Ant. O tomb! O bridal chamber! O abode! | other form is seen advancing from the Dug to hold fast for ever! Thee I enter To join my kindred, of whom most already Persephone has numbered with her dead. Last of whom I, and with worst end by far, Go down, not having filled my time allotted. Yet go I with good hope to meet my father Pleased with me; thee, my mother, too well pleased; And thee, my brother, most of all content. For burial, Polynices, death have earned me. erred. If they blame Creon, still let him nought worse Bear than he wrongfully inflicts on me. Cho. Yet is her soul stirred by the same Blasts as before. Cr. Your tarrying longer here, with footstep lame, Ye shall deplore. Ant. Alas! that word is spoken to proclaim My life is o'er. Cho. We cannot say, be of good cheer; His deed makes good his word severe. Ant. Oh, city of my Theban fatherland! God's of my fathers' line! They lead me forth to die, none stays their hand. Ye, chiefs of Thebes divine, opposite side of the stage. It is that of the blind old Teiresias, the mighty soothsayer, who first warned Edipus of his coming woe the prophet at whose evertrue words even tyrants tremble. He has been warned by sure tokens of heaven's wrath to bid Creon cease from his unnatural warfare against the dead. And, after describing them, he closes his addresses to him by the significant words: These things, my son, consider; for to err The ill incurred, nor shows a stubborn mind. Creon derides the warning, and refuses the proffered advice. Then the insulted prophet bids him prepare to give a son's life in exchange for the unburied dead and the entombed living. And hinting at yet further calamities, he adds, "Soon shall wailing fill thine own house, and hostile arms surround this city." Having said this, he turns wrathfully from the misguided king, and retires to his own house in displeasure. And now, to make the beholders' sorrow yet greater, a deliverance, which they feel assured will come too late, is procured for Antigone. Creon's soul is shaken by the fearful predictions of of the Chorus, and departs to release his Teiresias; he yields to the persuasions victim. But the passionate supplications which they pour forth after his departure to Bacchus, the Theban god, for aid in this sore extremity, prove vain. A messenger approaches, and Eurydice, Hæmon's mother, comes forth to receive from his lips the tidings of her son's death. A classic Romeo, Hæmon has slain himself in the grave of Antigone, into the recesses of which he had penetrated too late. For no sooner had its dreaded walls closed round the hapless maid, than, hopeless of rescue, she deemed it best to abridge her sufferings by strangling herself. To a Greek audience such an expedient would seem natural; a modern reader will always wish that Sophocles had brought about his catastrophe by some other This last appeal, disregarded below, is heard on high. The heroine has disap-means, and spared his pious heroine the peared from sight, and the Chorus are trying to soothe their own sorrow by fantastic parallels between her sufferings and those of famous ladies of old (perhaps with some latent hope that she may yet be delivered as they were), when an noose which more appropriately terminates the miseries of Iocaste, or the crimes of the wretched Phædra. But when Hæmon directly afterwards forces his way into the tomb, only to find there the lifeless body of Antigone, his shrieks of despair strike his father's ear, as, [ To descend to subordinate points. The bound on a similar errand, he is pausing death of Hæmon is the precursor of many to direct the long-delayed burial of Polynices. Hurrying forward at the sound, Creon finds his son maddened by his grief; who at first turns his sword against his father, but on second thought with surer aim sheathes it in his own breast. Then casting his arm round the dead maiden, the hapless Hæmon breathes his last breath forth on the cheek which he was not suffered to kiss in life, and (so the messenger concludes his doleful history) There lies he dead, clasping the dead; receives house.* The miserable Eurydice hears this sad tale in silence, and then departs, still with out a word, to follow her son down to his doleful marriage-chamber. Her suicide accomplishes the prophecy of Teiresias, by paying from Creon's own house a woman's life for the woman, a man for the man, whom he had wronged. Creon's bitter cup is now full; and the play closes leaving him " a living corpse bereft of the life of life, joy," accusing himself as the murderer of his own son, and crying in the anguish of his soul for death. a touching scene in romantic fiction, to women have matched the one we have been contemplating; a sufferer at once so innocent and so majestic; a woman so masculine in her courage and yet so feminine in the source of that courage, her reverence for the charities of kindred and the sancties of home. The "Electra" of Sophocles challenges comparison in some points with his are there deepened, and have less to rebut the sterner features Antigone; lieve them; the heroine's object (to revenge her father's murder on her own mother) is a fearful kind of reverence for the dead when placed beside Antigone's; most of all, the halo of the martyr's crown which encircles the Theban