No Fancy for a Plain Gentleman
February 10, 2020_-001.jpg) |
| Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire |
Voltaire
once visited Congreve. This famous dramatist requested to be regarded
only as a plain gentleman. "Had you been that I should never
have come to see you," Voltaire cynically replies.
(William
Congreve baptized Feb. 10, 1670.)
Vol.
34, pp. 130-140 of The Harvard Classics
Letter
XVIII—On Tragedy
THE ENGLISH as
well as the Spaniards were possessed of theatres at a time when the
French had no more than moving, itinerant stages. Shakspeare, who was
considered as the Corneille of the first-mentioned nation, was pretty
nearly contemporary with Lope de Vega, and he created, as it were,
the English theatre. Shakspeare boasted a strong fruitful genius. He
was natural and sublime, but had not so much as a single spark of
good taste, or knew one rule of the drama. I will now hazard a
random, but, at the same time, true reflection, which is, that the
great merit of this dramatic poet has been the ruin of the English
stage. There are such beautiful, such noble, such dreadful scenes in
this writer’s monstrous farces, to which the name of tragedy is
given, that they have always been exhibited with great success. Time,
which alone gives reputation to writers, at last makes their very
faults venerable. Most of the whimsical gigantic images of this poet,
have, through length of time (it being a hundred and fifty years
since they were first drawn) acquired a right of passing for sublime.
Most of the modern dramatic writers have copied him: but the touches
and descriptions which are applauded in Shakspeare. are hissed at in
these writers; and you will easily believe that the veneration in
which this author is held, increases in proportion to the contempt
which is shown to the moderns. Dramatic writers don’t consider that
they should not imitate him; and the ill-success of Shakspeare’s
imitators produces no other effect, than to make him be considered as
inimitable. You remember that in the tragedy of Othello, Moor of
Venice, a most tender piece, a man strangles his wife on the
stage; and that the poor woman, whilst she is strangling, cries aloud
that she dies very unjustly. You know that in Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark, two grave-diggers make a grave, and are all the time
drinking, singing ballads, and making humorous reflections (natural
indeed enough to persons of their profession) on the several skulls
they throw up with their spades; but a circumstance which will
surprise you is, that this ridiculous incident has been imitated. In
the reign of King Charles II., which was that of politeness, and the
Golden Age of the liberal arts; Otway, in his Venice
Preserved, introduces Antonio the senator, and Naki, his
courtesan, in the midst of the horrors of the Marquis of Bedemar’s
conspiracy. Antonio, the super-annuated senator plays, in his
mistress’ presence, all the apish tricks of a lewd, impotent
debauchee, who is quite frantic and out of his senses. He mimics a
bull and a dog, and bites his mistress’ legs, who kicks and whips
him. However, the players have struck these buffooneries (which
indeed were calculated merely for the dregs of the people) out of
Otway’s tragedy; but they have still left in Shakspeare’s Julius
Cæsar the jokes of the Roman shoemakers and cobblers, who are
introduced in the same scene with Brutus and Cassius. You will
undoubtedly complain, that those who have hitherto discoursed with
you on the English stage, and especially on the celebrated
Shakspeare, have taken notice only of his errors; and that on one has
translated any of those strong, those forcible passages which atone
for all his faults. But to this I will answer, that nothing is easier
than to exhibit in prose all the silly impertinences which a poet may
have thrown out; but that it is a very difficult task to translate
his fine verses. All your junior academical sophs, who set up for
censors of the eminent writers, compile whole volumes; but methinks
two pages which display some of the beauties of great geniuses, are
of infinitely more value than all the idle rhapsodies of those
commentators; and I will join in opinion with all persons of good
taste in declaring, that greater advantage may be reaped from a dozen
verses of Homer or Virgil, than from all the critiques put together
which have been made on those two great poets.
I
have ventured to translate some passages of the most celebrated
English poets, and shall now give you one from Shakspeare. Pardon the
blemishes of the translation for the sake of the original; and
remember always that when you see a version, you see merely a faint
print of a beautiful picture. I have made choice of part of the
celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet,which you may remember is as
follows:—
“To
be, or not to be? that is the question!
Whether
’t is nobler in the mind to suffer
The
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or
to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And
by opposing, end them? To die! to sleep!
No
more! and by a sleep to say we end
The
heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That
flesh is heir to! ’T is a consummation
Devoutly
to be wished. To die! to sleep!
To
sleep; perchance to dream! Ay, there’s the rub;
For
in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
When
we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must
give us pause. There ’s the respect
That
makes a calamity of so long life:
For
who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The
oppressor’s wrong, the poor man’s contumely,
The
pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The
insolence of office, and the spurns
That
patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When
he himself might his quietus make
With
a bare bodkin. Who would fardels bear
To
groan and sweat under a weary life,
But
that the dread of something after death,
The
undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No
traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And
makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than
fly to others that we know not of?
