were
pleased with it, showed here also that they had a higher relish for the
disproportionate and prominent talents of a virtuoso, than for the
harmonious impression of a work of art considered as a whole.
In the tragic literature of the Romans, two epochs are to be
distinguished: the first that of Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, and
also Pacuvius and Attius, who both flourished somewhat later than Plautus
and Terence; and the second, the refined epoch of the Augustan age. The
former produced none but translators and remodellers of Greek works, but
it is probable that they succeeded better in Tragedy than in Comedy.
Elevation of expression is usually somewhat awkward in a language as yet
imperfectly cultivated, but still its height may be attained by
perseverance; but to hit off the negligent grace of social wit requires
natural humour and refinement Here, however, (as well as in the case of
Plautus and Terence,) we do not possess a single fragment of any work
whose Greek original is extant, to enable us to judge of the accuracy and
general felicity of the copy; but a speech of considerable length from
Attius' _Prometheus Unbound_, is in no respect unworthy of--Aeschylus, and
the versification, also, is much more careful [Footnote: In what metres
could these tragedians have translated the Greek choral odes? Horace
declares the imitation, in Latin, of Pindar, whose lyrical productions
bear great resemblance to those of Tragedy, altogether impracticable.
Probably they never ventured into the labyrinths of the choral strophes,
which were neither calculated for the language nor for the ear of the
Romans. Beyond the anapest, the tragedies of Seneca never ascend higher
than a sophic or choriambic verse, which, when monotonously repeated, is
very disagreeable to the ear.] than that of the Latin comic writers
generally. This earlier style was carried to perfection by Pacuvius and
Attius, whose pieces alone kept their place on the stage, and seem to have
had many admirers down to the times of Cicero, and even still later.
Horace directs his jealous criticism against these, as well as all
the other old poets.
It was the ambition of the contemporaries of Augustus, to measure their
powers with the Greeks in a more original manner; but their labours were
not attended with equal success in every department. The number of
amateurs who attempted to shine in Tragedy was particularly great; and
works of this kind by the Emperor himself even are mentioned. Hence there
is much in favour of the conjecture that Horace wrote his epistle to the
Pisos, chiefly with the view of deterring these young men from so
dangerous a career, being, in all probability, infected by the universal
passion, without possessing the requisite talents. One of the most
renowned tragic poets of this age was the famous Asinius Pollio, a man of
a violently impassioned disposition, as Pliny informs us, and who was fond
of whatever bore the same character in works of fine art. It was he who
brought with him from Rhodes, and erected at Rome, the well-known group of
the Farnese Bull. If his tragedies bore the same relation to those of
Sophocles, which this bold, wild, but somewhat overwrought group does to
the calm sublimity of the Niobe, we have every reason to regret their
loss. But Pollio's political influence might easily blind his
contemporaries to the true value of his poetical labours. Ovid, who tried
so many departments of poetry, also attempted Tragedy, and was the author
of a _Medea_. To judge from the wordy and commonplace displays of
passion in his _Heroides_, we might expect from him, in Tragedy, at
most, a caricature of Euripides. Quinctilian, however, asserts that he
proved here, for once, what he might have done, had he chosen to restrain
himself instead of yielding to his natural propensity to diffuseness.
