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And, for manner and tone, compare the speeches of Pheres in the Alcestis, and Jocasta in the Phoenissae, with those of Claudio in Measure for Measure, and Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida. The Greek dramatists were somewhat fond of a trick of words in which there is a reduplication of sense as well as of assonance, as in the Electra: So Shakespeare: "Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled";
The sea and the invincible might of Athens on the waves formed the connecting ideas of the three dramas, Phineus, Persae, Glaucus. The trilogy was produced in 473 or 472 B.C., whilst the memory of Salamis was still fresh in every heart. The Phoenissae, the "Women of Sidon," a tragedy on the same theme by Phrynichus, had been acted five years earlier.
Now, if we had nineteen plays of Sophocles, of which twelve or thirteen should be no better than the Trachiniae, and if, on the other hand, only seven pieces of Euripides had come down to us, and if those seven had been the Medea, the Bacchae, the Iphigenia in Aulis, the Orestes, the Phoenissae, the Hippolytus, and the Alcestis, I am not sure that the relative position which the two poets now hold in our estimation would not be greatly altered.
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, to whom, in this place, I am glad to confess my gratitude after all these many years. While we were deep in the history of Pendennis we were also being dragged through the Commentaries of Caius Julius Caesar, through the Latin and Greek grammars, through Xenophon, and the Eclogues of Virgil, and a depressing play of Euripides, the "Phoenissae."
Is Shakespeare thinking of the Phoenissae, or is he speaking only on the promptings of his genius? A phrase has been used to explain the Greek element in Shakespeare's work, namely, "congruity of genius," which is apt to be resented by Baconians. The speaker therefore says, "The event is impossible; miracles do not happen: therefore the reported event never occurred.
This composition of farces must have reached down to the time at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle enclosed within the Latin-speaking Campania; for one of these writers of farces, Blaesus of Capreae, bears even a Roman name and wrote a farce "Saturnus." It was probably merry enough in this form. In the -Phoenissae- of Novius, for instance, there was the line:
This composition of farces must have reached down to the time at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle enclosed within the Latin-speaking Campania; for one of these writers of farces, Blaesus of Capreae, bears even a Roman name and wrote a farce "Saturnus." It was probably merry enough in this form. In the -Phoenissae- of Novius, for instance, there was the line:
The Phoenissae is rich in tragic incidents, in the common acceptation of the word: the son of Creon, to save his native city, precipitates himself from the walls; Eteocles and Polynices perish by each other's hands; over their dead bodies Jocasta falls by her own hand; the Argives who hare made war upon Thebes are destroyed in battle; Polynices remains uninterred; and lastly, Oedipus and Antigone are driven into exile.
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