Thus
conscience does make cowards of us all;
And
thus the native hue of resolution
Is
sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought:
And
enterprises of great weight and moment
With
this regard their currents turn awry,
And
lose the name of action—”
My
version of it runs thus:—
“Demeure,
il faut choisir et passer à l’instant
De
la vie à la mort, ou de l’être au neant.
Dieux
cruels, s’il en est, éclairez mon courage.
Faut-il
vieillir courbé sous la main qui m’outrage,
Supporter,
ou finir mon malheur et mon sort?
Qui
suis je? Qui m’arrête! et qu’est-ce que la mort?
C’est
la fin de nos maux, c’est mon unique asile
Après
de longs transports, c’est un sommeil tranquile.
On
s’endort, et tout meurt, mais un affreux reveil
Doit
succeder peut etre aux douceurs du sommeil!
On
nous menace, on dit que cette courte vie,
De
tourmens éternels est aussi-tôt suivie.
O
mort! moment fatal! affreuse eternité!
Tout
cœur à ton seul nom se glace épouvanté.
Eh!
qui pourroit sans toi supporter cette vie,
De
nos prêtres menteurs benir l’hypocrisie;
D’une
indigne maitresse encenser les erreurs,
Ramper
sous un ministre, adorer ses hauteurs;
Et
montrer les langueurs de son ame abattüe,
A
des amis ingrats qui detournent la vüe?
La
mort seroit trop douce en ces extrémitez,
Mais
le scrupule parle, et nous crie, arrêtez;
Il
defend à nos mains cet heureux homicide
Et
d’un heros guerrier, fait un Chrétien timide,” &c.
Do
not imagine that I have translated Shakspeare in a servile manner.
Woe to the writer who gives a literal version; who by rendering every
word of his original, by that very means enervates the sense, and
extinguishes all the fire of it. It is on such an occasion one may
justly affirm, that the letter kills, but the Spirit quickens.
Here
follows another passage copied from a celebrated tragic writer among
the English. It is Dryden, a poet in the reign of Charles II.—a
writer whose genius was too exuberant, and not accompanied with
judgment enough. Had he written only a tenth part of the works he
left behind him, his character would have been conspicuous in every
part; but his great fault is his having endeavoured to be universal.
The
passage in question is as follows:—
“When
I consider life, ’t is all a cheat,
Yet
fooled by hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust
on and think, to-morrow will repay;
To-morrow’s
falser than the former day;
Lies
more; and whilst it says we shall be blest
With
some new joy, cuts off what we possessed;
Strange
cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet
all hope pleasure in what yet remain,
And
from the dregs of life think to receive
What
the first sprightly running could not give.
I’m
tired with waiting for his chymic gold,
Which
fools us young, and beggars us when old.”
I
shall now give you my translation:—
“De
desseins en regrets et d’erreurs en desirs
Les
mortels insensés promenent leur folie.
Dans
des malheurs presents, dans l’espoir des plaisirs
Nous
ne vivons jamais, nous attendons la vie.
Demain,
demain, dit-on, va combler tous nos vœus.
Demain
vient, et nous laisse encore plus malheureux.
Quelle
est l’erreur, helas! du soin qui nous dévore,
Nul
de nous ne voudroit recommencer son cours.
De
nos premiers momens nous maudissons l’aurore,
Et
de la nuit qui vient nous attendons encore,
Ce
qu’ont en vain promis les plus beaux de nos jours,” &c.
It
is in these detached passages that the English have hitherto
excelled. Their dramatic pieces, most of which are barbarous and
without decorum, order, or verisimilitude, dart such resplendent
flashes through this gleam, as amaze and astonish. The style is too
much inflated, too unnatural, too closely copied from the Hebrew
writers, who abound so much with the Asiatic fustian. But then it
must be also confessed that the stilts of the figurative style, on
which the English tongue is lifted up, raises the genius at the same
time very far aloft, though with an irregular pace. The first English
writer who composed a regular tragedy, and infused a spirit of
elegance through every part of it, was the illustrious Mr. Addison.
His “Cato” is a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and
to the beauty and harmony of the numbers. The character of Cato is,
in my opinion, vastly superior to that of Cornelia in the “Pompey”
of Corneille, for Cato is great without anything like fustian, and
Cornelia, who besides is not a necessary character, tends sometimes
to bombast. Mr. Addison’s Cato appears to me the greatest character
that was ever brought upon any stage, but then the rest of them do
not correspond to the dignity of it, and this dramatic piece, so
excellently well writ, is disfigured by a dull love plot, which
spreads a certain languor over the whole, that quite murders it.
