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IV.] applause had subsided. The play of Goethe is in fact an unfortunate mixture of Greek scenery and modern sentiment, and as such is rather a literary curiosity than a great play.

There were far more successful imitations of Euripides in older days. Pacuvius wrote for the Roman stage his Dulorestes, in which, according to Cicero, the mutual devotion of the friends in the presence of death brought down thunders of applause. After several early French versions Racine undertook the subject, and we still have his abstract of the intended scenes of the first act. Like all the other Frenchmen, he felt compelled to introduce the king en soupirant, after the model of the Helena. Among succeeding attempts we may mention Guimond de la Touche's play (1757), which pleased everybody in France at the moment except Voltaire, Grimm, and Diderot—three mighty dissenters. But Gluck's opera laid a real hold on the musical public of Europe.

43. The Orestes.—The Orestes, produced in 409 B.C., a tragedy exceedingly popular and much quoted m antiquity, but equally censured of late years, is in Euripides' later style, if there be such a distinction. Indeed there are strong reasons for asserting it from a metrical point of view, as in this, the Phœnissæ and the Helena, many licences are admitted which we do not find in the earlier plays, Yet even here the Bacchæ disproves the rule, being one of his latest works and yet metrically strict. But as to plot, it seems that the poet became fonder of crowding together incidents, even so far as to combine two separate actions in the same piece, as we shall see in the sequel. When such separate actions are not naturally connected, we cannot speak of the play as a drama of plot, and the Orestes narrowly escapes this charge. For with the condemnation of Orestes and Electra, and their affectionate leave-taking of one another and of Pylades, the play properly ends (v. 1070); but is started afresh by the sudden interference of Pylades, who suggests that they shall be avenged on their false