Tragedy, representation of a heroic action with the object of exciting terror and compassion.

We have in this matter two celebrated guides, Aristotle and the great Corneille, who light and show us the way.

The first, having for principal object in his poetics to explain the nature and the rules of tragedy , follows his philosophical genius, he considers only the essence of the beings and the properties deriving from them. With him everything is full of definitions and divisions.

For his part, Pierre Corneille, having practiced the art for forty years and and examined as a philosopher that which could please or displease in it, having pierced with the flights of his genius the obstacles of many rebellious matters and observed as a metaphysician the path that he cleared for himself and the means by which he had succeeded, finally having put to the test of practice all of his reflections and his observations of those that had gone before him, he well merits that one respect his ideas and decisions, even if they are not always in agreement with those of Aristotle. He, after all, only knew the theater of Athens, and if it is true that the geniuses most daring in their speculations on the arts never go beyond the models that the artist-inventors furnished them, Greek philosophy would have given but the beautiful ideal of Athenian theater.

On the other hand, however, if it is a fact that while a new genre, as a sort of phenomenon, appears in literature and vividly strikes the spirit, and is quickly brought to its perfection by the ardor of rivals prodded by glory, one might believe that tragedy was already perfect with the Greeks who served as models for the rules of Aristotle, and that those who have come afterwards could add no more than refinements capable of bastardizing this genre through wishing to give it an air of novelty.

Finally, a last reason that may diminish the authority of the French poet is that he himself was an author, and one has observed that all those who have made rules after having written works, whatever courage they may have had, have not been, whatever one might say, but timid legislators. Similar to the father of whom Horace spoke, or the lover of Agna, they sometimes take their defects themselves for ornaments, or if they recognize them as defects, they only speak of them by designating them with names that closely approach those of virtue.

Be it as it may, I limit myself to saying that tragedy is the representation of a heroic action. It is heroic if it is the result of a soul carried to a certain extraordinary degree. Heroism is a courage, a value, a generosity which is above common souls. It is Heraclius who wishes to die for Martian, it is Pulchérie who says to the usurper Phocas, with a pride worthy of his birth:

Vices enter into the idea of this heroism of which we speak. A statue maker may create a Nero eight feet tall; in the same way, a poet may depict him, if not as a hero, at least as a man of extraordinary cruelty, and if one might permit me this term, heroic in some fashion, because in general vices are heroic when they have for principle some quality that supposes an uncommon boldness and steadfastness. Such is the boldness of Catalina, the strength of Medea, the intrepidness of Cleopatra in Rodogune.

An action is heroic either in itself or by the character of those who carry it out. It is heroic in itself when it has some grand object, like the acquisition of a throne, the punishment of a tyrant. It is heroic in the character of those who carry it out when they are kings or princes who act, or against whom one acts. When the undertaking is carried out by a king, it is elevated, ennobled by the grandeur pf the person who acts. When it is against a king, it is ennobled by the grandeur of the one being attacked.

The first quality of tragic action then is that it be heroic. But this is not enough. It must also be of a nature to excite terror and pity; that is what makes it different and which makes it properly tragic.

The epic poem deals with a heroic action as does the tragedy , but its principal end being to excite terror and admiration, it does not move the soul but to elevate it bit by bit. It does not know those violent shocks and those tremblings of the theater that shape the truly tragic. See Tragic.

Greece was the cradle of all the arts, consequently it is there that one must seek the origin of dramatic poetry. The Greeks, most of whom are born with a happy genius, having the taste natural to all men to see extraordinary things, being in this type of nervousness that accompanies those who have needs and who seek to fulfill them, had to make many attempts to find the dramatic. It was therefore neither to their genius nor to their research that they were beholden.

Everyone agrees that the celebration of Bacchus occasioned its birth. The god of harvests and joy had that all of his followers celebrated with pleasure, inhabitants of the countryside and those who dwelt in the cities. A male goat was sacrificed to him, and during the sacrifice the people and the priests sang a chorus to the glory of this god of hymns that the nature of the victim caused to be named tragedy or song of the goat , τραγος ωδη . These songs were not only restricted to the temples, they made the rounds of the large villages. A man dressed as Silenus riding an ass was led around followed by people singing and dancing. Others completely drunk perched on carts and shook the glasses in their hands, praises to the god of drunkards. In this coarse tableau one saw a licentious joy mingled with cult and religion: one could see serious and foolish, religious chants and Bacchic songs, dances and spectacles. It is from this chaos that dramatic poetry came.