The
custom of introducing love at random and at any rate in the drama
passed from Paris to London about 1660, with our ribbons and our
perruques. The ladies who adorn the theatrical circle there, in like
manner as in this city will suffer love only to be the theme of every
conversation. The judicious Mr. Addison had the effeminate
complaisance to soften the severity of his dramatic character, so as
to adapt it to the manners of the age, and, from an endeavour to
please, quite ruined a masterpiece in its kind. Since is time the
drama is become more regular, the audience more difficult to be
leased, and writers more correct and less bold. I have seen some new
pieces hat were written with great regularity, but which, at the same
time, were very flat and insipid. One would think that the English
had been hitherto formed to produce irregular beauties only. The
shining monsters of Shakspeare give infinite more delight than the
judicious images of the moderns. Hitherto the poetical genius of the
English resembles a tufted tree planted by the hand of Nature, that
throws out a thousand branches at random, and spreads unequally, but
with great vigour. It dies if you attempt to force its nature, and to
lop and dress it in the same manner as the trees of the Garden of
Marli.
Letter
XIX—On Comedy
I AM surprised
that the judicious and ingenious Mr. de Muralt, who has published
some letters on the English and French nations, should have confined
himself, in treating of comedy, merely to censure Shadwell the comic
writer. This author was had in pretty great contempt in Mr. de
Muralt’s time, and was not the poet of the polite part of the
nation. His dramatic pieces, which pleased some time in acting, were
despised by all persons of taste, and might be compared to many plays
which I have seen France, that drew crowds to the play-house, at the
same time that they were intolerable to read; and of which it might
be said, that the whole city of Paris exploded them, and yet all
flocked to see them represented on the stage. Methinks Mr. de Muralt
should have mentioned an excellent comic writer (living when he was
in England), I mean Mr. Wycherley, who was a long time known publicly
to be happy in the good graces of the most celebrated mistress of
King Charles II. This gentleman, who passed his life among persons of
the highest distinction, was perfectly well acquainted with their
lives and their follies, and painted them with the strongest pencil,
and in the truest colours. He has drawn a misanthrope or man-hater,
in imitation of that of Molière. All Wycherley’s strokes are
stronger and bolder than those of our misanthrope, but then they are
less delicate, and the rules of decorum are not so well observed in
this play. The English writer has corrected the only defect that is
in Molière’s comedy, the thinness of the plot, which also is so
disposed that the characters in it do not enough raise our concern.
The English comedy affects us, and the contrivance of the plot is
very ingenious, but at the same time it is too bold for the French
manners. The fable is this:—A captain of a man-of-war, who is very
brave, open-hearted, and inflamed with a spirit of contempt for all
mankind, has a prudent, sincere friend, whom he yet is suspicious of,
and a mistress that loves him with the utmost excess of passion. The
captain so far from returning her love, will not even condescend to
look upon her, but confides entirely in a false friend, who is the
most worthless wretch living. At the same time he has given his heart
to a creature, who is the greatest coquette and the most perfidious
of her sex, and he is so credulous as to be confident she is
Penelope, and his false friend a Cato. He embarks on board his ship
in order to go and fight the Dutch, having left all his money, his
jewels, and everything he had in the world to this virtuous creature,
whom at the same time he recommends to the care of his supposed
faithful friend. Nevertheless the real man of honour, whom he
suspects so unaccountably, goes on board the ship with him, and the
mistress, on whom he would not bestow so much as one glance,
disguises herself in the habit of a page, and is with him the whole
voyage, without his once knowing that she is of a sex different from
that she attempts to pass for, which, by the way, is not over
natural.
The
captain having blown up his own ship in an engagement, returns to
England abandoned and undone, accompanied by his page and his friend,
without knowing the friendship of the one or the tender passion of
the other. Immediately he goes to the jewel among women, how he
expected had preserved her fidelity to him and the treasure he had
left in her hands. He meets with her indeed, but married to the
honest knave in whom he had reposed so much confidence, and finds she
had acted as treacherously with regard to the casket he had entrusted
her with. The captain can scarce think it possible that a woman of
virtue and honour can act so vile a part; but to convince him still
more of the reality of it, this very worthy lady falls in love with
the little page, and will force him to her embraces. But as it is
requisite justice should be done, and that in a dramatic piece virtue
ought to be rewarded and vice punished, it is at last found that the
captain takes his page’s place and lies with his faithless
mistress, cuckolds his treacherous friend, thrusts his sword through
his body, recovers his casket, and marries his page. You will observe
that this play is also larded with a petulant, litigious old woman (a
relation of the captain), who is the most comical character that was
ever brought upon the stage.
