by Paul Hazard
This highly decorous play of Colley Cibber’s, Love’s Last Shift, was put on at the Theatre Royal, London, in the year 1696, and scored an immense success. Thereafter followed a number of comedies of mixed ingredients, grave, gay, homely, moral but with a few faint whiffs of the old licentiousness here and there; for, now and again, one of the old stock characters would be trotted out, and of course he would not have forgotten how to swallow his liquor, dangle after petticoats, and break out into obscenity, no matter what chaste ears were there to hear. There were tales, stories, sometimes new enough in parts but always freely introducing the old threadbare devices—disguises, masquerades, letters going to the wrong person, mystifications, misunderstandings. Colley Cibber set the example when he made Loveless fail to recognize his wife, because, he explained, her face had been slightly disfigured by smallpox. Ill-constructed, encumbered at the end of every act, sometimes of every scene, with homilies that were not very good and were certainly not spontaneous, however, they all bore witness to the same quickening of the conscience, the same psychological truth. It was that no moral reform can be effected from without, at the dictate of force or authority. The soul, the spirit, must be moved; before any attempt at regeneration is made, the spirit must be first aroused, and then guided, by the feelings. The husband who has become aware that his wife has wandered from the path will be powerless to influence her unless he can awaken in her heart the pangs of contrition and remorse. So to bring this about, what he does is to stage a sort of play; he gets someone to pretend to make up to her, a hireling lover; then, when she has been brought to within an inch of the precipice, she will have a sudden pang of loathing for the deceit and the treachery of which she was all but guilty, and this loathing for vice is the pathway that will bring her back to virtue.
Tenderness, compassion—these are now the things; aged domestics, like faithful hounds, grateful for all the benefits their masters have bestowed on them, display, in the latters’ hour of need, a devotion truly admirable. A few disreputable women, definitely past praying for, will be left to their miserable fate, but, for the most part, the women will be tender and gentle, and, if their hearts lead them astray, means will be found to bring them back to the right path before it is too late. As for the men, constancy in love will never go unrewarded, though, of course, it will have to be put to the proof by a few searching tests. Then, a father who would spare his son the slightest pain will be held up to our admiration; so will the son, who is no less tender, no less affectionate. Yes; the best and most loving of fathers, the best and most loving of sons! Yet, like a pair of sensitive plants, they shrink into themselves the moment they are touched. In the same play, we meet a pure and charming ingénue who refuses to believe in the existence of evil, despite all that is said to the contrary. Even the characters that are least engaging will be nothing more than just a trifle rough in manner, or a little bit jealous. However, the jealous fits will be dispelled, rough ways will soften into tenderness, everyone will kiss and be friends amid universal tears of joy. Such is the kind of thing we get in Steele’s The Conscious Lovers which was produced in 1772 and carried off the palm in its particular line. One department of literature is becoming “an obliging service to human society.”[12]
Opera!— What an insult to human intelligence! Please the eye, please the ear, and revolt the reason. The thing is an outrage against common sense. Fancy singing everything from start to finish! not only declarations of love, but speeches, messages, orders, curses, confidences, secrets! The thing is too absurd. Just imagine a master singing to call his servant; singing when he is sending the man on an errand; fancy singing when you have a secret to tell a friend, singing when you are addressing a meeting; singing when you are giving an order; singing when you are in a fight and melodiously slaying your man with sword or spear. “You want to know what opera is like?” Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a queer mix-up of poetry and music, in which the poet and the composer keep getting in each other’s way, and put themselves to no end of trouble to produce a very mediocre result.
