[Dramatic works].

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Book.

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Preface

TO THE FOURTH PUBLISHED EDITION.

The following Drama, as the readers of two Editions which were printed for private circulation are already aware, was composed and printed without any hope of its being found capable of representation on the stage. Its publication in its present form was cotemporary with its production on the night of Mr. Macready's benefit, 26th of May, 1836; and as, at that time, its repetition was not anticipated, it was thought unnecessary to accompany it with any Preface. But as its performance has since been attended with unexpected success both in this country and in America, I may, without impropriety, state the views with which it was written, and indulge myself in the expression of my gratitude to those by whose assistance it has thus far been rendered vital. The first of those purposes will be best accomplished by extracting a portion of the Preface to the earliest of the unpublished Editions, which bears date in April, 1835 : —

" The title of this Drama is borrowed from the Tragedy of Euripides, which gave the first hint of the situation vin PREFACE.

in which its hero is introduced — that of a foundling youth educated in a temple, and assisting in its services ; but otherwise there is no resemblance between this imperfect sketch and that exquisite picture. It has been written, not indeed without a view to an ideal stage, which should never be absent from the mind of the humblest aspirant to dramatic composition, but without any hope of renderingit worthy to be acted. If it were regarded as a drama composed for actual representation, I am well aware that not in 'matter of form' only, but in 'matter of substance,' it would be found wanting. The idea of the principal character, — that of a nature essentially pure and disinterested, deriving its strength entirely from goodness and thought, not overcoming evil by the force of will, but escaping it by an insensibility to its approach, — vividly conscious of existence and its pleasures, yet willing to lay them down at the call of duty,— is scarcely capable of being rendered sufficiently striking in itself, or of being subjected to such agitations, as tragedy requires in its heroes. It was further necessary, in order to involve such a character in circumstances which might excite terror or grief or joy, to introduce other machinery than that of passions working naturally within, or events arising from ordinary and probable motives without; as its own elements would not supply the contests of tragic emotion, nor would its sufferings, however accumulated, present a varied or impressive picture. Recourse has therefore been had, not only to the old Grecian notion of Destiny, apart from all moral agencies, and to a prophecy indicating its purport in reference to the individuals involved in its chain, but to the idea of fascination, as an engine by which Fate may work its purposes on the innocent mind, and force it into terrible action most uncongenial to itself,

PREFACE. ix

but necessary to the issue. Either perhaps of these aids might have been permitted, if used in accordance with the entire spirit of the piece ; but the employment of both could not be justified in a drama intended for visual presentation, in which a certain verisimilitude is essential to the faith of the spectator. Whether any groups, surrounded with the associations of the Greek Mythology, and subjected to the capricious laws of Greek superstition, could be endowed by genius itself with such present life as to awaken the sympathies of an English audience, may well be doubted ; but it cannot be questioned, that except by sustaining a stern unity of purpose, and breathing an atmosphere of Grecian sentiment over the whole, so as to render the picture national and coherent in all its traits, the effect must be unsatisfactory and unreal. Conscious of my inability to produce a work thus justified to the imagination by its own completeness and power, I have not attempted it ; but have sought, out of mere weakness, for ' Fate and metaphysical aid,' to ' crown withal ' the ordinary persons of a romantic play. I have therefore asked far too much for a spectator to grant : but the case is different with the reader who does not seek the powerful excitements of the theatre, nor is bound to a continuous attention ; and who, for the sake of scattered sentiments or expressions which may please him, may, at least by a latitude of friendly allowance, forgive the incongruities of the machinery by which the story is conducted. This Drama may be described as the phantasm of a tragedy, — not a thing of substance mortised into the living rock of humanity, — and therefore incapable of exciting that interest which grows out of human feeling, or of holding that permanent place in the memory, which truth only can retain.

x PREFACE.

" There are few perhaps among those who have written for the press, predominant as that majority now is over the minority, of mere readers, who have not, at some season of their lives, contemplated the achievement of a tragedy. The narrow and well-defined limits by which the action of tragedy is circumscribed — the various affections which may live, and wrestle, and suffer within those palpable boundaries — its appeal to the sources of grief common to humanity on the one hand, and to the most majestic shapings of the imagination on the other, softening and subduing the heart to raise and to ennoble it, — and perhaps, more than all, the vivid presentment of the forms in which the strengths and weaknesses of our nature are embodied, its calamities dignified, and its high destiny vindicated, even in the mortal struggle by which for a season it is vanquished, — may well impress every mind, reaching, however feebly, towards the creative, with a fond desire to imitate the great masters of its ' so potent art/ This desire has a powerful ally in the exuberant spirits of youth, when the mind, unchilled by the sad realities of life, searches out for novelty in those forms of sorrow, from which it afterwards may turn for relief to the flickerings of mirth, and to brief snatches of social pleasure. Perhaps ' gorgeous tragedy ' left a deeper impression when she passed ' sweeping by ' my intellectual vision, than would have been otherwise received by a mind unapt for so high a correspondence, by reason of the accident that the glimpse was stolen. Denied by the conscientious scruples of friends an early acquaintance with plays, I had derived from Mrs. More's ' Sacred Dramas * my first sense of that peculiar enjoyment which the idea of dramatic action, however imperfectly conveyed, gives ; and stiff and cumbrous as they now seem, I

