Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/52

 in the senses and emotions, in the imaginations and intellect of his audience. This is the reason why the drama discloses in some respects better than any other branch of literature the average character of the age. Orestes on the stage is driven to crime and madness by the effects of a long descent of inherited sin, but the feelings and beliefs which make his story tragic are in the heads and hearts of the Athenian audience.

The Ali or Hosein of the Persian passion-plays are figures splendidly and tragically beautiful, not as the æsthetic workmanship of any writer, but because they are seen through mists of religious faith by the devout audience of the tekya. The sensuality of a Vanbrugh lived in the hearts of his audience before it walked his stage. The refined intrigue of a Molière or Sheridan was performed to the life dramatised. This is why the Roman plays of Ben Jonson courtly circles before it was were a failure, while those of Shakspere succeeded. What mattered it whether the Catiline of Sallust or the Sejanus of Tacitus were presented to Elizabethan men and