Is in the garret writing tragedy;
While his essential being is abroad
Pursuing whimsies in the world of fancy.
The visitor now calls aloud upon the poet:
Euripides, Euripides, come down,
If ever you came down in all your life!
'Tis I, Dikæopolis, from Chollidæ.
This Chollidæ probably corresponded to the Pea Ridge often quoted
in our day. Euripides declines to come down, but is presently made
visible by some device of the scene-shifter. In the dialogue that
follows, Aristophanes ridicules the personages and the costumes
brought upon the stage by Euripides, and reflects unhandsomely upon
the poet's mother, who was said to have been a vender of
vegetables. Dikæopolis does not seek to borrow poetry or eloquence
from Euripides, but prays him to lend him "a suit of tatters from a
worn-out tragedy."
For mercy's sake, for I'm obliged to make
A speech in my own defence before the chorus,
A long pathetic speech, this very day,
And if it fails, the doom of death betides me.
Euripides now asks what especial costume would suit the need of
Dikæopolis, and calls over the most pitiful names in his tragedies:
"Do you want the dress of Oineos?"--"Oh, no! something much more
wretched."--"Phoenix? "--"No; much worse than
Phoenix."--"Philocletes?"--"No."--"Lame Bellerophon?" Dikæopolis
says:
'Twas not Bellerophon, but very like him,
A kind of smooth, fine-spoken character;
A beggar into the bargain, and a cripple
With a grand command of words, bothering and begging.
Euripides by this description recognizes the personage intended,
_viz._, Telephus, the physician, and orders his servant to go and
fetch the ragged suit, which he will find "next to the tatters of
Thyestes, just over Ino's." Dikæopolis exclaims, on seeing the mass
of holes and patches, but asks, further, a little Mysian bonnet for
his head, a beggar's staff, a dirty little basket, a broken pipkin;
all of which Euripides grants, to be rid of him. All this insolence
the visitor sums up in the following lines:--
I wish I may be hanged, my dear Euripides,
If ever I trouble you for anything,
Except one little, little, little boon,
A single lettuce from your mother's stall.
This is more than Euripides can bear, and the gates are now shut upon
the intruder.
Later in the play, Dikæopolis appears in company with the General
Lamachus. A sudden call summons this last to muster his men and march
forth to repel a party of marauders. Almost at the same moment,
Dikæopolis is summoned to attend the feast of Bacchus, and to bring his
best cookery with him. In the dialogue that follows, the valiant soldier
and the valiant trencherman appear in humorous contrast.
LAMACHUS
Boy, boy, bring out here my haversack.
DIKÆOPOLIS
Boy, boy, hither bring my dinner service.
LAMACHUS
Bring salt flavored with thyme, boy, and onions.
DIKÆOPOLIS
Bring me a cutlet. Onions make me ill.
LAMACHUS
Bring hither pickled fish, stale.
DIKÆOPOLIS
And to me a fat pudding. I will cook it yonder.
LAMACHUS
Bring me my plumes and my helmet.
DIKÆOPOLIS
Bring me doves and thrushes.
LAMACHUS
Fair and white is the plume of the ostrich.
DIKÆOPOLIS
Fair and yellow is the flesh of the dove.
LAMACHUS
O man! leave off laughing at my weapons.
DIKÆOPOLIS
O man! don't you look at my thrushes.
LAMACHUS
Bring the case that holds my plumes.
DIKÆOPOLIS
And bring me a dish of hare.
LAMACHUS
But the moths have eaten my crest.
Dikæopolis makes some insolent rejoinder, at which the general takes
fire. He calls for his lance; Dikæopolis, for the spit, which he frees
from the roast meat. Lamachus raises his Gorgon-orbed shield; Dikæopolis
lifts a full-orbed pancake. Lamachus then performs a mock act of
divination:--
Pour oil upon the shield. What do I trace
In the divining mirror? 'Tis the face
Of an old coward, fortified with fear,
That sees his trial for desertion near.
DIKÆOPOLIS
Pour honey on the pancake. What appears?
A comely personage, advanced in years,
Firmly resolved to laugh at and defy
Both Lamachus and the Gorgon family.
