Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/502

 What justification is there for man's pleasure in such make-believe?

Marcus makes these points. First, Tragedy reminds us of what actually does happen:

We are not all alone unhappy: This wide and universal theatre Presents more woful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in.

Secondly, the catastrophe is a necessary outcome of the complication which precedes it: we see 'the inscrutable destiny interwoven with the legend'. The play is, for Marcus, a picture of the necessity which he believed to govern universal Nature.

Thirdly, we are captivated by the sorrows of the story and we see that the kings and heroes of legend were obliged to endure those sufferings. The poet addresses a message to his public: 'you are not to complain if your experience on life's stage tallies with what I show you here'.

The word 'captivated', used here, is also employed in iii. 2, where our pleasure in the appearances of the decay of nature, and in artistic representations of death and what in actual experience is disgusting, is debated. The pleasure depends, Marcus says, upon recognition of natural law. His theory here is the same, though he does not state it explicitly. St. Augustine asked but did not answer a similar question about his pleasure in the adventures of lovers, as shown on the comic stage.

The fourth point is drawn from what Aristotle calls the intellectual element in dramatic poetry, where the poet embodies his criticism of life in striking maxims.

The Old Comedy Marcus prefers to what succeeded to it. He approves its direct and unvarnished style, so strongly contrasted with the later innuendo, and its manly criticism of great statesmen, even of philosophers. Aristophanes administered an antidote to vain-glory. In passing he remarks that Cynics, like Diogenes, copied this candour; they called a spade a spade, mercilessly exposed men who stood high in their own esteem, even an Alexander of whom he no doubt is thinking.

Comedy declined through its middle period to the new fashion, 410