ART. II. The Tragedies of Maddelen, Agamemnon, Lady Macbeth, Antonia, and Clytemnestra. By John Galt. London; Cadell and Davies. 1812. Royal 8vo. pp. 262. W E have reason to apprehend, that the observations which in a former number we found ourselves obliged to make upon Mr. Galt, have not been taken in such good part by this ingenious writer as our wishes had led us to anticipate. Warned by this failure, we should perhaps have declined recurring to this new work if we foresaw in it any seeds of a difference of opinion; but as we think these tragedies are nearly perfect in their kind, and as our observations can be little else than a stream of panegyric, we hasten to renew our acquaintance with Mr. Galt, and we trust with fairer prospects of mutual satisfaction. The most distinguishing quality of Mr. Galt which strikes every reader on opening his book, and which has even so forced itself on his own modesty, that he notices it in his preface, is boldness; in one not so highly gifted, it would deserve another name; but in Mr. Galt we admit it to be the legitimate flight of genius, and we admire the happy audacity with which he challenges comparison with Sophocles, Euripides, Shakspeare, Racine, and Otway. These are undoubtedly the great masters of the tragic art, and every writer who aims at any degree of excellence in it, must have them before him as models for imitation; but it is not to this common praise that Mr. Galt aspires; he approaches them less as a scholar than as a rival,-he encounters rather than imitates them ;-with a nobleness of soul above all praise, he dares them in their most trophied fields,' and the names of 'Lady Macbeth,'Clytemnestra,' and 'Agamemnon,' attest at once the rivalry and the confidence of Mr. Galt. Mr. Galt is too acute an observer not to perceive, that, in a struggle with such champions, the spectators, from prejudices of education and habit, would be somewhat partial to them; but he was conscious, and indeed admits, that his manner of treating the subjects would be altogether different from Euripides or Shakspeare's, that it would be soon seen that he was no servile imitator-and that his style was one which could not be mistaken for that of any other author living or dead. The plot of Maddelen is familiar to the stage,-the love of the son of an old husband for a young and blooming step-mother: this will remind our readers of Otway's Don Carlos; but it is but justice to Mr. Galt to say, that except a line or two which he here and there condescends to transplant, there is nothing in Maddelen that will bring Otway to their recollection. VOL. XI. NO. XXI. C Indeed the fatal love,-the terrible trial of the strongest and tenderest of human feelings-was not, as Mr. Galt informs us, his impulse to write this tragedy; that would have been too common and vulgar an object. 'The piece,' he says, was undertaken to try whither (meaning, perhaps, whether) such a person as the Dutchess, a character of meaner energies than the generality of those on whom the interest of the solemn drama is supposed essentially to depend, might be rendered capable of exciting a tragical degree of poetical sympathy.'-(Pref. p. i.) In other words, whether the meanest and least important character in a play, might not be made the most prominent and interesting. This, it will he admitted, is a novel attempt; but it has completely succeeded :-we think, (and our readers will presently be of the same opinion,) that whenever this play shall be acted, the good old Dutchess will be far the most entertaining person of the whole drama. Her Grace is, we know not how, the aunt of the son and of the bride, and a kind of confidant of their mutual love; about which, with great prudence, she never says a word till the ill-starred nuptials have taken place, when she suddenly becomes so 'giddy and garrulous' that she can talk of nothing else and (what exceedingly increases the interest)meaning, and indeed suspecting no kind of mischief, she is particularly jocose on the subject with the poor father-husband, a worthy old gentleman, who, if the Dutchess's fit of talking had come on at about nine in the morning instead of noon, would have been but too happy to hand over his bride to his son. This consistency in loquacity however, (though, according to Shakspeare and other tame copyers of the human character, it would have been more natural,) Mr. Galt has very properly neglected; we say very properly, because if the Dutchess had laughed, winked, or muttered, one minute too soon, there could have been no tragedy at all; the young couple would have been married, and the old folks wonld have retired quietly to their respective beds. Her grace the Dutchess meets Count Valdini, the old bridegroom, and thus addresses him. 'Joy! joy, my Lord! how does my Lady niece? Whom? DUTCHESS. Don Lorenzo, my dear nephew now. I never heard of Don Lorenzo's passion!'-pp. 7, 8. There-that is the whole plot-the secret's out; the snappish dog is in love with the cunning toad: and you shall hear how she and the Duke discourse in the next scene upon this tardy indiscretion. DUTCHESS. 