University of Virginia Library

To Charles Eliot Norton.

My dear Norton,

Some while ago you asked me to complete a version of the Œdipus Tyrannus and Coloneus of Sophocles, which had been lying by me some years. Here they are at last, the two Tragedies united into one Drama under the ponderous alliteration which figures on the Title-page; for which, however, I could hit on no so comprehensive a substitute. If you can, pray do so. There also, you see that my Drama professes to be neither a Translation, nor a Paraphrase of Sophocles, but “chiefly taken” from him: I need scarcely add, only intended for those who do not read the Greek. As you, however, to whom I send it, are a Scholar, who not only knows, but reveres the original, I shall try to excuse some of the liberties which I have taken with it. For my very free treatment of what I have retained you are already sufficiently prepared; not so, perhaps, for the much I have omitted: still less for one audacious substitution of my own work for that of Sophocles in what I may call the Second Act in the Second Part of my Play.

Well, then, to begin with the more venial sins of omission. You will see that I have dispensed with all (including what I belive is called the Kommos) which follows the narration of the catastrophe as related by the several witnesses; as I think is the case in some of the Tragedies of Euripides. What Professor Paley says of the Kommos which terminates the Persæof Æchylus must, I think, be true of all: that, whatever effect the vehement recitation might add to it, the Dialogue is secondary to the Spectacle—by which I understand him to mean those outward signs of woe which are implied in the name. Even as I venture to believe—proh Scholasticus!—that in most of the Lyric Chorus (unless in the case of Æschylus) the words are secondary to the Lyre: are; in fact, a kind of better Libretto for the Music.

However this may be with Ode or Kommos, I think no English reader will care to have the horror of the catastrophe in the first Play increased, even to his Mind's eye, by the exhibition of the poor self-blinded King staggering into the public street, whither his two daughters have been summoned to weep, and be wept over by him. In the original, you know, the spectacle he presents is much more revolting—a spectacle indeed of royal degradation surely worse than any which Aristophanes satirised in Euripides. And is not the catastrophe when told of as being accomplished within doors, more terrible, though

less horrible, than when exhibited without? And, on the other hand, does not a reader find the impression left on him by the grand catastrophe of the Coloneus dissipated rather than enhanced by the Lamentations which follow, and conclude the Tragedy?

Thus far I do not think you will much differ from me: but what will you say to the disappearance of two principal Characters from the Dramatis Personæ—that of Creon from the first Play, and that of Ismene from the second? Œdipus, you know, has involved Creon in the same groundless charge of Treason which he brings against Teiresias; and, after much and violent altercation with the Prophet, turns with yet more vindictive fury upon the Prince, who comes to vindicate himself from the charge. From all which little results except to show that the Creon of this Play (the Tyrannus) proves himself by his temperate self-defence, and subsequent forbearance toward his accuser, very unlike the Creon of the two after Tragedies, which Goethe thought should be regarded as parts of a connected Trilogy—a theory which is not favoured either by this dissimilarity of character in the several Tragedies, or by the dates usually assigned to the composition of each; the Antigone being reputed as among the earlier, and the Coloneus, as tradition tells, the very last of all the Poet's works.

As for Ismene—her cautious refusal to help

in burying her revolted brother may not be inconsistent with her singular exploit of riding alone to Athens to acquaint her banished father with what is plotting against him in Thebes. But her arrival brings with it more of paternal and filial effusion than comes within the compass of my Play. So I pretend that some loyal Theban—she, if you please, on her Sicilian filly—had told all that was to be told previously to the opening of the Play: and thus Ismene ‘disappears from my Playbill’ altogether. And Œdipus seems to me to present us a no less pathetic figure when accompanied only by the one daughter who is traditionally associated with him as the type of filial, as afterward of sisterly, devotion.

The disappearance of the two sisters along with that Kommos from the first Play helps to connect it with the second in point of Time, without, I think, diminishing the interest of either. In the Tyrannus, you know, Œdipus appears as a man little, if at all, beyond the prime of life. He came quite young, he tells us, to Thebes; his unlucky marriage, by which the State thought to confirm his other claims to the throne, would, for the same reasons, be not long delayed; those two daughters of his are scarce in their teens—certainly not marriageable—when brought in to him just before his expulsion; which, as the life of Thebes depended on it, must have followed immediately on his conviction.

Creon, at any rate, must have been, by his ill-starr'd relation with Œdipus, considerably the older of the two; and he, we see, is capable of very active service both in the Coloneus and Antigone. And certainly if Oedipus became an old man between the time of his leaving Thebes, and that of his arrival at Athens, Antigone, who figures along with him in both the original Tragedies, may, on her subsequent return to Thebes, have been a suitable bride in point of years to Creon's son Hæmon, but scarcely such as he would have been so much enamoured of as to sacrifice himself at her side.

Nevertheless, in the original Coloneus, Œdipus has become an old—I think, a very old man. Our own Theatre—our own Shakespeare—has ‘jumped the life’ of his people over as wide an interval in the compass of a single Play as Sophocles has done in two several Tragedies: but, especially if considering them as parts of a Trilogy, one cannot help asking one's self where, in all the little world of Greece, Œdipus could have found Space to wander in all the Time.

