Of the two, Aristophanes has the bigger canvas, leagues to Gilbert’s inches, but the yardstick is not a measure of art and the passages that follow will show how closely they resemble each other in the quality of their humor. It is true that Aristophanes wrote for an audience on a higher level intellectually than Gilbert’s, made up of the keenest minds, the most discriminating critics, the theatre has ever known. It would be impossible to imagine the Victorians listening delightedly to hundreds of lines on end that were nothing except exquisitely skillful parodies of Browning and Tennyson. In the vital matter of an audience the Athenian was greatly more fortunate than the Englishman, and his plays have inevitably a far wider scope. None the less, it remains true that while the difference in their intellectual appeal may quite well have been due to the difference between the people each wrote for, their resemblances are far more striking and are certainly due to a close kinship of spirit.
Even in matters of technique, which is wont to vary so greatly from age to age, there are many similarities. To both men the fooling is the point, not the plot. In that subtle, individual thing, the use of metre, they are strikingly alike. The metre of a comic song is as important as its matter. No one understood that more clearly than Gilbert:
All children who are up in dates and floor you with ’em flat,
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that.
Aristophanes understood it too as none better:
Come listen now to the good old days when the children, strange to tell,
Were seen not heard, led a simple life, in short were brought up well.
This jolly line is a favorite with him but he uses an endless variety. Examples will be found in the passages translated, in all of which, as I have already said, except the one indicated, I have reproduced the original metres. The effect of them is essentially that of Gilbert’s.
A device of pure nonsense in Gilbert, which seems peculiarly his own, and which he uses, for example, in the second act of Patience, is the appeal to something utterly irrelevant that proves irresistible:
GROSVENOR (wildly): But you would not do it—I am sure you would not. (Throwing himself at BUNTHORNE’S knees, and clinging to him.) Oh, reflect, reflect! You had a mother once.
BUNTHORNE: Never!
GROSVENOR: Then you had an aunt! (BUNTHORNE deeply affected.) Ah! I see you had! By the memory of that aunt, I implore you.
Precisely the same nonsensical device is used by Aristophanes. In the Acharnians the magic appeal before which all opposition melts is, not to an aunt, but to a scuttle of coal, as it might have been a few years back in England. Fuel was scarce in Athens just then; war was raging.
The scene is a street in Athens. A man, Dikæopolis by name, has said something in favor of Sparta, Athens’ enemy. The crowd is furious:
DIKÆOPOLIS: This I know, the men of Sparta, whom we’re cursing all day long,
Aren’t the only ones to blame for everything that’s going wrong.
CROWD: Spartans not to blame, you traitor? Do you dare tell such a lie?
At him! At him, all good people. Stone him, burn him.
He shall die.
DIKÆOPOLIS: Won’t you hear me, my dear fellows?
CROWD: Never, never. Not a word.
DIKÆOPOLIS: Then I’ll turn on you, you villains. Would you kill a man unheard?
I’ve a hostage for my safety, one that’s very dear to you.
I will slaughter him before you. (Goes into house at back of stage.)
CROWD: What is it he’s gone to do?
How he threatens. You don’t think he’s got a child of ours in there?
DIKÆOPOLIS: (from behind stage) I’ve got something. Now, you scoundrels, tremble, for I will not spare.
Look well at my hostage. This will test your mettle, every soul. (He comes out lugging something behind him.)
Which among you has true feeling for—a scuttle full of coal?
CROWD: Heaven save us! Oh, don’t touch it. We’ll give in.
Say what you please.
In the Lysistrata occurs the following:
FIRST SPEAKER: For through man’s heart there runs in flood
A natural and a noble taste for blood.
SECOND SPEAKER: To form a ring and fight—
THIRD SPEAKER: To cut off heads at sight—
ALL: It is our right.
Matter and manner are perfectly Gilbert’s. Any one not knowing the author would inevitably assign it to him, to the Princess Ida, perhaps, along with:
We are warriors three,
Sons of Gama Rex,
Like most sons are we,
Masculine in sex.