This, and all the other tragic attempts of the Augustan age, have
perished. We cannot estimate with certainty the magnitude of the loss
which we have here suffered, but from all appearances it is not
extraordinarily great.--First of all the Grecian Tragedy had in Rome to
struggle with all the disadvantages of a plant removed to a foreign soil;
the Roman religion was in some degree akin to that of the Greeks, (though
by no means so completely identical with it as many people suppose,) but
at all events the heroic mythology of Greece was first introduced into
Rome by the poets, and was in no wise interwoven with the national
recollections, as was the case in so many ways with those of Greece. The
ideal of a genuine Roman Tragedy floats before me dimly indeed, and in the
background of ages, and with all the indistinctness which must surround an
entity, which never issued out of the womb of possibility into reality. It
would be altogether different in form and significance from that of the
Greeks, and, in the old Roman sense, religious and patriotic. All truly
creative poetry must proceed from the inward life of a people, and from
religion, the root of that life. The spirit of the Roman religion was
however originally, and before the substance of it was sacrificed to
foreign ornament, quite different from that of the Grecian. The latter was
yielding and flexible to the hand of art, the former immutable beneath the
rigorous jealousy of priestcraft. The Roman faith, and the customs founded
on it, were more serious, more moral, and pious, displaying more insight
into nature, and more magical and mysterious, than the Greek religion, at
least than that part of it which was extrinsecal to the mysteries. As the
Greek Tragedy represented the struggle of the free man with destiny, a
true Roman Tragedy would exhibit the subjection of human motives to the
holy and binding force of _religion_, and its visible presence in all
earthly things. But this spirit had been long extinct, before the want of
a cultivated poetry was first felt by them. The Patricians, originally an
Etruscan sacerdotal school, had become mere secular statesmen and
warriors, who regarded their hereditary priesthood in no other light than
that of a political form. Their sacred books, their _Vedas_, were become
unintelligible to them, not so much from obsoleteness of character,
as because they no longer possessed the higher knowledge which was the key
to that sanctuary. What the heroic tales of the Latins might have become
under an earlier development, as well as their peculiar colouring, we may
still see, from some traces in Virgil, Propertius, and Ovid, although even
these poets did but handle them as matters of antiquity.
Moreover, desirous as the Romans were of becoming thorough Hellenists,
they wanted for it that milder humanity which is so distinctly traceable
in Grecian history, poetry, and art, even in the time of Homer. Prom the
most austere virtue, which buried every personal inclination, as Curtius
did his life, in the bosom of father-land, they passed with fearful
rapidity to a state of corruption, by avarice and luxury, equally without
example. Never in their character did they belie the legend that their
first founder was suckled, not at the breast of woman, but of a ravening
she-wolf. They were the tragedians of the world's history, who exhibited
many a deep tragedy of kings led in chains and pining in dungeons; they
were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers for the
sake of raising at last, out of the ruins, the mausoleum of their own
dignity and freedom, in the midst of the monotonous solitude of an
obsequious world. To them, it was not given to excite emotion by the
tempered accents of mental suffering, and to touch with a light and
delicate hand every note in the scale of feeling. They naturally sought
also in Tragedy, by overleaping all intervening gradations, to reach at
once the extreme, whether in the stoicism of heroic fortitude, or in the
monstrous fury of criminal desire. Of all their ancient greatness nothing
remained to them but the contempt of pain and death whenever an
extravagant enjoyment of life must finally be exchanged for them. This
seal, therefore, of their former grandeur they accordingly impressed on
their tragic heroes with a self-satisfied and ostentatious profusion.
Finally, even in the age of cultivated literature, the dramatic poets were
still in want of a poetical public among a people fond, even to a degree
of madness, of shows and spectacles. In the triumphal processions, the
fights of gladiators, and of wild beasts, all the magnificence of the
world, all the renders of every clime, were brought before the eye of the
spectator, who was glutted with the most violent scenes of blood. On
nerves so steeled what effect could the more refined gradations of tragic
pathos produce? It was the ambition of the powerful to exhibit to the
people in one day, on stages erected for the purpose, and immediately
afterwards destroyed, the enormous spoils of foreign or civil war. The
relation which Pliny gives of the architectural decoration of the stage
erected by Scaurus, borders on the incredible. When magnificence could be
carried no farther, they endeavoured to surprise by the novelty of
mechanical contrivances. Thus, a Roman, at his father's funeral solemnity,
caused two theatres to be constructed, with their backs resting against
each other, and made moveable on a single pivot, so that at the end of the
play they were wheeled round with all the spectators within them, and
formed into one circus, in which gladiator combats were exhibited. In the
gratification of the eye that of the ear was altogether lost; rope-dancers
and white elephants were preferred to every kind of dramatic
entertainment; the embroidered purple robe of the actor was applauded, as
we are told by Horace, and so far was the great body of the spectators
from being attentive and quiet, that he compares their noise to that of
the roar of the ocean, or of a mountain forest in a storm.
