Page:Euripides the Rationalist.djvu/59

Rh present this particular topic of 'hospitality': we must widen the scope of our consideration to take in the action of the play as a whole, and must observe a certain element in the facts presented, of which if we take no heed, we ourselves are responsible for the oversight, and not the author, who has omitted no available means of keeping it steadily before us.

The modern reader, having arrived at ancient Greek drama, as he commonly must, through a course of modern commentary and criticism, approaches it as a rule under a general prepossession, that among the things which he must not expect from the dramatist is a regard for the relation of events to one another in the article of time. Time (it is understood and occasionally asserted) is an element of reality which the Greek dramatist, in his imitation, did not pretend to account for. It was covered, obliterated, ignored by a general agreement between artist and audience. Time in a Greek tragedy is 'ideal', or to speak more plainly, insignificant. Whether the scenes of the story are supposed to pass slowly or rapidly, or by how long an interval one incident is separated from another, are questions which the Greek dramatist never entertained, nor the Greek audience either. By a convention (it is said) the incidents of a Greek tragedy were supposed, whether this were in fact possible or not, to occupy a day or thereabouts, and within this 'ideal' day they may be distributed as you please. If, ignoring this conventional treatment, you try to translate the story into terms of real time, you will become aware of your error by finding yourself involved in contradictions, compelled (for example) to suppose that one and the same interlude represents for one purpose an interval of a few hours but for another purpose an interval of as many weeks. This 'systolé and diastolé', with many other remarkable things, is a natural effect of the convention. Now I do not propose here to investigate this theory, as it does not directly concern us. Its development is a curious chapter in the history of opinion, and I have tried to relate it elsewhere. Under the name of 'the unity of time', a term now happily, if slowly, going out of use, it has had in its day an immense influence both on dramatic composition and on the archaeology of the drama. So that although it is utterly untrue,