Page:The Republic by Plato.djvu/13

Rh of the closet. Indeed, he is our chief source of knowledge for the conversational speech of fourth-century Athens. The streets, the gymnasia, the beauty of youth, the pride of manhood, and the teeming life of the city generally, are revived in his dialogues as nowhere else. The picturesque setting, the sharply outlined characters, the realistic grace and variety in speech, and the easily unfolding plots of his most perfect dialogues, such as the Protagoras and Symposium, show that he might have been—that, indeed, he actually is, along with the other sides of his composite manifold lifework—as masterly a dramatist as Sophocles. Even as a fun-maker, he is but second, though indeed a far-away second, to his contemporary, the unapproachable mad spirit that in the name of conservatism and the “good old ways” turned all the decencies and realities of life upside down in his comedy. Aristophanes himself, it should be remembered, is a welcome guest at the Platonic Banquet. He speaks there, even on the topic of Love, wittily and with bold creative fancy, though Socrates’ eloquence makes all that went before seem idle chatter. He drinks well and manfully, too, though here again he meets his match. The Symposium ends with a glimpse of Socrates, sober still and argumentative to the end, sitting, as the long night wanes, between Aristophanes and their host, the tragic poet Agathon. While they quaff in turn from the great bowl, the philosopher is convincing the reluctant and drowsy pair that the consummate dramatist will fuse comedy and tragedy, or become alike supreme in both. We need not call this a prophecy of Shakespeare’s advent. It was already largely made true in Plato’s own noble art, which saw life whole, alike an amusing and a pathetic spectacle.

We must insist, then, that Plato’s was a great, all but the greatest, dramatic genius. The characteristics of that most noble of arts, including even the effacement of the artist’s own person, are seen at once from the fact, that all his works are—not didactic sermons, in form at least, but—realistic dialogues: and the chief interlocutor in most, a prominent figure in nearly all, is that most grotesque and most pathetic, most ugly and most fascinating of figures, whether in fiction or in real life, “short of stature, stout of limb,” satyr-faced and siren-voiced, Socrates the Athenian.