TRAGED
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GUIDE TO GREEK TRAGEDY
A GUIDE
TO
GREEK TRAGEDY
FOR ENGLISH READERS
BY
LEWIS CAMPBELL, M.A., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS
AUTHOR OF 'AESCHYLUS IN ENGLISH VERSE'
(
SOPHOCLES IN ENGLISH VERSE,' Etc.
London
PERCIVAL AND CO.
1891
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PREFACE
THE present volume does not profess to be a
repertory of facts and theories respecting the
Greek Drama. For such results of learned and
archæological research I would confidently refer
the reader to Haigh's Attic Theatre, or, if a
German scholar, to A. Müller's Bühnenalterthümer,
and to the books there cited. My hope has been
that by recording impressions made on myself by
somewhat close and long-continued study of the
originals, I might assist the reader of Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides, whether in Greek or
English, to enter more completely into the spirit
and intention of their works.
Greek tragedy, as an interpretation of human
life, contains much which the world cannot afford
to lose. It carries an imperfect lesson relative
to a transitional age, yet one that is of lasting
import, and inseparable from the vehicle of
dramatic art in which it is couched.
To render
vi
Preface
Aeschylus and Sophocles, and, in part, Euripides,
more accessible to the countrymen of Shakes-
peare is, I trust, at least a respectable endeavour.
This little book is meant to be used as a com-
panion volume to Sophocles in English Verse
(1883) and Aeschylus in English Verse (1891),
published by Kegan Paul and Co. I have there-
fore quoted very sparingly from either. Nor have
I availed myself to a much greater extent of the
permission of Macmillan and Co. and the Messrs.
Black to repeat statements formerly made in
"Green's Classical Writers" (Sophocles) and the
Ency. Brit. (art. Sophocles), where I have treated
more fully of the central figure in the immortal
group of Athenian tragic poets than was possible
within the limits here allotted to me.
LEWIS CAMPBELL.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
PAGI
I. WHAT IS TRAGEDY?
I
2. TRAGEDY, ANCIENT AND MODERN
28
3. ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF Tragedy
•
41
SUBJECTS OF GREEK TRAGEDY-CHOICE OF FABLE.
60
5. CONDITIONS OF REPRESENTATION
84
LEADING THOUGHTS
ΙΟΙ
7. CONVERSATIONAL AND LYRIC ELEMENTS
119
'S. DRAMATIC CONSTRUCTION
141
Q CHARACTERISATION
167
10. LIVES OF THE TRAGIC POETS.
177
II AESCHYLUS-THE SEVEN EXTANT PLAYS
ISS
SOPHOCLES-
,,
20S
(13.), EURIPIDes
2.40
14. FRAGMENIS OF LOST PLAYS
.
265
15 ILLUSTRATION: THE STORY OF CAMBYSES ADAPTED
FOR A TRAGIC FABLE
297
16. How To ENJOY GREEK TRAGEDY-A LECTURE
308
INDEX
331
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS TRAGEDY? 1
THE purpose of this book is to afford some
assistance to those who desire to obtain a real
hold—whether in studying the originals or by
reading translations-of the chief masterpieces of
Greek Tragedy, considered as a great and impor-
tant phase of human culture.
As a preliminary step, before entering on a
nearer scrutiny, it is well to endeavour to form a
general conception of the phenomenon, of which
one part is here to be described. Such an cn-
deavour must largely be guided by light derived
from experience and tradition, and even when the
result has been formulated, it may have to be
subsequently modified so as to be brought into
closer harmony with fact.
1 Books to consult : Aristotle's Poetics; Lessing's Dramaturgic
(Dramatic Notes, in Bohn's Series); Hegel's Aesthetic; Schopen-
hauer's The World as Will and Idea, Eng. Trans. vol. iii.
c. 37; Dryden's Prose Writings.
B
2
Guide to Greek Tragedy
CC
There is a widespread notion that the theatre ·
is for amusement, and to have the feelings harrowed
is not to be amused. Why see, or hear, or read,
what makes one wretched?" is often said when any
serious work of fiction or dramatic art is spoken
of. "There is so much that is painful in actual
life that we do not care to have it pressed upon
us in our moments of recreation." The Athenians-
also, as we shall find, did not choose to be reminded
too pointedly of their own sorrows, and there are
tragedies which either from defective art¹ or from
a mistaken realism lie justly open to such an
objection. The great artist, however, knows the
secret of avoiding this. Sir Walter Scott, when
his humble friend Laidlaw had buried one of his
children, wrote as follows the same evening in his
diary :—
"I saw the poor child's funeral from a distance.
Ah, that Distance! What a magician for con-
juring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing all
asperities, reconciling all incongruities, veiling all
absurdness, softening every coarseness, doubling
every effect by the influence of the imagination.
A Scottish wedding should be seen at a distance;
the gay band of the dancers just distinguished
amid the elderly group of the spectators—the
glass held high, and the distant cheers as it is
swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a finished
1 As in Godwin's Antonio. See Essays of Elia.
What is Tragedy?
3
Dutch picture, when it becomes brutal and boorish.
Scottish psalmody, too, should be heard from a
distance. The grunt and the snuffle, and the
whine and the scream, should be all blended in
that deep and distant sound, which, rising and
falling like the Aeolian harp, may have some title
to be called the praise of our Maker. Even so
the distant funeral, the few mourners on horseback,
with their plaids wrapped around them— the
father heading the procession as they enter the
river, and pointing out the ford by which his
darling is to be carried on the last long road-
not one of the subordinate figures in discord with
the general tone of the incident-seeming just
accessories and no more—this is affecting."
>> 1
And it is not under the immediate stress of
grief that men are commonly in the mood for
seeking strength and comfort in the contemplation
of an ideal sorrow. The "odd tricks," that
Enobarbus speaks of, "which sorrow shoots out
of the mind are as various as the constitutions.
of human beings. Thus President Lincoln, when
cast down on witnessing the horrors of one of the
earlier battlefields in the American Civil War, is
said to have called for a comic song.
» 2
Nor is it by persons of an ascetic or gloomy
cast of mind that great tragedy has been either
1
¹ Scott's Journal, i. 172. Also in Lockhart's Life of Scott.
2 Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Sc. 2.
4
Guide to Greek Tragedy
written or enjoyed. The concluding lines of
Keats's "Ode on Melancholy" express the truth
in this regard—
In the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy hath her secret shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
The starting-point for our inquiry is the un-
questioned fact that tragic representations do give
intense and deep delight. And the central
problem is to account for the peculiar pleasure.
(Aristotle's oikeia dový) which was realised in
different ways by the Athenian citizens collectively
in the age of Pericles, and in the age of Elizabeth
by the whole English people-which still makes
itself inevitably and supremely felt whenever a
Betterton, a Garrick, a Kemble, or a Salvini fills
the modern stage.
Plato (Phileb. 48 A) refers to it but does not
analyse it, and fails to distinguish it from the
mere indulgence of grief.¹
1
Aristotle's famous definition of tragic poetry
was thus rendered into English by John
Dryden :-
((
'Tragedy is an imitation of one entire, great,
and probable action, not told but represented,
1 Homer's Iliad, xxiii. 98; Odyssey, iv. 198.
What is Tragedy?
5
which, by moving in us fear and pity, is con-
ducive to the purging of those two passions in our
minds."
Milton's reference to this passage must not be
omitted: ¹
1
"Tragedy, as it was anciently conceived, hath
been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most
profitable of all other poems; therefore said by
Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-
like passions, that is, to temper and reduce them
to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up
by reading or seeing those passions well imitated."
Aristotle's pregnant saying, however, is not
only extremely condensed, but so oracular, that
every clause in it, especially that on which Milton
dwells, has been the subject of prolonged dis-
cussion and elaborate commentary; and it is
therefore allowable to try a more diffuse and less
technical method.
Looking first, in the Socratic manner, at those
great works which all will at once admit to be
tragedies par excellence-the Agamemnon, Oedipus
Tyrannus, Medea, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear-let
us attempt to generalise their common character-
istics. A tragedy is a drama in which the spectator
is made to feel poignantly the sadness of life, but in
1 "Of that Sort of Dramatic Poem which is called Tragedy "
(prefixed to Samson Agonistes).
6
Guide to Greek Tragedy
The
such a way as to give satisfaction by the beauty
and grandeur of the presentation, and by awaken-
ing not only horror and compassion but some
more intimate mode of admiration and sympathy.
The subject chosen must have some quality
calculated to rouse the imagination of those
before whom the work is to be produced, and
the treatment of it must be such as to leave
an impression of greatness and nobility.
pleasure so conveyed may be undefinable, but it
seems to arise through the consciousness of
emotional powers, unaccompanied by the pain
which attends them when called forth by actual
misfortune. Those who have not suffered are
pleased to know from afar off that they are
capable of suffering. Those who have suffered
are soothed by the presence of an ideal sympathy,
by finding that they are not alone, and that there
is a mind which probes their sufferings.
some whose wounds are ready to bleed afresh, so
that they cannot speak of them, feel untold relief,
as in the privacy of a great assembly, under
the shadow of an imagined sorrow, they are
not ashamed to mingle their tears with those of
their fellows, even as the maidens lamented for
Patroclus, cach thinking of her particular loss.¹
And
1
All are made conscious of the enlargement of
1 Iliad, xix. 262: Πάτροκλον πρόφασιν, σφῶν δ' αὐτῶν κήδε'
ἑκάστη. "Each her own grief, Patroclus the excuse.'
"
What is Tragedy?
7
our
common nature which comes through the
experience and the contemplation of suffering—
Small rebuked by large,
We felt our puny hates refine to air,
Our prides as poor prevent the humbling hand,
Our petty passion purify its tide.1
Thus by the magic of a great poet's art, made
audible and visible, the mind's finer sympathies arc
unlocked from their obscure recesses, imagination
is expanded, and thought is drawn forth to dwell
on some far-reaching aspect of human experience.
According to one acceptation of Aristotle's
famous apophthegm-the feelings thus called forth
are also relieved of their excess, or purified of
their dross. In other words, emotion is refined
by being "touched" with thought. And what
is aimed at both by the author and the spectator
of a tragedy is not excitement but sympathetic
expression.
2
This is done by means of dramatic presenta-
tion; or, as Aristotle says, the action is
"3
"not
told but represented." As Milton has it,
tragedy is a "sort of dramatic pocm."
At this point it becomes necessary to clear
away a doubt and a misapprehension.
¹ R. Browning's Aristophanes' Apology, p. 10.
2 As Matthew Arnold said that religion was thought touched
with emotion.
* δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι' ἀπαγγελίας.
со
Guide to Greek Tragedy
I. A tragedy, in the sense here understood, is
a species of drama. It is not a story but a play,
two things which, be it never forgotten, are essen¬
tially distinct. And yet one may speak without
impropriety of a "tragic history." Just as Aris-
totle, with Plato, acknowledged the kinship of
tragedy to epic poetry, so if we left out of sight
the condition of representation (which determines
the form) we might include tragedy and serious.
fiction under one idea. When so regarded, such
works as the Bride of Lammermoor and Kenil-
worth and the Master of Ballantrae partake
essentially of the nature of tragic art. The
reader derives from them a pleasure which is the
same in kind; they have the same power of
purifying the emotions, and they are the out-
come of a kindred contemplation of human life
regarded as a whole in the light of sad experi-
cnces.
The truth would seem to be that different ages
have provided various expedients for supplying
the same mental need. Although the greatest
tragedies can never lose their power, their place
is partially supplied at the present day by music,
by the higher fiction, or by religious ritual, includ-
ing sermons. None of these, however, have the
peculiar stamp and flavour of dramatic art. And
when Plato in the tenth book of the Republic and
clsewhere spoke of Homer as the prince of tragic
What is Tragedy?
9
poets, he showed indeed his usual power of
generalising and of seeing resemblances between
things ordinarily kept apart,—but he also betrayed
the spirit of a time in which by cultivated persons
both epic and dramatic poetry were more often
read than heard or seen. For the interest with
which men listened to an Homeric rhapsody was
different from what they felt in the Dionysiac
theatre. And not less different is the sustained
energy required for the production of an epic
poem from the concentrated intensity, hardly less
rare, which goes along with successful tragic crea-
tion, an intensity not directly supported by feeling,
as in lyric poetry, but accompanying a free act of
the imagination.
2. The essential point of dramatic effect is
its immediacy. The spectator is brought face to
face with an action that is ideally portrayed. But
what is meant by action here ? The literal mean-
ing of drama is "a thing done," and many persons
seem to think that a scene is undramatic in which
something is not done before their eyes. They
judge of the dramatic quality of a piece by the
amount of incident, or by the spectacular effect.
This is the "misapprehension" above spoken of.
Not to press the suggestion of a French critic,'
that according to this way of viewing the matter the
pantomime is the most dramatic of productions,
1 M. Paul Stapler.
ΙΟ
Guide to Greek Tragedy
it is enough to show how a single scene in
Macbeth would have to be remodelled in order to
square with such a theory. After a certain exit
of Macbeth, Duncan should be discovered in his
chamber fast asleep, his murderer bending over
him. The snoring of the grooms should be
distinctly heard. Instead of conversing with an
"air-drawn dagger," Macbeth should wield his
dirk with manifest effect. Then a voice should
ring through the house-" Macbeth doth murder
sleep. Macbeth shall sleep no more." This would
be "immediacy" with a vengeance!¹
And yet
What is passing
that which the spectator most wants to know
would remain hidden from him, except so far as
indicated through the facial expression of the
actor who personated Macbeth.
in the mind of the assassin ?
him from ordinary criminals?
Lady Macbeth in the affair?
((
What differentiates
What part has
What is due to
supernatural soliciting"? In other words, what
is the nature of the action as a whole?
This example may serve to bring home the
important truth that by the "immediacy" of
dramatic presentation is not meant merely that
something is continually being done or suffered
under the spectator's eye, but that the chief agent
is present before him at the very crisis of the
1 On the demand for incident, as a peculiarity of the English
theatre, see A. II. Ward in Ency. Brit. vol. vii. p. 430 A.
What is Tragedy?
ΙΙ
"the
action taken as a whole-including in
action" all that is working together towards the
main result-motives, influences, impulsions, etc.-
and the impressions produced on the minds of all
who are chiefly concerned. In drama as thus
conceived spectacular effect (öfis) has only a
subordinate part, which rather tends to diminish
as the imagination of an audience is more culti-
vated, and as the purely "dramatic" motive is
intensified. Thus the Choëphoroc is more dra-
matic and less spectacular than the Eumenides or
the Supplices-Sophocles than Aeschylus-the
Medea than the Troades of Euripides. The
soliloquies of Hamlet and Macbeth are more
essential to the action than the fencing matches
(whether of rapier or broadsword) with Laertes
and Macduff.
Another point, which is expressly noticed by
Aristotle, now becomes clear. It is through
language that the truth of a situation is presented
and the sympathies of the audience conciliated.
And it is in the rendering of speech, as given to
him by the poet, that the art of the actor mainly
consists the characteristic difference being that
the language is spoken and not read, and that
while spoken it is acted as well, ie. the character
is impersonated so that eye and car, voice, gesture,
physiognomy together convey a concrete and
I 2
Guide to Greek Tragedy
objective impression to the collective mind of
those assembled at the performance of the play.
The very grandeur of a tragic action often makes
it impossible that the whole of it should be brought
immediately before the eye. And if it could, the
shock so produced would be essentially different
from the combined effect of pity and awe which is
the medium through which the pleasure of tragedy
is conveyed. Events of the greatest moment may
happen far away from the central scene, and can
then only be made known by narrative.
In some
of the noblest tragedies the use of narrative is
all-pervading.
Granting, then, that motive is the most im-
portant element of "action," and that the specta-
tor's sympathies are to be awakened through the
language by which motives are revealed, we may
return to the main point, and again insist, without
fear of being misunderstood, that the great effects
of tragedy are produced through action. The
spectator must be led to imagine himself as
witnessing the main crisis in some great life.
This has not been equally achieved by all great
tragedians, with whose work the epic, lyric,
and rhetorical clements have mingled in different
quantities. But it is a characteristic of those who
have most completely realised the dramatic spirit
that every speech is also a step in the action,
which moves forward almost with every line.
It
What is Tragedy?
13
has accordingly been remarked that the drama
is the most perfect form of poetry, because it
approaches most nearly to the concrete unity
of statuary. It is not an imitation or reflection
merely (as the ancients thought), but a new
creation modelled after the old; not a series of
thoughts and images, but a "life within a life,"
as De Quincey says. This remark is valuable,
in so far as it designates tragedy the supreme
effort of imagination, in which poetry approaches
most nearly to ideal reality, and which combines
all the elements of poetry in an organic whole.
But it should not blind us to the greater vivid-
ness and freedom of the drama as compared with
sculpture. Every detail must indeed be subordin-
ated to the tragic motive, but as this includes all
that is of deepest import in life, and as the poet
works through language, which, as Plato says, is
far more mouldable¹ than clay or marble, he has
an infinitely wider range than the statuary, who
must seize one moment, which he selects with a
view to outward effect, and must make this last-
ingly harmonious to the cyc. For though the
tragic poet is also limited to a brief time, yet how
much of life and movement can the imagination.
crowd into an hour! In the quick successive
flashes before the fall of the thunderbolt far more
electric energy is put forth than in many days of
¹ εÙTλασтÓтEрov. See Plato, Republic, bk. ix. p. 588 D.
F4
Guide to Greek Tragedy
serene weather. Yet the agitation of tragic
movement must leave on the mind an impression
of repose.¹ The spectator is to be moved, even
harrowed, if you will, but the final effect on him
is not that of anxious excitement. It is rather
one of calm and meditative awe. If real belief
took the place of imaginative illusion, the charm
would break. The mental satisfaction must out-
weigh the horror. Harmony of impression must
not be confused by actual pain. Men are not to
be sent away sorrowful, nor merely excited, but
satisfied, though it be with sadness.
A tragic action, then, is always contemplated
as a whole there is nothing transient, partial,
passagère about it. It is a whole ideally, because
of the art which has shaped it into a completed
form which satisfies the imagination. And this
ideal whole is symbolical of the whole of life.
For in the highest tragedy we are not asked
to abstract from our experience in order to
contemplate some partial aspect of the world,
the "humours" of a particular age or class of
society; some special phase of character, the
refinements of one natural tendency.
It is a
universal view of human things which the poet
opens to us by the beacon-light of a passionate
one
¹ This is what Shakespeare means by the "temperance that
may give it smoothness," and Longinus by the precept
must be sober even when the Bacchic fit is on (καν βακχεύμασι
νήφειν ἀναγκαῖον).
What is Tragedy?
15
history or the burning ruin of a disastrous,
example.
Hence tragedy always loses something when
it leaves the high road of humanity, and turns
aside from representing the great primary emo-
tions to engage with some exceptional passion,
some eccentric horror. This is why such plays
as Webster's White Devil and Shelley's Cenci
can never be placed in the first rank, despite
their thrilling power. In passing from them to
Macbeth or to the Agamemnon, we leave the
stifling atmosphere of a chamber of horrors for
the wholesome though stern realities of the open
day. Even an essentially dramatic genius like
Mr. Browning's comes short of tragedy for a
similar reason. A saying of Schopenhauer's is
here in point, that every life considered as a
whole is a tragedy, while any portion of it de-
tached from the rest is a comedy. The tragic
catastrophe is in so far final.
applying this remark to those grand series of
productions known as the Aeschylean “trilogies,"
they should properly be regarded as three-act
dramas. And even in tragedies like Hamlet and
the Antigone there are allusions to past and future
cvents. The action is not absolutely dissevered.
from the general course of human history. It gains
in dignity from being enacted in "this wide and
universal theatre." But as regards the agents in
Of course in
16
Guide to Greek Tragedy
whom the sympathies of the audience have been
concentrated, the decision of destiny is finally
delivered. The spectator witnesses the beginning,
the crisis, and the consummation of the course of
action or of suffering which forms the tragic
theme. About a century ago attempts were made
to soften the catastrophes of Romeo and Juliet
and King Lear. Nothing could more forcibly
illustrate the decline of tragedy-what the old
philosopher calls "the weakness of the theatre."
Shakespeare, who in his King Lear did what was
so unusual with him and changed the chronicle to
suit the purpose of his art, was more in touch
with antiquity, although he knew it not, than the
critics of the eighteenth century. Romeo dying
before Juliet awakes, Cordelia defcated and de-
spatched before the arrival of the order of release,
may be compared with Haemon breaking into the
vault to find Antigone sclf-slain, or Hyllus sob-
bing out his vain remorse over the dead body of
Deianira. This is tragic completeness. It is not
enough for tragic effect that the source of tears
should be unlocked-the emotions awakened by
great tragedy are often "too deep for tears
but the soul of the spectator must be profoundly
moved by the contemplation of a great life either
wrecked or endangered.
Our definition so far has included a few great
What is Tragedy?
17
works, which all admit to be masterpieces of
tragedy. But in order to be in accordance with
the facts, the limits must be extended so as to
comprehend what Dryden has called "that inferior
sort of tragedies which end with a prosperous
event." The Philoctetes of Sophocles, for example,
concludes with the reconcilement of an opposition.
which had been obstinately maintained.
In so
far as such dramas are felt to be transitional and
preparatory to something else their tragic force is
weakened, but it would be too paradoxical to
deny to them the name of Tragedies. It is
difficult to set a boundary line to mark where
tragedy ends and melodrama or high comedy
begins. But it must be acknowledged that there
is a larger sense in which every drama which
dcals in a serious spirit with any great aspect of
human life, considered as a whole, deserves the
name of Tragedy. Only, whether the struggle
ends well or ill, there must be the representation
of a struggle in which the microcosm of an essen-
tially great life is shaken to its centre.
It is manifest that powerful characterisation is
inseparable from the dramatic presentation of an
action in the sense here indicated. For the
action is that of human beings determined by
motives which depend on character. The tragic
poet is impressed with the truth that character
is fate. Not that " man is master of his fate":
C
18
Guide to Greek Tragedy
the sadness of life often consists in seeing
that it is not so; but his fate is coloured by
his nature and affects the spectator differently
according to what he (the person represented) is.
Often, too, the chief person lends himself to disaster;
misfortune works through weakness or perversity.
The tragic hero is the person who is most calcu-
lated to give poignancy to a particular tragic
situation to accentuate a specific phase of the
sadness of life. It is not forgotten that the poet
works on materials that are given to his hand;
but in studying his art we have to consider his
skill in moulding them. Thus in representing
Hamlet as a man pre-eminently fitted for great
practical achievements (a point which has been
often overlooked), Shakespeare adds greatly to
the tragic pathos of the destiny which crushes
' him. The tragic hero must be noble, to enlist
our sympathies; passionate, to awaken our
emotions by the expression of his own and to
account for his misfortunes; he should have great
aims and great opportunities, which are crossed
and frustrated, or thrown away. Why are tragic
actors and actresses so rare ?—but because common-
place amiability replaces heroism, mere sentiment
apes the part of passion, and the imagination
fails to conceive (or to express) the grandeur of
the sphere in which the tragic person moves.
Observe what pains Shakespeare has taken with
}
What is Tragedy?
19
the person of Antony (in Ant. and Cleo.) (1) to
indicate the magnificence of his soldiership when
not infatuated and the boundless generosity of his
nature; (2) to make his passion adequate to
the shamefulness of his fall; (3) to impress us
with the fact that what he sacrifices is nothing
less than the empire of the world.
Yet it may
well be doubted whether even this great work
does not fall short of the very highest excellence
by reason of something repulsive in the weakness
of the principal characters.
In Macbeth the poet has taken equal care that,
even where the essential purpose is to wrap the
spectator in an atmosphere of horror, the audience
shall not lose all sympathy with the perpetrator
of the crime that horrifies them. He has gifted
the criminal with his own power of concrete
imagination, so that at every step, although led
on by influences that are too strong for his will,
the tyrant is conscious of his true position, and
paints it to himself in vivid colours.
In some rare instances a character imagined
as all but faultless (Prometheus, Antigone, Alcestis,
Imogen, Nathan the Wise) has been made the
hero or heroine of a tragedy. But even when
faultless a tragic person is never unimpassioned.
For tragedy lives and moves in an atmosphere of
feeling, and the sources of its influence lie deep
amongst the springs of personality. Hence the
20
Guide to Greek Tragedy
hero of a tragedy is mostly one of whom, as
Hamlet says, in words which have an obvious
application to himself-
The dram of base
Doth all the noble substance oft subdue
To his own scandal ;—
in whom, as in Ajax, some "particular fault"
involves the ruin of an otherwise noble nature,
or some blind passionate outburst, as in the case
of Oedipus, leads to unforeseen disaster at a far-
off time.
Can we now describe in few words the function
and the charm of tragedy? Life is full of sadness;
each heart has its burden, "the unselfish for
another's pain, the selfish for his own "—but life
is also full of compensations, and every heart has
moments of brightness too. We would not brood
over our own sorrows-that would unfit us for
the workaday world; but still our innermost self
does not choose entirely to forget, and when we
are most cheerful we feel that it is good for us to
remember that life has a dark side for others if
not for us. In sympathy with ideal sorrow, we
are at once relieved from something of our own
selfish burden, and prepared to enter into the
depth of other men's experiences. But this is
not all.
Wherever there is great anxiety or great
What is Tragedy?
2 I
sorrow there must have been great possibilities,
large aims, strenuous endeavours, and if the
audience is to be profoundly moved, the persons
and actions must be such as to call forth their
sympathies. There must be nothing narrow or
undignified in the poet's conception of mankind.
and their strivings, and he must have an audience
who are ready to take life au grand sérieux.
The more life gains in significance, the richer may
be the developments of tragedy.
The poet need not isolate the element of
sadness to the exclusion of other aspects of life.
The interest he awakens rather lies in this, that
the moments he chooses to represent are those on
which all vital issues hang, in which are concen-
trated the hopes and aspirations of many years.
In other words, mere feeling is not enough. The
sentimental drama is not tragedy. There must
be action penetrated by feeling. For without this
the interest is lyric rather than dramatic, just as, if
the action is given by itself and not through feeling,
the work approximates to an epic structure.
There are moments in the private lives of
individuals which, in the amount of emotion which
they are fitted to call forth, are no less tragic than
the turning-points of history. And it would be
hard to deny that as the value of the individual
comes to be more felt, a great poet may make such
crises the subjects of real tragedy. But hitherto,
22
Guide to Greek Tragedy
even in the modern drama, it has been found
essential to anything deserving the name of tragic
treatment that the sphere of the action should be
a wide one, and that the events should be such
as to involve far-spreading consequences. The
imagination of a great audience cannot otherwise
be profoundly moved.
seen in some way to
either the nation or the
wanting in an essential element of tragedy, i.e.
greatness. Hence the two periods in which a
really original tragic drama has arisen-the age of
Athenian supremacy in Greece and the Eliza-
bethan age in England-have succeeded times of
rapid national development, when men's interests.
had been enlarged and their thoughts widened to
a more comprehensive scope.
And unless the action is
involve results affecting
race, the representation is
No great tragic composition is without unity
or without repose. Titus Andronicus may be
deficient in these, but not Lear or Cymbeline,
manifold as are the subordinate interests in them:
Of unity there will be occasion to speak at length
hereafter. For the present it is enough to state
that the action of every great tragedy is (1) con-
tinuous, (2) complete, and (3) that the effect which
it produces on the feelings and thoughts of the
spectators is harmonious—that there is a unity
of impression Those who censured Shakespeare
as a despiser of the unities can have had no eyes
What is Tragedy?
23
to see the profound elaboration with which, for
instance in Othello, the manifold persons, their
intricate relations to each other, their actions and
their fortunes, are made to minister to the central
effect. The same play may be adduced as an
example of the grandeur which is inseparable
from tragedy. While the private personal relations
of Othello to the rest enchain our sympathies,
Shakespeare deepens all this emotion, and at the
same time holds us in the open day, by keeping
well in view the splendour of the general's carcer,
the magnitude of the interests of which he has
been the centre, and the world-wide scene through
which he moves to his fall.
As Aristotle says, the action has an end.
Whether this be the final reconcilement of a con-
flict or some fatal catastrophe, the poct's art is so
employed that the spectator does not go away
merely disquieted. In the one case he has been
excited and then soothed. In the other he has
suffered with those whom he saw suffer, but in
such a way that the beauty of the composition
and the luxury of tears have relieved his heart,
and instead of continuing to mourn over Oedipus
or Heracles and their distant woes, he returns
with deepened thoughts and strengthened resolu-
tion to encounter for himself the stern realitics of
life, or to bow in silent contemplation before its
mystery.
24
Guide to Greek Tragedy
The repose, then, is twofold-rest in contempla-
tion of an artistic whole, and still deeper rest in
contemplation of that greater whole which it
symbolises.
An element of ethical reflection enters almost
necessarily into all tragedy. For it is in the
moment of struggle and difficulty that principles
of action assume the highest importance, and that
would not be a true representation, or fitted to
command wide interest, which made persons
who were to seem worthy of sympathy indifferent
to morality at such times-least of all when the
subject is a crime. See especially the words of
Macbeth (Act i. Sc.
7)—
This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust.
Further, the tragic poet in dwelling on the
prime springs of human conduct is naturally led
to contemplate (after his own fashion as an
artist) the ground of moral distinctions. Without
this his representations must necessarily be
wanting in depth and meaning. Mere blind
unreflecting passion can never by itself be an
adequate subject for the highest art. The blind-
ness of tragic persons has the effect of pathos
only when our imagination sees it in the light of
reason. Emotion must be touched with thought.
What is Tragedy?
25
The poet must somehow make felt the true nature
of the situation as a whole, and in relation to
human life as a whole. This is sometimes done,
as in Medea and Macbeth, by showing flashes of
the higher consciousness in the person who is
enthralled to the lower (Eur. Med. 1078-80)—
καὶ μανθάνω μὲν οἷα δρᾶν μέλλω κακα·
T
θυμὸς δὲ κρείσσων τῶν ἐμῶν βουλευμάτων
ὅσπερ μεγίστων αἴτιος κακῶν βροτοῖς
How evil is the deed these hands shall do,
I know; but passion oversways my thoughts,
Passion, the cause of boundless ills to men-
sometimes by other means; but unless this
impression is conveyed, the work falls short of
the highest art. The more profoundly the poet
has meditated on the wonder and the mystery of
life, the more fully he has appropriated the moral
and religious thought which is current in his age,
the more perfectly, other powers being equal, will
he attain to this, the noblest aim of tragedy.
And thus he will be not a poet merely, but a
teacher of men, not through schemes of poetical
justice, which at least in modern times have rather
found their place in comedy, or by the number
of undeniable maxims which his characters pro-
nounce, but by making the action appear to the
spectators as it would appear in reality to a wise
and considerate observer, who, while profoundly
26
Guide to Greek Tragedy
moved by the sufferings of noble human beings,
has the power of regarding them in the light of
their causes and results. And thus the inculca-
tion of deep moral ideas, without injury to the
"objectivity" of the work, is, to say the least,
compatible with the essential function of tragedy.
All great tragedy is at once individual and
universal-individual, because the action is the
combined result of characters and situations which
are believed as real; universal, because the same
action is felt to be typical of human life in one of
its primary aspects, as seen by the light of some
passionate experience or of some signal example.
And if the age be one in which experience
has not only been enlarged but deepened by
the growth of moral ideas in thoughtful minds
amounting to a new revelation, then the tragic
poet, whose vision of truth and right is at least
adequate to the advancement of his contem-
poraries, will make his poetry the vehicle of ethical
truth, not because from a poet he becomes a
preacher, but because he gives expression to his
conception of life as a whole, and his creations
bear the marks of that conception the more
unreservedly in proportion as there are minds
amongst his audience who are prepared to sym-
pathise with him.
The truth which Aristotle sought to convey
What is Tragedy?
27
is now sufficiently apparent. The value of his
definition is seen to depend partly on the degree
of emphasis given to the several terms of it, and
partly to the amount which can be read into each
of them. If the words expressing seriousness,
completeness, greatness, are rightly accentuated and
understood; if pity can be extended so as to
include admiration and sympathy, and fear may
be interpreted to mean, at once, terror, horror,
wonder, and awe, and if in the purification of the
emotions be included the refinement of feeling
through reflection, there is little fault to find with
his account. The chief defect in it is the con-
fusion which he shares with all ancient writers
between an imitation and an ideal creation, in
which emotion, both as excited and as repre-
sented, is transfused with active and contempla-
tive thought. Aristotle also fails to trace the
evolution of the art from its rudimentary form
and to recognise the religious basis, after the loss.
of which the art itself could not long subsist.
(See below, Chapter III.)
CHAPTER II
TRAGEDY, ANCIENT AND MODERN
1
WITHIN half a century after Shakespeare's death
his reputation had suffered from the reaction to
which the fame of most great poets has been
liable. French models and French criticism were
exercising a powerful influence on English literary
taste, and a wave of classicism, like that which
came from Italy in the sixteenth century, but
without the counter-balancing popular impulse,
was the result.
John Dryden-who, to do him justice, appre-
ciated Shakespeare more fully than any of his
contemporaries-was led by the fashion of the
hour into some strange vagaries, such as the
travesty of the Tempest, for which Davenant was
partly responsible, and the freak of "tagging"
Milton's verses with rhyme.
The mention of Antony in the preceding
1 Books to consult: Dryden's Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy;
Ency. Brit., art. "Drama"; Paul Stapfer's Shakespeare et les
Tragiques Grecs (French); Wilson's Hindu Theatre, p. xi. ; Pollard's
Miracle Plays, Introd.
Tragedy, Ancient and Modern
29
chapter may recall this poet's famous attempt to
recast a Shakespearian drama in a classical mould.
In the preface to All for Love, which is confessedly
founded on Antony and Cleopatra, the author says:
"I have endeavoured in this play to follow the
practice of the ancients, who, as Mr. Rymer has
judiciously observed, are and ought to be our
Horace likewise gives it for a rule in
masters.
his art of poetry—
"Vos exemplaria Græca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurnâ.
Yet, though their models are regular, they are too
little for English tragedy, which requires to be
built in a larger compass.¹ . . .
CC
The fabric of the play is regular enough
as to the inferior parts of it, and the unities of
time, place, and action more exactly observed than
perhaps the English theatre requires. Particularly,
the action is so much one, that it is only of the
kind without episode or underplot; every scene
in the tragedy conducing to the main design, and
every act concluding with a turn of it.”
As is usual with him, Dryden is no more than
just to his own work.
All for Love is a very
1 Cp. the same author's dedication to his Third Miscellany,
where the contrast is drawn between French and English dramatic
art: "They" (the French) "content themselves with a thin design
without episodes and managed by few persons; our audience will
not be pleased but with variety of accidents, an underplot, and
many actors."
30
Guide to Greek Tragedy
noble composition, and claims admiration even
from those who are familiar with the Shake-
spearian play. What most concerns us here is to
observe that the scene is laid wholly in Alexandria,
and the time confined to what is subsequent to
the battle of Actium. Whereas Shakespeare,
following Plutarch, carries us from Alexandria to
Rome and back again, to Messina, to Misenum,
to Syria, to Athens, to Actium (both by sea and
land), to the coast of Peloponnesus,¹ and to Alex-
andria once more. Then Enobarbus, with his
comic vein, Pompey, Menas, and many other
minor characters, are discarded by Dryden. The
result is greater simplicity, and apparently, at
first sight, greater concentration. But there is
This
one thing more essential even than unity of action
as here understood, and that is climax.
cannot be attained by skill in arrangement; and
it is precisely this which Shakespeare, Aeschylus,
and Sophocles never fail to attain. That is the
mark of their profound and radical affinity. The
fire of tragic passion, once kindled, blazes more
and more fiercely and with a clearer flame until
the height is reached; then comes the change,
with clouds of smoke that gather round combus-
tion, until the darkness of extinction follows. It
makes no difference whether the bush out of the
midst of which the flame appears be formed of
1 Act iii. Scenes 11 and 13, wrongly headed in the editions.
Tragedy, Ancient and Modern
31
many branches or of a few only.
In all except the
greatest tragedy the heat is apt to be exhausted
before the crisis arrives. And in All for Love, by
Dryden's own showing, the greatest scene is that
between Antony and Ventidius in the first act.
The once-much-talked-of "unities " of time and
place were less present to the minds of the ancient
tragic writers than they have been to those of
their critics. In so far as the supposed rules were
really observed by them, they were matters of
stage convenience and of theatrical convention,
resulting partly from the continuous presence of
the chorus. But unity of action is, as Dryden
felt, a more essential thing. And it is observable
in Shakespeare's tragedies no less than in the
Greek drama. For the opposite of unity, in the
true sense, is not multiplicity but incoherence.
The distinguishing note of ancient tragedy is not
unity but simplicity, which is a different thing.
Simplicity and concentration, as characteristics of
the Attic masterpieces, may be opposed to the
greater comprehensiveness and discursiveness of a
Shakespearian play.
1. In representing ludicrous side by side with
serious aspects of life and character, Shakespeare
probably met an imperious requirement of the
Elizabethan stage, to which the Indian Vidúshaka¹
or jester presents a curious analogy. But in
¹ Monier Williams's Sakuntala, Introd. p. xxx.
32
Guide to Greek Tragedy
nothing is his art more marvellous than in the
interpenetration of humour with pathos, as in
Lear, or with horror, as in Othello and Macbeth.
Hamlet stands alone-it is part of the irony per-
vading the whole piece-in introducing what is
ludicrous (in the part of Osric) after the conclusion
of the third act. The Fool in Lear does not
survive the storm. A distant and yet real analogy
may be traced between these laughter-making
interludes and certain remnants of rusticity-
vestigia ruris-in ancient tragedy, as in the persons
of heralds, messengers, watchmen, etc., the nurse
in the Choëphoroc, the Phrygian slave in the Orestes,
and even the Cassandra of Euripides in the Troades,
who, compared with the Cassandra of Aeschylus, is
as Tilburina compared with Ophelia. Such traits
have the effect of relieving by contrast the per-
vading sombreness of the tragic scene, and they
were doubtless so intended by the poets. But
only in the faintest manner can they be said to
anticipate the broad comic touches in Shake-
spearian tragedy. Ancient tragedy is otherwise
not without moments of relief, but the relief is
transient and illusory, and serves rather to intensify
the central gloom.
-
2. The introduction of underplots, a feature
borrowed from comedy-which adds so greatly
to the complexity, for example, of the action of
King Lear-makes another obvious difference
Tragedy, Ancient and Modern 33
between Shakespeare and the classic drama.
Some anticipation of this comprehensiveness of
plot may be found here and there in Euripides.
But his attempt to extend the action, so far as
it went, was injurious to unity of impression,
coinciding as it did with an inevitable decline of
that heroic or ideal nobility which constituted the
chief excellence of ancient tragedy.
3. The most striking of all differences between
Greek tragedy and the Shakespearian drama con-
sists in the number, variety, and complexity of
the characters. It is sometimes said that the
characters in a play of Aeschylus or Sophocles are
typical, while those of an Elizabethan play are
individual.¹ The statement rests upon undoubted
facts, but, as thus broadly put, is apt to be under-
stood in a sense which is erroneous. The
modern is more complicated, but the ancient not
less real; while both arc equally ideal. The
point is, Whether does the author convince us, or
does he not, of the reality of his persons? That
the personality of Hamlet has more of range and
elasticity than that of Eteocles or Ajax, for
cxample, is manifest enough. Complexity of
situation involves complexity of motive and of
feeling. But Ajax and Eteocles are not the less
alive; they are human beings of whose vitality
no one who sees and hears the dramas can
1 Sce, for example, A. Ward in Ency. Brit, vol. vii. p. 394.
D
34
Guide to Greek Tragedy
})
entertain a doubt-more convincing, from the
very fact of their solidity, than many "complex
characters in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays.
Nor is every character in ancient tragedy so
entirely simple. There are differences in this
respect between the three great tragedians, which
will appear in the sequel; and in the personality
of the Sophoclean Oedipus or Philoctetes there
are diverse elements which the poet's art has
brought together and harmonised.
It
4. The multiplicity of characters in Shake-
speare makes up in some degree for the absence
of the chorus in so far as they represent the
average bystander, while a substitute for those
lyrical passages where emotion is reflected and
magnified, in which the Chorus approaches more
nearly to the character of the "ideal spectator,"
is found in the frequent use of the soliloquy—a
conventional expedient for which the objective
cast of ancient tragedy gave less of scope.
may be urged, however, that the Chorus supply
an element for which no perfect substitute exists
in the modern drama. While they mediate
between the spectators and the scene before them,
they collect into one focus many rays of feeling
and reflection which must otherwise be scattered
up and down the play. On the other hand, it
must be admitted that the presence of the Chorus,
while suited on the whole to the representation of
Tragedy, Ancient and Modern
35
ancient life which passed chiefly in public and in
the open day, either precludes or renders improb-
able many confidential scenes which greatly assist
the totality of impression, and which no modern
playwright can afford to omit.
5. It was the presence of the Chorus, as already
said, that made necessary within certain limits the
continuity of the action. But the limits were less
narrow than has been sometimes assumed. A
recent critic¹ has objected to the received under-
standing of the Agamemnon, that the King could
not arrive from Troy within the day. The asser-
tion is indisputable, but the objection is not to be
sustained. For in other plays, and not in the
Agamemnon only, the lapse of time is, through
the illusion of the scene, in part idealised and in
part ignored. On the other hand, no ancient
dramatist could indulge in the inconsistencies
which have led interpreters to puzzle themselves
over the age of Hamlet, or which gave occasion
for Professor Wilson's brilliant Time-analysis of
Othello.
The difficulty of the task which the ancient
playwright had to fulfil is obvious. In about half
the time that is occupied by a Shakespearian
play, the hearts of thousands were to be drawn
forth and fixed on a supreme crisis, in which some
serious aspect of human destiny was typified. The
1 Dr. Verrall in his edition of the Agamemnon.
36
Guide to Greek Tragedy
crowning issues of one or more representative lives
had to be summed up and manifested in a few
scenes. And this must be done with complete-
ness of effect. The struggle of man with fate
must be displayed in its rise, its culmination, and
its close. When in addition to this it was
required that the action should seem literally
continuous, so that the presence of the Chorus
throughout should not be felt as improbable, the
severity of requirement was extreme. The diffi-
culty was met by choosing the most critical
moment for representation; and in so far the
imagination of the spectator was less exercised
than when, as in Shakespeare, he is called upon
to witness a series of actions more or less widely
separated in time. The ancient drama is thus
characterised by intense concentration. And this
has the further advantage of helping proportion,
and giving depth to the composition by a sort of
perspective. The necessity for employing narra-
tive spares the audience such incidental scenes as
the blinding of Gloucester and the murder of
Banquo on the stage.
The great size of the Dionysiac theatre, with
the consequent use of the mask, speaking-tube,
and buskin, may well seem at first sight to have
constituted a serious impediment to naturalness
in the ancient drama. But mechanical obstacles
are the artist's opportunities. And while all these
Tragedy, Ancient and Modern
37
causes conspired to maintain simplicity and to
intensify concentration, it cannot be alleged that
they betrayed the great tragic poets into offences
against nature. Each seems to have been pre-
sent in spirit, not in the theatre itself, but at
the imagined scene; and, strange though it may
appear, it is certainly true that a speech of Ajax
or of Oedipus may be broken up and varied in
declamation to a moderate-sized audience without
any essential departure from the meaning of the
poet, but rather with the effect of interpreting
him more faithfully. Similarly, there are delicate.
shades and turns of feeling in Euripides to which
the mask and speaking-tube cannot have given
adequate effect. It is clear that some conventions
were discounted, and that much was left to the
imagination, including many of the horrors de-
scribed as present in the scene.¹ But where this
is so, a great poet, instead of clipping the wings
of his own fancy, rather indulges it the more.
Witness the description of the English and French
camps in Henry V., where the author was well
aware that the representation on the stage would
much disgrace
With four or five most vile and ragged foils
The name of Agincourt.
There must always be some correlation between
1
Stapfer, Shakespeare et les Tragiques Grees, p. 24.
↓
38
Guide to Greek Tragedy
1
"naturalness" and convention.¹ Nor is it possible
for us now to ascertain with what approximate
success Greek actors may have represented nature,
though encumbered with the paraphernalia of their
theatre. There will be an opportunity for return-
ing to this subject in Chapter V.
Besides the attributes of simplicity and con-
centration, ancient tragedy is stamped with a
degree of objectivity and outwardness which, on
the whole, differentiates its creations from those of
the modern drama, steeped as this so often is
with the introspectiveness or self-reflectiveness
that pervades the modern world. In a Shake-
spearian tragedy, while there is no loss of that
reality of presentation which alone can convince
or move an audience, there is not only a richness.
of content which sometimes veils from us the
artistic harmony, but the work presupposes a
higher degree of conscious self-analysis than had
any place in ancient Greek art. The arena of
conflict is no longer the family or the state,
Olympus or the world at large, but is laid within
a human soul. So Brutus says--
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.
The Genius and the mortal instruments
1 The frequent soliloquies in Hamlet and Macbeth would have
been censured as unnatural by an ancient critic.
Tragedy, Ancient and Modern
39
Are then in council, and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
Some anticipation of this great change also is
traceable in Euripides; but his reflection is apt
to degenerate into sentimentalism, and his psycho-
logical analysis into sophistry.
Under all the differences between Shakespeare
and the old tragedians there is an essential com-
munity. The unity of motive, which the simplicity
of the ancient drama makes so manifest, is present
also amidst the multifariousness of Shakespeare.
It is more really observable in Macbeth or Hamlet
than in the Andromache, Hercules Furens, Orestes,
or many another play of Euripides. No scene in
any of the English masterpieces is so manifestly
foisted in for a merely mechanical purpose as the
dialogue between the heroine and Aegeus in the
Medea. And in one great point-the nature of
the tragic hero and of the tragic life—the greatest
works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespearc
are entirely at one.
As to the historical connection between Ancient
and Modern which is sometimes assumed¹-while
it is certainly true that modern tragedy, like
modern sculpture, sprang into life together with
the revival of classical learning, it is not less.
¹ Wilson's Hindu Theatre, Introd. p. 11; see Pollard's Miracle
Plays, Introd.
40
Guide to Greek Tragedy
certain that, in the advance from Titus Andronicus
to Romeo and Juliet, and from Romeo and Juliet
to Macbeth, Shakespeare was not guided by any
study of Aeschylus and Sophocles, nor of "Seneca
by candlelight," but by the genius of his art.
1 Ency. Brit. art. "Drama," p. 431 A. "In no respect is the
progress of his technical skill more apparent-an assertion which
the comparison of plays clearly ascribable to successive periods of
his life would satisfactorily establish."
CHAPTER III
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF TRAGEDY 1
WITHOUT Some reference to the rise of tragedy
in Attica, any theory of the nature of tragedy is
after all unmeaning. We can hardly speak of
"tragedy in the abstract" apart from Attic
tragedy. For tragedy was made by Aeschylus,
. Sophocles, and their predecessors. All modern
tragedy is really a continuation of the Greek, as
with a very slight exaggeration all modern
literature may be said to be a continuation or
imitation of Greek literature. We do but resolve
Greek tragedy into its elements in the attempt
to analyse the notion of tragedy generally.
Aristotle's outline, however wonderful in its
general truth, must in this aspect be pronounced
defective. Besides the confusion between imita-
tion and creation, his account lacks depth of
1 Books to consult : Bentley's Phalaris; Donaldson's Greek
Theatre; Müller's History of Greek Literature; Jebb's Primer of
Greek Literature; Jevons's History of Greek Literature; Ency.
Bril. art. "Drama." See also Monier Williams' Sakuntalá.
