Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/47

Rh time of Sophocles, of twelve or fifteen, voices to the proper musical utterance of their recitatives and choral odes, to provide the fitting masques, to superintend the scenery, decorations, dresses, which his plot required. And all this had to be done for a people keenly alive to any imperfection, ready to seize eagerly upon any ludicrous combination, or coarseness of taste, satisfied with nothing but completeness. Out of the scanty records which give us little more than a blank, a few facts emerge which may be referred to this period; and trifling as they are, they are characteristic, (1.) Up to his time, it had been the custom, as has been said, for the author to be the chief actor also, appearing as the hero of the piece, and combining with it such of the subordinate characters as appeared when the hero was off the stage. Æschylos, for example, had acted the parts of Prometheus and Agamemnon. Sophocles, however, partly from a weakness of voice, which would have made it difficult to fill the great theatre of Dionysos, partly, perhaps, from a sense that the two functions were in their nature distinct, and that it was better to keep them so, that each might attain to excellence, withdrew from the stage altogether. (2.) To him also was due the enlargement at once of the freedom of the writer in