PREFACE. xi

owe to their author that debt of gratitude, which others may perhaps share with me, who have first looked on the world of literature through the net- work of most sincere but exclusive opinions. These gave, however, but dim limits of the greatness which was behind ; — I looked into the domain of tragedy as into a mountain region covered with mist and cloud ; — and incapable of appreciating the deep humanities of Shakspeare, ' rested and expatiated ' in the brocaded grandeurs of Dryden, Rowe, and Addison. To describe the delight with which, for the first time, I saw the curtain of Covent Garden Theatre raised for the representation of Cato, would be idle, — or how it was sustained during the noble performance which followed, when the visions of Roman constancy and classic grace, which had haunted the mind through all its schoolboy years (then drawing to a close), seemed bodied forth in palpable form,— when the poor common-places of an artificial diction flowed ' mended from the tongue ' of the actor, and the thoughtful words trembling on his lips suggested at once the feeling of earthly weakness and of immortal hope, — and when the old Stoic, in his rigid grandeur, was reconciled to the human heart by the struggle of paternal love, and became * passioned as ourselves,' without losing any portion of that statue-like dignity which made him the representative of a world of heroic dreamings.

" After this glimpse of the acted drama, I was long haunted by the idle wish to write a tragedy ; and many hours did I happily, but vainly, spend in sober contemplations of its theme. I tried to wreathe several romantic and impossible stories, which I fashioned in my evening walks into acts, and began to write a scene ; but however pleased I might be with the outline of these fanxi i PREFACE.

tasies, I was too much disgusted with the alternate baldness and fustian of the blank verse, which I produced in the attempt to execute them, to proceed. At this time also, just as the laborious avocations of my life were commencing, my taste and feeling, as applied to poetry, underwent an entire change, consequent on my becoming acquainted with the poetry of Wordsworth. That power which, slighted and scoffed at as it was then, has since exerted a purifying influence on the literature of this country, such as no other individual power has ever wrought ; which has not only given to the material universe ' a speech and a language ' before unheard, but has opened new sources of enjoyment even in the works of the greatest poets of past days, and imparted a new sense by which we may relish them; — which, while on the one hand it has dissipated the sickly fascinations of gaudy phraseology, has, on the other, cast around the loveliest conditions a new and exquisite light, and traced out the links of good by which all human things are bound together, and clothed our earthly life in the solemnities which belong to its origin and its destiny — humbled the pride of my swelling conceits, and taught me to look on the mighty works of genius, not with the presumption of an imitator, but with the veneration of a child. For the early enjoyment of this great blessing, which the sneers of popular critics might otherwise have withheld from me for years, I am indebted to my friend Mr. Baron Field, now filling a judicial situation at Gibraltar, who overcame my reluctance to peruse what the e Edinburgh Review ' had so triumphantly derided. The love of contemplative poetry, thus inspired, led me, in such leisure as I could attain, rather to ponder over the resources of the profoundest emotions, or to regard them as associated with

PREFACE. xm

the majestic forms of the universe, than to follow them into their violent conflicts and mournful catastrophes ; and although I never ceased to regard the acted drama as the most delightful of recreations, I sought no longer to work out a frigid imitation of writers, whom alone I could hope to copy, and whose enchantments were dissipated by more genial magic.

