University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

I publish this tragedy not without many apprehensions. The various pieces which I have known applauded on the stage, and despised in the closet, make me dread lest mine should incur the same fate. One or two striking incidents, the skill of the actors, my readiness to obviate objections, might conciliate an audience in the representation; but a different merit is necessary to support the broad day of publication. The regular conduct of the piece, or even its interesting the passions, will then be of little consequence. Every work in verse, though otherwise complete, must of necessity be tedious, if each line is not full of strength and harmony; if an elegance pervades not the whole; if it wants those inexpressible graces of poetry which genius alone can bestow, to which knowledge can never attain, and concerning which we have argued so poorly, and to so little purpose since the death of Mr. Despreaux.

It is a very great mistake to imagine, that the versification is either the easiest, or the least considerable part of a dramatic performance. Racine, who of all men, Virgil excepted, best knew the art of verse, was of a different opinion. He spent two whole years in composing his Phædra. Pradon boasts that his was finished in less than two months. As the transient success of a tragedy, depends with respect to its representation, not on the style, but on the actors and incidents, the two Phædras seemed at first to meet with an equal degree of applause. But the merits of each were soon determined on their publication. Pradon, according to the usual

practice of bad authors, in an insolent preface accused his critics of prejudice and malice; this, however, availed but little; his play so much extolled by his party and himself, sunk into that contempt which it deserved; and were it not for the Phœdra of Mr. Racine, we should not know at present, that Pradon ever composed one.

But whence arises the vast difference between these two performances? The plot is nearly the same in both. Theseus is absent in the first acts: he is supposed to have been in the infernal regions with Pirithous. Hippolytus his son wants to quit Trezene, and fly from Aricia whom he loves. He declares his passion to Aricia, and attends to that of Phædra with horror. He dies the same kind of death, and his governor relates the circumstances of it.

Add to this, that the personages in each piece, being in the same situation, say almost the same things; but here it is, that the man of genius, and the bad poet are distinguished. When Racine and Pradon have similar sentiments, the contrast is most striking between them. As a remarkable proof of this, we need only take the speech of Hippolytus when he first discovers his love to Aricia. In Racine he expresses himself as follows:

“I who so long with proud rebellion strove
“Against the force of love, and mock'd his chains;
“Who saw with pity the disastrous wreck
“Of feeble mortals, thinking I should stand
“Always secure, and from the shore survey
“The raging billows. To the common law
“Now subject; ah! how fatal is the change!
“What restless tumults hurry me away
“Far from myself! one moment hath subdu'd
“My rash presumption, and this haughty soul
“It's freedom boasts no more. Six lingering months
“Tortured with shame, a prey to hopeless grief,
“I bore the rankling arrow in my breast.
“Against thy charms, against my own desires
“I struggled, but in vain. I shunn'd thy sight;
“But thou wert present still; thy image pierced
“The forest's deep recess; the beams of day,
“The shades of darkness brought before my view
“Thy winning form in new-born grace array'd;
“All, all conspire to bend to thy controul
“This heart reluctant: to my former self
“Now lost, the only meed of all my toil.
“My bow, my javelin, and swift-rolling car
“Delight no more, no longer I regard
“The precepts of the Ocean-God; the woods
“Echo my groans alone, and unemploy'd
“My coursers have forgot their master's voice.”

Pradon makes Hippolytus speak thus:

“Too long with impious lips have I reproach'd
“Love's gentler passion, and adored Diana;
“In solitary fierceness spent my life
“Chasing the bears and lions of the desart.
“Now a pursuit more urgent claims my care,
“And my distracted thoughts employs. Thy charms
“When I beheld, the field and all it's sports
“I strait forsook; erst sought with sweet delight.
“And now no other motive, to the chace
“Impels my steps, but to reflect on thee.”

These two passages cannot be read and compared, without our admiring the one, and laughing at the other. There is, however, in both the same ground of sensations and thoughts; for when we are to make the passions speak, all men have nearly the same ideas. But the manner of expressing them distinguishes the man of wit, from him who has

none, the man of genius from him who has only wit, and the poet from him who would be a poet if he could.

