macht sich mit seinen vielen schönen Reden fast etwas lächerlich, Kato und Katulus werden zu ziemlich farblosen Nebenpersonen herabgedrückt und auch das nicht sehr würdige Benehmen von Cäsar und Krassus dient nur dazu, um die Partei der Verschwörer, die die reichste Mannigfaltigkeit an kraftvollen Charakteren aufweist, in ein günstigeres Licht zu setzen.

taten aus.

'Ausserdem wird Katilina noch mit allerhand sympathischen Charakterzügen, wie der Liebe zu seiner Gattin, mit überlegener Klugheit und Menschenkenntnis, unglaublicher Energie und unbeugsamem Trotze ausgestattet, und schliesslich löscht sein heldenhafter Tod, nachdem er mit grösster Tapferkeit bis zum letzten Atemzuge gekämpft, viele von seinen früheren SchandKatilina ist also ein Verbrecher aus Ehrgeiz im grössten Stile, ein "erhabenes Scheusal", das auftritt wie eine wilde, schaurigschöne Naturgewalt. Er wird zwar unterdrückt und vernichtet, aber nicht eigentlich überwunden, das heisst zur Anerkennung gezwungen, dass seine Gegner im Rechte sind. Im Gegenteil, die allgemein verderbten Zustände des Staates rechtfertigen sogar grösstenteils sein Vorgehen, fällt er doch schliesslich nur der Eifersucht einer Frau und einem geschickten Spionagesystem zum Opfer. Wir haben also hier eine Darstellung vor uns, die dem Bilde der antiken Quellen von Katilina in allen seinen Teilen völlig gerecht wird, Jonsons Drama ist eine klassische Behandlung des Katilinastoffes. Es besteht eben unzweifelhaft eine innere Verwandtschaft zwischen diesem Stoffe und dem Geiste der Spätrenaissance.'-H. B. G. Speck. Katilina im Drama der Weltliteratur, pp. 26—28.

'Aussi bien quoi qu'il fasse, quels que soient ses défauts, sa morgue, sa dureté de touche, sa préoccupation de la morale et du passé, ses instincts d'antiquaire et de censeur, il n'est jamais petit ni plat. En vain dans ses

tragédies latines, Séjan, Catilina, il s'enchaîne dans le culte des vieux modèles usés de la décadence romaine; il a beau faire l'écolier, fabriquer des harangues de Cicéron, insérer des chœurs imités de Sénèque, déclamer à la façon de Lucain et des rhéteurs de l'empire, il atteint plus d'une fois l'accent vrai; à travers la pédanterie, la lourdeur, l'adoration littéraire des anciens, la nature a fait éruption; il retrouve du premier coup les crudités, les horreurs, la lubricité grandiose, la dépravation effrontée de la Rome impériale; il manie et met en action les concupiscences et les férocités, les passions de courtisanes et de princesses, les audaces d'assassins et de grands hommes qui ont fait les Messaline, les Agrippine, les Catilina et les Tibère. On va droit au but et intrépidement dans cette Rome; la justice et la pitié n'y sont point des barrières. Parmi ces mœurs de conquérants et d'esclaves, la nature humaine s'est renversée, et la corruption comme la scélératesse y sont regardées comme des marques de perspicacité et d'energie.'-H. A. Taine. Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, 2. 107-8.

'Catiline is an historical tragedy of exceptionable merit; save for the fortuitous interest which the problem of the character of Tiberius excites in Sejanus, the later1 must be pronounced the superior play. Consummate is the portraiture of conspirators-braggart Cethegus; Lentulus, voluptuary and dreamer; savage and desperate Catiline; and skillful is the contrast of these with prudent Cato and with Cicero, eloquent to the verge of garrulity and appreciative of his own abilities and achievements to a point that halts just short of comedy. But if Jonson's fidelity to the greater portraits of history is worthy of praise, not less admirable is the effect which he has contrived to produce in representing to us, with a

1 Catiline (1611) was later than Sejanus (1605).

vividness which only the stage can attain, the social life of ancient Rome. The scenes in which figure the fickle, wanton Fulvia, and Sempronia, vain of her knowledge of Greek and ambitious to be dabbling in politics, are second to nothing in the satirical high comedy that the age has left us.