In "The Frogs," god and demigod, Bacchus and Hercules, are put upon the
stage with audacious humor. The first has borrowed the costume of the
second, in which unfitting garb he knocks at Hercules' door on his way
to Hades, his errand being to find and bring back Euripides. The dearth
of clever poets is the reason alleged for this undertaking. Hercules
suggests to him various poets who are still on earth. Bacchus condemns
them as "warblers of the grove; poor, puny wretches!" He now asks
Hercules for introductions to his friends in the lower regions, and for
Any communication about the country,
The roads, the streets, the bridges, public houses
And lodgings, free from bugs and fleas, if possible.
Hercules mentions various ways of arriving at the infernal regions: "The
hanging road,--rope and noose?"--"That's too stifling."--"The pestle and
mortar, then,--the beaten road?"--"No; that gives one cold feet."--"Go,
then, to the tower of the Keramicus, and throw yourself headlong." No;
Bacchus does not wish to have his brains dashed out. He would go by the
road which Hercules took. Of this, Hercules gives an alarming account,
beginning with the bottomless lake and the boat of Charon. Bacchus
determines to set forth, but is detained by the recalcitrance of his
servant, Xanthias, who refuses to carry his bundle any further.
A funeral now comes across the stage. Bacchus asks the dead man if he is
willing to carry some bundles to Hell for him. The dead man demands two
drachmas for the service. Bacchus offers him ninepence, which he angrily
refuses, and is carried out of sight. Charon presently appears, and
makes known, like a good ferryman, the points at which he will deliver
passengers.
Who wants the ferryman?
Anybody waiting to remove from the sorrows of life?
A passage to Lethe's wharf? to Cerberus' Beach?
To Tartarus? to Tenaros? to Perdition?
Just so, in my youth, sailing on the Hudson, one heard all night the
sound of Peekskill landing! Fishkill landing! Rhinebeck landing!--with
darkness and swish of steam quite infernal enough.
Charon takes Bacchus on board, but compels him to do his part of the
rowing, promising him: "As soon as you begin you shall have music that
will teach you to keep time."
This music is the famous "Chorus of the Frogs," beginning, "Brokekekesh,
koash, koash," and running through many lines, with this occasional
refrain, of which Bacchus soon tires, as he does of the oar. His servant
Xanthias is obliged to make the journey by land and on foot, Charon
bidding him wait for his master at the Stone of Repentance, by the
Slough of Despond, beyond the Tribulations. After encountering the
Empousa, a nursery hobgoblin, they meet the spirits of the initiated,
singing hymns to Bacchus--whom they invoke as Jacchus--and to Ceres.
This part of the play, intended, Frere says, to ridicule the Eleusinian
mysteries, is curiously human in its incongruity,--a jumble of the
beautiful and the trivial. I must quote from it the closing strophe:--
Let us hasten, let us fly
Where the lovely meadows lie,
Where the living waters flow,
Where the roses bloom and blow.
Heirs of immortality,
Segregated safe and pure,
Easy, sorrowless, secure,
Since our earthly course is run,
We behold a brighter sun.
Such sweet words we to-day could expect to hear from the lips of our own
dear ones, gone before.
Very incongruous is certainly this picture of Bacchus, in a cowardly and
ribald state of mind, listening to the hymn which celebrates his divine
aspect. Jacchus, whom the spirits invoke, is the glorified Bacchus, the
highest ideal of what was vital religion in those days. But the god
himself is not professionally, only personally, present, and, wearing
the disguise of Hercules, in no way notices or responds to the strophes
which invoke him. He asks the band indeed to direct him to Pluto's
house, which turns out to be near at hand.
Before its door, Bacchus is seized with such a fit of timidity that,
instead of knocking, he asks his servant to tell him how the native
inhabitants of the region knock at doors. Reproved by the servant, he
knocks, and announces himself as the valiant Hercules. Æacus, the
porter, now rushes out upon him with violent abuse, reviling him for
having stolen, or attempted to steal, the watch-dog, Cerberus, and
threatening him with every horror which Hell can inflict. Æacus departs,
and Bacchus persuades his servant to don the borrowed garb of Hercules,
while he loads himself with the baggage which the other was carrying.
