Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/348



Heavenward do bear her from the pine-clad shore,

Past Ukishima's widely stretching moor,

Past Ashidaka's heights, and where are spread

Th' eternal snows on Fusiyama's head—

Higher and higher to the azure skies,

Till wandering vapours hide her from our eyes."

It is to be noted how strongly this prominence of Nature distinguishes the Oriental from the Western dramas. The scene of Æschylus' Prometheus Bound lies on the Caucasus, in the midst of that savagely sublime scenery which Lermontoff, the Russian Byron, was to depict in his Demon; but the Athenian dramatist makes no use of the opportunity for description, his own interest and that of his audience being centred on humanity, not physical Nature—a striking contrast to Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, in which we have humanity subordinated to Nature. Again, in the Persians how an Indian dramatist would have delighted in giving a full and graphic description of the Hellespont; in Sophocles' Philoctetes and Œdipus at Colonus, how widely would he have extended the brief notice of the hero's cavern and of the sacred grove! Nor is this domination of human interest by any means confined to the classical drama of the West. Beyond the description of the starry night in the Merchant of Venice, and a few glimpses of Nature such as that of the sea in Lear, we shall find few passages descriptive of Nature in Shakspere's plays, and not many more in the plays of his contemporary dramatists. Moreover, the mysteries and miracle-plays of England, France, and Germany are curiously deficient in description of Nature. The same characteristic is presented by German dramatists, who can by no means be accused of slavishly following Greek models. Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, for example, though elaborated from ideas first roused in the mind of the poet's friend Goethe by Swiss scenery,