'But there is yet another aspect in which Jonson's later Roman tragedy deserves serious attention. Catiline is alike the final expression of Jonson's theories as to English tragedy and one of the most successful among English tragedies modeled on ancient dramatic theories and ideals. For although Jonson, be it reaffirmed, was no supine classicist, but believed, to use his own words, that "we should enjoy the same license or free power to illustrate and heighten our invention as the ancients did; and not be tied to those strict and regular forms, which the niceness of a few-who are nothing but form— would thrust upon us";1 yet Catiline shows, as compared with Sejanus, a retrogression to earlier ideals and a stricter regard for the minor practices if not the larger spirit of Seneca. Thus the drama opens with an Induction in which figures the ghost of Sylla; and lyrical choruses in a variety of metres interlard the acts. But these, as Gifford put it, are "spoken by no one, and addressed to no one," and, although at times of great literary excellence, are absolutely inorganic. Catiline with its historical portraiture, its consummate dramatic dialogue and constructive excellence, is no Senecan drama. That Jonson should have fallen short of absolute success in these Roman tragedies of his mature years is wholly due neither to the defects in his theory nor to his limitations as an author. The trend of the

1 Every Man Out, Induction.

2 Gifford, Wks. 4. 189.

age was against such art, as the trend of our age is against it. And when Swinburne dubs Sejanus "a magnificent mistake" and esteems Catiline as valuable alone for its proof "that Jonson could do better, but not much better, on the same rigid lines," with due respect for the superlative powers of a great poet, we must keep in mind that we have rhapsodic and impressionistic art for the nonce arrayed in judicial robes and sitting in judgment on all, in short, that it is not.'-F. E. Schelling. Elizabethan Drama 2. 33-35.

'The tragedy of Catiline his Conspiracy gave evidence in the following year that the author of Sejanus could do better, but could not do much better, on the same rigid lines of rhetorical and studious work which he had followed in the earlier play.2 Fine as is the opening of this too laborious tragedy, the stately verse has less of dramatic movement than of such as might be properif such a thing could be-for epic satire cast into the form of dialogue. Catiline is so mere a monster of ravenous malignity and irrational atrocity that he simply impresses us as an irresponsible though criminal lunatic and there is something so preposterous, so abnormal, in the conduct and language of all concerned in his conspiracy, that nothing attributed to them seems either rationally credible or logically incredible. Coleridge, in his notes on the first act of this play, expresses his conviction that one passages must surely have fallen into the wrong place--such action at such a moment being impossible for any human creature. But the whole atmosphere is unreal, the whole action unnatural: no one thing said or done is less unlike the truth

1 A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 56. 2 Sejanus.

See

3 The reference is to 1. 505 ff. The incident may be in questionable taste; but Coleridge probably misunderstood its purpose. lv, infra.

of life than any other; the writing is immeasurably better than the style of the ranting tragedian Seneca, but the treatment of character is hardly more serious as a study of humanity than his. In fact, what we find here is exactly what we find in the least successful of Jonson's comedies: a study, not of humanity, but of humours. The bloody humour of Cethegus, the braggart humour of Curius, the sluggish humour of Lentulus, the swaggering humour of Catiline himself—as huffcap hero as ever mouthed and strutted out his hour on the stage all these alike fall under the famous definition of his favourite phrase which the poet had given twelve years before in the induction to the second of his acknowledged comedies.1 And a tragedy of humours is hardly less than a monster in nature-or rather in that art which itself is nature." Otherwise the second act must be pronounced excellent: the humours of the rival harlots, the masculine ambition of Sempronia, the caprices and cajoleries of Fulvia, are drawn with Jonson's most self-conscious care and skill. But the part of Cicero is burden enough to stifle any play and some even of the finest passages, such as the much-praised description of the dying Catiline, fine though they be, are not good in the stricter sense of the word; the rhetorical sublimity of their diction comes most perilously near the verge of bombast. Altogether, the play is another magnificent mistake: and each time we open or close it we find it more difficult to believe that the additions made by its author some ten years before to The Spanish Tragedy can possibly have been those printed in the later issues of that famous play. Their subtle and spontaneous notes of nature, their profound and searching pathos, their strange and thrilling tone of

1 Every Man Out.