That’s saying nothing about the scene-painter, another offender. To go and clutter up the stage with a lot of wonderful scenes all made of cardboard, to substitute for the intellectual or psychological interest, a lot of elaborate devices to amaze and astound, to contrive machines of extraordinary complexity—winged chariots, gods and goddesses mounting up to heaven, live monsters and so on—what a preposterous idea! In short, in the opinion of sensible people, people that have some respect for truth, who like things to have at least a semblance of probability about them, logical, level-headed people, like Saint-Évremond, say, or Boileau, or La Bruyère, Addison, Steele, Gravina, Crescimbeni, Maffei, Muratori—people like that all say that opera is an absurd thing, utterly puerile and irrational. For, say what you will, “an absurdity served up with music, and dancing, and complicated stage devices and elaborate scenery is no doubt a magnificent absurdity, but an absurdity none the less.”[13]
Precisely; opera was absurd, but opera caught on. That was a fact, and there was no getting away from it. This new departure, which enraged everyone with a grain of common sense about them, was a success. Everywhere it triumphed; Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, not a city in the whole of Italy but had come under the spell. It had made itself at home in the leading musical centres of Germany, at Dresden and Leipzig. In Vienna, which became a sort of second home to it, people simply raved about it. Not a Prince, or a Grand Duke but must have his theatre, his scenic artist, his composers, and must needs engage the finest maestro, the finest ballet-master, the finest prima donna to be had. In Paris, Lulli and Quintault were the lions of the hour. London had its Handel, and meant to keep him. Madrid was not up to date; Mme. d’Aulnay in her Relation du Voyage d’Espagne, which appeared in 1691, says with a smile: “There never was such pitiable stagecraft; the gods came down astride a plank which reached from one side of the theatre to the other; the effect of sunlight was produced by a dozen or so oiled-paper lanterns each with a lamp inside it. When it was Alcine’s turn to do her witchcraft business, and she called up her demons, they obligingly climbed up from the infernal regions on ladders.” But help was coming. In 1703, an Italian company came and took up its quarters in Madrid.
How is the furore to be accounted for? The fact is, the human heart has an incurable craving for the pathetic; it loves to be moved. Tragedy, which from about the end of the last century had been a purely imitative, a wholly mechanical affair, failed now to satisfy this craving. Music, then, should do what the drama could not do. It was this spiritual, this psychological need that
A vast assemblage of beautiful things; a pattern to which every art made its contribution, a feast of sound, colour and rhythmic motion; enchantment both for eye and ear, a completely and definitely novel kind of emotional appeal, defying analysis since its effect was physical, so that one’s bodily substance seemed to melt and dissolve under its influence: a delight born of magic and enchantment; a sensation inexplicable, unfathomable and incommunicable. Such was opera. You might condemn it a hundred, nay, a thousand times over, you would be but a voice crying in the wilderness. The critics were all on a false scent. They did not understand that a new want had arisen, a craving that would be satisfied, the craving for the breath-taking, the heart-rending, for floods of compassionate tears. Such were the things that people demanded now. They cared no more about being convinced; what they wanted was to be thrilled.[14] Therein lay the key to the whole matter. Let us consider the question a little more closely. What Europe was so enthusiastically taking to its bosom was opera, the Italian opera. Italy, which had provided the pattern of the thing, was the source, the inexhaustible source, whence flowed these endless waves of sound. She furnished Europe not only with the music, but with the musicians to perform it. Italy was but another name for Music. Thus it came to pass that these music-dramas made their way into all the neighbouring lands. However, Paris, too, wanted to have a finger in the pie; but the genius she chose to pit aga
inst the Italians was himself an Italian. Moreover, we must bear in mind that it was only one half of France that tried to resist the invasion. The other half had surrendered already. Hamburg for a long time remained loyal to German music; but Hamburg, too, at last gave in. The operatic world was one Italian colony; no more and no less.
How are we to account for the favour it thus received, for the leading position thus accorded to it? The Italian librettists, for their part, were as anxious as anybody to render fealty to the sovereign rights of Reason. By so doing they would cease to expose themselves to the scornful judgment of the critics; they would yield nothing in dignity to the great tragic poets. What Benedetto Marcello, and what Apostolo Zeno, master of music to His Imperial Majesty, and a would-be Pierre Corneille of Opera, both wanted to do was to give the libretto an organic shape, to do away with its customary inconsistencies, to compress and simplify it, in a word to bring it closer to the tragic model. Finally, sometime later, we find Metastasio appealing to Aristotle’s Poetics, in order to establish the title of music-drama to be classed as a legitimate form of art.