These hymns were nothing other than a lyric song, such as one sees described in the Æneid, where Virgil, by all appearances, depicted the sacrifices of king Evander after the idea that one had during his time of the choruses of the ancients. A portion of the people (old men, young people, women, girls, according to the divinity who was being celebrated) divided into two rows to sing in alternation the different couplets until the end of the hymn. There were sections where the two rows together, and even the entire group of people sang together, which made some variety. But since it was always chant, a strong monotony reigned which put the audience to sleep.

To create more variety, it was judged not to be out of the question to add an actor who performed some recitation. It was Thespis who tried this novelty. His actor, who apparently first recounted the deeds attributed to Bacchus, pleased everyone, but soon the poet took subjects foreign to this god and of which most people approved. Finally this recitation was divided into many parts to divide the song several times and to augment the pleasure and variety.

But since there was only one actor, that did not suffice. A second was needed to continue the drama and to make that which is called dialogue. So the first step was made, and and this was a great deal.

Æescylus profited from the opening that Thespis had made and formed all at once the heroic drama, or tragedy . He placed two actors in it instead of one, he made them undertake an action into which he transported all that suited him in epic action, he added exposition, complication, effort, dénouement, passions, and interest. As soon as he had seized upon the idea of rendering the epic in spectacle, the rest must have come easily; he gave the actors characters, morals, suitable elocution, and the heart, which in the beginning had been the basis of the entertainment, was no longer but an accessory, and served only as an interlude to the play as the play had once served as its interlude.

Admiration was the passion produced by the epic. To feel that terror and pity were those that suited tragedy it was enough to compare a work in which these passions were found with another which produced horror, fright, hate, or only admiration. The least reflection provided proof, and even without it, the tears and the applause of the spectators sufficed for the first tragic poets to let them know which were the subjects truly made for their art and to which they should give preference, and Æschylus probably made the observation from the very first time that the case presented itself.

There you have the origin and the birth of tragedy . Let us see its progress and the different states through which it has passed by following the taste and talent of authors and peoples.

Æschylus gave tragedy a gigantic air, harsh lines, a fiery pace, it was the nascent tragedy well-formed in all its parts. But still destitute of that civility that art and time add to new inventions; it was necessary to draw it toward a certain truth that poets are obliged to follow in their stories. This was the lot of Sophocles.

Sophocles, born happily for this genre of poetry with a great reserve of genius, delicate taste, a marvelous facility of expression, subjected the tragic muse to the rules of decency and truth. She learned to be content with a noble and assured pace, without conceit, without ostentation, without this gigantic pride that is beyond what one calls heroic ; he interested the heart in the entire plot, crafted the verses with care, in a word he elevated himself by his genius and by his labor to the point that his works became the example of the beautiful and the model of the rules. His is also the model of ancient Greece of whom modern philosophers most approve. He finished his days at the age of 90 years, during the course of which he carried away the prize eighteen times over his competitors. It is said that the final award given him for his last tragedy caused him to die of joy. His Œdipus is one of the most beautiful works that has ever appeared, and from which one may judge the truly tragic. See Tragic.

Euripides first followed the philosophers. He had Anaxagorus for his master, thus all of his works are full of excellent moral maxims; Socrates never failed to attend when he gave new ones; he is tender, touching, truly tragic, although less elevated and less vigorous than Sophocles. He was, however, crowned only five times, but the example of the poet Menander, to whom was ceaselessly preferred a certain Philemon, proves that it is not always justice that distributed the crowns. He died before Sophocles: furious dogs tore him apart at the age of sixty-five years. He wrote seventy-five tragedies .

In general, the tragedy of the Greeks is simple, natural, easy to follow, not very complicated, the plot is prepared, entangled, developed without effort, it seems that artifice has not the least part in it, and by that in itself it is a masterpiece of art and genius.

Œdipus, in Sophocles, appears to be an ordinary man. His virtues and vices have nothing that are of a superior order. It is the same for Creon and Jocasta. Teiresius speaks with pride, but simply and without embellishment. Far from reproaching the Greeks, it is a real merit that we must envy them.

Often we display a pompous work, characters with a grandeur that is more than human to hide the defects of a piece that, without this, would have little beauty. We dress Helen richly, the Greeks knew how to paint her as beautiful, they had enough genius to guide a plot and fill with it a space of five acts without throwing in anything foreign, nor leaving any voids, nature furnished them in abundance everything of which they had need, and we, we are obliged to seek and bring in material that often resists, and when things even though forced, are more or less arranged, we dare to sometimes say, "there is more art among us than among the Greeks. We have more genius than they and greater power."

