Some Account of the English Stage/Volume 2/Heroic Love
Heroic Love. Agamemnon＝Betterton: Achilles＝Verbruggen: Ulysses＝Sandford: Nestor＝Bowman: Chryses＝Kynaston: Patroclus＝Scudamore: Chalcas＝Freeman: Chruseis＝Mrs. Barry: Briseis＝Mrs. Bracegirdle:—Agamemnon and Chruseis are deeply in love with each other—Chryses demands his daughter—Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel—Agamemnon sends Talthybius to Achilles’ tent for Briseis—he protests however to Nestor, that he does not mean to be naughty with her—Chruseis becomes jealous of Briseis—Agamemnon wishes to exculpate himself, but Chruseis on one hand, and Briseis on the other, will not give an opportunity to speak—Briseis arrogates as much to her beauty as Achilles does to his arms—she returns to Achilles—he doubts whether she has been true or false to him—he grows amorous—and they make their exit together—Chruseis, after a long struggle, leaves Agamemnon—he falls into a swoon—and the wise Ulysses concludes the play with—
“Fate holds the strings, and men like children move
But as they’re led: success is from above.”
This T. is unnatural—some parts of it however are well written—particularly the amorous passages—Downes tells us that this play was well acted, and mightily pleased the Court and City—Dryden addressed a copy of complimentary verses to Granville in which he says “Thou copiest Homer”—this is so far from being true, that one is disgusted to the last degree by the principal characters being here represented so totally different from what Homer represents them—Agamemnon is as complete a lover as ever sighed in romance—Chalcas tells him that millions are concerned—he replies—
“And can they better die than for Chruseis?
The world’s a worthless sacrifice for her
More worth than thousand worlds. Let chaos come,
Confusion seize on all, whene’er we part;
Int’rest, ambition, piety, renown,
Pity, and reason, I have weigh’d ’em all,
But O how light! when love is in the scale.”
—Agamemnon observes of Achilles—
“Brave as he is, oft when the trumpet sounds,
He’ll loyter
For aparting kiss from his Briseis.”
Ulysses says of Chruseis—
“The sick, who know they perish for her sake,
Crawl from their tents, to gaze upon her face,
And looking on her feel returns of strength.”
Walpole very properly observes, that it was fortunate for Granville that he had an intimacy with the Inquisitor-general, (Pope) how else would such lines as these have escaped the Bathos?
“When thy Gods
Enlighten thee to speak their dark decrees.”
The Editors of the B. D. say the language of this play is sublime, yet easy—take a specimen or two—
Chruseis says to Briseis—
“Survey me well, and as you look grow humbler.”
Briseis. I have survey’d, and I confess you fair, I like you well—but like myself much better.
Briseis says to Agamemnon—
“Stir not to stop me—For I’ll look thee dead.”
—And to Achilles in the 5th act—
“Curse me if I forgive thee such a thought.”
—Chruseis in the 4th act says—
“Let all be Hellens, perjur’d Devils all.
Let every Husband, be a noted Cuckold.”
We should have been obliged to the author, if he had told us in what Greek or Latin writer he ever saw Helen spelt as Hellen.
It is not easy to conceive why Granville calls the Father Chryses and the daughter Chruseis: he ought to have been consistent and not have followed the Latin in one name and the Greek in the other.
Dryden, in his Address to the author, says of the Actors at L. I. F.
“Their setting Sun still shoots a glim’ring ray,
Like ancient Rome, majestick in decay:
And better gleanings, their worn soil can boast,
“Than the Crab-Vintage of the neigh’bring Coast.”
With the first two of these lines Downes concludes his R. A. applying personally to Betterton, what Dryden says of the old Actors in general.
Dryden says of the stage—
“It so declines that shortly we shall see,
Players and plays reduc’d to second infancy.
********
They plot not on the stage, but on the town,
And in despair the empty pit to fill,
Set up some foreign monster in a bill:
Thus they jog on; still tricking, never thriving;
And murd’ring plays, which they miscall reviving.
Scarce can a poet know the play he made,
’Tis so disguis’d.”