'Fine work! fine work! a merry wedding-day! The bridegroom here, with parchments in his hand! There, with a handkerchief dejected sits, Wiping away her final virgin tears. Were she in process of a lewd divorce, Caught in the fact, she could not sob it more. DUKE. Your silly meddling and unruly tongue, O! to be sure, all that mishaps is mine! I put the odious parchments in his hand, DUKE. Woman! no more of this! Hear my firm will. DUTCHESS. O heart of me! I always thought no good DUKE. There is more hazard in your giddy head, When the Dutchess complains of the altered temper of the Duke, she does it in the accents of high-born indignation. 'Between ourselves, the Duke's a-I know what. He is so gruff and turkish in his way, By Mary Virgin, I am more his slave Than his true Dutchess, wedded by the hand.' At other times, when put somewhat out of humour, she declares that she may as well turn devout, which she very correctly seems to consider as the lowest and last act of condescension. Again : Well! by my troth, I have good cause to fret. Snubb'd and brow-beaten when I would make mirth, As little heeded as a cuckoo clock, I may, as well, at once, go say my prayers.'-p. 18. I cannot speak, but flash, and there's a storm; Live silent; or but to say, yea or nay,— I may as well go lay me down to die. I'm a repeater, by my maker made; And when I'm press'd, must tell how the time goes. But I can stay at home-lie on a shelf See no one--nothing hear-sit like an abbess; I may as well, with hood and veil, at once, Go serve my God; and for this sprightly fan, Sigh to a fly-benastyed crucifix. Was it for this, that I was made a dutchess ?'-p. 36. Though the Dutchess is, as Mr. Galt informs us, the true heroine of the play, yet the bride (who gives the drama her name of Maddelen) is a person from whom much entertainment must accrue to a discerning audience. She was educated, it appears, by the Dutchess; and here it is that we may safely observe the superiority of Mr. Galt over Shakspeare. Every body must be struck at the elegance and tenderness of Juliet.-but it must nevertheless be confessed to be a most unnatural delineation. Juliet was educated by a gossiping vulgar old nurse, and it is contrary to all experience that she should not have been infected with the manners of her gouvernante. On the contrary, the Lady Maddelen is an admirably drawn character-just what one would expect a young creature formed by the Dutchess to be. Her Grace, who is curious in these matters, declares, after the wedding, with a roguish air, that she'll to the bride and feel her palpitations.' The bride displays a great similarity of taste, and when she meets her lover-son, begs him to amuse her with some story of their early love, Describe some transport of our warmer passion, Paint the secluded bower where last we met, &c.'-p. 4. When she complains of her ill-assorted marriage it is in these noble terms, which must wring every feeling heart :- 'Was't not enough to foist the old one on me? Think you I always will submit to this And take for him (her lover) that potsherd of a man?'-p. 51. After this Maddalen goes mad, miserably inad; and here it is that we are reluctantly compelled to qualify our recent admiration of Mr. Galt's originality, since we cannot but perceive an imitation of two heroines long since in possession of the stage. The reader has already anticipated us in naming Tilburina and Queen Dollalolla; and prejudice itself must admit that the supreme excellence of the models might justify an imitation of them in writers less alive to vivid impressions of the sublime and beautiful' than Mr. Galt. Of the dramas of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, in which Mr. Galt surpasses Sophocles and Euripides, and of that of Antonia, in which he surpasses even himself, we shall say a very few words, before we proceed to Lady Macbeth,' in which he encounters and transcends the hitherto unrivalled Shakspeare. In the treatment of the two classical subjects it is delightful to observe the successful effort of an original conception. The stories, as the Greeks and Romans have told them, are trite-we might almost say with Hamlet, musty. It was a poet, doubtless, who first invented the tale of ancient Pelops' line.' Another poet has surely a right to alter such a fable (if he can) for the better. The stories of Agamemnon,' says Mr. Galt,' are gross and detestable; of Clytemnestra, truly horrible;' but, in addition to the merit of choosing such difficult subjects, he modestly claims to himself 'no inconsiderable praise in having managed these delicate topics without disgusting,' (p. v.) a praise we must coneur in thinking not inconsiderable, since our author is of opinion that Sophocles has failed in this point, and that his Electra is a hideous and inhuman exhibition.' Agreeing, as we generally do, with Mr. Galt, we however, do not wish to speak too lightly of Sophocles, who though he has been dead many years, is still a writer of some repute; but we can truly say, that nothing in the world can be so different from the Electra of Sophocles as the Electra or (as he more properly calls it) the Clytemnestra of our author. It has been shrewdly observed, that if Shakspeare had possessed what is called school learning, the flight of his genius might not have been so bold and vigorous; this, which was herefore only an ingenious theory, is now substantiated by the evi |