Each act ends with a lyric chant that expresses the sentiments of the act that one has seen and prepares that which follows. Racine imitated this usage in Esther and in Athalie.

That which remains of Latin tragedy is not worthy of comparison with the Greeks.

Seneca dealt with the subject of Œdipus after Sophocles. His tale has a proportioned and regular body, that of the Latin poet is a monstrous colossus full of superfetation; one could remove more than eight hundred verses of which the plot has no need, his work is nearly the opposite of that of Sophocles from one end to the other. The Greek poet opens the stage with the greatest of all of his tableaux. A king at the door to his palace, en entire people suffering, altars prepared everywhere in the public place, cries of dolor. Seneca presents the king complaining of his wife, as a rhetor would have done at the time of Seneca himself. Sophocles says nothing that is not necessary, all is nerve with him, everything contributes to the advancement of the plot. Seneca is everywhere overloaded, burdened with ornaments; it is a mass of rotundity with striking colors and no action. Sophocles is naturally varied; Seneca speaks only of oracles, symbolic sacrifices, conjured shades. Sophocles acts more than he speaks, he does not even speak but for the action, and Seneca does not act but to speak and harangue, Teiresius, Jocasta, Creon, have no character with him, Œdipus himself is not even moving. When one reads Sophocles, one is afflicted; when one reads Seneca, one is horrified by his descriptions, one is disgusted and repulsed by his lengthiness.

Let us pass over fourteen centuries, and and come all at once to the great Corneille, after having said a word about three other tragic authors that preceded him in this course.

Jodelle (Etienne), born at Paris in 1532, died in 1573, was the first to bring the form of Greek tragedy to the French stage, and brought back the antique chorus in his two works Cleopatra and Dido, but how much did this poet remain below the great masters that he tried to imitate? In his works there is nothing but a good deal of declamation without action, without acting, and without rules.

Garnier (Robert), born at Ferté-Bernard, in Maine, in 1534, died around 1595, walked in the footsteps of Jodelle, but with more elevation in his thoughts and energy in his style. His tragedies were the delight of the people of letters of his time, although they were languishing and without action.

Hardy (Alexandre) who lived during the reign of Henri IV and who passed as the greatest tragic poet in France, merited this title only for his astonishing fecundity. Besides the fact that he did not know the rules of the theater very well and ordinarily violated the unity of place, his verses are harsh and and his works coarse. Finally here is the great epoch of French theater that was born under Pierre Corneille.

This sublime genius, whom one would have called such during the greatest days of Athens and Rome, cleared almost all at once the immense nuances that were between the shapeless attempts of his century and the most accomplished productions of the art; stances took more or les the place of choruses, but Corneille made discoveries with each step. Soon there were no more stances, the stage was given over to the combat of noble passions, plots, characters, everything was verisimilitude, the unities reappeared, and the dramatic poem had action, movement, situations, sensational developments. Events were grounded, interests well-handled, and scenes in dialogue.

This rare man was born to create theatrical poetry if it had not already been created before him. He always united the elements: the tender, the touching, the terrible, the great, the sublime, but that which dominates all of these qualities, and which embraces them in his works, is grandeur and boldness. It is genius that does everything with him, that created things and expressions; everywhere he has a majesty, a strength, a magnificence that none of our poets has surpassed.

With these great advantages, he should have been without rivals, there have perhaps not yet been any in our theater for heroism, but it was not the same on the side of success. A thoughtful study of the sentiments of men, who it was necessary to move, inspired Racine with a new genre when Corneille began to age. The first had, so to speak, brought together the passions of the ancients with the customs of his nation; Racine, more natural, brought to light entirely French works, guided by the national instinct that had applauded romances, the court of love, the carrousels, the tourneys in honor of ladies, the respectful gallantries of our fathers; he gave delicate tableaux of the truth of passion which he believed more powerful over the souls of the spectators for whom he was writing.

Corneille nevertheless knew this genre and seemed not to wish to give it his attention, but Racine, born with delicacy of passions, exquisite taste, nourished on readings of beautiful Greek models harmonized tragedy with the morals of his century and country. The elevation of Corneille was a world that many people could not reach. In addition, this poet had faults. There were some old words in his works, discourses that were sometimes cumbersome, places where he was too much the declaimer. Racine had the talent to avoid this little faults; always elegant, always exact, he joined the greatest art with genius and sometimes served himself with one to replace the other, seeking less to elevate the soul than to move it, he seemed more pleasant, more comfortable, and more accessible to all spectators. Corneille is, as someone has said, an eagle that rises above the clouds, who looks directly at the sun, who pleases himself amid the lightening and the thunder. Racine is a dove that murmurs in the bowers of myrtle among the roses. There is no one who does not love Racine, but it is not for everyone to admire Corneille as much as he merits.