Bold and fierce and strong, ha! ha!
For a war we burn,
With its right or wrong, ha! ha!
We have no concern.
Aristophanes was amused by grand talk that covered empty content. In the first scene of the Thesmophoriazusæ two elderly men enter, one with the lofty air that befits a Poet and Philosopher, the other an ordinary, cheerful old fellow. He speaks first:
MNESILOCHUS: Might I, before I’ve lost my wind entirely, Be told, where you are taking me, Euripides?
EURIPIDES: (solemnly) You may not hear the things which presently
You are to see.
MNESILOCHUS: What’s that? Say it again.
I’m not to hear—?
EURIPIDES: What you shall surely see.
MNESILOCHUS: And not to see—?
EURIPIDES: The things you must needs hear.
MNESILOCHUS: Oh, how you talk. Of course you’re very clever.
You must mean I must not either hear or see?
EURIPIDES: They two are twain and by their nature diverse,
Each one from other.
MNESILOCHUS: What’s that—diverse?
EURIPIDES: Their elemental parts are separate.
MNESILOCHUS: Oh, what it is to talk to learned people!
Gilbert was amused by the same thing. In the second act of the Princess Ida the first scene is the hall of the Women’s University. The principal has been addressing the faculty and students, and as she finishes asks:
Who lectures in the Hall of Arts to-day?
LADY BLANCHE: I, madam, on Abstract Philosophy.
There I propose considering at length
Three points—the Is, the Might Be, and the Must.
Whether the Is, from being actual fact,
Is more important than the vague Might Be,
Or the Might Be, from taking wider scope,
Is for that reason greater than the Is:
And lastly, how the Is and Might Be stand
Compared with the inevitable Must!
PRINCESS: The subject’s deep.
Every kind of sham is dear to Aristophanes but especially the literary sham. He is forever making fun of him. In the Birds Peisthetærus, an Athenian, is helping the birds found their new city in the clouds, which is called Cloud-cuckoo-town. To it flock the quacks and the cranks. A priest has just been chased off the stage when enter a poet, singing:*
O Cloud-cuckoo-town!
Muse, do thou crown
With song her fair name,
Hymning her fame.
PEISTHETÆUS: What sort of thing is this? I say,
Who in the world are you, now, pray?
POET: A warbler of a song,
Very sweet and very strong.
Slave of the Muse am I,
Eager and nimble and spry,
—As Homer says.
PEISTHETÆUS: Does the Muse let her servants wear
That sort of long, untidy hair?
POET: Oh, we who teach the art
Of the drama, whole or part,
Servants of the Muse must try
To be eager and nimble and spry,
—As Homer says.
PEISTHETÆUS: That nimbleness, no doubt is why
You’re all in rags. You are too spry.
POET: Oh, I’ve been making lovely, lovel
y lays,
Old and new-fashioned too, in sweetest praise
Of your Cloud-cuckoo-town.
…And won’t you see
If you have something you can give to ME?
Gilbert enjoyed the sham artist quite as much. In Patience the officers of the Dragoons are on the stage:
COLONEL: Yes, and here are the ladies.
DUKE: But who is the gentleman with the long hair?
(BUNTHORNE enters, followed by the ladies, two by two.)
BUNTHORNE: (aside) Though my book I seem to scan
In a rapt ecstatic way,
Like a literary man
Who despises female clay,
I hear plainly all they say.
Twenty love-sick maidens they!
(Exit ladies.)
BUNTHORNE: (alone) Am I alone
And unobserved? I am!
Then let me own
I’m an æsthetic sham!
This air severe
Is but a mere
Veneer!
This costume chaste
Is but good taste
Misplaced!
Both writers make the same kind of jokes about military matters and the like. In the Knights the two generals introduced were among the most famous of their time:
DEMOSTHENES: How goes it, poor old chap?
NICIAS: Badly. Like you.
DEMOSTHENES: Let’s sing a doleful ditty and then weep. (Both sing, break down and sob.)
