Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes movedto the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.
HISTORY OF THE STAGE.
BIOGRAPHY.
BIOGRAPHY—FOR THE MIRROR.
NOKES.
MISCELLANY.
SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.
DRAMATIC CENSOR.
ALFONSO, KING OF CASTILE:
ACT I.
ACT II.
ACT III.
ACT IV.
ACT V.
Menander, as has been said in the last chapter, once more rescued thestage of Greece from barbarism. In the death of Aristophanes wasinvolved the death of "the middle comedy," which rapidly declined in thehands of his insufficient successors. The poets and wits that came afterhim, wanted either the talents, the malignity, or the courage to followhis example, to imitate him in his daring personalities, or to adopt hismerciless satyrical style. They followed his steps, only in his feeble,pitiful paths, and contented themselves with writing contemptiblebuffoon caricature parodies of the writings of the greatest men. The newcomedy never could have raised its head, had the middle comedy continuedto be supported by a succession of such wits as Aristophanes, with newsupplies of envenomed personal satire. Fortunately, however, the stagewas pretty well cleared of that pernicious kind of writing whenMenander, the amiable and the refined, came forth and claimed the bay.
This celebrated writer, who justly obtained the appellation of "prince[Pg 350]of the new comedy," was a native of Athens, and was born three hundredand forty-five years before the birth of Christ. He was educated underthe illustrious Theophrastus, from whom he learned philosophy andcomposition. While a brilliant genius directed him to comic poetry, hisnatural delicacy, his refined taste, his moral rectitude, and truephilosophy controlled his fancy, imparted to his comedies a charmunknown before, and obtained for them the suffrage of the mostenlightened, witty, and judicious men of his age, though for the samereason they were, as Hamlet says, caviere to the multitude, and neverdid please the corrupted and malicious multitude of Athens. With a witas brilliant and acute as that of Aristophanes, and perhaps as capableof vitious coarseness and ribaldry, he kept it in correction, andscorned to disgrace his compositions with illiberal personal aspersions,or indecent, obscene, or satirical reflections; but endeavoured to makehis comedies pictures of real life, replete with refined usefulinstruction, and sagacious observation, conveyed through the medium ofnatural elegant dialogue. His writings, th