The history of French tragedy does not finish here, but it belongs to posterity to continue it.

The English already had a theater, as did the Spanish, when the French did not yet even have stages. Shakespeare (William) flourished at about the same time as Lopez de Vega, and merits that we address his character, since he never had a master or an equal.

He was born in 1674 at Stratford in the county of Warwick, and and died in 1616. He created English theater with a genius full of nature, strength, and fecundity, without any knowledge of the rules. One finds in this great genius the inexhaustible reserve of a touching and sublime imagination, fantastic and picturesque, somber and gay, a prodigious variety of characters, all well-contrasted, who do not hold a single discourse that does not lead to another; talents particular to Shakespeare, and in which he surpasses all the poets in the world. There are such beautiful scenes, such great and terrible moments spread throughout his tragic works, monstrous besides, that they were always performed with the greatest success. He was so well born with all the fertility of poetry that one might compare him to the stone set in the ring of Pyrrhus, which, so Pliny tells us, represented the figure of Apollo with the nine muses which nature herself had carved without any aid from art.

Not only is he the chief of English dramatic poets, but he always surpasses the most excellent; he had neither models nor rivals, the two sources of emulation, the two principal prods of genius. The magnificence or trappings of a hero cannot give Brutus the majesty that he receives from a few lines of Shakespeare. Gifted with an imagination equally strong and rich, he paints all that he sees and beautifies nearly everything that he paints. In the tableaux of Albanus, the loves in the suite of Venus could not be depicted with more graces than those which Shakespeare gave to the company of Cleopatra in the description of the pomp with which this queen presented herself to Anthony on the banks of the Cydnus.

What he lacks is choice. Sometimes while reading his works, one is surprised by the sublimity of this vast genius, but he does not let sustained admiration exist. Portraits where all of the elevation and nobility of Raphael reign are followed by tableaux worthy of tavern painters.

There can be nothing more interesting than the monologue of Hamlet, prince of Denmark, in the third act of the tragedy of this name. Everyone knows the beautiful translation that M. de Voltaire made of this piece.

The ghost of Hamlet appears and brings terror onto the stage. So much did Shakespeare possess the talent to depict that with this he touched the feeble superstitions in the minds of the men of his time and succeeded in certain places where he was sustained only by the strength of his own genius. There is something so bizarre and along with it so serious in the discourse of his ghosts, his fairies, his sorcerers, and his other chimerical characters, that one can not help himself thinking them natural, although we have no fixed rule to judge this, and one is forced to admit that if there were such beings in the world, it is highly unlikely that they would speak and act in the manner that he has depicted. As for his faults, one will doubtlessly excuse them if one considers that the human spirit can not clear all of the barriers that the tone of the century, morals and prejudices oppose against his its efforts.

The complete dramatic works of this poet appeared together for the first time in 1623 in-folio , and since then Messrs. Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and Warburton have outdone each other in putting out new editions. One should read the preface that M. Pope placed at the beginning of his on the character of the author. It proves that this great genius, notwithstanding all of his faults, merits being placed above all of the dramatic writers of Europe. One might consider these works, when compared with others more polished and more regular, as an ancient and majestic Gothic monument compared to a modern edifice of regular architecture. The latter is more elegant, but the first has something more grand about it. It contains enough material to serve for many other edifices. There is more variety and the apartments are more vast, although one often arrives in them through obscure passages that are bizarrely arranged and disagreeable. But the whole inspires respect although many of the apartments are in bad taste, badly arranged, and do not correspond to its grandeur.

It is good to remark that in general it is in individual works that the English tragic authors have most excelled. Their old pieces, deprived of order, decency, and verisimilitude, have astonishing moments of brightness in the middle of this night. Their style is too bombastic, too full of Asiatic turgidity, but it is also necessary to admit that the supports of the figurative style on which the English language is founded in tragedy, elevate the spirit quite high, although through an irregular development.

Johnson (Benjamin), closely followed Shakespeare and showed himself to be one of the most illustrious English dramatists of the seventeenth century. He was born at Westminster around the year 1575 and had Cambden for a teacher, but his mother, who was married to a mason, obliged him to take up the profession of his stepfather. He worked out of poverty on the buildings of Lincoln Inn with a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket. The taste for poetry soon won out over that of stonework; he presented dramatic works, gave himself up entirely to the theater, and Shakespeare protected him.