maiden's head, is lacking to that of the haughty and successful Electra. The claims of poetic justice, as commonly understood, are thus satisfied, and Antigone is amply avenged. Nor has she died in vain, since in death she obtains for her brother those full burialrites which she could not succeed in bestowing on him in life. To give any other reward to her lofty and pure devotion, the tragic Muse (waiting as yet amid darkness for the coming dawn) significantly owns herself incompetent. It is not in her power to explain or to justify Antigone's assurance that a welcome awaits her piety in the unseen world compared with which earthly love is as nothing. She cannot produce the same proof of the gods' approval of the maiden's self-devotion, as she can of their disapprobation of Creon. The "Antigone" of Sophocles suggests a question which Last of a fated house, each stands alone it does not answer: it leaves the beholder Mourning a father's wrongs, yet proud defies with a chilling fear in his breast that, A tyrant; each bewails with streaming eyes after all, the gods may not greatly regard A brother, to the dead untimely gone. man's struggles to hold fast the right; and But in the urn o'er which One makes her moan yet not without a hope that" some better Life stirs; o'erjoyed she sees the dead arise thing" has been provided for those who To vengeance spur him, and the work is To slay the slayers, and her eager cries in comparison with righteous dealing have held earth's rewards cheap. * "Ciò che'l viver non ebbe, abbia la morte." -TASSO. done. The Other all in vain bends o'er her dead, share; misery without, enshrining goodness (which is virtually blessedness) within. One dies, one triumphs; but the dead are free, | clean contrasts is arrived at; that of When we prepare to contrast a tragedy like the "Antigone" with any romantic This reflection, which prompts every drama, we must not forget that although reader of the two plays to say, "Rather they belong to the same genus, yet they let me fail with Antigone, than succeed are specimens of widely different species. with Electra," testifies to the moral and The choric song, the lyric utterances of spiritual beauty of the drama which we minds strung too high for ordinary speech have been considering. One respect in in the classic, are hushed in the romanwhich it exemplifies the "irony" of tic drama; and instead, we hear the hum Sophocles, has already been referred to. of more numerous and more natural With the mention of another we may voices. Each fair cold statue descends conclude our somewhat imperfect sketch from its pedestal, like Hermione in the of the most beautiful of Hellenic trage-"Winter's Tale," and stands less stately, dies. In Creon's case the irony of fate perhaps less graceful, than before, in is seen by making a man strong outward- warm and breathing life by our side. If ly who is weak within; by removing from we were to conceive of an Antigone as one who has no power to place restraint written by Shakespeare, we cannot imagon his own passions all external restraint ine anything more grand than her speech from circumstances; till (to use Plato's on the majesty of law, or more beautilanguage) the tyrant, inwardly tyran- ful than her pathetic lamentations, as nized over by the lawless inmates of his proceeding even from him. But we own breast, rushes to that hopeless ruin should expect to be brought into more from before which his very prosperity intimate acquaintance with the heroine has removed all the interposing barriers. under his guidance, instead of admiring In Antigone's case, the outward failure her, as we now do, from a respectful disis as complete as in Creon's the success. tance; by a thousand little touches Even her stealthy and scanty offering of Shakespeare would have filled in the earth is not suffered to remain on her noble sketch till the portrait glowed lifebrother's corpse; and she is herself re-like before us. The length of a play of moved to endure the punishment of the Shakespeare's — nearly double that of impious. She is the just sufferer of one by Sophocles, and more than double Plato's celebrated Dialogue. And yet, when the dialogues are compared alone as he is pronounced happy by a sublime gives added scope for this. But, alas! it paradox which had to await its logical is with no play of Shakespeare that we justification from revelation, so must she can propose to compare the " Antigone." have been by the instincts of even a We have instead to turn from this noble heathen audience. And thus the most group of antique sculpture to the brilliant startling and instructive of the Sopho-colours but often weak drawing of Cal We need scarcely say that a fuller account of several of the scenes, and specimens of the best translations of the "Antigone" will be found, along with many interesting observations on the play, in Mr. Collins's excellent Sophocles," one of the now universally known series of "Ancient Classics for English Read ers.' " Since this was written we have had the pleasure of reading Professor Campbell's (in many respects) excellent version of "Three Plays of Sophocles.' He will pardon us for saying that, in our judgment, he has sucthan with the "Antigone" - as might be expected, from the nature of his task. Of