ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

perfonated, and each event exhibited, the attention of the audience is greatly captivated, and the imagination fo far affifts in the delufion, as to fympathize in the representation. To the Mufe of Tragedy, there fore, Mr. Pope has affigned the noble task, To wake the foul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold. He afcribes fuch power to a well-wrought fcene, as to afk,

When Cato groans who does not wish to bleed?

He would not have fuppofed the death of Hector, or Sarpedon, could have produced an equal effect on any reader of the Iliad fuch enthusiasm is to be caught only from the Stage, and is the effect alone of strong-working sympathy, and paffions agitated by the peculiar force and activity of the dramatic manner. Writers of feeble genius, in their compofitions for the Stage, frequently deviate into the narrative and descriptive style ; a fault for which nothing can atone; for the Drama

2

Drama is a fpecies of poetry, as distinct from the epic, as Statuary from Painting; and can no more claim that merit which specifically belongs to it, and conftitutes its perfection, from fine verfification, or any other poetical ornaments, than a ftatue can be rendered a fine specimen of sculpture, from being beautifully coloured, or highly polifhed. It is frivolous and idle, therefore, to infist on any little incidental and acceffory beauties, where the main part, the very constitution of the thing, is defective. Yet on fuch trivial beauties do the French found all their pretenfions to fuperiority and excellence in the Drama.

According to Ariftotle, there can be no Tragedy without Action*. Mr. Voltaire confeffes, that fome of the most admired Tragedies, in France; are rather converfations, than reprefentations of an action. It will hardly be allowed to those who fail in the most effential part of an art, to set up their performances as models. Can they *Arift. Chap. vi.

who

[ocr errors]

who have robbed the Tragic Muse of all her virtue, and divefted her of whatsoever gives her a real interest in the human heart, require, we should adore her for the glitter of a few false brilliants, or the nice arrangement of frippery ornaments? If the wears any thing of intrinfic value, it has been borrowed from the ancients; but by these artists it is fo fantastically fashioned to modern modes, as to lofe all its original graces, and even that neceffary qualification of all ornaments, Fitness and Propriety. A French Tragedy is a tiffue of declamations, and laboured recitals of the catastrophe, by which the spirit of the Drama is greatly weakened and enervated, and the theatrical piece is deprived of that peculiar influence over the mind, which it derives from the vivid force of Representation.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quæ funt oculis fubjecta fidelibus, et quæ
Ipfe fibi tradit fpectator.

The business of the Drama is to excite

fym

fympathy; and its effect on the spectator depends on fuch a juftness of imitation, as shall cause, to a certain degree, the fame paffions and affections, as if what was exhibited was real. We have obferved narrative imitation to be too faint and feeble a means to excite paffion: declamation, still worse, plays idly on the furface of the fubject, and makes the Poet, who should be concealed in the action, vifible to the fpectator. In many works of art, our pleasure arifes from a reflection on the art itself; and in a comparison, drawn by the mind, between the original and the copy before us. But here the Art and the Artist ́must not appear; for, as often as we recur to the Poet, so often our sympathy with the Action on the Stage is fufpended. The pompous declamations of the French Theatre are mere rhetorical flourishes, fuch as an uninterested person might make on the state of the perfons in the drama. They affume the office of the Spectator by expreffing his 'feelings, instead of conveying to us the ftrong emotions and fenfations of the perfons under

C

under the preffure of diftrefs. Experience informs us, that even the inarticulate groans and involuntary convulfions of a creature in agonies, affect us much more, than any eloquent and elaborate defcription of its fituation, delivered in the propereft words, and moft fignificant geftures. Our pity is then attendant on the paffion of the unhappy person, and on his own sense of his misfortunes. From defcription, from the report of a Spectator, we may make fome conjecture of his internal state of mind, and fo far we fhall be moved: but the direct and immediate way to the heart is by the Sufferer's expreffion of his paffion. As there may be fome obfcurity in what I have faid on this fubject, I will endeavour to illustrate the doctrine by examples.

Sophocles, in his admirable Tragedy of dipus Coloneus, makes Œdipus expoftulate with his undutiful fon. The injured parent exposes the enormity of filial disobedience; fets forth the duties of this relation in a very ftrong and lively manner; but it is only by

the

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »