Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/196

 Chorus, shuddering with its divination of the deed, expresses our expectation. All at once a stifled exclamation struggles out from the interior of the palace: the Chorus whispers, "Hush! who is it that cries out, 'A blow'?" and the play soon closes with the sombre feeling unrelieved. Nothing intervenes to assist the spectators back to life, and to the other persons whose interests implicate them so deeply in the plot. There is but one interest and one action in a Greek Tragedy, and when that is reached the nature of the scene is exhausted; the poet has no more to say, and is not conscious of any craving for variety in his listeners. His play was an artistic embodiment of the current religious ideas, and so far was secluded, as the modern pulpit is, from manifold life. It is not possible to discover a place in these solemn developments of Fate, where a feeling of Humor could intrude. The Chorus, listening to the blow, intervenes instead of a Porter. It is the voice of an audience conscious of the crime. So is a modern audience conscious of Macbeth's crime, but that consciousness is itself the Chorus, whose ancient function is distributed through the silent hearts of the spectators, who are thus permitted to mingle in every awful occurrence, and therefore need to be restored again to the ordinary world of justice and emotion.

Shakspeare exhibits the supreme nature of his genius when he meets this exigency which antique religion did not feel. He admits the free play of life into its real closeness with all our moral and pathetic emotions; but we never find that Humor weakens the religious purpose