Among these subjects presented in the collection of Hyginus, there is one which has long attracted my interest, from the testimony of the ancients to its excellence, and from the results which that testimony has called forth from the emulation of the moderns. That subject is the story of Merope. To the effectiveness of the situations which this story offered, Aristotle and Plutarch have borne witness: a celebrated tragedy upon it, probably by Euripides, existed in antiquity. ‘The Cresphontes of Euripides is lost,’ exclaims the reviewer of Voltaire’s Mérope, a Jesuit, and not unwilling to conciliate the terrible pupil of his order; ‘the Cresphontes of Euripides is lost: M. de Voltaire has restored it to us.’ ‘Aristotle,’ says Voltaire, ‘Aristotle, in his immortal work on Poetry, does not hesitate to affirm that the recognition between Merope and her son was the most interesting moment of the Greek stage.’ Aristotle affirms no such thing; but he does say that the story of Merope, like the stories of Iphigeneia and Antiope, supplies an example of a recognition of the most affecting kind. And Plutarch says; ‘Look at Merope in the tragedy, lifting up the axe against her own son as being the murderer of her own son, and crying —
A more just stroke than that thou gav’st my son,
Take —— —
What an agitation she makes in the theatre! how she fills the spectators with terror lest she should be too quick for the old man who is trying to stop her, and should strike the lad!’
It is singular that neither Aristotle nor Plutarch names the author of the tragedy: scholiasts and other late writers quote from it as from a work of Euripides; but the only writer of authority who names him as its author is Cicero. About fifty lines of it have come down to us: the most important of these remains are the passage just quoted, and a choral address to Peace; of these I have made use in my tragedy, translating the former, and of the latter adopting the general thought, that of rejoicing at the return of peace: the other fragments consist chiefly of detached moral sentences, of which I have not made any use.
It may be interesting to give some account of the more celebrated of those modern works which have been founded upon this subject. But before I proceed to do this, I will state what accounts we have of the story itself.
These proceed from three sources — Apollodorus, Pausanias, and Hyginus. Of their accounts that of Apollodorus is the most ancient, that of Pausanias the most historically valuable, and that of Hyginus the fullest. I will begin with the last-named writer.
Hyginus says: —
‘Merope sent away and concealed her infant son. Polyphontes sought for him everywhere, and promised gold to whoever should slay him. He, when he grew up, laid a plan to avenge the murder of his father and brothers. In pursuance of this plan he came to king Polyphontes and asked for the promised gold, saying that he had slain the son of Cresphontes and Merope. The king ordered him to be hospitably entertained, intending to inquire further of him. He, being very tired, went to sleep, and an old man, who was the channel through whom the mother and son used to communicate, arrives at this moment in tears, bringing word to Merope that her son had disappeared from his protector’s house. Merope, believing that the sleeping stranger is the murderer of her son, comes into the guest-chamber with an axe, not knowing that he whom she would slay was her son: the old man recognized him, and withheld Merope from slaying him. After the recognition had taken place, Merope, to prepare the way for her vengeance, affected to be reconciled with Polyphontes. The king, overjoyed, celebrated a sacrifice: his guest, pretending to strike the sacrificial victim, slew the king, and so got back his father’s kingdom.’
Apollodorus says: —
‘Cresphontes had not reigned long in Messenia when he was murdered together with two of his sons. And Polyphontes reigned in his stead, he, too, being of the family of Hercules; and he had for his wife, against her will, Merope, the widow of the murdered king. But Merope had borne to Cresphontes a third son, called Aepytus: him she gave to her own father to bring up. He, when he came to man’s estate, returned secretly to Messenia, and slew Polyphontes and the other murderers of his father.’
Pausanias adds nothing to the facts told by Apollodorus, except that he records the proceedings of Cresphontes which had provoked the resentment of his Dorian nobles, and led to his murder. His statements on this point will be found in the Historical Introduction which follows this Preface.