42
Guide to Greek Tragedy
1
historical background. He has to a great extent
lost sight of the religious basis of tragedy, and
regards it simply, after his manner, as an art
having a definite end. Even so regarded, his
definition will bear to be amended in the light of
subsequent developments. Dryden ¹ well observes
that, if Aristotle had known Shakespeare, he
might in some respects have modified his theory.
The so-called "classical" dramas of France and
Italy, as well as that of Spain, which was more
distinctly rooted in popular favour, reflect some
illustration even through the fact that they are.
less original-on the true nature of their Greek
archetypes.
And the comparison of the beginnings of
tragedy in other races, however rudimentary in
their development,-the Hindu theatre, more
allied to romantic melodrama than to the Hellenic
stage; 2 the heroic extravaganza of China and
Japan; the rare imaginary dialogues of Hebrew
literature, so sublime in spiritual conception, so
naïve and crude in dramatic form,3-may at least
help to assure us that this plant, which blooms so
rarely-scarcely once anywhere in 2000 years-
1 Answer to Rymer. Cp. Aristoph. Poct. c. iv. § 2: Tò µèv oûv
ἐπισκοπεῖν ἆρ᾽ ἔχει ἤδη ἡ τραγῳδία τοῖς εἴδεσιν ἱκανῶς ἢ οὔ,
ἄλλος λόγος.
2 "Nenn' ich Sakuntalá dich, und so ist alles gesagt."-
Goethe. The existence of a regular drama in India appears to be
subsequent to the conquests of Alexander.
3 Song of Solomon, Job, Isaiah (c. xiv.)
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
43
is yet the outcome and natural exponent of a
widespread human tendency. For our present
purpose, however, we may confine our attention
to the rise of tragedy in Hellas and in Attica, the
cradle of the art.
According to a view long entertained by
many persons, tragedy was supposed to have
arisen from some chance meeting and amalgama-
tion of previously existing literary tendencies,
epic poetry being conjoined with lyric, the love
of recitation mingling with the love of song.
And it is quite true that in the earliest form
actually known to us tragic poetry has already
borrowed much from epic, lyric, gnomic, and
iambic literature. But the principle of life which
has assimilated all these extraneous elements is
essentially different from all of them. The art
had a separate and independent origin. Like
every feature of Greek life it had religion at the
root, and its birth was due to the worship of the
Theban Dionysus, which was brought at some un-
known period, by way of Eleutherae, into Attica.
Dionysus is more commonly known as
Bacchus, the god of wine. But wine is only a
symbol of all that is enlivening, cheering, invigorat-
ing-of the reawakening of vital energies in man,
as in nature, of every access of new life that
seems unaccountable, and is therefore attributed by
early imagination to the direct inspiration of the
44
Guide to Greek Tragedy
god. There is no need to lose oneself in the mazes
of the great Dionysiac myth, or in speculations
like those of the author of the Golden Bough.
Whatever may have been the remote origin of
Bacchic rites, it is manifest how inevitably a
mythological logic must have extended their
significance. It is important to observe that it
was not an autumn festival of grape-ingathering
or of the winepress that gave birth to the drama,
but an early spring celebration, connected partly
with the broaching of last year's wine and partly
with the preparation of the vines for the season
to come. How readily the thoughts natural to
such a time may lend themselves to mythological
personification is manifest from many indications
in comparatively modern literature. Witness the
black-letter ballad, of which Burns'
Burns' "John
Barleycorn" is an adaptation, and even Fal-
staff's rhapsody on "sherris-sack," which reads.
like a paraphrase of the speech of Demosthenes,
the Athenian general, in the Knights of Aristo-
phanes. It was a spring festival, and therefore
the rising of the sap, the bourgeoning of trees, the
prodigality of the earth teeming with flowers,
were all associated with the ideas of gladness,
of rejuvenescence and of trembling hope, which
Bacchus was known to inspire. The ivy with
its evergreen shoots, purple-flushed veins, and
1 2 Hen. IV. Act iv. Sc. 3.
Aristoph. Eq. 89-96.
2
1
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
45
clustering berries had a fancied resemblance to
the vine, and therefore, being available in spring-
time, which the vine was not, it was consecrated
to the service of the god. The goat is dangerous
to the vineyard and a lover of the vine, and
when "full of the god" he behaves wantonly;
hence he is sacred to Bacchus, who is accom-
panied by a troop of goat-footed beings, led by
Silenus as their "head-man "these are called
satyrs, and bear some resemblance to Arcadian
Pan. The "tragic dance" was originally a dance
of satyrs. Dionysus is also accompanied by
women, either those who nursed his childhood,
Thyiades, or those whom he had drawn from
civic life to sport with him as Bacchanals over
the hills. This does not mean that women of
old were specially addicted to wine, but that
there is something feminine in those irrational or
unaccountable impulses which were attributed to
Bacchic inspiration--whether regarded as a wild
uncontrollable passion or as "divine madness."
An analogous idea is latent in the worship which
our Teutonic forefathers paid to women as
having the gift of prophecy. The Bacchic rout
leaves public haunts for the wild wood; hence
the pine-tree is sacred to the god, whose peculiar
wand, the thyrsus, wound with ivy, is tipped with
a pine-cone. Dionysus is said by Herodotus to
1
1 Tacitus, Germania.
46
Guide to Greek Tragedy
be younger than other gods. This statement is
connected with his reputed birth from Semele, the
daughter of Cadmus, whom Herodotus places 1600
years before his own time (z.e. 2100 B.C.), but may
also be interpreted to mean that this worship,
which we now know to be at least as primitive as
that of Zeus, had not been from the first incorpor-
ated in the life of the city. The festival of Bacchus.
was essentially a village celebration, and there
may have been a time, long after the organisation
of public life within city walls, during which the
wild "Bromius," or roaring deity, was regarded as
a sort of "Pagan," an outsider. The legends of
Pentheus and Lycurgus, and also a well-known
tradition about Solon and Thespis, tend to
strengthen this conjecture, which is here put for-
ward, for what it is worth.
However this may be, a time came when
Dionysus also was enrolled amongst the regular
gods-the questionable pagan was rangé, and the
old village festival, returning always with the early
spring, became an essential factor in the life of
the city. But this meant in a city like Athens
that what was thus licensed was also regulated,
and was shaped and moulded by the genius of
Athenian art and by the public law.
The original freedom and abandonment of the
Bacchic festival, however, made this mode of ritual
exceptionally elastic and hospitable to other rites.
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
47
and other powers, especially to those whose worship
contained some kindred element of mysticism.
Thus from very early times there was an inter-
action of Dionysiac with Eleusinian influences;
the Thracian and Naxian cults of Dionysus were
blended with the Theban. Moreover, the Phrygian
Cybele, and, as Herodotus thought, even the
Egyptian Osiris, were brought into some relation
with the Eleutherian god. The adoption of this
worship by the State involved the further acknow-
ledgment, most important for tragic purposes, of
Zeus, Apollo, and Athena; and ultimately of the
Muses, the Erinyes, Hermes, Artemis, together with
Themis, Nemesis, and other ethical impersonations.
Before this process was completed, two impulses,
inherent in the archaic rite, had taken separate
form—one lawless, licentious, rollicking, abusive,
yet on the whole good-humoured, the same which
grew afterwards into the old comedy. That
growth is easily accounted for. But in the Bac-
chic impulse there were also stirring other thoughts
and feelings, less obvious because less superficial,
not below but above rationality, common sense,
and civic order, idealising the course of past events,
and aspiring after some higher law. And these,
in Attica and nowhere else, unless for a brief while
at Sicyon, were the dim foreshadowings of the art
that was destined to bring forth the Oresteia, the
Prometheus, and the Antigone.
3
48
Guide to Greek Tragedy
Some are tempted to think that the serious.
side of Bacchic ritual in Attica was due to its
early contact with the Eleusinian worship, of
which something has been already said,—that the
joyous son of Theban Semele came to be identi-
fied with his namesake, the "Winter Bacchus,"
as he has been called, Dionysus Zagreus, the child
of sad Persephone and Pluto, her dark bride-
groom. But although Eleusinian legend is already
represented in a play of Choerilus,¹ and Aeschylus,
who was undoubtedly a worshipper of Demeter,
distinctly mentioned Zagreus in his play of Sisy-
phus (fr. 224, Nauck), there is no clear evidence
that the origin of tragedy is to be thus accounted
for, however largely Eleusinian influence may have
been blended with its after growth-even that
influence being less due to any mystic leanings
than to the historical fact that Eleusis was now
a part of Attica. Allusions to Bacchus in the
extant plays are mostly confined to the Theban
and Eleutherian god; there are few traces in them
of the mystical Iacchos, although Sophocles twice
applies the name to Semele's son. And the
Bacchic subjects actually treated, the stories of
Lycurgus and Pentheus, clearly belong to the
widely established worship of the giver of the
vine.
Again, the acknowledged difficulty may be
1 The Alope-circa 500 B.C.
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
49
partly met by saying in a vague and general way
that the springs of laughter and of tears, of joy
and grief, in human nature lie close together, that
(C
men in drinking-songs spice their gay banquet
with the dust of death," and so forth. And this
is true enough, but not sufficiently precise.
The first step towards the genesis of tragedy
was the invention of the Dithyramb, which Hero-
dotus attributes to the Lesbian singer Arion of
Methymna, who was resident in Corinth. By
this union of Aeolian inspiration with Dorian
regularity, a graceful restraint was imposed on
the wild licence of the festival, while choral song
was differentiated from the Comus or revel-rout,
which, as Aristotle says, contained the germ of
comedy. Pindar also, in the thirteenth Olympian
ode, credits Corinth with the dithyramb.
In the time of Archilochus of Paros (700 B.C.),
who sings-
Well I know to lead the hymn of Dionysus, king divine,
Chanting dithyrambs, my spirit all aflame with wondrous
wine-
this kind of song seems to have been still more or
less a work of improvisation. In later times, as
may be gathered from Aristophanes and Plato,
the dithyramb was regarded as a rhapsodical form
of poetry, tending to bombast and inflation-a
sort of metrical fugue.
E
50
Guide to Greek Tragedy
Only one considerable fragment of a dithy-
rambic poem remains, the opening lines of an
ode composed by Pindar for choral performance
at Athens. The following is a tolerably close
rendering. Those who look for something bac-
chanalian, in the modern sense, will be disappointed.
The passage is quoted by Dionysius of Hali-
carnassus as an example of "austere harmony."
PART OF A DITHYRAMB (sung by fifty in a ring).
PIND. fr. 53.
Olympian Gods, behold our band!
Send grace and glory on our land!
Ye who in Athens' hour of mirth
Gather around her midmost hearth
That smokes with incense, while along
Each roadway troops the civic throng,
Visit the splendour and renown
Of the Agora, and from this crown
Of rathe-culled violets renew
Your spirits with their heavenly dew.
Look down on him who from the praise
Of high-throned Zeus, on echoing ways.
Of glorious song, approaches now
The God with ivy-berried brow;
Him whom we mortals Bromius 1
name,
The God of far-resounding fame,
Child of great Zeus and the Cadmeian dame.
¹ A name of Bacchus-“ the roaring God."
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
51
That time the Nemean prophet ¹ knows
When first the date-palm sheaths disclose
Their budding shoots, and fragrant flowers
Feel the sweet moment when the Hours
Open their balmy chambers wide,
And Spring breaks forth on every side.
Then violets spread their lovely blooms
O'er the blithe ground, and rich perfumes
From rose-bud wreaths our braided locks entwine.
Then tuneful voices with loud flutes combine ;
And Bacchic choirs hymn curl-browed Semelè divine.
This passage, about contemporary with the
earlier work of Aeschylus, has no touch of mysti-
cism, and it has a vein of serious poesy. Nor is
the invocation of the Olympian gods and the
praise of Zeus at this time held inconsistent with
Bacchic worship. Meanwhile, a generation earlier,
a capital step had been made by separating the
tragic from the dithyrambic chorus. This was
implied in the change attributed to Thespis. And
if it is borne in mind that in those early days men
of all natures, gay and serious alike, took eager
part in the same yearly festival, it will not seem
wonderful that in Attica at least some poets
whose minds were touched to finer issues found
an audience ready to respond to them, and in
presenting passages, whether from the legend of
Bacchus or some heroic fable, ventured to mingle
with the goat-footed satyrs' dance and song
1 "The Nemean prophet." Perhaps the priest of the grove of
Zeus at Nemea.
52
Guide to Greek Tragedy
some traits of what is known to us as
((
tragic"
dignity and pathos. This kind, once introduced
in such a soil, was sure to grow. And just as
men in England wearied of the grotesque mono-
tony of the old Moralities,-the old Vice, with
his dagger of lath, the seven worthies, "mouths
of Hell," and other properties of that rude
stage, and were prepared to welcome some em-
bodiment of native chronicles, such as representa-
tions of the dark reign of John, or of the long
contention between the Houses of York and Lan-
caster, so the legend of the sons of Aeacus and
of the Cadmeian dynasty, of the old supremacy
of Argos or of the wars of Athens and Eleusis,
by degrees supplanted the purely Dionysiac myth-
ology.¹ In like manner at Sicyon, in still earlier
times, the hero Adrastus had been honoured with
'tragic choruses"—perhaps through the genius of
one Epigenes, whose name has been handed down.
as a Sicyonian tragic poet. In this fragment of
tradition may be traced some adumbration of the
change, which Thespis appears to have carried
farther, perhaps already borrowing his fables from
epic poetry. And from hence began that further
3
1 When this began, the old-fashioned spectators are said to have
cried "What has this to do with Bacchus ?”—oùôèv πρòs тòv Aibvvσov,
-which passed into a byword for anything irrelevant.
2 Herod. v. 67, 68.
3
Aeschylus is reported to have said that his own tragedies were
scraps from the Homeric banquet."
Origin and Growth of Tragedy 53
The
differentiation of tragedy from the "satyric" drama
which Phrynichus and Pratinas completed.
ruder elements of the dance and song were rele-
gated to the satyric play, and the whole per-
formance became a serious thing, though still
mainly choral-the speeches of the Coryphaeus, or
"head-man," which kept the audience au courant
with the progress of the story, making only brief
interruptions in the flow of song. By-and-by
a separate personage appeared over against the
Chorus. He was called the "answerer” (vπOKρɩτýs),
because he told his tale in answer to the ques-
tionings of the Coryphaeus. The new interest
awakened by this interplay suggested the addition
of a second “ answerer" or actor, an innovation
said to have been introduced by Aeschylus. Thus
dialogue was born, and the elementary furnishings
of Greek drama were now complete.
Not only did the worship of Dionysus absorb
other worships, but, as already hinted, the tragic
art laid heavy contributions on other modes of
lyric, gnomic, and iambic poetry, as well as on
the epic rhapsodies. And thus the natural love
of recitation, which found vent in epic verse, and
the need for expression, to which an outlet had
been provided in the Aeolic and Doric lyric
poetry (the Aeolic mode being more individual,
the Doric more national), were blended by the
Attic genius into one pregnant form. In some
54
Guide to Greek Tragedy
respects epic poetry contained a clear anticipa-
tion of the drama, and gave examples of noble
and stately movement to the tragic poet. Achilles
in the Iliad is to all intents and purposes a tragic
hero, and in the conduct of the fable the art
of Homer is at least on a par with that of the
tragedians. But the prime motive to which
tragedy owed its origin was less one of curiosity
than of sympathy, or of the desire for expression.
It was only when feeling had been raised to an
extraordinary pitch through the excitement of
choric song, and the imagined presence of Dionysus
at his festival, that there grew up the passion for
impersonation, the desire for immediate vision
(πois) of the acts and objects about which
emotion was becoming transcendent. For the
satisfaction of this want the Dionysiac worship
alone gave adequate scope. One cannot imagine
a direct transition from epic to dramatic poetry.
The rôle of the rhapsode had long since become
a "limited profession." Even had the craving
for impersonation arisen amongst his audience,
the stately epic muse would never have conde-
scended to gratify it. But the drama, when it
once arose, had an assimilating power by which
it took up pre-existing forms and endued them
with a fresh and more intense vitality.
By a coincidence which was fruitful in conse-
quences, the most essential steps in this development.
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
55
had taken place, the worship of the Theban
Dionysus had been transplanted from Eleutherae
to Athens, the tragic chorus had been developed
as a distinct form of art, and this religion had
interlaced its branches, if not its roots, with those
of Demeter, Apollo, and the other deities, before the
great awakening of national life which preceded and
followed the Persian war. But for the expulsion
of the tyrants, but for the field of Marathon, the
growth of tragedy might have been arrested, and
the great masterpieces might never have seen the
light. The Peisistratidac had indeed done much to
prepare the way. But the art in which a nation
takes delight at the moment when its life is
culminating has a unique chance of coming to
perfection. And the dramatic art, being above
all others dependent on "public means," could
only grow by being accepted as a national burden.
Nor was the universal public interest less indis-
pensable than the liberality which was its outward
sign.
The dithyrambic Chorus numbered fifty per-
sons. The number of the tragic Chorus in the
time of Aeschylus and Sophocles is said to have
ranged from twelve to fifteen. Pollux, however, tells
a story to the effect that the Chorus was cut down
from fifty to twelve or fifteen because of the panic
caused in the theatre by the Furies as represented
by Aeschylus. K. O. Müller, in his edition of
56
Guide to Greek Tragedy
the Eumenides, tried to reconcile conflicting tradi-
tions by supposing a Chorus of fifty to be supplied,
two of whom were told off as actors, while the
remaining forty-eight were divided amongst the
four dramas of the tetralogy. The choreutae who
were unemployed in each particular drama are
supposed by him to have been held in reserve
as supernumeraries, for example, as the twelve
Areopagites and the attendants of Athena in
the Eumenides. It is enough to have alluded to
this theory, which is useful as reminding us that
Aeschylus must have always had a large number
of supernumerary performers at his command.¹
From the moment of the introduction of the
second actor, the evolution of the tragic art
proceeds with rapid strides. Several stages of
this development are distinctly manifest in the
extant Aeschylean plays.
In the Supplices of Aeschylus we find tragedy
not far removed from its choral origin. The
dialogue is nascent, naïve, unformed; the lyrical
numbers, on the other hand, are full and perfect.
The sweetness of their cadences reminds us of
what is said of Phrynichus, the predecessor of
Aeschylus, how he charmed the Athenians of his
day with harmonious strains.
Here the Chorus have unmistakably the
1 This point is rightly insisted on by Dr. Verrall.
infra, Chap. VII.
But see
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
57
principal rôle—the parts of Danaüs, the King, and
the Herald merely serving to keep the story on
foot and to link together the various utterances of
the maidens.
In the Persae (472 B.C.) the action on the stage
becomes more important, although the drama is
still mainly lyrical. Atossa is an imposing figure,
and the Ghost of Darius, rising above his tomb,
is invested with pathetic sublimity. But the
dialogue is largely maintained between the Chorus
and one actor. Hardly anywhere is it necessary
to have two persons at once upon the stage.
On
the other hand, the art of tragic narrative has
reached maturity in the account of the battle of
Salamis. In the Seven (467 B.C.) there is a
manifest development of dialogue-not, indeed, as
yet between two chief persons, but first between
Eteocles and the Scout (Ist Messenger), and
afterwards between Antigone and the Herald.
The prominence of the principal person is also
clearly marked, and this makes an advance in
dramatic business. There is a prologue before
the entrance of the Chorus, and Eteocles begins
the play.
In each of the remaining plays of Aeschylus
there is a prologue, but it is not assigned to the
chief person except in the Chocphoroe, where
Orestes, addressing Pylades, is the speaker.
the Agamemnon the Watchman prologises, in
In
58
Guide to Greek Tragedy
the Eumenides, the Pythoness, in the Prometheus,
Kratos ("Power") and Hephaestus; Prometheus
being present, indeed, but silent.
The Agamemnon (458 B.C.) shows an immense
advance in dramatic and tragic force, which is
continued in the Choëphoroe. The climax of
the Agamemnon, where the Cassandra-scene is
followed by the death-shriek, perhaps marks the
highest point reached by Attic tragedy.
Aeschylus is credited with the introduction of
the second actor, and by the time when he pro-
duced the Choëphoroe he had adopted the further
improvement (attributed to Sophocles) of the third
actor. And, as already observed, there is hardly
any limit to the number of supernumeraries whom
he is ready to bring on the stage for the purposes
of a procession or other ceremony. But, on the
other hand, even his maturest work retains much
of the simplicity of structure, with regard to
dialogue, which must have characterised the art
when, as in the time of Thespis, the one actor, in
the intervals of choral song, conversed with the
Coryphaeus.¹ Such dramatic business as occurs in
the Supplices between Danaus and King Pelasgus,
or between the Herald and the King, may be
described as inchoate, or only half-evolved. It is
sketchy and crude. In the Persac the presence of
1 What remains to be said upon this subject is reserved for the
separate chapters on Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Origin and Growth of Tragedy
59
Atossa no doubt adds greatly to the impressive-
ness of the ghost-raising scene. But very little of
dramatic interchange takes place between the two
great personages, although that little is nobly and
pathetically conceived.
In the Seven, as already indicated, the Scout
is only a Chorus-leader with brevet rank. Even
in the Agamemnon the passages which require the
presence of two actors are few and brief, and ex-
cepting in the dialogue between Clytemnestra and
Agamemnon before his entry to the palace, there
is no conversation between them, even when pre-
sent, Cassandra is silent, Clytemnestra addresses
the Chorus rather than the Herald; and again,
when she and Aegisthus are on the stage together,
she makes no answer to the taunts of the Elders.
From the Sophoclean point of view, this is not
economy but parsimony. Yet nothing in Sophocles
is more essentially dramatic than the climax of
the Choëphoroe.
CHAPTER IV
SUBJECTS OF GREEK TRAGEDY-CHOICE OF
FABLE 1
THE tragic poet
His duty is to
hardly ever invents his fable.
present in the concrete, with
It was
living power, an action of which some lineaments.
are already given in legend or tradition.
only when the great period of Hellenic tragedy
was past that such an elegant caprice could be
attempted as the Flower of Agathon, in which
the persons (so-called) were invented by the poet.
The taste for novelty, to which such a poem ap-
pealed, would be attributed by lovers of Aeschylus
to the degeneracy of the contemporary theatre.
A good reason for the preference of known sub-
jects is assigned by Aristotle :-" What is possible
is credible, and what once happened was clearly
possible." A capital advantage is gained, in
point of verisimilitude, when that is represented
1 Continual reference should be made to Smith's Dictionary of
Classical Biography and Mythology. See also the first volume of
Grote's History of Greece.
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
6I
which the audience are predisposed to believe.
The imagination of the ancient spectator met the
poet half-way and conspired with him in produc-
ing an atmosphere of illusion. "The theatre was
the poet," in a sense like that in which Plato says,
"the world is the Sophist,"except that the vult
decipi was of a more childish and innocent kind.
Hence when Aristotle says, "The poet must him-
self invent, or make good use of what is handed
down," the invention of which he speaks must be
understood as subject to traditional limitations.
The difference in this respect between the
ancient and the modern stage is, however, not so
great as has been sometimes supposed.¹ It is
apt to be thought that the old legends were
familiarly known to all the Athenian citizens,
whereas Aristotle says expressly (Poet. 1451 b),
"the best known fables are known to few, yet
give delight to all.” The knowledge of the few
supplied the assurance that "this really happened."
So at the first exhibition of a play of Shakespeare
the scenic illusion would be enhanced for the less-
informed when they were told by those who knew
something of the novel on which it was based, "the
story is extant, and written in very choice Italian."
While the ancient poet's choice was in this
way limited, it is obvious that he gained a capital
advantage in the reality of the interests to which
Spalding's essay on the Two Noble Kinsmen, pp. 62-78.
62
Guide to Greek Tragedy
he appealed. To the Athenian of the age of
Cleisthenes or of Miltiades the local or neighbour-
ing hero was still a living power, whose destinies
were inseparably bound up with the national
existence. But the limitation was notwithstand-
ing considerably severe, and was aggravated by
two causes, (1) the sameness of many legends,
and (2) the necessity of selecting subjects specially
fitted for tragic treatment.
(1) The traditional fables, however numerous,
tended to ring the changes on a few striking
incidents which had been impressed on the
savage fancy of a primitive time-the avenger of
blood, the outcast, the accursed family, the return
of the exile, the recognition of the lost, the pro-
tection of the suppliant, the purification of the
polluted, the horrors of incest and of parricide
or matricide.¹ These ancient and often grotesque
conceptions the poet had to make his vehicle for
"holding up the mirror" to a refined and thought-
ful age.
The unnatural features of such myths as
those of Alope, Actaeon, and Callisto had to be
softened away.
With all one's knowledge of the
power of Greek Art to humanise and beautify, it
is hard to conceive, for example, how the story of
Actaeon could be treated tragically.
1 Thus there was a certain family-likeness between the fables of
Orestes and Alcmacon, of Atalanta and Merope, of Callisto and
Amymone, of Adrastus and Oedipus, of Theseus and Heracles.
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
63
(2) As the aim of tragedy began to be more
clearly seen, the range of choice was still more
narrowed, until, as Aristotle says, it tended to be
confined to a few great houses, whose fortunes
supplied characters, situations, and catastrophes of
It would appear,
an eminently tragic nature.
however, if we turn over the existing fragments,
that the philosopher is speaking, as indeed his
language indicates, not of all tragedies, but of
those which he regarded as masterpieces. With
regard to many fragments the doubt is raised
whether the piece was tragic or satyric. Some
of those of Aeschylus may belong to a time when
the distinction was not yet clearly drawn.
Be this as it may, the proper subject of tragedy
was not all at once determined. Before the time
of Aeschylus we can discern two critical moments
in this process, which, if we knew more of it,
might teach us much about the genius of the
Art.
(1) Herodotus records that down to the time of
Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, one hundred years
before Aeschylus, the inhabitants of that town
had been accustomed to honour with "tragic
choruses," not Dionysus, but Adrastus, the grand-
son of Polybus. Without dwelling on the ety-
mology of the name Adrastus, or the mythical
relation of the hero to Oedipus, we may infer
1 Connected with Adrasteia, "the Inevitable,”
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
from this statement that before tragedy had any-
where assumed the dramatic shape the tendency
to substitute some local celebrity for Dionysus
had already taken head. If this happened so
early at Sicyon, it was still more likely to take
place at Athens, where the popular inclination in
such matters in the times before Peisistratus was
less liable to be checked by a despotic will. And
the liberty once assumed must have been freely
exercised, for Aristotle says, referring to the
early period, "the poets at first went through the
cycle of the legends as they came."1
(2) A bolder step was made when two great
events, the suppression of the Ionic revolt and
the repulse of Persia, inspired the wish to
dramatise contemporary history. The Taking of
Miletus, and the Phoenissae, both by Phrynichus,
showed the influence of these two great successive
waves of Hellenic history. The Persac of Aeschy-
lus (however imaginative in treatment) marks the
continuation of the same movement, which re-
appeared once more in the Aetneans, composed
by the same poet for the inauguration of Hiero's
new city.
Although the genius of the art itself, much
more than the fine imposed on Phrynichus "for
reminding the citizens of their sorrows," withdrew
1 τοὺς τυχόντας μύθους ἀπηρίθμουν.
2
2 Cp. the recent suppression by the French Chamber of Deputies of
plays by Coppée and Sardou representing crises in the national life.
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
65
tragedy again within the charmed sphere of
heroic legend, the Attic stage never lost the
impulse, of which this realistic outburst gave vivid
proof, by which a national sentiment was fused
with the religious, and the drama was consequently
raised to a more commanding elevation.
In again
becoming more ideal, tragic poetry did not cease
to be patriotic, and in that sense, real. But the
general rule once more obtained that every tragic
fable must be at once familiar to fancy and remote
in fact.
The total number of fables known to have
been made the subject of tragedy in the fifth
century B.C. is about 340 (discounting satyric
dramas). Of these 234 were used by the three
greatest poets. Aeschylus has 67 peculiar to him
as distinguished from the other two, Sophocles
69, Euripides 61. Of the 37 remaining, only 5,
Ixion, Oedipus, Palamedes, Telephus, and Philoc-
tetes, are common to all three, while 9 are
common to Aeschylus and Sophocles, 8 common
to Aeschylus and Euripides, and 15 common to
Sophocles and Euripides.¹
The poet's choice was naturally relative to the
taste of his audience, and the character of the
prevalent motives consequently differed somewhat
1 The number of fables peculiar to any one author might be
diminished by observing that different titles (as in Choëphoroe,
Electra) often cover one and the same theme,
F
66
Guide to Greek Tragedy
from time to time. But as in the case of other
arts, traditional convention retained a lasting hold.
As in Italian painting, it is less the subject-
matter than the mode of treatment which dis-
tinguishes one period from another.
In attempting to classify the fables-to avoid
cross-division is impossible-we have to distinguish
(I.) Mythological or superhuman subjects from (II.)
Heroic legend. The motives for selection, apart
from tragic aptitude and tradition, are mainly (1)
religious, (2) patriotic, (3) panhellenic, cherishing
the remembrance of great common enterprises.
I. SUPERHUMAN SUBJECTS.
This class of fables is, comparatively speak-
ing, absent from the theatre of Sophocles. This
poet hides his celestial machinery as he conceals
his art. The gods, whose action is all-pervading,
are personally withdrawn by him to an unseen
Olympus. But the supernatural themes on which
the spectator of Aeschylus gazed with simple
earnestness were partially revived by Euripides in
a romantic or phantastic spirit. In his Phaethon,
for example, which answered more or less to the
Heliades of Aeschylus, the Sun-god himself was
one of the speakers, uttering vain words of caution
to his adventurous boy.
In his daring presentation of superhuman
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
67
persons, Aeschylus was no doubt seconded by
the unsophisticated imagination of his audience,
whose taste was not fastidious but responsive even
to crude suggestion. Oceanus riding on his griffon
was not to their minds the grotesque figure he
would be to us. Their pity, not their risibility,
was moved by the entrance of Io with the horns
of a cow. It was not so long since a strapping
lass, accoutred as Athena, had led Peisistratus
home, and the proclamation of the Herald that
Athena herself had brought the exile back, pro-
duced more than a theatrical illusion.
(1) The description of the chief scene in the
Psychostasia of Aeschylus ("Souls in the Balance ")
given by several ancient authors forcibly recalls
to mind the simplicity of a medieval miracle- or
mystery-play. In the centre, high-enthroned, sate
Zeus himself, the father of gods and men. In
his right hand he held the balance, whose beam
extended far to right and left. In one scale stood
the soul of Achilles, and beside this his mother
Thetis, in the attitude of prayer, was entreating the
Highest that her son might win. In the other scale.
the soul of Memnon, son of the morning, stood,
and his mother Eôs, the Dawn (Aurora), on her
part similarly besought the supreme favour for her
child. This tableau, we may suppose, continued.
while long speeches were delivered on either side.¹
1 Pausanias (v. 22) mentions the treatment of this subject in plastic art.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
In another play, the Psychagogi (“Ghost-Raisers"),
Odysseus, as in the eleventh Odyssey, seems to
have called up the spirits of Teiresias and others
from the shades. The Chorus were probably
Cimmerians. The raising of Darius in the Persae
resembles this. And in the Sisyphus also the
underworld must have been revealed to view.
It is not impossible that in his Eumenides, mag-
nificent as it is, the poet may have carried the
staging of the supernatural too far for the temper
of the age.
We gather from a statement of Pollux that in
the Toxotides (or "Archer-Nymphs") representing
the fortunes of Actaeon, that luckless hero actually
came upon the stage with the stag's horns budding
from his mask! As in Io's case, this must have
moved wonder, horror, and pity, but not laughter.
Unless, indeed, it may be supposed that this and
some other of the lost tragedies belonged to the
early time, before the line of distinction had been
sharply drawn between tragedy and the satyric
drama.
(2) Among the divine persons brought upon
the Aeschylean stage was Dionysus himself, ac-
cording to the immemorial tradition. The Diony-
siac cycle of myths contained two groups, one
referring to the birth and nurture of the god, the
other celebrating the establishment of his worship
in Thebes and in Thrace respectively. To the
3₁
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
69
former group belonged, amongst the plays of
Aeschylus, the Semelè and Dionysus' Nurses, to
the latter, the Pentheus, Xantriae, Bassarides, and
the Lycurgean trilogy,¹ including the Edonians and
the Neaniscoi, or "Young Men." A characteristic
fragment of the Edonians describes the impression
produced by the Bacchic rout on unaccustomed
ears. (An allusion to "Dread Cotytto's mys-
teries" had preceded.)
One held that labour of the lathe
The flageolet, and with full breath
Shrilled forth a tune of maddening sound;
One clashed the cymbals brass-y-bound.
The countless chorus shout reply,
And from dim regions, by-and-by,
Comes bellowing noise of bull-like roar,
While from beneath the forest-floor,
As from some subterranean drum,
Thunders of mimic timbrels come.
Although Sophocles often alludes to Bacchic rites
with the unction of a devotee, Bacchic fables,
like other superhuman subjects, seem to have been
avoided by him, except in his satyric dramas.
But Euripides in the Bacchae, one of his last
plays, revived the story of Pentheus with splendid
success.
1 The satyric drama belonging to the same trilogy seems to have
contained a contemptuous allusion to beer, or to some form of barley-
bree. Fr. 120 (Nauck).
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
II. HEROIC LEGENDS.
These may be subdivided into :—
:-
1. Legends connected with great cities.
2. Panhellenic legends.
3. Fables having no apparent national or
political significance.
1. GREAT CITIES.
It is remarkable that myths and legends of
purely Attic origin and bearing form but a trifling
proportion of the whole number. This is to be
accounted for by what has been already noticed,
the conservatism of tragic art, especially with
regard to the subjects to be handled. Dramatic.
conventions had taken their bent before Athens
had fully realised the consciousness of her suprem-
acy. And even after this the spirit of Greek Art
and of Greek Religion was more comprehensive
than any local patriotism. Hera was still the
lady of Argos.
lords of Thebes.
Bacchus and Heracles were still
Not the recent politics, inter-
civic or otherwise, of these states were in question,
but their ancient glories and disasters, the remem-
brance whereof was the common inheritance of
Hellas. Nor was Athenian feeling compromised.
in dwelling on the times before the Dorian con-
quest. It was chiefly in relation to Sparta that a
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
י7
certain narrowness gradually crept in, affecting
not the poet so much as his theatre. Laconian
subjects are few and far between (the Tyndareus
and Lacaenae of Sophocles stand alone in the great
period), and other themes, especially in Euripides,
are apt to come round to praise of Athens and
dispraise of Sparta. In this, however, there is a
falling off from the nobleness of the Eumenides.
(1) According to Hellenic tradition, Argos had
once been the metropolis of Greece, or rather, of
Pelasgia, and this under two successive dynasties,
before the return of the Heracleids,-the Perseidae
and the Pelopidae. Two strains of legend
accordingly wound about this centre.
(a) The genealogy of Perseus, involving the
tragic story of Danaë, leading backward to those
of Hypermnestra, of the other Danaïdes, and of Io,
and forward to the birth and labours of Heracles.
This cycle had been already touched by Phryni-
chus in his Aegyptians and his Daughters of
Danais,―nearly the same in subject with the
Supplices and Danaïdes of Aeschylus. Other
themes connected with it are Acrisius (Soph.),
Andromeda (Phryn. (?), Soph., Eur.), Danaë
(Soph., Eur.), Dictys (Eur.), the "Net-draggers
(Aesch.), Io (Chaeremon),¹ Perseus (Aristias), and
Polydectes (?) (Aesch.)
1 The story of Io is interwoven by Aeschylus with that of
Prometheus.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
(b) The tale of "Pelops' line," from Tantalus to
Iphigenia. The tragic destiny of Orestes forms the
culminating point in this famous series of horrors,
of which the Thyestean banquet and the sacrifice of
Iphigenia are also important links. The following
plays amongst others belonged to this cycle¹:—
Adrastus (Aristias?)
*
*
Agamemnon (Aesch., Ion).
Atreus (Soph.)
Choëphoroe (Aesch.)
Chrysippus (Eur.)
Clytemnestra (Soph.)
* Electra (Soph., Eur.)
Erigone (Phryn. (?), Soph.)
Eriphyle (Soph.)
* Eumenides (Aesch.)
**
Hermione (Soph.)
Hippodamia (Soph.)
Iphigenia (Aesch., Soph.)
Iph. A. and Iph. T. (Eur.)
Niobe (Aesch., Soph.-She was also
connected with Thebes).
Oenomaüs (Soph., Eur.)
* Orestes (Eur.)
Pleisthenes (Eur.)
Tantalus (Phryn., Aristias, Soph.)
Thyestes (Chaeremon).
Women of Mycenac (Soph.)
1 The extant plays are distinguished with the asterisk.
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
73
(2) Thebes was the home of Bacchus and the
birthplace of Heracles, and as such was celebrated
in the Dionysiac worship which had its origin
from thence. The Cadmeian dynasty, beginning
from Cadmus himself, supplied many heroes and
heroines to tragic story. The following are the
titles of the chief plays whose subjects were drawn
from this important source of legend
*
Alcmaeon (Soph., Eur.)
Alcmene (Aesch., Eur.)
Amphitryon (Aesch., Soph.)
Antigone (Soph., Eur.)
Antiopa (Eur.)
* Bacchae (Eur.)
Cadmus (Eur.)
Epigoni (Aesch., Soph.)
Eriphyle (Soph.)
*Hercules Furens (Eur.)
*
**
Hypsipyle (Eur.)
Laius (Aesch.)
Nemea (Aesch.)
Niobe.¹
Oedipus (Aesch., Soph., etc.)
Oedipus Coloneus (Soph.)
Pentheus (Aesch.)
* Phoenissac (Eur.)
Phoenix (Soph.)
1 The Cadmeians were almost as much interested as the Pelopidae
were in the fate of Niobe. See above.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Semelè (Aesch.)
*Seven against Thebes (Aesch.)
Many of the stories connected with the life
and death of Heracles are directly or indirectly
associated with Thebes, the city of his birth.
Like Dionysus, this hero is mostly reserved by
Sophocles for satyric drama (e.g. Omphale).
His death forms, indeed, the catastrophe of the
Trachiniae, but the honours of Protagonist are at
least shared between him and Deianira. Other
tragedies in which the fortunes of Heracles play
a prominent or foremost part are-
* Alcestis (Phryn., Eur.)
Alcmene (Aesch., Eur.)
Antaeus (Phryn.)
Eurytidae (Ion).
* Hercules Furens (Eur.)
Licymnius (Eur.)
In this last he is associated with Theseus, his
Athenian antitype.
(3) Athenian fables are altogether more
numerous in Sophocles and Euripides than in
Aeschylus. Eleusinian and Aeginetan legends
may be classed as Attic subjects, the former
because Eleusis had long since become part of
Attica, the latter because, as eponymus of the
tribe Aiantis, the Telamonian Ajax formed a
link between Aegina and Athens. He and the
other Aeacids were held to have protected the
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
75
Greek fleet at Salamis, and thus the hereditary
glories of the great Aeginetan families, of which
Pindar sang, became the objects of Athenian
pride. Attic fables, as thus reckoned, naturally
Occupy an important place. The following
dramas turn on Attic themes:
*
Aegeus (Soph., Eur.)
Ajax (including the Judgment of the
Arms-Aesch., Soph.)
Alope (Choerilus, Eur.)
Cercyon (Eur.)
Creüsa (Soph., cp. Ion).
Daedalus (?) (Soph.)
Eleusinii (Aesch.)
Erechtheus (Eur.)
Eurysakes (Soph.)
*Heraclidae (Eur.)
*
Hippolytus (Eur. bis).
* Ion (Soph., Eur.)
Judgment of Arms (Aesch., cp. Ajax).
Minos (if connected with Theseus)
(Soph.)
Orithyia (Aesch., Soph.)
Pandion (Philocles).
Peirithous (Eur. ?)
* Persae (Aesch.)
Phaedra (Soph., cp. Hippolytus).
Procris (Soph.)
Salaminiac (Aesch.)
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Tereus (Philocles).
Teucer (Ion, Soph.)
Theseus (Soph., Eur.)
Thracian Handmaids (Aesch.)
Triptolemus (Soph.)
After all, the list of purely Attic subjects is not
inordinately long, even if it were made to
comprise the Eumenides, the Oedipus at Colonos,
and the Supplices of Euripides, or any other play
(such as the Medea) in which Athenian patriotism
is indirectly appealed to.
(4) Corinth, although so long a centre of
Hellenic life, and the birthplace of the dithy-
ramb, does not appear to have been rich in tragic
legends. The punishment of Sisyphus in the
underworld was the subject of an Aeschylean
mystery-play (vid. supra), and the stories of
Bellerophon and Polyidus had to do with Corinth.
Otherwise, except as remotely associated with
Oedipus, Alcmaeon, Glaucus, and perhaps Europa,
the city, though the cradle of the dithyramb, plays
an unimportant part in tragedy.
With regard to this whole subject it must be
borne in mind that, throughout the great period,
the local hero was to the common apprehension
still a living power, the object of a reverence yet
more intense than was felt by the English of the
Tudor times for those great ones of the past
whose names were "familiar in their mouths as
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
77
household words, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury
and Gloster." In their every thought of him
religious and patriotic interests were combined.
2. PANHELLENIC SUBJECTS.
(1) Connected with the Trojan Expedition.
Tragic fables drawn from "the Tale of Troy
divine" are too numerous to be fully particularised.
The following list must suffice:-
Aeschylus-
*
Sophocles-
Achilles in Scyros.
Agamemnon.
Hector's Ransom.
Lemnians (?).
Myrmidons or Nereids.
Palamedes.
Penelope.
Philoctetes.
Telephus.
Thracian Handmaids. (This and the
Adjudication of the Arms belong
equally to Attic legend.)
*
Besides the Ajax (already mentioned).
Achacans' Concourse.
Achilles in Scyros.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Achilles' Lovers.
Ajax Locrus.
Auge (Birth of Telephus).
Captive Maidens.
Chryses.
Death of Odysseus.
Dolopes.
Eumelus.
Euryalus.
Hermione.
Laconian Handmaids (of Helen).
Laocoön.
Memnon.
Nauplius.
Nausicaa.
Niptra (Recognition of Odysseus).
Odysseus feigning madness.
Polyxena.
Palamedes.
Phaeacians.
* Philoctetes.
Priam.
Phthiotides.
Reclamation of Helen.
Shepherds.
Sons of Antenor.
Telephus.
Troilus.
Tyndarcus.
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
79
Euripides—
Alexander (ie. Paris).
Epeius.
* Hecuba.
* Helena.
Palamedes.
Philoctetes.
Protesilaus.
* Rhesus (?).
Telephus.
*
Trojan Women.
Other titles of plays connected with the fall
of Troy are mentioned by Aristotle, of which
Sinon and Neoptolemus are the most suggestive.
Aristotle, in the passage just referred to,
observes that while three or four fables at most
are taken from the Iliad and Odyssey, the Cypria
supplied many, and the Iliupersis (or "Sack of
Troy ") no fewer than eight.
It is indeed manifest that, as the late Professor
Paley was never weary of insisting, the so-called
"echoes of Homer" in the tragedians are much
rather echoes from lost poems of the Epic Cycle;
and if the term "Homeric" be taken in the more
extended sense, the list above given shows that
the epithet Philhomerus ("lover of Homer "),
as applied to Sophocles, was more justifiable than
the saying attributed to Aeschylus, that his dramas
80
Guide to Greek Tragedy
were but "snatches from the mighty banquet of
Homer."
The choice of the later epics as a quarry to
draw from need surprise no one who remembers
Dryden's hesitancy in preferring Shakespeare to
Fletcher, or who has realised the force of the
Homeric lines:
τὴν μὲν ἀοιδὴν μᾶλλον ἐπικλείουσ' ἄνθρωποι
ἥ τις ἀειδόντεσσι νεωτάτη ἀμφιπέληται.
Men ever celebrate that strain of song
That moves most newly on the singer's tongue.
The Cyclic poet more frequently celebrated the
deeds of Attic heroes, and was therefore more
popular in Attica. Or even if confessedly inferior,
» 1
his works might all the more be reckoned “good
to steal from.' The very nature of the Cycle,
as a series of narratives without poetic unity,
would be conducive to this.
But while epic poetry, including the Cycle,
was largely used, it is important to remember
that the poet had other sources at his command.
He did not go to the rhapsodist for a subject,
but having chosen a subject, he borrowed from
existing rhapsodies. He was the ally of priests
and prophets, and himself exercised a kind of
priesthood. Such men
Such men were always learned in
oral tradition (óycol). A worship like that of
1 As Fuseli said of W. Blake.
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
8 I
Dionysus at Eleutherae or of Demeter at Eleusis
was sure to become the focus of a great body of
legend, which must have lived orally, whether
poets had given shape to it or not. And in one
of the latest efforts of the great period, the
Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles, the aged poet
lingers with all the fondness of a priest for his
peculiar shrine over the details of a local ritual
and mythology to which he was perhaps the first
to give poetic form.
(2) The Voyage of the Argonauts.
There is no mention of an early "Argonautica,"
yet it seems unlikely that the expedition should
have remained so long uncelebrated in epic verse.
The legends connected with it have at all events
given rise to a large and important group of tragic
subjects. Here, as before, Sophocles is the chief
borrower. The principal fables which may be
grouped under the present heading are—
Argo
Aesch.
Athamas
Aesch.
Soph.
Cabiri
Aesch.
Colchian Women
Soph.
Euryalus
Soph.
Ino
Eur.
Iobates (Phrynichus).
Lemnian Women
...
Soph.
:
G
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Medea
Peleus
Peliades
Pelias
Phineus
Eur.
Soph.
Eur.
:
Soph.
Eur.
Aesch.
Soph.
Phrixus
Root-Gatherers
Scythians
Soph.
Eur.
:
Soph.
Soph.
Tympanistae
Soph.
:
Tyro
Soph.
(3) The Calydonian Hunt.
To this group belong—
Atalanta
Aesch.
Eur.
Hipponoüs
Soph.
Eur.
:
Soph.
Eur.
Soph. (?) Eur.
Melanippè
Meleager
Oeneus
Pleuronians (Phrynichus).
This class of subjects was more frequent with
later poets.
3. MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS.
There remain a few subjects taken from
uncertain sources, and slightly, if at all, connected
with the great interests hitherto considered. Such
are-
Subjects of Greek Tragedy
83
Aeolus
Aletes
Eur.
Soph.
Callisto 1 Aesch.
:-
A Cretan cycle
perhaps
re-
motely
re-
Camicii
Soph.
lated to the
Minos
:
Soph.
person
of
Theseus.
Cresphontes
Eur.
Ixion
Aesch. Soph.
Soph.
Eur.
Lamia (a Cyrenaic myth ?)
Eur.
Thamyras 2
Soph.
¹ Probably connected with the Arcadian Artemis.
2 The worship of the Muses was associated with that of Dionysus.
CHAPTER V
CONDITIONS OF REPRESENTATION
1
EVERY Athenian drama was originally composed
for competitive performance before the whole body
of the Athenian citizens assembled, in broad day-
light, at the spring festival of Dionysus. The
place was at the south-east corner of the Acropolis,
near the temple of Dionysus. The gathering
had all the appearance of an ekklesia,² or public
assembly, except that women and boys were
present,³ and also that on either side of the archons
and the strategi in the front seats were ranged a
goodly company of priests, who marked the religious
character of the solemnity-the priest of Dionysus
Eleuthereus being seated in the centre.
The whole people drawn together under a
1 Books to consult: Haigh's Attic Theatre; Smith's Dict. oj
Ant., third edition, art. "Theatrum"; A. Müller's Bühnenalter-
thümer (German).
