Page:Chaos, a vision of eternity.djvu/18

 aspirations which a man feels haunting him, and calling to him, but which he cannot state in plain language or uphold with a full acceptance of responsibility."

In the performance of a modern drama, in which so much depends upon the scenery and action, there is no need for a chorus; but in the following poem it will be obvious that the expedient of resorting to the chorus is required by the nature of the drama and of the observations which could not properly come from its sole actor. Under the law of the Grecian drama, the chorus was not permitted to leave the orchestra throughout the course of the drama. This called forth the following caustic comment from Sir Walter Scott, in his essay on the Drama: "when a deed of violence was to be acted, the helpless chorus, instead of interfering to prevent the atrocity, to which the perpetrator had made them privy, could only, by the rules of the theater, exhaust their sorrow and surprise in dithyrambics."

Scott was not the first to find fault with the chorus. Aristophanes puts into the mouth of Euripides the following comment upon the chorus of Æschylus and Phrynichus:

The chorus was retained in the early English drama; but was used chiefly for the declamation of the Prologue or Epilogue. In Milton's Samson Agonistes, the chorus participates in the dialogue. It announces the entrance