Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/93

 ORIGIN OF COMEDY. 75 Histories, which exist in all countries where the drama is much cultivated, as a subordinate species of Tragedy : the other Tragedies we may call myths or fables ^ as distinguished from the true stories, to which they bore the same relation in the subdivision of Ionian literature, that the Epos bore to the history of Herodotus. In the course of time, another rib was taken from the side of the primary Tragedy, and Tragi-comedy sprang up under the fostering care of Euripides, which was probably the forerunner of the ikapoTpa<y(t)hLaL of Rhinthon, Sopatrus, Sciras, and Blgesus^. One old specimen of this kind of play remains to us in the "AXfcrj- aTL<; of Euripides, which was performed as the satyrical drama of a Tragic Trilogy, 438 B.C., and we are inclined to consider the Orestes as another of the same sort^. It resembled the regular Tragedy in its outward form, but contained some comic characters, and always had a happy termination. Of the Satyrical Drama we have already spoken : we cannot, liowever, quit the subject of Tragedy and its subordinate forms, without noticing a play called EtXajre? ol iirl Tacvapo), which was, according to Herodian^ a satyrical drama. This statement has occasioned some difficulties. It has been asked^, were the Helots, who doubtless composed the chorus, dressed like satyrs, or mixed up with satyrs? But if it was a satyrical drama, what mytho- logical subject is reconcilable with a chorus of Helots? and on the same supposition, how could the comedian Eupolis, to whom Athena3us6 ascribes the play, have been its author? for a trespass by a comedian on the domains of the tragic muse, to whom the satyrical drama belonged, was, especially in those times, something Macbeth were unknown to the spectators ; at present, parts of them might be moulded into tragedies like the Greek; that is, if a Sophocles were to rise up." 1 The words of Suidas, quoted above, appear to allude to this distinction ; /car a fjLiKpbv et's fxijdovs Kai la to pi as iTpaTrrjaav. 2 Muller's Dor. iv. ch. 7, § 6. 3 In an argument to the Alcestis, published from a Vatican MS. (No. 909) by Pindorf, in 1834, we find the following words: T6 dpa/Jia iiroLTjOr] l^. idi8dx07] iirl TXavKlvov iipxovTos to X. irpCoTos -qv 'LocpoKKrjs, devTepos Evpnridris Kprjacrais, 'AXK/xaiQvi Tcp 5ta "^a)0t5os, TifKecpa}, 'AX/CTjcrrtSt. to 5e dpdfxa KCjfJLiKOJTepav ^x" '''V KaTa<TK€vr)v. The last sentence is a repetition in effect of the statement in the Copenhagen argument. (Matthise, vii. p. 214.) On the date see Welcker, Rheinisch. Mus. for 1835, p. 508; Clinton, F. H. Vol. i. p. 424. ^ See Eustathius on Iliad ii. p. •297. ^ By Miiller in Was fur eine Art Drama waren "die Jleloten"? Niebuhr's Khein, Mus. III. p. 488, ^ IV. p. 138.