2 See Aristotle's Ath. Const. It is doubtful if new plays were
ever performed elsewhere-e.g. at Salamis, vid. ibid.
3 Plat. Gorg. 502 D; Laws, ii. 658.
Conditions of Representation
85
religious and also a civic sanction; business.
suspended for several days; all minds together
bent upon a keen enjoyment which came only
once a year;-how different from the modern
night-performances before a casual audience of a
few hundreds, whom chance or inclination brings
to one of many "houses" to look by gas-light at
a piece which has been acted nightly by the same
actors for great part of a year!
In an area holding many thousands, however
closely packed in concentric circles, it is obvious.
that a drama, to be seen and heard and followed,
must have the greatest simplicity and clearness.
Complicated situations, number and variety of
characters, incidents diverting attention from the
main business, underplots and unexplained transi-
tions,¹ are excluded by the conditions of the
spectacle. Thus outward causes conspired with
the native bent of Attic genius in imposing on
the poet and the actors alike the necessity for
directness and unity of effect. And hence, while
for spectacular and choral business not the Chorus
only but large numbers of supernumeraries were
often employed, giving a grand impression of
massiveness and collective strength, the purely
dramatic dialogue was distributed amongst a very
few; three actors at most, with rare exceptions,
being at any one time present in the scene.
1 Aristotle's Poct. 1455 a 8 èπетiμâто Kаρкlvw.
This
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
was not due to poverty of invention, still less to
any parsimony of the choregi, but remained as a
persistent rule.
The tragic mask with its oykos (or protuberant
forehead) and speaking-tube, and the cothurnus
with its high soles, the padding of the chest, helping
to exaggerate stature, voice, and figure, and the
flute giving continuous support to vocal effort,
were also felt to be necessities in the vast area.
It is to be remembered that the spectators had
no opera-glasses. All these conditions together
constituted alike for poet and actor a difficulty
which was also an opportunity. It is evident that
in such passages as the defiance of Prometheus,' or
the avowal of Clytemnestra,2 they may have aided
the elevation of the style. But it is also clear that
they must have militated against modulation and
variety. Any other than Greek artists so circum-
stanced would have overstepped the modesty of
The grandiloquence of early tragedy was
felt by the contemporaries of Aristophanes to lie
open to this charge. His Aeschylus is accused of
bombast by Euripides in the Frogs, and replies that
the heroes, being sons of gods, were likely to speak
grandly. A similar reply was made by a Japanese
informant to M. George Bousquet, when he inquired
into the nature of theatrical exhibitions in Japan.³
1 Aesch. Prom. V. s. f.
2 Aesch. Agam. 1372.
3 Revue des deux Mondes, 15me Août 1874.
nature.
Conditions of Representation
87
His remarks are curious and instructive, and may
be quoted here—
"Pourquoi,” demandais-je à un acteur en renom, le célèbre
Sodjaro, "faites-vous de si grands éclats de voix et de si
grands gestes dans vos rôles tragiques? Ce n'est pas ainsi,
ce me semble, que parle et qu'agit un daïmio ou un soldat.”
"Non," me répondit-il; "mais s'ils se comportaient sur la
scène comme tout le monde, qui pourrait reconnaître en
eux des héros ? " Cette réponse contient à la fois le secret
de l'art scénique et celui de l'art dramatique des Japonais.
Ils sentent confusément qu'au-dessus du niveau commun
des passions humaines il s'en agite de plus fortes et de plus
nobles qui appartiennent au domaine du drame,—qu’au-
dessus de l'homme vulgaire et banal il y en a un autre qu'il
faut decouvrir et representer. En un mot, ils cherchent l'idéal;
mais, c'est dans cette recherche même qu'ils s'égarent.
L'extrême Orient, il faut bien le dire, n'a pas connu la
beauté simple et nue des Grecs, apanage de la race âryenne;
la conception du monde supérieur ne s'est jamais pour lui
traduite que par l'informe grossissement du réel. Au-delà
de la trivialité journalière, il n'a trouvé que le monstre.
Il a cru faire beau en faisant énorme-obtenir l'admiration
en causant la stupeur, et toucher par l'effroi.¹
Judging from the actual remains of Greek
tragedy, it cannot be said that in aiming at
the ideal they ever landed in extravagance, al-
though to his successors the greatest of the poets
might appear too simply magniloquent. As has
been already hinted, the Attic spectator must
have learned in great measure to discount the
2
Cp. Aristoph. Ranae, 1060 (ed. Meineke).
2 Page 36.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
encumbrances of the stage, and to "piece out"
the actors' imperfections "with his thoughts"-
Minding true things by what their mockeries be.
While any art is young, imagination answers
generously to the artist's demands (see, eg. the
pictures by Old Masters in which several stages of
a story are given together), above all when he
works through language, the most elastic and
pliable of all art-media. So, though the per-
formance was in the open day, the action might be
represented as commencing in the grey dawn,¹ or
even at dead of night.2 The approach of night
may be apprehended as imminent, yet by and by
men will speak as in presence of the Sun, who
in the Phaethon of Euripides, again, as we have
seen, was personated in his own sight. In the
Psychagogi, on the other hand, the Chorus of
Cimmerians must have been imagined as never
seeing the sun.
Rapid movement must have been impossible
for one booted with the cothurnus. Yet swift
approaches and departures are represented and
remarked. Fine shades of facial expression must
in any case have been lost in that large space,
and all attempt at producing such effects must
have been impossible with the mask. Yet it is
2 Agamemnon.
3 Choëphoroe.
1 Antigone.
Conditions of Representation
89
clear that something answering to "by-play" was
not unknown. When Oedipus first begins to
realise the horror of his situation, Jocasta says
to him-
I shudder as I gaze on thee, O King.¹
There must have been something in his attitude.
to give the cue for this remark, and something
in her gesture suited to it. When Clytemnestra
remains silent after Electra's accusing speech, the
Chorus interpose with the observation, "I see her
fuming with fresh wrath."2 These words would
παρένδειξις
have been absurd if something in Clytemnestra's
bearing had not corresponded. The fact is con-
firmed by the evidence of Pollux, who gives
Taρévdeiğis as a term of tragic art-manifestly
nothing else than "by-play." Yet the actor's art
must have been different from anything known
amongst ourselves. There are delicate modula-
tions of voice and shades of facial expression
which are possible in a private room but useless
in a theatre. A still greater difference divided
the ancient from the modern stage. Such changes
of attitude, for example, as those above referred
to, marking critical points in the action, must
have been maintained for a considerable time, to
enable the whole body of the spectators to realise
them. Frequent movement and gesticulation
1 Ocd. Tyr. 745.
Soph. El. 610.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
would have been meaningless, even if the cothur-
nus, the padded bust, and the trailing robe had
not impeded motion. One can readily understand.
how the notion of Achilles pursuing Hector on the
stage suggested itself to Aristotle as the height
of absurdity. The grouped figures thus, as it
were, brought nearer to the eye (in the absence
of magnifying lenses) must often have seemed
as still as in a tableau vivant-the "dumb person-
ages” (кôþα πрóσwπa) and other supernumeraries
adding to the effect. The actor was a sort of
speaking statue, or at least one who in motion,
voice, and gesture resembled Aristotle's magnani-
mous man, whose gait is slow and his voice
monotonous and deep. The whole scene bore a
majestic resemblance to the marble reliefs with
which in later times the stage was adorned, much
as the Panathenaic procession saw itself reflected
in the Parthenon frieze. It by no means follows
that the effect produced was mechanical or
unnatural. It should rather be said that the
expression of sustained passion under these condi-
tions required an intensity of realisation such as few
even of the greatest actors have ever displayed.
To maintain with dignified pose and gesture the
character which the poet intended, and which the
maker of the mask had stamped in statuesque
nobility upon the face; to make felt by every one
of the 30,000 spectators the significance of every
Conditions of Representation
91
change, and above all, through the slow and
measured rhythm, which alone could be followed
by such a multitude, to carry home the warmth
and vehemence of strong emotion, must have
required powers and accomplishments of no mean
order. Declamation, whether in recitation, reci-
tative, or song (καταλογή, παρακαταλογή, ᾠδή),
must have been of the first importance; and it is
only natural that to make a voice (pwvaσкeîv) was
an indispensable pre-requisite.
As to "looking the part," so far as features
were concerned that task was left to the mask-
modeller (πρoowπоTоιós), who must have had
something of the statuary's skill. An Ajax or
a Heracles, a Clytemnestra or an Antigone, had
all the individuality that art could give them,
although the living play denoting various moods
could not be there, and in any case would have
been useless.¹ But the mask must have been
changed after a change of fortune. Not only the
self-blinded Oedipus, but Deianira on discovering
her error, Creon accompanying Haemon's body,
Clytemnestra making her avowal, must have worn
an altered look. The face of the Messenger in
Iphigenia in Tauris 1366 must have shown traces
of the blows he had received. It is strange to
think that the Furies in Aeschylus when they
1 66
Anatomy of expression" (Sir Charles Bell's happy phrase)
was not yet thought of.
92
Guide to Greek Tragedy
}
remain to bless have the same faces as at their
entrance. Perhaps a different section of the
Chorus came into prominence in the latter
portion of the play.
The position of the Chorus in the orchestra
and their evolutions there made them a mediating
element between the spectators and the action,
while the intense concentration of the dialogue.
added charm to the lyrical interludes, which did
not interrupt the drama, but on the one hand
linked it to common life, and on the other gave
utterance within due limits to the feelings which
its progress so far had awakened.
Two expedients connected with the unity of
scene remain to be spoken of: the speech of the
Messenger, and the ekkyklema (or “discovery ").
I. By means of narration things done at a
distance or within doors are brought to the ears of
the spectators without being presented to their eyes,
and an effect is produced like that of perspective
in drawing. The composition thus acquires depth
and harmony without losing unity. The ancient
like the modern dramatist has also recourse to
exclamations and brief utterances from "within."
2. The ekkyklema was employed when some
great impression could only be produced through
a tableau presenting to the eye not things in act
but the results of action. Clytemnestra beside
her murdered lord, Ajax among the slaughtered
Conditions of Representation
93
cattle, Orestes with his mother's corpse, the dead
Eurydicè, are thus rolled forth from the central
door of the fixed scene to the view of the spec-
tators, who, by a somewhat tyrannous convention,
are bound to suppose that what they see is not
outside the house but within. The incongruity,
however, was softened by distance, and this effect
might be increased by the help of perspective.
The unity of scene, which was due to the
exclusiveness of ancient civic life, as well as to
the presence of the Chorus, was not an absolutely
invariable rule. The scene changes after the
prologue in the Phoenissae, and perhaps in the
Oedipus Coloneus; and the Chorus are temporarily
withdrawn and enter on a new scene in the
Eumenides and Ajax. And the fact that Pollux
has special terms for such an exit (μeтáσTaσis)
and re-entrance (èπTápodos) seems to indicate
that the expedient must have been employed
more widely (probably in the Phaethon, for
example). There is a passage in the Helena
of Euripides (386-514) where it seems to be
required. Menelaus enters and tells his story,
which the Chorus would have no motive for
concealing, except to aid the plot, which is
against their interests. See also Eur. Alc.
747-860.
We may be quite sure (however strange it may
be thought) that none of these external conditions,
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
although some of them were gradually disused,
were allowed to interfere with dramatic illusion.
But they were not without their effect on the
poet, who in the earlier time himself took a part
amongst the actors, and retained the office of
instructing them to the last. He had no room
for copiousness in the development of situation or
character; his success depended on the force with
which he could present the essential points of the
action by means of strong and clearly marked
effects. Thus outward causes joined with the spirit
of Athenian art in banishing superfluities and en-
couraging simplicity, directness, concentration, and
unity.
Until recently, descriptions of the Greek theatre
were based on the canons of Vitruvius and a
superficial view of the remains of the Dionysiac
theatre at Athens. The more thorough examina-
tion of those remains, and skilled investigations at
Epidaurus, Megalopolis, Eretria, and elsewhere, have
raised important questions which are not yet solved.
Dr. Dörpfeld, who has the advantage of being an
expert at once in archæology and architecture, has
propounded a theory, which, even if ultimately
invalidated, cannot fail to modify existing notions.
According to him, Vitruvius erred in assum-
ing that the Greek proscenium corresponded to
the Roman pulpitum or stage.
The προσκήνιον,
Conditions of Representation
95
he thinks, was only a somewhat late mode of
decorating the scene. The stage was a surviving
segment of the orchestra. No part of the existing
structure at Athens is allowed by him to be
older than the building of Lycurgus (341 B.C.),
which was altered at successive periods down to
The only exception to this
the third century A.D.
sweeping statement is made in favour of two bits
of stone basement of polygonal work forming arcs
of a circle near the site of the temple of Dionysus,
and preserving the traces of an earlier orchestra.
The beautiful theatre at Epidaurus, said by
Pausanias to be the work of Polycleitus, thus be-
comes of special importance. The orchestra here
is a complete circle, not cut by the proscenium,
whose basement, or "stylobate," is raised some
inches above the level of the orchestra. According
to the new theory, the actor stepped down in front
of this, and all the action took place on the same
level. The exact age of this part of the structure,
especially of the pillars, has not been determined.
And much depends on the yet unfinished excava-
tions at Megalopolis.
While the decision is thus pending, a scholar
who “cannot dig" can only venture provisionally
to offer a few general remarks.
I. It seems rather a strong measure to set
aside the authority of Vitruvius, who wrote not
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
later than about the middle of the first century
A.D. His rules on this and other points were not
capriciously adopted, nor drawn from mere inspec-
tion of architectural diagrams, but must have
been to a large extent traditional. No doubt
particular theatres-at Epidaurus for example-
varied somewhat from the general norm which he
recognises. But the radical error attributed to
him by the new theory appears unlikely. And
there are places in Aristophanes which are scarcely
intelligible without the raised stage (e.g. Eccl.
1152). (But see Prof. White in Harvard Studies.)
2. On the other hand, there are many things
in the existing plays which are hard to reconcile
with a narrow proscenium or stage of from ten to
twelve feet high.
The entrance of Atossa, or of Agamemnon
and Cassandra, with chariots and other pomp,
could hardly be accommodated to the conditions
hitherto supposed.
And many scenes may be recalled, not only
from the earlier plays of Aeschylus, but from the
Choëphoroe and Eumenides, from several plays of
Euripides and Aristophanes, and even from the
last of Sophocles, proving that throughout the fifth
century B.C. the communication at certain points.
of the action between the actors and the Chorus
was of a kind that would be seriously interrupted
by a long flight of steps (Oed. Col. 836).
Conditions of Representation
97
3. But, thirdly, the distinction between the
two or three ὑποκριταὶ and the other χορευταὶ is
generally sharp and distinct, and there would be
a manifest awkwardness in maintaining the chief
dialogue either within the circle of the orchestra
or generally in the space before the proscenium,
which was intersected by the stone edge of the
dancing-ring. It would be too hampering, especi-
ally for one booted with the cothurnus, either to
have to move inside a hoop or to step over it
backwards from time to time.
4. An attempt to meet the difficulty has been
made by supposing that for dramatic performances,
as distinguished from mere choral competitions,
the Chorus were provided with a temporary
wooden stage, not much below the level of the
proscenium. This view is not without support
from documents, but cannot be proved for the
fifth century B.C. See A. Müller, Bühnenalterth.
§ 11, p. 129.
All
5. In the absence of direct evidence from stone
and lime, all theories are alike unverifiable.
woodwork has disappeared. (Сp. тùν σúµþpağıv
in inscr. quoted Classical Rev. vol. v. p. 344 a.)
But the following hypothesis may be advanced as
not glaringly inconsistent either with architectural
or literary documents.
"At the beginning of the fifth century B.C.
the orchestra was a complete circle, as at
H
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Epidaurus, with the Thymele or altar of Dionysus
in the centre. Whether or not the Coryphaeus
sometimes stood upon the step of the altar
is an immaterial point. But the ὑποκριτὴς (or
Answerer") had already a place assigned to him,
facing the audience and slightly raised, upon the
farther side of the orchestra;¹ and some simple
structure, representing a house or temple, made
a background for him. There was already a rudi-
mentary stage as well as a rudimentary scene.
Aeschylus, who introduced the second actor, prob-
ably in other ways made more significant the place
of the action. The stage was as yet but slightly
elevated above the orchestra, and when circum-
stances required, not the Chorus only, but other
persons, might enter by the side opening and easily
step on to the platform where most of the dialogue
took place."
Sophocles is known to have made some
great advance in scene-painting. But this must
have been anterior to the production of the
Oresteia and of the Promethean trilogy, both of
which require elaborate scenery.
The Prometheus
Bound also involves the use of machinery for bring-
ing on divine persons, and of stage thunder; while
the ekkyklema is in full use in the Orcsteia.
the Persae, 472 B.C., there must have been some.
In
1 The place of the audience on one side of the ring must soon
have been defined by the necessity of facing the chief speaker.
Conditions of Representation
99
contrivance by which the ghost of Darius rose
behind his tomb.
Whether we accept the tradition that at the
beginning of the fifth century stone seats were
substituted for the wooden benches, or reject it
with Dörpfeld, it is natural to suppose that
in the hundred years and more which elapsed
before the building of Lycurgus other important
changes may have taken place. The auditorium
was probably enlarged from time to time, and the
centre of the orchestra shifted inwards to the north
as the seats were cut more deeply into the hill.
It is not unnatural to assume that coincidently
with this process there may have been at once a
deepening of the orchestra and a gradual raising
of the proscenium, and of the whole okηvý, partly
for the sake of sound, and partly in order to
present the chief persons, with their surroundings,
more advantageously to the average spectator.
First, the one step would become three or four ;
then, when this was not enough, a regular hypo-
scenium would be developed and adorned with
pillars, rising to ten or twelve feet, as in the
scheme of Vitruvius. The flights of steps at either
end would then become a necessity; and the
awkwardness of the interruptions which they
occasioned would be less felt, because the Chorus
was by this time less important as an element of
the action.
IOO
Guide to Greek Tragedy
The narrowness of the Greek proscenium-
six or seven feet-may still
to the above hypothesis.
occur as an objection
But granting that it
involves some formality of grouping that appears
stiff from a modern point of view, this would be
little felt in the earlier and more creative period
while the elevation of the stage was slight and the
use of the side entrance was free. And the slight
difference of level would give a clear advantage in
marking out the chief persons and distinguishing
the dialogue from the choral business.
A degree
of elevation which lost all significance as the
auditorium grew wider and higher would be quite
perceptible from the pia or wooden platform,
which is now assumed to have held the spectators
in the early part of the fifth century B.C.
narrow stage had acoustic uses and left more room
for purely choric contests.
The
Another objection may be founded on the
apparition of Darius, the sinking of Prometheus,
etc., which could no doubt be better managed with
a high proscenium. But this might be provided
"for the nonce" by the tomb of Darius, the rock
of Prometheus, etc., being raised to a certain height
above the stage.
CHAPTER VI
LEADING THOUGHTS: EARLY PESSIMISM-
MORALITY AND DESTINY-INTERPRETATIONS
OF LIFE-CENTRAL THOUGHTS¹
As above remarked (in Chap. I.), completeness is
an attribute of all tragedy; every great tragedy
deals with some life-history regarded as a whole,
and as typical of a whole, ie. of human life
considered in some universal aspect; and tragic
effects are produced not merely through feeling,
but through feeling combined with reflection.
From this it is obvious that a great tragic poem
must be the outcome not merely of emotional
sympathy but of intellectual energy.
The poet
must have thought deeply, and his work must be
the sincere expression of his thought. This does
not mean that he is to moralise, or that his heroes
are to preach after the fashion of Godwin's Antonio.2
By expression is of course meant dramatic expression
1 Books to consult : Bunsen's God in History; Julia Wedgwood's
Moral Ideal; Green's Prolegomena to Ethics; Günther's Tragische
Kunst (German).
2 Lamb's Elia.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
or embodiment; and the less of self-consciousness
there is in this the better for the work.
Like the kindred arts of dancing, singing, and
epic recitation, Greek tragedy adhered to certain
conventional lines. But within the limits pre-
scribed by tradition it enjoyed greater freedom
than any.
This was partly due to its Dionysiac
origin, and partly to the fact that its main develop-
ment coincided with the rise of national and
political freedom at Athens. It was the awaken-
ing and deepening both of the collective and
individual consciousness that gave to tragedy, as
a function of Greek life, its peculiar distinction.
For, after all, the fact that the art had a religious
basis was common to it with every phase of
existence, however mean or frivolous. Athletics,
boat-races, cock- and quail-fights, the broaching
of a wine-cask, the prosecution of a love-affair,
all were associated with religion. It is not in
this sense that one speaks of Aeschylus as
a religious poet. The distinguishing character-
istic of tragic poetry was that it reflected the
deepest thoughts of an expansive and transitional
time.
In two previous chapters we have considered
the subjects of tragedy, the legends which were its
raw material, and surveyed the outward conditions.
under which the poet worked. We have now
to turn from the husk to the kernel, from the
Leading Thoughts
103
framework to the animating principle, and to
inquire into the spirit which informed it, the ideas.
which guided it.
No simple result is to be looked for in this
inquiry; because in an age in which many ideas
were germinating each poet had his own ideal,
his own way of regarding human life. Hence
even the serious side of Greek drama is not
uniform in tone. The aspect of nature and of
destiny varies with the temper of the individual
dramatist. Still less can the scope of tragic art
be summed up in such a formula as that of—
poor humanity's afflicted will
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.1
In Chapter III. I tried to distinguish between
the origin and growth of tragedy. I would now
mark the difference between the data and the
genius that handles them: between tragic common-
places and tragic motives. A tragic poem may
be compared to a piece of embroidery in which a
pattern is wrought with many-coloured threads
upon a sombre ground. The ground represents
the data-the traditional deposit; the pattern is
the poet's own thought.
It has been truly said that "under the marble
exterior of Greek literature was concealed a soul
1 Wordsworth.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
thrilling with spiritual emotion.” ¹
And it is not
less true that beneath the Greek serenity and
brightness there lay, thinly veiled, a profound
sadness, which, as Hegel has said, "knows the
hardness of fate, but is not by that knowledge
driven out of freedom and measure."
This consciousness of (C
some undercurrent
woe" will not appear unnatural if we consider
the probable condition of "what is now called
Hellas" (as Thucydides says) in times between
the Trojan war and the legislation of Solon.
That condition must have often resembled the
state of Germany after the Thirty Years' War.
Civilisation was just emerging from the mere
struggle for existence. The inhabitant of the
plain might at any time have his crops ravaged
or his cattle driven off by predatory tribes.
from the hills. The beginnings of commerce
were all but stifled by piracy. Now and again
some strong personality would arise and protect
the weak while plundering the plunderers, like
Rob Roy or Robin Hood. And so dynasties
arose which left their mark and were long re-
membered for good or evil. But by-and-by the
oligarchs in their turn were threatened by some
combination of the common folk. Then it was
their turn to cry that the good old times were
over and gone that base men were supplanting
1 Jowett's Plato, Introduction to Phaedrus, s. f.
Early Pessimism
105
the better sort, and life was
living.
no longer worth
The misery and nothingness of human life had
already been a frequent theme of reflection even
in epic poetry—
Of all that live and move upon the ground,
No thing more sad than mortal man is found.
"Man has no comfort in mourning, save to shear
the locks, and to let fall the tear." Amidst the
brightness and vividness of the Iliad this ever-
recurring strain, that the noble and the vile alike
must die, affects us with strong and simple.
pathos. The burden of all the later books,
"Achilles' doom is ripe when Hector falls," gives
a wonderful sense of transiency to the whole long
poem. The counterpart of this is the undying
power of the Olympian gods.
In Hesiod we find a detailed account of
actual human misery, with a deeper feeling about
wrong and injustice, than commonly occurs in
Homer, accompanied with a kindred awe towards
superhuman powers, which are more definitely but
less grandly conceived. A similar strain is con-
tinued in Theognis, who cries, "Far best were
never to be born, next best to die forthwith"; in
Pindar, who exclaims that "Man is the dream of a
shadow"; and it is echoed here and there in Plato.
But it is in the Ionic literature of Asia Minor
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
that the darker aspect of human life is most
clearly formulated, together with a strange phase
of theological pessimism. Beneath that graceful
and gay civilisation, amidst all its command of
resources, its perfect climate, its progress in the
arts of life, there lay the abiding consciousness of
some overhanging doom-with the inference that
"ere it came it was but fair that life should be
enjoyed." Those words, in which Thucydides ex-
presses the feeling of the Athenians at the time.
of the plague, might sum up what we know of
the poetry of Mimnermus of Colophon (634-
600 B.C.) Whether this sense of instability was
in any way connected with the position of the
Ionians under the shadow first of Lydian and then
of Persian supremacy, or whether it arose in any
way through the infiltration of ideas from farther
East, it is clearly present not only in the philosophy
of Heraclitus (called in later times the "weeping
philosopher"), the philosophy of eternal change,
but in the history of Herodotus, who, with all
his serenity and evenness of spirit, is profoundly
penetrated with three great thoughts—the pre-
dominant misery of human life, the absoluteness of
Fate, the envy and cruelty of the gods. He has
also occasionally notions of another order from
these, which he does not see to be at variance
with them-the inevitable retribution which awaits
the perjurer (once darkly hinted at in Homer) and
Early Pessimism
107
the vengeance which long afterwards overtakes
the doer of a wrong, besides many wise proverbial
maxims which had been gathered from the experi-
ence which he records.
That every man has cause oftentimes to prefer
death to life; that the good man is often crushed
by the decree of Heaven; yea, even, like Mycerinus,
on account of his goodness; that none can be
called happy before he dies, because the divine
nature is envious and delights in confusion, are
thoughts which might evidently become the basis
of a certain kind of tragedy. And if the true
aim of this art had been to detach the spectator
from the will to live, to teach the lesson of
absolute resignation, to convince him that there is
nothing in the world worth living for, then these
conceptions proved the time already ripe for
tragedy at once to attain her goal. But as it
happens and this is an essential point-Greek
tragedy is not the offspring of an outworn age,
nor of the sickliness incident to youth, that "will
be as sad as night only for wantonness." It is
not the product of exhaustion, but of fulness, not
of a world-weariness like that of Byron, but of
the spirit that "sufficeth unto all and more
than all," of the Attic genius at the time when
Athens had the firmest hold on life. And
1 See Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. i.§ 51.
2
· ἐξαρκεί πᾶσι καὶ περιγίνεται.-IIeraclitus.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
in the heyday of Athenian greatness, to the men
who could put forth such boundless energy for
Hellas and for Athens, the cry that "All' is
vanity," that "it is better not to be," that "man
that is born of a woman hath but few days and
is full of misery,"-thoughts kindred to these,
familiar to them from the gnomic poetry, were
like an echo from the past, that thrilled them
with a mysterious awe, but carried only an im-
perfect meaning. It was because life had such high
value for them that they were fascinated with the
contemplation of traditional or ideal calamities.
If the poet who plucked asunder for them the
jaws of darkness and unveiled the world of gloom
had had no more to teach them than that "the
gods are hard to reconcile," and that "man is the
dream of a shadow," the fascination would soon
have palled or cloyed them. But, whatever may
have been true of earlier poets, both Aeschylus and
Sophocles were yet more profoundly convinced
than the Athenians were that there are things
worth living for, ay, and things one had better
die than lose; and this not in some far-off,
mysterious, transcendental sense (though they had
their mysticisms), but in a sense which every true
Athenian heart could recognise. Which is there
amongst their extant plays that does not affirm
the endless worth of home, of country, of religion,
of domestic purity, of civic freedom, of faithfulness,
Morality and Destiny
109
of personal honour, of humanity, or of piety?
And is it not because these motives are weakened
in Euripides-because the bases of civic virtue
have been shaken, and those of individual and
personal morality have not yet been firmly laid,
that his work fails of inherent unity and grandeur ?
It is true that the moral ideal here presented
to us is one which cannot be abstracted from the
family and the state.¹ But in this consists the
advance beyond the Homeric period, which such
a work as the Oresteia evinces, viz. that the
sanctity attaching to the domestic hearth and to
the national spirit has sunk so much more deeply
into the consciousness of the time.
In this re-
spect the Odyssey is in advance of the Iliad, and
Aeschylus is in advance of the Odyssey.
1
To the poet these thoughts were more than
to his countrymen, for it was through these
that he communicated ideas which transcend the
limits of Greek nationality and are of universal
value. In their apprehension of the ideas of justice
and purity, and to some extent also of equity, of
mercy, and of truthfulness, Aeschylus and Sophocles
rose far above the contemporary standard. If in
one way they are Greeks of the Greeks, in another
they are more than Greeks, and have voices that
1 What the best sort of Athenian was apart from his country is
well seen in the conduct of Phrynichus at Samos, compared with
Thucydides' eulogy of his character (Thuc. viii. 27, 50, 51).
IIO Guide to Greek Tragedy
reach to all time, sounding as they do in con-
sonance with Hebrew prophecy. To ask reasons
for this would carry us far and
carry us far and over doubtful
ground. It may well be that the Eleusinian
worship contained elements other and deeper than
those of the public religions, and that Aeschylus,
if he betrayed the mysteries, sinned, like his own
Prometheus, in the cause of a noble philanthropy.
It may be that through Orphic or Pythagorean
channels there flowed a purer ethical teaching
than the common opinion of Athens had yet
acknowledged. But whatever may be thought of
antecedents, at which we can but dimly guess, the
fact is plain that among the Athenians of the
early fifth century the higher spirits had an assur-
ance, to which their poets sought to give effect,
that an essential righteousness lay deep in the
divine counsels, and that sin (in the form of in-
justice) was the prime cause of suffering.
also felt that the essentially noble human being,
though he might err and be unfortunate, must in
the end be justified. In the gradual and fitful
growth of these moral ideas within the outward
form of fatalistic legend lies one chief interest of
the history of Greek tragedy. The poet stands
behind his work, and his own thought shines
through, either as a light pervading the whole,
though nowhere expressly manifested, or breaking
forth at intervals.
They
Morality and Destiny
III
It may be observed, however, in passing that
the more nearly the drama approximates to its
ideal objectivity, the less obvious becomes the
poet's general conception, which in the most
perfect dramas is to be inferred from the whole
treatment, and not sought for in any of the parts.
Not in the moral maxims, which the persons utter
in accordance with their situation and character, nor
even always in the lyrical effusions, which, as the
treatment of the Chorus becomes more dramatic,
are more apt to be confined to a single aspect of
the action, but in the action itself, is the thought
of the poet, if he has a leading thought, to be
found. And it is important to remark that this
thought is inextricably bound up with imagination
and feeling, and inevitably becomes different the
moment an attempt is made to give it logical
expression.
It
But to return. The idea of Fate was not, as
has often been assumed, the exclusive or even
the most active principle in Greek tragedy.
is the warp of the texture, but not the woof; the
site, but not the framework of the building; the
background of the picture, not its leading motive.
It is there, like the power of the curse, like the
prophetic gift of Apollo-a deposit of anterior
tradition, invaluable as material, or as an instru-
ment of tragic effect, but is employed differently
according to the idiosyncrasy of the poet, and the
II 2
Guide to Greek Tragedy
aspect of the time-spirit which he embodies.
To
the poet, as to his audience, these dark traditions
had a real and terrible meaning; but his mind.
was also instinct with other and more living con-
ceptions, by which these were crossed and modified.
And if thoughts of retribution were still excessive,
and righteousness seemed inseparable from vindic-
tiveness, this was partly because of the profound
impression produced by the revelation of the
heinousness of wrong. The morality is an in-
cipient morality; but it is not less real and deep.
And it is the struggle of morality with fatalism
that gives to Greek tragedy its most abiding
charm. Nor does the vindictiveness just spoken
of, however essentially inherent in the ancient
ideal, strike its roots so deep or occupy the
ground so widely as is sometimes assumed.
Oedipus had learned to forgive his enemies, he
would not less have found peace in the ultimate
vindication of his essential innocence in the sight
of Heaven.
If
The assertion of Baron Bunsen, however, in his
God in History,¹ that "nowhere has the funda-
mental idea of tragedy been conceived more
profoundly, or expressed more magnificently, than
by those poets—namely, that self-seeking is the
destructive element, and that tragic complications.
are the product of transgressions of due balance,
1 Eng. Translation, p. 175.
Interpretations of Life
113
and of moral demerit," has too much of a modern
tone, and though suggestive of much valuable truth
respecting certain tragedies, such as the Choëphoroe
or the Ajax, is not exhaustive, even of the ethical
element in Greek tragedy.
It is impossible to treat this subject fairly or
at all fully without distinguishing carefully between
the three great tragic poets. Yet it is difficult to
do this without anticipating what will be more in
place in the chapters to be given separately to
each of them. The main differences in their
treatment of these central ideas may, however,
be stated in a few sentences.
1. Aeschylus is no pessimist, though some of
his chief persons are surrounded with gloom. His
fatalism is not exclusive of free will. Human life
was to him the scene of a warfare between good and
evil principles, in which it depended, under Heaven,
on man himself whether the good or the evil
triumphed in a particular generation. In the long
run the triumph of justice was assured. ( Had not
Hellas triumphed over Persia ? And had she not
to thank for this first of all the powers of light
who fought for her, and then the principles of
liberty, law, equity, patriotism, and household
purity which prevailed above all in Athens? Of
all this Aeschylus is profoundly convinced, and he
dwells on those features of each legend which are
most calculated to impress on the spectator the
I
I 14
Guide to Greek Tragedy
realities in which he believed-pride, not merely
prosperity, preparing downfall; sin leading to
retribution either soon or late; the curse of
heredity not irredeemable, but even when it falls
giving scope for the display of moral grandeur ;
the conflict of opposing principles resulting in that
growth of righteousness towards which all events
lead on.
2. Sophocles accepts from Aeschylus the belief
in supreme righteousness, which thus becomes
part of tragic tradition; and in the spirit of Greek
piety he identifies justice with the will of Zeus or
of the gods generally. But the power of Fate, of
which men in old time had spoken, is confirmed
for him by the facts of life and acquires new
meaning from them. Destiny, as now interpreted,
is correlative to the ignorance and blindness of
men, whom no innocence of intention will save
from the consequences of their acts, as these are
determined by the working of the eternal laws.
The tragic persons of Aeschylus are preparing the
way for the triumph of justice, which goes on with
cumulative force from generation to generation—
an increasing purpose which " through the ages
runs." Those of Sophocles rather illustrate by
their fall or by their rising again the unchanging
purpose of a righteous but inscrutable power.
the rest, Sophocles, though he teaches through his
art, is less bent than Aeschylus was on reading a
For
Interpretations of Life
115
lesson to the spectators: he is entirely engrossed
in adapting his fables to the production of great
tragic effects of terror and pity. And, although
not more than a tenth part of his work is
extant, we can hardly be wrong in recognising in
him, as in Shakespeare, a certain relaxation of
tragic severity towards the close of his career.
The lesson of the Coloneus is not anticipated in
the Tyrannus; the tone of the Philoctetes is less
unrelenting than that of the Antigone.
3. Euripides makes the pessimism of the old
fables a vehicle for the opposition, rife in his time,
between morality and mythology. He believes,
somewhat intermittently, in a divine power govern-
ing human things, but one inseparable from nature
and the mind of man. In representing the gods
as cruel, capricious, vindictive, he is perhaps ex-
pressing his disbelief in them. But he is also
accentuating, in a more bitter and querulous tone
than Sophocles ever assumed, the blindness of
Fortune and the frequent injustice of the actual
distribution of happiness and misery in the world.
"Nature" is relentless, and to individuals not
always just.¹ The total effect of many Euripidean
dramas must have been to send away the audience
distressed and irritated rather than calmed and
quieted," an effect like that which the music of
(C
1 Compare Tennyson's In Memoriam, liv. lv., contrasted with
cxvii.
116
Guide to Greek Tragedy
Wagner produces on some persons as compared
with that of Beethoven or Mozart.
Fate, the power of Zeus, Nemesis, the claims
of the Erinyes and of the powers below, the
prescience of Apollo, the wisdom of Athena, these
are factors of the tragic art, with which the poet
works, and disposes them differently according to
the thoughts that dominate him and the require-
ments of his audience. This last condition is
never to be forgotten, whether in speaking of the
superficial or the deeper nature of tragedy.
The Greek of that age delighted in listening
to life-histories, and he believed implicitly in the
real presence of dead heroes, the patrons of his
race. Both features of the time are manifest in the
pages of Herodotus,¹ who also exemplifies the
taste for gnomic sayings and for interspersing
narrative with dialogue. The Athenian was in
all these respects a child of the time, and was
ready at the Dionysiac festival to brim over with
sympathetic emotion. But he further demanded
from the tragic poet that "emotion should be
touched with thought." For in the Athens of the
fifth century, more than ever elsewhere, human
consciousness was struggling towards independent
existence.
Vivid national experiences had freshly
It was only when smarting under disappointment that the
Thebans sent back the Acacidae to Acgina and asked for living men.
-Herod. v. 81.
Central Thoughts
117
awakened various obstinate questionings about the
meaning of life, the essential characteristics of
human nature, and the purposes of the gods.
Before philosophy had prepared her answer, the
drama gave an imaginative embodiment to the
successive contemporary phases of the mental
struggle. The attainment of free citizenship and
the successful repulse of Persia had the combined
effect of intensifying the general interest in all
things human. Hence at the annual festival of
Dionysus, when the poet, according to religious
wont, idealised for them some aspect of human
sorrow (side by side with the exuberance of animal
gladness), the people entered with new zest into
the spirit of the representation, and realised
with extreme vividness all the deep reflections
and far-reaching thoughts which it evoked.
it is a mistake to assume any immediate connec-
tion between particular events of Greek history and
the subjects chosen. The attempts which have.
been made in this direction by Mr. W. W. Lloyd
and others have not been successful. The results
are too thin and shadowy to produce conviction.
The poet's choice had for the most part an artistic,
not a political motive. The Persac and Eumenides
of Aeschylus are no doubt inspired with Athenian
patriotism; but this was always ready to be called
forth, and needed not any occasional motive for
its expression. Such motives, even if they existed,
But
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
as we may imagine them to have done in the case,
for instance, of the Oedipus Coloneus, as they
undoubtedly do in that of the Supplices and
Heraclidae of Euripides, are but slightly connected
with the artistic result, which depends on in-
dependent laws of poetic and dramatic creation.¹
Nor is the effort justifiable, though often made,
to deduce the evolution of a tragic poem from
some "ground-idea." There can be little doubt,
for example, on which side the sympathies of
Sophocles and his audience were in the struggle
represented in the Antigone. But much of what
has been said on the subject rests on the barren
supposition that the poet starts with a clear-cut
preference for the claims either of the state or of
family-life, or else on the merely abstract notion
that from the clashing of two principles equally
divine, he is endeavouring to strike a harmony.
Even in Aeschylus, who is more actively possessed
with moral notions, the central or heart-thought
of each drama comes out rather as a last result
than as the primary motive.
1 But for the facts of chronology, the line in the Seven, 1044,
"Be warned; a people rescued knows not ruth," might have seemed
to reflect the experience of the restored democracy.
CHAPTER VII
CONVERSATIONAL AND LYRIC ELEMENTS:
I. THE DIALOGUE; II. THE CHORUS¹
IN Chapters IV. and VI. we have considered the
substance of Greek tragedy-the fable and the
thoughts. We now return to the consideration
of the form; and before dealing with this
synthetically, i.e. before looking at the structure
of a drama, considered as a whole, we have to
study the parts of which it is composed, in the
arrangement and distribution of which the art of
the dramatist largely consists.
I. THE DIALOGUE.
The student of a Greek play is at once
encountered with the diversity of two main
elements—the choric passages and the dialogue.
It has been already shown that the choral part
1 Books to consult : Müller's History of Greek Literature;
Schiller's Preface to the Bride of Messina; Schlegel's Lectures on
the Drama; Munk's Greek Tragedy, ed. Verrall.
I 20
Guide to Greek Tragedy
was originally supreme, and we shall have occasion
presently to observe that in the typical period of
Greek tragedy the Chorus had a recognised place
amongst the persons of the drama. But it is
convenient for us to treat first of the dialogue as
the more obvious and familiar part, and we are
justified in doing so by the saying of Aristotle,
that Aeschylus had already given to the dialogue
the principal rôle (τὸν λόγον πρωταγωνιστὴν
κατεσκεύασεν). The natural order in this case
differs from the historical.
By dialogue, for the purpose of this chapter,
I understand that part of the business of a Greek
play which either takes place wholly between
the actors, or is carried on between the leader
of the Chorus, or the choreutae severally, and
persons on the stage. We may therefore consider
separately, under the present heading (1) narrative,
(2) dramatic speeches, (3) antiphonal interchange,
(4) stage lyrics.
It may be premised that the language of
tragic dialogue is for the most part intermediate
between poetry and prose; it was noticed by the
Greeks themselves that the rhythm of the senarius
was not far removed from the natural movement
of ordinary Athenian speech. The dialect is
Attic, with a strong tinge of archaism, borrowed
either from the earlier speech of Attica, or from
epic poetry, or from contemporary Ionic. In
Conversational and Lyric Elements I 2 I
this, as in other respects, Euripides comes nearer
than the others to real life. He is more modern,
more purely “Attic."
I.
1. The germ of the tragic dialogue was
originally contained in the recitations of the
Coryphaeus, or leader of the Chorus, who recited to
his companions (probably in trochaic verse) the
account of an event or a situation, on which the
whole Chorus presently declaimed their sentiments.
This species of dramatic business survives in the
part of the Messenger.
The transition may be
observed in the Persae and the Seven against
Thebes, in which the rôle of the Messenger is so
important. A messenger's speech may occur at
any crisis of a play, but the normal place for it
is in introducing the catastrophe, or at the point
corresponding to the beginning of the fourth act
of a Shakespearian tragedy (Macbeth, iii. 6;
King Lear, iv. 3). The Antigone and the Oedipus
Tyrannus of Sophocles (in the part of second
Messenger) afford the most distinct examples of
this arrangement. In the Ajax, on the other
hand, where the dénoûment happens on the stage
(and therefore needs not to be reported), the chief
use of narrative occurs in the earlier (and
expository) portion of the play, as in the long
story of Tecmessa and the speech of the
Messenger reporting the prophecy of Calchas.
And in the Agamemnon this element of interest is
I 22
Guide to Greek Tragedy
supplied at the pause before the climax of the
action, in the speech of the Herald describing the
tempest, while in the Persae the Messenger's
narrative is the culminating point.
Much of the skill of the dramatist consists in
placing these descriptive pieces, in which the
Athenians were remarkably tolerant of length.
The Messenger describing Salamis has an un-
broken speech of nearly eighty lines. The
Herald's "tempest" speech is the longest in the
Agamemnon, with the single exception of
Clytemnestra's lengthy rhodomontade of hypo-
critical welcome. In the Prometheus and elsewhere
prophecy virtually fills the place of narrative.
Such passages in Aeschylus often remind one
of an Homeric rhapsody. In most cases the
fable of a tragedy had previously been the theme
of some episode in an epic poem. And the
tragic poet borrows from his predecessor a
kindred elevation of style. This is especially the
case in narrative speeches, in which an epic
flavour is often distinctly perceptible. But even
here the dramatic motive gives increased con-
centration. Aeschylus, the most epic of the
tragic poets, has a peculiar grandiloquence in
narrative. This appears most prominently in the
Persae, where, as Sainte-Beuve remarked, the epic
poem of Salamis is given once for all.¹ Such
1 Portraits Littéraires.
1
Conversational and Lyric Elements
123
passages cannot be truly said to interrupt the
action, which flows on continuously in a lordly
stream, or even if stationary is being gradually
realised, even by means of narrative; but in
passing these meadow-lands it may be said to
overflow its banks, and to exceed the strict limits
of dramatic purpose.
The narrated action, even
when episodical, acquires an interest of its own
and breaks forth into an independent exuberance
of descriptive metaphor.
It is otherwise in Sophocles, in whom every
touch even on the background is carefully
adapted to emphasise the main effect. The
narrative of the messenger in the Antigone is
a drama within the drama, fore-shortened but
clearly seen and indispensable in its relation
to the immediate action. In the Electra and
Philoctetes the fictitious narratives which are
necessary to the plot are elaborately contrived to
bring out the emotions which they are calculated
to produce on the chief persons.
This constitutes an essential difference be-
tween such passages and the epic rhapsodies,
which at first sight they resemble. They are
marked as integral portions of the action, not
only by the gestures of the Chorus, but, as
formerly observed, by the by-play of persons on
the stage. The presence of Eurydice, for
example, during the Messenger's speech in the
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Antigone forms an essential part of the composition.
This is still more evidently true of those narrative
speeches which are more deeply embedded in the
action itself,—such as the great speech of Oedipus
to Jocasta (Oed. Tyr., 771-833), or that of Hyllus
to Deianira in the Trachiniae, 749-812, where
something that is past or done elsewhere is
brought immediately to bear upon the series of
emotions which the spectator witnesses, and
which excite his sympathies.
In Euripides the narrative element again
overflows, and occasionally claims an interest
superior to that which is felt in the immediate
scene. The spectator who listens to the account
of the death of Polyxena may almost forget the
sorrows of Hecuba in the interest awakened by
the pictorial narration, which however is now
rather marked by oratorical skill, and by the
grace of the idyllic poet, than by a majesty
analogous to that of epic verse. A similar
observation holds of the description of the
madness of Heracles, and of the account of the
death of Pentheus in the Bacchae. Graphic
description in these supplies the place of dramatic
action, and we feel that in relation to such
passages the spectator of tragedy (Deaτns) is
passing into a listener (akрoarýS).
2. Dramatic speeches. The long narrative
passages which have been so far characterised
Conversational and Lyric Elements
125
may be contrasted with those more concentrated
utterances through which tragic feeling is directly
conveyed. The passion expressed of course
greatly varies in intensity according to the point
which has been reached in the development of the
action, and the length also varies from a dozen
lines or so to forty or fifty; but it is always
impossible fully to appreciate the force and
beauty of such passages when separated from
their context. Yet even when taken separately
the strength and majesty of Clytemnestra's
avowal of her crime, the profound and complex
passion of Oedipus with his sightless orbs, the
outburst of Philoctetes which so works on the
conscience of Neoptolemus, the death-speech of
Ajax, or the despairing rage of the cruelly-
used Medea, and the gentler pathos of dying
Alcestis, cannot fail to impress one who reads or
hears them. How much more when any of these
is given worthily on the stage at the climax of
a great action! The student may find it in-
structive to compare such passages also with
those most nearly resembling them in Homer,
who in a sense, as Plato says, may be regarded as
the Father of tragedy. The appeal of Tecmessa
to Ajax, for example, may be viewed as
parallel to that of Andromache to Hector, or
Oedipus' angry outbreak on Teiresias may be
compared with Agamemnon's against Calchas, or
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
the speeches of Ajax or Eteocles with the most
passionate utterances of Achilles. The difference
will be found to consist not merely in the greater
length of the epic passages, or in the larger
rhythm, but also in the greater discursiveness of
language, which is natural and indeed necessary
where the action is not brought immediately
before the eye.
(3 and 4) The longer speeches are sometimes
preceded sometimes followed by an altercation,
generally, but not always, in single lines, or even
parts of lines (avriλaßai); and they are some-
times introduced or followed by a series of lyric
rhythms, of which more presently.
3. For an outburst following an altercation
see Oedipus Tyrannus (380 foll.): & TλOÛTE KAÌ
Tuρavví, etc. "O wealth and sovereign power," etc.