He had performed in 1601 a tragedy entitled The Fall of Sejan . If one makes the objection, he says in his preface, that my piece is not a poem according to the rules of the time, I admit it; even an agreeable chorus, which is the most difficult thing to make work, is missing. Furthermore, it is neither necessary nor possible to observe today the pomp of the ancient dramatic poems, considering the character of the spectators. If nevertheless I have fulfilled the duties of a tragic author, as much by historical accuracy and the force of sentiment, do not hold the omission of the accessories against me, since without them (without praising myself), I am in a better state to make the rules than to neglect them for not knowing them.

In 1608 he wrote the Conjuration of Catalina ; I will not speak of his comedies which acquired for him much glory. By the admission of connoisseurs, Shakespeare and Johnson are the two greatest dramatists that England may boast. The latter gave rules to perfect theater that were as good as those of Corneille. The first owed everything to the prodigious natural genius that he had. Johnson owed much to his art and his knowledge. It is true that both wrote works that were not worthy of them with the difference however that in the bad works of Johnson one finds no vestiges of the author of Renard and of the Chemist , while in the most bizarre works of Shakespeare you will find here and there traces that will make you recognize their admirable author. Johnson had over Shakespeare a profound knowledge of the ancients, and he drew from them boldly. There is no Roman poet or historian from the time of Sejan and Catalina that he did not translate in the two tragedies for which these two men furnished the subjects, but he rose above all other authors as a conqueror and and that which is thievery in other poets is for him a victory and a conquest. He died 16 August 1637, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. This short epitaph that say so much was placed on his tomb. O rare Ben Johnson .

Otway (Thomas), born in the province of Sussex in 1651, died in 1685 at the age of 34 years. He succeeded admirably in the tender and touching, but this is something too familiar in those places that should have been supported by the dignity of expression. Venice Saved and The Orphan are his two best tragedies . It is a shame that he based the first on such a vicious plot that the greatest characters that one finds there are all rebels and traitors. If the hero of his work had shown as many handsome qualities for the defense of his state as he shows for its ruin, one could not have admired him enough. One may say of him what a Roman historian said of Catalina, that his death would have been glorious, si pro patria concidisset [ if it had been given for his country ]. Otway was in perfect possession of the art of expressing the passions in tragedy and of depicting them with a natural simplicity; he also had the talent to sometimes excite the most violent emotions. Mademoiselle Barry, a famous actress, never pronounced without tears these three words: ah, poor Castalio! Beviledere troubles me and Monime always touches me; this terror takes hold of my soul and art makes honest tears fall.

Congreve (William), born in Ireland in 1672, and died at London in 1729, was the first to show on the English stage, with much spirit, all of the accuracy and regularity that one can wish for in drama. One finds the proof in all of his works, and particularly in his beautiful tragedy l'Epouse affligée, the Mourning bride .

Rowe (Nicholas), was born in Devonshire in 1673 and died at London in 1718 at the 45 years and was buried in Westminster facing Chaucer. He showed himself as regular as Congreve in his tragedie s. His first work, The Ambitious Mother-in-Law merits all sorts of praise for its purity of diction, the accuracy of its characters, and the nobility of its sentiments, but the tragedy of which he made the most and for which he was also the most esteemed, was his Tamerlane . There reigns in all of his works, a spirit of virtue and love for the homeland that does honor to his heart. He made particular use of all occasions that presented themselves to make the theater serve to inspire the great principles of civil liberty.

It is time to speak of the illustrious Addison, his Cato of Attica is the greatest character, and this work is the most beautiful that might be on any stage. It is a masterpiece for its regularity, elegance, poetry and elevated sentiments. It appeared in London in 1713, and all of its parts, while divided and opposed, fit together admirably. Queen Anne desired that this piece be dedicated to her, but the author, in order to uphold his duty and his honor, published it without a dedication. M. Dubos translated some scenes from it into French. The abbé Salvenien made a complete Italian translation, the English Jesuits of Saint-Omer translated this work into Latin and had it publicly performed by their students. M. Sewell, doctor of medicine, and the chevalier Steel have embellished it with learned remarks full of taste.

The whole character of Cato conforms to history. He excites our admiration as a Roman virtuous as he is intrepid. He touches us with the sight of the poor success of his noble efforts in support of the public cause. It builds our indignation against Cæsar in that the most eminent virtue finds itself oppressed by a happy tyrant.

The individual characters are distinguished from each other by the nuances of different colors. Portius and Marcus have their morals and their temperaments, and this depiction is noticeable throughout the work in the opposition that reigns in their sentiments, even though they are friends. One is calm and self controlled, the other is full of fire and vivacity. They propose together to follow the example of their father, the older considers him the defender of liberty, the younger as the enemy of Cæsar; one imitates his wisdom, and the other his zeal for Rome.

