Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1894) v1.djvu/19

Rh very inadequate conception of a Greek play if we thought of it simply as a series of stately dialogues maintained between two or three actors, with chorus-chants intervening. It was, in point of fact, much more of the nature of a grand spectacular opera. The theatre, large enough to contain an audience variously estimated at from 15,000 to 30,000, became for the occasion a temple of Dionysus (Bacchus), having his altar at its centre. The drama was the heart of an annual solemn religious festival, and the stage (200 to 300 feet long) was, when the action of the piece justified their introduction, the scene of the grouping and movement of splendid pageants and processions, in which armies of supernumeraries formed a magnificent setting for the tragic interest of dialogue and ode. The Chorus, occupying the orchestra, or dancing-area, in front of the stage, grouped themselves, or executed their evolutions, round the altar. While chanting Strophe 1, they danced, "with woven paces and with waving hands," from the altar towards the right, returning, with precisely similar music and movements, in Antistrophe 1,the rhythmical structure of which must accordingly correspond. In Strophe 2 they danced to the left, with (generally) a change of music and movement, returning as before in Antistrophe 2; and so on through the series of pairs of stanzas. The occasional odd stanza (Epode, if at the end, Mesode, if in the middle) was executed round the altar. Now, it must be remembered that all these movements of gliding limb and swaying form were not only rhythmical accompaniments to the words and music, but were in themselves significant, nay, eloquent, among a race who (like some peoples of southern Europe in our own day) carried pantomimic gesture to such perfection that a conversation might be carried on, or a public address delivered, without the utterance of a single articulate word. Hence, the