For long speeches followed by single lines, see the
scene between Haemon and Creon in the Antigone
(631-765). The regularity of this mode is alien
from the spirit of the English drama, although
something closely resembling it appears occasion-
ally in Shakespeare's earlier manner (Richard III.
iv. 4; Richard II. ii. 1), and it is imitated by
Milton in Comus, 275-288. It certainly could
not be extended to an equal length without
monotony on the modern stage. But in the
Dionysiac theatre, some amount of uniformity
and even formality was not without its use, and
Conversational and Lyric Elements
127
the repetition of stroke for stroke in this dramatic
interplay only served to emphasise the situation.
It was partly by this means that the poet brought
out those contrasts of opposing views about the
same matter of fact—δύο λόγω περὶ ἅπαντος
πράγματος ἀντικειμένω—in which every Athenian
audience took such delight. A kindred effect is
sometimes produced by speeches of greater length
which are antiphonal or antistrophic in their
effect. Tragedy reflects an instructive light upon
the growth of rhetoric and of rhetorical casuistry
in Athens. The curious forensic arguments
in the Eumenides give perhaps the only very
distinct illustration of this in Aeschylus. But
they serve to illustrate the kind of reasoning that
might be expected to influence the old-fashioned
court of Areopagus. When we come to Sophocles,
the examples multiply. The dialogue between
Creon and Haemon in the Antigone, between
Teucer and Menelaus and Agamemnon in the
Ajax, between Oedipus, in both the plays which
bear his name, and Creon, between Electra and
Clytemnestra, between Neoptolemus and Odysseus
in the Philoctetes, while they have in every case
a strong dramatic element, are also distinctly
rhetorical. They show the power of putting an
adversary in the wrong, of defending one's own
cause, etc., which was so highly prized at Athens.
In Euripides, rhetoric is still more rife; it is
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
less dominated by tragic feeling, and it is already
degenerating into sophistry. Polynices arguing
with his mother, or Odysseus with Hecuba, says
not what is naturally prompted by his character
and situation, but what a clever speaker, well
primed with commonplaces, might think well to
say on the question which the situation has raised.
Again the Athenian spectator is becoming a
listener (οὐ δράματος θεατής ἀλλὰ σοφιστῶν
ἀκροατής).
The rhetorical element includes, or rather
absorbs into itself, the gnomic (or proverbial)
element which preceded it in the development of
Greek literature. Many maxims of Theognis, of
Solon, and other authors of similar apophthegms
are embedded in Greek tragic poetry. Such
reminiscences are frequent in Aeschylus no less
than in Euripides, but in the earlier poet they are
more intimately inwrought into the substance of
his thought. Contrast in this respect the
Prometheus with the Orestes. The wise maxims
of Oceanus remind us of the simple moralising of
such speakers as the daughter of Periander in
Herodotus (iii. 53).
4. The commos, or lament, formed a stated
portion of Greek tragedy when we first become
acquainted with it. Fine examples of the
commos at this stage occur at the end of the
Persae, and of the Seven against Thebes, and
Conversational and Lyric Elements
129
again at the end of the Antigonc.
But the place
of the commos, which sometimes occurs more
than once within the limits of a single play, is
extremely various (see Chap. VIII.), and there are
brief commatic passages occurring in the midst
of scenes, which merely indicate the climax of
emotion, and were no doubt accompanied with
incidental music. The commos is technically
described as a lyrical interchange between the
Chorus and the chief person on the stage. But
either on one side or the other the ordinary metre
of dialogue is sometimes employed.
Stage lyrics, monodies.-In passages of ex-
ceptional emotion the chief person on the stage
breaks into lyric verse, cither in the middle of a
speech (Prometheus, Soph. Electra) or in a pro-
longed strain accompanied with music (Soph.
Electra, Philoctetes); a practice in which Euripides
greatly delighted, and for which he is ridiculed by
Aristophanes.
Anapaests and trochaics.-Such passages as
those just spoken of are to be distinguished from
those in which the anapaestic measure is put to
its ordinary use for expressing movement, as in
accompanying an entrance or an exit (Prometheus,
Antigone), as well as from the long trochaics
(perhaps the original metre of dialogue), which
are introduced to give the effect of haste (Persae,
Oedipus Coloneus).
K
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
The Chorus as an interlocutor.-When the
Chorus is spoken of as taking part in the dialogue,
the leader of the Chorus (Coryphaeus) is generally
to be understood. Sometimes, however, as many
as three or five members of the Chorus interpose
by turns; and in a few passages all the members
speak successively (Agamemnon, 1344-1371).
II. THE CHORUS.
With the exceptions above noted, lyric measures
are reserved for the Chorus. In proportion, there-
fore, as the part of the Chorus is more or less
important, the lyric element increases or diminishes,
until in the later phase represented by Euripides
the business of the Chorus is again extended, not
now for dramatic purposes, but for musical effect.
In the Supplices and Persae of Aeschylus, and
to some extent in the Eumenides, the Chorus is
"protagonist," i.e. not only are they more in evidence
than any single person, but the change in their
fortunes constitutes the main interest (for Xerxes
cannot be the hero of a drama in which he appears
only towards the end). Also in the Supplices and
Persae, and these alone (unless we take account of
the Rhesus), the Chorus prologise. They come on
at the beginning, and are present to the end. In
the Seven against Thebes the centre of gravity,
so to speak, has been already transferred to the
Conversational and Lyric Elements
131
chief person, whose fortunes, however, are bound
up with those of Thebes, while his character is
contrasted with that of the Chorus of Theban
women, who may thus be said to play the part of
δευτεραγωνιστής, the second role.
From this point
onwards, the Chorus, though still counted amongst
the dramatis personae, is gradually subordinated,
and the pivot of interest is on the stage. Before
the parodos, or entry of the Chorus, the audience
have been already put in possession of the main
situation, or point of departure, and this is
sometimes concealed from the members of the
Chorus, which under the previous arrangement was
impossible. Of this more will be said in Chapter
VIII. The part taken by the Chorus in the level
dialogue has been already spoken of. It remains
to speak of the parodos, the exodion, the stasimon,
and (although this has been already mentioned)
of the part taken by the Chorus in the commos, or
lament, and kindred (commatic) passages.
When the Chorus no longer, as in the earlier
drama, take the principal part, they contribute to
the action through the relation in which they
stand to the chief person, most commonly as
sympathisers, but sometimes also as antipathetic or
neutral. The leader of the Chorus, indeed, seldom
entirely sympathises with the tragic hero, but
entering most thoroughly into his cause, and pity-
ing his misfortune, endeavours (vainly) to moderate
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
the excess of his passion. Exceptions, which
occur to the mind at once, are the Choëphoroe, the
Philoctetes, and the Hecuba. In the Choëphoroe
and the Hecuba the Trojan captives, from different
motives but in a similar spirit, incite to the deeds
of violence which form the catastrophe. In the
Philoctetes, where the interest turns on Neopto-
lemus' conquest over himself, the Chorus actually
contribute to his temptation by suggesting that he
should carry off the bow. The attitude of the
Argive women in the Electra of Sophocles is the
more usual one, sympathising as they do with
Electra's grief, but seeking to moderate its excess;
admiring her desperate determination, but dissuad-
ing her from attempting the impossible; then,
after the arrival of Orestes, becoming interested
spectators of the action in which they cannot
share, and finally exulting in the event.
In the Oedipus Tyrannus the loyalty of the
horror-stricken Chorus to him whose fall they
cannot check or soften, lends a touch of milder
pathos to the catastrophe; whereas the coldness of
the Theban elders to Antigone_adds greatly to the
poignancy of her fate. Thus in Sophocles, while
the Chorus has ceased to be protagonist, their posi-
tion is essentially dramatic-not moralising the
situation merely, but contributing to the tragic effect.
The parodos, or entrance of the Chorus, was
Conversational and Lyric Elements
133
The rule in early times
managed in various ways.
was that they marched in column-wise, "chanting
together" in an impressive manner, as in the
Agamemnon, Oedipus Tyrannus, Antigone. But
sometimes in Aeschylus and Sophocles, and more
frequently in Euripides, we have what has been
called the "commatic parodos," in which the
Chorus enter singly or in several groups, and their
relation to the chief person is forthwith defined by
a broken interchange of speech and song. The
Philoctetes of Sophocles gives a typical example,
with which the choric entrances in his Oedipus
Coloneus and Electra, in the Prometheus of Aeschy-
lus, and the Electra, Medea, Heraclidae, Orestes of
Euripides, may be compared. The peculiar effect
produced by an entrance of the Chorus in two
divisions may be studied in the Ion and the Alcestis.
The double parodos of Aeschylus' Eumenides is
singularly bold. First the Furies are described
by the Pythoness, then discovered asleep, grouped
round Orestes, then one by one, roused by Clytem-
nestra's ghost, they awaken. Then, forming appar-
ently in the orchestra, they sing their “prclude,” and
after an altercation with Apollo, in which they are
represented by the Chorus-leader, they make their
exit, probably in single file, on the track of Orestes,
leaving the stage vacant for the change of scene.
(The only other clear instance of such removal of
the Chorus occurs in the Ajar of Sophocles, where
134
Guide to Greek Tragedy.
1
it makes way for the solitary death-scene-though
it would certainly be convenient if in the Helena
of Euripides the Chorus were likewise absent from
line 386 to 514. And if more than the extant
relics of the Greek drama had been preserved to
us, it might be found that the phenomenon was
less singular than we now suppose it to be.).
It
The scene is changed to Athens, where Orestes
prologises, and the Chorus enter, again apparently
in single file and speaking one by one. Then,
while their leader makes rejoinder to Orestes'
second speech, they form in the orchestra, where
they move about and sing their "binding hymn."
This takes the place of an ode immediately follow-
ing the parodos, and forming one whole with it,
but separable and different in kind, which occurs
in several tragedies, and is difficult to name.
is sung not during but after the entry of the
Chorus, and in rhythmical structure resembles the
stasimon; yet the name stasimon is reserved by
Aristotle for the song of the Chorus which separ-
ates two portions of dialogue or dramatic scenes.
Clear examples of what is meant are Aesch. Persae,
65-134, Agam. 104-257. The structure of the
parodos in Sophocles' Antigone seems to be a
variation upon this mode of composition. Here
two strophes and two antistrophes are separated
by three anapaestic systems-the whole being
¹ Cp. A. Müller, Bühnenalterth. § 11, p. 126.
Conversational and Lyric Elements
135
followed by a fourth set of anapaests. The Chorus
may be imagined as pausing at three several
stations before taking up their final position in the
orchestra from each of these pouring forth their
lyric strain, and then chanting the anapaests as
they move on. The fourth set or system of ana-
paests accompanies, not any movement of the
Chorus, but the entrance of Creon.
Exodion.-The Chorus is always present at the
conclusion of the drama, and almost always has the
last word. The only certain exceptions to this are
the Prometheus, where the Titan's own voice is
last heard, and the Eumenides, in which the Herald
speaks last, and the concluding strain is sung
by the Propompoi, a supplementary chorus, or
παρασκήνιον, of which other instances occur in the
Supplices of Aeschylus and the Oedipus Tyrannus
of Sophocles.¹ Euripides seems to have adopted
certain stereotyped forms of exodion for the Chorus
to go off with. Peculiar to Aeschylus, on the
other hand, is the semichoric ending, in which the
Chorus sings alternately in two divisions.²
Stasima. The word stasimon properly signifies
a stationary song. But it is not to be supposed
1 The last lines of the Trachiniae of Sophocles are sometimes
given to Hyllus, who is marshalling the funeral procession. But I
understand them to be a challenge from the chorus of Trachinian.
maidens to the maidens within the house of Cejx, who would enter
to them as a "parascenion" and add their ranks to the concluding
spectacle. On the word see Müller's Bühnenalterth. § 14, p. 176.
2 This belongs to the quasi-epic nature of the incomplete drama.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
to exclude all movement, and was probably ac-
companied with expressive gesture. Whether the
strophe and antistrophe were or were not com-
monly assigned to different moieties of the choric
troupe is a doubtful point. The complexity of
certain Aeschylean movements especially would
be rendered more effective by some such division.
The number of stasima varies with the nature of
the action. Taking Aristotle's definition, there are
only three in the Agamemnon, while it is possible
to reckon as many as five in the Antigone. Here,
however, it is only right to distinguish the sudden
appeals to Love (781-800) and Bacchus (1115
foll.) from the sober stateliness of the odes on Man
(332 foll.) and Fate (582 foll.), and the cold eleva-
tion of the legendary song (944 foll.) The cry to
Bacchus may be classed with other songs occurring
at crises of the action (hyporchemata), in which
choric movement had evidently an unusual share—
Ajax, 693 foll., Trach. 205-225, and perhaps Oed.
Tyr. 1086-1109. There is only one sustained choral
ode in the Philoctetes (676-720). The commatic
parodos is followed by a single strophe and anti-
strophe (169 foll.), and what might else have been
a first stasimon is divided between lines 391-402
and 507-518.
The choral odes sum up in a concentrated ideal
form the feelings naturally awakened by the action
at each stage of its progress not by any means
pressnot
Conversational and Lyric Elements
137
2
3
1
invariably the feeling of the poet himself, nor that
which he would impress on his audience as the
final outcome of the play. [In Sophocles at least
the Chorus never depart from their supposed char-
acter; nor in Aeschylus do they really do so,
although in one place by a curiously bold stroke.
the Erinyes address their words directly to the
Athenian spectators, as in the parabasis of a
comedy. Compare Eur. Andr. 623, 951, where
yvoμaι are addressed to the world at large, i.e. to
the spectators. But, as a rule, the Chorus give
utterance to the feelings, not, as has been said, of
the ideal spectator, but of the average spectator
glorified. The ideal spectator's feeling is that
which is produced by the drama taken as a
whole. It is the final result of the alternate
action and reaction; of the complex interplay of
purpose, thought, emotion, the rise, culmination,
and close of the tragic interest. It is vain to look
for this, the soul of tragedy, in a single part or
member of the framework-least of all in the
brief strain of commonplace reflection with which
the Chorus leave the orchestra. The value of the
Chorus as an intermediary between the spectators
and the action is evident.] And the fact that it
¹ See above, Chap. VI.
2 The other places in which this has been supposed to occur are
doubtful, the suggestion resting merely on the use of masculine
forms by a feminine chorus.
3 Schiller, Preface to Bride of Messina.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
was retained throughout the classical period shows
how well it accorded with the open-air publicity
of Greek life. But the attempts of a priori criti-
cism to define the function of the Chorus from an
ideal point of view have not succeeded well. The
remark of M. Paul Stapfer, generally a sensible
critic, that Aeschylus and Sophocles both fell
short of such an ideal,¹ goes far to reduce the
theory to absurdity.
But
The lyrical portion of a Greek drama, whether
sung by the Chorus or by a person on the stage,
was in Doric Greek,2 and was in this, as in other
ways, contradistinguished from the dialogue, which
was couched in the peculiar modification of Attic or
Ionic speech which has been above described.
as the Ionic dialect was modified, so was the Doric.
Epic as well as lyric traditions largely influenced
it. And in the anapaestic passages, which were
given in a kind of recitative, the dialectical pecu-
liarities were less marked than in the lyrics properly
so called. The conventional inconsistency involved
in all this was so little felt, that in many of the
commatic interchanges, where the iambic verse of
dialogue is interspersed amongst lyric numbers,
•
"In every
¹ Shakespeare et les Tragiques Grecs, p. 128.
2 Cp. Monier-Williams, Introd. to Sakuntalá.
Sanskrit play the women and inferior characters speak . . Prákrit
-bearing the same relation to Sanskrit that Italian bears to Latin.
The hero...
and all the higher male characters speak in
Sanskrit; and . half of what they say is in verse."
Conversational and Lyric Elements
139
the Attic and Ionic forms are used in the iambic
lines.
When private individual interests began to play
a part in tragedy, the continual presence of the
Chorus began to be felt as an encumbrance. There
are several places in Euripides where either the
Chorus are disregarded or their exit and re-entrance
have not been marked. Sophocles removed the
Chorus, as we have seen, in order to acquaint us
with the inmost thoughts of Ajax before his death,
and nothing but the exaltation of feeling which
makes both the king and queen regardless of
bystanders could render probable the great scene
of mutual confidence between Oedipus and
Jocasta.
The difficulty is only partially removed by
providing for some relation of peculiar intimacy
between the chief person and the Chorus, whose
function then resembles that of the confidant on
the French stage. The scene between Phaedra
and the Nurse, for example, in the Hippolytus of
Euripides, would be more effective if the other
women were away. The advantages, however,
more than counterbalanced this disadvantage, and
the imagination of the Greek spectator was strong
enough to discount what was inconvenient but
inevitable in the business of the scene.
The only serious attempts in modern tragedy
to reinstate the Chorus in their ancient function
140
Guide to Greek Trageay
have been those of Schiller in his Bride of
Messina, and of Racine in his sacred plays (Athalie
and Esther). Racine is thought by French
critics (who should know) to have succeeded
admirably.
CHAPTER VIII
DRAMATIC CONSTRUCTION-TRILOGIES—
DRAMAS OF RECONCILIATION-SATYRIC PLAYS ¹
ARISTOTLE has made the somewhat obvious re-
mark that a tragic action must have a beginning,
middle, and end. A truth which is scarcely less
obvious, but sometimes ignored, is that the tragic
poet aims not merely at a series of vivid effects,
but at a grand totality of impression. This is
true in the main even of Euripides, though he
is too often led aside by the interest of some
incidental situation or by his own genius for
graphic description, or by the desire to create
surprise through an unexpected diversion Οι
strange catastrophe. Still, the action of every
Greek drama may be traced through five stages,
corresponding to the five acts of a modern play :
(1) the start, (2) the rise, (3) the height, (4)
the change, (5) the close. One of the dramatist's
1 Books to consult Aristotle's Poetics; Sophocles in Green's
"Classical Writers" (Macmillan and Co.); Art. "Drama" in Ency.
Brit.; Moulton's Ancient Drama; Jonson's Discoveries.
1
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
chief difficulties is to sustain the interest through
the fourth act, while reserving "a trot for the
avenue," as Sir Walter Scott puts it. Euripides
takes occasion by means of a second turn, or
peripeteia, to "pile up the agony" still higher.
All
Not much of subtilty is apparent in the pro-
gress of an Aeschylean play. All is "straight
hitting from the shoulder," to borrow an art-critic's
phrase. The characters are introduced; they
speak their sentiments frankly and without re-
serve, unless there is a motive for dissimulation
patent to the spectators (as in Clytemnestra's
reception of Agamemnon, or Orestes' speech to
Clytemnestra in the Choëphoroe), in which case
they dissemble strongly and unhesitatingly.
have much the same largeness of utterance and
grandiloquence of tone. Yet with what a sweep
and impetus, when the poet so wills it, does the
action move, carrying along with it in one broad
current the emotions of the chief persons, of the
Chorus, and of the auditory! Take, for example,
the Persae, one of the simplest in construction of
all dramas. At the opening all the persons are
in suspense, and the anxiety is intensified by the
recital of Atossa's dream. The Elders have
partly succeeded in calming her fears and sup-
pressing their own, when the Messenger arrives,
and suddenly, without preface, announces the
Dramatic Construction
143
whole extent of the calamity.¹ At this point
we are not one fourth part through the play,
and the reader naturally asks himself, how is
tragic interest after this to be maintained? It
is maintained most simply, yet most effectively,
by what Sainte-Beuve has called the Epic of
Salamis, which is not merely a drama within the
drama (having a climax and consummation of its
own), but the most vital part of the drama itself,
because every successive onset of disaster, as it
is freshly told, falls with an immediate crushing
effect on the queen-mother and on the Persians
who are there. When the narrative ends, the
peripeteia, or turn of fortune, has already taken
place. In modern phraseology, the curtain has
fallen upon the third act. After so tremendous
an impression, how is interest to be further main-
tained (as we should say) through the fourth act?
We shall see. The poet is not yet at the end
of his resources. Transgression and retribution
are not yet full. Narrative has run its course,
but there is still room for prophecy. For though
Salamis is over, Plataea is to come. In order to
quench the last struggling rays of hope and give
completeness to calamity, Aeschylus resorts to
the expedient of raising the spirit of Darius and
1 Sophocles would have followed Herodotus, according to whom
the tidings of the taking of Athens had reached Susa before the
report of the defeat at Salamis.-Her. viii. 54.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
bringing the dead monarch upon the scene.
The
introduction of this incident at the particular
juncture where it occurs, and in relation to exist-
ing beliefs about the state of the dead, must have
been a stupendous coup de théâtre. Darius reads
the lesson of the situation and predicts the ex-
termination of the army left in Hellas, then sinks
again beneath the ground. Atossa, with a mother's
weakness, goes to fetch the best apparel for Xerxes,
whose actual return, in rags and humiliation, and
his melancholy responses to the sad reproaches of
the Elders, add a touch of milder pathos to the
exodos (or fifth act) of the play.
This
Plain and straightforward as the action is, of
which a sketch in outline is here given, the reader
will have observed that it is notwithstanding
rich in organic structure, climax, gradation. The
anapaestic parodos (which is also the prologos) is
immediately followed by an ode, recalling in mag-
nificent strains the going forth of the great army,
for whose return all in Asia are longing.
is followed by the entrance of Atossa, which forms
part of the first epeisodion, but really contributes
to the exposition or groundwork of the drama,
the exaltation of interest attending on Atossa's
dream being expressed in a trochaic dialogue.
The scene, when so far heightened, is broken in
upon by the coming of the Messenger, whose brief
announcements are met with short lyrical outbursts
Dramatic Construction
145
on the part of the Chorus (giving a commatic
effect). Then the interview between Atossa and
the Messenger is continued for two hundred and
twenty-five lines, and followed by a remark of
the Chorus-leader and speech of Atossa to him,
with which the long scene terminates. The in-
terest has now culminated. The first stasimon
which follows this (and which comes like that in
the Oedipus Coloneus at the centre of the play)
expresses the feeling of the Elders at the ruin of
the host. Atossa's second entrance is contrasted
with the first. Then she was mounted upon a
car, and gorgeously arrayed; now she comes un-
adorned upon foot, with offerings for the dead.
Her speech of twenty-four lines is hardly enough
to count for an epeisodion, and therefore the choric
strain which follows it, and is really part of the
scene, should not be regarded as a stasimon
(dividing scene from scene), but should rather be
classed with those appeals to divine powers,
accompanied with special gestures, which do not
interrupt the action but are continuous with it.
(See especially Soph. Electra, 1384-1397; Oed.
Col. 1556-1578. Supra, Chap. VII. hyporchema).
The excitement caused by the appearance of
Darius is marked by a recurrence to the long
trochaic measure. His disappearance and the
exit of Atossa are followed by the second stasi-
mon, and this by the (anapaestic) entrance of
L
146
Guide to Greek Tragedy
Xerxes and the commos, with which the play
concludes.
The Persae may be divided into five parts (or
acts), as follows :
I-159. Reminiscence and anxiety of
the Elders.
(1)
(2)
160-248. Atossa's dream.
(3)
249-597. Epic of Salamis.
(4) 598-908. Apparition of Darius.
(5) 909-1077. Xerxes' home-return.
The Persae and its companion-plays were pro-
duced in 472, four years before the first victory
of Sophocles. Let us next examine the structure
of the Antigone, which was brought out nearly a
generation after this, when the younger poet had
attained the acme of his renown.
The Antigone is by no means the most elabor-
ate of the extant plays of Sophocles, of which it
is probably the earliest. But it is eminently
characteristic both of his individual manner and
of the middle or culminating period of Greek
tragedy. In contrasting it with the Persae, there-
fore, we include some features which are present
also in the later plays of Aeschylus. In the
Persae, the Chorus prologise; the Antigone opens
with a dramatic dialogue in which the pro-
tagonist takes part. And it is at once observable,
not only that the prologos is separable from the
rest of the play, but that from the first two actors
Dramatic Construction
147
are together upon the stage, and the part of
Antigone is thus contrasted with that of Ismenè.
The parodos is almost Aeschylean in its breadth
of effect. We note, however, that while the
Persian Elders were apprehensive of disaster
from the first, the triumphant exultation of the
Thebans is but slightly dashed with a sense of
the horror of the fratricidal combat, a topic which
they brush aside as inauspicious amidst the general
joy. This illustrates the artistic reserve, or so-
called irony, with which Sophocles prepares for
his dramatic contrasts. Another instance of the
artifice presents itself in the first speech of Creon,
and in his whole bearing until the revelation of
Teiresias breaks him down. It is not merely
unconsciousness of wrong which the poet marks
in him, but the passionate self-assertion of con-
scious rectitude. It is on a man of this temper
that wave after wave of the action bursts, until
over-confidence gives way suddenly to superstitious
fear, not for himself only, but for the State. The
first complication is introduced in the early
manner, which was never quite abandoned, by
the aid of narrative. And the narrator, in his
character of Watchman, retains a strong tinge of
the rusticity (vestigia ruris) which is said to have
belonged to the earlier drama. But observe how
skilfully this very characteristic is employed (1)
to enhance by contrast the heroism of Antigone,
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
(2) to irritate Creon, and (3) to relieve the tension
of the situation, just as in approaching the climax
it becomes more sombre.
The mysterious deed (no mystery to the spec-
tator) leads the Chorus to reflect with the naïveté
of the average mind-echoing also the common-
places of Creon-that man is hard to rule, that
the righteous who obey the laws shall be exalted,
and that the way of transgressors is hard. Of
the bearing of these remarks on the action the
poet says nothing. Then with the return of the
Watchman, bringing in Antigone, the interest
rises to the height at which it is sustained
throughout the central portion of the play. The
Watchman is dismissed, but not until the beauty
of Antigone's action has made itself felt, peering
from beneath the homely garb of the man's com-
mon speech, which at one point (as his occupation
has made him familiar with the life of nature)
blooms unconsciously into poetry. The two
strong wills, Antigone's and Creon's, are now
immediately confronted. She makes her appeal
to the eternal law.
head of the State.
He reasserts his authority as
Here the value of the second
actor becomes strikingly apparent. And in what
follows the third actor also is brought in, through
the entrance of Ismenè, and a further shade of con-
trast, between the heroic and the average human
being, helps to accentuate and define the situation.
Dramatic Construction
149
The Chorus see in all this nothing but a
lamentable infatuation and the terrible fatality
still impending over the house of Laïus.
The situation is now fully developed, but the
crisis of the action is not yet reached.
Antigone
is arrested and condemned, but not sentenced;
Creon is obdurate, but still tolerably self-possessed.
One touch, indeed, has nearly driven him wild.
It is where Antigone exclaims against the oppro-
brium which, in reviling her, he throws on his
own son Haemon. This bitterness is now to be
exacerbated. For Haemon comes and pleads with
his father, at first temperately and with the tact
of true affection. But when his well-meant inter-
cession works against his own desire, and only
enrages the despot, he speaks hot words in anger
and goes desperately forth. The Chorus see in this
only the excess of youthful love. Meanwhile Creon's
wrath has passed all bounds, and he determines to
immure Antigone, having spared to stone her, not
out of any tenderness to her, but professing (per-
haps really thinking) so to avoid pollution for the
State. At this point the action culminates, and
the last entrance of Antigone follows almost im-
mediately, the little choral ode on the power of love
just serving to secure a pause and link together
rather than divide the scenes of which the " third
act" is composed. She speaks as one beneath
the shadow of death, not shaken in resolution, but
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
dwelling less than formerly on defiance of the
world, from which she sadly turns away, and feel-
ing bitterly the isolation of her lot—sure only of
one thing, that her love for her own kindred is
unquenchable. She herself wonders at its depth.
The Chorus again moralise and quote examples
from mythology. Antigone is crushed, and the
will of Creon is apparently triumphant, but really
he is on the brink of ruin. This truth is revealed
by Teiresias, the blind prophet, who threatens the
despot with the consequences of divine anger, not
to himself alone, but to the State, in the fancied
maintenance of whose cause he has transgressed.
At last the proud stubborn spirit suddenly gives
way, not through any "compunctious visitings of
nature," but under the influence of religious terror.
He resolves, at the eleventh hour, to undo his
deed. The Chorus, ever responsive to a change
of mood in one of the chief persons, give way to
a sudden flickering of hope amidst despair, and in
their song to Bacchus the essential gloom of the
situation is strangely relieved and lightened with
a false joy.
In the speech of the Messenger who reports
Haemon's death, with its attendant circumstances,
and the manner of Antigone's end, the several
threads of the action are drawn together. First
comes the burial of Polynices, or of what remains
of him (for his sister had been no longer there to
Dramatic Construction
151
guard the dead).
thus seeking first to pacify the powers beneath—
an act which in his former mood he had charac-
terised as “labour in vain" (πóvos πepiσσós)—has
sealed the fate, not only of the maiden, but of his
son, whose lamentable voice he hears as he ap-
proaches the vault. Next comes what Aristotle
thought too dreadful-what is in any case the
crowning horror of the catastrophe,—the son's
attempt upon the father's life, followed by his own
suicide. All this is told while the mother, Eury-
dice, is standing by. She goes forth silently, then
Creon enters mourning over Haemon, then another
messenger reports to him Eurydice's suicide, and
her curses upon him, as the author of all her
sorrows. He has outraged natural affection, and
he is punished with the death of wife and child,
preceded by their final alienation from him.
Then it is found that Creon, in
Truly Sophocles was, as M. Sarcey once ob-
served, le plus malin des dramaturges-the most
cunning of dramatic artificers. It is sometimes
said that in the best French acting the play is
never forgotten in the act, the act in the scene,
nor the scene in any phrase or syllable.
thing akin to this is true of Sophocles as a
composer. Each of his plays is a living organism
in which every minutest part contributes some-
thing indispensable to the soundness, beauty, force,
and harmonious activity of the whole. Let the
Some-
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
The persons are
hidden themselves,
The only "celestial
reader observe how the action we have just de-
scribed is developed, or rather unfolds itself from
within.¹ Given the character and the situation,
all seems to come inevitably.
their fates. The gods have
even as the poet hides his art.
machinery" is afforded by the soothsayer, a familiar
personage of Greek life, who reveals, but does not
cause, the sequel. The rôle of Haemon, with
which that of Hyllus in the Trachiniae should be
compared, is also very "cunningly" employed.
The betrothal, though so little dwelt upon, effect-
ively emphasises the heroism of Antigone's act.
It also serves to betray the one vulnerable place
in the hard yet brittle determination of Creon.
Taking his son's warning for a threat, he imagines
him as going forth to make insurrection in the
city. This precipitates his action, and hastens
the doom of Antigone. And when his proud will
gives way to religious terror, and he has first gone
to bury Polynices, one more surprise awaits him
in hearing his son's outcry as he approaches the
"unhallowed cell." Rendered blind to the claims.
of natural affection through the reaction of public
responsibility on his proud nature, he could not
foresee the course which first love so frustrated
1 "It is an acknowledged rule of the Indian drama that the
business should spring from the story, as a plant from the seed.”-
Wilson's Hindu Theatre, Introd. p. xxiv.
Dramatic Construction
153
would take, and yet he has within him a heart that
can be wounded, though too late, by the loss and by
the bitter alienation from him of his wife and son.
If we turn now to the Hercules Furens, which
Browning has translated for the English reader,
and which deserves perhaps as much as any other
play of Euripides Balaustion's encomium of "the
perfect piece," the first thing that strikes us is
the novelty of the fable. According to the
usual version, which through Ovid and Seneca
has found its way into modern literature (Shake-
speare's Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 10), the mad-
ness of Heracles was caused by the poisoned
robe sent by Deianira on his return from
Oechalia, and was fatal, not to his children,
but to Lichas. This was immediately followed
by the funeral pyre on Mount Oeta and the hero's
assumption to the skies. But here in Euripides
the fit of mania follows on his return from Hades,
which has been delayed on Theseus' account, just
when he was about to rescue his children and his
wife Megara from the tyrant Lycus. Instead of
rescuing, he destroys them all. On his recovery
he is taken to Athens by Theseus, and he must
be supposed to survive the incident many years.
The next thing to notice is the external manner
in which so violent a change of fortune is brought
on through an incident superinduced and not
evolved from within. After the third stasimon,
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Iris, the messenger of Hera, appears from heaven,
leading with her a terrible figure, whom she in-
troduces as Lyssa, ie. Delirium. The Thebans
are told not to be alarmed, however, since the
visitation is not aimed at them, but only at their
hero. While they stand afflicted and awe-stricken
at the sudden reversal of their hopes, a messenger
comes in and relates the terrible scene, in one of
the most vivid of those narrative-speeches in
which Euripides excels. Amphitryon, the earthly
father of Heracles, then enters, followed by the
hero, whose awakening from his delirium in such
a presence is the more pathetic. On learning
what he has done, he is about to kill himself, when
by a fresh surprise, for which the spectators are
scarcely more prepared than for the former change,
the play is brought, if not to a happy, yet to a
soothing and consolatory close. Theseus unex-
pectedly appears. He had been mentioned once
before in the play, where Heracles said he had
delayed his own return in order to bring Theseus
back to earth. Theseus comes in order to succour
Heracles against Lycus. But the cruel work of
Lycus has been done by an unlooked-for hand,
and the friend only arrives in time to save the
hero from himself.
Moral." How much better it is to have a
human friend than to suffer from the caprices of a
heavenly father!"
Dramatic Construction
155
The action, which is "tragic" enough, is thus
softened at the end; and human kindness is
contrasted, as the poet's manner is, with divine
malignity—" if indeed there be gods at all." The
originality of this treatment of the legend is
apparent, and the difference both of spirit and
artistic method between Euripides and his pre-
decessors is sufficiently clear. There must have
been a change in the temper of the Athenian
audience. Traditional mythology was losing hold
on the more intelligent minds. The tales were
less familiar and less credible than formerly. The
poet was therefore bound to be more and more
explicit in setting forth the peculiar version of his
fable, which, for dramatic purposes, he intended to
be accepted for the time. And hence must have
arisen also the substitution of a rhetorical prologue,
addressed to no one in particular, for the dramatic
initial scene (or prologos) with which Sophocles
carried his audience in medias res, or the no less.
effective lyrical parodoi of Aeschylus. But in
essential outline the structure of the Hercules
Furens does not depart from our general scheme.
Act I. The Start-1-139.
a. Amphitryon prologises.
b. Scene between Amphitryon and Megara-
Heracles delays his coming.
c. Parodos.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Act II. The Rise-action complicated-140-450.
a. Entrance of Lycus. Scene between Lycus,
Amphitryon, leader of Chorus, Megara.
b. First stasimon.
Act III. The Height-451-814. Expectation is further
roused and sustained by the return of
Heracles from Hades.
a. Return of Heracles, who resolves to be
avenged on Lycus.
b. Second stasimon.
c. Entrance of Lycus.
d. Third stasimon.
Act IV. The Change-815-1086.
a. Apparition of Iris and Lyssa.
b. Outburst of Chorus.
c. Narrative of Messenger.
d. Monody of Chorus—entrance of Amphitryon
-commatic interchange.
Act V. The Close-1087-1428.
a. Entrance of Heracles.
b. Entrance of Theseus.
c. They go off together, leaving the Chorus
forlorn.
Observe that by a double turn, or peripeteia,
the climax is carried into the fourth act, as it
were, so that the excitement goes on augmenting
until it suddenly drops at the close. This sensa-
tional mode is characteristic of Euripides.
remains to say a few words about the handling of
the Chorus in this play.
It
The second and third stasima occur near
Trilogies
157
together towards the middle of the drama. The
long passage 822-1428 is divided into three by
the excited lyrical outbursts of the Chorus at
875 and 1017. These, indeed, form part of the
action; but in the three stasima, 348-458, 638-
700, 763-814, the Chorus, although taking their
starting-point from the actual situation, digress
into generalities and mythological excursions which
must have in some measure distracted the atten-
tion of the spectators from the business in hand.
And this was probably what both the poet and
his auditory desired. They had no longer the
profound concentration of Periclean citizens.
TRILOGIES.
The fact appears indisputable that throughout
the great period of tragedy each poet who com-
peted at the Dionysiac festival produced four
plays for judgment, one of the four being a
"satyric drama." Aeschylus, however, seems to
have stood alone in binding his three tragedies.
into a connected whole, to which the satyric play
also bore some reference. It is by no means
certain that even he did so always; and it has
been suggested that where the action of the four
plays was not continuous there was some connec-
tion of idea. If this were so, it remains unproved,
and is of no importance for our present inquiry.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
It has also been suggested that in the later period,
while four plays were presented by each poet, only
one of them was acted. But this is a conjectural
view. And we may be contented to accept as
practically true the saying of Suidas, that Sophocles
discontinued the tetralogy and brought single
dramas into competition with single dramas.
The ingenuity of Welcker found a way of
connecting in groups of three or four all the plays
of Aeschylus whose names are preserved. It is
enough to mention here that each of his seven
extant tragedies may be shown to have had a
place in such a series. Reserving for separate
consideration the Orestean trilogy, we may speak
first of what tradition enables us to gather about
the remaining four.
I. In the Alexandrian argument of the Persae
there is a statement, which probably has the
authority of Aristotle or of some authentic list of
tragic victories, that "in the archonship of Menon
(472 B.C.) Aeschylus won the tragic victory with
the Phineus, the Persae, the Glaucus Potnieus, and
the Prometheus." It thus appears that the Persac
was the central play of a trilogy. The connection
of the subjects is not obvious. The only remain-
ing fragment of the Phineus tells of the Harpies
carrying off the hero's food. The action was
therefore laid in mythical times, but may have
contained prophecies of Artemisium and Marathon.
Trilogies
159
A fragment of the Glaucus Potnieus (fr. 36,
Nauck)—
Chariot on chariot, man on man in death,
And steed on steed in dire confusion lay-
is at least consistent with an account of the battle
of Plataea, of which Glaucus, the hero of Potniae
in Boeotia (between Thebes and Delphi), might
speak as an eyewitness.
The Prometheus here mentioned was a satyric
drama in which the Bringer of Fire was confronted
with the leader of the Chorus, who in his delight
at seeing the unknown element nearly burnt off
his beard. It is quite uncertain in what way this
fable was connected with the preceding.
II. The Seven against Thebes was the conclud-
ing drama of a trilogy on the Tale of Thebes,
with which the Sphinx was appropriately con-
nected as a satyric drama. The three tragedies
were Laius, Oedipus, Seven against Thebes. No
fragment of the Laius gives a hint of its main
import, but an indication is supplied by the
reminiscence contained in the second stasimon of
the Seven (745-757)-a son is born to Laïus in
defiance of the oracle. The subject of the Oedipus
must have been much the same as that which
Sophocles handled in his great masterpiece.
sole remaining fragment has reference to the "triple
way." But the later poet, who saw the wisdom
The
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
of softening horror with pathos at the close, has
omitted (in his first Oedipus) the curse upon Eteocles
and Polynices which must have found place in the
Aeschylean tragedy, in preparation for the action
of the Seven. The whole trilogy formed one
stupendous tale of evil destiny pursuing a race for
the primal sin. The horror is relieved in the
extant play by the patriotism of Eteocles, the
virtues of Amphiaraüs, the sisterly devotion of
Antigone. But there is no solution of the mys-
tery, no final reconcilement, as in the Promethean
and Orestean trilogies.
III. In the Promethean trilogy the knot that
was tied was loosed again. The Prometheus
Bound was followed by a Prometheus Unbound.
But it remains uncertain whether our Prometheus
was the central or the opening play. Prima
facie, the former supposition, that it held the
second place, has great inherent probability.
According to this view, Prometheus the Fire-
bringer represented the offence to Zeus and boon
to men, Prometheus Bound the punishment of the
offence, Prometheus Unbound the reconciliation of
the contending powers. But Wecklein and others
have taken occasion, from some words in a
scholion, to suggest that the Fire-bringer was the
concluding play, and celebrated the institution of
the worship of Prometheus on earth after his
acceptance by the powers above. Once more, in
Trilogies
161
the list of plays appended to the Medicean MS.,
the order is Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Bringer
of the Fire, Prometheus Unbound. What most
concerns us is the relation of Prometheus Unbound
to Prometheus Bound. This subject has a super-
ficial and an inward, that is to say, a mythological
and a theosophic, aspect. Mythologically speak-
ing, the Prometheus Bound introduces us to the
ancestress of Heracles by whom he is to be finally
released. At the opening of the Prometheus
Unbound Prometheus has been brought back to
upper air, and the eagle is tormenting him. The
Titans come to sympathise with him. Heracles
also comes, and Prometheus prophesies of his
labours. Then Heracles transfixes the eagle with
an arrow from his bow, and Prometheus at last
tells the secret, viz. that if Zeus marries Thetis
their offspring will be stronger than his sire.
Whereupon Thetis is married to Peleus. For
the deeper or symbolical meaning of the Pro-
methean trilogy see Chapters XI. and XIII.
IV. It is not certain that the Supplices was
one of a trilogy, but it was probably connected
in some way with the Danaïdes. Whether
this play followed immediately on the former,
or whether there was a drama between, which
culminated in the fiftyfold betrothal, cannot be
proved. But there is at least some plausibility
in the latter view, which Mr. Morshead has
M
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
developed in the preface to his translation of the
Supplices.
-Of one other trilogy we can speak with con-
fidence, although none of the plays belonging to
it remain entire. It is that in which Aeschylus
treated directly of the Dionysiac legend, and in
particular of the fate of the Thracian Lycurgus.
(See Homer, Il. vi. 130 ff.) This seems to have
been represented in the Edonians, the first of the
three, in which it appears that the introduction of
Bacchic rites into the palace of Lycurgus, king of
the Edonians, played an important part (Longinus,
de Sublim. xv. 6). The second play, the Bas-
sarides (or Bacchanals), represented the still more
terrible fate of Orpheus. The third drama, the
Young Men,¹ probably illustrated the introduction
of Bacchic orgies amongst the male population.
But how a tragic turn was given to this theme we
do not know. In the satyric drama the story of
Lycurgus was again introduced in a grotesque
aspect.-
V. The Orestean Trilogy.
The Aeschylean treatment of the story of
Orestes, like that of the Promethean legend,
according to the more usual supposition, com-
prehended a complete cycle of action, reaction,
and restoration or reconcilement.
1 Νεανίσκοι.
Trilogies
163
1. Agamemnon. In revenge for the sacrifice
of Iphigenia, Clytemnestra deserts her husband
Agamemnon and puts him to death.
2. Choëphoroe.-Orestes, on coming to man-
hood, returns home, and, with the support of his
sister Electra and his friend Pylades, compasses
the death of Aegisthus, the usurper, and of
Clytemnestra. To this act of matricide he has
been instigated by Apollo.
3. Eumenides.-Orestes is pursued by his
mother's Furies, and takes refuge finally at Athens,
where at the first solemn meeting of the Council
of the Areopagus he is defended by Apollo, and
acquitted, by the casting vote of Athena, from the
guilt of blood.
If the Oresteia were regarded as one continuous
play (and many of Shakespeare's dramas are
longer than this would be), the arrival of Aga-
memnon would mark the beginning of Act ii.,
which (as in Macbeth) would end with murder and
usurpation. The action of the Choëphoroe would
fill Act iii., culminating as it does with the death of
Clytemnestra, and terminating with a preparation
for the "change" in the exit of Orestes followed by
the Furies. The contention of Orestes with the
Erinyes would occupy Act iv., concluding with his
acquittal, which forms the turning-point of the
Eumenides. Act v. would commence with Athena's
persuasive appeal to the ancient goddesses.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
The Eumenides and the Prometheus Unbound,
each taken singly, were instances of what Dryden
has called the weaker form of tragedy-the drama
of reconciliation-of which the Winter's Tale and
Cymbeline are the Shakespearian examples. In
Sophocles the Oedipus Coloneus and Philoctetes
(the two latest amongst the extant plays) belong
to the same category. In these, while there is
still an orderly development of the action from
within, there is a dash also of external incident in
the manner of Euripides. The desired consum-
mation is delayed by hindrances occurring un-
expectedly, the arrival of Creon and Polynices,
the restoration of the bow; and is likewise brought
about by the aid of outward occurrences (the storm
in the Coloneus, the adverse wind and the appear-
ance of Heracles in the Philoctetes). But on the
other hand the Philoctetes is the one amongst all
Greek dramas which comes nearest to the inward-
ness and psychological analysis of the modern
romantic drama.
The taste for this milder form of tragedy (a
taste which uniformly dominated the Indian stage)
must have increased towards the end of the fifth
century. For a large proportion amongst the extant
plays of Euripides have a happy ending. Hence
partly, perhaps, Mrs. Browning's eulogy on—
Euripides the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
Satyric Plays
165
And his lifting of things common
Till they almost touch the spheres.
Nothing so strongly marks the conservatism of
the Attic stage as the persistence of the satyric
drama, which survived as a sort of apology to
Dionysus for the licence which had removed
tragedy so far from the original type. There is
clear evidence that two satyric plays were produced.
as late as 415 B.C., the year following the disaster
at Syracuse. These were the Athamas of Xenocles.
and the Sisyphus of Euripides.¹
The only remaining specimen of the satyr-play
-the Cyclops of Euripides—is known to English
readers in Shelley's very felicitous, though incom-
plete, translation. The Athenians were doubtless
amazed when Silenus rivalled Odysseus in "wise
saws and modern instances." And the play has
enough of frank coarseness (in parts which Shelley
has avoided); but it has neither the spontane-
ous verve and brusquerie which one imagines
to have belonged to this kind when in the
hands of Pratinas, nor the mock-heroic dignity
which Aeschylus conferred upon it. And this
2
1 Acl. Var. Hist. ii. 8 (quoted in Haigh's Attic Theatre, p. 320):
"Xenocles was first (whoever Xenocles may have been) with Oedipus,
Lycaon, Bacchae, and Athamas for the satyric play; Euripides second
to him with Alexander, Palamedes, Troades, and Sisyphus-the last
satyric." It may have been dangerous to leave any ceremony out so
soon after the mutilation of the Hermac.
2 See IIor. Ars Poct. 229.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
toning-down of the traditional form may help to
make intelligible the anomalous fact, of which
there seems to be undoubted evidence, that the
Alcestis was produced in the year 438 B.C., i.e.
comparatively early in the career of Euripides,
as the fourth play of a tetralogy, that is to say,
as a substitute for the satyric play.
The remarks of Professor Jebb upon this subject
in his article on Euripides in the Encyclopædia
Britannica ought to be specially consulted.¹
1 Ency. Brit. vol. viii. pp. 674, 675: "The Alcestis is altogether
removed . the purely Hellenic drama to the romantic."
•
CHAPTER IX
CHARACTERISATION
1
ALL dramatic interest turns on the treatment of
situation and character, and it is impossible that
these two elements should in reality be separated.
But it has been argued that, while in the ancient
drama the action is primary and the persons only
subordinate, in Shakespearian tragedy this order
is reversed. Recent criticism, however, has vindi-
cated for Shakespeare the essential unity of action
and of idea without which no drama can be great.
What here concerns us is to show cause for the
assertion made in a previous chapter, that while
the persons of the ancient stage are less complex
than those of Shakespeare, they are not less real.
But first it may be well to hear the other side,
and to ascertain how far the view which we are
questioning has been pushed by a priori criticism.
Winckelmann compares the beauty of Greek
art to the purity of water drawn at the source,
1 Books to consult : Paul Stapfer, Sh. et les Trag. Grecs; Patin,
Les Tragiques Grecs; Sophocles in Green's "Classical Writers."
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
This
which is without flavour. This comparison is
upheld by Schelling, and is somewhat hesitatingly
applied by M. Paul Stapfer to the protagonists of
Greek tragedy, each of whom appears to him the
embodiment of a moral idea, so that their conflict.
has in it nothing personal, but is equivalent to the
clashing of incompatible abstract principles, or, in
the language of the Greeks, of opposed divinities.
