Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/58

xlviii finds its explanation in these grand central truths of Christianity, which have left their impress alike on art and on literature. Thus, in the head of our Saviour in the Cena of Leonardo da Vinci, we see that marvellous union of sublimity and pathos, which, while lifting the soul into a higher atmosphere, at the same time appeals to the deepest sympathies of the human heart. Thus, too, the grand figures of the Sistine Chapel, the prophets and sibyls of Michael Angelo, while exhibiting the human form cast in the majestic mould of the Olympian gods, bear traces, at the same time, of those inner life-struggles which impart to every noteworthy countenance so deep and often so tragic an interest. The literary productions of the romantic era also bear witness to the deeper significance which attaches to human nature since the advent of Christianity—a phenomenon the recognition of which is essential to the true appreciation of classical literature.

The fundamental distinction between the ancient and modern drama will be more fully recognized if we bring into closer comparison the two great fathers of dramatic art, Æschylus and Shakespeare, who, though separated from one another by an interval of nearly twenty centuries, yet offer some remarkable points both of analogy and contrast.

In studying the dramas of Æschylus, when we penetrate below the surface, we find that the solution of problems, ethical and religious, bearing upon man's nature and destiny, constitutes their essence, an object to which the delineation of character is made