At our Kameiros theatre, clean-scooped See note on Childe Harold, iv. 16, for the incident in Plutarch on which Balaustion's adventure is founded. Non-classical readers who are interested to notice in what respects Browning has departed from his original, should consult Potter's Translation of Euripides (Morley's Universal Library, No. 54); R. G. Moulton's Browning's Balaustion, a Beautiful Perversion of Euripides' Alcestis (Browning Society's Papers, Part xiii. No. 67); J. R. Dennett in the N. Y. Nation, xiii. 178. 1-3. Admetos. King Admetos had been sick unto death: at the request of Apollo, the Fates had agreed to spare his life, on condition that some one would die in his stead. Of all his friends and dependents, his faithful wife Alkestis was the only one found willing to save him. This sacrifice Admetos meanly accepted. The play opens on the day appointed for her death. — For the story in full see Cl. Myths, § 80-81. Pelias: Cl. Myths, 4-33. Chorus of Ancient Servitors. § 147. Paian (Paeon): in Homer, the god of Healing. (See Iliad v. 900-904). Later, used as here, as an epithet of Apollo. clipt locks (25). Compare Æneid iv. 693-706, from which we gather it was a common belief that no one could die until Proserpina had clipt a lock from the head and thus consigned the soul to Pluto. 34-52. Iolkos (Iolcus): an ancient city of Thessaly. The Argonautic expedition started thence. 53-54. Here Admetos speaks. quotes the words of Charon. 70-72: Admetos. 55-60: Alkestis. In 58-60 she 60-63: Admetos. 64-69: Alkestis. 79-86: Admetos. 73-78: Alkestis. 87-149. Passages of such pathos as this, make Euripides the most modern in tone of all the Greek poets. 150-178. A little care in study will show the lines appropriate to each character. In line 166, Alkestis means it is not necessary that Admetos should sacrifice himself: her death is sufficient to appease the Fates. 179-200. There is nothing in the original to correspond with these lines: they are, of course, the interpretation of Balaustion. A great voice: the voice of Herakles. this dispirited old age: the chorus of Ancient Servitors. 201-203. Herakles and Admetos were bound by ties of long friendship. 204-227. Balaustion again, and so in many subsequent places that will hardly need indication. their monarch tried, etc. (218) their monarch tried to discover if any loved him more than he loved them. = 228-248. In the lines omitted after line 248, Admetos gives ambiguous answers to Herakles' questions as to the cause of grief. This is a weak point in the play: Admetos admits that he must inter a certain corpse to-day,' and the dramatist must dower Herakles with preternatural stupidity to keep him from stumbling on the true explanation. 249-271. In this episode the character of Admetos appears in its most favorable light. In the main, he is a contemptible fellow. 272-293. the snake the Lernean Hydra. the lion's hide: the Nemean lion. For the exploits of Herakles, see Cl. Myths, § 139143. 294-331. Chaplet (317); myrtle-sprays (318). See Alexander's Feast, line 7, and note thereon. 332-359. Tiruns (Tiryns) a city in Argolis, where Herakles made his home during the twelve years in which he was accomplishing his Twelve Labors. Hence he is sometimes called Tirynthius. boltered clotted. This is a very rare word that seems to have survived only in the Warwickshire dialect. Shakespeare (a Warwickshire man) uses it in Macbeth, iv. 1. 123. Koré (Core): For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me. The Maiden, a title of Persephone (Proserpina). 360-397. By the stand-still: by the stopping of the funeral procession on its return from the tomb. peplos (peplum): an upper garment worn over one arm and draped at will around the body: richer and more voluminous than the himation. 398-419. Too late Admetos recognizes his own selfishness and the worth of her he had lost. 420-482. the king o' the Bistones Diomedes. His horses lived on human flesh; to capture them was the eighth labor of Herakles. 483-535. This is certainly a strong dramatic situation. Compare Shakespeare's treatment of a similar theme in the Winter's Tale, v. 3. 536-588. Do we feel assured that the soul of Admetos is thoroughly purified by suffering? He says so, but he is not put to the proof by action. 589-702. And save, that sire, his offspring (659) = And may that sire [Zeus] save his offspring. the son of Sthenelos (683) = Eurystheus, to whom Herakles was made subject by the gods for the space of twelve years. See note on Tiruns, line 334. 703-718. Sophokles: generally acknowledged to be a much greater dramatist than Euripides. Of the 130 plays ascribed to him, only seven have come down to us; the Alkestis is not among these. The only direct evidence we have that Sophocles wrote a play on this subject, is a line which Plutarch quotes in his Treatise on Oracles (xiv.) and which he ascribes to a play of Sophocles called Admetos. Dionusiac. The Alkestis of Euripides was first performed at Athens in 438 B.C. in the theatre dedicated to Dionysus (Bacchus). Aristotle, in his Poetics, tells us that Tragedy originated with the leaders of the Dithyramb, — originally nothing more than the song of peasants celebrating the vintage. See Cl. Myths, § 46. crater, in its original (Greek) meaning of 'goblet.' The Human with his droppings of warm tears. This line is from Mrs. Browning's Wine of Cyprus. Despite jagged and uncouth lines not a few, every reader of Browning must feel how much that poet gains in presentation when he brings himself under the clarifying and restraining power of even so ordinary a stylist as Euripides. Experience seems to show plainly that no poetry lacking in clearness of expression and beauty of form can exercise any wide-spread or permanent influence; Browning either was unable or was too careless to give this form and this expression to the great majority of his verses: we may be tolerably sure, then, hat a volume or two will contain all of his poetry that future ages (less realistic than this) will care to read. Theologians and metaphysicians may