Through the annihilation of the human agents.
the divine contradiction is harmonised.
theory, which seems to be somewhat rashly
generalised from an ultra-Hegelian study of the
Antigone, cannot be accepted without considerable
qualification. Most true, the divine agency is
omnipresent, even when not visibly brought upon
the scene; and if this truth were carried out to
a logical result, the human persons would dwindle
into insignificance. But neither the poet nor his
audience reasoned thus. To their apprehension
all the persons were characteristically distinct; all
the more so because each of them is “solid” and
of one piece. And so they are also to the modern
reader who lives long enough with them to make
their acquaintance, and has not been previously
too much dazzled by the miraculous fulness and
variety of Shakespeare.¹ Nor can M. Stapfer's
1 Heracles' treatment of Deianira is not the result of any magic,
such as that which excuses Dushyanta's forgetfulness of Sakuntalá,
but of an impulsive nature absorbed in a new passion.
Characterisation
169
further assertion be admitted, that in this respect
Euripides is in advance of Sophocles.¹
When
Yet she retains
The Clytemnestra of Aeschylus is not merely,
as she herself asserts in defending herself against
the elders, the incarnation of some vengeful house-
hold fiend, or, as she pleads afterwards with her
threatening son, a passive instrument in the hands
of Fate. She is a woman of heroic mould, de-
naturalised with solitary brooding over the wrongs
of outraged maternity, but still a woman.
her hour arrives, she uses all the concentrated
energy which belongs to a powerful nature
possessed with a dominant idea.
so much of genuine womanhood as sincerely to
love the man who protects her and abets her
crime. When she sees him dead her self-posses-
sion deserts her, and she forgets her own imminent
danger in her grief for him. True, she has no
"compunctious visitings," no hypnotic reaction,
like Lady Macbeth, no subconscious undercurrent
of remorse. She is the same in the other world
as in this, and hounds on the Furies although
herself a powerless shade.-There, if you will, is
•
1 See Mommsen's Hist. of Rome, ii. 444. "In Aeschylus
each of the contending powers is only conceived broadly and
generally . . . Sophocles seizes human nature in its broader types,
the king, the old man, the sister; but not the features of
individual character." Also A. Ward in Ency. Brit. art. Drama,"
p. 406 b: "If his (Euripides') men and women are less heroic
and statuesque (than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles) they are
more like men and women."
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
"the solidity of the antique." But the "psycho-
logy" of Aeschylus is less at fault than some
modern critics have imagined. Has he not, in
the concluding scene of the Agamemnon, depicted
for us in this man-slaying woman some of the
natural shrinking of feminine human nature from
unnecessary bloodshed, the satiety of a heart that
by violence has gained an end long sought, a mind
not incapable of horror, and a will whose very
strength of determination shows itself in mini-
mising the extent of guilt? She does not
rage illimitably, like some French or Russian
tigress who has tasted blood. No other character
in Aeschylus is so fully developed as his Cly-
temnestra and Cassandra are,—his Agamemnon,
for example, is but slightly drawn, but in all his
dramatis personae he manifests the same undefin-
able and incommunicable power of "giving the
world assurance" of a human being. For it
hardly needs to be observed that his gods, when
they come upon the scene, are also human.
Sophocles, the consummate artist, proceeds
by a different method. Instead of being sketched
in bold broad lines, his characters are etched, as
it were, with fineness and extreme care. But
neither is his outline wanting in strength and
firmness. Like all else in his dramas, the persons
are adapted to the central situation and the main
intention, and it is only after a careful review of
Characterisation
171
the whole composition that any one of them can
be rightly estimated. To superficial readers they
are apt to appear colourless and insaisissable.
Even so keen a critic as Professor Jebb appears
to think that it is useless to attempt to analyse
the character of Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus,
-that he must always be to the spectators what
the actor makes him. But the actor has not been
left to create the part out of nothing. The poet
has given clear indications of the nature which he
represents as so tormented. The man doomed to
be a parricide is a most affectionate son; he who
was to be proved incestuous is one to whom all
the purest domesticities are exceptionally dear.
The man of penetrating mind, to whom mystery
was torture, proves utterly blind to his own
position, and is self-condemned to irrecoverable
darkness when the hour of revelation arrives.
The most patriotic and unselfish of men, he brings
the plague on the place of his adoption, which
proves to be his native city. But, on the other
hand, there is in him something dangerous, if not
to others yet to his own peace, a spirit of rash-
ness, making his misfortunes not incredible.
Though he is the very fool of destiny, yet it may
be truly said that his own impulsiveness is his
ruin. He is goaded to Delphi by a dim rumour
and a drunken word. From Delphi he is sent
flying by an oracle half-understood; and in his
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
sore and melancholy mood he picks the fatal
quarrel by the way. He flings himself into the
Sphinx-adventure, and a time of brittle happiness
follows. When the plague comes, and the oracle
is brought from Apollo, he takes the whole burden
on him with a light heart. But the two alterca-
tions, first with Teiresias and then with Creon,
reveal the existence of hidden fires within him,
and he is proved to be one who, "being wrought,"
can be "perplexed in the extreme."
By and by, the death of Polybus, his reputed
father, at Corinth, awakens old hopes and
impulses that had but slumbered, and he again
shows a strange lightness of spirit until the scales
suddenly fall from his eyes.
Once more in his act of self-blinding, and the
passionate scene which ensues, he evinces the
same impetuosity to which all his actions had
been due.
These traits of character are combined by the
poet's art in a personality that is single and
indiscerptible. Though by no means colourless
or featureless, the characterisation still retains the
"plastic solidity" which has been attributed to
the Greek drama generally. It is not quite true
to say that the soul of the hero is not the sphere
of tragic action; but there is no inward conflict.
The man is not divided against himself.
It has become well-nigh a commonplace of
Characterisation
173
›› 1
late years to claim for Euripides the singular
merit of inaugurating a new phase of tragic art
and anticipating the modern stage by the
inwardness of his creations. "Le centre de
l'intérêt tragique fut désormais dans l'âme
humaine ("thenceforward tragic interest has
centred in the human soul"). This claim is only
partly justified. The central motive of the Medea,
the Hippolytus, or the Hecuba, is certainly more
personal in one sense, i.e. more purely egoistic,
than that of the Seven against Thebes or the
Antigone. But the personality that is absorbed
in state or family affairs is not for that reason
less individual, nor is the objective treatment of
human life necessarily unspiritual. On the other
hand, it is quite true that the psychological
interest awakened by the conflict of opposing
motives in the same person is a distinct anticipa-
tion of the modern romantic drama, and this is
a development of tragic business which only
came into vogue together with the popularity of
Euripides. Whether it was an innovation due
to his invention or a natural movement in the
evolution of the art which he shared with others
in effectuating, is a question which the scanty
fragments of Greek tragic poetry do not enable
us to determine. What is certain is that in the
Philoctetes of Sophocles, produced in the last
1 Paul Stapfer, Shakespeare et les Tragiques Grecs.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
decade of the fifth century B.C., the characterisa-
tion is of this "modern" kind, and that it is more
perfect than anything in Euripides. For, after
all, is not the complexity of the latter poet
often a complexity rather of situation than of
character? Does not the author seem to have
considered, not "What effect would this change
of circumstances have on this individual?" but
"How would ordinary human nature comport itself
under such and such conditions? Do not the
persons sometimes reason too explicitly (not to
say too calmly) of their own distraction?
not even the grand reflection of Medea-
I am well aware
How fraught with evil are my deeds to come,
But Passion, still the cause of crimes to men,
O'errules all else within me-
Does
partake more of the nature of "sign - post
criticism" than of the language of a soul in
agony ?
And is not the remark of Aristotle per-
fectly just, that the Iphigenia of Euripides is a
different person towards the end from what she is at
the beginning of the Iphigenia in Aulis? But in the
Philoctetes the twofold struggle between opposite
motives in the breasts of the hero and Neoptolemus
is presented at once with dramatic truth and
psychological subtilty. The pivot of the situation
is less now the change in outward fortune by
Characterisation
175
which the bow and its master are secured to
serve the Greeks at Troy, than the complex
inward problem which keeps the emotion of the
audience at full stretch,-on the one hand, "Will
the fixed idea in the mind of the wronged
Philoctetes ever give way?" and on the other,
Will this guileless youth, the son of the truth-
lover, persevere under the influence of ambition in
a course of treachery and deceit, or will sympathy
and friendship be too strong for him?" The change
of mind in Neoptolemus is in fact the climax of
a play within the play; and the drama, like some
in Euripides, has a double turn, the apparition of
Heracles arresting what had seemed the con-
summation of the action.
Of course it is not to be denied that in
Greek tragedy certain typical personages have
a tendency to recur. Such are the prophet, the
tyrant, the messenger, and, in Euripides, the self-
immolating youth or maiden. But in all of these,
notwithstanding "family resemblances," there are
traits of character which have a differentiating
and individualising effect. The Messenger in the
Persae, the Scout in the Septem, and the Herald
of the Agamemnon, the Watchman and the final
Messenger in the Antigone, have each and all of
them ethical "ear-marks" by which they are
clearly distinguishable. So have Agamemnon
and Menelaus in the Ajax, and Creon in the
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Oedipus Coloneus as compared with both. The
Teiresias of the Oedipus Rex is more terrible, and
also more human, than the Teiresias of the
Antigone. It may be somewhat difficult to find
distinctive differences between Macaria, Polyxena,
and Menoeceus, in Euripides, but characterisation
is not his strong point. In Sophocles the finer
shades, as for example between Ismene and
Chrysothemis, are more easily perceived than
defined, and are only seen completely through
the relation of either to the principal characters.
This will appear more fully in discussing the
merits of the three great tragic writers severally.
CHAPTER X
LIVES OF THE TRAGIC POETS
1
OF most of the Greek tragic poets we know
hardly anything but the name, and even of the
three great masters whose works are in part pre-
served to us the biographical record is scanty and
not trustworthy. The number of authentic names
is limited by the fact that during the most im-
portant period not more than three tragic choruses
were given in a single year.
In this chapter we
can do little more than recapitulate the salient
points of the familiar tradition.
Thespis flourished in the sixth century B.C.
(534), and is said to have carried about his
show and his unwritten compositions from village
to village. The plays that went by his name in
late antiquity, fragments of which have been pre-
served by Plutarch and others, were manifestly
forged by some imitator of Euripides.
1 Books to consult: Ency. Brit.; Smith's Dictionary of Classical
Biography; Jebb's Primer of Greek Literature; Green's "Classical
Writers"; Müller's Lit. of Greece, cc. 21-26; etc.
N
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Choerilus is said to have produced 150 plays,
and if this number is correct, the practice of bring-
ing out four dramas every year must have very
early prevailed. The fable of the only play of
his whose title has been preserved, the Alope,
belonged to the Eleusinian cycle of mythology.
In his time, therefore, it may be assumed that the
cult of Demeter had already become associated
with that of Dionysus.
Phrynichus the tragic poet (to be distinguished
from the general and the comic poet of the same
name) established a lasting reputation by the
charm of his lyric numbers and the elaboration
of the choral business generally. Tradition marks
him as a great original poet. It was from him,
according to Aristophanes, that Aeschylus received
the art which he developed.¹ His boldness of
invention showed itself in his two great historical
dramas (or cantatas), the Taking of Miletus² and
the Phoenissae, in which the subject of the Persae
was anticipated. In the more direct line of tragic
work he brought out many fables of which his suc-
cessors afterwards availed themselves. Thus his
Aegyptians and Danaïdes dealt with the fortunes
of the families of Aegyptus and Danaus, one of
Aeschylus' early themes; the story of Meleager
was touched in his Pleuronians (cp. Aesch. Atalanta,
and Chocph. 604); the "tale of Pelops' line was
2 Sec above, Chap. 11.
1 Ran. 910.
>>
Lives of the Tragic Poets
179
carried back to Tantalus; and it is interesting to
observe that in his Alcestis (a subject apparently not
handled by Aeschylus or Sophocles) the apparition
of Death bearing a sword, and probably also the
wrestling of Heracles with Death, features which
are thought grotesque in Euripides, were antici-
pated. On the other hand, the fable of Antaeus,
the great wrestler, perhaps because especially suited
for spectacular and choral treatment, appears to
have been peculiar to the pre-Aeschylean stage.
He
The hospitality of Athens in naturalising
foreign artists is specially marked in the case of
Pratinas, who was a native of Phlius (above
Sicyon), and therefore a Dorian by birth.
shares with Choerilus the credit of differentiating
tragedy from the satyric drama. Perhaps, when
Phrynichus with his tragic strains had thrown the
older and more rustic art (in which tragic and
satyric elements were blended) into the shade, the
originality of Pratinas may have shown itself in
developing satyric drama as a separate genre.
His son Aristias was also distinguished in both
kinds, producing an Atalanta, and preceding
Euripides with a satyric play on Polyphemus, in
which the Cyclops complained that Odysseus had
"drowned the miller "
Y' have spoiled the wine with watering it.
This passed into a proverbial saying.
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All these from Choerilus downwards were com-
petitors with Aeschylus, who outshone them, but
has not altogether eclipsed their fame.
AESCHYLUS (born 525 B.C.; died 456 B.C.)
Cyne-
Euphorion, the father of Aeschylus, lived at
Eleusis, and was happy in his three sons.
geirus, apparently the oldest, had his hand hacked
off at Marathon in grappling with a Persian galley.
Aeschylus also fought well at Marathon, and both
Aeschylus and Ameinias are said to have distin-
guished themselves at Salamis. Aeschylus would
then be forty-five, a seasoned soldier,¹ but on that
occasion Athens needed all her men. That the
early education of Aeschylus was in some way
associated with the Eleusinian worship we gather
from a line of Aristophanes, in which the father
of tragedy is made to say-
(AESCH.) Demeter, on whose lore my spirit was nursed,
Grant I prove worthy of thy mysteries!
Ran. 886.
That through this or some other channel he
imbibed a strain of Orphic or Pythagorean,
possibly also of Heraclitean, learning may be in-
ferred from the general drift of his poetry. But
1 "In eld
Still nourishing strong nerves with vigorous blood.'
Seven against Thebes, sub init.
Lives of the Tragic Poets
181
that which evoked his genius most powerfully
was the crisis in the national career of which the
victories of Marathon and Salamis—“ quarum pars
magna fuit"-were the splendid fruits. Those
high successes were felt by him to be the embodi-
ment of yet higher principles, whose observance was
the salt of Athenian life, the secret of Athenian
glory; principles of equity, of loyalty, and of
mercy. The Oresteia was his crowning effort for
enforcing these, and, according to a not incredible
legend, some reverse or disappointment in connec-
tion with this production was the cause of his
leaving Athens a year or two before his death.
The zeal for the Court of Areopagus which he
expressed in the Eumenides, ran counter to the
prevailing policy of the time. That Court had
been stripped of its secular functions four years
previously by the action of Themistocles (?) and
Ephialtes, and its powers were to be still further
curtailed by Pericles and Archestratus. The lately
published Aristotelian treatise on the Athenian
Constitution has enabled us to see how natural
it was that the Marathonian warrior should hold
exalted views of the prestige due to an institution
which had won a new lease of influence and
importance through its wise promptitude in dis-
tributing a largess to the fleet before the battle
of Salamis. The poet certainly spent some time.
at the court of Hiero in Sicily, and was buried in
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
that foreign land. The Geloans showed his tomb
with this inscription—
This monument in Gela's fertile plain
Doth Aeschylus, Euphorion's son, contain.
Of Athens he; whose might the Mede will own,
That met him on the field of Marathon.
SOPHOCLES (born 496 B.C.; died 405 B.C.)
Sophocles was sixteen at the time of the battle
of Salamis, and is said to have led the chorus
of youths in the procession that celebrated the
victory-his preceptor in music and dancing hav-
ing been Lamprocles. During his long life he
seems never to have left Athens except on public
duty. This he did several times, however, as an
ambassador to subject states, and on one occasion
as a general. He was thus identified, though in
a less striking manner than his great predecessor,
with the civic life of his countrymen, and had
opportunities of becoming widely familiar with
Hellenic life. His appointment as one of the
generals in the Samian war (440 B.C.) is said to
have been due to the favour won for him by the
Antigone. He himself, however, acknowledged
that his colleague Pericles was right in refusing
to him the credit of good generalship. Gentle
and inoffensive, and somewhat too open perhaps
to social delights, he made an impression on
Lives of the Tragic Poets
183
Aristo-
his contemporaries which must have contrasted
strangely with the austerity of his art.
phanes imagines him in the other world,
Kindly-attempered there as here above,
to be good-naturedly willing to yield precedence
to Aeschylus, though prepared, if need were, to
contest the tragic throne with Euripides.
CC
The sayings attributed to him, (1) that his
own style had had three phases, one turgid, in
imitation of Aeschylus, one dry and severe, and
one more humane, which was the best of all,
and (2) Euripides represents men as they are,
I make them what they ought to be," whether
authentic or not, are at least well invented. The
insinuation of Aristophanes that the poet was
grown covetous in his old age need not have any
real foundation; and the story that his sons tried
to prove him incapable, and that he defended
himself by reading part of the Oedipus at Colonos
-although Cicero tells it—is almost certainly a
myth. It is quite inconsistent with an early
epigram, which seems authentic, and also with
another tale, more pleasing and less improbable,
that Sophocles, in producing a drama after the
death of Euripides, caused his actors and his
chorus to appear in mourning.
Minor tragic poets who were contemporary
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
with Sophocles, and may be accounted anterior
to Euripides, are Aristarchus of Tegea, Neophron
of Sicyon, Ion of Chios, Achaeus of Eretria (all
foreigners like Pratinas), Euphorion (the son of
Aeschylus), Astydamas, his grandson, and Philocles.
Aristarchus wrote an Achilles, which Ennius.
is said to have imitated, and a Tantalus. A
fragment to the following effect is attributed to
him by Stobaeus :
He who hath never felt the power of Love
Knows not Necessity; beneath whose sway
I came perforce this journey to my doom.
Love makes the weakling mighty, and to men
Lost in distraction points a hidden road.
Neophron's chief distinction is to have written
a Medea upon lines which were closely followed by
Euripides. Those who take an interest in the sub-
ject of "literary borrowing" may compare the
fragment quoted in Chap. XV., with Eur. Med.
1021-1080. It should be said, however, that
the authenticity of the lines has been repeatedly
questioned, though hardly on sufficient grounds.
Ion of Chios, an author of repute in other
ways, was the most considerable of the minor tragic
poets, and was on terms of intimacy with Sophocles.
Agamemnon, Argivi, Teucer, Phoenix, are the titles
of some of his plays. No less than three belonging
to the legend of Heracles are referred to by ancient
Lives of the Tragic Poets
185
writers, and in these he seems to have drawn from
the same sources which are used by Sophocles in
the Trachiniae. Their titles were Alcmena, Eury-
tidae, and Omphale-the last a satyric drama.
Ion's language was exquisitely refined.
Achaeus was a poet of some mark, but having
the misfortune to contend with such great rivals,
only once carried off the tragic prize. His satyric
plays, however, were much admired. Some of
his tragic subjects were Adrastus, Alphesiboea,
Theseus, Cycnus, Oedipus, Philoctetes, Phrixus.
There seem to have been two poets bearing
the name Astydamas, an elder and a younger,
but little is known of their productions.
The only drama of Philocles whose title is
known was on the peculiarly Attic fable of
Tereus. But it is recorded that he won the
prize against the Oedipus Tyrannus.
EURIPIDES (born 480 B.C.; died 406 B.C.)
The third great tragic poet was, like his greater
predecessors, in a manner associated with Salamis,
where he is said to have been born about the time
of the battle, his parents having migrated thither
with the other Athenians; who, if they themselves
remained on board the fleet, placed their wives and
children in the island for security.
His name,
meaning "son of the Euripus," is said to have been
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
given to him in commemoration of the victory at
Artemisium-the Greek fleet before that battle
having been stationed at Chalcis in Euboea. The
few traces of his life-history which have been pre-
served to us are suggestive, as Professor Jebb has
well observed, of restlessness from within and from
without. He does not seem to have held public
offices as Sophocles did, but to have contented
himself with the exercise of his profession as a
tragic poet.
That he associated more or less
with Anaxagoras and with Socrates is probable
enough, and he certainly partook largely of the
intellectual influences of his time. Rumours of
his unhappiness in married life are just substantial
enough to warrant a hesitating belief, although
the comic poets were capable of inventing every-
thing. Like Aeschylus, he withdrew from Athens
in his later years, and accepted protection from
the "tyrant" Archelaus in Macedonia. It is
fabled that like Actaeon he was torn in pieces
by hounds; but no allusion to so strange a death
occurs amongst the many gibes with which Aristo-
phanes has aspersed his memory. The Bacchae,
produced at Athens after his death, is said to
have been written in Macedonia.
The great period of tragedy is concluded with
the death of Sophocles; and it is needless for our
purpose to enumerate the lesser lights which for a
Lives of the Tragic Poets
187
time continued to shine on the Attic stage, of
whose works Aristophanes speaks contemptuously
as swallow-like twitterings heard for a little while
once for all in spring. But this chapter would
close too abruptly without any mention of Aga-
thon, the beloved of Socrates, whose first tragic
victory is celebrated in the Symposium of Plato,
and whose Flower, already more than once re-
ferred to, was a late experiment of the declining
art; or of Chaeremon, a poet of the "fleshly
school," of whose sensuous descriptions some
fragments of striking beauty are preserved; or
of Carcinus and Theodectes, whom Aristotle
employs to illustrate what is to be avoided.
Yet Xenocles, the son of Carcinus, gained the
tragic prize against Euripides.¹ Tragedy after
this became a rhetorical exercise, and the only
true arena for dramatic genius was the middle
and newer comedy.
Müller, Lit. of Grecie, p. 383 of Eng. Trans.
CHAPTER XI
AESCHYLUS-THE SEVEN EXTANT PLAYS'
1
WITH the exception of the Oresteia, which is fairly
complete, each of the remaining plays of Aeschylus
is, in all probability, a fragment from a greater
whole. In judging of the Prometheus or the
Seven, not to speak now of the two earlier dramas,
it is important to reflect that we are in the same
position with regard to them as we might have
been with regard to the Choëphoroe or the Eumen-
ides if one of these had alone been left to indicate
the grandeur of the entire trilogy.
But in every Greek work of art, the spirit of
the whole is traceable in every part. The con-
siderate student may gradually come to apprehend
the full bearings of what time has spared; and, as
the Latin proverb has it, to know the figure of
Hercules by the foot,—ex pede Herculem..
1 Books to consult: Miss Swanwick's Aeschylus; Aeschylus
in "Blackwood's Classics"; Morshead's House of Atreus, and
Supplices; Aeschylus in English Verse (Kegan Paul & Co.), and
other translations.
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 189
It was in Aeschylus, as we have seen, that
the art of tragedy grew up by rapid stages, from
the choral drama, or cantata, to true dramatic
completeness, and it is therefore specially useful
in studying him to take note of the chronological
order of composition. And it so happens that
we have a trustworthy record of the dates at
which five out of the seven plays were produced.
The Persae was brought out in 472 B.C., the
Seven against Thebes in 467 B.C., the Agamemnon,
Choëphoroe, and Eumenides, in 458 B.C. For the
dates of the Supplices and the Prometheus Bound
there is no external evidence. But there are
strong internal grounds for placing both of them.
The subject of the former play, the daughters of
Danaus, belonged to a cycle of legend which had
been treated by Aeschylus' predecessor, Phryni-
chus; the Chorus is protagonist; the choral numbers
are full and perfect, while the dialogue is meagre;
there is very little employment in it for a second
actor. It is obvious from what has been pre-
viously said, that for all these reasons the play is
rightly assigned to the earlier period, and that,
on the whole, it may with probability be assumed
to have preceded even the Persae. The exact
place of the Prometheus is by no means equally clear.
But there are strong grounds for thinking that it
is not an early play. This is sufficiently proved
by the prologos (or initial dialogue) preceding
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
the entrance of the Chorus, by the compara-
tive subordination of the choral element generally,
and by the scheme of versification, both lyric and
iambic. Mention of Sicily points to a time not
far removed from the poet's sojourn at the court
of Hiero. (Was it written there?) The third actor
would at least be convenient in the opening scene.
But it is uncertain whether the Promethean trilogy
came before or after the Oresteia, which in any
case registers the high-water mark of Aeschylus'
achievement as a dramatic poet. The uncertainty
is increased by the fact that the Orestean and
Promethean trilogies are different in kind. The
Prometheus, then, is to be referred to the decade
466-456, and within these limits a later date
is somewhat more probable than an earlier one.
Thus we obtain the scheme—
S Supplices
Persae
Seven against Thebes
Agam., Choëph., Eum.
Prometheus
B.C.
circ. 484
472
467
458
. circ. 460-456
The Seven holds a central or intermediate position
between the choral play and the fully-developed
drama.
The first thing which strikes the reader of any
one of these works is the presence of the "Great
Manner," as it has been called, the boldness of
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 191
the conception, the freedom of the handling, the
largeness of the composition. All is imagined on
a colossal scale, and there is a corresponding
absence of minute elaboration. The poet is at
ease in his Olympian realm. He attains to
grandeur without effort, and cares not to assume
a forced solemnity. A certain naïveté occasionally
reminds us that it is still fresh morning with
the tragic art, and that the audience are as yet
unsophisticated. But all such impressions are
overpowered by astonishment at the deep har-
monies that are struck from time to time on the
Aeschylean lyre, as now and again the reader
pauses to reflect—
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
I. Dramatic energy.
The power of intense
impersonation and vivid presentation of an action,
so clearly manifested in the trilogy, is already at
work, though less explicitly developed, in the
earlier plays.
(1) The son of Palaechthon may be rather
shadowy, but the daughters of Danaüs are not a
chorus merely. They are creatures of flesh and
blood, with whose quivering excitement and tender
apprehensions the spectator cannot but keenly
sympathise. And, simple as the action is, there
is an "increasing purpose" in it, passing through
the two chief crises of the vote of the Argives and
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
the arrival of the ship, until it culminates in the
entrance of the Herald.
(2) The construction of the Persae (analysed
in Chap. IX.) shows a still more evenly-developed
rise and fall, while the person of Atossa has a
strength and fulness of individuality with which
nothing in the preceding drama is to be com-
pared.
(3) In the Eteocles of the Seven the poet
has reached a power and massiveness of charac-
terisation which he has hardly surpassed, unless in
the person of Clytemnestra. The patriot son of
Oedipus, moving through darkness to his doom,
yet withal upholding his native country in her
hour of extreme peril, is one of the most pathetic-
ally heroic figures, whether in fiction or in history.
And the other persons, though only sketched in,
and that through description for the most part,
Tydeus, Capaneus, Parthenopaeus, Amphiaraus,
Antigone, have a grand force and passionateness
the expression of which is essentially dramatic.
(4) In approaching that stupendous creation,
the Orestean trilogy, our first thought is one of
amazement at the progress which Aeschylus as a
dramatic poet has made in nine years. The
rivalry of Sophocles has not been in vain. Ten
years ago the younger man won his first victory, .
and we cannot but suppose that the elder and
more impassioned genius has been roused to
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 193
emulation.
Here is no lack of subtle contrivance,
and yet no loss, but rather a fresh accession, of
Consider the depth and fulness of
native power.
the composition. Look at the balance, so to
speak, of light and shade,—the overhanging gloom
which clings around the opening, a horror of dark-
ness which neither the beacon-flame, nor the false
exultation of the Queen, nor the Herald's joy in
home-return, nor the arrival of the victorious King
can lift or dissipate; a darkness which deepens.
with every utterance of Cassandra, until it closes
in upon all present with the death-shriek of the
King. See how this is counterbalanced by the
radiant ending of the Eumenides: the persuasive
eloquence of Athena, the blessing from the weird
mouths that came to curse, the shouting of the
folk after the auspicious ceremony. Then how full
of dramatic and tragic vividness is all that comes
between the contrast of the royal murderess with
her royally-descended rival and victim, as subtle
and more powerful than anything in Sophocles ;
the skill with which Cassandra's prophecies, so
impressive in themselves, are not only made to
thicken the atmosphere of horror, but to prepare
the hearts of the audience to take the most thrilling
possible impression from the cry within.
And when the trilogy is regarded as a whole,
this great event, the death of Agamemnon,
is only the first complication-standing forth
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
as it does from the lurid background, of which
such admirable use is made, the Thyestean.
banquet, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the sin against
Menelaus, the sacking of Troy. The whole action
culminates in the great scene where the son is
confronted with his mother, whom he is about to
kill. And that in her supreme hour the guilty
woman may not be without all commiseration has
been well provided by the motive assigned for her
act. The spectators have not yet forgotten the
picture of Iphigenia's death called up by the
Argive elders in their first ode, nor the haughty
pleadings of the avowed murderess, by which even
they had been impressed. And if the cry of
Clytemnestra over the dead Aegisthus renders
more imaginable the rage of Orestes at the
moment, as his father's son, it also helps the
spectator to realise the pity of the entire scene.
That single line has a complete convincingness,
carrying home the truth that after all it is not
a bloodless demon but a woman who is standing
there.
The dramatic power of Aeschylus here reaches
its chief height, but is by no means exhausted, as
witness those astonishing efforts in the region of
the supernatural, the Eumenides and Prometheus.
Of these, however, there will be more to say when
we are contemplating this mighty genius from the
religious side.
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 195
II. Aeschylus' power of characterisation is
gigantic, but unequally put forth. Thus, although
Orestes is the cardinal figure in the trilogy, the
idea which we receive of his personality is far less
vivid and less fully realised than our conception
of Clytemnestra. The poet was fascinated by his
own creation of the man-slaying woman, much as
Shakespeare was drawn on by the horror of
Shylock and his bond to make the Merchant
of Venice (the title-rôle) less important than
the contrasted figure of the Jew. In comparison
with the guilty Queen, Agamemnon (like Shake-
speare's Caesar) is little more than a lay figure.
But Aeschylus has elsewhere shown a great power
of bringing a grand personality before the mind's
eye with a few broad touches. What can be
finer in this way than the contrast of Power and
Hephaestus at the opening of the Prometheus-
the harsh eagerness of the servile minister; the
noble yet vain reluctance of the brother-god?
III. If Aeschylus was considered merely as
a dramatic poet, his supremacy might possibly
be considered disputable. Sophocles has written
nothing on the whole so great as the central scene
of the Agamemnon, nothing quite so solemnly
impressive as the Chocphoroe; but he has more
absolute and unerring mastery of his craft, and
the results of his work as a mere playwright are
more complete and perfect. But then it is not
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
merely as an artist that Aeschylus is to be ap-
praised, for first of all he is in a true sense the
creator of the tragic art. He is the giant from
whose shoulders his successors speak. And, like
a pagan St. Christopher, he has lifted them above
the wild element of mythology and legend into
the air and light of day.
"All the fine arts have it for their highest and
more legitimate end and purpose, to affect the
human passions, or smooth and alleviate for a
time the more unquiet feelings of the mind-to
excite wonder, or terror, or pleasure, or emotion
of some kind or other. It often happens that in
the very rise and origin of these arts, as in the
instance of Homer, the principal object is attained
in a degree not equalled by his successors. But
there is a degree of execution, which in more
refined times the poet or musician begins to
study, which gives a value of its own to their
productions of a different kind from the rude
strength of their predecessors. Poetry becomes
complicated in its rules; music learned in its
cadences and harmonies; rhetoric subtle in its
periods.
((
'There is more given to the labour of executing
-less attained by the effect produced. Still the
nobler and popular end of these arts is not for-
gotten; and if we have some productions too
learned, too recherchés for public feeling, we have
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 197
every now and then music that electrifies a whole
assembly, eloquence which shakes the forum, and
poetry which carries men up to the third heaven.”¹
IV. Again, Aeschylus is more than a dramatic
artist, because he is a prophet, and an epic and
lyric as well as a dramatic poet. He rises far
above mythology, and yet mythology is as it were
his native element, the ready vehicle of his loftiest
thought. In this as in all else he is genuinely
creative; one of the fountains of the great deep,
which when they are broken up overspread the
world.
The religious element in Aeschylus is fourfold.
1. There is the popular mythology which reigns
throughout, and is the embodiment of an unques-
tioning polytheism.
2. The conception of the superiority of Zeus,
which tended to unite and organise the superhuman
world, and pointed towards an esoteric monotheism.
3. The sovereignty of Fate.
4. The idea of righteousness as a sort of final
cause or consummation towards which the whole
creation moves.
This last is the expression of what lies deepest
in the poet's mind, and is interfused with all the
rest, by means of a profound and far-reaching,
albeit somewhat crude and primitive, theosophy.
1 Sir Walter Scott's Journal, vol. i. p. 118.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
1. The polytheistic colouring varies with the
varying scene. The divine dramatis personae are
shifted with the human. The Persian elders
revere the Sun and worship Darius as a god.
The Theban women implore Artemis, Athena
Onka, Ares, and Aphrodite. The Argos of
primitive times is guarded by the twelve greater
gods (ayovio Oeol); the Herald of Agamemnon,
also at Argos, addresses rather the ancestors of
the Pelopidae. Athena and Apollo have their
due respect on the Athenian Acropolis in the
Eumenides. And the daughters of Danaus,
although on Argive soil, are not afraid to invoke
the help of the dark Egyptian Epaphus,—the
bull-god Apis. Aeschylus' herocs are represented
as still believing that sacrifice was literally the
food of the gods (S. a. T. 77, Choëph. 255), and that
libation at a grave gives temporary animation to the
souls of the dead (Persac, 619 ff.; Choëph. 479 ff.)
2. Meanwhile in all the plays, including the
Persae, Zeus figures as the supreme god. And in
the Supplices, to begin with the earliest, very
noble conceptions of the divine sovereignty appear
side by side with strange puerilities of mythology.
The lover of Io is the unerring governor of the
universe, whose ways are past finding out.
"What thing his nod hath ratified stands fast,"
etc. "It is he whose breath prospers each design"
(τὸ πᾶν μῆχαρ οὔριος Ζεύς).
1
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 199
He is the ancient of days, ineffable, the mind
of the world. There is no trace as yet here, or in
the Persae or the Seven (in which Zeus, although
appealed to as lord over all, is less prominent), of
the idea of a succession of dynasties in Olympus.
This imagination, although familiar to the readers
of the Hesiodic and other theogonies, and not
without support from Homer, is nowhere alluded
to by Sophocles or Euripides, and amongst the
plays of Aeschylus occurs only in the Prome-
theus and the Oresteia. The Argive elders in
the Agamemnon are aware that Zeus is but the
approximate human title for him "who reigns,'
and that-
One erst appeared supreme, etc. (¿.e. Uranus)
And he is gone
Who flourished next (.e. Cronos),
and that Zeus is the author of human experience
and of the wisdom that flows from it.
But the Erinyes, who naturally know more
than the elders, reproach Zeus himself with the
long past offence of binding his father Cronos.
To which Apollo replies, in general terms, that
such an offence is not irremediable. (Pindar,
Pyth. IV.)
Had Zeus himself, then, learned wisdom from
experience? Had he been made perfect through
suffering? That seems to have been implied in
the Promethean trilogy.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Here Aeschylus figures to himself a time of
spiritual chaos, in which not only the elemental
passions of humanity but the very elements of
deity appeared to be conflicting. He is thus
enabled to make it felt that it is in the union of
power and wisdom, of energy and beneficence, that
true Godhead, the impersonation of Righteousness,
consists.¹
In giving dramatic embodiment to this
thought, he was assisted by a mythological
tradition, implying that in the supreme region
there had formerly been change and succession.
Nay, it was whispered that Zeus himself had once
been a malignant ruler. This imagination was
the outcome of an age in which men's conception
of the Highest was a creature of their fear. We
know from the story of Mycerinus 2 and from the
words attributed to Solon: "God is envious and
loves to make confusion," that such notions had
been powerful in earlier times, and had been
revived and accentuated by Ionian pessimism.*
The legend of Prometheus, whatever may have
been its origin, conveyed a special aspect of this
mode of thought, expressing the superstitious
dread with which a rude conservatism regards the
inventor, as one who by sheer force of mind
3
1 See Aeschylus in English Verse, pp. 294, 295.
2 Her. ii. 129-134; Mycerinus in Matthew Arnold's Poems.
8 Her. i. 32.
4 See above, Chap. VI.
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 201
transcends the limits appointed for the human
lot, and makes the divine powers of nature sub-
servient to the wants of mortals.¹ But the
legend, so conceived, belongs to a stage of culture
which the Athenian imagination, immature as it
still was, had far outgrown. And Aeschylus tells
his spectators in effect, "This happened, indeed,
but under a previous dispensation. It involved a
contrariety which could not last. For Power
rejecting Wisdom must come to nought, while
Wisdom rebelling against Power is fettered and
manacled. Omnipotence, to be eternal, must be
at one with truth and goodness,-in a word, must
be just. And because Power, alone and unac-
companied, is brittle and transient, beneficence
and Wisdom are essentially co- eternal with
Almighty Power."
Thus it appears that the conception of divine
power put forth at first in the Supplices, however
sublimely felt, was not found finally satisfying.
Aeschylus came to see that it is only in combina-
tion with wisdom and beneficence that the con-
summation of divinity is reached, and "Power
comes full in play."
3. It is Prometheus himself who reveals to
the awe-stricken Oceanides that even Zeus cannot
1 Cp. Job xxxviii. 35. "Canst thou send lightnings, that they
may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?"
2 R. Browning, Asolando, Reverie.
202
Guide to Greek Tragedy
escape his destiny. The Fates are there conjoined
with the Erinyes.
What, then, is the Aeschylean notion of Fate?
The conception of an impersonal inscrutable
determination, against which man strives in
vain, is common to all ages and to all literatures
in which there is contained any serious reflection.
on past experience. As we have just been re-
minded, the earlier phases of Greek literature
present a darker mode of this conception than is
to be found in Aeschylus. For as he regarded
life, the gloomiest fate still yields an opportunity
to the human will. The weird that Persian
prophets had foretold, and that Darius foreknew,
would not have fallen for Xerxes to dree it but for
his own mad infatuation. The curse of Oedipus,
which would never have been uttered but for the
sin of Laïus, carries with it the dreadful fall of
Eteocles, but cannot obliterate his noble service to
his country. The evil that is unavoidable is the
consequence of former sin. Thus it comes to
pass that the Fates are associated with the
Erinyes, the goddesses of retribution. In other
words, Fate is a mysterious power which makes for
righteousness, and the workings of eternal destiny
are dimly conceived as the outcome of great
principles whose beneficent operation becomes
more and more distinctly manifest in the evolution
of the human race. These principles may be
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 203
resolved into: (1) Nemesis—“ Pride comes before
a fall"; whatever goes beyond its measure, “the
Erinyes will find it out." (2) Heredity" the
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's
teeth are set on edge." (3) Retribution-" who
doeth shall suffer." But against each of these is
set, as by natural antinomy, a moral notion which
makes the silver lining of the cloud (1) The
spirit of moderation may partially avert ruin;
(2) individual worth is not annihilated though
the curse come down; (3) atonement, by the law
of equity and mercy, may make an end of guilt
and inaugurate a brighter day.
4. Thus by a natural transition we pass from
the older to the newer dispensation, from the rule
of blind Fate to the reign of righteousness. And
this brings us to the very heart and core of
Aeschylus' prophecy, to what in Matthew Arnold's
language may be called his "secret."
From moral chaos towards moral cosmos, to
order from disorder, is the direction, according to
Aeschylus, of inevitable progress, the "eternal
process moving on," and bringing humanity ever
nearer to the goal of righteous consummation.
This is imaged forth in the divine region as
a change which has come over Zeus himself
since he made up his quarrel with Prometheus
and gave birth to Athena. And in the human
realm it is more distinctly exemplified in the
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
taming of the Furies, whereby the wild justice
of retribution, crime followed by revenge in
endless alternation, gives way before the insti-
tution of Athenian equity. The negative "thou
shalt not" is followed up by the positive "thou
shalt." The promise as of a new gospel succeeds
to the thunders of the law.
The august powers who come to curse remain
to bless. As sin brought suffering, so the righteous
shall inherit a blessing and be a source of blessing
to posterity.
IV. Shakespeare's Wolsey speaks of the
ambition of courtiers as having "more pangs
and fears than wars or women have." Both
these great causes pay tribute to the tragic muse
of Aeschylus. This masculine genius owes much
to the patriotic valour of the citizen-soldier.
The Seven against Thebes, as Aristophanes
remarked, is full of this, the "Epic of Salamis" is
full of it, and the same note is continually struck
elsewhere. But this impression of martial strength
is rendered doubly striking by the passages of
unexpected tenderness in which the weakness of
ordinary womanhood is depicted. Even Clytem-
nestra, as we have seen, though denaturalised
by the frenzy of outraged maternity, is still a
woman, and, as in Lady Macbeth, beneath her
resolute and boastful exterior, when exalted by
passion, there is hidden some remnant of a
Aeschylus-The Seven Extant Plays 207
2. The language is highly figurative, and the
"grand manner" is pervasive, an inferior person
being sometimes made the mouthpiece of a great
thought poetically expressed. This may be
dramatically inconvenient, but the grandeur is
native, not assumed,-the poet's voice behind
the mask, not an exaggeration due to the artificial
organ. If there is awkwardness in this, it is the
clumsiness of Alfred allowing the cakes to burn
while he thinks of driving out the Dane, or of
Heracles mismanaging the distaff in some day-
dream of a tussle with the Nemean lion. The
fearless naturalness of some passages may be set
off against the apparent turgidity of others.
CHAPTER XII
SOPHOCLES-THE SEVEN EXTANT PLAYS
1
IF the supposed ruggedness of Aeschylus is
deceptive because it covers an underlying con-
tinuity of harmony, the smooth grace and finish
of Sophocles is attended with a corresponding
illusion, in so far as it tends to favour the assump-
tion that in his hands tragedy has suffered any
considerable loss of strength. A contest between
the two poets must have resembled one between
a wrestler of gigantic proportions and a well-knit,
lithe, and sinewy adversary: as between Achelous
and Heracles, or Orlando and Charles. Sophocles
seems at first sight less than he really is, because
he deliberately discards everything but what is
directly conducive to the purpose of his art.
Epic breadth, spectacular magnificence, pro-
phetic eloquence, these are not his own peculiar
qualities, and he rather dissembles that share of
them which he inherits. Relying absolutely as
¹ Books to consult : Müller's History of Greek Literature ;
Green's Classical Writers"; Sophocles in English Verse, etc.
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 209
he does on dramatic and tragic presentation, his
secret lies in the profound truth with which the
central situation of each fable, with its essential
human motive, is felt and realised.
The attempt to fix the chronological order and
position of his extant plays is attended with more
uncertainty than exists in the case of Aeschylus.
But the problem is also one of less importance, as
all the seven belong to the maturity of the tragic
art and of the poet's industry. Internal probability
rather points to the Antigone as the earliest of
them, and a fairly corroborated tradition assigns
it to the most brilliant period of the career of
Pericles, when the poet had attained his fifty-fifth
year-eighteen years after the date of his first
tragic victory. The Philoctetes is known, with
whatever of certainty attaches to the didascaliae, to
have been produced in 409 B.C., when the author
was at least eighty-five. The Oedipus Coloneus,
which tradition likewise attributes to his old age,
is said to have been put upon the stage still later
in fact, after the writer's death. But those were
troublous times in Athens, and it seems prob-
able on the whole that the great drama, then first
produced, had been composed in 4II B.C., the
year of the revolution of the Four Hundred.
There remains an interval of about thirty years,
at uncertain points in which are to be placed the
Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus, and Trachiniae.
P
CHAPTER XII
SOPHOCLES—THE SEVEN EXTANT PLAYS¹
IF the supposed ruggedness of Aeschylus is
deceptive because it covers an underlying con-
tinuity of harmony, the smooth grace and finish
of Sophocles is attended with a corresponding
illusion, in so far as it tends to favour the assump-
tion that in his hands tragedy has suffered any
considerable loss of strength. A contest between
the two poets must have resembled one between
a wrestler of gigantic proportions and a well-knit,
lithe, and sinewy adversary: as between Acheloüs
and Heracles, or Orlando and Charles. Sophocles
seems at first sight less than he really is, because
he deliberately discards everything but what is
directly conducive to the purpose of his art.
Epic breadth, spectacular magnificence, pro-
phetic eloquence,—these are not his own peculiar
qualities, and he rather dissembles that share of
them which he inherits. Relying absolutely as
1 Books to consult: Müller's History of Greek Literature;
Green's "Classical Writers"; Sophocles in English Verse, etc.
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 209
he does on dramatic and tragic presentation, his
secret lies in the profound truth with which the
central situation of each fable, with its essential
human motive, is felt and realised.
The attempt to fix the chronological order and
position of his extant plays is attended with more
uncertainty than exists in the case of Aeschylus.
But the problem is also one of less importance, as
all the seven belong to the maturity of the tragic
art and of the poet's industry. Internal probability
rather points to the Antigone as the earliest of
them, and a fairly corroborated tradition assigns
it to the most brilliant period of the career of
Pericles, when the poct had attained his fifty-fifth
year-cighteen years after the date of his first
tragic victory. The Philoctetes is known, with
whatever of certainty attaches to the didascaliae, to
have been produced in 409 B.C., when the author
was at least eighty-five. The Oedipus Coloncus,
which tradition likewise attributes to his old age,
is said to have been put upon the stage still later;
in fact, after the writer's death. But those were
troublous times in Athens, and it seems prob-
able on the whole that the great drama, then first
produced, had been composed in 411 B.C., the
year of the revolution of the Four Hundred.
There remains an interval of about thirty years,
at uncertain points in which are to be placed the
Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus, and Trachiniae.
Р
210
Guide to Greek Tragedy
The Ajax may possibly be earlier even than the
Antigone; the Electra is probably subsequent to
them both; but the use of the ekkyklema, which
occurs only in the Ajax, Antigone, and Electra
amongst the plays of Sophocles, may be taken
as indicating a comparatively early date for all
three. In the Oedipus Tyrannus this crude
expedient is dispensed with. The blinded
Oedipus is not "discovered," but enters falter-
ingly, groping his way. The ekkyklema is
likewise absent from Trachiniae, Philoctetes,
Oedipus Coloneus. It is probable enough that
Sophocles should have anticipated Aristophanes
in discrediting this somewhat clumsy feature of
the early stage.
The description of the plague in the Oedipus
Tyrannus has been thought by some critics to
have remote reference to the visitation in 430 B.C.,
the second year of the Peloponnesian war; and I
have myself suspected an obscure allusion, in the
Trachiniac, to the Spartan captives from Sphacteria.
This would give to this play a date which is
otherwise not improbable, about 423 B.C. These
considerations taken together may justify the
order-
Antigone
Ajax S
Electra
Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 211
Trachiniae
Oedipus Coloneus
Philoctetes
But the only point of importance is to observe
that the Oedipus Coloneus and the Philoctetes were
amongst the poet's latest works, belonging to the
last decade or so of the great fifth century, that
they were subsequent to the disaster at Syracuse,
and had been preceded by many successes of
Euripides. It is natural, on all these grounds, to
look for some change of manner in them.
Concentration is the leading note of Sophoclean
art. The audience of an Aeschylean tragedy are,
it may be said, "spectators of all time and all
existence." Mighty issues revolve about the
scene, far transcending the fate of Orestes or
even of Prometheus. In the perspective paint-
ing of Sophocles, these vast surroundings fall into
the background, and the feelings of the spectator
are absorbed in sympathy with the chief person
on the stage. The tragic effects of awe and
pity are centred in an individual destiny. The
fortunes of Thebes affect us less than those of
Oedipus; we care more for the vindication of the
honour of Ajax than for the victory of the Argives
over Troy.