The character Juba is new; he takes Cato as a model, and he finds himself engaged by his love for Marcia. His shame when his passion is discovered, his respect for the authority of Cato, his conversation with Syphax touch on the superiority of exercises of the spirit over those of the body, embellishing further the traits that concern him.

The difference is no less sensitively exposed between the vicious characters. Sempronius and Syphax are both cowards, traitors and hypocrites, but each has his own manner; the perfidy of the Roman and that of the African are as different as their humors.

Lucius, opposed to Sempronius and friend of Cato, is a sweet character carried to compassion, sensitive to the ills off all those who suffer, not by feebleness, but because he is touched by the misfortunes that he sees prey on his homeland.

The two daughters are animated by the same spirit as their father, Cato's daughter is keenly interested in the cause of virtue, she puts a curb on a violent passion while reflecting on her birth, and by an admirable artifice of the poet, she shows how much she esteems her lover on the occasion of his supposed death. This incident is as natural as it is necessary and and it makes disappear that which in this passion would have hardly been suitable for the daughter of Cato. On the other side, Lucie, of a sweet and tender character, cannot disguise her feelings, but after having declared them, fear of the consequences resolves her to decide to await the turn that affairs will take before making her lover happy. There is the timid and sensitive character of her father Lucius, and at the same time his attachment for Marcia also engages him before the friendship of Lucius for Cato.

In the dénouement, which is of a mixed order, unhappy virtue is abandoned to chance and the gods, but all of the other virtuous characters are rewarded.

This tragedy is too well known to enter into the details of its particular beauties. The sole soliloquy of Cato, act V. scene 1 , will always be admired by philosophers. It finishes thus.

Addison pleases us by his good taste and by his simple depictions. When Sempronius says to Portius that he would be at the height of happiness if Cato his father would give him his sister Marcia, Portius responds, act I. scene 2:

How this image is beautiful and well-placed in the mouth of a Roman! It is furthermore the majesty of religion that augments the nobility of the thought. The idea is new and at the same time so simple that it appears that anyone would have found it.

As for the love plot of this piece, one of our great geniuses, a great judge in these matters, condemns it in more than one place. Addison, says M. Voltaire, had the weak complacency to bend the severity of his character to the morals of his own time and spoiled a masterpiece for wanting to please him. I have nevertheless much pain in subscribing to this notion. It is true that M. Addison reproduced love on stage, a subject too ordinary and worn, but he painted a love worthy of a Roman virgin, a chaste and virtuous love, the fruit of nature and not of a disordered imagination. As beautiful as Portia is, it is the great Cato that the young prince Massinisso loves in his daughter.

Lovers are here more tender and at the same time wiser than those that had previously been presented on stage. In our corrupt century a poet must have a great deal of talent to excite the admiration of libertines and to make them attentive to a passion that they have never felt, and of which they have only borrowed the mask.

"This dramatic masterpiece which has done so much honor to our country and to our language (says Steele), excels perhaps as much by the passions of lovers as by the virtues of heroes. At least their love, which is only in the characters of second class, is mire heroic than the grandeur of the principal characters of the greater number of tragedies ." I only want for proof the response of Juba to Marcia, act I, scene 5 , when she reproaches him with dignity for speaking to her of his passion at a time when the good of the common cause demands that he be occupied by other thoughts. Does he reply like Pyrrhus to Andromache?

No, but adoring the daughter of Cato, he tries to be worthy of her, he must fulfill his duty. Vos reproches, he instantly replies, sont justes, vertueuse Marcie, je me hâte d'aller joindre nos troupes, &c. And indeed he leaves.

The French Cato of M. des Champs is to the English Cato what the Phèdre of Pradon is to the Phèdre of Racine. Addison died in 1719, aged 47 years, and was buried at Westminster. Besides being one of the most pure writers of Great Britain, he is the poet of sages.

Since him and Congreve, English theater works have become more regular, the authors more correct and less bold; yet the brilliant monsters of Shakespeare please a thousand times more than modern wisdom. The poetic genius of the English, says M. de Voltaire, resembles a bushy tree planted by nature, tossing at chance a thousand branches, and growing unequally with force, it dies if you try to trim it as a tree in the gardens of Marly.

That is enough on the illustrious tragic poets of the two rival nations in theater, but since it matters to those who wish to imitate them, to understand well the end of tragedy , and to not be mistaken in the choice of subjects and the characters that suit them, they will not be upset to find below some advice from M. l'abbé Dubos, because they are appropriate to light this spiny path. We will finish by discussing with him whether love is the essence of tragedy .

