Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/219



§ 53. peculiar poetic production of the city is the dramatic spectacle, whether in the rude shape of such plays as those of Hans Sachs or in the exquisite symmetry of Sophocles' Antigone. We do not, of course, mean to maintain either that all cities, if left to their own literary evolution, will of necessity produce a drama, or that no social conditions save those of city life have produced this form of literature. The Indian, Chinese, and Japanese dramas show the weakness of any such general assertions; and wherever an audience can be gathered together, to a passion-play like the Persian or a court-play like the Japanese, we may be sure that religion or royalty will supply the place of the city audience to a certain extent. But the religious or courtly spectacle cannot be regarded as a perfect substitute for the city drama. It is in the organisation of city life that the greatest variety of human character within the smallest space is produced; and this variety of human types allows dramatic analysis of character its fullest scope. Accordingly, the most admirable specimens of dramatic art have been the work of cities, from the Athens of Pericles to the London of Elizabeth and the Paris of Louis Quatorze. We are, however, at present concerned, not with the drama of national capitals, but only with