Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/157

Rh literary expression appears first in the field. Greek drama, on the other hand, whatever its associations with popular ritual may have been, was developed by a people already possessing an epic and lyrical poetry of the very finest quality, and its earliest known examples are literary masterpieces.

I confess to the heresy of regarding the problem of the origin of Greek drama as a conundrum interesting indeed—but relatively unimportant. The product is so different in character from the sources from which its derivation is sought, that, could the question be solved with certainty, it would not, I think, throw any considerable light upon the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, nor help to its appreciation. And that the question is capable of solution, I doubt. There is, in fact, no evidence except that of analogies, the exactness of the correspondence of which with the Greek circumstances is imperfectly known, and the interpretation of the structure of plots, where the degree of relative emphasis laid upon individual features is liable to be more certainly in accordance with the investigator's prepossessions than with the dramatist's intentions.

I can only hope that this common failing of the critic has not been too markedly exemplified above, for, when all is said and done, Miss Phillpotts has given us a thoroughly scholarly piece of work, rich in interesting information and full of suggestive obiter dicta, to which no sufficient justice can be done within the compass of a brief review.