Yet there is a sense in which human action
counts for less in Sophocles than in Aeschylus. An
overruling and relentless Providence is everywhere
212
Guide to Greek Tragedy
presupposed. The action of each drama is set
in a rigid framework of fatality. Of this the
spectators are from the first aware. The gods
appear more rarely even than in Homer, but their
operation though invisible is all-pervading. They
bring about their ends through the unconscious
instrumentality of men. Heroes and heroines
alike, under the influence of some strong passion,
make noble efforts to overcome frustration and
accomplish their purposes. So far as God is with
them, they succeed; if God and Fate are opposed
to them, then they fail. The disastrous blindness
of human beings, at once heroic and passionate,
is contrasted with the calm, predetermining fore-
sight of the supreme powers.
Matthew Arnold's
lines on Byron in the Memorial Verses might well
be applied to the Sophoclean Oedipus, Ajax, or
Heracles-
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with Eternal Law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
These powers, however, which dominate over
the scene of Sophocles, are by no means blind.
They mete out to every life its due and proper
meed, in the interest of universal right. On indi-
viduals, indeed, a thoughtless moment, or even an
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 213
unwitting action, may be visited, as experience
shows, with crushing disaster; but this only
magnifies and makes honourable the majesty of
the unwritten law, which our own great poet
apostrophises in words which, if they do not con-
tain a reminiscence of Sophocles, are wonderfully
near to him in spirit-
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and
strong.
That is the upper side of the shield-the divine
motive, which for the most part is hidden from
the persons on the stage. Meanwhile the lower
and purely human side is pregnant with the most
poignant awe and pity. And these emotions are
enhanced by the ever-returning contrast between
appearance and reality, between transient hope
and brightness and unending gloom.
It is in the management of this contrast, so
as to maintain a continuously ascending scale of
tragic interest, that the subtle and profound genius
of Sophocles is most clearly manifested.
I refrain from discussing here the verbal ques-
tion whether the word "irony," by which Bishop
Thirlwall and others have sought to designate this
peculiar kind of tragic effect, is really applicable.
Suffice it to say that, if the term is admitted (and
a specific term is possibly required), its meaning
214
Guide to Greek Tragedy
must be so far modified as to imply, not pride
or exaltation in the spectator on account of his
superior foresight, but rather a fresh access of
compassion for one who is too blind to feel his
own misfortune; a tone of feeling akin to that of
the Spirit in Milton's Comus on perceiving the
dangerous position of the innocent lady-
Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear,
And oh, poor hapless nightingale, thought I,
How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare !
This effect is produced both by dramatic economy
and by minute turns of phrase. In both respects
Sophocles may well be illustrated from Shake-
speare. Compare, for instance, the stately entrance
of Richard II., or Lear, with the position of either
later on, or the serenity of Duncan's fatal entrance
with the event, or consider the elation of Caesar
before his fall. The following are a few out of
many single expressions which enhance such an
impression. In Richard II., i. 1, Richard says of
Bolingbroke-
Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom's heir.
In iii. 3, he says to him-
Cousin, I am too young to be your father,
Though you are old enough to be my heir.
In Othello Desdemona says, in answer to Emilia's
question, "Is he not jealous?"
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 215
Who, he? I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humours from him.
And in Cymbeline, ii. 3, when Imogen has missed
the stolen bracelet, she says to Pisanio-
I do think
I saw't this morning: confident I am
Last night 'twas on mine arm; I kiss'd it :
I hope it be not gone to tell my lord
That I kiss aught but he.
The Oedipus Tyrannus is the stock example of
this, as of other aspects of Sophoclean art, and
there is something of the nature of a tour de force
in the ingenious endeavour of Thirlwall to extend
the same motive to the remaining plays. He is
compelled, for example, to assume a beneficent
irony (like that of the Angel in Parnell's Hermit),
which, under the appearance of a curse, conceals
a blessing. Now, in the Oedipus Coloneus, and
also in the Electra and Philoctetes, there is a con-
trast indeed of the most striking kind between
the present misery of the chief persons and the
good things in reserve for them (in the case of
Philoctetes, victory, in that of Oedipus, eternal
peace). But it is surely a violence to language
to speak of the artistic management of this con-
trast by the name of "irony." Furthermore, in
the Trachiniae, when Deianira's short-lived joy is
dashed with well-founded jealousy, and (having
216
Guide to Greek Tragedy
been deceived long ago by the centaur) she com-
mits the hasty act which she repents too late, her
apprehensions hit the truth only too exactly. It
is "the thing she greatly fears" that "comes upon
her." That also, as well as the concealment of
approaching sorrow, is a note of Sophoclean
tragedy "I was not at rest, neither was I quiet,
yet trouble came."
Another mode of the contrast between appear-
ance and reality to which the word irony is hardly
applicable is that between the worldly and the
divine view of situation and character. Antigone
appears to be crushed, but her cause is vindicated.
Ajax is ruined in this life, but his grave is
honoured even by his foes. Philoctetes is rejected,
but the Gods have need of him. Oedipus is re-
nounced by his countrymen, but accepted by the
Gods and Theseus, and the Thebans in their dire
extremity seek in vain to compass his return.
This deeper contrast is most marked in the earliest
and latest of the poet's extant plays. And its
effect is greatly enhanced by the poetic reserve, in
which the art of Sophocles is unique.
To express the substance of the preceding para-
graphs more generally.-The final estimate of
Sophoclean tragedy must largely depend upon
the mode in which his treatment of destiny is
conceived. That Aeschylus had risen on the
wings of faith to a height of prophetic vision,
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 217
from whence he saw the triumph of equity and
the defeat of wrong as an eternal process moving
on toward one divine event; that he realised sin,
retribution, responsibility, as no other ancient did,
has been already seen.
But it has been argued
that because Sophocles is saddened by glancing
down again at actual life, because in the fatalism
of the old fables he finds the reflection of a truth
which experience warrants, he in so far takes a
step backward as a tragic artist." Now is this
altogether just? The poet's value for what is
highest in man is none the less because he strips
it of earthly rewards, nor is his reverence for
eternal law less deep because he knows that its
workings are sometimes pitiless. Nor, once more,
does he disbelieve in Providence, because experi-
ence has shown him that the end towards which
the supreme powers lead forth mankind is still
unseen. We miss something of the exultant
energy of the Marathonian man; but under the
grave and gentle guidance of his successor we
lose nothing of the conviction that, "because right
is right, to follow right were wisdom in the scorn
of consequence." Not only the utter devotion of
Antigone, but the lacerated innocence of Oedipus
and Deianira, the tempted truth of Neoptolemus,
the essential nobility of Ajax, leave an impress on
the heart which is ineffaceable, and must ever serve
1 Günther's Tragische Kunst.
218
Guide to Greek Tragedy
to elevate and purify. In one respect, however, it
must be admitted that Sophocles is not before his
age. There is an element of unrelieved vindictive-
ness, not merely inherent in the fables, but insepar-
able from the poet's handling of some themes,
which is only too consistent with the temper of
the "tyrant city." Aeschylus represents this with
equal dramatic vividness; but he associates it,
not with heroism, but with crime.
The spectator of a Sophoclean tragedy was
invited to witness the supreme crisis of an indi-
vidual destiny, and was possessed at the outset
with the circumstances of the decisive moment.
Except in the Trachiniae, where the retrospective
soliloquy of Deianira is intended to emphasise her
lonely position, this exposition is effected through
a brief dialogue, in which the protagonist may
or may not take part. In the Oedipus Tyrannus
the king's entrance and his colloquy with the
aged priest introduce the audience at once to the
action and to the chief person. In the Ajax and
Philoctetes the entrance or discovery of the hero
is made more impressive by being delayed.
Immediately after the prologos, the Chorus
enter, numbering fifteen, either chanting in pro-
cession, as in the Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus,
or dispersedly, as in the Oedipus Coloneus and
Philoctetes, or, thirdly, as in the Electra, where, after
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 219
entering silently during the monody of the heroine,
and taking up their position in the orchestra, they
address her one by one. With a remarkable
exception, to be noted presently, the Chorus,
having once entered, remain to the end. They
always stand in some carefully-adjusted relation
to the principal figure. The elders of Thebes,
whose age and coldness throw into relief the
fervour and the desolation of Antigone, are the
very men to realise the calamity of Oedipus, and
while horror-stricken, to lament his fall. The
rude Salaminian mariners are loyal to Ajax, but
cannot enter into his grief. The Trachinian
maidens would gladly support Deianira, who has
won their hearts, but they are too young and
inexperienced for the task. The noble Argive
women can sympathise with the sorrows of Electra,
but no sympathy can soothe her distress.
The parodos of the Chorus is followed by the
first scene or epeisodion, with which the action
may be said to begin. For in the course of this
the spectator's interest is strongly roused by some
new circumstance involving an unforeseen com-
plication—the awakening of Ajax (Aj.), the burial
of Polynices (Ant.), the dream of Clytemnestra
(El), the dark utterance of Teiresias (Oed. Tyr.),
the arrival of Lichas with Iole (Trach.), the re-
port of Ismene announcing Creon's coming (Oed.
Col.), the urgent entreaty of Philoctetes crossed
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by the entrance of the pretended mariner (Phil.)
The action from this point onwards is like a
steadily-flowing stream into which a swift and
turbulent tributary has suddenly fallen, and the
interest advances with rapid and continuous
climax until the culmination is reached and the
catastrophe is certain. The manner in which this
is done, through the interweaving of the pnoeis
and στιχομυθία of the dialogue with the στάσιμα
of the Chorus and the κομμοί and κομματικά
(where there is an interchange between the Chorus
and the persons), is very different in different
dramas, one of the principal charms of Sophocles
being his power of ingenious variation in the
employment of his resources. Not less admirable
is the strength with which he sustains the interest
after the chief turning-point or peripeteia, whether,
as in the Antigone, by heaping sorrow upon sorrow,
or, as in the first Oedipus, by passing from horror
to tenderness and unlocking the fountain of tears.
The extreme point of boldness of arrangement is
reached in the Ajax, where the Chorus and
Tecmessa, having been warned of the impending
danger, depart severally in quest of the vanished
hero, and thus leave not only the stage but the
orchestra vacant for the soliloquy that precedes
his suicide.
No such general description as has been here
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 221
attempted can give even a remote impression of
the march of Sophoclean tragedy,—by what subtle,
and yet firm and strongly-marked gradations the
plot is unfolded; how stroke after stroke contri-
butes to the harmonious totality of feeling; what
vivid interplay, on the stage, in the orchestra,
and between both, builds up the majestic ever-
moving spectacle. Examine, for example, the
opening scene, or
οι πρόλογος, of the Oedipus
Tyrannus. Its function is merely to propound
the situation; yet it is in itself a miniature
drama. /First there is the silent spectacle of the
eager throng of suppliants at the palace gate,-
young children, youths, and aged priests. To
them the king appears, with royal condescension
and true public zeal. The priest expresses their
heartfelt loyalty, describes the distress of Thebes,
and extolling Oedipus' past services, implores
him to exercise his consummate wisdom for the
relief of his people. The king's reply unveils
still further his incessant watchfulness and anxious
care for his subjects, and he discloses a new
object to their expectancy and hope. Creon, a
royal person, has been sent to Delphi, and should
ere now have returned with the response of Apollo.
At this all hearts are trembling in suspense, when
a figure is seen approaching. He is wreathed
with Apollo's laurel; he looks cheerfully. What
has Phoebus said? Another moment of suspense
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
is interposed. Then the oracle is repeated—so
thrilling to the spectator who understands the
story, so full of doubt and hope and dread to
all the persons of the drama: "It is for the
blood of Laïus-his murderers are harboured in
the land of Thebes. The country must be
purged." That is the culminating point of the
little tragedy. While Oedipus asks for informa-
tion, while in gaiety of heart he undertakes the
search, while he bids the folk of Cadmus to be
summoned thither, the spectators have just time
to take in the full significance of what has passed,
which every word that is uttered sends farther
home. All this in 150 lines!
Once more, consider the employment of nar-
rative by this great poet. The Tyrannus might
be again adduced, but let us turn instead to the
Antigone and the Trachiniae. The speech of the
Messenger in the Antigone, the speeches of
Hyllus and the Nurse in the Trachiniae, occur at
the supreme crises of the two dramas. Yet there
is no sense of any retardation in the action by
the report of what has been happening elsewhere.
Much rather the audience are carried breathlessly
along, while each speaker brings before their
mental vision the scene of which he has himself
been part.
It is a drama within the drama, an
action rising from its starting-point in rapid.
climax, swift, full, concentrated, until that wave
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 223
subsides, and is followed by a moment of thrilling
expectation. Nor is this all. The narrative of
the Messenger is heard by Eurydice, that of
Hyllus is addressed to Deianira, that of the Nurse
to the Chorus of Maidens. And in each case a
poignancy of tragic significance is added by this
circumstance; while the pĥous in the Antigone, and
that of Hyllus in a yet higher degree, bind to-
gether in one the twofold interest of an action
which might otherwise seem in danger of distract-
ing the spectator.
So profound is the contrivance, or, to speak
more accurately, such is the strength of central
feeling and conception which secures the grace
of unity in complexity to the Sophoclean
drama.
In the Antigone and Ajax, which are probably
the earliest of the seven, it is perhaps not alto-
gether fanciful to trace some slight survival of
Aeschylean influence. In the Antigone this
appears chiefly in the connection of the plot with
the preceding history and the prominence of the
notion of heredity; in the Ajar rather in the
grandiose character of the speeches and in the
apparition of Athena. There is also something in
the structure of the play which I have elsewhere
compared to a condensed trilogy, i.e. the subject,
consisting of the madness, death, and burial of
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Ajax, might have furnished forth three con-
secutive plays. Nor has the art of Sophocles in
either of these great dramas attained the supreme
concentration of the Oedipus Tyrannus; but in
this respect that model of Greek tragedy may be
said to stand alone.
The truth is that the originality of Sophocles
appears in nothing more than in the variety of
style and structure which he succeeds in reconcil-
ing with severe simplicity; and it is therefore a
mistake to reduce his method to any single
formula. It is enough to say that certain charac-
teristic features appear and reappear.
1. The prologos in six out of the seven
plays consists of a dialogue, which lays the
ground of the action and puts the spectators in
possession of the main situation. This mode,
which Aeschylus also adopted in his Prometheus,
is greatly facilitated by the addition of the third
actor, which is said to have been due to the
invention of Sophocles. Thus Orestes and the
Old Man are able to prologise in the Electra,
while Electra, as well as the Chorus, is still
absent from the scene. Antigone similarly de-
clares her resolution in the absence of Creon and
the Elders; and Odysseus reveals his plot to
Neoptolemus before the entrance of Philoctetes.
In the Oedipus Coloneus the blind man and his
daughter have appeared and disappeared before
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 225
the parodos, with the temporary addition of the
Athenian Stranger, the part of Theseus being held
in reserve. By such expedients more opportunity
is given for the interaction of opposing interests,
SO as to prepare for the complications which
ensue. Also the first entrance or discovery of
Ajax, as of Philoctetes, is rendered more im-
pressive, and that of Electra more pathetic than
it could otherwise have been. The prologos of
the Oedipus Tyrannus is singularly elaborate,
introducing as it does the first complication
together with the entrance of Creon, so that all
the three actors are together present before the
Chorus come on. In the Trachiniae, on the other
hand, there is a recurrence (as so often happens
in Euripides) to the simpler method of the
Seven and the Agamemnon, and the opening
speech of Deianira is practically a soliloquy.
But then it should be observed that the desolate
solitude in which the wife of Heracles passes her
time is one chief point to be enforced in opening
the play; so that here, as elsewhere, the matter
really exemplified is the freedom with which the
poet handles his resources.
2. Another striking feature which is common
to the extant plays of Sophocles is the use which
he makes of the hyporchema, or dancing song.
In the Antigone, Ajax, Oedipus Tyrannus, and
Trachiniae a sudden gleam of hope, preceding an
Q
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
impending crisis, and known by the spectators to
be illusory, prompts the Chorus to an excited
strain in which anxiety gives way to a fit of
gladness, contrasting forcibly with the gloom of
the sequel. This belongs to the so-called irony
above referred to, and also serves to relieve the
monotony of sadness. In the Electra and Oedipus
Coloneus the catastrophe is immediately preceded
by an invocation of a more solemn kind, which,
however different in tone, may be technically
classed with these hyporchemata, as being distinct
from the stasimon, or regular choral ode. The
address to Love in the Antigone, and that to
Sleep in the Philoctetes, are of a kindred order.
That the duty of managing the actors as well
as of training the Chorus belonged to the author
is well known. According to a credible tradition,
Sophocles, because of the weakness of his voice,
was the first poet who desisted from acting in his
own plays. In his Thamyras, however, he is said
to have performed on the lyre to admiration, and
in his Nausicaa (perhaps as Protagonist) to have
played gracefully the game of ball. Various
minor improvements in decoration and stage-
carpentry are attributed to him:-Aristotle goes
so far as to say that he invented scene-painting.
It is more interesting, if true, that he wrote his
plays having certain actors in his eye; that he
formed an association (fíacos) for the promotion
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 227
of liberal culture; and that he was the first to
introduce three actors on the stage. It is asserted
on the authority of Aristoxenus that Sophocles was
also the first to employ Phrygian melodies. And
it is easy to believe that Ajax, 693 foll., Trachiniae,
205 foll., were sung to Phrygian music, though there
are strains in Aeschylus (e.g. Choëph. 152 foll., 423
foll.) which it is hard to distinguish essentially
from these. Ancient critics had also noticed his
familiarity with Homer, especially with the
Odyssey, his power of selection, and of extracting
an exquisite grace from all he touched (whence
he was named the "Attic Bee"), his mingled
felicity and boldness, and, above all, his subtle
delineation of human nature and feeling. They
observed that the balanced proportion and fine
articulation of his work are such that in a single
half line or phrase he often conveys the
impression of an entire character.
As Sophocles is credited with the invention
(above referred to) of the third actor, it is
interesting to note the places in him where this
expedient is undoubtedly employed.
2.
To begin with the Ajax. (1) At the
close of the prologue we have Ajax,
Odysseus, and Athena. (2) And again,
in the final scene, Odysseus, Teucer, and
Agamemnon.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
2.
حب
4.
حب
In the Antigone (1) Creon, the Watch-
man, and Antigone are all present at once,
and again (2), Antigone, Creon, and Ismene.
Both these combinations occur in the
scene preceding the crisis of the play.
In the Electra (1) the Old Man tells
the fictitious story of Orestes' death in
the presence of both Clytemnestra and
Electra; and again (2), the same person
enters while Orestes and Electra are
conversing after the recognition. Further
(3), Electra is present when Aegisthus
comes, and Orestes is discovered standing
by the body of Clytemnestra. Thus
Electra, Orestes, and Aegisthus all take
part in the concluding scene.
In the Oedipus Tyrannus (1) Creon
enters to Oedipus and the Priest of Zeus
in the opening scene; (2) Jocasta enters.
to Creon and Oedipus in the midst of their
altercation; (3) a messenger from Corinth
has told his message to Jocasta when
Ocdipus re-enters; and (4), at the chief
crisis, the Theban messenger is con-
fronted with the Corinthian in the
presence of the King.
In the Trachiniae (1) Hyllus enters
while Deianira is conversing with her
attendant. In a subsequent scene (2)
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 229
3.
4.
9.
Lichas re-enters to Deianira and the
Messenger. (3) Hyllus, the Old Man, and
Heracles come in together and all speak.
Thus in the Trachiniae the use of the
third actor appears three times only.
In the Philoctetes, although the chief in-
terest lies in the interaction of Philoctetes
and Neoptolemus, there are notwithstand-
ing four places where three actors are
employed at once: (1) the entrance of the
pretended Ship-master; (2) the re-entrance
of Odysseus when Neoptolemus is all but
persuaded to give way; (3) when Neop-
tolemus brings back the bow and is
followed by Odysseus; and (4) the appari-
tion of Heracles to Philoctetes and Neop-
tolemus at the close of the play.
It remains to consider the Oedipus
Coloneus. Here the introduction of a
third actor is still more frequent.
1. In the opening scene an Athenian
stranger enters to Oedipus and
Antigone.
2. By-and-by Ismene comes in and makes
a third with her father and sister.
3. When she is gone about her offering,
Theseus arrives, and Antigone con-
tinues present though she does not
speak.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
9.
4. Creon enters, and his approach is
notified to Oedipus by Antigone.
5. Antigone has been carried off, but
Theseus enters while Creon and
Oedipus are still in altercation.
Theseus, Creon, and
and Oedipus all
speak at length.
6. In the following scene, three if not
four actors are required:
are required: the two
maidens are restored, and Oedipus,
Theseus, and Antigone all speak.
7. When Polynices comes, the scene is
divided between him, his father, and
his sister Antigone. Ismene must be
supposed present, but does not speak.
8. Polynices departs, but Theseus returns.
Antigone, though she does not speak,
remains upon the stage, as does also
Ismene.
9. In the concluding scene, the Messenger,
Antigone, Ismene, and Theseus appear
to be all present at the same time.
It is here that a fourth actor has been
considered necessary, because Ismene
takes part with her sister in the lament.
It is conceivable, however, that the
Messenger, after indicating the ap-
proach of the maidens, may have retired,
and returned by-and-by as Theseus.
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 231
These facts confirm the impression spoken of
above in Chapter III. p. 58, that the employment
of a third actor was more sparing at first, and
more liberal in the later period. The shortness
and the simple structure of the Trachiniae may
account for the comparative infrequency of such
an expedient in this play, which need not there-
fore be assumed to be of an early date.
The
Mute persons, such as Pylades, Iole, etc., and
the children Eurysakes (in Ajax), Antigone, and
Ismene (in Oed. Tyr.), are not reckoned here.
introduction of children on the stage, however,
was a new feature, which was afterwards further
developed by Euripides.
The addition of a third actor, as already
hinted, enabled Sophocles to complicate the
action while preserving unity. It also lent him
most important aid in giving relief by contrast to
the finer shades of character.
The adaptation of character to situation is one
of the capital features of the art of Sophocles.
And it is promoted by two expedients, the
manipulation of the fable, and the relation of the
minor persons to the protagonist.
a. Aeschylus handles mythology and legend
with great freedom, and has probably himself
innovated or invented here and there. Sophocles
is content, for the most part, to accept tradition as
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
he finds it; but his subtle originality is employed
in taking advantage of the discrepancies of tradi-
tion. For example, the later epics had begun to
vilify Odysseus, and had even represented him as
the son of Sisyphus. The Odysseus of the Ajax
is the true son of Laertes, as in the Odyssey, and
is essentially noble. But his wise policy has been
grievously misunderstood, and those to whom he
has given offence (not Ajax himself, however) are
never weary of reproaching him with his dishonest
cunning and his unworthy origin. It is only when
his real character, as inspired by Athena, has been
revealed that Teucer pointedly addresses him as
"Laertes' true-born son." The Odysseus of the
Philoctetes is a different person; not altogether
ignoble, but a politician prone to stratagem.
Here the purpose was to contrast him with the
ingenuous youth Neoptolemus, and to bring out
the passionate resentment of Philoctetes, who
couples Odysseus with Thersites and calls him
Laertes' bargain bought from Sisyphus. This is
one of many examples of similar adaptation.
b. The dignified self-possession of Odysseus in
the concluding scene of the Ajax stands in striking
contrast, not only to the brutality of Agamemnon,
but to the passionateness of the hero. Shake-
speare has several times employed similar means
for setting off the fiery natures of his tragic persons.
Hamlet's friend Horatio is
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 233
As one suffering all that suffers nothing,
A man who Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hath ta'en with equal thanks.
Macbeth says of his rival, Banquo-
'Tis much he dares ;
And, to that dauntless tenor of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety.
And something higher than mere wisdom appears
in Banquo's own words, when tempted by Mac-
beth-
Macb. If you shall cleave to my consent,-when 'tis,
Ban.
It shall make honour for you.
So I lose none
In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,
I shall be counselled.
Similarly the noble and calm strength of the loyal
Kent adds pathos to the breaking-down of Lear.
Other instances in Sophocles are the contrast of
Creon with the King in the first Ocdipus, of
Haemon with Creon in the central portion of the
Antigone, and of Theseus with the other persons
in the Oedipus Coloneus.
A contrast of a different kind is that of the
unheroic to the heroic nature. Thus Ismene is a
foil to Antigone, Chrysothemis to Electra, Lichas
to both Deianira and Heracles.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.
Yet another mode of contrast appears where
feminine tenderness is opposed to manly strength,
as in the relation of Tecmessa to Ajax; and a
further point in this direction is gained by the in-
troduction of children on the stage (Aj., Oed. Tyr.)
With regard to the similarity in the type of
certain characters in Sophocles it is to be observed
that, with the exception of the weak Chrysothemis
and of Jocasta, whose strength has been for evil,
all the women in the seven plays of Sophocles
are capable of heroic self-devotion, even when
deprived of their natural support. This is a
new feature; for, as elsewhere observed, none of
Aeschylus' women, except the criminal Clytem-
nestra, is capable of acting alone. The Oceanides
are more than human, and their persistence is
in vain. They are not able to drink the cup
the Titan drinks of. Deianira acts with weak
precipitation, it may be; but she will not survive
the ruin of her love, and is heroic in her death.
So is Eurydice, the Theban mother. Ismene is
willing to die with Antigone, though she would
not disobey the King. And Tecmessa, the poor
captive, not only is the first to find her expiring
lord, but even before the arrival of Teucer breathes
defiance over his corpse against his enemies.
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 235
Antigone and Electra may seem at first sight
to be of a different mould. Yet the motive of
their heroism is not less essentially feminine than
the self-sacrifice of these lesser women.
The love of kindred, especially of a father and
a brother, is felt by Sophocles to be the glory of
womanhood. This passion—a love which many
waters cannot quench-appears in Antigone as an
uncontrollable impulse, acknowledged by her as
divine; in Electra as the never-weakening spring
of an insuppressible endurance. Whether to
admire most the young virgin-martyr appealing
from the tyrant to the Eternal Law, or the mature
maiden, withering on the virgin thorn, who after
ten years of servile oppression borne in the still-
deferred hope of a brother's return-the brother
whom she herself had rescued-on hearing of his
death resolves by herself alone to do the vengeful
deed that had been looked for from his arm,
this, in common with the ancient epigrammatist,
I find it a hard matter to decide. Perhaps
the best solution is that while the action of
Antigone is more
more beautiful, that of Electral
(granting vengeance to be a duty) is the more
admirable. Neither of them, indeed, wrings the
heart of the spectator so irresistibly as Deianira―
the rival of Imogen in purity, of Catherine of
Aragon in her "great patience," and of both in
wifely spirit.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Sophocles is often praised for skilful construc-
tion. But the secret of his skill depends in large
measure on the profound way in which the central
situation in each of his fables has been conceived
and felt. Concentration is the distinguishing mark
of tragedy, and it is above all by greater con-
centration that Sophocles is distinguished from
other tragic poets. In the Seven against Thebes
or the Prometheus there is still somewhat of epic
enlargement and breadth; in the Hecuba and
other dramas of Euripides single scenes have
an idyllic beauty and tenderness which affect us
more than the progress of the action as a whole—
a defect which the poet sometimes tries to com-
pensate by some novel dénoûment or catastrophe.
But in following a Sophoclean tragedy we are
carried steadily and swiftly onward, looking neither
to the right nor to the left: the more elaborately
any scene or single speech is wrought, the more
does it contribute to enhance the main emotion,
and if there is a deliberate pause, it is felt either
as a welcome breathing-space or as the calm of
brooding expectancy.
The result of this method is the union, in the
highest degree, of simplicity with complexity, of
largeness of design with absolute finish, of grandeur
with harmony. Superfluities are thrown off with-
out an effort through the burning of the fire within.
Crude clements are fused and made transparent.
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 237
What look like ornaments are found to be in-
separable from the organic whole. Each of the
plays is admirable in structure, not because it is
cleverly put together, but because it is so com-
pletely alive.
It must always seem curious that Sophocles,
who was himself, by all accounts, the gentlest and
most amenable of men, should have delighted, as
he does in the Philoctetes and also in the Oedipus
Coloncus, not only to sound the depths of tragic
passion, but to display the tyrannous dominance.
of a fixed idea. Nothing but the miraculous
intervention of Heracles can for a moment soften
the obstinate determination of the hero to refuse
his aid to the Achaeans, though he must remain
and perish in the desert isle. The conclusion of
the Philoctetes is the only instance in Sophocles
of the deus ex machind of which Euripides is so
fond (for the apparition of Athena in the prologos
of the Ajax is rather a survival of Aeschylean
supernaturalism). And there are other points,
such as the double turn or peripeteia, and the
external business with the bow, which indicate.
that the latest manner of Sophocles had some-
thing in common with the method of Euripides.
But the management both of the plot and charac-
ters is entirely Sophoclean, and there is no play
in which the poet more distinctly proves his
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
unique originality. The invention of the part
of Neoptolemus, and the sustained interplay or
interaction of contrasted natures-between the
generous youth whom ambition has bent for a
moment to deceit and the time-worn solitary man
in whom cruel usage and long pain have killed
ambition, yet whose heart within him is still
fresh and young-is a masterpiece of dramatic
evolution, which for its combination of psycho-
logical interest with stage effectiveness is un-
equalled in ancient and unsurpassed in modern art.
It cannot be said, however, that the Philoctetes
has a tragic ending in the strictest sense. And
although the Oedipus Coloneus concludes with the
death of Oedipus, than which nothing can be more
sublimely impressive, yet both pathos and horror
are softened by the assurance of peace and victory
for Athens which he bequeaths to the guardians
of his tomb. Together with the decay of hope
and national pride which followed the reversal of
Athenian power at Syracuse there seems to have
come a shrinking from such "tragic completeness
as we find in the Antigone, Ajax, Oedipus Tyrannus,
Electra, and Trachiniae. Melpomene relaxes some-
what the severity of her brows. Of the plays
which Euripides is known to have produced after
413 B.C., viz. Helena, Phoenissae, Electra, Orestes,
Iphigenia in Aulis, Bacchae, the Bacchae is said to
have been composed in Macedonia for production
"}
Sophocles-The Seven Extant Plays 239
at the Court of Archelaus; and of the other five,
the Phoenissae, produced in 411 B.C., the year of
revolution, is the only one which ends tragically.
Sensational horrors occur incidentally; but Apollo,
or Artemis, or the Dioscuri, set all to rights at last.
The sun of tragedy, when it gained its ascend-
ant in the Aeschylean trilogy, was still struggling
amidst louring clouds, to which it lent a lurid mag-
nificence. In the Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus,
having reached its meridian height, it is shorn of
that gorgeous array, but looks fiercely down upon
the world, though with seemingly diminished disc,
in lonely splendour and with concentrated heat.
Rolling westward in the Oedipus Coloneus, it gazes
back upon mankind with milder beams; and if
some clouds return, as in the curse on Polynices
or the ode on the miseries of age, they are finally
transfigured with the promise of an ampler day.
CHAPTER XIII
EURIPIDES 1
THE judgments of modern critics on Euripides
have been strangely various. On the one hand, the
cavils of Aristophanes have found many echoes in
the modern world. And this has not been merely
due to the authority of Schlegel and other writers.
The just appreciation of Aeschylus and Sophocles
impresses on the mind a standard of dramatic art
to which their great successor did not, and could
not, conform.
their secret.
The secret of his influence is not
His aim is different from theirs,
perhaps less elevated, but his success. as an
original poet is notwithstanding very real and
wide. If none of his works produces so noble and
far-reaching an impression as the Orestean trilogy,
or that entire and flawless chrysolite the Antigone,
yet some tones of his many-stringed lyre have
1 Books to consult: Art. "Euripides" in Ency. Brit. by R. C.
Jebb; Mommsen's History of Rome, vol. ii. (Eng. Trans.) pp. 444-
446; Symonds' Greek Poets; Browning's Aristophanes' Apology;
Froude's Short Studies; Bunsen's God in History, Eng. Trans. pp.
234-244; Milman's Bacchae, etc.
Euripides
241
sounded on beyond the Sibyl's thousand years
and have awakened echoing chords in places
which to the strains of Aeschylus and Sophocles
have remained mute. If he has had many
detractors, his admirers have not been of mean
repute. Euripides, and not Sophocles, was "sad
Electra's poet" to the muse of Milton, whose
choral "apolelymena" in Samson Agonistes are
probably imitated from the Euripidean monodies.
He was thought worthy of imitation by Racine and
also by Goethe, who not only wrote his Iphigenie
on lines suggested by Euripides, but when the
fragments of the Phaethon were discovered on a
palimpsest forming part of the Codex Claromon-
tanus of St. Paul's Epistles, and were communicated
to him through Hermann, his imagination was
greatly excited and, with Göttling's help, he made
a serious effort towards a reconstruction of that
play.¹ He returned to the subject afterwards, in
1823 and 1826, and also in the last-mentioned
year attempted to supply the missing speech of
Agave in the Bacchae (Sämmtliche Werke, ed.
1851, pp. 336-356). In our own time Robert
Browning "transcribed" the Agamemnon, but
¹ One remark of Goethe's in this connection deserves to be quoted
here with reference to what has been said above (ch. ii. p. 35)
concerning the Unity of Time: "Das dargestellte in einer gewissen
Zeit unmöglich geschehen kann und doch geschieht. Auf dieser
Fiction des Dichters und der Zustimmung des Hörers und Schauers
ruht die oft angefochten und immer wiederkehrende dramatische
Zeit- und Orts-Einheit der Alten und Neueren."
R
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
with less perfect sympathy than he showed in
recasting the Alcestis or
or in translating the
Hercules Furens, that "perfect piece," as his
Balaustion calls it. The poet's imagination finds
completeness in the incomplete. Mr. Froude
has devoted to Euripides one of the most ingenious
and eloquent of his Short Studies. And if we
turn again to antiquity, the popularity of Euripides
in Macedonian and Alexandrian times is shown
by the number of his tragedies (eighteen) which
have been preserved-a fact of which it is also
right to take account before comparing him
unfavourably with Aeschylus or Sophocles. For
if we believe that on the whole Time has made a
wise selection, such comparative judgment should
be confined to the seven plays (whichever they
are) which are selected from the eighteen extant
tragedies as the best. There is no great difficulty
in preferring six, viz. Medea, Hippolytus, Ion,
Bacchae, Phoenissae, Iphigenia in Tauris. For the
seventh one is left in doubt amongst three others,
the Hercules Furens, Alcestis, Electra.
And yet
the materials for judgment are not complete.
For those single scenes, descriptions, situations,
passages, in which the strength of Euripides often
lies, are scattered everywhere. How can we rule
out of court the relation of the death of Polyxena
in the Hecuba, the apostrophe to Zeus in the
Troades, or the opening scenes of the Orestes, or,
Euripides
243
again, the colloquy between Agamemnon and
Menelaus in the Iphigenia in Aulis? Euripides
abounds with "beauties." And it is partly for
-
this reason,
reason, as well as from his world wide
popularity, that his fragments are so numerous,
or, in other words, that quotations from him are
so frequent in Plutarch, in Clement of Alexandria,
in Athenaeus, and in the Florilegium (or anthology)
of Stobaeus. Nor can we be certain that to a
modern taste such romantic plays as the Phaethon
and the Andromeda would not have been more
pleasing than the Medea. The real difficulty is
to apprehend his dramatic point of view, his
prevailing motive. And this depended, as it
must always do, upon the audience for whom he
wrote.¹
Tragedy was not now, as in the Periclean
time, the main or central exponent of Athenian
feeling. The national life no longer mirrored
itself objectively in the idealising of heroic legend.
The simple proverbial philosophy of the Solonian
period was being replaced by a species of
casuistry. Moral consciousness was undermining
Greek mythology. The dilemma which Plato
puts so forcibly, "either the gods are evil, or the
1 "I dare establish it for a rule of practice' on the stage, that we
are bound to please those whom we pretend to entertain; and that
at any price, religion and good manners only excepted . . . there
is a sort of merit in delighting the spectators, which is a name more
proper for them, than that of auditors."-Dryden.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
tales which poets tell of them are untrue," was
already dimly felt by many and confused their
thoughts. Ionian "Physiology" (ie. the philo-
sophy of Anaxagoras and his predecessors) was
another solvent. The breach thus made was
superficially healed by a crude rationalism. As
thought had made the gods, so thought might
modify them. Meanwhile the decline of Athens
and the many vicissitudes of private fortune
"sicklied o'er" the restless mental activity of the
time with a new species of pessimistic fatalism,
and in this aspect the old dark tradition of divine
malignity commended itself afresh. The caprice
of the Supernatural became a fitting symbol for
the blind work of Chance.¹ On the other hand,
men had begun to realise the claims of a common
humanity, and the words of Socrates: "Can it
¹ See De Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Reeve's transla-
tion), vol. i. chap. xiv. 'But epochs sometimes occur, in the course
of the existence of a nation, at which the ancient customs of a
people are changed, religious belief disturbed, and the spell of
tradition broken; while the diffusion of knowledge is yet imperfect.
. . . The country then assumes a dim and dubious shape in the eyes
of the citizens; they no longer behold it in the soil which they
inhabit, for that soil is to them a dull inanimate clod; nor in the
usages of their forefathers, which they have been taught to look
upon as a debasing yoke; nor in religion, for of that they doubt;
nor in the laws, which do not originate in their own authority. .
They entrench themselves within the dull precincts of a narrow
egotism. They are emancipated from prejudice, without having
acknowledged the empire of reason; they are animated neither by
instinctive patriotism nor by thinking patriotism . . . but they have
stopped half-way between the two, in the midst of confusion and
distress."-(Quoted by Sir A. C. Lyall in Asiatic Studies.)
Euripides
245
But the
ever be just to harm a human being?" found
hearers not totally unprepared. "The gods care
for Troy also" (Euripides' Andromache, 1251 ff.)
From these and other causes Euripidean tragedy
has often the effect of a magnificent tour de force.
Dramatic creation is still bound within the cycle
of legendary mythology. Artistic convention and
popular feeling alike demanded the limitation.
The experiment of Agathon came later.
traditions could be more freely handled than
heretofore, and the fable was more distinctly felt
to be merely the vehicle through which an im-
pression was to be conveyed.¹ For proof of this
we have to look no farther than to the story of
Helen as represented in the Helena, and as given
or understood in the Orestes, Andromache, and
elsewhere. Aeschylus and Sophocles in different
ways had adapted tradition to the purpose of
their art, but we cannot suppose that either would
have ventured on such inconsistency as this,
although the newer version of the fable was
known to Stesichorus and Herodotus. The
variation in the Iphigenia story is hardly less.
striking. And in both the same rationalising,
accommodating, and reconciling spirit has been at
1 Cp. Miss Harrison's Attic Mythology, p. cxx. "The latter end
of the 5th century B.C.,- -a time when the vase-painter was beginning
to concern himself more with the skill of his grouping, the graceful
pose of his figures, and the dexterity of his drawing, than with his
mythological intent."
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
work. (See especially Euripides' Electra, 1282,
1283.) But it is manifest that neither story can
have had for the audience a reality of the same
order with the legend of the Telamonian Ajax as
presented to the men of Salamis by Aeschylus and
Sophocles in succession.¹ A like distinction holds
between supernatural appearances in Aeschylus
and Euripides. The Erinyes, Apollo, Hephaestus,
Athena had a reality for the earlier audience.
(whose fathers had worshipped Phya for Athena)
very different from any that could attach to
Madness, led in by Iris, or to the Dioscuri, or to
Athena herself and other deities appearing on the
raised platform above the later stage. Not the
divine persons themselves so much, but rather the
idea they symbolised, would impress the intelligent
spectator of a Euripidean play.
The great painters of the Venetian school
often represented the Christ and His Apostles
in the garb and environment that were familiar
to the Italian world. Even a negro slave is
introduced in the Marriage at Cana by Paul
Veronese. Such anachronisms were never entirely
absent from the Attic theatre. But the practice
is greatly extended by Euripides, not so much,
of course, in the matter of dress although
¹ Where Aeschylus and Sophocles have followed different versions
of a legend, Euripides is sometimes eclectic: e.g. in acknowledging
both Argos and Mycenae, and making Menelaus live at Argos while
he rules at Sparta.
Euripides
247
1
the realism of his ragged garments and other
outward signs of misery provoked the scorn of
Aristophanes, but in thought and tone of feeling
his personages, as has often been remarked, come
very near to the men and women of his own time.
And by this means there is no doubt that he
succeeded in universally touching his audience, if
not in profoundly moving them. The reflections
of Orestes in his sickness, eg.—μεταβολὴ πάντων
γλυκύ,
уλʊκú, “Change in everything is sweet"—may
seem to us commonplace generalities, having
little to do with either poetry or the drama, but
they found a clear echo in the contemporary
Athenian breast. And it may appear to us
strange and unnatural that a prophet or a hero
should reason about the probability of a god's
existence, or rationalise the legend of his birth
(Bacchae, 290, 333 ff.) But such things must
have precisely hit the imaginative half-belief of
the men and women with whom the poet had to
do.2 We have heard a sermon in which it was
explained that the angels who carried Lazarus
into Abraham's bosom were "laws of Nature."
Such pious exposition may find many parallels in
Euripidean belief. Some lines of the Troades
1 "There is yet another obstacle to be removed, which is,-pointed
wit, and sentences out of season; these are nothing of kin to the
violence of passion; no man is at leisure to make sentences and
similes, when his soul is in agony."-Dryden.
2 See Browning's Ring and Book-The Pope, s. f.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
(884-888) well illustrate the manner in which
mythology was becoming transfused in terms of
thought-
O Earth's upholder, who on Earth dost dwell,
Whoe'er thou art, past finding out, whate'er
Thy name be, Zeus, or Necessary Law
Of Nature, or the Mind of mortal Man,
I worship thee, for still with noiseless tread
Thou guid'st all human things the Righteous way.
The concluding line, however, expresses a
firmer faith than is often present in Euripides.
The newly-discovered fragment of the Antiopa is
very characteristic of the artificial compromise
between scepticism and piety which we often find
in him. Amphion and Zethus are the sons of
Antiopa by Zeus, who appears to have deserted
her. Like the brothers of Imogen, these children.
of Nature have been brought up in rustic seclusion.
Their mother has been persecuted by Lycus and
his wife Dircè, the reigning powers at Thebes. The
young men have slain Dircè, and have planned
an ambush for Lycus, with whom their case is
desperate. Amphion, addressing his mother, gives
utterance to this counsel of despair:
Speak not of flight! In vain were Zeus our sire
Not to avenge us of our enemy.
And howsoe'er, we have reached a pass in woe
Where flight is hopeless, retribution sure
For Dirce's blood new slain. If we stand fast,
Euripides
249
One of two things must be.
Either we die
Then to Thee
This day, or triumph o'er our adversaries.
So far to thee, my mother.
Who dwellest in the bright etherial land
Thus bold I speak: "Taste not of marriage-joy
And afterward neglect thine offspring's weal;
But, as high Honour bids, defend thine own."
Howe'er it prove, decoy we now our prey
To a convenient lucky harbourage,
And overpower the impious tyrant there.
In the sequel, Hermes appears, prevents the
slaughter of Lycus, procures his voluntary sub-
mission, and declares Amphion the true heir of
Cadmus and builder of the new city of Thebes.
This pleasant dénoûment satisfies the claims.
of ordinary piety; but the sceptical reclamation of
Amphion would leave a deeper impression on the
educated and intelligent auditor.
A similar vein of thought is apparent here and
there in Sophocles, but is so introduced as to have
the effect only of a passing shadow, as where
Hyllus expostulates with Zeus for looking on at
the agony of Heracles,-when every Greek is well
aware of the glory that shall follow; or where
Tecmessa follows Ajax's example, and in her bitter-
ness cries out against Athena; or lastly where
Philoctetes, in the despair that is born of his exile,
is led to doubt the goodness of the gods in the
manner of the fin du siècle Vme B.C. But although
in these few instances there is a real approach
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
to what is so frequent in Euripides, the tone and
accentuation are widely different.
The figment of divine intervention, or celestial
magic, which in the Antiopa appears to justify the
ways of Zeus, is elsewhere introduced merely as a
conventional expression for the unaccountable,
irrational, and cruelly capricious course of human
things.
The growth of reflection and self-consciousness
was accompanied with a novel sense of human
brotherhood, akin to that expressed by Aristotle
where he says, "one may find in travelling how
much of kinship and of kindness exists between man
and man." The feeling of distinctive patriotism was
becoming merged in that of a common human nature.
It is here that Euripides most anticipates modern
feeling. The humble and yet noble yeoman in
the Electra, the slave and fellow-captive of Andro-
mache, who still treats her mistress with respect,
the Chorus in Iphigenia in Tauris, who are re-
minded of their own parents' fortune (576), may
be cited as examples of this new spirit, which
does not, however, preclude the recognition of the
supposed fact, so regarded also by Aristotle, of
the persistence of an essentially servile nature in
certain races—the Phrygian for example. Nor
does this increasing mildness of mood towards
humanity in general prevent the occasional re-
crudescence of an abnormal savagery in dealing
Euripides
251
with an enemy. Electra and Orestes are
profoundly penitent, and the Time-Spirit has
convinced them that no so-called divine sanction
could extenuate matricide; but the revenge of
Hecuba on Theoclymenus, and that of Alcmena
on Eurystheus, the death of Dircè tied to the tail
of a wild bull, can only be compared to the act of
Samuel in hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord.
These instances reveal the
Tiger's heart wrapped in a "civic " hide,
which was capable of such enormities as the
sentence on the Lesbian people and the massacre
at Melos. Hence while these and similar inci-
dents, by rendering the chief person less worthy
of sympathy, detract something from the value of
the drama in which they occur, if judged by an
absolute or universal standard-at the time of
production they were liable to no such stricture,
but doubtless carried forward powerfully and with-
out a check the stream of emotion which the
precedent action had set going.
The indulgence of contemporary feeling has
another aspect. The age delighted in intellectual
novelties, and commonplace is consequently apt
to assume the form of paradox. The audience of
Euripides were at once pleased and startled by the
asceticism of Hippolytus, the temperate and chaste
enthusiasm of the truc Bacchanal (cp. Plato), the
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
remorse of Hermione, the bravery of old Peleus,
the cowardice of the professed warrior, the religious
purity of Ion as a sort of Samuel or Timothy,
the forgivingness of Iphigenia, the destiny which
is stronger than the gods (I. T. 1486).
A speaker in the Protesilaus (455 N.) seems
to have anticipated Plato's community of marriage
(cp. the Agathyrsi in Herod. iv. 104). One strik-
ingly modern touch occurs in Orestes, 1288, "Have
the swords that were aimed at Helen been blunted
by her beauty?" This must have been present to
the mind of Lord Tennyson when he wrote his
"Lucretius "
Then, then, from utter gloom stood out the breasts,
The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a sword
Now over and now under, now direct,
Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down shamed
At all that beauty.
Some recurring novelties of situation and senti-
ment deserve to be mentioned more at length.
1. Self-abnegation.-The stories concerning a
survival of human sacrifice which abounded in
Greek legend are repeatedly employed by Euri-
pides to accentuate the worth of voluntary self-
devotion. There is a strong family resemblance
amongst such willing victims in his plays—Macaria,
Polyxena, Iphigenia, Menoeceus, etc., though of
course with individual differences. They are all
too much inclined to reason out the grounds of
Euripides
253
their own action.
This seems to have been the
case also with Praxithea, the wife of Erechtheus,
who gave up her child for Athens.
Mr. Swinburne,
in his drama on the last-named subject, and
Mr. Browning in characterising Alcestis, have
corrected this fault of the older poet. Still the
merit must be conceded to him of having perceived
the value of a motive, by which suffering is
ennobled, and pity is enhanced with admiration.