Proserpine, however, sends her maid to invite the supposed Hercules to a
feast of dainties. Xanthias now assumes the manners befitting the hero,
at which Bacchus orders him to change dresses with him once more, and
assume his own costume, which he does. Hardly have they done this, when
Bacchus is again set upon by two frantic women, who shriek in his ears
the deeds of gluttony committed by Hercules in Hades, and not paid for.
There; that's he
That came to our house, ate those nineteen loaves.
Aye; sure enough. That's he, the very man;
And a dozen and a half of cutlets and fried chops,
At a penny ha' penny apiece. And all the garlic,
And the good green cheese that he gorged at once.
And then, when I called for payment, he looked fierce
And stared me in the face, and grinned and roared.
The women threaten the false Hercules with the pains and penalties of
swindling. He now pretends to soliloquize: "I love poor Xanthias dearly;
that I do."
"Yes," says Xanthias, "I know why; but it's of no use. I won't act
Hercules." Xanthias, however, allows himself to be persuaded, and when
Æacus, appearing with a force, cries: "Arrest me there that fellow that
stole the dog," Xanthias contrives to make an effectual resistance.
Having thus gained time, he assures Æacus that he never stole so much as
a hair of his dog's tail; but gives him leave to put Bacchus, his
supposed slave, to the torture, in order to elicit from him the truth.
Æacus, softened by this proposal, asks in which way the master would
prefer to have his slave tortured. Xanthias replies:
In your own way, with the lash, with knots and screws,
With the common, usual, customary tortures,
With the rack, with the water torture, any sort of way,
With fire and vinegar--all sorts of ways.
Bacchus, thus driven to the wall, proclaims his divinity, and claims
Xanthias as his slave. The latter suggests that if Bacchus is a
divinity, he may be beaten without injury, as he will not feel it.
Bacchus retorts, "If you are Hercules, so may you." Æacus, to ascertain
the truth, impartially belabors them both. Each, in turn, cries out, and
pretends to have quoted from the poets. Æacus, unable to decide which is
the god and which the impostor, brings them both before Proserpine and
Pluto.
In the course of a delicious dialogue between the two servants, Æacus
and Xanthias, it is mentioned that Euripides, on coming to the shades,
had driven Æschylus from the seat of honor at Pluto's board, holding
himself to be the worthier poet. Æschylus has objected to this, and the
matter is now to be settled by a trial of skill in which Bacchus is to
be the umpire.
The shades of Euripides and Æschylus appear in the next scene, with
Bacchus between them. Æschylus wishes the trial had taken place
elsewhere. Why? Because while his tragedies live on earth, those of
Euripides are dead, and have descended with him to bear him company in
Hell. The encounter of wits between the two is of the grandiose comic,
each taunting the other with his faults of composition. Euripides says
of Æschylus:
He never used a simple word
But bulwarks and scamanders and hippogriffs and Gorgons,
Bloody, remorseless phrases.
Æschylus rejoins:
Well, then, thou paltry wretch, explain
What were your own devices?
Euripides says that he found the Muse
Puffed and pampered
With pompous sentences, a cumbrous 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 compass.
I kept my plots distinct and clear to prevent confusion.
My leading characters rehearsed their pedigrees for prologues.
"For all this," says Æschylus, "you ought to have been hanged." Æschylus
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 illustrious poets
Conferred on mankind in the centuries past.
Orpheus instructed mankind in religion,
Reclaimed them from bloodshed and barbarous rites.
Musæus 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 title 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. Æschylus, in his argument
against Euripides, speaks of the noble examples which he himself has
brought upon the stage, reproaches his adversary with the objectionable
stories of Sthenobæus and Phædra, with which he, Euripides has corrupted
the public taste.
Euripides alleges in his own defence that he did not invent those
stories. "Phædra's affair was a matter of fact." Æschylus 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 assigned 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 mediæval 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 Hell,
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 passages 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 Æschylus 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 Hoopoe with the intention of securing his
assistance 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 Hoopoe 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
Hoopoe 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 Æsop, who narrates that the lark was embarrassed 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
cock 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 gods 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 gods, 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 cock. 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.
