Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/92

 74 CLASSIFICATION OP GREEK PLAYS. objects of tragic and comic imitation, and adds to it the consti- tuent characteristic of Tragedy, namely, that it effects by means of pity and terror the pm-gation of such passions ^ Aristotle's definition of Tragedy is so full and comprehensive, that it has been adopted even by modern writers as a description of what modern Tragedy ought to be^; there is one particular, however, which he has not expressly stated, and which is due rather to the origin of Greek Tragedy than to its essence, we mean the necessity for a previous acquaintance on the part of the audience with the plot of the Tragedy : this it is which most eminently distinguishes the Tragedies of Sophocles from those of Shakspeare, and to this is owing the poetical irony with which the poet and the spectators handled or looked upon the characters in the piece ^. Aristotle is supposed by his commentator Eustratius, to allude to this in a passage of the Ethics*: we are disposed to believe on the con- trary, that he is referring to the different effects which events related in a Tragedy, as having taken place prior to the time of the events represented, and those events which are represented by action, produce on the minds of the spectators : for example, the calamities of (Edipus, when alluded to in the QEdipus at Colonus, do not strike us with so much horror as when they are represented in the (Edipus at Thebes. If, however, all the prominent characters in the true Tragedy were gods or heroes, it follows that the Uepaac of ^schylus, and the MiXrjTov aXcoG-L<; and ^olvLaaat of Phrynichus, were not Tragedies in the truest sense ^, and must be referred to the class of ^ 7] Sk KWfJuphLa iariv, uicnrep diroixev, fji,tjxr]cn.s (pavoTip)p jxiv, ov fievroi Kara iraaav KaKcav, dXXd rod alcrxpov ecm to yeo7ov fidpiov. Poet. c. V. — ^arip odv rpayuidia fAifXTjais irpd^€0}S crvovdaias kuI reXelas, fxeyeOos ixo^arjs — ^— dpdivTiou Kal ov 5i' aTTayyeXias, di eXiov Kal <p6^ov irepalvovcra rrju tQu tolovtwv TradrjfxdTuv KaOapaiv. Poet. c. VI. 2 Kurd's definition {On the Province of the Drama, p. 164) is a mere copy of Aristotle. Schiller, who has a better right to declare ex cathedra what Tragedy ought to be, than any writer of the last century, thus defines it: *' That art which proposes to itself, as its especial object, the pleasure resulting from compassion, is called the tragic art in the most comprehensive sense of the word." Werke, in einem Bande, p. 1 176. 3 See Dr. Thirlwall's Essay On the Irony of Sophocles. TroXi> fxaXXov ij to. irapdvoixa Kal deivd Trpovwapxeiv rah rpayciidtais rj irpdrrecrdai. ^ Niebuhr, Hist. Home, Vol. i. note 1150: "The Destruction of Miletus by Phry- nichus, and the Persians of ^schylus, were plays that drew forth all the manly feelings of bleeding or exulting hearts, and not tragedies : for these the Greeks, before the Alexandrian age, took their plots solely out of mythical story. It was essential that their contents should be known beforehand : whereas the stories of Hamlet and
 * I. II, § 4: dia^epei Se twv -rraOoJu '^Kaarov rrepl ^Quras rj TeXevT'qaavTas (rvju.^aiueiv