May hope to rob him. By his ruthless hand, Already seized, the noble victim lay, The bless'd, the lov'd, by all who own'd his sway, By his illustrious parents, by the realms Surrounding his, and oh! what need to add, How much by his Alcestis ?-Such was he, Already in th' unsparing grasp of death, Withering, a certain prey.-Apollo thence Hath snatch'd him, and another in his stead, Though not an equal,-(who can equal him ?) Must fall a voluntary sacrifice. By closest bonds united, must descend Phe. What do I hear? Than his lov'd parents-than his children more More than himself!-Oh! no, it shall not be! Thou perish, O Alcestis! in the flower And think'st thou not of those, whose tender years Demand thy care?-thy children! think of them! O thou, the source of each domestic joy, Thou, in whose life alone Admetus lives, His glory, his delight, thou shalt not die, While I can die for thee!—Me, me alone, The oracle demands-a wither'd stem, Whose task, whose duty, is, for him to die. My race is run the fulness of my years, The faded hopes of age, and all the love Which hath its dwelling in a father's heart, Woe to us, wee!-what victim ?-who And the fond pity, half with wonder blent, Disdain the victim. Phe. All prepar'd the prey! And to our blood allied! O heaven!-and yet Thou bad'st me weep no more! Alc. Yes! thus I said, And thus again I say, thou shalt not weep Thy son's, nor I deplore my husband's doom. Let him be saved, and other sounds of woe Less deep, less mournful far, shall here be heard, Than those his death had caus'd.-With some few tears, But brief, and mingled with a gleam of joy, E'en while the involuntary tribute lasts, The victim shall be honour'd, who resign'd Life for Admetus.-Would'st thou know Inspired by thee, whose youth with hea venly gifts So richly is endowed; all, all unite Pheres commands thee, O Alcestis! live! surpass An aged sire's devotedness. Alc. I know Thy lofty soul, thy fond paternal love; Pheres, I know them well, and not in vain Strove to anticipate their high resolves. But if in silence I have heard thy words, Now calmly list to mine, and thou shalt own They may not be withstood. Phe. What can'st thou say Which I should hear? I go, resolved to save Him who with thee would perish ;-to the shrine E'en now I fly. Alc. Stay, stay thee! 'tis too late. Already hath consenting Proserpine, From the remote abysses of her realms, Heard and accepted the terrific vow Which binds me, with indissoluble ties, To death. And I am firm, and well I know None can deprive me of the awful right Alc. Yes! thou may'st weep my fate, Mourn for me, father I but thou canʼst not blame My lofty purpose. dear'd Oh! the more en My life by every tie, the more I feel Death's bitterness, the more my sacrifice 1 Its dread effects. Through all my burning veins Th' insatiate fever revels. Doubt is o'er. The Monarch of the Dead hath heard-he calls, He summons me away-and thou art sav'd, O my Admetus! In the opening of the third act, Alcestis enters, with her son Eumeles, and her daughter, to complete the sacrifice by dying at the feet of Proserpine's statue. The following scene ensues between her and Admetus. And with your innocent encircling arms Eum. Can it be indeed, Father, lov'd father! that we see thee thus Restored? What joy is ours! Adm. There is no joy! Speak not of joy! away, away! my grief Is wild and desperate; cling to me no more ! I know not of affection, and I feel Eum. Oh! what words are these? More close; he must return the fond embrace. Adm. O children! O my children! to my soul Your innocent words and kisses are as darts, That pierce it to the quick. I can no more Sustain the bitter conflict. Every sound Of your soft accents but too well recals The voice which was the music of my life. Alcestis! my Alcestis !—was she not Of all her sex the flower? Was woman e'er Oh! let me strive to soothe him still. Approach, My handmaids, raise me, and support my steps To the distracted mourner. Bear me hence, That he may hear and see me. Adm. Is it thou? thus And do I see thee still? and com'st thou Alc. For me thy care is vain. Though Adm. O voice! O looks of death! are these, are these Thus darkly shrouded with mortality The eyes that were the sunbeams and the life Of my fond soul? Alas! how faint a ray Falls from their faded orbs, so brilliant once, Upon my drooping brow! How heavily With what a weight of death thy languid voice Sinks on my heart! too faithful far, too fond, Alcestis! thou art dying—and for me! Alcestis! and thy feeble hand supports With its last power, supports my sinking head, E'en now, while death is on thee! Oh! the touch Rekindles tenfold frenzy in my heart, a Vain is cach obstacle.-In vain the gods Themselves would check my fury-I am lord Of my own days-and thus I swear- Admetus! for thy children to sustain to form. Within thy breast; thy lip, by them enchained, Would vainly seek to utter.