Perhaps, however, so ran the Legend; or Sophocles considered that, as usual, I think, in ancient Tragedy—the ‘Pity of it“ was increased by adding the weight of old age to blindness and calamity. I do not question that: but is it so with the grandeur of his præternatural ‘taking off,’ if determined to a time of life when death in some way or other is inevitable?

So much for omission. And now for my capital act of treason committed against Sophocles, amounting to nothing less than the re-casting of the whole Second Act (as I call it) of the Coloneus, including Creon's bootless expedition to Athens.

I never understood, though I doubt not the Athenian audience approved, that coming of his with a consdierable force (as in the original he does) unprevented—uninterrupted, and apparently unobserved, under the very walls of their City, and seizing on those who were taking refuge there. Insomuch that, when King Theseus, alarmed by the outcries of the Chorus, comes to the rescue, Antigone and Ismene have already been forced away by some of Creon's people, and Œdipus only just escapes being carried off by Creon himself.

In re-casting all this, I hope that whatever wrong I may have done Sophocles, King Theseus, at any rate, has not suffered indignity at my hands, if Creon be made to regard him of sufficient account as to apprize him before advancing to his walls; not with the rash design of seizing and carrying off those who are under his protection; but to prevail on them, if he can, by fair argument, to return to Thebes: Theseus standing between the two parties to hear, if not to judge, what has to be said on either side.

And on that score also I have something to say. Up to this visit of Creon's, I could never see any just ground for the rancorous hate which

Œdipus entertains and exhibits toward Creon or toward his own sons, which occupies so much of the coloneus with imprecations, that remind one of Lear's against his daughters, but without as much reason, and therefore without engaging our sympathy on his behalf. For how stands the case? Phœbus had announced that, until the murder of King Laius were avanged, Thebes would not rid herself of the Plague that was devouring her: Œdipus denounces Excommunication on the Criminal; convicts himself ; and, after putting out his own eyes, calls aloud for Thebes to execute the sentence he had called down upon himself, whether by banishment or death. Creon, however, who is now left in charge of the City, decides, with the concurrence of Œdipus' two sons, that banishment will be sufficient accomplishment of the Oracle; and Œdipus is accordingly banished. He soon indeed repents of his rash self-denunciation, and prays to be restored to Thebes: but how could that be until the God, by Oracle or Augury, should sanction his return, without danger of bringing back the Plague which he took away with him?

And when the Oracle at last declares that

Thebes can only secure herself from her enemies by repossessing herself of her old King, it is on the strange condition that she is to keep her treasure, whether alive or dead, upon neighbouring territory, for the very reason that he is polluted by his father's blood. Not a satisfactory arrangement for him, whatever it might be for Thebes. But for this, and for all thus far, the Gods were responsible, not Creon and the sons upon whom he fulminates his wrath.

But when Creon appears, and afterward Polynices, to persuade, if not to force him home, he being apprised of their ulterior intentions regarding him, we do not wonder at his blazing up against their selfish duplicity. But still it is, I think, their previous ill-usage (as he thinks it), rather than their present design upon him, which mainly supplies the fuel of his wrath.

Now, had his first expulsion been aggravated by unnecessary cruelty and insult on their part; and had they persisted in keeping him out when the Gods, under some favourable auspices, might have been suposed to license his return to Thebes, polluted as he might still be with the blood which had not prevented his reigning there for so many years before: I think he would have been furnished with such reason for his Fury as would have carried our feelings along with him. And, whatever ancient Legend or Mythology might say, neither of them was very impracticable, had the Poet chosen to deal

with them as I have ventured on doing with him.

While doing, as well as saying all this, I am sure you will understand that I am not pretending to improve on Sophocles whether as a Poet or a Dramatist. As for Poetry, I pretend to very little more than representing the old Greek in sufficiently readable English verse: and whatever I have omitted, added, or altered, has been with a view to the English reader of To-day, without questioning what was fittest for an Athenian theatre more than two thousand years ago. Those great ancient Tragedians were not, any more than their audiences, nice about such consistencies and probabilities as any modern playwright would provide for, and, so far, be the better for it.

One modification of the original not even the English Scholar—I do not mean, Scholastic—would resent; namely, leaving the terrible story to develope itself no further than needs it must to be intelligible, without being descanted, dwelt, and dilated on, after the fashion of Greek Tragedy.

As I thought I should do no better with the Choruses than old Potter, I have left them, as you see, in his hands, though worthy of a better Interpreter than either of us; all of them, I say, excepting the two fragments which might otherwise be imputed to him: one at page 388 of the First Part during which Iocasta is supposed to be making her oblations at the altar before the

Corinthian Herald interrupts her: secondly, at page 455 of the Second Part, by way of giving Theseus a little while before he enters on the scene to which he has been so hastily summoned: and, lastly, the little Choral morality which ends each play. You say that good literal Prose translation would be better than Potter. So think I too in some respects; but with Potter the Lyric Form, so essential to the conception of Greek Tragedy, is retained, if nothing else: though some grand piece of appropriate organ music would answer the purpose much better.

What I meant for a written letter has grown to such a length—and long-windedness, I fear—that it shall even go to the printer along with the play which it prates about, and, at any rate, give you no trouble in deciphering. Pray mark down what you see amiss in both: and belive me yours, as ever, sincerely,

Littlegrange.
[February, 1880.]