" But the tragic drama was about to revive amongst us, and I was not insensible to its progress. Although the tragedies of the last twelve years are not worthy to be compared with the noblest productions of the great age of our drama, they are, with two or three exceptions, far superior to any which had been written in the interval. Since the last skirts of the glory of Shakspeare's age disappeared, we shall search in vain for serious plays of equal power and beauty with Virginius, William Tell, Mirandola, Rieiizi, or the Merchant of London ; at least, if we except Venice Preserved for the admirable conduct of its story, and Douglas for that romantic tenderness and pathos which have been too little appreciated of late years. It happened to me to be intimately acquainted with all those who contributed to this impulse, and to take an immediate interest in their successes. I also enjoyed the friendship of the delightful artist to whom all have by turns been indebted for the realisation of their noblest conceptions, and was enabled to enjoy with more exquisite relish the home-born affection with which those were endued, and the poetical grain breathed around them, by finding the same influences shed by Mr. Macready over the sphere of his social and domestic life. It will not be surprising, that, to one thus associated, the old wish to accomplish something in dramatic shape should recur, not accompanied by the hopes of sharing in the scenic xiv PREFACE.

triumphs of his friends, but bounded by the possibility of conducting a tale through dialogue to a close, and of making it subserve to the expression of some cherished thoughts. In this state of feeling, some years ago, the scheme of the drama of Ion presented itself to me ; and after brooding over it for some time, I wrote a prose outline of its successive scenes, nearly in the order and to the effect in which they are now completed, and made some progress in an opening scene, of which little now remains. The attempt was soon laid aside ; for I found the composition of dramatic blank verse even more difficult now that I had present to me the ease and vividness of my friends, than when I had been contented to emulate the ponderous lines of the dramatists of Garrick's age. Still the idea of my hero occurred to me often ; I found my pleasantest thoughts gathering about him ; and rather more than two years ago I determined to make one essay more. Since that time such seasons of leisure as I could find have been devoted to the work ; but I had so great distrust of my ability to complete it, that I did not mention my design to any one ; and I cannot charge myself with having permitted it to interfere with any professional or private duty. It has been chiefly written in scraps of time ; composed for the most part on journeys, and afterwards committed to paper ; and thus, at the close of last year, I found four acts reduced into form. At this time, the sudden realisation of another youthful dream opened to me the prospect of additional duties, which I knew full well ought to preclude the continuance of those secret flirtations with the Muse in which I had indulged ; and therefore I resolved to make a last effort, and, by completing my Drama before those duties should commence, to free myself from the bondage of those threads of fan-

PREFACE. xv

tastical interest which had woven themselves about my mind. I accordingly wrote the fifth act with far more rapidity than any of the previous passages of my play ; and, before I was called upon to share in more momentous business, I had communicated to a few friends the result of my scribblings, and bade adieu to my dramatic endeavours and hopes.

" But it may well be asked, Why, with the sense I have of the feebleness of this poetical sketch, I have ventured to intrude it on my friends ? My chief reason is, that I am anxious to cast from my own mind the associations which have hung about it during the composition of the poem, and which, while it remained in manuscript susceptible of alteration, I could not certainly hope for ; and, further, to preclude the charge, (if it should ever be brought to light hereafter,) that it had occupied leisure which henceforth must be devoted to other studies. I have also a desire to gratify myself by presenting it to my friends, especially to those who are removed to a distance ; because, although as a drama it is unw 7 orthy the attention of the world, yet, as containing thoughts which have passed through my own mind, it may be acceptable to those whose conversation I can no longer enjoy. It would be a sufficient reason to myself for printing it, that I shall be able thus to remind Sir Edward Ryan, now, most honourably to himself and happily for India, Chief Justice of Bengal, and his excellent colleague Sir Benjamin Malkin, of the delightful hours we have spent together on the Oxford Circuit, when life was younger with us, and when some of the topics they will find just touched on in these verses were the themes of our graver walks between Ross and Monmouth, or in the deep winding valleys indenting the Table-Land above Church Stretton, or haply by xvi PREFACE.

moonlight in the churchyard of Ross. I take leave to mention these as far away ; but there are others of my fellow-labourers at home, whose sympathy and whose conversation have cheered my professional life, who I believe will receive it cordially ;- and among them I hope my sometimes Sessions-leader, who has committed a similar offence, though with more extenuating circumstances, by investing with so much dignity of passion and richness of language the story of the Countess of Essex, will not disdain it."

With these views Ion was sent to the press, and presented to many of my friends. The favour with which it was received by some, whose approbation was most valuable, would have induced me at once to publish it, if I had not been withheld by the suggestion of Mr. Macready, that it would be effective in representation, and by the belief that any interest which might be excited by such an attempt would be lessened by its previous sale. The prospect, that, at least for one evening, the dull tracery of thought, silently and laboriously woven, might burst into light at the torch of sympathy, and become palpable to the senses and the affections of a multitude, was too delightful to be resigned, and was ultimately realised by the friend who had opened it. His consent to produce the Drama on the night of his benefit, secured it against painful repulse ; and, although I had still no expectation that even he could endue it with sufficient interest to render it attractive on ordinary occasions, I looked forward to its single representation in the belief that it would be tolerated by an audience disposed to be gratified, and that the impression it might leave, however faint, would be genial and pure. Many of those who had expressed the most favourable opinions of the piece as a com-

