Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/426

406 406 DRAMA I G KEEK myths of the tragedians. They only very exceptionally treated historic themes, though one great national calamity, 1 and a yet greater national victory, 2 and in later times a few other historical subjects, 3 were brought upon the stage. Such veiled historical allusions as critical ingenuity has sought not only in passages but iu the entire themes of other Attic tragedies 4 cannot, of course, even if accepted as such, stamp the plays in which they occur as historic dramas. No doubt Attic tragedy, though after a different and more decorous fashion, shared the tendency of her comic sister to introduce allusions to contemporary events and persons ; and the indulgence of this tendency was facilitated by the revision (Btaa-Kev^) to which the works of the great poets were subjected by them, or by those who produced their works after them. 5 So far as we know, the subjects of the tragedies before ^Eschylus were derived from the epos ; and it was a famous saying of this poet that his dramas were &quot; but dry scraps from the great banquets of Homer &quot; an expression which may be understood as including the poems which belong to the so-called Homeric cycles. Sophocles, Euripides, and their successors likewise resorted to the Trojan, and also to the Heraclean and the Theseau myths, and to Attic legend in general, as well as to Theban, to which already ^Eschylus had had recourse, and to the side or subsidiary myths connected with these several groups. These substantially remained to the last the themes of Greek tragedy, the Trojan myths always retaining so prominent a place that Lucian could jest on the universality of their dominion. Purely invented sub jects were occasionally treated by the later tragedians ; of this innovation Agathon was the originator. 6 nstruc- Thespis is said to have introduced the use of a prologue u - and a rhesis (speech) the former being probably the opening speech recited by this solitary actor, the latter the dialogue between actor and chorus. It was a natural result of the introduction of the second actor that a second rhesis should likewise be added ; and this tripartite division would be the earliest form of the trilogy, three sections of the same myth forming the beginning, middle, and end of a single drama, marked off from one another by the choral e songs. From this /Eschylus proceeded to the treatment of schylean these several portions of a myth in three separate plays, tgy- connected together by their subject and by being performed in sequence on a single occasion. This is the jEschylean trilogy, of which we have only one extant example, the Orestea, as to which critics may diifer whether yEschylus adhered in it to his principle that the strength should lie in the middle in other words, that the interest should le tetra- centre in the second play. In any case, the symmetry of & the trilogy was destroyed by the practice of performing after it a satyr-drama, probably, as a rule, if not always, connected in subject with the trilogy, which thus became a tetralogy, though this term, unlike the other, seems to be a purely technical expression invented by the learned. 7 1 Phrynichua, Capture of Miletus. a Moschion, Tliemistocles ; Theodectes, Mausolus ; Lycophron, Jdarathonii ; Cassandra ; Sucii ; Philiscus, Tliemistocles. 4 ^Eschylus, Septem v. Thebas ; Prometheus Vinctus ; Danais- trilogy ; Sophocles, Antigone ; CEdipus Culoneus ; Euripides, Medea. 5 Quite distinct from this revision was the practice against which the law of Lycurgus was directed, of &quot; cobbling and heeling&quot; the dramas of the great masters by alterations of a kind familiar enough to the students of Shakespeare as improved by Colley Gibber. The later tragedians also appear to have occasionally transposed long speeches or episodes from one tragedy into another a device largely followed by the Roman dramatists, and called contamination by Latin writers. 6 A nthos ( The Flower). 1 One satyr-drama only is preserved to us, the Cyclops of Euripides, a dramatic version of the Homeric tale of the visit of Odysseus to Polyphemus. Lycophron, one of the poets of the Pleias, by using the satyr-drama (in his JMeneilemus ) as a vehicle of personal ridicule, applied it to a purpose like that of Old Attic comedy. Sophocles, a more conscious and probably a more self- critical artist than ^Eschylus, may be assumed from the first to have elaborated his tragedies with greater care ; and to this, as well as to his innovation of the third actor, which materially added to the fulness of the action, we may attribute his introduction of the custom of contending for the prize with single plays. It does not follow that he never produced connected trilogies, though we have no example of such by him or any later author ; on the other hand, there is no proof that either he or any of his succes sors ever departed from the ^Eschylean rule of producing three tragedies, followed by a satyr-drama, on the same day. This remained the third and last stage in the history of the construction of Attic tragedy. The tendency of its action towards complication was a natural progress, and is approved by Aristotle. This complication, in which Euripides excelled, led to his use of prologues, in which 01:0 of the characters opens the play by an exposition of the circumstances under which its action begins. This practice, though ridiculed by Aristophanes, was too convenient nob to be adopted by the successors of Euripides, and Menandcr transferred it to comedy. As the dialogue increased in importance, so the dramatic significance of the chorus diminished. While in ^schylus it mostly, and in Sophocles occasionally, takes part in the action, its songs could not but more and more approach the character of lyrical intermezzos; and this they openly assumed when Agathon began the practice of inserting choral songs (embolima) which had nothing to do with the action of the play. In the general contrivance of their actions it was only natural that, as compared with ^Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should exhibit an advance in both freedom and ingenuity ; but the palm due to a treatment at once piously adhering to the substance of the ancient legends and original in an effective dramatic treatment of them must be given to Sophocles. Euripides was, moreover, less skilful in untying complicated actions than in weaving them ; hence his frequent resort 8 to the expedient of the deus ex machina, which Sophocles employs only in his latest, play. 8 The other distinctions to be drawn between the dramatic qualities of the three great tragic masters must be mainly based upon a critical estimate of the individual genius of each. In the characters of their tragedies, ^Eschylus and Sophocles avoided those lapses of dignity with which from one point of view Euripides has been charged by Aristophanes and other critics, but which from another connect themselves with his humanity. If his men and women are less heroic and statuesque, they are more like men and women. Aristotle objected to the later tragedians that, compared with the great masters, they were deficient in the drawing of character by which he meant the lofty drawing of lofty character. In diction, the transition is even more perceptible from the &quot; helmeted phrases&quot; of ^Eschylus, who had Milton s love of long words and sonorous proper names, to the play of Euripides s &quot; smooth and diligent tongue ; &quot; but to a sustained style even he remained essentially true, and it was reserved for his successors to introduce into tragedy the &quot;low speech&quot; i.e., the con-, versational language of comedy. Upon the whole, how ever, the Euripidean diction seems to have remained the standard of later tragedy, the flowery style of speech introduced by Agathon finding no permanent favour. Finally, /Eschylus is said to have made certain reforms in tragic costume of which the object is self-evident, to have improved the mask, and to have invented the cothurnus or buskin, upon which the actor was raised to 8 Ion; Siqiplices; Iphigenia in Tauris; Electra; Helena; Ilippolytus; Andromache. a Fhilvctttes. Com] I ed acti&amp;lt; Dk-t-or Impiov ments i costum tc.
 * Id., Plucenissce ; ^Eschylus, Persas (Persce-trilogy ?).