DEMOSTHENES: No use in whimpering. We’d do better far
To dry our tears and find some good way out.
NICIAS: What way? You tell me.
DEMOSTHENES: No. Do you tell me.
If you won’t speak I’ll fight you.
NICIAS: No, not I.
You say it first and then I’ll say it after.
DEMOSTHENES: Oh, speak for me and say what’s in my heart.
NICIAS: My courage fails. If only I could say it
Neatly and sweetly, like Euripides.
Well, then, say SERT, like that, and say it smartly.
DEMOSTHENES: All right. Here goes: SERT.
NICIAS: Good! Have courage now.
Say first SERT and then DE, repeating fast
The two words, very fast.
DEMOSTHENES: Ah, yes. I get you.
Sert de, sert de sert, DESERT!
NICIAS: You have it.
Well, doesn’t it sound nice?
DEMOSTHENES: It’s HEAVENLY.
But—but—
NICIAS: What’s that?
DEMOSTHENES: They FLOG deserters.
Gilbert’s jokes, of course, were in a lighter vein. War seemed remote to the mid-Victorian. The passage most like the one quoted from Aristophanes is the marching song of the Police in the Pirates:
MABEL: Go, ye heroes, go to glory,
Though ye die in combat gory,
Ye shall live in song and story,
Go to immortality!
POLICE: Though to us it’s evident,
Tarantara! tarantara!
These intentions are well meant,
Tarantara!
Such expressions don’t appear,
Tarantara, tarantara,
Calculated men to cheer,
Tarantara!
Who are going to meet their fate
In a highly nervous state,
Tarantara!
Politicians in Athens and in London seem very much the same. In the Plutus a slave, Carion, meets one. He asks:
You’re a good man, a patriot?
POLITICIAN: Oh, yes,
If ever there was one.
CARION: And, as I guess,
A farmer?
POLITICIAN: I? Lord save us. I’m not mad.
CARION: A merchant then?
POLITICIAN: Ah, sometimes I have had
To take that trade up—as an alibi.
CARION: You’ve some profession surely.
POLITICIAN: No, not I.
CARION: How do you make a living?
POLITICIAN: Well, there’re several
Answers to that. I’m Supervisor General
Of all things here, public and private too.
CARION: A great profession that. What did you do
To qualify for it?
POLITICIAN: I WANTED it.
So Gilbert in the song of the duke and duchess in the Gondoliers:
To help unhappy commoners, and add to their enjoyment,
Affords a man of noble rank congenial employment;
Of our attempts we offer you examples illustrative:
The work is light, and, I may add, it’s most remunerative.
Small titles and orders
For Mayors and Recorders
I get—and they’re highly delighted.
M. P.’s baronetted,
Sham Colonels gazetted,
And second-rate Aldermen knighted.
In the Knights an oracle has just foretold that Athens will be ruled some day by a sausage-seller. At that moment one enters and is greeted with enthusiasm.
DEMOSTHENES: Dear Sausage-seller, rise, our Saviour and the State’s.
SAUSAGE-SELLER: What’s that you say?
DEMOSTHENES: O happy man and rich!
Nothing to-day, to-morrow everything.
O Lord of Athens, blest through you!
SAUSAGE-SELLER: I see, sir,
That you must have your joke. But as for me,
I’ve got to wash the guts and sell my sausage.
DEMOSTHENES: But you are going to be our greatest man.
SAUSAGE-SELLER: Oh, I’m not fit for that.
DEMOSTHENES: What’s that?
Not fit?
Is some good action weighing on your conscience?
Don’t tell me that you come of honest folk?
SAUSAGE-SELLER: Oh, dear me, no sir. Bad ’uns, out and out.
DEMOSTHENES: You lucky man. Oh, what a start you’ve got For public life.
SAUSAGE-SELLER: But I don’t know a thing Except my letters.
DEMOSTHENES: Ah, the pity is That you know anything.
A parallel passage is Sir Joseph’s song in Pinafore:
I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party’s call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
The Greek Way Page 11