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46 which might seem unmeaning to those only acquainted with modern literature.

The other two divisions are dramas of character and dramas of situation. In the former, the human will asserts itself against the power of destiny, and even when crushed in the conflict, asserts its inalienable dignity and liberty. This is the highest and the most essential kind of Greek tragedy, and one in which Æschylus and Sophocles were never equalled except by Shakspere in his greatest character plays. In the latter class, the characters are represented as dominated by misfortunes, which pour in upon them in succession like the messengers in the Book of Job.

34. It is easy to see how the nascent drama would take this simple form, and excite the pity of the audience by a series of pathetic scenes and poetical complaints; but we marvel how Euripides, who had discovered the use of plots, should have written a whole play like the Troades, which is merely the pathetic history of the last day of the captives in their ruined native land. The large proportion of lyrical monodies and choral odes in this class of plays suggests to us that Euripides here intended rather a musical than a dramatic effect. We know that he was much censured by the old school for the introduction of monodies and of irrelevant odes, which can have had no intention but to display the musical effects of the school of Timotheus, and of other composers who made both voice and instrument the vehicles of strong emotions and of bitter grief. Thus a play like the Troades may have been partly a musical intermezzo among the more intellectual and dramatic pieces of the tetralogy. But it is also evident that a poet like Euripides, who had a peculiar talent for painting pathetic scenes, was enabled in such plays to bring up a loosely connected series of such scenes, each of which would have a powerful effect upon a sensitive audience. In both Phœnissæ and Troades this is essentially the case.

35. The few cases, like the Supplices, where dialogue