Wycherley
has also copied from Molière another play, of as singular and bold a
cast, which is a kind of Ecole des Femmes, or, School
for Married Women.
The
principal character in this comedy is one Horner, a sly fortune
hunter, and the terror of all the City husbands. This fellow, in
order to play a surer game, causes a report to be spread, that in his
last illness, the surgeons had found it necessary to have him made a
eunuch. Upon his appearing in this noble character, all the husbands
in town flocked to him with their wives, and now poor Horner is only
puzzled about his choice. However, he gives the preference
particularly to a little female peasant, a very harmless, innocent
creature, who enjoys a fine flush of health, and cuckolds her husband
with a simplicity that has infinitely more merit than the witty
malice of the most experienced ladies. This play cannot indeed be
called the school of good morals, but it is certainly the school of
wit and true humour.
Sir
John Vanbrugh has written several comedies, which are more humorous
than those of Mr. Wycherley, but not so ingenious. Sir John was a man
of pleasure, and likewise a poet and an architect. The general
opinion is, that he is as sprightly in his writings as he is heavy in
his buildings. It is he who raised the famous Castle of Blenheim, a
ponderous and lasting monument of our unfortunate Battle of Hochstet.
Were the apartments but as spacious as the walls are thick, this
castle would be commodious enough. Some wag, in an epitaph he made on
Sir John Vanbrugh, has these lines:—
“Earth
lie light on him, for he
Laid
many a heavy load in thee.”
Sir
John having taken a tour into France before the glorious war that
broke out in 1701, was thrown into the Bastille, and detained there
for some time, without being ever able to discover the motive which
had prompted our ministry to indulge him with this mark of their
distinction. He wrote a comedy during his confinement; and a
circumstance which appears to me very extraordinary is, that we don’t
meet with so much as a single satirical stroke against the country in
which he had been so injuriously treated.
The
late Mr. Congreve raised the glory of comedy to a greater height than
any English writer before or since his time. He wrote only a few
plays, but they are all excellent in their kind. The laws of the
drama are strictly observed in them; they abound with characters all
which are shadowed with the utmost delicacy, and we don’t meet with
so much as one low or coarse jest. The language is everywhere that of
men of honour, but their actions are those of knaves—a proof that
he was perfectly well acquainted with human nature, and frequented
what we call polite company. He was infirm and come to the verge of
life when I knew him. Mr. Congreve had one defect, which was his
entertaining too mean an idea of his first profession (that of a
writer), though it was to this he owed his fame and fortune. He spoke
of his works as of trifles that were beneath him; and hinted to me,
in our first conversation, that I should visit him upon no other
footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of plainness and
simplicity. I answered, that had he been so unfortunate as to be a
mere gentleman, I should never have come to see him; and I was very
much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity.
Mr.
Congreve’s comedies are the most witty and regular, those of Sir
John Vanbrugh most gay and humorous, and those of Mr. Wycherley have
the greatest force and spirit. It may be proper to observe that these
fine geniuses never spoke disadvantageously of Molière; and that
none but the contemptible writers among the English have endeavoured
to lessen the character of that great comic poet. Such Italian
musicians as despise Lully are themselves persons of no character or
ability; but a Buononcini esteems that great artist, and does justice
to his merit.
The
English have some other good comic writers living, such as Sir
Richard Steele and Mr. Cibber, who is an excellent player, and also
Poet Laureate—a title which, how ridiculous soever it may be
thought, is yet worth a thousand crowns a year (besides some
considerable privileges) to the person who enjoys it. Our illustrious
Corneille had not so much.
To
conclude. Don’t desire me to descend to particulars with regard to
these English comedies, which I am so fond of applauding; nor to give
you a single smart saying or humorous stroke from Wycherley or
Congreve. We don’t laugh in reading a translation. If you have a
mind to understand the English comedy, the only way to do this will
be for you to go to England, to spend three years in London, to make
yourself master of the English tongue, and to frequent the playhouse
every night. I receive but little pleasure from the perusal of
Aristophanes and Plautus, and for this reason because I am neither a
Greek nor a Roman. The delicacy of the humour, the allusion, the à
propos—all these are lost to a foreigner.
But
it is different with respect to tragedy, this treating only of
exalted passions and heroical follies, which the antiquated errors of
fable or history have made sacred. Œdipus, Electra, and such-like
characters, may with as much propriety be treated of by the
Spaniards, the English, or us, as by the Greeks. But true comedy is
the speaking picture of the follies and ridiculous foibles of a
nation; so that he only is able to judge of the painting who is
perfectly acquainted with the people it represents.
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