PREFACE. xvu

position were even less sanguine than myself as to the probable event of the evening, and apprehended that it would terminate in their mortification and my own. They did not perceive the possibility of infusing such life into the character of its youthful hero, as would bring the whole fable within the sphere of human sympathies; reconcile the audience to its machinery ; and render that which seemed only consistent in its dreaminess, at once entire and real. Such was, however, unquestionably the effect of Mr. Macready's performance on that evening, which I believe, in the judgment of many who cannot be influenced like the author by personal regard or individual gratitude, was one of the most remarkable triumphs of art which has graced the stage of late years. Although other of his performances are abstractedly greater, none I believe approach this as an effort of art, estimated with reference to the nature of the materials which he animated, to the difficulties which he subdued, and to the preconceptions which he charmed away. By the graces of beautiful elocution he beguiled the audience to receive the Drama as belonging to a range of associations which are no longer linked with the living world, but which retain an undying interest of a gentler cast, as a thing which might have been ; and then, by his fearful power of making the fantastic real, he gradually rendered the whole possible — probable— true ! The consequence of this extraordinary power of vivifying the frigid, and familiarising the remote, was to dissipate the fears of my friends; to render the play an object of attraction during the short remainder of the season ; and to embolden others to attempt the part, and encourage other audiences to approve it, even when the power which first gave it sanction was wanting.

b xvin PREFACE

How little it was anticipated that the success of the first performance would justify its repetition may be gathered from the Prologue, which was spoken on that occasion by Mr. Serle — a gentleman, whose earnest and laborious pursuit of excellence as a dramatic poet and an actor, from early youth I have watched with admiration ; whose success I have hailed with delight ; and through whom I was most happy to express my feelings.

" What airy visions on a play's first night Have flash'd refulgent here on poet's sight ! While, emulous of glory's stainless wreath, He felt ' the future in the instant ' breathe ; Saw in the soften'd gleam of radiant eyes The sacred tear through lids yet tearless rise ; Made to each fervid heart the greet appeal To bear him witness — stamp'd with living seal — Of passion into forms of grandeur wrought, And grief by beauty tinged, or raised by thought : As cordial hands their liberal boon conferr'd, Fame's awful whisper in the distance heard, Now shrunk from nicest fear, from fancied scorn, — Now glow'd with hope for ' ages yet unborn.'

" With no such trembling sense of inward power Our author seeks to win his little hour, While, for a transient glance, he dares unveil The feeble outlines of a Grecian tale. He boasts no magic skill your souls to draw Within the circle of Athenian awe ; Where Fate on all things solemn beauty throws, And shapes heroic mourn in stern repose ; Or to reveal the fame where genius tips With love's immortal lustre heavenly lips,

PREFACE. xix

Where airs divine yet breathe around forms so fair,

That Time enamour'd has been charm'd to spare ;

Nor his the power which deeds of old imbues

With present life, and tints with various hues ;

Casts glowing passion in heroic moulds,

And makes young feelings burn 'neath ancient folds :

Unlearn'd in arts like these, he seeks to cast

One faint reflection from the glorious past ;

A narrow space his fond ambition bounds, —

His little scenic life this evening rounds !

u O ! if some image pure a moment play O'er the soul's mirror ere it pass away ; If from some chance-sown thought a genial nerve Should, heart-strung, quicken virtue's cause to serve ; Let these slight gifts the breath of kindness claim For one night's bubble on the sea of fame, Which tempts no aid which future praise insures, — But lives — glows — trembles — and expires in yours ! "

The part of the heroine, which affords too little scope for the development of tragic power, was on this night graced by the elegance and the pathos of Miss Ellen Tree, which, as personated on that night, will long be perpetuated by the genius and taste of Mr. Lane. As her engagements at the Haymarket rendered it impossible for her to repeat the character at Covent Garden, the Drama was indebted to the zeal and good-nature of Miss Helen Faucit for accepting it under these peculiar circumstances, and studying it within a few days, and to her talent for giving to it an importance which the author could not hope for from the faintness of its outline. Its subsequent production at the Haymarket calls for a sincere acknowledgment to Mr. Morris, the veteran xx PREFACE.

manager of that delightful place of entertainment, and to all the members of his company, especially to Mr. Vandenhoff for his kingly personation of Adrastus ; to Miss Taylor for her earnest and affecting Clemanthe ; and, most of all, to the original representative of the heroine, who now illustrated the hero, and who has made the story of his sufferings and his virtues familiar to Transatlantic ears. Who is there who does not feel proud of the just appreciation, by the great American people, of one who is not only the exquisite representative of a range of delightful characters, but of all that is most graceful and refined in English womanhood, — or fail to cherish a wish for her fame and happiness, as if she were a personal friend or relation of his own ?

