Literary Remains, vol 2 | Page 7

which all the radii from the different seats or benches converged. In
this double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time as
spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the
unity of place;--not on the score of any supposed improbability, which
the understanding or common sense might detect in a change of
place;--but because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any
imagination to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the
persons, instead of the persons changing their place. Yet there are
instances, in which, during the silence of the chorus, the poets have
hazarded this by a change in that part of the scenery which represented
the more distant objects to the eye of the spectator--a demonstrative
proof, that this alternately extolled and ridiculed unity (as ignorantly
ridiculed as extolled) was grounded on no essential principle of reason,
but arose out of circumstances which the poet could not remove, and
therefore took up into the form of the drama, and co-organized it with
all the other parts into a living whole.
The Greek tragedy may rather be compared to our serious opera than to
the tragedies of Shakspeare; nevertheless, the difference is far greater
than the likeness. In the opera all is subordinated to the music, the
dresses and the scenery;--the poetry is a mere vehicle for articulation,
and as little pleasure is lost by ignorance of the Italian language, so is
little gained by the knowledge of it. But in the Greek drama all was but
as instruments and accessaries to the poetry; and hence we should form
a better notion of the choral music from the solemn hymns and psalms
of austere church music than from any species of theatrical singing. A
single flute or pipe was the ordinary accompaniment; and it is not to be
supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed to obscure
the distinct hearing of the words. On the contrary, the evident purpose

was to render the words more audible, and to secure by the elevations
and pauses greater facility of understanding the poetry. For the choral
songs are, and ever must have been, the most difficult part of the
tragedy; there occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, the
newest expressions, the boldest images, the most recondite allusions. Is
it credible that the poets would, one and all, have been thus prodigal of
the stores of art and genius, if they had known that in the representation
the whole must have been lost to the audience,--at a time too, when the
means of after publication were so difficult, and expensive, and the
copies of their works so slowly and narrowly circulated?
The masks also must be considered--their vast variety and admirable
workmanship. Of this we retain proof by the marble masks which
represented them; but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness
of the substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor; so
that not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left for
the pupil of the actor's eye, but in some instances, even the iris itself
was painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the divine
or heroic personage represented.
Finally, I will note down those fundamental characteristics which
contradistinguish the ancient literature from the modern generally, but
which more especially appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The
ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the first
there is a predominance of rhythm and melody, in the second of
harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore
were the masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity,
majesty--of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed
by defined forms or thoughts: the moderns revere the infinite, and
affect the indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite;--hence their passions,
their obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through the unknown,
their grander moral feelings, their more august conception of man as
man, their future rather than their past--in a word, their sublimity.
[Footnote 1: Greek (transliterated): exegromenos de idein tous men
allous katheudontas kai oichomenous, Agath'ona de kai Aristophanaen
kai S'okratae eti monous egraegorenai, kai pinein ek phialaes megalaes

epidexia ton oun S'okratae autois dialegesthai kai ta men alla ho
Aristodaemos ouk ephae memnaesthai ton logon (oute gar ex archaes
paragenesthai, uponustazein te) to mentoi kethalaion ethae,
prosanagkazein ton S'okratae omologein autous tou autou andros einai
k'om'odian kai trag'odian epistasthai poiein, kai ton technae
trag'odopoion onta, kai k'om'odopoion einai. Symp. sub fine.]

PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA.
Let two persons join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either
take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry
will have already