The account of the modern fortunes of the story of Merope is a curious chapter in literary history. In the early age of the French theatre this subject attracted the notice of a great man, if not a great poet, the cardinal Richelieu. At his theatre, in the Palais Royal, was brought out, in 1641, a tragedy under the title of Téléphonte, the name given by Hyginus to the surviving son of Merope. This piece is said by Voltaire to have contained about a hundred lines by the great cardinal, who had, as is well known, more bent than genius for dramatic composition. There his vein appears to have dried up, and the rest is by an undistinguished hand. This tragedy was followed by another on the same subject from the resident minister, at Paris, of the celebrated Christina of Sweden. Two pieces with the title of Mérope, besides others on the same story, but with different names, were brought out at Paris before the Mérope of Voltaire appeared. It seems that none of them created any memorable impression.
The first eminent success was in Italy. There too, as in France, more than one Merope was early produced: one of them in the sixteenth century, by a Count Torelli, composed with choruses: but the first success was achieved by Maffei. Scipio Maffei, called by Voltaire the Sophocles and Varro of Verona, was a noble and cultivated person. He became in middle life the historian of his native place, Verona; and may claim the honour of having partly anticipated Niebuhr in his famous discovery, in the Capitular library of that city, of the lost works of Gaius, the Roman lawyer. He visited France and England, and received an honorary degree at Oxford. But in earlier life he signalized himself as the reviver of the study of Greek literature in Italy; and with the aim to promote that study, and to rescue the Italian theatre from the debasement into which it had fallen, he brought out at Modena, in 1713, his tragedy of Merope.
The effect was immense. ‘Let the Greek and Roman writers give place: here is a greater production than the Oedipus!’ wrote, in Latin verse, an enthusiastic admirer. In the winter following its appearance, the tragedy kept constant possession of the stage in Italy; and its reputation travelled into France and England. In England a play was produced in 1731, by a writer called Jeffreys, professedly taken from the Merope of Maffei. But at this period a love-intrigue was considered indispensable in a tragedy: Voltaire was even compelled by the actors to introduce one in his Oedipus: and although in Maffei’s work there is no love-intrigue, the English adapter felt himself bound to supply the deficiency. Accordingly he makes, if we may trust Voltaire, the unknown son of Merope in love with one of her maids of honour: he is brought before his mother as his own supposed murderer: she gives him the choice of death by the dagger or by poison: he chooses the latter, drinks off the poison and falls insensible: but reappears at the end of the tragedy safe and sound, a friend of the maid of honour having substituted a sleeping-draught for the poison. Such is Voltaire’s account of this English Merope, of which I have not been able to obtain sight. Voltaire is apt to exaggerate; but the work was, without doubt, sufficiently absurd. A better English translation, by Ayre, appeared in 1740. I have taken from Maffei a line in my tragedy —
Tyrants think, him they murder not, they spare.
Maffei has —
Ecco il don dei tiranni: a lor rassembra,
Morte non dando altrui, di dar la vita.
Maffei makes some important changes in the story as told by its ancient relaters. In his tragedy the unknown prince, Merope’s son, is called Egisto: Merope herself is not, as the ancients represented her, at the time of her son’s return the wife of Polyphontes, but is repelling the importunate offer of his hand by her husband’s murderer: Egisto does not, like Orestes, know his own parentage, and
return secretly to his own home in order to wreak vengeance, in concert with his mother, upon his father’s murderer: he imagines himself the son of Messenian parents, but of a rank not royal, entrusted to an old man, Polidoro, to be brought up; and is driven by curiosity to quit his protector and visit his native land. He enters Messenia, and is attacked by a robber, whom he kills. The blood upon his dress attracts the notice of some soldiers of Polyphontes whom he falls in with; he is seized and brought to the royal palace. On hearing his story, a suspicion seizes Merope, who has heard from Polidoro that her son has quitted him, that the slain person must have been her own son. The suspicion is confirmed by the sight of a ring on the finger of Egisto, which had belonged to Cresphontes, and which Merope supposes the unknown stranger to have taken from her murdered son: she twice attempts his life: the arrival of Polidoro at last clears up the mystery for her; but at the very moment she recognizes Egisto, they are separated, and no interview of recognition takes place between the mother and son. Finally, the prince is made acquainted with his origin, and kills Polyphontes in the manner described by Hyginus.