long continue to gain ideas from him, but neither theology nor metaphysics is the province of poetry. If this judgment be wrong, I err in good company: Matthew Arnold did not consider it worth while to read any of Browning's later works, and Schopenhauer asserts, even too emphatically perhaps, that everything has been sung, everything has been cursed in due order, and that with poetry everything is now a matter of style. TENNYSON. ALFRED TENNYSON, the son of a country clergyman, was born at Somersby Rectory in Lincolnshire in 1809 (the same year as Mr. Gladstone). In his twelfth year he composed an epic of four or five thousand lines, - fortunately lost. He missed the doubtful blessing of rough school-boy life at Eton or Harrow, receiving instead thorough classical instruction from his father, and a thousand pleasant lessons from Nature, who unclasped for him her illuminated missal as he roamed by hill-side, brook and sea-shore. At Cambridge (18271831) he took the Chancellor's Prize for the best English poem; among his competitors were Arthur Henry Hallam and Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). In 1830 appeared his Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, among which were many pieces now famous: Claribel, Mariana, The Poet, Oriana, Recollections of the Arabian Nights. Two years later came another volume; in this we find The Miller's Daughter, Enone, A Dream of Fair Women, The Lotus Eaters. These were written in Tennyson's twenty-third year; among our great poets only Milton and Keats have shown such maturity at such an early age. Some of the poems in this volume were not without defects; passing over their virtues, the Quarterly seized upon these defects and held them up to ridicule. Unnecessarily hurt by these strictures, Tennyson remained silent for ten years in 1842 he gave to the world another volume in which (to mention only the best) were Ulysses, Locksley Hall and Launcelot and Queen Guinevere. Emerson's criticism on this volume is wisdom in a nutshell: Tennyson, he says, 'is endowed precisely in the points where Wordsworth wanted. There is no finer ear nor more command over the keys of language. Color, like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil in waves so rich that we do not miss the central form.'-Tennyson's reputation was now firmly established; The Princess, (1847), if we excise the lyrics, hardly added to it, nor did Maud (1855). In 1850, upon the death of Wordsworth, he was appointed Poet Laureate and in the same year published In Memoriam. Four Idylls of the King appeared in 1859; others were added at varying intervals, rounding the episodes into a complete Epic. The weak-motived, slow-evolving dramas that Tennyson put forth during his old age, make us feel that his reputation would have been higher had he lived no longer than did Shakespeare. In the idealizing epic, with an ornate grace all his own, he is but little below the masters; in the lyric he is unsurpassed; in the drama -in that highest form of literary art, where character is painted in with the colors of both emotion and action in this he is deficient. Tennyson was raised to the peerage in 1884 and died, full of years and honors in October, 1892. Here is Carlyle's portrait of him in his prime: 'A great shock of rough, dustydark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive, aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes, cynically loose, free and easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic -fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between ; speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe.'-Letter to Emerson, 1847. FRIENDS - Arthur Henry Hallam, Trench, Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle, Browning, Gladstone. BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIFE AND TIMES. - Tennyson's family have not yet authorized the publication of any life of the poet. Until this appears, we can find a vade mecum sufficient for our purpose in Alfred Tennyson, A Study of his Life and Work by Arthur Waugh (London, 1893). Those to whom this book is inaccessible may consult a sorry substitute in the article on Tennyson by Mrs. H. K. Johnson in Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia for 1893. Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie has some interesting reminiscences in Harper's Magazine for December, 1883, while the ever-faithful Poole will unlock the flood-gates of periodical literature. CRITICISM. Tennyson reflects so perfectly nineteenth century thought and emotion, that little help is needed to get at his meaning. Yet the following books will be found useful for illustration: Littledale: Essays on Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. This gives in simple and popular form, an account of the historical sources of the Idylls and an interpretation of such allegory as Tennyson may (or may not) have intended to put into them. Van Dyke: The Poetry of Tennyson: An excellent exposition of Tennyson's poetic development from 1827 to 1889. Contains also a Bibliography that separates the slag from the gold, and a List of Biblical Quotations and Allusions Found in the Works of Tennyson. 7. Churton Collins: Illustrations of Tennyson. Traces Tennyson's imitations and transferences to their sources, with the object of illustrating the connection of English Literature with the Literatures of Greece, Rome, and Modern Italy. Bagehot: Literary Studies; Vol. II. Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning; or Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art in English Poetry. A most subtle and delicate piece of criticism: within the field to which it confines itself, by far the best thing that has been written on Tennyson. CENONE. Enone was the wife whom Paris deserted for Helen. - Notice with what delicate art, in this poem, the landscape is set to reflect the feeling. This landscape-setting is a poetical device almost unknown to the ancients; Tennyson has had many imitators, but no equals in this method of treating classical subjects. |