Page:The Tragic Drama of the Greeks (1896).djvu/16

4 strolling players, the other literary, and preserved by the ecclesiastics.

It appears then from the above survey that the theatre of the Greeks is the ultimate source of every dramatic literature which really deserves the name. Among the Greeks themselves the first species of drama to be developed into perfect shape was tragedy. Hence the history of Attic tragedy, apart from its own intrinsic interest, is a subject of which the literary importance can hardly be overrated. Further than this, as a scientific study it possesses certain advantages over the history of the modern theatre. The dramas of the different European nations have been exposed from the very first to such complexity of influences, each of them acting and reacting on the other, and all alike being dominated at various times and in various degrees by classical example, that their course of necessity has been somewhat fitful and irregular. The tragic drama of the Greeks, on the other hand, is one of those branches of art which have been allowed to unfold themselves in a purely spontaneous manner, without any admixture of foreign elements. Being wholly a native product, each successive phase in its career follows naturally from that which went before. Its progress from birth to maturity, and from maturity to decay, resembles one of the evolutionary processes of nature; and the task of tracing its progress throughout these various stages has much of the attractiveness which accompanies an inquiry into some phenomenon of natural science.

In most countries art and literature are originally the offspring of religious enthusiasm; and the early poets and sculptors find their highest inspiration in singing the praises, or in fashioning the likeness, of the divine being. The Greek drama forms no exception to this rule. The cause to which it owed its origin was the fervent zeal of the worshippers of the god Dionysus, amid whose sacred festivals it developed and grew to maturity, and to whose honour it was consecrated.