This is an outline of the story as arranged by Maffei. This arrangement has been followed, in the main, by all his successors. His treatment of the subject has, I think, some grave defects, which I shall presently notice: but his work has much nobleness and feeling; it seems to me to possess, on the whole, more merit of a strictly poetical kind than any of the subsequent works upon the same subject.
Voltaire’s curiosity, which never slumbered, was attracted by the success of Maffei. It was not until 1736, however, when his interest in Maffei’s tragedy had been increased by a personal acquaintance with its author, that his own Mérope was composed. It was not brought out upon the stage until 1743. It was received, like its Italian predecessor, with an enthusiasm which, assuredly, the English Merope will not excite. From its exhibition dates the practice of calling for a successful author to appear at the close of his piece: the audience were so much enchanted with Voltaire’s tragedy, that they insisted on seeing the man who had given them such delight. To Corneille had been paid the honour of reserving for him the same seat in the theatre at all representations; but neither he nor Racine were ever ‘called for.’
Voltaire, in a long complimentary letter, dedicated his tragedy to Maffei. He had at first intended, he says, merely to translate the Merope of his predecessor, which he so greatly admired: he still admired it; above all, he admired it because it possessed simplicity; that simplicity which is, he says, his own idol. But he has to deal with a Parisian audience, with an audience who have been glutted with masterpieces until their delicacy has become excessive; until they can no longer support the simple and rustic air, the details of country life, which Maffei had imitated from the Greek theatre. The audience of Paris, of that city in which some thirty thousand spectators daily witnessed theatrical performances, and thus acquired, by constant practice, a severity of taste, to which the ten thousand Athenians who saw tragedies but four times a year could not pretend — of that terrible city, in which
Et pueri nasum rhinocerotis habent:
this audience loved simplicity, indeed, but not the same simplicity which was loved at Athens and imitated by Maffei. ‘I regret this,’ says Voltaire, ‘for how fond I am of simple nature! but, il faut se plier au goût d’une nation, one must accommodate oneself to the taste of one’s countrymen.’
He does himself less than justice. When he objects, indeed, to that in Maffei’s work which is truly ‘naïf et rustique,’ to that which is truly in a Greek spirit, he is wrong. His objection, for instance, to the passage in which the old retainer of Cresphontes describes, in the language of a man of his class, the rejoicings which celebrated his master’s accession, is, in my opinion, perfectly groundless. But the wonderful penetration and clear sense of Voltaire seizes, in general, upon really weak points in Maffei’s work: upon points which, to an Athenian, would have seemed as weak as they seemed to Voltaire. A French audience, he says, would not have borne to witness Polyphontes making love to Merope, whose husband he had murdered: neither would an Athenian audience have borne it. To hear Polyphontes say to Merope ‘Io t’amo,’ even though he is but feigning, for state purposes, a love which he has not really, shocks the natural feeling of mankind. Our usages, says Voltaire, would not permit that Merope should twice rush upon her son to slay him, once with a javelin, the next time with an axe. The French dramatic usages, then, would on this point have perfectly agreed with the laws of reason and good taste: this repetition of the same incident is tasteless and unmeaning. It is a grave fault of art, says Voltaire, that, at the critical moment of recognition, not a word passes between Merope and her son. He is right; a noble opportunity is thus thrown away. He objects to Maffei’s excessive introduction of conversations between subaltern personages: these conversations are, no doubt, tiresome. Other points there are, with respect to which we may say that Voltaire’s objections would have been perfectly sound had Maffei really done what is imputed to him: but he has not. Voltaire has a talent for misrepresentation, and he often uses it unscrupulously.