What engages us to stop with pleasure at this genre of poem over which Melpomene presides is that it affects us much more than comedy. It is certain that in general one is not moved as much by theatrical action, that they are not so given over to the spectacle during the performance of comedies as they are of tragedies . Those who make their entertainment of dramatic poetry speak more often and with more affection of the tragedies than of the comedies that they have seen. They know a greater number of verses from the works of Corneille and Racine than from those of Molière. After all, the public prefers the rendezvous that is given to divert it by making it cry to that which one presents to divert it by making it laugh.

Tragedy , following the signification that one gave to this word, is the imitation of life and the discourse of heroes, subjects by their elevation to the passions and catastrophes, as well as the most sublime virtues. The tragic poet makes us see men preyed upon by the greatest agitations. It is unjust but all-powerful gods who demand the slaughter of a young innocent princess at the feet of their altars. It is the great Pompey, the conqueror of so many nations and the terror of the kings of the Orient, massacred by vile slaves.

We do not recognize our friends in the characters of the tragic poet, but their passions are more impetuous, and as the laws are but a very feeble curb for these passions, they have very different effects than the passions of the characters of a comic poet. Thus the terror and pity that the depiction of tragic events excites in our souls attracts our attention more than laughter and the scorn that comic incidents produce in us.

The end of tragedy being to excite terror and compassion, it is necessary that the tragic poet first shows us characters equally likeable and estimable, and that he then show them in an unhappy state. Begin by making me esteem those in whom you would like me to be interested. Inspire veneration for the characters destined to make my tears flow.

It is therefore necessary that the characters of tragedy do not deserve to be unhappy, or at least as unhappy as they are. If their faults are real crimes, these crimes must not have been committed voluntarily. Œdipus would not be the principal character of a tragedy if he had known at the time of his combat that he was drawing his sword against his own father.

The misfortunes of scoundrels are hardly proper to touch us; they are a just punishment that could not incite in us either true terror or compassion. Their punishment, if we were actually to see it, would arouse a mechanic compassion in us, but as the emotion that imitations produce is not as tyrannical as that which the object itself arouses, the idea of the crimes that a character in a tragedy has committed, prevents us from feeling for him a parallel compassion. Nothing happens to him in the catastrophe that we have not wished for him many times during the course of the piece, and and we applaud to the heavens which finally justify their slowness to punish.

Nevertheless, it must not be forbidden to introduce scoundrels in tragedy , as long as the principal interest of the piece does not fall upon them. The design of the poem is to incite in us terror and compassion for certain characters, but not for all of the characters. Thus the poet, in order to arrive more certainly at his end, may well light other passions in us that prepare us to feel more keenly the two that should dominate the tragic stage; I mean compassion and terror. The indignation that we develop against Narcissus augments the compassion and terror into which we are thrown by the misfortunes of Britannicus. The horror that the discourse of Œnone inspires makes us more sensitive to the unfortunate destiny of Phèdre.

One may then place scoundrels on the tragic stage as one places executioners in the painting that depicts the martyrdom of a saint. But as one would blame the painter for depicting as loveable those to whom he makes something odious happen, in like manner they would blame the poet who gave scoundrels qualities capable of reconciling them to the good wishes of the spectator. It would be to go against the greatest end of tragedy to depict vice as beautiful when it should be to purge the passions by placing before our eyes the perditions into which they lead us and the perils into which they hurl us.

Dramatic poets worthy of writing for the stage have always regarded the obligation to inspire the hatred of vice and the love of virtue as the first obligation of their art. When I say that tragedy can purge the passions, I mean to speak solely of base passions dangerous to society and they are well understood as such. A tragedy that would give disgust for passions useful to society, such as love of homeland, love of glory, fear of dishonor, &c . would be just as defective as a tragedy that made vice loveable.

Never warm the buskin of men inferior to many of those with whom we live, otherwise you would be as blamable as if you had done what Quintilian calls giving a child the role of Hercules to play, personam Herculis, & cothurnos aptare infantibus .

Not only must the characters of the principal roles be interesting, but it is necessary that the accidents which befall them be such that they may tragically afflict reasonable people and instill fear in a courageous man. A prince of forty years that one represents in despair and and in the position of committing suicide because his glory and his interests oblige him to separate from a woman with whom he is in love and by whom he has been loved for twelve years, never makes us compassionate to his misery, we would not know how to pity him for five acts.

