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Updated: June 8, 2025
'Telephus et Peleus, cum pauper et exul uterque, Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba." 'Heroes and kings, in exile forced to roam. Leave swelling phrase and seven-leagued words at home."
But these alone cannot account for his bringing forward so decidedly the Euripidean element in Euripides; for his neglecting the choruses still more than did his original; for his laying still stronger emphasis on sensuous effect than the Greek; nor for his taking up pieces like the -Thyestes- and the -Telephus- so well known from the immortal ridicule of Aristophanes, with their princes' woes and woful princes, and even such a piece as Menalippa the Female Philosopher, in which the whole plot turns on the absurdity of the national religion, and the tendency to make war on it from the physicist point of view is at once apparent.
"True, Doctor," replied the King; "but, in the meanwhile, can you expound to Mistress Alice Lee two lines of Horace, which I have carried in my thick head several years, till now they have come pat to my purpose. As my canny subjects of Scotland say, If you keep a thing seven years you are sure to find a use for it at last Telephus ay, so it begins
Though the poets began by accepting any tragic story that came to hand, in these days the finest tragedies are always on the story of some few houses, on that of Alemeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, or any others that may have been involved, as either agents or sufferers, in some deed of horror. The theoretically best tragedy, then, has a Plot of this description.
DIKAIOPOLIS. No; but a person still more beggarly. EURIPIDES. I have it. You want the sorry garments Bellerophon, the lame man, used to wear. DIKAIOPOLIS. No, not Bellerophon. Though the man I mean Was lame, importunate, and bold of speech. EURIPIDES. I know, 'Tis Telephus the Mysian. DIKAIOPOLIS. Right. Yes, Telephus: lend me his rags I pray you. EURIPIDES. Ho, boy! Give him the rags of Telephus.
The journey, then, is not such as the Telephus of Æschylus describes it; for he says that a simple path leads to Hades; but it appears to me to be neither simple nor one, for there would be no need of guides, nor could any one ever miss the way, if there were but one. But now it appears to have many divisions and windings; and this I conjecture from our religious and funeral rites. 131.
Peleus and Telephus, Exit'd and Poor, Forget their Swelling and Gigantick Words. Among our Modern English Poets, there is none who was better turned for Tragedy than Lee; if instead of favouring the Impetuosity of his Genius, he had restrained it, and kept it within its proper Bounds.
He is afraid of the noisy patriotism appealed to by mob-orators and of the lust for condemning the accused which is the weakness of older men. Choosing from Euripides' wardrobe the rags in which Telephus was arrayed to rouse the audience to pity, he boldly ventures to plead the cause of the Spartans, though he hates them for destroying his trees.
"Telephus et Peleus, quum pauper et exsul uterque, Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba"? Was this to prove that he recognized a wandering prince in his opponent? thought Malcolm; but, much on his guard, he made answer, as usual, in his native tongue. 'That which is not touched and held is but a vain and fleeting shadow "solvitur in nube."
But the most remarkable feature of the piece is its close resemblance to the new type of drama which Euripides had popularised. The miserable life of Philoctetes, his rags, destitution and sickness are a parallel to the Euripidean Telephus; most of all, the appearance of a god at the end to untie the knot is genuine Euripides.
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