Vain attempts. Misled by the literary fallacy that still prevailed around them, and which would have men believe that the works of the great epic and tragic poets were the choicest flowers of the human spirit, they failed to see, these obstinate librettists, that the literary part of the thing was of very minor importance, that literature, so far as opera was concerned, was a mere handmaid, whose business it was to do whatever the music required of her. If the music wanted a solo here, a duet there, and somewhere else a chorus; if it demanded that so many lines, in such and such a metre, were to be assigned to the tenor or the bass, as the case might be, the music had to be obeyed. The music decided everything, even the librettist’s vocabulary, which must consist of words that were harmonious and easy to sing. All it required of the writer was that he should be adaptable, endowed with the will and the skill to do what was required of him. His was the art of accommodation, of doing what the composer, the conductor, the prima donna wanted him to do. And then the language, the Italian language, richer, more sonorous, more harmonious and more varied, than any other European tongue! It now began to recover some of the prestige it had lost when it tried to act as a vehicle of ideas.
Ah, this Italian music, how delightful it was! How it soared heavenwards like a fountain of melody, free and unfettered! How rich, how warm, how copious! And what triumphant ease! Generous, inexhaustible, it gave to a people to whom music was the breath of life, something which French music could not give; no, nor the music of any other country; it gave fire, and spirit and a style all its own. Yes; a style that was always characteristic, whatever the theme, gay or sad. Gentle, smooth-flowing numbers were not what it aimed at; nor rigidly correct transitions; it had little respect for rule, it took hazards, it would do and dare, and the very recklessness of it held you spellbound. There were people, even in those days, who realized this, some Frenchmen among them. “French composers would be terrified that disaster would follow if they ventured on the slightest deviation from the rules. They were all for soothing and caressing the ear; the ear was their god, and, even when they had done their utmost to obey the rules, they were still haunted by the fear that, for all their care, they might have done something amiss. The Italians are bolder than that. They will make abrupt changes of key and time, give the most numerous and complicated trills to notes we should think incapable of sustaining the slightest shake. They will sustain one single note for such a time that people not used to it get impatient at what they first think an outrage, but afterwards cannot sufficiently admire.” In short, “they cause mingled surprise and alarm to the hearer. He gets it into his head that the whole composition is about to crash in hopeless chaos; and then, when all his thoughts are centred on the ruin which he supposes to be imminent, his calm is restored by cadences so regular that he is lost in wonder as he sees harmony reborn from the very soul of discord, and drawing its crowning beauty from the very irregularities which, a moment ago, seemed destined to destroy it”.[15]
The pleasure that is born of audacity, the pleasure that even the appearance of violating the sacred canon can procure, a pleasure which is really physical, a pleasure which makes our flesh creep and our nerves thrill like a violin beneath the bow of a master; that was the nature of the pleasure for which all these Italian composers were responsible, men whose very names had music in them, men “whose excellent productions laid all Europe under a spell”. When some pupils of Scarlatti, the most illustrious of them all, asked him why he wrote this rather than that, or why he told them to do so and so, he always made the same reply, “Because it makes one feel better”.
[1]Of battles and that prelate terrible I sing
Who after many toils by power invincible
Wielding his mighty force in a most famous church
At last a lectern in the choir caused to be placed.
[2]Sing, O muse, the salutary quarrels of the London doctors and apothecaries, long since united together against the human race. What God, for our salvation, made them enemies; how came they to let their patients go on breathing while they left them to go and fight with their dear comrades? How came they to exchange their headgear for an iron helm, syringes for guns and pills for bullets? Glory was theirs. Fiercely they fought each other, losing their lives and leaving us our own. Voltaire, in reference to The Dispensary, by Samuel Garth, 1699.
[3]J. Philips, The Splendid Shilling, 1701 and 1705.
[4]This Muse of mine is no daughter of the Sun; no lyre of gold adorned with ebony is hers. She is but a rude country wench and likes to go about flinging up her songs into the air.
[5]She sings only but to put herself in joyous trim and to gladden those who hear her song; she knows no rules and cares nought for them.
[6]Reynaldo and Roland, arm linked in arm, get as drunk as they can at the inn.
[7]Le Distrait, act 1, scene 6.