To arrive at Racine's perfection in writing, a man must possess his genius, and polish his works like him. How different ought I to be, who born with such indifferent talents, and oppressed by continual disorders, have neither the gift of a fine imagination, nor leisure to correct the faults of my compositions with diligent attention? I perceive and lament all the imperfections, both in the contexture and diction of this piece. I should have altered some of them for the better, could I have delayed the publication; but a great many would still have remained. In every art there is a certain point beyond which we can never advance. We are confined within the limits of our talents; we see perfection before us, and make impotent efforts to attain to it.

I shall not critically examine all the particular faults of this piece; the reader will find abundant room for such remarks without any assistance. But I cannot help taking notice of a general objection which has been made to the choice of my subject. As it is the genius of Frenchmen to lay hold with rapidity on what is ridiculous, in things of the most serious nature; it has been said that the subject of Mariamne is nothing more, than an old, amorous, brutal husband, to whom his wife, from aversion, refuses the conjugal duty. To which it has been added, that a family quarrel could never make the foundation of a good tragedy. I would beg the attention of the reader to a few reflections on prejudices of this kind.

Tragedies are either founded on the interest of a whole nation, or on the private interests of particular princes. Of the first kind are, the Iphigenia in Aulis, where all Greece assembled demands the blood of the daughter of

Agamemnon: the Horatii, where the fate of Rome is intrusted to three combatants: and OEdipus, in which the safety of the Thebans depends on the discovery of the murderer of Laius. Of the second kind are Britannicus, Phædra, Mithridates, &c.

In the three latter pieces, all the interest is confined to the families of their respective heroes. Every event is produced by passions which the vulgar feel in the same manner as princes; and their plots are as proper for comedy as tragedy. Take the names away, and Mithridates is only an old fellow in love with a young girl; his two sons are in love with her likewise; and he has recourse to a very mean stratagem to discover which of the two she is fond of. Phœdra is a step-mother who encouraged by an intriguing confidante, makes proposals to her son-in-law, who is elsewhere engaged. Nero is an impetuous young man, who falls suddenly in love, wants immediately to be parted from his wife, and hides himself behind the tapestry to overhear the conversation of his mistress. These are subjects as fit for the pen of Moliere, as of Racine. The plot indeed of the Miser is precisely the same with that of Mithridates. Harpagon and the King of Pontus are two old men in love, each of them has a rival in his son, and each of them has recourse to the same artifice to discover what passes between the son and the mistress; and each piece conclude with the marriage of the young man.

Moliere and Racine were equally successful. One amused, and excited the mirth and laughter of the audience. The other affected, terrified, and made them weep. Moliere exposed the ridiculous love of an old miser; Racine represented the weakness of a great prince, and rendered it respectable.

Should Vateau and Le Brun be ordered to paint a wedding. One would exhibit a company of peasants under an arbour in all their native, rude, and lawless jollity, seated round a rustic table, where drunkenness, riot, debauchery, and immoderate laughter would prevail. The other wound paint the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the feast of the Gods, and their sublime enjoyments. Thus both, though by different means, would arrive at the highest degree of perfection in their art.

All these examples may be applied to Mariamne. The ill humour of a wife, the love of an old husband, the malicious tricks of a sister-in-law, are subjects of a lighter kind, and in themselves of a comic nature. But a monarch to whom the world has given the title of great, fond to distraction of the finest woman in the universe, the violent transports of a king so famous for his virtues and his crimes; his past cruelties, his present remorse; that perpetual and rapid transition from love to hatred; the ambition of his sister, the intrigues of his ministers, the distressful situation of a princess, whose virtue and beauty are celebrated even to this day, who had seen her father and brother condemned to death by her husband, and who to complete her misfortunes was beloved by the murderer of her family; what a field is here! what an opening for any genius but mine! will any one affirm that such a subject is unworthy of tragedy? It rather proves, most evidently, that as things happen to turn out, so they change their names.