Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/230

206 came on first, say, as the King Lycurgus, let him change his dress during the next song and re-enter as the priest whom Lycurgus has scorned; next time he may be a messenger announcing the tyrant's death. All that is needed is a place to dress in. A section of the round dancing-floor ('orchêstra') is cut off; a booth or skênê is erected, and the front of it made presentable. Normally it becomes a palace with three doors for the actor-poet to go in and out of. Meantime the character of the dancing is somewhat altered, because there is no longer a ring to dance in; the old ring-dance or 'cyclic chorus' has turned into the 'square' chorus of tragedy.

Of course, the choir can change costume too: Pratînas once had a choir representing Dymanian dancing girls. But that was a more serious business, and seems to have required a rather curious intermediate stage. There are titles of plays, such as The Huntsmen-Satyrs,* Herald-Satyrs,* Wrestler-Satyrs.* Does not this imply something like the Maccus a Soldier, Maccus an Innkeeper, of the Italian 'Atellanæ,' like The Devil a Monk in English? The actor does not represent a soldier simply; he represents the old stage buffoon Maccus pretending to be a soldier. The choir are not heralds; they are satyrs masquerading as such. It is the natural end of this kind of entertainment to have the disguise torn off, and the satyrs, or Maccus, or the Devil, revealed in their true characters. In practice the tragic choirs were allowed three changes of costume before they appeared as satyrs confessed. That is, to use the language of a later time, each performance was a 'tetralogy'—three 'tragedies' ('little myths,' Aristotle calls them by comparison with the