Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature by August Wilhelm Schlegel (classic books to read TXT) 📖

"Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading.... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history, - with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him."

- SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.
Address on the opening of the Eton Library , 1833.


CONTENTS.


Preface of the Translator.

Author's Preface.

Memoir of the Life of Augustus William Schlegel.

LECTURE I.

Introduction - Spirit of True Criticism - Difference of Taste between the Ancients and Moderns - Classical and Romantic Poetry and Art - Division of Dramatic Literature; the Ancients, their Imitators, and the Romantic Poets.

LECTURE II.

Definition of the Drama - View of the Theatres of all Nations - Theatrical Effect - Importance of the Stage - Principal Species of the Drama.

LECTURE III.

Essence of Tragedy and Comedy - Earnestness and Sport - How far it is possible to become acquainted with the Ancients without knowing Original Languages - Winkelmann.

LECTURE IV.

Structure of the Stage among the Greeks - Their Acting - Use of Masks - False comparison of Ancient Tragedy to the Opera - Tragical Lyric Poetry.

LECTURE V.

Essence of the Greek Tragedies - Ideality of the Representation - Idea of Fate - Source of the Pleasure derived from Tragical Representations - Import of the Chorus - The materials of Greek Tragedy derived from Mythology - Comparison with the Plastic Arts.

LECTURE VI.

Progress of the Tragic Art among the Greeks - Various styles of Tragic Art
- Aeschylus - Connexion in a Trilogy of Aeschylus - His remaining Works.

LECTURE VII.

Life and Political Character of Sophocles - Character of his different Tragedies.

LECTURE VIII.

Euripides - His Merits and Defects - Decline of Tragic Poetry through him.

LECTURE IX.

Comparison between the Choephorae of Aeschylus, the Electra of Sophocles, and that of Euripides.

LECTURE X.

Character of the remaining Works of Euripides - The Satirical Drama - Alexandrian Tragic Poets.

LECTURE XI.

The Old Comedy proved to be completely a contrast to Tragedy - Parody - Ideality of Comedy the reverse of that of Tragedy - Mirthful Caprice - Allegoric and Political Signification - The Chorus and its Parabases.

LECTURE XII.

Aristophanes - His Character as an Artist - Description and Character of his remaining Works - A Scene, translated from the Acharnae , by way of Appendix.

LECTURE XIII.

Whether the Middle Comedy was a distinct species - Origin of the New Comedy - A mixed species - Its prosaic character - Whether versification is essential to Comedy - Subordinate kinds - Pieces of Character, and of Intrigue - The Comic of observation, of self-consciousness, and arbitrary Comic - Morality of Comedy.

LECTURE XIV.

Plautus and Terence as Imitators of the Greeks, here examined and characterized in the absence of the Originals they copied - Motives of the Athenian Comedy from Manners and Society - Portrait-Statues of two Comedians.

LECTURE XV.

Roman Theatre - Native kinds: Atellane Fables, Mimes, Comoedia Togata - Greek Tragedy transplanted to Rome - Tragic Authors of a former Epoch, and of the Augustan Age - Idea of a National Roman Tragedy - Causes of the want of success of the Romans in Tragedy - Seneca.

LECTURE XVI.

The Italians - Pastoral Dramas of Tasso and Guarini - Small progress in Tragedy - Metastasio and Alfieri - Character of both - Comedies of Ariosto, Aretin, Porta - Improvisatore Masks - Goldoni - Gozzi - Latest state.

LECTURE XVII.

Antiquities of the French Stage - Influence of Aristotle and the Imitation of the Ancients - Investigation of the Three Unities - What is Unity of Action? - Unity of Time - Was it observed by the Greeks? - Unity of Place as connected with it.

LECTURE XVIII.

Mischief resulting to the French Stage from too narrow Interpretation of the Rules of Unity - Influence of these rules on French Tragedy - Manner of treating Mythological and Historical Materials - Idea of Tragical Dignity - Observation of Conventional Rules - False System of Expositions.

LECTURE XIX.

Use at first made of the Spanish Theatre by the French - General Character of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire - Review of the principal Works of Corneille and of Racine - Thomas Corneille and Crebillon.

LECTURE XX.

Voltaire - Tragedies on Greek Subjects: Oedipe , Merope , Oreste - Tragedies on Roman Subjects: Brute , Mort de César , Catiline , Le Triumvirat - Earlier Pieces: Zaire , Alzire , Mahomet , Semiramis , And Tancred .

LECTURE XXI.

French Comedy - Molière - Criticism of his Works - Scarron, Boursault, Regnard; Comedies in the Time of the Regency; Marivaux and Destouches; Piron and Gresset - Later Attempts - The Heroic Opera: Quinault - Operettes and Vaudevilles - Diderot's attempted Change of the Theatre - The Weeping Drama - Beaumarchais - Melo-Dramas - Merits and Defects of the Histrionic Art.

