Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

Is instinct with her spirit, stood above me,
Arm'd for the traitor's deed?-It is my child!

[Ion, reviving, sinks on one knee before Adrastus.]

"Ion.-Father!"

The reprieve is but momentary, Ctesiphon and the other conspirators succeed in accomplishing the sacrifice, and Adrastus lays down his life for the relief of Argos. The closing interview between the father

"A man who has embraced

His child for the first time since infancy,

And presently must part with him for ever"

and the son, is indescribably touching.

Ion of course succeeds to the vacant crown, and is fully mindful of the one great duty the inheritance brings with it. He strives not wholly to banish from his heart its tender emotions and old associations. He recalls the image of Clemanthe though he fain would not see her, and when, on repairing to the temple to perform the necessary rites before his coronation, he meets her there, he puts on a tone of distance to save her gentle nature from the shock that is to follow. "Dark and

cold," says he,

"Stretches the path, which, when I wear the crown,
I needs must enter:-the great gods forbid
That thou shouldst follow in it!

"Clemanthe.—O unkind!

And shall we never see each other?

"Ion. [After a pause.] Yes!
I have ask'd that dreadful question of the hills
That look eternal; of the flowing streams
That lucid flow for ever; of the stars,
Amid whose fields of azure my raised spirit
Hath trod in glory: all were dumb; but now,
While I thus gaze upon thy living face,

I feel the love that kindles through its beauty
Can never wholly perish; we shall meet
Again, Clemanthe!”

True to the tenderness of woman's nature, however, she clings to him to the last, and believes any thing rather than that her love has been unworthily bestowed.

"Clemanthe.-The last embrace!

Then he has cast me off!-No, 'tis not so;
Some mournful secret of his fate divides us:
I'll struggle to bear that, and snatch a comfort
From seeing him uplifted. I will look
Upon him in his throne; Minerva's shrine
Will shelter me from vulgar gaze; I'll hasten

And feast my sad eyes with his greatness there!"

The last scene finds the youthful king surrounded by his guards and courtiers in the great square of Argos to assist at

the ceremony of enthronement. He enters upon the duties of the occasion with unwonted solemnity, distributes offices, awards punishment, and confers honours. At length, approaching the altar, he solemnly and finally devotes himself for the welfare of his country, and "after the manner of his country makes himself immortal." Mr. Sergeant Talfourd must speak the rest in his own pure and beautiful language.

"Ion.-Gracious gods!

In whose mild service my glad youth was spent,
Look on me now;-and if there is a power,

As at this solemn time I feel there is,

Beyond ye, that hath breathed through all your shapes
The spirit of the beautiful that lives

In earth and heaven;-to ye I offer up

This conscious being, full of life and love

For my dear country's welfare. Let this blow
End all her sorrows!"

[Stabs himself, and falls. Ctesiphon rushes to support him.]

Ctesiphon, thou art

Avenged, and wilt forgive me.

"Ctesiphon.-Thou hast pluck'd
The poor disguise of hatred from my soul,
And made me feel how shallow is the wish
Of vengeance. Could I die to save thee!
[Clemanthe rushes forward.]
"Clemanthe.-Hold!
Let me support him-stand away-indeed
I have best right, although ye know it not,
To cling to him in death.

"Ion. This is a joy

I did not hope for-this is sweet indeed.

Bend thine eyes on me!

"Clemanthe.-And for this it was

Thou wouldst have wean'd me from thee! Couldst thou think
I would be so divorced?

"Ion.-Thou art right, Clemanthe,

It was a shallow and an idle thought!

'Tis past; no show of coldness frets us now;
No vain disguise, my love. Yet thou wilt think
On that which when I feign'd I truly said—

Wilt thou not, sweet one?

"Clemanthe.-I will treasure all.
[Enter Irus.]

"Irus.-I bring you glorious tidings-Ha! no joy

Can enter here.

"Ion.-Yes-is it as I hope?

"Irus.-The pestilence abates.

"Ion.-[springs upon his feet.] Do ye not hear?
Why shout ye not?-ye are strong-think not of me;
Hearken! the curse my ancestry had spread

O'er Argos is dispell'd-Agenor, give

This gentle youth his freedom, who hath brought
Sweet tidings that I shall not die in vain--

VOL. XXI.—NO. 41.

27

And Medon! cherish him as thou hast one
Who dying blesses thee;-my own Clemanthe!
Let this console thee also-Argos lives-
The offering is accepted-all is well!"

[The curtain falls.]

[Dies.]

The history of the play, as well as its peculiar beauties of language and simplicity of plot, certainly indicate rare powers in the author, and abilities to form a school of English tragedy which, if it shall not obtain complete possession of the stage, will always address itself successfully to the mind of almost all classes of readers. The author of Ion, it is true, exercised uncommon forbearance and modesty in doubling, to the delay of his own fame, the nonum prematur in annum of Horace. He kept his play twenty years instead of nine, and every line exhibits the result of that careful and assiduous detail which only can produce a finished work of art. The gratification with which we contemplate such a work is akin to that with which the mind retires satisfied and filled with the proportions of the Apollo. Ancient criticism might require the sacrifice of Clemanthe to the unity of the action, but to modern tastes, at least to modern affections, she seems a necessary adjunct. Were we strictly to scan the development of the action we might condemn her as unnecessary, yet she is a being so pure and gentle, so trustful and confiding, that for woman's sake we could not cast her off. If the character be false to Greece it is not false to nature; nor do we know why the softest passion of the heart might not flourish in that same Argos where friendship and filial affection were found or fabled to have dwelt, and whose local charms embittered by the very recollection of their loss the last moments of Virgil's dying soldier:

"Sternitur infelix alieno vulnere, cœlumque

Aspicit, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."

