13 JULY 1867, Page 17

ORESTES.*

THERE is much poetry in this drama, some fine poetry, but it is not equal to Philoctetes, and if conjecture in such a case were

* Orestes. A Metrical Drama. By William P. Lancaster, M.A., author of Philocteles. Leaden: Bennett.

worth much, we should suppose it was an earlier effort of the same fine and thoughtful imagination. The subject is intrinsically less striking, and there is a certain want of adequacy about the motive for the tragedy with which it ends. Orestes is not the Orestes so well known to Greek tragedy, but a young Larissasath King, still in his minority, who has long brooded on the painfulness of his position as the mere puppet of an ambitious mother and

a more ambitious commander of mercenary troops. Orestes is' intended apparently as a classical study of Shakespeare's Hamlet,

—or is, at least, intended to be like him in meditative irresolu- tion, the sort of shrinking with which he starts back from action, and the welcome with which he greets any alternative which pro- mises to excuse him for delay. But in the first place, this is too entirely a modern subject, and needs too much of the sub- jective-romantic treatment, to bear even the appearance of a clas- sical form. And in the next place, it is not very well worked out,' and the impression which Orestes produces upon us is too thin, too pale, too despondent, for the heroic type at all. Hamlet makes up for his irresolution by endless wealth of intellectual resource and suggestion. Orestes is less irresolute, and indeed finally kills himself without any sufficient motive, but the fibre of his nature is too slight, too fine, to fasten any very strong hold on the reader's imagination, and when he dies there is a feeling less of tragedy than of the natural snapping of a weak thread. Nor is the prominent interest which Orestes fails to supply sup- plied by any other character in the drama, evil or good. Medius- the " Horatio" of the play—(the " Ophelia" instead of falling mad for love of the Prince who, nevertheless, loves her, thinks him too- high for her, and quietly gives her heart to Medius),—is, like Shake- speare's Horatio, quite without interest. And the queen-mother, Dyseris, and her paramour, Simus,—the Gertrude and Claudius of the piece,—are too slightly sketched in their evil consciences to take- the part of central figures. On the whole, the drama depends for

its beauty less upon the subject and the art of its execution, than on the detached beauty of individual passages. As compared with Philoctetes there is a want of life and substance in it, and though it is the indisputable work of a poet, it is equally indis-

putably the work of a poet less in earnest with his task, and draw- ing with a less vigorous and decisive hand.

In the figure of Orestes there is a radical uncertainty from- beginning to end whether the poet means to draw what Orestes. himself believes himself to be, a sort of classical Hamlet, radically

irresolute and too vague-minded for responsible action, or simply a boy hesitating only through immaturity of character, whose intel- lectual and moral scrupulousness has quite outstripped the develop- ment of his force of will and animal energy. Orestes describes him- self undoubtedly as having " the native hue of resolution all sickliedt o'er by the pale cast of thought," in the following fine passage :—

" And I believe that some one man or two,

Some poor or ignorant man about this land May envy me, Orestes, as I stand Here at my palace-gate, broad plains beyond, Under a quiet sky, and at my feet The mad glad year flushing in myriad blooms.

Why are things happy ? Wherefore with such care Dost thou trim out thy little bell, road-weed?

Nothing shall heed, if thou art beautiful, Or the first foot should crush thee ; as I would, But do not, being a tender milky fool, Hating myself and losing the pith of time Upon thine insignificance. To act And to act merely, cleansing from my brain These weak irresolute fumes of thought, that hold My hand suspended from the vital sword, That sets me with this Simus throat to throat, And thrusts these boasters with defiance home.

Ah, to have done with thought and see my way, Then were I man. Or, would that God had sown That blind bull-instinct in my soul, which drives Sheer at the end, and counts not. And I stand And tell myself, fool, thou must act and now, The very edge of time and of thy fate ; Let this dial creep an inch of shadow, and lose All—what is all? Life, I suppose ; not much.

The curse of all my nature, self-mistrust, Makes me still palter here."

And In conformity with this picture of himself he seizes the opportunity of going as a hostage with the hostile branch of the Lariasmans (the Crannonians) (just as Hamlet does of going to England), even though he leaves his love behind him, on the ground that this course delays the issue and opens a way for fate to decide for him what he lacks energy to decide for himself. But, on the other hand, when at last Simus's treachery and his mother's shame are fully known to him,—instead of still putting off the final moment, as Hamlet does, till dragged into it by the fencing match with Laertes, and the death of his mother before his eyes

by poisoned wine, have warmed his blood, and till his own poisoned wound leaves him only a moment's more life to execute his ven- geance,—Orestes weighs what is just with a great precision of judgment, and leaving his mother otherwise unpunished, puts Simms first and then himself to death : and his explanation of his motive for ridding the world of this one ruffian,—one of the finest passages in the drama,--savours nothing of the irresolution or vagueness of temperament indicated in the passage we have already quoted:— "I cannot see but that this man must die.

0, I would not go down with bloody hands If I could see a turning otherwhere !

I cannot weed the earth of all its knaves, Had I the sword of Perseus, and this one Might as well breathe and fester with the rest.

It is a knot of serpents, coiled and crammed,

Sucking the poison vapour of a marsh, That fatting them, kills else all healthy life.

I do not dream the serpent breed shall fail Tho' I crash one that in his hideous coils Has wound my mother. But it seems to me, Man's effort being bounded, he can only Rid out his own peculiar evil, and sleep, Leaving the issue of the monstrous rest

On the god's knees, then gladly fold his hands."