the two latter, we in cline to prefer the last named; for though he has mostly well caught the pathos of the "Electra," the translator has not been always so fortunate as to escape commonger's introduction to Clytemnestra, or even in the finest place — e.g., in such passages as the disguised messenscene. One cause of this is the introduction of rhymed couplets in the iambic dialogue, which are out of place in a classic drama, and would be better excluded in a future edition from the few scenes in which they occur in all these three plays. Deianira's most sad story is particularly well rendered by Mr. Campbell; and he has been especially happy in the first and last chorus, lines ceeded better with the "Electra" and the "Trachiniæ" 94 and 823 and (in most respects) with the difficult speeches of the dying Heracles. deron's long picture-gallery, and we take our stand before his "Steadfast Prince;" attracted thither, as in that well-known Spanish picture, "Padilla's Execution," by the grave, earnest face, stooping in manly grief over the fallen comrades for whom he sorrows more than for himself. Calderon is, as our readers probably know, a very great dramatist; we need scarcely add that his is not the genius of a Shakespeare. After the simple severity of the Greek drama especially, the Spanish tragedian seems somewhat over-florid, ble; his metaphors strike us as too lav his language rather hyperbolic than forciishly scattered, his long harangues as requiring cutting down to more reasonable Size. But these things belong to, and harmonize with, the semi-oriental genius of his nation; they are a part of the tradi tions of the Spanish, as the Chorus is of the Greek, stage. The speech of the dying hero, with its piles of similes and its interminable rush of verse, is conventional, like the solemn song of the dying heroine. and gains a real victory, like her he makes good with his life the sacred trust committed to him: for him, as for her, Heaven interposes in death, though human succour comes too late. But, happier far than she is, his calm serenity is perturbed by no doubts of his unseen Helper. The noblest heathens could but feel after an unknown God "like children crying for the light." Calderon's Portuguese hero " has the light, and fears no dark at all." He offers his life, with all a Christian's humility and a true knight's intrepid courage, as a willing sacrifice to his God and Saviour; and no fears perplex him as to how that sacrifice may be accepted. Some of Calderon's gifts as a dramatist are not displayed in his "Steadfast Prince;" of others, and those his highest, it gives full proof. Certainly, its simple story affords little space for that singular dexterity with which, in some of his other plays, he weaves and unravels the most complicated entanglements. Its want, also, of a Christian heroine, which leaves the play destitute of any lovescenes, save those which belong to a very secondary under-plot, deprives us of that The story of this Christian Regulus will dignified yet passionate love-making in be understood from a brief abstract of which Calderon's romantic cavaliers gen- Calderon's play, which we need only erally distinguish themselves. But, on preface by saying that in all its main outthe other hand, we are gainers by the ab- line it is true: Don Fernando, of Portusence of most of those tedious attempts gal (grandson, through his mother, to our at wit, which in many of his other plays own John of Gaunt), having been taken only make Calderon's deficient sense of captive (as is here told) in an unfortunate humour the more conspicuous. The sub- African expedition, having refused libject, too, of this tragedy, sufficiently re- erty on the Moorish king's terms, and mote both in time and place to allow the having died of the ill-treatment which he softening lights of poetry to play upon its endured in consequence, though after personages, was still happily near enough more protracted sufferings than those in both to preserve its author from those which Calderon describes. In our exastounding mistakes as to history and tracts we shall exactly follow Calderon's geography which often provoke a smile in structure of verse; his usual rhymed his classic dramas; and of which the first metre being the singularly graceful one instance which we remember, the march peculiar to Spanish plays, diversified by of Alexander the Great over the Pelopon-occasional sonnets and by passages in nesus, a mountain in Asia, may serve as triple, in octave, and in a broken heroic a sample. More than that, it was a sub-verse. ject alike interesting to the author and to We shall only change (at least in the the audience. Sure of their sympathy, most important speech) the assonants Calderon could not fail to set forth, with which, as in many Spanish ballads, give all the splendour at his command, a an imperfect rhyme to the remaining Crusade against the Infidel; prison and portions of the play. for full rhymes ; death braved and endured by a Christian being moved so to do by the consideraprince in defence of the true faith. We tion that in Spanish the vowels have an here reach the source of the Spanish as unchanging, in English a varying sound; of the Hellenic drama's strength-the and that therefore while a and e, for