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PRIZE TRAGEDIES.
In days of yore Melpomene was a proud and
haughty dame, who had to be long and ardently
wooed before she would vouchsafe her company to
any one; she was like one of those fair, unreasonable
damsels in the age of chivalry, for whose sake
a man had to endure much abstinence, penance,
and mortification before he was rewarded with the
slightest degree of familiarity; but now she is transformed
into a mere modern miss, who will flirt and
keep company with all who take the trouble of asking
her. And then both she and her votaries have
become mercenary. In former times it was “the
divinity which stirred within them” that prompted
tragic poets to the creation of those mighty works
that have spread a halo around their names; now
it is a mere matter of dollars and cents: ours serve
for hire, and undertake to manufacture tragedies on
any given subject that may be dictated to them.
On one point, however, they have decidedly the
moderns in strength, they are far inferior in productiveness;
and an author now litters more literary
offspring in a year, than three or four could
formerly bring forth in ten; but what is produced
with so little trouble and in such abundance, is
sickly and short-lived; whilst the rare, but healthy,
hardy offspring of the intellects of other years still
continue to bloom and “flourish in immortal
youth.”
The great point of inferiority of the ancients to
us was their ignorance of machinery, the discoveries
in which we have applied admirably both to
physics and literature. Our forefathers were in
bodily strength immensely superior to the present
slim generation; yet by the aid of engines we can
do more in an hour than they could in a year. So
it is with the drama. They were giants in intellect,
and a tragedy was with them a tremendous
mental struggle and victory; with us it is a mere
mechanical affair. The matter is a trifle, the manner
all in all. We take an interesting anecdote,
put it into turgid blank verse, inflate it with bombast
and epithets, divide and subdivide it into acts
and scenes, and, by the aid of machinery, scenery,
dresses and decorations, make it go off with more
noise and eclat than can be produced by the most
The curious anatomy of the heart of man is
not half so imposing as the intricacies of a “grand
tramp march;” and a prolonged mock combat and
pantomimic style of giving up the ghost are superior
to the very finest poetry. This is not idle complaining.
It is so, and will always be so, as long
as show is preferred to sense; and such things have
probably been much in vogue ever since Thespis
played upon a cart, though it was reserved for the
present age to be exclusively devoted to them. The
“good old times” is now generally allowed to be a
misnomer, and it is foolish to affect to lament over
them. The world has greatly improved since
then; but certainly in most things connected with
the drama we have retrograded lamentably. Modern
comedies are poor enough; but from two-thirds
of modern tragedies, there is no affectation in
saying “heaven deliver us!”[1]
The literature of these United States has been
made the subject of taunt and ridicule; and it is to
be wondered that such has so long been the case
when the means of remedying the defect were so
easy. It appears that at any time authors can be
is really curious to observe, as soon as a five hundred
dollar premium is offered, what a flood of
inspiration deluges the whole land! The mere
reading of the advertisements created hundreds of
tragic poets who never before dreamt of such a
thing; and a speculator in quills realized a very
handsome profit by buying up all the stock within
his reach on the first announcement of the business.
The ploughman quitted his plough and
wrote a tragedy, the drygood-clerks neglected their
customers and wrote tragedies, the frequenters of
ten-pin alleys, and similar elegant places of resort,
stayed at home o' nights and wrote tragedies; and
it is understood that some of them were the most
unique things of their kind that were ever submitted
to the eye of man. To say nothing of the
grammar or the chirography, the violations of the
simple rules of Webster's spelling book were grievous
in the extreme; and towards the latter end of
the fifth act
Two or three of the much-enduring committee have
scarcely recovered from the shock which their intellects
received, and yet retain a perfectly excusable
Considering the manner in which they had to addle
their brains by perusing all this perilous stuff, there
ought certainly to have been a benefit for the remuneration
of the sufferers—that is, the committee.
This was the prevailing character of the pieces,
the authors of whom had taken for their guide
Othello's exclamation, “blood, blood, Iago!” and
cut short the mortal career of their dramatis personæ
with the most unrelenting pens. Others
there were of a more lady-like and lachrymatory
turn, who dealt in
Three-piled hyperbole, spruce affectation,”
were obliged to make away with a great
number, as the depth of a tragedy now-a-days depends
upon the mortality that takes place among
the persons brought together; consequently there
is twice as strong an infusion of the tragic in a play
where ten people are killed, as there is where only
five expire. Soldiers, citizens, peasants, and such
plebeian parts as are enacted by supernumeraries
whose names are not in the bills, are, however,
not taken into account; just as in real life, a
great outcry is made about a dead general, while
being said about the matter.
But Mr. Forrest, Mr. Forrest, what excuse can be
made for thee? Thou who didst profess to admire
the Indian character, and venerate their great and
noble qualities. Was it well done in thee to single
out this persecuted race of beings from the nations
and communities of men on the face of the
earth, as fit subjects to be backed and tortured by
all the poverty-stricken and unfledged poets in the
country? “Call you this backing your friends?”
Is it not enough that they have been ruthlessly
driven from house and home, that their lands have
been forcibly wrested from them, and the graves of
their fathers violated, but you must, by holding
out a five hundred dollar inducement, hound on all
sorts of people to dramatize the lives of their warriors,
and put into the mouths of their sachems and
orators, bad grammar and bombast, which when
living they would have blushed to utter? Think,
Mr. Forrest, of the number of noble chiefs that have
been resuscitated through your means, and transformed
into senseless ranting braggadocios. They
may not, to be sure, appear in public; but will not
their several vainglorious authors distribute the
manuscripts of their unsuccessful efforts among
their friends and connexions all over the country,
thus rendering the Indian character ridiculous, and
adding, as it were, insult to injury? If you want
more prize tragedies, make the affair general, give
the money to the best, but play all that are sent,
and let us have a laugh at the whole world. Make
no more invidious selections, but let there be classic
victims, Grecians and Romans, of whom antiquity
furnishes an inexhaustible supply. Besides,
it would be a very difficult matter to make another
aboriginal tragedy. Indianisms, such as “smoking
the pipe of peace,” and keeping the “chain of
friendship bright,” sound very well when judiciously
and sparingly introduced; but it does not answer
to compound many long speeches entirely of such
figurative fragments.
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