2. Paternity. The care of a father for his son.
appears with pathetic effect in the Erechtheus and
the Phaethon. Erechtheus exhorts his son before
going to the battle, and Helios gives vain counsel
to his adventurous child.
Still more modern in effect is the poignant
grief, of which Brabantio's for Desdemona, and
Leonato's for the slandered Hero, are familiar
instances in Shakespeare. Nycteus kills himself
when he believes that shame has come to his
daughter Antiopa; Catreus gives his daughters
Aërope and Clymene to Nauplius to be drowned;
Minos is naturally horrified when Zeus has "made
him grandsire" to the Minotaur.
3. First-love.-A capital innovation in tragedy,
which to Plato and others appeared morally ruinous,
and to Aeschylus, and perhaps to Sophocles, would
have seemed a falling off from dignity, was the
sympathetic treatment of the passion of love.
Aristophanes' contemptuous allusion to Phaedra is
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
well known. But his Dionysus, who though
personally too susceptible for dignity is a severe
critic, was evidently captivated by the Andromeda,
the reading of which on board ship had moved
his desire to recover Euripides. And, indeed, it is
not difficult to imagine the effect which the powerful
treatment for the first time in serious drama of a
pure attachment under romantic circumstances
must have produced on an audience who were
becoming more accessible to the softer harmonies.
One speech of the heroine to her deliverer very
closely resembles that of Miranda to Ferdinand:-
To be your fellow
You may deny me, but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no.1
If Euripides is to be judged not as a tragic
but as a romantic poet, he shows a considerable
advance in the delineation of natural feeling and
the development of pathetic situations. We trace
his progress in this direction from such com-
paratively regular dramas as the Medca and
Hippolytus to the Electra and the Orestes. But
the advance is also a decline. The transition
towards the middle comedy is already begun.
By a convention of the contemporary stage,
the familiar figures of heroic legend no longer
represent the extraordinary as in Aeschylus, or the
1 "Sir, take me with you, whether as your servant,
Or wife, or handmaid."-Fragment 133 (Nauck).
Euripides
255
To
ideal as in Sophocles, but ordinary human nature.
subjected to exceptional circumstances. The
legend is to a great extent discounted-we no
longer expect to find it convincing. What we
do expect is to have true pathos distilled from
each situation in turn, and to have thought stimu-
lated with suggestions which, whether new or old,
are seen at once to be of wide application.
a taste formed by Aeschylus or Sophocles the
sentiment sometimes appears sickly, or even frigid,
and the moralising is often overdone. But to the
Athenian all this had the effect of a new genre, a
fresh departure in dramatic art, and it was ap-
plauded accordingly. Neither can we deny that
in the larger horizons which begin to open in
Euripides there are anticipations of untried possi-
bilities, such as were afterwards realised in different
ways by Menander, Shakespeare, and Molière.
Again, if Euripides were judged, not as a drama-
tist, but as an idyllic poet, many narrative and
descriptive passages might claim unrivalled charm.
Or if we selected his best lyrics, they would be
hard to beat. And it is partly due to the circum-
stances in which his lot was cast that as a dramatic
poet he so seldom approaches the grandeur of
Aeschylus, or the perfection of Sophocles.
Tragedy, as represented by Sophocles, Aeschy-
lus, and Euripides, may be regarded under the
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
image of a mighty river, which in its earlier course
(seeming to tumble from the sky) rolls its foaming
and seething waters down a rugged glen: by-and-
by between trim banks it flows with deep smooth
current, but with impetuous force, until it nears
the plain, through which in alternate stream
and pool it glides amongst a varied landscape,
now lapping tree-fringed shores, now mimicking
the earlier torrent for a while, and now reflecting
laughingly on its calm expanse the more distant
heaven.
In the structure and fabric of his plays par-
ticularly, Euripides anticipates to some extent
the complexity of modern drama. He is in a
sense the originator of dramatic intrigue. His
tragedies have "many turns.” But he does not
escape from the inconvenience pointed out by
Dryden as attending this mode of construction.
What is gained in freshness and variety of in-
cident is lost in concentration and in force of
characterisation. "For the manners can never
be evident, where the surprises of fortune take
up all the business of the stage, and where the
poet is more in pain to tell you what has happened
to such a man, than what he was.”
“Too many
accidents, as I have said, encumber the poet; for
the variety of passions which they produce are
ever crossing and jostling each other out of the
Euripides
257
way."
In some of his dramas, such as the Orestes
and Antiopa, it is hardly too much to say that
Euripides contented himself with unity of subject,
where unity of action is required by dramatic.
art. And sometimes for the sake of a rhetorical
point both character and action are marred.
Jason says to Medea, "You helped me, it is
true, but then you were in love, and you got
something by it." Such a man, of course, de-
serves anything; but would the death of his
children affect him deeply?
In some respects the art of Euripides has a
misleading superficial resemblance to that of
Aeschylus. In both there are appearances of
gods. The dialogue in both is apt to be dilated
with superfluous narrative and description.
both the lyric element is larger than in Sophocles.
In
But (1) the supernatural in Aeschylus has a
convincing reality which it could not have for
the spectators, or rather audience, of Euripides,
who at the very moment when they were thrilled
with some exhibition of supernal power, were
inclined to question the goodness, and even the
existence, of the gods. (See Eur. Andromache,
1161-1165.) In listening to Thetis inviting
Peleus to share her immortality, the illusion can
hardly have been complete where Peleus takes
occasion to observe, "How good it is to have
S
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
made a prudent marriage!"
It is not too much
to say that the destiny of Cadmus and Harmonia
was poetically realised more completely by Matthew
Arnold than by Euripides.
When Aeschylus says, "Zeus, whosoe'er he
be," he is speaking with profound awe of the
ineffable name that, as Heraclitus says, "both
wills and wills not to be known." The tone in
which Euripides says, “Zeus, whoever Zeus may
be," belongs to a different strain of agnosticism.
He has come to think of Zeus (see above) as a
conventional symbol for "Laws of Nature." But
while mythology was thus honeycombed with
rationalism, it was also receiving new developments.
Both processes went on side by side. Though each
of the old legends had become "a tale of little
meaning," men delighted in them none the less.
Foreign rituals, such as Cretan Orphism, were
grafted upon Attic superstition. And reflection
on a myth might assist in giving to it a secondary
formation. Thus, when the acquittal of Orestes
by Athena and the Areopagus had failed to
satisfy the more cultivated moral
moral sense, his
further wanderings, pursued by a remnant of
the Furies, were added as an appendix to the
story. This afterthought was associated with
another legend, which may have been suggested
by the ritual of the Brauronian Artemis. The
real Iphigenia is here supposed to have been
Euripides
259
spirited away at the time of the sacrifice, and to
have been recovered, together with the sacred
Góavov, or primitive idol of the goddess, from the
Tauric Chersonese.
The state of mind in which men listened
greedily to the tales of priest and prophet, and
yet reasoned about them-wavering between
belief and scepticism—is difficult to apprehend,
and yet bears some analogy to the mental con-
dition of a time like our own, in which, for many
reasons, a musical ritual serves as the euthanasia
of positive belief, and a learned curiosity about
the origin and history of religion is taking the
place of a strong and active faith.
(2) If the speeches in Aeschylus are some-
times expanded beyond the strict requirements
of the action, this naturally arises from the
fulness and exuberance of his imagination, and
from the eager curiosity which the action has.
directly stimulated in the spectator. But Euri-
pides pauses, even at critical moments, to moralise
a situation, or to adorn a narrative with graphic
details. And where Aeschylus makes direct
appeal to Hellenic or Athenian patriotism, he
does it in such a manner as to secure universal
sympathy. But this can hardly be said of the
political or patriotic passages in the Heraclidae,
the Supplices, or the Andromache, which have a
narrower scope and a more bitter flavour.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
(3) The lyrical part in Aeschylus is amplified
because the Chorus is still so important to the
action; but in Euripides the stasima, monodies,
and threnodies are "long drawn out" because the
action itself is less engrossing, and the audience.
are more at
at leisure to dwell on the general
sentiments and reflections which it suggests, and
to indulge in the enjoyment of musical effects.
The language of Euripides is often picturesque
and "sensuous" rather than "simple and passion-
ate." He sometimes employs words and phrases
more for their "colour" and associations than for
their exact significance. But he is also capable
of the most unaffectedly pathetic utterance—as
in Andromache 384-420, and in well-known
1 The following is the speech of Andromache above referred to;
Menelaus has attempted to induce her to leave the sanctuary of the
altar by threatening to kill her son :-
"O hard election!
Cruel offerer
Of life with misery or unhappy death!
O mighty pother for a trifling cause!
Why wouldst thou slay me?
What town have I betrayed?
For what fault? Consider.
What son of thine
Killed I? What home set fire to?-By compulsion
I married him whom fortune made my lord.
Then wouldst thou slay me and not him? The will,
The first beginning of the act, was his.
You strike at me on whom the end is come.
O me unhappy! Native land of mine,
How in thy fall I am ruined! Why, oh why
Must I have children, doubling all my woe?
Nay, let me not lament till I have drained
My cup of present sorrow. I have seen
Euripides
261
See
speeches of the Medea, Alcestis, and Hecuba.
also the speech of Cadmus in Bacchae, s.f. (where
that of Agavè is unfortunately lost.) It is to be
observed as further proof of the relaxation of tragic
severity that children not only appear upon the
stage, but are allowed to speak (Alcestis, Her. Fur.;
cp. Aristoph. Ranae, 948).
On the whole, one sees that in Euripides the
tragic art is in course of being transformed,
descending from its pedestal so as to reap more.
from the "lacrymae rerum," the tearfulness of
"Hector expiring at the chariot-wheel,
And Ilion's piteous fires; then as a captive,
Unto the Argive ships dragged by the hair,
I came to Phthia, where my husband's murderer
Must be my husband! What is life to me?
What hope does time, present or past, afford?
One child I have, the comfort of mine eye,
All that remains to me from vanished days;—
They would destroy him !-Not if death of me
May buy him off. Hope gilds his living head.
But shame were mine, not dying for my boy.
Behold, I leave the altar. I am thine
To bind, to smite, to strangle. Child, to save thee
From death thy mother dies. Ig go. But thou,
Escaping from the threatful hurricane,
Remember my affliction and mine end.
And tell thy father, kissing him with tears,
And clinging round him with thy arms of love,
What griefs were mine.-Our children are our souls.
If any blame that maxim, having none,
He is spared much sorrow; but his gain is loss,
And in privation stands his envied state.”
Both Goethe and Dean Milman have attempted to restore it.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
common things, but
things, but also tending somewhat
towards melodrama and losing some of its central
fire. What Aristotle means by calling him "the
most tragic of poets," is to our apprehension
rather a “sentimental" or
"sentimental" or "sensational" tendency.
What remains of genuine tragic effect has become
more self-conscious, more subjective. In some
places, however, the very feebleness of the
characterisation has the result of sending home a
grand impression of the overmastering force of
circumstance, of the predominance of the collective
over the individual will,-so hinting powerfully at
"the whole tragedy and comedy of human life."
No instance of this is more remarkable than the
treatment in the Iphigenia in Aulis of the crushing
and irresistible force of popular clamour, the
Civium ardor prava jubentium.
Agamemnon has reluctantly consented to the
sacrifice of his daughter, but has afterwards
repented. In time, however, he again yields.
her to the pleadings of his brother Menelaus.
Then Menelaus in his turn recoils before the grief
which Agamemnon has shown, and urges him to
take back his gift. But the General only now
becomes aware of the resistless power which in
reality is constraining him. He cannot, if he
would, recall his consent. Once more Iphigenia
has been taken from her mother through the
Euripides
263
pretence that she is to be married to Achilles.
That hero's chivalrous spirit recoils from the
policy that has made him the stalking-horse of
such a scheme. He declares his opposition.
But when he has done so, his own Myrmidons
are the first to rise against him. Even his valour
is powerless to save the predestined victim.
Then, "at long last," the maiden herself makes a
virtue of necessity and becomes (like Macaria and
the rest) a voluntary sacrifice. The characters,
except that of Achilles, are flat and unimpressive,
that of Iphigenia, as Aristotle says, is de-
cidedly inconsistent, — but the main situation
is driven home with masterly force and em-
phasis.
It is in reading such sad lessons of experience
that Euripides excels, much more than in holding
up any great ideal either of individual or of
national life. His Athenian patriotism is
occasionally keen, but it is on the one hand
embittered with party spirit, and on the other
diluted with humane or Pan-Hellenic sentiments.
Lessons of gentleness, of home affection, of
friendship, of self-denial, he does occasionally
teach, and it is here that he shows most of a
universal, widely reaching mind.
-
But such
passages stand out as something alien from the
general scope of his work. They are like the
strawberry-plants which an artist like Conegliano
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
loves to paint in the foreground of a picture
otherwise conventional.
In Aeschylus and Sophocles, the fables in
which the people still believed are transfigured by
the alchemy of dramatic poetry. Euripides came
at a time when this was no longer possible. The
myths, whose hold is weakened while their form
is varied, become to him the vehicle for a new
mode of art, less strong and perfect, although in
some directions more genial and penetrative.
His permutations and combinations of tragic
fable could after all only be carried a little way,
while the simplicity which had characterised the
art in its great period was inevitably lost.
CHAPTER XIV
FRAGMENTS OF LOST PLAYS
THE fragments of the tragic poets are naturally
disappointing. Preserved as they have mostly
been for the sake of some general sentiment, or
some picturesque expression,-sometimes merely
to exemplify the use of an uncommon word, they
seldom throw much light upon lost plays, or even
illustrate forcibly the characteristics of the writers.
Such as they are, however, the reader is here
presented with a selection from them.
As may
be readily imagined, quotations from Euripides
are most abundant, both because he was most
in vogue in the learned Alexandrian age, and
because his love of graphic description and of
rhetorical moralising renders him a peculiarly fit
subject for the collection of elegant extracts.
The fragments are here numbered as in the
edition of Nauck.
AESCHYLUS.
The most considerable fragment of Aeschylus
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is a speech from the Prometheus Unbound which
happens to be quoted by Cicero, but unfortunately
not in the Greek. The following is a translation
of his translation:
O Titan breed, co-partners of my blood,
Heaven's offspring, see me tied and bound to a rough
Moorage of rock, as timid sailors bind
Their ship 'mid roaring surf, fearing the dark.
So Cronos' son, great Zeus, hath fixed me here,
Taking Hephaestus for his minister;
Who with fell craft wedging my sides hath cloven
My joints asunder. By such art transpierced,
I hold this fortress, garrisoned by Furies.
And now there visits me, every third morn,
Zeus' minion flapping sullen wings, and cruelly
With crooked talons, for his dire repast,
Tears me,-till sated with my liver's richness,
He screams for the universe to hear, then soars
Aloft, summing his pens, blithe with my blood.
But when the vital organ hath renewed
Its full-blown form, diminished by his beak,
Again he lights and battens greedily.
So cherish I the guard of my sad suffering,
Who stains me living with perennial pain.
Since foiled, as ye behold, with bonds from Zeus,
I cannot fray this horror from my breast.
Thus ever looking for new misery,
Anxious to die, widowed of what I was,
I long in vain to find an end of ill.
But far from death by Zeus's hest I am driven.
This torment, heaped up by the gathering years,
Ages have made inveterate on my frame,
Whence drops expressed by the too ardent sun
Steep the Caucasian rocks continually. Nauck, fr. 187.
Fragments of Lost Plays
267
This is also from the "Prometheus Unbound."
186.
The ruddy sea's empurpled floor,
Where, fast by Ocean's thundrous shore,
That fosters Aethiopia's race,
The All-seeing Sun his deathless face
And body with warm drenching laves
Of waters soft, and in mild waves,
Disporting at his journey's close,
Gives his hot coursers glad repose.
(Cp. Eur. Phaethon.)
From the "Heliades," probably treating of the
story of Phaethon.
67.
There on the westward shore
Is moored thy father's bowl, Hephaestus-wrought,
Wherein through billowy paths he passeth o'er
Even to his goal, whence Night's black steeds are brought.
From an "Europa."
94.
'Tis still the War-god's way
To reap the noblest ears o' the human grain.
From the "Myrmidons."
I 34.
Antilochus, lament me who live on,
More than the dead: my hold of life is gone.
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135.
This hath been rumoured in a Libyan tale :-
An eagle with an arrow from the bow
Death-stricken, when he saw by what device
The shaft was winged, spake thus:
With plumage from our proper pinion lent.
Herein we are shent
“Niobe.”
153.
Tantalus says—
The fields I till extend twelve journeys' space,
To the Berecynthian region, where's the shrine
Of Adrasteia: Ida's flocks and herds
Fill all the air with bleatings, and with noise
Of lowing kine. The plain is rife with cries.
I 54.
My life hath touched his zenith and now falls
Earthward, and Destiny rounds in mine ear,
Respect not human fortune overmuch."
I56.
Alone of powers divine
Death loves not gifts. None shall prevail with him
By rich drink-offering nor by sacrifice;
No altar-place, no hymns of praise are his.
Persuasion, to whom other gods give ear,
May ne'er approach him.
I57.
Near kin of gods,
Little removed from Zeus, whose altar stands
Fragments of Lost Plays 269
Sacred to Zeus their father in mid-heaven,
On Ida's height, nor is the blood divine
Yet vanished from their veins.
((
Oedipus."
167.
We came upon the three-ways parted road,
Well-marked with wheels, where the dread goddesses
Preside over the meeting of the ways.
((
Sisyphus."
226.
To a ghost.
Thou hast no muscle nor blood-furnished veins.
"Philoctetes."
250.
(Cp. Macbeth.)
O Death, great healer! scorn me not so far
To bide aloof when summoned. Thou alone
Physician art of wounds immedicable.
A dead man's corpse no sorrow cometh near.
"Hector's Ransom."
259.
Whether you would do kindness to the dead,
Or harm them, 'tis all one.
Nor joy nor grief
Finds mortals there. But Nemesis the while
Is greater than we are, and for the dead
Justice exacts return with usury.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
CC
Orithyia."
275.
Boreas loquitur.
For if I see one coal upon the hearth,
Passing within-doors with a wintry swirl,
I'll make the house one cinder, setting fire to it.
As yet my pipings lack of their true note.
From a "Tereus" (?)
Attributed to Aeschylus.
297.
The "Hoopoe."
A bold rock-bird, in armour cap-à-pie,
When spring appears, he waves the varied wing
Of the white-mottled hawk. His sire and he
Shall differ though derived from one self-womb.
But when young Autumn yellows o'er the grain,
A speckled wing again shall carry him.
And evermore hating these parts he'll fly
To other woods and hills with thickets rough.
"Ino."
305.
Atlas' seven daughters, named Peleiades,
Featherless doves, holding their altered form
Of nightly radiance, weep their father's doom
Who groans beneath the covering vault of Heaven.
Uncertain Plays.¹
Thetis complains of Apollo, who had sung at her
wedding-
340.
He sang of generations fair to be,
Of painless lives and long, and summing all
1 I.e. it is uncertain from what play each of these fragments comes.
Fragments of Lost Plays 271
My fortunes in the phrase of "God-beloved,"
He cheered my spirit with that health-fraught hymn.
And to my hope Apollo's song divine
Seemed true and pregnant with prophetic power.
But he who voiced it, he who graced that board,
He who so spake, 'tis he hath slain my son.
352.
Nor many wounds upon the breast bring death,
Unless the destined term of life be won,
Nor shall the sitter by his hearth at home
Escape, if destiny but reach the door.
342.
Fear not. The height of woe endures not long.
372.
Where strength and justice join in one endeavour,
What yokefellows can pull more mightily?
383.
A lucky fool is most unbearable.
385.
The man confirms his oath, not oaths the man.
386.
God joins His work with his who labours well.
391.
Where youth is hot and hasty, age is just.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
293.
I have learned to speak with favour of the race
Of the Ethiopian soil, where seven-streamed Nile
Rolls o'er the land his breathing water-springs ;
The fire-eyed Sun there gleaming on the earth
Melts from the rocks the snow, whence Egypt all
Flushed with the holy rills and blooming o'er
Gives forth Demeter's life-sustaining corn.
SOPHOCLES.
So far as there are any grounds in them for
forming a judgment, the student of the fragments
of Sophocles is led to believe that in many of
his plays the milder pathos of the Coloneus and
Philoctetes prevailed rather than the stern tragic
note of the first Oedipus or the Antigone. The
following are some of those in which the human
interest is most apparent :-
"Tercus."
521.
An unhappy wife (Procne ?) is longing for
her former home--
Now, parted thence, I am nothing. Ah! how oft
Have I perceived this of the woman's lot,
What nobodies we are! As girls, 'tis true,
We live sweet lives within our father's home;
For ignorance hath alway store of bliss;
But when we have reached our bloom, and gained some
sense,
Fragments of Lost Plays
273
Then we are cast off, exported, sold away
From our true parents and our fathers' gods
To foreign husbands, if not barbarous,
And to strange homes, or hostile.
In a night
Our life is changed. And, once beneath the yoke,
One needs must praise it, and declare, "All's well."
"Peleus."
444.
Old Peleus is led in by a female slave—
Sole handmaid to the son of Aeacus,
I guide his aged steps as if a child's;
For man in age is once again a child.
"Teucer."
516.
Telamon has just heard of his son Ajax's
death-
How vain, then, O my son !
How vain was my delight in thy proud fame,
Whilst I supposed thee living! The fell Fury
From her dark shroud beguiled me with sweet lies.
Tympanistae."
574.
A landsman is uncomfortable at sea-
Ah me ! What greater joy than to set foot
On shore, and there beneath a quiet roof
Hear the thick raindrops with half-slumbering ear.
T
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Uncertain Plays.
736.
A father, or paedagogus, is taking young
children to school-
Now, then, since all the holy rite is done,
Proceed we, children, to the Muses' haunt,
The halls of sage instruction and grave lore.
Add daily to your knowledge whilst ye may,
While bettering is in season. Every boy
Learns mischief of himself without a fee.
That needs not toil nor tutoring. But what's good,
Even though he find a teacher, he is slow
To acquire, and soon forgets it. Labour, then,
And watch 'gainst idleness, my boys, for fear
Ye should be thought the sons of ignorant men,
Or of a roving, home-neglecting sire.¹
((
Eriphyle."
199.
Depart! you trouble Sleep, the healer of woe.2
Uncertain Plays.
858.
This is said of a widowed mother—
With a man's mind she guards her orphaned home.
784.
This, of a perverse temper
Much need of curbs, ay, and of rudders too.
¹ There is some doubt whether these lines belong to Sophocles
or not,
2
Reading ἀπελθέ, κινεῖς κ.τ.λ.
Fragments of Lost Plays
275
"Phaedra."
614.
Phaedra entreats her handmaids to keep her
secret.
Feel for me, and betray not. Though 'tis hard
For women to keep counsel, yet should women
Help woman to conceal her sex's shame.
Uncertain Plays.
868.
A bereaved person wishes for death-
A. I long to die and go to him!
B.
No haste!
Doubt not of winning to thy destined goal.
786.
"Like the snowflake on the river
My lot still changes hue. The whirling wheel
Of Providence exalts it and brings down.
So the moon's radiant visage never stays
Two nights together in one form, but first
Peers forth from nothingness with youthful mien,
Then brightening moves and rounding to the full,
Till, just as she attains her noblest show,
She wanes, and dwindles back to nothingness.
753.
One of the Mystae reflects on the happiness
of his condition-
Thrice blest is he
Who sees these rites ere he depart. For him
Hades is life, for others naught but woe.
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662.
Deep wits and sage philosophers you'll find
Like our friend here, perfect in counselling
The poor unfortunate. But let Fate cross
The jauntiest of them all, and scourge him backward,
Where's his philosophy? 'Tis no more seen.
"Laocoön."
344.
Toil, that is past, is sweet.
(C
Thyestes."
239.
There is a pleasure even in words that bring
Forgetfulness of present misery.
"Achaean Assembly."
I 46.
Of memory-
Blest power that holds
The narrow isthmus of our little life
Out of the seas of Time.
"Achilles' Lovers."
I 54.
Sweet and bitter fancy"—
Love's malady, this torment we desire.
'Twere an apt likeness to compare it thus:
When Frost reigns from the sky, and children seize
On blocks of ice, the newly-felt delight
Fragments of Lost Plays
277
Is unalloyed at first, but presently,
Thrilled by the smart, they neither will let go
Nor can they hold their treasure without pain.
Even so one passion at one time enforces.
Our lover both to do and to forbear.
“ Nauplius.”
398.
To men unfortunate one night is ten;
But to glad feasters morning comes unsought.¹
1
((
Rhizotomi."
490.
An invocation—
Helios, lord of light, and thou,
Holy flame on Hecat's brow,
Onward borne as still she moves
Through Olympus and Earth's groves,
Hallowing every triple way
With a consecrating ray ;
Crown'd with oak and the divine
Horror of the serpent-twine!
"Creisa."
328.
'Tis noblest to be righteous; best to live
Free from disease; but pleasantest to have
One's wish, whate'er it be, from day to day.
323.
This is most painful, when the man who might
Mend all brings down the trouble on his head.
1 Reading εὖ παθόντα δ' ἡμέρα φθάνει.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
"Thyestes."
235.
Description of the fabulous Nysaean Mount—
There Bacchus' grape is ripened in a day.
Bright morning sees the tendril and the flower;
By noon green fruit hath formed, and ere the sun
Declines, the clusters redden more and more,
Till toward eve the vintage, fully ripe,
Is cut and gathered, and the vats o'erflow.
CC
Tyndareis."
583.
Ne'er count good fortune blessedness until
The man's full life is finished.
Little time
Suffices the bad Genius to bring down
Great wealth, through God-sent mutability,
And the dire potency of dangerous gifts.
Uncertain Play.
824.
From one deep fountain sorrow and delight
Both spring.
Else why should joy give birth to tears?
"Hipponois."
Then hide thou nothing.
280.
Time, who sees and hears
All that is done or said, unfoldeth all.
Of contemporaries of Sophocles who may be
counted anterior to Euripides the most important
are Ion and Neophron.
Fragments of Lost Plays
279
Here are some of Ion's short fragments, freely
rendered:
"Know thou thyself"-'tis but a little word;
But, for the task, it passes human power.
The dying game-bird,
His body all wounds, his eyeballs bleeding sore,
Still breathes of battle, and with fading strength
Crows faintly, choosing death before disgrace.
The poor huntsman.
A little bird-lime and a hazel rod,
And web of Egypt-netted flaxen thread,
Fettering the wild-fowl, are my means of food.
The foot-race prize.
You shall obtain a gift worth running for-
A cup of fluted wood, untouched by fire,
That Castor's swiftness won from Pelias' hand.
From the "Phoenix"
On shore I praise the lion's open war
More than the hedgehog's wretched craftiness.
When he perceives his mightier coming on,
He rolls himself into a bristly ball,
To teeth and claws alike invulnerable.
Here follows the speech of Ncophron's Medca,
to which reference was made above in Chap. X. :-
Well, then, O passionate heart, what wilt thou do?
Take thought, ere by thine error thou hast made
The sweetest bonds most bitter.
What impulse carries thec away?
Hapless one,
Restrain
*
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
This hideous valour, this god-hated might!—
Nay, why this whining strain? since I behold
My life deserted and despised of those
Who most should love me.
Shall I yield, forsooth,
To soft compunction, when thus deeply wronged?
O passionate heart, be true to thine own cause.
My resolution's taken. Alas, my children,
Go from my sight! A tide of murderous frenzy
O'erflows my mighty spirit. O hands of mine,
For what a deed we are taking arms to-day!
Woe's me for the resolve wherewith I go
To bring to nothingness in one short hour
The fruit of my sore travail and long care!
The following is a fragment from Achaeus of
Eretria describing young Hellenes at play
Naked they plied their splendid arms, with youth
O'erbrimming, and their brawny shoulders, bright
With fresh-laid oil and rounded perfectness.
While on their chests and on their gleaming feet
Dropped the rich unguent from luxurious homes.
EURIPIDES.
The preservation of more fragments of Euripides
than of his two predecessors is due to several
causes.
1. His plays were more in vogue in Alexandrian
times, and in most subsequent ages have been
more popular on account of their literary and
rhetorical brilliancy.
Fragments of Lost Plays
281
2. Not only are quotations from him more
frequent and more extensive, but fragments of
early copies of his lost works have actually been
found. An event which caused no small com-
motion in the learned world in the year 1821
was the discovery of part of the Phaethon in a
palimpsest of the sixth century, forming part of
the Claromontane Codex (now at Paris) of the
Epistles of St. Paul.
3. In the present generation at least one con-
siderable portion of a play of Euripides (viz. the
Antiopa) has been found on an Egyptian papyrus
of the Alexandrian age.
4. Aristophanes delighted in parodying Euri-
pides, and many rather tantalising echoes have
been thus handed down.
Of lost plays of Euripides, those of which the
most considerable fragments are preserved are the
Phaethon, the Erechtheus, the Antiopa, and the
Andromeda.
1. Phaëthon, as the reputed son of Merops,
king of the Orient, is about to be married, when
his mother reveals to him his true origin. He
forms the daring wish to guide his father's chariot
for a day. It is reluctantly granted, and while
the preparations for the marriage ceremony are in
full course his fatal fall is reported.
2. Erechtheus devotes his daughter as a sacri-
fice to secure victory in the war between Athens
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
and Eleusis.
Mr. Swinburne's splendid treatment
of this subject is well known.
3. Amphion and Zethus, sons of Zeus by
Antiopa, daughter of Nycteus of Thebes, had
grown up as peasants in ignorance of their origin.
Zethus takes kindly to useful arts, but Amphion is
devoted to the Muse. They are disputing as to
the value of their respective occupations, when
Antiopa finds them and unveils the truth. She is
persecuted by Lycus, who has usurped the king-
dom of his brother Nycteus, and by his wife Dircè,
who in the guise of a Bacchanal is ranging the
hills. The boys seize Dircè and tie her to a furious.
bull. They then inveigle Lycus and bind him also
for death. But at the critical moment Hermes
appears, Lycus is spared, and Amphion becomes
king of Thebes, which by the music of his lyre he
miraculously builds anew.
4. Perseus, on his return from killing the
Gorgon, rescues Andromeda from the sea-monster.
Fragments from "Phaethon."
775.
(A bridal morning in the land of the Sun.)
Ch. Lightly moves the morning breeze
And among the dewy trees.
Never-wearied Philomel
Sings her dirge for Itys well.
Hark! amid the mountain firs
Fragments of Lost Plays
283
What's the sound that newly stirs?
'Tis the shepherd's pipe I hear,
And his flock are bleating near.
To the pasture now repair
Colt and filly, horse and mare,
Wakened by the wakening morn.
Now I hear the hunters' horn,
As they ride the forest-way,
Bent the silly deer to slay.
By broad Ocean's rippling rim
Peals the swan her tuneful hymn,
While on his smooth breast afloat
Safely rides the rowing-boat,
And the ship with lordly sail
Glides where freshening winds prevail.
771.
The scene is laid in the land
Which Helios from behind his fiery team
First in uprising strikes with golden flame :
Called by the dark-hued race of neighbouring men
The Orient, or the stable of the Sun.
757.
A friend offers consolation to the mother of Phaëthon.
Ch. Take thou what comfort I can yield thee, lady.
No mortal lives whom sorrow findeth not.
He buries children: others then are born:
Then he too dies; and men complain that earth
To earth is carried! 'Tis Necessity
Bids life, like ears of grain, be carted home;
That one should go, one come. Why then complain
At that which Nature in her course requires?
Naught that must be hath terror for the wise.
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((
"Bellerophon."
310.
Give way, thou shady leafage, let me pass
Beyond the hollow where fresh waters glide.
I long to see above my head the sky
And know what station radiant Phoebe holds.
"Erechtheus."
362.
Praxithea. I will give my child for death.
reasons for it
Are many.
First, no state compares with Athens,
Whose people are not brought from distant lands.
This Earth's true children we! Nations elsewhere,
Shifted upon the chessboard of the world,
Not rooted in the soil, but mortised on,
Or dovetailed, like a clumsy joiner's work,
Are states in name, but really mobs of men.
Then, wherefore have we children, but to shield
Our sacred altars and dear native land?
Had I a son, and fierce invasion's fire
Threatened my city, should I spare to send him,
Fearing his death?
Let not my children be
Mere lovely shapes i' the city, but defend her.
The men who fall in battle share a grave
In common and find equal fame.
But she,
My child, shall have one single glorious crown,
Dying alone for her whole country's safety.
My
Fragments of Lost Plays
285
364.
(Erechtheus before going to battle gives this
charge to his son.)
Well asked, dear boy! 'Tis time, for now thy wit
Is crescent, and thy mind can register
Thy father's precepts, to advise thee well
And give thee counsel fitted for thy youth-
A precious heirloom for thee, should I die.
First ever keep a gentle heart in thee,
To worship equally the rich and poor
With kind observance and just clemency.
Of lines of conduct offered to thy mind,
Choose one decisively, and leave the other.
Follow not wrongful gain, if thou wouldst dwell
Long time in a safe hall: what comes within
Through wickedness hath no security.
Yet look thou gain. For wealth gives nobleness
And brings great marriages within thy reach.
Since poverty stands ever low in fame,
And reaps neglect, how rich soe'er in wisdom.
The friends that yield not readily in talk
Bind to thee. But to him still bar thy door
Whose vice would pander to thy weak desire.
Seek old and reverend company: but hate
The wits that minister to laughter merely.
Bad pleasures yield but shallow brief delight.
Nor follow, when occasion gives thee power,
My son, base loves among the common people.
That brings the knife, the halter, after it,
To shame the offspring of poor honest men.
Never exalt bad men within the state;
For wickedness enriched or dowered with rule
Grows wanton when unlooked-for luck befalls.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Give me thy hand, dear son; come near!
Farewell!
Respect forbids to dwell too much on parting.
It were not manly. So! Once more, farewell!
"Archelais."
257.
Think you to overcome the gods in wit,
Supposing Justice far removed from men?
Justice is near at hand, and unperceived
Sees who deserves her chastisement. Thou know'st not
What time with sudden swoop she'll quell the wicked.
(C
Cresphontes."
462.
Deep fount of wealth, fairest of blessed powers,
Peace, how I murmur at thy long delay.
I burn with jealous fears, lest age o'erwhelm me,
Oppressed with toils, ere I behold thy face,
Thy blooming loveliness, thy revelry,
Thy garlands, thy gay dances, and thy songs.
Come, goddess, to my city! Drive away
From this our home dire Faction's hateful brood,
And frenzied Feud, that loves the sharpened steel.
(C
Melanippè."
508.
Think you transgressions mount on wings to heaven,
And that some scribe records them in a book,
Where Zeus beholds them and so judges men?
The sky would not suffice for such a scroll,
And time would fail him to o'erlook and punish.
Justice is here at hand, would ye but see.
Fragments of Lost Plays
287
(C
Alopè."
II 2.
Why labour to admonish womankind?
Since those well nurtured, and with greatest care,
Deceive us worse than those we cared not for.
"Bellerophon."
288.
God sides with the greater battalions.
Will any tell me there are gods in heaven?
No gods! No gods! 'Tis but the foolish talk
Of men who let tradition sway their minds.
Consider, not my words, but what ye see.
What spills more lives or reaves more wealth away
Than tyranny? What breaks more oaths across,
Or sacks more cities? Yet the men who do it
Are happier than the quiet harmless souls
That practise piety from day to day.
Small cities honouring the gods aright
Yield to the greater that with impious force
O'erbear them by the number of their spears.
"Archelais."
230.
Danaüs, the father of the fifty maids,
Left Egypt's soil and Nilus' healthful stream,
Who fills his current from the southward realm
Of Ethiopia's swarthy race, whene'er
The Sun's hot team, careering through the land,
Melts the pure mountain snow. To Argolis
He came, and founded Inachus' fair town ;
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
And from thenceforward made the custom hold
Pelasgia's stock should have the Danaän name
Through Hellas.
"Andromeda."
512.
One was fortunate,
But God hath hidden what formerly was bright.
Even as the wind prevaileth, human life
And fortune bend and turn.
118.
The maiden is alone with her condoling friends-
Cease, Echo, in thy cave!
Leave me and these dear maids to take our fill
Of weeping.
I 19.
Share thou my pain, since he who lives in woe
Lightens his load through tearful fellowship.
146.
The future daily affrights us. Still we deem
Ills apprehended worse than present pain.
123.
Perscus arrives :
Pers. O Heaven! to what barbarian dwelling-place
With winged sandals have I sped, advancing
Through midmost ether my plume-wafted feet?
Fragments of Lost Plays
289
I24.
He sees Andromeda—
How strange! I see a rocky bluff, all round
Washed with sea-foam, and there a maiden form
In native perfectness of chiselled beauty
Wrought cunningly by some unrivalled hand.
(C
131.
These woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our time to come."
Sweet after rescue to recall past woe.
I 39.
He feels that he has been too impetuous-
Love hurries me along-then from my words
Cull forth the better meaning. Love is blind,
And rules the worser moiety of the mind.
135.
The Messenger describes the scene-
The shepherd-folk were flocking to her there,
One fetching her of milk an ivied bowl
To yield her woes relief, and one the cheer
Of grape-juice from the vine.
"Phrixus."
832.
Whoe'er of mortals thinks, day after day,
In doing evil to elude the gods,
U
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
His thought is wicked, and conviction waits him.
When Justice finds herself at leisure, then
He'll suffer retribution for his crime.
((
Antigone."
176.
Death is to men an end of controversy.
Nought reaches beyond that.
Say, who shall wound
The stony precipice and make it smart?
Or who shall touch with shame the senseless dead?
((
Antiopa."
207.
Ant. If I and my two sons are God-forgotten,
It is not strange. Of the great world of men
Some must be wretched, and some fortunate.
183
Each hastens to that work, and gives to that
His most of time, wherein he most excels.
184.
Zethus to Amphion-
A strange pursuit, a muse unprofitable,
Thou wouldst bring in, a friend to idleness,
A lover of wine, neglecting industry.
212.
Repletion waits on all things.
I have seen
Fair wives deserted in a passionate mood
For plainness, and the guest, whom feasts have cloyed,
Gladly regaled at an ill-furnished board.
Fragments of Lost Plays
291
219.
Three virtues thou must practise, O my son-
Honour to Heaven, and to thy parents dear,
And Pan-hellenic laws. Performing this,
Thou still shalt wear the wreath of fair renown.
Additional fragments from the Antiopa.
1
N.B.-The new fragments of the Antiopa are
freely rendered from a text restored to a great
extent conjecturally (and perhaps rashly) by the
present writer.
If taxed for this, he can only
shelter himself under the authority of Goethe,
who writes as follows of his own proceeding in a
similar case (Goethe's Sämmtliche Werke, ed. 1854,
vol. xxvi. p. 348):-
einer
Die gewagte Restauration besteht also aus
Göttling'schen Uebersetzung der von Ritter Hermann
mitgetheilten Fragmente, aus den sonstigen Bruchstücken
und aus eigenen eingeschalteten und verbindenden
Zeilen. Diese drei verschiedenen Elemente liess ich ohne
weitere Andeutung, wie solches wohl durch Zeichen hätte
geschehen können, gesammt abdrucken; der einsichtige
Gelehrte unterscheidet sie selbst, die Freunde der Dichtung
hingegen würden nur gestört ; und da die Aufgabe war,
etwas zerstücktes wenigstens einigermassen als ein Ganzes
erscheinen zu lassen, so fand ich keinen Beruf, mir meine
Arbeit selbst zu zerstücken.
New fragment (restored).2
Amphion . . . To kill such women were for me a joy.
1 Published in Hermathena, No. xvii. 1891. 2 See p. 248.
292
Guide to Greek Tragedy
Lycus. 'Twere danger, sure, to let such horror live.
Amph. To work then! For her sons, I know they're dead.
Lyc. Let us address ourselves,—if thou know'st that.
Amph. By going within the humble dwelling-place,
Where he and I, this while, inhabit, sir.
Lyc. What of the strangers? May I speak with them?
Amph. If you but leave your guard without the door.
Lyc. There, I dismiss them. I alone remain.
Amph. We three will manage rightly what ensues.
Lyc. How many are the strangers ? Tell me that.
Amph. A handful, and unarmed.
Lyc. (to his guards.)
Stand ye without
And watch the mountain-ways on every side.
Amph. Meanwhile I will deliver to thy hand
The child of Nycteus.-She shall find, I warrant
her . .
Lyc. (from within). My henchmen, one and all, to the
rescue, ho!
Cho. Shout! Raise the cry! Let the wild notes resound!
Lyc. O City of Cadmus by Asopus' stream!
Cho. The hour arrives.
The day of retribution and of blood.
Justice is slow of gait, but when she comes
She falls unlooked-for on each impious head.
Lyc. Alas! I have no helper. Two will slay me.
Cho. Groan'st thou not also for thy consort slain?
Lyc. Slain is she? That were an unheard-of woe.
Cho. Yea, dragged and torn, tied to a raging bull.
Lyc. By whom? By you? That also I would know.
Amph. Thou shalt know soon, inquiring of the dead.
Lyc. Ye are cruel men. Who is your sire, I wonder?
Amph. Why ask? When thou art dead, thou shalt know all.
Fragments of Lost Plays
293
Hermes (to Lycus). When thou shalt bury her,¹ cast her
on the pyre,
Gathering the wretched fragments of her form,
Then shed the ashes of her bones consumed
Into the fount of Ares, that the stream
Which passes thence to water all your town
And kindly irrigates the Theban plain
May bear the name of Dircè to all time.
(To the Cho.) And ye, when Cadmus' people now are
pure,
Go, all of you, beyond Ismenus' stream
Prepare a new and seven-gated town.
(To Zethus.) Thou, Zethus, take a weapon of your foes
And mark the city's circuit. Then shalt thou,
(To Amphion) Amphion, lyre in hand, lead forth the
hymn
Praising the gods, when, lo! a miracle!
The stubborn rocks responding to the strain
Shall come about thee in close order ranged,
Charmed to civility. And when that ground
Affords a solid basement thus prepared,
Your mother's image, curiously wrought,
Thou shalt uplift and place there.
Such reward.
Zeus hath appointed and I give to thee,-
Even in the place, where thou didst find, Amphion,
This unexpected boon. Ye shall be called
The twin white colts of Zeus, and evermore
Hold supreme honour 'mong Cadmeian men.
And one of you shall have a Theban wife,
The other a fair bride from Phrygian land,
Tantalus' daughter.-Now with happy speed
Fulfil the part god hath sent forth to-day,
And with good comfort hie the leftward way.
Lyc. What strange surprises lurk in Zeus's will
1 Dircè, the wife of Lycus.
i
etc.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Among the successors of Euripides, Chaeremon,
the “fleshly” poet, was distinguished as the author
of the Centaur, a drama in various metres (cp. the
Indian Theatre, e.g. Sakuntalá). The only con-
siderable fragment of his work, however, is in the
regular Iambic measure, and seems to be a
description of sleeping Bacchanals. As a piece
of word-painting it is remarkable. The subject
of the play was Oeneus (father of Tydeus and of
Deianira).
One lay reclined, displaying to the Moon.
Her milk-white bosom loosened from the vest.
Another's dancing had undone the robe
From her left flank :-the white complexion there
Beamed to the eye, set off by darkling shade.
And one's resplendent arms were bared to view
As she enclasped her neighbour's yielding neck.
Another from beneath the parted fold
Of her rent garment showed a gleaming thigh,
While on the virgin bloom that smiled therefrom
Love without Hope had set his maddening seal.
O'ercome by slumber on soft flowers they fell,
Crushing the violets' petals purple-grained,
And crocus, that upon their robes distilled
A sunlike glory shadowed from the gold.
And lush amaracus refreshed with dew
Pillowed their heads on tracts of verdure sweet.
As a specimen of the kind of thing which
tragedy became amongst the successors of
Euripides, the following fragment of a Sisyphus
Fragments of Lost Plays
295
by Critias, the uncle of Plato and one of the Thirty
Tyrants, may perhaps suffice :—
Time was the life of man was void of rule,
Like that of beasts, subserving strength alone,
When no reward was offered to the good
Nor chastisement prescribed for wrongdoers.
Then after that, methinks, mankind ordained
Laws to chastise the bad, that right might rule,
And quell brute insolence.
•
If any sinned, he found the penalty.
Now, when the laws restrained from open crime
And outward violence, but still men sinned
In secret, then, methinks, some cunning wight,
Of wit more searching than his fellows, found
A fear to terrify whoe'er of men
Did, spake, or thought, even in his secret heart,
A wicked deed, bad word, or foul design.
He brought in godhead to the world, and taught
How deity exists immortally
And blooms for ever and sees all, and knows,
Attends, is conscious, wears a perfect form;
So that whate'er is spoken in the world
He hears, whate'er is done he witnesseth.
And though in silence you devise the sin,
The gods are 'ware of it, for perfect thought
Is theirs. So reasoning, he introduced.
A doctrine welcome to the world, and wrapped
In figments what he held for truth. He said
God dwelt-even there, where feigning such abode
He most might fright his hearers,—in the sky,
The wide circumference, from whence he knew
Men took their terrors and their joys to boot
In this their little life of wretchedness:
Whence lightnings flash and thunders scare mankind,
296
Guide to Greek Tragedy
And sun and stars shed radiance, garnishings
Of Time the decorator, artist good.
Thence shoots the meteor, thence distils the shower.
Such terrors he established all around
The life of mortals, and for that effect
Assigned to God a fitting dwelling-place.
Thus lawlessness by law was tamed and quenched,
And thus, methinks, some man to us unknown
Persuaded mortals to believe in gods.
"The wheel was come full circle" when tragic
persons could discourse thus frigidly about
religious belief.
CHAPTER XV
ILLUSTRATION: THE STORY OF CAMBYSES
ADAPTED FOR A TRAGIC FABLE
IN Chapter IV. it has been observed that the
Greek tragic poet of the best period was severely
restricted in his choice of subjects (1) by the
requirements of his audience, who demanded
something associated with their national tradi-
tions, and (2) by the conditions of his art, which,
the more clearly they came to be understood,
more imperatively prescribed the selection from
the cycle of Hellenic story of those fables which
had the tragic note in them. If the "best period'
could have been prolonged, if other poets of equal
originality had arisen to reawaken and satisfy the
taste which had been cultivated by Sophocles,
it is probable that, as the narrowness of local
patriotism was modified, many of the life-histories,
which Herodotus and other Greek historians had
so vividly told, might have been dramatised with
effect.
298
Guide to Greek Tragedy
It may therefore not be wholly extravagant
if, as an illustration of the views advanced in
the preceding pages, I attempt to show how
the story of Cambyses, for example, could be
arranged for treatment in an Athenian drama.
The reader must forget
must forget Falstaff's burlesque
allusion to "King Cambyses' vein," as well as
Thomas Preston's "Lamentable tragedy, mixed
full of pleasant mirth, containing the life of
Cambyses, King of Persia," except in so far as
these mock-heroics imply a sense of what is
really tragic in the old tale.
There is one great preliminary difficulty to
be overcome before the Cambyses of history
(for whom see Dict. of Class. Biography) can
be transformed into a hero of tragedy. The
Cambyses of Herodotus is passionate enough,
and abundantly unfortunate, but sadly wanting
in nobility. He is altogether too lawless, too
utterly self-willed, too barbarous to enlist our
sympathy. If he is to interest a Greek audience,
the worst features of his life must be suppressed,
and his excesses must be attributed to the per-
version of high motives. Some colour for this
is afforded by his dying speech (Her. iii. 65), in
which he shows a real solicitude for the Persian
name. With this proviso the argument might
run somewhat as follows:
((
Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Great, having
The Story of Cambyses
299
subdued Egypt, resolves to extend the Persian
empire and religion over the whole of Africa.