LECTURE XXII.

Comparison of the English and Spanish Theatres - Spirit of the Romantic Drama - Shakspeare - His Age and the Circumstances of his Life.

LECTURE XXIII.

Ignorance or Learning of Shakspeare - Costume as observed by Shakspeare, and how far necessary, or may be dispensed with, in the Drama - Shakspeare the greatest drawer of Character - Vindication of the genuineness of his pathos - Play on Words - Moral Delicacy - Irony-Mixture of the Tragic and Comic - The part of the Fool or Clown - Shakspeare's Language and Versification.

LECTURE XXIV.

Criticisms on Shakspeare's Comedies.

LECTURE XXV.

Criticisms on Shakspeare's Tragedies.

LECTURE XXVI.

Criticisms on Shakspeare's Historical Dramas.

LECTURE XXVII.

Two Periods of the English Theatre: the first the most important - The first Conformation of the Stage, and its Advantages - State of the Histrionic Art in Shakspeare's Time - Antiquities of Dramatic Literature - Lilly, Marlow, Heywood - Ben Jonson; Criticism of his Works - Masques - Beaumont and Fletcher - General Characterization of these Poets, and Remarks on some of their Pieces - Massinger and other Contemporaries of Charles I.

LECTURE XXVIII.

Closing of the Stage by the Puritans - Revival of the Stage under Charles II. - Depravity of Taste and Morals - Dryden, Otway, and others - Characterization of the Comic Poets from Wycherley and Congreve to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century - Tragedies of the same Period - Rowe - Addison's Cato - Later Pieces - Familiar Tragedy: Lillo - Garrick - Latest State.

LECTURE XXIX.

Spanish Theatre - Its three Periods: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon - Spirit of the Spanish Poetry in general - Influence of the National History on it - Form, and various Species of the Spanish Drama - Decline since the beginning of the Eighteenth Century.

LECTURE XXX.

Origin of the German Theatre - Hans Sachs - Gryphius - The Age of Gottsched - Wretched Imitation of the French - Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller - Review of their Works - Their Influence on Chivalrous Dramas, Affecting Dramas, and Family Pictures - Prospect for Futurity.


PREFACE OF THE TRANSLATOR.


The Lectures of A. W. SCHLEGEL on Dramatic Poetry have obtained high celebrity on the Continent, and been much alluded to of late in several publications in this country. The boldness of his attacks on rules which are considered as sacred by the French critics, and on works of which the French nation in general have long been proud, called forth a more than ordinary degree of indignation against his work in France. It was amusing enough to observe the hostility carried on against him in the Parisian Journals. The writers in these Journals found it much easier to condemn M. SCHLEGEL than to refute him: they allowed that what he said was very ingenious, and had a great appearance of truth; but still they said it was not truth. They never, however, as far as I could observe, thought proper to grapple with him, to point out anything unfounded in his premises, or illogical in the conclusions which he drew from them; they generally confined themselves to mere assertions, or to minute and unimportant observations by which the real question was in no manner affected.

In this country the work will no doubt meet with a very different reception. Here we have no want of scholars to appreciate the value of his views of the ancient drama; and it will be no disadvantage to him, in our eyes, that he has been unsparing in his attack on the literature of our enemies. It will hardly fail to astonish us, however, to find a stranger better acquainted with the brightest poetical ornament of this country than any of ourselves; and that the admiration of the English nation for Shakspeare should first obtain a truly enlightened interpreter in a critic of Germany.

It is not for me, however, to enlarge on the merits of a work which has already obtained so high a reputation. I shall better consult my own advantage in giving a short extract from the animated account of M. SCHLEGEL'S Lectures in the late work on Germany by Madame de Staël: -

"W. SCHLEGEL has given a course of Dramatic Literature at Vienna, which comprises every thing remarkable that has been composed for the theatre, from the time of the Grecians to our own days. It is not a barren nomenclature of the works of the various authors: he seizes the spirit of their different sorts of literature with all the imagination of a poet. We are sensible that to produce such consequences extraordinary studies are required: but learning is not perceived in this work, except by his perfect knowledge of the chefs-d'oeuvre of composition. In a few pages we reap the fruit of the labour of a whole life; every opinion formed by the author, every epithet given to the writers of whom he speaks, is beautiful and just, concise and animated. He has found the art of treating the finest pieces of poetry as so many wonders of nature, and of painting them in lively colours, which do not injure the justness of the outline; for we cannot repeat too often, that imagination, far from being an enemy to truth, brings it forward more than any other faculty of the mind; and all those who depend upon it as an excuse for indefinite terms or exaggerated expressions, are at least as destitute of poetry as of good sense.

"An analysis of the principles on which both Tragedy and Comedy are founded, is treated in this course with much depth of philosophy. This kind of