extragedian's absolute certainty of a re-ample, will strike the ear in line after line sponse when he touched certain chords. of a Spanish ballad — the altering consoNo Greek would doubt the sinfulness of nants with which they recur preserving leaving a brother's body unburied; no us from too great monotony Spaniard that of abandoning Christian vowel in English changes its sound too churches to the unbelievers: each would much (as, for instance, in "angel," " wanapplaud the heroism which dies rather der," "handed," "father,") to do more than prove false to such sacred obliga- than appeal to the eye, while it leaves the tions. Thus Sophocles and Calderon ear unsatisfied. could alike feel strong in the strength of "The Steadfast Prince," begins by a the foundation of their drama - the reli- scene at Fez, in the king's gardens; gious sentiment of their own nation. where the song of the Christian captives And thus, amidst the greatest diversity of strikes the first note of the sad strain form, their plays have a similarity of which we are to hear so frequently during spirit. Like the heroine of Sophocles, its course. They are singing to the Calderon's hero suffers apparent defeat, mournful accompaniment of their clank the same We two are such; not here in fight we close We come to serve, not trespass in His sight, ing chains, for the gratification of Phoenix, the king's daughter. After their dismissal her father enters to prepare her for her intended marriage with the King of Morocco, whose portrait he places in her unwilling hand; her heart being secretly given already to Muley, the general of her father's army. That devoted lover, entering to make his report to the king on the proposed expedition against Ceuta, surprises the princess with the portrait in her hand. He stifles his jealousy till hẻ has announced that the Portuguese have Disappointment swallows up these high themselves taken the initiative, and in- hopes. All indeed goes well in the first stead of merely preparing to defend encounter with the Moors: their general, Ceuta, are about to attack Tangiers. Muley, is taken prisoner by Ferdinand, Their leaders are the King of Portugal's though set free with romantic generosity, brothers, Henry and Ferdinand, Grand when his captor beholds him weeping for Master of the Order of Avis. The King his absent and perhaps faithless ladye. of Fez receives this news with defiant But the small Christian army is surprised pride, and declares his purpose to keep after its advance to Tangiers, by the comTangiers and storm Ceuta, in spite of any bined forces of the kings of Fez and Momasters and princes in the world. He rocco: hopelessly outnumbered, it gives goes away; and then Muley's jealousy way in spite of prodigies of valour perovercomes his respect for his princess, formed by its leaders - one of whom, and he asks her angrily whose the por- Don Ferdinand, instead of dying for the trait is. Phoenix at first replies that faith as he had wished, is constrained to though she has condescended to allow yield his sword to the King of Fez. That Muley to love, yet she has given him no monarch has a parley with Prince Henry, permission to insult her. Presently, how-in which he bids him go to Portugal and ever she enters on a further explanation, and then asks Aow then sinned I, if my father Muley. How? by breaking Ph. How? Easily. Inventions hast thou tried? Ph. Which? Mu. At least thou couldst have died: I would gladly die for thee. return with full power to effect Ferdinand's release. Ceuta (so he bids him tell his royal brother) is the only ransom which will be accepted for the captive prince. "Tell him," says the prisoner significantly, "to see that he act in this calamity as a Christian king should." The full sense of these words appears later on. The tears by which they are accompanied, reveal in them to the discerning spectators Ferdinand's last farewell to freedom and to life. In the second act, we are again at Fez, where the king treats his captive with The scene changes. For a time we great respect, and permits him the diverleave the Moorish palace for the Chris- sion of the chase. The Christian pristian army, and witness the disembarka- oners gather round him as their consolation of the Portuguese princes on the tion and their hope, since they know of African coast. Prince Henry falls as he his intention to stipulate for their Kberty takes his first step on land, and other along with his own. But dark forebodprevious evil omens combine to dismay ings oppress Ferdinand's mind as he his mind. Ferdinand, whom these in awaits his brother's return; and he studtruth concern, bids him be of good cour-ies, as he says, in the captives' sorrows age. Like Hector, and like Hamlet, the young champion of the Cross defies auguries; and alas! as we shall see, with the same evil result, as far as temporal success goes. He says These common portents and these terrors vain train: how to bear those misfortunes which he may one day feel himself. At length the expected ship approaches its sails are black, and Prince Henry lands, himself in mourning weeds, and announces his royal brother's death; hastened by grief for his army's defeat and for Ferdinand's capture. His last thoughts have been directed to his brother's release; and |