The excess of passions into which the poet makes his hero fall, all that he makes them say in order to persuade the spectators that the interior of this character is in the most frightful agitation only serves to degrade him more. One renders the hero indifferent in wishing to render the plot more interesting. The usage of that which happens in the world and the experience of our friends, for want of our own, teaches us that a contented passion wears itself out in twelve years, that it simply becomes a habit. A hero obliged by his glory and by the interest of his authority to break this habit would not be afflicted enough by it to become a tragic character. He ceases to have the dignity required of characters in tragedy if his affliction goes so far as despair. Such a misfortune would not strike him if he had a little of that resolve without which one could not be, I will not say a hero, but even a virtuous man. Glory, one will say, will win him over in the end, and Titus, of whom one easily sees that you are speaking, sends Berenice home.

But this is not to justify Titus, it is to do wrong to the reputation that he has left, it is to go against the rules of verisimilitude and the truly moving to give him, contrary to the witness of history, such a weak and effeminate character. Thus, although Bérénice is a very methodical work and perfectly well-written, the public does not see it with the same delight as it reads Phèdre and Andromaque. Racine chose his subject poorly, and and to speak the truth more exactly, he had the weakness to write it at the insistence of a great princess.

As a result of these reflections on the inappropriate role that Racine made of Titus, it does not follow that we should bar love from tragedy . One should not blame poets for choosing from their imaginations the effects of the most general passions and which all men ordinarily feel. Of all the passions, love is the most generally felt, there is no one who has not had the misery to feel it at least once in their life. It is enough to interest oneself in works about those whom it tyrannizes.

Our poets could not be blamed then for giving love a place in the plot of a work if they did so with more discretion. But they have pushed too far complaisance for the taste of their century or, better said, they themselves have given rise to this taste with too much cowardice. In outdoing each other in this, they have made a boudoir of the tragic scene. May this end!

Racine placed more love in his works than Corneille. Boileau, working to reconcile his friend with the celebrated Arnaud, brought him the tragedy Phèdre on behalf of the author, and asked him his advice. M. Arnaud, after reading the work, said to him that there was nothing to complain of in the character of Phèdre, but why had he made Hippolyte a lover? This is perhaps the only critique that can be made against the tragedy Phèdre, and the author, who had even made it to himself, justified himself by asking what the dandies would have thought of an Hippolyte who was the enemy of all women? What cruel pleasantries would they not have thrown at the son of Thésée?

At least Racine recognized his fault, but most who have come since this amiable poet, finding that he was easier to imitate in his weak moments than in his others, have gone even further than he down this wrong path.

Since the taste to move by love in tragedy was not that of the ancients, it will perhaps not be that of our nephews. Posterity will then be able to blame the abuses that our tragic poets have made of their spirit and censure them one day for having given the character of Tircis and Philiène, for having made all of those things done for love by illustrious personages who lived during the centuries when the idea that one had of the character of a great man did not admit the mixture of such weaknesses. They will take our poets in hand for having made a love intrigue the cause of all the events that took place in Rome; when they will create a conjuration for calling back Tarquinius, as for having shown the young men of that time so polished and even so timid with their mistresses, they whose morals are sufficiently known from the recitation of Titus-Livitus of the adventures of Lucretius.

All those who have depicted for us Brutus, Arminius, and other illustrious personages with such inflexible courage as so tender and so gallant have not copied nature in their imitations and have forgotten the wise lesson that M. Despréaux gave in the third song of the Art poétique, where he decides so judiciously that personages must retain their national character:

The same reason that should engage poets to not introduce love into all of their tragedies should perhaps also engage them to choose their heroes from times at a certain distance from our own. It is easier to inspire in us veneration for men who are known only to us through history than for those who lived in a time not very distant from our own and about whom a still recent tradition instructs us of the exact particulars of their lives. The tragic poet, one might say, would do well to suppress the pettiness capable of debasing his hero. Without doubt, he was not lacking in them, but the listener remembers this, he takes exception to them when a hero lived in a time so close to his own that tradition has informed him of this pettiness.

It is true that the Greek poets placed on stage sovereigns who had just died and sometimes even living princes, but this was not to make heroes of them. They were attempting to please their homeland in making the government of a single man odious, and it was a means to success to depict kings with a vile character. It is with a similar motive that one has for some time represented on stage the famous siege of Leyden which the Spanish carried out at the orders of Phillip II and which they were obliged to lift in 1578. Since Melpomene pleases to adorn her personages with crowns and scepters, it will occur in these times of horror and persecution, that she chooses as a victim in a dramatic piece a prince against whom all spectators revolted.