[8]Servilius: When, alas, I bethink me that my present plight will expose to the most mortal distress a beautiful maiden whose trust and constancy has a greater claim on my gratitude than words can tell, all my strength deserts me. Pardon, I beseech you this poltroonery of mine, which disclosing to me all the dread things that lie ahead compels me to fall weeping on thy manly breast. Manlius: What, tears? Ah! Better these traitorous Romans should by thy valiant hands die bathed in their own blood. Tears! Is this the extremity to which thy grief hath driven thee?
Manlius Capitolinus, a Tragedy by La Fosse d’Aubigny, first presented by the players in ordinary to the King, on Saturday, 18 January, 1698.
[9]La Bruyère, Caractères. Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit.
[10]Unpublished Letters of Pierre Bayle, by J. L. Gerig and G. L. van Roosbroeck (The Romantic Review, July-September, 1932).
[11]Histoire nouvelle des amours de la jeune Bélise et de Cléante, 1689. Lettres de la Présidente Ferrand au Baron de Breteuil, Eugène Asse, 1880.
[12]Richard Steele, The Tender Husband, a comedy, 1705. To Mr. Addison, “Poetry . . . is an obliging service to human society”.
[13]Saint-Évremond, Lettre sur les opéras.
[14]Mme. de Sévigné, Lettre du 8 janvier, 1674.
[15]Raguenet, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français en ce qui regarde la musique et les opéras, 1702.
IV
INFLUENCES, NATIONAL, POPULAR AND INSTINCTIVE
WE have examined a few of the forces which, confusedly, instinctively, were tending to prevent Europe from becoming the exclusive domain of critics, analysts, logicians, and philosophers. These forces, which were to come into full operation later on, were, in a vague sort of way, preparing for the time, still far distant, when they might strike a blow in behalf of the feelings and the imagination. We have looked at these forces objectively, as it were, recording their visible manifestations in all their complex variety. What it now behoves us to do is to look at them from a higher plane, to examine them from some more elevated vantage point, so that we may dis
cover, at least some of the guiding principles from which these various forces of resistance were accustomed to draw their inspiration.
Nationalism: the consciousness of the differences which separate nation from nation—who shall eliminate nationalism? It goes down to the very bedrock of ideas; it derives from causes some of which Reason recognizes, some of which it does not.
There was at this time a tendency for a uniform mode of thought, a uniform mode of expression, to establish itself in every country; order, precision, disciplined lines of thought, beauty, the solid and enduring fruit of prolonged patience and enduring toil. That was all very well as a general principle, but was there not a secondary aspect of the matter to take into account, were there not subsidiary details which each nation interpreted in its own manner, so that differences, sometimes downright clashes, occurred to disturb the general uniformity? Here is an example: England had embraced the classical ideal, partly as a result of French influence, partly because she needed some inwardly stabilizing principle to regulate and discipline her material power. But her attitude towards the classics was always a distinctively British attitude.[1] Here, ready to hand, is a striking example: In England Swift figures among the classics, and it is a fact that he played an important part in fixing a standard for English prose. He is read and commented upon in school class-rooms, and no doubt he will continue to be so studied and expounded. There is a firmness, a solid quality in his work, and that unquestionable hall-mark of genius which entitles him to a place in the foremost rank of his country’s men of letters. But what a strange sort of classic he would seem to a Frenchman today! And how much stranger still to a Frenchman who took Boileau for his guiding light. Let us take a glance at the Tale of a Tub; let us look at it with the eyes of a continental reader of 1704, we will say. Imagine his stupefaction, his bewilderment! What a hopeless jumble! The man hasn’t got even the most elementary idea of composition. Off he goes at a tangent on whatever trail happens to strike his fancy, leaves that, and starts on something else, only to leave it and begin on something else again; apparently completely ignorant of that artistic device which goes by the name of transition. He obeys nothing but his own caprice. His introductions are longer than the things they introduce; for logic he doesn’t care a fig; and he seems to be laughing at us all the time. “After so wide a compass as I have wandered, I do now gladly overtake and close in with my subject, and shall henceforth hold on with it an even pace to the end of my journey, except some beautiful prospect appears within sight of my way.” What are we to think of an author who writes a digression in praise of digressions? And what extraordinary similes; what extravagant ideas! what a frenzied imagination! “Wisdom is a fox, who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof, to a judicious palate, the maggots are the best: it is a sack-posset, wherein the deeper you go, you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg; but then lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.”