Jupiter sends an embassy to treat for peace, and by a curious juggle,
imitating, no doubt, the political processes of those days,
Peisthetairus becomes recognized as the lawful sovereign of
Nephelococcagia, and receives, on his demand, the hand of Jupiter's
favorite queen in marriage.
I have given my time too fully to the Greek poet to be able to make any
extended comparison between his works and those of the Elizabethan
dramatists. But from the plays which trifle so with the grim facts of
nature, I can fly to the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and alight for a
moment on one of its golden branches. Shakespeare's Athenian clowns are
rather Aristophanic in color. The play of "Pyramus and Thisbe" might
have formed one interlude on that very stage which had in sight the
glories of the Parthenon. The exquisite poetry which redeems their
nonsense has its parallel in the lovely "Chorus of the Clouds," the ode
to Peace, and other glimpses of the serious Aristophanes, which here and
there look out from behind the mask of the comedian.
I am very doubtful whether good Greek scholars will think my selections
given here at all the best that could be made. I will remind them of an
Eastern tale in which a party of travellers were led, in the dark,
through an enchanted region in which showers of some unknown substance
fell around them, while a voice cried: "They that do not gather any will
grieve, and they who do gather will grieve that they did not gather
more, for these that fall are diamonds." So, of these bright diamonds of
matchless Greek wit, I have tried to gather some, but may well say I
grieve that I have not gathered more, and more wisely.
These works are to us exquisite pieces of humoristic extravagance, but
to the people of the time they were far more than this; _viz._, the
lesson of ridicule for what was tasteless and ridiculous in Athenian
society, and the punishment of scathing satire for what was unworthy.
Annotators tell us that the plays are full of allusions to prominent
characters of the day. Some of these, as is well known, the poet sets
upon the stage in masquerades which reveal, more than they conceal,
their true personality. For the demagogue Cleon, and for the playwright
Euripides, he has no mercy.
The patient student of Aristophanes and his commentators will acquire a
very competent knowledge of the politics of the wise little city at the
time of which he treats, also of its literary personages, pedants or
sophists. The works give us, I think, a very favorable impression of the
public to whose apprehension they were presented,--a quick-witted
people, surely, able to follow the sudden turns and doublings of the
poet's fancy; not to be surprised into stupidity by any ambush sprung
upon them out of obscurity.
Compare with this the difficulty of commending anything worth thinking
of to the attention of a modern theatre audience. It is true that much
of this Greek wit must needs have been _caviare_ to the multitude, but
its seasoning, no doubt, penetrated the body politic. I remember, a
score or more of years ago, that a friend said that it was good and
useful to have some public characters Beecherized, alluding to the broad
and bold presentment of them given from time to time by our great
clerical humorist, Henry Ward Beecher. Very efficacious, one thinks,
must have been this scourge which the Greek comic muse wielded so
merrily, but so unmercifully.
Although Aristophanes is very severe upon individuals, he does not, I
think, foster any class enmities, except, perhaps, against the sophists.
Although a city man, he treats the rustic population with great
tenderness, and the glimpses he gives us of country life are sweet and
genial. In this, he contrasts with the French playwrights of our time,
to whom city life is everything, and the province synonymous with all
that is dull and empty of interest.
How can I dismiss the comedy of that day without one word concerning its
immortal tragedy,--Socrates, the divine man, compared and comparable to
Christ, chained in his dungeon and condemned to die? The most blameless
life could not save that sacred head. Its illumination, in which we sit
here to-day, drew to it the shafts of superstition, malice, and
wickedness. The comic poet might present on the stage such pictures of
the popular deities as would make the welkin ring with the roar of
laughter. This was not impiety. But Socrates, showing no disrespect to
these idols of the current persuasion, only daring to discern beyond
them God in his divineness, truth in her awful beauty,--_he_ must die
the death of the profane.
It is a bitter story, surely, but "it must needs be that offences come."
Where should we be to-day if no one in human history had loved high
doctrine well enough to die for it? At such cost were these great
lessons given us. How can we thank God or man enough for them?