He sends armies against Carthage and against
the Ammonian oasis, and himself marches into
Ethiopia. But one army is baffled, another
overwhelmed, and his own troops are worn by
famine and compelled to return. His fiery
patriotism and fanatical zeal are only increased
by this, and while the Egyptians are in high
festival on the apparition of Apis, he insults
their god. As he is glorying in this achievement
and boasting high things, he is warned in a dream.
that the kingdom is to be taken from him and
given to Smerdis. This leads to his crowning
guilt the assassination of his brother Smerdis by
his command. No sooner is this accomplished
than the news arrives that Smerdis-the Magian,
as it proves has usurped the throne. Cambyses
hastily mounts his charger to return, but is
accidentally wounded by his own sword, and in
a dying state gives the Persian nobles around.
him his last commands."
The character of Cambyses would be contrasted
on the one hand with that of his sister, who might
be named Parysatis, and on the other with that
of his confidential minister, Praxaspes. The aged.
Croesus would supply the place of Teiresias, as
a kind of seer. The dramatis personae are then
as follows:-
300
Guide to Greek Tragedy
PARYSATIS, sister of Cambyses.
PRAXASPES, his prime minister.
A MESSENGER.
CHORUS of Persian elders.
CAMBYSES, King of Persia.
HERALD.
SECOND MESSENGER.
The groundwork being so far prepared, we
may attempt the following scenario:-
PARYSATIS.
Prologos.
PRAXASPES.
Parysatis confides to Praxaspes her anxiety
for her two brothers, (1) for Cambyses, who is
on the verge of madness, (2) for Smerdis, who
is left in charge at home. Cambyses is returned
from Ethiopia disappointed, weakened, over-
strained. What if the other expeditions to
Carthage and to Ammon have likewise failed?
Will he not pass all bounds? Praxaspes also
owns to his anxiety (1) for Persia, (2) for his
own children, (3) for his lord Cambyses. Not
only the king's disappointment is to be feared,
but his zeal for Persia and for Ormuzd. Has
Parysatis heard that bull Apis, the epiphany of
Osiris, has just appeared?
The Messenger now arrives and reports the
failure of the armies.
The Story of Cambyses
301
Parodos.
CHORUS.
The Egyptians are slaves to Persia. Yet they
rejoice. Wherefore? Because three Persian hosts
have been destroyed? Think of the millions yet
in reserve! Some friends are lost, but many more.
remain. But they rejoice with a religious joy.
Their gods, perchance, have inflicted on us these
wounds. Yet let us not insult the people who are
in festival, but honour King Nomos, though in a
strange land. The divine has many forms. Who
can tell if Apis be not Ormuzd in disguise?
First Epeisodion.
CAMBYSES.
CHORUS.
Cambyses enters with a blood-stained sword,
and recounts his feat upon the bull Apis. He
vents his wrath on the Egyptian gods, who have
sent famine and the sandstorm on the armies of
Persia. No gods of flesh and blood shall triumph
over Ormuzd and the seed of Cyrus.
First Stasimon.
CHORUS.
(1) Will Cambyses, our lord, escape from
heavenly wrath? He is already inclined to frenzy.
The seed of the Achaemenidae hath still been rash.
(2) This deed is terrible. Dreadful was the
302 Guide to Greek Tragedy
famine in the forest: first they lived on the
insane root, then ate each other. Dreadful
the sand-whirlwind that overwhelmed the fifty
thousand. But more dreadful is the guilt now
incurred, the anger of a people whose religion
is outraged, perchance also the fury of their gods.
Second Epeisodion.
CAMBYSES.
PRAXASPES.
Cambyses tells his dream: how Smerdis was
sitting in his throne, his head reaching the sky.
But Cambyses will not brook that another should
sit in the seat of Cyrus. Either he, Cambyses,
must exalt the greatness of the Persian name, or
the universe may go to wreck.
Praxaspes replies submissively, deprecating
evil. Cambyses gives him sealed orders, and exit.
Praxaspes claims the sympathy of the Chorus.
Should aught untoward result from this com-
mission, let the blame rest on him whose will
cannot be resisted.
Second Stasimon.
CHORUS.
(1) The Chorus find the situation increasingly
grave. This may only be the beginning of
troubles. The moods of princes are to be feared.
(2) Dreams give a wonderful impression of
reality, but are not always true. Cambyses'
The Story of Cambyses
303
dream may have been sent by a deceiving god,
perhaps by Osiris. The event must show.
Third Epeisodion.
PARYSATIS-CAMBYSES—PRAXASPES—HERALD.
After a scene between Parysatis and Cam-
byses, in which the king grows more and more
violent, Praxaspes returns. He is welcomed and
goes in with Cambyses to the palace. Parysatis
remains and, in lyrics from the stage (Com-
mation), complains to the Chorus of the misery of
her lot. They sympathise with her. Praxaspes
comes forth again, and after securing from all
present a promise of secrecy, confesses the truth
-Smerdis, son of Cyrus and brother of Cam-
byses, is no more. Parysatis goes silently within.
The Herald then arrives, and Cambyses is
called forth. The Herald reports that Smerdis is
on the throne. Cambyses rages at Praxaspes,
who insists that the king's order was obeyed.
Cambyses orders the son of Praxaspes to be
arrested as a hostage.
forth by the guards.
go within.
Praxaspes himself is led
Cambyses and the Herald
Third Stasimon.
CHORUS.
(1) The Chorus give utterance to their con-
sternation. They recall the greatness of Cyrus,
his wisdom, his temperance, his personal bravery.
304
Guide to Greek Tragedy
Yet how sad his end!
They remember also the
youthful promise of Cambyses, his generous ardour,
his accomplishments, his feats of strength.
(2) Now, what is the condition of the royal.
home? Disorder, fratricidal. feud, and usurpation
—by a brother or a stranger?
(3) Thus it comes to pass when men mount
high in pride. They fall down low.
(4) Destruction of three armies, the outrage of
sanctities, madness, and loss of empire (here the
least of ills) are together fallen on Cambyses.
Fourth Epeisodion.
CROESUS.
CAMBYSES.
Croesus enters, supported by a slave, and calls
forth Cambyses. He soothes his rage and
prevails on him to cross-examine the Herald. In
the course of this dialogue a light breaks on the
leader of the Chorus. "Smerdis" is no other
than the Magian whom Cambyses left in charge
of his treasures. The king is suddenly convinced
of this orders the release of Praxaspes (whose
son is unfortunately already slain), and calls to
horse. Then exeunt.
:
Hyporchema.
CHORUS.
The Chorus hereupon break out in an excited
strain of mingled grief and hopefulness-appealing
Illustration
305
to the Sun and all the gods not to allow the
Empire to pass away from the Achaemenian
name.
Fifth Epeisodion.
The Second Messenger enters in haste and
reports that in mounting his horse Cambyses has
accidentally been wounded by his own sword in
the very place where he had wounded the bull.
The narrative ended, Cambyses is brought in on
a litter, accompanied by Croesus, who speaks of
his own old sorrows and attempts to console the
dying king. The suicide of Parysatis is reported
and her corpse disclosed. Cambyses then
addresses the Chorus, lamenting his own errors.
and exhorting his friends to vindicate the Persian
name. He blames his flatterers, who when they
could find no law to justify his acts, invented the
other law, "The king can do his will."
The Commos follows, in which Cambyses,
Croesus, and the Chorus lament antiphonally
together.
Exodus and Exodion.
As he is carried into the palace to die, the
leader of the Chorus moralises the situation in a
few impressive lines.
A romantic drama of the milder Euripidean
type, or, as Dryden phrases it, one of "that
X
306
Guide to Greek Tragedy
inferior sort of tragedies which end with a
prosperous event," might have been founded on
the story of Democedes (see Dict. of Class. Bio-
graphy).
The opening scene would introduce him in the
dungeon, conversing with the soothsayer, his
fellow-captive, who would prophesy good. A
Chorus of Persians might admire the Greek
physician while remaining loyal to Darius, whose
sprained ankle would be the first complication,
leading to the order for the physician's release.
Then would follow the enrichment of Democedes,
told by a messenger; his longing for home (here the
presence of the Chorus would be a difficulty); the
delicacy of his relations with Atossa; his inter-
view with Darius, whom he deceives by refusing
to unfurnish his house in Susa. His departure
would be the crisis of the play; and the sequel,
including his voyage and the parting message,
"I am married to Milo's daughter," would again
be reported in Euripidean narrative by the
captain of the Persian crew. If Crotona had had
a native drama, and if Democedes had attained
to heroic honours there, such a play might have
been not impossible.
It would be wearisome to follow up these
hints, else it might be shown how plays of the
romantic order might have been founded on the
The Story of Democedes
307
history of Dorieus, and of his friend Philip of
Crotona.
The motive for touching so far upon a doubtful
theme has been (1) to illustrate some points of
tragic method, and (2) to accentuate the inevitable
limitations to which tragic poetry in Greece had
to conform.
CHAPTER XVI
HOW TO ENJOY GREEK TRAGEDY ¹
(A Lecture)
DION CHRYSOSTOMUS, the rhetorician and Pro-
fessor of Literature, who flourished towards the
end of the first century A.D., tells in one of his
lucubrations how he has spent a day of leisure in
reading to himself for pastime three great dramas
on the same subject-Philoctetes at Lemnos-by
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. He remarks
that he has thus been enabled, at small cost, to
be his own choragus, his own chorus (or acting
company), and his own judge. He possessed
some advantages which are denied to the modern
student. Classical Greek, if not his native
language (he was born in Bithynia), was at least
a living language to him, and he had a much
larger dramatic repertory-so far as the Greek
theatre is in question-at his command. But
¹ Books to consult : Papers by Fleeming Jenkin, ed. R. L.
Stevenson, vol. i.; Jebb's Oed. Rex, Appendix on Harvard perform-
ance; Soph. in Eng. Verse, Prefatory Note.
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
309
there is no reason why an analogous enjoyment
should not be in some measure
measure attainable by
English students, or even by the “English
reader."
Under the present heading I propose to con-
sider-
1. Translations in prose and verse (rhymed or
unrhymed).
2. Dramatic reading.
3. Representation on the stage in Greek or
English.
The direct knowledge of the Greek tragedians
was but little promoted in England by the furore
for classical translation otherwise so prevalent at
the Revival of Learning. Gascoigne's Jocasta, an
adaptation of the Phoenissae of Euripides, is the
only Greek play that is known to have appeared
so early in an English dress. The Electra and
Antigone of Sophocles had been translated and
imitated in France and Italy, but do not appear
to have been rendered into our language even at
second-hand. English students of the drama
contented themselves with Seneca. The Electra
of Sophocles was rendered into Dutch by J. Vondel
about 1640. And, possibly suggested by this, the
Electra of Christopher Wase was printed at the
Hague in 1649. It is a strange production,
dedicated to the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of
Charles I., who by implication is compared to
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Electra, her brother to Orestes, and the late
martyred sovereign to Agamemnon. The render-
ing, which follows Sophocles pretty closely, is in
rhymed heroic verse throughout. About a century
afterwards, Lewis Theobald made a more serious
attempt, and rendered four plays of Sophocles into
very tolerable blank verse; the choral portions,
however, as in Browning's rendering of the Alcestis,
being given in the same metre.
Francklin's Sophocles (1759) was the first com-
plete translation of a Greek tragic poet.
It was
perhaps suggested by the French version of
Brumoy, contained in his Theatre of the Ancients
(1749). Potter's Aeschylus followed next; and the
same diligent Greek Professor also gave a complete
translation in verse first of Euripides and finally
of Sophocles. The choral odes are in the manner
of Gray.
Since that time translations, both in prose
and verse, of all the tragic poets have been not
infrequent, and some favourite plays, such as the
Oedipus Tyrannus, the Agamemnon, the Antigone,
and the Prometheus, have been attempted often-
times.
Two questions with regard to the translation.
of ancient poetry have been much disputed.
First, as between verse and prose; and secondly,
if verse is preferable, whether the metre of the
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
311
A further
original should not be closely imitated.
question, but one of minor import, is whether
lyrics should be rhymed or not.
1. The alternative of verse or prose does not
bear in my opinion to be put quite simply. For,
first of all, it should be considered with reference.
to the language into which the translation is to be
made. French prose is one thing, English prose
another. In the next place, the kind of poetry to
be translated must be taken into the account. A
different method may be right for epic, lyric, idyllic,
and dramatic poetry. The Odyssey, which is a
narrative poem, has been rendered into English
prose more perfectly than has been hitherto done
in verse. But a heroic drama in prose, though
never so well written, would seem unnatural and
tame to English readers. If the drama is to be
rendered as a drama, that is to say, in a form in
which it might be put upon the stage, any other
medium than blank verse for the dialogue is
hardly admissible.
The more difficult point of the choral odes
of course remains. If what is called the level
portion is in verse, the part characterised by
lyrical exaltation cannot be in prose; but should
it be in rhyme? I think so. Because (1)
unrhymed lyrics have hitherto not prospered in
our tongue. Matthew Arnold's, which are the
best of this century, bear too much evidence
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
of a study of German poets, who in this, as in
their hexameters and pentameters, worked with
a freer hand. Blake's unrhymed verses at an
earlier period were sui generis, and so peculiar a
style can hardly be adopted for purposes of trans-
lation. (2) The most exquisite unrhymed lyrics
conceivable (e.g. Collins' Ode to Evening) will
always make their appeal in England to the few.
Translations are not for the few, but for the many,
and must in any case be unsatisfying to scholars.
In the management of the rhymes, of course, one
who is a scholar and has an ear will seek to adapt
his rhythm to the feeling of each passage.
But
this does not mean a mechanical imitation of
ancient rhythms. This again may be an attempt
suited to the German genius, but not to our language,
which has its own native principles, its own means
of producing metrical effects. Foreign models
can no longer be so fruitfully adopted as in the
time of Spenser. And the license for such
experiments can be more readily accorded to the
original poet than to the translator, whose safest
course is to run in some familiar groove. Carducci,
in his neo-paganism, may mould the Italian into
an ingenious likeness of its Latin prototype; it
does not follow that in transfusing Greek thought
and feeling into our barbarous tongue we are to
carry with us the Greek mould as well as the
metal. Clever people will still be found to say
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
313
that they prefer the baldest literal version to such
recasting. Let them munch their Bohn by all
means if they find this the readiest way to get
the marrow. The translator has a more ordinary
set of readers in his eye. He desires to hit the
average apprehension, to which the language of
Bohn does not convey those "unheard harmonies "
which the intuition of genius finds there. And
if the question is between a real translation in
prose and one in verse, let it not be forgotten
that the prose translator also must recast much.
He must study rhythm and round his periods.
That is not consistent with employing literalness,
that bald-pated slave. Dr. John Carlyle once
told me that he translated Dante into prose
"because no tune was better than the wrong tune.”
There is something in that, and his translation is
admirable as a companion to the text. The
fact is that there are two kinds of translation,
having different aims, the one an aid to reading
the original, the other for English readers. But
the prose translator also, if his version is to be
able to go alone, must have a tune" of some kind.
The literary précieux, or exquisite, has many
forms, and they all combine to scout the humble
translator. Even our "gutter" journalism has its
Mascarille. Besides these, the translator has two
other persistent enemies, the pedant and the tyro-
scholar. The pedant must, I fear, be left to him-
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
self.
His case is hopeless. That worst form of
ignorance, conceit of knowledge, surrounds him
like the nine-enfolded Styx, a multiplex river of
hate. If Dryden could make no impression on
the Ogilbys of his day, there is small hope for his
feebler successors.¹ Yet to propitiate this grave
and reverend seignior, before passing onward, let us
make our bow to him and say that the translator
will be most grateful for any light, however dry,
so it be true and clear. For his desire is to be
faithful as well as free.
Of the tyro it would be wrong to despair, for,
as Protagoras in Plato says of the sons of
Pericles, "he is yet young." In the flush of
natural exultation at being able to construe a
speech of Prometheus or a choral ode of the
Oedipus, perhaps to say it off by heart in
barbarous tones, he has a feeling of natural
superiority to his cousin or his aunt, who seems to
enjoy what has neither the usefulness of a crib
nor the grandeur of the Greek original. He is
young, as has been said, and therefore does not
know that if a drama is to be enjoyed it must
be enjoyed as a whole, and it cannot be so enjoyed
unless the whole of it can be at one time presented
to the mind. In spelling out his single play,
some forty lines a lesson or so, with the help of
1
¹ Dryden's critical dicta on this subject are altogether admirable.
If only he had always done as he has said!
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
315
Grammar and Lexicon- the less help he has
from the crib the better, he is taking the sure
road towards an ultimate comprehension of the
poet's mind, much more intimate and thorough
than is attainable through translations only. It
may be that his contempt for all translations is
one of those preservative instincts which are
common to ingenuous youth. But do not let him
spoil other people's enjoyment by spouting 'N Aîos
aieńp, etc., in tones that would be unintelligible
(not to say excruciating) to an ancient Greek, and
flaunting the truism that the lines are untranslat-
able. Rather he should be advised, in some
season of calm weather," when the stress of
examinations is temporarily removed and he is
away from the originals, to take up a verse trans-
lation and glance over it. That coup d'ail may
be of service to him when he returns to study.
((
Translations from Greek classics, then, are
(1) for the increasing number of educated persons
who have no Greek, and also (2) for those, whom
the establishment of the modern side in schools
probably renders a decreasing number, who began
Greek in boyhood, but have dropped it under the
stress of business in after life. Can they hope to
get enjoyment in reading to themselves some fairly
executed translation of a Greek tragedy? That
partly depends upon another question, Do they
enjoy reading plays in English at all? There is
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
nothing in which intelligent persons differ more
than in this. The reason is that in a printed
play there are fewer aids to the imagination than
in other forms of fiction.
gestures, etc., are not described.
Characters, looks,
One has to take
To get the full
the trouble of imagining them.
enjoyment out of a play of Shakespeare, for
example, when read "in the closet" requires either
more than average gifts or a special training.
One main object of the present work has been
to place my readers, if I could, in a more advan-
tageous position for appreciating, if not at first
hand then through translations, the master-pieces
of Greek dramatic art, to enter more fully into
their significance, and to understand how the
several parts or elements bear upon each other.
Another aid which is not to be despised is
dramatic reading. Supposing the translation to
be one that will bear the test (and it is the most
crucial test conceivable), then if it is read aloud
by one who has studied the particular drama and
can read, the true effect will be carried home to
many people's hearts to whom the printed page
would have appealed in vain. Or again, if several
persons combined, as at a Shakespeare reading, to
distribute the parts amongst them, dividing the
Chorus between four or five, and after sufficient
study and rehearsal delivered themselves to an
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
317
audience—supposing the reading to be equally
good,—the effect would be more complete. The
only difficulty here is that the art of reading
aloud, and especially of dramatic reading, is so
little cultivated; else this method would have some
advantages over what at first sight seems the
more complete and perfect one of representation
on the stage. This is well worth attempting, but
is surrounded with difficulties.
Before enumerating these, it may be well to
review the history of such attempts in Eng-
land and elsewhere. Many instances of such
revival have been, no doubt, forgotten. For
example, it is more than probable, considering
the character of the age, that the Antigone of
Alemanni and that of Rotrou, the Electra of De
Baïf, of Vondel, or of Christopher Wase, were
really performed in Italy, France, and the Low
Countries respectively. The Oedipus of Dryden
and Lee (1679) is hardly more removed from
Sophocles than Dryden's All for Love is from
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The model
suffers in both cases, but it is still the model.
L. Theobald's much closer rendering of the Electra
of Sophocles was certainly acted in London about
the middle of last century. Such performances,
both in public and private, have in the present
1
1 See the Dramatic Miscellany of 1760.
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
century had considerable vogue in Germany, where
the appreciative criticism of Lessing had long
since helped to create a taste for them. They
received a great stimulus in the year 1841 when
Mendelssohn was the royal Capellmeister at Berlin,¹
and wrote music for the Antigone and Oedipus
Coloneus in Donner's translation, which followed
closely the metres of the original. The choral
parts were specially revised for the occasion by
August Boeckh.2 This part-dramatical, part-
musical production was transferred to England,
Scotland, and Ireland in 1845, and was rend-
ered memorable by the fact that Helen Faucit,
now Lady Martin, acted the part of Antigone
-the play having been translated, with omissions,
by Mr. Bartholomew. Similar performances, in
which, however, Mendelssohn's music has been the
principal attraction, have taken place repeatedly in
recent years at the Crystal Palace.
Glancing back to an earlier period, we find
English schoolmasters, such as Parr and Valpy,
encouraging their pupils to recite the original
dialogue of some Greek tragedies in costume.
One of Dr. Parr's audience when the Trachiniac
was thus presented at Stanmore (1772) was Sir
William Jones, the famous Oriental scholar;3
1 ¹ See Grove's Dict. of Music, vol. ii.
"It is observable that A. Boeckh's Antigone in Greek and German
was published in 1842.
3 Monk's Life of Dr. Parr.
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy 319
and one of Dr. Valpy's auditors at Reading
(1810) was young Talfourd, afterwards Serjeant
Talfourd, who, in the Dedication to his tragedy of
Ion, gracefully acknowledges the stimulus he had
then received.
The countrymen of Corneille and Racine have.
not been insensible to the acting possibilities of
Greek tragedy. An adaptation of the Antigone
by Messieurs Auguste Vacquerie and Paul Meurice
was acted in Paris at the Odéon (as I have been
told by Mr. Swinburne) in May 1844. And a
rhymed version of the Oedipus Tyrannus, by the
late M. La Croix, has been repeatedly mounted
at the Théâtre Français (first in 1858), no less
distinguished actors than Geoffroy, in 1861, and
Mounet-Sully, in 1881-1890, having assumed the
title-rôle; and at least one considerable actress
Mdlle. Lerou, is known first to have made her
mark in the part of Jocasta. Les Erinnyes, a
successful play of Leconte de Lisle, repeatedly
produced at the Odéon, is in effect a spirited
rhymed version of the most dramatic parts of the
Agamemnon and the Choëphoroe.
The year 1873 saw the unconscious beginning
of a series of similar attempts in Great Britain.
The late Professor Fleeming Jenkin,¹ whose private
stage in his house at 3 Great Stuart Street was for
1
Papers and Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, by R. L. Stevenson ;
Memoir, pp. 126, 127.
320
Guide to Greek Tragedy
many years a centre of intellectual life in Edin-
burgh, produced in that year, with the help of his
dramatic friends, the principal scenes from the Frogs
of Aristophanes in Hookham Frere's translation.¹
On the same stage, in the spring of 1877, under
Professor Jenkin's management, a recently-pub-
lished version of the Trachiniae of Sophocles was
performed, the part of Deianira being played by
Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin. This gave so much pleasure
that it was again brought out with good effect in
the Town Hall, St. Andrews, in the autumn of the
same year.
The Professor's well-known dramatic
enthusiasm warmed more over this than any of his
previous undertakings, and on the appearance of
Browning's Agamemnon he wrote an article in
which the glow of that enthusiasm was clearly
reflected. This was published in the Edinburgh
Review for 1878, and has since been reprinted
amongst his collected papers. In concluding it
he says: "One object of this article has been to
draw attention to the extraordinary merits of some
Greek plays as dramas fit for representation on
the stage."
2
He had a practical aim in view when he wrote
thus of the Agamemnon, and less than two years
subsequently, after long and anxious preparation,
some six hundred of his friends witnessed on the
1 Papers and Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, by R. L. Stevenson
vol. i. pp. 35-44.
2 Vol. i. pp. 3-34.
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
321
stage in Great Stuart Street a performance of the
Agamemnon in English. This was in May 1880.
By this time the seed had been cast abroad, and
other causes had conspired to fructify it. In June.
of the same year the Agamemnon, in the Greek,
was performed by Oxford undergraduates in the
hall of Balliol College before an audience which
included many persons of literary eminence. It
took all present by surprise, and produced a
remarkable effect. The light had now been set
upon a hill, and, like the pine-blaze on Mount
Athos, it shot far over land and sea, to London,
to Cambridge, where at least six plays have been
performed in the Greek, to Bradfield,' to Harvard,
U.S.A., to Toronto in Canada, and subsequently
to the Cape of Good Hope, where, however, the
performance in 1889 of the Electra of Sophocles
in English was the direct outcome of the impres-
sion produced by the representation of the Deianira
at St. Andrews in 1877.2
In the spring of 1890 the Students' Shake-
spearian and Dramatic Society of St. Andrews
University performed the Ajax of Sophocles in
English. The performance was witnessed and
enjoyed by about nine hundred persons from St.
Andrews, Dundee, and elsewhere. An appreciative
notice appeared in the Academy of Sth March 1890.
1 In the neighbourhood of Reading; see above.
2 See the Cape Argus for 30th Sept. 1889.
Y
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Guide to Greek Tragedy
Of the representations which are here recorded,
those at Oxford and Cambridge, at Bradfield, at
the Queen's College, London, at Harvard, and at
Toronto, besides many scholastic performances in
Germany, have been in Greek. Those in French
and German theatres, the performances of the
Antigone, etc., in England in 1845 and subse-
quently; those in 1877-1890 in Edinburgh, St.
Andrews, and Cape Town, have been in the language
understanded of the people. The same method
was followed, in part, by those who got up the
Tale of Orestes in London under the management.
of Professor Warr, and by Lady Maidstone when
she played the Antigone in St. George's Hall in
1890, taking for the purpose Mr. Whitelaw's
translation.¹
There is thus some experience to go upon in
estimating the comparative merits and demerits.
of such attempts in Greek, and in the language of
the country in which the play is acted. Assum-
ing an audience who are all well acquainted with
the play, and who are agreed in accepting the
same mode of pronouncing Greek; assuming,
further, that a young scholar has been found with
sufficient dramatic genius to act the part of Ajax
or of Oedipus, there are of course great advantages
¹ Some reference should be made in this connection to the pro-
duction in Hengler's Circus of plays after the Greek model by Mr.
Todhunter.
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
323
on the side of a performance in the original. The
poet's actual words are given with rightness of in-
tention and in tones which to the hearers are not
barbarous. The dresses and other properties,
founded on antiquarian research, help to sustain
a certain species of illusion, especially when, as at
Bradfield, a model of the Dionysiac theatre can
be provided¹ in the open air, and the day is fine.
But how rare is such a combination of propitious
circumstances ! Can an audience even of five
hundred people be gathered anywhere in Great
Britain to whom every syllable of a Greek play,
if well acted and declaimed, goes home with
absolute fulness of effect? or could five hundred
of the best scholars of the country be assembled
by every one of whom the same pronunciation
and accentuation of the Greek would be without
misgiving accepted as real? The ancient rhythms,
especially the anapaestic, afford, no doubt, an ex-
cellent opportunity for the musical composer; but
is there not a danger here that the music will
prove more interesting than the action, and that
antique simplicity will give way to the genius of
modern art? The music indeed will be appre-
ciated and understood by many who do not follow
the words, but this is not to revive Greek tragedy.
Sir Walter Scott says in his Journal for 6th April
1 But here the Dörpfeld controversy, referred to in Chap. VIII.,
constitutes a fresh difficulty.
324
Guide to Greek Tragedy
1829–
1829-" William Forbes sang in the evening with
a feeling and taste indescribably fine; but as he
had no Scottish or English songs, my ears were not
much gratified. I have no sense beyond Mungo :
'What signify me hear if me no understand."1
"Oh, but," it will be said, "we have the transla-
tion in our hands or on our knees, just as at the
Italian Opera, or at the French play." Or, "We
have read it up beforehand, and we have a fair
general notion what it is all about." Well, of
course, that is the only resource left to you. I
must own that I have recourse to it myself in the
case of foreign languages which I have not fully
acquired conversationally,—except when, as in the
case of Shakespeare or Sophocles, I happen to
know the original play pretty
play pretty well by heart.
1 Aristotle defines language as owv'n onμavtikń-"sound conveying
φωνή σημαντική-
sense"; and he also truly says that dramatic effects are given through
language (see Chap. 1.) And compare the following dialogue in
Fletcher's Elder Brother:
•
Brisac.
Miramont.
I'm sure you've read all Aristotle.
Faith, no:
But I believe; I have a learned faith, sir,
And that's it makes a gentleman of my sort.
Though I can speak no Greek, I love the sound on't ;
It goes so thundering as it conjured devils :
Charles speaks it loftily, and, if thou wert a man,
Or hadst but ever heard of Homer's Iliads,
Hesiod, and the Greek poets, thou wouldst run mad,
And hang thyself for joy thou hadst such a gentleman
To be thy son. Oh, he has read such things
To me !
Bri.
And do you understand 'em, brother?
Mir. I tell thee, no; that's not material; the sound's
Sufficient to confirm an honest man.
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
325
Even in that case, I do not profess to receive
from Salvini or from Mounet-Sully the entire
benefit of their highly finished declamation. As
to having the play before me either in a transla-
tion or in the original while it is being performed,
I am not equal to the acrobatic feat of being
auditor, reader, and spectator all in one. Sup-
pose the play to be Otello, and that I have
forgotten the Italian word for handkerchief, or
(what is equally possible) that I know it when I
see it in print, but not when I hear it spoken. As
I observe the rising excitement of the scene I
either look down at the libretto and lose one of
the most important bits of the acting, or fail to
do so and miss its full significance. The cul-
minating passion of Shakespeare's Othello becomes
"a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing."
Or I am listening to Mounet-Sully's narrative
to Jocasta with a general comprehension of his
drift, when suddenly his voice softens and an
unexpected pathos strikes me through the ear.
For the moment I am at a loss, for in listening
to the unfamiliar language, I have dropped the
thread. Only on looking down upon the book
do I discover that the actor has made a good
point by marking the strong filial affection of
Oedipus towards his supposed father, Polybus.
My judgment approves of this, but it is too late
326
Guide to Greek Tragedy
really to enjoy it. For the effect of declamation
on the stage—" the action suited to the word, the
word to the action "—must be instantaneous, or it
is null and nothing worth. The true object of
stage revival is dramatic interpretation. Anti-
quarian reproduction (as of Nineveh or Luxor in
the Crystal Palace), opportunities of musical effect,
the imaginative illusion of hearing the actual
words in the original language (as if language
were any longer language when it conveys no
meaning), these are after all side issues.
As an academical exercise, the effect of which
(apart from the benefit to the performers) may be
to scholars most enjoyable and even beautiful,
the production of Greek plays in Greek deserves
all encouragement and praise. And the mere
sketch in outline of a Greek tragedy is so instinct
with life that many persons who are ignorant
of Greek receive much unlooked for enjoyment
from such representation. But as a mode of
interpretation, while it has its advantages, it must
be acknowledged, for the reasons stated, to be
incomplete. To hear the Psalms chanted in
Hebrew once or twice is an impressive experience.
But for a mixed congregation in Great Britain
the Authorised, or still better, the Prayer-Book
Version-in Scotland even a "gude hard Psalm"
in the old Metrical Version-has surely more of a
devotional effect. If our Reformers had not felt
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
327
thus, the English language would be poorer than
it is to-day.
The analogy of the French play, etc., does
not run upon all fours. If a company or
"thiasus" of Periclean, or even of Alexandrian
Greeks, could be brought over to London from
the Elysian Fields or "wheresome'er they are,"
and were found willing to accommodate them-
selves to the dimensions of Her Majesty's Theatre
or of Drury Lane, and to perform by gas-light
(or electric light), that "novelty" would be well
worth a visit, if only to solve the moot question
of the pronunciation of Greek. Then, as in seeing
the French plays, we should at least be listening
to perfect artists declaiming in their own native
tongue. But as that is "no possible," as Lamb's
Scotchman said, "because they are deid," it
remains for us to consider the advantages and
disadvantages of a performance in the language
of the country in which the play is to be pre-
sented. This plan has been followed for thirty
years in France, and for fifty in Germany, where
the Donner-Boeckh version of the Antigone has
been repeatedly mounted on the public stage.
Some difference of spirit is noticeable between the
two attempts. The German rendering is one of the
finest fruits of German scholarship, and it follows
closely the metrical structure of the original, to
which in the choral parts, Mendelssohn's music
328
Guide to Greek Tragedy
was originally adapted. I have no doubt that
great German actors and actresses have nobly
given the parts of Creon, Haemon, Antigone,
and Eurydice. But for some reason the purely
dramatic aspect of the production has been less.
celebrated out of Germany than the musical num-
bers have. In the French production of the
Oedipus Tyrannus, on the other hand, the Chorus
is reduced to a position which, except where the
Chorus-leader takes part in the dialogue, is un-
essential and merely ornamental. While the
Chorus - leader accordingly remains a Theban
Elder, the strophes and antistrophes of the princi-
pal odes are musically declaimed by two young
débutantes, who mount on a sort of pedestal when
they recite. This is a serious drawback. But it
does not prevent the play, as a play, from pro-
ducing a tremendous impression. The dialogue
is in rhymed Alexandrines, according to the native
tradition for an heroic play in France. But the
rendering is faithful, and almost line for line. On
both occasions when I saw the play, the attend-
ance, especially of men in the parterre, was full
and large; and it needs hardly to be said that it
was not an audience of scholars. There was
nothing, always excepting the débutantes, to jar
upon a student of the Greek, but I suspect that
few thought much whether Oedipus was a Theban
or a Frenchman.
What we had before us was the
How to Enjoy Greek Tragedy
329
man, the affectionate, public-spirited man, who
became the victim of those cruel sorrows, and
with noble intentions incurred such dreadful
guilt. The silence at critical moments was more
striking even than the applause. As I came
away, I asked myself, Why can we not have the
like of this in England? And the only answer I
could return to myself was that we have at present
no school of tragic acting in our country.
are fast losing even the tradition.
We
We have had
In
to import even our Othello and our Lear.
burlesque, in cup-and-saucer comedy, even in
sentimental drama of a realistic type, we have
actors whom I dare say it would be hard to beat.
Heroic or ideal drama we have none, perhaps do
not want to have it. It is not merely that we have
no Oedipus, but who is to act the Priest, or
Teiresias, or the Theban Shepherd? Who is to
declaim the narrative of the Exangelus? All this
was worthily done at the Théâtre Français. And
if it were possible, under the conditions of theatri-
cal management in Great Britain, to conduct a
similar enterprise with equal skill, it would, I think,
be felt more widely and generally than it is felt
to-day that the dramatic and the purely human
elements in Sophocles (for example) are imperish-
able.
The management of the Chorus is, I must
own, attended with great difficulties, and these are
330
Guide to Greek Tragedy
greater for obvious reasons in the case of the
earlier plays, such as the Oresteia or the Antigone,
than in the Oedipus Tyrannus. But even were
the difficulty insuperable, it might be evaded, as
at the Théâtre Français-only avoiding the sole-
cism of substituting women for men,-and much
would still have been gained. Half a loaf is better
than no bread, and in Sophocles the dramatic
portion, i.e. the dialogue, is more than half. But I
do not see why the difficulty need be altogether
insuperable. Were the task to prove attractive
to some composer, gifted with such self-restraint
and power of dramatic adaptation as Verdi showed
in his opera of Otello, the problem would be solved.
The number of the Chorus is an unessential point,
and might be reduced according to the size of
the theatre. On the whole, the obstacles in the
way of such an approach to completeness
of
interpretation must be acknowledged to be very
great, and it is doubtful whether they will be
surmounted in Great Britain.
Meanwhile, those who have strong imagina-
tions, even if they have no Greek, may enjoy
reading the plays to themselves, and those who
are unequal to such an effort, or disinclined for
it, may notwithstanding sometimes like to hear
them read by another. And in both cases the
translator's modest work, in spite of his enemies
aforesaid, will have its limited reward.
INDEX
ACHILLES, 105, 126
Achilles in Scyros, 77
Actaeon, 62, 68
Acting and actors, 36 ff., 53, 58,
85, 89 ff., 97, 151, 227 ff.
Action, distinguished from Inci-
dent, 9 ff.
Adrastus, 52, 63, 72
Aeschylus, see especially 53, 65,
86, 102, 108 f., 113, 143 ff.,
188 ff., 265 ff.
|
Atalanta, 82, 178
Atossa, 96, 142, 192
BACCHAE, 69, 124, 241, 261
Bacchus, see Dionysus, Iacchos
Balliol College, Oxford, 321
Bradfield, 321
Bromius, a name of, 46
Browning, Robert, 241, 253, 310
Browning, Mrs., 254
Bunsen's God in History, 112
Agamemnon, 57 ff., 72, 96, 121 ff., By-play, 89
163, 320, 321
Agamemnon, character of, 170
Agathon, 60, 187, 245
Ajax, 75, 93, 121, 125, 127
CALYDONIAN HUNT, 82
Cambridge, 321
Cambyses, 297 ff.
Ajax Locrus, 78
Alcestis, 93, 125, 166, 179, 242, Carcinus, 85 note, 187
Cape of Good Hope, 321
Carducci, 312
Carlyle, Dr. John (translator of
Dante), 313
253, 310
Alope, 75, 178
Anapaests, 129, 134
Andromache, 257, 259, 260
Andromeda, 71, 254, 288
Antigone, 73, 121, 123, 127, 132,
146 ff., 168, 182, 210, 310,
(Eur.) 290
Cassandra, 59, 96, 193
Centaur, 294
Central ideas, 113, 118
Chaeremon, 294
Change of scene, 133
Antiopa, 73, 248, 253, 257, 282, Characters in tragedy, 33, 167 ff.,
290 ff.
Antiphonal speeches, 127
Archilochus, 49
Argonautica, 81
Arion, 49
Aristophanes, 49
195, 231 ff.
Choëphoroe, 57 ff., 72, 163, 189
Choerilus, 178
Choregi, 86
Chorus, 34, 53, 92, 130 ff.
Aristotle, 4, 7, 23, 26, 60, 61, 90, Cimmerians, 68
151, 181, 226
Arnold, Matthew, 212, 258, 311
Chronological order, 189, 209 ff.
Climax, 30, 141, 143, 151, 213,
236
332
Index
Clytemnestra, 59, 72, 86, 125, | Epidaurus, 94 ff.
169, 194
Commatica, 138
Commos, or lament, 128
Concentration, 36, 94, 211, 236
Conservatism, 70 (cp. 65), 165
Contrast, 216, 233
Convention, 66, 70, 87, 102
Corinth, 49, 76
Coryphaeus, 53
Cothurnus, or buskin, 88, 97
Creon (in Antigone), especially 152
Cyclic poems, 79 ff.
Cyclops, 165
DANAË, 71
Danaïdes, 71, 161, 178
Dead, state of the, 205
Demeter, 55, 81, 180
Democedes, 306
Destiny, see Fate
De Tocqueville, 244 note
Dialogue, 119 ff.
Dion Chrysostomus, 308
Dionysiac theatre, 36, 126
Epigenes of Sicyon, 52
Equity, 109
Erechtheus, 75, 253, 281
Eretria, 94
Erinnyes, Les, 319
Erinyes, 116
Eteocles, 33, 192
Ethical reflection, 24-26, 109 ff.
Eumenides, 117, 127, 163, 181
Euripides, especially 109, 115,
127, 173, 185 ff., 240 ff.
Eurydice, 123
Exodion, 135
Εξώστρα, 98
FABLES ENUMERATED, 65 ff.
Fate, idea of, 103, III ff., 202,
216 ff.
Francklin's Sophocles, 310
Frere's Aristophanes, 320
Furies, 91, 258
Dionysus, 43 ff., 68 ff., 81, 84, Glaucus, 159
GHOST OF DARIUS, 98, 100, 146
Ghost-Raisers," 68
Gnomic poetry, 53, 128, 137
Goethe, 241
Dithyramb, 49 ff.
Grandiloquence, 86
117, 162
Dionysus Zagreus, 48
Donner's translation of Sophocles, Great cities, 70 ff.
318
Dörpfeld, Dr., 94 ff., 323 note
Dramatic reading, 316
Dramatic speeches, 121 ff.
Dryden, 4, 17, 28 ff., 42, 243 Hebrew prophecy, 110
note, 247, 256, 314, 317
EDONIANS, 69, 162
Ekkyklema, 92
Greatness
inseparable
from
tragedy, 21-23, 27
HAEMON, 126, 149
Hebrew Psalms, 326
Hecuba, 79, 124-128, 251
Hegel, 104
Helena (Eur.), 79, 93, 245
Electra, 65 note, 72, 89, 123. Heracles, 73, 74
127, 251, 317
Eleusis, 48, 180
Eleutherae, 43
Eleuthereus, epithet of Dionysus,
84
"Emotion touched with thought,"
III
24, 27, 116, cp. 111
Eos, 67
Epeisodion, 145
Epic poetry, 8, 53, 79 ff.
Heraclidae, 75, 259
Heraclitus, 106 (cp. 180)
Hercules Furens, 74, 124, 153
Hermione, 252
Herodotus, 49, 63, 106, 116
| Heroic legends, 70 ff.
Hesiod, 105
Hippolytus, 75
Historic subjects, 64
Homer, 8, 79 f., 106, 125, 196
Index
333
Hyllus, 124
Hyporchema, 136, 145, 225
Hyposcenium, 99
IACCHOS, 48
Ideal spectator," 137
Iliad, 79, 105, 109
Indian drama, 31, 39, 42, 294
Io, 67, 68, 71 note
Ion, 75
Ion (the poet), 279
Iphigenia, 91, 194, 258, 262
Irony" of Sophocles, 213 ff.
Ixion, 65, 83
JAPAN, 42, 86
Jenkin, Professor Fleeming, 319 ff.
Jones, Sir W., 318
Justice, 109, 114, 203 ff.
LA CROIX, M., 319
Language, II
Laocoon, 78
Laws, the unwritten, 43
Leconte de Lisle, M., 319
Lessing, 318
Lloyd, Mr. W. W., 117
Longinus, 14 note, 162
Lycurgus, 46, 162
Lycurgus (the orator), 95, 98
Lyric poetry, 53
MAIDSTONE, Lady, 322
Marathon, 55
Martin, Lady, 318
Mask, 88, 91
Μηχανή, 98
Medea, 82, 257, (Neophron) 184,
279
Meleager, 82
Memnon, 67, 77
Mendelssohn, 318
Messengers' speeches, 92, 121, 222
Milton, 5, 241
Mimnermus, 106
Monodies, 129
Moral ideal, 24, 109
Moral maxims, see Gnomic poetry
Moralities (i.e. Morality Plays), 52
Morality, see Ethical reflection
Mounet-Sully, 319
Müller, A., 84
Müller, K. O., 55
Mycerinus, 107, 200
Mysteries, 110, 275
NARRATIVE, 121 ff. 143, 222
Nausicaa, 78, 226
Nemesis, 116
Neophron, 184, 279
Neoptolemus, 79, 125, 127, 229
Niobe, 72, 73, 268
ODYSSEUS, 78, 232
Odyssey, 79, 109, 311
Oedipus, 65, 73, 76, 81, 93, 96,
115, 121, 124-127, 159, 171,
185, 215
Oral tradition, 80
Orchestra, 94 ff.
Oresteia, 109, 162 ff., 181, 190,
192
Orphism, 110 ff., 180
PALAMEDES, 65, 77-79
Panhellenism, 77, 263
Parabasis, 137
Paradox, 251
Parascenion, 135
Parodos, 98, 131-135, 219
Parr, Dr., 318
Patriotism, 66
Peisistratidae, 55
Pentheus, 46, 73
Performance, 84
Peripeteia, 142 ff., 156 (cp. 175)
Persae, 57 ff., 64, 75, 98, 117, 121
ff., 128, 142 ff., 158, 192
Pessimism, 104 ff., 115, 244
Phaethon, 66, 88, 241, 281
Philocles, 185
Philoctetes, 65, 77, 78, 79, 96,
115, 123, 125, 173, 237, 308
Phoenissae, 74, 93, (Phrynichus)
178
Phrynichus, tragic poet, 64 ft.,
General, 109 note
178
Comic poet (epigram attri-
buted to), 183
Pindar, 49, 50, 75, 105
Morshead, Mr. E. D. A., 161, 188 | Plato, 4, 8, 49, 105, 125
334
Index
Pollard's Miracle Plays, 39 note
Pollux' Onomasticon, 55, 89, 93
Polycletus, 96
Potter's translations, 310
Pratinas, 165, 179
Prologos, 131, 155, 221, 224
Promethean trilogy, 98, 160 ff.,
199 ff.
Sphinx, 159
Stage, Greek; see Proscenium
Stage lyrics, 128 ff.
Stage, Roman, 95
Stapfer, M. Paul, 37 note, 138, 168
Stasimon, 134, 135 ff.
Stichomythia, 126
Structure, dramatic, 141 ff.
Prometheus Bound, 58, 86, 98, Style, 206
122
Prometheus (satyric), 159
Prophecy, 122, 143
Proscenium, 94 ff., 99
Protagonist, 130, 132
Pythagoreanism, 110, 180
RACINE, 140, 241
Reading, dramatic, 316
Religious aspect, 102, 197 ff.
Revival of Greek plays, 317 ff.
Rhapsode, 54
Rhetorical element, 127 ff.
St. AndrewS, 321
Sainte-Beuve, 122
Sakuntala, 31 note, 42 note, 294
Salamis, 122, 146, 181, 185
Subjects of tragedy, 60 ff.
Superhuman subjects, 66 ff.
Supernumeraries, 85
Supplices of Aeschylus, 56 ff., 161,
198 ff.
of Euripides, 76, 250
Swinburne, 253, 282, 319
TALFOURD'S Ion, 319
Tecmessa, 125
Teiresias, 125, 150, 176
Telephus, 65, 77, 78, 79
Tennyson, Lord, 252
Teucer, 76
Thamyras, 83, 226
Theatre, 36, 94 ff.
Theobald, L., 310, 317
Theognis, 105, 318
Theseus, 75
Satyrs and satyric plays, 51, 165 ff. Thespis, 52, 177
Sarcey (M. Francisque), 151
Scene (σκηνή), 97, 99
Thetis, 67
Schiller's Bride of Messina, 137, | Thymele, 97
140
Schlegel, 240
Schopenhauer, 15, 107 note
Seven against Thebes, 57, 121,
128, 159, 192
Shakespeare, 18 ff., 28, 30 ff., 39,
61, 153, 167
Shelley, 165
Sicily, 181
Sicyon, 52, 179
Simplicity, 31, 85, 94
Sisyphus, 68
Slavery, 250
Soothsayer, the, 152
Sophocles, 108, 114, 123, 173,
182 ff., 192, 209 ff., 237, 272 ff.,
308
"Souls in the Balance," 67
Sparta, 71
Spenser, 312
Toronto, 321
Toxotides, 68
Trachiniae, 124, 215, 320
Tragedy, general notion of, 5 ff.
"Inferior sort" of, 17, 164
Ancient and modern, 31 ff.
Growth of, 49 ff.
Subjects of, 60 ff.
Tragic completeness, 16
Tragic hero, the, 18 ff.
Translation, 309-316
Trilogy, 157
Triptolemus, 76
Trochaic verse, 129
Trojan expedition, 77
UNDERPLOTS, 32, 85
Unity, 31, 35, 85, 94
VALPY, Dr., 319
Index
335
Vestigia ruris, 32, 147
Vindictiveness, 218, 251
Vitruvius, 94 ff., 99
WAR, 204
Ward, A. W., in Ency. Brit., 33
note, 40 note
Warr, Professor, 322
Wedgwood, Miss, 101
Welcker, 158
Whitelaw's Sophocles, 322
Wilson's Hindu Theatre, 39 note,
152 note
Winckelmann, 167
Woman, 204
Wordsworth, 213
XENOCLES, 165
ZAGREUS, the Winter Dionysus, 48
Zeus, see especially 197 ff., 258
THE END


1