Only one sample of the tragical talent of the Romans has come down to us,
from which, however, it would be unjust to form a judgment of the
productions of better times; I allude to the ten tragedies which pass
under Seneca's name. Their claim to this title appears very doubtful;
perhaps it is founded merely on a circumstance which would lead rather to
a different conclusion; that, namely, in one of them, the _Octavia_,
Seneca himself appears among the dramatic personages. The opinions of the
learned are very much divided on the subject; some ascribe them partly to
Seneca the philosopher, and partly to his father the rhetorician; others,
again, assume the existence of a Seneca, a tragedian, a different person
from both. It is generally allowed that the several pieces are neither all
from the same hand, nor were of the same age. For the honour of the Roman
taste, one would be disposed to consider them the productions of a very
late period of antiquity: but Quinctilian quotes a verse from the _Medea_
of Seneca, which is found in the play of that name in our collection, and
therefore no doubt can be raised against the authenticity of this piece,
though it seems to be in no way pre-eminent above the rest. [Footnote: The
author of this _Medea_ makes the heroine strangle her children before the
eyes of the people, notwithstanding the admonition of Horace, who probably
had some similar example of the Roman theatre before his eyes; for a Greek
would hardly have committed this error The Roman tragedians must have had
a particular rage for novelty and effect to seek them in such atrocities.]
We find also in Lucan, a contemporary of Nero, a similar display of
bombast, which distorts everything great into nonsense. The state of
constant outrage in which Rome was kept by a series of blood-thirsty
tyrants, gave an unnatural character even to eloquence and poetry.
The same effect has been observed in similar periods of modern history.
Under the wise and mild government of a Vespasian and a Titus, and more
especially of a Trajan, the Romans returned to a purer taste. But whatever
period may have given birth to the tragedies of Seneca, they are beyond
description bombastic and frigid, unnatural both in character and action,
revolting from their violation of propriety, and so destitute of
theatrical effect, that I believe they were never meant to leave the
rhetorical schools for the stage. With the old tragedies, those sublime
creations of the poetical genius of the Greeks, these have nothing in
common, but the name, the outward form, and the mythological materials;
and yet they seem to have been composed with the obvious purpose of
surpassing them; in which attempt they succeed as much as a hollow
hyperbole would in competition with a most fervent truth. Every tragical
common-place is worried out to the last gasp; all is phrase; and even the
most common remark is forced and stilted. A total poverty of sentiment is
dressed out with wit and acuteness. There is fancy in them, or at least a
phantom of it; for they contain an example of the misapplication of every
mental faculty. The authors have found out the secret of being diffuse,
even to wearisomeness, and at the same time so epigrammatically laconic,
as to be often obscure and unintelligible. Their characters are neither
ideal nor real beings, but misshapen gigantic puppets, who are set in
motion at one time by the string of an unnatural heroism, and at another
by that of a passion equally unnatural, which no guilt nor enormity can
appal.
In a history, therefore, of Dramatic Art, I should altogether have passed
over the tragedies of Seneca, if, from a blind prejudice for everything
which has come down to us from antiquity, they had not been often imitated
in modern times. They were more early and more generally known than the
Greek tragedies. Not only scholars, without a feeling for art, have judged
favourably of them, nay, preferred them to the Greek tragedies, but even
poets have accounted them worth studying. The influence of Seneca on
Corneille's idea of tragedy cannot be mistaken; Racine too, in his
_Phaedra_, has condescended to borrow a good deal from him, and among
other things, nearly the whole scene of the declaration of love; as may be
seen in Brumoy's enumeration.