Page:Euripides the Rationalist.djvu/32

16 of commentaries he borrowed the further assumption that this general purpose is to illustrate the religious legend. And he saw, or rather felt—for I do not of course mean that he said such a thing to himself or put it consciously as a step in an argument—he acted, let us say rather, on the truth which he perceived instinctively, that, given these premisses, a noble, beautiful, and thoroughly admirable Heracles is an indispensable necessity. With a selfish, unmanly, unwise, and half-contemptible Admetus it would just be possible—Browning has shown this—to present the legend of Alcestis so as still to preserve the religious hypothesis. The gods, it might be said, though the theology is not very Hellenic, are merciful to the repentant: and the Euripidean Admetus repents, if it be repentance to perceive your folly, as heartily as could be desired. On the whole he might do. But that Heracles should be exposed to any just contempt, Heracles the son of the highest god, the minister of life, privileged to wrestle victoriously with the power of darkness and corruption, to bring quick out of the grave a body upon which the mortal change had actually been accomplished, that Heracles should be semi-comic, or comic at all in the least degree—this seemed, as it is, intolerable, a thing as repugnant to the organic laws of art as a centaur or a chimaera to those of nature. Accordingly since the Heracles of Euripides, as the expositors agree, is in fact semi-comic and liable to much just contempt, Browning simply made another, enveloping and dressing, literally as well as figuratively, the original man in robes, trappings, and appurtenances, material and moral, of which in the Greek play there is not the least suggestion, until once at least, so complete is the transformation, he has to be unwrapped again as it were, before the words of Euripides can find their way to his mouth.

The thing is done (with what perfect unconsciousness and good faith is proved by the audacity of it) by means of copious stage-directions and interpolated remarks. The form of Browning's poem, as will be remembered, is a recitation of the play, with occasional comments by the reciter. The comments are largely pictorial, explaining how the personages looked and moved, replacing in short the action. It is noticeable that at one time Browning seems to have felt, or come near to feeling,