There is one circumstance attendant on the circulation of this Drama, which has afforded me peculiar gratification—that it has been read without disapproval by many of those estimable persons whose conscientious scruples withhold them from the theatre, and has won some of them to confess that there is nothing in the form of dramatic poetry necessarily akin to guilty passions and ignoble aims. I am well aware, that it is indebted for this fortune not to any tone of moral feeling superior to that which is to be felt in its more powerful cotemporaries, but to the incidental relations of its author, and to the manner of its original distribution ; and I refer to it, therefore, with pleasure rather than with pride. If such as these are still deterred from sharing in the refined enjoyments of the acted drama, and from permitting their children to receive from it the vivid impressions which it leaves, by a just fear of the accidental influences with which it has been too frequently associated, they may be assured that an opportunity is now offered to them

PREFACE. xxi

of accepting the benefit without the alloy. They will find one of those great theatres — where alone the mightiest effects of heroic action and suffering can ever be felt, or their greatness fitly presented, — under the direction of an artist whose personal worth might grace any profession or rank, and who, in seeking to dissipate the languor which has crept over the general heart in reference to the stage, at the sacrifice of his own health and ease, and the risk of his well-earned fortune, has had the virtue and the courage to cast away all vicious appliances, and to discourage every blandishment except those by which Art embodies the conceptions of Genius. To Covent Garden Theatre the sternest moralist may now conduct those whose moral nurture he regards as his most anxious and most delightful duty, without fear lest their minds should be diverted from the blameless gaieties or noble passion of the scene by intrusive suggestions of vice, which he would skreen, as far as possible, from their thoughts. If, indeed, dramatic representation itself is essentially evil ; if it is a crime to render historic truths more vivid by calling forth its august figures from the depth of time and the silence of books, ' in their habits as they lived ;' if it is a sin to displace the vapidity of conversation, revolving in its own small circle of personal experiences, by presenting the genial eccentricities of character to be at once laughed at and loved, and imaging the graces of society without its bitterness ; if it is an offence against the Beneficent Author of our Being * to hold a mirror up ' to the nature he has moulded, in which its grandest and its fairest varieties shall be reflected in the happiest combinations, as that choicest of all His human works — a poet's soul — has cast them ; the attempts to remove from the magic glass all external impurities must be fruitless. But if xxn PREFACE.

there are those who, while they hold the faith and morals of Milton, are not afraid to accept his precept and to follow his example, I would entreat of them to assist the lessee of a great national theatre in his generous struggle to rescue the stage from the pollutions which have too long debased it. I urge this on them thus earnestly, because, in proportion as the dissipated and frivolous have withdrawn from this intellectual enjoyment, it becomes their province to sustain it ; because I firmly believe that its maintenance is most important to the expansion of all that is social, and to the nurture of all that is great within us ; because I deem it — not as an instructor in the way of direct moral invitation or purpose — but as dissolving the crust of selfishness which daily cares and labours gradually form about the kindest hearts ; as softening the pride of conventional virtue, and bringing the outcasts of humanity within its sphere ; and as combining all the picturesque varieties which external distinctions present with the sense of the noble equality which lies beneath them. If the introduction of this Drama to the notice of some who have hitherto abstained from visiting the theatre by objection to extrinsic circumstances, should induce them to enjoy the representation of plays of far deeper sentiment and far more vivid passion, it will not have been written nor acted in vain.

T. N. T.

London, 14th November, 1837.

PERSONS OF THE DRAMA,

AS REPRESENTED AT COVENT GARDEN THEATRE.

Adrastus, King of Argos,

Crythes, Captain of the Royal Guard,

Phocion, son of Medon,

Ctesiphon, 1 i i a • xl

Cassandek, } ™ble Argive youths,

Ion,

Agenor, "I

Cleon, > sages of Argos,

Timocles, J

Irus, a boy, slave to Agenor, Clemanthe, daughter of Medon, Abra, attendant on Clemanthe, f Mr. Dale, \Mr. Vandenhoff.

Mr. Thompson.

(Mr. C. Hill, \ Mr. Roberts.

Mr. G. Bennett.

CMr.H Wallack,

< Mr. J. Webster. [Mr. Howard.

Mr. Macready.

CMr. Pritchard.

< Mr. Tilbury. [Mr. Harris.

Miss Lane.

f Miss Ellen Tree, \ Miss H. Faucit.

Miss Lacy.

Scene — Argos.