If Clemanthe is superfluous, she is the only superfluity of the piece, the principal person in which is developed with uncommon skill and success. The purity of Ion's original character, the entire transparency of his nature, and the gentleness of his feelings, are felt by the reader intuitively the instant he hears of his ministering unhurt to the plague-struck Argives. The power of innocence to confront danger is no fable, for it arises from a perfect unconsciousness of its presence. The spotless virgin wandering in the enchanted wood is but an emblem of an untainted moral nature, safe in its own purity:

"She feared no danger for she knew no sin,"

is Dryden's beautiful expression. This characteristic of Ion is an exquisite introduction to the subsequent phases under

which he is presented. There would have been something too shocking to the moral sense in imposing the solemn task of regicide and parricide, even in compliance with religious duty, on any but unstained and pure hands. This is one reason (the passion to be gratified is another,) why the tragic duty executed by Orestes seems so atrocious to us, and was so abhorrent to the ancients themselves, though actually performed under divine command, that the tragic writers were compelled to subject him to that horrible punishment, which, even in the mimicry of the stage, excited the lively imaginations of the Athenians almost to frenzy. But Ion's natural characteristics and his religious training admirably qualify him for the high action for which he is destined. In this he may be cited to illustrate the opposite of Hamlet's character, of whom Goethe, in a celebrated simile, so finely speaks, as of a person on whom a duty too great for his powers was laid by means of an awful behest. Born in the purple, nurtured in a luxurious court, educated amid the foolish and empty disputations of Wittemberg, the friend of Horatio, the lover of Ophelia, sporting away his time between jests upon Polonius and the society of a company of players, the playfellow of Yorick, and the idol of the commonalty, no wonder Hamlet's amiable but somewhat unschooled nature vibrated and quailed under the dread mandate of his dead father. It was not courage he wanted, for he followed the ghostly visitant whithersoever he led, but

"the native hue of resolution

Was sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought;"

the enterprise took new shapes and colours under the application of his Wittemberg logic. It grew upon him like some monstrous and distorted vision; he procrastinated, he dallied with the time, he went about the court like a soul awry, casting himself in mockery upon every object whose vice, whose fatuity, or even whose affection, enabled him to forget for an instant the incubus that overweighed his spirit. We say that in this respect Ion is in beautiful contrast with Hamlet. Prepared by an education mysteriously secluded, free from those selfish passions which intercourse with the world fosters and strengthens, shackled but by a single tie, and that scarce known to himself, he enters modestly, but with perfect consciousness of the peril of his mission, on his errand to the king. Fortified by the result of that errand in his conviction of a high destiny, he claims the honour of the more dangerous enterprise almost before the lot is decided. Saved from the conflict between filial affection and patriotic duty, he advances to the final scene of his fate with a high port and descends to the altar a perfectly voluntary, self-possessed, and conscious sacrifice, on the holiday

of his enthronement. So admirably has the author sustained the destiny of the piece, that the conclusion seems but the inevitable and quiet close of an actual event, so free is the sacrifice of Ion from all the turgid commonplaces usual on such occasions. It is but the necessary end of a career in which self has had no share; in which a being, born for others, lays down his life in one great act of devotion, which at once crowns and consummates its purposes. We know of but a single instance of self-sacrifice which is more adequately conducted than this of Ion, and that (it is no disparagement to Mr. Sergeant Talfourd to say) is the Departure of Regulus, in Horace, a picture wonderfully sublime, unequaled for the condensation of its images and for the simplicity with which its great elements are brought before the eye. The morale of the Roman subject is to moderns higher than that of the Grecian, the act of Regulus being strictly consonant to the injunctions of the Christian code.

With all the beauties of "Ion," however, we fear that Mr. Talfourd has not done any thing to invalidate the theory, that in its operation on the general mind by means of the stage tragedy has lost its day. The uniform delicacy and polish of his language, the judgment with which his principal character is elaborated, the purity of taste and purity of moral by which the play is distinguished, and the total absence of the larmoyante women and fustian men, which have never been superseded from Otway to Home and from Home to the present time, save, perhaps, in the extremely clever play by Milman, to which we have already alluded, leave his tragedy without points for the grasp or contact of the general mind. We have heard it said, and experience seems to countenance the observation, that no man can write a successful tragedy who is not practically familiar with the stage. If the opinion be correct, it is so more because the stage is pregnant with the reflected sentiments of miscellaneous audiences, and catches intuitively the tastes of those who form the mass of theatre-goers, than from any necessity an author is under of learning mere points of stage business. A man of genius finds his mind imbued with traditional maxims there, he learns the calibre of his audiences, and finds out how to modify his own rules and reduce his own standard of dramatic construction. What a strangely different play would Mr. Sheridan Knowles have made of the conception of Ionhow uneven, how occasionally unworthy would it have proved, and yet it might have contained situations of great force, and have told with strong effect in the hands of the actors.

It has been recently stated in the newspapers, that an accomplished lady, formerly attached to the theatrical profession, has in preparation a tragedy from an incident of Spanish romance,

« ÎnapoiContinuă »