He never used it more unscrupulously than on this occasion. The French public, it appears, took Voltaire’s expressions of obligation to Maffei somewhat more literally than Voltaire liked: they imagined that the French Mérope was rather a successful adaptation of the Italian Merope than an original work. It was necessary to undeceive them. A letter appeared, addressed by a M. de La Lindelle to Voltaire, in which Voltaire is reproached for his excessive praises of Maffei’s tragedy, in which that work is rigorously analysed, its faults remorselessly displayed. No merit is allowed to it: it is a thoroughly bad piece on a thoroughly good subject. Lessing, who, in 1768, in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie, reviewed Voltaire’s Mérope at great length, evidently has divined, what is the truth, that M. de La Lindelle and Voltaire are one and the same person. It required indeed but little of the great Lessing’s sagacity to divine that. An unknown M. de La Lindelle does not write one letter in that style of unmatched incisiveness and animation, that style compared to which the style of Lord Macaulay is tame, and the style of Isocrates is obscure, and then pass for ever from the human stage. M. de La Lindelle is Voltaire; but that does not hinder Voltaire from replying to him with perfect gravity. ‘You terrify me!’ he exclaims to his correspondent — that is, to himself: ‘you terrify me! you are as hypercritical as Scaliger. Why not fix your attention rather on the beauties of M. Maffei’s work, than on its undoubted defects? It is my sincere opinion that, in some points, M. Maffei’s Merope is superior to my own.’ The transaction is one of the most signal instances of literary sharp practice on record. To this day, in the ordinary editions of Voltaire, M. de La Lindelle’s letter figures, in the correspondence prefixed to the tragedy of Mérope, as the letter of an authentic person; although the true history of the proceeding has long been well known, and Voltaire’s conduct in it was severely blamed by La Harpe.
Voltaire had said that his Mérope was occasioned by that of Maffei. ‘Occasioned,’ says Lessing, ‘is too weak a word: M. de Voltaire’s tragedy owes everything to that of M. Maffei.’ This is not just. We have seen the faults in Maffei’s work pointed out by Voltaire. Some of these faults he avoids: at the same time he discerns, with masterly clearness, the true difficulties of the subject. ‘Comment se prendre,’ he says, ‘pour faire penser à Mérope que son fils est l’assassin de son fils même?’ That is one problem; here is another: ‘Comment trouver des motifs necessaires pour que Polyphonte veuille épouser Mérope?’ Let us see which of Maffei’s faults Voltaire avoids: let us see how far he solves the problems which he himself has enunciated.
The story, in its main outline, is the same with Voltaire as with Maffei; but in some particulars it is altered, so as to have more probability. Like Maffei’s Egisto, Voltaire’s Égisthe does not know his own origin: like him, youthful curiosity drives him to quit his aged protector, and to re-enter Messenia. Like him he has an encounter with a stranger, whom he
slays, and whose blood, staining his clothes, leads to his apprehension. But this stranger is an emissary of Polyphontes, sent to effect the young prince’s murder. This is an improvement upon the robber of Maffei, who has no connexion whatever with the action of the piece. Suspicion falls upon Égisthe’s on the same grounds as those on which it fell upon Egisto. The suspicion is confirmed in Égisthe’s case by the appearance of a coat of armour, as, in Egisto’s case, it was confirmed by the appearance of a ring. In neither case does Merope seem to have sufficient cause to believe the unknown youth to be her son’s murderer. In Voltaire’s tragedy, Merope is ignorant until the end of the third act that Polyphontes is her husband’s murderer; nay, she believes that Cresphontes, murdered by the brigands of Pylos, has been avenged by Polyphontes, who claims her gratitude on that ground. He desires to marry her in order to strengthen his position. ‘Of interests in the state,’ he says,
‘Il ne reste aujourd’hui que le vôtre et le mien:
Nous devons l’un à l’autre un mutuel soutien.’
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 27