Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/354

 stage—the door through which the ghosts make their entrances and exits—marks the frequent presence of spiritual (but by no means immaterial) personages in the theatre; even amusing parodies on ancestral worship might be quoted—for example, from Act IV. sc. vi. of Ho-han-chan. Indeed, the Chinese dramatist displays an easy familiarity with the world of spirits worthy of the roughest maker of medieval mysteries. The Revenge of Teou-ngo, for example, is a drama in which ghost-life—if we may use such a phrase—is denuded of all that solemn horror which shrouds the Æschylean Darius or the Shaksperian Banquo; even the tragic poets in the Frogs maintain the ghostly proprieties better than Teou-ngo. This is not because the Chinese play intermingles comedy and tragedy, as is usual with the Chinese dramatists; it is because we see the ghost in plain daylight, pleading in a court of justice, arguing its case with consummate coolness, and confronting, nay, actually beating its false accusers. We may look upon the mutilated form of Vergil's Deïphobus—

or the scornful face of Farinata degli Uberti—

without starting at the materialism of the thought; but this is because we are for the time in Hades, a long way from the upper world. But to imagine the effect of Teou-ngo on our Western stage we must picture Polydorus' ghost accusing Polymêstor in the presence, not only of Hecuba, but a full Athenian court, or "the majesty of buried Denmark" walking arm in arm with Hamlet and even beating the astonished Claudius.