Edward Berdoe - The Browning Cyclopædia - A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning

He can hardly, however, have been a woman-hater who created the beautiful characters of Iphigenia and Alcestis. In this comedy the Athenian ladies have resolved to punish Euripides, and the poet is in dismay in consequence, and takes measures to defend himself. He offers terms of peace to the offended fair sex, and promises never to abuse them in future.

Aristophanes’ Apology; including a Transcript from Euripides, being the last adventure of Balaustion. London, 1875. – As Aristophanes’ Apology is the last adventure of Balaustion, it is necessary to read Balaustion’s Adventure ( q. v. ) before commencing this poem. Balaustion has married Euthukles, the young man whom she met at Syracuse. She has met the great poet Euripides, paid her homage to his genius, and has received from his own hands his tragedy of Hercules . The poet is dead, and Athens fallen. She returns to the city after its capture by the Spartans, but she can no longer remain therein. Athens will live in her heart, but never again can she behold the place where ghastly mirth mocked its overthrow and death and hell celebrated their triumph. She has left the doomed city, now that it is no longer the free Athens of happier times, and has set sail with her husband for Rhodes. The glory of the material Athens has departed. But Athens will live as a glorious spiritual entity —

She and Euthukles are exiles from the dead Athens, not the living: “That’s in the cloud there, with the new-born star!” As they voyage, for her consolation she will record her recollections of her Euripides in Athens, and she bids her husband set down her words as she speaks. She must “speak to the infinite intelligence, sing to the everlasting sympathy.” There are dead things that are triumphant still; the walls of intellectual construction can never be overthrown; there are air-castles more real and permanent than the work of men’s hands. She will tell of Euripides and his undying work. She recalls the night when Athens was still herself, when they heard the news that Euripides was dead – “gone with his Attic ivy home to feast.” Dead and triumphant still! She reflected how the Athenian multitude had ever reproached him: “All thine aim thine art, the idle poet only.” It was not enough in those times that thought should be “the soul of art.” The Greek world demanded activity as well as contemplation. The poet must leave his study to command troops, forsake the world of ideas for that of action, otherwise he was a “hater of his kind.” The world is content with you if you do nothing for it; if you do aught you must do all. But when Euripides was at rest, censorious tongues ceased to wag, and the next thing to do was to build a monument for him! But for the hearts of Balaustion and her husband no statue is required: he stood within their hearts. The pure-souled woman says, “What better monument can be than the poem he gave me? Let him speak to me now in his own words; have out the Herakles and re-sing the song; hear him tell of the last labour of the god, worst of all the twelve.” And lovingly and reverently the precious gift of the poet was taken from its shrine and opened for the reading. Suddenly torchlight, knocking at the door, a cry “Open, open! Bacchos bids!” and a sound of revelry and the drunken voices of girl dancers and players, led by Aristophanes, the comic poet of Greece. A splendid presence, “all his head one brow,” drunk, but in him sensuality had become a rite. Mind was here, passions, but grasped by the strong hand of intellect. Balaustion rose and greeted him. “Hail house,” he said, “friendly to Euripides!” and he spoke flatteringly, but in a slightly mocking tone, as men who are sensual defer to spiritual women whom they rather affect to pity while they admire. Balaustion loves genius; to her mind it is the noblest gift of heaven: she can bow to Aristophanes though he is drunk. (Greek intoxication was doubtless a very different thing from Saxon!) The comic poet had just achieved a great triumph: his comedy had been crowned. The “Women’s Festival” (the Thesmophoriazusæ as it was called in Greek) was a play in which the fair sex had the chief part. It was written against Euripides’ dislike of women, for which the women who are celebrating the great feast of Ceres and Proserpine (the Thesmophoria) drag him to justice. And so, with all his chorus troop, he comes to the home of Balaustion, as representing the Euripides whom he disliked and satirised, to celebrate his success. The presence of Balaustion has stripped the proper Aristophanes of his “accidents,” and under her searching gaze he stands undisguised to be questioned. She puts him on his defence, and hence the “Apology.” He recognises the divine in her, and she in him. The discussion, therefore, will be on the principles underlying the works of Euripides, the man of advance, the pioneer of the newer and better age to come, and those of the conservative apologist of prescription, Aristophanes the aristocrat. He defends his first Thesmophoriazusæ , which failed; his Grasshopper , which followed and failed also. There was reason why he wrote both: he painted the world as it was, mankind as they lived and walked, not human nature as seen though the medium of the student’s closet. “Old wine’s the wine; new poetry drinks raw.” The friend of Socrates might weave his fancies, but flesh and blood like that of Aristophanes needs stronger meat. “Curds and whey” might suit Euripides, the Apologist must have marrowy wine. The author of the Alkestis , which Balaustion raved about, was but a prig: he wrote of wicked kings. Aristophanes came nearer home, and attacked infamous abuses of the time, and scourged too with tougher thong than leek-and-onion plait. He wrote The Birds , The Clouds , and The Wasps . The poison-drama of Euripides has mortified the flesh of the men of Athens, so nothing but warfare can purge it. The play that failed last year he has rearranged; he added men to match the women there already, and had a hit at a new-fangled plan by which women should rule affairs. It succeeded, and so they all flocked merrily to feast, and merrily they supped till something happened, – he will confess its influence upon him. Towards the end of the feast there was a sudden knock: in came an old pale-swathed majesty, who addressed the priest, “Since Euripides is dead to-day, my choros, at the Greater Feast next month, shall, clothed in black, appear ungarlanded!” Sophocles (for it was he) mutely passed outwards and left them stupefied. Soon they found their tongues and began to make satiric comment, but Aristophanes swore that at the moment death to him seemed life and life seemed death. The play of which he had made a laughingstock had meaning he had never seen till now. The question who was the greater poet, once so large, now became so small. He remembers his last discussion with the dead poet, two years since, when he said, “Aristophanes, you know what kind’s the nobler – what makes grave or what makes grin!” He pointed out why his Ploutos failed: he had tried, alas! but with force which had been spent on base things, to paint the life of Man. The strength demanded for the race had been wasted ere the race began. Such thoughts as these, long to relate, but floating through the mind as solemn convictions are wont to do, occupied him till the Archon, the Feast-Master, divining what was passing in his mind, thought best to close the feast. He gave “To the good genius, then!” as a parting cup. Young Strattis cried, “Ay, the Comic Muse”; but Aristophanes, stopping the applause, said, “Stay! the Tragic Muse” (in honour of the dead Tragic Poet), and then he told of all the work of the man who had gone from them. But he had mocked at him so often that his audience would not believe him to be serious now, and burst into laughter, exclaiming, “The unrivalled one! He turns the Tragic on its Comic side!” He felt that he was growing ridiculous, and had to repair matters; so he thanked them for laughing with him, and also those who wept rather with the Lord of Tears, and bade the priest – president alike over the Tragic and Comic function of the god, —