'That is the speech of a man who is not a classical antitype of hamlet, but rather a classical antitype of the Christian soldier *smiting reluctantly with the sword of the Lord, and realizing, as he strikes, that little as he effects towards the purifying of the world, it is his appointed and providential appointment on earth to effect that little. There is here none of the vague intellectual haze which stands between Hamlet and action,—on the con- trary, the character here delineated is that of fine and delicate practical discrimination, distinguishing exactly,—under a classical rule of morality,—how much that is revolting to him it is ...obligatory on him to do, and doing it without a moment's hesitation. What is suggested by this passage is that Orestes' -uncertainty of purpose is the uncertainty not of intellectual -doubts, not that due to the paralysis which a mind teaming with a wealth of distracting suggestions suffers from, but the uncertainty 0f delicate scrupulosity, of moral exactness of nature, which cannot bear to act without a clear and definite; conception of the precise esztent of obligation. And something between the two conceptions as apparently embodied in the fine closing speech before Orestes &ills himself .—

" And now 0 strange lord ! Death, Thou floating dream so near us all our lives, Thee we put forth our hand and often touch And know it not. 0 I have never feared thee ! Let those with many loves and spacious ease Tremble where no fear is. For I have gazed, Ay, very closely in thy terrible eyes, And found them tender as a mother's, more Tender than mine. 0 I have felt thy hand, And found it answer more than mortal love's,— Have thou no anger with me, 0 great lord! If loving thee so much and wearied out, I come uncalled, and dare invade thy realm, Trustful of welcome yet without thy leave.

"Now is the road right open to mine eyes, I feel a spirit, and this dull flesh breaks In exaltation shedding off my shame.

Fire wavers in mine eyes and the hills flash In awful red around me. Sheets of light Spread back in heaven ; there seems a breadth of lake 'With other mares beyond it infinite, "Where strange successions of immortal lights Are crisped upon them. Now are my limbs air, And to the great change I step proudly down Without one sigh, without one fear—my dagger, Speak thou the rest."

'That is the picture of a nature, full of vision and full of scruple, and yet not driven from its purpose by either the vision or the .scruple. In fact, the vision, instead of being, as Hamlet's would -have been, full of reasons for not dying, is a picture of the fascina- tions of death, and the scruple—just indicated—as to the rashness of self-slaughter is not sufficient to deter in the face of these fascina- tions. In spite of some ambiguity and shortcoming in the sketch, the character of Orestes keeps the attention, though scarcely vivetting it, throughout. But this cannot be said for any of the other characters. Once only, the queen-mother, Dyseris, as painted by her paramour, rises into some viyidnesa where he taunts her with wishing to have all the advantages.of his crimes, but to avoid sharing the responsibilities :-

" Sums. • • • •

You are a woman after all: I thought you A little better than the milky rest

Of soft fool-faces, breeders of fool's breed ; But like the rest you are gone flaring out About your mother's feelings. Yon must act Even to me who know you to the core; You are a woman after all: you want To rale and be soft-hearted, eat the fruit Of cruelty, with virgin credit still Of being tender : I must find the crime, And you sit flushing in your rose leaves there

And cry ' alas ! ' at death."

Some of the choruses have great beauty, though we miss any with the sort of charm that belonged to the chorus to Pan, the indwelling god of Nature, in the Philoctetes. Perhaps the following on the Nemesis which is visited on the children of great criminals, even to the third and fourth generation, when they have escaped all Nemesis themselves, is one of the finest. The chorus is speak- ing of the princely criminal :— " He rules and will not care :

He rules and honour clothes his years supremely fair.

So of his crime he takes the sweet, and dies With the full savour of it in his month, And keen delightful eyes ; While yet his lips a quiet laughter keep At fools that fear the gods. So turns he to his sleep.

And men will come and say, 'His crime is Barely done and clean and passed away.

Can god account with these dry bones for wrong, Or make them live again?

His vengeance is not wakeful, and this one Hath made his rest, and done His full of pleasure and escaped god's pain.'

" Not so, ye fools and vain, Heap up his grave and listen : from the ground, From the gray bones when years have greened his mound, An Ate vengeance rises. As soft rain Her feet, and like the fluttered leaf, her robe, And like a dream she goes Pale-eyed and unreposing. And she knows, Patient to wait, that years and years again Will not erase the stain.

For which she watches the accursed race, The seed of him who prospered his disgrace, And made his laughter at the gods and died.

And well she knows that vengeance waxeth sweat For keeping, and her face Is pale for want of blood, and yet she curbs desire, Altho' her veins are fire, And years are very slow, She bides her time to strike, and needs no second blow."

On the whole, Orestes seems to us a drama of somewhat uncer- tain outline, but still of great poetic beauty, with occasionally a faltering stroke or two even in detaiL (What does Mr. Lancaster mean, by the way, by making Medina say to his love?— "So let thy hand be there ; There is a fire comes from it soft and sleek."

What is "sleek fire " like? and how could it express a lover's feeling for the touch of her he loved?) We should add that it is a poem of great promise, had we not had another of what seems to us a much greater promise from the same pen. If, as we have conjectured, this is an earlier effort, it is well, though we doubt if Mr. Lancaster is wise in publishing it after his greater and maturer effort. But if it is a later work, it seems to us to show much less meditative depth and unity,—a less noble theme and a less tranquil meditation of his theme,—than the former poem, by which he made for himself at one stroke the reputation of a poet.