66 in voluntary actions only. He only hears the cries and shrieks. of Sophocles' Philoctetes, and entirely overlooks his other resolute qualities. How else would he have had the opportunity of making his rhetorical onslaught upon the poets? They would make us effeminate by introducing the bravest men weeping." They must let them weep; for a theater is not an arena. It behooved the condemned or mercenary combatant to do and suffer everything with propriety. Not a sound of complaint must escape his lips, not a convulsive start reveal his pain. His wounds, and even his death, were intended to afford delight to the spectators, and he therefore had to learn the art of entirely concealing his feelings. The slightest display of them would have awakened compassion, and compassion, if frequently excited, would soon have made an end of these cold and cruel spectacles. Now the very effect which was there avoided, the tragic stage has for its principal aim, and here, therefore, a directly opposite line of conduct is demanded. Its heroes must display their feelings, must give utterance to their pain, and let nature follow her ordinary course within them. If they betray any signs of training and forced effort, they fail to reach our hearts; and prize fighters in the cothurnus can at the most but excite our wonder. This epithet may be applied to all the characters in the so-called tragedies of Seneca, and I am firmly convinced that the gladiatorial contests formed the principal cause why the Romans remained so far below mediocrity in the Tragic Art. The spectators learnt, in the bloody amphitheater, to misconceive all that is natural; a Ctesias, perhaps, could study his art there, but a Sophocles never. The most tragic of geniuses, inured to these artificial scenes of death, would have degenerated into bombast and rodomontade. But as such rodomontade cannot inspire true heroism, so neither can the sorrow of a Philoctetes inspire weakness. The sorrows are those of a man, but the actions those of a hero. Together, they make the human hero, who is neither weak nor yet obdurate, but rather appears now the former, now the latter, according as nature or his principles of duty may require. His is the highest character that wisdom can produce or art imitate. 4. Not only has Sophocles preserved his sensitive hero from contempt, but he has also wisely provided against any other objection which the Englishman's observation might cause to be raised against him. For, although we may not always despise a man who cries out with bodily pain, yet it cannot be denied that we do not feel so much pity for him as his cries would appear to demand. What attitude, then, are those actors to assume who have to deal with the crying Philoctetes? Ought they to appear deeply moved? This would be contrary to nature. Or should they appear as cold and embarrassed as one usually is in such cases? This would produce a most disagreeable and incongruous effect upon the spectator. Now this also, as mentioned, Sophocles has guarded against. He did so by furnishing the subsidiary characters with an individual interest, so that the impression made upon them by the cries of Philoctetes does not form the only thing with which they are occupied; and the spectator's attention is directed, not so much towards the disproportion of their sympathy to these cries, but rather to the change which, through this sympathy, however strong or weak the latter may be, is, or should be, effected in their own sentiments and designs. Neoptolemus and the Chorus have deceived the luckless Philoctetes; they recognize the depth of despair into which their deceit will plunge him; and now he meets with his terrible disaster before their very eyes. If this disaster cannot excite any marked degree of sympathy in them, it can at least induce them to look into their own conduct, to have consideration for so much misery and not wish to add to it still further by treachery. This is what the spectator looks for, and his expectations are not deceived by the noble-minded Neoptolemus. Philoctetes, had he been master of his pain, would have confirmed Neoptolemus in his dissimulation; Philoctetes, whose pain renders him incapable of all deception, how necessary soever the same may appear to him, lest his fellowtravelers repent too soon of their promise to take him with them; Philoctetes, who is himself perfectly natural, brings back Neoptolemus also to his nature. This conversion is splendid, and it is all the more touching, because it is brought about simply by humanity. With the Frenchman, on the other hand, the beautiful eyes have their share in it. But I will dismiss this parody from my thoughts. This device of combining in the bystanders the pity intended to be evoked by hearing cries of pain, with some other emotion, has also been adopted by Sophocles in his "Trachiniæ." The pain of Hercules is not merely an exhausting pain: it drives him to a state of frenzy, in which he only thirsts after vengeance. In his fury he has already seized Lichas and dashed him to pieces against the rock. The Chorus is composed of women, and it is therefore most |