-Sce'st thou not, It is from them the inspiration flows, Which in my language breathes? They lend me power, More lifeless than the dying victim, see Alc. O my handmaids! still Lend me your pious aid, and thus compose With sacred modesty, these torpid limbs When death's last pang is o'er. Chorus. Alas! how weak Her struggling voice! that last keen pang is near. Peace, mourners, peace! Be hush'd, be silent, in this hour of dread! Our cries would but increase The sufferer's pangs; let tears unheard be shed, Cease, voice of weeping, cease! Sustain, O friend! Upon thy faithful breast, Chorus of Admetus. "Tis not enough, oh! no! To hide the scene of anguish from his eyes; Still must our silent band Around him watchful stand, And on the mourner ceaseless care bestow, That his ear catch not grief's funereal cries. Yet, yet hope is not dead. All is not lost below, While yet the gods have pity on our woe. Oft when all joy is fled, Heaven lends support to those Who on its care in pious hope repose. Then to the blessed skies Let our submissive prayers in chorus rise. Pray! bow the knee, and pray! What other task have mortals, born to tears, Whom fate controls, with adamantine sway? O ruler of the spheres! Jove! Jove! enthron'd immortally on high, Our supplication hear! Nor plunge in bitterest woes, Him, who nor footstep moves, nor lifts his THE following remarks, thrown together many years ago, rather hastily and unconnectedly, seem to me to contain some principles which have scarcely been attended to, and which yet, I flatter myself, are not quite undeserving of attention. I am emboldened to send you them very much as they were originally written. There are some questions relative to The head that sinks, with mortal pain op- dramatic poetry, which have never prest! And thou, assistance lend To close the languid eye, Still beautiful, in life's last agony. Alas! how long a strife! been very accurately examined. To begin with the time which a drama may be supposed to occupy;-it has been recommended by the critics that this should not exceed the space of a What anguish struggles in the parting day. In strict propriety, a day is too breath, long a time, if the reason of the limitation be, that the spectator shall be fully satisfied of the probability that those occurrences of which he is a witness, may have actually taken place in the time during which they have been presented to him. It is, however, imagined, that if the story be interesting, the spectator can be beguiled into the belief that one day has passed over his head since he entered the theatre, and it would require very great artifice in the poet, or, indeed, would rather be quite impossible, on many occasions, to reduce the series of events into a shorter period. Perhaps some such rule as this might be necessary in the ancient drama,-in the course of which the stage was never allowed to be empty,-and the attention of the spectator was, accordingly, always brought back to the consideration of the time in which the performance took place. There would have been something, indeed, extremely absurd, had the Chorus been supposed to walk, and moralize, and sing from one end of the stage to another for the course of a year together, and even Shakespeare, I suppose, if he had had a chorus to manage, would not have been inconsiderate enough to lead them such a dance. exceed as little as possible the actual period of the representation. In an interesting scene, perhaps, some hours may be supposed to have passed away without any very bad effect,-at the same time, there must be attention paid, that no very distinct marks of the time should betray the deception; it would be improper, for instance, in the course of the same scene, to speak of the sun rising and the sun setting. Some time may be allowed to pass between the shifting of the scenes, but it would be proper, perhaps, to suspend the action, and make in fact a greater number of acts whenever any considerable portion of time is required to be slurred over on these occasions. When there is an entire suspension of the action, I do not see any bounds which I should put to the licence of the poet in this particular. Every act then seems to stand, as far as time is concerned, in the place of a distinct drama, and the poet inay take it up at any point at which the chain of the fable will permit him. According to the system of the modern drama, greater licence in this particular may, I imagine, be safely taken, and, if an ancient audience with a chorus constantly in their eyes, could be seduced into the belief, that a few hours occupied the space of a day, I see no reason why we, before whom the action is so frequently suspended entirely, should not be led into a much greater delusion. The fact is, that the time of a drama is never at all attended to, unless the poet chooses to point it out by some circumstances which naturally call the attention of his audience to this object, and if he will make the divisions of time in the course of one day very striking and prominent, the absurdity of the supposition that they have been accomplished in the short period which is occupied in the representation of a drama, will strike the spectator as completely, as if a much longer time were expressed. If he will place a clock in the view of the audience, he must regulate his fable accordingly. The chorus was a kind of clock, and, accordingly, while it was fashionable, it was necessary to confine the time of the dramatic action within very narrow bounds. Since the clock has been removed, the spectator is left in all that inattention to the course of time which is natural to him. Through the course of every act, indeed, the poet ought to It is quite impracticable in a modern drama to observe the strict unity of time, if our system of dividing the play into acts be retained, which sup❤ poses both a suspension of the action itself, and of the time, consequently, which the chain of events occupies. It is possible in our drama to preserve strictly the unity of place, but that is very useless, if the other cannot be preserved. When the course of the action, as in the ancient drama, was never suspended, it was absolutely impossible to shift the scene. What would have been more absurd, than, while the stage was never unoccupied, to have made any such alteration? When we see an actor on the stage, we suppose that he cannot get into any other place than that in which he is, unless he chooses to go to it, so that it would be perfectly absurd to change the scene in his presence. The utmost licence as to place, therefore, must be allowed in the modern drama, since the only reason why none was allowed in the ancient was the impossibility of the thing. It is strange enough, however, that some modern dramatists are extremely scrupulous as to this unity, while their adherence to the common practice of dividing the play into acts obliges them, in a certain degree, to deviate from the other. They are, in this way, frequently led into very unnatural situations; and, by crowding every event into one place, they make the same scene very unusually fertile in striking occurrences. Dennis ridicules with some effect this particular in Mr Addison's Cato, all the events of which, though of a very different kind, take place in a large hall in Cato's house, and matters of the most secret and important nature are transacted in a place in which they were exposed to every accidental or designing intruder. Any farther question concerning these unities will involve the discussion, whether the system of the ancient or the modern drama be the more perfect. I know the sticklers for antiquity will at once endeavour to put an end to the dispute, by maintaining that there is a gross absurdity in adopting any other system than that which prevails in the ancient drama. They will say, that, "to suspend the action after it has begun, is totally inconsistent with the dramatic effect, and that it is nothing else than to recal the minds of the spectators from the dream of reality into which they have been brought, and to give them occasion again and again to recollect that the whole representation is merely fictitious. It is the tenet of some philosophers, that the whole scene of creation is a mere picture which beguiles our senses; but, be it so or no, certainly the great Author of the drama of Nature at no time suspends that agency by which the notions of real existence are impressed upon our minds; and although, at times, in a philosophical humour, we may turn our eyes aside, and endeavour to believe that all is delusion and deception, yet the enchanted scene is ever before us, and constantly intrudes itself on our perceptions.' Now, it will be maintained, that "the dramatist ought, in a similar manner, to carry on the impressions which he has begun; and that it is but a bungling kind of creation to give birth merely to a series of detached dreams, from which we are every moment awaking. You begin to interest us in certain events, and to make us look with impatience for their catastrophe. We have seen certain characters, and our sympathies have been strongly called out, and we have begun to have those fictitious person ages bound to our hearts by the strong ties of humanity, and made in some sort to participate in the reality of our own existence when all at once you break the talisman, and the fairy palaces crumble about our heads. The forms which we had begun to consider as brothers and fellow-creatures vanish from our eyes; the strong current of our affections is at once violently stopped ; and, after doing us all this injury, you leave us to solace ourselves with the scraping and fiddling of the orchestra. It is in vain that you would afterwards make us amends by raising once more the works you have destroyed; we no longer give up our minds to your delusions; or, if we do, it is only that we may again meet with a similar return. Such are the disadvantages of suspending the course of the action by the modern invention of acts. We call it modern, because, though, in the ancient drama, the business of the play did not always proceed with equal impetuo sity, and the songs and reflections of the chorus gave the spectators full opportunity to look back on the interesting occurrences which had passed, and to form awful conjectures concerning what should follow; though this kind of remission in the action very properly was admitted, yet certainly it was never entirely allowed to be suspended. The name acts was applied to the intermediate dialogue parts between the songs of the chorus, and, as the moderns have thought fit to retain these merely, and to throw out the chorus altogether, while, at the same time, they suspend the action entirely, which the chorus only had the effect of making a little less impetuous, they have materially altered the dramatic system. If they will not allow any chorus, they ought, at least, to adopt the spirit of the ancient drama rather than the form; and, if they think it fit to put away the odes which divided, and yet connected, the acts together, they ought to have no separation of acts at all. But it is plain that the dramatic system of the moderns is founded on a misapprehension of the ancient plan, and they have forgot the rule of Horace, that the chorus should always bear a character in the drama,-a rule which is exemplified in the best of the compositions for the ancient stage. They seem to have conceived, as some of the infe |